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 Miners in 2017 Whipsaw

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Ever since 2012’s failure of the ‘QE 3 rally’ in the precious metals it has not been fruitful to micro manage the gold sector, because that failure jump started a savage bear market that would need time to work out the excesses both in the sector’s investor base and in its mining businesses, which had become bloated and inefficient. That’s what bear markets do; they clean out the landscape to make it inhabitable for new investors one day. Here is a weekly chart showing the bear’s kickoff. HUI’s 55 week EMA then became the ball and chain that kept its fate sealed (red arrows) until January of 2016.

hui

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Currencies, and Some ‘Out There’ Thoughts on Inflation, Stocks, Gold and Miners

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NFTRH’s ‘Currencies’ segment (one among a report filled with critical insight across all major market segments and many of the stocks therein) went off its usual brief message and riffed into some macro discussion on inflation’s post-2011 path. Excerpted from the May 28th edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole…

Uncle Buck’s index is weak and the SMA 50 is crossing below the SMA 200. Before long we will be reading about it in the media. Now let’s consider a theme we’ve promoted for years; when the media trumpet a “DEATH CROSS!” * it is time to brace for the opposite implication to the media’s bearish promotion. Our view has after all, included a decline to the mid-90s for the index. Meanwhile, USD/JPY is decent right at the SMA 50, USD/EUR and USD/CHF are at lateral support and USD is at least neutral vs. the Commodity currencies. (more…)

Stocks, Commodities and Gold (Part 1 of 2)

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It has now been exactly 10 months since we established 2410 as the measured objective for the S&P 500. In forming a potential double top this week at 2405.77 I’d say we are close enough to call the target in (as we did in February when the first top was made on what we called “peak Trump” day, post-congressional address).

Now, a target is not a stop sign; in this case it was a long-term objective based on a chart pattern, period. It could make me look like the genius I certainly am not, or it could just pause at the target on its way to further upside mania and a potential market blow off. Don’t let ’em baffle you with bullshit, nobody knows which of those, or whatever else may be in store. (more…)

An Update on Commodities

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In NFTRH 447 we used individual daily charts for the CRB index and various individual commodity items. This was in order to better view details of the bearish (but bouncing, as expected) state of the complex. Below are some of the more general daily charts we usually review (along with weekly charts) each week in NFTRH.

CRB and crude oil look bearish, NatGas is stable to constructive, copper is bearish as it consolidates the big bump, Agri is neutral/non-starter and the Uranium holder is bearish, exactly as we expected the fallout from the previous pump job to be.

crb

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Tax Reform and the ‘Repatriation’ Trade

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The following is the opening segment of the May 14th edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole…

Since the Trump victory we have heard all about the coming fiscal policies that would replace the non-stop and brilliantly evil* monetary policies employed by the Fed since the 2008 market crash. These fiscal policies range from the hair-brained (rust belt factory job repatriation) to the silly (building a border wall in lieu of modernizing security-focused information and surveillance technologies) to the arduous (fixing the Healthcare system) to the sound (well-targeted tax cuts). We’ll get tax cuts, but how well targeted they’ll turn out to be will be debated endlessly and I for one don’t think the trend of the rich getting hyper richer and the poor getting poorer is going to reverse any time soon. For reference, see this post at Biiwii. (more…)