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.

Watching the Rally Setups on Crypto

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In my last post on Friday I was looking at the overall picture on Crypto and the current setup on Bitcoin (BTCUSD), Solana (SOLUSD) and Ethereum (ETHUSD) which is still in the balance but looking decent this morning, though some key resistance levels still need to be broken to open the upside for a decent rally.

Looking at the bigger picture again there is a double top setup on Bitcoin that has broken down with a target in the 69k to 70k area, and I am still expecting that target to be reached after any rally here.

I would also note on the weekly chart below that Bitcoin is rallying (so far at least) at the weekly middle band, which is a very obvious and historically strong support level.

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Surely That Isn’t All. Right?

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As recently as yesterday afternoon, my persistent hand-wringing about the bounce was in Full Wring mode, and I figured we might be only 40% done with the bounce. I laid out in a premium post over the weekend that we might be in for more teeth-clinching for the VIX to work its way from almost 30 (last week) to maybe half that value.

Let’s just put on our fantasy caps for a minute and suppose that 1400-point rise on the Dow from Thursday’s low to yesterday’s high was sufficient to relieve the oversold nature of the market and that, unbeknownst to us, the nature of the market has changed so severely that the selling has already resumed. With those rosy glasses on our heads, let’s talk about how each of these indexes might continue to get walloped.

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A Case For A Decent Rally Here

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Editor's Note: I offer this post from our friend SHJ in the interest of being fair and balanced. I, of course, would hate to see any rally, decent or otherwise!

Every so often something rare happens on equity indices, and I get to run the numbers to see what to expect when that happens, which is something I always enjoy doing. Last week there were touches and punches below the weekly 3sd lower band on the US equity indices, so I’ve been looking back to see what has happened in the past when this happened.

On the bigger picture the topping patterns on the US equity indices that I was looking at in my post on Wednesday 19th Feb have all broken down and none have yet made target, though SPX and QQQ are getting close. I’m expecting to the US indices go lower, but there is a decent case for a rally during the next couple of weeks before we reach Trump’s key date on April 2nd when he has said that his full threatened tariffs on the rest of the US trading partners are going on.

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Taking Stock on Crypto

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In my last post on Monday I was looking at the rally setup on Crypto which was decent but looked fragile, and that setup didn’t deliver, with Bitcoin (BTCUSD), Solana (SOLUSD) and Ethereum (ETHUSD) making lower lows and those bottoming setups disintegrating.

I want to have a look at the bigger picture on Crypto today as there are some reasons to think that a larger low may be forming, though with Crypto tied as closely as it is to equity prices, there is an obvious large risk that further equity declines may drag Crypto down into a larger decline.

That risk is very clear on the chart below, where you can see that historically Bitcoin regularly makes a high before equities, but tends strongly to make significant lows with equities.

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