I woke up to this:
Appropriate combination, yes?
Anyway, here's what Tony sent me (which I appreciate). An ungodly high bull/bear sentiment:
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.
Are There Any Slopes Besides Slope?
I have a serious question for you folks out there: are there any other sites like Slope?
I'm not talking about bearish blogs. I'm not talking about tin-foil hat enclaves, either. I'm not even talking about blogs run by an affable host with a full head of silky hair.
What I am talking about are blogs which are:
+ Well-trafficked;
+ Have an active, intelligent comments section;
+ Relate to the world of trading/finance in some way
I'm curious, because I can't seem to find any. Sure, there are tons of trading blogs out there – – including some highly trafficked ones – – but even those with comments seem to garner just a small handful (if any) for each post.
There are also some sites which have hundreds of comments per post………but they don't bother putting up a post except for once a week!
It's just hard for me to believe that in this world of six billion people, there's only one thriving community of traders on the entire Internet. Clue me in, please.
More Improvements
Happy Sunday, everyone. A couple of improvements on Slope worth mentioning…….
First, you'll notice a Performance link in the upper right corner; this lets you see the performance information from people posting various trading ideas (if you don't see this link, be sure to clear your browser's cache).
Scroll down and you can see the Top Performing Slopers and those with the Most Ideas
In addition, some folks (well, at least one…….) don't care for the badges that appear next to avatars (showing "ranks" and areas of trading interest). You can now suppress these by choosing the new checkbox shown in Account Settings.
Words of Wisdom from Saint George
For newer Slopers, you should know that George Carlin is the patron saint of this blog. I was reading an interview with him last night – the last one he ever gave, I believed – and his words resonated with me (as they often do)……..
I’ve addressed this before when the question is asked more bluntly: Are you an angry man? What are you angry about; what are you so angry about? I don’t live an angry life, not an angry person. I rarely lose my temper, can’t remember the last time, never had a physical fight in my life, don’t carry grudges, don’t carry resentment either. Very very lucky in those respects. But I feel a very strong alienation and dissatisfaction from my groups.
Abraham Maslow said the fully realized man does not identify with the local group. When I saw that, it rang another bell. I thought: bingo! I do not identify with the local group, I do not feel a part of it. I really have never felt like a participant, I’ve always felt like an observer. Always. I only identified this in retrospect, way after the fact, that I have been on the outside, and I don’t like being on the inside. I don’t like being in their world. I’ve never felt comfortable there; I don’t belong to that. So, when he says the “local group,” I take that as meaning a lot of things: the local social clubs or fraternal orders, or lodges or associations or clubs of any kind, things where you sacrifice your individual identity for the sake of a group, for the sake of the group mind. I’ve always felt different and outside. Now, I also extended that, once again in retrospect, as I examined my feelings.
I don’t really identify with America, I don’t really feel like an American or part of the American experience, and I don’t really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don’t. All the definitions are there, but I don’t really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture and the human experience and culture and human choices.
But even if I am a cynic, they say if you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist—that’s what’s underneath. That’s the little flicker of flame, has a little life in it, the idealist: I would love to be able to entertain that side of me, but it doesn’t work like that. I don’t see what’s in it yet, I mean I just like it out here.
I’m not an angry person, just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans’ choices—and on stage those feelings sometimes are exaggerated for a theatric stage—you’re on a stage you have an audience of 2500 or 3000 people: you need to project the feelings, the emotions it’s heightened, and people mistake it for a personal anger but it’s more dissatisfaction, disappointment and contempt for these things we’ve settled for.
This Comment Merits Its Own Post
Springheel Jack is one of Slope's most esteemed and valuable participants, particularly since he does a substantial post every weekday morning. He has my gratitude, as he does the vast majority of the community.
I noticed a comment he made recently, and I'd like to share it in its entirety (with a few items emphasized by myself) since I think it's worthy of its own post. Thanks, SHJ, for this, and everything else.
Here's a repost from my reply to Tim's post on the last page. It's sort of a resigned bear's manifesto:
Tim, great post and I know exactly where you're coming from. The last twenty months have been bruising for all those of us who have read enough economic history to expect current policies to end very badly.
Timing as with so many things is the key here. I think the old Dow Theory maxim that the basic trend of the market could not be manipulated has been convincingly disproved since March 2009. It was the first time this maxim has really been tested thoroughly and as it happens, it was wrong.
What we're left with I think is that the market can be supported by the US gvt and the Fed as long as their credibility and credit holds out. That might take a year or two even at current rates of spending and in the meantime we could see some extraordinary and obviously unsustainable things happen, as one can see in any bubble.
Pug thinks that we are starting a new secular bull market and thinks that current imbalances will somehow be sorted out by the market within that secular bull. I disagree though I'm expecting it to be sorted out by the market too, but I'm expecting that to be in the traditional manner that the market deals with any spendthrift borrower, through rising interest rates, tightening of credit and eventually default. When we see that process advance to the stage that the Fed can no longer easily borrow or print huge sums of money, the house of cards that they are building now will collapse and we will see the end of the current secular bear market in the traditional manner with an unmanipulated cyclical bear market and revulsion low.
I was talking to Trader1 yesterday about the view expressed by many slopers that because of market manipulation, technical analysis is now irrelevant. I told him that in my view that was back to front, and that as long as the market is being supported this way, it is economic analysis that is irrelevant, and the only thing likely to guide us through this is technical analysis, which has been working just fine if we tune out the broader economic picture.
Just my 2c as a long time admirer of your work. I'm no less bearish than you in the long term. I'm just further along the road of accepting that this will end when it ends, and in the meantime we should just trade what we see rather than what we expect.
