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.

Everybody’s Talkin’

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As the Slope of Hope approaches its 13th birthday, it’s important to note that one of the most important aspects of the site – – indeed, probably THE most important aspect – – has been the comments section. Whereas the comments is an afterthought on most sites, or perhaps garners a handful of remarks for every post, Slope has gathered up literally MILLIONS of comments during the course of its lifetime (only about 10% of which are BDI telling us to blow him).

One of the oddities of Slope, which has almost become a meme, is how folks will have discussions and comments that have absolutely nothing to do with whatever post I’ve created. I was reminded of this when I did the prior post, which is a reflective, mildly-humorous post that should garner a lot of feedback, memories, and banter. Instead, people just kept talking about whatever they were talking about. That’s fine by me, but it leads me to a question that’s been on my mind……….. (more…)

A Moment of Thanks

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During Slope’s nearly thirteen year history, dozens of people have contributed posts to the site. Although I’ve written most of the 20,000+ posts here, the contributions from others besides me has brought tremendous benefit, including:

  • Providing diverse thought and opinion – so that not every post is about shorting every financial instrument that has a ticker symbol;
  • Allowing me to focus on other activities, such as SlopeCharts development
  • Occasionally allowing me to have some semblance of a life outside Slope

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Free PLUS For a Month

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If you have wanted to try Slope PLUS out but were waiting for a coupon, it’s your lucky day (and I’ve just put up what I think is an interesting post about market targets today). I do not issue coupons frequently. In fact, if you look at how often I’ve issued coupons for PLUS, you can see the trend is pretty clear:

2013 – 8 times
2014 – 6 times
2015 – 3 times
2016 – 2 times
2017 – 1 times

In case you are not familiar with the benefits of a PLUS membership (besides just being a good sport and supporting my hard work for the past dozen years), they are listed here. PLUS subscribers also get a variety of exclusive privileges with SlopeCharts, and that list is going to be getting much longer now that I’ve got a full-time person working on it.  (more…)

Pee Wee

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A good friend of mine (a Sloper from Mexico, and a very cool fellow overall) sent me the chart below, which illustrates the biggest drop in the S&P 500 for any given year, going way back to when Teddy Roosevelt was in office. In case anyone didn’t mention it to you already, 2017 is the most godawful year so far (for bears) in that entire century, since its drawdown is the puniest ever.

0928-drawdown