Look further out and the picture darkens. Positioning, sentiment, and liquidity are all stretched to levels that have rarely rewarded the crowd. Cash is near record lows, leverage near record highs, and everyone’s crowded into the same comfortable story.

So we play both horizons: long the trend until breadth breaks, while sizing for the reversion the intermediate evidence keeps pointing toward. Two surprises this week — financials gave a rare bullish signal, and our Market-Implied Regime indicator flipped to something we didn’t expect. More on both below.

***The MO port is currently up +42.5% ytd in 26’. The Collective is where we discuss the theory behind the positioning, publish the differentiated research, track the book in real time, and argue it out with a global group of serious investors. If that’s your kind of room, join us in Slack. ***

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio gave back 70 basis points last week, leaving us +42.5% on the year and below our high-water mark of +61%. We recently reset to mostly cash. From here we expect to rebuild exposure in biotech (XBI, ARKG, and select names), cybersecurity, energy and crude, and a narrow set of the Mag7 (META, NVDA).

2. Bonds are compressing. Bollinger width on the monthly is its narrowest since 2018. Compression regimes are reliable in exactly one respect: they precede large moves. They say nothing about direction. Our bias is that this one resolves lower.

3. The dollar is testing its own line. DXY is dancing on the level it recently broke, now acting as support. Whether it holds there or fails will set the tone for macro over the coming months. We’re watching for follow-through, or a bull trap.

4. The S&P continues to coil. Our base case remains an eventual break higher. Near term, renewed US–Iran tension and firmer oil argue for some potential downside first.

5. Breadth eased but held. Our Aggregate Breadth Indicator slipped to +2, still consistent with the prevailing uptrend. A move to +1 or below would, on our history, raise the odds of a 7%-plus correction materially.

6. Internals are deteriorating. The key market internals are moving the wrong way. If the picture doesn’t stabilize soon, our one-to-three-month outlook turns decidedly more cautious.

7. Liquidity keeps grinding lower. Our Liquidity Gauge continues to trend down, which adds weight to the intermediate-to-longer-term caution.

8. Positioning and sentiment are stretched, especially on longer horizons. Hedge-fund net leverage sits at 79%, just off four-year highs; gross leverage near 312%, close to a record. BofA’s Bull/Bear gauge is at 9.6, its highest in more than five years. Schwab’s STAX, which tracks actual retail flows and positioning, has jumped to 59, a four-year high. Our own Trend Fragility measure is at 71% and rising. None of these are a timing signal. But together they describe a market with little cushion.

9. The latest FMS tells the same story. BofA’s July Global Fund Manager Survey shows cash down to an “uber-low” 3.6%, managers their most overweight US equities since December 2024, the highest “boom” expectations since February 2022, and a record 54% now forecasting no landing. Consensus has rarely been this comfortable.

10. One model disagrees with us, and we’re listening. Nearly all of our work points to higher rates once the current one-to-two-month lull in inflation passes. One reading though cuts the other way. Last month our Market-Implied Macro Regime indicator flipped to a 100% Goldilocks signal, meaning low, positive growth alongside low and falling inflation. The indicator has a strong record predicting the regime six months out. It isn’t our base case. But a model with a good hit rate contradicting your priors is exactly the kind of evidence to sit with rather than wave off.

11. China is still deleveraging, and commodities don’t seem to care. State Street’s China Monetary Conditions Index keeps making new all-time lows, and it tends to lead macro momentum. What’s telling is how well commodities have held up regardless. Copper is near record highs through a long, deep Chinese deleveraging. The global growth and inflation picture changes materially the day China restarts its growth engine.

12. We still like precious metals, and we think we’re early. For now we’re waiting out the correction, which is a rates story. Until bonds find a durable floor, we stay on the sidelines here.

13. Central banks keep buying gold. The pace is accelerating, which puts a floor under how far the metals can fall.

14. The clearest positive is in the financials. Our new colleague Dean Christians (TPMR) flagged a rare breadth thrust in the sector. This week every financial sub-industry group registered a bullish short-term Dual Trend buy signal, something last seen in 2021.

The base rate is encouraging: when more than 95% of financial sub-industries are on buy signals, the sector has compounded at 19.6% annually, well above its average back to 1959. As Dean put it, “the ongoing rotation out of technology has fueled improving participation across several other sectors, with financials standing out as one of the primary beneficiaries.”

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

Early in my career, trading and investing appeared to hinge on the gathering of facts. To gather all the facts—regarding a company’s prospects, the market’s current phase, the economy’s outlook—would mean to know. And to know was the hurdle for risking capital.

Yet no matter how voraciously I ingested analysis, no matter the confidence with which it was presented, the facts kept… shifting. Over time, analysts revised their models. Forecasters moved their timelines. The targets that once felt inevitable quietly became footnotes.

But facts shouldn’t shift. Facts are facts, are they not?

That is what the intellect tells us. It divides our world into fixed categories: black and white, right and wrong. Once named, these become the things we say we know. And once known, they remain known.

Yet in markets, today’s facts consistently become tomorrow’s fictions.

Gradually, I began to perceive a resonance that accompanied the facts—and discovered it follows a reliable arc.

Early in a cycle, a compelling thesis hits something in me that is curious and alive. Novel. Seductive.

As price confirms the thesis, the novelty of those facts hardens into something different. Something that feels like solid ground. The model isn’t just interesting anymore—it feels true. Capital accumulates around it. Confidence builds.

In the latter stages, another shift occurs. Not in the data—not yet—but in the resonance. That felt sense of solid ground begins to recede. The delivery changes: more defensive, more emphatic, more insistent. More sophistication. More facts.

The resonance becomes one of grasping. And I feel it before I can explain it.

This resonance is the market’s most honest signal: truth, in all its fluidity, has moved on. And the facts, brittle and unbending, will inevitably break.

My trust has shifted: from the fixed I desire to the fluidity markets demand.

Facts lag. Resonance leads.

Around the World

The breakout in the U.S. Dollar is developing in a manner that keeps both longs and shorts on edge. For three weeks, price has been consolidating just above the breakout threshold, hovering near 100.

The structure on the daily timeframe resembles a Bull Flag pattern, with price action pulling back to test former resistance as newly formed support.

The month’s swiftest mover has been Euro / Pound, which this week met the 1X measured move target for the Descending Triangle pattern that comprised the Right Shoulder.

On the weekly chart, this highly directional move has already covered two-thirds of the 1X measured move target from the completed Head & Shoulders Top pattern. Given the intense momentum thus far, I anticipate heightened two-way volatility going forward.

Lumber Futures—the September contract shown here—continue to hold its higher low in what could be the formation of a tight continuation pattern on the daily.

Heating Oil broke out of the Falling Wedge pattern on the continuation chart, cited in last week’s issue. I have yet to identify a clear pattern on any specific contract month to properly structure this trade.

The consolidation in Feeder Cattle Futures continues to move within its congestion zone.

And as the SPY rolled over short of the 760 level required for a new high, the Nasdaq headed toward the lower threshold of the consolidation range I’ve been tracking for over a month.

The Pauses That Refresh

Our team at Macro Ops has been monitoring the recent sector rotation away from previous momentum leaders toward fresh beneficiaries. Specifically, financial stocks—most notably in the insurance space—have seen increased strength.

A prime example is The Travelers Companies (TRV), which was initially added to the active watchlist on June 20, 2026, and later flagged as a featured breakout in the June 27, 2026 issue. TRV posted impressive pre-market earnings on Friday, marking the climax of its recent powerful breakout.

Because TRV is currently extended by 7x ATR from its 50DMA—a threshold our Macro Ops team frequently utilizes for profit-taking on overextended positions—we anticipate the stock will consolidate or experience a pullback toward its long-term moving averages in the near term.

Here are the names that grabbed my attention in this week’s screen:

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***The MO port is currently up +43.3% ytd in 26’. If you’d like to join the Collective, our premier service that offers discussions on high-level theory and performance, differentiated research, real-time portfolio tracking, and a global community of serious traders/investors dedicated to mastery, then click the below and sign up. We look forward to seeing you in our Slack!***

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week down -70bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +43.3%, below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: All cash as we recently did a portfolio reset but we’ll be repositioning back into biotech (XBI, ARKG and select names), cyber security, energy / crude oil, and select Mag7 (META, NVDA).

2. Bonds continue their compression on the monthly tape with BB width at its tightest range since 2018. Compression regimes precede big trends but are directionally agnostic, though our bias is for a breakout to the downside (more on this below).

3. Bonds are testing key levels of support. Yesterday’s weak CPI surprise provided only a temporary boost before reversing and closing the day unchanged. There’s no clear short entry yet, as it’s oversold against its 20dma. We’re continuing to keep a close eye on this as I expect things are setting up for a bearish breakdown come end of summer, once this short-term disinflationary impulse runs its course.

4. There is a tactical long in the front end, 3m SOFRs. Speculative positioning is record short. I’ve laid out why I’m bullish rates (bearish bonds) here, but I think we’re in a 1-2 month window where inflation and growth surprise to the downside, making this a tradeable setup. I’m considering putting in a buy stop above recent highs to see if the market can pull us in long.

5. But again, this is a short-term tactical trade at best. The best central banker (2yr yields) says the Fed’s next move will be a hike.

6. Our Leading Yield Indicator continues diverging higher.

7. DXY continues to hold its breakout / support level. Not much to say here. We’re willing to play it in either direction; long on a move above recent highs and short on a bull trap breakdown.

8. Our bias for risk assets continues to be bullish. SPX is still trading in a 2 month sideways range, within a Bull Quiet regime.

9. Breadth continues to expand putting the odds strongly in favor of a bullish breakout. Notice the opposing breadth picture that preceded the March selloff, where breadth diverged lower compared to today’s where its diverging higher.

10. However, one thing we’re closely monitoring is the negative divergence in a few key internals, such as credit (green line) and Qs vs SPY (tan line). I suspect we’ll see both bottom out and reverse soon. If not, I’d be hesitant to buy any breakout in SPX as it’d likely be a trap.

11. From Citadel Securities: “Despite the S&P 500 trading within 1% of all-time highs, S&P 500 Information Technology, the Nasdaq 100, and even the S&P 500 Semiconductor industry all trade below their respective 10-year average forward P/E multiples.

Some of the market’s highest-quality growth companies are entering earnings with valuation support rather than valuation headwinds.”

12. Semi’s forward PE is back below their 10yr average. Admittedly, this is on the back of elevated earnings expectations (chart via Citadel).

