Why Did the Iran War Restart? | Macro Mondays, July 13, 2026

0:00Andreas Steno:Summertime is maybe good, summertime is maybe shit. It's Macro Mondays, big picture, clear place, stocks, bonds, FX, crypto on the way. Get context, strategy right now on your screen. Macro Mondays, level up your week, oh yeah.

0:21Mikkel Rosenvold:Hello out there, welcome to Real Vision, welcome to Macro Mondays. My name is Mikl Rosemol, your usual host, and as usual, I'm joined by Andres Denno. And while I'm sending to you from rainy Copenhagen, Andres, you're live with us from the warmth of Corsica. Andres, before I get to ask you about the elephant in the room behind you, let's start with the other elephant. Do we need to worry about oil again? I thought the war was over.

0:48Andreas Steno:Well, I don't think you should ask me that question, whether the war is over. I think I've called it over like three or four times, but I actually don't think the oil math looks that bad compared to, say, March or April. So I'm not worried as we speak. But of course, we cannot live with a closed rate for the rest of the year. So it depends on your time horizon, Mikkel. That's the long answer to the short question.

1:13Mikkel Rosenvold:And what's the big trade you're looking at right now, Andreas?

1:17Andreas Steno:I think the big trade that everybody's looking at is the memory stocks. You know, we've had bizarre volatility on Friday and on a Monday here again in some of the names that everybody's involved in. So, you know, I think we're approaching a point where it looks incredibly tempting to buy the dip here in memory.

1:37Mikkel Rosenvold:Absolutely. We'll dive much more into this, including a look ahead at the prints this week and all the news that we're going to be getting on the inflation picture. They're obviously heavily influenced by oil. Remember, this is our free show on Real Vision that is published across platforms. We publish a number of articles and exclusive shows on Real Vision as well. So do check out your options on realvision.com for even more content, including, Andres, your Oil Flash update. We will be digging a little bit into it, but if you want the full picture, the full analysis and all, you need to sign up for Real Vision's Pro Cheer for that.

2:16Mikkel Rosenvold:Andres, let's dive straight into it. We had this message from Donald Trump just an hour and a half ago, I think, that Donald Trump wants the U.S. to run Hormuz. And we're essentially in a position addressed where for the past week or so, we've had increasing attacks from both sides, leading up to the point where Donald Trump, first of all, declared the ceasefire for over, initiated heavy attacks on the IRGC over the weekend. And we didn't really get any hope here, Andreas. We didn't really get any talk about returning to the negotiation table. And now there's news that the U.S. wants to run the Strait of Hormuz.

3:00Mikkel Rosenvold:Now, let's start with geopolitics here, Andreas. I wrote a piece last week, and you can check it out on Real Vision on why we got to this point, why the U.S. miscalculated in the Memorandum of Understanding. It's actually, there are some logic steps you can follow game theory wise as to why the Iranian Republican Guard ended up essentially disrupting the memorandum and the peace process. But now we're at this point, Andreas, the U.S. wants to run the Strait of Hormuz. I don't know what that means. How do you run a block of water? Do you run the coastlines on each side? Possibly. Do you take some of the islands within?

3:38Mikkel Rosenvold:Do you blockade it navally? We don't know. In any case, this speaks to further disturbances to the flow of oil. How do you gauge the market reaction to all this address? And have we seen the worst yet?

3:53Andreas Steno:I mean, if we look at the oil price live, we're not even above Thursday's peak. So, I mean, it's not that bad. And speaking of the flow, I mean, we're not talking about a closed straight, at least. I borrowed a chart from our good friend, Rory Johnston. So a big shout out to him. He's really, really good follow when it comes to the flows in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. And it's been clear to me for a while that the flow was better than reported everywhere, basically. So if you look at the left-hand side here, we have the west to east flow out of the Strait of Hormuz of tanker ships, right?

4:33Andreas Steno:And we had a lot of unaccounted dark transits basically through June, most of July. We still have those. Still waiting for the point where Donald Trump admits to Abu Dhabi being behind these dark transits. And I still think that it remains the case that the flow is actually OK-ish. I mean, there is at least the flow. So having said that, I think basically the beige bar here, the Omani route, is what triggered the response from the military side of the Iranian leadership. So the U.S. effectively managed to create a transit together with the administration in Oman. It is now not used again. And so, I mean, they have at least effectively managed to officially close that part with the attacks that they've made, the ERJTC over the past days here.

5:38Andreas Steno:So, I mean, there is a flow. It is incredibly difficult to gauge it in real time. As I've said over and over, I think the best way of gauging it is to look at a lot of very technical price spreads in oil markets. I can show you a couple of them in just a second. But having said that, Mikkel, I don't think the market response points us in a direction where we should be overly worried about the oil flow, especially since we had a pretty massive flow out, say, over the first two weeks of this ceasefire. And those ships are basically in transit now, right? So we know that a lot of oil will arrive over the next four weeks, both in Asia and elsewhere.

