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.

Exasperation in One Chart

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If there was a way to strangle a monitor, I’d be surrounded by dead monitors right now. It’s all because of one chart, comparing the EUR/USD for the past 120 trading days with the @ES:

0327-euroes

As you can see, for about the first half of the chart, the @ES cheerfully followed the EUR/USD higher.

But somewhere around the time I’ve tinted in magenta, they disconnected. The EUR/USD has been in a bear market for two solid months. Equities, however, have merrily pushed higher, utterly oblivious.

What scares the hell out of me is that the EUR/USD looks like it may be ready to bounce. If equities can’t fall in the face of a collapsing Euro, what are they doing to do if the Euro strengthens?!?!?

There needs to be a stronger word for a combination of “frustration” and “disappointment” than I can conjure up right now. The decoupling above is a heartbreaker.

What Will It Take?

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North Korea loudly proclaimed it was making a nuclear weapon to be fired at the United States. The largest company on the planet has lost one-third of its market value, destroying hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth in the span of a few months. And, based on this, the market on a number of measures reached the highest levels ever in world history.

Well, Apple has been talked to death, and frankly, I think in the weeks ahead, people are going to realize it's basically a company past its prime and not really worth yacking about. No one has given me a medal (or a chest to pin it on) for my oh-so-right prediction about Apple, but I'll say what I've said before: you will never see this stock again at $700, and you can expect it to fart around in the 400s (and, occasionally, lower 500s) in the months ahead. As the chart shows below, we are close to major support, and a retard-o-bounce is a strong possibility.

0124-finalAAPL

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