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.

NEW: Rapid Labels

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Although the SlopeCharts Labels feature was introduced only a week ago, we’ve already made a significant improvement.

If you have a large number of ticker symbols upon which you want to apply labels, it can be extremely time consuming. Using the mouse and the menus to apply a label to a ticker from time to time is perfectly good, but if you want to do them “en masse“, it can be extraordinarily tedious. We thus created a faster means to accomplish this: Rapid Labels.

To use this feature, choose this item by right-clicking any ticker symbol:

LabelChoice
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Why Day Traders Fail

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Day trading is when an investor buys and sells the same stock on the same day, which can occur in any marketplace (but is particularly common in the foreign exchange and stock market). Over 97 percent of daily trading activity derives from individual investor accounts. Moreover, performance measured over six months found that eight out of ten-day traders loses money. While those numbers can be discouraging, it should serve as a measure of caution for new traders lured into this activity from marketers advertising “fool-proof strategies” and “surefire signals.”

In a 2011 research study titled “The Behavior of Individual Investors,” UC Berkeley Professors Brad M. Barner and Terrance Odean found that individual investors who trade both actively and speculatively without a diversified portfolio lost money over time.

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50 Reasons to Gasp

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Ya know, since I majored in marketing in college (embarrassing, yes, but true) you would think I’d be better at it, but I stink. Maybe it’s because I’m lazy. Perhaps I just don’t have a knack for the common touch. It’s high time I stepped up my marketing game, though.

How about all those stupid click-bait headlines we see every blessed day? Let me try a few out on you:

  • This One Weird Chart has Chiropractors Baffled
  • You Won’t Believe These 9 Hottest IPO Balance Sheets!
  • 12 Breakout Patterns That Mean Big Profits
  • Dancing With the Stars Celeb Shares Her Favorite Biotech Picks
  • Irresistible Puppies Pick Their Fave Saucer Patterns!
  • Try Not to Gasp When You See This A/D Summation Index

Meh. It’s not working. Plus I feel gross now.

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