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.

Golden Slumbers

By -

Well, the crickets are chirping here in Palo Alto, the sun set long ago, and you lunatics are still filling up the comments section on my Sunday morning post. So I'll freshen the place up a bit before I go to bed.

Far and away my largest short position is in gold. I shorted a honkin' big block of GLD above $100 last week. Glancing at @GCZ9 trading, gold is down nearly $8 right now. My fifth largest position – and it's still a big one – is the ultrabearish on gold DZZ fund. So, it should be obvious, I'm a precious metals bear.

I like being a contrarian. And about the most "contrary" thing you can do these days is to be short gold. Everybody and his brother is convinced gold is going to be at $1300 in no time (based on a complete misinterpretation of the chart pattern), and some of the real tin-foil hat types are looking for gold to be at $5,000/ounce soon. Pffft.

I even saw one prominently-featured comment on MarketWatch's home page a week ago where a guy said "Gold is now four digits. Soon it will be five. Then six. Then seven. You do the math." The only math I need to do is to find out how many milligrams of LSD that guy dropped.

As a swing trade, I'll probably take my profits when gold gets to $970 or so, but I'll just wait for a bounce and short it again.

0920-gold

My General Assessment

By -

Bearish resolve among Slopers is snapping like dry tinder thrust against the knee of insanity. Readers are kneeling down at Mike V's feet to ask him just how high the market is going to go. Even steadily-bearish folks are bracing themselves for the S&P to reach its former lifetime high before turning back again. And the snark level is ready for an entry in the Guiness Book of World Records.

I will give that maybe – just maybe – the Russell 2000 might have 6% more of upside if Obama does God-knows-what-else to prop things up (selling off the national parks to the Chinese, perhaps?). But as I look after index chart after index chart, I'm ready to fall out of my chair with what is around the corner. Honest to God, all I can say is: you people be crazy! And that's all I've got to say about that.

0920-crazy