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.

Real Estate Layers

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We only rolled out the awesome new Layers feature late last night, and I’m having a ball with it. As I mentioned, the one feature I really want to add is the ability to Save charts, so rest assured, that’s coming.

Let me offer an example I just did to show how Layers can be used. So let’s start with the sensible-sounding premise that interest rates have an influence on real estate. So I put the 15-year fixed mortgage in one layer and the IYR in another (note bene: I’m sure other mortgage rates might be better choices, but, meh, what the hell, I landed on this one). Importantly, I did a Flip on the interest rates, which inverts the scale (in other words, the bottom of the chart represents higher rates).

Already, we can see a very cool interaction between these two. Notice how interest rates seem to lead – – by a long time – -the real estate market?

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Good Day for Commodity Plays

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As I keep saying, the only asset I am cheerfully bullish is gold, and it had another good day. Yesterday I made a big point about how the plunge in gold should not be seen as a failure, because it was merely testing support. It did so, and even though “someone threw a war, and nobody came”, Gold closed ABOVE its peak on Monday. Let that sink in. We are higher NOW than we were on the brink of war!

goldmin
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High-Probability S&P Options Trade

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Before I get started, don’t forget to sign up for my Free Weekly Newsletter for weekly options education, options research and trade ideas. I’ve appreciated all the kind words lately. Thanks!

Here we go again!

A few weeks ago, I posted a bear call spread on the S&P 500 (SPY). At the time SPY was trading for $454.97. Now SPY is back under $440, and our bear call spread is worth well-less than half of our original premium. As a result, our profit target was met.

As I state in every “Trade Idea” post, “I look to buy back a spread when I can lock in 50% to 75% of the original credit.”

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Laying It On Thick

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I’m going to be a bum and just paste in the documentation to our new Layered Charts feature. I still need to read the comments from my announcement last night, since I know some of you had good ideas I want to implement. But I am continuing to ask for feedback and ideas to improve this – – and for you to tell me if you’ve seen anything like this anywhere else. I’ve been wanting this feature for years.

The ability to “layer” charts is a unique and powerful feature in SlopeCharts which at first glance might seem to be just an other form of comparison charts, but it is much more flexible and sophisticated than that. This feature allows you to combine charts in ways that are simply not possible with standard comparison charts.

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