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.

Mistakes I Made (by AlgoTradeAlert)

By -

Trading Mistakes I Made in My Career

Do Not Trade Based on Any Stock Market Direction Predictions or Pivot Dates: No one can predict with certainty what the stock market will do in the future, so avoid making trades based on that assumption. Never base your trades on a prediction of a specific date when the market will turn, especially if it comes from other traders. Many such predictions are inaccurate, with less than half proving correct even after ten attempts. Never execute a trade based solely on fear and greed indicators or overbought or oversold conditions. These are merely market conditions and not direct signals to buy or sell.

(more…)

Beware of Weakness

By -

Below is a simple chart of the NASDAQ 100, with a vertical line separating one calendar year from the next. The years were 1999 and 2000. Put yourself in the head of some permabear weirdo like myself, on the heels of an insane, crazy rally. You figure 2000 CAN’T be anything like 1999. It just can’t.

And, sure enough, blammo, the selling starts! Yay! The bear market is here! And yet……..the damned thing went up another 40% in a matter of weeks! AIEEEEEE!!!

(more…)

On Corruption

By -

The subject of corruption has been on my mind recently, for reasons that I cannot get into and probably never will be able to articulate, but the inspiration hardly matters. If you had asked me a week ago was “corruption” meant, I would have stated roughly what most people might, which is that it has to do with things like bribing a government official. In other words, a way to bend the rules in your favor by doing something for someone else.

My notion of corruption has broadened, or at least changed, quite a lot in the past few days. Now, I think of corruption as what is going on inside a black box. In a normal system, if “A” goes into the box, and you can expect “B” to come out, then “B’ emerges. However, if “X” emerges, there’s something foul afoot inside. It isn’t operating as expected. The innards of this hypothetical box are………….corrupted. Because the outcome does not comport with the expectation.

(more…)