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.

Brave New World

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I’ve been mulling over how to do this post for a while because I don’t want to offend readers who might be very sensitive to any criticism, direct or implied, of the Trump administration, and I tend to stay away from any political discussions. However, any objective review of the likely effect of some of that administration’s policies requires an honest discussion of those policies and their likely impact.

Given that I now believe that the odds of seeing a serious bear market this year are high and that a full market crash is increasingly on the cards. I need to do that objective review, and my apologies if anyone is offended. I am just describing the geopolitical and economic realities here as I see them and am not planning to make political commentary a regular feature in my analysis going forward.

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Downside Targets Update

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Two weeks ago today I wrote a post looking at the case for a rally on US equity indices in the 12 trading day window into April 2nd, the planned day for US tariffs to be extended to most US trade partners. That rally delivered but wasn’t quite as strong as I hoped then, and I wrote another post a week ago in which I was looking at the bear flags forming on the US indices and talking about those moves topping out on Tuesday or Wednesday last week. On Wednesday morning I wrote a third post calling a likely high within those bear flag patterns and sketching out in arrows my preferred path from there.

That path was looking good but my hoped for high retest failed on the bad inflation numbers on Friday and this morning the bear flag targets at the retests of the 2025 lows on SPX, QQQ and IWM were hit. The bear flag target at the retest of the 2025 low on DIA is still outstanding but likely gets hit after the current oversold rally on the US indices ends.

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It’s A Kind Of Magic

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One of the things I enjoy most about being a technical analyst is that sometimes we can make calls that almost look like magic as they deliver, though in truth they’re obviously just a combination of math, historical analysis and good pattern recognition. I also love an uncertain market, as while anyone can look like a genius in a strongly trending market, it takes real skill to trace the likely paths ahead in uncertain markets. Whatever else Trump has done or may yet do this year, he’s at least been delivering a an interesting year for me, and I thank him for that. 🙂

Anyway, the story of this rally so far ……..

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Decent Bear Flags on Crypto

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In my post on Tuesday last week I was looking at the very promising rally setup on Crypto and was looking at the important daily middle band resistance that needed to be broken and converted to open the upside. That didn’t go quite as hoped and in my last post on Friday last week I put forward an alternate scenario where the IHS pattern on Bitcoin (BTCUSD) and Solana (SOLUSD) wouldn’t make targets as it was bear flags that were forming.

In my premarket post this morning I was looking at the bear flags and, coupled with the matching flags on US equity indices, was calling a likely high. We;’‘ll see how that goes.

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The Bear Flags Look Ready

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At the start of last week I wrote a post looking at the case for a rally on US equity indices in the 12 trading day window into April 2nd, the planned day for US tariffs to be extended to most US trade partners. That rally delivered but hasn’t been quite as strong as I hoped, and I wrote another post on Monday in which I was looking at the bear flags forming on the US indices and talking about those moves topping out yesterday or today.

So here we are, the bear flags are all formed and today is the day I was expecting these to top out if that didn’t happen yesterday. We’ll see if that happens and if it does, then I have sketched out a possible ideal path that this reversal may take.

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