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.

Can Bad Market Breadth Be Good?

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In a word, yes. But first, bad market breadth will likely be… bad

Excerpted from last weekend’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 815:

A subscriber sent me analysis calling for a “Monster [bullish] reversion trade for the ages” based on the extreme under-performance of the Equal Weight SPX (RSP) to the Headline SPX. The writer’s conclusion is that after such an extreme divergence the spring back in RSP vs. SPY/SPX is strong and the broader market is the place to be for out-performance.

Can’t argue with that.

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Gold is Misunderstood, Allright

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Gold is misunderstood, but the misunderstanding extends to those critical of others for misunderstanding it

In Wonderland what is, it wouldn’t be.

The subject of this post has been made anonymous, as I’ve decided to release it to a wider audience. Said subject anonymized those he was critical of and so, turnabout is fair play.

Elliott Wave technical analyst Mr. Anonymous (Mr. A) has an article explaining his view of why gold is misunderstood by analysts that claim it is a hedge against inflation and a hedge against stock market weakness. On the surface, he is correct. You cannot argue with facts and the facts are that gold has been a less than stellar inflation hedge (under certain inflationary circumstances) and it did go down significantly during Armageddon ’08 and the 2020 pandemic crash.

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Proven Wrong, Academics Take 3rd Stab at Gold

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Harvey & Erb, they of the Golden Dilemma, once again promote a story that only an academic would stick to years after being proven wrong

They back, ole’ Harvey and Erb. First there was the Golden Dilemma in 2012, where they predicted $800 for the gold price (it made a low of 1046 in 2015) based in part on its lack of effective inflation utility (well, they were at least half right, sort of).

Then came the Golden Constant as I highlighted in 2019. Again applying faulty assumptions from the rarefied air of academia, they state:

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Gold is a Counter-Cyclical Anchor

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As inflation signals moderate and Goldilocks gets pumped, gold is forecasting something more virulent for Q4 – H1, 2025

While this is not an article about gold mining, it is an article about the counter-cyclical economic backdrop ahead that gold is forecasting, and a reminder that the gold mining industry is counter-cyclical and due to leverage gold’s macro relationships in a way that it could not during long inflationary trends.

Since projecting a Goldilocks (inflation not too hot or cold, but just right) flavored market recovery to be led by Tech/Growth stocks well over a year ago that is exactly what came about, with an interruption by the recent bump up in macro inflation signaling, which we also anticipated in advance (due to Treasury yields bottoming and various inflation signals beginning to percolate). But that was expected to be counter the trend toward an interim deflationary liquidity problem for the markets.

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FOMC Increasingly Irrelevant

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As FOMC readies another rate decision, its irrelevance has never been more apparent

I started my market management service in 2008 with the imagery of renowned children’s fantasy, Alice In Wonderland for a reason. That reason being, in Alice’s words:

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

Lewis Carroll, by way of Alice
Notes From the Rabbit Hole
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