Macro Mondays: September 29, 2025

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2:14Hello there. Welcome to another edition of Macro Mondays. My name is Miguel Osnaldo. I'm your usual host here in Real Vision and together with Andreas Deno, this is our weekly macro show. So Andreas, we're obviously sending live from Copenhagen and right now no drones to speak of. Would you wait to the office okay this morning? No drone attacks? Yeah. I just watched a press conference a bit earlier today and the head of the police force in Denmark looked towards the sky while addressing the media. Yeah, it was a very, very amusing press conference. But you're right. As far as we know, no Russian drones or drones from wherever this morning.

3:01No, no. Lots of big names in Copenhagen this week over the European Union summit. I don't think we'll be talking too much about that. I'll be covering that in the drill article a little bit later this week. But lots of great stuff to talk about, Andreas. We're going to be talking about the – or also some less great stuff, the government shutdown. We're going to be talking about cannabis, Lyftium, and everything else you need for a good life, essentially. But before we get to that, Andreas, just a reminder to all your listeners, this is our weekly free show to get the full package of analysis, research, and trade ideas, including our portfolio, our model portfolio.

3:36You need to sign up for Real Vision for more of that. Usually, Andreas, this is where we play our little jingle, our little disclaimer. But instead of that, I want to introduce the Simon Sinek quote of the week. I know you're a big Simon Sinek guy. This is not Simon Sinek, but it might as well have been. We need a little bit of philosophical depth to this show. I don't know if you've seen the trend on X currently where people post, this is my quant. And then they post a funny video. This is the best one, in my opinion. So this is my quant, the first video here, if we can get it on. if you put a pizza on top of another pizza you have two pizzas okay but if you stick lasagna on top of another lasagna you only have one lasagna

4:47Okay, Tristan, you're the one who went to business school. What do you make of this logic? I don't know, really. It's hilarious. Anyway, yeah. Just a little bit of philosophical depth there, Tristan. Let's get into macro now. We had this post from a listener about where we are in the cycle. I just wanted to post this. Hitch Fund stars are now making so much that they are hiring agents. Are people looking at hiring an agent address? Only AI agents. I'm still walking around the streets of Copenhagen without any... It could be a good bet for you with that green jacket, though. Let's see if that's on for next week.

5:33The good thing, and I've learned that lesson from visiting the U.S. a lot of times, right? you're allowed to don a much larger blazer in the U.S. than you are here, right? You need slim fit blazers in Copenhagen. And I'm not really capable of donning a slim fit at the moment. So, you know, I've gained some weight after being ill earlier this summer. So, you know, I'll probably have to go to the U.S. to don that one. Great stuff, Andreas. Okay, let's move on to the hot take of the week. And this is one of the great billweathers of 2025, I think. Eric Trump. We have a little bit of a clip from him.

6:10And I know you have some takes on this. So let's hear from Eric Trump here. The future is incredible. The future is bright. The future is incredible. And I think fourth quarter of this year is going to be unbelievable for a host of reasons. How do you think Bitcoin is going to go? I've always said that. I think in time, Bitcoin surpasses a million dollars. I think with quantitative easing that we're going to have starting tomorrow when the announcement is made, and all signs point in the right direction, unless this guy's really off his rocker, but then he's going to just get laughed at this country.

6:39But I think starting tomorrow, you'll see right drops. You'll see what's happening with M2, which is the money supply around the world, which is skyrocketing right now. Fourth quarter has always historically been the best quarter, generally the best quarter for cryptocurrencies.

6:56So this seems to be supporting your overall thesis and bullishness. What do you make of this logic? first of all Eric is obviously right that fourth quarter has historically been incredibly bullish for crypto and Bitcoin by the way I typically prefer not to label Bitcoin crypto and if you look at the Bitcoin seasonality in October it's obviously the strongest month of the year on average especially over the past 10 years with say 22-23 % average returns I personally dislike like simple seasonality analysis without taking a step back and assessing whether the macro backdrop is actually there for this to repeat itself.

7:41I think to a large extent it is. September proved to be better than feared. So remember, September has got nasty seasonality typically, both for Nasdaq, Bitcoin and other risk assets. We had a great month so far. And Bitcoin is roughly flat. It's probably even up a couple of percentage points since the start of the month by now. So the backdrop is pretty solid. And why is that the case? Well, we're obviously amidst the cutting cycle again in the US, typically fuel for such narratives. We're amidst an expansion of the monetary base. Eric is right about that. And we're amidst the positive cycle when it comes to the credit creation in the private sector, not least.

