Dear FSC Friends,
The work of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles has always been grounded in a simple conviction: Markets, economies, and societies move in rhythms shaped by real constraints. Over the past year, that conviction has only strengthened.
Our recent Market Forecast 2026 was the most successful we’ve ever hosted – not just in participation, but in coherence of insight. Across very different analytical styles, a common understanding emerged: We are operating in a late-stage debt and liquidity regime that inflates financial asset prices while steadily hollowing out the real economy. Cycles are being stretched, distorted, and prolonged – not resolved.
Artificial intelligence has entered this environment not as a corrective force, but as an accelerant. AI rewards scale, capital intensity, and data ownership far more than labor or productive capacity. Rather than narrowing inequality, it risks deepening the divide between financial markets and lived economic reality. Policymakers, faced with the consequences of excessive leverage, are increasingly incentivized to protect asset values – further extending cycles and reinforcing distortions.
For investors, this has clear implications. Asset strength should not be mistaken for economic health. Timing risk matters more than ever. Durability, real assets, and exposure to physical and biological constraints deserve renewed attention. Cycles are no longer just signals of opportunity – they are warnings about regime.
Against this backdrop, the Foundation is organizing itself for the next phase. Planning for FSC’s Cycles in the City ‘26 conference is well underway, with strong early momentum and an expanded agenda that reflects where cycles thinking must now go. After the success of the 2025 conference, I didn’t expect we could move faster – but with our footing secure, 2026 is shaping up to be even more substantive.
Our technology platform is also evolving in service of this mission. Expanded data coverage, deeper integration of long-term public series, and new approaches such as cycle swing momentum are all designed to bridge analysis and action, without losing sight of underlying realities.
The FSC archives project also continues to advance, with plans for a spring internship to help preserve and activate nearly a century of cycles research. This work matters because cycles are not a trading trick – they are a language of systems.
Ultimately, the Foundation’s role is not to replace human judgment with computation, but to align natural intelligence with artificial intelligence – tools that sharpen perception rather than obscure it. Cycles remind us that no abstraction escapes reality forever.
It’s about time,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
As we close out 2025, it’s clear that this past year marked a genuine watershed moment for the FSC as to the clarity of our purpose. So many attendees to Live in '25 told me that they felt like they had really found their tribe. That matters. Communities like this don’t appear by accident.
With that in mind, I’m pleased to share that Cycles in the City '26 will take place May 28-30, 2026, in New York City. We will once again gather in a setting designed for depth rather than scale – an environment where real work and real connections can happen.
Last year I was pleased to discover that Cycles in Science and Nature turned out to be our most popular day. This year, we’re drawing on that inspiration to lean even more strongly into serious scientific and conceptual exploration. The unifying theme for 2026 will be: cycles as natural intelligence.
Much of the focus in the cycles community, understandably, is on cycles as a predictive tool. What many of many of us are starting to glimpse, however, is that cycles are also indicators of health and even of learning in natural systems. Meanwhile, in today’s increasingly artificial systems, natural cycles are often suppressed – to the advantage of a few and the detriment of many.
At Cycles in the City 2026, we will explore cycles not merely as forecasting tools, but as visible signs of an underlying order – patterns through which life, markets, and natural systems learn, adapt, and respond over time. Markets will remain a crucial domain of study, including a focused examination of the approaching 18.6-year real estate cycle peak in 2026, but they will be situated within a broader inquiry into time, learning, and intelligence across systems.
Looking Back on 2025
Beyond the conference, 2025 was a year of consolidation and maturation for the Foundation:
- The Masters Working Group continued to deepen into a serious professional forum, distinguished by the quality of its dialogue and participants.
- Cycles TV expanded our reach while helping clarify what kind of conversations FSC is best suited to host.
- Our technology and analytical capabilities advanced meaningfully, reflecting a shift toward more rigorous, institutional-grade work.
- The ongoing archives project reaffirmed that FSC’s past is not something to be admired from a distance, but a living resource for present discovery.
Most importantly, the Foundation has grown into something more coherent: a place where cycles are studied not as mechanical curiosities, but as expressions of how systems behave in time – and a community of people seeking new insights and discoveries as to how our world really works.
Looking Ahead
In 2026, FSC will continue to focus on three guiding priorities:
- Cycles as Natural Intelligence — advancing a serious, non-reductionist understanding of
cycles. - Community and Participation — fostering a culture of shared inquiry and contribution.
- Application with Integrity — exploring markets and other systems scientifically.
Thank you for being part of this community and for helping shape what the FSC is becoming.
