Ironically, probably my best call of the entire year was the one I kept being so embarrassed about: declaring that the crude oil gap at $73.25 would be the peak of a staggering, multi-hundred percent increase in energy over a period greater than two years. Yet that is almost precisely where it flipped around, getting as high as 72.83. Since then, KABOOM, oil has been vomiting all over itself. As it melts past that magenta area I’ve tinted, we have a failed bullish breakout, plain as day.
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.
Gas Money
Sheesh, what is with this market? Tuesday was awesome for me. Wednesday was absolutely horrible. And now today, Thursday, is going great. Could the market make up its mind? No, I’ll go one better. Have the market go down 2% daily, every day, until it is 0. That’ll suit me nicely. This up/down/up/down stuff is driving both the good guys (the bears) and the wicked evildoers (the bulls) out of their respective minds. It’s sick.
Anyway. I wanted to share a couple of unrelated short ideas (tied together by my clever post title). The first is the financial sector, XLF, which gapped down nicely where that circle is shown. This sector peaked back on January 29th, and its gap is at 27.72. I have so many bank stocks in my portfolio already, it would be redundant for me to short this one too, but it’s a cool chart.
Thanks, Mister Gap!
My “Close Enough” post from just three days ago declared the rise in crude oil to be over, based (rather flimsily) on the successful assault against the gap at 73.25:
Gap. Yep.
I’ve been kind of hung up on the price gap in oil at 73.25. Yesterday, as we had pushed close enough to that number for me to be satisfied, I did a post called “Close Enough“, where I specifically pointed to XOP and wrote “I suspect this one is going to suffer the quickest.” Here is XOP now, with an arrow marking the timestamp of yesterday’s post.
Close Enough
I’ve been watching the gap in the long-term crude oil contract for a long time. The value is at $73.25. We got up to about $73, which is close enough for me.
