Last year, my wife named the bottleneck in her architectural design business. Clients hire her for her eye, her taste, the way she communicates a vision. Yet contract drafting, order tracking, bookkeeping, and invoicing consumed almost half her working hours each week. To take on more clients—to serve more people with what they hire her for—required space she did not have.

We debated a part-time assistant. Then Claude Cowork launched. Over three weeks, we trained it to draft her contracts, track her orders, keep her books, and generate her invoices. Once trained, it cut her administrative hours by more than half. The hours she got back went not to idle leisure, but to all that makes her come alive: designing, observing, researching, sitting across the table from clients.

The debate over whether AI will save or enslave us misses what is already true: it is working in service of humanity today. The unlock is naming what in your work is rote administration and what is uniquely human.

Traders, buried in numbers and models, see only the first.

One trader I know described “market feel” as the heart of his process. We ran the same exercise: which hours crowded out cultivating that feel? The tedious logging of trades in his journal. In one week, we trained AI to read a single post-mortem chart and file every trade for him. The hours he got back went straight to what only he can read: order flow, closing auctions, news failures.

Another intuits price structure so well he manages open positions better than any ruleset he can write. His bottleneck was getting into positions at all. He would loop on analysis, find imperfections in every setup, or become overwhelmed by opportunity in fast-moving markets. AI now enters every valid setup—at conservative size with a stop attached—for him. It never hesitates, never second-guesses his rules. He arrives at his desk each morning, unencumbered, to do what he does best: manage open exposure.

The verdict is in. AI is here to serve our humanity—to accentuate what each of us does that no system can replace. Which part of your craft is purely administrative? Which part is unmistakably you?

Name both, and the future so many are still debating becomes yours today.

Equities vs. Energy

The Nasdaq’s December contract held its breakout this week from a 3.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation. Price is now right up against the prior high from June, an important level to watch next week.

The Nikkei has a similar look, having broken out Thursday from a 3-month multi-point trendline.

A potential threat to equity resilience is energy. Brent futures are forming what could be a 5.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation.

The same structure appears in WTI. November crude oil is flagging above its 50-day SMA after reaching the 1x measured move target of its 3-month head-and-shoulders continuation.

Last week, we speculated that a pullback in corn could be imminent after price had reached the 1x measured move target of a 3-month head-and-shoulders continuation on the daily timeframe. The competing view was the 2-year symmetrical triangle on the weekly timeframe, flagging at half-mast on the way to its 1x measured move target. One of the two views had to break, and it did on Wednesday as the pullback on the daily played out. A member of The Collective noted that the midweek selloff was a 3-standard-deviation move.

Despite last week’s impulsive selloff, the weekly timeframe maintains its bullish structure, with price well above the upper boundary of the 2-year symmetrical triangle and a 1x measured move target at 589.25.

November feeder cattle attempted to break out on Thursday from a 2.5-month head-and-shoulders before reversing back to the neckline on Friday. Thursday’s high at 336.875 becomes the level to watch for a secondary completion.

Other agricultural commodities firmed. White sugar futures held the 50-day SMA for the second time since their June breakout from a 3-month symmetrical triangle. Both 1x and 2x measured move targets have been reached.

The London cocoa pattern previously labeled a cup-and-handle has morphed into a 3-month ascending channel. Price found support at the lower boundary twice in two weeks.

December soybean oil looked primed to break down this week from the 4-month symmetrical triangle we have been tracking, but found buyers at the lower boundary each time. The more times a level is tested, the more vulnerable that level becomes to failure. Both upper and lower boundaries have now been tested multiple times.

Forex in Focus

There are a number of large ranges in currencies at the moment. AUD/JPY is testing the lower boundary of a 6-month rectangle.

EUR/AUD continues to coil inside a 6.5-month descending triangle.

And Australian dollar futures have formed an 8.5-month head-and-shoulders top.

The Pauses That Refresh

My recent equity screens continue to reveal a sharply divided market, presenting a diverse mix of long and short setups alongside continuation and reversal patterns.

On Friday, Dean Christians, our Lead Equity Market Strategist, issued a report for members of The Collective regarding the accelerating stealth correction he has been tracking. Notably, the equal-weighted S&P 500 is pacing toward its seventh consecutive weekly decline—a streak not observed since the 2022 bear market—even as the standard SPX remains within 2% of its all-time high. Dean describes this market environment as “unprecedented,” making his analysis required reading for anyone managing equity-focused portfolios.

Below are the names that caught my attention in this week’s equity screen:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

Western culture promotes a belief: busyness equals productivity, motion signals progress, and idle hands confess a lack of ambition.

There is much to admire here. It is the American entrepreneurial spirit. It built the companies and conveniences we take for granted. Silicon Valley. A man on the moon. One day: Mars.

But the belief has a shadow: that if you’re not constantly in motion, you are falling behind.

That shadow has cut down more risk takers than I can count. Not because they were behind. Because markets demand waiting, and the waiting fed the belief.

Consider a batter waiting on a pitch. His body is loaded, weight balanced on the back foot.

His attention is total.

He is tracking the pitcher’s grip, the windup, the release point. Every muscle coiled, ready to fire the instant the ball leaves the hand.

He is waiting. Yet he is anything but passive.

Waiting in sport and waiting in trading share the same posture: readiness.

