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.

Cushioning A Cliff Dive

By -

Not Reading Slope Can Be Expensive

Back on Tuesday, February 12th, our host Tim noted natural resources stocks were weakening and suggested shorting Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF).

The next day, Cliffs dived 20% after announcing a cut in its dividend after the close on Tuesday.

From A Mess To The Masses

The old Odd Lot Theory was based on a simple premise: the average, small investor (those who couldn't afford round lots of shares) was usually wrong. Guess which stock Fidelity customers were buying with both hands as it dropped 20% on February 13th?

(more…)

Mass Media Dowgasm

By -

As I’ve been saying on a daily basis lately, breaking the old high of the Dow was the big, looming goal of TPTB and the MSM, and voila, they’ve done it. Naturally, the likes of Cramer are jizzing all over the airwaves right now, and any glance at CNBC.com or MarketWatch.com or any similar site shows gigantic headlines about The Big News.

0305-indu

 

Bernanke (and his albino helpmate Yellen) must be feeling awfully good about life right now.

Ersatz H&S Patterns (by Springheel Jack)

By -

ES broke up from the triangle developing yesterday morning and is testing the February highs. There is a possibility that a double-top is forming here but I'm not at all keen on this as I think the time for this pre-main high retracement has come and gone. Worth bearing in mind though. What looks like a bullish IHS has developed during this retracement but the appearance is deceiving. H&S patterns are purely reversal patterns and the technical targets given for these patterns are taken from reversal patterns only. The decline into this pattern was very short and this is therefore not a reversal pattern. Having said that I have seen some strong up moves developing from setups like this, and those can often make the reversal IHS target. That would be 1562 in this instance but that is not to be relied upon:

(more…)