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.

April ISM and the Forward View

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ISM hints at forward deceleration

Uncle Buck

As a former manufacturing guy I am well aware of how monetary policy and the state of the US dollar affects US manufacturers. But I have not been that guy for so long now that I tend not to look at it as closely anymore. But the current time seems appropriate for a review of the manufacturing sector.

I actually used to look down upon the ‘services’ economy as something almost artificial, given that the US had been exporting its manufacturing base (and thus, much of its productivity) for decades and replacing normal economic cycles with monetary chicanery (like the Fed’s ability to regulate the economy through interest rate manipulation) in order to keep the consumerist racket going.

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2022: Still “the Golden Year”

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Gold is following a logical path in 2022

Reference this article posted on 12.30.21:

2022: The Golden Year

Gold has done nothing unusual and in fact it has done as would normally be expected. In February it began to rally out of the base on the daily (futures) chart below. Driven by war (easy on the war, terror and pestilence bull rationales dear gold bugs) and inflation hype, kneejerkers and momos (momentum players) quickly jumped on pushing gold to an overbought high on March 8. The resulting correction is normal and it is healthy. Momos are not allowed to participate in a real gold bull (at least not until later when the bull is obviously blowing off).

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The Continuum: Through the Limiters!

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Inflation pushes the 30-year Treasury bond yield through long-term moving average trends!

Okay, let’s take a breath. I don’t like to use ‘!’ in titles or even in articles. In fact, when I see too many of them I immediately think that someone really REALLY wants me to see their point. That said, the signal shown below is pretty important.

It’s in-month with a monstrously over-bearish bond sentiment backdrop similar to when we installed a red arrow on the chart below at the height of the Q1 2011 frenzy (cue the Bond King: “short the long bond!”). Chart jockeys are probably delivering the bad news of the chart’s inverted H&S, a potential for which NFTRH began managing a year ago when the 30yr yield hit our initial target of 2.5% and then recoiled as expected after the public became very concerned about inflation.

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Yield Curve Inverts; Gold Awaits

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Yield Curve inverts deeper than August, 2019

Like the larger media this tiny little spec within the media reports the news to you. The 10yr-2yr yield curve has inverted (ref. Yield Curve inversion upcoming). Now, what does it mean?

Well the first thing it usually means is not to panic (especially now that High Yield credit spreads are easing), but do tune out the media hype about it because it is not the inversion that tends to signal an economic bust but instead, the steepening that follows it. Among the important questions are how long will it remain inverted and how deep will the inversion go before the next steepener?

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The Yield Curve Flattener

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As the Yield Curve flattens, this inflation is different from the 2020 inflation

In 2020 an inflationary yield curve steepener was in the bag as the Fed dropped and pinned the Funds Rate and sucked up every bond it could get its hands on (in order to monetize/print). The bond market made the logical signals about the resulting inflation as the short end was pinned by a combination of Fed policy and the frightened, risk ‘off’ herds clustered in T-Bills and short-term Treasuries, relative to the long end.

Gold and then stocks picked up on it first, followed by commodities, which were tardy but are now the star performer late in the inflation cycle. Hmm…

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