Slope of Hope Blog Posts

This is the heart and soul of the web site. Here we have literally tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. You can also click on any category icon to see posts tagged with that particular category.

Gold Stocks Acting as They Should During Market Stress

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The macro has moved through a time of moderately rising inflationary concerns when economies were cycling up, many commodities were firm and risk was ‘on’. Contrary to the views of inflation-oriented gold bugs, that was not the time to buy gold stocks.

As I have belabored again and again, the right time is when the inflation view is on the outs, gold is rising vs. stock markets, the economy is in question, risks of a steepening yield curve take center stage (the flattening is so mature now that steepening will be a clear and present risk moving forward) and by extension of all of those conditions, confidence declines.

Well?…

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“Harbinger of Doom”: Amigo 3 in Play, But Real Doom Awaits

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“The Harbinger of Doom”? Of course we (well, the media) are talking about the yield curve AKA Amigo #3 of our 3 happy-go-lucky riders of the macro. I have annoyed you repeatedly with this imagery in order to show that three important macro factors needed to finish riding before situation turns decidedly negative.

Amigo 1: SPX (or stocks in general)/Gold Ratio

Amigo 2: 30 Year Treasury Yield

Amigo 3: Yield Curve

In honor of Amigo 3’s arrival to prime time let’s have a good old fashioned Amigos update (going in reverse order) and see if we can annoy a few more people along the way. 🙂 (more…)

A Post-Powell View of USD, S&P 500 and Gold

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The Fed blinked. This was not news to Macro Tourist Kevin Muir or readers of Biiwii.com, which is very pleased to publish his work.

Fed Finally Blinks

Amid a weakening global economy, gathering signs of weakening in the US economy and a dump in inflation expectations, Jerome Powell implied that the Fed may be going on hold for a while after a December rate hike.

This graph from SG Cross Asset Research/Equity Quant by way of Kevin Muir’s article attempts to show that the accumulated rate hike tightening and “shadow” tightening as a result of QE suspension has now met or exceeded the levels that preceded the last two economic recessions. (more…)

Thanksgiving for Proper Gold Stock Fundamentals

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All through the bear market hopeful rationalizations were served up for a bullish case on the gold miners. All through the bear market we warned people not to eat that rotten turkey!

China demand, the China and India “love trade”, cyclical inflation driving up the prices of commodities and resources and the classic… economic growth in the US will create cost-push inflation through wage increases with the smart money seeking inflation protection in gold. All of those and a veritable Turducken of mishmashed ingredients were served to gold bugs as a decidedly not delectable appetizer before the main course.

But with a top in risk ‘on’ global markets now finally including the US (pending any holiday relief bouncing), the planets are aligning per the fundamentals that matter. This will drive up gold’s relational price to cyclical risk ‘on’ assets and improve gold mining bottom line operations (reducing miners’ costs per ounce of gold produced). (more…)

Slowly We Turn… Gold vs.

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Let’s take an in-day snapshot of gold vs. several key competitors (for your investment dollars/euros/yen, etc.) and check the progress in turning the macro from risk ‘on’ to risk ‘off’, cyclical to counter-cyclical.

Gold/Commodities motors along above the SMA 200. The move has been hysterical, and thus looks impulsive. That could mean something as we look back in hindsight one day.

gld.dbc (more…)

The Google Machine Inspires a Discussion about Inflation and Deflation

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The following is excerpted from the Opening Notes segment in this week’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 525 (out on Sunday, November 11). It pretty much came out of nowhere after I did a comparison of Google searches for “inflation” and “deflation” while checking Google Trends for another aspect of the report.

The Google Machine Inspires a Discussion about Inflation & Deflation

Switching gears, while I was in the Google machine I decided to compare two terms that are at the heart of our investment management going forward; “Inflation” and “Deflation”.

inflation and deflation

It is no surprise that inflation is always much more often searched for because well, they are inflating in one form or another constantly. Whether it is through outrageously experimental monetary policy under the Bernanke Fed or supposedly sound fiscal policy under the Trump administration, it is all designed to raise prices and enrich asset owners, while leveraging debt (which is where the potential for deflation comes in). (more…)

Positive Implications for Gold Miners if Crude Oil Breaks Down

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It’s an over obsessed upon commodity, previously hyped for its (Hubbert’s) “peak” status by “experts” like T Boone Pickens and a whole clown show of promoters.

Now WTI Crude Oil has reached a thick resistance zone (as managed in NFTRH for the last couple of years) and may be breaking down from a peak of a whole other kind. Here is the monthly chart we use.

wtic (more…)

Gold Stocks Will Benefit From Cyclical Change

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As we have noted over the many years of the gold sector’s bear market, the gold miners will not rally for real until the real sector and macro fundamentals come into place. Those fundamentals do not include commonly promoted inflation, China/India “love” trades, a US dollar collapse or especially, war, pestilence or any other human misery than economic. The more astute gold bugs do not fall for that.

The gold miners are counter-cyclical as they leverage gold’s performance (whether positive or negative) relative to cyclical assets and markets. Hence the handy picture showing the key fundamental items with the 4 largest planets orbiting the golden sun being the most important.

So the 3 Amigos (of the macro) were saddled up last year in order to guide us to the point of macro change. Linked here is the most recent update from October 19. In this post let’s look at just one macro fundamental indicator among several important macro and sector fundamentals; the ratio of gold to developed stock markets. (more…)

Treasury Bonds and the Fed

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Excerpted from the Market Internals segment of this week’s Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 522 (Oct. 21). The segment focused on the bond market and its macro signaling this week. There was more to the segment, including US and global negative divergences in play to long-term yields (positive divergences for bonds) despite the bullish technical situation, and some possible implications/downside targets for the stock market.

Treasury Bonds and the Fed

The technical signs [of a potential bond bear market/breakout in yields] are there, but…

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SPX/Gold, 30yr Yields & Yield Curve – Amigos 1, 2 & 3 Updated

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We began the Amigos theme last year in order to be guided by the goofy riders during the ending stages of a cyclical, risk-on phase that was not going to end until the proper macro signals come about, no matter how many times the bears declared victory along the way. The fact that grown adults see conspiracies around every corner (okay, I see them around every third corner myself, but work with me here) makes such macro signaling very necessary in order to keep bias at bay.

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