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.

Precious Metals: A Positive Big Picture View of Risk vs. Reward

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While routinely following the precious metals as one of many sectors in NFTRH, we have mostly left it alone with respect to public writing over the last few years. That is because it is in a bear market and since I am not a slick short-term trader, I have felt it is best to mostly just let it play out to the bear’s will without overly active involvement.

But several indicators have us on alert that 2016 is going to be the year that the bear ends in gold and gold stocks. So why not publicly discuss the shiny rock a bit more in anticipation? I am still 100% in line with the value aspect of a monetary metal that is historically sought after in times of doubt about the Monetary Politburo’s (Central Bankers’) ability to manipulate the global macro backdrop as desired and to positive effect over the long-term.

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Consumer Prices: A Sticky Situation

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We have noted anecdotally that there is a creeping inflation in the system. It does not show up in commodities, which are in a post-bubble (ah, the good old ‘China story’ that was so vigorously promoted to a degree that would make a gold bug promoter blush) melt down. Crashing costs like that are providing the Goldilocks-like balance to rising costs within the economy.

This morning, the highly recommended Daily Shot had among its macro graphs a look at the “sticky” consumer price index. That got me to go over to the St. Louis Fed website and pull a couple different views of it. First, here is SLF’s description of the sticky index…

“The Sticky Price Consumer Price Index (CPI) is calculated from a subset of goods and services included in the CPI that change price relatively infrequently. Because these goods and services change price relatively infrequently, they are thought to incorporate expectations about future inflation to a greater degree than prices that change on a more frequent basis. One possible explanation for sticky prices could be the costs firms incur when changing price.”

These could be considered the embedded costs within the economy, like the steady upward march in healthcare or my trash collector’s price increases due to administrative and regulatory issues built into this particular service (despite dropping fuel costs).

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Gold Sector Inputs That Actually Matter

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The word play in the title is in reference to the ridiculous fuss over COMEX gold inventory and other promotions masquerading as fundamentals put out by cartoons masquerading as analysis.

30 year divided by, and 30 year minus 5 year are neutral at best. Yield spreads would be rising in a gold-positive environment. As a side note, this spread also tends to bring trouble for the stock market during its initial stages of rising.

30 year / 5 year yield spreads

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Last Week’s Peek Behind the Policy Curtain

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Note: This article assumes the reader knows the reasons we are now bearish on the Semiconductor Equipment sector. NFTRH subscribers definitely do and NFTRH.com/Biiwii.com readers should as well. Readers who have been around a few years also know that we became bullish on the Semi’s in Q1 2013 from much the same reason, in reverse, we are becoming bearish now.

This article was originally and simply titled ‘Market Management’ as the opening segment from this week’s NFTRH 372. We then covered US and global stock markets and precious metals in detail, along with brief but ongoing negativity about commodities (but also what to look for regarding signs of change), a currency update and extensive market sentiment and indicator updates.

As noted recently, my trading had become problematic because I do not have the time, inclination or even the raw talent to day trade, which is what this market has seemed to demand lately. There is no better illustration of the reason why trading has been difficult than what happened on Tuesday through Friday as markets popped up to challenge the recovery highs, tanked hard, seemingly launching the bear view and then ramped again toward the highs on Friday (on a policy maker’s jawbone, what else?).

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