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.

Risk vs. Reward, AU-Style

By -

The broad market, supported by the glorified boiler rooms on Wall Street, the glorified infomercials in the mainstream financial media and the glorified monetary clerks at the Fed, operates to its own set of rules and cycles.  For instance, now we have conventional investors who used make cracks about their 401k's becoming 201k's actually becoming hopeful that they will regain all of their lost value.  The wonders of inflationary monetary policy has brought this prospect tantalizingly close to becoming reality.  Close, but…

Over in the gold sector however, where investment is actually a form of revolution (against inflationary fiat monetary systems), it is not so easy.  Investors simply must be mindful of the risk vs. reward setups at all times because the same forces arrayed in support of the stock market are lined up against the barbarous relic.  I am not saying this is a conspiratorial cabal, but I am saying that macro manipulation (like the recent 'reworking' of US Treasury yield curves) is just the way it is, whether it is planned out in the shadows to the most minute details, or just the result of embedded 'business as usual' academic myopia in a fiat system.

(more…)

Four Short Setups If This Market Breaks (by Ryan Mallory)

By -

Looking at my short scans, and yes they can seem quite futile in these types of markets, two industries with the most well defined bearish patterns and that are appearing the most often are the energy stocks and utilities. I've included four charts below of short setups that you can take if this market does indeed rollover sometime between now and the next two millennia. 

On a side note, I was talking to a buddy of mine in the financial sector, and he told me that their brokerage firm is receiving an unprecedented surge in applications to become traders and financial advisors. Not surprising though because anyone looks like a genius in this market quite honestly. When the cookie starts to crumble is when you start to sort the wheat from the tares. 

(more…)

Retracement Targets and EURUSD Patterns (by Springheel Jack)

By -

Overnight we got the lower low on ES and the break below 1393.5 that I was looking for yesterday morning, on a string of bad overnight data releases. On ES this looks like something I have seen before, which is a break from a steep uptrend channel into a shallow rising channel, then a break into a shallow declining channel, and next in the process would be a break into a steep declining channel as the retracement gathers pace. Broken support is at 1393.5-5 and I'd like to see that hold. Declining resistance is at 1398.25 and falling fast. In an ideal world we would see a move to the potential neckline at 1384 today, then a bounce to the 1393.5-5 area to make a right shoulder and touch (by then lower) declining resistance, then a strong move down to the next support level around 1370:

(more…)