8:21where he's completely off is his chatter about quantitative easing because that explicitly refers to the central bank expanding its balance sheet. It's not. It's actually doing the exact opposite. So as much as I like Eric's take here, it's extremely misguided in terms of the actual driver. But, you know, for what it's worth, he's probably, you know, out there spreading this narrative, especially the M2 narrative is one that is probably, you know, Kind of refers to what we've been saying here at Real Vision for quite a while. So good to see that Eric is actually listening. But quantitative easing, no, we're not even close to it.

9:00But we see an expansion of the monetary base maybe in 26 on the cards, right? But it's not on the cards for Q4 by any means. It would simply take the Fed to make a complete U-turn on the balance sheet. They're not. So the credit creation or the monetary expansion comes from the private side of the equation, which is why a lot of institutions, a lot of economists have been completely misguided on this liquidity cycle since 2023, because they've typically looked at the Fed balance sheet and the Fed balance sheet is doing nothing. while you see the liquidity expansion coming from outside of the simple narrative of the Federal Reserve creating money.

9:42It's not. The Federal Reserve is not creating money at the moment. Private banks are the U.S. Treauries. Speaking of printing money, Andreas, obviously the big story on the radar this week is the potential U.S. government shutdown. You don't seem all too worried about this. Is this becoming standard operating procedure? Are you fearful of this? What do you mean? I mean, is it seven or eight years ago since we had a shutdown? It's been a while, but we obviously have the annual debt ceiling budget stuff going on every year, right? And I mean, by now, it feels like there's almost a fatigue among investors discussing this topic, right?

10:24As far as I can see now, Trump labels this the Schumer shutdown in case it happens, right? you know a year ago the tide was turned completely compared to this everyone blamed the republicans for the same I think it's exhausting to listen to this shit to just put it out there in plain English every single time we hear all of this BS and then they ultimately end up agreeing on something what we're seeing though Andreas is in the slightly longer term that the political system is getting used to this as well. And it's fueling the emergency-driven politics and emergency-driven appropriations that we're seeing.

11:10Almost the entire, or perhaps the entire big, beautiful bill is exempt for this, if you will, because it's mostly mandatory spending and not discretionary spending. So the political system is also finding ways of working around this, which was the very point that it shouldn't be able to. But if it keeps happening, people, you find ways. Water will always find a way to flow. and, you know, politicians will always find ways to spend people's money. So, I mean, it is becoming less and less of an issue, less and less of a worry. I'm sure they're going to find a solution relatively quickly. So, yeah.

11:43Okay, Andreas, let's get on to some actual investment topics here because this seems to be perhaps something of a nothing burger with regards to that. We had this yesterday from Donald Trump, Andreas. A whole video I didn't want to play. We've had enough clips this week on lasagna and pizza. Let's not get one here. But you've probably seen the video as well that the president posted on Two Social about legalizing cannabis use in some shape or form, revolutionizing senior health care. So this seems to me to be a renewed focus from Trump on RSK's department, on that side of the government. Is this investable?

12:31Is this too late, too early? What do you think? So Mikkel, the last time I counted, I think 24 states have already legalized recreational cannabis use. So yeah, we're talking almost minus 50 % of the countries, right? of the country. And I think in 38 states, cannabis is allowed for medical use. So, I mean, we're certainly getting there without this being a nationwide legislation. And, you know, the laws do vary depending on the state for now. But I think you're right that we're moving towards alternative sources of medication in many ways. And I think this is, you know, one thing is the recreational use, right?

13:14I have strong opinions on that myself. mostly in favor of what Trump is doing here. But when we're talking about the medical case, we're also talking about something that could turn into a really, really interesting investment case, right? We've obviously seen cannabis stocks and also cannabis-themed ETFs being launched both in 2023 and 2024. And it hasn't really been a strong investment case up until, say, a few weeks ago. And we're starting to see the first signs of this investment case really spreading. I also think it's interesting to see whether we'll move even further into this narrative, for example, by accepting various old medicines such as MDMA, Ayahuasca, and stuff like that.

