Gold and silver prices should be close to their short-term peak.

Aside from briefly buying ETH a while ago, I haven't touched crypto lately. Instead, I've been enjoying short-term trading of precious metals and crude oil on HyperLiquid. Firstly, the trading logic for traditional assets is much clearer than for crypto (you know why they rise and fall). Secondly, the liquidity of altcoins is completely unplayable; even a slightly large position in a small altcoin will get you targeted for manipulation, and the volatility of large altcoins is even lower than BES. Be kind to yourself. You have choices. Even in a casino, you choose a game with higher odds for retail investors. If you can trade assets with better odds, don't get involved in Ponzi schemes.

We've discussed this topic before. In a bear market, don't focus on breakouts for trading, or assume a breakout from a certain range means a new trend is about to begin. If you widen the range from a small breakout to a larger one, you'll find a hundred resistance levels. Bull markets tend to have more bear traps, while bear markets tend to have more bull traps. But the trend is your friend. Focusing on lower highs and lower lows will prevent you from misjudging the trend. To trade on the right side of the trend, wait for a change in direction before entering. Before that, treat any breakout as a smokescreen.

78000 2600

Those who missed the bottom and don't have long positions now should consider which assets to short in the next two weeks.

Here's my opinion: the current upward cycle in precious metals is over. Silver's cycle has ended, and gold's will likely continue for another six months before it ends. Logic: A good way to observe cycles in any market is to identify the leading and second-leading stocks in a given sector and observe the changes in their exchange rate pairs. The exchange rate pair of the second-leading stock/leading stock is a measure of the cycle. Early to Mid-Bull: Leading stocks rise. Mid-Bull: Second-leading stocks begin to catch up. Tail-Bull: The exchange rate pair of the second-leading and leading stocks begins to surge dramatically. Tail-Bull: The second-leading stock reaches its peak first, the exchange rate pair tops out and begins to collapse, while the leading stock stagnates or continues to rise for a period. The above applies to ETH, SOL, and BTC. I've seen this cycle more than once. In fact, the sector rotation in on-chain memes and A-shares follows the same logic. When you see the exchange rate pair of the second-largest/first-largest stock start to collapse, the cycle of that sector is not far from ending. You can observe this closely: Chart 1 below Blue: Silver Orange: Gold Candlestick Chart: Silver/Gold Exchange Rate Pair Chart 2 below Blue: Ethereum Orange: Bitcoin Candlestick Chart: ETH/BTC Exchange Rate Pair The logic behind this phenomenon is not difficult to understand: * **Leading Stock:** The stock with the strongest narrative, the purest logic, the most compelling story, and the strongest willingness to attract institutional investment. Everyone in the market assumes that "to play this theme, you must have a leading stock," and the leading stock also has a higher institutional presence. *Second-Large Stock:** It has a related narrative, but its logical purity, storytelling, market capitalization, turnover rate, and institutional preference are all weaker than the leading stock. The natural order of capital entry is: buy the most certain and most expensive one (the leading stock) first, then buy the cheaper and more cost-effective one (the second-largest stock). When sector sentiment peaks and profit-taking begins, those who exit first are often the "least profitable, riskiest, and most vulnerable" – they typically hold the second-tier leading stock (meaning higher retail participation in the second-tier). The result is: The propagation path of sector speculation is: Leading stock → Second-tier leading stock → Third-tier leading stock → Minor stocks catching up. The peak is the reverse: Minor stocks die first → Third-tier leading stock collapses → Second-tier leading stock collapses → Leading stock corrects. (Ugh, why can't I move images when editing posts now? Too lazy to write an article, just bear with it 😅)

I think crude oil is very likely to follow a similar pattern to gold/silver last month, experiencing a sharp drop followed by a significant rebound. If Iran were truly prepared to follow this path, they wouldn't have chosen someone whose father, wife, and daughter were killed by the US as their new supreme leader. It's truly unbelievable how Trump can succeed in this round of TACO (Taiwan independence). As long as the war continues, controlling oil exports will be Iran's biggest countermeasure. I haven't established a position yet; I plan to wait three or four days to see how things develop. Anyone have a different opinion?

Sigh, oil prices plunged 21% at the open today. Historically, the final surge in oil prices has always been the beginning of a major stock market crash in the US. High oil prices > high inflation > inability to cut interest rates, or even need to raise them to control inflation > squeezed corporate profits > layoffs > worsening economy > but because of high inflation, interest rate cuts cannot be made to save the economy. The Federal Reserve has two missions: 1. To ensure maximum sustainable employment (controlling the unemployment rate) 2. To ensure price stability (controlling inflation) When neither of these can be controlled, it's stagflation. The last time the US truly experienced stagflation was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, also due to the revolution in Iran causing oil prices to soar, ending in a severe recession in the US. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Volcker used years of extremely tight monetary policy to pull the US out of stagflation (at its peak, the federal funds rate was 20%). Sigh, so worrying. Why can't Ethereum, which is called digital oil, rise along with it? 🤡

I stayed up all night these past two days playing the new Resident Evil: Requiem. I think this is the best game in the series; it has a ton of horror and action. Highly recommended!

Ugh, this is frustrating. BTC just had a false breakout. This is the last thing I wanted to see; if it can't recover, it'll probably go down another step.