Slope of Hope Blog Posts

This is the heart and soul of the web site. Here we have literally tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. You can also click on any category icon to see posts tagged with that particular category.

Has The Market Crash Been Put On Hold Again?

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By Avi Gilburt, ElliottWaveTrader.net

Last weekend, I wrote an article entitled “The Market Is Going To Crash.” The response to that article garnered over 55,000 hits on Seeking Alpha, which is about 4-5 times the reads that I normally get on a stock market update.

This gives me anecdotal insight into where the overall sentiment is in the market today. It seems most investors are leaning quite bearish, and are looking for articles that support their own bearish bias.

And, as I noted last weekend, I am sorry to disappoint all of you who have a bearish bias. You see, the market is likely going to be heading over 3000, and potentially even over the next 12 months.

While I am sure you were taken in with the common expectation that the President’s abandoning the Iranian deal was going to tank the market, it seems the market never got that memo. Yes, we have yet another reason the market has ignored while it continued to climb higher. At this point, you would think that investors would be used to this if they have been paying attention in 2016 and 2017.

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The Ceaseless Ascent

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Well, I’m glad the site is doing so well, because the markets over the past week have made me feel pretty lousy. It’s nice to at least have Slope humming along to comfort me.

I’d like to offer the following off-the-wall musings as a very different take on the market. It’s a disposition that many, many people share, and perhaps it would help me get in sync with the rest of the planet to actually type what everyone else is thinking. I submit this to be neither facetious nor wry. So here goes.

(1) Just as humanity as made sufficient advancements in technology to, for example, feed everyone on the planet, so, too, have we reached a sophistication in knowledge and financial management rendering bear markets permanently extinct. Yes, there will be occasional dips from time to time (see green tints), but these will swiftly be pushed aside by a new ascent. If a solid decade of evidence isn’t enough, I’m not sure what is.

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A Fearsome Loss!

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After the market closed today (Monday), I saw on my news feed that Verifone Systems (PAY) had agreed to be acquired at a huge premium to its closing price, about 50% higher than the market. That’s not especially interesting news to anyone that doesn’t have a position in the stock, but I do. And it’s a short position. And that, as you might guess, is not a good thing.

I am sharing this bit of bad news as an object lesson in risk management, however. Because after I found this out, I asked myself the following questions and gave myself the following answers: (more…)

Bouncing Toward the Gap and MA

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As you might guess, today (Monday) was pretty much the opposite of last Friday for me. Friday was awesome. Today sucked. But as a swing trader, I’m not going to cover all my positions willy-nilly. As I so often say, the individual stops need to take care of themselves. As such, I’ve retreated from 71 positions down to 61. Of those, 51 remain profitable, and the other 10 have small losses. Average of the winners is 3.27%, and the average of the losers is negative 0.26%.

This bounce could have more life to it (and, for me, more pain). Looking at the charts, it seems to be the key is the gap between last Wednesday and Thursday. Take a look below, and you’ll see an interesting correlation between the 100 day moving average and the Wed/Thurs price gap. It seems to me, that makes a sensible bounce target. (Side note: I took this snapshots about an hour before the close, so the price moves were even higher).

xmi (more…)