It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like COVID! | Macro Mondays: May 11, 2026

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1:03Mikkel Rosenvold:New week.

1:07Andreas Steno Larsen:Big moves. You ready?

1:21Andreas Steno Larsen:to inflation every chart every trend get the story get the setup from the open to the end they try to be as actionable and as honest as possible but keep in mind that their predictions

1:36Mikkel Rosenvold:might be sometimes maybe good sometimes maybe sometimes maybe she she she she she she she she shit shit and summertime is maybe good summertime is maybe shit it's macro mondays

2:09Mikkel Rosenvold:hello there welcome to real vision welcome to macro Mondays. We have a great show for you today. We're going to be talking about why Andreas is reminiscing 2021 all of a sudden and whether we should worry or not about the Hantavirus. We're also going to touch upon the inflation numbers tomorrow, the Xi Trump meeting and everything else that's going on. So great show for you today. My name is Mikkel Rosenwald, your usual host. And as usual, I have with me Andreas Dino. How are you doing, Andreas?

2:39Andreas Steno Larsen:Good, I'm not suffering from the Hantavirus yet No,

2:44Mikkel Rosenvold:no, very happy to hear that We have a great show today We're going to touch upon the Hantavirus Not too much, I promise you guys that But a little bit, we've got to have some fun at least Andres, you're doing another show This Wednesday, I just wanted to plug It's at 3pm Eastern time The monthly State of the Union show I'm skipping it this time, but what can people expect from that If they're pro-tier subscribers At Real Vision

3:06Andreas Steno Larsen:So we're going to look into the inflation wave, whether we should expect it to also slowly but surely filter through to other goods than the energy basket of the consumer inflation basket, right? we'll have inflation out from the US tomorrow highly anticipated report and it probably won't look pretty so we'll spend most of Wednesday's show looking into how this will pass through to everything from foreign exchange markets to interest rate markets to the whole macro picture across the globe so a very important one to watch

3:40Mikkel Rosenvold:Absolutely on Thursday we have Shooting the Shit with Roland Julianne at 12pm Eastern so lots of good stuff to look forward to to look forward to if you are a subscriber at Real Vision. Remember, this is our weekly free show where we give you a sneak peek into our view on the world of macro. We have a bit of fun and we try and give you some ideas of how to navigate this crazy, crazy world of ours. Things are moving very, very fast. This is obviously the exponential time age show. Remember that even though we try to be extremely actionable and accurate in our updates and our ideas that things might be...

4:16Andreas Steno Larsen:Summertime may be good, sometimes may be shit.

4:20Mikkel Rosenvold:That's the way it is. Okay, Andreas, let's kick off with one of our rules. We have a lot of rules of thumb here on the show. One of them is the Fauci rule. And we've used that. We've mainly applied that to all analysts during 2026 here because, you know, Andreas, remembering back to the COVID days, you had a period of time towards the end of COVID where all of the experts were sort of clinging on to this sudden wave of attention that they had, including Mr. Fauci here. And to poke some fun at some of the oil analysts, we've seen some of the same during the Iran war crisis. Some geopolitical analysts as well, I'm not afraid to take that.

5:00Mikkel Rosenvold:But now we're back in Fauci territory, in true Fauci territory. Dr. Fauci has been quoted for saying that it might be time to start wearing masks again and maintaining social distance. So how do you rate this, Andreas? What are the chances that we get into a new lockdown and all the turmoil that came after the last pandemic here, Andreas?

5:26Andreas Steno Larsen:So thanks for allowing me to don my inner armchair virologist here. It's not necessarily my area of expertise to put it like that. Having said that, I think it is very unlikely that we'll enter lockdowns this time around. That would just put it like that. I basically think we should spend our time on other topics than the hansa virus. For what I've been able to gather so far,

5:53Andreas Steno Larsen:it's incredibly unlikely that this is going to spread fast between humans. And therefore, I think we have six confirmed cases on Earth and I think the first case broke roughly 10 days ago now. So it's not like I'm scared of the exponentiality in what we've seen in terms of confirmed cases. It's obviously a very nasty virus, also given the empirical evidence that we've been able to gather so far. But let me just put it like this, and it could be my famous last words. I wouldn't spend a second discussing this from a macro or market perspective. and yeah, I probably should refrain from commenting on what Fauci said.

6:35Mikkel Rosenvold:Absolutely, yes. I want to get in one thing because we had a few questions during the week on what is the Hantavirus bet? Aside from Moderna doing 30 % or so, you could probably guess that. The real sleeper bet lies here, Andreas. We've already heard all across X that Ivermectin is obviously the solution to Hantavirus as well. It's the solution to everything from a common cold to AIDS, or I don't know. This is a place where Europe and US is very, very different, Andreas, because when I talk to Europeans, almost everyone laughs at this ivermectin stuff. In the US, it's quite big. I've been hearing about people building up stocks of ivermectin to combat whatever the next pandemic might be.

