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 Rally Opportunity

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The movement in the bond market has been throwing a few sectors around in the past few months. Today, I would like to highlight the ishares real estate ETF, IYR. You don’t have to look all that closely to see the tight correlation its had to the bond market (represented by TLT) over the past eight months. Keep an eye on that one. As goes TLT, so goes IYR.

161126 - IYR TLT correlation

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US Dollar Ripple Effect

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There’s been a number of significant level breaks/hits over the past week and it seems timely for a longer-term chart review. Here come the weekly charts.

A lot of the charts coming up relate in some way to the US dollar so let’s take a look at that one first.

The USD chart has broken out strongly from a 2 year range. There’s no arguing with this breakout, the USD is going higher. Since a lot of commodity charts react to moves in the greenback, let’s take a look at some of the more popular ones.

161125 - US dollar weekly

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Bollinger Breadth

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Well, I know I’m not the only one who is glad the election is over. Truth be told, as glad as I am to see price moving around again after this summer’s lethargy, I have my fingers crossed that volatility dials it back a little from here because it’s a bit too much for me. BUT, after just one week, conditions have changed considerably so a quick review is in order.

Coming into Election Day, there was a significant amount of hedging going into the uncertainty of Nov 8th was evident by the high SKEW readings and Equity Put/Call ratios. Since then, the SKEW has returned to mid-levels and Equity Put/Call is not far behind.

161111 - SKEW reset (more…)

The Month of Trade Prior to a Presidential Election Since 1992

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Due to some of the speculation around the slope about the effects of an election on the market, I decided to look at the last 20 years of elections.  They’re a pretty mixed bag among the lot.  Some were steadily uptrending the month prior, some were in choppy ranges, and some sold off for a couple weeks and rallied right back.

I sum it up to useless data.  No edge there.  Carry on as if wasn’t happening.

election 1992 (more…)