Originally published on TheTechTrader.com.
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.
What Makes a Top, Part Two (by Leaf West)
As I am sitting here on Wednesday pre-Fed I decided to look at the daily SPY chart and what I saw made me dust off my Jan 20th blog …. enjoy, you Leaf_West haters!
Back on Jan 20th I posted a blog that compared the topping action to the then current conditions of the SPY (see Jan 20th blog). What started my thinking on Jan 20th was the possible "shot across the bow" that often are evident at the start of a topping process.
After the first shot across the bow in April, the market grinded higher … I pointed this out and posted the following chart:
Wedge on a Ledge
Well, Fed Day is behind us, and that's a good thing. I hate all the noise it causes. Its biggest effect today seems to have been to push the $VIX to ever-lower levels.
I've been working on my latest book (in case you haven't heard, I've written a bunch of 'em, including this one I mention from time to time about ProphetCharts), and last night I finished my chapter on the ascending wedge pattern. I was struck by the SPY graph and the fact that it sports two gorgeous ascending wedges, one of which was gloriously pierced last Spring (ahhh, those were the days, weren't they?) Of course, it was a POMO-free market, so it actually had a chance to go down before Bernanke could shove his index finger into that dyke.
Anyway, the similarities of these moves is pretty obvious. The problem is that the wedge hasn't been broken yet. If and when it ever does, I will definitely make a lot of noise about it here.
Eye on Precious Metal Names (by Paulenoff)
This is shaping up to be a very important and a very interesting day for the precious metals and the mining names. With oil inventories putting pressure on U.S. oil prices in general, it remains to be seen if oil's impact presses other commodity prices lower — in particular, the precious metals.
If the mining issues remain bid, and buoyant today, then we could come to the conclusion that they are following the equity market lead, rather than the weakness in commodities. Right now, my technical work argues in favor of price stability followed by potent recovery rallies in Barrick Gold (ABX) and Silver Wheaton (SLW).
As for the commodities themselves, looking at the daily charts in the precious metal's ETFs from last night's close, a sustained up-day today will indicate that at the very least the corrective leg from the January 3 high at $30.44 in the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and from the December 7 high at $139.81 in the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) is over, and that a recovery rally period already is in progress. With that said, it is imperative that Tuesday's lows at $26.03 and $129.07 remain intact and viable.
Originally published on MPTrader.com.
Old Tech
Some of the more enticingly weak charts I've been finding lately have been of old-school companies with decades of history that are, to be blunt, past their prime. In each of the examples below – Eastman Kodak (the former film giant) and Xerox (the former copier giant), they had a go at some kind of breakout (tinted in magenta) but, once it dawned on the investing world that these firms were not about to undergo some kind of corporate renaissance, they sold off again hard. I came into the day short XRX but covered as it got close to its supporting trendline (it could fall much further, but I am being terribly cautious today).