13. Speaking of semis, RenMacLLC recently pointed out that nearly 87% of semi names are oversold.

14. The memory ETF DRAM is bouncing off its lower band, offering a decent spot to play for a tactical long with a tight stop, which we might do in small size.

15. Semis should continue to perform well as long as actual CAPEX keeps pace with expectations. 3Fourteen Research shows that MAG 7 CAPEX estimates are approaching 3% of GDP. These are insanely large numbers.

16. META’s valuation recently dropped to its second lowest level ever — the all-time low marking the end of its 22’ bear trend. The key catalyst is monetizing its massive compute base: if Meta can rent out spare AI capacity without slowing its own roadmap, investors stop treating capex as vanished cash flow. That reframe alone could re-rate the multiple.

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

Last month, a colleague wanted to talk through a difficult first half of the year. He pulled up a chart of the S&P and began walking me through it. His account was riddled with “I”: chopped up, trapped short, forced to cover, embarrassed. I stopped him.

He couldn’t have been trapped in April. He was sitting across from me right here, right now.

An uncertain laugh. I let the silence hang.

I asked him to walk through the chart again, this time with a condition: no references to self whatsoever. The words came slowly at first. Then he caught his stride:

Mean-reverting conditions. An adverse environment for trend trading. A v-reversal on de-escalation headlines. Price to new highs. The market, moving.

No story. Just circumstance.

That was the only accurate account of what happened. The “I” trapped short, the “I” that feels shame…that “I” is a story. There is no “I” in markets.

He pushed back. He existed, didn’t he? He was sitting right there.

Yes—exactly there, in that moment, talking to me. In the next, conducting research. The next, defining risk. The next, sizing and executing. Perpetually present; never in the chart.

The story was dissolving, but not without a fight. None of this reinstated his sold-out positions or made back the money lost on the short.

But his grip—interlocked with an invisible adversary, grappling on a fictional mat—loosened.

I could see him returning.

I asked him simply: what is the next right action? His response: tighter regime rules, smaller size in adverse conditions. And he went to work.

Listen to how you describe your trades. “I got chopped up.” “I was trapped.” “I got shaken out.”

And conversely, notice who is actually sitting right here, right now, ready to take the next right action.

Wide & Loose

It’s a Jesse Livermore classic: “It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.”

Sometimes, it seems like all markets are consolidating. In those periods, “my sitting” involves patiently awaiting a clear breakout to trigger a new trend.

Conversely, there are moments when everything trends simultaneously, and “my sitting” means waiting for that volatility to compress once more. Currently, the currency and futures markets reflect this latter environment.

U.S. Dollar Futures tested its prior resistance level for a second consecutive week following one of the most-watched breakouts in macro. We maintain our risk-defined long position within the Macro Ops Portfolio.

The Ascending Triangle pattern in Rice Futures—first featured in the May 2, 2026 issue—met its 2X measured move target this week following a volatile uptrend that included a deep retest of the 50SMA.

Following its Symmetrical Triangle breakout, White Sugar Futures may be undergoing a similar deep retest. This week, price pulled back after advancing more than halfway toward its 1X measured move target near 514.

Robusta Coffee Futures also met its 2X measured move target on Monday, followed by a strong reaction to this past February’s highs.

Lumber Futures put in the lower high speculated in last week’s issue—but not in as convincing a manner as I’d like.

Things look a bit more convincing on the September contract, where price is closer to reclaiming the June highs.

Soybean Meal Futures continue to attempt a major change of trend on the weekly. No clear pattern on the daily for getting involved—yet.

The Head & Shoulders Top pattern in Euro / Pound—first highlighted in the April 25, 2026 issue—sold off decisively this month.

Price action on the daily chart has now fulfilled two-thirds of the 1X measured move target for the Descending Triangle pattern that comprised the Right Shoulder.

And on the weekly, price is roughly halfway to the 1X measured move target of the completed Head & Shoulders Top pattern.

We continue to hold our risk-defined long position in British Pound Futures in the Macro Ops Portfolio.

Finally, the Double Bottom in Euro / Aussie—first featured in the May 16, 2026 issue—continues to stairstep higher.

Consolidation & Rotation

A select number of markets are presently in a consolidation phase.

Heating Oil, for instance, experienced an impulsive move this week, driving directly into the downsloping trendline of a potential multi-month Falling Wedge pattern.

Feeder Cattle Futures continue to consolidate within the Handle of a multi-month Cup & Handle pattern.

5-Year T-Note Futures are in as tight a range as they come. Personally, I find rates to be some of the choppiest markets I follow, with many false moves.

While the Nasdaq continues its time-based correction, my bias remains aligned with the direction of the preceding trend.

The SPY demonstrated notable relative strength compared to the Nasdaq, exemplifying the rotation out of AI names and into alternative sectors of the market. This rotation represents a far healthier technical development for the broader market than uniform, market-wide selling.

Rather than staging a third drive lower to allow the 200EMA to catch up, the index instead experienced a mere minor correction off the upper boundary of its Bull Flag to start the week. Strong buying then emerged from Wednesday through Friday, making Wednesday’s low a clean level for defining risk.

The Pauses That Refresh

Recent issues have highlighted an uptick in equity consolidations forming beneath their 200EMAs, primarily across the technology and software sectors. The resolution of these setups—either forcing an upside breakout to reclaim their 200EMAs or resolving lower to extend the underlying weakness—should offer insight into the Nasdaq’s next directional move.

One example from the active watchlist, AvePoint (AVPT), staged an upside breakout from its Head & Shoulders Bottom Reversal this week.

And in the first week of July, Slide Insurance Holdings (SLDE)—an “Insurtech” name also featured on the active watchlist—broke out to the upside.

Of the remaining names in this same category, nearly all are at or above their range midpoint, closer to completing upside reversals than downside continuations.

Here are the symbols I’m watching going into next week:

Active watchlists, real-time trade alerts, and live portfolio tracking are reserved for members of The Collective, our premier service offering discussions on high-level theory and performance, differentiated research, and a global community of serious traders and investors dedicated to mastery. Learn more about The Collective here.

Breadth continues to improve. Short-term sentiment and positioning are elevated and climbing, but not yet at levels that push us into defensive posturing. The longer-duration signals are a different story. The MO Liquidity Tool and BofA’s Bull/Bear indicator both point to a more volatile regime ahead.

Near-term, the path of least resistance is still up. The longer-term picture is another matter.

Crypto is coiled for a run. Global defense names look to have put in a bottom. Plus more.

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week up +140bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +44%, below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: elevated cash, long Nasdaq, long Russell2k, long biotech complex and cybersecurity names, long GBP.

2. Bonds continue their compression on the monthly tape with BB width at its tightest range since 2018. Compression regimes precede big trends but are directionally agnostic, though our bias is for a breakout to the downside.

3. 10-year TNotes continue trading in their range within a Blended Bear Quiet regime. The direction of breakout will likely determine the near-to-intermediate term direction for the broader equity market as well as the USD.

4. This is a make or break week for the DXY as it should decide whether this breakout holds or ends in a bear trap. The answer holds big implications for the rest of global markets.

5. Last week we highlighted the mean reversion setup in GBPUSD, supported by the record short positioning in Specs. The trade is working nicely so far (chart below is a weekly).

6. SPX continues consolidating its gains off its April lows. The weight of the evidence favors a coming breakout through the upside of its current range.

7. Our Aggregate Breadth Indicator strengthened last week to +3. Major corrections (10%+) occur when this measure falls to 1 or below. This improvement supports an eventual bullish breakout in equities.

8. However, our longer-term measure of liquidity is plumbing new lows. While this indicator can have a long lead of 3-6 months, the lower it goes the lower average forward returns for the market become.

9. This dichotomy in the setup between short and intermediate terms can be seen in the sentiment and positioning data as well. Our Trend Fragility indicator, a composite of short-term sentiment and positioning data points, is at 71% and rising. Still well below the 90%+ threshold for an official sell signal. While BofA’s longer-term measure, is giving a strong sell signal.

10. Our 6m oscillator for net Speculative positioning in the SPX is elevated at 81% but still below the 90th percentile that suggests caution.

11. Perhaps the catalyst for the next move up in risk assets will come from a softening (read: more dovish) tone from the Fed as the Narrative Pendulum swings in the doves favor?

12. We like crypto here. SOLUSD has put in a bear trap on the weekly, and sentiment is coming off the lows (see next chart).

13. From Sentix: “Last week, the sentiment barometer for Bitcoin stood at -34 percentage points. Consequently, we highlighted in our newsletter the counter-cyclical opportunity arising from this extreme in sentiment… The TD Index still stands at -15 percentage points and is ‘cushioning’ prices against a fall. The sharp improvement in sentiment, coupled with a simultaneous rise in bias, carries a second piece of information. This is a sentiment impulse which, according to conventional interpretation, points to the prospect of further price gains.”

14. Global Defense stocks have set up again after correcting over -25% ytd. We like both ITA and SHLD.

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

I‘ve lived in three Americas.

In the first, I delayed all gratification. I hustled. I held every penny hostage to the future. While others rested, I worked. Against all odds, I parlayed a $20,000 brokerage account in my late twenties to seven figures before I turned forty.

In this America, the nation was an objective arena for the game of capitalism. Each individual an atomized player on the field. Success or failure: 100% personal effort. Isolation wasn’t a cost. It was the strategy for avoiding a median outcome.

I’ve lived in three Americas.

In the second, the single-family home in Pasadena demanded my entire account. The consolation: a new-construction condo downtown. Taken from under me by foreign buyers, paying all cash. I’d had every advantage: middle-class upbringing, two degrees from a top university, a white man in a white-collar profession. And still: a rented apartment.

Seven figures was no match for capital that had begun compounding before I was born. Before my parents were born. If someone like me—every card meticulously played—still couldn’t close the distance…

Outrage. Fury. Powerlessness. Isolation wasn’t a cost. It was the system’s design.

I’ve lived in three Americas.

The third: mountain ranges older than any deed of ownership. Snow so light it sprays like champagne. Lakes of stained glass. Forests you can feel breathe. Beaches covered in sand like powdered sugar.

And here: “Grandma” and “Grandpa” across the road. Mom and Dad a morning’s drive away. Baristas whose faces I recognize. Bags of hand-me-down clothing finding the doorstep of new families. Teachers who matter to our children.

The hustle, the fury, the beauty.

I live in three Americas.

