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.
Oil Too Hot to Handle?
Pretty nasty day out there so far for the bears! And my oil-related positions have been taking a drubbing.
My largest one, OIH, is the one I watch most closely. My stop on this is $195, which was the all-time high set back on January 3 of this year.
The risk is that OIH does a repeat of what it did back in 2006 and early 2007. There was a bearish looking pattern (blue tint), a bounce and subsequent drop (the yellow tint), and then an explosion higher to new highs (the magenta tint). I've repeated these tints for the late 2007 to present period. Of course, the magenta period for the present is conjectural at this point, and naturally if it fulfills, I'll be blown out of my OIH puts with a fat loss.
Also in the world of energy, the solars are going bananas. I don't trade these, either long or short, simply because I don't find their charts particularly interesting. But there's no doubt this sector, of which FSLR appears to be the king has made a lot of bulls some money.
The IWM continues its march to the high end of its 2008 range. Somewhat distressing. This is either a fantastic put-buying opportunity or the final set-up before the bulls blast the market higher. Would be nice to know which of those was about to materialize, wouldn't it?
Embracing Bad News
Just to recap………..
- The presumptive next president has already made plain his plans to
substantially increase taxes, including a large increase in capital
gains taxes - The head of the federal reserve has (finally) stated what would have
been unthinkable for him to say a few months ago: that it's likely
we're in a recession - The unemployment figures came out, and joblessness shot higher than
most expected. Payrolls dropped 80,000 people, marking the third
consecutive month of a shrinking job market, and the unemployment rate
leaped to 5.1% - Congress is going to approve plans to plunge the nation hundreds of billions of dollars into the hole to bail out investment banks and low-income borrowers that made foolish financial decisions
- Every economic indicator coming out shows that nation's economy is heading downward
……..and with all this, the Dow is up 1,000 points over the past couple of weeks and the GLOBEX is in the green before this morning's opening bell.
It sounds like we've returned to the insane illogic of bull markets past. Maybe GS needs to bring Abby back. The brainlessness has returned (cue Beanie……….).
