Factory Reset: Trading the New Pattern

We are not trading the war itself. We’re trading what the war brought to light.

The early-2026 playbook had been clear enough: a weaker dollar, broader leadership, easier beta, and more tolerance for unproven risk. But that started to change before the first strikes on Iran were announced. The conflict simply made the break impossible to ignore.

Oil had already stopped behaving like a fade. The dollar was already reclaiming its role as the market’s preferred shock absorber, taking center stage back from gold. And instead of broad risk collapsing, capital snapped back toward the most proven, cash-rich parts of U.S. equities even as volatility rose.

Stocks, in other words, “un-rotated.”

That matters because this is not a clean, textbook war trade.