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.

Updated Watch Lists

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I've expanded my Watch Lists (shown on the right column; scroll down some; you can see the contets of any list by clicking on the Plus sign):

Take note of the new lists, Candidates Short and Candidates Long. Those are items on my radar screen for potential positions.

Having gone through all my charts, I was able to uncover more long opportunities than my last post would suggest. If things do start finally turning upward at some point, I'd like a set of good stocks to buy in order to benefit from the ride.

I'll see you in the morning.

The Bottom-Up Paradox

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I think most of us would agree that individual stocks are heavily influenced by the market in general. No matter how fantastic a company and its earnings are, if the entire market is in a free-fall, an individual stock is going to have a tough time defying everything else.

Based on this, I've always subscribed to the "top-down" approach to choosing stocks; that is, starting with the big indexes, then industry groups, and then individual stocks.

Looking at my current holdings, however (of which there are nearly 200), it's hard to get away from the fact that, in spite of a wide variety of stocks from a reasonable different number of sectors, the short positions are far more compelling than the longs. The shorts look fantastic – – – if you didn't know what the market was doing, you wouldn't guess nearly 50% of the market had been chopped off already; these issues have tons of downside potential. The longs, on the other hand, are almost sympathy plays. They're decent, I guess, and might push up a bit, but on the whole they are pathetic compared to the shorts.

That's a difficult conclusion to reach, because looking at the broad market indexes, they seem ready to push higher. It's discomfiting, to say the least, to be looking at a stock market which seems poised to push higher yet find the vast majority of opportunities on the short side.

I sure hope things clear up with the new year. Things are just a mess right now.