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.

Weekly Sector Report: 05/14/10 (by Leisa)

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The market had a bounce last week, with the DJUS Total Stock Market Index advancing 2.74%. There are 148 subsectors. You can easily see the top/bottom performers by going to the WSJ industry page.
Below is a 1 week performance view for the 10 best/worst performing subsectors (industries):

(data courtesy of WSJ).

You can find this information for a number of time periods, and it it updated daily. It's a great way to perform an end of the day review and wrap your head around the market action beneath the indices. I've created a full report of the 148 sectors sorted by weekly performance along with the weekly/daily charts of the 24 broad sectors here. You will need to rotate the chart pages counter clockwise for easy viewing.
My individual charts use a 13/34 period exponential moving average. I'm interested in the relationship of these two lines to each other (e.g. is the 13 moving toward or away from the 34?) and the relationship of price to these two lines. I included thumbnail sketches of all 24 sectors so that you can see all of them at a glance. Stockcharts uses a 20/50 moving average that is not editable in this thumbnail view. The same concept is at work though–short moving averages v. longer moving averages and the price relative to those. Currently all 24 sectors see price action below the 20 period and 8 of the 24 sectors have the 20 day below the 50 day.

What a Crazy Week/Month (by Nathaniel Goodwin)

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So I'm finally back home from Slopefest, and I think I had a great time. Honestly the whole week was a blur and I don't remember much of it at all. I hope I got to meet some of you there, and thanks Tim for pulling it all together.

I was going through some of the pics on my camera, and I don't remember any of them. The following photo is really the only one I'm willing to share, I found the others extremely embarrassing and deleted them immediately. I do have my doubts on whether this was a Slopefest-sanctioned event or not.

The Colonel would always tell me, “Female strip clubs only attract horny dudes, Cuz! Sometimes you need to think outside the box to get poon!” He said that one should visit male strip clubs to find horny chicks. So I think/hope this is what I was doing at this place.

Vegas1
 

Anyway, I’m glad to be home, and for some reason I fired up a monthly chart of the SPX. May 2010 is about 1/2 over now, and we have one ugly candle or bar forming this month. I do not think this monthly bar looks good for the bulls (long term). This is the sort of monthly bar that would make me want to protect my 401K if I had one (which I don’t). “Long term investors” should look at this bar and start paying attention to protect their gains over the past year. 

From 1991 to 2000 we have only three months that compare to the size of this red candle. From October 2002 to October 2007 (the next bull run) we have zero red bars that are similar or greater to May 2010.

SPX

Who knows; we could blast off to new highs in the next few months, but this red bar is scary. Makes me want my mommy.