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.

The Price of Comfort

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I retain stop-loss orders on all my positions. On occasion, fewer than ten times a year, I am facing a really tough morning in which I need to decide whether, one, just to grit my teeth, let a portion of the positions get blown out by their stops, or two, delete all the stop orders and re-enter them with the hope that the worst of the buying will be done soon after the market opens.

Today, I decided to just let the stops stay in place, and the result was that I got zapped out of some of my positions at pretty much the worst prices of the day. This psychological “insurance” cost me many thousands of dollars. It would have been better to have just strapped on a pair. This was a $10,000 insurance premium that was valuable for about five seconds.

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The Ultimate Pair Trade

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I need a new set of balls.

I’m serious. It’s not from overuse. God knows that’s not the issue. It’s just that in about 95% of the cases where I’m upset with my trading, it’s because I violated my rules. Take today. Please!

Yes, I came into the day very short, but I was totally ham-handed with my gold trade. Specifically:

  1. I came into the day long January (I say again, JANUARY!!!!!!!) puts on GLD.
  2. They moved a LITTLE against me but violated nothing.
  3. Since I have defective balls (see above), I immediately dumped them for a small loss.
  4. The FOMC did its thing and gold went into a free-fall.
  5. I frantically bought DUST to try to make up for it. Gold began recovering.
  6. It moved against me. I dumped DUST at a nastier loss than the GLD puts.
  7. Gold then resumed a much more severe drop, sending DUST and my puts soaring.

Thus, I managed to multiple-dimensionally fuck up a gold trade. To be clear, this was a great day, but sweet baby Jesus, I am my own worst enemy.

Biting the Big One

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You are probably weary of me griping about my mismanagement of my Bitcoin short. Too bad! I’ve got to get this off my chest.

Simply stated, my declaration at $83,000 that Bitcoin was about to fall hard was, to date, the greatest trade idea of the Year of our Lord 2026. It was brilliant. I think, in sum, I made a few thousand bucks off of it. BFD. That’s pretty goddamned sad for the trade of the year.

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