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.

Read and Listen to the Media, be a Day Late, Lot of Dollars Short

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Seriously, the longer I do this more intolerant I become with the whole financial media/services/advice complex.  Stoopid MSM headlines this morning…

Dollar holds gains as investors set their watches for jobs data (ooh, the tension mounts)

Markets counting down to big Jobs Friday (T-minus… to BIG Jobs)

Gold loses shine as Fed feelings lift dollar (blah blah blah…)

European stocks hemmed in with ECB minutes on deck (of course, there has to be a reason they’d be little changed; this one’s as good as any)

This is why the Stock Market’s complacency is about to end (tell me genius, do tell… )

Dow, S&P 500, bonds trade like a Fed rate hike isn’t cause to stress out (because it isn’t, Captain Obvious)

And that is just the MSM; factor in the opinion and propaganda from the blogosphere and the gold bug cult “community” and it’s no wonder people get confused.  I get email from very decent and intelligent people asking what I think is going on, what is going to happen.  It is obvious that the disparity of opinions (much of it stated confidently as virtual fact) flying around out there has people flummoxed (hey, that’s a word I’ve never written before, ever in my life).

But there is no ‘IS’.  There are only probabilities.  A good bit of the crap in the MSM and from the lesser lights in the blogging ecosystem speaks in definite terms because it is either trying to get eyeballs or it is pitching its dogma to its own gain.  On any given day it seems like a majority of the financial complex is hanging an ad in its window saying “come consume what I have to offer!  I’m right and here’s why…” and then the story changes for the MSM as it simply hangs new ads in its window the next day; and as for the lesser touts?

Why, they simply start reporting the news, as in… Thought bubble:  ‘Shit, I was wrong big time to be touting that trend even after it ended, but I need to figure out a spin…’ Stated publicly:  “Gold and Silver are in a correction and support looks to be in the…”

So tomorrow is “big Jobs” Friday.  Whoop de doo!  The Semiconductor Equipment sector gave its signal so many months ago.  Some people fought me on this, either knowingly (you know who you are) or from an expert’s perch, unknowingly.  Also, Brexit did not end the world, Europe is talking about tapering QE and things have held up just fine.

Now it’s “big Jobs” week.  The ultimate lagging data point will be reported tomorrow and if it goes over 200K (experts are forecasting 169k) there will be a cacophonous uproar.  But we will not be surprised because we had early, forward looking data months ago (which has already manifested in a big jobs recovery over the last few months).

I guess all I am saying is will you please tune down the cacophony?  It is unhealthy.

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Neo Rio

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My pre-dawn dog walks are the closest thing I get to meditation, and as I walked this morning, something occurred to me: for the months leading up to the Olympics, ZeroHedge posted dozens upon dozens of articles about how catastrophic it was going to be. Everyone was going to get the Zika virus. Everyone was going to be held at gunpoint. There would be Islamic terrorists. The water was going to get everyone deathly sick. And on and on and on.

0816-zhol

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A Treasure Trove of Nuggets From the MSM

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It is summer slack season, with no FOMC meeting in August and so into the void go our friends in the mainstream media, with all sorts of noise to distract investors. Here’s one that was anticipated…

Fed should raise interest rates this year, Williams says

From NFTRH 406 (July 31), after the July FOMC meeting in which they fretted about inflation not being high enough (ha ha ha):

“Yes yes, I know the Fed does not see enough inflation yet. And that is just the point. They told us last week that there is not enough inflation and damned if they are not going to keep trying to promote it. It is also worth considering that while they will probably send various expectations managers to their assigned microphones, there is no meeting in August and there is a lot of room for asset price appreciation between now and September 21, per their wishes I assume (by their policy inactions and their inflationary words).

What they didn’t tell us is that they are not stupid (misguided in my opinion, but not stupid) and they know that something built on inflation (metaphor: a substance with opiate-like qualities) must have ongoing inflation (opiates) in order to keep the markets (metaphor: patient) stable. Withdrawal of these substances would mean a come-down and financial detox that would seem like hell on earth to those who think any of this is normal or organic in anyway (like a Keynesian intellectual, for instance).

The game of Whack-a-Mole is ongoing and institutionalized. It is an exciting time to be an investor a casino patron. But we need to be aware of things like the music stopping, how many chairs there are when the music stops and our own egos, bias and limitations.”

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