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.

ETF Triage

By -

Since I’ve been understandably distracted the past week, I didn’t really get a chance to take a hard look at charts until well after Friday’s close. To some degree, I was shocked at just how persistently strong things remain. This is not across the board, however, so I wanted to break some representative ETFs up into some appropriate groups, going from strength to weakness.

The most “bears might as well give up forever” chart I see is the Industrials, that is the DIA “diamonds”. This is a breakout, no two ways about it. Not only is it a breakout, but it is one from a formidable base. Scary.

(more…)

SPX: Trade With Caution

By -

Isn’t it amazing what Central Bankers can do for markets. Case in point is this compressed view of the S&P 500 Index (SPX) in “area” format (monthly chart below). It’s virtually been on a tear since the bleeding from the financial crisis of 2008/09 was abruptly halted with their intervention and injection of monetary support, and it hasn’t had much of a correction since then, relatively speaking.

(more…)