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.

Nothing Can Bring Down This Market Except . . .

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This past week, we experienced yet another horrendous terrorist attack in New York City. And, amazingly, just like what occurred after several other terrorist attacks that have been experienced over the last year, the market rallied right after the attack.

It has almost gotten to the point that people now expect the stock market to rally after a terrorist attack. Have we really become this warped in our thinking? Must we hold fast to ridiculous notions that news is what drives the stock market to the point that we have to resign ourselves to believing that the market will rally “because” of a terrorist attack? Do you not see how ridiculous these perspectives really are?

Yet, if the market dropped after a terrorist attack, there is no question in my mind that every analyst and their mother would be absolutely certain that the market dropped specifically due to the terrorist attack. Every article the next day would have been pointing to the attack being the definitive “cause” of the market drop. And, if I then challenged this false exogenous causation theory, the response I would receive is “don’t you believe your eyes?” Yet, not a single analyst dares to suggest that the markets are rallying because of news of terrorist attacks despite seeing many instances of this occurring over the last two years. Do, they not believe their eyes? (more…)

An Inverse Correlation To Depend On

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We did the monthly free public Chart Chat at theartofchart.net yesterday, and if you missed that the recording is posted on the November Free Webinars page here.

We were asked a question about a correlation there, and I remarked that I don’t think most correlations are worth much. If you think USD is going down and therefore gold should go up, then it’s best to cut out the middleman and just short USD. That’s not to say however that there aren’t some striking correlations around.

As part of her ongoing campaign to make me feel old and decrepit my daughter has found herself a job, and while she was going to that job on Saturday morning she was astonished to find a group of enthusiastic Flat Earthers sharing the … um …. flat news in the city centre. It appears that Chester is a major centre for these hardcore traditionalists, meaning that there appear to be at least five of them, and they have a website with reasonably grammatical sentences and so on here. It’s certainly an interesting read and they seem very passionate about their beliefs. (more…)

Bitcoin vs Ethereum – What’s Happening in Crypto

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From Ramsey 2017: Since I know there are some here who have been in crypto for years and many who ignore it completely, I’ll try to appeal to both audiences with this post and hopefully everyone can say they learned something new.

It’s no secret bitcoin has been on an unstoppable bull run lately, but what you may not know is that virtually all other cryptocurrencies have not participated and are flat to down over the last few months. Prior to August/September, most cryptocurrencies followed bitcoin – so what’s going on? I would highlight two main factors – first, bitcoin is the most widely accepted, has the most liquidity, and can be bought/sold in more fiat currencies compared to any other crypto. Secondly, there is an upcoming hard fork in 10 days which will result in the creation of a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin2x. (more…)