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.

Garth, Wayne… Mo?

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Fo-Moe? Faux-Moe? Whatever it is, FOMO-driven MOMO is in play

Manic forces likely driven by the fear of missing out seem to be overtaking markets. This environment of inflation-fueled speculation was created by the 2020 Federal Reserve in panic mode, while today the 2021 Federal Reserve is trying to manage us in the other direction according to the James Bullard indicator, at least. How difficult might it be to put all of these released animal spirits back in the box? Eh James? Eh Jerome? Does Lael even want them back in a box? How about Janet (not on the FOMC I know, but she’s always there in the side car)?

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Why I Cashed Out

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On Tuesday morning, I closed my my crypto positions at Kraken, wired all my profits to my checking account, and let the original principal remain at Kraken in plain old cash. I’d like to explain why.

First, here is what the crypto market (represented by Bitcoin) and the stock market (represented by the SPY) were doing until a few months ago. It doesn’t matter which is which; the point is that they each went their own ways.

different
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Mega-Meh

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Over on Reddit’s /wsb board, which usually has a wide variety of symbols as the topic of conversation, practically 100% of the board was wringing its hands over TSLA. Tesla is a big holding for the boys in wsb-land, and almost to a man (or to a boy, more accurately) they were worried that TSLA would be gapping down by hundreds of dollars thanks to Elon’s “I’m going to sell 10% of my TSLA if you tell me too” Twitter poll.

Well, TSLA Is down, to be sure, and it it seeing prices not witnessed since……….three trading days ago.

tsladown
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Time For A Taper Tantrum?

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crying baby

I have been perusing the financial MSM over the past few days and beyond all the usual hyperbole and guesswork as to what the Fed may or may not decide to do there is one thing they all share in common: A total lack of consideration or care as to the long term implications of an exploding Fed balance sheet and an inability or unwillingness to draw correlations to the massive jump in inflation that consumers in and outside of the U.S. are increasingly experiencing. So basically, business as usual!

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