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.

Pushmi-Pullyu

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Well, the market presents a mixed bag – – some major indexes look bullish (which explains why I finally relented by actually BUYING some stocks, which is probably a huge short signal in itself) and others look bearish. Let's take a look at them, in bullish/bearish order:

The NASDAQ Composite pushed above its long-term resistance line late last week, and it's been inching higher ever since. This chart is bullish, period.

0207-bullishCOMPQ

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (the Dow 30) likewise beat its "bin Laden high" from last May 2nd.

0207-bullishINDU

The Apple-powered NASDAQ 100 has been on a huge tear since Thanksgiving, and, as with the broader Composite, is straight-up bullish.

0207-bullishNDX

The strongest argument for the bearish case (which could be badly damaged by a single "good" headline at any moment) is the EUR/USD.

0207-bearishEURO

It turn, the $HUI Gold Bugs Index is poised for a beautiful fall (provided it stays under that centerline).

0207-bearishHUI

The Russell 2000 is right up against resistance, and this is a point where it could easily slip back to the high 700s.

0207-bearishRUSSELL

The Broker/Dealer Index, $XBD, may have double-topped.

0207-bearishXBD

Lastly, the NYSE Summation is a screaming sell right now. Look how it's configured compared to Spring 2010, shown on the left, just before its big tumble.

0207-bearishSUMMATION

So your guess is as good as mine at this point. At this moment, I'm 50% in cash, and of the 50% in equity positions, 25% is long and 75% is short. It's pretty much all about the Euro at this point, folks. We are all FOREX traders.

Geomagnetism Rules

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A correlation between stock market performance and geomagnetism is captured in a paper here by Krivelyova and Robotti. That aside, it is a rarely used discipline in trading, and if you search Marketwatch, Bloomberg and CNBC for its reference, you will come away empty handed. My latest findings are about to demonstrate its importance.

Here is daily geomagnetism versus the S&P500 stock index since the cyclical bull market begain in March 2009. The red-yellow spikes down are high geomagnetic disturbances, and the two periods in which they are strongest correspond to correction periods in the stock market. In between and either side, stocks advance during periods of relatively benign geomagnetism.

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