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.

Stocks and Gold: the Next Opportunity

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Unless you visit the Notes From the Rabbit Hole website regularly, you might think the title of this article implies it is written by a market analyst pretending to know what will happen; like a top in the stock market or a resumed bull cycle in gold.  You might also think it is written by one of the writers who’ve either a) been fighting the stock bull since the bearish market terminated a year ago or b) been a perma gold bug bull.

So once again, we have our disclaimers because in a milieu of quickly forgotten soundbites, integrity is important.  So I point you to a couple of posts (among many others) that indicated, when the time was right for people to get bullish the stock market in favor of gold.

AMAT Chirps, B2B Ramps, Yellen Hawks and Gold’s Fundamentals Erode (May 30, 2016) (more…)

Moving Targets: Investors Need to Discriminate!

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Robot-48x48In the current political climate herds are running every which way.  There is the anti-Trump herd, the pro-Trump herd, the liberal herd, the conservative herd, the CNBC herd, the mainstream financial services industry herd, the Armstrong herd, the gold bug herd… and there are all those ideologies in play.  But robotic thinking, unless it is in service to profitable trades like this one on an excellent company providing automation (ref. recent Fanuc NFTRH+ highlight), does not pay (disclaimer: I’ve sold and taken the profit).

So stop right there!  These are the financial markets, and if you have not checked your deepest held beliefs, your virtue, your bigotry and in general, your bias at the door you are going to lose.

There is a plan in play, which NFTRH has been tracking for many months, since we abandoned the bearish topping patterns (that weren’t) in US markets during the depths of the Brexit hysteria and the subsequent sentiment thrust, which undid the market’s bearish technical status.  The plan has been ‘SPX bullish’ based on the bullish moving average (up) signal on this weekly chart from the better part of a year ago…

spx weekly chart
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T/A and Sentiment in Crude Oil

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It seems that I don’t post very much on oil (or Natural Gas, for that matter).  These are covered each weekend in NFTRH; but yes it’s true, I give oil and energy short shrift in public posting.  Probably because I have other higher priority interests right now.

But a subscriber asked about shorting oil in light of the fading efficacy of the OPEC deal, Elliott Wave’s (I assume he means EWI) apparent target of $56 with a crash due thereafter, and Sentimentrader’s high risk sentiment reading.  So let’s look into it.

WTI Crude Oil is bullish above key support by daily chart.

wtic daily

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He’ll Bring Them Inflation

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I used to make fun of the FOMC rate hike “decision” language in the mainstream media because under the Obama administration and its economic policies overseen by the Fed’s monetary policy, there really was no decision, was there?  It was ZIRP-eternity, interrupted by a lone and token rate hike in December 2015 (the Dec. 2016 hike does not count because the transition to a new administration and policy regime was already known; in effect, the Fed has already made its first hike under Trump).

According to the traders who make up the Fed Funds futures, there is no decision tomorrow, either.  From CME Group, we have virtually no one predicting two successive rate hikes.

cme fed funds futures

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“Protection Will Lead to Great Prosperity”

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A slightly modified version of the opening segment of this week’s Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 431…

After being mostly off the grid on Friday, I listened to the Trump inauguration speech on Saturday morning. While I have lots of thoughts and opinions, I want to focus on an item where I am qualified; namely my former area of expertise as someone who was in essence told by the media over and over again “you don’t exist”, while the consumerist, financialized and globalized economy flourished. By “you” I of course mean me, an owner of a small American manufacturing business. My area of focus from the speech…

“We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind. The wealth of the middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world. But that is the past and now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward it’s going to be ‘America first… America first… America first’! (more…)