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.

Brace Yourselves

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It was almost a year ago that I got an email from a local developer who pointed out a variety of important ways Slope could be improved. Since then, particularly over the past few months, my team and I have been hard at work on the new Slope.

If all goes as planned, this Friday, May 4, we’ll shut down the old system and start up the new. I am deliberating doing this after the close on Friday, just in case we have some snags (or a complete disaster). I wanted to warn you well in advance that if things look totally different (best case) or if you get a 404 Page Not Found error (worst case), it’s because of what we’re doing. Remember the day!

may4 (more…)

US Equity Markets Remain Locked In Limbo

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Like a tightly-coiled spring, Major US Indices and Sectors remain trapped in tight consolidation zones, so far, this year, as shown on the following daily charts.

What’s remarkable is that the swings on their rate-of-change indicators (with an input value of 1 day) have been getting smaller and smaller…hinting that markets may explode in one direction or the other at some point.

As yet, the catalyst to drive such a move remains a mystery. Perhaps more will be revealed next Wednesday (May 2) when the Fed’s interest rate decision is announced, along with any new forward-guidance revelations. (more…)

One Possible Future (by Piano Man)

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I wanted to share something that perhaps few people would see. My background was in semiconductor test. I spent almost 30 years in mixed-signal semiconductors working for a vendor of test equipment and then with a semiconductor company. Semiconductor testing is a massive market, every electronic item you buy is tested at the device/computer chip level, then as a circuit board filled with those components to verify functionality, and then as an end product.

Billions of dollars are spent on test equipment as an economy is expanding to meet the needs of manufacturing consumer products. For the testing, the tester is mated to another piece of equipment, called a handler, that together allows both pieces of equipment to test hundreds of devices an hour (perhaps thousands of devices an hour if it is quick to test). Entire manufacturing floors overseas are filled with this pairing of equipment that runs night and day, if needed, to crank out tested computer chips to be sold around the world. And yes everything gets tested. (more…)