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.

Triple Long View

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Good morning, Slopers, and welcome to a new week. The earnings season is finally going to start ramping up, and of course there’s that Putin/Trump meeting happening, so it should be an interesting few days.

There aren’t exactly a lot of fireworks this morning, so let’s take a step back and look at a few basics. First, the bonds below remain completely intact for what I am hoping is a sea-change in the world of bonds and rates. The uptrend, having been broken, was challenging with a multi-week rally, but this mercifully seems to have been repelled where I’ve put the arrow. My only two options positions are substantial stakes in XLU and XLF January 2019 puts, and obviously the XLU is quite dependent on a strengthening interest rate market. My opinion is that we’ll see bond prices tumble away from this resistance point.

bonds (more…)

Stock Market Superheroes

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Whenever someone argues against short-selling, they often bring up two very scary words: Infinite Risk. In other words, the most you could lose on a long position is 100%. But there is no mathematical limit to short losses. You could short a stock at $10 and it opens the next day at – – what – – let’s say $500,000. Shriek, right?

Well, yeah, but that doesn’t happen. I think the most horrendous wipeout I ever suffered was a 50% gap up, and since my positions are typically 1% of my portfolio, it wasn’t devastating. If someone is going to argue against short selling, I think a far better and more realistic argument is not that losses are unlimited but that profits are limited.

In other words, the most you can possibly make on a short is 100% and, let’s face it, stocks never go to zero. Hell, I think even Lehman Brothers is still trading in some form to this day. A gain or 20% or 30% – – maybe 50% once in a blue moon – – is a terrific success.

However, the profits on long positions are unlimited. Making more than 100% – – be it 500%, 1000%, 5000%, or even 100,000% – – is absolutely possible, and it’s been done by people all over the world. The main ingredient is timing and patience.

I’ve used SlopeCharts to create some percentage charts below, to illustrate some long-term winners as Intel……

slopechart INTC (more…)