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.

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

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Just a little musing on something which occurred to me this morning…….

I am a fan of history, and a fan of analogs. Those two interests combined this morning, when I wondered to myself if there are any parallels between the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and what the U.S. and China are going through right now.

As a refresher, the 1939 agreement was a non-aggression pact between Germany and Russia. Simply stated, they agreed not to attack one another, not to ally themselves with any enemy of the other, and (secretly) to define their spheres of influence over Europe.

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Dracarys

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I have noticed something about this rally off the crash low. It has a rhyme to it. I remember thinking to myself during the crash, and hearing other say, “It feels like the entire 2008 financial crisis is condensed into one month.”

We are seeing the something similar transpire with the bullish move off the crash low. The Fed is using the same playbook that launched the QE bull market, but at an accelerated pace.

First, let’s take a look at a chart of the history of QE that Tom McClellan posted to his Twitter feed on April 5th. You can see from the chart that the stock market nicely traced the path of QE up until 2017. Much of what transpired after 2017 was retraced during the crash.

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