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 Wound That Won’t Heal
Have you heard of Microsoft, Meta, SAP, Target, Merck, or Walmart? Of course you have. Could you name the CEOs of any of those companies? Yeah, you could probably name at least two or three. And, for those you can actually name, can you articulate their political dispositions?
Probably not.
There’s a good reason for this. The first reason is: who cares? If I need to buy cough syrup, I’m not going to trouble myself with what the CEO of the maker of that cough syrup thinks about politics, family life, religion, or any other personal topics. I just want to stop coughing.
The second reason is: most CEOs are shrewd enough to know that there’s absolutely no value or benefit to them running around shrieking about their opinions on anything except their own company’s products and services. If the CEO of IBM thinks that there should be a special 5% universal tax to fund transgender surgery, they’re not going to go onto CNBC to chat about it, because they would be idiots to do so. It’s a longstanding tradition among business leaders to keep their traps shut and to stay in their lane.
(more…)Bracing for Friday Extravaganza
The past two weeks have been nothing more of amazing. Today was the first sort of “meh” day for me, because until then, I had been dancing with the market like Baryshnikov, yet on Thursday I felt flat-footed. We have certainly not seen the big bounce I was hoping would transpire, and frankly what I’m afraid of is that the bounce might just come on Friday, now that I’m more fully short.
Let’s forget what I’m hoping and feeling, though, and chop through some charts together. We start with the daily /ES, which has hammered out a magnificent, and very large, top. I’ve drawn a horizontal that I believe is a reasonable line of resistance, and a push up to that level (but not through it) would be just what the doctor ordered.
Love Story
With this being Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d tell a story I don’t think I’ve ever told here. In fact, for some modicum of discretion, I’m going to make it visible only to paying members (all levels). It’s a good enough story that you might even want to subscribe. So, let’s begin.
Severed
Do not be alarmed. A minority of you get Apple TV, and a subset of that group watches the television series Severance. This post doesn’t require knowledge or even interest in the show, but the show’s conceit is the basis for what I have to say.
The premise of the show is that a small number of people have consented to a medical procedure on their brain which allows a corporation to employ them during the day, and during that workday, they will have absolutely no knowledge of their lives, memories, or families outside the workplace. Even though there may be a single human being, there are two human experiences: the “innie” who is the worker and the “outie” who is the person outside the confines of the office.
