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.

Colliding Waves (by Silver Singularity)

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A Note from the Publisher: Over the weekend, long-time Sloper Silver Singularity composed an epic post. Indeed, it is so epic that I sought and received his permission to make it visible ONLY to paying members. It’s a long one, so I’m going to leave it up for a while to give folks a chance to read it.

I’d like to offer a couple of deep discounts to encourage people to subscribe (and get immediate access to this post). Click here to get BRONZE for 99 cents for the first month (you can swing that!) and a permanent discount thereafter, or click here to get GOLD for the same can-you-believe-how-cheap 99 cents for the first month as well as a permanent discount. And, hey, this article by itself has got to be worth 99 cents, so even if you don’t intend to use a membership, you can always cancel before a month passes and still try out all the membership benefits! C’mon!

Hey Slopers, happy new year and I’m back with some crispy food for you!

This is certainly the most interesting time since I’ve been in the markets, I think we are at a very critical time and let me explain why:

Here we are back at all time highs for the three big indexes after a rapid digestion of the pullback we had this summer, pullback that was once again driven by long term rates.

And today you know the narrative: “soft landing, rates are going down because the inflation fight is over and the FED is going to be our friend again so we’re so back baby!”

Btw the bond market has become such a holy temple of volatility nowadays that it has become a little scary. Crazy how the market has been getting used to it at first glance.

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Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Bitcoin

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I’ve mentioned in recent months that, after years of struggling to figure out what on earth crypto was good for, I finally hit upon the truth: it’s a gambling token. Pure and simple, it’s a new way for people to get their gambling ya-ya’s out of their system, and by all measures it has been tremendously successful, since the combination of the Internet and the blockchain has created the world’s most vibrant casino.

Indeed, the animal spirits take all kinds of forms. Most recently, the notion that ETFs would push Bitcoin to a million dollars (by 2030, according to Cathie D. Wood, and in “weeks or days“, according to Samson Mow) cranked the price of BTC much higher as the big day approached.

Of course, in one of the great “sell the news” events of financial history, BTC has become blown to pieces, starting with the moment those ETFs were rolled out. The level of surprise about this should be precisely zero.

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TimGPT

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At the outset, I should make plain my persistent skepticism about the utility of AI. Never in human history has there been so much aggressive chatter about artificial intelligence and its implications, and things started going berserk late in 2022 with ChatGPT and haven’t calmed down since then.

Countless times have I experimented with various AI tools, and with the exception of graphics generation (which is amazing), I walk away unimpressed.

Earlier today, I decided to give AI another shot, since I saw something called Automated Blog Post Writer being featured as something superb. I thus gave it the URL to my own website’s blog section, and I was very impressed by how accurate its summation of my site was.

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Best Posts of 2023 (Part 9 of 9)

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Here are some of the very best posts written on Slope in the year 2023. To read a preface about what this list means to me, please read part 1, located here.