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.
The real price of gold, as adjusted by commodities is making some nice baby steps toward rebounding. Here is a picture of the gold ETF vs. certain key commodity ETF’s and markets, that show the progress of what would be the most desirable condition (a rising real price) for a healthy gold bull.
I’m not normally interested in stocks with so little history, but this caught my eye this weekend. Be warned, though – as of now, this stock (Border Free) is rather thinly-traded.
I’ve been a customer with Bank of America for decades, and even though I’m content with the 
brokers I already use, I decided to take advantage of their $600 bonus offer for their own firm, Merrill Lynch. The deal was that if you opened up a $200,000 account, and kept it there for 90 days, they’d give you $600. Free money – not bad – and I liked the convenience of being able to easily move funds to and from my checking account seamlessly. So I signed up.
Well, that was just one week ago, and I have un-signed up, transferring all my funds back. I’m willing to learn a new web site; I’m willing to deal with some imperfections; but one thing I can’t abide is products or services that are so littered with flaws as to render them almost unusable. (Long-time readers know that I have endless affection for well-polished products, such as those from Tesla or Dropcam, whereas I have little patience for their opposites). (more…)
SPX punched over the weekly upper band again on Friday for the second punch above the band in the last three weeks,. I don’t want to overemphasize this as a topping signal, but it goes without saying that these punches tend to happen when SPX is looking rather overbought, and on the four previous examples that I have marked on the chart below from the 2011 low, none rose significantly further before a consolidation or retracement period lasting four weeks or more. This would not generally be a place to look for a strong push upwards.
In terms of the primary rising channel, the high on Friday at 1963.91 was just short of my 1965 wedge targets, and was a test of primary rising channel resistance. I had a look at this using the thinnest possible trendlines over the weekend and there is very little play left in the trendline. Even a move to 1970 now would risk breaking it. SPX weekly chart: (more…)
