This market is marvelously exhausting. I’m already resenting the weekend ahead, since it’ll create a break in the festivities. Can you imagine if Juneteenth was coming up? The past three days feel like thirty, and the only sad thing is that – – as Colonel Kilgore assured us – – someday this war’s gonna end.
In the meantime, though, the bombs are dropping, and Slope’s 20 years have proved one thing: when the market gets battered, Slope gets popular. It’s only just beginning……….
And on social media in general, the Slope buzz is building up, because the market is beginning to disintegrate.
It’s curious, I must say, that the comments section seems to be dead as a doornail, presumably because people are so tired after each trading day that they just collapse onto the nearest sofa.
Thus, I’m not going to compose yet-another-missive about the market at all. Instead, I want to share with you an indicator which isn’t available anywhere in the world, at any price, except here on Slope: my premium subscriptions graph.
I’ve shared this a variety of times with my beloved Gold and Platinum subscribers, but never here amongst the unwashed masses, but it’s absolutely fascinating. I’m not going to get into the particulars, but I will divulge a couple of charts that could knock your socks off, assuming you are appropriately attired. Let’s begin with this one:
To explain the chart (which, surely, I need not say again, you can click for a big version):
- The grey line represents the lovely people who have found it within their hearts to open up their wallets and actually subscribe to any premium membership on this site. There are three big “up” moves in this chart. The first is when it was first launched. The second is the COVID crash. The third was the all-too-brief bear market of November 2021-June 2022. As you can see, there was a very substantial diminishment in subscriptions following surges Two and Three.
- The blue line represents the INVERTED SPY ETF, and it has been shifted three weeks backward. The reason for this is simple: Slope is known as a site for short sellers. If the market has a clear inflection point, after about three weeks, it begins to dawn on the general public, and they start opening their wallets to subscribe. As the market continues to fall, subscriptions gain momentum, until it reaches an orgiastic peak. When it does, the market has already bottomed and is starting its way mercilessly higher, at which time people start quitting again. Feh.
The inverse correlation between subscriptions and the equity markets has been well-established and is both amusing and horrifying to me.
The reason it’s horrifying is that I’ve learned through hard experience that product features, improvements, more posts, more hard work, and constant cajoling are useless when it comes to people actually subscribing.
The one and ONLY thing that works is a collapsing market, over which I have, last time I checked, absolutely zero control.
Here’s what’s interesting, though, and where my charting skills come into play: looking at the chart below, which is the raw subscriber count, there are clear patterns and cycles which go on between growth spurts. Subscriptions have been grinding lower and lower for about twenty-five miserable months (which I’ve got to tell you, is hardly inspirational for someone working on this site 365 days a year without fail, and also goes on to explain why I drop to my knees with gratitude to the kind souls that have the decency to subscribe in the first place).
However, my supposition is that we are at a “You Are Here” moment which roughly correlates to January 2022, which began one of the most glorious market massacres (and Slope subscription rallies) in history.
Let’s hope I’m as right about that as I was about the off-the-cuff tweet below, which I sent out at 5:30 on Wednesday morning.
I can likewise tell you that the subscription rally should terminate around January 2025 which, I’ve got a hunch, will be an awfully interesting time in United States history in any case.
If you want to beat the rush and actually subscribe before all the Johnny-Come-Latelies four months from now, by all means do so! In my estimation, there’s tons of downside still left.
