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.

Not Counting Chickens

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Let’s talk about Shopify (SHOP) for a moment, because there’s a point I’d like to make. SHOP announced earnings hours before the market opened, and the stock plunged by about $20. I had no position, but if I had puts, I’d have been briefly thrilled. However, the stock’s low was basically set a few moments after the earnings came out, and it did nothing but climb afterwards. Once it was all done, the stock actually CLIMBED for the day. Any Shopify bears were understandably pissed and/or disappointed.

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Your Worst Enemy in Options Trading?

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Look in the Mirror

By the time you finish reading this, you’ll either nod in quiet agreement or scoff in denial. But the truth remains: trading is not about the market—it’s about you.

Most traders spend years chasing the perfect strategy, the magic indicator, the secret formula that will make their account grow in a straight line. They burn through books, forums, YouTube videos—convinced that success is a matter of finding the right “edge.”

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Severed

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Do not be alarmed. A minority of you get Apple TV, and a subset of that group watches the television series Severance. This post doesn’t require knowledge or even interest in the show, but the show’s conceit is the basis for what I have to say.

The premise of the show is that a small number of people have consented to a medical procedure on their brain which allows a corporation to employ them during the day, and during that workday, they will have absolutely no knowledge of their lives, memories, or families outside the workplace. Even though there may be a single human being, there are two human experiences: the “innie” who is the worker and the “outie” who is the person outside the confines of the office.

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