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.

In The Eye Of The Storm

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In my last post on Tuesday I was looking at possible rally options from the current 2025 lows, and was looking for a rally lasting at minimum a week or two to make right shoulders on the possible H&S patterns that may be forming on SPX, QQQ and DIA here.

Getting a rally that lasted that long was seeming somewhat doubtful on Wednesday morning but then the highest tariffs were delayed for 90 days and a window of opportunity opened to see that rally.

How much of a reprieve was this tariff delay? Well the existing tariffs already in place before April 2 are still in force against Mexico and Canada, the 25% worldwide tariffs on steel and aluminium are in place, and the 25% worldwide tariff on cars and car parts imported into the US announced before April 2 remains as well. Of the other April 2 tariffs, all have been cut to 10% except the tariffs on China, with the US and China now in a full trade war. The White House has made it clear that a minimum tariff of 10% will now be levied on all trade partners indefinitely with rare exceptions that may be negotiated.

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It’s Getting Tougher

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I have really been nailing US equity markets so far this year. I published a post on Wednesday 19th February, the day the SPX made the current all time high, looking at the high quality double top setups on SPX, QQQ and DIA, and the ok quality H&S on IWM, and all those topping patterns have now reached target with DIA, the last to reach target, hitting that on Friday.

I published a post on Monday 18th March looking at touches of the weekly 3sd lower band over the last few years and calling for a rally lasting at least a week or two based on the past history of similar setups on the weekly 3sd lower band, and we saw that too.

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A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Support

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In my post on Wednesday last week I was looking at the bear flags formed on Bitcoin (BTCUSD), Solana (SOLUSD) and Ethereum (ETHUSD), and those have all since broken down, but in a way that looks as though we might see a rally shortly.

I was outlining a scenario for that rally to a friend a couple of days ago, but was thinking the setup would probably fall apart as equity indices fell hard, but with SPX down almost 10% since then the setup is still intact, so I’m going to look at that today.

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The Masque of the Red Death

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The title of this post is a reference to a story by Edgar Allen Poe, which I would strongly recommend and, not wishing to give much away in the way of spoilers, is about a very exclusive party given by a Prince Prospero that ended extremely badly for all participants. It seems an appropriate title today,

As I suspected Trump did go ahead with the April 2nd ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs and seems determined to persist with these for several months at least. In practice this is the largest peacetime tax hike on US citizens in history and it seems unlikely that this experiment will go well. Before I look at the markets today I’d like to put these tariffs into some factual and historical context.

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April Fools

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‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ – Alexander Pope

Here we are on the morning of ‘Liberation Day’ and it really does look as though the Trump Administration is planning to launch a trade war against the rest of the world today. I understand that is scheduled for 4pm EST this afternoon as the RTH market closes.

If Trump is right then, unlike any other instance where tariffs have been imposed in history, US trading partners will absorb the cost of tariffs and in effect the tariffs will be a tax on those trading partners for the privilege of trading with the US, while the decreased competitiveness of imports, even though those import prices will not have risen, will rebuild the US manufacturing base.

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