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.

Snake Oil Sales

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The best thing about weekly scheduled “news” events is that they can offer volatility and entertainment.  The worst thing is that unsuspecting retailers regarding them as actual “news” and don’t recognize news events and scheduled releases for the scams that they truly are.

This week’s exhibit in the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up category is none other than light, sweet, and lately crude West Texas Intermediate.

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Municipal Madness

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Only a government employee could point to a 99.5% failure rate and declare it a success.

Look no farther than my local newspaper this morning: the city of Menlo Park (which is an affluent superb like Palo Alto, but even whiter and more sheltered) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment to read the license plates of all the cars passing by certain intersections. (We’ll set aside the creepiness of the surveillance and just focus on the economics here.)

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Tsipras Tsucks

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Greetings from Orlando where, as is almost always the case, my family is frolicking and having carefree fun while I’m dealing with stock market nonsense. It’s my preference, actually, but I can’t help gaze out the window jealously from time to time, since most of the world isn’t dealing with complete sell-outs with Tsipras stabbing his countrymen in the back and bending over to the EU hoodlums. Harry Potter rides sound a lot more entertaining.

I had mentioned the gap being filled. Strictly speaking, that isn’t true yet (unless you count the collective rectum of Greek citizenry). On an intraday basis, which is what I use, the gap is at 2095.50 (shown below on the ES chart as the horizontal red line). For a few weeks, we were stuck in the Greek Equilibrium, let’s call it, and now we’ve escaped.

0713-estwo

I came into the morning relatively light, and my bias toward energy and precious metals shorts is taking a lot of the sting away (MWE notwithstanding, which I was short, and which gapped higher). I intend to start re-entering good positions now, though, and increasing my risk in the face of this capitulation.

Can we all agree to stop talking about this idiotic Mediterranean country until they actually default for real in a few months? Thanks.

Debt Saturation (by BKudla)

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I put this post together as a curiosity.  Per international data, the world has now created 4 times as much debt than the combined reserves and  M0, M1, and M2 in the world.  Out of these reserve and M numbers only $5 Trillion is circulating outside of the banking system.  There is 171,000 tons of gold or 5.5 billion ounces, or approx $6 trillion of value, in the world.  Total assets are valued at $241 Trillion.  The elites have taken us to the wall.

Exeter would be proud and alarmed at the same time.

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