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.
Trading FAS (by Brian Johnson)
A look at FAS and different things to do homework on when trading this particular ETF.
Principal Financial Blotto
One Sloper brought to my attention that Principal Financial Group (PFG) was getting kicked today. This is a good news/bad news for me. It's good news, because I can't stand Principal (home of the World's Worst Online Brokerage ™); it's bad news because I was planning to short them today (honest!) and now it's obviously a higher-risk trade.
SKF Yet Again
Sorry to keep bringing up SKF – the ultrabear on financials ETF – but for an instrument like this to be down only .37% on a day like this, where the bulls are having a field day, is interesting, to say the least. I still like this pattern.
What Mellons!
It's interesting to me that financials aren't exactly setting the world on fire lately. One in particular, symbol BK (Bank of New York – Mellon) has been amazingly lame during most of the huge run-up this year.
Sure, it had a pop back in the Spring, but that was a million years ago. In this environment, where everything seems to be exploding higher, for a stock to look like this is pretty telling. I would also point out that it's been down today, when the Dow was as much as 150 points higher.
I entered a short position on BAC last week, but I've also entered a short trade on BK today. My stop is pretty tight – $28.14
