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.

Sovereign Poverty Fund

By -

The President is a man of action, that’s undeniable. One of his many announcements lately has been for his administration to explore the prospect of setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund for the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Ummm…………..what? This would be EXACTLY like setting up a family office for some alcoholic bum you met on the street. The U.S. HAS no wealth to manage! We aren’t like Saudi Arabia, which is drowning in extra cash that needs a home. Seriously, this is one of the silliest ideas I’ve heard yet. Give me a break.

Watch Those Crumbles

By -

There sure does seem to be some magic about Monday sell-offs, huh? For the past two Mondays, there has been a big plunge only followed by perpetual healing. Whether or not Canada and Mexico are actually doing anything NEW is unclear to me, but it was still quite a piece of performance art.

What I’d suggest is to continue to respect the fact that the overall strength of the market (as expressed by the symbol $SPX200MA, which shows the percentage of stocks above their 200-day moving average) is behaving very technically itself, inasmuch as it was range-bound, broke down, retraced, and is now re-weakening. This isn’t August 1982, folks.

Midnight Indexes

By -

I’m a creature of deeply-ingrained habits. Up at 5. Asleep at 10. Repeat. Being in a strange place, nice as it is, four time zones ahead, can throw me for a loop. That’s why I’m sitting on the floor at midnight composing a post about Monday’s index action. Trust me, being on a plane and watching the unchecked mayhem from above the Atlantic is not something I want to make a habit.

(more…)