My foot is falling asleep, but I don’t want to disturb them. Sheesh. Freakin’ Yin and Yang:
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.
Tempo-Bull
Well, I am a very patient bear (in case you didn’t figure that out, since I’ve been slogging it out from 2009-2015) but a very impatient bull. I bought a bunch of longs yesterday, including sizably big positions in XOP, XME, FXI, EEM, and others. They all did great today – – every single one with a profit, and some of the profits quite large. But I looked at this chart………
And there were two very clear things:
(1) I think we can all agree that this is what we call a “downtrend”;
(2) The sensational bump higher today was getting awfully close to filling its gap
So, at the risk of missing out on a ton of bullish profits, I am “pure bear” again – – although LIGHTLY so (way more than half my portfolio is in boring old cash).
Volume Thrusts As An Indicator
If you look at the bottom of the daily chart below you can see that I have added some annotations and shading to highlight where there are spikes in the daily volume well over the average. I mark these up because these volume spikes occur at, or very close to, reversal areas, and the last two days have generated these spikes. I’ve looked at these in 2008/9 and the main differences in a bear market/crash situation were that the average volume was higher, and it often took more volume spikes to turn in very strong moves. Volume spikes like this will generally deliver a swing low within two or three days. That might just deliver a rally, but to just keep running lower would be a rarity. That is the overall context today. SPX daily chart:
Just Like Old Times
It seems like years since we’ve heard from the central bankers and their never-ending “stimulus”, but Mario Draghi broke the silence this morning by hinting at – yep – more stimulus (because it’s worked oh-so-well and making Europe the dynamic economic powerhouse that it is today). And down the Euro goes………..
Confidence Man
Springheel Jack and I have a couple of things in common with our posts today: first, like him, I want to apologize for being so late. I’ve been very “out of it” today dealing with my totally unexpected new family additions. Second, judging from what Jack said in his post, we both had a “dog” issue stalling us.
Before I forget, a big shout out to Jack for his AMAZING call last year, when he shorted the ES at almost the exact top. From what I gather, he covered today for something like 300 handles on the ES. Good gravy, Jack, congratulations! That is totally amazing!
