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.

Is China’s Drop Over?

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One of the better sectors in the past couple of weeks for me in this horrid market has been China. I stupidly dumped my FXI puts a couple of weeks ago, only to see them ascend nearly 80% in value, but I at least held on to BIDU, BABA, and JD puts. My initial target price on FXI was 29.54, and both yesterday and today we came within 30 cents of that level. I’m getting nervous about the three individual equity puts I’ve got, but that’s badly exacerbated by the clown-raping that’s been happening across the board. Suffice it to say I’ve got an itchy trigger finger on these three Chinese position, in spite of them having literally months left until they expire.

Complete Mistrust

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Normally, I’d be excited. But this hasn’t been a normal week. Although in absolutely terms I’ve been fine financially, I feel like I’ve been getting my face punched in every single day. Every day, we get totally bearish news, the market starts selling off, and then SOMEONE (I assume from D.C. and NYC Fed) bids the hell out of the market. I’ll tell you one thing – – since I’m more lightly positioned than I’ve been in an entire year, I’m going to be pissed as hell if this sell-off actually STICKS, because last night I was seriously contemplating shuttering my trading account and just developing products for a living.

Spythereum

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As is my strange habit, no matter the time zone, I get up at 5 a.m. On the Pacific coast, that’s perfect. Here in EST-land, not so much. In any case, even during this absurd hour, let me share with you an insight. Below is the chart of Ethereum. We know all about crypto, right? Going to change the world with blockchain, smart contracts, and digital currency, yes? Not a chance. Crypto has become nothing more than a proxy for equity enthusiasm. It might as well be the SPY. Honestly. Crypto has almost NO purpose except to serve as just a different flavor of equity ETF, so it merits observation by stock people.

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