Iran Talks Collapse: A New Surge in Inflation? | Macro Mondays: April 13, 2026

0:05Mikkel Rosenvold:Hello out there. It's Monday again. It's time for Macro Mondays here at Real Vision. My name is Mikkel Rosenvold. I'm your usual host. And as usual, I'm joined by you, Andreas. Happy Monday out there.

0:17Andreas Steno:Happy Monday, Mikkel. It's good to be back in Copenhagen. So, yeah, thankfully I made it out of Greece without too much turbulence.

0:24Mikkel Rosenvold:Yeah, not quite the same weather you had down there, but it's coming along. We're getting into springtime. Happy times. Hopefully we can bring some happy tidings here as well for all the hungry investors out there listening to our show. We have a jam-packed show today. As usual, Andres, we're going to be talking even more about the state of Hormuz. I know you're sick and tired of this topic, but it keeps on giving.

0:50Mikkel Rosenvold:Also just touching on the CPI report from Friday, trying to talk some actual macro once in a while. So if you want to hear more macro talk, we have our State of the Union show for Real Vision Pro tomorrow for the month of April. Could you just give us a address before we get started with our agenda today here, a few headlines of what we're going to be talking about tomorrow in the State of the Union show?

1:10Andreas Steno:Yeah, so it is our monthly guided tour around the world of macro across all of the big tradable geographies. So basically the US, China, India, the Eurozone, you name it. and a bit of a cliffhanger. It actually looks much better than I would have anticipated a month ago, given everything that has happened in between. So we'll use our now-class technology across the world to give you a guided tour on where to allocate your money, which is obviously also the important thing to watch in this environment, right?

1:47Mikkel Rosenvold:Yeah, absolutely. So that's tomorrow at 11 Eastern on Real Vision Pro. On Thursday at 9 a.m., And we have a very interesting show, 9 a.m. Eastern, that is. Joel Bland of Real Vision is going over his beginner's entry-level portfolio. They had some real big winners over the past few weeks. He went long as Cytos Space. I didn't know that. I had to be honest. I think it made almost 80%, 90%. UnitedHealthcare been doing really well as well. So this is usually for the Connect here on Real Vision. But we are beginning to make his show available in front of the paywall for everyone here on YouTube. and on X as well, I suppose, once a month.

2:24Mikkel Rosenvold:So that is coming up on Thursday at 9 a.m. I really recommend that show if you're getting into investment or if you're new to the Real Vision universe. That is a very, very good gateway drug, I would even say. To complement all that, obviously, we have our usual free flagship reports, including our Trade Ideas portfolio on Friday. We're working on a brand-new sub-page on Real Vision where you can follow our portfolio in real time. It's going to make it even easier for us to do the Friday piece and dress, so no complaints here. We're just ironing out a few details there, and that will be up and running very, very shortly for you to navigate and make things even more actionable.

3:02Mikkel Rosenvold:That's for the approach here on Real Vision as well. So just goes to show you, we try to be as actionable and concrete as possible. But that also means, as we say every week, that our ideas and recommendations might be...

3:14Andreas Steno:Sometimes it may be good, sometimes it may be shit.

3:17Mikkel Rosenvold:That's the way it is. Okay, Andreas, I want to start off, obviously, with the greatest meme of the week, the evolving strategies around the Strait of Hormuz, because I think lots of investors were shocked that, perhaps not shocked that the Islamabad talks collapsed over the weekend. We can get a bit back to that. But Donald Trump's response, which was not to threaten to annihilate the Persian civilization, but to block the Strait. I mean, a week ago, he was ready to almost nuke Iran to get the straight open. Now it's blocked. And we can just show this.

3:53Andreas Steno:Or is it? That's a good question, right?

3:56Mikkel Rosenvold:That's a good question as we speak. So it's a good thing we're sending this live. So Andreas, maybe allow me to give my interpretation of this and why I actually think this is quite a good idea. And then we can get back to the market reactions. Also, a look at the oil situation, which, you know, you're very much on top of Andreas. So the way I see this, just very, very quickly, blocking the straight is obviously Iran's greatest leverage. It's the best card they hold in their hand. But it is one of those things that if you abuse it, you lose it. Because the more the Iranians play this card, the more tolls they put on, the more they block the straight, the greater the incentive everyone else has, all the opponents have, to find alternatives.

