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.

Memorial Motion

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Man, Moorea makes meandering morning musings more manageable.

As surely you have heard, our fearless leader has back-pedaled for the umpteenth time on what I had been told was his favorite word, tariffs. Whereas we had a delightful, Bear Force One-initiated plunge early on Friday, that entire drop has been undone, and then some, with Trump giving the EU yet even more time – – all the way through the July 9th “ninety day pause” terminus.

It’s kind of challenging trying to trade when a single tweet can upend everything.

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Holiday Spirits

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In my post a week ago on Friday 16th May I was looking at the break over 90 on the SPX daily RSI 5 and noted that history suggested that would likely be followed with a consolidation or retracement lasting for two weeks. I also suggested that an ideal retracement target would be a backtest of the 200dma that was broken hard at the start of last week.

With the decline since then culminating this morning (so far) in the backtest of the SPX 200dma at 5773, with the low today at 5667, that’s looking pretty good and this is also the obvious area to find support so this is a candidate low for this retracement.

What next? Well the obvious next step would be retests of the all time highs on SPX and QQQ, and ideally DIA as well, though that looks like more of a stretch. Historically this would be a very good time to see this happen as three days in each of the next three weeks lean conspicuously bullish. Even setting aside the fact that there are only four trading days next week that is a strong bullish lean, and looks like the ideal time to see these high retests.

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The Dog That Didn’t Bark

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My apologies for this unusually long post. This has been a very interesting week on Crypto and there is a lot to look at. I did consider splitting this into two shorter posts but decided it is better to just do a longer post today.

In my last post on Monday 12th May I was looking at the possibility that large IHS reversal patterns might be forming on Solana (SOLUSD) and Ethereum (ETHUSD), and that there might be a large retracement across the board on those two and Bitcoin (BTCUSD) while right shoulders were established on those IHS patterns.

Last Friday, as the modest retracement we have seen this week on equities was setting up, my working assumption was that this retracement on Crypto would happen mostly as that retracement played out on equities, as the retracement between Crypto and equity indices is historically very strong, but that didn’t deliver as I expected and while what did happen was interesting, what didn’t happen was potentially much more interesting. Let’s have a look at that.

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Wake Up!

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My natural alarm clock (AKA my brain) fails to wake me up for the market perhaps twice every year, and this morning was one of those times. As one might guess, puppy duties were the cause, which is pretty much the best reason one can imagine, but nonetheless, I was surprised to see the clock read 6:36 a.m. when my eyes popped open.

No harm came of it, however. Of my 25 short positions, 20 of them are down, and the 5 that aren’t are up an average of half a percent, so, meh, I’m fine.

More broadly speaking, the /RTY futures are still sporting a pitch-perfect reversal away from their Fibonacci retracement level and, I would hasten to mention, Bear Force One launches just after the close on Thursday. It’s a BIG trip, too, so if the market plunges on Friday, you know precisely who gets the credit.

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