Well, the day began like this……….
……..and ended like this……….
(more…)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.
Sunday Index Review
BonbonBONDs
The bond market, known as the debt or the credit market, is where investors go to buy and sell debt securities issued by corporations or governments. The U.S. bond market is more than 30 percent larger than the stock market in terms of total value of securities traded.
Bonds are given an investment grade, denoting the risk a bond has of defaulting. A bond with a “AAA” or “A” rating is high-quality, while an “A”- or “BBB”-rated bond is medium risk. Bonds with a BB rating or lower are considered to be high-risk.
Bonds are susceptible to risks such as inflation and interest rates. Aren’t those key topics of the day/month/year? So. Shouldn’t we be paying attention?
(more…)Learning Lessons The Hard Way
Inflation, bad economics, and slower consumer spending have hit even the nation’s most affordable retail stores – Family Dollar.
On Wednesday, 13 March Dollar Tree announced its fourth-quarter earnings, and despite the revenue growth over recent months, the company announced that it’s planning on closing nearly 1,000 of its Family Dollar-owned stores.
Back in 2015, Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar in a $8.5 billion deal in an attempt to create a coup de grace that would challenge nearest discount competitors Dollar General and Walmart.
Unfortunately, Dollar Tree had to learn these lessons the hard way, following the acquisition and the difficulty of having to rebuild the reputation of the downtrodden Family Dollar brand that has been ridiculed with bad publicity and increasing competition within an already slow consumer market.
(more…)Neat and Tidy
Despite priding myself on organization, my watchlists in SlopeCharts have become anything but and are instead a hot mess of charts not reviewed in months (and in many cases, years). Oh, dear. Goes to show how leaving for tomorrow what can be done today, has a way of messing things up.
Taking watchlist cleanup on as challenge, I began the process thinking there would be plenty of purging, but so far, that’s not been the case. I started with just the “short” watchlists, four of them totaling 178 issues, and haven’t nearly gotten through those. Another factor is that most of the charts I’ve reviewed so far still deserve the “short” classification.
Starting with good ol’ almighty SPY, here are a few charts plucked from the still-messy short watchlists. [Note for all charts: green and red horizontals represent the top and bottom of the Ichimoku Cloud.]
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