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.

Big Picture Update on Commodities & Precious Metals

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Note: I’d like to thank Slope readers and especially Slope’s distinguished proprietor for the opportunity to post for you tales of Amigos, Horsemen, mania, greed, arrogance, stupidity, fear, terror and all the macro nerd stuff within my view of markets. Happy New Year SoH –Gary

Some monthly charts of interest in the commodity sector, including precious metals.

CRB Index dwells below key resistance. A break of 200 would target around 250 in 2018.

crb

CRB/SPX Ratio shows the utter devastation of the Goldilocks era of Central Bank inflation with no apparent consequences. This is not likely to last. (more…)

Amid Bad Fundamentals, Gold Sector Rally May Have Begun

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See edit at end, adding in the favorable gold and silver CoT.

We have been expecting a seasonal rally in gold, silver and the miners off of a bottom due in either December or January, as is typical of the sector. I’ve marked up Sentimentrader‘s seasonal gold pattern to show the secondary low made (on average over 30 years) in December and the January ramp up that follows (on average).

gold seasonal pattern

But we’ve long contended that noise about global strife (geopolitics), inflation and most of all China/India demand need to be tuned out and the larger component planets of the Macrocosm ™ need to be respected in order to call a real bull market phase in gold and gold stocks. (more…)

Semi Bullish?

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As an email from [omitted] entitled “Cyclical Indicators Soar” hits my inbox, I thought I’d update a cyclical indicator of another kind. You know, the friggin’ cyclical indicator that preceded them all? Why, it’s none other than our Canary in a Coal Mine, the Semi sector and in particular, Semi Equipment. The progression and projection we used back in 2013 was Semi Equipment → Semis → General Manufacturing → Jobs → Completely bubble headed euphoric mania with a business friendly corporate stooge in the White House. Okay, well I just added that last part in, but you get the point.

The answer to the title question is no. We’ve put forth reason to believe that the earliest of birds, the Semi Equipment sector, may have issues in 2018. What’s more, this warning to ignore a MarketWatch article and the newly bullish fund manager it highlighted came exactly 2 days before the SOX index made its top. (more…)

Chirp Chirp, Chirp Chirp… Silence?

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The canary chirped in 2013 as its equipment sector ramped up its bookings and we kept up with the bullish data every step of the way after that with updates like this one.

Semi Sector & Stock Market (2014)

The canary chirped again, as we noted amid much resistance if not outright contempt (this is when a supposed tech “expert” was held up in stern refutation of my stance, by a former subscriber whose trusted experts were then bullish gold and bearish Semi *).

AMAT Chirps, b2b Ramps, Yellen Hawks and Gold’s Fundamentals Erode (2016)

Then in November 2017 it was time to begin a new narrative as the MSM pumped a fund manager who, though bullish the FANGs, thought he’d found some great relative value for 2018 in the Semi sector. The link below clearly refutes that and gives reason to believe that these goofy troubadours in the MSM are going to lead a lot of new market participants to slaughter. (more…)