When I wait for a setup, I am actively receiving: tracking patterns, sifting noise, trusting signal when it arrives.

Frustration comes when I mistake my mind’s pressure to act for a genuine signal to respond. When that pressure to feel in motion leads me to put on the trade.

Consistency lives in the space between what the mind demands and what the market offers.

The feeling of falling behind is an illusion. The discomfort it spawns is real. A trade placed to relieve that discomfort swings at nothing the market offered.

The pitch will come. My only job is to be here when it does.

Markets in Motion

The Nasdaq thrust out of the 3.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation featured in last week’s issue. Price is now hovering above the neckline. The 1x measured move target sits at 33,213.75.

November RBOB gasoline on Thursday reached the 1x measured move target of its 3-month cup-and-handle. Weakness on Friday offers the possibility of a pullback ahead.

Oat futures continue to fly, albeit with increasing volatility in the form of long lower shadows during both Monday’s and Friday’s sessions.

Corn futures have formed a 4-week bull flag after impulsing halfway to the 1x measured move target of their 2-year symmetrical triangle.

Soybean futures have formed a daily flag similar to corn’s weekly one after breaking out from a 5.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation on the continuous chart. The 1x measured move target sits at 1393.

Rough rice futures continue to put in one of the strongest trends of the year, extending their run out of the 1-month ascending triangle featured in the “Commodity Supercycle” section of the August 22, 2026, issue.

Zooming out on the continuous chart, the trend traces back to the May 4 breakout from the 2.5-month ascending triangle bottom highlighted in the May 2, 2026, issue.

Last week, we pointed out that while selling in soybean meal futures had left a long upper shadow on the weekly chart, price closed above the upper boundary of the 10-month ascending channel, offering the possibility of a resistance-turned-support retest. Support held this week and price “filled the wick.”

Natural gas futures completed a 2-month head-and-shoulders bottom on Thursday. Natural gas is in a seasonally strong period through the end of October.

A pattern still developing: the October feeder cattle contract has formed a 2.5-month head-and-shoulders on the daily timeframe.

The Pauses That Refresh

The dispersion in individual equities persists. Here are the setups that caught my eye this week:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

My original major in undergrad was music. I knew just enough about writing songs on guitar to understand artists, and just enough about marketing and business to understand record labels. I sought to make a career at the intersection.

Writing music had always tantalized me.

Everything a song could need sat right there on the fretboard: every possible note, every possible combination of notes, laid out across the six strings running the length of the instrument’s neck.

And yet the melodies and chord changes… they’d hide, as if waiting for a time of their choosing to reveal themselves to me.

There were moments I’d stare at the steel strings and the cherry-stained wood beneath them and think: somewhere in there is a progression I’ll soon discover. A song I’ll write around it. An entire composition I’ll later play by heart.

Each time I’d pick up my guitar after that discovery, I would see the song’s patterns, and spot its changes mapped across the fretboard. Right there in plain sight, where they’d been all along.

But whenever I tried to force the patterns—to will them out of the strings—I could never find them.

Only when I shifted from searching to receiving, from trying to allowing, from determined to curious, would the songs allow themselves to be seen.

While my career in music was short-lived, the lessons songwriting taught me still return.

The next relationship that would hold for decades. The next role that would redirect my career. The next investment that would carry my portfolio.

Each was already there. Refusing to be willed into view.

Waiting, instead, for me to stop searching and start receiving.

Every Four Years

One monthly chart has anchored our read of Bitcoin’s cycles since inception: cycle lows spaced 47 months (roughly four years) apart, with cycle highs arriving 35 months (roughly 3 years) after each low. The framework comes from Bob Loukas, founder of The Financial Tap.

In Bob’s framework, the lows are the structural anchors. Highs can be “right translated” (price advances longer than it declines across the 4-year period, as in every cycle to date) or “left translated” (price tops early and spends most of the cycle falling). The lows stay fixed in time.

Standard cycle timing pointed to a bottom next month, in October. Instead, Bitcoin carved out a 2.5-month head-and-shoulders base over the summer and broke out impulsively, forming a potential double-walled bottom.

The base formed after a multi-month decline of three volatile legs lower and a bearish turn in sentiment. Price held without new lows through negative headlines, including Strategy’s initial Bitcoin sales (widely read as forced liquidation) and the failure of the Clarity Act. Volatility then compressed ahead of the breakout.

We have expressed the early-cycle-low thesis through Ethereum, which reclaimed the lower boundary of its 2-year ascending triangle after a June breakdown failed to follow through.

As covered in the August 22, 2026, issue, our expectation after a range reclaim was consolidation back at the range midpoint. We are now four weeks into it.

We remain long Ethereum in the Macro Ops portfolio. Its price action currently rhymes with spring 2025. Analogues hold only until they break, but this one gives us a map for a risk-defined, asymmetric add.

Indices, Energy & Ags

Despite higher oil and higher rates, equities have held up. The case could be made that the Nasdaq has formed a 3.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation on the daily timeframe. Equities are notorious for backing and filling. Add to that a downward-sloping neckline and this would make for a challenging pattern to trade.

October crude oil inched higher to start the week before roundtripping the move into the week’s end. Price has remained sticky at the 100 level following crude’s September 1 breakout from its 3.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation. We are long December Brent in the Macro Ops portfolio.

