Trend Following: Week in Review - July 31, 2026

"Crude Surrenders Its Breakout, the Dollar Reverses, Grains Fall as One, the Barometer Collapses to 30% and Very Weak, and the SG Trend Index Turns July Negative"

This Week in Trend – 31 July 2026

Welcome to This Week in Trend, your weekly view into the evolving structure of global futures markets and the behaviour of systematic trend following. This edition covers conditions through the close of US markets on Friday, 31 July 2026.

The question that closed last week’s edition has an answer, and it is the one that costs. The board did not hold the shape it had found. Energy went from leading at +3.51% to falling 3.10%, Crude Oil Brent retracing 7.08% and Crude Oil WTI 5.20% of the double-digit gains the two had posted across the fortnight before, with Natural Gas off 4.88% and Gasoline RBOB 2.85%, leaving Heating Oil up 1.31% and Ethanol 0.12% as the only contracts in the sector still rising. The Grains complex fell hardest of all, the sector average dropping to -5.42% with all eight contracts lower: Soybean Oil off 8.45%, Canola 8.09%, Wheat 5.72%, Soybeans 5.60%, Oats 5.48%, Corn 5.06%, Soybean Meal 4.81% and Rough Rice 0.11%. Where four grains contracts had advanced together a week earlier, none did. The dollar turned with them, the USD index falling 1.49% while all seven remaining crosses in the basket rose, JPY leading at +3.04%, and the sector average moving to +1.03% from -0.58%. Soft Commodities led the board at +1.81% on Orange Juice up 9.31% and Coffee 5.83%, though Lumber fell 6.19% inside the same sector. Metals held a positive average at +0.97%, the Equity Indices firmed to +0.54%, Bonds eased 0.41%, the Meats fell 0.63% as Lean Hogs dropped 4.69%, Bitcoin fell 3.20% and the VIX dropped 5.86%. Contract-level breadth was 24 of 49 contracts higher, 25 lower and none unchanged, barely different from the prior week’s 23 and 26, and once again the count says almost nothing about what the week did.

Inside the complex the split ran along the age of the moves rather than along commodity and financial lines. The sectors that had paid a week earlier were the ones that gave ground, and the sector that led was led by the contracts with the least trend behind them. Energy reversed on crude specifically, Brent and WTI surrendering a large part of a two-week breakout while Heating Oil held its gain, inverting the two-speed split of a week earlier. The Grains complex fell as one, an unbroken run of eight declines after a week in which Corn, Soybean Meal, Canola and Soybeans had advanced between 3.74% and 4.38% together. The Currencies basket inverted in the same way, seven crosses rising against a dollar that had strengthened against six of them a week earlier, JPY up 3.04% after two consecutive weeks of decline. Soft Commodities split four against two, Orange Juice up 9.31%, Coffee 5.83%, Cotton 2.26% and Cocoa 0.39% against Sugar off 0.74% and Lumber 6.19%, the sector’s one sustained climb falling while its two longest declines bounced hardest. Metals divided three against two, Platinum up 3.40%, Palladium 2.22% and Copper 1.70% against Gold off 0.59% and Silver 1.90%. The Equity Indices firmed on European leadership, the DAX up 2.10% and the Euro Stoxx 50 1.14% while the Nikkei 225 fell 1.72%, and Bonds fell in the same order of duration they have traced for weeks, the 30 Year Bond off 1.28% against the 2 Year Note up 0.06%.

Trend Indicators:  Barometer Collapses 22 Points to 30% and Falls Out of Neutral, SG Trend Index Gives Back the Month

TTU Trend Barometer: 30%, down from 52% last week, with the overall trend strength classification falling to Very Weak as the reading dropped 22 points, broke through the 40% floor of the Neutral band and moved well into a weak environment for the first time in this five-week run. The 10-day rate of change reads Falling Rapidly, down from last week’s Rising Weakly, the near-term pace turning sharply lower with force behind it. The five-week sequence now reads 64, 39, 50, 52, 30: the reading has given back the entire 13-point recovery it built from the 39% trough across the two prior weeks and a further 9 points beyond it, and at 30% it sits 10 points below the Neutral floor it left this week and 25 points below the 55% boundary it had approached twice without crossing.

