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Foreign welcome to another edition of Macro Mondays. I am Michael Wolfenwald and this is going to be a not so usual version of Macro Mondays. My usual co host, Andreas has fallen ill, so I'm all alone with the range today. And this means that we will take a slightly different approach to this show. My area of expertise is obviously geopolitics, as many of you probably know. So we're going to be taking a deep dive into the world of geopolitics right now that's as hot as ever and has huge impacts on markets. Still, we're going to round off the show with a couple of trade ideas, also looking ahead at the upcoming tariffs deadline. So we're not all without Macro today, even though Andreas is not with us as usual, we are sending this live on X on Real Vision on various platforms, YouTube, etc. We also publish this as a podcast. But if you're viewing this live, please do post your questions in the comments section for that. Perhaps especially related to geopolitics. If you have questions specifically for Andreas or in areas that are a little bit outside of my area of expertise, please post them as well. And we will get back to those next week when Andreas is hopefully with us. Again, depending on the level of illness within the Copenhagen daycare system, let's just put it like that. So, as usual, this is a sneak peek into the research that we do at Sten Research today. Specifically much of the research that goes into our the Drill article series. The Drill is a combination of our research on commodities and energy and geopolitics, hence the name, and it's a weekly article that you could get full access to via the Pro Macro subscription tier at Real Vision. Remember our usual disclaimer, obviously, and perhaps even more so today since I'm alone here. So no counterweights that our trade ideas and our analyses. They might be sometimes maybe good summertime, it may be shit. Okay, let's get started folks and please pour on the questions. We'll get along those underway. We'll take a deep dive into the world of geopolitics. Get all across the globe on various situations and how they might affect your portfolio. I want to start here. Let's show this picture of Usher Vance going to Greenland. Now, Andreas and myself, we get a lot of questions every time something happened to Greenland since it's obviously a Danish territory. So let's just do a quick recap. This is not going to move the needle very much in your portfolios, guys. I know that it's very, very hard to find, very, very Hard to find any Greenland equities and even if you did, I'm not sure I would suggest that, but just to cover it. Anyway, obviously Donald Trump has been keep, has kept on banging this drum on and wanting to annex or at least include Greenland in some shape or form into the United States. Greenland is a part of Denmark, an autonomous territory, and it seems now that the US Is trying to ramp up efforts by sending a bunch of, a bunch of official as well as the, the wife of the Vice president to Greenland. What's the status and what's likely to happen up there? Well, for many months we, Andreas and I both had the view that a deal was very much possible here. I mean, Greenland has been discussing independence for decades and I've been waiting for the right time. Perhaps this was the right time. Now they had another suitor, another country ready to take over. However, what's happened over the past few months is that the Greenlandic politicians and the Greenlandic peoples have cooled down remarkably on at least a quick independence. The Greenlandic government, it seems, suddenly realized that quick independence meant becoming a U.S. territory. And that's definitely not what they meant by independence. The Greenlandic people have had this idea that they could become an independent state and could pick and choose from case to case between the world powers. And that's obviously not going to happen. Donald Trump very clearly has demonstrated that. So a few weeks ago we had the elections in Greenland and that's a result that was, I think, displayed or discussed in a number of ways that that's not entirely accurate. So you have to understand that all Greenlandic politicians more or less want independence. That's nothing new. So to say that the independence wing has won this election is like saying that the anti monarchy wing won the US elections. I mean, everyone almost in the Greenlandic Parliament wants independence. The question is how fast do they want it and how violent do they want it? Obviously, Greenland is very dependent on, on subsidies from Denmark. So when they say independence, does that mean an independence vote within the next six months? Does that mean independence even if Danish subsidies are cut, etc. So the only party really truly pushing for accession into the United States, the collect party, received 300 votes. 300 votes. So the, the, the atmosphere is, is definitely not one of simply applying to becoming the 51st state. Now, a lot of people have talked about the Nalarak Party receiving, having a very, very good election, becoming the second largest party. They're the only people, they're the perhaps the harshest independence party. They want a referendum on independence very Very quickly. But it's not a Trump party. This is a left wing party, as is most of Greenlandic politics. I mean, if Bernie Sanders were to pick a party in Greenland, these guys would probably be too left wing for him in some cases. So to understand this, the Greenlandic people want independence. I think Trump has made it less likely that they will vote for independence within the next four years. And the ability of Trump to do a deal with Denmark has also fallen dramatically because Denmark never had the intention of keeping Greenland against its will. So if the Greenlandic people choose to vote for independence, Denmark will allow Greenland to be independent and then the US can swoop in. But now the Greenlandic people have seen whether that independence is equal to