From the Slope of Hope: [6]Greetings from Whole Foods Market in Palo Alto [7]. There are times when I simply have to get away from my home office, since even I have limits as to how many hours I want to stay in the same place. I come to Whole Foods often enough to notice that a fair number of insane people come here. I divide them into (a) insane people without money and (b) insane people with money.
The insane ones without money are the more obvious ones. They are the ones yammering to themselves, or dressed in really peculiar outfits, or otherwise looking semi-homeless. The ones with money [8] require a more discerning eye (or, in my case, a good memory). FLASH update: at this very moment, one of group (b) sat next to me and is having a business meeting on speakerphone. Astonishing. (It's a very typical conversation: "I'm just trying to keep my day job while trying to raise money for my pet project.")
Today was really annoying from a trading perspective. It started off profitable, got really profitable, and then withered into a small loss. A market that isn't "allowed' to go its natural direction gets to be irksome. We've been trapped in a fairly tight range for the entire year.
I'm still pretty comfortable shorting this market, and on Thursday I increased my positions from 62 to 80. I've still got 64 other prospects, but their price isn't where I'd want them to be to short them. There are five charts that I think speak to the good prospects for bearishness. My favorite of them I shared this morning [9] with my (beloved) Slope Plus members, but here are the others:
The Dow Jones Composite has painted out a beautiful series of lower highs. My fervent wish, of course, is that the recent surge we have been dealing with is just another opportunity to disappoint our bullish friends.
[10]
The S&P 100 has quite clear broken its wedge pattern:
[11]
Similarity, the Russell 2000 broke its own wedge and has a pretty decently-formed head and shoulders top in place:
[12]
And my intent is to remain stalwart in the face of bullish bluster and nonsense until we get a VIX spike to the mid-20s. I know that seems impossible, but.....that's my benchmark.
[13]
Another guy just sat down to replace the one earlier, and he's talking to someone about his startup. My God, this place has lost its mind. But it's doing so with money, so people forgive the insanity.
