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.

Beginner’s Luck

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I mentioned a couple of times earlier this week that I had done something which I hadn’t done for years – – bought an options position. Specifically, I bought a big slug of $143 QQQ puts, expiring July 21st. Well, I just sold ’em, and it worked out nicely (I did this screen grab a little earlier; I actually got out at $3.00, higher than shown here).

0609-options

I know most of you are fancy-pants options traders that do sophisticated positions, but I’m just a dumb old bear.

Oh, and one other tip – – now that I’m out, I can assure you that the NASDAQ is going to completely crash sometime between now and July 21st. God has a riotous sense of humor.

A Positive Negative Day

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In spite of a VIX scraping zero and a SPY that fell all of nine hundredths of a single percentage point, my lovingly-crafted portfolio had a good day. I gained 1.6% on the day with my entirely short portfolio, and my “ETF Only” portfolio hit a lifetime high in value. It comprises a mere three instruments: DRIP, ERY, and FAZ. Those are all triple-leveraged.

Those energy ETFs are particular favorites of mine. Here is one of them, which is about to reach escape velocity away from its cup with handle pattern:

0529-drip

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The Break So Long Anticipated

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YES! It’s finally happened! After all this waiting, crude oil has finally shattered the support level I’ve been watching for so many months. Ever since Gartman did his widely-followed broadcast on April 11th instructing people how to take advantage of the bull market in energy, the commodity has fallen EVERY SINGLE DAY with only a single exception. This is very exciting.

0504-crude

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