Consolidation & Continuation

Equity indices continue to form consolidation patterns near their highs. The pause in the Nasdaq I’ve been featuring, occurring right on top of a multi-month trendline, further tightened this week inside the initial range.

The SPY could be forming a Bull Flag above its rising 200EMA. To my eye, price looks like it wants to make a third drive down, allowing the 200EMA to catch up and support a more sustainable trend continuation higher. My bias is always for consolidations to resolve in the direction of the prior trend.

While equity futures consolidate, commodity futures continue to move. Robusta Coffee reached its 1X measured move this week, with a 2X target sitting at roughly 3758.

White Sugar Futures, shown here on the continuous contract, followed through on last Friday’s breakout, pushing halfway toward a 1X measured move target of roughly 514.3.

Lumber Futures pulled back at the end of June, but is possibly putting in a lower high with this week’s turn.

The much-followed breakout in U.S. Dollar futures came back to test prior resistance this week. We’re holding a risk-defined long position in the Macro Ops Portfolio.

And the massive Head & Shoulders Top in Euro / Pound finally broke down this week. As I’ve stated previously, due to the size of this pattern, I expect ample volatility on the daily timeframe regardless of how price ultimately resolves. We are long British Pound futures in the Macro Ops Portfolio.

The Pauses That Refresh

There was an uptick in equity consolidations forming below their 200EMA in my screening this week—many in the software and technology spaces, currently bouncing from oversold conditions.

Resolution of these consolidations—to the upside while reclaiming their 200EMAs, or to the downside as continuation of weakness—could inform the next move in the Nasdaq.

Here are the names that caught my eye:

Active watchlists, real-time trade alerts, and live portfolio tracking are reserved for members of The Collective, our premier service offering discussions on high-level theory and performance, differentiated research, and a global community of serious traders and investors dedicated to mastery. Learn more about The Collective here.

The next two weeks are telling for DXY. It needs to hold its recent breakout. If it can’t, and this turns into a bull trap, GBP is the long — positioning there is the most crowded it’s been in history.

Breadth is broadening and diverging higher. That’s not a bearish signal. But there are early signs that volatility is building under the surface, and the next leg up in equities will be a rougher ride than the last.

We close with a full Trifecta setup in the insurance sector, and crypto remains a great short.

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week up +230bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +42.6%, below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: elevated cash, long Nasdaq, long Russell2k, long biotech complex and cybersecurity names.

2. Bonds continue their compression on the monthly tape with BB width at its tightest range since 2018. Compression regimes precede big trends but are directionally agnostic, though our bias is for a breakout to the downside (more on this below).

3. Last week we made the case for higher rates, eventually… I say eventually because bonds are both short-term oversold, up against major support, and positioning has flipped decidedly bearish (see chart below).

4. I’m watching to see what 10s can do here. I’m willing to play a tactical long on a breakout above this range.

5. The DXY has so far held its breakout (chart below is a weekly).

6. It’s now around 2std overbought across all-three timeframes, while short-term positioning is elevated. The next two weeks will be the tell in whether DXY can hold and consolidate these gains, or this turns into a major bull trap. The answer will have significant implications across assets (ie, commodities, EM, growth, etc…). We are long.

7. If you’re of the mind that DXY is setting up a bull trap, then long GBP offers a nice trade It’s at the bottom of its 15-month+ sideways range/compression regime.

8. Our Spec oscillators on both a 6m and 3y basis are in the 4th and 1st percentiles, respectively.

9. In fact, Commercials are holding their most crowded long positioning in history. The last two times Commercials were even remotely this long it marked a significant bottom in the pound.

10. Our HUD multi-chart page shows that GBP is basically the inverse of DXY right now. It’s roughly 2std oversold across all three timeframes. Seasonality flips positive one week from now. But… yield spread momentum remains low and we’d want to see that flip in order for long GBP to have prospects of more than just a small mean reversion positioning fade.

11. This is a pretty incredible relative flows chart from SG.

12. NYSE A/D Line (in amber) hit a new all-time high last Friday, positively diverging from the index, which typically is not a bearish development.

13. And our friend Dean Christian’s over at TPMR shared this study last week showing that over 75% of cyclical subindustries are in bullish trends on both short and long-term measures. Going all the way back to the 60s, this has occurred only 3.8% of the time, and the SPX has historically seen annualized returns of +10.8%.

14. The path of least resistance remains up. That’s what the weight of the evidence (breadth, internals, technicals) tell us. However, we expect the trend to be more volatile going forward, with frequent positioning induced air pockets. Our resident vol trader, Tony, shared some great stuff on this very topic in this week’s Vol Street Journal. I highly recommend giving it a watch. Here’s some of his summary notes:

This week’s episode examines a series of shifting conditions across my proprietary market models, volatility complex, currency, and credit markets that point to growing market vulnerability. I break down the developments and explain why the risk environment has changed.

• Proprietary Models: Both models have been flashing warning signs for weeks, and Friday sent the EWS model to its highest, most cautionary level since the early days of the Iran conflict.

• VIX Futures: The front of the futures curve is flattening as spot VIX tightens its gap to the July contract and the July-August spread compresses.

• Chronic Undervixing: Realized volatility continues to climb while implied volatility lags, squeezing the variance risk premium as individual stock volatilities rise.

• Positioning Dynamics: Speculators are heavily long the Dow and strongly bought the S&P dip, alongside crowded long positions in the US Dollar and short positions in major cross currencies.

• Credit Market Stress: High-yield and investment-grade spreads are beginning to widen from very tight levels as capital rotates toward Treasuries and equities start to follow high yield bonds lower.

15. Been tracking this one for a while now and it looks like it’s finally tee’d up. The SPDR Insurance ETF (KIE) has put in a bear trap reversal within a major compression regime on the monthly. Its relative performance versus the SPX is coming off all-time lows, even below levels hit during the 09’ bottom. We will likely be getting long this ETF along with some select names.

16. Here’s the Koyfin holdings breakdown for it. The top 1-month performing names are BWIN, OSCR, SKWD, and RYAN. OSCR is my current favorite.

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

On Tuesday, I walked the design and manufacturing floor of Brunello Cucinelli’s headquarters in Solomeo: open, airy, flooded in natural light. My family had lunch alongside the workers: prosciutto toscano e pecorino, rigatoni al pomodoro, tagliata di manzo con patate al forno. Crostata all’albicocca with caffè della moka for dessert.

I’d followed Brunello for decades—first as a twenty-something living in Italy, later as a business school graduate who found his interviews unlike anything I’d heard from a CEO. He spoke not of revenue and inventory, but of beauty, dignity, and humanity. His business and his philosophy were indistinguishable.

That philosophy was born not in a textbook, but in a memory. His father, having moved the family from a rural farm to a suburban factory, would come home with wet eyes, repeatedly humiliated by his supervisors. A young Brunello made himself a promise: whatever he built, he would make money without compromising human dignity.

He founded his company in 1978. A decade later, as corporate Italy raced toward industrial centers, he followed an internal compass, relocating his entire business to a crumbling, forgotten village in Umbria: Solomeo. His wife’s hometown. His birth region. The beauty he believed would nurture the soul of his artisans.

One aligned decision after another, each defying the spreadsheet’s calculus, Brunello transformed Solomeo into the literal and spiritual home of a fashion empire: a parish church, a theater, a soccer field, residential homes. Artisans paid 20% above the Italian manufacturing average. No work past 5:30 PM. No emails after hours.

There is no cell in a spreadsheet for dignity. No input for what it costs a man’s soul to be treated as a unit of output. No formula for the wet eyes of a humiliated father. Brunello built a billion-euro luxury brand atop a foundation that no Excel model could capture.

He built an aligned business—an aligned life—informed by financial maps, but guided by the human terrain. The terrain asks something no spreadsheet can: who is right beside you? And what does dignity look like for them, specifically, today?

One aligned decision after another. This is what birthed the exception of Solomeo. And how any empire worth building begins.

Healthy Rotation

In the June 6, 2026 issue, I highlighted the weekly engulfing candle on the Nasdaq that had stopped a potential trendline breakout in its tracks. The comment I made at the time:

While this move signals a shift, it is not a cause for alarm. Following a strong run of eight positive weeks out of nine since the April low, the market may simply be entering a phase of digestion.

This pause could facilitate a transition where other sectors take over leadership from the AI trade. The future outlook depends on the nature of this correction: whether it manifests as a price decline that drags down other risk assets, or a time-based consolidation that allows for a healthy rotation.

What we’ve seen since has been the latter: a time-based consolidation that has allowed for healthy rotation into other areas of the market.

The time-based consolidation is clear on the daily timeframe, where over the past 21 days, Nasdaq Futures have moved just 1.18%.

Beneficiaries of the rotation have been industrials, financials, and a number of additional cyclical groups.

Individual names within these sectors, highlighted in the active watchlist section of these reports, have experienced breakouts with follow-through, including The Travelers Companies (TRV) …

… and Woodward, Inc. (WWD) …

… while technology names like Palantir (PLTR)—highlighted last week as one of just two short setups—broke down from its four-month consolidation.

The Dollar vs. Commodities

The breakout in U.S. Dollar futures—telegraphed in the June 13, 2026 issue—has thus far followed through.

And while a rising U.S. Dollar is typically a headwind for commodities and related equity groups, White Sugar Futures blasted through the upper boundary of its Symmetrical Triangle consolidation on Friday.

And Sugar No. 11 Futures could be putting in a double bottom, akin to the price action featured earlier this year in EURAUD.

Rough Rice, after a significant retrace back to the 50DMA, is closing in on its 2X measured move target.

And Robusta Coffee Futures continues to hold the breakout from its Ascending Triangle bottom.

The Pauses That Refresh

There continues to be a healthy selection of constructive equity setups this week.

Here are the names that caught my eye:

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week down 230bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +40.3%, below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: elevated cash, long Nasdaq, long Russell2k, long select biotech, and cybersecurity names.

2. Bonds continue their compression on the monthly tape with BB width at its tightest range since 2018. Compression regimes precede big trends but are directionally agnostic, though our bias is for a breakout to the downside (more on this below).

3. The DXY finally broke out from its 12m+ rectangle last week. I think this breakout will hold, but one thing that makes me a bit uncomfortable about the trade is that it’s being widely acknowledged and most prime desk reports I read through over the weekend are bullish. We have orders to get long but the current sentiment has me waiting for more technical confirmation before pressing.

