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

Andreas Steno Larsen and Mikkel Rosenvold are back to break down a dramatic start to the week, beginning with the rare coordinated U. S.-Japan intervention to support the yen and what the market reaction says about currencies, rates, and the future of the carry trade. They Unpack Donald Trump’s decision to postpone planned strikes on Iran in favor of renewed talks, and examine the implosion of Leopold Aschenbrenner’s highly leveraged AI hedge fund and what this means for the AI trade. Let Monarch do your financial 'spring cleaning' for you! Use code REALVISION at Monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. Today’s sponsor is Plus500 US. Take your trading to the next level with cross-market contracts, from precious metals to key indices, and more. Whether you’re a seasoned trader in the Futures arena or brand new, Plus500’s user-friendly trading platform offers you the advanced tools, market insights, and quick execution you’ve been looking for. Get started with Plus500 for as little as $100 at https://us.plus500.com. Trading in futures involves the risk of loss.🔥 Get 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘 𝗔𝗖𝗖𝗘𝗦𝗦 to Real Vision https://rvtv.io/3YOZZUe Timestamps:01:23 - US Intervention to Support the Yen: What Markets Need to Know04:45 - Why the US Stepped Into the Japanese Yen Market06:03 - Iran Talks Resume as Trump Calls Off Planned Strikes07:32 - The Sinus-Wave War: Why Markets Are Panicking Less08:49 - Oil Flows, Strait of Hormuz, and the Risk Premium Fading11:16 - What Trump Really Needs From a New Iran Deal14:07 - Inflation Is Falling Faster Than the Fed Realizes18:40 - Strong PMI, Higher Real Rates, and the Momentum Selloff19:48 - Microsoft vs Alphabet: The AI CapEx Accounting Divide22:21 - Why Memory Chips Could Be More Valuable Than GPUs24:56 - Inside Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Hedge-Fund Implosion26:08 - Global Macro Opportunities and Why the Dollar Could Weaken Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:31Speaker 01

  Hello out there, welcome to Real Vision, welcome to Macro Mondays. My name is Michael Rosenbaum 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 Beson'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. By God, we are spending a lot of money on various subscriptions.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  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, Andreas.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  No, but I think the pricing is $100K.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  It is per month.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  So, I mean, yeah, per month? Okay, I thought it was annual.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  It's company-wide though, yeah.

• 2:38Speaker 02

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

• 3:04Speaker 01

  That's it? I think it's, you know, 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 will probably, you know, make it even more relevant for the core ICP.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Here would be an add-on that gives you immediate access to Scott Beson's meeting notes, because that seems to be worth even more, or what?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  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 Beson's meeting during the weekend before he intervened against Japanese yen market. But I can also guarantee you that Scott Beson didn't write this. And the reason why is that Scott Beson 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? Yeah, you would never do that. So Scott has not written this. I'm 100% sure. It's probably a troll.

• 4:43Speaker 01

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

• 4:53Speaker 02

  It's been on a weakening path for a long while. The Japanese authorities have struggled to, you know, regain the momentum and they needed some help. You know, this is kind of the reverse of what we saw in 2011, where the authorities intervened against a strong yen, right? And for an intervention to be, you know, 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.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  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. But the Japanese authorities have been, you know, they've been wanting this for a long while, because, you know, without controlling the Japanese yen path, they obviously cannot control inflation and they've struggled with exactly that for a while.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Interesting, Andreas. We might get back to that in a little bit. You're obviously releasing your weekly stand on signals flagship or your editorial this Monday, Andreas. You were writing about the sinus wave's 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's, it is still driving markets incredibly to some degree. I mean, not as it was initially, but it's still driving oil markets enormously, these weekend tweets. And Andreas, this weekend, we got the, it was already Saturday, so a little bit ahead of schedule. We have the weekly hope here.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  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 wave picture, that we are essentially in, back to this weekly schedule, this weekly role of getting some hope here over the weekend, we're getting closer to a deal, and then things slowly deteriorate during Monday, Tuesday, Friday, the trading week.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  So, should markets just look elsewhere? Should investors just look elsewhere or what's your take here?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  I actually think that, you know, by now, it seems like this sinus wave is slightly longer than the weekly scheduling that you just laid out. Because, you know, 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, whatever he wrote, Trump, before calling things off. This time, he stated that it would be the biggest attack 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.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  And does that mean that we have a second memorandum of understanding coming up? Probably not short-term, but we're 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 Argus oil price and the WTI.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  So basically a spread that tells you whether the export price of US oil is higher than the domestic price amount. 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

• 9:47Speaker 02

  are sneaked out of the region via the seaway. 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, Michael, that markets tend to become very creative when there is an incentive to be creative. Iraq offers...

