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.

Another Inflection Point Here

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In my post on Wednesday I was looking at the H&S patterns that had broken down on SPX, QQQ and DIA and saying that, for a variety of reasons I explained then, I didn’t think any of those H&S patterns were likely to reach their targets, and would likely instead fail into retests of their all time highs. Since then we have seen the start of rally I expected and equity indices have reached another inflection point where they can either break up towards retests of the all time highs, or fail down into those H&S targets.

On DIA the H&S failed this morning on the break back over the H&S right shoulder, and that now has a target at a retest of the all time high, but the big dogs here are SPX and QQQ, so I’ll mainly be looking at those today.

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Topping Really Is A Process

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In my post on 20th May I was looking at the four high quality topping patterns forming on SPX, QQQ, DIA and IWM. As is often the case these didn’t deliver and the indices rejected back into higher highs. We are now looking at a new candidate high forming here but for a number of reasons these highs tend to take a while to form. This one does not look ready yet for much more downside unless there is some really bad news today.

I watch the historical stats for each day carefully as they often deliver, and last week and this week have been unusual for two reasons. Firstly every day has had a significant bullish or bearish lean, which is rare, as the majority of trading days in any year lean neutral. Secondly, the historical lean towards a red or green close has delivered every day since the start of last week, and I’m thinking the odds are decent that will continue to be the case into the end of this week.

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Oil Inventories at Critical Levels

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I wrote a post on 23rd April arguing that from an economic point of view the ongoing war between the US, Israel and Iran was largely irrelevant as the only thing that really mattered was how long the Strait of Hormuz would stay closed, and the risk that the Bab al-Mandab Strait might also be closed.

That was almost six weeks ago, and we’ve had a lot of announcements and briefings about peace talks since then, at least some of which appear to have been real, and it looked for a while last week as though there might actually be a chance of an interim agreement, but that has foundered for two strong reasons, firstly that both sides badly wanted a deal they could present as an unambiguous victory for themselves, and secondly that Israel didn’t want any peace agreement, and weren’t willing to restrict their actions in any way to get such any agreement.

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Four Beautiful Topping Patterns

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In my post on 6th May I was looking at the resistance trendline on the SPX weekly chart and that rising trendline was being close to being hit in the 7385 to 7400 area. It was then hit and exceeded in what might have been a bearish overthrow, but I had by then also drawn in an alternate high quality resistance trendline that was hit perfectly at the high on Friday. SPX could go a bit higher, but the ideal upside trendline target has been hit. Look at the chart below and admire this beautiful rising megaphone from the 2022 low. 🙂

SPX daily chart:

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