In case anyone was wondering how Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism company was doing:
The Not-So-Final Frontier
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.
For Sentimental Reasons
Here is symbol FR:UMCSENT which tracks consumer sentiment. I’ve zoomed in from 1999 to present. The year 2000 was basically Peak America, and it’s been crap ever since. People are finally cluing in to this fact, as scumbags like Bezos and Zuckerberg have grabbed everything and left rat poison for everyone else.
Thanks, Goldman!
The bloodsucking swine at Goldman were kind enough to drop their forecast, which will be as useless as the one they just modified. Anyway, they are calling for 5700 at year end and 5900 in 12 months. Whatever.
Liberation Eve
There are three looming events this week. The first, happening now, is a trio of special elections which will act as a political referendum on the new administration. The notion that a quarter billion dollars would be spent on a single seat in a small state’s supreme court is astonishing, but that’s the world we live in. The second happens tomorrow, which is when all the tariffs ostensibly kick in. Third, there’s the jobs report on Friday before the opening bell.
In the meanwhile, let’s look at a few charts. The first, EFA, has a clean gap at 82.29. It’s amazing to me that this fund, which represents worldwide equities outside North America, was at its highest point in the history of humankind just days ago. Anyway, I just shorted a big block with a stop at 82.35.
Downside Targets Update
Two weeks ago today I wrote a post looking at the case for a rally on US equity indices in the 12 trading day window into April 2nd, the planned day for US tariffs to be extended to most US trade partners. That rally delivered but wasn’t quite as strong as I hoped then, and I wrote another post a week ago in which I was looking at the bear flags forming on the US indices and talking about those moves topping out on Tuesday or Wednesday last week. On Wednesday morning I wrote a third post calling a likely high within those bear flag patterns and sketching out in arrows my preferred path from there.
That path was looking good but my hoped for high retest failed on the bad inflation numbers on Friday and this morning the bear flag targets at the retests of the 2025 lows on SPX, QQQ and IWM were hit. The bear flag target at the retest of the 2025 low on DIA is still outstanding but likely gets hit after the current oversold rally on the US indices ends.
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