4:39Mikkel Rosenvold:So the higher the toll, the better the business case to build for the Chinese to build new pipelines across the desert somewhere. The better the business case for other countries to ramp up their oil production, et cetera, et cetera. So I think what Donald Trump is doing here, so the Iranians have been making bilateral deals, allowing a lot through very, very delicate balances, exactly because they know they can't abuse this card. They need to cash in. They need to use it right now. But they also know that there's an expiration date to this if they abuse it. So in my view, what Donald Trump is doing here is that he is abusing this card for the Iranians, if you get what I mean.

5:16Mikkel Rosenvold:He's forcing their hand here, forcing them to do this to trigger all the responses down the line. Now, let's get back to the long-term stuff, Andres. Actually, the way I see the market response was quite mild today. How do you view that?

5:30Andreas Steno:Yeah. I mean, as per usual, when stuff like this happens over the weekend, we kind of get the worst of the price action right around the open bill of the futures. And, you know, watching the price action live right now, we have Nasdaq a little bit up. We have Russell up on the day. And the oil is close to sneaking below 100 again. So you could clearly have a few worse. and you know it's currently nine minutes past 10 a.m eastern so i guess the blockade is now nine minutes old at least that's the official communication right but it's not immediately clear whether it is blocked uh and you know we haven't heard anything uh by by the time of this show around how they are going to enforce this because that's one of the things that's you know I kind of pondered about yesterday or had discussions with myself about how are they going to block it?

6:34Andreas Steno:I mean, are they going to shoot at ships? Are they going to board and seize them as we've seen with the Shadow Fleet, for example? It's not immediately clear. So my best guess, and I'd like to hear your take on this, is that this is once again a part of the negotiations. It is once again designed to bring the Iranians back to the table. And I think, you know, having watched Trump's negotiation tactics for a couple of years in a row now, I think they'll present them with a weaker deal once they get back to the table. And then let's see whether they actually agree on something. But my best guess is that this is not a situation that will last for particularly long.

7:19Mikkel Rosenvold:No, no, I agree with you completely, Andres. I'm very curious to see how they will enforce this. It will probably not get to that point. They will find some narrative to bit by bit escape this. But I still think it's a clever move because it puts the Iranians on the spot sort of strategically here. It forces their hand a little bit and it's something else. I mean, it would sound really stupid if Trump had just reiterated the same threats of bombing perishes and whatever. So now he's trying to then – now we're blocking the trade. You block the trade. We block the trade. I mean, it flips the script a little bit.

7:55Mikkel Rosenvold:And I mean, it's no surprise that the talks are collapsing. That happens. It happens over the weekend. These talks are supposed to go the length. I mean, if the Iranians don't squeeze as every last drop out of this as they can, they're going to have very, very big problems domestically. The same goes for the U.S. So these are negotiations that are meant to last almost a distance, if not over the distances we're usually seeing. So they'll sit down and talk again. They will revisit some points, et cetera. Let's see. I still think it's going to be a very, very hard sell for Donald Trump to reopen this war now that he has closed it down, sort of.

8:34Mikkel Rosenvold:They are still deploying troops to the region. So they are keeping their leverage. They're keeping their options open. But I think it's going to be a very, very tough one for Trump to reopen the war, so to speak. We might see some bombing runs towards the end of these negotiations. You shouldn't be surprised at that. Some further ships being knocked out, some bridges, what have you. But the boots on the ground scenario can be completely rolled off now. And the question remains, Andreas, does that even matter for markets? If this doesn't matter, the U.S. threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz, that is even beyond the usual worst or the historic worst case scenario for geopolitics, then what even matters for markets in this anymore?

9:16Mikkel Rosenvold:Or do we just need to watch the traffic through the strait here?

9:21Andreas Steno:Yeah, of course we need to watch the traffic through the strait. And maybe we can bring up this chart on the oil flows through the strait of Vamoose and out of the region overall. because you know on saturday right before trump threatened to block the strait i would argue that we had almost normalized oil flows in total out of the region we had four vlccs so very large crude carriers exiting the straight of amuse to the persian gulf and they were each carrying roughly two million barrels of oil um you know i haven't i got a lot of questions have you counted that no but you know that's the ocean intelligence right um and therefore we had yeah between friends roughly eight million barrels flowing out of the strait on saturday on top of that we we obviously have the roughly seven million barrels a day uh through the pipeline in Saudi Arabia.