It’s about time,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
Over the past month, the Foundation has been alive with progress, participation, and purpose. I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all of you who are contributing to the work of the FSC. Your time, insight, and commitment are what truly move us forward. There’s much to report, so let’s get to it.
Masters Working Group – The Place To Be
The Masters Working Group (MWG) continues to be the beating heart of the Foundation – a meeting ground for serious traders, thinkers, and cycle practitioners.
This past month, MWG members enjoyed private sessions with Michael Howell and Larry Williams – two masters with deep, real-world experience and hard-won wisdom. Their presentations were outstanding, and the Q&A was rapid fire. What I found especially gratifying was that both Michael and Larry came away impressed by the caliber of our MWG Members. It’s truly a smart group – and getting smarter all the time.
Next up: Jake Bernstein joins us for what promises to be another masterclass in experience and technique. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be part of a living laboratory of cycle analysis, the MWG is the place to be. MWG Members also receive access to recordings of past sessions.
Join the Masters Working Group.
Analyst Pro – Evolving in Real Time
Last week, Lars and I unveiled the newest suite of Analyst Pro capabilities. We’ve added a new proprietary indicator – Cycle Swing Momentum – along with massive new global data coverage spanning more than 150,000 securities.
There’s simply nothing else like the Analyst Pro platform for cycle analysis, and we’re thrilled to welcome all our new members.
Cycles TV
Our Cycles TV channel on YouTube continues to deliver outstanding free content. Lars interviewed Andrew Pancholi, and I spoke with Robert Prechter. We also welcomed back Jake Bernstein, who offered two excellent masterclasses on seasonality and cycles. Lars explored business cycles, P/E ratio cycles, and Bitcoin cycles, while I continued my big-picture series on monetary policy and liquidity cycles.
Cycles in the City ’26 – Save the Dates
We’re already preparing for next year’s Cycles in the City, returning to our superb venue in New York City on June 11–13, 2026. The space was such a success last year that we couldn’t pass up the chance to gather there again. One of its greatest strengths is its intimacy – it naturally fosters peer-to-peer engagement and genuine participation.
Attendance will be limited to keep the experience focused and interactive. Expect an official announcement in December – but for now, mark your calendars. This one will be special.
Looking Ahead
It’s been over six years since we undertook the revival of the FSC, and it’s deeply gratifying to see that hard work producing real momentum and engagement. That means a lot to me.
I believe that cycles are an expression of natural intelligence unfolding in time. That intelligence doesn’t exist without you – our Members. Action, taken in time, produces knowledge.
I was recently discussing this with our Market Strategy Director, D.R. Barton, who shared a story about a great trader he knew through the late Van Tharp. This trader, after exhaustive preparation before every trade, always said, “I know that I don’t know anything until I put down my first five.”
He was speaking to a profound truth: Everything changes once you enter the arena. Eisenhower has a similar take: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” And we heard echoes of it again this month from Larry Williams during an MWG session. When I pressed Larry on the real secret to his success, he invoked a rodeo metaphor: “It’s being able to stay on the bull for eight seconds.”
All action in time requires endurance, involves risk and pain, and ultimately yields new knowledge and insight.
That’s a truth – and a cycle – that the FSC stands behind. We can and will continue to study cycles, but what matters most is the feedback loop of action and learning in time. That is the cycle we can only complete with you, our Members.
With appreciation,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
Cycles are everywhere. They pulse through markets, nature, and history itself – and this month at the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, we’ve seen that truth brought to life in remarkable ways.
We were honored to welcome Michael Howell, founder of CrossBorder Capital, to the Masters Working Group, where he and FSC’s own Lars von Thienen shared groundbreaking research on how global liquidity cycles drive Bitcoin’s rhythm. Their findings underscore a critical moment for markets and reflect the caliber of dialogue happening inside the MWG – our most elite membership circle, where top thinkers and practitioners gather twice a month.
Meanwhile, FSC Board Member Bill Sarubbi has laid out a timely market outlook for September 2025. Drawing on decennial patterns and historical seasonality, Bill shows why the odds favor higher equity markets into January – and why the final stretch of September may present opportunity.
We’re also delighted to bring back Navigating Seasonal Cycles with Jake Bernstein, highlighting three high-probability patterns you won’t want to miss. This series continues to be one of our most practical tools for traders and investors who want to put cycles directly to work.
Looking further back, Ron William reminds us that the Foundation is standing on nearly a century of cycles research. His reflections on Edward R. Dewey’s pioneering vision show how FSC continues to carry that torch into new frontiers, from markets to natural cycles. In his monthly vlog, Ron also explores how eclipses – symbolically and psychologically – can coincide with turning points, raising important questions about the months ahead.
