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 Sentiment Lesson #3000

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The number in the title is in honor of the boldest forecast burped up by the gold community in February as the metal (and the miners) jerked upward and jerked the holdout would-be enthusiasts into the market. It was included in the anonymous (but real) quotes from a cautionary post last week on the Gold Bull Horns.

We also used these quotes in an NFTRH update in order to try to make a point, despite what were very short-term contrarian bullish readings that day (per Sentimentrader’s data) for junior and senior gold miners.

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Gold Bullhorns Quieted for a Day, at Least

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Over in the gold patch things went from disinterested and downright antagonistic (A Notable Lack of Interest in Gold) to sleepy (Gold “Community” Crickets) to ferociously over bullish. Check.

Any long-time and right minded gold bug will tell you that the latter condition is usually a signal to prepare for some turbulence.Wednesday and Thursday brought the turbulence in the form of a reversal and pullback for gold, silver and the miners.

Since we became constructive on the gold sector in Q4 2018 (per the links above and especially NFTRH reports/updates) the groundswell of gold boosting (pom poms and all) has steadily risen since it became obvious that something bullish was going on in January. And it appears that last week’s breakout from various daily chart bull flags in gold, silver and the miners finally jerked ’em all in. Enter the Thursday pullback. (more…)

Manage Your Psych Profile

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Note: This is not market analysis. This is a person writing words and inserting some funny pictures. It is a product of said person’s view of psychology and the modern market.

First off, my honest self-evaluation: I would be pleased to see the US stock market to go down again, not because I am positioned for it (I am not, yet, other than through fairly non-dramatic risk management like portfolio balancing, profit taking and keeping high cash levels as appropriate) but because I feel like the bull was cooked up by an evil man named Ben Bernanke.

When I write “the bull” I am not talking about the post-Christmas Eve rally. That had to happen and at the time I was buying the spiking fear and panic. I am talking about the post-2008 bull market.

Regarding Bernanke, evil is probably too strong a word but I consider the effects of his policy to have been purely evil, exponentially enriching the already rich and driving the middle class to the verge of… electing an American TV character who says the right things to those who want, no need to hear those right things after the Bernanke years of abuse (ironically, with the distribution to the rich taking place under a president thought of as a socialist redistributor… only in America). (more…)

A Precious Metals Update

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I reserve most of the work on precious metals for NFTRH weekly reports and in-week updates because it is done on a consistent basis, with the work done previously key to the narrative making sense in real time and going forward. In other words, in order to not be out there stabbing in the dark you need to have an ongoing, adjustable plan that makes sense at all times with the macro markets around it.

So that said, let’s take a snapshot of where things stand currently with the understanding that this work will need future updates, which will probably not be made publicly. It is up to the reader to do the work required to put context to the picture. Meanwhile, this will free up more space in next week’s NFTRH 538 to focus on some quality miner charts, which sometimes take a back seat to the macro/sector stuff. (more…)

Counter-Cyclical Winds Blow, Gold Miners Front and Center

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Note from Tim: Scientific Option Trading Webinar TODAY at 2:00 PST! Sign up here if you haven’t.

As the stock market cracked on October 10th we noted…

Looks Who’s Holding Firm Amid the Carnage; the Gold Miners

And sure enough the GDX bottoming pattern noted in that post (and before that in an NFTRH subscriber update) played out perfectly amid the stock market carnage going on all around it.

Was I trying to predict something? Of course not. I was just following general rules we’ve had in place through all of NFTRH’s 10-plus year history and privately for myself since early in the bull market that began in 2001. Very simply, the counter-cyclical winds must blow and the Macrocosm must come front and center for a constructive fundamental view of the gold stock sector. That first crack in the stock market was a good start.

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