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.

Fed Spread Extreme

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Thursday afternoon means one thing, and that’s the Fed Spread. I am probably going to resume putting these posts behind the pay wall next week, since this chart is about to get extremely interesting.

You’ll recall that, until a week ago, the Debt Ceiling was all anyone could think about. Now that it’s resolved (and the debt ceiling feels like it was about a decade ago), no one is thinking about it anymore, but I think there’s going to be a major impact on equities in the months ahead.

Walking through the three sub-components, we have the reverse repo doing nothing it hasn’t done for the past year. That is to say, it’s still floating above $2 trillion a night.

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The Source of the Red

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Last night, I was doing what I always do when I’m out of projects, which is that I roamed Slope, polishing things up here, tidying up things over there, and basically making this 19-year old creation a little nicer for you each day. Something occurred to me in doing so: there is SO MUCH here, and, frankly, it is SO good. To me, it’s bewildering that Slope isn’t a hundred times more popular than it is. I mean, honestly, this isn’t just a proud papa talking: this is SUCH a great site. I bet you aren’t even aware of 70% of the stuff in here, because it’s so easy just to hang out and chew the fat with other traders, but honest to God, the fact Slope isn’t the home page for every trader is a travesty.

The point is driven home for me when I visit other sites that I considered, at one time or another, rivals. I won’t name names (or give URLs), but I visited a couple last night, and they are utter crap. Not only has the feature set not changed for years, but there are SLATHERED with advertisements, which is totally annoying and intrusive. As some of you know, I have fought back the temptation to have ads, since I don’t want my beloved Slope sullied with crass, annoying garbage. Would you really like to have to constantly be closing pop-up ads? Yeah, I didn’t think so. So maybe throw in a few bucks.

Meh, don’t worry, TIm. If an honest-to-God bear market starts, your problem isn’t going to be why the place isn’t more popular. Your place is going to be having the servers keep up with the traffic.

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