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.

The Bigger Picture on the USD

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This is my first public post on the US Dollar possibly since 2012, so it will be lengthier than normal as it will also act as a reference post that I can refer back to every time I do an update on USD here in the future.

I’ve always really enjoyed doing the long term charts on the US Dollar. Longer term patterns can take decades to form, with the falling wedge that broke up in 2014 breaking a wedge resistance trendline coming from a high in 1985.

Even the shorter term patterns within these larger patterns can take many years to form. On the monthly chart below I was noting in April 2012 that the rising megaphone that formed in the 90’s took six years to form, and the current rising megaphone on USD has been forming since the big low in 2008, which was the lowest low going back as far as my data extends to the dying days of the gold standard in 1970.

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Pulsing Palladium

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Before this Monday, I had never traded anything to do with palladium in my entire life. However, over the weekend I decided this laggard metal was worth a shot, so I started buying on Monday.

I am ashamed to say that yesterday morning, when PALL was slipping lower, I was briefly tempted to dump it and be done with it, but I looked at the charts more and decided not only was I not going to dump it, but I was going to push deep into margin and buy a lot more. Well, thank God for that…………it blasted higher yesterday, eased back all night long, and then went into blast-off mode again.

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Consider the Source

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Years ago, I assumed the news was fairly even-handed and you could trust what you were reading. I’ve learned over time to take into account the source, since publications tend to have strong biases one way or the other. For example, there are some specific media outlets like Electrek and Futurism which HATE Tesla and HATE Elon, so these days when I read a breathless headline like this, I take it with a grain of salt:

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