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.

California Gold

By -

With the focus on precious metals lately, I wanted to share a free chapter from my Panic Prosperity and Progress book about a germane period in financial history related to the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th century. Enjoy!

The California Gold Rush is one of the most universally-known eras of American history, but it is also one of the most widely-misunderstood. It obviously altered the importance of California (which today reigns as one of the most important technological and business powerhouses on Earth), but it was just as important to the history of the entire nation in the decades that followed gold’s initial discovery at Sutter’s Mill.

There were not any meaningful financial markets for it to affect, but the gold rush laid the foundation for some important personal fortunes and fundamental Californian characteristics that lived far past the middle of the 19th century.

(more…)

The State of the Macro

By -

It’s the Bond Market, Stupid

As our Continuum chart predicted over a year ago, Jerome Powell was called to his higher inflationary powers when the macro markets liquidated with great violence and terror. This link shows the Continuum (30yr yield and its monthly EMA 100 limiter) as it was then, begging for inflationary action…

Oh Jerome? Bond market calling…

Below is the Continuum today. Since the linked post last February, 2020, a lot has happened and it has been according to the plans we laid out last spring. The plan was inflationary because the Fed was going into steroidal inflation mode. The ‘Fed comfort box’ on the chart has thinned out from the original post because the red dotted limiter (monthly EMA 100) has declined appreciably since then.

These many months the NFTRH target has been 2.5% to 2.7% on the 30yr Treasury yield. This week that zone’s lower bound got dinged. It is coming time for a cool down at least, if the macro reflation is going to get a second wind. What could provide that second wind?

(more…)