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.

The Nikkei 225 Line

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Perhaps you’ve read by now that the Bank of Japan has been utterly humiliated (which stings extra-hard in the Japanese save-face-at-all-costs mindset) by the global market which took place thanks to their minuscule 0.15% interest rate bump.

They have solemnly pledged NEVER to raise rates again as long as markets are not “stable” which means………….never. Japan is a financial basket case and will never, ever recover. As my mother used to say, you can put that in the Bible.

Prompted by the cuckold state of Japanese finance ministers, the /NKD has been blasting thousands of points higher the past couple of days, which delights me, since it’s going to be an amazing setup for U.S. equities. I’ve been watching that red line.

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Feeble

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As I am typing this (I really shouldn’t have to type that each time………..) the /ES is up 35 and the /NQ is up 138, which in normal times would be a wild morning, but these days is practically tepid. Last night, we were all watching the inverted head and shoulders pattern on the /ES. The market had been beaten up badly, so it seemed pretty much a slam-dunk for the /ES to complete this IHS and, at the very least, seal up its price gap (arrow).

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Preparing Profits

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Let me state first off, both to you and myself, the least productive use of my time and emotional energy on this historic morning: checking to see the profits I missed by closing out any positions in recent days. The amounts are going to be huge, I already know that. But I also know that I’ve got ten bearish positions now, all of which were already profitable, which are going to absolutely rock when the market opens. So I’m going to break character and not engage in nonstop self-pity and self-recrimination.

I’m also not going to indulge in told-ya-so’s, not only because it’s childish and tedious, but also because I might just as well stand in the mirror and say the same stuff (see above paragraph). My suggestion weeks ago that NVDA would go to $96 seemed absurd. At this point, we have exceeded that formerly lunatic guess. And on it goes. My dark predictions are all coming true, only way too early.

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Literary Agent Saga

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Before I even start into this best-of-Slope post, I’ll come right out and say it: if you are (or know of) someone in the world of literary agents or publishing, I’d love to hear from you. By the end of this post, I think you’ll see why! So here we go.

I’ve been a professional writer since I was a teenager. I wrote for national magazines at 15, had my first published book at 16, and by the time I was 25, I had written that many books (that is to say: 25). They were all books about computers, and I was financially independent by the time I was in my late teens. Getting published was very easy, because almost every book proposal I came up with was accepted. I had no agent. Just myself.

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