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.

Mason Reese’s Pieces

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I’m amazed this week is almost over. It’s been quite an intense week, particularly psychologically, as I stood alone as the last bear in the solar system as of Tuesday, in spite of plenty of doubters and dissenters hither and thither.

Just the past couple of days have been exceptionally positive for my portfolio, but the real potential is Friday, which could be either glorious or dreadful. The magic moment happened on Wednesday, and, God willing, that will mark the end of Wave Two so we start to have some real fun.

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Gameslop

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In late 2020 and early 2021, Gamestop (GME) was the man. EVERYBODY wanted a part of it, and the sensation around it warranted a full-length feature movie called, fittingly, Dumb Money. In the years since, GME has fallen out of favor as a meme stock, replaced by the likes of Strategy (MSTR).

Desperate for renewed attention, GME decided to steal MSTR’s playbook and, you guessed it, announced they would spend a ten-figure sum of Bitcoin since, ya know, store of value. That had the intended effect, blasted the stock higher for about a day.

As usual, and has been done so many times before, the lovely people at GME decided to take advantage of the higher price and announced a ton more stock for sale, which had the effect of totally destroyed the stock price. Congratulations to those who bought into the BTC announcement and, just hours later, are looking at a 30% loss in value.

The BFD of the PCE

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Well, the presumed big event of this week is coming up in the morning, before the opening bell: the PCE report, which is basically real inflation divided by, I dunno, three or four. As you can see, this concocted, totally fake inflation data doesn’t budge very much from month to month, but for some reason all life on Earth depends on what this data point turns out to be tomorrow.

Does Trump Realize What America Is?

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Trump appears to be using a 1970s, or worse, 1930s playbook; and those playbooks did not work even though the US had a large industrial base at those times

Note: I started writing on similar themes to this back in 2004, with FrankenMarket Lives.

Progress

Donald Trump appears to have some sort of fantasy about what America is. I share his pride in this country as it was in the WWII era and maybe beyond, into the 1970s. I am, shall we say mature of age as well. Not nearly Trump’s age, but old enough to remember the inflationary angst of the 1970s and interested enough in economics to know about the post-bubble Great Depression of the 1930s.

I write now as a former manufacturing person. As the threat of Japan’s industrial rise grew steadily in the 1980s, we had to abandon the old ways of doing things, like men cranking handles in a profession (precision machining) that was more craft than labor. In short, in this new globally competitive reality it was “automate or die”. We automated. That was progress. America’s industrial base, following the likes of Japan, progressed even as its gross industrial base contracted under global pressure and yes, the productivity of automation.

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Mericuhn Cars

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With the (ostensible) tariffs for car parts in place, the question as to where the parts come from and manufacturing takes place is quite germane. Below is a graphic that illustrates where various car makers get their stuff and – – surprise!!! – – the biggest beneficiary is Tesla, whose owner I think has something to do with the new administration. That’s why GM is getting destroyed today and TSLA is actually up.