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.

Introducing Transformer

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OK, folks, another “Tim thought of this when he was swimming” feature, and I think you’re going to love it. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else, and for now everyone can access it (in a little while, it’ll just be premium members). It’s called the Transformer feature.

The Transformer in SlopeCharts is a unique way to apply a formula to every single symbol you enter. This can be a tremendous time-saver if you want to have a customized perspective into any symbols you enter, particularly those within a watch list, since it is vastly more efficient to have the formula automatically applied as opposed to altering every symbol you want to see.

A very simple example would be if you wanted to view a series of assets proportionate to the Federal Reserve’s M2 money supply. In other words, you want to see every symbol divided by the M2 value. This new perspective might lead you to some important new insights.

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The Big Picture Continuum

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The Continuum (monthly 30yr yield with the 100 month EMA ‘limiter’) simply states that the economy was weakening, as were inflation expectations, before 2020. In early 2020 we got a real deflationary jolt from which asset markets are still clawing back, with full frontal inflationary support from a Federal Reserve desperate to keep asset owners whole (and further enriched) and to further punish savers and those without the means to invest in the racket.

They called Ben Bernanke “the Hero” but he was actually the perpetrator of the next debt-backed inflation that would further ruin the country, primarily by greatly increasing the divide between asset owners and everyone else. If we had taken the pain in 2008 and 2009 we’d be on a new system now. Instead, we are riding the Greenspan>Bernanke>Powell continuum. Yellen is omitted because nothing egregious happened under her watch. She slipped in between the cycles and fell through the cracks.

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Top Shorts over Eight Years

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It’s incredibly difficult to make big money shorting stocks. You need a strong conviction in your bets. You need to have a firm belief that something is cooking in the company that most people overlook or choose to ignore. Those shorting stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic have made more than $50 billion in profits.

Here we take a look at the top shorts of each year between 2013 and 2020. The list is based on data from Activist Insight Shorts. Josh Black of Activist Insight has given double credit where two short sellers were first and second on the same idea, though their campaign returns might be slightly different.

Short selling is when you bet against a stock and profit when it falls. Short sellers borrow shares from investors and then sell them at market price. They expect the stock to decline by a specified future date (the expiration date). If/when the stock tumbles, the short seller buys it back at ridiculously low prices to return to the investor from whom they had borrowed. The short seller pockets the difference. But sometimes shorting backfires when the stock in question skyrockets.

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