Navigating the 2026 Cycle Convergence

Market practitioners have long grappled with the limits of analysis.

Market practitioners have long grappled with the limits of analysis. As early as the 1960s, when veteran market strategist Robin Griffiths began his financial career, many investors recognised that fundamental analysis alone was too complex for any individual to master. Attention shifted toward understanding how prices move, giving rise to technical analysis and, over time, a broader appreciation that markets evolve in cycles.

These insights align closely with the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter, who described capitalism as a recurring process of expansion, contraction, and renewal rather than a linear progression. With experience, this cyclical perspective broadens.

Joseph Schumpeter

Markets are not isolated systems; they reflect patterns found throughout nature itself: from biological to longer seasonal rhythms and economic waves. The challenge is not to identify cycles, but to interpret them. Multiple cycles operate simultaneously, sometimes reinforcing trends and at other times obscuring them.

Historically, the most consequential market periods occur when several major cycles converge. When cycles rise together, they tend to generate sustained expansions with broad participation. When they decline together, markets experience heightened volatility, structural repricing, and economic restructuring. These episodes are not failures of the system, but represent necessary phases of renewal, during which excesses are unwound and the foundations for the next expansion are laid.

Crucially, cycle convergence rarely produces a single turning point. Our analysis suggests a sequencing of inflections rather than an immediate resolution. Shorter business and political cycles appear likely to trough closer to the end of the decade, while the longer 90-year structural cycle, often associated with institutional change and shifts in capital allocation, may not fully reset until the early 2030s.

Historically, markets tend to recover ahead of deeper structural repair, helping explain why transitional periods are marked by false starts and elevated volatility before a more durable expansion emerges. As 2026 begins, evidence suggests markets are entering such a convergence phase. Our Roadmap Signature Model (Figure 1) integrates long-wave inflation and debt dynamics, medium-term patterns of the business cycle, US political and liquidity cycle, ranging from 3-5 years (Figure 2).

In parallel, the Strauss–Howe generational framework places the current period in the late stages of a ~90-year “Crisis” cycle, historically associated with systemic macro dislocation. These crisis phases tend to express through financial instability, geopolitical confrontation, and rising tail risks, including climate and resource-related shocks, as existing institutional frameworks lose legitimacy.

A close historical analogue is the 1929–1945 crisis window, which began with the 1929 market crash and structural failure of the prewar financial system, unfolded through the Great Depression, and culminated in the Bretton Woods postwar reset. This sequence marked a decisive transition from laissez-faire capitalism to a managed industrial world order, embedding state coordination, monetary discipline, and multilateral institutions as stabilising mechanisms.

The prior echo cycle occurred roughly 90 years earlier (1857–1866). It was triggered by the Panic of 1857, a systemic financial shock that exposed the fragility of the agrarian-credit economy. The crisis escalated into the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), a geopolitical and institutional rupture and resolved through the industrial transition of Reconstruction (1865–1866). This period marked the terminal decline of the agrarian order and the emergence of industrial-state capitalism, characterised by centralised authority, industrial production, and modern financial infrastructure (Figure 3).

Projected forward, the current cycle follows a comparable structure. The 2019–2023 period functioned as the initial system shock, revealing institutional fragility across public health, fiscal capacity, supply chains, and governance. The 2024–2026 window represents a convergence phase, during which multiple pressures, notably debt saturation, geopolitical fragmentation, technological displacement, and climate stress. Each macro driving force overlap, but without yet producing a definitive institutional reset. Historically, this phase corresponds to the pre-resolution compression seen in the late 1930s and early 1860s.

The 2028–2032 window is projected to represent the core regime-reset phase of the current 90-year cycle. Analogous to 1938–1942 and 1861–1865, this period is expected to feature decisive policy realignment, reconfiguration of monetary and fiscal frameworks, and consolidation of a new governing paradigm. The thematic transition is likely to involve a shift from the late-industrial, financialised global order toward a digitally mediated, AI-enabled, and security-conscious governance regime, with expanded state coordination and redefined notions of sovereignty and economic stability.

Taken together, these perspectives suggest current conditions reflect a broader regime transition rather than a routine market correction. This cyclical backdrop coincides with a structural shift in the global order. The world is moving toward a multipolar system, reshaping trade relationships, capital flows, and reserve management across regions.

Within this context, the US dollar’s dominance is not disappearing, but weakening at the margins. Geopolitical fragmentation, the rising salience of sanction risk, and incremental diversification by emerging-market central banks are collectively reducing the dollar’s uncontested role as the sole anchor of the global system. These forces point toward a more pluralistic monetary landscape rather than a binary regime change.

Cross-asset behaviour increasingly reflects these dynamics. Commodities, particularly precious and industrial metals, have emerged as relative leaders consistent with periods of currency uncertainty and shifting liquidity regimes. Energy markets and oil stand out as structurally constrained yet undervalued; a combination that historically coincided with late-cycle leadership during regime transitions. Further tactical implications will be addressed in forthcoming RWA premium updates.

Importantly, cycle analysis does not offer precise forecasts. Its value lies in providing a probabilistic framework for navigating environments characterised by elevated uncertainty, nonlinear risks, and structural change (Figure 4).

The practical investment implication is therefore a shift recalibration of priorities: from return maximisation toward capital preservation, from static allocation toward flexibility, and from prediction toward resilience. Periods of cycle convergence have always tested investors, but they have also laid the groundwork for the next expansion, rewarding those positioned for durability rather than precision. For a more in-depth discussion of our cycle framework, see Mapping the Markets published by the Economist. Expanded research and follow-up analysis will be released in subsequent publications.

Best wishes navigating the cycle ahead!

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Summary Biographies

Robin Griffiths, FSTA

Robin Griffiths is Senior Advisor & Investment Strategist at RW Advisory.

Robin has served as Head of Multi-Asset Research & Advisory at the ECU Group. He was previously Chief Technical Strategist at HSBC Investment Bank for 20 years, before becoming Head of Global Asset Allocation at Rathbones, and then a director and technical strategist for Cazenove Capital Management. Robin was a Partner of WI Carr and Head of Technical Analysis at Grieveson Grant.

Robin is a committee member and former chairman of the International Federation of Technical Analysts, and former chairman, now fellow, of the British Society of Technical Analysts. Robin has been a member of ECU’s Global Macro Team for over 20 years. Robin has won several Technical Analyst awards for his research.

Ron William, CFTe

Ron William is founder & CIO of RWA, an award-winning, macro-tactical, research and advisory firm, to a wide range of financial institutions & professionals, producing differentiated alpha, insightful idea generation and unique market timing.

He specialises in global, multi-asset, top-down framework, grounded in behavioural technical analysis, driven by cycles, based on the expanded “Roadmap” signature model of veteran market technician Robin Griffiths, originally published in Robin’s book “Mapping the Markets.” Additional insights also featured in their peer interview exchange hosted by Real Vision, T3 reports and Halkin letter contribution.

Driven by impactful education, Ron trains financial institutions and serves on the board of a variety of professional societies, notably as MENA director, education committee member of the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA) and Development Director at the Foundation of the Study of Cycles (FSC).