4. Rising yield spread momentum is what’s driving the dollar out from its range, similar to the setup in early 21’.

5. What makes me think this breakout will hold is that I expect the positive relative momentum in US yields to continue. Below is our leading yield indicator in red positively diverging from UST 10yr yields.

6. Our market internals derived economic cycle regime indicator (ECRI in blue) is also strongly diverging higher after breaking out of its multi-year sideways range, indicating that we’re entering a new economic regime. One that will necessitate higher yields.

7. The best central banker is the 2yr yield (in red). It’s telling us that the Fed is going to need to hike…

8. Both Real Retail Sales (top chart) and the Dallas Fed’s Weekly Economic Index (bottom chart) have jumped to multi-year highs. Similar to our ECRI, the economic data is increasingly pointing to a new regime marked by accelerating growth and sticky inflation.

9. This is all largely driven by the massive AI CAPEX cycle in the US, which is why relative growth, rates, and the DXY should continue to move higher over the coming quarters (charts from BBG’s Simon White).

10. The other week I shared two charts showing China’s tightening financial conditions and negative credit impulse. So I was surprised to see in my study over the weekend that China’s Citi Economic Surprise Index (blue line) is near its highest levels since 21’. Has the bearish China narrative pendulum swung too far? If so, this will have big implications on global inflation and rates.

11. In the meantime, it’s starting to look like the labor market is turning a corner… Below on the top chart is the BLS’s Labor Breadth Diffusion on a 1m (amber) and 1y (tan) basis. And the second chart is from Citadel Securities which writes:

“From a markets perspective, we think this outlook is validated by our macro framework, in which we decompose moves in broad macro markets into their macro drivers (Growth and Policy). The framework implies that the performance of risk assets is largely offsetting the sell off in front end rates and policy pricing sits at just +0.48 st deviations, in the 58th percentile of its 5y history, implying there is plenty of room to price a more hawkish policy pathway.”

12. Again from Citadel: “We see a growing risk that the US inflation process is shifting toward a hysteretic equilibrium, in which more sustained price pressures may persist even after the initial energy shock fades. We think the near-term boost to headline inflation from higher energy prices, together with renewed supply-chain disruption, is likely to catalyze second-round effects at a particularly vulnerable point in the cycle, as a temporary price shock collides with our expectation of a positive output gap, easy financial conditions, a generational AI capex cycle ($0.75tn in 2026, $1.25tn in 2027), and a reaccelerating labor market. In that context, an unwind in oil prices may not be sufficient to offset the broader chain of events driving the inflation process.”

13. If you’re looking for evidence that the floor on inflation is shifting structurally higher, look no further than the chart below showing the Fed’s Acyclical Inflation index (amber) above their Cyclical Inflation (grey) for the first time since 2021.

Real yields have flipped negative again, meaning that the Fed is effectively easing by keeping rates steady. With growth accelerating, the labor market turning a corner, China starting to positively surprise, and the floor on inflation now higher, interest rates are going to have to rise.

14. This week we enter the seasonal weak period of “June Swoon” that ends at the start of July. I don’t have strong conviction on the short-term path, though my bias is higher and if we get a swoon, I expect it to be short-lived. This market looks to me like it wants to trade up and we likely see it punch through 8k in a Summer rush — though watch rates, as they could end the party early.

15. Aggregate Breadth remains at +2. Not incredibly strong, nor terribly weak. But enough to confirm the current bull trend (sell signals trigger at readings of +1 and below.

16. Internals continue to support the primary trend higher.

17. I’m in the process of training an AI to create a summary positioning & sentiment report off the dozen or so IB reports I read each week. Below is a snapshot of this week’s summary. The current sentiment backdrop is this: long term it’s stretched and indicative of what we typically see in the runup to a cyclical top, intermediate term its stretched as indicated by the BofA Sell Signal and retail flows, but short-term 0-2 months is where the market still has some room to turn up the heat a bit more.

Our Trend Fragility Indicator is at 63%, which is neutral. Small traders loaded up on puts these past two weeks making it one of the highest proportions of hedging in 25yrs. And while HFs are starting to finally crowd in, they’re doing it mainly by closing out shorts.

All in all, the sentiment and positioning backdrop is pretty bearish and we’re setting up for what will likely be a significant corrective period. But my low conviction base case is that we go parabolic first.

18. On that note, AAII Retail Cash Allocation has fallen to the bottom decline. File this under our longer-term positioning data points. Historically forward market returns 3-6 months out tend to be pretty poor.

19. So I’m thinking we climb a bit further here, maybe take out 8k in the SPX before rolling over into a correction for the rest of Summer inline with the seasonal midterm tendencies, setting things up for an Autumn rally maybe?

20. Our team is turning increasingly bullish on biotech. It’s at the bottom of its Capital Cycle. Sentiment and positioning are very low while industry wide fundamentals are starting to shift upwards — not to mention we expect the sector to be major beneficiaries of AI tech, specifically in the discovery process.

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

I’m writing this from a restored 14th-century hamlet in the Chianti hills, just outside Florence. I once lived here—not Tuscany, but Rome—managing a wine bar in the city’s historic center. Italy won the World Cup while I was there.

Throughout the tournament, I’d pause to watch the match introductions. Each country’s team paraded to the field: their colors, their flag, their anthem filling the stadium. Argentina looked so Argentine. France sounded so French. Match after match, the world’s nations filed past in the same proud, predictable mold.

Then, Team USA took the field. Just like all the rest: their colors, their flag, their anthem. They looked the part, too: so American. I’d been living in Italy for nearly two years by then. And it struck me: “USA” was just another “other.”

It was the first time I saw culture for what it was: a set of norms and expectations inherited blindly. Suddenly, culture became a choice: opt in, opt out, switch between, invent my own.

Culture had run my life on assumed truths: that freeways were eight lanes wide; that money was green; that busyness was a virtue. From outside the fishbowl, none of it felt inevitable anymore.

This perspective returns each time I leave my context. Wherever I land, I hold the same question: what story am I telling myself about my days and my life that just isn’t true?

Timeframes I haven’t explored because I was told by successful traders there was no edge there. Sizing I’ve kept modest because that’s what responsible traders do. Entrepreneurial ventures I haven’t pursued because it would put too much financial pressure on my spouse.

But have I explored those timeframes myself, with rigor and curiosity? Have I defined what responsible sizing looks like for my actual edge and risk tolerance? Have I allowed my spouse to speak for herself, rather than putting my own words in her mouth?

Culture offers us heuristic shortcuts. They keep us moving—but only straight ahead. We solve for the problems we’ve been given rather than interrogating the assumptions baked into the problem statements themselves.

The old warning about assumed knowledge speaks as much to our peril as our potential: it ain’t what you don’t know. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

Currencies & Commodities

Following the structural shift in the Dollar’s multi-month range that I noted last week, our team anticipated an upside breakout. That breakout materialized this week, leading us to adjust the Macro Ops Portfolio positioning to reflect the move.

Given the magnitude of this pattern and its nature as a reversal, I anticipate significant volatility. Over the next several months, should the trend continue upward, the price action may look orderly on the weekly timeframe while remaining erratic on the daily.

The Euro / Pound has once again tested the neckline of a year-long Head & Shoulders Top. Like the Dollar, the sheer scale of this formation may make managing a trade on a daily timeframe a challenge.

The boundary line of the Cup & Handle pattern in Mexican Peso Futures saw yet another reaction this week.

The Head & Shoulders Continuation pattern remains valid on the continuation chart.

The price action in Copper Futures appears to be in a stair-stepping uptrend, with the latest development being a High Base.

White Sugar Futures continue to coil in a Symmetrical Triangle, with multiple reactions to the upper boundary.

The Cup & Handle Continuation pattern for Feeder Cattle Futures remains sound and continues to develop constructively.

The upward climb has persisted in Lumber Futures following the previously featured trendline breakout.

And a breakout in September Robusta Coffee Futures I passed on, believing the Ascending Triangle Bottom was a bit too messy, has proven exceptionally clean in hindsight.

The Pauses That Refresh

I continue to find many constructive consolidations in equities.

Here are the names that caught my eye this week:

Active watchlists, real-time trade alerts, and live portfolio tracking are reserved for members of The Collective, our premier service offering discussions on high-level theory and performance, differentiated research, and a global community of serious traders and investors dedicated to mastery. Learn more about The Collective here.

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week down 330bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +42.3%, below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: elevated cash, select beaten-down software, healthcare, and cybersecurity names; short ETH; long gold miners; long the Bloomberg Commodity ETF; a handful of idiosyncratic equity positions.

2. Will keep posting this one weekly as it’s one of the most important setups in macro right now and is gearing up for a big move.

3. Our 26 week positioning oscillator is climbing up from below the 10th %tile, showing crowded bearish positioning and giving us a long setup to play for reversion back to the middle of its compression regime.

4. Similar to long bonds, the DXY chart is one I’ll keep showing each week until we get a breakout. Last week I pointed out that yield spread momentum and positioning were similar to the conditions that preceded the 21’ rally in USD. We’ll see if a budding speculative frenzy in the US can catalyze a bullish breakout from this range.

5. If even half the points in this Iran-US draft deal circulating on Iranian state media are real, it amounts to total US surrender. Trump wants out. Midterms are the focus now(link here).

6. Crude getting smoked on the news. And no surprise, the specs who we faded at the lows around the turn of the year find themselves completely offsides once again. It’s almost like there’s something to this positioning thing.

7. What’s going on in China? China’s Financial Conditions Index is falling to levels not seen outside of COVID.

8. Credit impulse is back in negative territory and trending lower. Historically, this has been a strong lead indicator for commodities, particularly industrial metals. The AI buildout may make that relationship more spurious going forward. We’ll see.

9. I flagged this chart at the start of the year: NYSE FINRA Margin Debt was elevated at 35% YoY but still shy of concern territory. It’s now approaching that threshold. On a margin balance-to-currency basis, it’s at dot-com highs. On a YoY basis, it’s risen to 53%. An official sell signal triggers above 60% then reversing below 50%. How fast we get there depends on the market path — but with midterms in November, I’d expect the administration to pull out all the stops.

