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.

50 Reasons Why This Bull Market Has Longer To Run

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I always love reading titles to articles that tell me I am about to read a bunch of “reasons” as to why a market is going to do something. So, I thought I would write my own.

When someone presents you with such an article, this is what they are really saying:

The stock market is logically going to decide to move in a specific direction because the reasons for it to do so are stronger than the reasons for it to move in the opposite direction.

Ultimately, the underlying premise of these articles is that a market moves based upon logic and reasoning.

So, let me ask you some questions:

With what logician did the analyst consult in order to come up with their analysis?

And, when was the last time you read analysis from a logician in order to determine the direction for the stock market? I mean, would it not make the most sense for logicians to provide analysis for the stock market if one believes that we should be looking into reasoning for the market to move in a specific direction?

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Survivors and Thrivers

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In this lifetime-highs-every-single-day environment we’re in, it’s astonishing that the vast majority of my short positions remain profitable. I’m not aggressive in the least right now – – about 130% of my cash buying power is being used (“aggressive” is twice that) – – and I am being very impatient with non-performers.

Here are thirteen individual shorts I am in right now that I wanted to share. This is a gallery, so you can click on any thumbnail and scroll left and right to see the SlopeCharts at a more legible size.

Friendly Reminder to Torture Yourself

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I want to remind everyone of Slope’s extremely unique page called Woulda Shoulda Coulda which lets you enter in any hypothetical trade and find out:

  • What it would be worth today;
  • What percentage change would have take place;
  • What maximum drawdown you would have had to endure at any point;
  • What the maximum loss would have been from your original investment.

As an example, let’s say the day after I sold Prophet, I put $50,000 into NFLX, which was a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the cash that went into my account.

nflxshoulda

So this reveals a $50,000 investment in Netflix would be worth nearly $12 million today. This assumes, of course, I would have had the testicular fortitude to ignore a 22% drop in value and, far worse, a nearly 83% drawdown during this holding period.

I would normally be jumping off a bridge at this point, but I know there’s no way in hell I would have held on, so I’m going to let myself off the hook.

Baby Steps

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I was expecting a modest retracement in my last post and we have seen one. I was looking at the setup on the premarket video today and there is a probable short term low here testing support at the ES weekly pivot, open gap support on SPX and the 50 hour MA. We should see a short term higher high next and that will likely be setting up a larger retracement to follow. That’s working out so far.

Partial Premarket Video from theartofchart.net – Update on ES, NQ:

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