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.

Now What?…………………Evil Plan 73.0 (by BDI)

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Well, my fellow Slope-a-Dopes, where to from here? The blizzard rages on, that much is clear/blurry. The whiteout will arrive as the storm's violent fury reaches peak strength. The only question that remains is will it bury us alive, or will we escape certain death by borrowing Ben's 300hp QE fuel injected turbocharged snow blower to dig our way out.  Will the global economy rapidly descend into a deep freeze sending all financial thermometers to sub zero Centigrade, or will the coming coordinated round of massive global Central Bank snow blowing thaw all risk assets back up to Fahrenheit 451?  

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Is 30.2.Au Flying in Ben’s Face? Not Yet

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More tin foil on a subject I apparently just can't get enough of…

The FOMC announced that Operation Twist would continue through year end.  This is where the Fed tries to re-inflate the housing bubble (and related areas) by buying long term T bonds to artificially hold down long term interest rates while sopping up any inflationary implications to the money supply by selling short term T bonds.  Throw in a side of ZIRP, and you've got a lot of free money flying around out there with very subdued inflation effects.

Gold is in an orderly corrective consolidation.  Silver has been hanging around at support and is sponsored by a bullish CoT structure.  Commodities, even backing out the wildcards in agriculture, are in nice short-term bottoming patterns (copper is rounding upward and crude oil is breaking up from a small Inverted H&S with a target around 98) and just waiting for the Fed to lose control of the nice macro painting it has been working on since Op/Twist #1, back in September of 2011.

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Ben Bernanke: ‘How You Like Me Now, Suckas?’

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A newsletter that was actually pretty workmanlike, charting what it needed to chart and setting its market parameters as usual, ended a little weirdly as the writer had obviously not yet fully processed and resolved his feelings about the Fed Chairman and his brilliantly conceived operation whereby the Fed feeds favored economic areas (hello housing index) through long term bond purchases and sops up the money supply by selling short term bonds.  The result is a painting, a representation of reality as dreamed up by an academic genius.  This was the 'wrap up' segment to NFTRH196:

Bernanke: How You Like Me Now, Suckas?

Gold is twisting around and being restrained by policy. This policy makes it appear that the system is just fine. But this is just a painting, a fraud. A powerful entity is selling non-strategic T bonds to buy up strategic ones. It is painting the macro economic picture in a brilliantly despicable operation to keep previously popped bubbles like housing and current bubbles like government credit alive with no need as yet for outright printing. Markets, including the gold market, seem to buy it.

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Rise, Platform, Blow Off, Correction: AU is Well

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Many chart geeks – myself included – are managing the 1520 to 1530 area as important support for gold, which it is if the 'price' of gold is what matters.  And with legions of individuals and funds holding GLD or other forms of paper gold, I suppose it is important.  They are hoping for their paper to be marked up after all, with the idea of making 'price' gains in line with the value associated at any given time with the actual monetary metal.

In addition to visual support levels, there are trend lines and moving averages in play as well and this chart has nothing to do with any of these.  In fact, it has not so much to do with technical analysis as it has to do with perspective; a sort of cartoon version of the last several years of agony and ecstasy that has been the gold bug experience.

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