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.

Rent-a-Wreck

By -

This is a follow-up on something I posted two Septembers ago which, over the long haul, was a fantastic short, but there’s no doubt I was too early!

I had suggested shorting Rent-A-Center in this post, and I predicted it would eventually look like the destroyed chart of one of the for-profit education companies. The Rent-A-Center chart was about $30 at the time, which I’ve marked with an arrow. Here’s where we are at now:

0202-RCII

So suggesting shorting a stock at nearly $30 that’s in the single digits was pretty brilliant, eh? Well, yes and no, because you’d have endured some nasty pain beforehand, and I’m the first to admit I wouldn’t have stuck with this short since it pushed about 20% higher before the plunge began.

All the same, it’s nice to see such an exploitative sector get nuked. Oh, and I was spot-on about what the chart would look like. Take a look at the post I mentioned, and you’ll see.

Two Hundred Thousand Dollars

By -

Well, I can hardly believe my eyes, but only 13 trading days into the year, and my Slope Plus Glengarry Leads post has thrown off over $200,000 in profits.

TwoHundred

In other words, I offered up 125 ideas, 124 of which are profitable now with an average gain of over 16% (again, this is in just over a couple of weeks). The hypothetical portfolio was $10,000 per symbol. I wish I could tell you I was short all 125, but I am not!

This has seriously got to stop at some point, though. Unlike interest rates, stocks can’t go below zero. In any case, congratulations to my beloved Slope Plus subscribers.

Sour MLK

By -

Preface: Slope has historically been a very visual piece of work. Oftentimes a post of mine will be nothing more than a chart without a single word. This post is going to be quite different, because I have a lot to say. Read it, though, since there might be some useful morsels in here for you.

I’ve had nine dogs in my life, and none of them have been inclined to chase cars (well, except maybe for my little Cotons, who chased the UPS truck yesterday, since it’s always dropping off annoying packages). From time to time I’ll read the musing that dogs do, in fact, chase cars, but they wouldn’t know what to do with one if they actually managed to catch it.

I feel a bit like that right now. For six miserable years, I was fighting a bull market. In my naivete, I failed to grasp that scumbags like Bernanke would actually be willing to doom this country to countless trillions in debt just so his Wall Street buddies could re-establish their fortunes. I guess I’m just not cynical enough. But in spite of all the good reasons that The Market Should Start Falling Here, it never took place, and bears like me got run over, battered, beaten, and consistently disappointed.

(more…)