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.

High Quality Patterns from April Low

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I’ve been having a very careful look over the weekend at the longer and shorter term patterns on the main US equity indices to assess the odds of a high forming here and today I’m going to be looking at the patterns from the April low, which are now looking as good or better than they did in early August.

First though, the rally on Friday from the lows was decent, but failed again to close back over the daily middle band, which closed Friday at 6674.42. That was tested as resistance every day last week and if it continues to hold as resistance then we will likely soon see a break below the 50dma, currently at 6565 and which held as support last week.

If we see that break down then the topping patterns I was looking at in my post on Friday will start to break down and may well then make the targets that I was looking at.

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Still Some Decent Looking Topping Patterns Here

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In my post on Monday 6th October I was looking at the negative divergences on SPX and QQQ, with daily RSI 14 and RSI 5 sell signals brewing on both of those. All of those daily sell signals fixed last Friday, with both RSI sell signals also reaching target on Friday. There are now daily RSI 14 sell signals fixed on all of SPX, QQQ, DIA and (weaker signal) IWM. This is suggesting a larger retracement soon to reach those targets.

I was also saying then that until we saw some strong breaks below the daily middle bands on US indices they remained in a strong uptrend from the April low. On Friday they all broke hard below their daily middle bands. Since then SPX and DIA have backtested the daily middle bands but failed to break above, and QQQ and IWM have broken back above but are currently back below at the time of writing. Unless that changes that larger retracement may already be in progress.

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Decent Looking Topping Patterns Here

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In my post on Monday 6th October I was looking at the negative divergences on SPX and QQQ, with daily RSI 14 and RSI 5 sell signals brewing on both of those. All of those fixed on Friday, with both RSI sell signals also reaching target on Friday. There are now daily RSI 14 sell signals fixed on SPX, QQQ, DIA and (weaker signal) IWM. This is suggesting a larger retracement soon to reach those targets.

I was also saying that until we saw some strong breaks below the daily middle bands on US indices they remained in a strong uptrend from the April low. On Friday they all broke hard below their daily middle bands so are all now in a possible topping process for larger retracements than the ones we saw on Friday.

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A Double Top Breaks Down on Bitcoin

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In my post on Tuesday 16th September I was looking at the possibility that we might see a modest retracement (by Crypto standards) on Crypto over the rest of the week and into the end of September, during the last significantly bearish leaning period (on equities) this year.

In my post on Wednesday 24th September I was looking at the possibility that the low on that retracement had been made and giving the obvious targets below in the event that Bitcoin (BTCUSD), Solana (SOLUSD), and Ethereum (ETHUSD) went lower.

As it turned out the short retracement low was in, all three recovered back over their daily middle bands and Bitcoin then made a new all time high.

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So What Happened on Friday?

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US stock markets fell hard on Friday after President Trump reacted to new export restrictions on rare earth metals from China with a threat to add a further 100% tariff on imports from China in addition to the 57% tariff currently in force. Trump walked back that threat over the weekend and at the time of writing futures have rallied about 50% of the decline from Friday’s lows before pulling back somewhat.

So what is the rare earths issue about? Well for those who don’t already know, rare earths are vital for a lot of manufacturing of complex machinery such as cars, jet engines, nuclear reactors & LEDs, are also important in oil refining, and are vital for a lot of high tech manufacturing such as computer components, smartphones, high performance batteries etc. There is a good page about rare earths on wikipedia here which is worth a read.

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