My old desk doesn’t arabesque, in the morning when I first arrive.
It’s a pleasure to see it’s waiting there for me to keep my hopes alive.
Such a comfort to know it’s got no place to go, it’s always there.
It’s the one thing I’ve got, a huge success, my Good Old Desk.
My old desk never needs a rest, and I’ve never once heard it cry.
I’ve never seen it tease, it’s always there
to please me from nine to five.
Such a comfort to know, it’s dependable and slow,
but it’s always there.
It’s the one friend I’ve got, a giant of all times, my Good Old Desk.
My old desk isn’t picturesque, but it’s happy as a desk can be.
We never say a word, but it’s perfectly alright with me.
For when my heart’s on the floor, I just open the drawer
of my favorite guest. And what do I see? But a picture of me
working at my Good Old Desk. – – Harry Nilsson
I do not know you. I know myself. I can only speak for myself. And one thing I know deeply is that I want to create. I would hope that this would be a universal urge, but judging from what I’ve seen during my life, the desire ranges from non-existent to unquenchable. I suspect there’s a lot more of the former than the latter.
I have been blessed with the Slope of Hope for over eleven years now. This has given me a creative outlet, a forum to air my ideas and opinions, and some friendships that I suspect will be lifelong. There are other creative outlets in my life (such as the couple dozen books I’ve written, the software products I’ve created, the company I built, and so forth), but Slope has probably be the biggest and longest-lasting.
This is a very tough market for people like me, however. As I stand here on a Sunday morning, I struggle for what on earth I can say about the market that isn’t a tired old repetition (and I’m facing a holiday tomorrow which is also an empty void). I’ve mentioned my “blogger’s guilt” in the past, which the phrase I use to describe a sense of obligation I have to keep Slope flowing with relatively fresh content on a regular basis.
Sometimes this is easy, particularly when things are going my way. There are times when I am neck-deep in posts, and I can barely keep us with everything I want to share and observe. There are other times, like, oh, right about now, where I’d just like to turn the lights off until things improve. I don’t really give myself this option, however, since I feel too strong a sense of obligation to the people who bother coming to this blog.
My good friend Northy and I chat constantly, and he’s helped me preserve some modicum of sanity. I’ll take a moment here to again express my gratitude for my friendship with Northy, which I was brilliantly able to avoid for a long time due to a petty dispute over something I regarded as an insult. I am famously thin-skinned. I will let myself off the hook for this royal screw-up, however, since I took the initiative to reach out to Northy and make peace, and what was simply supposed to be a burying of the hatchet rapidly changed into a budding friendship which has continued to this moment.
Anyway, Northman Trader has been sharing his own frustrations with me. Bear in mind that Northy does not have the same always-be-bearish sickness with which I am cursed. He is a level-headed chap. But even he looks at this market and is tearing his hair out, because, even though you bullish fellows are doing very well, you are clearly blinded at this point to just how insane things have become and how overvalued assets are.
Northy is so fed up that he’s pulling the plug all the free content from his site. This is a pretty big deal. Northman Trader is a very popular site, and his technical charts portion is the only place besides Slope that I go to look at charts. But he works very hard at his craft, and he’s reached the decision to provide charts only to his paying members.
I’ve had this debate with myself before, and I’ve made that discussion very public. I’m still going with the “freemium” model, in spite of the fact that ad revenue is almost a complete joke. I still save all my best ideas for Slope Plus members, but at times like these, it’s tough to even come up with good content for my beloved subscribers (whereas at other times it’s a virtual inundation of ideas). Funny enough, at the very moment I was typing this paragraph, Northy messaged me and shared a nasty tweet with me and mention how the hate mail/tweets have been accelerating rapidly lately. This in itself is a contrarian signal, in my opinion, and obviously it only firms up his decision to stop providing his talents to an ungrateful, non-paying audience.
Ya know, since I’m talking about Northy so much, let me just share one chart he did that I think is superb. It illustrates vividly just where we are at – – yes, even with all the recent upward action this week – – with the market in general. Click to see in all its glory.
It’s different this time, right? Well, maybe. God knows that beautifully-crafted analogs, patterns, and setups have been collectively peed upon by the central bankers, who have done an incredible job fooling the world into an asset inflation never seen before in history.
As I’ve intimated, I’m planting the seeds for other creative outlets, just in case one day I totally lose it and just can’t handle the markets anymore (“S&P 500 nears 3000!”) I’ll be announcing one of these new “outlets” next month, which I think some of you will find of interest (and which has zero to do with charting or stocks).
Enjoy your Sunday. See you later.
