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 Bigger Picture on US Treasuries

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Part One: The Setup

On 10th November last year I wrote a post entitled Strange Days on US Treasuries. In that post I was looking at a very important inflection point that looked likely to be coming up on US Treasuries over the next few months to a year. I would suggest you read that post for the detailed analysis there of the outlook for US debt levels and interest payments as I’ll be looking at those in less detail this week.

This is currently a series of (likely) four posts reviewing the US Dollar, US Treasuries, and why the US Dollar may lose its status as the world’s main reserve currency. I published the first post in this series on the US Dollar on Monday last week and you can see that here.

After writing a lot of this review on bonds it has become clear that I can’t fit it into one post so I am dividing it into two. This post will look at historical bull and bear markets on bonds, the setup for a major increase in bond yields over coming months and years, and why that might play out rapidly rather than slowly.

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Rally Projection & TSLA Update

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In my last post on Tuesday I was looking at the prospects for this rally on US equity indices and the first thing to say is that the tariff reprieve that triggered this rally still looks partial, temporary and fragile and that the new tariffs currently being trailed by the administration as coming soon on electronics, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals may well kill this rally when they start being implemented and that may well start soon.

The other thing I’d mention here is that while there are a lot of negotiations going on with US trading partners, it does appear that the bottom line for this administration seems to be a baseline tariff level at 10% across the board, with an additional 15% across the board on steel, aluminum, cars and perhaps soon tariffs other goods such as pharmaceuticals and semiconductors that may also not be negotiable.

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Uncertain Smile

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In my posts last week on Wednesday and Friday I was looking at possible rally options from the current 2025 lows, and was looking for a rally lasting at minimum a week or two to make right shoulders on the possible H&S patterns that may be forming on SPX, QQQ and DIA here. That is proceeding slowly but I was thinking then that at minimum this rally would ideally last a week or two, and I think the odds of that look decent. The rally will be a week old tomorrow lunchtime, this is a holiday week and while there has been much talk of further tariffs coming soon, these have not yet been implemented.

I did say as well last week though that this tariff reprieve was partial, temporary and fragile, and that remains the case. If the new tariffs being trailed by the administration on electronics, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals start hitting next week then this rally may be over, and a new leg down may begin.

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The Bigger Picture on the US Dollar

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I’ve been mulling over the best way to do my review of the US dollar, US treasuries, and why the US dollar may lose its status as the world’s main reserve currency, and how that might look, and I’m splitting this into three posts this week.

The first post is this one and will look at the US dollar and where it may go from here.

The second post will look at US treasuries and where they may head from here.

The third post will be looking at the US dollar’s status as the main reserve currency, US treasuries as the main reserve asset for US dollars, why that may already be changing, and what other options might replace it over the next few years.

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A Distorted Mirror Image

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I posted the first Bitcoin (BTCUSD) chart below at the end of December and there are two notes that I made on it then that are worth another look today.

The more important one of those is that I noted that any sharp decline on equity indices takes Bitcoin down with it, and we have most definitely been seeing that. On the flip side, any significant rally in equities will likely take Bitcoin up with it.

The other note I made that is worth remembering is that I noted that all of the RSI 5 buy and sell signals on this chart reached the full target (at 70 on RSI 5 for buy signals and 30 on RSI 5 for sell signals).

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