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.

Getaways

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In spite of the late-day run-up, I had a pretty terrific day. Both my options and my equity accounts appreciated, and my equity portfolio beat the general indexes by 100 basis points, approximately (in other words, if the market is up 0.50%, I expect to be down 0.50%; but if it’s up 0.50% and I’m also up 0.50%, and I’m entirely short, I consider that a 100-point beat, which is really, really cool). It goes without saying that when the market was down earlier in the day, I was really up.

It’s not all sunshine and petunias, however. As I’ve stated before, my fear is biting me in the ass, and I’ve really got to let these positions blossom (or, in my case, rot). Here are a couple of put options I sold at a profit, only to see the profit become more………errr………profitable. (more…)

Another Glorious Victory for TA

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I have only two small screens today, not my usual eight large screens, but even in these primitive conditions, I am loving what I am seeing. Blood, chaos, and crumbling stock prices everywhere. Keep this up for a few years, and I can find my bliss. I’ll mention one stock in particular (which I’ve pointed out many, many times both here and on TT) – CREE – that has fulfilled its destiny of closing its gap. Sure, it could keep falling, but at least this goal has been met. Huzzah!

0428-CREE

Amazon’s Bear Market

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Most of you know that I’m hanging out in Bellevue right now, the land of Amazon and Microsoft (there’s a pretty fierce bidding war going on for Slope right now, and I’m weighing offers in the vicinity of eight hundred dollars, plus a box of my choice of office supplies, which is bundled with the Amazon term sheet). It’s pretty amazing how swiftly the likes of Amazon have lost value; the chart below doesn’t even capture today’s debacle, but Bezos & Company have seen over a quarter of the value of their organization (many tens of billions of dollars in former “wealth”) blown straight to hell. I think there’s plenty more to come. This is my kind of market.

0428-AMZN