Trump. They don't really want it anymore. So for now, this is kind of a deadlock. Denmark can't really do anything. We can't really hand over Greenland without the Greenlandic people accepting to it. And they're definitely not too fond of that idea. So, okay, guys, enough about Greenland. Unless you have more questions on the topic, I think it's going to be all show and very, very little action on this because there's not a whole lot you can actually do. Moving on from, from Greenland, we are having some, some interesting questions on tariffs. We'll get back to those later in the show. I want to move along to Ukraine, obviously, the biggest geopolitical situation in 2025 and a situation to watch for all investors. Obviously we had a long process up until this. We had the react talks. They were a huge shock to, to the European nations. You had the American delegation sitting right across the Russian delegation. This is a picture of subsequent talks between the US And Ukrainian administrations. But still the same room. Looking very nice, by the way. And I think you should, you should see these peace negotiations as sort of an M and A process here. Donald Trump, the first step in an M and A process is obviously that you evaluate the company that you're trying to purchase or merger with. They've done that. Trump has come to the conclusion, okay, we want to do a deal here. The first step then is not to go to the counterparty, that's to go to your own board. And that's what Trump did after the initial react talks. The initial react talks were a sort of a feeler. Is there any ground here? Do we want to do a deal? Okay, we want to do a deal. Now I have to talk to my owners and my shareholders. And that's what Trump did when he received Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer. That's what he did. That part of my French shit show of a, of a press conference in the White House that was meeting the shareholders. So the U.S. shareholders being the European countries in Ukraine, he had to get them on board. So say, okay, now I have a mandate, more or less anyway, to go and actually deal with the counterparty being Russia. So that's where we're at right now. Trump has gotten some sort of a mandate from Europe and Ukraine, at least enough for him to, to initiate direct negotiations with Russia. Now we are entering a phase of negotiations where we should expect two things. First and foremost, we should expect volatility in this process. This is the way Trump usually deals with this kind of things. When he doesn't get the other party to do what he wants. He pushes tariffs, he pushes sanctions, he, he withdraws support, etc. He very obviously did this with Ukraine. I mean, one day he pulled all military assistance and intelligence support, only to reinstate it maybe a week later when the Ukrainians had caved in and essentially given him the mandate he wanted. That's most likely going to happen to Russia as well. So Trump has already indicated that he will be ramping up sanctions, he will be providing more weapons to the Ukrainians. I know that's a flip flop, but you have to understand that these are two different parts of the negotiation process. So Trump is going to ramp up the pressure on Putin right up until the point where they have an agreement. That's the one thing you should expect. The other thing you should expect is for Trump to try and sort of tiptoe towards an agreement. What does this mean? Well, number one, it means that Trump will try to make smaller agreements on ceasefires or don't use these weapons or exchange these prisoners, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right up to the point where we're talking an actual broad cease fire. We saw this. The initial cease fire was that you couldn't act, you couldn't attack each other's nuclear plants and other infrastructure installments. That's not really a cease fire. They're still shooting at each other. The armies are still throwing everything at each other. The next step now is a Black Sea cease fire. So that's sort of the next tiptoe here. And we might see more deals in that regard. Might be easing of some sanctions if and when Russia abides to this ceasefire. It's still my base case that we're looking at a ceasefire within one to two months here, an overall ceasefire as the next step towards an actual peace. How will this reflect on markets. So obviously this is going to be very, very good news for markets. I mean, Europe is not going to be trading directly with Russia again on day one, but it will come relatively quickly. It's also a major de risking of international affairs and potentially also sort of wrestling Russia out of China's grip. So in many cases this should be a positive for for equities perhaps especially Europe and in particular Eastern European equities. We've discussed this in other podcast. There seems to be a lot of great cases for the Eastern Europeans to do really, really well in this scenario. Before I get to some more points on weapons stocks and trade ideas, just a question here. Hi Miguel, how do you interpret the theory cited by Peter Sihan that the US Administration has been infiltrated by Russian intelligence, which would partly wholly explain the recent pivot in U.S. policy affecting Russian interests? Well, it's very likely that the US Administration is to some extent infiltrated by Russian intelligence. And it's very evident that the current US Administration being Trump and a lot of his top advisors are more Russian friendly minded or at least not as critical of Russia. However, I also think this is the timing of this is of these talks and the peace process has something to do obviously with the fact that there's a new president. No matter who it is. This brings whole new momentum and you sort of eyes to stuff. I think it's possible that Kamala would have initiated peace talks as well. Perhaps not as rapid, not as violently as Trump is doing, but it is very much possible. The other factor is the simple fact that Ukraine is losing on the ground. So I mean