My last few posts have been a coronavirus COVID-19 series, so I’m putting in the links here so as to refer back to them easily for now. These are the twelve posts so far. I’m planning to finish this series with a post on the likely economic impact of COVID-19 over the coming year, and a look at the interesting search for scapegoats that is now getting started, with the obvious targets being the very strange behavior of both China and the WHO as this crisis was developing. That should conclude this series in the next week or two, though economies and markets will likely take quite a while longer to get back to anything that we might recognize as normal.
(more…)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.
Long-Term Oil View
The drop in crude oil the past couple of months has been absolutely unprecedented and is already in the process of reshaping the financial landscape for years to come.
The Better Half
Allow me to share a couple of charts that have almost nothing to do with one another, but strike me as similar in a strange way. The first one is the volatility index, the VIX. I have split this into two zones. One is in green, below roughly the 35 level, which is where virtually all the activity has been for many, many years.
Historic or Histrionic?
The always-happy-to-support-the-narrative media wasted no time this weekend lauding the “historic” OPEC deal, which was sure to boost energy prices, send oil company stock soaring, and save the worldwide economy from depression:
Could It Be Possible?
If I were to look at the chart below with no idea what it represented, I would call it a very strong buy. It has a long, well-formed base. It has surging volume in all the right places. It had an enormous breakout and a successful retracement without violating its breakout. Basically, it has everything you’d want to see when you bought a financial instrument.
