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.

Apple Rushes to Fill the Gap

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Apple was a major beneficary of the mad rush-to-buy that took place today. Its gap is just about closed, and I haven't seen an up-spike like this in Apple for ages. To quote ZeroHedge:

Today's AAPL move, on no news, is as of this moment a $35+ move in one trading session, or a $30+ billion market cap move in one trading session, and a nearly $60 move from the Friday lows. As the histogram below shows, in absolute terms, this is the second largest intraday move up in the stock in the past two years, and a 4 sigma move for a stock which has moved 7% on a 1.7% standard deviation, for no other reason than the "stock is oversold" or whatever other narrative those who put narratives to stock moves have ascribed to it today.

1119-aapl

Bear Market Holiday Sale (by Phantomcapital)

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On Thursday I wrote a post titled "That Time of Year Again."  Basically, I
was calling for a major snap back rally to take the S&P back to the north
side of 1400.  While the market ripped
the bears to shreds today, another more interesting November needs to be
examined.  And that my friends, is a
November that occurred in the beginning of a bear market; November 2007. 

It seems everyone and their
brother was talking about a possible snapback rally on Friday.  1400 was a virtual given according to
conventional wisdom.  Today’s action
absolutely confirmed that we are in the midst of the snap back rally.  However, the difference between November 2011
and November 2007 is that we are now in a bear market.  As before, I’d like to present a few charts
with numbers (they are markers for my comments, not waves) to make a very
bearish case. 

SPX November 2007

(more…)

Lazy Trade Long & Short: ODP & LULU (by Ryan Mallory)

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Today's lazy trade long and short comes as we are finally getting a solid bounce out of this market and likely to push higher throughout the week. The short setup, Lululemon (LULU) looks great, and if I didn't think that this market would rally for the better part of this week, I'd already re-short this stock. 

But instead, I'm going to keep LULU in my back pocket to short if this market decides to surprise and reverse lower, then LULU will be the first stock I take on. 

ODP looks really good as well as it has a nice box/coiling setup over the past couple of weeks, and as of today, is looking to make a move to the upside by pushing through $2.98.

[UPDATE: Took a long position in ODP at $2.98]

Here's today's lazy trades long and short setups

LONG: Office Depot (ODP)

Office Depot ODP breakout play long

SHORT: Lululemon (LULU)

Lululemon LULU short swing-trade setup

Be sure to check out more of Ryan's Swing Trading Strategies at SharePlanner.com

A Fine Start

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It's been a long time since I've been so pleased to see a strong opening. I came into the day with large long positions in TBT, GDX, and IWM. The Dow 30, shown below, suggests to me that the "bounce" I am ceaselessly talking about is a little more than 50% complete, and the GDX, shown as the second chart of this post, is nearing the underside of its channel too.

1119-indu

The drumbeat I am hearing is "they will print", and sure, they will, but they also already have. People are treating the idea that the Fed will puke up new "money" as some kind of revelation. It's just more of the same. The charts I look at are jumping-up-and-down short opportunities, provided we get to the levels I've been talking about. Today is a important and constructive day into fooling the world that Everything Is Just Fine Again.

1119-gdx