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.

Too Good

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There isn’t a single trading morning that starts without me holding my breath to see what the first quotes of the day reveal, but this morning was particularly anxiety-laden, considering the consequences of the retracements about which I’ve written endlessly and the nauseating strength of the bull run over the past six trading days. How pleased I was to see my favorite color, red, slathered all over the screen. It was particularly delicious since, of course, futures had been so annoyingly (but appropriately) strong on Sunday, with the NQ flying higher by another triple digits. As of this moment, all of that doe-eyed, Fed-sucking bullish delusional thinking has been laid waste.

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Retracement Particulars

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This is obviously a holiday weekend (not as exciting as Juneteenth, but a federal holiday nonetheless), and frankly I don’t have a heck of a lot to say. So I’m just going to do a handful of posts and try to make them good ones. So this is for Saturday…………..

The good news is that things are playing out perfectly. My charts were correct (some monkeying around with anchor points here and there, but on the whole, on the money). The bad news is that my pigheadedness, which more than a few of you have noticed, kept me committed to my puts way too long.

The only thing I did SOMEWHAT right during the week was move 40%+ of my portfolio into cash, which at least didn’t spend its time getting punched repeatedly in the face like my poor puts did! The OTHER not-totally-stupid thing I did was, as always, be in puts that have months of time left on them (average 147 days now; literally nothing before mid-September!).

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The Opposition

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As much fun as I’ve been having in 2022, I’m reluctant to dare mention bullish prospects, but I’ll choke back the tears and offer the possibility that the market – – – for reasons I cannot possibly fathom – – – be in a position for a hearty counter-trend rally. I will be clear that there isn’t a doubt in my mind this is an honest-to-God, multi-year bear market, but bounces come with the territory, so we have to bear with them, as it were.

What has me the most worried are the Fibonacci retracements. I see them on IWM, SPY, and QQQ, and we’ll use that third one as an example for our purposes. Simply stated, we have been hammering out support in recent days and are poised for a rally approaching 10%.

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