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.

FOMC Game Plan

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This is a selfish and a selfless post. It is selfish in the respect that I’m hoping to glean some wisdom from the crowd. It is selfless since it’s a decent amount of work to construct this properly, with the hope that some folks might benefit from the problem and its potential solutions.

Let me start with the situation and my assumptions:

  1. I have a substantial portfolio which consists of only cash and 30 bearish equity positions, by way of being long puts that expire no earlier than September and, on most cases, expire much later than that.
  2. I have 20% of my portfolio in cash. The portfolio overall is sporting a 57% profit so far this year.
  3. Over the past few weeks, I saw about 90% of my profits for the year go up in smoke, only to be restored over the course of the past few days (please note: it was not a good feeling, and I’d rather not go there again);
  4. My overarching assumption is that stocks will be MUCH lower at some point this year (prior to October) and, counter-trend rallies be damned, virtually all these puts will be worth much more later, even with time decay.
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The Bullish Playbook

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One of our fellow Slopers, Big Red, left the following question in the comments stream. I’ve boldfaced a few particularly salient portions:

Thanks for the chats, @TimKnight! It is always soothing to see and hear what other bear(s) are going through…and don’t worry, I won’t leave as a subscriber if I lose money (40% last week alone) as I believe you are one of the most enlightened voices on the Markets anywhere. My losses are my own. I knew when to get out and I ignored my own signals. I am in training for the next time and am *visualizing* getting out (my biggest problem)! 😛 

That said, I feel more comfortable on the bear side (making 2M and losing it in 2008 because, once again, I didn’t know when to get out). 🙂 

What do you do (not now, because I agree with you the markets still have more to go downwards) when the markets finally turn and things start to look bullish (the “green shoots” haunt me to this day as I would still have that 2M if I had paid attention). It might be an interesting post – speculating on the bear side vs. the bull side. I have my own thoughts but I’d love to hear from someone who is better than I!  

Do you have a bullish playbook? I am working on mine – which has to be different than the bear side! I have a completely different lineup of stocks and strategies for the bull side (which I am continuously preparing for). 

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Monkey Business

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I want to show you something exceptionally cool.

Please observe the /ES action last night. Kindly take note of the breakout I’ve marked in red. This is the bullish breakout. This is where equity bulls – – a group, remember, a couple of notches beneath child pornographers – – figures they are going to run off with the market is a glorious Powell-worshipping blaze of glory. Those guys. Further, note how the breakout failed.

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