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.

The One-Decision Stock

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One has to stand back in awe at the performance of Amazon. From what I understand, this company has never actually earned a cent, and yet its two decades as a public company have been a virtually uninterrupted money-making festival. A mere $10,000 investment at its nadir would be worth about $4.5 million today. Kind of suicide-inducing to the 99.999% of folks who didn’t enjoy the ride.

0331-AMZN

The Two Tim Tale

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I have been running an experiment with myself over the past couple of months. I really didn’t plan for this experiment. I just sort of fell into it. Now that it’s running, though, I’m quite interested to see what comes of my personal test.

The first result of this test is as follows: in the first quarter of 2017, in my regular portfolio, I lost ground. That isn’t a huge shock, since that portfolio is entirely short, is often 200% margined (or even more), and Q1 2017 had all kinds of lifetime highs on just about every major index. I had some great trades here and there, but the simple fact of the matter is that if you spent an entire quarter going short, and the market hits record highs, you are not going to make money.

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