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.

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The Letter of the Day

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Since it appears the loftiest thing the citizens of the United States can seem to discuss is either

(a) which Mario Kart character the POTUS’ wanger most closely resembles; or

(b) whether or not two felt puppets are actually gay or not (see image to the right)

Then I guess I’d better just repeat what I did yesterday and sing The Alphabet Song. Or, more precisely, share with you what I thought were interesting charts as I thumbed through my ETF watch list from A to Z. Some will be repeats from yesterday, and some others will not.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed in the action on Tuesday. Although I’ve been through enough disappointment to not get excited about a big double-digit drop on both ES and NQ during nighttime trading, even I wasn’t cynical enough to think that ratcheting up the trade war would actually push markets to lifetime highs in some cases. And yet that’s precisely what happened.

So here we go again.

First off we have commodities, by way of DBA. In spite of oil’s crazy strength in recent months, my view is that commodities in general are more inclined to weakness than continued strength for the balance of the year. (more…)

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From A to Z

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I first want to say how pleased I am at the warm reception Slope Memberships has been getting. It is proving more popular than I anticipated, and I’m definitely going to be focusing my efforts on adding features to all the membership levels. As a reminder, you will see new features appear here on Slope on a regular basis, but rest assured they will all eventually get tucked behind the seclusion of one membership plan or another.

As for this post  – – there is going to be an unapologetically non-creative theme for this post: I have gone through my ETF list, from A to Z, and have plucked out my favorites below. I have a few words for each one.

Commodities are poised to fall.

(more…)

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A Bit of Utility Damage

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This remains a dreadfully drama-free market. As I type this, the ES is down all of 8 hundreths of a single percentage point. Whoop de freaking do.

One bit of obsession for me remains the Dow Utilities, on which I have an obscene number of January 2019 puts. Today, for the first time in months, we’re causing a tiny bit of damage to the ascending trendline. Nothing definitive, but it certainly helps.

(more…)

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Dust in the Wind

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Gold, silver, and precious metals miners have been bouncing lately (I suggested going long miners on the 16th to my PLUS subscribers, which I’m glad to say was the exact bottom). I still think they have room to run, but for the more nervous folks out there, I wanted to point out that an important price gap is quite close. In addition, as the gold sector chart shows below, the moving averages have entered into full-blown collapse mode.

(more…)

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Money Show

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I’m on my way to the San Francisco Money Show right now, where I hope to spend a little time with my Tastytrade colleagues (which only happens about once a year). I’m bouncing along a train right now trying to hack together something resembling a post, so I’ll share a few thoughts on some ETF charts I find more interesting than the others.

First up is the commodity ETF symbol DBC, which is forming a beautiful top; it looks like the pattern is about 90% done. Here’s hoping for a break beneath that horizontal.

(more…)

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Idealized Utilities

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If someone – – anyone – – were asked what financial instrument sounded more exciting: The Dow Jones Utilities (XLU) or hot Internet app maker Snap (SNAP), I strongly suspect SNAP would win the day. However, SNAP is a dog, trading at about one-third of its peak and just kind of crawling around the sub-teens (much like its demographic). The Utilities, on the other hand, is a daily obsession of mine.

I have a ton of January 2019 puts on this (strike price $54), and after causing a bit of trendline damage earlier this year (red circle), it roared higher and only started weakening a few days ago.

(more…)

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Can Bonds Relax?

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The only red on my screen this morning (and it’s down only the tiniest bit) is bonds. This is a market I watch terribly closely, because as I’ve said through most of 2018, the core shift I’m looking for is an increase in interest rates and an accompanying decrease in real estate valuations. Through the course of the year, the now-broken trendline has done an effective job of repelling prices (arrows). At the moment, my fondest hope is that prices don’t either bother getting back to the trendline and instead turn away from that green tinted area.

(more…)

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