Are Markets About to Take Off Again? | Macro Mondays: September 21, 2026

Andreas Steno and Mikkel Rosenvold are back to ask whether markets are beginning to resemble the setup we saw in March. With the Fed having hiked, yields elevated, and oil moving lower, are the conditions falling into place for another leg higher? They also unpack the new U. S.–Denmark–Greenland agreement and what it means for the shifting geopolitical picture in the Arctic, before diving into the recent crypto rally to see whether it really has legs.🔥 Get 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘 𝗔𝗖𝗖𝗘𝗦𝗦 to Real Vision https://rvtv.io/3YOZZUe Timestamps:00:00 - Macro Mondays with Andreas Steno & Mikkel Rosenvold 00:22 - Crypto Is Ripping: Should Investors Rotate Out of AI?03:05 - What’s Really Driving the Crypto Rally?04:31 - Why AI and Crypto Could Work Together in the Agent Economy08:23 - Why Markets Are Starting to Look Like March and April Again11:47 - Trump-Xi Summit: Chips, China, and the Next Trade-War Test15:20 - South Korea Exports Surge as the Semiconductor Boom Reaccelerates18:09 - Greenland Deal: What the US, Denmark, and NATO Actually Got22:08 - Semiconductors vs Gold vs Crypto: The Best Q4 Setups23:43 - Iran, Hormuz, and Why We May Be Past Peak Escalation#macromondays #macro #mikkelrosenvold #andreassteno #stenoresearch #markets #investing #stocks #stockmarket Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Sometimes it may be good, sometimes it may be shit.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Hello out there, welcome to Real Vision, welcome to another edition of Macro Mondays. My name is Michael Rosenwald and I am slightly delayed here with you for another Monday show with you and Andreas. Welcome to the show Andreas, you doing okay?

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, you know, I've had my issues with the wifi for the past 30 minutes, but hopefully we'll be able to send to you live for the next 30 minutes without any hiccups, fingers crossed.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Sure, great. Andreas, we have plenty of material and topics for those 30 minutes. We're going to be covering as much as we can here, but let's kick off Andreas with a direct question. I like to do that, a harpoon as we would usually call it. How much of your AI back have you offloaded to buy into this crypto rally?

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Nothing yet, but okay, let me start by saying one thing when you address this question, Michael. I've seen a load of...

• 1:15Speaker 01

  I'm going there, no, go ahead.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I've seen a load of takes online that if you're into the AI trade, then you need to pivot to crypto.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  And I've said, I think continuously, that those two trades will work in tandem over time. So I think it's a wrong question whether it's either or, it's AI and crypto in tandem over time.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  You don't see those AI stocks doing 15% today Andreas, it's too slow.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Fair enough. We'll dive much more into this, talk a little bit about the situation in the Middle East, the upcoming US-China summit, a little bit maybe, maybe a little bit Greenland, I don't know. Lots of content to discuss today, Andreas. But we're going to start at one of my high points of this weekend. We had a lot of action, but this was probably the, definitely the best tweet I've seen maybe all year. Obviously you had Logan and Jake Paul visiting the Pentagon as well. They visited Scott Besen in the Treasury Department as well. And of course, the analysis is that the hawk to a girl should be Secretary of the Interior by now. Andreas, do you think this is Jake and Logan Paul, is this the 2028 ticket for the Republican Party, do you think?

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I honestly wouldn't rule it out. I mean, so this is maybe the only thing that makes me slightly upbeat on behalf of the Republicans ahead of the midterms, because they have a tremendously good grip on this whole influencer crowd in the US. Something that we are yet to see to the same extent in Europe, that parties work directly with these influences to the extent that we see in the US. So, I mean, as per usual, as Europeans, we're kind of watching this and then we expect it to arrive in a cycle or two here.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely, Andreas. Very exciting stuff here to watch this, but I have to admit, it's very, very strange for us here in Europe. Okay, Andreas, what's happening in crypto right now? What's driving it, do you think?

