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.

Something’s Up with Elon

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Although I’m a dyed-in-the-wool chartist, I appreciate when people make thoughtful conjectures about what’s going to happen to a company, a financial instrument, or a country based on their broad observations. Remember, “speculate” is derived from the Latin verb speculare, which means to observe. Successful investors notice things.

As such, I’d like to share something I’ve noticed. It first started back on July 29th, when I got an email from Elon Musk (errr, not personally, but it a spammy kind of way). It started off like this:

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American Whirl

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I’ve written about American Girl before, such as this post. For those unacquainted with American Girl, it started off as a doll-based means for girls to learn about different periods of U.S. history, but it has developed into a phenomenal retail success story of overpriced Chinese-made junk sold in branded stores in high-end shopping malls (like, oh, say, the Stanford Shopping Center). It’s a big deal for the 9-12 year old crowd.

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