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.

In this America, “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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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George Coyle, co-author of the upcoming Market Wizards: The Next Generation, has been making the interview rounds.

Nearly every interviewer asks a version of the same question: what core trading principles do all wizards share?

Coyle’s answer won’t surprise anyone familiar with the iconic series: respect price action, hold winners, cut losses. Find a strategy that aligns with your temperament and lifestyle.

But one interviewer asked a different question: who were the human beings behind the tactics, and what traits did they share as people? Coyle identified six:

Self-awareness: A deep understanding of oneself and what works.

Clear goals: Precise objectives for what they’re trying to achieve.

Unjustified self-belief: Profound persistence, even after significant failures.

Independence: A preference for autonomy over traditional career paths.

Extreme passion: Devotion to trading as a primary reason for being.

Commitment and persistence: Willingness to press on despite the fear of failure.

These aren’t tactical choices. They are ways of being.

Across nearly all performance fields, aspiring players seek ‘how to’s’ of the elite performers, only to end up mimicking surface-level actions.

The doing is seductive because it’s observable. You can see the setups, the entries, the exits. You can backtest it, forward-test it, replicate it.

But the tactics bloom from the traits. The being births the doing.

The being requires you to look inward. To ask: Do I truly know myself? Do I have clear goals? Do I believe in this work even when the evidence says I shouldn’t? Am I willing to walk away from a traditional career path? Does this craft call me forward?

When you study a Market Wizard, be curious about their tactics. Learn their setups.

But do not seek to copy their trades. Seek first to cultivate their traits.

Futures in Focus

The Nasdaq printed a Doji this week, signaling market indecision right above its multi-point weekly trendline. With open skies overhead and a lack of structure below, I expect the direction for the next two-to-three week move depends on which side of this weekly range breaks first. In this scenario, this next phase will either trigger a significant reversal of the recent v-shaped rally or spark an accelerated blow-off move.

Rough Rice met its 1X measured move target this week. Thrusts out of patterns don’t get much stronger than this, suggesting it could be the start of a larger move. We’re long a risk-defined position in the Macro Ops portfolio.

Cocoa Futures hit their 1X target and are retracing to the breakout level. Note Cocoa’s strength relative to Rough Rice. Tony D-L, our resident Vol expert and futures trader, caught much of this move for the MO Portfolio via an early entry last month.

A theme we’ve seen—and played (see: A Real Gusher)—since the turn of the year has been the major trend changes across the commodity complex. Soybean Meal is attempting such a trend change right now.

The December contract had the cleanest boundary, in my view. Price is experiencing volatility as it attempts to breakout from the ~323 level.

Soybean Oil already established its uptrend and is pausing after multiple legs higher.

Canola has a similar look.

Bucking the uptrend is Coffee, which I’ve been highlighting in recent issues. Price closed Friday definitively below prior support on the weekly continuation chart.

Individual contracts show support from last July still in play. For the September contract below, that level sits at 251.50, where I expect more volatility before direction is ultimately decided. Our MO Portfolio is short a risk-defined position in the July contract.

I’m sneaking one currency cross into the futures roundup as it displays price structure very similar to the commodity reversals we’ve seen. Perhaps one of our traditional Macro Operators can provide the economic rationale for going long Euro short Aussie …

The Pauses That Refresh

There’s a mix of equity consolidations ready to break out and others ready to break down in this week’s screen.

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.

What does money represent to you?

Complete this sentence with the first three words that appear: “Money is ______ .”

When I ask traders this question, the same qualities surface time and again. They surfaced for me, too.

Money is freedom. Money is choice. Money is security.

Now, name the opposite of each quality you just wrote. Use those words to complete this sentence: “Without money, I am ______ .”

Without money, I am imprisoned. Without money, I am coerced. Without money, I am unsafe.

See what money has stolen from you.

See what you believe must be protected when your account reaches new highs. What you believe is being taken from you when your account draws down.

This perceived theft is what disconnects traders from their process as their account scales.

They are not protecting capital. They are protecting their sense of freedom, their sense of choice, their sense of security—all of which have been projected onto an account balance.

What if you could reclaim these qualities? Not by pretending the money doesn’t matter. But by recognizing the qualities exist independent of the numbers on the screen.

The work is seeing it: you have freedom, you have choice, you are secure—at new highs and in drawdown.

Limit your drawdowns. Compound your returns. Care deeply about the process. But do not trade in pursuit of life’s most precious qualities.

Trade because the craft itself calls you forward.

A Trader’s Journey

Last weekend, a member of the Collective reached out to Alex, our Macro Ops Team Lead, seeking advice on how to cultivate his ability to act more independently as a trader. Alex subsequently shared this inquiry with the broader community:

“Just renewed my subscription … been loving the community and learning from you guys. I’ve been enthusiastically reading and applying what I read as it relates to trading/macro (eg, just today backtested what happens to JPYUSD post MOF/BOJ intervention given the news and whether it makes sense to follow that trade through) but the volume of info and content to consume far outpaces what I can realistically get through and don’t feel like I’ve grown too much as an independent-thinking trader (where I can generate ideas myself without leaning on what you, Brandon, Mike write about) so wanted to ask what you recommend as the best path forward -- do you think it’s a function of time spent reading books and eventually things clicking into place, reading research papers, etc.? what would you attribute to driving better idea generation and trading, and what do you think is the most optimal path forward for someone in my shoes (~6Y working in finance in banking, PE, and now credit with ~1-2Y of trading experience but honestly mostly riding the coattails of you guys and 1-2 others whose work I trust)? appreciate any help. thanks!”

Several members of the Collective stepped up to provide mentorship based on their personal experiences. This exchange highlights the strength of our community and brings to life one of our foundational principles: iron sharpens iron.

In my contribution to the discussion, I aimed to synthesize the initial inquiry and provide a structured framework for the various recommendations offered by the group.

I am including that response below as a real-world application of the concepts explored in the introductory essays of This Infinite Game.

You’re consuming ideas faster than you’re developing your own judgment. That’s normal at this stage (”~1-2Y of trading experience”) and fine as a starting point. But now you need to shift from observer to operator. The path forward isn’t more books or reading (external input). It’s narrowing your focus and building reps in one specific area until you develop proprietary pattern recognition.

Here’s what I’d suggest:

Pick one domain. Not ten. One. Maybe FX interventions. Maybe credit dislocations in a sector you know from PE. Pick one thing where you’re genuinely curious and have some edge from your background. (See: Enabling Constraints)

Let your curiosity lead. Audit your last few months of trading-related work. What work has dropped you into flow state—where you followed a thread for hours with no regard for time? By contrast, what felt like a homework assignment with a looming deadline? Double down on flow state. (See: Trade Where Time Falls Away).

