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.

Mortar & Pestle

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I’ve been in the markets since 1987. I thought the market was strange in 1999. I thought it was odd in 2007. But nothing – – nothing! – – comes even close to what we’re going through now. It’s like I’ve met people who were 2’3″ and 1’9″ and then met someone who was four micrometers high. There’s no comparison.

And thus, we’ve seen volatility pounded and pounded and pounded until it is at 11. And why not? Even the most empty-headed simpleton realizes that the Federal Reserve is directly pushing the market up every day, and Dow 30,000 is clearly in their sights. It makes great press. So here’s the sad state of the VIX:

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Re-Breathing

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Note from Tim: Earlier this week, I did a post called A Breathtaking Tale of Loss, which was simply a link to a story on the WSB sub-reddit that I found fascinating and horrifying. To my chagrin, after I did my post, I saw that the story to which I had hyperlinked had been wiped clean by the town fathers over at Reddit. Mercifully, a Sloper by the saucy name of qtbby69 had the mad skillz to unearth the article, which he provided. For the sake of its exposure, I am reprinting it here. Thank you!

The year is 2017, my parents had a successful real estate business with over a dozen rental properties and several fix and flip projects in production. Our assets totaled a million and a half after paying off all loans if we ever liquidated everything. Which we did, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 
 
My oldest brother made the brilliant decision that because he lost his job, he should start day trading. He quickly made $30k on Apple by yoloing his saving in shares before an Apple products release event. Excited by this, he made an entire PowerPoint presentation convincing the family to get into day trading. We were reluctant at first, and I wish it stayed that way. 

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Psychology of Trading, Part 7

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Dealing with Loss

In the summer of 2006, I left my job at Dell Computers.  I was planning to take a year off, which I did, before moving forward.  I spent my year off diving into my passion of investing.  At one point I became particularly consumed with the idea of peak oil (13 years later an idea debunked by the combination of US shale oil and QE).  At the time though, I needed to buy a new car.  I had been driving a truck for a number of years, which I loved.  However, with my study of the energy market, I decided to buy something I never would have before.  I bought a Prius.

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