6:22Andreas Steno:And if we look at the current setup, I've tried to calculate backwards, if you know what I mean, on page 14, how close are we to some sort of normalized oil flow out of the region? And my best assessment is that we lack 4 million barrels a day. Is that manageable for the US and China in cooperation? Well, they managed to fill a void of, say, 8 million barrels through April and May. So we're basically talking about half the damage of when it peaked. And we still have time, but, you know, we're still using strategic reserves, both in China and in the U.S., to fill this gap. And there is obviously an end date to such a policy mix, right?

7:13Andreas Steno:So having said that, that end date is not anywhere near. we're talking three, four, five months from here. So there's still time.

7:21Mikkel Rosenvold:And, you know, that is the true long-term picture of this, Andres, because obviously the Iranians, the Republican guard essentially, especially they're really trying to push their leverage on this. They feel like this is their chip to both make a lot of money, but obviously also to secure their position in the future. But there's a limit to how much they can push this. We've discussed this a lot, Andres. And not only are they pushing the patients of the Americans, they're also pushing the patients of China. And the rest of the world has learned by now how to address this. So if the strait gets closed, yes, it's a problem.

7:57Mikkel Rosenvold:We know how to fix it. China just stops buying oil. And in the future, we're going to have a lot more ways to fix this. We already heard talks about the U.S. investing massively in shortcuts around or in alternative routes to get both oil and other commodities out of the Gulf and rest. So, so far, not overly worried, it seems to me. Also, you know, Andres, once we hit$100 in oil, if we get there, people begin to get very, very, very creative. And that's not even accounted for here.

8:28Andreas Steno:No, but my best guess would be that we won't even get close to$100 again. I think the equilibrium right now is probably$80. And having said that, Miguel, the issue is not oil. The issue is products. So, you know, jet fuel, diesel, et cetera. We're talking about a situation where we've managed to bypass the straight of amuse on oil, but we haven't managed to bypass the straight-over moves on jet fuel products because we cannot move the refiners. And that's still an issue. We're talking record-high crack spreads in the U.S. because refiners have moved marginal capacities of jet fuel instead of gasoline and diesel, etc.

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10:16Andreas Steno:It's still an issue that the trade is closed, especially when it comes to the consumer inflation, because as long as the trade is closed, you cannot pass on the full price disinflation from the barrels of oil because of a lack of refinance capacity, basically.

10:32Mikkel Rosenvold:I have a feeling, Andreas, looking at the numbers in your analysis, that we were getting very, very close to the price of the pump finally dropping. And now it's probably been postponed a few weeks at least here. I'm not overly confident that we're going to have an improvement on the political situation here, But the fallout from markets seems to be a little bit more compressed this time around, not perhaps as dramatic as we saw earlier this year. But let's have a look at inflation. Obviously, we have inflation rates coming out this week, the big prints. We've talked a lot about your expectation that inflation will roll over.

11:12Mikkel Rosenvold:We're seeing it in our now casting. Will we get evidence of that already now? Or do we need to wait another month for this to kick in?

11:22Andreas Steno:So if we look at the June inflation from Europe to begin with, we already have some evidence from Europe a couple of weeks back. And it looked pretty benign outside of energy. And so it wasn't really an energy story that surprised the market. And my best guess, you know, we run our now costing across all of the subcategories in the inflation index is that we get a pretty soft report, broadly speaking. It's not an energy story. Of course, it's partially an energy story, but it's not a standalone story. And my best guess is that we get a report that prints 0.2 % points below the consensus tomorrow, which should be a pretty big deal, especially given the chart that you just put on the screen here, Michael, right?

12:05Andreas Steno:Because we had the FOMC meeting minutes out. It was Wednesday or Thursday last week. And it was probably the most hawkish message from the Federal Reserve since 2022, where they had this hiking cycle, right? So a lot of members are clearly concerned about the inflation outlook, but it's still an outlook thing. If the outlook improves, then my best guess is that they'll wait and see. So, you know, I cannot put enough emphasis on this inflation report. If it prints soft, it should massively reprice the front end of the curve in the US because everyone is so concerned about inflation within that committee.

12:48Andreas Steno:So they'll probably change their mind if inflation comes down right. It's not like they've changed their reaction function. They've changed their outlook, and that outlook is probably wrong, if you ask me. So I see it more as a forecasting error than a policy error, if that makes sense.

13:03Mikkel Rosenvold:Yeah, and a matter of time lag of when these reports are sampled and counted together. Okay, so we had the last print at 4.2%, consensus around 3.9%. What's your bet to make this very, very specific so we can hold you up on this next week?

13:17Andreas Steno:3.7 % for headline and 2.7 % for core. So yeah, it's a little bit less than 0.2 % points below consensus. A big surprise in case we're right.

13:28Mikkel Rosenvold:An ice cold print, if that's what we're about to get. Very, very interesting address. Maybe the Iran story still, the restart sort of of the war in Iran, maybe that gives Kevin Walsh a bit more breathing space before the pressure mounts on him to begin a new cutting season. I still think the political pressure will emerge at some point, but right now, obviously, he has the best excuse of them all, which is disturbances to oil and the energy market address. So very, very interesting. So a quick break in your regular programming. If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called Prepare for 2030.

