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.

Don’t Get Cute

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Now that the market has turned down, I imagine most bears – who have been dying for this moment – are telling themselves that they'll get in when the prices are better.

I'm among them. The difference is that I've got 85 open positions, all bearish, and I intend to keep them. I'm pretty sure the market will move against them, and that's OK. I'm so deeply in profits on them already that it doesn't matter. I'm willing to wait it out.

If we do push higher – and I pray God that we do – I've got a veritable truckload of new shorts I'm waiting to get into.

But here's the thing – – back in March, as the market was undergoing another sea change, people kept saying I'll Wait For A Better Price. They knew the market was moving higher, but they didn't want to pay "top dollar" after a big surge. Let's call this thinking IWFABP. I was affected by it. And here we have it:

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The problem is that a better price never showed up. Not even once. So……..

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I cheated myself out of the vast majority of the rally this year by waiting for the "right price." I'll be damned if I'm going to repeat that mistake in the other direction.

Your friend Tim remains firmly entrenched and shall add to his short positions on any pushes higher. Come and get me!

Bye-Bye, Watch Lists

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So far today I…..

  • Covered my GLD short immediately at the open for a small profit (phew/thank goodness); I was surprised how weak the dollar was with the /ES sell-off, so I figured it was time to scoot away from GLD
  • Went long a small position (10 contracts) the /ES
  • Closed my UNG, GLD, and BLK puts

As a side note, I have removed the watch lists widget from the blog permanently. No need for an explanation – – nothing bad happened – – but I figured it would be prudent.

Steer wheel today, shipmates. We are in rough seas!

Reality Bites

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First off, I have declared Comment Bankruptcy. I’ll never catch up with comments, so cold reality catches up with OCD behavior. Reality wins.

Second, I was at my desk well before the jobs report. When it came out, it made sort of a “voomp” sound. As I’m typing this, the /ES is down over 11 points. It seems the consensus estimate for lost jobs was 170,000, but the actual figure was 263,000 lost.

Why is this a surprise? And why on Earth was it a surprise yesterday that – – – once taxpayer-funded bribes to the public (“cash for clunkers”) were removed from the picture, that auto sales would collapse? Don’t you think that all the latent buying would have been exhausted by now? Yet another brilliant government waste of money.

Anyway, I’m not sure if we’re going to see 10,000 on the Dow again, folks.

The countertrend rally………..is over.

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