Supercycle Trader, Friday, September 4, 2026 (close data: Thursday, September 3, 2026)

Only palladium and the S&P carry a confirmed green trend today. The dollar's own trend just flipped red, which is why the Score sits at 27 rather than lower. Everything else is chopping inside a yellow band, up on price, unconfirmed on trend.

The setup into today: the August jobs report lands with consensus at plus 53,000, and it is the last major data point before the Fed's September 16 decision. Equities are already leaning risk-on ahead of it, Nasdaq futures up 0.4%, S&P futures up 0.1% in the overnight session. That risk appetite showed up in yesterday's cash session too. The S&P closed up 0.69% at 773.17, the Nasdaq proxy QQQ up 0.96% at 717.67, and the S&P is the only equity or commodity line on the board with a confirmed green trend alongside palladium.

Palladium is the loudest mover on the sheet, up 3.16% to 25.79, and its trend flipped from negative to a confirmed green in a single session, the kind of move that shows up when a market that has been dead for months suddenly finds a bid. Platinum rode along for a smaller 1.35% gain. Both are metals the market usually ignores until it can't.

Gold slipped fractionally (down 0.12%) while silver added 0.88%, splitting the precious metals complex down the middle. That split is consistent with a dollar that closed higher on the day (up 0.07%) but whose own trend indicator just turned red, meaning the multi-week dollar advance that has been the main headwind for the whole commodity complex may be running out of room even as the spot price grinds to new local highs.

Natural gas gave back 2.15%, the sharpest red mover on the board, unwinding some of an extended run (posture still reads 82, deep into overbought territory). Grains firmed on the back of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's report that world food prices rose in August, citing weather disruption and Black Sea and Middle East supply risk. Corn rose 1.61%, soybeans 1.53%, though both show trends that already peaked and are now fading, a red signal despite the green price action.

The Treasury curve moved in a bear-flattening pattern over the past two weeks. As of yesterday's close: 2-year 4.34%, 10-year 4.77%, 30-year 5.25%, a 10s2s spread of 0.43 percentage points, down from 0.50 two weeks earlier (August 20). Yields rose across the board over that stretch, which is the textbook signature of a market pricing in both near-term Fed resolve and longer-run fiscal concern at the same time.

That fiscal concern went mainstream overnight. Multiple outlets flagged the 30-year yield briefly crossing 5.3% intraday, and Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC the U.S. Treasury's recent bond-market intervention was "a step too far," adding he believes the global bond sell-off is likely not over yet. Separately, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, was reported to be planning to cut roughly $80 billion of its U.S. Treasury holdings and reallocate into mortgage-backed securities and other assets, a real reallocation signal from one of the largest holders of U.S. government debt on the planet.

On the energy side, Rosneft chief Igor Sechin said China, not OPEC, is doing the heavy lifting on stabilizing the global oil market, citing a roughly 5.5 million barrel-per-day cut in Chinese crude imports this year. U.S. retail diesel prices hit a fresh record high, attributed to Middle East and Russian refinery disruptions, a real cost pressure that shows up downstream in shipping, agriculture, and everything trucked to a shelf.

The CFTC Commitment of Traders feed available to this run returned only historical 2024 vintage reports for gold and the dollar index, not current positioning. Publishing a "current" net long or net short reading from that data would misstate today's positioning. This section is marked degraded rather than invented. Tomorrow's issue will carry a fresh read if the feed corrects.

Out here in Taintsville, nobody trades palladium, but everybody noticed the diesel sign at the pump hit a number the mayor's pickup truck has strong feelings about. Somewhere in Oslo, a sovereign wealth fund the size of a small country's GDP is quietly trimming its pile of U.S. IOUs and buying mortgage bonds instead, which is the financial equivalent of your neighbor swapping his Treasury bonds for a rental duplex because he's heard a rumor about the landlord's credit. Meanwhile Washington keeps telling us the debt is fine, the dollar is strong, and the 30-year yield brushing 5.3% is just vibes. Out here we call that the "trust me, it's load bearing" school of civil engineering, and it tends to end with someone standing in the rubble asking who signed off on the blueprints.

Brad Hoppmann
Supercycle Trader