7:17Mikkel Rosenvold:So possibly not the worst bets of all to get into that, but it's not part of our portfolio. Let's just leave it at that, Andreas. No, I've been poking a bit of fun also in the title of this show that is beginning to look a lot like COVID. It has nothing to do with the Hanzo virus, to be honest, Andreas. It's much more to do with the outlook in US dollar liquidity and the macro outlook. So tell me, Andreas, why is it that you are reminiscing 2021 suddenly?

7:44Andreas Steno Larsen:So, I mean, I actually had these thoughts about everything playing out right now, looking a lot like 2020, 2021, before we even heard about the Hansa virus. So it was kind of an odd coincidence that we suddenly had a virus to compare it to as well. But if we look at the setup right now, we have the so-called non-profitable bets in Wall Street. All of the, say, tech companies not making any substantial revenues or profits for that matter, yet outperforming stocks with incredible cash flows, for example. That's a thing we saw back in 2020, 2021 as well, with a lot of non-profitable bets outperforming classic value bets.

8:37Andreas Steno Larsen:And we've seen that to a large extent, especially over the past six weeks. We've seen signs of recycling of Donald liquidity to an extent that I haven't seen outside of, say, April, May of 2020, right at the peak of that panic QE during the first lockdown. And it is very related to this so-called ESLR reform, the supplementary leverage ratio reform, which basically allows banks to run more leverage without setting capital aside. What does that mean? Well, it basically means that They set aside a lot more balance sheet to low risk transactions, such as repurchase agreements in treasuries. Why is that important from a liquidity perspective?

9:30It's very, very important to watch repo trends as they basically tell you how easy it is to recycle the same dollar into more than one.

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10:41Andreas Steno Larsen:asset think of it this way a repo transaction is basically a short-term borrowing transaction i agree with the bank to post collateral for example a treasury and in return for that treasury i get short-term funding i can then use that short-term funding to buy a new treasury And then, again, same logic. I can use that treasury I just bought to borrow against in a repo transaction. So you can actually recycle the same dollar, albeit with a haircut every time. And the more balance sheet the banks set aside for this, the easier it is to buy a lot of treasuries with the same dollar. And we've seen an incredible increase in the repo transaction activities since this ESLR reform was put in place around 1st of April.

11:35Andreas Steno Larsen:So I think this is, at least to some extent, reminiscent of what happened during 2020. and therefore, it reminds me of some of the mechanics of 2020. It's not like that we have a lockdown. It's not like that we have a meaningful pandemic. I don't think we'll get one from the hands of virus either, but we have this cocktail of very easy access to money paired with, in my opinion, a very underappreciated reacceleration of the US economy. I mean, we got another decently strong labor market report on Friday, right? It was the second consecutive strong report, which we haven't seen for a year or so.

12:16Andreas Steno Larsen:And it kind of goes against all of the doomsaying that we've seen from energy pundits since 1st of March, right? That we see an acceleration now. But it rhymes very well with what we're observing in our now casting. And at the same time, we have a Federal Reserve that is pretty reluctant to do anything about the inflation spike that we've seen that is pretty reluctant to tighten policy into the acceleration of the economy that we're seeing. So in that sense, we have this easy monetary policy relative to inflation that we also saw back in 2020, 2021. And it will probably end in an inflation wave, also in other goods than energy.

12:58Andreas Steno Larsen:But it may take, say, six to nine months from here for it to really show up in the U.S. economy outside of energy.

13:05Mikkel Rosenvold:And that's a very interesting similarity, because back then, you obviously had the big inflation wave, especially hitting in 2021, especially into 2022. also came from sort of an exogenous shock. Back then, it was obviously the pandemic. Today, we might not have a pandemic right now, but we do have that exogenous inflation shock, or at least the expectation of it, from the Iran war, from oil prices. So let's maybe zoom in a little bit on that, Andreas. What do you expect from this inflation report? And how far along are we in that expected tsunami of inflation?

13:41Andreas Steno Larsen:so we'll probably see peak energy inflation in this report at least unless things worse than in Iran meaning that we'll we'll get relatively close to four percent in headline inflation you know I'm currently looking into the details but probably between 3.7 and 3.8 in headline terms of course again very driven by energy this time around but we're also starting to You see some of the spillovers to the broader goods basket. For example, fertilizer prices are up a lot. We'll bring up the charts here, yeah. Slowly but surely, it is basically a pre-warning of what's going to happen to food prices, right?

14:22Andreas Steno Larsen:We know that there's a scarcity of fertilizer. I'm not the kind of pundit that expects that scarcity to show up in the West through actual shortages. I think we'll import the price increases and then leave some of the poorest emerging market countries without any supply. That's typically what happens. It's the cynical truth of the capitalistic world. So the whole notion that we'll see shortages is outright wrong, but we'll get some second order effects through prices. And we're going to see the first glimpse of that tomorrow. And I probably even underestimated rhetorically by calling it a glimpse because it will be quite nasty what we'll see tomorrow.

