Metalico Co, the holding company for 80s big-hair bands, has a beautiful cup with handle pattern. I bought some yesterday.
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.
Harry Boxer’s Charts of the Day
Who is the Enemy? (by Biffermas)
Who are you fighting when trading
the markets? Is it the government, known for a pronounced reverse Midas touch? They've
efficiently screwed up health care, the postal service, Amtrack, Fannnie Mae,
and General Motors, yet they seem to find a cryptic way of propping up a
multi-trillion dollar, multi-faceted market without detection? Are you fighting Goldman Sachs and the high-frequency trading robots camped in New Jersey? Are you fighting the Federal Reserve, with their nefarious
methods of flooding the world with cheap fiat money? Are you fighting chicken entrails, Elliott Wavers, Abby Joseph
Cohen, or the Turtles? Who is the enemy
that prevents you from being right on market direction and trading profits?
When you peek under that mysterious
curtain to find the real force behind the markets, who do you think you're
going to find? I suspect there is
nothing but a simple mirror with your own reflection.
Take responsibility for your
actions. Accept routine failure as the natural course of events. View a
properly taken loss as a success. The
only variable you're ever going to control in this enormous mess is yourself.
Find
your peace, like Dexter, who is pictured on the bottom (Goldman Sachs pictured on top).
Seven Hundred Points To Go?
Regular readers may have a sense of deja vu, but yes, I did a similarly-titled post just a couple of weeks ago. Anyway……
I've seen more than a few pieces of evidence pointing toward the market continuing to push higher through early March. I'm not sure I could stomach that, but having survived the past ten months, I feel that I can steel myself for anything at this point.
More importantly, I've been examining the 1937-1942 analog from a Fibonacci perspective. Here's the Dow 30 from 1937/1938, with retracements drawn between the extremes. Take note of the magenta-tinted area, at 61.8, since that's where the rally pooped out.
Now here's the interesting thing:
(1) On a percentage basis, we have already matched the rally;
(2) But on a Fibonacci retracement basis, we've still got some higher prices to go.
Below is the current Dow 30 chart, drawn with the same retracement levels. The yellow tint shows the 700 Dow points that are left before we're at 61.8% (and I emphasize again, we've already had a sufficient rally in percentage terms, but there's still 700 points of potential upside).
So what's it going to be? A top around here, or a top at 11,250? I think the reaction to Friday's jobs number is going to be a very big indicator as to which of these potentials will unfold.
2009 ES Gap Fill Summary (by TradeFlightPlan)
Long time listener, first time caller here. I enjoy Slope so much,
I decided it was high time I make a contribution. The following is an
excerpt from my blog (tradeflight.com) – hope it helps.
2009 ES GAP FILL SUMMARY
Many traders regard the gap fill on the
E-mini S&P 500 futures contract (designated on many trading
platforms by ticker symbol root ES) as one of the highest probability
trades each trading day.
Well, let’s see if the statistics held true in 2009. The gap fill is
defined by price action that touches or breaks through the closing
price of the previous trading day.
Since many traders regard the 4:00PM Eastern Time close as the gap
to be filled, we’ll use the 4:00PM closing time for our analysis. Many
trading platforms show the ES closing prices based on the 4:15PM
session close, so custom tweaks are required to show the previous
trading day’s 4:00PM closing price.
In this analysis, we track the number of trading days the ES filled
its gap, or at least touched the 4:00 closing price from the previous
trading day. We also observe the hourly time slot the ES first fills
its gap on gap fill days.
Traders often regard the half gap fill as an even higher probability
trade. The half gap is defined as half the distance between the opening
price at 9:30AM Eastern Time and the previous trading day’s 4:00PM
closing price.
No surprise here: Further analysis of the ES reveals that the half gap fill was truly a higher probability trade in 2009.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS
Of course, past performance and 2009 statistics are no guarantee for
future results. And, 60-80% probabilities do not necessarily reflect
optimal trade entry and exit execution points. Finally, not every
trading day affords a gap fill or half gap fill that is worth taking.
Traders must ask themselves whether the remaining distance to the gap
or half gap is worth the risk:reward ratio involved from the point of
entry and stop loss levels. Often, ES gap fill trade setups occur in
premarket globex trading hours, before the 9:30AM opening bell. Trades
always require discretion and should never be placed blindly. However,
astute traders keep these things in mind as they observe what many
regard as one of the highest probability ES trades.
FUTURE ANALYSIS
We can continue our study of ES gap fills by considering 4:15PM closing
prices, the average number of points for trades placed precisely at
9:30AM market open, option expiration day Fridays, etc. Perhaps we’ll
revisit a few of these in the near future.
