Inspiration can come from odd places. The most recent one came from a RiffTrax video, poking fun at a 1976 movie made for school kids about good manners and courtesy.
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.
Eerily Quiet
First the data. Then, the feelings.
All the inflation data is out (CPI yesterday, PPI today), and it is ice cold. The actual data (left column) is way, way below the anticipated (right). In normal times – – and these are NOT – – the bulls would be celebrating this with +200 on the /ES. Instead, it’s slowly sinking in that deflation is creeping into our lives, and that’s not something to celebrate.
Gold Mining Macrocosm Fully Engaged
As Inflation Bugs sell indiscriminately, the gold mining Macrocosm (of proper macro-fundamentals) is engaged
A man sits in the White house. A different kind of man. A man who does not like diplomacy or going along and getting along with his global counterparts. He likes throwing Spanners and Monkey Wrenches all around the macro. There may one day be revealed a positive outcome to this, through negotiations. But on the face of it, nobody wins a tariff war. Least of all the biggest consumerist nation on the planet.
Clicking the graphic will yield the reason that the veteran trader pictured with a pensive, almost resigned look on his face with a sea of red behind him, looks the way he does (they always seem to find just the right guy with just the right expression for the moment). The reason du jour this morning is China retaliation.
(more…)Brave New World
I’ve been mulling over how to do this post for a while because I don’t want to offend readers who might be very sensitive to any criticism, direct or implied, of the Trump administration, and I tend to stay away from any political discussions. However, any objective review of the likely effect of some of that administration’s policies requires an honest discussion of those policies and their likely impact.
Given that I now believe that the odds of seeing a serious bear market this year are high and that a full market crash is increasingly on the cards. I need to do that objective review, and my apologies if anyone is offended. I am just describing the geopolitical and economic realities here as I see them and am not planning to make political commentary a regular feature in my analysis going forward.
(more…)Fifty Thousand Posts Ago
It all started today, precisely twenty years ago. Good God. If I only had known.
