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.

The ‘Real’ Reason the Fed Wants to Raise Rates

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By Biiwii

In case you thought you were smart enough to know why the Fed wants to do what it supposedly wants to do [1] MarketWatch sets you straight with the real scoop. We’ll use this as a talking point and see what comes of it…

Here’s the real reason the Fed wants to raise rates

Policy makers want to give themselves some room to maneuver

That is the commonly held belief and who am I to dispute it? A big part of the problem is and has been their refusal to begin a journey toward normalization 2 years ago, when the economy began to visibly (we noted the seeds of that improvement in January of that year) improve. They had no confidence and I was left to wonder (aloud here, frequently and I am sure, sometimes obnoxiously) why Grandma [2] (and her 0% savings account payout) had to continue to bear the brunt of this non-action despite a recovering economy.

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Old Faithful

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Obviously the talk-of-the-town after hours is Amazon, which is, as of this moment, up over 16%. It’s a foregone conclusion that AMZN will have a market cap of over a quarter trillion dollars tomorrow, which is a lifetime high.

The funny thing is how Amazon has been consistently the butt of the “they’ve never made a dollar” jokes. What’s incredible to me is, over the long haul, what a steady performance this stock has been. There are utility stocks that have had wilder rides than this one which, over most of its lifespan, has had a relatively steady ascent (and this chart doesn’t even take into account the amazing pop it’s going to see at the opening bell tomorrow).

0723-AMZN