U.S. Rescues The Yen | Macro Mondays: August 3, 2026

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1:23Andreas Steno Larsen:Right now on your screen, Macro Mondays, level up your week, oh yeah.

1:31Mikkel Rosenvold:Hello out there, welcome to Real Vision, welcome to Macro Mondays. My name is Mikl Rosenwald and I'm joined as usual by my co-host Andreas. We have a great show for you today. We're going to be talking about the sinus wave of warfare in the Middle East, Scott Besson's to-do list. and maybe try and provide you with some situational awareness on the global world of macro, if you get such a little hint there. Andreas, before we get into the depths of global macro, I was thinking on my way over here, and I wanted to get your take on this. We're running a research business. We're monitoring a lot of situations.

2:12Mikkel Rosenvold:By God, we are spending a lot of money on various subscriptions. There's a new SaaS in town. the Trump Media API. Do you think it's worth much? Should we get that? What's your take? We didn't have time to discuss this over lunch address.

2:26Andreas Steno Larsen:No, but I think the pricing is$100 ,000. It is per month. Per month? Okay, I thought it was annual.

2:36Mikkel Rosenvold:It's company-wide, though.

2:38Andreas Steno Larsen:Yeah, but we're only the two of us right now, Michael, right? So having said that, it is obviously worth a lot if you're running a high-frequency trading disc, right? So I guess it depends on your style, given that we're a little bit more forward-looking, a bit more cycle-based. I don't think we could use it for a lot. But if you're an oil trader, I guess it's a must-have.

3:05Mikkel Rosenvold:That's it. I think it's all the criticism. We can get back to why this is a horrible idea. But as a business idea, this is quite a good idea. This is good thinking. I was thinking about, Andreas, some feature requests here since this is a SaaS. Obviously, I would probably as an investor be looking for an add-on that includes a presidential pardon because can you really trade on these informations? Is it truly legal? It's a bit of a gray area, but if you get a presidential pardon with a subscription, I mean, then you're good to go. And then another add-on, Andreas, and I wanted to get your take on how valuable this would be that would probably make it even more relevant for the core ICP.

3:46Mikkel Rosenvold:Here would be an add-on that gives you immediate access to Scott Besson's meeting notes, because that seems to be worth even more or what.

3:55Andreas Steno Larsen:So, okay, two things. I had a laugh when I saw this because I think it was Reuters, a photograph from Reuters. And I can tell you two things. First of all, it's obviously interesting that this was an actual notepad from Scott Besson's meeting during the weekend before he intervened with the Japanese yen market. But I can also guarantee you that Scott Besson didn't write this. And the reason why is that Scott Besson has traded a lot of FX. If you're into FX and FX lingo, you would never write Japanese yen and spell it out. You would never do that. You would only write the stuff in the parentheses, right?

4:35Andreas Steno Larsen:Yeah, exactly. You would never do that. So Scott has not written this. I'm 100 % sure. It's probably a troll.

4:43Mikkel Rosenvold:But why does he want to buy Japanese yen there, Andreas? Let's use this as a pivot to Scott Besson's to-do list. What's going on in the Japanese yen, and why is Scott Besson getting involved here?

4:54Andreas Steno Larsen:It's been on a weakening path for a long while. The Japanese authorities have struggled to regain the momentum, and they needed some help. This is kind of the reverse of what we saw in 2011, where the authorities intervened against the strong yen, right? And for an intervention to be decently solid, you probably need both sides to work together. And that's basically what happened over the weekend. have they gotten something in return for this we don't know yet i mean trump basically just stated that japan has been nice to us ex-pearl harbor so that was his exact statement actually so we don't know whether they're planning on asking for something in return but you know given how the trump administration typically goes about stuff like this I think they will ask the Japanese authorities for something in return.

5:56Andreas Steno Larsen:But the Japanese authorities have been wanting this for a long while because without controlling the Japanese yen path, they obviously cannot control inflation. And they've struggled with exactly that for a while.

6:11Mikkel Rosenvold:Interesting interest. We might get back to that in a little bit. You're obviously releasing your weekly stand-up signals flagship or your editorial this Monday, Andreas. You're writing about the sinus waves war in Iran. And this has to be a recurring topic, Andreas. I know some people are sick and tired of hearing about the war in Iran. But it is still driving markets incredibly to some degree. I mean, not as it was initially, but it's still driving oil markets enormously. enormously these weekend tweets and address. This weekend, it was already Saturday, so a little bit ahead of schedule. We have the weekly hope here.

6:50Mikkel Rosenvold:Donald Trump called off what he mentioned as would have been the largest attacks on any country since World War II. That's a lot, but let's leave that. Called them off because negotiations were apparently progressing very, very well. The Iranians apparently are not really involved in these negotiations. They're not confirming this. But it seems to do the trick for markets once again. And it seems like, Andreas, you put up the sinus waves picture that we are essentially back to this weekly schedule, this weekly roll of getting some hopium over the weekend. We're getting closer to a deal. And then things slowly deteriorate during Monday, Tuesday, Friday, the trading week.