The 22-point fall came as the trends already running on the board broke, not as markets stopped moving. Breadth barely shifted, 24 of 49 contracts higher against 23 a week earlier, so the collapse in trend strength came from reversal rather than from participation drying up. Crude unwound a large part of a breakout that had run two weeks, the dollar turned against the whole basket after strengthening against six of seven crosses, and the grains complex fell on all eight contracts after four had advanced together. Where the prior week’s reading rose 2 points because established moves held their shape, this one fell 22 because the same moves changed direction. Very little on the board went quiet. A great deal of it started travelling the other way.

What the barometer measures is the share of markets generating medium-to-strong trends, not the direction those trends take, so a board where 24 of 49 contracts finished higher can still send the reading sharply lower. The weekly level fell 22 points to 30% and now sits well inside the weak band, while the 10-day rate of change moved to Falling Rapidly from Rising Weakly. Both measures point the same way for the first time in three weeks, and both describe an environment that deteriorated quickly rather than one that drifted.

Fewer markets were trending decisively by the close, as established moves broke rather than firmed. Crude Oil Brent and Crude Oil WTI reversed a fortnight of gains inside a single week, the eight grains contracts that had been working up ranges since the spring all fell together, and the dollar index dropped 1.49% after a climb it had held since the spring. At 30% the level sits 10 points below the 40% boundary and 25 below the 55% threshold, far enough from both that the question is no longer whether the reading can cross into a favourable environment but how long it stays outside the Neutral band. The Falling Rapidly rate of change reinforces that reading: the near-term pace is not merely lower, it is deteriorating at speed, and the barometer would need to recover 10 points simply to return to the band it occupied a week ago.

SG Trend Index: -1.50% month to date for July and +7.49% year to date as of 31 July. That compares with +1.24% MTD and +10.47% YTD at the prior week’s close: the year-to-date figure gave back roughly 2.98 percentage points over the week, and July turned from a gain of 1.24% to a loss of 1.50% inside the month, a weekly return of close to -2.7% once compounding is accounted for. The loss sat with precisely the trends that had been held rather than the ones that turned. Crude reversed a breakout that was two weeks old and had paid twice, so the books that had rotated into energy early surrendered a large share of what they had been carried on, Brent off 7.08% and WTI 5.20%. The dollar fell against every one of the seven remaining crosses in the basket after strengthening against six of them, and the grains complex fell on all eight contracts after four had advanced together, two more sets of positions that had been running for weeks and reversed at once. The gains that did occur were confined to markets that had already fallen a long way, Orange Juice up 9.31% near the bottom of a decline it has traced all year and Coffee 5.83% off its own lows, moves a book positioned with those declines would have given ground on rather than captured. What makes the week worth studying is that it is the exact inverse of the one before it. Breadth again barely moved, 24 of 49 contracts higher against 23, yet the index went from adding well over two percentage points to shedding close to three. The loss did not come from a worse environment in any sense the breadth count can show. It came from the trends on the board being the ones a book already carried, running the other way.

Weekly Asset Class Snapshot

Equity Indices (+0.54% | prev -0.47%)

Across the Equity Indices, the shallow pullback of a week earlier resolved upward, the sector firming to +0.54% after easing 0.47%. The DAX rose 2.10% and the Euro Stoxx 50 1.14%, with the DJIA up 0.98%, the S&P 500 0.96% and the Nasdaq 100 0.43%, while the Russell 2000 fell 0.11% and the Nikkei 225 1.72%. The regional split of the prior week persisted and widened, Europe leading for a second consecutive week while Japan fell further. On the weekly charts every index in the sector remains inside the uptrend it has held since the spring, the DJIA near 52,520, the S&P 500 near 7,504 and the Euro Stoxx 50 near 6,387 all back close to the top of their ranges, with the Nasdaq 100 near 28,290 and the Nikkei 225 near 63,000 still the two furthest from their highs. This was one of the few sectors on the board where the weekly figures and the chart structure pointed the same way, the consolidation of the prior fortnight resolving in the direction the longer trend was already travelling.

