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.

Italian Bonds Over 7% (by Springheel Jack)

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I was talking about the possibility yesterday that we could see a major bearish reversal, and we may be looking at that starting now, though a visit to 1185/90 support on ES doesn't become a likelihood until the ES rising channel support at 1240 is broken, and that's holding on the first test so far.

How serious is this move overnight? Potentially very serious indeed. It has been triggered by Italian bond yields moving over 7% and that has been triggered in part by some vey stupid moves by European leaders. Firstly banks in the Eurozone are being very strongly encouraged to mark their weak sovereign debt to market, which means that a lot of them are just reducing or selling out their holdings altogether. Margins on weak debt have also been raised and all this selling has taken italian debt over the important 7% level. Over 7% the debt becomes harder to roll over and Italy is on a slide towards default that may not be easy to reverse. Greece is a small two bit economy that has been a major struggle to rescue. Italy is much bigger and owes an awful lot of money.

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Sweet Jesus on a Pita Bread

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Here we go again. Here we go again. 

This market is hell-bound determined to drive every single one of us nuts.

It was 4 in the morning, and I woke up worrying, as I always do, about what's next. My post yesterday, rightly titled "Beaten" and tagged with a "Defeat" category, grudgingly admitted that I had held back my impulse to wretch violently and had bought some stocks for safety's sake. (I am still net short, as I always am, but not aggressively so).

So, naturally, this story from ZH tells us the news: Italian bond yields are exploding higher, and the world's markets….which until, oh, not that many hours ago didn't seem to break on any news, no matter how bad…..are suddenly in a free fall.

I have 75 short positions, so I'm not that miserable, but I already hate every single one of my 16 longs, and I hate even more the fact that I have no large short ETF positions.

And just you watch. Something completely retarded will happen – – Herman Cain will announce a new Pay-Per-View Porn channel or something – – and everything you are seeing right now will be completely erased.

Bitter much, Tim?