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 CoT Improving, But…

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Gold’s CoT data predictably improved again this week, but here I think some discussion is needed just in case it starts to get hyped too much.

Below is the CoT on an improving trend of Commercial short covering and large Speculator long reduction. Okay, that’s good. But here is the part where the hype needs to be tuned out. The CoT tends to degrade (i.e. trend in a bearish direction during gold rallies) and improve (i.e. trend in a positive direction during gold corrections). The charts of CoT and gold below are set over the same 1 year time frames…

au.cot

gold

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Gold: Value, Re-Propositioned

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Last weekend, in a segment titled Gold Obsession & Ephemeral States of Mind NFTRH 330 talked about a growing presence that seems to follow Martin Armstrong’s anti ‘gold promoters’ theme. This theme seems to be – coming as it does in a gold bear market – something of a promotion itself; just as the over-the-top inflationist gold bug stuff was during the bull market.

Please understand, dear followers of Marty, I am not at all calling him a promoter. He is the originator of ideas, thoughts and analysis that while not all my cup of tea, is interesting enough that it is linked at NFTRH.com and Biiwii.com. But behind this mindset that is solidifying in the public consciousness, is a growing cadre of gold bugs – some of whom benefited from the notoriety lavished upon them by the likes of Mr. Gold, Jim Sinclair – that seems to be taking things over the top*, as always seems to happen with humans and in markets. Every mental elastic band seems to stretch too far.

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4 Safe Haven Investments to Replace Swissy & Gold

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Trying not to pre-judge the title as flat out stupid, let’s proceed to the article…

Four safe-haven investments to replace Swiss francs and gold –MarketWatch

Where to park your money until the next crisis blows over

Greece is on the edge of a dramatic exit from the euro EURUSD, -0.09% . The Russians are meddling in the Ukraine again. The oil price CLH5, -0.46% has been hammered, creating an arc of instability across the Middle East. The global economy is, as is so often the case, poised on the edge of another crisis. If it happens, money will start fleeing to safe havens, somewhere where it can be safely parked to ride out the turmoil.

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Risk ‘ON’

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I have a short position against the S&P 500 and despite Friday’s EoD reversal and yesterday’s down day, as noted to subscribers in an update, I don’t feel very good about its prospects. I am net long the market, and that is for a reason; recent signals have been more bullish than bearish.

Greece? Ha ha ha… was Greece 1 bearish? How about Cyprus? How about the litany of other meltdowns around the world since? In the price obsessed casino (where patrons checked any concept of value at the door), it seems to be all bullish because even when backing out the 24/7, 365 inflationary global policy hoses we realize that over bullish sentiment keeps getting reset by these anxious events and the bull eats that for breakfast.

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