Energy (-3.10% | prev +3.51%)

Energy fell to -3.10% after leading the board for two consecutive weeks, and the reversal concentrated in the two contracts that had driven the advance. Crude Oil Brent fell 7.08% and Crude Oil WTI 5.20%, erasing a large share of the double-digit gains they had posted across the fortnight before, with Natural Gas off 4.88% and Gasoline RBOB 2.85%, while Heating Oil rose 1.31% and Ethanol 0.12%. On the weekly charts the breakout that had held for two weeks has now failed: WTI near 86.80 and Brent near 91.04 have both fallen back into the middle of the range they traded before the summer decline, surrendering most of the ground the breakout had reclaimed, and Gasoline RBOB near 3.17 has come off the top of its own range. Heating Oil near 4.19 is the one petroleum contract still holding close to its highs, while Natural Gas near 2.79 has fallen back toward the bottom of its range. The move that last week’s edition described as the difference between a spike and a trend has now given back enough to reopen the question.

Metals (+0.97% | prev +1.38%)

Metals held a positive average at +0.97%, three contracts higher and two lower. Platinum rose 3.40%, the largest gain in the sector, with Palladium up 2.22% and Copper 1.70%, while Silver fell 1.90% and Gold 0.59%. The weekly charts qualify the figure in the same direction as a week earlier. Gold near 4,099, Silver near 57.78, Platinum near 1,656 and Palladium near 1,278 all sit close to the lows of declines that have run since February, so the gains in the precious complex again read as movement at the bottom of those declines rather than a turn back upward, and a second week of bounces has not changed the pattern the sector has traced for months. Copper near 6.51 remains the exception, holding close to the top of the climb it has extended through the year and the one contract in the sector where the weekly figure and the chart structure agree. Two consecutive weeks in which a positive sector average has rested on counter-trend movement is a more useful reading than the average itself.

Soft Commodities (+1.81% | prev +0.35%)

Soft Commodities led the board at +1.81%, four contracts higher and two lower. Orange Juice rose 9.31%, the largest single gain on the board, with Coffee up 5.83%, Cotton 2.26% and Cocoa 0.39%, while Sugar fell 0.74% and Lumber 6.19%. The composition matters more here than the average. On the weekly charts Orange Juice near 153 remains close to the bottom of the long decline it has traced all year, so a 9.31% gain lifts it off the floor without altering the shape of the move, and Coffee near 332 is still working through the fade that followed its spike. Lumber near 613 fell hardest in the sector, and it is the contract that had been holding the steadiest climb, built since the winter. Cotton near 81.65 has pushed into the upper part of its range and Cocoa near 5,394 sits in the middle of its own. The sector that led the board did so on its two weakest structures while its one sustained trend broke, which is the inverse of what a leading sector average is usually taken to imply.

Grains (-5.42% | prev +1.30%)

Grains fell hardest on the board at -5.42%, all eight contracts lower and six of them by more than 4.8%. Soybean Oil dropped 8.45%, Canola 8.09%, Wheat 5.72%, Soybeans 5.60%, Oats 5.48%, Corn 5.06%, Soybean Meal 4.81% and Rough Rice 0.11%. A week earlier four contracts had advanced together between 3.74% and 4.38% while four eased; this week the split closed entirely, and it closed downward. The weekly charts show the complex undoing a large part of the structure that had made it the firmest sector on the board a week earlier: Canola near 760 has fallen off the top of the climb it built since the winter, Soybeans near 1,171 and Soybean Meal near 314.50 have both come off their highs, Corn near 440.50 has surrendered the recovery it made through July, and Soybean Oil near 67.47 fell furthest of the eight. Rough Rice near 13.99 barely moved and is the only contract in the sector still pressing the top of its range, while Oats near 312 extended a decline now into its third consecutive week. The sector where the weekly percentages and the chart structure had agreed most closely is the one where the reversal cost most.

Meats (-0.63% | prev +0.72%)

The Meats turned back down to -0.63%, the even three-contract advance of a week earlier splitting apart again. Live Cattle rose 2.13% and Feeder Cattle 0.68%, while Lean Hogs fell 4.69%, the largest decline in the sector by a wide margin. The weekly charts keep the sector inside the pullback it has been working through since the spring: Live Cattle near 227 and Feeder Cattle near 343 both sit below the highs they made in May, though both have now risen for two consecutive weeks, and Lean Hogs near 84.70 has fallen back toward the low of its own decline. The agreement that closed across the sector a week earlier lasted exactly one week, the cattle side firming while the hogs gave back rather more than they had gained.

