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.

Mental Breakthrough at Chinese Buffet (by Nathaniel Goodwin)

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My Mom's new boyfriend Ted (AKA, jagoff who took over my room and made me move in with grandma) took us all out for Chinese buffet Sunday afternoon. He made us all read our fortune cookies out loud and said we had to add "in bed" to the end of the fortune; he gets a real kick out of that.

Mom's was, "The happiest person is the one without a history… in bed" I call total bullshit on that one since I pretty much have no history in bed, and I'm pretty unhappy about that.

Grandma's was "Your everlasting patience will be rewarded sooner or later… in bed" She promptly stated, "Oh this one should be for you Nathaniel!" Stupid old bag, she jumps on every opportunity possible to zing me…

Jagoff's fortune was "Present your best talents today to an eager and welcoming audience…. in bed." Mom was swooning, and I puked up in my mouth when he read that. 

My fortune read, "Take time to deliberate but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in… in bed" That one makes no sense at all (the in bed part), but I kind of dug the actual fortune. The past few weeks I've seen a lot of good bullish (cringe) setups / formations that I planned to act on, then talk myself out of it when the moment presented itself because I'm doing too much analysis, too bearish and too mentally beat up. When the market is open, I really need to "stop thinking and go in" when I see a setup take place. I need to trust my analysis and not be afraid.

I can't believe how many breakouts I saw last week; ones that I sat and looked at for days or weeks before thinking, "this looks pretty bullish", but refused to act upon.

One of the only ones I did act on was SQM. It has been in a nice slow ascending triangle for weeks. An ascending triangle is a bullish formation that usually breaks to the upside. Even though I have been really bearish I put some trust in the chart and stuck with it, last week it did pay off. I wish I would have put a little more trust into some of the other charts I saw.

SQM 

 

2009 did some real mental damage to me, but I can't really blame anything but myself. Technical Analysis is not broken or "just not working anymore" like I have heard many frustrated traders say. That SQM chart (as well as many others) is proof to me that it is working. I think I just need to push some of my fears aside, and "take time to deliberate but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in…."

Fans Lines of the Ages

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This weekend has still been very much in "Mind-Whirling" mode. I have also been in constant contact – in person, on the phone, and via email – with a variety of folks from the trading world – – all of them whip-smart, and all of them as bewildered at the market as me. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only one scratching a valley into my scalp.

Since 90% of my invited guest writers seemed to have skipped town, and the only 10% contribute every now and again (which I appreciate, believe me), I am sometimes feeling a bit short on material: particularly on a Sunday morning, when I emptied my modestly-sized noggin out the prior day..But I landed on one interesting item I've noticed, which is the extremely long-term Fibonacci Fan lines on the S&P 500.

I've drawn a couple of them, both of them starting July 8, 1932 (yep, nearly 80 years ago) and ending on March 24, 2000 (for one) and October 11, 2007 (for the other). The lines, over the decades, have been amazing guideposts for market action. For instance, during the 70s:

0110-70s
 

……..in the late 80s and early 90s……..

0110-80s
 

So what does it tell us today? Well, the S&P seems to be facing off with two of these levels. As you can see in the chart below (and take note how, last March, it bounced beautifully off the 61.8% line) we are just about precisely at one of the fan lines (suggesting a resistance level) and about 75 points away from another fan line (from the other series).

0110-current

So what this tells me is that, unless we get some weakness almost immediately, we're in for about another 75 S&P points on the upside, coinciding with very late March/very early April (which kind of plays well into the "people will start selling for tax reasons in March" scenario).