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.
Roughly one week ago we exited what would be a profitable directional trade in XOP.
XOP had climbed into a short-term overbought state, so I decided to short the ETF using puts. Now typically, I am a seller of options, but the set-up was just too good to pass up for an aggressive style trade so I bought a few puts. The result was a 74% gain over just a few trading days. While I’m not going to anticipate similar results this time around, I am excited about the opportunity ahead. (more…)
Coach (COH) took a header on earnings last week…
But it was punished far too much. (more…)
Today I watched a documentary about Bill Hicks (the adjunct Patron Saint of Slope, 2nd only to George Carlin, blessed be his name). It was fantastic. Here’s a trailer for it: (more…)
Well for one thing, gold has often experienced strength during periods when long-term yields have risen. The yellow bars on the 2 lower panels of the chart below show that. Yet on this cycle, gold has gone down as long-term yields have risen. (more…)
During the second half of 2012, “for-profit” education companies (the ones such as ITT Technical Institute that advertise on television all the time) were getting pummelled. The basic story was that the graduates from these “colleges” were pretty much unemployable, and thus unable to pay back their (huge) Fed loans. The Feds were getting sick of it and started to clamp down, so COCO, ESI, DV, and many others plunged. (more…)
