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.

Dutch

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The first email came in August 2014.

TK, – Had my big meeting with the doctor’s yesterday evening and it is not good at all. Seems my diabetes has weakened my heart substantially as well as kidney damage. So, we are now on a strict regimen for controlling that. heart is so bad, candidate for a heart transplant. NOT going to happen. the good news is, cholesterol is good as blood pressure. Also, losing weight as directed. Down to 221! So, going to do whatever I have to do to stop the “bleeding” as it were. just to keep you informed. – – Dutch

And, six years later, I got this on the 4th of April 2020, only a few weeks ago:

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Advances and Declines

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A while ago, we introduced our Statistics data panel. An important part of that panel was the Advances/Declines data, but we had to get rid of it because the data vendor stopped providing it. Undaunted, we decided to create the data ourselves! So I’m delighted to let you know the Statistics data panel is back, and frankly I think the data is better than ever (since we created it this time).

The Slope of Hope system calculates each day the number of stocks that increased in value, the number that decreased in value, what the sum total of those values is, and what the “running” total is back to the beginning of its calculation, many years ago.

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Sand Castles and Fed Waves

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The past two months have had the equivalent of about two years of news and market activity compressed into an incredibly tight and vivacious space. This is an incredibly difficult market to trade. Now that the weekend is upon us, allow me to reflect on an important personal anecdote and how it is informing my current approach.

The time leading up to the February 19th was a total and utter grind. It was an era of a VIX in the sub-teens and a relentless notch higher every single day for the bulls. It was horrific. And then, out of the clear blue sky (and many weeks after the virus was widely reported on the news), we got our first good, hard dip. For me, it was like a tall glass of cool water in the desert.

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Powell’s Pathetic Perversion

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With the exception of those among us who are clinically insane, humans are rational beings who make rational choices. The choices are quite obviously not necessarily good choices, nor is the rationale behind them necessarily sound. However, any sane human bases a decision on the information available at the time and takes what they perceive as the most appropriate course of action. This holds true for decisions as small as what kind of bread you want at Subway and as big as whether or not to go to war with another nation.

Even the most vile among us have their reasons for doing what they do. Let’s race toward the bottom of the barrel and use a child predator as an example. When held to account for their actions, they may well articulately explain the basis for what they do. They could calmly lay out how they are aroused by certain youngsters, and how they know acting on this desire leads to the execution of a self-interested outcome. From their point of view, they are acting logically. From our point of view, of course, what they’re doing is horrific, vile, and worthy of incarceration.

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