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Oil tankers, a price of, say, a little less than thirty dollars 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? As far as I can calculate, that's an extra profit of fifty to sixty million dollars per ship. I guess you could convince a couple of Philippine captains to take that chance.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  You don't have to spend.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  And that's what I'm trying to say.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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. So, yeah, absolutely.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  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.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Andres, 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, et cetera. So, what I'm seeing, Andres, and I think 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 to, some level of regime change, they wanted them, all these sorts of things.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  That was essentially scrapped for the first memorandum of understanding that was boiled down to nuclear and the straight. 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. 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,

• 12:51Speaker 01

  and probably they're going to have to give 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 straight might very well be some joint venture set up between Iran and Oman, essentially the US out of the straight. So, that's obviously a much, much worse situation than compared to pre-war. 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 was written on occasion. It was a big mistake to enter Iran, but he's so far managed to avoid the escalation trap here.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:45Speaker 03

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• 14:02Speaker 01

  I don't know if you've read the CNN report, Andres, that the US general staff, the military leadership has essentially written a mail out, an email to its 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.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yes, quite the thing to run out of stuff to bomb, right?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  It is, it is. But essentially, they are. What else are they going to bomb on this? They're 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 straight, 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 expected perhaps not quite what we saw in March, but hinting towards that. But in US inflation, at least the eurozone, slightly different picture, seems to still be, the chance of the inflation rise seems to be very, very low. Why is that, do you think?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  So, let me just be as crystal clear as I can. 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, right? 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.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  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? 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, core goods, look extremely soft.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  And the best way to explain that is the following. We had, you know, several quarters in a row with a lot of tariffs intake. We're now seeing a net tariffs

• 16:49Speaker 02

  release, basically. We're paying back tariffs on a monthly basis. That happened in June, that has happened here in July again. So, if you're, let's assume that you had to take decisions on pricing at sea level, Miguel, right?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And you're certainly handed billions in return tariffs.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  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 case here in July, and prices are basically sideways. So, inflation roughly zero on the month.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  That is incredibly soft, and it is so, so, so out of tune with the Fed reserve. I cannot recall

• 18:08Speaker 02

  a timing where they've been this off in that direction. You know, they were off in the other direction during 2021, 2022, where they kept saying that inflation was nowhere to be seen while it was going up. We could see that in our inflation data as well, and now the opposite is happening. So, I think Wash 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, you know, he basically says nothing, meaning that the Fed remains relatively hawkish while inflation is calming down. That leads to higher real rates.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  And I think that probably provided the match, as I wrote on Friday, for this whole momentum rout in July. And then it was obviously accelerated by King Leopold and all of his friends in Korea.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  We'll get back to that in a second, Andres, because you could argue that Kevin Wash 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 fifty-five point six, even better than the most forecasts and consensus, I believe. So, yeah, just under 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, Andres. 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, Andres,

• 19:47Speaker 01

  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

• 20:00Speaker 01

  in a scenario where the path of the Fed is unsure. Was that what provoked this meltdown in situational awareness, or was it simply just bad risk management?

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Oh, it was bad risk management, no doubt. But, as I said, real rates have been increasing at an immense pace since Wash took over. And by saying nothing, he's said a lot, given that inflation swaps are down so much. So, you know, the market has sniffed out a lot of what's going on in inflation now costs as well, by the way.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Having said that, Miguel. 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 on the earnings side. But they're slowly but surely actually,

• 21:04Speaker 02

  you know, bringing the life cycle of their server packs down in their accounting. Microsoft did the exact opposite. They increased the life cycle of their server packs from 15 to 25 years, meaning that they can hide some of the CapEx because, you know, by definition, some of this CapEx moves from being an operational to a financial lease. So it basically shifts category in the earnings. 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.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  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. So as I wrote on Friday, this is the stupidest market I can recall having participated in, both on the way up and on the way down. You know, a lot of names that had no news were bought right, left and center in Q2. And a lot of solid, solid names with only good news through July have been sold off. So I think this is a time of great opportunity if you're not levered,

