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.
One of my favorite indicators for identifying potential corrections in the stock market has just triggered the 4th extreme reading of below 0.60 on the Put-to-Call Ratio in what I refer to as a cluster of readings (a series of sub 0.60 readings that occur in relative close proximity without a substantial correction while the stock market is moving higher with each successive reading).
90% (my low-balled estimate) of you, the investing public, are herding when it comes to the bond market. You may not know it because the overwhelming psychological atmosphere is to reaffirm, not question peoples’ behavior. That is what herding is; a comforting feeling of going with the flow and being at one with your environment and the greater zeitgeist.
Now, please don’t be offended by the title; you dear reader may well be one of the 10%. But out there in the financial investment realm, they are herding, BIG time, as bond yields are expected to continue rising, because… media; because… “Great Rotation, part 2” and because… the story of epic secular changes and the chance to be early and clued in to a great new market phase are so alluring.
Over the past six years or so, the VIX has been carving out an enormous saucer-shaped pattern. I’ve been dutifully tinting the price peaks (that is, the mini-panics) all along the way, and it forms a pretty interesting, if highly irregular, pattern.
As the VIX got pounded back into the sub-teens today, it occurred to me to compare the present activity to the period preceding the financial crisis. What I found was interesting. The chart below (click it for a much bigger version) shows 2003-2007 on the top and recent history on the bottom. You may notice a lot of similarities between the top and bottom, and I’ve drawn a red line at the top showing the equivalent of “right now”.
Then we had further “stories” of Deutsche Bank crashing and taking the world financial markets down with it. And, once again, all the “safe haven” gold addicts were harping about how gold was going to soar on this news. While more and more bad news was coming out about Deutsche Bank this past week, more and more were calling for not only the collapse of the company, but also a crash to the markets and a moon shot for gold.