10. Nomura’s Charlie McElligott on the MAG7 becoming funding sources for the next leg of the AI trade:

As somebody who is “medium horizon” (next two-three quarters) constructive on AI Capex trickle-down and US Equities (Earnings Growth Tailwind broadening out from the Capex boom uplift i.e. Manu mini-renaissance), the LOCAL issue I see for US Equities Index now is that we almost certainly CANNOT resume making new highs without the Mag7 Hyperscalers doing the heavy lifting, as they’re simply “too big” and matter too much, particularly with regard to 2^nd order impacts on both “Real and Synthetic” Negative Gamma forces in the market (i.e. the recent pro-cyclical “Spot Up, Vol Up, Crash Up” regime via Options Upside Call demand and Leveraged ETFs) which HAD propelled us higher in what HAD been a 3 Sharpe 3m move

• So how is it that now Hyperscalers have tilted into what I believe to be a broad Equities market HEADWIND? It’s really two-fold:

• In some ways, the Hyperscalers and big Semis / GPU -plays are now closer to acting like the FUNDING SHORTS in the maturation in this “AI Trade” phase-shift…as the opportunistic Longs have moved OUT OF the “Perpetual Capex Spend Arms Race” and first-order “Winners”…and instead, down the stack into the “Bottlenecks” of Memory, Silicon, Infra, Servers, Networks, Robotics etc…in other words, Hyperscalers and Semis are increasingly looking like “Source of Funds” in the trade

• But in addition to this aforementioned phase-shift / maturation of the AI Trade…I have to pound the table on the point I made Sunday night in the email, which is this idea too that the Hyperscalers are at the core of this potential paradigm shift in “Supply > Demand” in Stocks, AWAY FROM what had been the virtuous 15+ year “De-Equitization” -period for US Stocks, where the Float had been shrunk and Vol was suppressed as a massive tailwind for Stocks on account of the unprecedented “Demand > Supply” flow realities this created via “Buybacks + Cash M&A > Issuance”

• But now into this new world order of what feels like as “Exponential” Capex funding needs, Cash is being burned through at “known unknown” rates of speed vs Spend plans, which is then not only endangering the “Flow” of the Stock Buyback “Demand”...

• …While at the same time, we have this “Supply Overload” issue: Not just the overall Equities issuance “Cannibalization” risk of more need for “Funding” via the sheer $size of the tectonic Mega Tech / AI -linked IPO calendar coming in a tight window, which is why there’ all eyes on how SPCX takes Friday and thereafter…but critically too, the Hyperscalers’ OWN SUPPLY from issuance now acts like de facto “Overwriting” of themselves (as if they were selling Long-Dated Calls), with the risk of “Issuance Overhead” helping to further “Kill Off” the “Spot Up, Vol Up” residuals, after last week’s massive GOOGL $85B ATM offering, and the ensuing reports that META would be looking at potentially doing the same

11. One of the structural tailwinds for US equities has been net share cannibalization — US companies have been buying back more shares than they issue, creating persistent demand against a shrinking float (more on that here). That dynamic just flipped positive for the first time since 2021, and with the coming wave of mega IPOs and megacap issuance, it’s likely to stay that way for the next 12 months. A structural tailwind is now a headwind. (Chart via BBG’s Simon White.)

12. Expected operating margin growth is running well ahead of revenue expectations — the market is front-loading a lot of AI-induced productivity. That’s a crowded bet.

13. Simon White shows how elevated earnings expectations tend to mean-revert as we move through time.

14. Again from Simon, this is a great chart…

15. This is an interesting study from our friend Dean at TPMR (link here). He writes “The S&P 500’s three-year rate of change recently peaked above 84% and currently stands at 72%. Readings in this range have historically been associated with below-average annualized returns, as shown in the table below. However, I would note that shorter-term readings continue to reflect positive momentum, which is generally bullish.”

16. So things are getting frothy, sure. But interestingly one of our favorite intermediate term indicators of retail speculation, the STAXX index which measures millions of actual retail positioning and flows, while elevated, is still below the 60% threshold that tends to mark speculative peaks. Like margin data, we’ll likely see this signal trigger in the coming six months.

17. The Qs held their breakout level last week. We are long.

18. SII is a geared play on a structural bull market in precious metals and critical materials. AUM is already compounding off gold, silver, uranium, copper, and energy transition themes. If you believe in currency debasement, central bank gold buying, and capex-light green/AI infrastructure buildout, Sprott’s platform gives you a clean way to express that view — with growing fee streams and dividends. It’s teeing off its lower weekly band and 200dma.

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

Steve Cohen has built one of the most celebrated hedge funds on Wall Street. When asked how Point72 pushes aspiring portfolio managers to evolve, his word choice—repeated twice—struck me:

“Everyone needs a little push. [...] It’ll be a little bit provocative. Just open their eyes to what’s possible. [...] And from that comes a change or an improvement that enhances what they do and who they are. They’re really intimate provocations that push the bounds of what people can achieve.”

I know this word well: provocation.

Those closest to me—teammates, traders, friends—know my words can cut through stagnant ways of seeing and initiate radical change.

But the operative word is cut. And this blade is two-sided.

When I take things personally, I wield it as a weapon. I provoke to protect the illusion of control—to defend a personal identity that feels under threat.

When I am grounded, when I am seeing clearly, I provoke differently. Not to destabilize, but to unblock. I wield the blade with passionate intent: cutting away the habitual; freeing energy to move—perhaps for the first time in years.

I can search old correspondence and see it immediately: the notes written from disconnection, deploying provocation to tip the receiver into the same state of uncertainty.

And then the others: words emanating from clarity, striking precisely at what limits, catalyzing change rather than conflict.

For those who carry a reputation as prickly, as defiantly contrarian—as so many traders do—consider that you hold something just as capable of liberating as instigating.

And consider that in your hands is one of the cleanest signals back to your own process: are you wielding the blade to unblock what is stagnant in others, or to protect your own sense of control?

Currencies & Commodities

Bitcoin broke down from an Ascending Channel earlier this month. As noted in the previous issue, maintaining short positions in various crypto pairs within the Macro Ops Portfolio served as an effective hedge against our long equity holdings.

Price has reached the origin point of the Ascending Channel and we’ve taken full profits.

Mexican Peso Futures continue to trade just below the neckline of a Head & Shoulders Continuation pattern. The right side is contracting. Low volatility precedes high volatility.

The September contract has the look of a Cup & Handle Continuation. The implication is the same.

Euro / Pound is pressing into the neckline of its Head & Shoulders Top formation. The right shoulder has taken the look of a Descending Triangle. The more tests of a level, the more likely that level is to break.

The contracting volatility in the Euro / Aussie pair, which I noted two weeks ago as a potential sign of a trend shift, expanded to the upside this week. It looks like the turn is in.

The Dollar has returned to the upper boundary of its trading range, though a significant shift in price action has emerged: following May’s successful test of the range midpoint, price has sustained its position in the upper half of this year-long consolidation for more than three months. This persistence suggests a growing appetite among buyers to defend higher levels.

Given this structural shift, our team is internally gameplanning various scenarios for a potential move higher, and preparing to execute should a breakout occur.

Lumber Futures demonstrated a decisive move within the commodities sector, breaking out cleanly from a multi-point trendline. For more detail on the role trendlines play in commodity technical analysis, refer to Building a Commodities Playbook in the March 21, 2026 issue.

Feeder Cattle Futures continue to build a constructive-looking Cup & Handle Continuation.

And White Sugar Futures are coiling in a Symmetrical Triangle with multiple reactions to the upper boundary.

The Pauses That Refresh

It has been three weeks since I highlighted the S&P 500 Equal Weight finishing its Cup & Handle Continuation. In the time since, RSP has climbed to fresh all-time highs, even as market-cap weighted indices have retreated from their peaks.

This expansion of market strength has propelled numerous featured watchlist stocks—those sharing the same technical structure—into fresh highs.

Two financial names have acted as prime examples: Enova International (ENVA) ...

…. and Valley National Bancorp (VLY).

There remain a number of constructive consolidations this week, and a notable lack of short setups.

Here are the symbols that caught my eye:

Active watchlists, real-time trade alerts, and live portfolio tracking are reserved for members of The Collective, our premier service offering discussions on high-level theory and performance, differentiated research, and a global community of serious traders and investors dedicated to mastery. Learn more about The Collective here.

Near-term path: low conviction in either direction. A new BofA Sell Signal just triggered, and our Liquidity indicator remains well below 50%, which has historically weighed on forward 3-month returns. We’ll let the tape lead. Separately, our crypto shorts saved the book last week. We took partial profits near Friday’s close. BTC and ETH are sitting at significant support and deeply oversold — how they react here matters. We also pitch two equity names on our target list.

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week up +80bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +45.6%, which is below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: elevated cash, select beaten-down software, healthcare, and cybersecurity names; short ETH, BTC, SOL; long the Bloomberg Commodity ETF; long solar; a handful of idiosyncratic equity positions.

2. The short crypto trade that we’ve been writing about — and participating in — for the past month, saved our book last week with our short ETH, BTC, and SOL trades making up for our losses in equities. We took partial profits near the close on Friday and now have some tough trade management decisions to make. ETH is at its lower weekly band as well as multi-year support along the significant 15k level.

3. RSI on both weekly and daily timeframes has dropped to historically significant oversold readings.

4. There have been seven instances (including last week) when the daily RSI fell below 20. In four of them, ETH was trading higher 50 days later, with an average gain of +25%. .

5. We’ll see how the crowded long CoT positioning shifted when Friday’s updated report drops. Sentix’s BTC Sentiment index is near its lowest reading in two years.

6. If you’re not reading Mike G’s weeklies, you’re missing out. His latest covers the chart below alongside a study on gambling and neuropsychology — a real banger (link here).

On the chart: we closed our NQ long last week out of respect for risk management. I don’t think the trend is over — strong momentum tends to beget more momentum — but my conviction is low. What I do have increasing conviction on is that we’re late cycle. I’m seeing it in our long-term positioning metrics, in the technicals, and now in macro data flagging a late-cycle Overheating regime.

This isn’t immediately actionable. Late cycles can persist for months, even years, which makes them among the hardest regimes for our style to navigate. The good news: there are better opportunities outside the crowded AI trade. We’ll continue to play the trend with tight risk, but most of our focus is shifting elsewhere.

7. From @sunchartist, a technician I respect:

“Semi’s have all the hallmarks of exhaustion throwover. The exponential rally is more pronounced on the Weekly charts. Last week formed a bearish inverted hammer reversal on higher volume, with the highest RSI reading on record. If this is indeed a trend reversal or establishing a higher trend channel, we are about to find out.”

8. Historically, when weekly RSI on semis climbed above 80%, it preceded higher prices over the subsequent 13 weeks on average — before rolling over. In 5 of 5 instances, semis traded lower over the following 35 weeks, with an average forward 50-week return of -12.76%.