14:01Those pro members of the Real Vision community that follow our research on a running basis will know that we have a couple of single-name stocks that we really like in this space and that we're currently very close to pulling the trigger on. So I think this is something that we're going to talk a lot about, also from an investment perspective, say, over the next couple of quarters. And it's not an investment thesis that is already subscribed to at this juncture. So I think there's plenty of money to be made here.

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15:18Visit us.plus500.com to learn more. Trading and futures involves the risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Not all applicants will qualify. Plus500. It's trading with a plus. Yeah, absolutely. Also, this is a prime example of where you can get ahead of the institutional, of the professional crowd, I believe, in many cases, to be very frank. Okay, Andreas, let's head a little bit back to Europe before getting to some of the charts of the week and back to you as exceptional listeners. Well, we have a few points on that. But this story broke over the weekend or late last week that a big lithium ore was found in Germany in Saxony-Anhalt province.

16:03This was very, very big news initially. I'll just present a few views and then hear your take, Andreas. This is obviously huge. This is right next to an existing national gas deposit. You have a lot of the infrastructure there. It sounds very, very logical that you can pull up the lithium in Germany, where a lot of the cars are made. The thing is, though, Andreas, the price of lithium has been falling. It's still going to be – the demand is still going to be substantial for the next couple of decades, even though we look at alternatives. But Germany, it's one of the highest labor costs, one of the highest energy costs everywhere in the world.

16:43Right now, they don't have the refining capabilities. If they pulled up all these 43 million tons, they would have to ship it all to China and back. Are they going to pull back all that manufacturing from China or are they simply going to be delivering the raw material? And then is that where Germany is going to be placed in the value chain? I'm not quite sure about this. To be frank, I'm not quite sure that any of this is ever going to be excavated unless it's treated as a very, very strategic project. So that is the only angle I can see here. If the EU or the German government really steps in here and basically bankrolls this project.

17:19So I think it's a little bit overstated. Do you think there's an investment angle here, Andreas? 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. Yeah, so the two companies in question, Neptune Energy and Lilac, they're both private companies, so you cannot directly invest in this. Saxon Anhalt project. But let me mention a few things from an investment perspective.

17:57First of all, when you talk about lithium, we had the case of Lithium Americas suddenly being the center of attention from the U.S. Treasury and the Trump administration, was it last week, they considered taking a stake in it. And we had an explosion in that equity or that stock of, yeah, ish 100 % in a couple of days. So sure, this is something of strategic relevance to the West. I have my doubts on whether the German administration is as much of a front-runner as the Trump administration on this topic. Obviously, we need to reduce dependence on lithium imports from China. It's not necessarily because China holds vast amounts of lithium deposits.

18:42We're mostly talking about Chile, Australia, Argentina in terms of the actual lithium deposits. But we're obviously talking about the processing power here. And I'm still skeptical when it comes to the German case for being a super important part of that supply chain. One simple example why, and I spent some time looking up this project in Sachsen-Anhalt, right? As far as I can see right now, you have more than 22 ,000 petitions against the project. So basically local people signing a petition against it. They still need several new, both licenses and registrations to be able to actually exploit the project.

19:27So this is just a pilot case. You know, environmental groups of all sorts have also raised issues relating to sort of the historical contamination, et cetera, and nearby sites. So this is EU classic, right? You have a pilot case, you find the raw materials. But, you know, the phase of the project that we're now entering is the very difficult part of it. So I think it's very, very early to say that, you know, we're amidst some sort of landslide in terms of the German capabilities here. Also do note that, yes, they released this estimate of 43 million tons, but it is way lower than the initial estimate.

20:13made during the spring of 70 million tons. So, I mean, everyone just posted it 43 million tons. Wow. But it was more or less half of what they said just six months ago. So I'm not overly impressed. Let me just put it like that. No, no. I read a new story from Sweden. Maybe you remember two and a half years ago, we had news stories that they had found almost every rare material you would ever need in northern Sweden. And they're already used to mining iron ore up there. And nothing has been mined of that yet. and the optimistic outlook is 2035 for that. So we are not fast-mover on this in Europe.

