General Electric has been falling for two solid years, having lost about two-thirds of its value. Let’s face it, ANY stock which can do that poorly in this completely fake, central-bank-supported, sugar-high of a market has got to have SERIOUS trouble. I thought it might manage to double bottom, but nope – – even with markets near lifetime highs, this piece of crap is breaking down to levels not seen since 2011.
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
This is the heart and soul of the web site. Here we have literally tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. You can also click on any category icon to see posts tagged with that particular category.
Triple Long View
Good morning, Slopers, and welcome to a new week. The earnings season is finally going to start ramping up, and of course there’s that Putin/Trump meeting happening, so it should be an interesting few days.
There aren’t exactly a lot of fireworks this morning, so let’s take a step back and look at a few basics. First, the bonds below remain completely intact for what I am hoping is a sea-change in the world of bonds and rates. The uptrend, having been broken, was challenging with a multi-week rally, but this mercifully seems to have been repelled where I’ve put the arrow. My only two options positions are substantial stakes in XLU and XLF January 2019 puts, and obviously the XLU is quite dependent on a strengthening interest rate market. My opinion is that we’ll see bond prices tumble away from this resistance point.
Utilitarianism
The Dow Utilities, against which I have January 2019 puts (by way of XLU), has been tearing higher since June 12th. The moving averages are still intact, and we’re coming up upon a wall of resistance that I believe will cease the public’s newfound adoration of utility companies.
Stock Market Superheroes
Whenever someone argues against short-selling, they often bring up two very scary words: Infinite Risk. In other words, the most you could lose on a long position is 100%. But there is no mathematical limit to short losses. You could short a stock at $10 and it opens the next day at – – what – – let’s say $500,000. Shriek, right?
Well, yeah, but that doesn’t happen. I think the most horrendous wipeout I ever suffered was a 50% gap up, and since my positions are typically 1% of my portfolio, it wasn’t devastating. If someone is going to argue against short selling, I think a far better and more realistic argument is not that losses are unlimited but that profits are limited.
In other words, the most you can possibly make on a short is 100% and, let’s face it, stocks never go to zero. Hell, I think even Lehman Brothers is still trading in some form to this day. A gain or 20% or 30% – – maybe 50% once in a blue moon – – is a terrific success.
However, the profits on long positions are unlimited. Making more than 100% – – be it 500%, 1000%, 5000%, or even 100,000% – – is absolutely possible, and it’s been done by people all over the world. The main ingredient is timing and patience.
I’ve used SlopeCharts to create some percentage charts below, to illustrate some long-term winners as Intel……
What Does The Analyst Who Called For The 2016-2017 Market Rally Say About 2018?
By Avi Gilburt, ElliottWaveTrader.net
As Ecclesiastes notes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” This, too, applies to the stock market.
The average investor trap is the same throughout whatever period you wish to review. Markets become overexuberant, see a correction, sentiment resets, and markets rally on to their next phase of overexuberance. It is really that simple. Yet, we overcomplicate matters by relying on economics and fundamentals, which have proven to be relatively useless at major market turning points.
The Long View with Projections
On this quiet holiday weekend, I thought I’d share a couple of very long-term charts (which PLUS users enjoy via SlopeCharts) Here’s the Dow 30 featuring Fibonacci retracements and a projection. As you can see, the projection has been exceeded (see inset); in the normal world, this is called a “failure”, but in the world of charting, it’s a “throwover.”
