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.

SALT on the Wound

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Some of you may recall that a component of last year’s tax reforms was a $10,000 limit on State And Local Taxes (SALT) which includes, important, property taxes on real estate. I had sort of forgotten about this until I begin very crudely roughing out our taxes for 2018 and noticed this:

salt

As you can see, the deduction would formerly have been $13,945, but thanks to the new law, POOF!, about $4,000 is no longer deductible. Those have to be AFTER tax dollars. Keep in mind, I had only calculated property tax on our house: this doesn’t include state and local taxes (which for some folks can be really significant).

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Roughed Up

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The final quarter of 2018 spoiled me. It was fantastic. The last three weeks have reminded me what a vicious market feels like. Yuck.

I’m not alone in this, however. I just peeked at my Twitter feed (as I approach 20,000 followers – hurray!) and there were plenty of pleas for some encouragement. Well, I don’t want to “spin” things just for the sake of encouragement, but let’s look at a few principal charts together.

First and foremost, let’s observe the fact that over 50% of the $VIX has been blown to smithereens. Looking at the moving averages, it seems to me we have once against returned to the level of volatility where we could spring higher, rubber-band style. Even if we weaken further, I consider a level of about 16 a fairly reliable base.

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