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.

Sentiment Shifting for Gold Bugs

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Warning… Condescension ensues… NFTRH 307’s opening segment, dated 9.7.14:

From a post on the HUI at the site last week:

“There are worse things that could happen than filling a gap and scattering the wrong kind of gold bugs back out. Then it would be up to the longer-term charts to do the heavy lifting if the daily does fulfill this downside potential.”

The gap was filled, the top end of the anticipated support zone was reached and indeed, the wrong [i.e. momentum players] kind of gold bugs are scattering back out. The hard sell down on Thursday was very likely due in large part to the selling by traders with a fetish about gold as a geopolitical or terror hedge. (more…)

NFTRH 307 Excerpt; Currencies

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NFTRH has been bullish the USD and bearish the Euro, Canada dollar and Aussie dollar for quite some time now, most often using this simple weekly chart of various currencies. Months ago we noted USD creeping out of its downtrend (green dotted line) and the Euro falling out of its wedge (red dotted line). Back then, sentiment toward the USD was far different than it is today. So this week the Currency segment included some thoughts (and data) on USD and Euro sentiment as well.

Also of note, while the excerpt speculates that a USD reversal could trigger bounces in commodities and precious metals, these items generally remain bearish until proven otherwise. Not the other way around. (more…)

Market Ratio Messages

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Using monthly charts I want to update more big picture views of where we stand in the financial markets. This is just a brief summary [edit; okay it’s not so brief. In fact it had to be ended abruptly or else it would have just kept on rambling] and not meant as in depth analysis with finite conclusions.

I was listening to Martin Armstrong talk about his ‘economic confidence’ model and realized that the way he views gold is similar to the way I do (and very dis-similar to the way inflationists and ‘death of the dollar’ promoters do). I don’t love the way he writes, and I usually avoid these weird interview sites, but checked it out (linked at 321Gold) anyway and found him enjoyable to listen to.

Anyway, this prompted another big picture look at gold vs. the S&P 500 and as with the shorter-term views, the picture is not pretty. (more…)

HUI Timing Boxes

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In the previous post it was mentioned that the 2013-2014 would-be bottoming grind in HUI has been almost exactly the duration of the 2010-2011 topping grind. Here is a visual to put with that statement.

hui

The current yellow box is an exact duplicate of the 2010/11 box, which came with an over bought MACD crossed down. The breakdown candle implies that September would be the month that a break UP candle comes into play if this relationship has any predictive power.

Taking it further, as also noted in the previous post, the Ukraine noise does not help the sector and indeed could hurt in the short-term, because it keeps the wrong gold bugs on the tout. So NFTRH keeps open some minor downside targets.

Taking it further still, those downside targets would end up being buying opportunities if gold’s macro fundamentals start to improve, which despite the emails I get to the contrary, really has not happened yet beyond a few ongoing positives. But it had not happened yet in 2000 either.

Gold Miners and Inflation

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A constant struggle in writing about the precious metals is in trying to be clear about the differences between the gold stock sector and other sectors when it comes to inflation. That is because there are two types of bullish environments for gold stocks…

  1. The ‘play’, where all the inflatables rise with inflation expectations; this would be the ‘gold is silver is copper is oil is hogs is corn’ trade. This is the play where the inflation and commodity gurus tell you to buy resources to protect yourself from the US dollar crash that is going to happen any day now. A problem is that in this environment many resources often out perform gold, thus hurting miners’ fundamentals.
  2. The other is a longer trade or dare I say it, investment. This is where commodity prices are declining and the USD is firm. Gold is stronger than silver and the inflation oriented gold bugs get bearish because they can’t understand how gold will not go down with oil and indeed, inflation expectations.

(more…)