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.

Magnificent Interview

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My affection for George Carlin is well-known. He is, after all, the Patron Saint of Slope of Hope.

I hadn’t seen this interview before, but I tripped across it by chance. It is a wonderful interview for a couple of reasons. First, George basically talks about himself for an hour. There’s no interviewer jumping in; it’s just him and the camera. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to knowing what it would like to have actually met him and listened to him as a real person, instead of as a performer on the stage.

Second, his values really shine through. He is obviously a very moral and thoughtful man, and he is someone who tried to be wise about the decisions he made in his life. And he had a truly amazing life. This is something I would like to be able to say of myself in the end. I’ll never be a Carlin, or anything close, but I’d at least like to look back and think I didn’t screw up too badly.

Some of you recall that hearing about Carlin’s death was a “JFK moment” for me. He was a comedic genius, and he helped me understand how frustration and anger can be crafted into creative forms of expression. If you even a passing interest in Carlin, please do watch the interview.

So, Like, What’s My Strategy?

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Here are some snippets from an interview from New Yorker magazine with the queen of trading on the cusp, 16-year-old Rachel Fox (as in Stocks; it rhymes, get it?), the shoeshine girl of the modern age. Emphasis added by me.

How did you even get involved in stock-trading?


0227-foxMy parents explained the stock market to me because it’s such a big, important part of life. They didn’t expect me to take such a liking to the whole day-trading idea, though.

So, like, what's your strategy? Do you have a Bloomberg terminal?
Well, I don’t like trading stocks that are very news-dependent. I trade on the technical analyis of stocks. (Lord in heaven, give me strength – Ed.)

Do you trade penny stocks?
OH GOD, OF COURSE NOT. No, I go to Yahoo Finance every morning, that's my thing. And then I go to my trading platform [Scottrade] and do the technical stuff in there. (Because, like, ScotTrade is, like, so awesome. It has, like, the best charts, y'know? – Ed.)

And this is fun?
Definitely. There are certain things making it easier for common people who work and have a day job to do this as well. I'm not just a typical guy who has a suit and goes to Wall Street. My point in writing this blog is not trying to compete with the finance professionals. It’s more just to inspire people to trade.

Who do you go to for investing advice?

Well, um, really … nobody? I mean, I'd have to think about that.

Any people you really look up to? Who's your investing idol?
I heard a story about Warren Buffett, that he has none of his college degrees hanging on his wall. He only has his certificate for public speaking, which is so awesome and inspiring. (Buffett. Naturally. Although I'm not quite clear on why hanging this particular certificate on the wall would give anyone an emotional boner. But, then again, I'm Tim on a Whim, not Fox on Stocks – Ed.) If you can learn public speaking, you don't have to have a ton of education to do well.

You couldn't let go, huh?

It’s hard to master the psychology. You’ve got to know when to step out of things. (Not true, Ms. Fox. You simply have to wait for people who have absolutely no business engaging in a particular vocation professing to be an expert. It's a cinch. – Ed.)

I bet you got a lot of calls after your CNBC appearance.
I'm going to keep those confidential, but there may or may not have been some requests. (Very shrewd, Ms. Fox, very shrewd! Keep those cards close to that chest that the men of America are scrutinizing – Ed.)

So when do you start managing other people's money?
[Laughs.] Maybe I’ll start a hedge fund. 

So – – look – – I've got nothing against sixteen year olds. I was one once myself, and at the time, I wrote my first book – the first of a couple dozen, actually (and that first book, incidentally, argued for the importance of computer-to-computer communications and how it would transform the world, way back in 1982 – so thank you very much). But, having done charting for a quarter-century now, I'd rather not be told by a doe-eyed girl how to draw a trendline……..or what stocks to buy (errr, short) for my own hedge fund.

No Picnic Basket Needed (by Mark St.Cyr)

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This week was a strange week for anyone that just started opening
their 401K statements again. For those that are new or been trading for a
few years, this week certainly holds up to what must seem as a “once in
a blue moon” event.

Imagine what this week must be like when seen through the eyes of a
16-year-old day trader that’s accustomed to racking up over 30%
annualized returns. Obviously something must be wrong. If not how else
can the markets go down 2 days in a row? I mean – “OMG!”

Of course I’m being sarcastic yet – not by much.

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Good Grief

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Yesterday I drove the family up to Santa Rosa for a fencing tournament, and since it was going to be a long day, I decided to take my daughter ice skating and to the nearby Charles Schulz museum (I took a couple of photos, shown below). I had been there years before, and I really enjoyed it, but she had never been.

0128-peanutsComics have always been a big part of my life, and I've got many thick volumes of comics that I enjoy. They tend to be more out of the ordinary stuff, such as Zippy and This Modern World, but I've also got my fair share of Dilberts and the like. I've never had any Peanuts, pretty much because they're all stored in my head anyway and I don't need a book.

Indeed, comics are such a big share of my cultural touchpoints that, before Slope, I was seriously going to focus my blog on bitching about comics. I was going to call it The Comics Curmudgeon, and I already had my sights set on inexcusable crap like Garfield, Cathy, and Family Circus. Of course, that blog would have starved itself of material pretty fast, so I never really bothered. The world will never know of Barfy's Theorem and other pontifications I planned.

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