Two months ago, the market was absolutely electrifying. Day to day, one never knew what the direction would be, but whether up or down, it would be big. The daily swings were large, and sometimes historic. It was a ball.
Get a Stick
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 Overconfidence Trap
Why Your Best Options Trades Are Setting You Up to Fail
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You just nailed three iron condors in a row. SPY stayed perfectly between your strikes, theta decay worked like clockwork, and you closed each position at 20% profit in under two weeks. You’re feeling invincible. Sound familiar?
(more…)Faithless & Perverse Generation
All right, fellas (and Violet), I can see the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. I’m having a grand old time this morning (having woken up at 3:30 a.m., which is when the markets open in Tahiti), yet I’m seeing a lot of chatter about the market closing green and bears getting wrecked and so forth. Take a big step back and look at the /RTY (which, incidentally, has completely bashed in Scott Bessent’s pretty hairdo).
When I was a boy, there was a little poster in my bedroom which said, “Faith can break the sky in two, and let the face of God shine through.” Try that some, except with charts. Tend the garden. Let reason conquer impulse.
Be Fearful When Others Have FOMO
Volatility Nearing Support
This trendline neatly contains a bull market in volatility that started half a year ago. Higher lows. Higher highs. An unbroken supporting trendline. It all suggests there isn’t much more VIX to bleed out at this point.