November RBOB gasoline held up better still, forming a tight pennant across the week and closing near its highs.

December oats put in an impulsive second leg last week after a 2-week consolidation, following their initial August breakout from a 3-month multi-point trendline highlighted in the August 29, 2026, issue.

Soybean meal futures broke out of the 10-month ascending channel we’ve tracked most of this year, then reversed midweek to form a sizable upper wick on the weekly chart. The initial price acceleration confirmed the importance of the level for market participants. While sellers stepped in, price closed above the upper boundary, offering the possibility of a resistance-turned-support retest.

The retest scenario is clearer on the daily timeframe. The continuous chart is shown here.

As a reminder, we are eyeing potential pullbacks in the commodities space, including corn futures, which drifted back toward their rising 50-day SMA after reaching the 1x measured move target of their 3-month head-and-shoulders continuation. We took profits on that leg earlier this month.

December soybean oil has formed a well-defined 3-month symmetrical triangle. While directional bias for consolidation patterns is always in the direction of the prior trend, symmetrical triangles can act as both continuation and reversal patterns.

The Pauses That Refresh

The current bifurcated equity market is represented in my equity screens, with a mix of long and short setups, continuations and reversals. Here are the names that caught my attention this week:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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 August 29, in Newport, Rhode Island, Roger Federer was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. His wife Mirka introduced him: twenty Grand Slams, 103 titles, 310 weeks at world No. 1 behind him.

Two years earlier, at Dartmouth’s commencement, Federer had shared what built his legacy. “Effortless is a myth.” Behind the ease, he said, sat years the public never saw:

“There is no way around the hard work. Embrace it. You have to put in a lot of sacrifice and effort for sometimes little reward, but you have to know that, if you put in the right effort, the reward will come.”

Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors’ head coach, told a different story. In 2017, Draymond Green, the team’s star forward, asked Federer how he’d kept winning titles across two decades. At the time, the Warriors were building on year four of their dynastic run.

Federer’s answer was his week: breakfast with his kids, the school drop-off, two hours of practice, lunch with Mirka, dinner as a family come evening. No grind. No war stories. A man home for supper, grateful for the day, twenty years into greatness.

Both accounts are true. They’re the same career described from two different elevations.

Federer gave up a normal childhood and buried a fiery teenage temper beneath a mountain of reps without witness. But well into adulthood, the discipline that mattered most wasn’t the discipline to keep grinding. It was the discipline to stop.

Federer redefined sacrifice, rather than retired it. “Not banging your head against the wall,” as Kerr put it. Not outworking the field until his body gave out. Sacrifice became protecting what mattered by cutting what didn’t. The week he described—breakfast, the school drop-off, two focused hours, lunch with Mirka—wasn’t leisure he’d earned. It was the maintenance that kept the foundation from eroding.

Federer broke down as he turned to speak about Mirka on stage. It moved me. Because I know how close I came to declaring the school pick-ups, the family dinners, the marriage—the person who would be standing next to me in twenty years—as “the sacrifice” necessary to scale the next summit.

To me, the most impressive part of Federer’s career was not the ultimate mastery of his sport. It was knowing what not to sacrifice to achieve it.

Pullback Potential

Last week, we noted energy had the baton. This week, the sector followed through, capped off by a Friday close that sets up potential pullbacks going into next week.

October crude oil surged toward the 1x measured move target of 107 after breaking out of a 3.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation. Our Macro Ops portfolio has remained long December Brent crude all month.

November RBOB gasoline ran to within reach of its 1x measured move target of 3.3967 after completing a 3-month cup-and-handle.

Meanwhile in ags, December KC wheat is pulling back to retest the neckline of its 3.5-month cup-and-handle. We remain long in the Macro Ops portfolio.

December corn looks set for a retrace of its own back toward the 50-day SMA after reaching the 548.75 1x measured move target of its 3-month head-and-shoulders continuation. A relevant analogue is white sugar futures’ retest of the 50-day SMA this summer. We took profits on our December corn position this week and will look to reenter should a new asymmetric reward-to-risk opportunity develop.

On the weekly timeframe, corn futures have ample room for a healthy correction to play out before resuming toward the 589.25 1x measured move target of their 2-year symmetrical triangle.

December soybean oil put in a fourth test of the upper boundary of its 3-month symmetrical triangle.

Soybean meal futures spent another week pinned to the upper boundary of their 10-month ascending channel on the weekly chart, offering a logical level to define risk should a breakout occur next week.

December copper reached the neckline of its 4-month head-and-shoulders continuation, but has since hit the right shoulder low three times, setting up the possibility of a continuation failure.

The Pauses That Refresh

In a detailed report released this week, Dean Christians, our Lead Equity Market Strategist, analyzed the technical backdrop of the consumer discretionary sector. 21-day lows in the sector surged to levels not observed since the 2022 bear market. His Turning Point Report from September 10, 2026, breaks down what this means for both short- and long-term allocations.

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

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

Alix Pasquet III, who runs the boutique hedge fund Prime Macaya Capital Management, spent part of an AMA this week promoting massage guns, cold plunges, and a foam roller shaped—in his words—like a torture device. A casual attendee would have interpreted it as a wellness tangent. It wasn’t.

