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 | 01/28/11 (by Leisa)

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Such a day in the market on Friday!  The unrelenting march forward was stopped and then pushed back.  For the week, though, the change was merely a .35% decline.  However, looking at the sector/industry charts, you will note that that there has been some serious damage done to these charts.  Drilling down to individual stocks, the carnage is even more brutal.

We must be ever cognizant that market indices are like a house which goes up brick by brick.  For an index, the bricks are individual stocks and their collective performance.  An index house will eventually roll over once the sector bricks are weakened one by one–but that rolling over is through a successive failures in stocks/sectors. That is why topping is a process. And while the market tops over a period of months (e.g. Financial topped in Feb of 2007 (in fits and starts); Basic Resources topped a full 16 months later), they all seem to bottom at the same time, with October 2008 and March 2009 a collective double bottoming for every sector. I've been providing a view of the total stock market index. 

Let's take a look at that daily chart here (click all images for enhanced viewing):

As we can see by the volume@price bars, we have quite a bit of price memory here.  Note that the last peak is at the bottom of the bar which would offer the next range of support with some worrisome vacuum underneath. How did our sectors fare over the week?

Here are the top/bottom ten performers at the industry level (This is weekly only):

In days such as yesterday when all the world is going to hell (or seemingly so), spotting divergences is informative (for those of you that trade individual securities v. indices).  For those of you inclined that way, this weekend is a good time to review that information which you can do easily on FINVIZ (though I have prepared my usual report for you which you can find here):

  • Industry subsector performance: You can find the industry subsectors here. (sorted in best to worst).  If you like to see this information graphically, you can do so here.
  • Individual stock performance:  You can find individual issues here (sorted best to worst)–be sure to use the filtering tools to pull out thin capitalizations and low priced stocks–a graphical rendition is found here where you can see the sector + individual notables (the good, bad and the ugly).
  • Short interest change:  You can the change in short interest (in addition to the total short interest here.
  • Relative Volume:  Viewing sectors by relative volume can also be fruitful.  You can find that view here.

Let's see where the short interest changes are:

Whether we had a healthful consolidating pullback or something more will be determined with the passage of time. Many of the sector leaders (e.g. automobiles/parts) have been weakening over the past couple of weeks. Price action has moved ahead of the news. News is now coming out that informs the correctness of the market's anticipation of future events.

The market by its nature is anticipatory; however, we should always remember that its crystal ball is cloudy. It does act decisively when its expectations are not met. We should as well. I wish you good trading for next week, and I hope that that you find some use from this week's report.

Silver Bells (by BKudla)

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For the past month Silver has retraced some amazing gains, pretty aggressively, I may add.  But looking at the chart of the miners I selected below, it sure looks like consolidation to me, on the verge of a new upleg. 

Up until the unrest in Tunisia became a contagion in Egypt, I was in the camp of silver going to the $24-25 dollar range, and planned on holding any new purchases until the latter part of February to let that scenario play out.

In March, silver the open interest is growing incredibly, and in that OEX the buyers can demand the physical. Also, investors are emptying the Comex of inventory.  My view is speculators sensing a squeeze will start putting upward pressure on the metals after the February OEX closed.

Now back to North Africa, this is a game changer, people are being reacquanted with risk, and the Precious metals benefit from this.  Also, I cannot see a short term scenario that stops the FED from doubling our money supply again in the next twelve months, So I started buying back into my silver positions this week.

Below, I present three companies for you, AG is a core holding, and above $12.40 I will complete my buy program (gap fill and hold), EXK, I think has already broken out, and added to already.  Finally, HL, it looks like AG's chart (I do not own it).

 

Ag_2011-01-29_0553 
EXK_2011-01-29_0540 
Hl_2011-01-29_0548 

SPY Daily Recap (by Leaf West)

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St Louis 06 Wow what a day … the market that was looking for a reason to correct and got it in the form of Egypt's public protests.  I guess we know why the US gov't keeps extending unemployment benefits, food stamps etc.  It doesn't seem possible but without these programs, the scenes from Egypt could very well be coming from Chicago or Detroit or …..

After that pleasant thought, let's review the day's action in the SPY …

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