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.

US Bond Bubble Or Equity Bubble?

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Based on purely technical reasons, which I’ll explain below, I’d hazard a guess that US bonds are not in a bubble. If anything, equities look more like their bubble is about to burst.

The price on the following monthly charts of US 2-yr, 5-yr, 10-yr, and 30-yr bonds is currently trading around their respective regression channel medians, after a lengthy move up over the past year off very oversold lows (around the channel -2 deviation level).

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The Biggest Winners

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This is a survey of the biggest winners, on a percentage basis, over a number of time-spans. Below I have created galleries in SlopeCharts of the best gainers for 2019, the past five years, the past ten years, and the past twenty years. I want to emphasize two things: (1) even though I just told you, I’ll say again these are percentage charts, not normal charts; (2) if you want to see the big version of any chart, click on the thumbnail. Unfortunately, the left/right arrows don’t let you navigate the entire set, so you need to click on any specific chart to see it.

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Marathon Man

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As oil went on its biggest up-move in history, I had some concerns about the handful of energy-related shorts in my portfolio. Turns out, as I hoped, that it wasn’t worth wringing my hands over. Just because the commodity itself (crude oil) roars higher in price doesn’t necessarily mean great news for the companies which seek it or process it. Take Marathon Petroleum, for example, one of my shorts. Its down about 2.5% right now, and I think far lower prices are in store. The symbol is MPC:

slopechart MPC