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.

Top Tick Truisms

By -

Last Monday, I wrote a post called Top Tick Tyler, which essentially pissed and moaned about how the various “this time for sure!” reasons for the market to fall, as offered up by ZeroHedge, had collectively amounted to Jack Squat. (It is probably no coincidence that, on that very day, the Dow Industrials reached its highest level in the history of the universe).

One of my readers took the time to email me a lengthy response. I asked for permission to reprint it, which he kindly gave. Here it is, along with my response embedded in bold:

Hi Tim,

I apologize at the beginning for the length of this email. You are a swell guy, if anything here offends you, it was not my intent and I apologize even before I begin.

Interestingly enough, any time an email begins like this, it’s usually a very thoughtful and friendly missive. (more…)

Relativity

By -

Friday was a very interesting trading day for me, and I thought I’d share my memories of it since I think it is instructive about both risk and emotional management.

As most of you would probably guess, I came into the day completely short. But I wasn’t just short: I was Herve Villechaize short. So short I could jump off a nickel. You get the idea.

In spite of the fact that Monday registered the highest closing price in the 13 billion year history of the universe for many indexes, including the now-Apple-laden Dow 30 Industrial Average, I’m a dauntless bear, and I spent the week shorting, shorting, and then shorting some more.

Before I go further, I should explain a couple of elements of my trading that are important to this story. First off, since I’m a constant-as-the-Northern-Star permabear, I judge my own performance inversely. If the market is down, I certainly want to be up. And if the market is up, I know I have to tolerate being down.

(more…)