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.
I’d like to start off by making clear just how rich my neighbor Mark Zuckerberg is. Let’s say his wealth was frozen at its current level right now. And let’s further say the man’s fetish is to have $1,000,000 in cash piled up in front of him, doused in gasoline, and set ablaze. And, just when its almost entirely burned to a crisp, his puts out the fire by peeing on it (Hey, everyone’s got their kink). So let’s just say that’s what he’s really into.
He could do this little ritual, day in and day out, 365 days a year.……….until the year 2300. Try to picture that (well, not too vividly). A million dollars in free cash is an amount only a tiny, tiny portion of the world’s people ever possesses. And yet this man is able to do his piss-fire ritual without interruption every day for almost a quarter of a millennium. That, on multiple levels, should disgust you.
(more…)Years ago, when I was a kid, a friend’s father told me that his wife got dragged in front of human resources to defend and explain herself. The reason? She told a non-white colleague that she didn’t have a strong work ethic. The recipient of this information, apparently being none too bright, apparently couldn’t distinguish between the meanings of “ethic” and “ethnic” and, thus, complained loudly to HR about discrimination. (This was, incidentally, in an academic setting).
Not only has nothing changed, but it’s radically worse. Allow me to introduce to you one Professor Greg Patton, an esteemed professor at the University of Southern California’s business school:
I believe we are at the start of a new bull market in oil. In the famous words of Dave Chappelle, “Oil? Oil? Who said anything about oil?” Isn’t the world swimming in oil right now? Isn’t every possible tanker and storage facility filled to the brim? Why on earth do I believe that oil is starting a new bull market? I’m glad you asked. Let’s take a look.
Since this is the one and only Slope of Hope, let’s begin by taking a look at some charts. After that we’ll examine the geopolitical and monetary fundamentals that I believe will also play a role.
Earlier this month Jesse Felder penned the article, “A Generational Opportunity in Commodities?” He discussed the idea that rising U.S. fiscal deficits is bearish for the U.S. dollar, with one of the consequences being a return to a commodities bull market. The chart that caught my attention the most in his article is the chart shown below. This chart compares the Commodity Stock Index vs. the Dow. As you can see, the last commodity bull market ended in 2008, and commodities have been in a bear market ever since. This data goes back to 1937, and commodities are now the most undervalued relative to the Dow in that time span.
(more…)Slope is, understandably, widely perceived as a permabear site. This isn’t entirely justified. If you glance just to the right on your screen, at the category cloud, you can see the Long category is just about as big as Short.
This site has had a long, very positive disposition toward Tesla (both its cars and its stock). It all began early in 2013, when hardly anyone outside of Silicon Valley knew of the place. My first meaningful post was called A Quick Review of the Tesla S, which turned out to be quite a misnomer. It was a glowing, gushing review (and the car, with 140,000 miles on it, still looks and drives great), and I closed with this:
(more…)I think Tesla as a public company (symbol TSLA) has a great future ahead – I hope they do, at least – provided that the world embraces electric vehicles and the de facto more modest infrastructure for this kind of car. I’ll also mention that the new Slope of Hope (coming soon!) looks gorgeous, particularly in a vehicle being zipped around the Bay Area at high speeds. Elon has another winner on his hands.