Bonds (-0.41% | prev -0.81%)

Bonds fell for a second consecutive week, the decline shallowing to -0.41% with the same order of duration intact. The 30 Year Bond dropped 1.28%, the 10 Year Note 0.30% and the 5 Year Note 0.10%, while the 2 Year Note rose 0.06%, a gradient running from the long end to the front that has now held its shape across two weeks. The weekly charts put all four contracts at or near the lows of the ranges they have traced through the spring and summer, the 30 Year Bond near 108.34, the 10 Year Note near 108.06, the 5 Year Note near 106.01 and the 2 Year Note near 102.80, so this week’s decline again continued an established move rather than starting one. Market pricing reflected little change in the rate path across the week. Of the sectors that fell, Bonds was the only one falling in continuation of the trend it already held, which is why a 0.41% decline here reads very differently from a 3.10% one in Energy.

Currencies (+1.03% | prev -0.58%)

The basket strengthened as the US dollar reversed against all of it, undoing the broad advance of a week earlier. The USD index fell 1.49% while JPY rose 3.04%, NZD 1.71%, EUR 1.37%, GBP 1.18%, CHF 1.14%, AUD 0.80% and CAD 0.51%, leaving the sector average at +1.03%. Every cross in the basket rose, where six of seven had fallen a week earlier, and the yen led after two consecutive weeks of decline. The weekly charts show the USD index near 99.71 breaking below the climb it had built since the spring, with EUR near 1.1545, CHF near 1.2440 and CAD near 0.7146 all lifting off the lows of their own ranges, and JPY near 0.6373 making the largest move of the eight. AUD near 0.7015 continues to hold close to its highs. The dollar trend that last week’s edition described as among the more established on the board, and which paid again without needing to be caught, turned inside a single week.

Volatility, Crypto: The VIX dropped 5.86% in a second consecutive weekly decline, the weekly chart showing it near 18.40 and back in the lower part of the range it has held through the summer. The move ran alongside the modest advance in the Equity Indices, volatility easing while the indices resolved their pullback upward, and the two have now travelled in opposite directions for two weeks running. Bitcoin fell 3.20%, its second consecutive decline and a larger one than the week before, sitting near 63,185 on the weekly chart and close to the lows of the decline it has traced from its highs. Where most of the board reversed direction this week, Bitcoin did not, continuing lower on its own footing while the Equity Indices firmed and the dollar fell.

Top Movers

Both lists are drawn from a narrow set of sectors, and between them they describe the week. The upside runs Soft Commodities, Metals, Currencies: Orange Juice and Coffee taking the top two places with the only gains above 5% on the board, Platinum third, JPY fourth as the dollar reversed, and Cotton fifth. Three of the five largest gains came from a single sector, and two of those three sit near the bottom of declines that have run for months. The downside is led by Soybean Oil and Canola, the Grains complex supplying the two largest falls anywhere on the board, with Crude Oil Brent third as the energy breakout gave way, Lumber fourth and the VIX fifth. Orange Juice’s 9.31% gain was the largest single move in either direction this week, and Soybean Oil’s 8.45% decline the largest on the downside. What separates this week from the one before is the composition rather than the size. A week earlier both lists were drawn from moves that had been running for some time. This week the upside is drawn almost entirely from bounces off lows, and the downside from the trends that had been paying.

Portfolio View

The week rotated, and that is the whole of the story. The reminder in it is the one that recurs, arriving this time from the other side: portfolio returns depend less on how many markets trend than on whether the trends already held survive. This week they did not, and the arithmetic makes the point as plainly as it did a week ago. Contract-level breadth was almost identical, 24 of 49 contracts higher against 23 a week before, yet the barometer fell 22 points and out of the Neutral band entirely, and the SG Trend Index went from adding well over two percentage points to giving back close to three. Neither the number of markets participating nor the overall balance of the board changed much at all. What changed was that the moves on the board were reversals of positions already carried rather than continuations of them. Crude gave back most of a two-week breakout, the dollar fell against the entire basket after strengthening against nearly all of it, and the grains complex fell on all eight contracts after four had advanced together. The clearest directional contributor was the turn itself: the same breadth reading produced opposite outcomes in consecutive weeks because in one the trends held and in the other they broke. A book positioned along the energy advance, short the curve and long the dollar needed to do nothing at all a week ago to be paid, and needed to do nothing at all this week to give a large part of it back.

