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.

April Fools

By -

‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ – Alexander Pope

Here we are on the morning of ‘Liberation Day’ and it really does look as though the Trump Administration is planning to launch a trade war against the rest of the world today. I understand that is scheduled for 4pm EST this afternoon as the RTH market closes.

If Trump is right then, unlike any other instance where tariffs have been imposed in history, US trading partners will absorb the cost of tariffs and in effect the tariffs will be a tax on those trading partners for the privilege of trading with the US, while the decreased competitiveness of imports, even though those import prices will not have risen, will rebuild the US manufacturing base.

(more…)

That Smoot-Hawley Feeling

By -

I see that it occurred to the White House that having their giant tariff-focused Make America Rich Again (ha!) celebration of specialness at 3 p.m. wasn’t a brilliant idea, since that’s during market hours, so they quietly moved it to precisely the market close. Should be interesting.

It’s a relief to see a lot of red this morning. What has happened over the long haul is that the gargantuan (and final, God willing) megatop pushed prices much lower, only to result in the annoying counter-trend rally, whose peak I predicted to be 5800. That’s almost exactly where it landed (arrow) before resuming the fall.

(more…)