This may be my last post until late tonight; anyway, here are a few bullish ideas (holding period being measured in weeks, not years) to chew on:
Adios!
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.
Breaking Above 874 is Key
A clarification on my prior post – – we are CLOSE to breaking above the neckline of the inverted H&S on the S&P, but we're not there yet. We must break above 874 to finish the pattern. As it is now, we got to 873 and backed away (as of this writing). It needs to break it to make it.
Buying the S&P
I think we've finally got a tradeable pattern shaping up here. I am going long the S&P via ES futures as well as the SSO based on this inverted head and shoulders pattern. I believe this sets us up for a run to 1,000 on the S&P, at which time shorting opportunities will abound.
The Core Question
Looking at the news headlines this morning, I am struck by this simple fact: the American public is faced with two competing views of the economy and its future.
On one hand, you have politicians (notably, our President-elect) saying that they have a plan and they are going to make everything OK.
On the other hand, you have hard data showing collapsing spending, rising unemployment, and the worst housing market in eighteen years.
Who are you going to believe? A politician or numeric data?
Now, human emotions/values such as Hope and Belief and Trust are going to hold sway, because people are desperate for good news. That's going to push the market up. But there will come a point – – I don't know when, but let's just call in around April – – when people are going to realize the Emporer Has No Clothes, and we're in a world of hurt (or any other four-letter noun you wish to use).
Double Top Drop
First off, for those who didn't see it, here's an interesting article by Paul Farrell about a one-hundred year long bear market. The article makes me look positively doe-eyed and Pollyanna-ish.
Second, I noticed something about the ES this morning that I hadn't noticed before…..a repeated pattern recently in which price surge higher, drop briefly, try to surge again (but fail after making a little bit of a higher high) and then fall away hard. This pattern is too short-term to repeat for very long, but it's worth noticing since it seems pretty consistently recently:
