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.

Counter-Cyclical Winds Blow, Gold Miners Front and Center

By -

Note from Tim: Scientific Option Trading Webinar TODAY at 2:00 PST! Sign up here if you haven’t.

As the stock market cracked on October 10th we noted…

Looks Who’s Holding Firm Amid the Carnage; the Gold Miners

And sure enough the GDX bottoming pattern noted in that post (and before that in an NFTRH subscriber update) played out perfectly amid the stock market carnage going on all around it.

Was I trying to predict something? Of course not. I was just following general rules we’ve had in place through all of NFTRH’s 10-plus year history and privately for myself since early in the bull market that began in 2001. Very simply, the counter-cyclical winds must blow and the Macrocosm must come front and center for a constructive fundamental view of the gold stock sector. That first crack in the stock market was a good start.

(more…)

Fed Doves Take Flight

By -

A ‘wild card’ segment has been added to NFTRH reports because I wanted the freedom to go out of bounds in any direction, beyond our usual areas of disciplined coverage. Last week it was a look at the Semiconductor sector.

This week it is Fed policy with a side trip down memory lane, trying once again to illustrate why today is not at all like the ZIRP era and why the post-2015 re-connect between the Fed Funds rate and the stock market does not bode well for stocks, assuming the Fed really is going soft.

Excerpted from tomorrow’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, which will also include loads of actionable analysis along with the more theoretical stuff below…

(more…)

Semiconductor Sector

By -

As in January of 2013 (ahead of an economic up cycle) and Q4 2017-Q1 2018 (ahead of an economic ripple that began in 2018) the Semiconductor sector and in particular its Semi Equipment sub-sector are front and center in forming our analysis about coming events. Excerpted from the January 20th edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 535…

Semiconductor Sector – Watch the Early Bird in 2019

This one is special for me. I started my work life many moons ago as a participant with the Semi sector [circa 1983-1993], painfully learning first hand how violent the cyclical turns can be. Dialing ahead a couple decades, in January of 2013 NFTRH began a narrative that saw the then up-turning Semi Equipment bookings (this data is unfortunately no longer published) lead the sector, general manufacturing and eventually the whole raft of components that make up the economy into a cyclical up-turn.

(more…)

SPX and Gold; Pivotal Points at Hand

By -

Leaving aside our usual inclusion of macro fundamentals and market ratios, today let’s take a simple technical look at the S&P 500 and gold.

As the US stock market was becoming deeply oversold (and over-hated, sentiment-wise) in December we planned for a holiday seasonal bounce, which finally arrived with the immediate reversal after the Christmas Eve massacre when the machines (and a few human casino patrons) drove it to its downside climax. The bounce was almost a certainty, given the sentiment backdrop of the moment.

(more…)