9. Here’s @spotgamma on Friday’s action:

“When someone answers “What do you think triggered the big stock market selloff Friday?”

They will come up with a large list of narratives, none of which mention positioning: People were choking on calls on Thursday, and purging all those calls on Friday.

ex: $SMH (pink) went from top right on this chart on Thursday (calls priced higher than puts in the +90% %’ile), to puts and calls being equally valued (i.e. center of chart).

Then look at how expensive QQQ options were INTO the Friday vs SPY (Y axis). Tech heavy Qs were massively overvalued related to SPY as everyone over-FOMO’d tech.

Positioning needed a reset.”

10. A few weeks ago we wrote about the coming tidal wave of new equity supply from mega IPOs and its historically bearish implications for equities over the following 12-24 months (link here).

Alphabet’s recent $84.7 billion equity raise adds a new data point. Cash-rich giants don’t sell stock — they buy it back. When Alphabet reversed a two-decade pattern to externally finance an AI build-out, it echoed a familiar sequence: a serial cash-returner pivoting to fund a demand-boom capex cycle. History has not been kind to that pattern. Telecom/fiber in 2000: -18% twelve months later. Energy in 2008: -31%. Four of five analogs since 1929 saw the S&P lower a year out, with mean forward returns of -17% at 12 months and -25% at 24.

The caveats are real: these tops took time to form (returns were flat-to-positive at 1-3 months), the sample is small (N=5, judgmentally dated, with 2014 shale a clean outlier), and capex itself has been priced for two years. Read this as weight-of-evidence, not a tradeable signal. The tell isn’t the surge in capex. It’s how it’s now being financed.

11. Another BofA Bull/Bear Sell Signal fired last week while our Trend Fragility indicator climbed to 76%, unphased by Friday’s selloff. Again, my bias is that markets trade a bit higher in the short-term (low conviction on this one) but I think we’re setting up for a larger Summer selloff.

12. We’ll keep updating this weekly DXY chart until we get a breakout. Likely putting on a small starter long this week.

13. The constructive action in DXY is being driven by rising yields. 5-year Notes broke their triangle compression last week. Our positioning measure shows speculators near max crowded long levels.

14. We’ve been flagging the healthcare setup for several weeks and have been slowly adding exposure. ISRG is a name we’re doing DD on.

The bull case: ISRG is the entrenched leader in robotic surgery with a dominant installed base and high switching costs. Revenue is increasingly driven by recurring instruments, accessories, and service — now over 80% of sales. Da Vinci 5 and SP are driving higher revenue per procedure. International expansion (including new Japanese reimbursement starting June 2026) and continued double-digit procedure growth underpin a 10-15% revenue CAGR with expanding margins and strong FCF. The buyback program is active: $2.3B repurchased in 2025, a $9.08B multi-year program completed in Q1 2026, and a new $5B authorization approved in May 2026.

The monthly chart: if ISRG holds its lower band — a level that has marked significant lows multiple times over the past decade — and closes the month strong, that’s technical validation for the bull thesis.

15. Over the weekend I drove past a Texas Roadhouse outside San Antonio. Packed parking lot on a Saturday. A family member said it’s always that way.

The bull case for TXRH: one of the few scaled casual-dining chains with consistently positive traffic, strong value perception, and best-in-class unit economics. They’ve put up 60+ consecutive quarters of comp growth and continue to take share in the steakhouse category, supported by resilient mid-income dining demand, easing beef costs, and improving throughput. Dividend recently hiked to $0.75/quarter. The board approved a new $500M buyback in February 2025; they’ve deployed roughly $150M of it through 2025 and continued buying in Q1 2026.

The monthly chart is compressing nicely. This looks like it’s setting up for a significant move.

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

In 1994, the University of Iowa produced the Iowa Gambling Task—now a cornerstone of neuropsychology—reshaping how we understand decision-making under risk.

Participants chose cards from four decks, aiming to maximize play money. Two groups played: healthy individuals, and those with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex—the region that converts past emotional experience into anticipatory gut feeling.

When a healthy human loses money or makes a mistake, their amygdala fires and the vmPFC tags that feeling as a subtle signal that resurfaces when they face similar risk again.

Two decks offered high immediate rewards but large, unpredictable penalties; two offered smaller rewards but smaller penalties—the superior decks over time. Both groups had to discover this through trial and error.

The vmPFC-damaged group had no anticipatory emotional memory. Every time they looked at the four decks, it was as if they were seeing them for the first time. Without gut feeling pulling them away from the dangerous decks, they relied purely on short-term arithmetic. And they chose the dangerous decks time and again, repeatedly surrendering their winnings.

The healthy group followed their gut and came out ahead.

Mainstream Wall Street wisdom preaches just what the damaged cohort did: cold, memoryless execution.

“Trade the market in front of you, not the one in your head.”

“Be like a goldfish.”

The Iowa Gambling Task suggests this is not wisdom. It is a disability.

As artificial intelligence proliferates across all sectors—not least finance and trading—a new cohort of participants is entering markets: those with superhuman ability for calculation, logic, and cold-blooded rationalism.

What they have no access to: self-awareness, discernment, gut feel.

Some of the smartest money knows this. Last September, D.E. Shaw—which for over 30 years pioneered quantitative investing by treating the market as a massive data-processing problem—quietly raised five billion dollars for its first purely discretionary, human-led hedge fund.

The Wall Street mantras may not be entirely false. They may simply be incomplete.

Don’t trade the market in your head. Trade the one in your gut.

Bend with the Trend

Equities, spearheaded by the Nasdaq, appeared positioned for further gains until Friday’s strong U.S. employment data revealed a surprisingly robust economy. The shift extinguished expectations for rate cuts and reignited concerns about future rate hikes.

Consequently, a Bearish Engulfing pattern emerged, wiping out the advances made during the preceding week.

In accordance with the principle that Price is Truth—the first rule of This Infinite Game—we closed our Nasdaq long position this week as the trend began to shift.

Adhering to the trend is a core component of our process, as evidenced by various examples within our Macro Ops Portfolio and previous issues of this report.

While this move signals a shift, it is not a cause for alarm. Following a strong run of eight positive weeks out of nine since the April low, the market may simply be entering a phase of digestion.

This pause could facilitate a transition where other sectors take over leadership from the AI trade. The future outlook depends on the nature of this correction: whether it manifests as a price decline that drags down other risk assets, or a time-based consolidation that allows for a healthy rotation.

Our commitment to bending with the trend is further illustrated by our coverage and positioning in Coffee Futures.

In April, we identified a potential upside reversal at a long-term support level; however, as that support failed to hold and the reversal attempt stalled, we adjusted our stance.

Consequently, we have maintained a short position in Coffee since the middle of May.

Another case in point is Ethereum.

Throughout the first quarter, ETHUSD battled to maintain its footing at a multi-year trendline that has served as a reliable floor for price pullbacks since 2022.

Early signs of accumulation appeared on the daily charts as buyers attempted to defend this key support level, prompting us to initiate several long positions within the Macro Ops Portfolio.

However, by Q2, the bullish momentum began to wane.

Recognizing that the prevailing trend was shifting, we adjusted accordingly: we flipped our bias to short last month and secured partial profits during last week’s sharp downside break.

In addition to our short ETHUSD position, our Macro Ops Portfolio has maintained short exposure to both BTCUSD and SOLUSD.

We used this week’s break to peel off profits in these positions as well.

Note the significance of this week’s breakdown. This is the first time in four years that this trendline has failed to act as support.

For the previous two weeks, I highlighted a Symmetrical Triangle forming in July Soybean Futures. While my default expectation for consolidation patterns is a continuation of the prior trend—which, in this case, suggested a measured move higher—the market had other plans.

This Tuesday, price decisively breached the pattern’s lower support boundary. This breakdown provided a clear, risk-defined entry to the short side. Since that break, an impulsive decline has already carried price roughly two-thirds of the way toward its downside objective of 1095.50.

Our Macro Ops Portfolio managed to edge higher this week, successfully weathering the risk-off environment.

This resilience was a direct result of our commitment to bending with the trend and respecting price as the ultimate truth.

Despite entering the period with material exposure to various AI and Tech holdings, as well as a long position in the Nasdaq, adherence to our process ensured we remained on the right side of the tape.

The Pauses That Refresh

Should market breadth widen beyond the AI theme, there are a number of consolidations occurring at or near all-time highs.

Here are the names that caught my eye this week:

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One thing worth stating plainly: we are in one of the most consequential technology revolutions in history. That is not an earnings forecast or a valuation argument — it is an observation about the secular backdrop. From a Narrative Pendulum standpoint, the “singularity” narrative carries some of the most powerful trend-extension properties we’ve seen. Extended markets can get much more extended. That’s the regime we’re in.

Crypto continues to lag the equity rally. Large specs have pushed long positioning in BTC and ETH to or near all-time highs, yet price isn’t catching bids with the market. That combination — crowded positioning, max downside beta — makes it a functional hedge against our long book, which is exactly how we’re using it. Bonds and DXY remain compressed and appear to be on the cusp of significant directional moves.

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week down -172 bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +44.83%. We are now 15.7% below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: elevated cash, long NQ and select beaten-down software, healthcare, and cybersecurity names; short ETHUSD; long the Bloomberg Commodity ETF; long solar; a handful of idiosyncratic equity positions.

2. Large spec longs in BTC and ETH are at or near all-time highs. The crowd is fully loaded. Price isn’t keeping pace with the equity rally. It is, however, showing maximum beta to the downside — which makes it a useful hedge against the long book. That is how we’re treating it.

3. ETH daily chart below. Multiple long-term bearish setups across the crypto complex. We are short.

Trifecta Charts

4. CoT sector positioning dashboard below.

• Most crowded longs: Nikkei, UST 5yr, UST 10yr, 6L, Aluminum, Copper, Rough Rice, Soybean Meal, Oats, BTC, ETH, XRP

• Most crowded shorts: NQ, Ultras, 6J, 6M, Natural Gas, Gold, Palladium, GF, HE

5. Two data points worth holding together: Momentum vs. Minimum Vol is running 5 standard deviations above its long-term trend, while Goldman’s US Equity Speculative Trading Indicator sits at neutral. The GS indicator tracks relative trading volumes across penny stocks, unprofitable companies, and high-EV/sales names — a composite measure of retail froth. Elevated factor spread, subdued speculative activity. That combination is worth monitoring.

Charts via AlpineMacro & GS.

