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.

Peering Through The Fog

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This is an unusual post for me, in that it is not about the markets, but rather about an issue that might be a strong influence on the markets over the next few months, namely the current coronavirus outbreak that has so far been mainly confined to China. I’ll be reviewing what appears to be the cases so far from both official and unofficial sources, and share what I’m watching to assess whether this is likely to remain a mainly Chinese issue, or might spread much wider to become a worldwide one.

Regardless of the numbers though, some aspects of life in Wuhan continue as normal. Here is a recent image of a local resident out walking their dog in a familiar scene that might currently come from any number of large cities in China:

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The January Barometer

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When I looked a few weeks ago at the stat for the first five days of the year I found that the correlation with the yearly close there was essentially random, so I was wondering when I had a look at the full January Barometer stat whether I would find the same but was pleasantly surprised when I did not.

The numbers I was looking were from 1950 to the present, so that’s a good statistical sample, and in that time 72.86% of years closed green, and 27.14% of years closed red, with 61.43% of Januaries closing green in that time and 38.57% of them closing red.

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A Feast Of Numbers

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Between cancer treatments (for my wife) and some serious IT issues I didn’t manage a post last week, and have a bit of a conundrum this week as the post I’d ideally like to have published today would have involved too many charts and and an likely indigestibly large quantity of numbers for a single post. I’ve given this some thought and have decided to do three posts this week. The first one today will look at short term prospects for the market and the implications of the weekly candle last week coming off the weekly upper band ride that has likely just ended.

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Another Week, Another Inflection Point

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Apologies for the lack of a post last week. Some of you know my wife has some health issues at the moment and they have me distracted. I’m doing this post tonight because SPX is at a key inflection point and because the way this breaks may deliver the direction for the rest of January.

Before I start I have a quick announcement.  We (theartofchart.net) have launched a new options service run by an old friend of the site Paul Frey. This is an educational service looking at options trade opportunities in real time run by a thirty year veteran of options trading. If your interested you can read about the service and access the free trial here.

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