This is the heart and soul of the web site. Here we have literally tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. You can also click on any category icon to see posts tagged with that particular category.
There was a time I thought pretty much all my readers were from the United States. Out of fear of offshore hacking, I blocked a ton of countries and quickly found out how many loyal readers I have in places I could never have imagined. It seems just about every landmass with civilization has Slopers on it. Indeed, looking at my Twitter followers (which is a pretty good proxy for the site in general), you can see how they are spread far and wide.
On this week when we mourned the former President, a bit of mirth from over quarter of a century ago which I understand the actual President all took with good humor.
Chinese Communist dynasty emperor Xi knows they’ve blown the biggest bubble in the history of humankind. All measures being taken by Communists are to ensure the survival of the party when this bubble eventually pops. Dynastic succession in China usually involves the losers’ entrails being paraded around Tiananmen square (or other significant public gathering place), so this is about survival. Politics, economics and ideology are secondary.
The Communist dynasty knows that the bubble will pop and they will lose the mandate of heaven (economic prosperity). The only way they can stay in power is if the blame can be diverted. Trump is heaven’s gift to the Communist dynasty. EVERYTHING can be blamed on Trump. The Communist dynasty will play the nationalism card – having been attacked by Trump. The Chinese will rally around this. Trade was forced on China (Most Favored Nation was a punitive trade measure against China by the western powers) and now Trump is going back against trade treaties designed to humiliate China since the Boxer Rebellion. (more…)
If you’ve been following my analysis of the S&P 500 through the years, you know that we have called the stock market rather well. In fact, we called for the rally to 2100 in 2015, and then expected a pullback from 2100 to the 1800 region as we came into 2016. However, unlike most others at the time, we expected that pullback would set us up for a 40%+ rally in the overall index before we saw a 20-30% correction. In fact, we were calling for a “global melt-up” at the time. (Yes, you’ve mentioned this at every possible opportunity – – Ed.)
And, for those that remember back to November of 2016, when everyone and their mother was certain the market was going to crash if Trump won the election, we staunchly stuck to our guns and noted that we expected the market to rally strongly “no matter who was elected to office.” And that is exactly what we got, despite the common expectation of a market crash if Trump was elected.
The news cycle has thrown one bomb at the market after another during the last three years. But the market has not cared about any of these “issues,” as it has continued to rally unwaveringly towards our long-term targets. So, let’s be honest: no one who has been investing or trading based upon geopolitics has been on the correct side of this market for years. Yet, the analysts focusing on geopolitics have certainly provided some entertaining reading about all the risks that have kept many investors on the sidelines during this major market rally.
You are probably acquainted with the old saw, “you always fight your last battle”. In the case of politics, the last “battle” saw every poll prediction turned on its head, and a night of nothing but jaw-dropping shocks. Thus, people assumed 2018 would be like 2016, and they laughed at the polls.
Well, as the results clearly show, the polls were 100% right. In fact, you might as well have predicted the outcome in JULY, since it’s exactly, precisely, and spot-on what the pollsters and oddsmakers predicted: a Democratic House, a Republican Senate, and nothing particularly earth-shaking on the national scene.
