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.

Equities Testing Resistance (by Springheel Jack)

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If we were not in a very strong uptrend, I would have loaded the boat up short on SPX yesterday, as the bearish reversal setup there is really very nice indeed. The candlestick setup I was looking at yesterday suggested we might see a slightly higher high, which we've seen. Over the last two days rising wedge resistance on SPX has been hit at the high on both days. A Vix Sell (equities) Signal triggered on Wednesday and confirmed yesterday. Decent negative divergence on the 60min and very much on the daily while overbought on both. It really is a nice setup. 

We are in a strong uptrend though and in strong uptrends bear reversal setups can fail repeatedly. That gives some reason for caution here. Another reason for caution is that short term swing tops on SPX have been taking quite a while lately, and the last one just trickled up my resistance trendline for a couple of weeks before the modest subsequent reversal. 

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The Necessary Ingredient to Fuel This Rally

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Below is a percentage comparison chart of the Dow 30, S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 Indices, and the Financials ETF (XLF). I've started it from the October 2011 lows.

As you can see, the Russell 2000 Index has been leading the advance from that point on a percentage-gained basis until the second-place XLF shot above it on March 13th.

The Russell 2000 has been, effectively, in a basing mode since February, but has been moving up from its low of last week and is now near the highs of this year. It had begun pulling further and further ahead of the other Major Indices from mid-December, and they have closed the gap to the point now where they have all been moving up "in tandem" from last week's lows.

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