His point: physical tension amplifies emotional tension. Emotional tension amplifies mental tension. A tight jaw dominoes into a tight read on the market. He’s watched hedge funds go through periods so tense they lose the ability to think beyond the next hour, pinned to their screens, unable to hold a position long enough for the original thesis to pay out.

He learned this lesson personally. After shutting down his first fund in 2008, he hired a coach and spent six months reviewing every email, every trade, every decision from the stretch between ’06 and ’08. The finding had nothing to do with managing positions. It had everything to do with managing stress. He’d been running tense the entire time and never noticed the cost until someone reflected the transcripts of his own behavior back to him.

Prolonged tension, as Pasquet views it, is the enemy of career longevity. But he then turned right around to complicate the clean version of his own point: a debate between a bull and a bear—tense enough to turn heated—forges alpha. The resolution of this acute tension, not its absence, births insight.

So not all tension is created equal. There’s the tension you carry unresolved into tomorrow’s session, because you never decompressed after today’s close. And there’s the tension generated on purpose, between smart people with divergent viewpoints, that exists to be spent productively right there in the room.

The first type compounds against you. The second type fuels breakthroughs.

A leader’s job, he said, is knowing how to create productive tension and how to dissipate negative tension. Most of us are adept at manufacturing pressure: the hard question, the devil’s advocate, the position size that unmasks true conviction. Few of us are as skilled at the release—at decompressing before the next session starts, rather than carrying Tuesday’s debate, unresolved, into Wednesday’s open.

Ask which tension you’re holding right now. Then book it: the conference room, or the steam room.

Energy with the Baton

Agricultural commodities dominated the end of August into the turn of the month. Corn futures reached the 548.75 1x measured move target of their 3-month head-and-shoulders continuation on Wednesday.

November rice futures inched higher following last week’s successful retest of the breakout boundary.

Soybean meal futures remained pinned to the upper boundary of their 10-month ascending channel on the weekly chart.

Other areas of the ag complex weakened, including December KC wheat, which spent much of this week retracing its initial breakout from a 3.5-month cup-and-handle.

December cocoa also sold off back toward the boundary of its 1.5-month cup-and-handle-like consolidation.

As did December oats, following last week’s breakout from its 3-month multi-point trendline.

Meanwhile, December crude oil broke out on Tuesday from a 3.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation, and is now hovering just above the breakout level.

The continuation chart displays a 5-month multi-point trendline dating back to this past April.

And November RBOB gasoline completed a 3-month cup-and-handle on Monday and is also hovering just above its breakout level. Energy has the baton. Let’s see if it will be the next to fly—or to fail.

Copper continuous futures are still consolidating below the upper boundary of a 3.5-month cup-and-handle on the daily.

In currency markets, EUR/AUD is at an inflection point for what has become a 5.5-month descending triangle.

EUR/GBP completed its 1-month head-and-shoulders continuation on Wednesday and is now pushing into the support levels from earlier this year that may act as resistance.

The Pauses That Refresh

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

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

Which is easier to change: who you are, or how you trade?

I met a trader this summer who had never thought to ask.

His strategy had a proven edge. Yet his execution kept breaking. So he concluded: I am the problem. And he set about repairing himself: a journal, a meditation app, a trade checklist taped to his monitor.

But all this work on the man had left the strategy unexamined.

The strategy demanded snap decisions. His temperament was measured and introspective.

The strategy carried risk overnight. His children needed him present at dusk and dawn.

The strategy financed seven losers with three winners. Those seven once added up to his rent; they now add up to months of mortgage payments.

This trader did not have a discipline problem. His repairs kept failing for a different reason: he wasn’t broken. His strategy was written for someone else. Someone else’s temperament, someone else’s hours, someone else’s life.

No amount of journaling alters a strategy cut for someone else. And even a true fit today carries an expiration date. The strategy that matched 14 hours of unbroken screen time at twenty-eight collides with career, children, sleep at thirty-eight.

I have refit my own trading more than once: new work, new priorities, a growing family, fuller days. Each time, the temptation was to grip the old playbook tightly, and double down on my discipline. Each time, fighting who I had become, I began to fray.

Before declaring yourself the problem, audit your strategy’s fit—the direction it requires you to move, and the direction your life wants to move.

For me, the fraying resolved the same way: I stopped believing I needed to become someone else.

It was the strategy that needed to change.

All One Trade

The rally in agricultural commodities powered ahead this week. Advancing past 70% of their 1x measured move target at 548.75, corn futures pushed further out of a 3-month head-and-shoulders continuation pattern.

On the weekly timeframe, corn futures are now halfway to the 1x measured move target of the 2-year symmetrical triangle featured in last week’s issue. We are long the December contract in the Macro Ops portfolio.

KC wheat futures broke out midweek from a 3.5-month cup-and-handle. A 1x measured move target sits at 897.5. The Macro Ops portfolio holds a long position.

Oat futures also broke out midweek from their 3-month multi-point trendline.

November rough rice retested last Friday’s breakout to start the week before pushing higher.

December cocoa futures, featured in the last issue, broke out on Thursday from their 1.5-month cup-and-handle-like consolidation. We are long in the Macro Ops portfolio and added on confirmation of strength.