6. Last week’s Trifecta Lens Score drop to -3 warranted attention but not action — the signal needed to hold at that level consistently before it carried weight. It reversed quickly to -2. Neutral. No change to posture.

7. Bloomberg’s Simon White recently described the underlying risk structure in US equities: a gamma squeeze driven by single-stock options is holding individual vol elevated while VIX stays suppressed. It’s a rare configuration historically, and it’s sowing the conditions for a disorderly unwind when the squeeze exhausts.

Macro

8. Real personal income less transfers, measured on a 6-month annualized basis, has turned negative at -1.8%. Historically, that inflection has preceded a ~1.3 percentage point softening in 12-month payroll growth, and roughly doubles recession odds over the following year (25% to 57%).

We don’t think a recession is imminent. AI capex and fiscal deficits remain large enough to offset the signal — though the fiscal impulse is decelerating. But this is another data point confirming how unusual the current environment is. Reliable signals are misfiring. That tells you something about the regime, even if it doesn’t change the near-term outlook.

9. Alyosha’s bearish oil thesis rests on a simple premise: scarcity fears are overstated. With roughly 8 billion barrels of petroleum in global storage (~5.25B crude) and meaningful non-GCC spare capacity still available, the market has more than a year of runway even under a severe supply deficit. In his framing, squeeze attempts remain self-limiting — and crude can’t hold a rally because the cushion is larger than the bulls believe.

The bull case argues the opposite: that much of that storage is functionally unusable (tank bottoms, line-fill), that SPR depletion has removed a real buffer, and that the live Iran/Hormuz risk compounds the tightness. Alyosha’s counter is that unusable-barrel claims are overstated, the SPR release is largely term-lending already priced on the curve, and scarcity is a function of time rather than a hard wall.

Note: this summarizes his view, not an endorsement. The assumptions are stylized. Recent price action, however, appears to be voting in his direction. Below is a chart we made to illustrate his point.

10. Bonds remain the fulcrum for everything else in macro right now. Our bias is that long bonds break lower. However, the May bar is shaping up as a failed breakdown — which doesn’t change the bias, but does demand patience and flexibility. Nothing to do here except stay attentive and let the tape tell us what’s next.

Trade Setups / Topical Charts

11. DXY continues to coil in a 12-month-plus range. The long-term bias is lower — a 3-to-5-year secular move driven by the reversal of capital flows out of Core and back toward the Periphery as US exceptionalism gets re-rated.

12. That said, a number of conditions are aligning that mirror the setup preceding the early ‘21 DXY breakout. Our Large Spec 3-Year Oscillator is coming off a bearish consensus hit — same as early ‘21. DXY yield spread momentum is accelerating in the dollar’s favor — same as early ‘21. Relative US equity outperformance is positive. Relative USvsRoW growth is accelerating, driven by the AI trade. And the US is meaningfully insulated from rising energy costs via Strait of Hormuz (SoH) closure risk in ways that most of the world is not.

13. Defense appears to have finished correcting. PLTR sits at the intersection of AI and defense — two of the most durable secular themes in the current environment. The weekly chart looks constructive. New highs look to be on the horizon.

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,

Alex

When top-tier hedge funds need to recruit portfolio managers, they call Ilana Weinstein. At Sohn New York this month, Jawad Mian asked her what makes an investment professional worth betting on.

I knew her answer too well:

“I think special people tend to have a chip on their shoulder. There’s usually some historic thing they had to overcome that left an imprint. [...] I think this underdog syndrome matters because public markets test your resolve.”

Her examples were vivid: a learning disability, a speech impediment, bullying.

Some obstacles, though, run deeper—into the subconscious.

Jawad traces his own ambition to a childhood hunger for the approval of his father, a driven, successful entrepreneur. He names that unfulfilled desire as the engine that carried him to conventional success, yet the hunger it ran on never eased.

Follow that thread far enough, and it arrives at a fork.

The first instinct is to condemn it all—the pattern and everything it built.

But just because the chase was hollow does not mean the skill is.

The breakthrough: you have a choice.

Not just to walk away. But to reengage. Consciously, for the first time.

Perhaps out of curiosity. Perhaps for the intellectual satisfaction of building something and watching it fly. Perhaps as an explorer alongside others, rather than alone carrying something to prove.

Jawad’s final question to Ilana: what, over time, has she come to value?

“A sense of humour. The fiercest competitors I know also know how to laugh at the end of the day.”

Perhaps, God forbid, you actually have fun playing this infinite game.

Momentum & Continuation

In the May 9th, 2026 issue, I highlighted the Nasdaq’s weekly trendline breakout, stating that it offered the “almost unfathomable potential for further acceleration of the trend.”

The following week formed a hesitation Doji as the initial move digested. I mentioned I was watching for a breakout from its boundaries to confirm direction. We got that break this week.

“Unfathomable” upside continues until price action dictates otherwise …

Top momentum traders utilize relative strength as a primary filter for identifying opportunities, particularly during aggressive corrections when true leadership becomes apparent.

During the market volatility of early April, I identified Brookfield Renewable Partners (BEP), Bread Financial Holdings (BFH), and Dell Technologies (DELL) as standout performers due to their resilient price action.

Their moves since have been significant: BEP and BFH successfully reached their measured move targets, and DELL entered a full parabolic phase, capped off this week by a $9.7 billion U.S. Pentagon contract on Wednesday and an exceptional Q1 earnings report on Thursday.

The sheer velocity of DELL’s recent ascent has been remarkable.

Around the World

In other areas of the market, December Soybean Oil Futures broke out of the pennant I’ve been featuring. This is a tight pattern that should impulse quickly if it is going to move.

November Canola also broke out—but encountered immediate resistance on Friday.

The best breakouts are those that never look back. This one is already out of the “best of” running.

Soybean Futures continue to form a Symmetrical Triangle on the July contract.

Mexican Peso Futures are holding just below the neckline of their Head & Shoulders Continuation.

And Euro / Aussie is still trying to put in a Double Bottom.

Trends are hard to turn. The dropping volatility could be an early precursor to a new price equilibrium taking hold.

The Pauses That Refresh

This week, a fresh array of tickers emerged on my radar, suggesting that market breadth could widen beyond the AI narrative if these consolidations successfully clear overhead resistance.

Here are the names that caught my attention:

Active watchlists, real-time trade alerts, and live portfolio tracking are reserved for members of The Collective, our premier service offering discussions on high-level theory and performance, differentiated research, and a global community of serious traders and investors dedicated to mastery. Learn more about The Collective here.

Against that, three developments warrant attention: our Trifecta Lens Score deteriorated last week; fund manager sentiment surveys show signs of euphoria; and BofA’s Bull-Bear Indicator triggered a sell signal. We are not calling a top. But the distribution of outcomes has widened. The appropriate response is to trail stops, size down on risk and tactically ride the momentum.

Separately, we examine Healthcare Equipment, which is registering its most oversold reading in recorded data and merits a closer look as a mean-reversion candidate.

***Quick housekeeping note: Enrollment into our Collective is open until the end of this week. The Collective includes all of our research, a full library of reports and videos on theory and strategy, our proprietary market dashboard, plus our internal slack where the team and I, plus fund managers and die-hards from around the world talk shop, exchange ideas, and shoot the shit. We will be raising our prices by over 25% within the next few months. So if you’ve been on the fence, now’s a good time to jump so you can lock in current pricing. Looking forward to seeing you in the group. ***

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MO Portfolio & Trades

1. The portfolio ended last week down 344 bps, bringing year-to-date returns to +46.56%. We are now 14% below our YTD NAV high of +61%.

Current positioning: elevated cash, select beaten-down software, healthcare, and cybersecurity names; short ETH/USD; long the Bloomberg Commodity ETF; short duration; long solar; a handful of idiosyncratic equity positions.

2. We are structurally bearish the long end of the curve but acknowledge it is technically oversold at a meaningful support level. Front-end positioning has grown crowded on the short side, and ceasefire speculation has begun unwinding that trade. A tactical long entry in the front end is worth considering. Any strength in the long end we will use to re-up our short.

3. We significantly reduced long energy exposure last week. The tape was heavy, and ceasefire chatter introduced enough headline risk to justify trimming ahead of a positioning flush — regardless of where fundamentals stand. Our base case remains that any ceasefire will be short-lived, measured in weeks rather than months. However, we have no interest in stepping in front of a narrative-driven unwind, even when the fundies increasingly favor being long.

From Warren Pies: “The last month recorded the largest cumulative draw of total U.S. petroleum inventories on record. Gasoline inventories on a seasonally adjusted basis are at their lowest since 2014. Distillate inventories are at their lowest since 2003. The next few weeks represent a crucial window for oil fundamentals.”

We will look to re-engage on any washout.

Trifecta Charts

4. Trifecta Lens Score dropped to -3 last week. This reading is not yet confirmed — it could reverse quickly. But historically, a reading at or below -3 that persists has preceded elevated volatility regimes with high reliability. We are watching closely.

5. Aggregate Breadth Indicator remains at +2, which is supportive of the broader trend. Historically, larger corrections have not been preceded by readings above 1. No deterioration here yet.

6. My friend Dean has built a really deep sub-industry dataset back to the 1960s, and one of his favorite tells is what defensive groups are doing versus the S&P over a rolling 63-day window. In his latest work (link here), that indicator went from 100% of defensive sub-industries outperforming during the Iran conflict pullback to literally 0% afterward—something his history has never recorded before.

As Dean notes, when fewer than 10% of defensive groups are outperforming, the S&P has historically posted about a +21.5% annualized return, which is a pretty powerful bull-market signal.

7. BofA’s latest Global Fund Manager Survey shows record equity allocation, a sharp drop in cash holdings, record expectations for earnings growth, and a second consecutive Bull & Bear Indicator sell signal. The prior signal triggered February 26 — just ahead of the Iran-conflict selloff.

Sentiment at these levels does not predict the direction of the next move. It does reduce the margin for error.

Macro

8. The “Issuance Signal” study tests whether surges in equity supply — IPO proceeds normalized to GDP, combined with Baker-Wurgler’s classic equity share of new issuance — predict weaker forward S&P 500 returns. Across 50 years (1975-2024), the composite signal fires in just 9 instances (1991-96 cluster, 1999-2000, and 2021), and in those years subsequent 12-month returns averaged just +4.7% versus the +13.3% baseline, with maximum drawdowns averaging -21% over the following 24 months versus -16% otherwise.

