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.

Miners Finally Break

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Being a contrarian sucks most of the time, because, well, you're pretty much saying "black" when the rest of the world says "white", and they'll hate you for it.

Of all the broad contrarian calls I've made, few have earned me more wrath than being a miners bear. But precious topped out fifteen MONTHS ago, as did miners, and they've been in a messy, choppy bear market ever since. Today was a pretty big deal, because GDX broke a trendline that has been supporting it since the bottom set in late 2008. That's a big trendline, boys and girls.

1220-gdx

While I'm busy beating my chest, allow me to flip myself off at the same time. I rarely trade options, but I had bought some December $55 GDX puts a while back. I got spooked by the strength in miners (and the destruction of my beloved analog) and sold my puts at just about the worst time (see horizontal line), and they are up nearly 200% now. This isn't the first time that my charts have been right and my trading behavior has been wrong, so this is an especially painful chart for me to gaze upon.

1220-gdxoption

Winding Down (by Springheel Jack)

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So much for statistics, as we did see a significant retracement yesterday, and that has opened up the possibility that we may now see more. If we do see more I'll still be looking primarily at NDX. The retracement yesterday stopped at the first obvious support level. If we see more then the next big support level is in the 2660 area, and I would expect that to hold:

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