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.
Yield Curve and VIX (by LZ)
The VIX has been a coincident indicator with the 2s10s yield curve. Both have usually turned higher fairly early in a bear market cycle, well before the market topped in some cases.
Dumb Bond Jokes
We live in a world that’s never been more buried in debt. I distinctly remember as a kid that the news was ablaze with shock that, for the first time, the United States was over one trillion dollars in debt. It was an unimaginably large number, and it felt humiliating as a nation to see what bums we had all become.
Let’s just say that, $32 trillion later, and trillions more accruing constantly, we’re well past that. We’re quite content with being helpless debt addicts. The thing is, though, that bonds are starting to collapse anew, and that means just one thing: even higher interest rates.
Wham, Bam, Thanks Japan
All central banks are crooked Ponzi schemes, but Japan’s makes that of the United States look relatively virtuous. True Japanese prosperity ended in the late 1980s. Since then, it’s just been a Kabuki theatre of increasingly laughable nonsense, with the central bank thrust into the humiliating farce of being the country’s only customer for its bonds and actively gobbling up equities which are, under a harsh eye, actually worthless.
As such, the Japanese Yen is beginning to resemble toilet paper, as even the pathetic U.S. dollar looks positively Herculean in comparison. I suspect strength will beget strength.