Taken together, these contributions remind us of the richness of cycles research. From liquidity and Bitcoin to eclipses and equity markets, cycles provide a unifying framework that helps us see beyond noise into rhythm. As members and contributors, you are part of a living tradition that is both timeless and urgently relevant.
Let’s continue to build on that tradition – together.
Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
This past month at the Foundation for the Study of Cycles has been a vivid reminder that cycles aren’t just abstract patterns — they are the pulse of life itself. My recent interview with Brian Von Herzen of the Climate Foundation drove that home powerfully. We explored how restoring natural cycles is essential to the health of ecosystems, and how those same principles echo through economics, climate, and society. If you missed it, the conversation is well worth your time.
We’ve also been advancing our own tools for uncovering and tracking cycles. Analyst Pro Members now have access to our new Watchlist Scorecards — a feature designed to make cycles insights more actionable than ever.
On the publishing front, Edward R. Dewey’s classic Cycles: The Mysterious Forces That Trigger Events is about to reach a new audience, with a Korean edition soon to be released. It’s exciting to see Dewey’s work continue to find fresh resonance across cultures and continents.
Momentum is also building in our research community. Janne Miettinen, whose work was featured at our recent conference, has just received a three-year grant from the Radiance Trust, a strong vote of confidence in the relevance and rigor of cycles research.
And our Masters Working Group continues to set a high bar. Last month we hosted Valérie Gastaldy, whose market insights were nothing short of riveting. With only six spots left — and prices set to rise, now is the time to join this extraordinary circle of practitioners and researchers. Book a call with D.R. Barton to find out if the MWG is right for you.
Cycles connect the dots between disciplines, eras, and worlds. As a Foundation, we’re committed to not only studying those patterns but restoring them where they’ve been disrupted. Let’s continue building this community of people who see — and act — with the rhythm of reality in mind.
Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
Last week’s conference in New York City was nothing short of historic. For three days, over a hundred passionate cycles analysts, market veterans, and curious minds came together in an unprecedented gathering. It was the largest in-person event the Foundation for the Study of Cycles has hosted in decades – and the energy was electric.
We heard from true legends: Peter Eliades, Larry Williams, Sherman McClellan, Jake Bernstein, Bill Sarubbi, and many more. The depth and breadth of insights shared affirmed just how alive and essential cycles analysis remains – not just for markets, but for understanding the rhythms of the world itself.
What struck me most wasn’t just the brilliance of the presentations, but the sense of long-overdue reunion. It felt like a dam had broken – cycles people from all walks of life were eager to speak, share, and connect after years of isolation.
The enthusiasm for the FSC was overwhelming, and it’s clear that the Foundation’s work is resonating more than ever. New technologies, fresh collaborations (including with Tom Kehler and CrowdSmart), and a renewed commitment to long-term fundamental data are positioning the Foundation at the leading edge of the next wave of cycles research. The future has never looked brighter.
If you were there, you know the magic. If you weren’t, now is the time to plug in. Become a member, upgrade your involvement, or simply help spread the word. The Foundation is more than a repository of knowledge – it’s a living, breathing community. And together we’re building something lasting. Let’s ride the cycles ahead, not just as observers, but as active participants in shaping a more rhythmically aware future.
Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
I am getting more excited every day about our upcoming conference in NYC. It’s been gratifying to see so many serious cycles researchers heed the call to gather in person for the first time in over 30 years.
I think a lot of cycles researchers feel like they’ve been working in the wilderness and everyone’s been waiting to see if this thing is for real. It's definitely for real, and it’s getting more real by the day. If you’re serious about cycles, you really owe it to yourself to be there.
Speaking of getting real, I’m grateful to Neil Howe for introducing us to one of those cycles researchers who has been working in the wilderness – Janne Miettinen. If you haven’t seen my recent interview with Janne, go watch it now. Here is what Neil had to say about Janne’s work in his recent book The Fourth Turning is Here:
An estimated two-thirds of all mammalian species exhibit multi-year cycles of population expansion and contraction. These range from roughly four years for lemmings and voles to ten years for snowshoe hares to thirty-eight years for moose. Most of these cycles appear to be unrelated to climate, predators, or anything else in the environment. More intriguingly, many are linked to a matching behavioral pattern – for example, cycles of aggression, herding, migration, mating, and stress.
In effect, these animals act differently depending on when, during this repeating calendar, they are born. While biologists aren’t sure what drives these cycles, some have speculated that they may be triggered by periodic changes in the animals’ production of hormones and neurotransmitters and that these changes may be synchronized by pheromones and behavioral cues. No one has any idea whether this triggering does happen or could happen in humans. Research on this question, even for small mammals, remains in its infancy.
