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 Break in Logic

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Comment-cleaner time, and something to get off my chest……..

The “logic” of the market these days seems to be along these lines:

  1. If the price of crude oil is going up………..
  2. Then that must mean demand is strengthening………..
  3. Which implies that the economy as a whole is strengthening…………
  4. Which means that companies will have more earnings………..
  5. Which will lead to higher stock prices, so I better buy stocks RIGHT NOW

Ahem. Folks: the reason crude oil is going up is because there’s chatter from producing countries about artificially holding down the supply. That’s it. End of story.

So my request of the people of earth is: please stop being morons.

Thank you.

P.S. I came into the day really short and have only been aggressively adding to my shorts.

Bold Numbers

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Apologies for the very late post today. I had a morning appointment that overran badly, and it’s slower work getting charts done after the markets open and I’m then trading as well as charting.

I mentioned on twitter last night after the close that the bulls narrowly managed to avoid a 5dma three day rule breakdown with a target at a retest of the lows. There was more downside overnight that reached my ideal target on ES at a retest of the 1850 area and ES then reversed back up hard there. There is a strange myth that globex highs and lows always need to be retested soon after. I’ve been watching that for a while and have seen little evidence to support this, and there’s no need to see that here.

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The Torque Awakens

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Well, naturally it’s a little disappointing to have sold off my energy longs yesterday and see crude pushing even higher today, but what can ya do. My portfolio is still in Bear Lite mode (50% cash, 50% distributed amongst carefully-chosen equity shorts). Regarding crude, the horizontal I’ve drawn below represents reasonable resistance at the moment. And as crude goes, so go the markets.

0122-cl