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.

The State of the Macro

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It’s the Bond Market, Stupid

As our Continuum chart predicted over a year ago, Jerome Powell was called to his higher inflationary powers when the macro markets liquidated with great violence and terror. This link shows the Continuum (30yr yield and its monthly EMA 100 limiter) as it was then, begging for inflationary action…

Oh Jerome? Bond market calling…

Below is the Continuum today. Since the linked post last February, 2020, a lot has happened and it has been according to the plans we laid out last spring. The plan was inflationary because the Fed was going into steroidal inflation mode. The ‘Fed comfort box’ on the chart has thinned out from the original post because the red dotted limiter (monthly EMA 100) has declined appreciably since then.

These many months the NFTRH target has been 2.5% to 2.7% on the 30yr Treasury yield. This week that zone’s lower bound got dinged. It is coming time for a cool down at least, if the macro reflation is going to get a second wind. What could provide that second wind?

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HGNSI Joins Progression of Gloom in Gold

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Hulbert’s HGNSI joins other sentiment-based positive indicators for Gold

Just as ole’ Jim Cramer above signaled an imminent short-term rally recently in the stock market, bleak views coming out of the gold bug “community” are reliable contrary indicators. The Hulbert Gold  Newsletter Sentiment Index (HGNSI)  is out and it is fully bullish on a contrary basis as it shows gold newsletter writers in full retreat.

But first…

We have noted that Gold’s CoT has been improving (CotBase)…

gold cot
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Buffett Buys a Copper Stock!

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Just kidding. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway may or may not own copper stocks. I did not dig deep enough to find out. For the purposes of this post it does not matter.

With the Buffett Buys a Gold Stock! hysterics last summer, the subsequent (and inevitable) fallout and the Buffett Pukes a Gold Stock! resolution, you never know. It’s worth asking the question about what sort of investors are now true-believing in copper and the industrial metals where once upon a time last summer gold was the object of affection.

Look, the contrarian dynamics in play now are 180° from where they were last spring, coming out of the deflationary crash, when we first started to get a handle on and act upon the coming inflation aimed at reflating the economy. NFTRH has used a lot of indicators, starting then and continuing today to be on the right (inflationary) side of this macro dynamic. With all due respect and foresight about macro decision points to come, we remain on the inflationary side today.

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The Gold & Gold Stock Corrections Are Normal

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Corrections in Gold and Gold Stocks are completely normal in an inflationary macro market phase

Every week I notice the agony ratcheting up incrementally. While the rest of the casino takes off to the speculative heavens, gold sits on its heavy ass and the gold miners go nowhere in a downward-biased perma-correction. Or so it seems. It’s all normal and I’ll explain why.

First of all, it is not healthy to be railing against unseen nefarious manipulative interests. That is emotion and emotion has to be kept out of it (and yes, I get as aggravated as the next guy sometimes, but it cannot affect your plan or you will be the victim, the mark). You have to take what the market gives you and roll with it. All markets are manipulated when you consider that the greatest manipulation of all is courtesy of the Federal Reserve, implementing its MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), err, that is TMM (Total Market Manipulation) toward desired ends.

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