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.

Holding Fast with AMD

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About 25 minutes into the trading day, it looked like the bears were going to smack the bulls across the face with a giant bag of semi-rotten avocados. Sadly, the ISM report saved the bulls’ asses, and it’s a terrible day for the bears. Personally, I have held fast, although I have trimmed from 30 total positions to 25 and have bumped cash up to about 20%. Still, long-term put positions on stuff like Advanced Micro Devices continues to look good, and I’m not going to let a few hours of bull-gasm shake me loose.

The Morning’s Second Data Point

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While everyone is fixated on the jobs report, there was actually a second important economic release today, and it happened moments ago. Specifically, the ISM Services PMI, which is described as “Survey of about 300 purchasing managers which asks respondents to rate the relative level of business conditions including employment, production, new orders, prices, supplier deliveries, and inventories.” The report shows a very substantial miss………

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First Jobs

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Good morning, everyone. Moments ago (as I’m typing this, at least) the first monthly jobs report came out, and the numbers are as follows (the order being actual, forecast, and prior):

Briefly stated, the unemployment fell to 3.5% and more jobs were added than forecasts. However – – and this is what the market seems fixated on – – wage growth came in cooler than anticipated.

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