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.

Gold and Silver Correction

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Progress (Technical & Fundamental)

Gold and silver continue to be mired in a now maturing correction

It has been a long slog since the expected correction began (on the January 29th spike and reversal) from a strenuously overbought situation in the gold, and especially silver, market. That was the dumbest and most FOMO’ing at the mouth money surging into the market.

Gold and Silver Price Technicals

The daily chart shows a falling wedge (bull flag of minor importance, as is most “pattern recognition”) * and an in-progress test of support at the June-August lows. It also shows a 62% Fibonacci retrace of the most intense legs of the 2025 bull move. This is biased positive for a bounce at least.

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Awaiting the Pivot Back

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….. to Precious & Critical Minerals

After a stellar 2025, 2026 has seen a pivot away from precious & critical minerals, as we await a new pivot

From the standpoint of the most precious metal of all, gold, the stock market has been the star of 2026. All year we anticipated a bottom to be put in at/above the green shaded box. If that bottom is in, that is exactly where it was forged. However, later in the article you will see a caveat to this view.

Line chart showing the Gold to S&P 500 ratio (GLD/SPY) over time, with key values highlighted for reference.
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Goldilocks Painted Into Existence

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Goldilocks has been our favored short-term outcome, and she just took a step forward

Yesterday, the FOMC did the very much expected and hiked the Fed Funds Rate by .25% while jawboning another to come. Let’s leave aside that they are supposedly fighting “inflation” with a dumb monetary tool that has little to do with fighting the war and tariff-driven price increases that people are calling “inflation”.

I’ve written til my fingers fall off that price increases are not inflation. They are the effects of the inflation that was created in Q1, 2020 by the Fed (monetary) and government (fiscal). These effects manifested in 2021-2023. Birthed under Trump 1.0, made worse under Biden (Yellen channeling through Powell: “inflation is transitory”).

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She’s Baaack!

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And I don’t mean Hazel…

Although Hazel and her grotesque grin are back as well, as August payrolls knocked it out of the park on the back of non-productive Leisure/Hospitality services, Government and Education/Health services.

However, Manufacturing was also positive and I would not discount the prospect that it could be due to production of more killing machines within the Fabricated Metal Products sub-segment of Manufacturing, which includes Ordinance & Accessories.

Awesome; America great again.

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Operation Twist 2.0?

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Bessent & Warsh Work the Yield Curve

Operation Twist 1.0 was a stroke of pure (evil) genius by Ben Bernanke 15 years ago, and two modern day Wizards may be trying to engineer something similar today

“Sanitize” Baby, “Sanitize!”

In 2011 former Fed bond market manipulator Ben Bernanke painted inflation expectations right out of the macro with Operation Twist and its officially stated objective to “sanitize” inflation. A “twist” is done by rigging long-term bond yields lower and short-term yields higher. Or at least rigging short-term yields stronger than long-term yields on a relative basis.

The implication is that policymakers are on the job, watchful hawks on inflation while the long end of the bond market is painted to not be concerned about inflation. That’s a good one! But still, in market management it’s reality over ideals and justice, folks.

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