7:35Mikkel Rosenvold:So should markets just look elsewhere? Should investors just look elsewhere? Or what's your take on that?

7:41Andreas Steno Larsen:I actually think that by now it seems like this sinus wave is slightly longer than the weekly scheduling that you just laid out. Because we've seen this move before. Everything that happened in the run-up to this weekend kind of resembles what happened late March, early April, where he talked about, I think it was annihilating a whole culture or whatever he wrote, Trump, before calling things off. This time he stated that it would be the biggest attacks since the World War II, and then he ended up calling them off. So I think we're past peak. That's kind of what I'm trying to say here. And does that mean that we have a second memorandum of understanding coming up?

8:28Andreas Steno Larsen:Probably not short term, but we're at least at least probably past the point where we get sequential weakness out of the situation every week and instead get sequential progress again. If we look at the oil market right now, it's actually a much, much better balance than most pundits would suggest. As we rightfully said when the attack started again, the market will never discount the same event twice with the same kind of panic. Take this example, the spread between the Houston Arcus oil price and the WTI. So basically a spread that tells you whether the export price of US oil is higher than the domestic price or not.

9:12Andreas Steno Larsen:That spread will get very elevated if a lot of foreigners are willing to bid for the US oil exports. And we didn't see that panic this time around. We saw the panic back in March and April. We didn't see the panic this time around. Probably as a lot of people have gotten accustomed to this sinus wave war, and people are just probably deciding to wait and see instead of panic bidding. Having said that, it's still the case that roughly 5 to 6 million barrels a day are sneaked out of the region via the sea wave. a very nice piece of anecdotal evidence I actually think is very interesting because it goes to confirm what you've been saying for a while Mikkel that markets tend to become very creative when there is an incentive to be creative Iraq offers oil tankers a price of say a little less than$30 a barrel if they're willing to go to Iraq load up the ship and take it out of the Strait of Amuse meaning that the ship operator earns that spread if they're not nuked on the way to the actual oil price, right?

10:32Andreas Steno Larsen:As far as I can calculate that's an extra profit of 50 to 60 million dollars per ship I guess you could convince a couple of Philippine captains to take that chance You don't have to spend And that's what I'm trying to say.

10:49Mikkel Rosenvold:No one's going to insure that. So you don't have to spend money on insurance as well. It's a complete all or nothing bet. Either you make double digits millions or you get blown up. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

11:02Andreas Steno Larsen:But what I'm trying to say here, Miguel, is that the market, and especially the oil market, has found ways to maneuver this by now. So, yes, we're talking about a sinus wave war. But the relevance also dissipates over time. So sure, we'll get the waves, but it will be less and less and less important, in my opinion.

11:25Mikkel Rosenvold:Yeah. And Andreas, we do still have a few months probably before we get to some of the inherent deadlines, the US petroleum reserves, the expected Chinese petroleum reserves, the midterms, etc. etc. So what I'm seeing, Andreas, and I think there's more or less confirmation of that, is also that the American side has been very realistic, actually, that when you go back to, I'll just bring up the sinus wave again, if you go back to the climax in March, they had a long list of demands for Iran. They wanted to scrap their missile program. They wanted to cut funding to Hezbollah and the Houthis. They wanted some level of regime change.

12:04Mikkel Rosenvold:They wanted them, all these sorts of things. That was essentially scrapped for the first memorandum of understanding that was boiled down to nuclear and the strait. So the question is, what's going to be part of the next memorandum of understanding? My best guess is that the nuclear question is out. They're not going to be making any progress, or at least it's going to be very, very token progress. Trump mentioned in his truth this Saturday, the nuclear issue that they're still aiming for a non-nuclear armed Iran. But I think at the end of the day, the only thing that really, really, really matters to Trump here is getting the straight opened.

12:39Mikkel Rosenvold:That is the only thing he needs before he can simply let this happen. And obviously getting Iran to stop shooting and stuff as well. So we are getting down to the very, very, very basics of what the US can offer. And probably they're going to have to give you even more concessions. Maybe we're looking at the war reparations that were part of the first memorandum of understanding, lifting sanctions. And the solution for the strait might very well be some joint venture set up between Iran and Oman, essentially the US out of the strait. So that's obviously a much, much worse situation than compared to pre-war.

13:16Mikkel Rosenvold:We're not going back to the pre-war status quo in any way. Iran has no incentive to do so. But at least things aren't getting out of hand. Things aren't escalating. And we need to praise Donald Trump a little bit for that, as I've also written on occasion. It was a big mistake to enter Iran, but he's so far managed to avoid the escalation trap here. And everything we see confirms to me that Donald Trump really, really wants this to end. He's really, really eager for this not to spiral out of control, so to speak. So a quick break in your regular programming. If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called Prepare for 2030.

13:53Mikkel Rosenvold: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. I don't know if you read the CNN report address. The U.S. general staff, the military leadership has essentially written a mail out, an email to middle management asking, do you guys have any idea? Because they're simply running out of stuff to bomb. And that is as good a time as any to cut a deal. So let's hope we are indeed moving closer to that, Andres.

