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.

SocialTrade: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut

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Am I obsessed with my latest creation, SocialTrade? Yeah, I'm obsessed. I love this product. I've never been so excited about something in my entire life.

This morning, I got a nice email from a SocialTrader, and he wrote…..

My one thought about it is that I think you should change the way the activity log displays activity.  Personally, I think that only comments should be displayed one after another in the activity log.  Currently, the log is also showing likes and restacks, which has the effect of making comments hard to find.  I would suggest doing something similar to Facebook where they simply list how many likes an item has received, and then you can click on the link to see all the names.  If you did that for likes and restacks and just left comments each showing in the log, it would look great.

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SocialTrade Gets More Social

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The new SocialTrade web site is getting better literally every day.

The latest couple of features are pretty cool. The first one reveals to you, in the upper-left corner of each thumbnail, how many comments (represent by the little talk bubble icon) and Likes (represent by the plus sign) a given page has received. For example, in the image below, the VIX chart received one comment and five Likes.

This will help you see at a glance which pages are garnering the most discussion and approval among SocialTraders.

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There's another time-saver we just added as well…..when you mouse over a thumbnail, not only does it 0612-STdescription expand the image so you can see it more clearly, but it will display the description (if any was entered) for the page. This  will make understanding what's "beneath" the thumbnail much easier. (It also makes it more important than ever that you provide a description when stacking something, in case the value of the page isn't immediately obvious).

If you haven't signed up for free SocialTrade access, please do so. You'll love it!

One MILLION Comments

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Long-time Slopers know what a crucial element the comments system is to the zeitgeist of this blog. Comments represent the lifeblood of Slope of Hope. It is where people share, learn, get to know one another, and help build a community.

I made the investment (of both time and money) creating my very own comments system a couple of years ago. I did so because I wasn't satisfied with the existing offerings and felt I could do a better job with my own vision of what a system would be like. At the time, I thought I could make a business out of it, but the world seems content with the likes of Disqus, so I cheerfully have kept my creation as the exclusive purvue of The Slope of Hope. And, hey, we've even got badges!

Some weeks ago, Iggy pointed out to me that it wouldn't be long before we had our one-millionth comment (hats off to Iggy for even paying attention to such things; I was clueless). So, week by week, we've been keeping an eye on when the blessed event would occur. So – – here we are today – – one MILLION comments have been posted into Slope's own system!

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The lucky Sloper who made the comment was Clint AKA Fabio, and here it is, in all its glory:

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Most financial blogs garner maybe a couple dozen comments a day. Here at Slope, the metric is consistently in the four-figures. I want to thank all Slopers – – especially the lunatics below who constitute the most active commenters on the site. 

+ MarketSniper
+ BDI
+ Iguanadon
+ Clint
+ Your beloved host (me)
+ Buddhaboy
+ Cool_Beans
+ mmTesla
+ zStock
+ Dollar

Thank you, everyone! Now let's get cracking on the next million comments! (Oh, and sign up for SocialTrade!)

The Launch

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I've decided to release my new project tomorrow, June 1st. I've been at work on it for quite some time, and although I'm very proud of ProphetCharts, this new creation is, I think, my best idea (errr, it's not a chart package – – something quite different). I'm quite excited about it, and I hope you like it. I'll be putting up a post and video at midnight. Thank you.

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