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.

Leading and Other Indicators: Time to Hike?

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According to the amalgamation of ‘Leading Indicators’ to the economy, it is time for a rate hike. Here is the graph of LI and Fed Funds, from Wisdom Tree’s post on the subject.

leading indicators

It is and has been also time to hike based on employment numbers. This was supposed to be the last thing to get squared away before normalization, wasn’t it? LI is thought to lead inflation in the economy, which has thus far been held in check by a global deflation that is devouring funny munny sprayed from global policy hoses.

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It’s Getting Almost Eerie

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Last Friday morning, my heart sank when I read Gartman had flip-flopped to bearish in “catholic terms” (whatever that means), and his actionable suggestion was to short the S&P futures.

As required by federal statute, the market  immediately exploded higher, and I was worried just how long it would keep going (well, more specifically, I was wondering when Gartman would flip-flop again, allowing us bears a chance at making money once more).

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“No Recession, But…”

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By Biiwii

Excerpted from the September 13 edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 360…

I am personally not yet convinced an ultimate bull market top is in despite the obvious similarities of the recent interim top to 2007 [the first sign in this regard would be a loss of the October 2014 and August 2015 lows]. It could also be a 1998 clone, as we have noted by chart similarities and by global financial similarities (China/Asia). However, in 2007 the stock market did a good job of forecasting the coming “Great Recession” (a sanitized way of saying ‘impulsive unwinding of leverage’). Here is what economists think today (ref. Bloomberg article): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-11/here-s-when-economists-expect-to-see-the-next-u-s-recession. 2018 it is, according to a majority of buttoned down dart throwers.

recession predictions by economists, from Bloomberg
Source: Bloomberg News Survey

What were they saying in December 2007? Let’s take a look, also from Bloomberg…

(Dec. 17, 2007): No Recession, But… http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2007-12-19/no-recession-but. (more…)

The Year of the Triangle

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I have no great love for triangles, as I’ve mentioned a few times before, and this year has produced a bumper crop across the equity indices, which is tiresome. We’ve been kicking around in the current one for three weeks now, and as ever, it has been an annoying bore.

So where do we start this week? Well everyone seems convinced that SPX is going to break up to a retest in the 2020-40 area, and I’m still very doubtful about that for two main reasons:

1. My 5DMA stat requires a retest of the 1911 low before a break of the last 1988 low. Could the stat fail to deliver here? Yes, any historical stat can fail, but having seen dozens of these 5DMA Three Day Rule setups since the start of 2007 I have yet to see one fail, and I’m not seeing any compelling reason to think as yet that the first fail will be here. From an odds perspective, if fifty solo lemmings leap off a cliff and drown, then the working assumption for the fifty first lemming leaping off the cliff should be that it will drown too. That isn’t destiny, that’s just math. As ever there is a possibility that it could go the other way, but most likely it won’t.

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