18 July 2026 · Field note
A seasonal window is not the intermediate cycle
A market can firm in the same months most years and still be late in a longer swing. Write both lengths or you will mix them up.
Rice, gold, and the baht all carry seasonal talk in Bangkok. Some of that talk is earned. A tendency for gold to firm into the new year can show up often enough to deserve a line in the journal. It is still not the same object as the intermediate cycle, which may run many months and does not care that the calendar page has turned.
Two lengths, two lines
On the Silom desk we force them onto separate lines. Line one is the seasonal window: the months when this market has often leaned one way, written as a range of weeks on the calendar, not as a promise. Line two is the intermediate swing: trough to trough on the weekly sheet, with its crest and its length. If you only have room for one sentence, you will eventually use the seasonal sentence to excuse an intermediate count you have not done.
A seasonal window can sit inside an intermediate advance, inside a distribution, or inside a decline. The window does not promote the larger swing. In the morning room we see this every January with gold: the seasonal bid can appear while the weekly count is already old. People who track only the season buy the window and ignore the crest that printed two months earlier.
What the intermediate swing needs
An intermediate swing needs the same evidence as any weekly cycle, only stretched. You still want troughs a stranger could see. You still want a crest between them. The length may be thirty or forty weeks instead of eighteen. Do not average the last three lengths and call the average a forecast. Write the three lengths in a column and let the eye do the work. Averaging is how an outlier gets to hide.
Dollar-baht is a useful Bangkok example because the seasonal stories are loud and the weekly sheet is often dull. Dull is informative. If the intermediate swing is a tight, aging range, a seasonal week does not turn it into a new advance. The Tuesday sheet either leaves the range or it does not.
- Name the seasonal months on their own line
- Measure the intermediate swing from weekly troughs, not from the festival calendar
- Keep the last three intermediate lengths visible, unaveraged
- Ask which object you are talking about before you say the word cycle in company
The morning chart room is where this separation gets practice. Three markets, one hour, both lines updated or the sheet is not finished. The intensive goes slower and builds the intermediate count from the first trough up.