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.

David Stockman’s Contra Corner

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Many of you know the name David Stockman. He was Ronald Reagan’s famous budget director for the “Reagan Revolution” , a Congressman, a money manager, and author of what I consider the greatest business book ever written, The Great Deformation. He is, incidentally, a paying member of the Slope of Hope, and I have had the pleasure of corresponding with him.

As my over-the-top review of his book suggests, I consider Mr. Stockman a stunningly superb writer. Besides his excellent books, he also writes a five-times-a-week missive called Contra Corner, of which I am a dues-paying member. He wrote me about a week ago and suggested Slopers might find it appealing, as I do, so he suggested (unprompted by me) promoting Contra Corner here on Slope. I readily agreed.

Here is his “pitch” below. I am, let’s just say, a thrifty soul, and Contra Corner is the ONLY thing I subscribe to. I’d urge you to consider signing up, since he offers a vantage point I don’t think you can get anywhere else. So here’s David……………

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ATR Don’t Lie, Bro

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Before I begin with what I want to say this weekend, let’s just stop and take a look and marvel at what we’ve just seen.  For the next hundred years, students of the stock market will look back at the last three weeks and attempt to understand and learn from what we just experienced.  A three week 27% crash in the S&P 500 straight off of all time highs. The Russell fell 35%Amazing.

SPY
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Small Cap Support?

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I woke up this morning thinking, “I have so much writing to do.” I love my self-created avocation. But this is going to be one busy weekend. I just dashed off my first premium post to my Gold and Diamond members. I need to clear time to do my “big” post.

In the interim, I’d like to offer the chart below of the Russell 2000. As you can infer, it is absolutely plausible that a major bottom is in place, or nearly in place. I am still utterly on the fence, as the much longer post later today will reveal. But I wanted to at least get our collective wheels spinning on this one image.

BOTTOM

Gold Miners: Dismissing the Inflation Bugs

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Below is a monthly chart of HUI telling some stories of the past.

  • The 2003 to 2008 bull rally ended with Huey’s “crown of thorns” as I used to call it back then. An H&S that formed at the end of a great inflationary phase in the markets.
  • The great crash of 2008 (Armageddon ’08) was completely deserved because as I’ve belabored for so many years now, you don’t buy gold stocks in any heavy and/or long-term way during cyclical inflationary touts as gold barely keeps up with mining cost commodities and other assets/markets. The crash of Q4 ’08 cleaned out the inflation bugs and it did so with great cruelty and relentlessness. Only when every last bug who’d come aboard for the wrong reasons was exterminated did the bloodshed finally end.
  • So who turned and burned first out of the ’08 (deflationary) bottom? Gold and then the miners, that’s who. They led the whole raft of commodities and stocks, which finally bottomed in March of 2009. Then another massive inflation trade ensued, before blowing out in Q1 of 2011. Then? What I called “Mr. Fat Head” formed as the first drop found support at 375, the sector rammed upward on a QE tout, then failed, taking out 460 on the downside and we proclaimed that was that. Welcome to the bear market.
  • Then years of a bear crash and grind took HUI down to Mr. Fat Head’s measured target, which was around 100.
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