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.

Forget About the FANGs

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Forget about the FANGs, it all about the FAAMG stocks. Most traders & investors are familiar with the term the ‘FANG’ stocks, an acronym for the high-performing tech stocks Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Why Netflix, with a market cap of only $60.15B is included instead of the much larger Microsoft (MSFT), which not only has a market cap over over 8x that of NFLX (502.6B) but is also one of the best performing & top-heavy components of the leading index, the Nasdaq 100 as well as one of the top components of the S%P 500 Index? I guess the word ‘FANGs’ has a cool ring to it when spewed out by the financial media or something along those lines.

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Divergences Warn Of Impending Correction

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The chart below shows the Nasdaq Composite plotted above the percent of stocks within the Nasdaq Comp trading above their 50-day moving average. The dashed vertical lines show every stock market peak for at least the last 13-years.

Without a single exception, all of those corrections (a drop of 10% or more) and bear markets (20%+ drops) were preceded by clear, multi-month divergences between the Nasdaq Comp & the percentage of stocks trading above their 50-day moving average. Of particular note is the recent plunge in the $NAA50R which virtually mirrors the plunge that preceded the market top in 2015 which was followed by one of the largest corrections throughout current 8+ year bull market.

$NAA50R daily March 30th
$NAA50R daily March 30th

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Sentiment Extremes Warn of Likely Correction In US Equities

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One of my favorite indicators for identifying potential corrections in the stock market has just triggered the 4th extreme reading of below 0.60 on the Put-to-Call Ratio in what I refer to as a cluster of readings (a series of sub 0.60 readings that occur in relative close proximity without a substantial correction while the stock market is moving higher with each successive reading).

$CPC chart
Total Put/Call Ratio

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GDX vs. SPY: Accumulation vs. Distribution

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So far today, both GLD (Gold ETF) & GDX (Gold Miners ETF) gapped down & continued lower but have since recouped all of their post-opening losses & then some while the equity markets gapped up, rallied from there but topped out shortly after & have since been moving lower… essentially a near inverse mirror between the price action in the PMs & equities so far today. Should the current trends (stocks moving lower while gold & GDX rally) continue into the close today, that would indicate distribution in equities (sellers stepping in to sell the rallies) in equities & accumulation (buyers stepping in to buy the dips) in precious metals.

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Short Interest on Leading Stocks At Multi-year Lows

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Short sellers are often vilified by the mainstream media, CEO’s of publicly traded companies & many institutional money managers which are forced, by prospectus or other security selection parameters, to maintain only long-side exposure to the market.

I won’t go into all the benefits that short sellers provide, such as liquidity and sniffing out corporate malfeasance while the masses are content to turn a blind eye as long as a stock is in a bull trend, other than to mention that short sellers, at least when short interest is at normal or above average levels, often serve as a backstop in a stock or the broad market during selloffs as short sellers are the only guaranteed buyers in the market.

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