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.

Apple Loses Its Cool

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The Tao of Steve

In the movie “The Tao of Steve” (2000), the lead character associates the name “Steve” with cool, charismatic men such as the actor Steve McQueen. Apple (AAPL) co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs was famously cool and charismatic, and when he passed away three years ago, investors wondered what impact that would have on the company. As we now know, Apple rocketed to new highs over the next few years. The company had a product pipleline in place, and a wide moat: the convenience of upgrading to a new iPhone, for example, and keeping all of your data and apps, was and still is a powerful inducement to remain an Apple customer. Reactions to Apple’s San Francisco product launch event on Wednesday, however, suggest that Apple may have finally ran out of the residual Steve Jobs cool factor.
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Market Sentiment Update

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By Biiwii

In the last 2 NFTRH editions, we noted extremely over bearish market sentiment conditions in Rydex bull/bear fund allocations and in Small Speculators’ net short positions. These sentiment indicators have been reset to traditional correction-ending, even bear market-ending levels. That’s the reality.

The latter especially, has been a reliable contrary indicator. Basically, the Small Specs have never been right at important market turns. For instance, they were heavily net short in the late 1990’s but by the time the market topped in 2000, they had covered and become net long. They have reliably been a contrary indicator all along the current bull market as well, going net short at each correction bottom, post 2009.

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