14:06Mikkel 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. Let's get to a few of our laughs of the week. We like to throw in a few of them on the show, Andreas. First of all, you posted this picture. You sent it to me yesterday because we've been talking a lot about AC this year. Obviously, we're both living in Europe. We're living in the part of Europe where it's only really hot for a few weeks every year. But it's been exceptionally hot this year. And a lot of Europeans have been traveling to the U.S.

14:39Mikkel Rosenvold:for the World Cup and experiencing what AC is. It's like they've crossed the river into Narnia and seen what's over there. And you seem to be really enjoying your AC down in France, Andreas. How's it working out?

14:54Andreas Steno:Yeah, I just posted this picture because when I started talking about a lack of AC in Copenhagen, you know, my inbox was full of these, oh, you're just a Europe poor messages, right? And this is a heat pump slash an AC in the house here in France. So it is possible here in Europe. I just wanted to confirm that. It's from just outside. So we can actually figure stuff out here. I think you put it very well when we had this discussion on AC here in Europe, Wregel, that it's actually because the demand hasn't really been there to launch extended Northern Europe that the solutions are not pretty good.

15:41Andreas Steno:So in that sense, I guess it's a matter of time before enough people will demand AC for us to get there. But let's see.

15:53Mikkel Rosenvold:Absolutely. Just to confirm all the notions about Europoros, I went to an open house on a house builder over the weekend. I asked them about what's it going to take here in Denmark to build a complete AC covered house. Not going to happen. if you apply for permit to build, that is just going to be turned down. So still a bit of work to do here in the north of Europe, but happy to hear that you're enjoying it, Andreas. And I know you've been enjoying this chart as well, the complete K-curve of hyperscalers and semiconductor companies that's really making rounds on Twitter right now and really got you agitated from the poolside there, Andreas.

16:35Mikkel Rosenvold:What are we looking at here?

16:37Andreas Steno:Well, I think the chart is pretty interesting in itself, right? You know, hyperscalers are spending all of their free cash flows to buy semiconductors. That is essentially the story of 2026. It was possibly the story of 2025 as well. And I think it will be the story of 2027 as well. The guy here, Puro, is a decent fund manager, but he's a part of the very vocal crowd right now. admittedly sort of having the upper hand in price action on these things at the moment, calling for mean reversion, say this cannot continue. Fair enough. And then he explicitly states that you should never buy cyclicals, in this case, semiconductor companies around peak earnings.

17:23Andreas Steno:And I'm like, should you ever buy anything around peak earnings? Right. It's like water is wet, that statement. Having said that, Miguel. Don't buy the peak. That's yeah. No shit, Sherlock. Right. But having said that, the discussion is not whether to buy a cyclical at peak or not. I mean, that's just a silly part of that discussion. The discussion is whether we've peaked or not, or whether this will continue to accelerate. And I simply don't see anything that points in the direction that we've peaked. If you look at the underlying spot price of semiconductors, for example, we're still accelerating.

17:59Andreas Steno:If you look, it's on page 22. So even since we've got the updates from Micron, Hynix, etc., we're probably up another 20 % or so. And one of the smaller players, Taiwanese semiconductor player, last week was quoted for saying that they expected the big players within that space to hike prices 30 % to 40 % in Q3. And, I mean, that's certainly not discounted. If you look at the forward earnings, most market participants expect the semiconductor companies to peak in Q1 next year or something like that. So that's the discussion. Will the cycle run for longer than Q1 next year? If you look at the communication from the hyperscalers, it will run far further.

18:50Andreas Steno:If you look at the communication from Hynix, for example, itself, they say we basically have a solid orders book until 2031. So, I mean, there's a huge divergence between what most of these bearish PMs currently expect and what the companies involved in this free cash flow transfer from hyperscalers to semiconductors say about it, because they communicate that 2027 will be wilder, way wilder than 2026. 2026. So I'm of the view that, you know, we're currently in a setback for a lot of momentum trades, basically all of the trades that have worked so far this year. But it's very driven by this shot from the policy slash forecasting era from the Fed Reserve earlier in June.

19:39Andreas Steno:You know, we've had higher dollar real rates for a while. A lot of people are a little bit scared whether we'll get interest rate hikes, et cetera, right? So if we get that off the table again, then I think people will start staring at these spot prices for memory chips once again and conclude that we're far from peaking. My best guess is that we peak maybe late 2027, early 2028, if I should give a guess right now. But there's just nothing pointing to peak right now if you look at the underlying price trends.

20:10Mikkel Rosenvold:Very interesting, Andreas. We're obviously covering that in a lot of our publications on Real Vision if we want to dive into all these charts and even more on that. Let's go to your favorite number, Andreas, the export numbers out of South Korea. People love it when we bring this on, also because it's such a high-frequency number. Are we seeing a rollover right now?