Week in Review
May 25–29, 2026
The Iran framework drove the tape all week, and it whipsawed. Wednesday 5/27 the Islamabad Memorandum draft hit Iran state TV around 9:20 AM ET: US lifts the naval blockade, Iran restores commercial shipping through Hormuz to pre-war levels within thirty days, a 60-day clock to a UN-binding resolution if a final deal lands, all conditional on the “tangible verification” Iran put on it that night. Crude rallied into it, closing +3.78% at $90.34, with Lorie Logan’s “if the molecules aren’t available the world can’t consume them” read beating Lufthansa’s “no summer jet-fuel risk” call.
Monday’s going-in posture, that framework follow-through pulls crude lower and lifts the energy-inflation cover, looked wrong for forty-eight hours. Then Thursday it landed: the 11:29 AM Axios headline on a US-Iran 60-day ceasefire MOU flipped crude negative, knocked pump gas down 15.2c a gallon on the week (the biggest drop of 2026), and ran stocks to fresh records. Early, not wrong. The catch came Thursday night, when Iran fired a missile toward the strait and the IRGC went back to turning ships away, so the premium never fully exhaled. Crude stays the swing variable into next week.
What worked
· BTC manual hedge short re-engaged 5/26 18:53 at $75,922, 20% size, stop $78,282 (https://www.tradingview.com/x/yea6SMPc/), covered at target 5/28 07:14 at $73,544 for +3.1% in 1.5 days (~754% APR pace, https://www.tradingview.com/x/uOjrKzxA/ “Cover BTC short, hit target”). Same setup as the 5/22 short that half-paid into the Iran framework cluster and scratched the back half on a break-even stop. Second iteration of the same trade, second time the bot’s bearish_reb deck filled before the move, and this one ran to target. The Wednesday tape confirmed the read: a daily downtrend triggered in IBIT (https://www.tradingview.com/x/3I3pkGOG/) with its weekly trend already expired, and Trump’s “not considering lifting Iran sanctions” line rugged BTC intraday, so the stop came down to break-even that evening (+0.38% on crypto capital at the time) before the position ran to the Thursday target. The squeeze-to-$80K thesis and a tactical hedge sat on the same book; the hedge side resolved in our favor as BTC sold off into Thursday morning, banked before the cash session.
· Thursday 5/28 morning cover batch, 07:14-10:36 ET. The short book from Tuesday and Wednesday evening came off into the pre-data crash, twelve wins on the seventeen legs. TRUMP +7.9% in 1.7 days (~1,683% APR pace), SYRUP +7.5% in 0.9 days (~3,199% APR), MOVE +7.2% in 1.6 days (~1,663% APR), XLM weekly long +6.6% in 0.4 days (~5,369% APR), ETC +5.5% (~1,273% APR), MELANIA +5.3% (~967% APR), PNUT +3.6%, ENS +2.7%, SKY +1.8%, with PUMP and kBONK scratched (+0.7% / +0.5%) on 13-minute holds. INIT weekly short held into Friday. The hedge from the 5/22 and 5/26 BTC shorts paid in two trips before the 11:29 AM US-Iran 60-day ceasefire framework headline took crude negative and lifted the tape.
· Wednesday morning short cover batch, 07:33-08:34 ET. Four bot HODL bearish_reb shorts opened Tuesday evening 17:14 caught the overnight crash. INIT +11.2% in 0.6 days (~6,845% APR pace, https://www.tradingview.com/x/Lom80emF/ “Nice crash.”), kNEIRO +5.1% (~1,757% APR), 0G +4.0% (https://www.tradingview.com/x/utZoVAYT/), ZORA +3.0% on the re-entry from 5/26 12:49. Bot opens the right setups, the manual call is when to bank.
· ZEC monthly sliver close +2.0% Tuesday 07:14, reversed back long at $626.14 same morning. The 5/22 17:37 re-entry at $597.17 (5.19% size after the daily got oversized at 20%) closed on a bot HODL reversal at $609.23. The +13.3% bulk was already booked at the 5/22 trim. Bot flipped short same minute; I covered that briefly (-2.5% on the brief short) and reversed back to long at $626.14. Two-step exit on a monthly trigger, monthly trend still on.
· KAITO daily long +6.3% in 1 day. Bot HODL re-entry Sunday 5/24 17:14 at $0.4958, closed Monday 5/25 17:25 at $0.5270 in the same exit ping that cleared MORPHO, PURR, SAGA and ZEN. Same batch: PURR +0.6% on the win side.
· PMCSP model account closes. ATO 5/26 9:30 AM at the 60% target (+$777), GD 5/27 9:30 AM at the 50% target (+$62). Model account at $104,119, +4.12% running since the April 14 start. Methodology color; every entry and close posted in Notes in real time.
What didn’t
· Thursday 5/28 long legs cut in the same morning window. FET weekly long -12.0% in 1.9 days, JTO -10.1%, ICP -9.2%, FIL weekly long -7.8% in 0.6 days, AR -3.2% in 2.7 days. The long side gave back while the short book paid; twelve wins to five losses net on the morning batch. Same one-sided follow-through per cohort as the rest of the week.
