To trade is, in part, to navigate discomfort. The ambiguity of selecting trades, the vulnerability of putting on risk, the tension of extended drawdowns.
To grow in trading is to develop one’s capacity for doing so.
So when someone promises to eliminate these for you—completely remove them from your trading experience, for one low fee—you’ve found my favorite screen in finance.
Such engagements are not mentorship. They are marketing. Even at their best, the enrichment flows one way, and the result is dependency.
What, then, distinguishes a true mentor? Start with your own lived experience.
Whether you have traded for a few years or a few decades, you have made contact with many truths of trading: the ambiguity, the vulnerability, the tension; the euphoria, the invincibility, the ephemeral sense of arrival.
Even in the faintest of ways, you already know these textures.
A mentor is someone steadier in the places that have left you off balance. Their contact with the realities of trading is more persistent, more tapped in.
And when you observe them closely, you can see it—not because they claim it, but because you’ve touched that same truth yourself and recognize its depth in another.
Each aspect of trading carries its own truth: market sense, sizing up, adding asset classes, trading under the eyes of risk managers or LPs.
You don’t need someone who has mastered it all. You need someone closer to whichever aspect is blocking your next stage of growth.
And once you find them, watch how they meet you. Do they offer guidance, or do they manage you? When you challenge their ideas, do they defend, or do they open?
Marketers sell dependency. Mentors cultivate your liberation.
High-Flying Commodities
In the April 4th issue, I noted that Light Crude’s “loose” price action lacked the asymmetric risk-to-reward required by my swing-trading playbooks.
While it has since whipped around that same range …
… Brent Crude broke out of the Flag noted in the April 18th issue and is testing March’s swing high. Clearing this resistance targets a 1X measured move of 109.
Energy isn’t the only sector moving; Iran conflict spillovers are aggressively driving agricultural commodities higher.
KC Wheat’s breakout, noted last week, nearly hit its 1X target:
Soybean Oil broke out of a 7-week Running Wedge. As I commented in the Macro Ops Comm Center, I preferred the three upper-boundary pivots on the December contract, but early entry on the nearby July contract was rewarded.
On Friday, the November “new crop” soybean contract broke past the upper resistance level of a seven-week Ascending Triangle pattern.
And the reversal in Corn continues to take shape with price pushing further away from the neckline of a multi-month Head & Shoulders, which is part of a large double bottom formation.
We’re long a number of these commodities in our Macro Ops Portfolio, and have added multiple times this year to our position in the Bloomberg All Commodity ETF (BCI).
Rounding out a look at agricultural commodities, Rough Rice pivoted off of the 11.45 level multiple times since mid-February, forming an Ascending Triangle on the continuation chart. Note that this market is significantly thinner than those previously discussed.
Featured Forex
I’ve been tracking a potential Head & Shoulders Continuation in Yen Futures, specifically the tight coil at the right shoulder. Following a Wednesday breakdown, the Bank of Japan intervened at the neckline to halt the decline. Thursday’s surge then breached the right shoulder high, signaling a possible trend reversal.
This possibility gets much more interesting when zooming out to the weekly.
The BOJ defended a level that was first tested back in 2024. Much like the range in Coffee covered last week, a reversal from this lower boundary would offer plenty of room for a run back to the top of the two-year range.
The US Dollar continues to trade at the midpoint of its established range:
The potential Head & Shoulders Top I’ve featured in the Euro / Pound ended the week right at the neckline:
And the Australian Dollar / New Zealand Dollar has been on a tear and is coiling at highs:
The Pauses That Refresh
Responding to Collective member requests, I’ve added Sector and Industry labels to the upper right of every chart on my active watchlist. This update makes it easier to track names within specific groups or themes.
Here are the stocks that grabbed my attention during this week’s screen:
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