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.

Ignored the ULTIMATE Sell Signal

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On July 27, 2023, I was absolutely miserable. I had plenty of troubles going on in life, and the market had soared to yet another high. My portfolio was a wreck. Bulls were dancing in the streets. People were cancelling their subscriptions, which I bust my ass to acquire. I felt like shit. And then, just to add salt to the wound, THIS email tumbled into my inbox:

In case you can’t read this, it’s an email I get whenever someone cancels. I ask every person who cancels why they cancelled. In 100% of the prior cases, it was some version of “It’s not you, it’s me”, but in this case, here’s what the guy wrote……………and this is verbatim:

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CPI Could End the Bull Run (by LZ)

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The CPI report on Thursday might be a snoozer hitting expectations of 0.2 percent. If it comes in higher, bears might gain an edge on the market by looking at the Cleveland Fed’s model and crude oil moving forward. 

Nowcasting

I’ve been following the Cleveland Fed’s Inflation Nowcasting model for the past year. It hasn’t been terribly accurate, consistently coming in on the high side as disinflation kicked in. The past two years of data shows they lag the trend as shown by this chart from MacroMicro. The Cleveland Fed’s model is consistently low when inflation is rising and consistently high when inflation is falling.

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Slowly, Then All At Once

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No one has ever asked, but some may be wondering what my interest in /wsb is all about. I simply see it as a unique subculture on the web where young wanna-be traders (who are much closer to degenerate gamblers) convene and throw nonsense around. Sometimes it’s amusing. Occasionally it’s tragic.

This go-around, it’s a bit closer to the latter. I stumbled upon a chap who apparently had his luck YOLOing his way into hundreds of thousands of dollars in gains. Given the insane run-up in crappy stocks from January through July, it’s no surprise. He knew what he was doing was reckless, but he got a huge charge out of it, and he made a lot more money than he lost.

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