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.

Trading in an Up-Trend Day (by Leaf_West)

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Hi Slopers … as many of you know my blog site is in many ways more an educational site that attempts to help less experienced traders/investors to learn how become better "fisherman" rather than a spot that just talks about the latest stock tip.

To that extent I often receive requests from readers asking about an issue that people are having trouble with.  That happened a fair bit after the market on Friday and on Saturday morning.  The issues that people were having trouble with is how to get involved with stocks to the long side on an Up Trend Day.  I have posted pretty extensive Trend Day trading guides in the past but I haven't done one in awhile so I wrote a post on Saturday afternoon.

The post looks at the trading in WYNN from reviewing the set-up on Thursday evening to the intra-day opportunities from Friday … what I really wanted to highlight for readers was how traders can still get involved on a good risk/reward basis with a strong trending stock even if you weren't there from the market open.

Anyways, I am giving this preamble so that people NOT interested in looking at intra-day trading in Up Trend Days, can avoid trying to read the attached long blog posting.

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July!!

Leaf_West

 

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Foodstamps Are Still Going Like Hotcakes! (by Goatmug)

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April's SNAP (Food stamp program) data release provides another glimpse into the on-going recovery we are not having for our economically challenged folks.  The Food stamp roles continue to show monthly gains to levels that have not been seen.

The number of participants receiving government benefits now totals 44.65 million citizens that count on government distribution of taxpayer funds for meals.  Clearly the cost doesn't stop there as these same recipients also probably qualify for health care services and child care benefits.  Don't get me wrong, this lifestyle isn't so grand as the average person receives $131.00 a month in support and the average family takes in $282.00 a month in payments for food related help.  It is just mind blowing to me that 14.5% of our entire nation is living on the taxpayer dole.  I'm sure there are a large number of folks out there that are too independent to actually apply for these benefits even though they qualify for them.

I find it compelling that our stock market continues to rip higher (kinda) while our population of non-stockholder SNAP participants continues to increase.  In other words, the divide between the haves and have-nots continues to increase.  Interestingly, the policies of the Federal Reserve to increase inflation to their 2% inflation target will exacerbate this problem!  Those people that don't have assets that will appreciate more than inflation or at least hopefully keep pace with it will fall deeper and deeper into a hole made entirely by our own central bank!  We better hope that this commodity price inflation is transitory Uncle Ben.

APRIL SNAP DATA

Here are a few more details of the report. 

USAGE FACTS

1 month increase or decrease   + .14%

YTD increase or decrease  +1.0%

YOY increase or decrease +10.4%

ANY GOOD NEWS HERE?

As a glass half-full kind of goat I always look for the positive and I see two things that make me optimistic.  First, we see a drop in the actual total benefit cost of the program, in April the cost declined by $33 million.  This is great news, and keeps us from eclipsing the $6 Billion annual cost level.  This drop in pricing is only the second one in almost two years. 

Second, the rate of change of people coming on to the program is now almost at zero (.14%) which is the second lowest total since November 2008 when there was a drop of 1.7% of the participants in the program.  These are great signs and I'm hopeful the drop is a symptom of higher employment for our nation.  Perhaps all those shovel-ready projects are coming on line now?  Perhaps.

Please stop by the blog at www.goatmug.blogspot.com I'm posting daily now and have seen traffic increase to about 100 visits a day (ok 50 of them are mine, but thanks for checking in, it makes the effort worth it!).  I've posted some great documentary stuff on Greece and Argentina in the last few days, it is well worth the time to view it.

GOATMUG

Thus Far

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Back on June 12th, I wrote this post that I thought was important enough to tag as a Hall of Fame inductee. In it, I speculated the following might be coming up:

(a) a push higher, beginning this week, lifting the S&P to the ~1340 level;

(b) a stalling by sometime in July, at which time the indexes will have lifted high enough to give relief to the politicians and re-excite people about IPOs like GRPN, P, and so on;

(c) a weakening in August, accelerating in September, completing a well-formed right shoulder;

(d) a big break in September or October down to ~1130 on the S&P

Well, there's no doubt that (a) has come true with flying colors. So far, so good. When I wrote the post, we were just about at the lows for the month, and the explosive move higher pushed the S&P to 1339.67 at Friday's close. (sounds like "~1340" to me!)

Now, if the market makes an obscene gesture at us poor bears and simply floats higher to 1400 and beyond, well, we can just quietly crumble up the above speculation and toss it into the waste basket.

On the other hand, if we get weakening on July 5th (or just fart around these levels – thus, "stalling") we can assume that we're in the (b) zone. When full-on 'tard equities like P and LNKD are lurching up double-digit percentages each day, something must be amiss.

I confess the lift higher has been a skosh faster than I would have anticipated. I mean, the Dow went up over 700 points in just over a week! But the simple fact is that things are, thus far, playing out as hoped. It seems peculiar a bear would hope for a spirit-crushing lift in equity prices, but, yeah, I did.

Recent market history always seems to color the views of traders. If things are plummeting for a while, the bears speak of 400 on the S&P and laugh at the bulls for their doe-eyed idiocy.

On the other hand, after a week like last one, we bears- from ZH to SOH – look, quite frankly, like cynical, tin-foil-hat-wearing a-holes. It's not my cup of tea, believe me.

It's all up to next week. If we have another bullish week, a lot of my current views on the market are going to get demolished. The only three words I can guarantee 100% at this point are: we shall see. All the same, keep an eye on the pattern I laid out earlier last month.

0702-lnkd

Slope End Of Day Video for Week Ending 070111

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Brian Johnson here with an end of the week wrapup. Are you all tired of me yet?!?! What an amazing week we had! That wave 3 really put the bulls in a giddy mood before the three day weekend. I hope you all got to play along this week. Great moves on FAS and FAZ, great moves on the Indices, I’m very excited with how the week went. I might actually be able to afford a Pabst Blue Ribbon tonight! I know….I like the expensive stuff.  I hope you all have a great weekend and I’m glad to be able to give back to Tim’s site. He needs a rest every now and then so I hope he and his family enjoyed themselves this week.