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.

That Time of Year Again (by phantomcapital)

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Ah, the holidays.  A
season celebrating food comas, Christmas decorations before Halloween, cards
sent to people we haven’t spoken to in a year, and pure market insanity.  My favorite time of the year is back again. 

It is no secret that I love looking at historical patterns
and this year Stock Market Santa appears to be flying down from the North Pole
a month early.  November 2011 seems to be
repeating itself all over again.  Below
is a chart with some numbers and lines on it, read the text below and I promise
it will make more sense. 

SPX November

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Sharp Decline in Philly Fed Mfg. Index (by SB)

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Data released today (Thursday) shows a sharp decline in the
Philly Fed Manufacturing Index, as shown on the graph below.

Since
"changes in businesses' sentiment can be an early signal of future economic
activity such as spending, hiring, and investment," it's worth noting this
sharp reversal of the small rally of recent months…particularly as it relates
to the overall longer-term downtrend from the peak in March of 2011. As you can
see, this downtrend is much steeper than the one from 2004 leading to the big
decline in 2008/09…this may be forecasting a repeat of such a downturn in
manufacturing.

All in the Span of Minutes

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Well, if a nation wants a completely-phony, utterly-Fed-manipulated market, this is what they have to live with. For myself, my ONLY losses today were those garnered from (twice) stupidly buying all this "bounce" talk (you guys really need to stop…………) and going long (briefly) a couple of ETFs. Fair value for the Dow is 6,000. It's just going to take the public a couple of years to finally get there.

1115-nq

Downside Targets Reviewed (by Springheel Jack)

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I was very clear about the risks to any bounce setup yesterday on equities and sure enough the setup failed. That increases the odds for the next setup working and we are getting close to the first of the downside targets that I gave last week so I'll have a look to update those targets today. 

On the SPX weekly chart I gave a target at or near the weekly lower bollinger band (BB) on the clear break of the weekly middle BB. That is now at 1340, though this target only fixes at the weekly close, so depending on what happens between now and then I'd put that in a range between 1338 and 1342. Of the last twelve clear breaks of the weekly middle BB nine hit the weekly lower BB and two of the other three were near misses. With yesterday's close at 1355.49 that target is now close:

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