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.

Waiting for a Break (by Springheel Jack)

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There was a bounce yesterday, but it lacked conviction, and looking across the indices there are quite a number of double-tops in play that have broken down and not yet reached target. For today on ES strong support is still at 1371.50, and first overhead resistance is at yesterday's high at 1382.75, where there is also some trendline resistance, and at the valley low between the double-tops in the 1387 area. A break over 1387 opens up a strong bounce, and a conviction break below 1371.50 opens up further downside, with the double-top target in the 1353 area of course:

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Liquidity Junkie (by Springheel Jack)

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What a liquidity junkie this market is. The Fed announced essentially no change yesterday and markets tanked across the board, equities, bonds, commodities, EURUSD etc, precious metals. Absurd. Equities have been rising ever higher on the expectation of a QE3 that has become ever less likely as it has risen, as the purpose of QE3 would be above all to boost asset prices, and if they are already high then why would the Fed do it? 

Be that as it may we are at a major inflection point today now and it could very much go either way. My favored scenario is still that we see a bounce on SPX at rising support from October in the 1397 SPX area before a move up to test the 1442 SPX pivot, with a very possible interim top there before the usual summer weakness. That would be the best technical scenario but that doesn't mean it's going to happen of course. Here's the updated SPX chart from yesterday:

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Choppy Action (by Springheel Jack)

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That was a nice move up to a new high on SPX yesterday, but it isn't yet a clear break out of the whippy sideways to up action of recent weeks. It's possible that we'll see a continuation of this sort of action into the 1442 SPX pivot and then an interim top there. The 2010 and 2011 tops were at major technical resistance areas and the interim top in 2012 may well be the same. The next one up is the 1442 SPX pivot and we'll see there whether this move up has the juice left to break over that to the next pivot north of 1500. 

Short term I called the high (on twitter) yesterday on ES nicely with a short term broadening ascending wedge. I have two possible support trendlines for that wedge and the higher one has been hit overnight. The lower one is in the 1406 area if that breaks. Worth mentioning here is that these patterns are 73% bearish and a breakdown would target the 1386.5 area low on ES. The likely target would be a little higher as I'll be showing on the SPX chart. Declining resistance from yesterdays high is currently in the 1412.5 area and I would be leaning towards seeing a new high on a break of that trendline. Here's the ES 15min chart with the wedge:

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