Study it obsessively for 3-6 months. Build a database. Track every instance. Backtest different approaches. Develop your own framework for when it works and when it doesn’t. If you’re more of a price-action trader, you can use my trade log template. If you’re more of a thesis-driven trader you can use a journaling software like Notion.

Trade it in small size. Real money, but small enough to learn without bleeding. The goal isn’t profit yet, it’s judgment. The best you can, tune out all other market commentary. Tune in to the budding intuition that is taking root as you apply your “classroom” study to real-world live markets. You’ll learn more about your own market sense from taking 20 small trades in your domain than from 100 hours of reading what others have to say on those same markets. (See webinar: Your Ears Are Your Enemy)

Share what you’ve learned and ask about topics where you feel blocked. By this point you will have original thoughts on your individual domain, and specific questions as to what you believe is blocking your next stage of growth (much like you shared with Alex, as it happens). Ask questions specific to your study and your experience trading your strategy in small size. This community will route you to excellent, curated resources on those specific topics.

You don’t have to remain in this single domain forever. But for right now, deep expertise in one thing will cultivate your ability to think independently.

Commodity Whiplash

A slew of commodity breakouts saw their advances undone this week when reports hit that the U.S. and Iran were close to a peace agreement. My current commodities ruleset stopped me out of positions in Brent Crude, Soybeans, KC Wheat and Corn for a smattering of tiny wins and tiny losses.

What’s survived? Rough Rice, holding its Ascending Triangle breakout …

… and Cocoa Futures, holding its Ascending Channel breakout.

Fresh breakdowns appeared in Lean Hogs—possibly a Secondary Completion of April’s Head & Shoulders Top …

… and a real surprise based on what I was anticipating in Coffee: a Head & Shoulders Continuation to the downside.

If you recall from earlier issues, I was monitoring the lower boundary of a massive range between ~280 and ~420, scanning for either a reversal pattern at the lows or a continuation pattern after an initial move higher.

Yet the market now appears on the verge of breaking down.

Other markets I’m watching right now include Australian Dollar / New Zealand Dollar, which broke down the Rising Wedge featured in recent issues.

This wedge is small and price is above a rising moving average, so expectations are low.

Euro / British Pound’s Head & Shoulders Top.

Feeder Cattle’s Cup & Handle Continuation.

A multi-point trendline in Robusta Coffee Futures.

The Dollar looking increasingly weak at the mid-point of its range.

And the runaway train that is the Nasdaq …

The above chart is weekly and displays the almost unfathomable potential for further acceleration of the trend with this week’s closing breakout. Grab your popcorn.

The Pauses That Refresh

There are a number of consolidations in equities hovering right at All-Time Highs.

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.

To trade is, in part, to navigate discomfort. The ambiguity of selecting trades, the vulnerability of putting on risk, the tension of extended drawdowns.

To grow in trading is to develop one’s capacity for doing so.

So when someone promises to eliminate these for you—completely remove them from your trading experience, for one low fee—you’ve found my favorite screen in finance.

Such engagements are not mentorship. They are marketing. Even at their best, the enrichment flows one way, and the result is dependency.

What, then, distinguishes a true mentor? Start with your own lived experience.

Whether you have traded for a few years or a few decades, you have made contact with many truths of trading: the ambiguity, the vulnerability, the tension; the euphoria, the invincibility, the ephemeral sense of arrival.

Even in the faintest of ways, you already know these textures.

A mentor is someone steadier in the places that have left you off balance. Their contact with the realities of trading is more persistent, more tapped in.

And when you observe them closely, you can see it—not because they claim it, but because you’ve touched that same truth yourself and recognize its depth in another.

Each aspect of trading carries its own truth: market sense, sizing up, adding asset classes, trading under the eyes of risk managers or LPs.

You don’t need someone who has mastered it all. You need someone closer to whichever aspect is blocking your next stage of growth.

And once you find them, watch how they meet you. Do they offer guidance, or do they manage you? When you challenge their ideas, do they defend, or do they open?

Marketers sell dependency. Mentors cultivate your liberation.

High-Flying Commodities

In the April 4th issue, I noted that Light Crude’s “loose” price action lacked the asymmetric risk-to-reward required by my swing-trading playbooks.

While it has since whipped around that same range …

… Brent Crude broke out of the Flag noted in the April 18th issue and is testing March’s swing high. Clearing this resistance targets a 1X measured move of 109.

Energy isn’t the only sector moving; Iran conflict spillovers are aggressively driving agricultural commodities higher.

KC Wheat’s breakout, noted last week, nearly hit its 1X target:

Soybean Oil broke out of a 7-week Running Wedge. As I commented in the Macro Ops Comm Center, I preferred the three upper-boundary pivots on the December contract, but early entry on the nearby July contract was rewarded.

On Friday, the November “new crop” soybean contract broke past the upper resistance level of a seven-week Ascending Triangle pattern.

And the reversal in Corn continues to take shape with price pushing further away from the neckline of a multi-month Head & Shoulders, which is part of a large double bottom formation.

We’re long a number of these commodities in our Macro Ops Portfolio, and have added multiple times this year to our position in the Bloomberg All Commodity ETF (BCI).

Rounding out a look at agricultural commodities, Rough Rice pivoted off of the 11.45 level multiple times since mid-February, forming an Ascending Triangle on the continuation chart. Note that this market is significantly thinner than those previously discussed.

Featured Forex

I’ve been tracking a potential Head & Shoulders Continuation in Yen Futures, specifically the tight coil at the right shoulder. Following a Wednesday breakdown, the Bank of Japan intervened at the neckline to halt the decline. Thursday’s surge then breached the right shoulder high, signaling a possible trend reversal.

This possibility gets much more interesting when zooming out to the weekly.

The BOJ defended a level that was first tested back in 2024. Much like the range in Coffee covered last week, a reversal from this lower boundary would offer plenty of room for a run back to the top of the two-year range.

The US Dollar continues to trade at the midpoint of its established range:

The potential Head & Shoulders Top I’ve featured in the Euro / Pound ended the week right at the neckline:

And the Australian Dollar / New Zealand Dollar has been on a tear and is coiling at highs:

The Pauses That Refresh

Responding to Collective member requests, I’ve added Sector and Industry labels to the upper right of every chart on my active watchlist. This update makes it easier to track names within specific groups or themes.

Here are the stocks that grabbed my attention during this week’s 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. Learn more about The Collective here.

Developing traders often see constraints as boxes that limit them. When they watch a trader commit to a single setup, a single timeframe, a single ruleset, they misread what’s happening. They think: “That trader has boxed themselves in.”

But constraints don’t create a box. They create riverbanks.

