Long Apple (AAPL)
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.
The One Red that Matters
I’m going to make this post rather fast for one reason: squirrels. You see, the squirrels around town get up at a very specific time, and once they are up and about, it’s all over for me and my dog walk. You’ve never had your arms yanked off quite so swiftly as when a bunch of bushy black tails are scampering around and two very large, strong dogs are intent on pursuing them. So I need to scoot while I have a chance.
In any event, you all know my fixation on crude oil and my bearish positioning on energy stocks. In spite of yet another very green day on ES and NQ, I’m feeling pretty good about this morning, because crude continues to weaken. It seems that the OPEC meeting this month turned out to be just a fake, fabricated, anti-market contra-trend joke, and the true direction of commodities has resumed. I remain gleefully long ERY and DRIP and short a hodgepodge of energy issues, each of which I detailed last weekend.
Partying Like It’s 1999
I didn’t get to the post in RTH today, so I thought I’d do something different today and have a close look at NDX (Nasdaq 100). This is worth doing as there can be little doubt which index has been driving the bull bus in recent months, so I’ve been looking it carefully and am taking the opportunity to share what I’m seeing there tonight, with my normal mainly SPX-centric view back for tomorrow’s post.
The shorter term setup here is a rising channel from the April low within a larger rising channel from the November ’16 lows. The two channel resistance trendlines are intersecting this week in the 5830 area and that is the obvious target for NDX this week.
A Positive Negative Day
In spite of a VIX scraping zero and a SPY that fell all of nine hundredths of a single percentage point, my lovingly-crafted portfolio had a good day. I gained 1.6% on the day with my entirely short portfolio, and my “ETF Only” portfolio hit a lifetime high in value. It comprises a mere three instruments: DRIP, ERY, and FAZ. Those are all triple-leveraged.
Those energy ETFs are particular favorites of mine. Here is one of them, which is about to reach escape velocity away from its cup with handle pattern:
