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.

Fib Fans and the Pathway

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A thoughtful Sloper wrote me this morning, pointing out that if you draw fan lines from the peak on 5/2 to the low on 8/9, they provide a very clean target for the "plan (b)" I mentioned in yesterday morning's post.

Now, I am offering this chart two and a half hours before the Euro and ES markets even open, so I'm putting this out there without the hugely important "tell" from those markets. But, again, God hates a coward, so I'm putting a stake in the ground just to be extra-ballsy. Here it is:

0925-pathway

If indeed we do get a push higher, my strategy is simplicity itself:

(a) keep the stops on my shorts wide;
(b) ride the longs higher and dump them once I think we've pooped out on the lift (~1170);
(c) short the living hell out of everything unfortunate enough to have a ticker symbol and be shorter than I've been in ages, covering them in October after the market drops 10%.

Perfectly Split

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I think at this point one of two things will happen next:

(a) we will crash based on some major event, swiftly taking us to 1050 (which, ironically, will really irk me, since I won't be in a position to take advantage); or

(b) we will get a lift up to somewhere around 1170 or 1175 on the ES, and then continue an orderly plunge from there.

I am positioned the best for situation (b). I have a precise 50/50 split in my portfolio – a 38% commitment (62% cash) with exactly 25 long and 25 short positions.

If (a) happens, well, I'll lose on all my longs and will basically make nothing with the exception of any excess drops on my shorts. So it'll be a wash (and a disappointing one!), little better than being wholly flat.

If (b) happens, I'll sell my longs at a nice profit once we finish the push higher, then I'll augment my existing shorts with new positions and go 100% bearish again. And you won't see anything about a 38% commitment, either.

So at this point, I'm market-neutral, although I'm banking on a rise first and then a drop later in the week.

0923-half