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.

A Sea of Contradictions

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Early this week, when Ms. Whitney was getting this torture-fest started, one Sloper mused, "Who are they going to bring out next? Roubini?" Well, life continues to be stranger than fiction. I was stunned to see Roubini's optimism being held up as the latest evidence of the new bull market. Amazing. Just amazing.

The weakness we saw from June 11 through July 12 has been swept away. If you look at the NASDAQ Composite, the entirety of last autumn's bear market has been retracted. We are just underneath the unfilled gap, and we are at a new high for 2009. Lovely.

0716-finalCOMPQ

There are opposing currents and eddies all over the place. Take a look at the S&P 100 below. The magenta portion is the pattern that shall not be named (and which failed gloriously). And the green pattern, much larger obviously, is its bullish doppelganger. It is conceivable that the S&P 500 (a different index than the one below, but highly correlated) could return to the quadruple digits as soon as next month. I, for one, remain very uncomfortable going long in this market.

0716-finalOEX

I remain cautiously bearish on energy. I'm long DUG and short OIH.

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Unless some miracle happens tomorrow, this will go down as the work week in my life as a trader. On the whole, I did a very good job following my rules, so I don't have a lot of beating-myself-up to do. The simple fact is that I was very badly positioned for this rally (to say the least), and this run-up, for me, was quite unexpected. I will climb out of this hole, but it's going to take a heck of a lot longer than four days.

Vicious Rally Continues

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As the chart below of the /ES shows, what took about 20 days on the downside took only 4 days on the upside to erase. I thought downward moves were the fast ones! But in this case, the bulls did one of the greatest head-fakes in history with that H&S pattern and have been running with the ball (and stomping on bears' throats) for the entire week.

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At least GOOG hasn't poured salt on the wound. In spite of a positive earnings surprise, the stock is down over 11 points in after-hours trading.

I, for one, can't wait for this week to end. I'd appreciate it if God would smile on his humble servant and throw me a bone – even a Milk Bone – tomorrow. This has been quite the quartet of days!

More later………….

Bliss

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If you were an alien considering establishing relations with the people of Earth, and you sought to understand their culture, how likely do you think you would decide to do so based upon these popular suggested Google searches?

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Earth sounds like quite a fun place, doesn't it?

Well, at least you could save yourself some research……..

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He's a complicated man.