Will 2026 Be Your Year of Opportunity?
For some traders, 2026 will be about learning new techniques and building a foundation. For others, the knowledge is already there – the real work now is refining execution and tightening up their trading system.
I previously shared a quote that has stayed with me from Atomic Habits by James Clear:
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
That idea frames how you should approach 2026. Goals are important, but systems are what carry you through when conditions change or emotions get involved. Improving your system – and consistently following it – is where real progress is made.
Often, the challenge isn’t analysis. It’s follow-through. Life gets busy, distractions creep in, and it’s easy to miss a trade you’ve been stalking for weeks. Ironically, the day you don’t check back in is often the day price finally reaches your level and moves away without you. This is why structure, routine, and process matter just as much as market knowledge.
I finished 2025 stalking a potential setup in Sugar (SB-SpotV). The initial structure was a 50% retracement, with the possibility of daily swing ranges clustering together. This alone wasn’t a trade – it was simply a starting point. The key was follow-up: watching to see whether additional swing range milestones would develop and strengthen the setup.
Chart 1
Ultimately, Sugar never quite reached the 50% level – at least not yet. Instead, it has traded sideways in a tight range since early December. With no further structure developing, it has now been removed from my stalking list.
That’s not a failure. This is what a lot of trading actually looks like. There is far more waiting than action. Many setups never complete, and that’s perfectly fine. Patience and selectivity are skills in themselves.
With recent attention on Oil – particularly following Donald Trump taking Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro into US custody – I turn my focus to the current double-bottom structure forming in the market.
During the COVID period, Oil famously traded into negative territory, although this exact pricing doesn’t appear on any contract-month chart. After some digging, I found one reference showing Oil reached approximately –$37.63 per barrel. Using this as the all-time low, and 147.27 as the all-time high, a Ranges Resistance Card reveals something interesting: the current double bottoms are sitting very close to the 50% retracement level!
Chart 2
Adding to this, we’ve just seen a near-perfect repeating weekly swing range into the false-break double bottom. Notably, the 2025 high also appears to have found resistance around the 62.5% milestone of the same Ranges Resistance Card.
Chart 3
Oil now looks to be working higher, and if this proves to be a high-quality setup, there should be multiple opportunities to trade the long side as the Double Bottom continues to unfold.
Happy trading,
Gus