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.

The Price of COST

By -

Well, I blew this one.

I had puts on Costco (symbol COST). During yesterday’s shotgun-to-the-face nightmare for the bears, for absolutely NO reason other than unchecked panic, I dumped half my position about where the arrow is shown. Well, you know what happened next. I took a loss on what I dumped, and as I glanced at my spreadsheet right now, there is a 60% profit on them (and they have 106 days left on them as well). Just pathetic on my part. At least I didn’t dump 100%, but Jesus, what a ghey-boy.

(more…)

Brutal

By -

There’s just no other word for it. Today, for the bears, was absolutely brutal.

You see, over the weekend, I was thinking to myself how crucial it was that the market begin to weaken. That transpired beautifully on Monday. Tuesday was immaterial: nothing of note happened.

Today, however, blew a shotgun blast right through bearish hopes. In fact, the fun part of this bear market ceased abruptly on June 16th. Since then, it’s been a total hellscape. We seemed to be getting back into business in October, but with the October 13th CPI report, that was all over. It’s been a nightmare ever since.

(more…)

Diamond Choker

By -

There were times, earlier this year, that I would scold myself for being so timid with my options purchases. What was I doing, I would ask myself, buying options that had so much time on them, when other folks were getting options that were (in percentage terms) performing way better than mine, since they had taken a more aggressive stance with respect to price and time?

Well, I’m having no such self-flagellation lately, since just about the only good thing I can say about my positions is that they had a crap-load of time on them, which makes a horrible day like today, and a horrible period like that past five WEEKS, bearable. I have lightened up somewhat (15% cash now) but, generally speaking, am still poised for weakness, which should happen sometime before we have colonized Mars.

(more…)