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.

The Sad, Sad Tale of M.L.O.T.T.

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In trading, few things hurt worse than money left on the table. (In the unlikely event any of you are unacquainted with this term, it refers to profits forsaken because you were too impatient, scared, or what-have-you and missed out on extra money).

It’s virtually a truism in trading that you’ll score 8% on a given trade and it goes on to throw off 90% in gains. It happens all the time, but it happens CONSTANTLY in highly opportunistic and volatile markets like this one.

I am no stranger to this situation, particularly since my own emotional and psychological makeup doesn’t lend itself to – – how shall we put this? – – stalwart, steadfast, fearless determination. I prefer to slip on a pink taffeta dress, maybe some matching pantyhose, and scurry around closing anything that has a profit.

I’m exaggerating a bit (except for the clothes part), but just in recent weeks, the spreadsheet below shows the positions I have CLOSED, with the “entry price” reflecting whatever price I got when I closed them. Shield your eyes, Frank.

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New Fund=Time To Sell?

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A Sell Signal For An Asset Class?

In the video below, I note that Bitcoin has dropped by more than a third since the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) launched, and discuss a couple of other examples of similar phenomena that came to mind. The first was when Alliance Capital (as it was known at the time) launched its healthcare fund in the late ’90s. At the time, Pfizer (PFE) was one of its top holdings, and an archetypical one at that. It was selling two of the biggest drugs on the market: Warner-Lambert’s Lipitor (starting in 1996) and its own Viagra (starting in 1998). And yet Pfizer’s share price hit a high water mark a few years later that it didn’t regain until last year with its BioNTech (BNTX) COVID vaccine. 

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