• 3:15Speaker 00

  So I obviously think it's related to this short dollar proxy trade that we've had on since July. It's not as if the dollar is super weak in the foreign exchange market, but we've seen various proxies of that short dollar trade work alongside Scott Besen ramping up his purchases of longer dated bonds alongside this whole debasement narrative returning due to a lot of focus on the debt level. So sometimes it's actually pretty tricky to find the actual driver or the actual reason why a narrative returns. But I think, as I've said for a couple of weeks, that it dates back to Scott Besen admitting

• 4:00Speaker 00

  to the long end of the yield curve being slightly out of control and his return to a higher pace in the buybacks and all of that. At least for me, that's been, that's been the first catalyst. And you could of course argue that catalyst has been added over the past weeks, but it all dates back to that rally started by Scott Besen's buyback operations that suddenly revived the whole narrative and the whole momentum of the space.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get that Andreas, and that is probably the correct analysis. I still have a feeling that this is a much more healthy or wholesome rally that we're looking into in crypto, because it seems to me that this is at least correlating with the huge focus and huge debate around the US deficit, the bond yields. And secondarily, we begin to see stories of especially SUI being used for inter-AI or agent-to-agent transactions. So in my opinion, you have some of the, you know, the original story. This is not driven by politicians, on the contrary, you have politicians, they couldn't get the Clarity Act passed and still crypto is rallying. So this is not some government bailout-driven rally. And actually, we're starting to see blockchain being used for something.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, if you look at the agent economy since, say, mid-May or early June, we're talking about a very, very, very rapid acceleration of the number of agents live, right? So in that sense, I do hold sympathy for this more fundamental structural story that blockchains and crypto will prove to be the means of transaction in an agent economy. And that's why I've said also earlier on this show that AI and crypto will work in tandem. It's not either or, and I, yeah, I still struggle with that either-or narrative that we see everywhere,

• 5:56Speaker 00

  because without AI, we wouldn't really have gotten to the point where we discussed crypto and an agent economy, right? And vice versa, without crypto being well-equipped for microtransactions, we probably even wouldn't even discuss whether an agent economy with small transactions and all of that would be feasible at all, because in the old fiat system, that wouldn't really be feasible, right? The old system is not well-equipped for a microtransaction regime. So I think it is something that will work in tandem. And let me just stress that five or six times on this show. I think it's wrong to look at it from an either-or perspective, and it doesn't always be that a lot of people do.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, Andreas. Before we dive in more into some of the topics that we have today and look into your analysis of this looking like March or April, which I'm very eager to get into, Andreas, just a few notices here. Remember guys, this is our free show, every week we publish on Real Vision. It's live on, you can follow it on Action YouTube and it's something new also on TikTok, I believe it's called, Andreas, on TikTok. So we're expanding like that. We have a great week for you at Real Vision. If you're on the Pro tier, you can look forward to your monthly Macro Meet, Macro, Andreas. It's on Thursday at 3pm Eastern, you're going into how the portfolio is doing. A lot of the changes that were made this Friday, actually, so lots of stuff to talk about.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And the entire setup, your entire micro setup or stock setup for Q4. On Wednesday at 10am Eastern, I'm hosting an exclusive Ask Me Anything, and that's actually even for the Alpha tier on Real Vision, so it doesn't have to be on the Pro tier on geopolitics. So quite good timing, I have to say, right on top of the Trump-She meeting that we'll be covering much more there in our weekly articles. So lots of great stuff to look forward to this week on Real Vision. Go check out your options in there. But Andreas, you wrote this morning that this is beginning to look a bit like March or April, and we're seeing today oil is dropping towards $100 from upwards or from higher than that,

• 8:07Speaker 01

  despite new threats that Trump is considering restarting strikes in Iran, etc. What are you seeing in that space? Has some of the fear that we've been struggling with for the past few weeks around oil, around that situation, has that evaporated a little bit?

