Iron ore: not as pretty as gold, but in demand now. Photo by Peter Craven, Wikimedia Commons.
(more…)Instead Of Gold, Consider Iron
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 Heat Is On
Initial CPI Reaction
The widely-anticipated release of the month CPI report just came out, and with the ceaseless fears about inflation heating up, a “beat” to the upside has people mildly freaking out:
Gold’s Inflation Utility
Gold is okay, but not yet unique
There are times when gold is an okay inflation hedge, while under-performing the likes of industrial metals, oil/energy, materials, etc. During those times, if you’re doggedly precious metals focused you should consider silver, which, as a hybrid precious metal/industrial commodity, has more pro-cyclical inflation utility than gold.
But as I have argued for much of the last year, if the inflated situation is working toward cyclical progress (as it is currently) then there is a world full of trades and investments out there to choose from, many of which are trouncing gold (which, as I have belabored for the better part of 2 decades now, is not about price but instead, value) in the inflated price casino.
The latest ISM Report on Business shows one negative among the important areas as employment declined. Now, before we get too excited about that gold-positive reading let’s also realize that manufacturing employment is still growing, new orders are briskly increasing, backlogs are up and customer inventories are down. In short, manufacturing continues to boom.
(more…)The World Goes Fun-Size
I remember trick-or-treating as a kid, most people were too cheap to hand out normal candy bars, so they bought these big bags off pee-wee ones that were cynically called “Fun Size“. Well, in order to hide inflation, candy bar makers have been simply shrinking the size of their products while keeping the price the same. They call this ‘shrink-flation” and it is everywhere……….
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