Your creative energy—the spirit of your trading—moves like water. That spirit flows through the charts you watch, the setups you track, the trade data you collect.

Without banks, that water flattens into a shallow marsh. The potential power within you dissipates rather than builds because it has no direction to its flow. But introduce riverbanks and everything changes. The banks don’t block the water. They channel it.

By narrowing the path, the water gains depth. It gains speed. And suddenly it has the power to move your understanding, your experience, your wisdom forward.

This is what I see when traders make their biggest leaps. Not commitment to trading in general. Commitment to self-imposed enabling constraints.

David Ryan made this leap after blowing up his account early in his career. He audited a year of shallow waters: buying extended stocks, chasing pullbacks, mixing styles. He made a commitment:

“I was so focused. I wasn’t buying pullbacks. I wasn’t buying extended stocks. I was buying exactly right. I didn’t care what the rest of the market looked like. I was buying one setup and one setup only.”

He went on to become a three-time U.S. Investing Champion.

The constraints you choose—if only for a season—become the banks that give your trading depth and force.

Choose your riverbanks. Let them channel the spirit of your trading forward.

Futures in Focus

In last week’s issue, I highlighted Brent Crude flagging after the impulsive move up in energy. This week, it attempted to break out.

We’re long close cousin RBOB Gasoline Futures in the Macro Ops Portfolio.

Let’s see if they follow through next week.

Also attempting to break out this week is KC Wheat. Broadening Patterns are inherently volatile. The boundaries diverge from one another, representing the expanding volatility. This makes it challenging to define an appropriate risk point.

KC Wheat, however, compressed just below the upper boundary. Such pre-breakout conditions make for excellent risk-reward setups as they offer a clean structure to define risk and frame an asymmetric trade.

KC Wheat blasted out of that short price compression on Thursday, but ran into sellers on Friday. Another one to watch for followthrough or lack thereof next week.

Coffee is at an important juncture. Price is reacting to the ~280 level for the third time in nine months. The last test was March’s failed reversal attempt from a 7-week Head & Shoulders Bottom.

Zooming out to the Weekly, the picture becomes more compelling. Coffee could be reversing off the bottom of a massive range between ~280 and ~420.

The ideal setup would be a clean continuation pattern on the daily in the lower half of that range, launching a move back to the upper boundary.

Yen Futures continue to coil, as highlighted last week:

Euro / Pound could be forming a Head & Shoulders Top, with price drifting back to the neckline:

And the Corn Futures Continuation chart is attempting to push away from the neckline of a 54-week Head & Shoulders Bottom pattern (with a cautionary flag for the downward sloping neckline).

The Pauses That Refresh

There are a number of consolidations in equities this week that are building up power just below their All-Time Highs.

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.

What is the destination for your trading? Not your goals for this week, this month, this year. What is the vision for it all?

Dr. Brett Steenbarger spent four years at Tudor Investment Corporation and has worked with countless hedge fund managers since. At SMB Capital’s New York trading summit last month, he shared what he’s observed: those who dedicate a percentage of their profits to causes they deeply believe in transform their relationship with market speculation.

They’re inspired to trade well because the profits fund something meaningful. They stay disciplined because the cause matters more than any single position. And they hold better emotional balance because their identity isn’t tethered solely to market swings.

Dr. Steenbarger cites Paul Tudor Jones as an example of this principle: a man trading not for a number on a screen, but for his Robin Hood Foundation. The foundation is the destination that pulls him forward—his vision for his trading.

You don’t need PTJ-level wealth to feel this pull.

My wife and I have a young family and an equally young nest egg. We both care deeply about our local community and the next generation being raised here.

A few times a year, we’ll find ourselves driving through town and spot a commercial space for lease. My wife, an entrepreneur in architectural design, begins painting a picture of what could be created to support the flourishing of the people we care about. I soundboard. We assemble a shortlist of collaborators who could bring the vision to life.

The timing isn’t today. But there’s a real sense that the day will arrive when we have the capacity to move on one of these visions—if not multiple. The trading desk feels different the next morning. My attention is less magnetized to the minutiae: to today’s action, to this week’s performance.

I return to process—one I know will persist indefinitely, and compound until we arrive at the day the resources and timing are no longer ahead of us, but at our feet.

This is all it takes. No philanthropic foundation. No WSJ headline.

Just a destination you truly care about, and can make out clearly enough to feel its pull.

A Rip-Roaring Rally

Two weeks ago, in the April 4, 2026 issue, I featured the “loose” markets of Crude Oil and the Nasdaq, and contrasted them to the “tight” price compression on the Russell. Shortly after, the Russell popped out of that range with our Macro Ops Portfolio positioned long.

Things looked pretty good last week when I wrote I’d be watching what would develop next—potentially a bear-market “Rounding Pattern” or a tight, low-volatility consolidation.

What we got was a hot knife through butter:

In that same April 4 issue, I covered three names that had exhibited notable relative strength in the face of all the turmoil.

Bread Financial Holdings has gone on to meet both its Head & Shoulders Continuation and Symmetrical Triangle 1X targets:

Dell encountered initial selling pressure but pushed into new All-Time Highs:

Brookfield Renewable Partners pulled away from its Cup & Handle Continuation boundary on the daily timeframe, which can act as a launching pattern completing the massive Head & Shoulders Bottom on the weekly timeframe:

Of note: there is a boatload of overhead resistance to the left on the weekly chart:

Futures in Focus

Japanese Yen Futures looked like they were forming a Head & Shoulders Continuation, but volatility is contracting above the neckline. It’s a small pattern with potential to break either direction.

I’ll be watching to see if the upper boundary can clean itself up (I’m not thrilled with boundaries defined more by wicks than closes).

Brent Crude is flagging after the impulsive move up in energy. Brent Crude is a cleaner pattern than Light Crude if looking to play continuation in energy prices. December contract shown here.

I’ve been following the breakout in Cotton since initiating work on my commodities playbook earlier this year. The March break of the Declining Channel on the May contract kicked off a huge rally.

That breakout on the daily coincided with a breakout from a multi-month trendline on the continuation chart.

The Dollar continues its rangebound action between ~96 and ~100. It’s currently smack in the middle of the range. Both boundaries have been tested multiple times.

The ideal scenario for Platinum would have been a low-volatility contraction along the upper boundary of this Falling Wedge. This would have allowed energy to build for a breakout.

Instead, price bled right through the boundary, which tells me this boundary is not significant to market participants and the pattern as I labeled it is likely to morph.

Corn is trying to hold a retest of a multi-month Head & Shoulders Bottom breakout.

Note: Head & Shoulders with necklines slanted in the opposite direction of the breakout are considered weaker than those where the slant of the neckline aligns with the direction of the breakout.