• 8:23Speaker 00

  Well, slightly, right? At least the rate of change is improving. And when you look at it, Michael, right, back in March, we had... Markets trading the dollar on the long side. I mean, the market is very, very keen on trading the dollar high, at least when you look at speculants right now. We had a market that was incredibly long energy in positioning terms. Currently, the market is net forty-four percent long in oil of the open market interest in futures. So it's a very crowded long for good reasons, obviously, given what has happened over the past couple of months. But we're starting to get to a point where, and I've said that over the course of the FOMC meeting last week, also the higher-than-expected core CPI print the week before that,

• 9:08Speaker 00

  that even with news that should push the market in a certain direction, we're not really getting a large move in that direction. And that is, to me, a symptom of a market that has a very exhausted positioning already. And I think we're getting more and more evidence of that. I mean, the day after the Fed hike and a pretty hawkish message overall from from Walsh, markets just started accelerating again, right? And that is, again, to be a symptom of a market that is very, very crowded in one direction. If you look at, for example, the AAII survey, so the American Association of Individual Investors. So they basically survey a lot of their very active retail investors. And they are incredibly bearish.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  You know, a rate hike suddenly in the mix, a war that never ends,

• 9:57Speaker 00

  basically a re-acceleration of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in many ways. At least if you look at the damage done on infrastructure and all of that. You have so many things to worry about and yet, you know, the market hasn't really sold off despite so many people being bearish. I think it is a pretty good sign that we're about to see better times. And I saw someone label it the September phobia. We almost always have September phobia because it's, you know, if you look at the past ten, fifteen years, September has a bad seasonality track record. It was kind of the same last year. Everyone was so bearish into September and we got a massive rally, especially in some of the momentum names. And yeah, I think something like that is on the cards for the fourth quarter here.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Then we can talk about twenty twenty-seven later because sure, when we get rate hikes from all central banks, it is something that will put a lid on on the business cycle down the road. But, you know, there is time between now and then, let me put it like that.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  There's money to be made in that interregnum there. Okay, Andres, we are approaching a very, very important summit, the Trump-She summit. I wrote an article on it a few weeks back. I wasn't quite sure what the backdrop was going to be. We had a lot of reports that the Chinese were struggling to find out who would coordinate this meeting on the American side. That's always very, very hard to know. It seems to me like Scott Besant has now come to this on his to-do list after sending Jake Paul out of the door. He had time to begin coordinating this meeting, which is about time. They were probably on this for a few weeks, but you know what I mean? And we're getting quite positive news that there is a constructive term. They're working on maybe an AI safety plan, other stuff. It seems like the market is reacting really well to this, Andres.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  What are you expecting? What do you hear from market participants and the expectations for this meeting?

• 11:47Speaker 00

  So I, you know, in terms of what I hear, a lot of people are obviously focused on this whole Korea licensing question. Also, the border question on semiconductor, semiconductors across borders and all of that. What we've heard from the US side is that they hold sympathy for added tariffs on semiconductors. They hold sympathy for, you know, banning more of the equipment from China, which in turn would probably also lead to some sort of consensus between the US and China that they cannot renew a license within China or for the Korean companies, in my opinion.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  So I'm kind of watching those, those names within that space with a certain degree of eagerness since we are so heavily invested in them, right? So having said that, yeah, I don't, I don't really get the vibe right now that they're, you know, keen on really accelerating the trade war between them right now. I had that vibe a lot more a couple of weeks ago. So I don't know whether you agree with that, but to me, it would be a major surprise to see some sort of big escalation towards the end of the week now that we've gotten these conciliatory signals over the weekend.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. There are still a lot of fundamentals in the trade relationship that should. If you follow the twenty twenty-five, the spring of twenty twenty-five logic, this war should be red hot because they haven't been solved, they haven't been addressed. You still have all the same imbalances. But that just doesn't seem to be the focal point anymore. Everything is about AI, potentially also about Iran. I doubt they'll get much done on Iran, at least not publicly. They might be discussing a strategy for oil prices, et cetera. But I agree with you. It seems like there's some, they have found some common ground on, on the AI build-out and then how to balance that in a fair way. So looking forward to it, we'll hopefully know more.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  And no matter whether it's fair to say that the current spike in the oil and oil products price is solely driven by the Iran war, it's at least very much partially driven by it.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  What I was about to say is that China, the Chinese and the US administration, they have a problem in common right now. They do, that they're facing high energy costs. And they, to some extent, they simply need to coordinate their efforts for this not to spiral out of control. And both parties know that. And I actually think, basically since the Iran war, no matter whether you blame the US for starting it, whatever, right? The two parties have actually not been as focused on escalating trade wars against each other because they have this problem in common. And it's very typical, even foes, they can find common ground when they have something they need to solve together, right? And I actually think this is a big part of the backdrop here.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  No, I agree absolutely, Andres. We'll be covering that even more during the week. Andres, in your Monday article here and also in the Friday article, you began to look at one of the absolute banger charts that we usually do. And we have to look at it again, Andres, because things are really, really starting to look interesting in semi-space. Take it through what you see. We're already seeing some of the movements in today's market and some of the details, Andres. What are you seeing out of South Korea and in the semiconductor trade here?

