It has been a grim year and I, and many others, will be very glad to leave it behind, but even with maximum lockdown spreading rapidly across the UK with the new virus mutation, I have a great holiday weekend planned with roaring fires, presents, great food, homemade pancakes, (probably too much) chocolate, board games and so on. My soon to be ex-wife will be absent but my three children, two cats, and one dog will all be here having a great time and there is a good chance that this will be the most enjoyable Christmas that we have had so far this millenium. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve had requests for a family video of us making pancakes over the holiday that I may well film on New Year’s Day and post on YouTube. 🙂
(more…)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.
Annus Horribilis
Occasionally there is a year so awful that nothing seems to go right. The title phrase was first used in a Church of England publication in 1870, the year that papal infallibility was declared, Prussia invaded France, Italy annexed Rome, Lenin was born and the US weather service made their first official forecast. 2020 is another year worthy of the name (meaning horrible year in Latin), with COVID-19 having ravaged the world in a serious and lasting health and economic disaster.
This hasn’t been a great year for me either, with my marriage ending acrimoniously, though that end had at least been a long time coming, and then I received the news this morning that my beloved sister was killed last night by a drunk driver in London. She will be sadly missed by many including her three barely grown children though the funeral will have to be small due to COVID-19 restrictions. This really has been a bad year and I really won’t be sorry to see the back of it. This also adds a sister killed by a drunk driver to my existing tally of two close friends killed by (their own) alcohol problems in their 40s. That’s high, though a 2017 study found that the annual deaths worldwide from alcohol abuse are about 15 times higher, and the deaths from tobacco about 5 times higher, than the total deaths from all illegal drugs, which makes those last deaths from illegal drugs essentially a small rounding error on a much larger substance abuse problem involving legal drugs. Thought for the day.
(more…)Topping Trendlines
I was saying in my last post on Monday that a retest of the high looked likely and we saw new all time highs on both SPX and NDX as expected. So what now?
Well the best pattern on the board on Monday was the rising wedge on the Dow, and that is still looking pretty good. A daily RSI 5 sell signal has fixed there already of course, as one has on SPX as well.
INDU 60min chart:
Thanksgiving Thoughts – Shorter Term
November is about to end and SPX is likely at the time of writing to do something not previously done in the last twenty five years, which is to close a long way above the monthly upper band, currently 3566 area, only three months above the last strong punch close above in August. What does this mean?
Well on NDX this would give about 40-45% odds that the market would then deliver a series of closes at or above the monthly upper band in coming months, but while that is possible on SPX, historically there would be little precedent for it. The odds still favor a close at or below the monthly upper band at the end of December, at which point it would be unlikely to be over 3600.
(more…)Thanksgiving Thoughts – Longer Term
I was going to do a longer post today but I’ve decided to split the post in two, covering the longer term in this post and looking shorter term in a follow up post to be published tomorrow.
In my last post I was looking, among other things, at the SPX monthly chart and noting that if there was a monthly close significantly above the monthly upper band (currently 3570 area) at the end of November, then that would be the first time in the last twenty five years that had happened less than six months after a recent strong punch close above the monthly upper band (in August). The monthly close for November is at the close on Monday, so that is now only just over a trading day away in regular trading hours. Could it happen? Yes, and this has certainly been a very strange year both in the world and on the markets so we’ll see.
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