Those of you who have been reading these Chairman’s Letters for a while will recall that I have repeatedly talked about the work of Copley Amory and the Matamek Conference on biological cycles, which took place in 1931. Mr. Amory was the first Chairman of the FSC and in many ways was as big an influence on the FSC as the founder Edward R. Dewey.
Janne’s work on hormonal cycles is of great interest to the FSC because it aligns so well with the work of the Matamek biologists. It’s also of great interest to me personally because I believe that biology is gradually becoming a more important science to the world today than physics.
I was reminded of this while reading Andrew Lo’s Adaptive Markets. Mr. Lo, the head of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, had this to say: I hope to convince you that biologists should be reminding economists, “It’s the environment, stupid!”
Biology has been in the DNA of the FSC from day one and it is finally resurfacing again. Thanks to the support of a generous donor, Janne will be joining us in NYC. I hope you will too. It’s going to be an incredible environment!
Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
From our founding, the FSC has been concerned with a bigger picture about how we understand our world and how we make decisions – individually and collectively. At the heart of that concern is a sense, as Dewey put it, that “something is missing” from our current analytical approaches.
I was reminded of that this month when I interviewed prominent climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry (premieres Sat., Mar. 29, at noon ET). Like Dewey, Dr. Curry is a consummate and accomplished professional in a scientific field that is characterized by deep complexity. Dewey’s field was economics. Dr. Curry’s field is earth and atmospheric sciences – aka climate.
What Dewey saw in his time and what Dr. Curry sees today is that scientists are people too and that people are inescapably political. Politics, by its nature, tends towards oversimplification because people want certainty – they want answers. Politicians, of course, are happy to oblige, even if the answers aren’t certain at all.
Real problems arise when politicians invoke science as a justification for policy because you can rest assured that there’s more politics involved than science. As John M. Barry says in his #1 New York Times bestseller, The Great Influenza, “When you mix politics and science, you get politics.” Politics demands simple causal explanations of things. It demands the idea that the politicians are in control and can effect change. Meanwhile, the real world is more complicated and doesn’t often comply with simple command and control solutions.
A case in point is the findings of both Dewey and Dr. Curry that a lot of the changes we observe in complex systems, like economies and climates, can be explained by natural variability. When it comes to climate, for example, there are regular oscillations in ocean currents and there are regular oscillations in solar activity.
Neither Dewey nor Dr. Curry claim that natural variability is the sole causal explanation for changes in economies or climates. Both just gently encourage an exploration of natural variability as part of the model building in their respective fields.
Yet, an emphasis on natural variability is routinely minimized in causal explanations where science and politics inevitably mix. Why? Because natural variability, as an explanation, doesn’t lend itself to the political messaging of, “I can solve this problem for you.” It doesn’t drive votes, dollars, status, or power.
Dewey and Dr. Curry, and many other scientists like them today, understand that we need both classic linear mechanistic science as well as a science of natural variability – i.e., a science of cycles.
I’m proud of the market-focused research of the FSC, including our cycles technology, this newsletter, our YouTube content, and our upcoming conference. Frankly, there’s not a better value out there for the money. I’m also excited about the opportunity to slowly but surely expand the FSC’s focus to the bigger question of how we can make great individual and collective decisions in the face of real-world complexity.
Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
The past two weeks I did a deep dive into Dalio’s debt cycles and Michael Howell’s global liquidity flow cycles on Trading Market Cycles (live on Cycles TV on Tuesdays at noon ET). It was a sobering and informative exercise – one that also reminded me of one of the highest purposes of the FSC.
First, the sobering facts and cycles. The debt crisis is here, it is serious, and there is a limited liquidity window in which we can do something about it.
Long-term cycles in 10-year Treasury yields tell us that there is likely to be upward pressure on yields for decades to come. That means higher servicing costs on an already barely sustainable debt load. Howell’s 65-month cycle in global liquidity flows together with the 18.6-year real estate cycle tell us that there is a limited window over the next 12 to 24 months to get our financial house in order.
It's all a sobering reminder of why our founder, Edward R. Dewey, started to study cycles in the first place: to understand what caused the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing depression and to uncover what was missing from traditional early-20th-century economics.
I see a lot of vindication of Dewey’s prescience in our world today. In many ways Dewey was a pioneer of what we call behavioral economics today. He was willing to look beyond the “command and control” approach to economics and think more in terms of probabilities and statistics. This isn’t an easy thing to do today, let alone 80 years ago when Dewey started his work.