· Wednesday afternoon five-leg long cut, 20:07-20:17. All losses. EIGEN -11.7%, VVV -9.4% (5/21 entry, the longest of the cohort), SUI reverse long -8.4%, SNX -5.8%, NXPC -3.5%. These were the bot’s Sunday-evening longs (EIGEN/SNX/NXPC/WIF/AR/FET opened 5/25 18:10) plus the SUI manual reverse from Sunday morning. The morning short book carried the day, the afternoon longs gave a chunk of it back. Net read: signals fired both ways, follow-through one-sided per cohort, conviction stays reduced.
· 1:11 PM small cover, three legs. BLUR daily short -2.3%, AVNT daily short -0.6%, WIF daily long -0.6%. Marked at the 1-minute close at the call. Small, owned.
· APEX weekly long stopped -10.6% in the 08:34 cover window. Re-entry from 5/23 10:21 at $0.3617, closed at $0.32322. Weekly trigger didn’t hold. Stop placement was the cover, no discretionary override.
· Monday 5/25 17:25 long-cut batch, three losses across five legs. SAGA -9.0% on a same-day bot entry that didn’t hold (in 10:43 at $0.0258, out same evening at $0.02345), ZEN -1.9%, MORPHO -0.3%. KAITO +6.3% and PURR +0.6% offset on the wins side. Net loss low single digits across the five.
· Monday morning 11-leg short cover, base risk per leg. All small losses, range -0.8% (SUI short, flipped back to a manual long at $1.0487) to -3.9% (PNUT). Bot’s late 5/24 evening bearish_detach entries that didn’t catch the move. Bank and free the slots was the read.
Framework read
The bull/bear factor model at week’s close: 2015 analog intact, crude headwind still off the book since the April 17 weekly expiry, no re-entry triggered this week. The Monday assumption (Iran framework follow-through pulls crude lower and lifts the energy-inflation cover) looked like the week’s biggest miss through Wednesday, when the Islamabad Memorandum draft (US lifts the naval blockade, Iran restores Hormuz shipping within one month, 60-day clock to a UN-binding resolution, conditional on “tangible verification”) rallied crude +3.78% to $90.34 on Logan’s “molecules aren’t available” read over Lufthansa CCO Dieter Vranckx’s “no summer jet-fuel risk” call. It resolved Thursday: the 11:29 AM Axios US-Iran 60-day ceasefire framework flipped crude negative, pulled pump gas down 15.2c/gal on the week, and lifted stocks to record highs. Early by a couple of sessions, not wrong. The Thursday-night re-escalation (Iran missile toward Hormuz, the IRGC turning ships back) kept the premium from fully bleeding out, so the crude swing variable stayed live the whole short week.
Tim West scorecard ran BULL 6 / BEAR 5 / NEUTRAL 7 by Wednesday morning, BULL 6 / BEAR 5 / NEUTRAL 7 still as of Thursday’s 08:06 read, all 18 feeds reporting. Thin spread, deep neutral bucket; low-conviction regime read. Bull-side carry is Copper +7.2%, China/EM +24.5%, Small Cap +6.5%, PMI 52.7, Consumer Confidence 49.8, Yield Curve 0.48. The Copper print is firing on a supply squeeze (Hormuz / energy), not pull-through demand, against Energy $90.3, Inflation 4.0% YoY, Junk Spreads 2.72, and P/E 28.2x on the bear side. Stagflation in a bull jacket, as last week. VIX 16.7 with crude +3.78% and Hormuz war premium live is the most uncomfortable bull signal on the board, complacency the macro tape doesn’t justify. The 5/26 BTC hedge expresses that exact tail-hedge cue. Scorecard via Tim West (Key Hidden Levels).
Gold regime note. Gold and crypto sold off together Wednesday afternoon on the rates picture, not the de-escalation. Gold -2% to $4,411.99 reversing the morning +1.21% at $4,480. Bob Savage’s read: the unresolved conflict is lifting global inflation expectations and rate-hike odds, with dollar-priced commodities dragging other central banks along. Gold no longer trades as a war-headline safe haven; it now sells with crypto on anything that raises rate-hike risk or removes rate cuts. Apply that to any cross-asset frame next week.
PCE Thursday 5/28 came in cooler than feared. April core PCE was +0.2% MoM against +0.3% expected, headline +0.4% versus +0.5%, though year-on-year stays sticky at 3.3% core and 3.8% headline; spending rose +0.5% on flat income, so the consumer is leaning on savings. Q1 GDP missed at 1.6% versus 2.0% expected, and claims rose 5k to 215k. The reaction leaned dovish at the margin: the 10Y fell 2.8bp to 4.453%, gold dropped 1.5% to $4,392 on the softer core print, and UBS came out calling the market’s read of Fed hawkishness overdone (it sees easing resuming in December and a high bar for any hike, S&P target 7,900). Williams stayed two-sided, productivity gains arguing for a higher real rate while the energy-driven inflation hit “peaks over the next few months.” That energy line is the tell: the inflation pressure is mostly the Iran crude spike, which is exactly why Thursday’s Axios crude reversal matters past the headline. Net, the print took the edge off the year-end hike skew without resolving it.