Since May, we have monitored the primary trend shift in soybean meal futures in search of a clean daily entry pattern. Although no daily setup has developed, price action has returned to the upper line of its 10-month ascending channel on the weekly chart.

Still rangebound, soybean oil futures reversed off the lower boundary of their 2.5-month symmetrical triangle after forming three long lower wicks at support.

Coffee futures continue to consolidate midrange following a false breakdown this past spring and a range reclaim to start the summer.

Copper has been a choppy and challenging market this year. Continuous futures have formed a 3.5-month cup-and-handle on the daily.

And October RBOB gasoline continues to flirt with completing a 3-month cup-and-handle.

Cross Currencies

The double bottom in EUR/AUD, first featured in the May 16, 2026, issue, is returning to test the 1.61328 level in what may have morphed into a 5.5-month descending triangle.

Strength in the Australian dollar also has AUD/JPY on the verge of breaking out from a 5.5-month rectangle.

EUR/GBP has formed a 1-month head-and-shoulders continuation on the daily.

And EUR/CAD continues to consolidate inside a 4-month ascending triangle.

The Pauses That Refresh

Demonstrating continued relative strength despite weakness across the Nasdaq, featured breakout Roper Technologies (ROP) pushed higher out of the pennant structure noted in the last issue. ROP price is now two-thirds of the distance to its 1x measured move target of 447.05.

Here are the names that caught my eye in this week’s equity screen:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

My wife has a skill I envy. Through a closed bedroom door, she can tell one of our daughter’s cries from another. Tired. Hungry. Hurt.

And because her recognition arrives instantly, her response can be total: she sprints for the cry that means hurt; she settles back into her chair, with no more than a glance at the monitor, for the cry that means tired.

I struggle with this recognition. So I decide in advance: today, I will heed every cry to ensure our daughter is safe. The next: I will wait and watch, reminding myself that our daughter’s crying is normal.

No course taught my wife her ear. Seven months of unremarkable hours did. And now, the same woman responds with total conviction one moment, and patient flexibility the next.

Conviction and flexibility, I now see, are not in opposition. They rise together, both rooted in intimacy.

We imagine that to hold a market view with conviction means to grip it tightly, while to hold it with flexibility means to keep our distance.

But conviction without intimacy is stubbornness.

Flexibility without intimacy is ambivalence.

You can only hold a view when you trust yourself to recognize—within a few cries, or a few bars—what you are hearing. Absent that trust, you are forced to decide in advance.

How intimately do you know what you are holding? The market is on the other side of the bedroom door. Its cries will, at times, require a sprint. At others: no more than a glance.

Log the unremarkable hours. I am.

May we each learn to recognize which cry is which.

Commodity Supercycle

Earlier this week, Macro Ops Team Lead Alex issued a report on the developing Super El Niño—the most significant climate event in 150 years. In an interview with a Collective member and SpaceX meteorologist, they detailed how this climate shock will disrupt agricultural commodity markets, especially sugar, rice, cocoa, coffee, and citrus. This essential reading aligns with many of the strategic positions currently in our book.

White sugar futures came within spitting distance of the 2x measured move target of 567.1.

Corn futures broke out from a 3-month head-and-shoulders continuation on Monday. We are long the December contract in the Macro Ops portfolio.

Price is now testing the upper boundary of a 2-year symmetrical triangle, threatening a breakout.

November rough rice capped off the week by breaking out from a compact, 1-month ascending triangle.

Coffee futures continue to consolidate midrange following a false breakdown this past spring and a range reclaim to start the summer.

December soybean oil continues to coil inside a 2.5-month symmetrical triangle following the strong uptrend that opened the year.

December cocoa is testing an established trendline of a cup-and-handle-like consolidation.

Outside of agricultural commodities, October RBOB gasoline is nearing completion of a 3-month cup-and-handle.

After pausing last week, gold futures extended the trendline breakout featured in the August 8, 2026, issue, recapturing roughly half the decline that occurred across the first five months of the year. We continue to hold our Micro Gold futures long in the Macro Ops portfolio, which we initiated on the initial August 5 breakout.

In last week’s issue, we featured the laggard metal, platinum, and the 1798.3 level that served as a key pivot for potential upside continuation. Price closed above that level on Wednesday, and has thus far followed through.

September Mexican peso futures continued to climb following their breakout from a 6-month cup-and-handle. We remain long in the Macro Ops portfolio.

British pound futures are pressed right up against the upper boundary of a 1-year symmetrical triangle.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Wednesday plans to double its buyback operations for longer-dated bonds in the upcoming quarter. Following a brief consolidation below resistance, U.S. dollar futures dropped sharply in response. The move carried price about two-thirds of the way to the 97.95 range midpoint—the initial target highlighted in our August 1, 2026, issue.

Analogues in Action

On Tuesday evening, I shared on X an analogue that had struck me: Ethereum on the weekly timeframe was coiling directly along the bottom boundary of its 2-year ascending triangle, following a breakdown in June that had failed to follow through.

In recent issues, we have been tracking the range reclaim of a similar false breakdown from a massive weekly range in coffee.

As I stated in the post, the first target of a range reclaim is the range midpoint, where coffee sits now. The second: the range’s opposite boundary.

My expectation was for Ethereum to close the week above the last swing high at roughly 1,980, confirming the reclaim.

