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.

True Believer Syndrome

By -

I’m going to start with a tale from about 180 years ago. In the early 1840s, a religious leader named William Miller believed the second coming of Jesus was foretold in the Bible with mathematical accuracy, and using a myriad of verses and tidbits from the Bible, he sought to compute as closely as possible when exactly J.C. was going to come back.

prophetcy

At first, he didn’t offer anything very exact:

Using an interpretive principle known as the day-year principle, Miller, along with others, interpreted a prophetic “day” to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Miller became convinced that the 2,300-day period started in 457 B.C. with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. His interpretation led him to believe and promote the year 1843. Despite the urging of his supporters, Miller never announced an exact date for the expected Second Advent. But he did narrow the time period to sometime in the Jewish year 5604, stating: “My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.” (more…)

Letting Go

By -

There’s an old saying about how the opposite of love isn’t hate………it’s apathy. I guess there’s some truth to that. I’m definitely feeling it now with respect to the equity “markets”. Years ago, I was madly in love with them. These days, it’s the opposite. But I’m not feeling angry. I’m feeling more like this.

Recent trading has kinda pissed me off. On the last day of the year, there was a false bullish breakout (left green tint) followed by a hard break of the triangle (magenta). So far, so good. But in the first trading day of 2018, the ES pushed right back into the triangle pattern and, bang, above it again. I’m typing this on Tuesday evening, so who knows what it’ll be doing by the time you read this. But as I sit here now, I tell ya, it’s a pisser.

estw

(more…)

Crappy New Year!

By -

While I suspect the thoughts of many New Year’s Eve revelers are along the lines of “I want to lose weight” or “I’m going to quit smoking” or “Maybe I’ll get lucky tonight”, I have had, for years now, a very different thought: “This was the worst year of my life.” And I’m having it again this year. The thought is crystal clear, and to my troubled head, completely true.

But why, Tim? Why the worst year of your life? Did your family break apart? No. Are you broke? No, I’ve never had more money than now. Is Slope shriveling away, since this “bear blog” has been in a bullish market for going on nine years? No, it’s not that either. Slope is actually doing great. It has a very bright future. (more…)