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.
Today is a doubly special day.
For one thing, today is Slope of Hope’s 18th birthday. Every year on March 29th, I’ve written up some kind of “happy birthday” message to celebrate yet another annum in Slope’s long and storied history. It seems hard to believe that, were Slope a person, it would now be old enough to vote and have consensual sex. Let us all take a moment of gratitude that Slope is, in fact, an abstraction and incapable of doing either of those things. Sort of like its creator.
As he does eight times a year, Jerome Powell will stroll in front of a podium on Wednesday afternoon and discuss the latest decision of the FOMC and answer softball questions from reporters. This is always an interesting event, but I daresay that the press conference this week will easily rank in the top five of the past decade in terms of importance and consequence.
If you are driving all day long with a friend, and there’s nothing but blue sky and straight roads ahead, your conversation will probably wander to all kinds of topics. Perhaps you’ll listen to some music or news together. Maybe you’ll tell a funny story or share some thoughts about something going on in the world. It’s a good way to pass the time.
On the other hand, during the same trip, if you hit a huge patch of ice and start spinning around, putting you and your companion at risk of slamming into ongoing traffic of tumbling down a cliff, the priorities are going to change in a big hurry. You’re not going to be chit-chatting and laughing. You’re going to be focused on the emergency at hand and trying to save your life. Searching the FM radio dial for a good station simply isn’t going to occur to anyone.
(more…)I’m afraid I might have some bad news for the bears and, frankly, I’m not that surprised, because things have been absolutely glorious for a few days now, and “a few days” is about the lifespan of happiness for the bearish set.
What I am referring to is what I call the Fed Spread, which is probably a misleading and inaccurate term, but it’s my shorthand way of saying “The calculation of a bunch of Federal Reserve data that comes out every Thursday afternoon and does a good job predicting the S&P two weeks into the future.” See, it just comes out easier my way.
Over the past few days, a major bank has failed pretty much every single day (Silicon Valley Bank, then Signature, then First Republic, then Credit Suisse………you get the idea) and, naturally, the central bankers of the world did the only thing they know how to do, which is to throw literally trillions of dollars at the problem.
(more…)I thought I’d write something up to be a little more fundamentally educational rather than making guesses on market or stock directions. There is a lot of excitement recently regarding 0DTE (zero days to expiration) options. I don’t intend for this to be an all encompassing educational post, just a general walkthrough of how Options are priced, how they move, and why these particular types of options are so attractive in this trading environment.
An Option is a Derivative contract, meaning its value is based on an underlying security. The 2 key features of a contract are its strike price and an expiration date. A Call Option gives the contract owner the right to buy the underlying security at the strike price. A Put Option is the opposite in that the owner of the contract has the right to sell the underlying security at the strike.
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