I did not expect Ethereum to run over 30% into Friday’s close, colliding with its 365-day EMA. Fortunately, we’ve been long Ethereum in the Macro Ops portfolio since mid-July, and took this week’s surge as an opportunity to peel off partial profits.

As with coffee, a consolidation here would not be uncommon. Should one appear, the next target becomes the upper boundary at roughly 4,800.

The Pauses That Refresh

Featured on the July 25, 2026, active watchlist, Roper Technologies has demonstrated notable resilience after breaking out of a rectangle bottom, consolidating into a tight flag above both the upper boundary and its 200-day EMA.

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

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

Last month, a Collective member sent me a conversation with Emily Haisley, the psychologist who leads behavioral finance at BlackRock. Her mandate, in part: keep the firm’s portfolio managers in a state of mind and body worth trusting with risk.

Her team’s instrument is a consumer wellness gadget: the Oura ring. Managers wear them day and night; Haisley overlays what the body reports on what the portfolio does. In lab studies, a week of elevated cortisol measurably tilts preferences toward risk aversion. Stress does not simply feel bad; it silently repositions portfolios. And her data shows it live: a drawdown arrives, stress accumulates above baseline, and the body starts steering the risk decisions—while the manager insists the losses are not affecting him.

The instinct is familiar: when losing, work harder. More hours. More vigilance. More screens. Haisley presses the opposite: “It’s not just their job to work hard, it’s also their job to rest hard.“

Our bodies, like financial markets, are complex systems. And complex systems that endure move in cycles. Fields lie fallow. Aspens drop their leaves. Even price rests: every strong trend is born from a base. Only the relentless speculator believes he is exempt.

What is it to rest hard? My answer begins with telling deep rest from shallow.

Deep rest is stillness. A walk through groves of coast redwoods with no podcast. An afternoon at the lake with children who ask nothing of our PnL. Shallow rest is the bottomless scroll. The queue of episodes. The third refresh of a portfolio we swore we would let idle until September.

From the outside, both look like rest. Inside, only one is. Because shallow rest keeps our nervous system running: we have taken our hands off the work, but we continue to loop, to scenario plan, to indulge the inner voice. None of it purges the elevated cortisol Haisley’s team guards against. Deep rest replenishes. Shallow rest flips the channel until the allotted time expires.

August has already cleared the calendar. An industry that measures everything in basis points takes its one sanctioned pause. How much of it will you give to deep rest?

Every strong trend is born from a base.

Break, Retest, Resume

In the August 1, 2026, issue, we highlighted white sugar futures’ retest of the 50-DMA. This week, price hit the 3-month symmetrical triangle’s 1x measured move target at 514.3.

In the same issue, we also featured EUR/CHF’s 3.5-month head-and-shoulders continuation. The retest of its neckline held successfully, sending price upward to clear over 70% of the 1x measured move target at 0.94281.

Currency Watch

The 4-month ascending triangle in EUR/CAD remains in development. We hold a risk-defined long position in Euro FX futures in the Macro Ops portfolio.

GBP/AUD volatility has contracted significantly as price progresses through the right shoulder of a 5.5-month head-and-shoulders bottom. While volatility contractions themselves are directionally neutral, a bullish breakout may provide an advantageous early entry point if the broader bottoming structure resolves higher.

Mexican peso futures followed through on last Friday’s breakout from a 6-month cup-and-handle in the September contract. A risk-defined long position remains active in the Macro Ops portfolio.

The yen remains under sustained pressure, as seen in AUD/JPY, which is consolidating near its highs within a 5-month rectangle.

EUR/JPY is consolidating in a similar 6-month rectangle continuation.

Commodity Complex

October platinum futures remained in a tight, post-breakout consolidation, with the 1798.3 level serving as the key pivot for potential upside continuation.

Soybean oil futures are developing a 2-month symmetrical triangle on the December contract.

Following a false breakdown on the weekly chart, coffee futures continue to consolidate midrange on the continuation contract. While the daily descending triangle currently leans bearish, a potential dip to new lows followed by a sharp reversal higher would transform the pattern into a bull flag, pointing toward the top of the trading range as the primary upside target.

The Pauses That Refresh

In equities, the S&P 500 Equal Weight reached its 1x measured move target of 222.44 this week. This follows its breakout from the 3-month cup-and-handle we have been tracking since spring as a prime example of healthy rotation away from earlier AI market leadership into broader sectors and industries.

This week’s equity screen returned an intriguing mix of long and short setups, as well as notable continuations and reversal patterns.

Here are the key setups that caught my attention:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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 trade stops working at 10:02. The trader stops working against it at 11:42. What fills the hundred minutes in between?

The market received new information, adjusted, and moved on. It did so without ceremony. Price trades only in the present tense.

The mind does not. It stays behind to negotiate: with the entry that looked so clean, with the profit that was on the screen twenty minutes ago, with the outcome that was supposed to arrive by now. The chart updates itself. The story does not.

We file what happens next under emotion: emotions took over, discipline collapsed. But the trouble starts earlier, in what births the emotion: resistance.

Resistance to the fact that the setup changed. Resistance to open profits now gone. Resistance to closing the trade—because closing it would kill the possibility of it still becoming what we need it to. So long as the trade stays open, so does the possibility.

There is an exchange rate no ticker quotes: acceptance costs a few seconds of sharp discomfort, paid once; resistance offers to finance it, with interest.

