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.

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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The First Five Trading Days Of January

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The holidays are ending and volume should be coming back into markets next week as players return. New Year’s Day on Wednesday is obviously a holiday as well, and the five trading days after that will be closely watched to deliver an indication of how the rest of 2020 might go. I’ll be looking at that stat closely later in this post but first I’ll review SPX and NDX and the position as traders return for the last two trading days of 2019. I would note again that the last trading day of the year is the only historically strongly bearish day in December, with SPX closing down 67% of the time, and Nasdaq down 15 of the last 19 years.

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Not Even A Mouse

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Well the holidays are upon us, and many of those of us with lives, or even just social lives, have taken a couple of weeks off to do non-market stuff. Even the algos seem suspiciously quiet and may be taking a few days off too. I’m still here because …. well ……. it’s my job, and someone has to stick around to switch off the lights and lock the doors after the last buyer has departed for the holidays. In the meantime I’m doing an update for anyone still around to read it.

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All Targets Great And Small

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A week ago I was looking at upside targets on ES and the extended target on ES was in the 3180 target, made by the close of the week. I had other upside targets too with an extended IHS target on NQ that made target at the same time, and bull flag high retests on DAX and ESTX50 that were also made. I have run out of upside targets across the main equity indices that I watch and the December high on SPX is either in or should be close.

In the short term there is an open 60min sell signal and an attractive trendline target currently in the 3150 ES area, ideally to be hit on Monday before a high retest, though there is an SPX trendline target below in the 3155 area that may hold instead, as SPX is the technical dog to the ES tail from a charting perspective.

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