A weakening dollar is the ignition switch for commodities — and it’s already happening.

We’ve watched the dollar fail at the underside of resistance again and again. Every bounce gets sold. Every rally attempt dies early.

A fading dollar is the macro tailwind that energizes:

This sets the stage for the next leg of the cycle.

This doesn’t get talked about nearly enough:

Gold miners: +140%
Uranium: +84%
Steel, copper, lithium: +74–78%

While the S&P is up around 17%.

This is not a rotation.
This is a regime shift into real assets.

When real assets lead, refiners historically become some of the highest-velocity trades in the entire market.

TrendLabs highlighted something massive in XLE that most investors are missing:

Two years of:

This is exactly what major secular breakouts look like before they happen. Everything surrounding energy (commodities, metals, the dollar) has already moved.

Energy is the final domino.
And refiners are already anticipating the move.

While oil prices lagged and XLE stayed muted, refiners did the opposite:
They broke out anyway.

Josh Brown described it perfectly: when a whole sub-industry starts ripping together despite sector headwinds — that’s not random. That’s the market yelling at you.

VLO checks every technical box:

This is leadership behavior.

PSX has been one of the cleanest technical setups in the group:

The activist involvement only strengthens the risk/reward.

Josh Brown’s point:

Exxon Mobil (XOM) has been building one of the cleanest, most explosive multi-year bases in the entire large-cap energy space. This doesn’t drift out of a 3-year base — it explodes.

This chart tells the whole story:

1. A multi-year rounded base
XOM has spent nearly three years carving out a massive consolidation structure — the kind of pattern that doesn’t result in small moves. Bases this large resolve with multi-quarter upside when they break.

2. A deep, well-defined volume shelf at $110–118
This is where institutions accumulate.
Price keeps revisiting this area, getting absorbed, and turning higher.
There’s no distribution here — only accumulation.

3. Repeated resistance tests without any structural breakdown
Every push into the $118–$120 zone pulls back shallowly and then re-tests.
That’s exactly what a coiled asset looks like before the pivot.

4. Energy (XLE) itself is coiled and ready
As I said earlier — XLE is the final domino. If the sector breaks out, XOM is the most liquid, most institutionally-owned, most “must-own” name that gets repriced first.

5. This is where options give you perfect asymmetry
If Energy goes the way the macro setup suggests — weaker dollar, commodity leadership, refiners ripping, global rotation into real assets — XOM doesn’t just drift higher.

It explodes out of a 3-year base.

That’s why I’m positioned in:

• XOM 01/16/2026 $120 Calls
• XOM 03/20/2026 $120 Calls

If this breaks out, those calls don’t move 20–30%.
They move 200–300%+ because you’re sitting directly on top of a multiyear structural inflection.

6. The Cycle Is Turning — And Energy Is “Becoming” Again

TrendLabs used a perfect phrase:

That’s exactly where energy is right now.

The dollar is fading.
Commodities are leading.
Refiners are breaking out in unison.
XLE is coiled beneath a multi-year ceiling.

The transformation is already happening.
The breakout will just be the part everyone finally notices.

I prefer being positioned before that moment — not after.

— Connor
Alpha Before It Prints

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