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.

Oil, Market Killing & Warning Shots

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In my post on Tuesday 7th July I was looking at the setup for a strong rally on Oil starting and we have seen that strong rally since.

In my last post on Tuesday 14th July I was looking at the targets and resistance levels on Brent Crude (Brent) and West Texas Intermediate Crude (WTIC) and noting that both were getting close to their 3sd upper bands, and that the 89-90 area on Brent and 84-5 area on WTIC might well hold on those this week to allow the daily middle bands on both to start turning up, and for the daily bands to start expanding. Both peaked that day, spent two days forming bull flags, and have made higher highs today.

So what now?

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Washing the Windows

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It has been a few weeks since I wrote a post about the US equity markets and in large part that has been because while the short term patterns and setups are still important, and I’ve still been looking at those in detail in my daily premarket videos for subscribers, the background to this market, while generally ignored, has been becoming increasingly obvious and divergent from what we are watching on the surface.

I was talking to a friend about this yesterday and compared it to washing the windows on a house that was burning down. I said that as this happened the person washing the windows would either be unaware that the house is burning down or didn’t yet see why that might be important. Only when that perception changed would he/she stop washing the windows.

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Oil Targets and Resistance Levels

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In my last post on Tuesday 7th July I was looking at the setup for a strong rally on Oil starting and at the time of writing today Brent Crude is up about $11 and West Texas Intermediate Crude (WTIC) is up about $8 since then. So what now?

On the daily chart the highs last week were at the daily middle bands on both, and in my The Bigger Picture webinar on Sunday I was talking about the importance of those middle bands being broken with confidence to open further upside. That was done yesterday, so today I’m looking at upside targets and resistance levels for this move.

On Brent Crude a decent quality IHS has broken up with a target in the 91.60 area. That looks credible as a target, though I would note that there is an area in the 89.50 to 90.00 range that was important on the way down. That could now be resistance. Above that there are significant broken support areas at 96 and 98/9.

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Oil Bounce Likely Here

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On the 2nd of June I wrote a post looking at the bullish looking setup on oil, but that then fell apart in the days before the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed by President Trump at Versailles on 17th June. In the three weeks since then the Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTIC) crudes have fallen almost to pre-war levels before the most recent low last week.

Now after any steep decline there will generally be a low found and a bounce will start that should at least retrace a sizable proportion of the preceding decline, usually in the 38.2% to 61.8% range. I’ve been watching for that bounce and I think that has now likely started, though that doesn’t mean we won’t see retests of last week’s lows as part of that process.

So what’s the setup so far?

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The Bumpy Road To Peace With Iran

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This is another rare post without charts from me, but I want to write some important posts about the prospects for US equities and oil prices over the summer and need to write a post first about the Iran peace process to refer back to as I write those.

Just to be clear, I am not talking in the title about the bumpy road behind us in the road to peace with Iran, I am talking about the bumpy road ahead as the peace process hopefully evolves from the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed yesterday to a more permanent peace.

If you want to read about my thoughts earlier on in this peace process I wrote sections about this at the start of the following posts in March and April which weren’t that well received at the time, as I was suggesting the war was not going well for the US, but have aged well:

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