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.

Seismic Sentiment Shift

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Since the market bottomed on June 16th, the /ES has gone up hundreds of points (well over 300) and the Dow Industrials is up thousands. There has been an enormous change in sentiment, with the consensus being that the brief bear market (if you want to call it that) experienced during a tiny portion of this year was all the suffering that was required to clear out all the sins of the past quarter century.

Besides the fact that Zerohedge has more bullish articles every week than even the likes of Yahoo Finance, even Elliott Wave has thrown in the proverbial towel, declaring their “alternate scenario‘ (AKA the bear market ain’t happening) is in play. It wasn’t that long ago that they were stone-cold certain that we’d be plunging non-stop. This afternoon, hat in hand, they meekly sent out an ‘Interim Bulletin” (never a good sign) that raised the white flag. Their mojo is gone. Totally. Elliott Wave has SURRENDERED.

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From Record to Rotten

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This is going to be one of those longish, therapeutic posts which is as much for me as it is you.

In spite of all my griping about screwing up trades, and leaving tons of money on the table, and the Atilla cell in my spreadsheet, etc., etc., I actually wound up Thursday with the highest portfolio value ever. I had stars in my eyes about securing a triple-digit percentage gain for the first half of the year. I was 100% bearishly invested and ready to rock.

Friday changed all that. I went from a swaggering, super-confident bear to a quivering, timid, 54%-in-cash nimrod. The vast majority of my profits are still intact, but let’s just say I’ve totally dispatched with my triple-digits dream, except inasmuch as for the year 2022 as a whole. Friday was, in fact, one of the worst trading days for me in the entire year, and as I’ve mentioned, just about the ONLY thing I did right with this “all thumbs” week I just had was sucking out a mountain of cash from my brokerage account a week ago so I didn’t hurt myself even worse than I did! So, yeah, a cash withdrawal was my most resplendent victory. Pretty sad.

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