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.

Last Week’s Peek Behind the Policy Curtain

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Note: This article assumes the reader knows the reasons we are now bearish on the Semiconductor Equipment sector. NFTRH subscribers definitely do and NFTRH.com/Biiwii.com readers should as well. Readers who have been around a few years also know that we became bullish on the Semi’s in Q1 2013 from much the same reason, in reverse, we are becoming bearish now.

This article was originally and simply titled ‘Market Management’ as the opening segment from this week’s NFTRH 372. We then covered US and global stock markets and precious metals in detail, along with brief but ongoing negativity about commodities (but also what to look for regarding signs of change), a currency update and extensive market sentiment and indicator updates.

As noted recently, my trading had become problematic because I do not have the time, inclination or even the raw talent to day trade, which is what this market has seemed to demand lately. There is no better illustration of the reason why trading has been difficult than what happened on Tuesday through Friday as markets popped up to challenge the recovery highs, tanked hard, seemingly launching the bear view and then ramped again toward the highs on Friday (on a policy maker’s jawbone, what else?).

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Yellen Responds as a Central Banker Would

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By Biiwii

Let’s try to untangle the web of Fed-speak going on here. “Reality” for our purposes is defined as my opinion, obviously.

Yellen Defends Seven Years of Low Interest Rates in Letter to Nader

Fed-Speak:

Warning that “an overly aggressive increase in rates would at most benefit savers only temporarily,” she argued in the letter released Monday in Washington that the Fed’s seven-year era of zero rates had sheltered American savers from dramatic declines in the value of their homes and retirement accounts.

Reality: (more…)

The Paused Recession

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Contributed by Stephan Davied

The world seems to be in the throngs of something very strange. Are we in a recession or are we in a depression or are we in a 10 year period of just super low growth? The world has never coined a term to describe years and years of low growth, probably because it does not happen much.

Generally countries, businesses, schools and even humans go through cycles. The human normally sleeps at night and is awake during the day. This cycle is critical to our survival as we need the proper amount of down time to support our up time. Businesses go through cycles. Retailers are super busy during the holiday season and other times they are less busy. This is a retailers yearly cycle. Bigger than that are economic cycles. During times of robust business activity business struggle to keep up with demand so in turn they invest For example in times of robust growth a concrete company who can’t meet the demand of its customers might build another concrete plant.

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FOMC Word Play Kicks Off a Correction That Was Coming Anyway in Gold, May Soon Come in Stocks

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What They Said

“In determining whether it will be appropriate to raise the target range at its next meeting, the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial and international developments.”

What They Did

What did the Fed do yesterday? Why, they rolled over once again and held ZIRP. They also got mighty specific with some wording that freaked out precious metals players and put in a reversal, not only in the metals, but importantly, in their ratio. See yesterday’s post on the Silver-Gold ratio’s status… What Thing Looks Like the Other. A reversal in silver vs. gold would put the sector on a correction and also issue a warning to other global markets.

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Post-FOMC Minutes Clown Show

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By Biiwii

Almost as entertaining as the market’s reaction to the event itself is Thursday’s reaction to what a bunch of clowns pretending to be in control of the economy had to say about the economy and by extension their policy supposedly governing same.

Market participants, black boxes and substance abusers alike might want to keep a couple of things in mind; 1) inflammatory news events are fleeting in their effects (and look at how quickly the gold sector, one standing to gain from a weak economic backdrop and its implications for policy, head faked up and reversed down) and 2) after the FOMC Minutes release in September the market cheered and zoomed higher after the Fed punted. It then immediately reversed into a downside leg that became the bottom re-test.

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