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.

Tuesday Starts

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Good morning, everyone, and greetings from North Carolina, where I continue to yearn for both my dogs and my starting-the-day-at-5-a.m. time zone. I’m going to be spending part of my morning, once again, with the Duke Lemurs, which our family cheerfully supports.

I have entered a couple of new positions – Ryder (symbol R) and, because I’m so excited about tech, good old simple QQQ (and how nice it is to be in an option without a 25% bid/ask spread.) So I’m in 30 positions now and down to 7% cash, and that 7% is burning a hole in my pocket.

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Earnings Focus: Microsoft

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Today is going to be one of the biggest earnings days of the year, so I’m going to be taking a look, in three separate posts, at three of the most monster-sized reports. The reactions, collectively, to these reports will help inform market direction overall, because the stocks are so significant.

We begin with Microsoft which, over the long haul, has created more millionaires and billionaires than just about any other company in existence. It’s been the bluest of the blue chips.

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Down the Chimney

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In thinking about Santa coming down the chimney, do children ever question what a horrible sooty mess he’d be? Not that I’ve ever heard.

But rather than talk further about the wondrous notion of Santa, here are some stocks that look to be done making new highs and are now headed down the sooty chimney.

With its top holdings of Apple [23%] and Microsoft [21%], the Technology sector ETF, XLK, has held up better than some others. Even so, it lost its bid for a higher high at the end of March, and price fell below the Ichimoku Cloud on Friday.

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Bonds. James Bonds.

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Well, happy Sunday Slope. Yesterday was an absolutely amazingly beautiful day here in Nashville. I think we were in the mid-80’s, and nothing but clear blue skies. I spent the day going into downtown Nashville to enjoy being outside. It was so nice to see Nashville bustling with masses of maskless people once again just enjoying life. (Editor’s note: agreed! On and on the plane! What a pleasure!)

In today’s article we’re going to take a look at my new friend, TLT. For those of you that have never traded TLT before, it is an ETF that tracks the long end of the US Treasury bond curve. It looks at bonds of 20 years and longer. Not exactly a high flying tech stock, eh? It’ll pay the bills.

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