Decline the planned loss and hold a larger one. Decline admitting conditions changed and spend the afternoon glued to every tick. Keep declining and one loss becomes a drawdown, the drawdown becomes pressure, and the pressure leans on every decision that follows.

Acceptance is not just taking the loss, but acknowledging that it stings. That you wanted this to work. That it didn’t. That the disappointment is real. And then facing the only question price ever asks: what is true now?

This is not an emotional skill. It is a decision skill: the decision to stop resisting what has already happened.

The market needed one tick to move on.

Your resistance financed the remaining hundred minutes.

Sugar High

Last week, we highlighted White Sugar futures attempting to hold the 50-DMA after an impulsive breakout from a three-month Symmetrical Triangle. Price rocketed toward the pattern’s 1x measured move target of 514.3 this week.

On Monday, our Macro Ops team debated the setup in Sugar No. 11 futures. The October contract met all criteria for my commodity playbook’s multi-point trendline break.

However, the breakout itself was not decisive, instead closing with long upper wicks both Tuesday and Wednesday. We waited for more clarity, only to watch buyers completely overwhelm sellers into the week’s end.

One of our Collective members recently shared his antidote to FOMO: LOMO—the Love of Moving On. Sugar No. 11. gives our team a wonderful opportunity to put this motto into practice.

In metals, Gold futures staged a trendline breakout that converged with a brief, six-week consolidation phase.

Platinum is attempting the same, but encountering overhead supply.

That said, see Sugar No. 11 for what can happen should these three reversal bars have their wick highs taken out next week.

And in equities, the S&P 500 Equal Weight is now a hair’s breadth from the 222.44 1x measured move target of its three-month Cup & Handle Continuation.

Forex in Focus

In the currency markets, the Euro / Franc successfully retested the three-and-a-half-month Head & Shoulders Continuation pattern that we noted in last week’s update. This successful retest drove price action upward, approaching the 1x measured move target sitting at 0.94281.

Through the right shoulder of a five-and-a-half-month Head & Shoulders Bottom pattern, the Pound / Aussie is closely tracking its 50-DMA.

Following a v-shaped move this past spring, the Euro / Canadian Dollar has developed a four-month Ascending Triangle.

And in currency futures, the Mexican Peso broke out from a six-month Cup & Handle Continuation pattern on the September contract.

Muddying the picture somewhat is the continuation chart, which has price revisiting highs from the start of the year.

We hold a risk-defined long position in the Macro Ops Portfolio.

The Pauses That Refresh

Recent issues have noted relative strength in financials, and the sector’s increased presence in my equity screens.

This week, the active watchlist section saw its two featured bottom reversals successfully break out and reclaim their 200-EMAs.

This week’s equity screen once again reveals a compelling blend of long and short setups, alongside continuations and reversals.

The following names in particular stood out to me:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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 improvements I’ve made to my trading—the novel insights that meaningfully added to my edge—are ideas whose source I cannot name.

This summer, like each before it, I will audit the adaptations I made earlier in the year: what worked, what didn’t. Inevitably, I will try to reverse engineer the best discoveries. I will ask: where did I go when I found them? And I will plot a deliberate return.

And yet it’s never about where I go. It’s about what goes away.

What goes away is the justification to start.

What goes away is the ten-step plan.

What goes away is the knowable payoff: the guarantee that the time I invest in following a thread today will not be wasted time tomorrow.

Traders and investors have a particular relationship with the unknown. We are trained to model it, manage it, mitigate it.

We peer into the future and concern ourselves with the unknowables: the hidden leverage, the black swan, the tail risk that undoes the thesis.

We forget to look back at what the unknown has already given us.

Every unexpected discovery. Every insight that arrived from no discernible direction. Every leap forward that came not from a plan but from following a thread with no destination defined.

The unknown births all that is new. What is known is priced in—already an edge the market has adapted to. And your edge, as you know it today, will never be transformed by the familiar.

It will require befriending the very thing you have been trained to defend against.

The unknown is not the enemy of your edge. It is the source.

Shifting Expectations

The U.S. Dollar dropped sharply back inside its year-long range this week when the Federal Reserve decided to hold interest rates steady. Leading up to this week’s meeting, we’d been tracking the Dollar’s steady rise on speculation of a potential rate hike. And in last week’s issue, we highlighted the 101.57 level as a critical point to watch for either a confirmed higher high or a rejection. Wednesday’s meeting gave us our answer: the Fed opted to maintain the status quo and the premium for immediate hikes dissipated, prompting a broad selloff as expectations readjusted.

Friday’s close back inside the weekly range establishes a short bias, with an initial midline target of roughly 97.95 for the failed breakout.

Also in currencies, Euro / Franc pulled back to retest the neckline of its three-and-a-half-month Head & Shoulders Continuation pattern.

And Pound / Aussie is forming a five-and-a-half-month Head & Shoulders Bottom pattern.

While British Pound futures have been coiling for over a year now inside what could be a massive Symmetrical Triangle. Weekly chart shown here.

Another Symmetrical Triangle on the weekly has formed in Corn futures. The continuation contract shown here. No pattern on the daily to get involved as of yet.

Heating Oil futures continue to hold the breakout from a Falling Wedge pattern on the continuation chart, and could now be forming a small continuation pattern.

