Michael Oliver argues the U.S. stock market is in a long topping process, long-dated Treasury bonds are vulnerable to a renewed selloff, and commodities—especially gold and silver—are in a structural reassertion phase that could benefit from capital rotation out of stocks and bonds.
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In this Thoughtful Money interview, Adam Taggart frames the discussion around recent stock strength, war-related commodity volatility, and whether higher yields and tighter financial conditions are building a more dangerous market setup. Michael Oliver, founder of Momentum Structural Analysis, says the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are in a topping process that has been developing since early 2024/early 2025, and he emphasizes that his momentum work already broke the long multi-year uptrend structure even though price has recently made fresh highs. He expects the current rally to be potentially transient and says a monthly close below his key momentum thresholds would confirm that the U.S. equity bull market is over and that a multi-year bear market could follow, with historical analogs suggesting very large drawdowns are possible. Oliver also argues that long-dated U.S. …
Tactically, the setup is fragile: if the S&P 500 and Nasdaq lose their current momentum shelves, the post-April rally looks like a last gasp rather than a new leg higher. The immediate risk is a sharp sentiment turn in equities alongside renewed pressure in Treasuries.
Over the next few weeks to months, the base case is a rollover in equities and a continued drift higher in yields unless bonds can rebuild a durable base. Confirmation would be price failing to hold the broken momentum structures; invalidation would be a clean reclaim of those levels and a stabilization in long-duration bonds.
Structurally, he is arguing that the post-2009 U.S. equity regime is ending and that capital is migrating into real assets. If correct, bonds stop being the ballast and commodities become the strategic beneficiary of a new allocation regime.
The U.S. stock market has been in a topping process since early last year.
He explicitly says the stock market has been topping for about a year and compares it to prior laborious tops.
The recent equity rally is likely a transient final spike rather than the start of a new bull market.
He says the new highs are transient and may be the last rally before rollover.
If the S&P 500 loses the key momentum structure near the red-line support zone, it will enter a real downside phase.
He repeatedly says closing below the structure means the downside is beginning for real.
The S&P 500 just had its best month in six years in April. Do you trust this rally? Are we in a new bull uptrend or do you look at it with skepticism?
Michael says this has been their view for a while: the S&P has been in a topping process since early last year. Tops are laborious (like 2000 and 2007) and don't happen in a spike. Their momentum work indicated the market needed one more rally before the final top, which just occurred. He believes the new highs are transient and if the market stalls and oozes back under 7,000, it'll be in a precarious position. The momentum chart shows a clearly broken channel with a flat floor structure; close below that means it's over.
Are you expecting that the momentum channel that the S&P and NASDAQ have been in since mid-2022 will continue to break down?
Michael says it could fail around there - the last down tick was just Friday's close (only one day in May so far), so they don't know where the monthly close will be yet. The key point is the red lines on both charts are screaming at them. The numbers adjust up with the 36-month average, and about 20% over that average is where you break the NASDAQ structure. Momentum almost always behaves like this before price indicates a mistake and heads down.
Is your current default assumption that in both the NASDAQ and the S&P we are in the process of that final spike before the topping process ends?
Michael says they'll see it as it develops. They look at lesser long-term metrics than annual momentum — quarterly, monthly, weekly, even daily — and assess rollover constantly. As it happens, they'll know.
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