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.

Ship Sliding Away

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Well, we’ve gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. At the midst of the China/US negotiation insanity, the latest gambit by the U.S. is to increase tariffs (literally hours away at this point) but NOT on goods already in transit. Evidently, this gives them a few more weeks of breathing room as the cargo vessels groan their way over the Pacific.

I daresay the next ploy will be to demand the ships cut their speed to 5 knots so that even more time is allowed. It’s all become a comic farce at this point. We’ve only had three days of trading so far this week, but it feels like a month or two.

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A Joe Biden Stock Market

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Former Vice-President Joe Biden may run for President in the 2020 election. He stated recently that his platform would be the Obama/Biden policies of yesteryear.

Were he to be elected, and if the old Obama policies were resurrected, we could very well see the S&P 500 Index return to pre-Trump levels around the 2200 level, or lower, as shown on the monthly chart below.

In the two years since President Trump took office, the SPX has gained around the same number of points as it did in the last four years of Obama’s presidency. Those gains are in jeopardy, as uncertainty will weigh on markets in anticipation of a possible return to a more socialist agenda under Biden, or an even more far-left leaning Democrat.

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Decision 2024

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Now that the long-awaited Mueller investigation is done, the predictable camps have formed: one calling for impeachment, and another wanting to just put the entire matter to rest forever. In a few weeks, the latter camp will succeed.

But I think it is more worthwhile to look ahead – – far ahead – – to anticipate what might be next. A combination of history, politics, and financial markets blend together into some intriguing possibilities, and I would like to offer my own theory as to what the next six years may hold.

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