Lark Davis Monthly Debrief

Intro: A Note from Lark
House-Keeping
September Macro Update
September Notable News
TOD: Winner
TOD: Loser
Community Q&A

Good evening, and welcome back to our second monthly “debrief” for September 2026. These debriefs come at the end of each month, and it’s an opportunity for us to step back and discuss the markets from a zoomed-out perspective, and engage in more direct conversation with you, the reader.

We hope this provides value, and thank you again for going on this journey with us.

Lark and the Team

Got a question for next month's Community Q&A? Submit it below.

This message has been hammered home to our premium subscribers, but not to our free newsletter subs. So here it goes.

We think Bitcoin and the larger crypto markets are in a new “accumulation zone” right now. So for the coins that I’m long-term bullish on, now is the time for me to buy.

To illustrate the point, above is the “Psychology of the Market Cycle” chart. Generally speaking, the accumulation zone is the period of time after an asset in question has hit its cycle bottom, but before it begins its next major ascent. The chart above calls it the “Disbelief” phase; and again, it’s the phase that happens after prices have formed a macro bottom, there’s still lots of boring sideways grind, but prices remain low enough that purchases are seen as value buys.

Bringing it back to the personal, I’m long-term bullish on Bitcoin, I think $57K was most likely this cycle’s bottom, and I think that any purchases under $90K are accumulation zone value buys. Therefore, I’m trying to stack as much spot as I can now, because I don’t want to be chasing prices with the herd when Bitcoin is back in six-figure territory.

The big news in August was Bitcoin pumping north at the very time the four-year cyclists were expecting one more push south. This move caught most market participants off guard (including me), as evidenced by the massive short liquidations.

And you’ll remember that in last month’s debrief, we thought there was a 65% chance that $57K was the cycle bottom, given Bitcoin’s pump back into the $70Ks. Additionally, we said this probability would rise to ~85% if Bitcoin could break above its lower high of $82.7K that printed in May.

Well, that’s exactly what happened on September 21st. Bitcoin surged again, hitting $87K, and it’s been getting daily closes above that May lower high ever since.

So from a technical perspective, this latest move is a really big deal, because it signals that the bulls have taken control of Bitcoin’s price back from the bears. And this move opens up the accumulation zone, which we discussed in the section above.

Here are the two most notable events that occurred in September, both of which affect our markets and give us some valuable insights.

The Fed Hikes Rates and Bitcoin Pumps

Perhaps the most interesting (and surprising) event this month was the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates, and then Bitcoin reacted by pumping to break its prior lower high!

So the Fed met on September 16th and raised rates 25 bps to 3.75% - 4.00%. Now market participants were hotly debating beforehand if this hike would occur, but the CME FedWatch and prediction markets were heavily tilted towards a hike (90% chance). And that’s exactly what we got.

But what’s wild is what Bitcoin did after. On the day of the announcement, Bitcoin was trading at $75K, and five days later, it was trading at $87K.

The only explanation we can deduce from the above is that the market had fully priced in a hike beforehand, and once it occurred, the bad news had “been cleared away”, and buyers on the margin felt ok about continuing their purchases. Or to put it another way, the hike was a “sell the rumor, buy the news” event.

Now all of this is important to remember as we head into the Fed’s October 28th meeting. Current odds for a 25 bps hike are 37%.

US Treasury Yields Keep Pushing Higher

The second major event this past month has been what’s happening in the US treasury markets. Yields keep pushing higher, with the US30Y at 5.6% at the time of this writing. This is a 24-year ATH.

Higher bond yields mean lower prices. So high yields mean that bond investors are selling off their treasuries; or to put it another way, investors are demanding a higher premium to loan the US government their money.

And why are investors demanding a higher premium from the US government? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but most center around US inflation, debt, and fiscal issues.

Now we know that this story is critically important to the economy and our markets (US bonds are the center linchpin in the global economy), but we don’t know exactly how our markets will be affected. In fact, we don’t think that anyone really knows. There are just too many variables and unknowns to compute.

But we’ll keep following this story, and we’ll do our best to cut through the fog and find any edge with how our markets might react in response.

Trade: WTI Long   ·  Entry: $87.50  ·  Exit: $100  ·  +14%

Our Trade of the Day winner for September was a long on WTI for a 14% gain. So . . .

• - the top chart is the signal we posted to the Inner Circle Discord group on August 31st,
• - the second chart is our Trade of the Day (WTI long), which we published in the free newsletter on September 1st; and,
• - the third shows the outcome. The WTI take profit hit at $100 on September 10th.

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Trade: META Short   ·  Entry: $663  ·  Exit: $694 (SL)  ·  -4.7%

Our Trade of the Day loser for September was a META short for a 4.7% loss. So . . .

• - the top chart is the signal we posted to the Inner Circle Discord group on September 14th,
• - the second chart is our Trade of the Day (META short), which we published in the free newsletter on September 15th; and,
• - the third shows the outcome. Our META stop loss got hit at $694 on September 21st.

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