Final Reflections

The defining feature of the week was how completely the environment reading and the returns agreed, after a fortnight in which they had not. The TTU Barometer fell 22 points to 30%, breaking through the 40% floor of the Neutral band and moving into a weak environment for the first time in this five-week run, with the overall classification falling to Very Weak and the 10-day rate of change to Falling Rapidly. Contract-level breadth barely moved, sitting at 24 of 49 contracts higher against 25 lower, none unchanged. Against that, the SG Trend Index gave back roughly 2.98 percentage points to fall to +7.49% year to date, and July turned from +1.24% to -1.50% inside the month, a weekly loss of close to 2.7%. The environment reading collapsed. So did the outcome. The two agreed for the first time in three weeks, and the agreement itself is worth more attention than either figure alone.

A week earlier a barometer reading three points below the favourable boundary sat alongside the continuations that paid; this week a reading ten points below the Neutral floor sat alongside the reversals that cost, and the books carrying those positions handed back a little under three tenths of the year’s accumulated gain across five sessions.

1. The environment reading collapsed 22 points while breadth barely moved at all. What separated this week from the one before was not how many markets were moving, but which way they moved relative to the positions already held.

The five-week sequence (64, 39, 50, 52, 30) fell 22 points this week, the largest single-week move in the run and the first reading below 40% within it. The barometer has erased the entire 13-point recovery it built from the 39% trough across the two prior weeks, and a further 9 points beyond it. Breadth barely moved, 24 of 49 contracts higher against 23 a week earlier. Between them these two figures describe an environment that changed almost completely while the count of participating markets did not change at all. That gap isolates the cause for a second consecutive week, this time in the opposite direction. The count of markets trending decisively fell sharply because existing moves reversed, not because markets went quiet: Crude Oil Brent and Crude Oil WTI surrendered a fortnight of gains, all eight grains contracts fell after four had advanced together, and the dollar index dropped 1.49% after strengthening against six of seven crosses. The 10-day rate of change reads Falling Rapidly, down from Rising Weakly, so the near-term pace has turned lower with real force behind it. The lesson is the same one the prior week taught from the profitable side. Trend strength readings describe how many markets are moving decisively and say nothing about whether those markets are the ones a book is already holding. A week ago they were. This week they were again, and travelling the other way.

2. Soft Commodities produced the week’s divergence, leading the board while the sector’s one sustained climb fell 6.19% and its two largest gains came off the lows of long declines.

Soft Commodities rose 1.81%, the strongest sector average on the board, with Orange Juice up 9.31% and Coffee 5.83% as the two largest gains anywhere this week. The weekly charts read differently. Orange Juice near 153 sits close to the bottom of the decline it has traced all year, so a 9.31% gain moves it a long way in percentage terms without moving it far in structural ones, and Coffee near 332 is still working through the fade that followed its earlier spike. Lumber, the one contract in the sector holding a climb built since the winter, fell 6.19% to near 613 and was the fourth largest decline on the board. The distinction matters because a sector average cannot tell a bounce from a continuation, and this week the sector that led did so on its weakest structures while its strongest one broke. Metals repeated the same pattern for a second consecutive week, Platinum and Palladium rising near the lows of declines that have run since February while Copper near 6.51 held the top of its climb. Grains offer the contrast in reverse: eight contracts falling together off structures that had been climbing, weekly percentages and chart structure again pointing the same way, and pointing down. Where the two agree, the move is likely to be captured in whichever direction it runs; where they diverge, the sector average is describing noise inside a trend rather than the trend itself.

For trend followers, the week was not defined by whether markets rose or fell. It was defined by whether the moves were persistent enough to be captured. The opportunity was directional, but not directionally biased.

One question frames the week ahead: does a barometer reading of 30% with the rate of change falling rapidly mark the start of a genuinely cold stretch, or is it the low print of a single violent turn that resolves as quickly as it arrived? The answer will say less about where prices travel than about whether the reversals of this week settle into moves that can be held, or give way to the next rotation before any of them are old enough to pay.

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List of Resources used in the Week in Review

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