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.

My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

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Until such time as the hoped-for head & shoulders pattern on the S&P is rendered moot (which would take place if the S&P crossed above 862), I'm still working with that as the primary theme.

One item of interest to me is the EEM. It broke above the resistance line and – – importantly – – fell beneath again, and it is having trouble getting above it once more. This smells to me like a failed breakout.

I therefore am long the EEV, which is the ultrashort of the emerging markets index:

We've all been witness to the recent manipulation in the market, particularly from our good friends at GS. We need to mentally prepare ourselves for the worst-case scenario, which would be a push above 875, completing a pretty decent inverted H&S pattern with a measured target of 1065 (which is the projected high-water mark for 2009, in my opinion, although I'd prefer to wait until later this year!). I'm not seeing this is likely, but we need to keep potential disasters in mind and be prepared to act accordingly.

Precious Metals

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Yesterday I suggested precious metals (via ETFs such as GLD, GDX, and SLV) as good buys. That is working out nicely today. As of this writing, the $XAU is up nearly 4%.

Precious metals is a tough one for me, because there are opposing bullish and bearish camps which I both respect. On the bullish side is Gary Savage, whose reasons are a combination of both technical and fundamental, and his view is definitely long-term. On the bearish side are the fellows at Elliott Wave (as well as molecool from Evil).

Looking at the futures chart for the commodity gold itself, it could go either way……..

The green lines suggest two very bullish developments: (a) the puncturing of the psychologically-important $1,000/ounce level; (b) a nice inverted H&S pattern. The red lines show gold slipping under its Fibonacci fan line and heading toward the bottom of the channel (lower red line), which is in the high $600s that EWT has been predicting.

I remain long gold and silver, but I'm not steadfast about it.