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.
Greetings from the inky morning of Bellevue, Washington, where I’ll be spending the next couple of days at a you-know-what. I always enjoy coming up to the Seattle area, since it combines the high-tech culture to which I’m accustomed with the gloomier weather more suited to my sparkling personality.
I just got an email from one of you who kindly informed me that one of my short positions, Caterpillar, was going to have an interesting day:
At the start of this week, on my Tastytrade show, I said that it felt like something had “snapped” in the market. There was a confluence of little events that took place that convinced me that the few remaining bears had either lost their minds or thrown in the towel. The “Disappointment After Doha” – – that is, the inexplicable rise in the market after the complete collapse of talks in Qatar last Sunday – – – was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people.
Now, in my line of work, you’d expect me to be the recipient of a regular amount of hate mail. For one thing, my view is an unpopular one. The vast majority of people actually want assets to inflate in perpetuity. A permanent bull market would be just dandy for 99.9% of the public, and not only do I tout exactly the opposite, but I’m rather bombastic about it.
On March 4 we reviewed the technical reasons why the gold sector was launching as opposed to blowing off. This, after articles began appearing calling the rise to that point a doomed parabolic blow off using daily charts. Those calling it a blow off were confused; silver in spring 2011 was a blow off in the terminal sense. But when a parabolic move comes off a bottom, it is an impulsive thrust to change the trend, possibly ending the bear market.
We have long noted that gold is the first mover to a new inflationary phase, as the previous deflationary backdrop gets played out. That is exactly what happened, even though the silver miners have made stunning strides in leading the exciting up move in silver that is currently in process. Silver, in taking over leadership from gold would confirm an inflationary phase. Gold is monetary and silver is an industrial commodity with monetary aspects as well; i.e. it is more positively correlated to inflated economies making the silver-gold ratio a sensitive indicator to inflation.
