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.
What if I told you there is a ‘no risk’ investment that will out perform the S&P 500, even assuming the S&P 500 will continue upward at the pace it has over the second half of 2014? Would you buy that investment?
Then consider owning cash, if you are a US resident denominated in USD. Very simply, SPX in USD units has been declining since the middle of the year, with the weekly trend by AROON having gone negative and what looks like a topping pattern forming.
At the prodding of an NFTRH subscriber who was combing through old issues, I went back and read NFTRH 7, from November of 2008 and was struck by how things have really not changed in the last 6 years of non-stop inflationary policy; they have intensified and gone global, but the mechanics have not changed.
The current inflation operation is failing world-wide, with the US holding out for now. As pertains to the gold and gold mining case mentioned in the article below (as we got hyper bullish in Q4 2008), things are moving much more slowly now. The current backdrop is a different animal than the 2008 deflationary impulse, but its potential is to much more wide-ranging and ultimately destructive. (more…)
First, for all you right minded wording detectives out there, you are absolutely right… inflation is not rising prices and deflation is not dropping prices. Also, deflation is not two measures of a heavily manipulated bond market (chart 1) dropping impulsively. But for the sake of argument, let’s realize that Main Street does indeed call $4 regular at the pump “inflation” and every several years when a scare crops up they call dropping stocks and house prices “deflation”.
Here are some pictures of an over sold ‘inflation’ story, which put another way, is an over bought ‘deflation’ story.
TIP vs. TLT (inflation protected vs. regular long-term Treasuries), the indicator that did indeed give us the heads up on a coming implosion of inflation expectations long ago, is burrowing southward in what looks like a Waterfall decline (the opposite of a parabolic blow off ala Silver 2011, at the height of the last inflationary blow out). (more…)
Note: This is somewhat personal and subjective to biiwii.com and nftrh.com, but if any venue can take a little off the beaten path content, I figure Slope can. Thanks in advance to Tim if he should choose to publish it.
Well, now that the title has hopefully gotten your attention I’d like to talk about the ‘d’ and ‘i’ words that so many financial types – myself included – throw around so often. This is due to a reader/subscriber KR’s aggravation at my use of the word deflation, which he had thought was meant sarcastically, but then came to find out I am serious when I use it.
First I want to note that I seem to have been pissing everyone off lately, gold bugs (one of which I am) and gold bears in particular. That is due to my writing style being one where if I’ve got something to say, I say it. Sometimes that’s bad for business, as I can get a little heavy handed. (more…)
Excerpted from the December 7 edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole (with minor edits):
Now it gets interesting because early in the bailout process the Fed talked about achieving certain employment milestones before hiking interest rates. Here we are at the 10th consecutive month with 200,000+ job gains (321,000 in November) and the jobless rate down to 5.8% and still there is a question on when or whether ZIRP will be withdrawn?
Well I am a visual learner so I for one can never get enough pictures to inform my thinking. Pardon the redundancy in this chart’s frequent appearances in NFTRH…