Covered-call cycle stays on, now across two underlyings. 5/27 16:47 opened ETH 2300C exp 6/5/26 at $3.20 premium (delta 0.061, underlying $2,054.06 at entry, signal score 73/100); 5/28 21:46 added a BTC 80000C exp 6/5/26 at $70.00 premium (delta 0.055, underlying $73,675.63, signal score 79/100). Both sit well out of the money into the 6/5 expiry. Spot ETH held sub-$2,150 and BTC stayed in the low $70Ks through the week. Standard Chartered’s note this week put ETH in the Amazon-after-the-dot-com-crash bucket, expected to catch up over time, the structural read under the spot base the calls are written against. Income side does the work.
Next week setup
The Islamabad Memorandum carries a thirty-day Hormuz reopening lag and a sixty-day UN-binding clock, both conditional on the “tangible verification” Iran put on the draft. The Axios MOU layered on top is agreed at the negotiator level but still waits on Trump’s sign-off, and Iran’s senior leadership reportedly hasn’t blessed it either, so the weekend cuts both ways: ratification is a risk-on gap, a collapse or another Thursday-night-style escalation is risk-off. Crude is the gauge. It flipped negative on the framework Thursday, then caught a bid on the night’s re-escalation; a follow-through close lower confirms the cover variable coming off, a hold above $90 re-arms the headwind side of the factor model. Friday’s Deribit expiry is the near-term vol event ($6.5B BTC at $75K max pain, $1.34B ETH at $2,250, BTC realized vol at a nine-month low going in), and the BTC hedge is already banked, so there is no perp hedge carried into it.
The going-in book for next week is deliberately not a directional call. Crypto has divorced from the equity trend and trades more like a proxy for how macro players are positioned on rates, the same sensitivity that flipped gold this month. The tell is the CME line: anything CME lists a future on, BTC, ETH, SOL, is at the mercy of leveraged macro hedgers and moves on positioning rather than fundamentals, which is how ETH posts strong on-chain metrics and still gets sat on. The names with no CME product, HYPE the cleanest example, are free to trade their own fundamental case, and that gap is the disconnect. That is the dispersion, and it is the regime the bot’s long/short book runs best in. The book is signal-driven, not a call to short names for carrying CME futures: it shorts whatever triggers a short and longs whatever triggers a long. It just pays better right now because alt-to-BTC correlations have widened out. They ran near 1:1 pre-2018, when a basket of alts was really just BTC traded several times over, and have drifted structurally lower since, partly off this same CME-macro dynamic working on the majors. The caveat: a sharp sell-off snaps everything back to correlated, and the dispersion edge thins.
NVDA daily long from 5/6 at $204.50 still on, daily stop $195.82, monthly stop wide; the monthly trend stays valid, so a post-signal retrace is fine, the one real risk being a top right after barely tagging the first target (TV chart https://www.tradingview.com/x/TwSWKcHS/). ZM long from 5/19 at $97.62 ran near the 52-week high after the print, position held. On the rest of the equity watchlist, Cerebras (CBRS) tagged its first target Tuesday (https://www.tradingview.com/x/wnci6Y1U/) and 3D Systems (DDD) ran +17% the same afternoon (https://www.tradingview.com/x/BpT8zEFL/), while CRM based into this week’s earnings but failed to break out for now (https://www.tradingview.com/x/789rxMwY/).
SPY is carving a P-shaped profile with the monthly trend active, the best-case path landing the low-to-mode target near $867 by the September expiration, the direction the monthly still points. HYPE spot core held, perp sleeve at 6% on the 5/22 trim; it absorbed Thursday’s roughly $230M token unlock (4.02M HYPE, concentrated in four wallets) and held, basing with weekly and monthly trends still up (https://www.tradingview.com/x/tSxeLloL/), and HypeStrat (PURR) joins the Russell 2000 and 3000 after the June 26 close. ZEC monthly long re-established at $626.14, ~5.2% size. FOMC blackout starts Saturday 6/6. Last full pre-blackout week ahead; any Warsh or board-holdover remarks land on fed.gov. Next FOMC June 16-17 (Warsh’s first as Chair).
Crypto’s market-structure backdrop kept improving even as the near-term tape stayed hedged. Trump came out against Gensler and for a “future-proof digital asset market structure that cannot be undone,” and Friday morning the SEC cleared Paxos to clear and settle securities on-chain, a first. The Clarity Act still has an August runway. None of it changes the reduced-conviction, hedged near-term stance, but it is the structural bid under the spot bases.
Notes members got the exact levels mid-week. Next Monday the cycle starts again.
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