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.

Gold: a Stellar Picture

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Gold’s ‘real’ price indicates a fine ‘risk vs. reward’

[edit] Since this article will be distributed to a wider viewership than nftrh.com, where regular readers know I take pains not to hype this most precious ‘value’ asset, take note that a positive risk vs. reward does not mean run out and go whole hog gold stock bull right this minute. Risk vs. reward is a condition, but not a timer. The miners, as of now, are on a seasonal bounce/rally. But with patience, the sector is setting up to distinguish itself as unique and quite bullish in 2022.

As today’s (Thursday’s) market activity shows, the bubble is still in force as US stock markets/sectors generally remain intact (for the most part, with some notable exceptions outside of the headliners, as certain table legs get kicked out). But gold is in a beautiful Cup & Handle structure, as I’ve shown repeatedly (ref. 2022: The Golden Year) since NFTRH began projecting the handle-making in the summer of 2020.

What’s more, gold’s ‘real’, commodity adjusted price has been declining since the overdone 2020 upside as well. Risk is with commodities (and stocks) and reward – with patience – is with gold and when they leverage a future macro, gold stocks.

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The Fed’s Inflated Cake

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A stroll through recent and not so recent inflationary history

A Cynical Fed is a Dangerous Fed

On ‘Fed minutes Wednesday’ the media amplified the noise, the machines are doing what the machines do and running with it, and it’s all eyes on the great and powerful Fed (of Oz).

The Fed created the cyclical inflation (in NFTRH we detailed and managed the process successfully in real time) and thus the Fed created the cycle. In 2021 the Fed was exposed to the public as the agent of inflation it actually is, and when the inflation threatened to get out of hand they went into damage control mode. Now the Fed is trying to cool the inflation, which means cooling the cycle itself. You can’t have your inflated cake and eat it too. Not when the racket is exposed to the public.

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2022: The Golden Year

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The NFTRH big picture view for gold has been bullish since calling a top in mid-2020

Pardon the promotional sound of the title. I realize it, and I’m putting it up there anyway. There is a time for temperance and there is a time for promotion. Too many in the gold sphere forget about that first thing when risk is high, and in August, 2020 it was at nosebleed levels.

As you can see, the ‘real’ commodity adjusted price of gold was already in a long-term bull market from 2008 and it had actually turned up in 2019 before getting put all out of whack during 2020’s deflationary fear fest. The relief shown in this indicator has been in play for as long as the public has been aware of the inflation created by the Fed and the ‘inflation trades’ associated with it.

Good news for gold bugs? Risk is about a million times lower now than it was in the summer of 2020 as the ratio comes back on trend.

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Copper/Gold at Epic Decision Point

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Copper/Gold ratio teases cyclical inflation bulls and bears alike, but…

…it’s going to break one way or the other soon enough.

If you value gold’s standing in relation to industrial metals as a key market/financial/economic indicator as I do, then you view the ongoing consolidation in the copper price to the gold price as a key indicator (among several NFTRH tools) going forward.

I cannot make the macro do what I want it to do, but I sure can be super interested in an indicator that has made several false moves to the positive and negative sides in 2021 as we head into a year of changes to come (one way or another) in 2022. Cu/Au is making less and less volatile spikes and drops as it is currently pinched between the converging daily SMA 50 and 200.

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