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.

Debt Domes

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The credit-sensitive bond market led the stock market down hard for much of this year, and it led it right back up last week. Here are three major funds below; the long-term patterns are obviously still very toppy, but it’s hard to tell whether prices will keep slashing through those horizontals, since honestly the strongest resistance by far is seen with the highest horizontal.

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Weak Paws

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I am surrounded by vacillation.

Some would call it flexibility, I’m sure. Or not getting married to a point of view. Or open-mindedness. That’s fine. But person after person and company after company that had declared THIS IS IT! only days ago has now completely run for the hills (or, more accurately, hoisted a Bullish Flag above their fortress). Even here on Slope, I come to find out that the most stalwart, bloodthirsty bears have only committed a few percentage points of their portfolio to that disposition.

The straw that broke the camel’s back tumbled into my inbox just moments ago, when, of all parties, Elliott Wave began the most frantic backpedaling job I’ve ever seen and stated………

New lifetime highs, huh, boys? All I can say is that, if that doesn’t happen, don’t you DARE take credit for calling the bear market. Expressing BOTH opinions simultaneously doesn’t mean a goddamned thing.

Close to Home

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Just a quick look at a couple of major United States equity ETFs after the vomit-inducing four-day mega-rally that started in the wee yours of Tuesday and didn’t stop until Friday’s close.

Here we have the S&P 100 fund, symbol OEF, which since February 24th has seen the “higher lows” that just about everything else has had. I’ve anchored a line to its Friday high, but frankly it isn’t particularly meaningful since it doesn’t correspond to any true pattern.

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Dead Cat(hie) Bounce

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The bulls are doing victory laps, because even garbage like Ark Capital ETFs had a great week (in fact, I think the best in their history). I would quietly note that this is the NINTH dead cat bounce in the midst of this bear market for the likes of Ark, and I’m not sure where it is written that the ninth bounce is the magic number where it all suddenly stops and soars to lifetime highs.

Commodity Catch-Up

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The way the market traded last week, you would have assumed that Putin had surrendered, peace had broken out, and love was in the air. None of those things happened, even though it seemed like it, so I still believe commodities demand special attention in this environment.

The broad DBC fund broke above its long ascending channel, and even when it got beaten down, it seemed to respect the upper trendline of its channel as a support zone.

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