A continuation pattern forming on the daily would be an ideal setup from here.

The Pauses That Refresh

A month ago, many of these same equity setups appeared ready to break out. The conflict in Iran sent them to the opposite sides of their ranges. Now, they are looking back in play.

Here’s what rose to the top of my equity screen 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.

The best traders I’ve studied share one visible quality: the wilder markets become, the more still they appear.

In an attempt to emulate their external personas, I used to default to emotional detachment when markets came unhinged. It kept me out of trouble. And out of opportunity.

Without attunement to my inner state, the only action I could take was inaction.

This guarded against impulsive trading and protected capital. But it also suffocated perfectly valid trades that fit my playbook: opportunities I had trained for, conceived clearly—and then watched pass from behind the glass of detachment.

The traders I admired weren’t numb. They were spacious.

Numbness flattens the signal along with the noise. Space preserves the signal, and creates just enough distance to keep the impulse from pulling the trigger.

When the temptation to act arrives—to release the excitement, to resolve the unrest—the answer is not to extinguish it. It is to recognize the reactive impulse, and to pause.

In that pause, aligned action becomes clear: does this impulse fit what was conceived in calm? Does it match the trade plan built before the storm?

If yes, the pause is confirmation of the trade.

If no, the pause is the trade.

This is what separates the two traders who appear identical from the outside: both quiet and seemingly unmoved.

One has gone numb.

The other has learned to anchor in stillness without severing the signal.

Around the World

There’s been a strong focus on U.S. equities in recent issues, so this week I took to my full futures universe and grabbed the charts that caught my attention.

Japanese Yen Futures show a potential Head & Shoulders Continuation on the daily:

The Dollar continues its rangebound action between ~96 and ~100. Both boundaries have been tested multiple times. I’d love to see price tighten up against one of the two levels in anticipation of a breakout.

London Cocoa has formed an extremely tight price range between ~2500 and ~2300. Low volatility precedes high volatility …

We’re currently long the American Cocoa contract in the Macro Ops Portfolio.

The scale of this Falling Wedge on Platinum is enormous. So much so I question its tradability. Silver exhibits a similar pattern, but the upper boundary on Platinum looks cleaner to me.

The ideal scenario would be a low-volatility contraction along the upper boundary to allow energy to build for a breakout.

And, of course, there’s the Russell, whose tight price compression along the convergence of the 200EMA and multi-point trendline I featured last week.

I felt the Russell offered the best asymmetric setup of all the indices, allowing for either a conservative stop placement below the entire consolidation, or aggressive stop placement using the low of the last daily bar inside the range.

Russell popped this week, but the move lands it back in a congestion zone. The next 1-2 weeks are key: will we see a bear-market “Rounding Pattern” or tighter, lower-volatility consolidation?

The Pauses That Refresh

Many stocks continue to form clean consolidations. The following names stood out in this week’s screening:

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.

Markets have reached levels of extreme uncertainty. I can see it in the cascading conditionals on social media. I can feel it in the chat rooms.

As the cone of possibilities widens its jaws, it swallows our footing. Our need to know rushes to the surface. Should I be long here? Hedged? Flat?

There’s a part of you looping on unknowable outcomes. Minute after minute, day after day. Inhaling the headlines, refreshing the feeds, dredging the torrent for the data point that will finally reveal what should be done.

And there’s another part, connected to what’s actually unfolding before it becomes intellectualized, that already knows how you should be positioned.

The part that knows is not concerned with benchmarks. It’s not the voice ready to pounce on you for being “trapped” by a bear-market rally or “shaken out” by a V-reversal.

Those voices are your personality defending something—your competence, your identity as a trader, your need to not look foolish. They write the story you tell yourself about your actions.

The part that knows sits below the story. And before any probabilities are assigned, before any analysis is compiled, it simply knows.

Accessing it requires stepping out of the defended posture. The part that needs to prove it saw it coming. That it didn’t get fooled. That it beat the benchmark.

It requires curiosity instead of certainty. Wonder instead of worry.

Wonder about this moment in market history: 100% unique, impossible to backtest or probability-weight into submission.

Audit your posture right now. Is it wide and curious? Or narrow and defended?

One part aches to know. The other already does.

Loosey Goosey

Buy ‘em tight, sell ‘em loose. So goes the swing trading maxim.

It’s “tight” price action that allows swing traders to set tight stops, put on meaningful size, and attempt to capture significant price expansion. When that “tight” price action becomes “loose,” it’s not the time to put on risk. It’s time to take it off.

We discuss this internally at Macro Ops often: our highest expectancy trades are ones taken on moves out of compressed price action—”tight” ranges on the charts.

And we tactically implement fast-moving trailing stops when price reaches elevated ATR levels beyond a key moving average, systematically selling “loose” price action.

The irony is that interest in specific stocks or commodities runs just the inverse. When price action is tight, it’s seen as too boring to be of interest.

And then when price gets loose? Everyone wants to speculate on the next big leg.

Right now, there is a ton of interest in gold, oil and commodities. I understand there are important economic implications at play here.

But from a purely swing trading standpoint, these charts are way too loose to offer much in the way of asymmetric risk-to-reward according to my playbooks.

Over the last month, we tracked the price compression in the Nasdaq that broke down last week:

This week, price bounced right back to the converging resistance of the 200EMA, lower trendline, and compression range.

The Nasdaq was tight, now it’s loose.

This is even more apparent on the closing price line chart:

More interesting to me in the equity world is the Russell, which has held its “tight” price compression right at the convergence of its 200EMA and multi-point trendline.

While the Nasdaq could whip around from here irrespective of the next intermediate move for equities, the Russell may give a cleaner read when it expands from this compressed range.

Relative Strength

If the next direction in equities is up, there are a few names that jumped out as exhibiting particular strength over the past two weeks of turmoil.

Brookfield Renewable Partners (BEP) completed a Cup & Handle Continuation on the daily:

And this corresponds with completion of a massive Head & Shoulders Bottom on the weekly:

Dell Technologies (DELL) is threatening to complete an equally massive Head & Shoulders Continuation on the weekly:

And Bread Financial Holdings (BFH)—featured from the very first issue of This Infinite Game—has held its breakout from a year-long Head & Shoulders Continuation pattern, and formed a Symmetrical Triangle consolidation above the breakout level.

The Pauses That Refresh

There are a number of patterns that have held their consolidations, as well as many opportunities to play on the short side or between range boundaries.

Here are the names that caught my eye during this week’s 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. Learn more about The Collective here.

In March of 2023, I joined 25 others for a week-long psychospiritual retreat on the outskirts of Petaluma. Among us: a CFO of a Fortune 500 company, multiple entrepreneurs and founders, at least one billionaire. We came to unravel the unconscious patterns steering our lives.

