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.

Rising Wedge Broken

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The rising wedge I was talking about yesterday morning broke down and retested during the day. We are likely to see some retracement here and possibly a significant high. If we are looking at a retracement my minimum target area is the 23.6% fib retrace in the 2073 area, but my usual target range would be the 38.2% fib at 2055, the 50% fib at 2041 and the 61.8% fib at 2026. I would note that the daily middle band closed yesterday at 2053, so we might see a retest of the daily middle band. SPX 5min chart:

150219 SPX 5min Rising Wedge from 1980.90

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Crude and Tatooed

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I am excited and delighted by what’s happening with crude oil. As many of you know – particularly my Slope+ subscribers, for whom this has become an obsession – I’ve been very enamored of energy lately. One of the big appeals for me is that unlike so many equity stocks, energy and its related producer stocks seem to be one of the last “honest” markets to trade. It actually – gasp – reflects supply & demand as well as honest-to-God economic realities. It’s certainly refreshing, which is why a full third of my 81 short positions are directly related to energy.

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Crude Rotation

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I’m in total agreement that grease monkeys need not get excited unless they rip apart 5430s.  However, this week marks the first in many weeks that WTI has rotated right back to where it all started – the Weekly Opening Range (WOR) that was set Sunday night:

CL_2015-02-13

Experts are saying oil will head to $200 or $20 – pick a side.  Meanwhile, it’s been a nice bullish week and we’ll change our minds if they start breaking down weekly opening ranges again.

There’s no point in having a bias, only order flow 😉

Crude’s Decision Point

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The rally in crude oil has been impressive, but context is important. Let’s take a look at the past month on an hourly bar basis:

0213-clAs you can see, crude has had three rallies this month, and the peaks (circled in red) have been a little lower each time. I would suggest that this time is no different, and unless we bolt above $54.33, this is probably just another countertrend rally in the context of an ongoing bear market in energy.

Thank Ya, Crude!

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As my Slope+ readers well know, I’ve had a bug up my backside about energy shorts for quite some time. They’ve been doing a yeoman’s job keeping this bear happy in a market that seems to refuse to plunge. It’s interesting that the oil inventory report would come out this morning and cause  (appropriately, given its results) crude to accelerate its drop, only to have it rebound firmly. I’ve put an arrow at about the time the report came out. Crude seems to be re-weakening right now, and I’m dedicated to continuing my focus on this “bear market within a bull market”, in spite of a genius like Cramer declaring last week that oil “smelled like a bottom” (which, if you work at CNBC, passes as erudite analysis).

0210-CRUDE