supercycletrader.com

Wednesday, June 24, 2026

The TL;DR

With Brad Hoppmann

The Supercycle Score is the inverse of the dollar.

Scoreboard

as of the 6/23 close (vs 6/22, the prior trading day). Dot color = Golden Thread inflection: green = CCI rising above both its prior reading and its 14-day average; red = falling below both; yellow = mixed.

Yesterday we flagged a hairline crack: the dollar's momentum had stalled for the first time in this whole run, and a couple of washed-out grains were flickering green. One session later, the crack slammed shut. June 23 was a broad risk-off flush, and it was not gentle. Silver fell 5.40%. Copper dropped 3.84%. The Nasdaq lost 3.29%. Eleven of the twelve instruments on the board closed red. The one that didn't was the dollar, which roared back to a fresh 52-week high, and its 20-day CCI, the momentum gauge that ticked down on Monday, re-accelerated from +199 to +208. The "stall" was a one-day head-fake.

The damage went straight through yesterday's green shoots. Nat gas, which carried a +90 CCI on Monday, rolled all the way to −5, a green bar turned red in a single session. Copper's CCI collapsed from −35 to −199, about as violent a momentum break as this engine measures. The metals complex, gold, silver, the PGMs, sold off as one. On a day like this, correlation goes to one: nothing trades on its own story, everything trades on the dollar and the exits. The lone survivor is soybeans, down a fraction of a percent, CCI still grinding higher off a washed-out base. The cheapest, most-ignored thing in the yard was the only thing that didn't break.

Here's the Turtle's read, and it's the honest one: you don't flinch at a shakeout while the primary trend holds, and the primary trend in this late-business-cycle lull is dollar-up, commodities-down. Today deepened that trend; it didn't reverse it. But you also don't pretend a −5% silver day didn't happen. It did, and it hurt. The one thing under the surface worth more than the carnage is in the bond market: the 2-year yield fell 8 basis points to 4.16% while the long end barely moved, a bull steepener, the front end quietly leaning into rate cuts. That's the seed of the dollar top that eventually ends this lull. Not today. Today the dollar won. But the bond market just started betting on the turn, and the next vote is May PCE, due this week. A hot print re-arms the dollar and presses the 1 to the floor; a soft one is the first real chance for that re-accelerated CCI to roll.

The business-cycle clock ticked on Monday; on Tuesday it took a bucket of cold water. The lull got deeper, faster, and uglier than it had in weeks, a dollar at fresh highs, a Score down to a 1, and a board that bled almost everywhere at once. This is the part of the cycle that shakes people out, and it's supposed to. But the spine of the thesis doesn't bend on one flush: a dollar that loses value every year still drags everything real higher behind it over the long arc, and a single session that drives the dollar to a new high is the lull at its most painful, not the supercycle breaking. The tell that keeps me patient is the one nobody on TV mentioned: the 2-year yield dropping while the dollar spiked. The front end is starting to price the cuts that eventually take the dollar's legs out. The line this issue defends: the worse the flush looks with the dollar at new highs, the closer the bond market edges to calling the top, watch the 2-year, not the wreckage.

2yr 4.16% · 10yr 4.50% · 30yr 4.94%; 2s10s slope +34 bps, positively sloped and un-inverted (6/23 close). Day-over-day the curve bull-steepened: the 2yr fell 8 bps (4.24 to 4.16) while the 10yr slipped 1 (4.51 to 4.50) and the 30yr slipped 1 (4.95 to 4.94), widening 2s10s from +27 to +34. Regime read: a classic risk-off flight to the front end, money piled into 2-year paper and leaned into rate-cut odds even as the dollar spiked. That is the first crack in the real-rate vise the Score keeps flagging, but it's the bond market's vote, not the dollar's yet. The FOMC is a week behind us (June 17, held 3.50–3.75% for a fourth straight meeting, medium-confidence). The nearest dollar mover is now imminent: May PCE, this week (Thursday June 25 per last issue, date medium-confidence, could slip to Friday 6/26), the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, with estimates running hot. (Economics calendar off-plan, event high-confidence, exact date and estimate medium-confidence.)

The next regular CFTC Commitments of Traders prints Friday, June 26 (~3:30pm ET), capturing positioning as of Tuesday, June 23, which means Friday's report will be the first smart-money snapshot to include this flush. That's the one to watch: did the big specs get caught long the metals into the break, or were they already lightening up? The CFTC feed is off our current plan, so we flag the calendar rather than the numbers. With PCE landing first (this week) and a post-flush COT right behind it (Friday), the back half of this week decides whether the dollar's re-accelerated momentum runs further or finally meets the front end's rate-cut bet. (Timing medium-confidence.)

Couple Saturdays back they ran the Great Brevard Duck Race down in Cocoa Village, thousands of identical yellow rubber ducks tipped into the Indian River, everybody on the bank hollering for "their" duck like it had a personality. Here's the thing about a rubber-duck race: the ducks don't do anything. The current does all the work. Pick the prettiest duck, name it, paint a little number on it, doesn't matter. When the water moves, every duck moves the same way at the same time, and the only thing that ever mattered was the river. Tuesday was a river day. Silver, copper, gold, the Nasdaq, twelve ducks, eleven of them swept the same direction at once, and not one of them got a vote. The only thing moving the water was the dollar. Now flip to the television and watch two grown men argue over which duck has heart. Coke-TV calls the wipeout a "healthy correction"; Pepsi-TV says "see, the squeeze is finally working." Both of them are down on the bank pointing at ducks. Neither one looked upstream, where the 2-year yield quietly slipped under the fence, the first little eddy that says the current might be about to turn. Out here we've watched enough things float down that river to know the truth: you don't bet on the duck. You learn to read the water.

One ugly session doesn't break a supercycle, but it sure tests your stomach. The dollar won today; the 2-year started arguing. Read the water, not the ducks.
, Brad

1. Our thesis: a falling dollar lifts everything priced in dollars, so the score measures how weak the dollar is, its position in its trailing 52-week range, flipped. Dollar near its 1-year low to near 100 (tailwind); near its 1-year high to near 0 (headwind). Today the dollar closed at a fresh high (UUP 28.45 in a 26.395–28.48 band, ~98.6% of range), so the score reads 1.

Data sources: the Board + dollar via Massive Market Data daily ETF proxies (GLD, SLV, USO, UNG, SOYB, CORN, CPER, PALL, PPLT, UUP, QQQ, SPY), 6/23 close vs 6/22 prior trading day, CCI computed from 30 complete daily bars/instrument and validated against the 6/22 published CCIs; live gold cross-check via FMP (GCUSD) and Crypto.com (GC Live); Treasury curve via Financial Modeling Prep (6/23). Supercycle Score = inverse of the US dollar (UUP 52-wk range; low 26.395 / high 28.48 / close 28.45 = 98.6% of range). Built 2026-06-24; data reflects the Tuesday 2026-06-23 close.

Educational publication of supercycletrader.com, not individualized investment advice.