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 is a Counter-Cyclical Anchor

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As inflation signals moderate and Goldilocks gets pumped, gold is forecasting something more virulent for Q4 – H1, 2025

While this is not an article about gold mining, it is an article about the counter-cyclical economic backdrop ahead that gold is forecasting, and a reminder that the gold mining industry is counter-cyclical and due to leverage gold’s macro relationships in a way that it could not during long inflationary trends.

Since projecting a Goldilocks (inflation not too hot or cold, but just right) flavored market recovery to be led by Tech/Growth stocks well over a year ago that is exactly what came about, with an interruption by the recent bump up in macro inflation signaling, which we also anticipated in advance (due to Treasury yields bottoming and various inflation signals beginning to percolate). But that was expected to be counter the trend toward an interim deflationary liquidity problem for the markets.

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FOMC Increasingly Irrelevant

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As FOMC readies another rate decision, its irrelevance has never been more apparent

I started my market management service in 2008 with the imagery of renowned children’s fantasy, Alice In Wonderland for a reason. That reason being, in Alice’s words:

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

Lewis Carroll, by way of Alice
Notes From the Rabbit Hole
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Macro Turning in Favor of Gold

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Excerpt from NFTRH 804 on the macro turn in favor of the anti-bubble, gold

Turning

NFTRH is a top-down macro entity. It is not a stock pick rag, a technical analysis junkie, a market psychologist or a monetary/fiscal policy obsessive. It is all of those things, as needed. But primarily what we do is define the macro and then continually update the definition because it is always progressing, shifting, cycling and changing. From that work we then try to take it from ‘top-down’ definition and apply it to investment strategies.

I sometimes bristle at the hype that emanates from the precious metals sphere coming in the form of gold bug doctrine, perma-cheerleading, lecturing and rigid thinking. That is because like it or not, the macro is always shifting and doctrine or not, the macro shifted away from the precious metals in 2012 and only began recovering a gold-positive view in 2018. Since then, it’s been a volatile process with incomplete macro fundamentals.

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Update on Gold Ratios

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Updating gold ratios to other markets using associated ETFs

Sure, gold is a pretty and heavy object that people fall in love with (and express their love with). But it is also a primary market indicator here in NFTRH land. When it rises vs. cyclical ‘risk’ markets it implies rising risk in those markets. When it rises vs. inflation sensitive markets, it implies waning inflationary pressure. Generally, when gold rises in relation to markets and assets positively correlated to the economy, the indication is for a counter-cycle, an economic contraction.

Here’s the most recent snapshot by daily charts.

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As the Stars Align for Gold Stocks

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Gold stocks are among the most hated equities in the stock market, but that will change as the macro shifts in their favor for the first time since 2001-2003

It is the nature of the masses, the majority, the consensus… the HERD, to follow the trend. It is a lot easier to swim downstream than to fight the current. Just go with the flow. And from a US-centric view the flow has, with a blessed interruption from 2001 to 2003, been inflationary monetary policy free flowing into asset markets as needed and on demand at every point of financial crisis since. Armageddon ’08 and the COVID crash were two primary examples.

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