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 Masque of the Red Death
The title of this post is a reference to a story by Edgar Allen Poe, which I would strongly recommend and, not wishing to give much away in the way of spoilers, is about a very exclusive party given by a Prince Prospero that ended extremely badly for all participants. It seems an appropriate title today,
As I suspected Trump did go ahead with the April 2nd ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs and seems determined to persist with these for several months at least. In practice this is the largest peacetime tax hike on US citizens in history and it seems unlikely that this experiment will go well. Before I look at the markets today I’d like to put these tariffs into some factual and historical context.
(more…)The Big Liberation Day Surprise
A Liberation Day Gameplan
That Smoot-Hawley Feeling
I see that it occurred to the White House that having their giant tariff-focused Make America Rich Again (ha!) celebration of specialness at 3 p.m. wasn’t a brilliant idea, since that’s during market hours, so they quietly moved it to precisely the market close. Should be interesting.
It’s a relief to see a lot of red this morning. What has happened over the long haul is that the gargantuan (and final, God willing) megatop pushed prices much lower, only to result in the annoying counter-trend rally, whose peak I predicted to be 5800. That’s almost exactly where it landed (arrow) before resuming the fall.
