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.

Kuroda’s Floppy Bits

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I think all central bankers should be publicly executed, but I have a special loathing in my pitch-black heart for Haruhiko Kuroda, the governor of the Bank of Japan. Having completely abandoned my “I guess I’ll just stay in cash for the rest of 2015” pledge on Thursday, I was bracing myself for the news tonight.

I nervously watched USD/JPY, and it rocketed higher, turning the ES and NQ green instantly. I thought to myself, “Great, here we go again.” But then this happened:

1217-kura

Want to know what his brilliant plan is? Having the nation’s central bank print up lots of new money and buy ETFs. Read that again. They’re going to print up billions and billions more (well, we’re talking Yen here, so trillions) and buy ETFs. Have we all lost sight of how insane that is? Have we? I haven’t. It’s freaking lunacy.

So given the market’s reaction (at the moment, anyway) the guy looks like an unlubricated vibrator whose C batteries have run out of charge while a frustrated Janet Yellen frantically gets on her dressing gown to make a trip to the CVS for an emergency refill. This debacle seriously couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Of course, I’d much rather see him commit traditional Seppuku on international television, but in lieu of that, his completely failing and making a fool of himself will suffice for the time being. Carry on.

Death Metal

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In spite of the countless articles on ZeroHedge and innumerable appearances by the likes of Peter Schiff on television, all the good reasons to own precious metals for the past four years have been utterly urinated upon. I sold my silver a couple of months ago out of disgust, and boy, am I glad I did. I’m thinking of doing the same with all my gold bullion. This has to be the crappiest investment in human history. But, meh, I’ll probably hang on to it unless it breaks the channel I’ve illustrated below. Suffice it to say that precious metals continue to suck out loud, and if gold breaks $1000 (which some here declared would be impossible), you can expect the psychological damage to simply accelerate the dumpage.

1217-GLD