Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Power Bounce

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Well, all the jokes about my absence from the United States causing the market to fall, and how my return would cause it to rise, seemed to be eerily prescient. The market bottomed literally the moment I left Berlin, and by the time I touched down in San Francisco, the ES was over 30 points higher. Incredible.

I’m the impatient sort who would prefer to see the market fall every day that ends with the letter “Y”, but these BTFD rallies are just part of the game. The important thing, in my opinion, is that so many crucial trendlines have been broken, we are truly in a different market now. These rip-roaring rallies are simply blowing off some excess fear, but the general direction really is “down.” (more…)

The Society of the Spectacle

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spectacleI write all the time about bullshit detectors, cartoons and caricatures. I can be cranky, surly and intolerant of stupidity. I hate dumb commercialism and uncritical thinking. I want us all to be awake and dealing in reality, not giving up our critical power and dimly following someone else’s orthodoxies, especially those of so-called experts.

Of the negative feedback I get from public writing (outside of a couple whack jobs who periodically cannot keep themselves from sending along totally insane and hateful emails) by far the most frequent are along the lines of ‘I don’t know what you are talking about’ or ‘you fail to make a point’ or ‘this article is devoid of value and offers no actionable conclusion’ (hello SeekingAlpha, home of the linear, academic and/or auto-piloted paint-by-numbers thinker).

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