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the semiconductor trade is up a couple of percent today, right? So I know we cannot compete with some of the meme coins you mentioned to begin with. But the semiconductor trade looks interesting again, in my opinion. And if you look at it, right, it was the exact same backdrop that we had in March and April, for that matter. The South Korean trade data looked incredibly impressive.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  We're talking about a new acceleration. The numbers for the first twenty days of the month were out this morning, pointing to an increase of almost eighty percent year-on-year. If you work day-adjusted, it's even more. So I mean, it's an incredible increase. And against even my incredibly bullish expectations, we're accelerating in year-over-year terms, which is an incredibly hard barrier to beat because, you know, obviously you cannot continue growing a hundred percent a year, right? If you look beneath the hood, semis are up two hundred and fifty percent year-over-year, something like that. It's absolutely bizarre, while the broader exports ex semis are up twenty, twenty-two percent, something like that between friends, which is still a lot.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  I mean, the economic cycle is doing very well. And South Korea is typically one of the first gauges that we get of, you know, the economic health of the cycle. And despite hikes, despite oil wars and what have you, the economic cycle is not budging. And then I think that's very, very important as a takeaway this morning. And I think it is absolutely fair that Nasdaq is up a couple of percent here, that semiconductors are up a couple of percent, that the market is rebounding because the market is simply not positioned for this. And that's exactly what I've said maybe two or three weeks in a row. And we've thankfully guided our, our members in the right direction. Yeah, basically, over those, those weeks that, you know,

• 17:15Speaker 00

  the bearishness that we see across positioning, across a lot of metrics, it's not really rounded in fundamentals right now. It may be that two thousand twenty-seven will turn out to be a crap year. I wouldn't rule that out, given everything that's happening. But remember the leads and lacks. And that's why it's so important that you continue to do a business cycle analysis where you focus on the moving parts that you can actually use to forecast where the cycle is heading. And it is too early to, yeah, to label the cycle dead. It's simply too early.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Okay, Andreas. Obviously, you guys can catch all the movements that we did in the macro portfolio in our Friday portfolio update article from last week with the Real Vision approach here.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Okay, Andreas. I want to talk a little bit about Greenland. I don't have a big investment angle for this, but we have to touch upon it a little bit. Obviously, we're both Danish for people who don't know that. So we've been in the middle of this, and people are eager for our opinions on this, Andreas. And I know we've had slightly differing opinions. You were very, very hot on selling Greenland to the US.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  That is still my viewpoint.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  A little bit more lukewarm on that. In any case, we got a Greenland deal. And just to sum up a little bit of what happened here, the way I see it, is that the US had for many, many years, a big desire to mitigate this tail risk that essentially was Greenlandic independence, because some very, very foolish Greenlandic politicians, they were talking about, ah, once we become independent, we might try, decide to ally with China or Russia or who knows. And that's obviously delusional. And the US wanted to control that tail risk. It's a very, very, very, very small tail risk. Greenland is not becoming independent right now. And even if they were, with the Chinese who win, whatever. But I get it. I

• 19:23Speaker 01

  mean, as a label, it's kind of like a hedge fund thinking that you have this tail risk, it's potentially one that could trigger a world war. You need to hedge it. It's very, very expensive to hedge, so you mitigate it instead. And that's essentially what the US landed. And therefore, I think this was a very, very good deal. There was a lot of noise and problems in between, a lot of drains on the US European relations that shouldn't have happened. But again, this deal is okay. It's good for Denmark. It's good for the US. It's probably good for Greenland. It's, I think this is a win-win, and you can have that. I get a lot of Americans in my feed talking about who won this. And I mean, Denmark and US are supposed to be best friends. I mean, Andreas, when you and I go to lunch,