Our phones and laptops were locked away for the retreat’s duration. We knew each other by nicknames only. No talk of professional identity was allowed until the final day.

Despite our varied backgrounds, the patterns were the same. Our facilitators had seen them time and again. Some obvious: No matter how much money I make, it’s never enough. Others, more subtle: Seeing negative emotions as personal failings.

One pattern jumped out at me: Can’t look foolish.

Across the week, I traced this pattern’s origins and the ways it had been reinforced. A home where missteps were named and shamed. A school system that rewarded recitation over experimentation. A work culture that promoted confidence over deference.

Of all the patterns we unpacked that week, this one speaks most forcefully during market volatility.

Each gap down brings cries of risk off. Each gap up, a hedge. “Nibbling here.” “Adding back.” “Reversing with a tight stop.”

I used to see this as tactical opportunism. Now I see it for what it is: the compulsion to act so that, should the market bottom tonight, “I didn’t get shaken out.” I wasn’t fooled.

These trades never add to an edge. And the mental drain of the constant in-and-out suffocates the creative flow that could be put to use sharpening one’s sword or developing new playbooks.

If you’ve found yourself tethered to each market open and close this month, consider what unseen pattern is puppeteering you. Not to shame it. To see it clearly.

The pattern you’ve been rewarded for all your life may be exactly what’s working against you right now.

Guidelines for a Selloff

In the March 7, 2026 issue, I shared that our Macro Ops team had flattened our equity book.

That Friday, the primary trend filter for my long-equity breakout system flashed risk off. It’s remained risk-off since:

From that same issue, NQ is moving toward its 22,200 measured move target:

The Nasdaq 100 Equal Weight has already reached its measured move target of 123.50:

Even the poster child of the AI revolution is threatening breakdown from a Head & Shoulders Top:

It’s important to remember what measured move targets are—and what they are not. A measured move target is not a prediction. It is neither a minimum nor an extreme.

It is simply a guideline.

In the most basic sense, a measured move target says: “Price could reasonably move to this level because, very recently, price repeatedly made the same size move within a range.”

No magic about it.

The Pauses that Refresh

There are a number of patterns that have held their consolidations, as well as many opportunities to play on the short side or between range boundaries. If these are playbooks that you have yet to develop, now could be the perfect time to do so.

Here are the names that grabbed 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.

Most retail traders catch the bug the same way: chasing fast money on the side. A good portion burn through their cash at the starting line. A smaller portion survive long enough to build something meaningful.

And for those who do, the goalposts shift. Trading is no longer about extra cash alongside a primary income. It transforms into a pathway to freedom.

But here’s what goes unseen: this idea of freedom gets misattributed to external circumstances, seen as manipulable by money. Traders convince themselves that hitting a certain account balance will resolve a restlessness inside them.

Some get stuck in this loop forever. The felt sense of arrival keeps receding. They hit their number, move the goalposts, hit the new number, move them again. Because freedom is overwhelmingly an internal state, not an external one.

But a small fraction—true outliers—either last long enough or hit a number so stunning, they actually pause. And in that strange space of having money concerns covered while witnessing all that money cannot solve, they ask: “What is the purpose of trading beyond individual financial gain?”

Here’s what I ask them to consider: trading has no purpose. Just as no professional title grants its holder a purpose. Instead, it’s the qualities we develop through the experience of trading that enable us to deliver on our deeper calling in the world.

Dr. Brett Steenbarger writes, “In mastering risk and uncertainty; in cultivating the ability to pursue opportunity in effortful ways; in making ourselves better as decision makers; in becoming more disciplined actors; we seize the opportunity not only to become better traders, but also to become better human beings.”

These qualities spill into every area of life. They make us better business partners, spouses, parents, and friends. And those relationships, deepened by who we become through trading, nourish us in ways money and market speculation never can.

This is where freedom actually lives. Not in trading, but in what striving for mastery builds within us.

Building a Commodities Playbook

For the last few issues, I’ve shared that equities have moved into a risk-off posture. So long as this condition remains, my primarily long equity breakout system is on pause.

When pauses such as this occur, it offers the opportunity for rich, in-depth post-analysis, and the development of new trading playbooks and complementary strategies. It was, in fact, just such a pause last year that allowed me to refine my breakout regime filters, and develop the intraday version of my end-of-day strategy.

This time, I’m turning my focus to futures, with a major focus on commodities.

Commodities have not played a major role in my trading since 2022. At that time, I traded them using the same framework and trade management as my equity trades.

Since then, my focus has been lasered in on equities: the specific patterns they form, how they move, the regimes they cycle through as definable by indices such as SPY.

And because of the intimacy I’ve developed with this asset class, the foundation I’ve used for approaching commodity futures is, ironically, equities. What attributes do they share? And, more importantly, where do they differ?

There is a single, often-overlooked page in Edwards and Magee’s Technical Analysis of Stock Trends that speaks directly to these questions. Here is what they write (emphasis mine):

“News about weather, drought, floods, etc., that affect the growing crop, if we are dealing with an agricultural commodity, can change the trend of the futures market immediately and drastically [...] Analogous developments in the stock market are extremely rare.

Under what might be called normal market conditions, those chart patterns which reflect trend changes in the most simple and logical fashion work just as well with commodities as with stocks. Among these we would list Head-and-Shoulders formations, Rounding Tops and Bottoms, basic trendlines. Trendlines, in fact, are somewhat better defined and more useful than in stocks.

Other types of chart formations which are associated in stocks with short-term trading or with group distribution and accumulation, such as the Triangles, Rectangles, Flags, etc., appear less frequently in commodities and are far less reliable as to either direction or extent of ensuing move. Support and resistance levels, as we have already noted, are less potent in commodities than in stocks; sometimes they seem to work to perfection but just as often they don’t. For similar reasons, gaps have relatively less technical significance.”

Whereas in equities, trends tend to build and reversals are rare, the opposite is true in commodities, where “immediate and drastic” reversals are commonplace.

Whereas in equities, the polarity principle—that prior horizontal resistance turns into new support and vice versa—can be used to protect stops, in commodities horizontal support is rarer and less reliable.

Whereas in equities, diagonal trendlines should be viewed with suspicion, in commodities they should be viewed with greater confidence.

An initial playbook can therefore adapt setups in equities with these differences in mind.

For my personal equity setups, two price pivots at the same horizontal level allows me to draw a support or resistance line. Three price pivots make that level tradeable. For commodities: two price pivots along the same diagonal level allows me to connect them as a trendline. Three price pivots make that trendline treadable.

