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.

Wayback Machine

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Although this is bound to cause delight amongst a few folks, the past three weeks have been utter torture for me. There have been many reasons for this, but one of them, of course, has been the brutal counter-trend rally which seems to have strength drawn from another dimension.

Of course, what’s maddening is that it wasn’t a secret that things were badly oversold on February 11th. Indeed, I took the time yesterday to read every post from 2/11 to see what people were saying. I figured everyone would be screaming at me to get out. Nope. Everyone – – both authors of posts (Springheel Jack, for instance) as well as the commenters were all jumping up and down about the next leg down, be it 1750 (conservatively) or the 1500s. So the atmosphere was definitely “bearish now and bearish to stay.” Of course, the oversold state of the market is plain as the nose on my face now:

0303-oversold

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The Channel Mattered

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Back on February 11th (known for the rest of my life as The Day I Should Have Covered Everything), gold did something very important: it jumped above a channel that had been confining its price action for literally years. I’ve circled the descending trendline which constitute the upper boundary of that channel. Gold, represented here by way of GLD, “escaped” its downtrend.

0303-gldgap

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Let’s Put It This Way…….

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I have a couple of short ideas which are interesting options opportunities as well (by way of a long put positions). There are a couple of reasons I mention options, which I normally don’t do: (1) both of these stocks have lofty triple-digit price values, which gives them a lot of “juice” in raw dollar terms to the downside (2) the price for volatility is relatively low these days.

In other words, I wouldn’t dare put up a post suggesting put options on a day like, say, February 11th, when the VIX was in the 30s (it’s about half that value now).

Anyway, here they are – Baidu and Amazon; I’ve tinted the gaps for each.

0303-BIDU
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