10:30Andreas Steno:We have one and a half million barrels a day through the pipeline in the Arab Emirates. We have, say again, between France, a couple of million barrels from the strategic reserves being released daily and so on and so forth. So you can see this colored bar chat. We're actually, if we used Saturday as an example of a running wheat, we were actually very close to 20 million barrels at A coming out of the region plus some of these temporary solutions with strategic resources etc. So we are close to being back to normal. A couple of things to note here. The blue collared area here the 8 million they're very much up in the air now.

11:17Given

11:18Andreas Steno:the blockade right? This is exactly

11:20Mikkel Rosenvold:what he's trying to blockade Trump. This is exactly so Iranian shipping to China.

11:25Andreas Steno:Yeah, exactly. And on top of that, even the Iranian oil, which is not included in the 8 million, actually. It was Saudi and Iraqi oil. Probably also up in the air. So I think worst case, if you move to page 8, a full week of blockades would take us closer to 11 to 12 million barrels a day from what on Saturday it appeared to be close to 20 again or maybe even above 20. So, of course, as you can see here, I don't see this as a long-term blocking. I don't think the US can live with that either. So one week scenario, short 10 million barrels a day, that's bad for a week. but manageable. So a quick break in your regular programming.

12:27Andreas Steno:If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called Prepare for 2030. I think you've got five years to make as much money as possible. And this guide will help you navigate what's coming. The link is in the description. Download it now. If we move back towards this normalizations area already in week two and week three, then I think we can survive this easily. The issue is, of course, if this blockade remains intact for long. I think it was yesterday, one of the airport commissioners in the Eurozone wrote to the European Commission that we're three weeks away from running out of jet fuel or at least have to ration it.

13:13So again, as I've said,

13:16Andreas Steno:basically since the onset of this war, sure, we can live with a few weeks of this, but we of course cannot live with it for long. And therefore, as you also alluded to, sure, you can use this blockade card but you cannot use it for long. So it is of course designed to bring up the pressure. Well, the Iranians can't.

13:38Mikkel Rosenvold:In theory, the US could if they could sustain this and if they're willing to sustain it. It becomes very, very interesting when you get down to the specific implementation of this because what you're looking at is Chinese-bound ships. China is the importer of this oil. So to some extent, depending on the setup, they would be the owner of the oil on these ships that have left Saudi and Iraqi ports. So it's not Iranian ships that the U.S. are going to be boarding or blocking or whatever they're going to do. It's Chinese ships. That is something else. That might spice things up before the Beijing meeting in May if the U.S.

14:17Mikkel Rosenvold:keeps this up. I heard someone ask me if Trump was setting this up to keep it running until that meeting. I don't think so. That would be a huge undertaking and require enormous levels of patience by Trump. Because at some point the Chinese are, you know, initially the Chinese are going to say, what's the easiest way to solve this? That is to force Iran to make a deal. They could probably do that. But again, to have U.S. soldiers board a Chinese ship might also cause other reactions by China. Let's just keep it at that. So I agree with you completely. To me, this is not a long-term thing. It's going to cause a lot of volatility this week, unless we already later today get some hopier message from Trump as we used to.

15:01Mikkel Rosenvold:So expect a lot of volatility here. It doesn't really change the equation in my view, that this situation is mostly solved because Iran has all the incentives to do bilateral deals, especially with China. And as long as China gets these barrels out, then supply is supply, then the oil is going to move around the system. Eventually, we're going to end up with some oil here in Europe at some point. We're going to feel the inflation, but we are going to get the oil that we need.