20:49It's much, much easier to get this stuff done in dictatorship states. So that's where I would look. Much, much easier to do this in Africa or Asia, to be honest. So anyway, not to rain on the German parade here. They're obviously great neighbors, but not the big story everyone would have you believe in my opinion. I want to throw in a few charts, Andreas. Some of them are used in your Stenner Signal weekly editorial here. Do you want to start with the Atlanta Fed? Yeah, let's do that. I honestly think that this is a really good example of the macro backdrop. We've been banging the drum on the U.S.

21:32economy doing better than feared for a while. We're now starting to see that in the nowcasts presented by some of the regional Federal Reserve banks. Our now casts have been in front of this in many ways over the course of the summer. And I think it's interesting to see that you now have the blue chip consensus, meaning the economist departments of JP Morgan, Citibank, and so on and so forth, raising their forecasts for this year. So they're very much behind the curve. And it solidifies the view that I've had all year, not all year, but since April, that we've had an incredible institutional bias against the U.S.

22:12economy, especially after the sentiment shocker of Liberation Day. And when push comes to shove, this is not necessarily as big as a shock compared to what many people predicted. We're talking about a tariffs intake that is worth 0.3 % of GDP annualized for now. That's almost a rounding error when you talk about the yearly budget. Or at least it's within something you've seen before. It's not massive. And everyone more or less has their projections for the U.S. GDP growth in response to this Liberation Day shock, which is basically bullshit. So I think we're waking up to the reality that the U.S.

22:56economy is doing okay. It's not like it's through the roof. It's just a nothing burger, everything that happened since April, which sounds odd to say, given the sheer amount of coverage in our time this tariff narrative and migration narratives has received. So focus on something else. The economy is OK. And when the economy is doing OK, while the consensus is not there, it's a decent backdrop for investors. right? The opposite would have been way worse, of course. Yeah. And it also points to where we are in the cycle, that there might still be some steam in this engine for a few more months. Speaking into the Eric Trump agenda.

23:41Anyway, Dres, one more that I saw and I posted this. This is one of my favorite charts. I'm not 100 % sure what it shows you, but it should be returns. So this is three years and five years after ETF launch date of thematic ETFs. So it could be defense ETFs or alternative medicine ETFs or what have you, doing quite well before launch and then dropping off afterwards. Do you think there's anything to this? Is it stupid to buy thematic ETFs at launch or what do you think?

24:19the boring answer is that it depends michael right but i i guess if there's any logic to this chart which basically compiles returns from a lot of thematic etfs around launch date right it probably is that you and i family offices etc we buy when we see the narrative and those providing the thematic etfs they respond to the buying they see right so a lot of buying is happening and then they launch one. While if you're really good at launching thematic ETFs, you obviously need to be one step ahead. You need to launch it when the interest is not there. So basically, my opinion on thematic ETFs is that it's a great product.

24:59But the question is whether all of the providers are agile enough to bring this product to the market when the interest is still there and when the momentum is still there for the case. And as you see here, they've struggled. So, yeah, there are some angles to this, Andreas, because first of all, it takes some time to launch an ETF. Even if you're a very, very well-oiled machine, it will take at least six months from detecting a trend to developing a strategy that can be done relatively quickly. But all the legal work will take months at least. And second of all, if you're too early in this phase or in this cycle, no one's going to buy it because it's on nobody's radar.

25:40So you need to launch ETFs. If you're only thinking about a fundraising perspective and not an optimizing returns for investors, you need to launch it when it's on the front of the economist, essentially. So now would be a really good time to launch an AI ETF by that logic, as we talked about last week. So there are a little bit of points to that, Andreas. One final chart I wanted to bring in here, or you wanted to bring in, to be completely frank here, Andreas, the net foreign inflows and equities. This is a classic. I think we've had this back in time as well in our show. What does this tell us, Andreas?

26:20Well, conclusion number one, U.S. exceptionalism is not dead. And we're talking about pretty sizable inflows from foreigners. It's not even domestic buying. And it goes to show that there is a difference between stating your opinion and using your wallet to state your opinion, right? If you know what I mean. We've seen plenty of skepticism around this rally, but we've actually seen inflows to the US, even from foreigners amidst all of this noise. So I think that's interesting. There's a big, big divergence between storytelling and fun flows here, especially in relation to what I've mentioned a couple of times on the major financial media outlets being skeptical around everything that's ongoing in the US.