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.

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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Constructive Progress

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The star of today is, naturally, crude oil — and what a wild ride is has been! I came into the day long (VERY long……..) both DRIP and ERY. They started off well, and then they went into a free-fall which was, umm, a little disconcerting. Mercifully, I didn’t get stopped out, and they have turned around nicely. Take note, for instance, of the well-formed cup with handle pattern that has completed with ERY, shown below.

0525-ery

PHEW!!

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I don’t think I let myself know just how nervous I was about the OPEC announcement in the wee hours of this morning (my time). When I woke up, however, it took me about one second to grab my iPad from the side of my bed, fire it up, and look at crude oil. I was massively relieved to see that, quite obviously, whatever OPEC had to say did not thrill the market. (The “whatever” turned out to be a 9 month extension to their cuts, as opposed to something more dramatic).

0525-crude

I have a very substantial long position in both DRIP and ERY (the triple-bearish energy ETFs) as well as a scattering of energy shorts. I think this is going to be OK.

Extension Brings Expansion

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Since no one wants natural market forces to work these days, OPEC announced the extension of their already-in-place production cut. The response of crude oil has been steady all night, with prices ascending strongly, up over 3.5% as of this moment. To give this move some context, here’s the daily futures chart. The market is up about 10% since we bottomed earlier this month, but the multi-month trend still remains down.

0515-cl

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