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.

True Believer Syndrome

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I’m going to start with a tale from about 180 years ago. In the early 1840s, a religious leader named William Miller believed the second coming of Jesus was foretold in the Bible with mathematical accuracy, and using a myriad of verses and tidbits from the Bible, he sought to compute as closely as possible when exactly J.C. was going to come back.

prophetcy

At first, he didn’t offer anything very exact:

Using an interpretive principle known as the day-year principle, Miller, along with others, interpreted a prophetic “day” to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Miller became convinced that the 2,300-day period started in 457 B.C. with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. His interpretation led him to believe and promote the year 1843. Despite the urging of his supporters, Miller never announced an exact date for the expected Second Advent. But he did narrow the time period to sometime in the Jewish year 5604, stating: “My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.” (more…)

The Only Bearish Blog Left

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Slope, as you might suppose, is my favorite blog on the web. My second favorite, however, is ZeroHedge, and I’ve been an avid and daily reader for its entire existence.

Because ZH has been steadfastly bearish since its creation in January 2009 (which, interestingly, was pretty much the exact almost-to-the-day bottom of equities in general), the standard bromide out there is: “The bear market won’t start until ZeroHedge shuts down.”

Well, look, that’s NEVER going to happen. It’s far too successful a site. I obviously have no clue what their financials are, but they’ve got to be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (at least) on ad revenue, so they’re not just going to turn the switch off. (more…)

So Which Is It?

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(As a reminder, you can get free, real-time crypto charts in SlopeCharts).

Forty thousand dollars per bitcoin. One hundred thousand. Three hundred thousand. The predictions are as numerous as the people making them.

I don’t pretend to know which one is going to be reality, and neither should anyone else. I do find the simplified presentation of price movements during manias to be an interesting road map, however. We all know that last week cryptos went crazy, with some losing more than half their value. On Friday, and into this weekend, they are beginning to strengthen, and I suspect many crypto-bulls have heaved a sigh of relief and are comforted by the fact this was just another one of those scary downturns. They don’t say HODL for nothing, you know.

phases

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