15:07Andreas Steno Larsen:But it is expected. I mean, it's not like it's truth bomb that we'll suddenly see energy inflation tomorrow, right? Everyone's been at the pump over the past month, right? So we know what we're dealing with, and we also know what the solution is. It just doesn't seem like Trump and the Iranian regime are able to agree on that exact solution. No.

15:32Mikkel Rosenvold:Let's dive a little bit into that, Andreas. We had less Monday hope, as you usually call it this week, mostly continually bad news. I'm still struggling to understand, to be honest, the exact dynamics of what's going on. And especially the US strategy is a little bit bewildering for me. At the end of the day, it's not really driving markets anymore. Yes, we have the inflation wave. It's not going to be completely over until we get a solution to this. It seems like both parties have more or less found common ground in sort of containing the disagreements or limiting them to the nuclear question, sanctions, and then obviously the strait.

16:15Mikkel Rosenvold:And so to some extent, we're back to square one before the war. They discussed sanctions and the nuclear question. Now we also have the Strait of Hormuz to tackle. So it is still a game of patience, essentially. We don't really see any signs of interventions or pressure from China, as you could have expected. They're just leaning back and letting this happen. The US is, I mean, yeah, you're going to have a hot inflation report. But again, Trump can live with that for a while. The Iranians are sort of trickling oil out. So no real pressure from either side, at least economically, financially, fiscally.

16:55Mikkel Rosenvold:Politically, it is becoming a little bit expensive for both sides. But yeah, not the biggest market driver, though. So a quick break in your regular programming. 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. What could be a bigger market driver, Andreas Geopolitics, this week, and it surprises me that it is so unreported still, is the Trump-She meeting. I know a lot of other stuff is going on. We're going to touch a little bit on Ukraine maybe in a moment.

17:32Mikkel Rosenvold:But Donald Trump is going to meet Xi. That's a big thing. It was the main Trump economic driver or driver of the economy in 2025, the trade war with China. We've heard some reports of what's going to be agreed upon. It seems like a much more well-prepared meeting than a lot of the stuff that happened in 2025. So I have my expectation. My base case is that this is going to be a very, very smooth meeting. A smooth meeting means it's not a big market driver. There is always the potential that Trump decides to throw in a hand grenade into the meeting, blow everything up, start a new trade war. More likely, I think we will see an announcement of board of trade, board of investment type of thing, some sort of framework for dealing with trade between these countries.

18:27Mikkel Rosenvold:There's been talk about naming it a G2 corporation. So crystallization, that this is the driving relationship of the world right now. And I mean, all that should be good for markets. I don't believe we're going to get a big solution on rare earths or chips. So that's still going to be there. We may see some kicking the can down the road, some extensions of the ceasefires that are running for another six months. I don't think we're going to see any solutions, at least not publicly, about these things, probably not about Taiwan either. We might get some wording that China is sort of obligated to bring down their trade surplus, et cetera, but that's just worse.

19:06Mikkel Rosenvold:At the end of the day, my base case is a relatively smooth meeting, some good news, and a framework to discuss these things. And usually, as we've seen with other of these geopolitical tension points, that's all market needs. To know that things are being handled, to know that things are now in a bureaucratic process, that's going to ease markets a lot. And it's going to take a lot of geopolitical risk out of this, in my opinion. So potentially a very, very bullish case, in my opinion, or perhaps more of a slow bullish case from this, obviously with the potential that Trump decides to throw a hand grenade here.

19:40Mikkel Rosenvold:So just how do you view this from a portfolio standpoint? Should you prepare for this? Should you just await the news? So what's your take here?

19:50Andreas Steno Larsen:so i mean practically speaking what we've done is that you know we we hold i think roughly 15 16 of the portfolio in what i call decoupling bets so companies that thrive if the u.s and the chinese economies drift further and further apart which even with you know some sort of g2 high-level agreement is still what's ongoing on a trend basis. That's unstoppable. And such companies will obviously do even better if they decide to throw hand grenades at each other or whatever you labeled it. So one example is obviously companies working with bringing the supply chain of rare earths back home to the West.

20:37Andreas Steno Larsen:There are a couple of obvious choices there. I think a couple of the domestically focused companies solar companies in the u.s are very valuable assets in a portfolio given the situation between the two big powers of the world um they've by the way been doing very well for us these solar bets over the past say six nine months and solar is still incredibly cheap relative to some of the other power sources that we've seen on a tier basically since 2025 to 2024 and onwards like nuclear fuel cells and stuff like that. So I think solar is a good US-China bet. I think rare earth supply chain bets are still very valuable.