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.

November Game Plan

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November is here.  A wild 2023 continues to fly by unrestrained.  In my last post, Autumn Fall, I was looking for weakness to take hold in the markets from the beginning of August through the end of November. The weakness that we have seen over the past three months in markets is what I was anticipating, with roughly 20% declines in IWM and IYR.  As we enter into the beginning of November I ask the question:  Is the selling over for this year, or will there be more bearish opportunities in November?

To attempt to answer that question we’ll be looking at the crude oil analog, as well as the November setups for IWM, SPY, IYR, and XLF.  The crude oil analog below is the chart that I showed in Autumn Fall.  The red box in the top left is the time period of August – November 2013, which should be echoing through the broader market August – November 2023.  The analog is not anticipating the weakness in the broader market to stop until the end of November, followed by a December bounce.

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Quantity Not Required

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Over the weekend, I did a video about three big lessons I learned recently. Contrarian that I am, even to myself, I want to run directly into one of these and debate it: specifically, the point about how real profits come from LARGE quantity positions that are shorter-term in nature.

You see, I track not just my active positions but also the ones I close. I want to see how good or (more commonly) bad a decision I made by getting out.

What struck me this morning, when I sorted out the “would have been” percentage values, is that the BIGGEST gains, both percentage-wise and dollars-wise, were in tiny positions (like 4 or 5 put options) in expensive names. Specifically, Albemarle (ALB):

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