Drop the rigidity of the 200EMA trend filter, as reversals are common.

Manage trades for “immediate and drastic” changes in price, rather than for the choppy backing and filling of equity trends.

The polarity principle should not be relied upon to protect stops.

Let’s look at some examples from my early chart model playbook:

A valid trendline in Soybean Oil Futures, May 2026 contract.

A decisive breakout through that trendline.

An immediate trend period.

A valid trendline in Coffee Futures, May 2026 contract.

A decisive breakout through that trendline.

An immediate trend period.

A valid trendline in Sugar No. 11 Futures, Jul 2026 contract.

A decisive breakout through that trendline.

An immediate trend period.

These are best-case scenarios: model charts that will live in my futures playbook.

They represent price action that is repeatedly identifiable, allows for a logical risk-defined entry, and offers asymmetric reward-to-risk.

Doing further work on the entry, stop and trade management techniques that fit my personal psychology, risk tolerance, and trading objectives is something I very much look forward to exploring over the coming months.

The Pauses That Refresh

There are a handful of patterns that have held their consolidations, as well as a number of opportunities to play on the short side or between range boundaries. If these are playbooks that you have yet to develop, now could be the perfect time to do so.

Here are the names that grabbed 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.

A colleague of mine told me about the risk manager he worked under. The relationship sounded downright abusive.

The manager would constantly watch over his shoulder, critiquing every chart analysis and order entry. “Everyone else on the floor is having a great month … what’s your problem?” he would ask.

When a trade would stop out, there was the manager again: “That was a dumb place to put your stop. Of course it got run.”

The manager never left my colleague’s side. Always pointing out what he could have done better, framing a profitable trade as a gift from the heavens, blaming losing trades on his incompetence.

He tried to motivate through criticism, shame, and pressure. This made the manager terrible at his job.

My colleague was more uncertain in his trade plan, more anxious in his order entry, more focused on avoiding the next verbal thrashing than on creatively adapting to the market environment and professionally stewarding the firm’s capital.

I told him he had to fire that manager. Find a new one within the firm. Or move firms entirely.

He told me he couldn’t. Because wherever he went, the manager would follow.

The manager didn’t work for the firm. The manager was the voice in my colleague’s head.

Most people battle with their inner critic. They try to silence it, argue with it logically, suppress it. This only entrenches its authority.

The real issue isn’t the voice. The issue is believing it’s an effective manager.

See through this fallacy. See that the voice is driven by fear. That it hasn’t improved your trading one bit.

Then, give that manager the performance review he deserves, and fire him.

Trade Tactics for Bear Markets

Last week, when I shared a chart depicting my long equity regime filter closing, a member of The Collective asked if I simply inverted my trade tactics for bear markets.

My response: “I wish it were so simple …”

Bear Market declines in equities are not the mirror reflection of Bull Market advances, as much as I’d like them to be.

Two things work against trading equities to the short side in Bear Market Regimes: 1) the volatility of the regime and 2) the math of short-side trading.

Let’s start with the math.

On the long side, the math works with you. A $100 stock moving to a measured move target of $130 in three $10 legs requires 10%, then 9.1%, then just 8.3%. Each leg gets easier. Each dollar gain is a smaller percentage ask. Momentum compounds favorably.

On the short side, the opposite is true. That same stock falling that same $30 measured move requires 10%, then 11.1%, then 12.5%. The market must accelerate in percentage terms just to sustain the same dollar move.

While stocks can crash dramatically in percentage terms, maintaining a large dollar move to the downside means the percentage hurdle keeps rising at every step.

And as traders, we are paid by dollar moves.

This asymmetry makes simply flipping a long setup to a short one a more mathematically challenging trade.

This is also why the old saying, “stocks take the stairs up and the elevator down,” is only partially true in percentage terms.

Which brings us to the second major difference about Bear Market Regimes: volatility.

In the Classical Charting bible, Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, Edwards & Magee note that “[Bear Market] down trends are far less regular and uniform in their development than Bull Market advances.”

A figure early in the book highlights a prominent price action feature of Bear Markets: “’Rounding patterns’ [...] typical of rallies in a Primary Bear trend.”

The sustained Bear Market of 2022 exemplified this pattern beautifully:

Far from the “regular and uniform” Bull Market advances, these Rounding Patterns wreak havoc on breakout entries.

Individual equity names will breakdown coincident with a swing low breaking in the indices:

The weakest stocks will make progress toward their measured move targets. The most resilient will just poke through the lower boundary of their consolidations.

Both happen right before a screaming rally back toward the long-term moving average:

I’ve found that these massive rallies, which form the crest of each Rounding Pattern, can stop out even the best looking short setups.

So, as traders, we have to adapt to these market conditions, and adjust our tactics for the Bear Market Regime.

Looking at the charts above in hindsight, the worst place to have shorted would have been in those red boxes. And the worst place to long? The green boxes.

Consider instead: going long in the red boxes and short in the green boxes.

Do not mistake what I’m suggesting as trying to bottom fish or top tick. These are a fool’s errand.

Instead, if we understand that short setups fail and reverse in the red boxes … why not long a failed short setup in this regime, targeting the opposite side of the range?

And if long setups fail and reverse in the green boxes … why not short a failed long setup in this regime, targeting the opposite side of the range?

I’ve found these tactics to be far better suited to Bear Market Regimes than simply inverting my long-side tactics built for “regular and uniform” Bull Market advances.

When the environment is different and the math is different, the tactics, too, must adjust.

Nasdaq’s Roundtrip

In last week’s issue, I covered the consolidation in the NASDAQ between roughly 25,430 and 24,430. I mentioned that this one-month consolidation stood right at the convergence of the (potential) Ascending Triangle’s lower trendline and the 200EMA, which would warrant any breakdown meaningful.

Monday saw the 25,430 level vigorously defended, further showcasing its importance for market participants. By Friday, we round tripped right back to it.

The Nasdaq-100 Equal Weight continues to look like an underside retest of a breakdown.

Expect heightened volatility around the 200EMA of NQ next week. The level has proven significant to market participants, and those who defended it are now under real pressure.

The Pauses That Refresh

There are a number of opportunities to play on the short side or between range boundaries next week.

Here are the names that grabbed 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.

Markets can move for many reasons. Irrational exuberance. Leverage unwinds. A new technology capturing the zeitgeist. A major player missing expectations.

This week, markets moved on violence.

When big moves occur, especially those that force positions past their risk points, I walk away from the screen and widen my aperture. I found myself on the living room floor beside my six-week-old daughter, kicking on her playmat.

One day, she will ask me how human beings can kill other human beings.

This only intensified my unrest.

My body demands I do something. That I act. Ten years ago, action would have been my strategy. Today, I know better. I must clear what’s surging through me—adrenaline preparing my body to fight a non-physical threat.

