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.

Hedge Funds & the PPP

By -

Note from Tim: as a reminder, I put together a spreadsheet of Palo Alto firms that got over $150,000 in PPP loans. Check it out here. If you don’t have an AirTable account, it’ll ask you to sign up for free.

I had noted a few months ago that many of these firms getting the PPP loans were not ‘in the spirit’ of the program.

Without any real ‘oversight’ the compliance part of these loans seems – – – questionable — on some.  I am not sure how it all really works, but the American public likely believes these funds should have gone to the ‘small business’, with waiters, waitresses, or bartenders who obviously couldn’t work.  This was the spirit of the PPP program.

And, there are others – the people at the gyms and yoga studios.  At the nail salon and corner barber shops.  There are many, many businesses, and it seems everyone has a hardship story.

(more…)

I Need to PPP

By -

You’ve probably read that on Monday the SBA released all the data related to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Everyone who got under $150,000 in loans was anonymous, while all those $150,000 and over were named. (Side Note: just to show how psychotic I am, I stayed up Monday night and put this together of all the Palo Alto PPP recipients. Enjoy).

Even though this program was ostensibly to help out small businesses, quite a number of the firms served are relatively larger, public companies. I have been sifting through the monstrous amount of data, and it’s quite fascinating. For instance, I found 1,351 different companies in my little town of Palo Alto received PPP loans. Only 50,000 people live here in the first place!

Anyway, I put together a list of the largest public companies that got PPP loans, which is the downloadable text file below. You can use this in conjunction with the SlopeCharts import function if you’d like to check out the charts of the firms that saw a need to get an emergency loan.

Here are the biggest public PPP borrowersDownload

Phase 1 Compliance

By -

Following Trump’s election win, I read two books to better understand him and his behavior: Games of Strategy: Theory and Application and The Art of the Deal.  The game theory book was intended to understand how Trump thinks.  However, he is extremely volatile and that makes it difficult to predict his behavior thus it was difficult to apply theories to his decision making.  The Art of the Deal, however, was much more insightful.  In an old email I characterized him as:

“He (Trump) is a winner.  Looking strong is important.  He’s also incredibly sneaky and untrustworthy (whatever it takes to win…)…In other words Trump uses last minute tactics to: A) strengthen his position and B) ensure his position is not weakened…As an options trader he’s a wing buyer that bullies the market to make his position in the money.”

(more…)

Half the Gold Reserves

By -

Almost half of the global gold reserves are controlled by just 10 countries and institutions, according to a new study. The study reveals that the U.S. is far ahead of other countries in terms of gold reserves, even well above countries like Russia, whose central bank has been a buyer of gold for quite some time.

Buy Shares reports 49.37% of global gold reserves are held by nine countries and the International Monetary Fund. Total global gold reserves amount to about 1.85 billion ounces, and the top 10 countries and institutions are holding about 913.29 million ounces.

The U.S. is in first place with 286.87 million ounces, amounting to 15.5% of global gold reserves. Germany is in second place with 188.63 million ounces of the yellow metal, or 6.4% of the total supply.

(more…)