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.

Incomprehensible

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A few days ago, I finally finished reading, for the first time, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I would like to introduce this topic by way of Groucho Marx.

I get my hair cut on a regular basis, which is about the only time I am exposed to television. Since I get my hair cut early in the afternoon, what’s on the television is even more horrid than normal since it is, by definition, daytime television.

What was being broadcast was a reboot of You Bet Your Life, this time hosted by a (surprisingly elderly) Jay Leno. Why Leno feels the need to whore himself out on a cheesy daytime game show is beyond me, but there ya go. It’s a free country. I guess he likes the money.

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Our Island Nation

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Even before the GOOGL/AMD earnings came out Tuesday night, the tide had turned against the bears fiercely in recent days. In the span of a single week, the world went from we’re-all-going-to-die to happy-days-are-here-again. The icing on the cake, for the bulls, was the GOOGL news, an important component of which was the high-tech breakthrough of announcing a 20-for-1 stock split.

gggg
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Chopped Liver

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In recent days, I have been thinking deeply about what I can do to improve my trading. I’m a simple soul, so I like rules or mnemonics that are easy to remember and understand. Thus, I present to you what I hope to be my watchword when it comes to trading: PATE

It is pronounced as two syllables (as in the spreadable comestible) and it stands for Patience, Always Trade Extremes.

The “patience” is obvious. That is, be patient enough to wait for true opportunities. And what opportunities, pray tell, do I mean? Well, EXTREME opportunities. When something is stretched so high (as in my “sure-fire” XLE trade last week) or so low (as with XRT and TSLA this morning) that the risk/reward ratio is terribly appealing. And it’s not just price extremes. It also applies to slam-dunk, killer price patterns (like EFA and EMB).

I’m going to try to burn this into my head and actually live it. Let’s see if it helps! Maybe it’ll help you, too.