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.

More Improvements to Comments System

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As most of you know, Slope of Hope has its own customized comments system (whose development was funded through the advertisements displayed on the site). There are a few recent improvements that I'd like you to know about:

Cleaner Tool Bar

The tool bar has always been there, but after the umpteenth person asked me to add a Search function to the comments system (which has been there for a while), I decided to make it a little more obvious. Also, there's a new link – "Shares" – which I'll discuss in a moment.

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Top Shared Items

There are four kinds of "comments" you can add – (1) a comment (2) a trading idea, either long or short (3) a link to something of interest (4) a chart. The comments system tracks the most popular links (that is, type #3 which Slopers have posted) and lets you see an organized list of the most popular items. I guess the current top link isn't too much of a shock.

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Better Searching

There are a couple of improvements to search. First, the results are now returned in reverse chronological order. Second, you can now click on a user's name and get just the results for your search from that one particular individual. For instance, in the dialog below, a search for the word "absurd" yields some results. Let's say I just wanted to see instances of this in which just Goatmug used this word. I would click on his username:

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…..and, voila……

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Tweetable Comments

This is probably the coolest new feature of all – for those of you using Twitter, you can now Tweet a specific comment to all your followers. In other words, they will be provided a link which will zip right down to the specific comment. Just click the new Tweet button. Cool stuff, eh?

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By the way, if you have your own blog and you like this comment system, you can get it for free. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these new features. We have the most active community of any financial blog, and I think it's getting better all the time!

Technical Difficulties (by Springheel Jack)

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I'm having some problems with my main computer this morning, so this post will have to be short, and I'll only post charts for SPX, NDX, RUT and the Vix. Obviously that was an amazing week for the bulls last week, and the main equity indices punched through their daily bollinger bands and have stayed above them so far. Obviously these indices are all now very short term overbought and due for a retracement, but the stats for the second trading day of the month are fairly bullish and we may not see that today. Short term SPX, NDX and RUT are all in very narrow and steep rising channels and are approaching potential reversal areas that are all possible necklines for continuation IHS that could form here. I have that at 1344-5 on SPX at the Feb high:

On NDX the possible neckline area is at 2375:

On RUT the potential neckline area is at 848.30:

Vix reached the bottom of the daily bollinger bands and touched it on the last three days of last week. Vix has also now reached the support zone that marked lows in April and May:

Some notes on other things of interest. Silver is holding the broken support trendline so far though it is being tested a second time at the moment. EURUSD has broken declining resistance but has also broken the rising channel and appears to be making a short term top. This may just be a small retracement. Oil has broken declining resistance and is testing 96. A break of 96 with confidence would look pretty bullish. 

It's still possible that the equity indices are forming the right shoulder on large H&S patterns, but the move last week was so strong that that now seems much more doubtful. The rise was so strong that the rising channels are incredibly narrow and no bear patterns have had a chance to form. The depth of the first retracement should tell us a lot when we see it, but at the moment the presumption here really has to be that we are going to see more upside, and that dips should be bought until demonstrated otherwise.