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.

Dark Stormclouds (by Springheel Jack)

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Friday was always likely to be a retracement or consolidation day as I mentioned on Friday morning. SPX rallied to close at the IHS neckline and that was neither bullish nor bearish really. A strong Sunday night on ES to follow through would have been bullish, but ES has dropped to make marginal new lows at the moment. That delivers a potential W bottom on strongly positive 60min RSI divergence, but that's only IF we see a reversal back up here. If we see Thursday's low undercut by much during trading hours that will look bearish, and will become rapidly more so if we drop further as I was saying on Friday. Here's the setup on the SPX 60min:

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Obsession With Central Bank Action is Unhealthy, But Typical

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The great question revolving around Greece is now answered.  It remained unanswered when the opening segment of NFTRH192 was written.  Here is how one writer was trying to deal with these and other questions over the weekend:

Obsession With Central Bank Action is Unhealthy, But Typical

“We’re seeing some positive sentiment return on account of a few things: the prospect of coordinated intervention in the event of a sloppy Greek election, or outright victory of an anti austerity party,” such as Syriza, said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. –MarketWatch

NFTRH has been managing what I believe could be a pivot to a coming intermediate bullish phase in the broad markets. For several weeks now my response to the Ticker Sense sentiment poll has been ‘Bullish’ http://is.gd/IX10GL. This has been largely due to markets’ [previous] proximity to important support, pervasively bearish sentiment, an over bought/over owned US dollar and the ‘Sitting Democrat’ election year cycle.

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Bullish Reversal Patterns (by Springheel Jack)

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Of the many forecasting tools that can be used to predict the future using the past, possibly the worst is extrapolation, though it is probably also the most widely used. Extrapolation is a process of rationalising that whatever has been happening recently has been for strong fundamental reasons, and will therefore continue, and it is extrapolation that makes people buy at highs and sell at lows. 
Possibly the most famous person to forecast mainly, or possibly only, using extrapolation was Alan Greenspan, who in my view was one of the worst central bankers in history as a result. He made a number of famous strong calls in the 1970s and 1980s forecasting major continuations at big highs and lows, and it was these calls that led to Senator Proxmire describing his forecasting record as the worst that he had ever seen at Greenspan's confirmation hearing in 1987. Did he learn from his mistakes then? Well …. no, and it was Greenspan using his abysmal forecasting skills to direct the US economy that led to two of the largest speculative bubbles in history, and the consequent hangover that the world is likely to be suffering through for quite a while longer. 

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Shanghai Stock Index at Critical Support

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The Daily chart below of the Shanghai Stock Index shows that price closed on Monday just above a major (and recent) support level of 2300. It is trading below both the 50 and 200 smas, which may or may not cross to form a bullish “Golden Cross.” However, in the meantime, the RSI, MACD, and Stochastics indicators have hooked down again on increasing downside momentum.

A break with conviction below 2300 could send this index down to the next support level of 2250, and subsequently 2150…one worth watching overnight to see where it closes on Tuesday and for the days/weeks ahead to gauge its influence (if any) on price action on the U.S. Major Indices.