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.

Reality is One Thing, Markets Another

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Excerpted from the November 2nd edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole (NFTRH 887):

As noted last week, I am hearing all too much talk about a market crash to feel comfortable in a bearish view beyond the very short-term. Yes, the national debt (along with debts around the globe) is increasing with no end in sight. YouTube’s algo keeps feeding my TV video interviews of deep market thinkers talking about the coming crash. CNN even talked crash with 1929 author Andrew Sorkin. Ooh, scary!

It was October, after all, the most overrated, supposedly bearish month of the year. Well, nothing is foolproof, least of all market seasonals, but we are now in November, the traditional beginning of the supposedly bullish period that ends with “go away in May.”

The October crash talk is a “tell” that a crash is probably not imminent. Here is another. While I take issue with minor elements of CNN’s interpretation of the Fear/Greed index, you just don’t tend to get market crashes from all-time highs with sentiment readings like this. Market crashes tend to occur after enough bearish activity has already happened to drive mass sentiment to fearful.

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Rates Updates

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Following Powell’s surrender on Friday, a glance through the charts seems to strongly support the prospect that rates across the board are going to drop substantially. I do not pretend to be an interest rate expert, but it seems to me shorter-term rates will be more prone to weakening than, let’s say, the thirty year. Almost all the charts below have a similar setup: a sharp rise in rates, a rounded top, and what appears to be the beginning of a drop. Here we have the 10-year rates:

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