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.

Semi Canary Still Chirping, But He’s Gonna Croak in 2018

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Since January 2013 we have been using the worldwide Semiconductor Equipment industry as a leader within the Semiconductor sector, which is an economic cyclical leader itself. That month we noted a positive move in Equipment bookings, which became a (3 month) trend that spring. This trend was used to project positive economic signals to come.

Through some turbulence in 2014 and 2015 the sector has remained on ‘economic up’ along with our cross reference indicator, the Palladium/Gold ratio right up to the current time as the economic Canary in a Coal Mine has kept on chirping.

But on November 21, two days before the sector topped I derisively poked at the mainstream media for hyping the Semiconductor Equipment sector with its bold headline… Fund manager looks beyond ‘FAANG’ stocks and finds even bigger winners for 2018. Talk about eyeball harvesting and greed stimulation. (more…)

The McLaren Epiphany

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Five-thirty in the morning is my normal wake-up time.I have a circadian rhythm with Swiss-like accuracy, so I never need an alarm, even if I’ve changed multiple time zones. I get up, glance at the quotes on the iPad, and amble downstairs with my phalanx of canines. I leash them up and head off in the dark chill of pre-dawn.

The route we take has, over time, become consistent. That is to say, footstep by footstep, it’s pretty much the same path 365 days a year. My big payoff from this journey is, at its midpoint, to pick up a fresh copy of the Daily Post, which is Palo Alto’s only local newspaper. This morning, however, had a new surprise. Just a block away from my house, I saw a car in a driveway that had never been there before; a McLaren. This is the precise model and color: (more…)