Most importantly, Dewey’s quest to understand the causes of the Great Depression was driven by his burning desire to ensure that it never happened again. How did he hope that could be accomplished? Through an awareness of cycles.
The data and technology available today would be unfathomable to Dewey. Yet, we know exactly what he would do with it. He’d be studying it, collaborating with others on it, and sharing the work as widely as possible.
So shall we.
Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director
Dear FSC Friends,
The FSC is hosting Live in '25, its first in-person cycles symposium in over 40 years. We will be gathering in New York City from June 12 – 14, 2025. As the Chairman of the FSC, I obviously didn’t need to buy my own ticket, but I did buy my own ticket and I want to tell you why.
I have a sense of urgency about our times. I think you do too. As I see it, the time for a reckoning with cycles is at hand. As Neil Howe pointed out in his masterful book The Fourth Turning Is Here, we have run roughshod over the very idea of cyclical forces for centuries now, and we are, consequently, increasingly subject to the very cycles whose existence we try to deny!
There is no doubt that cycles are intrinsic to our world. It’s not even a question I bother to debate any longer. Cycles are literally everywhere and in everything. The question is whether we are going to recognize and acknowledge cycles and, ultimately, learn to work with the cycles.
Our own times are not dissimilar to the times that first gave rise to the Foundation for the Study of Cycles (FSC) nearly 90 years ago, in the second quarter of the 20th century. While, thankfully, we are not experiencing the same physical upheaval of two world wars, we can certainly all sense the deep conflict coursing through our world today and the risk of that latent conflict erupting into the open again. We are also keenly aware of the existential ecological risks.
The parallels between our times and those of our founders have become more apparent to me over the past year due to my exploration of the FSC’s physical archives. These explorations have led me to realize that, while the founding of the FSC was originally in 1941, an important event for the FSC actually took place a decade earlier on the Matamek River at an old Hudson Bay trading post in Quebec, Canada.
In the summer of 1931, Copley Amory, an investment partner at Loomis, Sayles & Company in Boston, gathered a small group of research scientists for the Matamek Conference on Biological Cycles in Quebec, Canada. Amory had converted the trading post into a summer home and retreat.
I had long assumed that FSC Founder Edward R. Dewey had been in attendance at the Matamek conference but, as it turns out, he was not. He only discovered the official report from this conference in a library many years after the conference took place. He writes about his discovery of these proceedings early in his book Cycles: The Mysterious Forces That Trigger Events:
About the time when I had been anxiously interviewing economists to discover the cause of our Great Depression, a Boston financier named Copley Amory had organized an international conference on biological cycles that was held at his summer estate in Matamek. Twenty-five of the world’s leading biologists assembled to compare notes about cycles in wildlife. As I read the transcript of their findings, a strange excitement took hold of me, for I learned a fact known to every sportsman, namely, that game is sometimes plentiful and sometimes scarce. But what impressed me was that the periods of abundance, and of scarcity, often came at amazingly regular time intervals. Cycles!
I discovered something else on that fateful day when the transcript of the Matamek Conference came to my attention. I learned of the cycle work that had been done by C. N. Anderson of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Anderson had discovered that sunspots act as if they were influenced by a variety of cyclic forces similar to those that Hoskins and I had been discovering in business figures and also to those that the biologists had discussed at Matamek. Cycles in business! Cycles in wildlife! Cycles on the sun! And, in many instances, these cycles had the same length and went up and down together. Now here was something basic, something fundamental, something more profound than I could envision. For if two or ten or a hundred separate and seemingly unrelated things fluctuated in cycles of identical wavelength and turned at about the same time, it was unlikely that they were as unrelated as might first be supposed. Either some of them were causing the others to behave that way, or something hitherto unknown and unsuspected was causing all of them to go up and down together. Do you see the mystery, the excitement? A detective story on a cosmic scale!
I saw at once that we were confronted with a basic scientific problem that could be solved only by linking together economics, biology, and astronomy—and perhaps several other sciences as well. The problem had to be attacked on a broad front.
Soon thereafter, Dewey and Amory joined forces to attack this basic scientific problem on a broad front. Dewey was, of course, the first Executive Director of the FSC, and Copley Amory was Chairman of the Board.
We have a rare complete edition of the Matamek conference proceedings in the FSC archives, and it reminded me about the “why” of the FSC. We also have a rare opportunity to pick up the flag that Dewey and Amory planted together back in 1941 and carry it forward into the 21st century.
That is why I bought my own ticket to FSC's Live in ’25 conference. I hope you will too.
Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director