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 Kind of Trade

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This seems like one of those days where all the action is compressed into about five minutes, and the rest of the day is a slog.

As we were "drilling down" into the zone I mentioned in the previous post, it became apparent to me we had hit some bedrock, so I closed out the Russell 2000 puts I bought yesterday. Here was the result:

0930-ruttrade

Very nice! A 20% profit in one day, and without an undue amount of risk. These are the kind of straight directional trades I love. I'm still wild-eyed bearish on the Russell, but I'm going to wait for another good entry point.

For the moment, I took a big long position in GLD – – it's my only truly large position at this point. Let's see if we fight our way back up to about 1052 on the /ES or not.

The Dollar/Equity Decoupling

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I am feeling hopelessly behind on comments – 36 hours – so I might just decide to cut myself loose and accept the fact I'm not going to get a chance to read them. Busy, busy, busy……………………

One very interesting thing I've noticed is how the EUR/USD is starting to decouple from the equity markets. Look at the graph below: notice how the EUR/USD (shown in blue) used to be joined at the hip to the /ES (shown in black). Over about the past week, though, these two don't seem to be even on speaking terms.

0930-decouple

My tin-foil hat theory is that the /ES is a much easier market to manipulate than the tremendously large foreign currency market, so the "truth" is tied more closely to EUR/USD than our friend /ES. One will have to catch up with the other, I think, eventually.

Beat the Meetles

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People often make glowing remarks about "California weather", particularly if they are visitors. This term usually gets deployed during instances of sunny, hot days. When it's sunny and hot, and people gush about California weather, I want to beat them with a beach umbrella.

There are three kinds of California weather I really like:

  1. Heavy snows – the kind of fluffy stuff that comes down for hours and makes for thigh-deep powder skiing;
  2. Fog-bound mornings with absolutely grey skies and a cool mist everywhere you turn;
  3. And the weather we had today – clear skies, strong breezes, and temperatures in the mid-60s.

That third category I find particularly exhilarating. There's something so uplifting about a blustery day; it feels like everything is being swept clean by nature. I confess it's one of the few times I feel really happy.

But you didn't come here for a weather report. The trouble is, I didn't come here to talk about the stock market either. I've got some other things to do: among them, set up and play with the new Beatles Wii game we got (complete with drum set, guitars, and so forth). I've never had any music games before (like Rock Band or Guitar Hero), but I love music, and I love the Beatles particularly, so this should be a kick.

I'll probably do a post much later tonight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.