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.

What’s Hot & What’s Not in US Markets

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Depicted on the following graphs are percentages gained/lost in Major Indices and Major Sectors over a longer term (1 year), a medium term (year-to-date), and a short term (the past week).

They are presented, simply, to illustrate where they are relative to those three timeframes.

My only comments are as follows:

  • Major Indices: Utilities, Small Caps and Transports continue to underperform, and I’d monitor Small Caps, in particular, as I outlined in yesterday’s article, for further signs of weakness and an indicator of further equity risk-off activity.
  • Major Sectors: Energy, Consumer Staples, Health Care and Utilities continue to underperform, but I’d keep an eye on Financials for any evidence of further weakening, as I recently described here.

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Weaponizing Intellect

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My fear for the future of the human race is grounded in two contrasting but related facts: (1) I am supposed to be extremely intelligent (2) I consider myself an idiot. In other words, if, based upon hard data from tests, the vast majority of people are less intelligent than me, yet if I consider myself just barely able to function and be a responsible member of society, where on earth are we all heading? I mean, come on – – I suck – – but most people suck even worse.

It wasn’t long ago that this wouldn’t have mattered at all. At any given point in human history, you could have created a bell curve of intelligence among all living humans. And yet how much has it truly mattered until recently?

In the year 1100, if you were far and away the most brilliant person in your entire village, would it have helped you at all? Would anyone have cared? Of course not! Because you just need to shovel the pig shit into a pile just like everyone else. Intellect was irrelevant. (more…)

Digging Deeper

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A story making the rounds quite a bit on Tuesday was about the young man who torched his $4 million trading account by betting it all on XIV which, as we all know, got completely destroyed in a manner that most would have never fathomed possible. ZeroHedge featured this story for many hours as its header post.

I like sleuthing around, so I decided to dig deeper into this anonymous fellow who lost all this money. After some digging, I figured out his name was Gregory, he lives in Singapore, and he’s one of those gunslingers that hangs out on Reddit’s “Wall Street Bets” forum. In case there’s any doubt about the youthful male nature of such a place, the animated graphic at the top of the forum leaves nothing to the imagination: (more…)

Very Mixed Feelings

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You think I’d be happy.

After all, days like Friday and Monday come along, oh, just about never. We have, in almost no time., seen bullish hubris hit with a flamethrower (perhaps even supplied by Mr. Musk). We have seen our smug bull friends have their accounts decimated (quite literally). And as for the White House, not only has it stopped tweeting about market highs, it issued some lame-ass little statement about how the fundamental economy was still strong and everything was going to be just peachy. Don’t you worry your fuzzy little heads.

All the same, I feel kind of lousy. it comes from three places, I suppose. (more…)

Said and Done

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Completely by chance, I stumbled across this video of a 17 year old high school junior named Sam Berns who had an extremely rare disease that aged him at a highly accelerated rate. Even though he was 17, he looked 90. I clicked the link out of curiosity, but I was transfixed for the entire video.

As I was watching it, I thought to myself, “He looks so frail – – I wonder if he’s still alive.” But I soon found out that a very short time after this video was made, he died – – basically of “old age”, in spite of being in high school. The simple truth is, not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be. But we are all God’s creatures.  I hope you find the video inspiring.