• 20:08Speaker 01

  we don't need a negotiation strategy for who pays for the lunch, because we're friends. We figure it out. I mean, you shouldn't need some kind of art of the deal to figure out who pays for this. But here we are. It's there. It's probably gone as a topic, which is a big relief. And yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  I'm not sure I completely buy that analogy, because no matter whether we use my credit card or yours, it will end up in the same council.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  That's fair.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  That's not entirely fair.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Our accountant doesn't need to hear that. She hears this program a lot. She doesn't need to know that.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  But in any case, Michael, I think it's interesting that we see the deal right now, given that we've seen a lack of progress around the Strait of Muz and a lack of progress in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. So to me, it seemed like they wanted to capture a victory somewhere in the geopolitical space ahead of the midterms. This was probably one of the easier ones that they could get. And, you know, as per usual, after such a deal is being signed, the two parties signing the deal, they don't agree on how to represent this deal, if you know what I mean. That's always the case. I guess to some extent, it was also what went wrong after the first memorandum of understanding between the US

• 21:28Speaker 00

  and Iran, that they had a very, very different storytelling around what was signed, actually. And it sometimes makes it difficult to ensure that the deal is actually being complied with if both parties are running around with different stories, right? Having said that, I am happy to see this deal for obvious reasons. And I sincerely think that this is a good step forward for NATO. In my opinion, it is of the utmost relevance to have the US military present up there to the extent that they want. It's almost always been the case that they've been allowed to. But I think that cooperation has now been solidified to very much to the gain of both parties.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get to talk about other stuff. That's equally important, Andreas. What can people expect, Andreas? As I mentioned earlier, we have the macro meets micro coming up this Thursday on Real Vision for ProView. What can listeners expect from that, Andreas?

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I mean, we're taking a deep dive into the semiconductor space to find the best traits to express the bullishness that I just laid out. We're obviously also going to discuss the allocation strategy between semiconductors and this soft dollar sleeve, where you have gold, Bitcoin, and you name it. And to me, it's been a bit of a surprise to see the crypto sleeve outperform precious metals to the extent that we've seen. It goes against the sort of machine learned observations that we've seen from our now casting technology. We hold both. Let me just stress that. We were both invested in gold,

• 23:06Speaker 00

  some in the crypto sleeve and some in the AI sleeve. So we're basically long all three, meaning that we directionally think all three will go up here. But some of the price action has surprised me and our technology, in all fairness. So we're obviously going to look through these three micro cases and really focus our attention there, given that's where you see the price action and the price bullishness, basically. Now, it looks incredibly interesting, the fourth quarter now. And then, you know, most people wouldn't have anticipated that a few weeks back.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  No, absolutely, Andreas. Great, great, great expectations and very, very exciting to hear more about that. And remember also, we have a geopolitical Ask Me Anything on Wednesday for Alpha. Cheers and the buff. So lots of great stuff to track here. Any final remarks or topics, Andreas, before we round off today?

• 24:00Speaker 00

  I mean, I took a lot of comfort in Trump's words over the weekend, where he wasn't fully rejecting the possibility of meeting the Supreme Leader in Iran. We've heard that tune before. But as we've said, since we, you know, I was kind of made famous on X for saying that the war, the conflict was over. I think I said that back in April. It proved to be the exact right take. And we did pivot from it, but probably not to the extent that we needed over the summer. But my reading of the conflict in the Middle East is that it moves in sine waves. And I think what we've heard this weekend is another

• 24:45Speaker 00

  solidification of that view, that we're basically moving in circles. And we're now past peak escalation, which is everything you need to know, which is what reminds me so much of March and April, that we had this, you know, grand escalation, and then both parties had an incentive to de-escalate. And that's basically what we've seen. So kudos to you also, Michael, for calling that a few weeks back.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Let's see how it goes from here, Andreas. It's very, very interesting times. And I think a lot could happen in the Trump she meeting that we'll obviously be covering. That's all for this time, folks. Remember to subscribe to the channel. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment what you would like more and less of. And yeah, good luck out there. See you next Monday.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  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.