• 22:30Speaker 02

  because you obviously need to be able to withstand the volatility that this creates. A few interesting numbers and stats just for our audience here. Samsung is expected to print more than a trillion in free cash flows over the next three years. Samsung is worth roughly a trillion. So they can buy back the entire company over the next three years in case those assumptions hold true. That's bizarre. Macro is more or less the same story, right? And Hynek's the same.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  So, you know, the market is still very convinced that some of these memory names are cyclical.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  And I'll just add one thing in relation to that. Next year, 2027, to the best of my assumptions of the more than a trillion spent in CapEx, the projected spend in CapEx from the hyperscalers, around 75% of that will go to memory chips.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  So memory chips are currently, and I stress currently, way more valuable than GPUs. Nvidia is priced as way more stable

• 23:54Speaker 02

  company than the memory companies.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  I think that assumption may be wrong.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  And, you know, the jury is definitely still out on that story.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  But everyone I talked to with, you know, solid understanding of data center setups, et cetera, they tell me that memory is more important than GPUs. By now, and, you know, the more we accelerate the agentic economy over the next handful of years, the more memory we need. Agents need memory.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  They need memory a lot more than they need logic. Of course, they need logic as well, but to take good decisions when you have a lot of background information, you need a lot of memory to have the right logic, right? So, you know, the split between logic and memory in a data center is moving fast in the direction of memory and the market is pricing it the other way around. I think that's wrong, but obviously the jury is still out. And therefore, I remain of the view that this is the stupidest market I've participated in. But it's very expensive to just sit here and say that.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  For me at the moment, you know, I haven't had a good July, not as bad as Leopold, but.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  He had a nice wedding, hopefully.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  I, I, I hope she said yes, right? And at least we know it's, she's not in it for the money anymore, but.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Still looking decent enough, but obviously a big shock also that, that a, what, a 30% drawdown was enough to take out his entire book, that is.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I, but, you know, a lot of people say, oh, he's still up 80% on the year. Yes, because of that anthropic position that they couldn't sell. So, you know, most investors in situational awareness, they are at around zero because they had that anthropic position from the get go, as far as I remember. So most that entered are basically wiped out.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is something else with these unlisted assets that they hold. It's, it's, it's different. It becomes a different sort of fund when you have a lot of that, but that's a discussion all to itself, Andreas.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  I forgot to look at the calendar, Andreas. Is it on Wednesday that you host the State of the Union here?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  I can't remember if it's Wednesday or Thursday.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Thursday, sorry. Horrible preparation on my side, Andreas. I just wanted to, to, to put in, put in a bit of, of an ad for that. What can people expect to hear more of? It's part of the approach here at Real Vision only, but, but what can people expect in the State of the Union on Thursday, Andreas?

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we, we give you a guided tour around the world of macro. And, you know, currently there, there is a lot of opportunity outside of the US as well. So what we do is that we look at our outcasts across India, China, Japan, Europe, et cetera, to find the best macro opportunities out there. And maybe that's a good cliffhanger here. Everything that we see in our outcasting right now suggests that the dollar has more weakness coming up. And, you know, we've been leaning that way slowly but surely since the inflation data started softening in the US. But we'll give you more insight to that and how to trade the macro.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Let us know in the comments what you think about our thoughts and what you are buying and selling in the coming days and months. We love to, to really try and nurture that community and bring that into the show in, in coming weeks. So do leave a like and comment if you like the show. Let us know what you're trading and what, what, what you think is overlooked in this crazy market of ours that we are all trying to navigate. Thanks a lot to you, Andreas. Thanks a lot to everyone for tuning in. That's all we had for you this week, but we'll be back across the week on, on Real Vision. And if nothing else, next Monday on Macro Mondays. See you next week.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  You obviously enjoyed the episode because you're here with me at the end. But listen, don't forget to go to realvision.com/join and grab a free membership. It's an incredible community packed with alpha, great investment ideas and the research that you need to help you unfuck your future. So get started now. Go to realvision.com/join.