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 Big Macro Play Ahead

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At NFTRH, we are about major macro turning points above all else. Of course, it is often years between these turning points or points of significant change so we are also about the here and now, and managing the trends, Old Turkey style.*

Since we are all learning all the time, I have no problem admitting to you that while right and bullish on commodities and stocks in 2009, after becoming bullish on the precious metals in Q4 2008, I completely ignored Old Turkey due to my inner biases. The result has been that after taking excellent profits from the precious metals bull, personally, I have greatly under performed the stock market bull despite holding a bullish analytical view for the majority of the post-2012 period.

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Treasury Yields: Here We Go, Folks

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Dear Slope readers: The below is more of a blurb that assumes you’re in tune with my ongoing themes, so please excuse the vagueness and take this as a short ‘perspective’ post. I am going to try to fill in more detail before week’s end.

If yesterday’s break above resistance is real you’ll need to have your thinking caps on in the coming weeks. It’s about to get really noisy out there. If the move is real, perceptions are going to firm and the 10yr and 30yr yields are going to go for their big picture limiters.

10yr daily… pattern target 2.8%.

tnx

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“Great Rotation” Ahead: Inflationary or Deflationary?

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Update: This article ultimately leans toward the view that the reasons for a rising curve will be inflationary. But I woke up in the middle of the night and my thoughts drifted to the components of the article (yeah, that’s pretty sad, I know), and with further consideration I am leaning toward neutral or even a bit into the deflationary camp. The reasons will be the stuff of another article.

Think back to the blaring headlines about the Great Promotion  Rotation in the financial media in 2013. Perhaps the media circus started in January of that year when The Economist asked the question of whether the rise in bond yields signaled a “flight” out bonds and into equities. It was probably an earnest and right minded question asked by The Economist, but you know our friends in the greater financial media; get a good story and flog the hell out of it to harvest eyeballs. Reality be damned, man, it’s the eyeballs that matter!

As the mini hysteria grew that year we called it a “Great Promotion” (by the financial media) in expectation that the Continuum’s limiter (the red monthly EMA 100 on the 30 year bond yield chart below) would hold once again, just as it had during Bill Gross’s inflation hysterics that signaled a top in inflationary angst in early 2011. By the end of 2013, our ears were ringing with the media buzz and drone about the “Great Rotation”.

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Baltic Dry Index… Freak Show Here

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Here we take a look at the BDI once again and marvel at its complex Inverted Head & Shoulders pattern with compound shoulders. Of course, that is a TA’s way of baffling ’em with technical sounding bullshit when what he really means is ‘look at that freakish thing; I don’t really know what it is but man it looks bullish!’

BDI is a shipping calculation, not an index; and hence, who really knows if it even translates well to a stock chart? But in my highly technical opinion, man, this freak looks bullish (and positive for the global economy). (more…)