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 Way Is (Probably) Shut

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SPX made yet another marginal new high yesterday making a total of five new all time highs over the last two weeks, all in the 2070s within a total range of less than six points. That’s a lot of effort from the bulls to fail to get get over what has so far been extremely stiff resistance. In the event that the bulls are unable to push through this resistance , or spike through but can’t sustain trade over the 2070s, there is now a very nicely formed pair of nested double tops lighting a path down to a retest of broken resistance at the 2019 high. SPX 5min chart:

141205 SPX 5min Nested Double Tops

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Oil Slick

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Further to my post of November 4th, WTI Crude Oil has pierced through its next major support level of 64.50, as shown on the following Weekly chart. Also, we now have a bearish Death Cross formation on this timeframe.

Oil has been in free fall since the beginning of October. The next major support level is 50.00. However, as I mentioned in the aforementioned post, price may pop up to retest the moving average cross-over level, which is now sitting around 95.00ish, before it plunges again…although, it may have a tough time rallying above, what is now major resistance, at 75.00.

The Week After Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving week is typically bullish, but the week after is not. The chart below from SentimenTrader shows this very well and the stats for today are obviously bearish.

141201 holiday_thanksgiving

My friend Cobra from www.cobrasmarketview.com adds that Mondays have been down 8 of the last 12, and that the first trading day of the month, for a long time a fairly automatic green close, has now been down 9 of the last 12. Altogether the historical stats are weighing in heavily against the bulls today: (more…)

A Fractured Misconception

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Amongst the permabulls of our race – – which is basically everybody at this point – – there’s this empty-headed notion that as crude oil prices plunge (an event I predicted repeatedly here on Slope), cheaper gas would make the economy boom even more. I’ve read this sentiment so often that I just had to same something – – in case you think plunging oil doesn’t indicate a fundamentally worsening economy, but instead is just a “peace dividend” to the unwashed masses so they can buy more crap from China, consider what crude oil did starting in June 2008 and what followed………

1127-uso

The Day After Thanksgiving

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I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and that none of you were long enough oil-related instruments for OPEC to upset your digestion. We are seeing a weak looking open today and in part that may be due to the break below $70 on oil, though on all three trading days so far this week we had a significant move down either from or before the open, which then wasn’t followed through. .

I’m skeptical about the prospects for the bears today. This will be a holiday half-session on low volume, and the stats for the last trading day in November are impressively bullish, with SPX closing up 6 of the last 7.

The close on Wednesday delivered another close above the 5 DMA, and another new lifetime high on SPX of 29 consecutive closes above the 5 day MA. If the bullish historical stats for today deliver then we will see SPX make another lifetime high at 30 above today. It wouldn’t take a big move to end that run here though, as the 5 DMA is now at 2065. SPX daily 5 DMA chart: (more…)