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.
By Biiwii
Hey look, anyone can post a jack-o-lantern with a scary face on Halloween, but how many sites are treating you to a traditional Irish Halloween Turnip? Hmmm… ?
And so October has come and (almost) gone. We got what we expected, which was a mother of a bounce, now probing the high extremes of the upside range. Why is it extreme? Because if it goes past certain levels it morphs from ‘bounce’ to ‘bears hand it over on downs’, and another opportunity lost to croak this market.
“In determining whether it will be appropriate to raise the target range at its next meeting, the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial and international developments.”
What did the Fed do yesterday? Why, they rolled over once again and held ZIRP. They also got mighty specific with some wording that freaked out precious metals players and put in a reversal, not only in the metals, but importantly, in their ratio. See yesterday’s post on the Silver-Gold ratio’s status… What Thing Looks Like the Other. A reversal in silver vs. gold would put the sector on a correction and also issue a warning to other global markets.
By Biiwii
So now the dust settles on global markets that were given quite a stir yesterday by the ECB’s proclamation “We are ready to act if needed. We are open to a whole menu of monetary policy instruments.”
These things come on a nice, neat menu now? As if they are codified, tried and true and simply ready for implementation?
Well, if the US – where they showed ’em how it’s done – is a good example then yes, it is as simple as that. I used to write about Ben Bernanke’s big brain as he took policy innovation (interference?) to previously unheard of levels. It was ‘Check out the big brain on Brad Ben’…
What it actually is is a global deflationary whirlpool sucking things toward the drain. But the valiant fight is kept up by our policy heroes in a sometimes competitive, sometimes alternating fashion. Right now they are alternating.
By Biiwii
The title does not include a (?) after it and that is for a reason. The gold sector’s fundamentals, both sector-specific and macro, are improving and this was not the case during the last exciting upturn in the sector circa summer 2014.
Back then, everything from Russia’s move into Ukraine to the Ebola scare were imagined to be sound drivers of the gold price. This stuff proved, as expected, to be wrong when the whole complex made new lows in November of 2014 (prior to this year’s ultimate lows).
What is driving gold and the gold sector this year? The things that we have been saying for years now would be needed.
Excerpted from this week’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 364…
In an age of Algorithms, High Frequency Trading, Quant-injected performance engines and every Casino Patron with an e-Trade account hyper-stimulating the market after each bit of news that is fed (no pun intended) to us by the financial media and Policy Central, the lowly individual can be forgiven for feeling small and vulnerable; for feeling as if the answers are beyond her, or that long-term success is out of his reach.
Indeed, this very publication has ground its gears pondering the fact that August-September market sentiment became historically over bearish in ratio to the relatively minor downside experienced thus far. That was a bullish, not a bearish thing. With sentiment now being repaired it is time to ask if we are giving the bulls too much latitude.
