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.

Stop-Setting

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A reader sent me an email which asked: “I have a question about stops…once before you mentioned that you limit your losses to think 1-5% using stops. How do you decide whether its 1%, 2% or 5% etc? And can I assume that some of your losses are very small numbers like $150 and some are thousands of dollars? ”

As I’ve tried to say before, I avoid responding 1-on-1 to just about anything, so I told the gentleman I’d write up a post about this topic. So here are a few points, in no particular order, about how I set stop-loss levels: (more…)

Straight Up

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Earlier today, I saw something on ZeroHedge which would have made me fall out of my chair if it weren’t for the fact that I use a standing desk:

declaeration

Groan. The thing is, he was extremely specific about his trade: he was short S&P futures, with a stop-loss price of 2741. I guess I don’t need to tell you what happened next.

straightup

The only good news is that we’re a hair’s breadth away from 2741 at this point.