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.

One Way It Isn’t 1999

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Many comparisons between present market heights and 1999 have been bandied about, but allow me to offer a way that we are absolutely not like 1999: the excitement about new issues.

Back in the day, when a hot new offering came out, its price ripped around like mad (usually higher). Stocks would have daily ranges of ten, twenty, thirty dollars or more, and adept day traders could make out like bandits.

Let’s take a look at one of the most widely-anticipated IPOs of the year – Square (run by Twitter guy Jack Dorsey) and hang on to our hats while we revel in the lightning-fast action over the past week. I’ve tinted the range so you can see the many, many pennies it’s been spanning.

1202-sq

There are century-old light & power companies that are more dynamic than this dog. I keep beating the same drum, which is that modern-day IPOs are for the birds (or at least for those combating sleep disorders).

What’s OPEC To Do?

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Contributed by Sloper Stephen Davied:

It seems every news agency is spitting out stories about the upcoming OPEC meeting on Dec 4, 2015. Based on what I have read consensus is OPEC will do nothing at the next meeting and the reason they will do nothing is loosely based on losing respect of others in the market. OPEC made the decision previously not to cut output in order to drive down prices and push out the inefficient producers. Consensus is that work may not be done yet. So it seems the expectation is for no quota change causing further price decline.

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