Half an hour of lap swim. Three rounds of contrast therapy. The chemicals inside have burned away. I now see what fueled them.

The lack of agency over the violence. Mourning the loss of innocent life. The senselessness. My privilege to be so far removed. The guilt woven through that privilege.

A part of me that is not these emotions, but stands before them, acknowledges each. I do not whisk them away. I sit with the lack of resolution. To seek resolution would label these concerns as “problems to be solved,” driving them back underground, still charged—primed to fuel a resurgence of physical survival instinct.

Instead, I stand momentarily with each, and I commune: at times, we lack agency. At times, the world is senseless. In certain contexts, we are privileged and don’t know why.

I hold this posture, regulating their unrest. Knowing that each time I do, I expand my capacity to hold greater uncertainty, senselessness, and contradictory truths.

Knowing she will one day bring these questions to me for the first time. Knowing that when she does, I will need to hold what cannot be answered for us both.

An Equity Cleanse

Our Macro Ops team was in an internal meeting last week discussing our new-member experience. We wanted to streamline the process for following our model portfolio. There had been a lot of action in our book through the first nine weeks of 2026.

Our Lead Value Investor, Brandon, commented: “When our book gets this active, it usually means we’re starting to top.”

At the moment, it seemed like an offhand mention. But I suspect his subconscious had already pattern matched the present environment to his past market experience. And that subconscious knowing was starting to brim at the surface.

This week, we made the decision to completely flatten the equity side of our book.

Here’s what MO Team Lead, Alex, shared in the Comm Center:

“The market right now is a bad table. Too many unknowns, too much headline risk, too many players making moves that have nothing to do with the cards in front of them. In poker, one of the most underrated edges isn’t your ability to bluff or read tells—it’s knowing which table to sit at, and when to pick up your chips and walk. The best players in the world routinely leave good tables because they’ve spotted a better one elsewhere. The second-best move they make is leaving a bad table altogether. This is one of those times.”

The cash raised will act as fresh powder when conditions clear.

While Brandon and Alex have a deep felt sense for market conditions and historical analogues, I lean on technical tools to understand current conditions. Perhaps it is no coincidence that on Friday, the primary trend filter for my breakout system flashed risk off.

Some of these signals end up short lived. At any moment, a peace deal struck could snap the risk appetite right back. But so long as this condition persists, long equity breakouts — viewed through my lens, on my time horizons, with my trade management — have proven negative EV.

From a technical analysis standpoint, two charts have my eye with regard to the next leg.

The NASDAQ 100 has formed a four-month range between 26,260 and 24,000.

The higher low at the start of February, paired with price action contained above the 200EMA, gives the formation a bullish bias as an Ascending Triangle. However, such formations can morph, with price breaking down the lower trendline.

And a smaller consolidation between roughly 25,430 and 24,430 has formed within the larger one.

This smaller consolidation stands right at the convergence of the Ascending Triangle’s lower trendline and the 200EMA, which would warrant any breakdown meaningful.

The smaller consolidation, which could be considered a Launching Pattern, is even clearer on the 4H.

Should the smaller consolidation complete to the upside, I’d expect another test of the highs at 26,260, and renewed conviction in the Ascending Triangle interpretation.

Should it complete to the downside? A measured move target would land at roughly 22,200.

The Nasdaq-100 Equal Weight looks even more dire. It has arguably already broken down its lower boundary and lost the 200EMA.

The smaller consolidation here looks more like an underside retest of the breakdown. A measured move target stands at 123.50.

A Real Gusher

While we’ve purged our book of equities, we’re happy holding our oil longs, T-Bond shorts, and a handful of uncorrelated futures positions.

Our oil long in particular has been a wonder to watch. I can say that because our Head Macro Operator, Alex, has played this one just beautifully and I, along with members of our Collective, have watched him do it in real time.

Rewinding to this past December, crude had been in a multi-year downtrend since peaking in 2022. What began to form on the chart in December—well before this month’s escalation overseas—was a potential double bottom around the 55 level.

That chart was precisely what Alex shared in the Comm Center on December 17, 2025, as the Macro Ops Portfolio entered a buy stop at 56.95 for an initial position.

I combed through the subsequent trade alerts to piece together how things played out from then through this week.

Expertly played.

The Pauses That Refresh

While long equity breakouts may temporarily be off the table, there are a number of opportunities to play on the short side, or between range boundaries this week.

Here are the names that grabbed 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.

What happens when trading platforms evaporate, and all that remains is the prompt? This reality is so close I can see the whites of its eyes.

Today, right now, I have an intraday version of my breakout strategy running autonomously in a virtual environment. At the New York Session open, code screens for stocks that match my criteria, populates symbols into order tickets, determines trade levels and position sizing, and submits orders through my broker’s API. It manages positions that fill, closes working orders that don’t, and takes my account flat five minutes before session close.

When I want to alter anything about the strategy—screening criteria, risk levels, suppression rules, trade management—I never open a trading platform. Instead, I write a prompt.

This particular code contains my rules. But a stone’s throw into the future, anyone in the world will be able to direct their AI platform of choice to “trade Qullamaggie’s strategy in my personal brokerage account,” and an approximate replica—soup to nuts—will go to work.

All remaining friction between a human being and their ability to risk capital in financial markets is disintegrating. The technical execution layer of trading is compressing into an invisible layer humans simply speak to. As this occurs, where will edge remain?

The retail prompt trader of tomorrow may say, “I will just let the AI run and not touch it.” Just as traders across time have told themselves, “I will just leave my stop where it is and not move it.“ Or, “I won’t double my position size when I feel I’m due for a win.” Or, “I won’t switch strategies when I hit an extended losing streak.”

But they will intervene. Alter size on hope. Strategy hop during panic. Instantaneously.

Naval Ravikant released a new podcast last week outlining his vision of our AI-saturated future. At the 37-minute mark, he states with stark directness what I have seen myself:

“If you have [an AI] trading bot out there, it’s going to be nullified or canceled out by every other trading bot until all the remaining gain will go to the person with the human edge.”

When execution earns nothing, what will your self-mastery yield?

Narratives Not Required

Our team has had a close eye on T-Notes. The 2-Year has been stabilizing above the long-term moving average for a year and half, with volatility compressing into an extremely tight range over the last six months.

Compressed volatility precedes expanded volatility. That expansion can move in either direction … but we’re leaning to the upside, and our Macro Ops Portfolio opened an anticipatory long position in late January.

In This Infinite Game two weeks ago, under “T-Notes on deck,” I featured a chart of the 5-Year T-Note, stating it “may have already tipped [bonds’] hand, breaking out of a five-month channel.”

