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 Waves

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First off, the folks at Elliott Wave International wrote me today saying they are kicking off a 17-city How to Trade in a Fast-Moving Bear Market tour from September 4, 2009 to February 2, 2010. You might want to click on the link to see if they'll be anywhere near you, since I really like their work and – – assuming this danged bear market fires its engines up sometime again – – I have found Elliott Wave to be helpful as we stairstep our way down.

Second – speaking of the same folks – here is a graph from their Short Term Update tonight (they allow me to occasionally republish graphs from time to time here) which I like:

0629-nasdaq

As usual, click on the graph to see a bigger version – but it does a nice job labeling the past year of market activity. The horizontal line marked as a .382 retracement is the crucial line in the sand. Either the countertrend rally has exhausted itself (which would agree with the "2" labeling), or what we experienced over nearly four months was simply the first phase of a more hefty push higher.

My money is at least oriented toward the notion of a meaningful "B" wave down, but not cracking March's lows yet. What would harm me the most – and this is why I'm relatively lightly positioned right now! – would be a swift rise above that line, prompted either by (1) end-of-quarter window dressing on June 30 or (2) a surprisingly bullish jobs report Thursday morning.

You know what three words are next………..we shall see!

One More Day

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Well, Q2 2009 is a quarter I'd just as soon permanently forget. It's been a tremendous amount of work for absolutely no profit. I am hoping that July 1 will bring us some relief, so I'm just biding my time until then. I've got about half the positions I would have if I were feeling really confident.

As for the /ES, we're less than a point away from breaking any potential of a true H&S pattern.

0629-es

I'm content letting the final day of the quarter burn by. I've got dozens and dozens of ideas waiting in the wings, but I'm not going to move forward on any of them until right near the close on June 30, at the earliest.

The Risk of Lottery Plays

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From mid-March until this month, low-priced, high-risk issues have been the backbone of my 401-k. They are definitely losing their steam, though, and it's also becoming evident that there are reasons these issues were battered in the first place

Take Lear Corp (LEA), for instance. This stock had a great run-up in the yellow tinted area, shown below. I did pretty well on this ride up. I then "re-loaded" when it headed back toward its trendline, and at first, this seemed like shooting fish in a barrel (see green tint). But look what happened – – it failed to exceed its prior high, it broke its trendline, and it absolutely fell to pieces.

0629-lea

Bear this in mind with such securities – – they are anything but "blue chip!"