Critically, the 2026 projection of ~$160B in IPO proceeds plus ~$440B in follow-on issuance would produce a composite z-score of +2.11 — the highest reading in the entire 50-year sample, exceeding even 1999-2000 and 2021 — though this is contingent on the projection materializing rather than coming in like the muted 2023-24 cycle.

The signal should be read as a late-cycle regime warning rather than a market-timing trigger: it can fire 2+ years before the actual peak, but every prior reading above +1.8 was followed within three years by a peak-to-trough drawdown of at least -20%.

9. Nomura’s Charlie Mcelligott’s latest on the inevitable “shock down”.

10. The AI CAPEX spend is driving a massive surge in US vs RoW economic outperformance. This growth divergence has driven a breakout in US vs RoW equities. Yet, what’s interesting is that DXY — which typically tracks relative growth and equity performance — remains firmly in its 12m+ range. A sign of USD oversaturation? I think so.

Trade Setups / Topical Charts

11. BofA GFS relative allocation to cyclicals (tech + industrials) versus defensives (healthcare + staples) has climbed to its highest level since Jan 18’. Time for some mean reversion in this trend?

12. Healthcare Equipment — Dean’s relative performance data shows Healthcare sitting at or near all-time lows relative to the S&P. The sector is at a historically extreme oversold reading.

13. We have begun building a basket using three filters: (1) technical leadership off the lows, (2) meaningful share repurchase activity underway or authorized, and (3) insider buying at significant scale.

14. UNH is one name we are evaluating for inclusion. The monthly chart, including relative performance, is shown below

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Thanks for reading.

Your Macro Operator,
Alex

I know of only one cure for the fear of death. It is not what people want to hear: experience death, and then live again. This is what happened to a mentor of mine.

She was whitewater rafting the Pastaza River in Ecuador. Her boat capsized, and she was swept away by a rip current. She fought at first. But the water swallowed her, slammed her like a ragdoll, and the inevitable became apparent.

While losing consciousness, her experience shifted: a lightness, an expansion, a still silence. A sudden freedom, unchained from societal conventions, expectation, identity.

Then, she woke up at the bottom of the boat. A guide had pulled her from the water and resuscitated her.

Her body survived. But a different part of her—the domineering corporate executive she thought she was—died that day. What remained: the stillness; the lightness; the freedom from all that was revealed to be trivial.

When trading greats talk about the moments that shaped them, I hear this same experience.

Paul Tudor Jones lost over 60% of his clients’ accounts on a single cotton trade. Stan Druckenmiller watched a bet on interest rates implode and was forced to sell a portion of his company. Louis Bacon saw a third of his initial funding evaporate, leaving him mortified.

I used to see stories like this as acts of perseverance. I would reduce their experiences to a motivational footnote: when the greats get knocked down, they get right back up. Doing so trivialized what had occurred.

Their raft capsized. They were thrown into a rip current. The inevitable became apparent: the trader they thought they were was losing consciousness.

Placing those investor letters in the mail. Signing away a portion of the company. Transferring all remaining capital out of the account.

Their bodies went unharmed. But the identities they once held died.

What remained: the trader who had experienced death, and then lived again.

Futures in Focus

Market hesitation persists following the weekly Doji on the Nasdaq that I pointed out last week. That candle appeared just above a multi-point weekly trendline, and as we finished this week inside of last week’s range, the state of uncertainty remains. I am still monitoring for a breakout beyond last week’s boundaries to confirm the direction of the next intermediate trend for equities.

Last week, I noted that Rough Rice reached its 1X measured move target with real momentum. That strength indicated that this could be the beginning of an extended advance. The 2X target is currently projected at approximately 13.945. We maintain our long in the Macro Ops Portfolio.

The established uptrend in Soybean Oil remains healthy, now appearing to be in a period of consolidation following several legs to the upside. On the December contract, a three-week pennant pattern has potentially developed.

Canola displays a similar look.

And Soybean Futures have taken on the form of a Symmetrical Triangle on the July contract.

Featured Forex

Euro / Pound continues to flirt with the neckline of its Head & Shoulders Top. The boundary could not be better defined, and the right shoulder has taken on the look of a Descending Triangle. My only qualm is just how large (in time) this pattern has grown. Applying daily-timeframe trade management to a pattern going on 46 weeks in length can result in being chopped out on volatility that, zooming out, never affects the integrity of the pattern itself.

The potential Double Bottom in Euro / Aussie highlighted last week continues to hold its form. A talented Macro Operator tells me positioning strongly supports this possibility.

And Mexican Peso Futures have formed a Head & Shoulders Continuation. The neckline looks well defined with multiple price pivots.

The Pauses That Refresh

The S&P 500 Equal Weight completed a Cup & Handle Continuation pattern this week.

This has led several individual equities to exhibit similar technical setups. If you decide to trade these names, remember to manage concurrent risk.

Here are the names that caught my attention in this week’s equity screen.

Active watchlists, real-time trade alerts, and live portfolio tracking are reserved for members of The Collective, our premier service offering discussions on high-level theory and performance, differentiated research, and a global community of serious traders and investors dedicated to mastery. We’re building the next evolution of the Collective right now, arming every one of our operators with best-in-class tools, research, and infrastructure. As these features roll out, we’ll be raising the membership price by over 25%. You can lock in the current rate by joining today. Enrollment is open until this Sunday at midnight.

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• Fundamentals: Is it cheap relative to where it could trade over the next 18-24 months?

• Technicals: Does it have an actionable technical setup that allows us to get a large notional size with minimal actual risk?

• Sentiment/Positioning: How hated is this idea, and how one-sided is the positioning?

Our best trades historically have all met the Trifecta Lens criteria. In fact, we’d be much more profitable if we only took Tier-1 Trifecta Lens setups.

We believe Solar Energy is the next Trifecta Lens Setup in markets. It meets all our criteria:

• Fundamentals: Solar stocks are bombed out, trading at 5-10 year lows, with a much cleaner supply/demand outlook over the next 18-24 months.

• Technicals: Solar has one of the highest Relative Strength scores and has outperformed the S&P 500 by 70% from its May 2025 bottom.

• Sentiment: Nobody’s talking about solar energy right now, even though it’s one of the only bipartisan energy sources in a world where Energy At All Costs will require even more solar energy capacity. Value and growth investors hate it.

We’ve been pounding the table on the solar energy theme since last August and have since built a basket of solar stocks to express our bullishness.

This week, I’m sharing Part 1 of our Solar Energy Value Chain Deep Dive Research series.

Solar Energy Value Chain (Part 1): Polysilicon & Wacker Chemie (WCH)

We’re deconstructing the Solar Energy Value Chain piece by piece so Collective members can gain a deeper understanding of the market’s next potential outperformer.

Which reminds me.

We’re opening enrollment to the Collective for the rest of the month. The Collective is one of the few places on the internet where serious traders/investors meet, build lasting relationships, share investment ideas, and foster a truly rich life. It’s unlike anything else out there.

The Collective includes all of our research, a full library of reports and videos on theory and strategy, our proprietary market dashboard, plus our internal Slack where the team and I, plus fund managers and die-hards from around the world talk shop, exchange ideas, and shoot the shit. We will be raising our prices by over 25% within the next few months. So if you’ve been on the fence, now’s a good time to jump so you can lock in current pricing.

We’re off to a good start this year (+45% YTD), but we know we can do better.

So if you’re interested in learning more about our Trifecta Lens trading philosophy, our Solar Thematic research (or all our other research), or what it would look like to join our community, click the link below.

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I can’t wait to see you in there.

Your Value Operator,

Brandon

“If each of us are hunting by ourselves, we can kill a bunny. But if the two of us hunt together, we can take down a stag. And then we can have a lot more meat to go around.”

Startup entrepreneurs grasp this intuitively: skilled teams collaborating in high-trust settings carry a material advantage over isolated individuals.

But traders and investors can be slower to learn this truth. The mythology of market speculation is a solitary one: the lone savant, the self-made millionaire, the romantic ideal of the deeply secluded obsessive.

I spent a large portion of my trading career inside that mythology and still trade this way at my prop firm. I take satisfaction in sharpening my sword week in and week out.

But trading together at Macro Ops—as The Collective—we achieve something else entirely.

We don’t trap bunnies. We take down stags.

Navigating the last two months of market turmoil is the clearest example.

In the first week of March, as the conflict in Iran escalated, we made a joint decision: flatten our equity book entirely. No heroics. Just out.

Here is what our Macro Ops Team Lead, Alex, shared with The Collective:

In the month that followed, we sidestepped deep corrections in tech and an overall risk-off skid across the indices.

Then, on April 4th, I spotted price action in the Russell suggesting strength was returning. I called it out in my weekly report.

Alex took the idea and ran with it.

He identified favorable positioning in the Russell, alongside a confirming Trifecta of data inputs, signaling an intermediate bottom in risk assets.

He framed the trade. Our Macro Ops portfolio went long the same day.

Six days later, our lead equity analyst Brandon—who had been tracking a starter position in Intel supporting the risk-on environment—opened a basket of AI and tech names for the portfolio.

The names added included Oracle, Intel Corp, Bloom Energy, and the AI & Technology ETF, CHAT.

Over the four weeks that followed:

The Russell moved from 2,550 to new all-time highs just shy of 3,000.

Oracle moved from 153 to 200.

Bloom Energy from 176 to 310.

CHAT from 70 to 89.

Intel from 52 to 130.

Our Macro Ops Portfolio surged to a high watermark of +61.2% YTD before settling at +50.9% YTD as of this writing.

This is what it looks like to hunt stags.

The collaboration extends beyond our core team.

Every week, members of The Collective share research, setups, and trade ideas from across specializations and geographies—ideas that would never cross an isolated trader’s desk, surfaced, vetted, and acted on together.

Discounted Korean corporates trading at 40% NAV discounts with active share buyback programs:

U.S.-based clean energy plays positioned to capture data center power demand:

The Macro Ops Collective is where private investors, CIOs, and individual traders come together to do what none of us can do alone.

Every member is entrepreneurial in spirit. Every member has come to understand that high-trust collaboration in markets isn’t a soft advantage—it’s a structural one. The kind that shows up in your returns at year end.

We’re building the next evolution of the Collective right now, arming every one of our operators with best-in-class tools, research, and infrastructure for the hunt ahead. As these features roll out, we’ll be raising the membership price. You can lock in the current rate by joining today.

Enrollment is open until this Sunday at midnight.

If you’re ready to stop trapping bunnies and start taking down stags, join us on the hunt.

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