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.

OK, So Now What?

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Misplaced optimism really rubs me the wrong way. And after Thursday’s close, the world was absolutely drenched in the stuff. If you watched the coronavirus briefing, as I do each afternoon, you would have rightly assumed it was the last one. There was an enormous “good work, everyone, we’ve learned a lot, take care!” vibe to it, and it seemed clear that the mood was much very one of victory and completion.

This was reflected in the after-hours market as well. Since the ES successfully managed not to crack 2750, it took a rocket ship higher, and it tagged the line I put in place from early in March.

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Kids Today

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Back when I was a lad, I subscribed to Investors Business Daily (umm, that didn’t last). There was a full page ad that appeared just about every day for something called The Better Software People, and it basically showed how, using their software, you could have turned $10,000 into $43 million, or something like that.

I don’t think I ever subscribed to their product, but the ad had the same effect on me as I suspect it had on a lot of other people, which was to put stars in our eyes about how easy it would be to just print money by participating in the equity and index options market (and this was back in 1985, so you can imagine how horrible the options markets were, to say nothing of the bid/ask spreads, which were probably wider than Kim Kardashian’s backside).

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Day Trader?

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In the Sudden Slope Sentiment Shift post from late last week, I stated that of the cancellations I had received on April 9th (which seemed to be some kind of “Max Pain” point for people), all but one stated their reason as something along the lines of, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

There was one exception, however, and he stated, in its entirety, the following:

150% short get’s us all excited only to find out that night on Closing trade you covered…you\’re a day trader who shows longterm charts…should have waited until the price hits 50day to short….killed me

I thought this merited a response, because I must strongly disagree with the characterization of myself as a “day trader.”

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