Lumber futures on Chicago Mercantile Exchange have officially wiped out all gains for the year on Monday. Prices have been sliding for 44 days, down at least 60% from the record high of $1,711 per thousand board feet from late April/early May. As we've noted multiple times, the great lumber bubble has popped. 

The drop in lumber prices has been quite dramatic and is a classic commodity blowoff top. The quadrupling of prices over the last year has been bad news bears for builders and do-it-yourselfers. Even with prices around $685, prices are still more than double pre-COVID prices. 

Since the early 1990s, lumber futures have been range-bound between $200 to $400, with some minor exceptions when prices jumped above $600 in 2018. 

The latest free fall in prices suggests the physical market is resetting after a historic lumber shortage was spurred by a perfect storm of factors during the virus pandemic.