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.

A Modest Proposal

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In my last post on Sunday 1st June I was looking at the bullish leaning stats for yesterday and today and that’s been delivering. I was leaning towards seeing a retest of the May highs on ES and NQ at 6008 and 21858 respectively and we may still see those today but ……. there is another possibility that I’m considering if those highs aren’t retested today.

Of the next six days four of them lean significantly bearish historically and there is a window there for some more consolidation and possible retracement and, while these stats are just a loose guideline, I am wondering if we might see that. We’ll see. I would note though that the window closes after that, with the subsequent three days all leaning bullish.

That’s not what this post is about though. I’ve been talking all year about seeing weakness in the first half of the year and then new all-time highs in the second half of the year, and while the initial weakness was faster and harder than I was expecting, I am still expecting that follow through into new all-time highs, and I want to lay out my preferred as well as my most bullish scenario for seeing that over coming weeks.

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Me and My Shadow

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Here’s an illustration of how large the “shadow” economy (drugs, criminal activity, black market, etc.) is in various countries as well as the percentage of the economy overall. For instance, the shadow economy in the U.S. is fairly small (5%) but is the largest in absolute terms, whereas over one-fifth (!) of China’s economy is “shadow”, I suppose because it is such an oppressive and tyrannical state.

Marble, Rust, and Plastic

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I just finished a very brief visit of Washington, D.C. and thought I’d share a few thoughts I had while I was there. To begin, I rented a car during my thirty-hour visit, and I did a fair amount of driving. I’ve driven hundreds of thousands of miles in my life, but my hand to God, I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many turns, tunnels, and opportunities to go the wrong way as I have in the District of Columbia. Good Lord!

I cannot imagine the kinds of auto accidents that must take pace with nervous drivers there. I’m glad to be done with it, with nary a scratch to show for it all.

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A Different Breadth View

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The ETF symbol SPY is the granddaddy of them all. It’s the oldest, most heavily-traded, and best-known. There is a very similar fund, however, with the symbol RSP, which also represents the S&P 500. Its difference, however, is that its calculation is based on the equal-weighted S&P 500, as opposed to the “normal” S&P which heavily favors the mega-caps.

As shown in the chart above, the SPY (blue line) has massively outperformed the RSP (black line) over the past couple of years. This simple difference in weighting yields about a two-fold difference in performance, because the mega-caps are carrying so much weight.