This week, that breakout began to follow through.

With regard to this potential move in bonds and its implication for rates, a Collective member in our Comm Center raised the concern that he simply doesn’t see any existing narrative that would support such a move.

It’s a distinction that warrants discussion.

I am not a macro trader. But I have traded hundreds of technical pattern breakouts. And in my experience, “narratives” are a phenomenon of momentum. Narratives perpetuate a trend that has already taken hold.

In many—if not most cases—the initial breakout from a valid technical level is accompanied by no narrative at all.

A breakout may be accompanied by a discrete, moment-in-time “catalyst” such as a big earnings beat, or a change in policy stance, or geopolitical turmoil. But just as often there is absolutely no clear rationale for a breakout at the time that it takes place, and narratives take shape after the fact, once a clear trend has been established.

Perhaps the most vivid example of this phenomenon has been gold’s arc the last two years.

Gold broke out of a 12-and-a-half year base in March of 2024, and has gone on an astonishing 150% rise across 23 months.

Looking at the chart of gold today, our minds play a trick. They label the entire move explainable by a world of elevated geopolitical tension, policy unpredictability under Trump, and tariff shock.

But the truth is that this narrative formed deep into gold’s trend.

The “Liberation Day” tariffs, to cite the most clear-cut timestamp, were not announced until April 2, 2025, a full year after the initial breakout occurred.

An honest look back to March 2024 will show the initial breakout framed as a “shock” or “head‑scratching” move: price ripping to new highs faster than the visible fundamentals seemed to justify. The commentary leaned on generic explanations like rate‑cut hopes, geopolitics and technical momentum.

Gold’s move has been absolutely historic. I would never expect something as dramatic in bonds. But if you are a trader who combines the macro with the technical, as we do at Macro Ops, don’t let your mind fool you into believing in revisionist history, and passing on excellent risk-to-reward trade profiles because a clean narrative for such a move has yet to reveal itself.

The Pauses That Refresh

We rang the register on CASY this week following what has been one of the most resilient trends of this recent regime.

Many of the consolidations that had appeared in my screens for weeks have broken structure and been taken off my watch list until they set up again.

Here are the names I’ve seen hold structure as we move 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.

For the better part of 2022, I was immersed in the world of Jared Tendler, a mental game coach specializing in high-stakes performance for traders, poker players, and athletes.

Jared’s unique perspective comes from having a master’s degree in counseling psychology spliced with a background as a three-time All-American collegiate golfer who competed in major amateur events.

There was one personal anecdote Jared slipped into a YouTube livestream that sank so deeply into my bones it has become unconscious instinct.

“I had a lead with nine holes to go. My hands were shaking so much I could barely get the ball on the tee. And the advice I had been given was to ‘Take a deep breath and relax.’ Well, I took a deep breath, and I didn’t relax. Now I’m panicked because I can’t relax [...] The breakthrough was realizing: ‘Okay, my hands are shaking. This is the reality. I am going to hit this golf ball with shaking hands.’”

So often, we believe some condition outside our control hinders our ability to perform. In actuality, it is our resistance to accepting the condition that sabotages us.

Each time I size up a strategy and the floating PnL gains an extra digit, I feel a rush of chemicals screaming to close the position early. Rather than resist the rush, I accept it: “I’m going to execute this trade plan with a racing heart.”

Each time I schedule deep analysis but sleep poorly the night before, I hear frustration declare the day is lost. Rather than resist the frustration, I accept it: “I’m going to drop into flow with dry eyes and a foggy mind.”

Just this week, my newborn daughter began wailing over the baby monitor right at the New York Session open. Rather than resist the chaos, I accepted it: “I’m going to hit every part of my morning process with this four-week-old strapped to my chest.”

There is always a condition to falsely accuse. “If only I weren’t so nervous.” “If only it were quieter.” “If only the setup were clearer.”

The condition is not the problem. Your rejection of it is.

Love the resistance. Accept the condition. Perform at your best right through it.

The Index Is Not the Environment

Before moving forward, I must mention that Collective members have access to my hour-and-a-half presentation, The Mental Game of Trading, which covers many of Jared Tendler’s most powerful concepts, including A-to-C Game Analysis, Mapping Your Pattern, Injecting Logic, and his Error Journal Template, all modeled using examples from my own real-world trading.

Onward …

In the February 7, 2026 issue, I contrasted the performance of my bottom-up breakout strategy in late 2025 to its performance thus far in 2026 to exemplify the market environment shift currently underway.

In late 2025, narrow thematics, the illusion of participation, and many failed breakouts left me feeling stuck in the mud. This year, the complete inverse: the crowded 2025 themes have taken shots across the bow, indices have stalled, yet quality setups are proliferating and breakouts are following through with strength.

Some readers wanted to know how much of this shift in environment was a feeling and how much was informed by my trades themselves.

For me, it has been 90% informed by my trades.

To make this as clear as possible, I wanted to contrast the exact same setups from Q4 2025 to those in Q1 2026.

Here is what my breakout trades looked like in Q4 of 2025:

Note that all of these trades fit my breakout criteria: 1) continuation patterns, 2) multiple months in duration with 3) minimum of three reactions to the same horizontal price level, 4) confirmed by the 200 EMA trend filter.

The three stocks above even had the additional tailwind of moving into new All-Time Highs.

Yet price repeatedly stalled out following each breakout, and collapsed back inside the range.

Compare the looks of those breakouts above to the ones here in Q1 2026:

Just this week, XP, Inc. (XP) broke out of a nine-month range with a wide-body bar, and followed through with equal strength on Friday:

All this while the indices have gone absolutely nowhere.

Mark Minervini puts it this way:

“One of the best decisions I made in my career was to stop looking to the market indexes as a barometer of health for breakout stocks and leading names, or even specific industry groups. The big turnaround for me came when I started letting the individual stocks themselves do the talking, and I did the listening.”

I’ve seen individual stocks with identical setups result in dramatically different outcomes across these two time periods.

When your trading is this structured and methodical, it is not something you must feel or intuit.

Price is truth, and the behavior of price in individual stocks will tell you when the regime has changed.

Our Macro Ops portfolio is up +36.9% YTD. Every one of the active breakouts above was featured in the watchlist section of This Infinite Game for members of The Collective. If you'd like to go deeper on the price action principles behind this strategy, and follow along as I execute entries, exits, and position sizing in live markets, you can join The Collective here.

Futures in Focus

Futures is not my primary universe, but there are some excellent Classical Charting patterns out there right now.

Some of my favorites:

The Pauses That Refresh

While the market environment remains supportive, I will continue to take swings at the plate.

Here are the pending breakouts I’m watching as we head 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.