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.
I did a post yesterday called Circus Tints, in which I wrote, in part, ” The yellow zone I’ve tinted above runs from 2825 up to 2865, a 40 point range (the math checks out). This is the “super easy” range for the bulls, because there’s absolutely nothing stand in their way in this range. “
Well, 2825 has been breached, and we’re ripping into the “super easy” zone right this second. The bullish grip on the market has tightened even more.
One decade. One decade has now elapsed between the fabled 666 bottom and now. Think about the world in March 2009. Obama was still finding his way around the White House. Facebook was a private company. Netflix was five bucks a share. And ZeroHedge was just a few weeks old.
And as a surprise to those who might consider me a die-hard permabear, I offer a post from that very day, March 6th, 2009, entitled Tim-Bull – –
(more…)This is not to say I’ve gone “all long”. I have, spread out among my accounts, 176 positions. 64 are long, 72 are short, and 40 are options (all of them puts). So on a position-count basis, I am more bear than bull. But on a cash basis, I’m more bull than bear, particularly since some of my long positions are well into the six figures.
Well, there’s nothing official yet (but since when did that stop anyone?) but the rumor that a China/US trade deal is pretty much done in time for a signing ceremony later this month has markets breaking above key resistance levels. As I’m typing this, we aren’t even open 10 minutes, so who knows where this will be at Monday’s opening, but for now, bulls are getting the moment they’ve been waiting for since last September.
Fed Minutes day produced some intraday zaniness. I was basically “checked out” of the insanity all day long, as I chose to do something I hardly ever do, which is to stay completely out of the trading day. I was roaming the chilly streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, glancing periodically at my iPhone to see what the ES and NQ were doing.
The market was up overall, but we are still completely unresolved. The giant unknown out there remains the Trade Talks, although every blessed day we get some kind of encouraging news about how well they are going (uh-huh). Below I show major indexes and what I consider important areas of resistance (usually horizontals, but sometimes broken trendlines).
If there are ANY bears left out there – – and I’m having my doubts – – there’s getting to be precious little room left until there’s essentially no hope. And by “no hope” I mean “central bankers will just keep pushing this thing up year after year until it stops working, which could be decades from now.” Here are some major cash indexes and their lines in the sand:
It seems that nighttime is the only time that the markets have any dalliance with the color red, because in short order, any brief weakness is eradicated in favor of the market’s official color of 2019: green. As I said yesterday morning at about the same time:
So in case anyone is wondering why, as usual for almost every day since December 26th equities are up across the board, the answer is a simple one and can be used for the foreseeable future: because they didn’t see any reason NOT to be.
Thus, we remain in “drift up” mode. We all know the habit of markets to move quickly when going down and slowly when moving up (which some refer to as – ahem – the slope of hope). You can see it clearly below: from December 3 to December 26th, it was just a gravity-tormented free-fall. Ever since Boxing Day……..just a grind higher and higher. Slow. Steady. Relentless. And probably persistent until this whole China Trade thing is settled.
Even though the S&P 500 index is over 6% beneath its lifetime high, you would never know it looking at HDGE, which is the ETF dedicated to selling stocks short. It is pretty much at its lifetime low, as if the market itself was at a lifetime high (which, the way things are going, shouldn’t be much longer now).
