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.
That’s something I’ve got in common with Private Pyle: he wants to be different. For whatever reason, I’m a contrarian to the core. Indeed, one of the appeals of messing around with personal computers back in 1980 was that practically nobody else was doing it (in case you hadn’t noticed, the unusualness of microcomputers vanishes decades ago, so that aspect of the appeal is likewise gone).
Before I begin, I wanted to mention how long I’ve been looking forward to the start of October. I’ve been lining up engineering talent to revitalize Slope and also bring some serious strength to SlopeCharts, and that all starts happening Monday. As a person who has lived his life creating products, I couldn’t be more excited about this “new era” of Slope commencing.
As far as the market, I couldn’t be less excited. This is pretty much as bad as it gets for an ursine soul like myself………lifetime highs everywhere, a raging small caps market, and a VIX in the single digits. Absolutely soul-crushing.
I’m not the sort of give up (ummm……..obviously) and I have, in fact, put together five options positions based on one simple premise. I’ll get to the premise later.
For now, let me show you the five positions in question. They all have these elements in common: (1) I own puts against them (2) the puts are in-the-money (3) the options expiration is way out in January 19 2018 (at least), giving me tons of time. (more…)
I will start off with a chart that, in a sea of tens of thousands of charts, stood out as shocking:
This is the twenty-thousandth post on the Slope of Hope. Earth decided not to make a big splash about this momentous occasion, because as I sit here on this pitch-black predawn, the ordinariness of the news is striking:
How much more fitting it might have been for the Dow to have fallen, say, 2000 points the day before, just to put a spring in our collective stride? (more…)
Ever since eclipse day (the 21st of August), markets have been surging higher, thanks, it seems, to the distinct lack of nuclear missiles flying through the air. The small caps are up nearly 6% in that brief timespan, but I think it would do us all good to keep the big picture in mind.
Here’s the index for the past twenty years. As you can see, we have hit that red resistance line five times now, turning back in each instance.
