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 notion that there is art involved in interpreting the economy and financial markets is probably heresy to many market participants and probably 99.9% of economists (that .1% guy being the one who’s excluded from the meetings and egghead social gatherings), whether they be right or left leaning (I always find it entertaining to hear right wing and left wing economists duke it out, as I did on NPR yesterday, coming to diametrically opposed conclusions amid the tax reform debate). (more…)
I have made countless posts lampooning the mainstream media and its eyeball harvesting, click baiting content. This content and especially the associated headlines (let’s recall the classic R.I.P. Bond Bull Market as Charts Say Last Gasps Have Been Taken, dated Dec. 2016 as but one example) are designed to whip up emotions, draw attention and thereby gain traffic and ad dollars (diminishing though they are these days). nftrh.com is and always will be ad-free, by the way.
So sure, the bond bull market may well have ended in the Brexit and NIRP dominated summer of anxiety (in fact I believe it did), but any good contrarian would have seen the trade setup to go bearish on bonds in the middle of that hysteria, not a half a year later when Bloomberg used Louis Yamada’s chart to make a big headline. From a post in June 2016 about the Silver/Gold ratio and the prospects for a future ‘inflation trade’ right at the height of the bond bull… (more…)
On August 11 the potential and reasoning for anticipated pivots in the US stock market and the gold sector were noted in this article: Potential Pivots Upcoming for Stocks and Gold
As for the stock market, several reasons were put forward in support of a 2nd half of September through Q4 danger period, for a correction (no need yet to talk bear market because that would be pure promotion of an agenda). Please note that standard technical analysis was not among those reasons. The stock market was then and is now, in an uptrend across all important time frames.
The reasons for the correction view noted in the article ranged from the S&P 500’s 30 month cycle, to the Fed’s Funds cycle and its proximity to the 2yr yield (this has not yet made a bear signal) to the US dollar’s potential to rally (still waiting on that one) to a rough seasonal patch that begins in mid-September. Well, today is September 15, da boyz is back from da Hamptins and the rest is up to the market’s nature to take its course. (more…)
Sometimes I like to trot these lumbering monthlies out so we can quiet everything down and see where various markets are slowly heading.
First of all, as I go down with my ‘strengthening US dollar’ ship*, I also mal-projected copper’s upside. I’d felt that $3/lb. would cap Doctor Copper because it is very clear lateral resistance at a handy 38% Fib retrace.**
Below are the opening segment and an excerpt (on the headline indexes and the Healthcare sector) from the first regular segment of this week’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 461…
Seeking Confirmations
We have several inputs forecasting change (market pivots) ranging from seasonal tendencies to an expected US dollar rally, Fed monetary tightening (such as it is), the 30 month S&P 500 cycle, not to mention a presidential administration in utter disarray and not having done much, if anything, to further the fiscal stimulation (which, the story goes, would replace the Fed’s monetary stimulation under the previous administration) view that much of the stock market’s post-election euphoria was built upon. (more…)