14:26Andreas Steno Larsen:Quite the thing to run out of stuff to pop. It is.

14:31Mikkel Rosenvold:But essentially, they are. What else are they going to bomb? Are they going to be bombing truly civilian targets, which I think Trump has no appetite for? And so, Andres, I wanted to bring in our macro regime, because obviously, what we're looking for here is with the restart of the war attacks, closure of the strait. do we get another inflation bump? We're not really seeing that in our numbers yet. And I was a bit surprised by this. I'd expect it perhaps not quite what we saw in March, but hinting towards that, but US inflation, at least, the eurozone is a slightly different picture, seems to still be the chance of the inflation rising seems to be very, very low.

15:10Mikkel Rosenvold:Why is that, you think? So let me just be as crystal clear as I can.

15:16Andreas Steno Larsen:The inflation looks incredibly soft. remember that we were the only ones in the world who had that inflation report from June coming out in July. I think the report that we'll get for July in mid-August will look as soft, maybe even softer. And I'm almost perplexed by this, but I think a few technicalities are in play here. the World Cup hangover is really relevant here because we had a big buildup and a lot of people forget that when you book tickets for flights and when you book hotels, et cetera, they're not necessarily mapped to the exact date where you will fly. They're mapped to when you book to some extent, right?

16:08Andreas Steno Larsen:So there is a front-running impact on inflation that fades, which gives a nice boost to the whole disinflation wave. Then obviously energy is still looking decent compared to what it did during the spring. But everything related to services is very soft. And then goods, car goods look extremely soft. And the best way to explain that is the following. We had several quarters in a row with a lot of tariffs intake. We're now seeing a net tariffs release, basically. We're paying back tariffs on a monthly basis. That happened in June. That has happened here in July again. So let's assume that you had to take decisions on pricing at sea level, Nico, right?

17:06Andreas Steno Larsen:and you're suddenly handed billions in return tariffs, I don't think you will cut prices, but you'll probably stand pat, right? Because if you have a budget and you suddenly get out of thin air tariffs paid back, you're ahead of budget. And that's not the timing for a price increase, is it? it's probably also bad PR if you raise prices when you get tariffs paid back so I think that's very practically speaking what's happening that a lot of managers and executives they take the decision to just leave prices where they are and you know as was the case in June it's the it's the case here in July and prices are basically sideways so inflation roughly zero on the month that is incredibly soft and it is so so so out of tune with the philip reserve i cannot recall a timing where they've been this off in that direction you know they they were off in the other direction during 2021 2022 where they kept saying that inflation was was nowhere to be seen while it was going up.

18:24Andreas Steno Larsen:We could see that in our inflation data as well. And now the opposite is happening. So I think Walsh is off to a very bad start because by saying nothing, he's saying a lot right now because inflation is falling apart in real time. And when he says that nothing is, he basically says nothing, meaning that the Fed remains relatively hawkish while inflation is coming down. That leads to higher real rates. And I think that probably provided the match, as I wrote on Friday, for this whole momentum route in July. And then it was obviously accelerated by King Leopold and all of his friends in Korea.

19:04Mikkel Rosenvold:We'll get back to that in a second, Andres, because you could argue that Kevin Walsh is keeping inflation in check. And that growth is beginning to look better in our models and Andres. We just had the manufacturing PMI coming in at 55.6, even better than most forecasts and consensus, I believe. So, yeah, just on the confirmation to this picture that we're seeing here, that the activity, the growth might actually be quite decent as well. I think we have the PMI on screen here as well. So absolutely interesting. Let's just talk a little bit about situational awareness. I promised that by the get-go, and maybe talk about where we are in the AI cycle based on that, Andreas, because it seems to me that the AI trade is beginning to be more and more debt-driven, which pushes some of this leverage-driven trading a bit when we are in a scenario where the path of the Fed is unsure.

20:04Mikkel Rosenvold:Was that what provoked this meltdown in situational awareness, or was it simply just bad risk management?

20:12Andreas Steno Larsen:It was bad risk management, no doubt. But as I said, real rates have been increasing at an immense pace since Walsh took over. And by saying nothing, he's said a lot, given that inflation swaps are down so much. So the market has sniffed out a lot of what's going on in our inflation now costs as well, by the way. having said that mingle i think it's very interesting to watch how the market responds to many of the hyperscalers reporting over the past couple of weeks here so alphabet laid out a very i'd say honest quarterly report tremendous growth uh on the earning side But they're slowly but surely actually bringing the lifecycle of their server pox down in their accounting.

21:11Andreas Steno Larsen:Microsoft did the exact opposite. They increased the lifecycle of their server pox from 15 to 25 years, meaning that they can hide some of the CapEx because, you know, So by definition, some of this CapEx moves from being an operational to a financial lease. So it basically shifts category in yearnings. And therefore, it looked like Microsoft threw in the towel on CapEx, but it's just because they hide it. And Microsoft was celebrated while Alphabet was sold off. And in my opinion, the quality of Alphabet's earnings were much higher than Microsoft's. They were both good, but Microsoft weakened their credibility and Alphabet increased their credibility and the market punished those who increased the credibility.