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.

Small Caps Sinking to the Fib

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A little over a week ago, the Russell 2000 small caps reached escape velocity and were finally able to free themselves from the clutches of a two-year price range. Over the course of the most recent 16 trading hours, most of this “escape” has been erased, but this could still be considered a bullish setup (very bullish, in fact) IF prices stabilize above the Fib and don’t slip below it. On the other hand, a failure of the Fib would represent a failed bullish breakout and suggest we’re simply back into the old range.

The Utility Fish

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This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the peculiar “Ichthus” pattern (it’s not real; I made it up back in 2015) on financial charts, and here it is again on the Dow 15 Utilities. I’ve sort of given up on the $UTIL behaving itself properly, but I still find this fishy pattern to be fascinating, so long as it continues to respect the trendlines which comprise it.

Literary Agent Saga

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Before I even start into this best-of-Slope post, I’ll come right out and say it: if you are (or know of) someone in the world of literary agents or publishing, I’d love to hear from you. By the end of this post, I think you’ll see why! So here we go.

I’ve been a professional writer since I was a teenager. I wrote for national magazines at 15, had my first published book at 16, and by the time I was 25, I had written that many books (that is to say: 25). They were all books about computers, and I was financially independent by the time I was in my late teens. Getting published was very easy, because almost every book proposal I came up with was accepted. I had no agent. Just myself.

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