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.

Amid The Political Drama

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There are plenty of risks in the equity and bond markets this year, and the Greenland drama over the last week has been a good illustration of that. There was a lot of political drama last year and so far this year it seems that might even accelerate.

Next year Donald Trump will probably be a lame duck President without control of the House (very likely) and possibly also the Senate (theoretically possible but unlikely), and that may slow the chaos down, though he will still likely have a lot more power than lame duck Presidents have traditionally wielded.

In my post on Monday 19th December I was looking at a setup for possible new all time highs on SPX, QQQ, DIA and IWM in the Santa rally, and some of that played out over the remainder of December.

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QE Breakout

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Since the nation is only $38 trillion in debt, the Fed figures – – why not MORE quantitative easing? Thus, they’ve announced that they’re going to flood the market with even more liquidity, which has caused the /RTY to finally blast above resistance to lifetime highs. I had bought some $253 IWM puts and sold them for a whopping $300 profit a minute before the announcement. Good thing, too, as they’re getting nuked now.

FOMC Eve

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The last FOMC meeting is tomorrow (cue the music to “Eight is Enough”, if anyone can remember it) and the world can fully embrace one of the great Buy the Rumor/Sell the News events of the year. A pointless 25 basis point is on the way, which will be as potent a salve for the economy as wrecking exports for farmers and then handing the same farmers a huge bailout for their trouble. God Bless America.

Equities seem to have stalled out in recent days, as illustrated by the /NQ, which is so laughably bloated and overvalued as to merit astonishment a few years from now when folks look back at these prices.

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