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 Ratios to Cyclical Markets

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Important gold ratios to markets that are more cyclical

When gold rises again vs. these markets the counter-cyclical economic view will generally be back on. Gold has far more utility (insurance, risk-off liquidity, relative value retention) during economically troubled times than cyclical assets like stocks and commodities.

Gold/SPX (U.S. stock market)

A sweet consolidation as the market angst of the spring has gone bye-bye. This is a lovely consolidation that was much needed as gold got over-pumped to the upside (and stocks to the downside) in April.

Graph showing the Gold to S&P 500 ratio over time, with price movements and trend lines. Indicator values and trading volumes are also displayed.
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Gold Is Revolution

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Gold is revolution against an expiring system that is still limping along

The expiring system (in progress for years, actual expiration date unknown) has limped along, through Fed (monetary) and government (fiscal) oversight, fabulously enriching the rich and impairing the middle and lower classes. The system has tilted the playing field heavily in favor of the ruling class. Yes, I am writing from within and about America.

It is beyond the scope of this article to go too far into the details, but money created out of nowhere (monetary) and spent into circulation (fiscal) must go somewhere. Where it goes is into assets and asset markets.

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Jackson Hole Week – with Implications

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Jackson Hole week is often used as a policy bull horn

It is clear that the market is taking some froth off the top of several recently over-bullish areas (everything from Palantir/AI to MP Materials/REE are taking haircuts) and it is doing it with fear of the Fed as rationale. This could paint the current market turbulence in these and other areas as brief, depending on what comes out of the Fed’s orifice at week’s end.

The Fed has traditionally used this getaway as a pulpit from which to hint about coming policy. With slipping economic signals (everything from employment to commercial real estate) continuing apace, I don’t think that the inflation jitters instigated by last week’s PPI report will stack up against the decelerating economy. That report was not inflation, after all. It was the effects of fiscal (tariff/trade) policy.

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Market Talk, Economy & Bond Market

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A premium excerpt from this week’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 876

Market Talk

At this point, far into the broad market recovery rally with gold stocks so close to the primary target (HUI 500+/-) I want to make sure I am speaking clearly as a human, rather than mechanically as a TA or macro funda dork. That will probably shorten this report and possibly the next few reports to come, until something big happens.

Big? Well, a broad top and breakdown would be big. A Fed policy shift would be big. A significant US Dollar rally would be big (given it would be against a government that seems bent on devaluation), a precious metals upside blowout and reversal, a commodity failure, a precipitous decline in long-term Treasury yields, or a resumed rise in those yields. All big.

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