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.

You Buy the Fear in Gold

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This article does not speak to gold’s proper fundamentals, which are not yet very healthy (although some positive signs are finally gathering). For the proper counter-cyclical atmosphere to engage gold bulls would need have risk ‘on’ markets and assets crack. Yet, gold’s (and silver’s) price may well bottom before readily obvious fundamental improvement is apparent to a majority (as was the case in Q1 2016). 

Far too much analysis is put out there linking gold with inflation. It is true that gold often acts as an effective inflation hedge, but it all too often fails in that capacity.

Far too much analysis is put out there linking gold with war, terror, pestilence and other conditions of human suffering. The surest way to spot a gold promoter, if he is not pumping inflation, is his pitch for gold as a disaster hedge. Yes okay, and I have a little Unibomber shack in Montana to sell you too. (more…)

Perfect Harmony

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Some of you know I don’t go in for a lot of television. Movies, I love, and there are some I’ve seen dozens of times. But my days tend to be wake up, work/family, go to bed, without any time allocated to plop myself in front of a television set.

Some weeks ago, however, I stumbled upon the Mad Men series, and I decided to watch an episode. I knew I was in trouble, because I really liked it, and there were 7 seasons of 13 episodes each. I watched every one of them, though, sometimes at the end of the day as a treat to myself, and sometimes while going through my charts.

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Intraday Charts Now LIVE in SlopeCharts!

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SlopeCharts is my pride and joy, but we are always making improvements and adding new features. I have asked you folks from time to time what you want to see most, and the most common answer was always the same: intraday charts (that is, minute bars).

Well, I am delighted to tell you they are here, they are live, and they are ready to use right now. Now, before I go any farther, I want to say something I’ve been saying a lot lately, which is that as we keep piling on new features, they are either getting thrown to PLUS users or, more commonly, I’m letting everyone use them. This is a temporary circumstance. Later this summer, if all goes as planned, I am going to be introducing multiple levels of service (not just PLUS, which will be renamed) and a whole bunch of features are going to get sequestered to those various levels. So don’t yell at me when they jump behind a paywall. For now, however, it’s free for the taking.

To get an intraday chart, just choose the bar size you want:

menu (more…)