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.

The January Barometer & Other Stats

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In my post on Monday 13th January I was looking at the four bull flag setups on SPX, QQQ, DIA and IWM, and the possibility that the bull flags would break up into retests of the all time highs across all four of those. SPX and DIA have made their new all time highs now, QQQ is getting close and I have some doubts about whether IWM will make it. I’ll review those today but first some historical stats.

The January Barometer is triggered when January closes down, and will often deliver a down year, but unless we see a truly impressive decline today that is now irrelevant for this year.

The second statistic I’ve been looking at today is the record of stock markets in the year after a presidential election. Of the last 21 of those going back to Roosevelt in 1941, eight delivered a down year, making this overall weakly bullish.

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Bitcoin & Solana Bull Flags Breaking Up

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In my last post on Thursday last week I was, among other things, looking at a sharply upsloping H&S on Bitcoin (BTCUSD) that had broken down with a target in the 92,000 area, though I was expecting that H&S to reject back up into the highs, and over last weekend Bitcoin broke down into a low at 97.7k.

On the face of it that was looking promising for the H&S to reach target but in my premarket video on Monday I put the case against that, on the basis that so far at least, this was looking like a backtest of the daily middle band as part of a bullish consolidation. In my premarket video on Tuesday I had drawn in the obvious bull flag setups on both Bitcoin and Solana (SOLUSD).

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The DeepSeek Retracement

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In my last post on Wednesday 22nd Jan, I was looking at the various targets for the move up from the January lows on the US equity indices, the all time high retest on SPX, which had just be reached, and the all time high retests on QQQ and DIA, which In my last post on Wednesday 22nd Jan, I was looking at the various targets for the move up from the January lows on the US equity indices, the all time high retest on SPX, which had just be reached, and the all time high retests on QQQ and DIA, which are still outstanding. I was also noting that a retracement to set up less vertiginously steep rising support trendlines on all three of these was overdue.

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Crypto – So Now What?

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In my last post on Friday I was saying that Bitcoin (BTCUSD) had just broken over the previous week’s high at 102.7k and, as I noted on Monday 13th Jan, that was the right shoulder high on the H&S that had broken down. The break up on Friday invalidated that H&S and that break fixed a target at the retest of the all time high at 108.4k.

That target at the retest of the all-time high was reached quickly amid a wild weekend with the launch of Trump and Melania’s astonishingly popular meme coins, and that leaves a possible large double top setup on Bitcoin that I am not taking particularly seriously at this stage.

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Buffing My Fingernails Modestly

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SPX retested the all time high today, and so the first, though not the only, upside target of the upside scenario that I laid out at the start of next week has been reached.

In my post on Monday 13th Jan I was stating that SPX was at the bottom of the big inflection point that has been forming, and that we were likely to see either a serious break down or a rejection back into the highs, showing the possible bull flag setups on SPX, QQQ, DIA and IWM.

In my post on Wednesday 15th Jan I was looking at the rally from Monday’s low, with the bullish reversal patterns forming on SPX, QQQ and DIA that would likely take them higher, and on SPX should open the test of the main resistance level at the daily middle band That would then need to be broken and converted to support to open the retest of the all time high.

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