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.

An Interesting Spreadsheet

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In prior posts, I've mentioned the interesting comparison of the $HUI gold index between 2006-2008 and the past couple of years. Below is the grid chart showing the past behavior on top and the recent behavior on the bottom. The analog speaks for itself.

0104-hui

Instead of just eyeballing the charts, I entered the dates into a spreadsheet of the difference in time between the major turning points. The length of time is quite similar, although the present instance is just a little shorter (95.5% of the length) that the prior one.

The interesting thing is calculating what this adjusted delta yields in terms of a "start date" for a breakdown in the pattern. The date turns out to be January 21st (a Saturday, but hey, it's just an estimate).

0105-dates

Can we count on some kind of hard fall starting then? Of course not. But at least it pinpoints a day for this analog to see if some kind of breakdown does indeed occur around then.

Who Do I Think I Am?

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This year will be the 8th year I’ve been writing this blog. I never imagined when I started writing what would become Slope of Hope in 2005 that I would have this many readers and that the blog would be such a big part of my life, but I have been feeling the urge to tell people just who you are dealing with, since this blog is still very much a personal expression.

You are going to find a lot of dichotomy and contradiction in this post, because that’s what I’m like. I spend half my days wishing someone would sneak up behind me and shoot me in the head, and the other half of my days feeling just OK. I'm never really happy – – – it’s been years since I’ve been anything close to that – – – but at part of my life I can spend not wishing to be wiped away.

The darkness of my mindset is pervasive; I have written countless private notes to myself to try to sort out my feelings; one snippet reads like this:

• No good deed goes unpunished. So hang on to everything you’ve got. Giving always backfires.

• Most of “success” is dumb luck – being in the right place at the right time. Lots of good, smart people don’t get shit, and lots of mindless, stupid people make fortunes.

• The way you live and what you get aren’t correlated. Evil, obnoxious people can get all they want, and decent, hard-working people can live with deprivation.

• The human desire to consume useless shit is almost insatiable, since most people are devoid of any real soul or understanding.

I sound like a barrel of laughs, don’t I? But I have to be honest with you. I can feel very bitter at times, and if nothing else, I owe my readers some honesty.

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Real Fakeness and the Hanging Man

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Those of you who have read my work for a while know that I have a paradoxical attitude which is not unique among Slopers; that is: loving America and really disliking Americans. Or at least disliking a lot of what constitutes American culture.

I came face to face with this not long ago when I did something I hardly ever do, which is fire up the television (ever since the series 24 went off the air, there's really nothing in particular I watch, although I dutifully pay my cable bill month after month). The show that was on was The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

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The Analog Unfolds Gloriously

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Way back on September 7th, a Sloper by the screen name of Phantom Capital thoughtfully sent me an analog, richly detailed, as to what he believed the market would do. I published this analog on the blog, and since that time, it has performed astonishingly well.

I have been exchanging emails with Phantom, and he and I see eye-to-eye on the market's future. I submit to you my belief that:

(a) we will indeed see a "from 13 to 14" drop, irrespective of what that traitorous douchebag Bernanke says tomorrow;

(b) once we approach 1000 (let's call it 1030 or so), The Powers That Be will issue forth their final, desperate attempt to save the world. Everyone will buy into it again, lifting the market somewhat. Because, Slopers notwithstanding, people are pinheads and always think it's different this time;

(c) Around March or so next year, TPTB will have lifted the market high enough to permit Facebook to IPO. This will be the last major IPO for a long time to come. The Facebook IPO, in my opinion, will almost pinpoint the top of 2012.

(d) After that point, all holy hell will break loose, and Slope will ascend to heaven in a blaze of chart-filled glory amidst wailing and gnashing of teeth. Yea, verily so.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

1212-roadmap

Let Justice Be Done

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I have been writing this blog for seven long years. During that time, this blog has stood for what matters to me as a person: truth, logic, justice, and reason.

The America I grew up with has already been destroyed, and we are witnessing a world whose leaders are slapping coat after coat of whitewash on a situation that will absolutely lead to global ruination and, thereafter, recalibration. The world's population, 99% of which stews in a cauldron of ignorance or apathy, allows more wood to be thrown onto the fire beneath with the misplaced hope that everything will, in the end, turn out fine, just like on their favorite SitCom.

This isn't a SitCom. It's a tragicomedy. And, month by month, week by week, day by day, and tick by tick, we are watching it unfold.

I say what I have said a thousand times – – if everything had simply been allowed to do what it naturally needed to do back in 2008, the entire world would already been healing, and I'd probably be as obnoxiously bullish as I am currently bearish.

Instead, wholly artificial means have been force-fed to the world, meaning that (a) the necessary pain has been delayed, not denied; (b) the eventual pain will be an order of magnitude higher than it needed to be in the first place.

I write this now, merely because the past couple of hours encapsulates what I'm talking about. On the one hand is the 727th bailout of this year being announced, forcing equities and the Euro to explode skyward. This is the hand of artifice.

On the other hand is the mere rumor of a change by S&P in its disposition toward the large European countries – – not even a downgrade, but just a move to "credit watch" – – swiftly laid waste to much of these gains. This is the hand of truth, and, in this instance, it's a tiny, tiny hand.

I believe with every fiber of my being that, in the end, justice will prevail and the world's economies will be forced to endure the horrible pain they must endure in order to become normal, natural, and real again. Free enterprise is what I embrace, and what we are living through now sickens me.

I want the change to come now, but we are powerless to make things happen any faster. We can only watch as the Merkels of the world – – – and the Yellens of the United States – – – continue with their insufferable meddling, allowing the pernicious disease to spread and get stronger.

And so we watch, and we wait. And we try to survive, if not prosper, while we do so. Watch yourselves. The market is getting more dangerous with each passing day.