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.

Roughed Up

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The final quarter of 2018 spoiled me. It was fantastic. The last three weeks have reminded me what a vicious market feels like. Yuck.

I’m not alone in this, however. I just peeked at my Twitter feed (as I approach 20,000 followers – hurray!) and there were plenty of pleas for some encouragement. Well, I don’t want to “spin” things just for the sake of encouragement, but let’s look at a few principal charts together.

First and foremost, let’s observe the fact that over 50% of the $VIX has been blown to smithereens. Looking at the moving averages, it seems to me we have once against returned to the level of volatility where we could spring higher, rubber-band style. Even if we weaken further, I consider a level of about 16 a fairly reliable base.

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The Joy of Being Overpaid

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Throughout my life, there’s typically been one person who decides how much I get paid; me. Since so much of that time has been involved in starting up a small business, oftentimes my salary – – if you want to call it that – – was just minuscule.

I remember quite well in 1993 that I was only able to pay myself $1,000 per month. Let’s just say that was a challenging time.

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Coming Apart

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Recently I read an interview with a fellow who said the most influential book he had read was Coming Apart by Charles Murray. I immediately bought the book and am halfway through it. I wanted to write you a review of the book, then I discovered that I had already done so six years ago! So I think my brain must be “coming apart”, but I’m going to be a lazy sumbitch and just reprint the review here, because I think it’s important:

I just finished reading the best-selling Coming Apart by Charles Murray. I confess to not having heard of the book until I saw it in the store, but the cover of a champagne glass and a crumpled beer can instantly suggested to me that I was going to enjoy this new examination of the United States and its sociological disintegration of the past half-century.

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