15:27Andreas Steno:But Miguel, please move back to page seven, because I think it's probably less than two weeks ago, I wrote this article that went incredibly viral on the internet on how to actually balance the oil market within three or four weeks. and i made this analogy and i actually have to thank you for it uh that many of these energy pundits were suffering from what i labeled this fauci syndrome right but they they have so much vested interest in sounding the alarm on a running basis because it gives them a lot of air time uh in the in this crisis environment that they almost cannot see the forest for the trees if you know what i mean in terms of finding solutions no matter how you look at it out of the 20 million barrels coming out of the region pre-war we found bypassing solutions for the equivalent of 50 of that more or less already by now first of all that decreases the leverage uh for iran because i mean if 50 is bypassed in a month what about in six months or 12 months or 24 months down the road right maybe the straight of humus will become irrelevant at some point it will and yeah at some point it will unless they strike a deal right so they know that they have a window of opportunity and i think they're slowly but surely realizing that they have to capitalize on it um also compared it's a little bit difficult to read here but compared to the incredibly upbeat base case i made for week one two and three in this scenario uh if we take saturday as the goal post um and if we don't look at today with the u.s blockade in place we were actually ahead of that schedule and when i released this every single energy pundit called Miyamura.

17:33Andreas Steno:Every single one. So I think things are more manageable than what you read in the mainstream media.

17:42Mikkel Rosenvold:Yeah, also because what we don't count in here, because it's very, very hard for us to count, is lower demand. Yeah. And obviously here in Europe, we're not going to be lowering our demand. We're going to still be filling up our trucks. We're going to be running everything. People are going to be firing up their barbecues. I'm going to be doing that this weekend as well. since we finally have some decent weather here. I don't mind paying whatever the equivalent of$100 a barrel is for my barbecue grill, which runs in gas. But we are hearing stories about factories in Vietnam, in Bangladesh, shutting down or lowering their capacity, taking days off because it simply doesn't make sense for them to produce at this level.

18:23Mikkel Rosenvold:So if oil gets much higher than the$100 mark, people start to get very, very creative. both in terms of limiting their demand, limiting their consumption of oil, but also finding alternative routes. So I'm still having a hard time seeing permanent oil levels above 100 because it simply means that some people will stop burning oil. And that will also obviously work to prolong the effect of the storages. So Andreas?

18:53Andreas Steno:Yeah, Miguel, we need the egg chart now. Do you have the egg chart? I have the egg chart. Because as someone wrote to me on X yesterday, are you seriously comparing X to oil? And I was like, yeah, but not really. But the point is still very relevant in an oil context as well. So look at it this way. And it holds very true for most commodities. every time there's a scarcity say one or two years down the road you end up in a glut and the exact same thing has happened in the egg space and I know nothing about egg production but it's just so incredibly interesting that from levels that were out of the atmosphere basically for eggs yeah was it 12 months ago it was right at the beginning of Trump's reign to basically record low egg prices today and no one talks about it right because the problem is solved and everyone's you know so my best guess is that we'll sit here in 12 to 18 months and the oil price will be very low and no one will talk about it that's my point if you're an oil producer

20:20Mikkel Rosenvold:So right now, if you're in Nigeria, what are you doing? Are you limiting your production? No, you're firing on all cylinders. Every bit of oil you can get out there is going out there. Every politician in this country is now working on the assumption that$100 is the new normal, that we're going to have increased public risks, and then they find out. This is capitalism, Andres. This is supply and demand. I mean, sometimes it's as simple as that to have these cycles. So, Andres, I alluded a little bit to inflation earlier. So obviously, we have to touch on the inflation report. Now, the reaction I saw a lot of this week was, yeah, but this is not the whole picture.

20:55Mikkel Rosenvold:We can't really use these numbers. I still found it very, very interesting, Andreas. Quite a soft report on the core, but obviously, overall, 3.3 on the year is an elevated inflation picture. What's your takeaways here from this CPI? We have the decomposition here. It's maybe a little bit too small for people to read, but yeah.

21:18Andreas Steno:yeah i mean 11 energy inflation on the month uh even if you include electricity and pipe gas which have haven't really been impacted yet in the us uh so fuel i love 30 gasoline up more than 20 um it was a nasty energy inflation report uh one of the nastiest i can recall but outside of that go ahead and cut interest rates. That's basically the main takeaway here. Food prices down. Rental prices are pretty contained. Of course, you see some spillovers to transportation, but jet fuel is up, right? So airfares are obviously up and stuff like that. And maybe worth highlighting as well, Biden talked a lot about it.