After an impulsive initial breakout from a Symmetrical Triangle, White Sugar futures is back to its 50DMA attempting to hold and resume higher, toward a 1x measured move target of 514.3.

And despite all the volatility in semiconductors and AI-infrastructure names, which continued to hit the Nasdaq this past week, the S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF has slowly drifted higher since breaking out of its three-month Cup & Handle Continuation pattern this past May.

RSP displays just how resilient the broader market has been despite SPY’s continued consolidation and QQQ’s sharp selloff. A 1x measured move target for RSP sits at 222.44.

The Pauses That Refresh

There is a notable mix of long setups, short setups, continuations and reversals in this week’s equity screen.

Here are the names that caught my attention:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

Simon Russo is the most successful trader Jack Schwager has ever interviewed. That endorsement alone is worth a pause.

Russo recently published a memoir: six parts, told in reverse, each principle threaded through image and metaphor.

He never saw trading as a sprint toward a fixed idea of wealth. For him, it was always an endless game with no final score. A thing-for-itself.

He goes further.

The discipline you practice today—the rules, the process, the painstaking structure—will be inherited, he argues, by a version of you that does not yet exist.

“You are building a cathedral for a stranger,” he writes. Requiring the mathematical precision of an engineer, the aesthetic touch of an artist, the spiritual devotion of a monk.

All while knowing you won’t be the one to worship inside.

Every morning I open the charts, I meet this stranger.

He steps into the cathedral—rules welded into archways, history stained into colored glass, structure reinforced by marble—and the very conviction that raised these walls now stands in quiet opposition.

The man who built this may have beaten the market. But I can beat his models.

The architect is gone.

The stranger stands alone, asked to trust a version of himself he no longer is. Asked to be a version of himself he has never been: humble, obedient, devout.

The ultimate question isn’t whether the cathedral was built with integrity.

It is whether he can kneel without proof. Whether he can honor what was revealed in past moments of clarity.

Whether The Stranger can become The Believer.

King Dollar

U.S. Dollar Futures appear to have completed a successful retest of prior resistance turned support. We first pointed out the growing appetite among buyers to defend higher levels in the June 13, 2026, issue.

The Bull Flag pattern on the daily, which we highlighted last week, broke out to the upside. Attention now centers on the 101.57 level to see if a higher high will be confirmed or rejected.

With a strong U.S. Dollar and an unwind in former AI leadership, the Nasdaq has fallen back to the lower limit of the consolidation range we have been watching for over a month.

If that lower boundary is breached, the 200EMA near 26,800 marks the next key support level. Reflecting this outlook, our Macro Ops Portfolio has carried a risk-defined short position in the indices since last week.

Lumber Futures continues to defy the typical inverse relationship between global commodity prices and a stronger U.S. Dollar by consistently establishing higher lows.

The short continuation pattern on the September contract, speculated in last week’s issue, completed on Monday and followed through into midweek.

Heating Oil also moved higher, despite exhibiting a weak close on Friday.

And Soybean Meal Futures continues to establish the major change of trend we’ve been tracking since May. The weekly continuation chart is shown below. I am watching for a pattern on the daily around which to define risk and frame a trade.

On the weekly timeframe, a Symmetrical Triangle spanning nearly two years has developed on the Corn Futures continuation chart. While the duration of this pattern exceeds my typical swing-trading preference, a confirmed breakout will establish a clear directional bias for any lower-timeframe patterns that form in its wake.

Metals stand out as the primary asset class currently responding to the strengthening U.S. Dollar. Specifically, Platinum Futures, which has maintained a downward trajectory since peaking in January’s blowoff top, has established a Bear Flag on the daily timeframe.

And in currency markets, the Euro / Franc completed a three-and-a-half-month Head & Shoulders Continuation pattern on Wednesday.

The Pauses That Refresh

Within the software and technology sectors, my attention remains on equity consolidations developing beneath their 200EMAs. Numerous names on the active watchlist pulled back below their long-term moving averages, remaining confined within their ranges without breaking out.

Examples include Alkami Technology (ALKT):

GoDaddy (GDDY):

Open Text Corporation (OTEX):

And Workday (WDAY):

For the Nasdaq to recover, such stocks may first need to drop to their lower support levels and test buyer interest there.

While technology has sagged, financials have caught a bid, resulting in an increased presence of this sector in my equity screens.

Here are the names that caught my attention this week:

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facts lag. Resonance leads.

Around the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pauses That Refresh

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

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

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

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

Active watchlists, real-time positioning updates, 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.

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

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

An uncertain laugh. I let the silence hang.

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

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

No story. Just circumstance.

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

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

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

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

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

I could see him returning.

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

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

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

Wide & Loose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consolidation & Rotation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pauses That Refresh

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

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

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

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

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

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

I‘ve lived in three Americas.

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

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

I’ve lived in three Americas.

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

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

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

I’ve lived in three Americas.

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

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

The hustle, the fury, the beauty.

I live in three Americas.

Consolidation & Continuation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pauses That Refresh

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

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

Here are the names that caught my eye:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Healthy Rotation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… and Woodward, Inc. (WWD) …

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

The Dollar vs. Commodities

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

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

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

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

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

The Pauses That Refresh

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

Here are the names that caught my eye:

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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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