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.

Listen to the Music

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This topic seems appropriate, considering how much music I listened to in the car during our multi-day eclipse journey. (We played a bespoke list of songs having to do with the sun, the moon, and eclipses; I know, sad, right?) We spent a lot of time in Austin, which is actually WAY weirder than Palo Alto ever was, and we visited one of the bigger vinyl record shops in town, which to me felt like the old days of hanging out at Tower Records. It’s heartening to see that old-fashioned vinyl albums are having a renaissance.

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The American Ream

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Normally it only takes a small percentage change in something to make it newsworthy. If the labor force participation index, for instance, went from 62% to 61%, that would merit discussion. The chart below, however, is jaw-dropping: a 50% level of home affordability down to 16% should be front page news across the country (it isn’t). I suppose this is largely caused by the increase in interest rates coupled with the merciless acquisition of residences by private equity firms. Let’s just say I’m glad I bought my “life home” in 1991.

Compound Miracle

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The table below is fascinating, because it shows the jaw-dropping power of compound interest (as well as how much a different a small percentage makes over the long haul). The top performing stock over 30 years from the S&P 500, AMZN, had an annualized return of 33.6% whereas Microsoft, another mega-tech giant, provided 20.3%. Both excellent returns, right? The difference is that, over the past 30 years, $10,000 would have grown to $2.5 million with MSFT but $24 million with AMZN!

You can experiment yourself with “what if?” scenarios like this with this free page on Slope.