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.

Sailors Take Warning

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We’ve raised babies into adulthood here in Knight Manor, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been awakened every 90 minutes or so by a needful youngster. With little Mishka in our lives, I’ve reacquainted myself with how easily I can wake up and go back to sleep, and miserable as it is, I’ll gladly take being up multiple times a night in exchange for the seeing the joy during the daytime. It’s worth it, but forgive me if my posts aren’t coming out at 5 in the morning these days like the before-time.

It hardly matters anyway. For the first time all year, there was a little red on the screen, but in short order that was wiped clean, including on the /ES:

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Three Days In

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We’re just three trading days into 2026, and I gotta tell ya, I am having zero fun so far. Zilch! No one but me should care, but I’ve been all thumbs so far this year. The only “trade” that is working for me is my cache of silver and gold bullion, and the only reason I’ve been smart enough to hold on to that is because it’s too clumsy and inconvenient to get rid of it. Otherwise, I’ve been moping all year long.

I’m also potentially even more mopey since the /NQ is potentially configured for a breakout (since, ya know, it’s so cheap and all). Given this maelstrom, I have over the course of the past week plunged from 37 positions to only 18, and with only 60% exposure right now. Yuck.

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The Trouble with Bubbles

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Happy New Year everyone and I hope you had a great holiday. 🙂

Just a few comments on the overall picture going into this year before I get started on the shorter term picture. Alan Greenspan famously stated that it was hard to identify speculative bubbles and I disagree. It isn’t hard to identify speculative bubbles, what is hard is to identify is when they are going to burst.

Plainly there is a speculative bubble now in progress in Tech and AI. I was reading a comment this morning that NVDA’s market capitalisation is now higher than the combined market capitalisations of Europe’s largest twenty companies. The takeaway of the writer was that Europe is increasingly irrelevant. My takeaway was that European stocks currently look much better value than US Tech stocks.

As it happens world stocks excluding US were up about 29% in 2025 and US stocks were up about 16%. I suspect that US stocks will relatively underperform in 2026 as well. Berkshire Hathaway has now been a net seller of (mainly US) stocks for twelve consecutive quarters, and they are very smart & long term money.

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