If there’s one image that captures the pre-opening action this morning, it’s this one.
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.
Blunder of the YEAR
Oh. My. God.
Look, I know nothing is more boring than the trades that got away, but I have got to share this. See, yesterday, I decided to enter a tiny position on SMH puts just for the hell of it. That’s the arrow on the left. At the opening bell, things weren’t looking so sharp, and since the puts expire literally today, I dumped them. That’s the second arrow. I got that sense of relief we all feel when we’re no longer scared. That feeling would instantly be supplanted by self-recrimination.
Heaven Seventeen
One of my favorite comics, the late, great Gilbert Gottfried (not the late, great Hannibal Lecter you’ve heard so much about this week) often said his secret fantasy was that he’d be backstage the club, waiting to go on, and the club’s owner would come back and tell him there had been a flood and, here’s your check, you can go home. I’m afraid in recent weeks that’s precisely how I’ve been feeling, which is utterly uncharacteristic of my entire life. That feeling had better change soon. In the span of just four weeks. from April 19 to May 17, the markets have all exploded to lifetime highs, with the /NQ alone adding about 1,800 points. That’s more than ten percent. In four weeks.
Bloody Nose
Over a period of many years, what percentage of days is the stock market up versus down? Any guesses? Given what we’ve seen over the past decade, my intuition is something like 95% to 5%, although lately more like 100% to 0%. The truth is actually 54% to 46%, which I know is very hard to believe, but that’s what the data says.
This month (the ostensible “Sell in May and Go Away” era) the market goes up every single tic. We are now, as you well know, at levels never seen before in human history across the board.
