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.

Failing At Strong Resistance

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The main resistance for the downtrend on SPX since the all time high is twofold, and those two resistance levels are currently crossing.

The first level is the monthly middle band, which has a long track record of acting as main support in an uptrend, and main resistance in a downtrend. That is currently at 4173 and the high this week was at 4169, so that was an almost perfect test.

The second level is the trendline from the 2009 low that was resistance in 2010, then resistance for multiple tests in 2012-14, 2018 & 2020 until it was broken hard in the collapse upwards after the 2020 low. After that was broken as support last year it has held as resistance twice, and has seen a third test this week that has held perfectly so far.

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Convergence and Revelation

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There are three meditative activities in my life. One, when I’m walking my dogs; two, when I’m in bed at the end of the day getting ready for sleep, and three, when it’s warm enough, when I swim. This time, it was the dog walk.

You see, whether I do well or poorly on a given day, I am in a constant state of judging myself. Even during very successful periods, I’ll ask myself: what do I think of my behavior? When I do poorly, of course, I judge myself even more critically, trying to reason out what I could have done better.

Given what transpired over the past week, I was in a particularly contemplative mood. After trading was over on Friday, March 24th, my portfolio was sporting a modest profit for the quarter. A week later, after the close on the 31st, it had turned into a modest loss. It isn’t a good feeling, and although the delineations that mark one quarter to the next are arbitrary in the context of the flow of trading, it’s still upsetting to work hard for three months and have less than nothing to show for it.

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