no matter how you look at it, Ukraine is losing or have lost depending on your temper. So right now is a good time for talks because it's not very likely that Ukraine will make headway on the front line for the next one to two years. Does this mean that Trump is pro Russia Russia? Well, evidently more so than Joe Biden. However, I also think these are the circumstances forming this and I think we will see a very, very tough Trump over the coming, coming weeks and months in these negotiations. He will have to give in to Putin on a number of issues. There's no question around that. Because Putin is winning on the battlefield. That doesn't mean that you're pro Russia. That just means that you've lost a war with the US And Ukraine essentially have. So that's my take on that. I know this is a very heated and loaded subject. So but anyway, please state your comments or questions in the in the section Below. Okay, let's move on a little bit because I have a thesis here. One of the effects of the new Trump administration is that the European Union has awoken in its own terms. Europe is trying to remar rearm itself and it wants to do so by purchasing European built weapons. Okay, I think you've all got the memo on that. Most of yours have also probably invested in it, or many of you may have Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, etc. And I think a lot of the expected increases in military expenditure has already been priced in into those equities. We still have a very big issue of these companies actually being being able to deliver goods. I've mentioned the statistic before, but. But over the course of the Russo Ukrainian war, North Korea has produced more than five times delivered, more than five times the number of shells, artillery shells than the entire European Union has. So when it comes to defense, the European Union has been outproduced by North Korea. And so obviously the European Union has all the financial industrial know how. We have everything we need to build way more industrial artillery shells. But it takes a lot of time to ramp that up. It's a part of our industry in Europe that we have completely neglected for decades, first and foremost by cutting our defense expenditure, but also by purchasing a lot of US Built equipment for our defenses. So European politicians are obviously trying to, to, to buy European in this rearmament. But I think they're going to have to realize that they have to look beyond Europe to actually get stuff delivered because that's also where we're at. It's not enough anymore for European politicians to write out checks and say, okay, we're going to spend this amount of money in six years. No, we need actual guns and actual shells. And the big European companies simply can't deliver that right now. Their order books are full. And that's why I still think there is a lot of momentum and a lot of potential in this for US Arms industries. Because even though Trump is doing everything he can to scare the Europeans away from the US Arms manufacturers, they're the only ones able to deliver at a large enough scale to satisfy the demand coming out of European defenses right now. So a couple of notes on this. I think there is a sub trend or very clear trend in military procurement that we're sick and tired of buying these very, very expensive fighter jets. Obviously the F35 is the most recent example in many countries. In Europe, there is now fear that if the US Leaves NATO, they have the leverage over our entire air Force. Said for Instance Denmark. Other countries have bought a lot of F35 planes. If the US refuses software updates for these planes, are they stuck on the ground? It's not entirely implausible. So and, and that vulnerability comes both from reliance on the US but also reliance on one weapon system that is extremely expensive. So meanwhile you have people like Elon Musk and other tech gurus out there talking about that the fighter jet, the symbol of modern warfare, is becoming obsolete. And that's also what we're seeing on the ground in Russia and Ukraine. You'll be hearing very, very little about air attacks. It's all missiles and drones. Drones is where it's at. So over the coming one to two decades and even within the next couple of years, given these huge increases in military spending that we're discussing, we're going to see a shift from fighter jets, from main battle tanks to over into drones. And I'm not, I'm not sure that has been quite priced in yet. Obviously you have a bunch of European drone manufacturers. Not very many of them are publicly traded. So a good way to look it's is at autonomous autonomous technology and robotics. ETFs could be aware of this. I don't think these, this purchasing spree in Europe has been priced into this sector yet at all. And I think it will get there because as I just mentioned, we're not producing this stuff in Europe. So. So at least not to the extent that we want to buy it. Two very specific examples and company called aerovironment just landed a huge deal with the Dane. It's US company just landed a huge deal with the U with the Danish military to produce drones for use in Greenland, ironically. So we're having a US company deliver the drones that we need to patrol Greenland and the Arctic area. The these guys have a huge potential. You they already have inroads into most European defenses. They have a huge potential to deliver larger drones in the smaller drone game, which is also going to be very, very relevant, especially for army use. We have a company like Red Cat Holdings. They gained a lot after the election, as did many shares, but have also dropped since New Year's. I think there's huge potential here also within the US army because remember, Elon Musk has only just begun looking at Pentagon. Is it possible that he can begin to shift money away from these huge fighter jet, aircraft carrier, main battle tank, these very heavy and heavy expensive investments and more into drones? We're talking billions of dollars worth of, of government purchases here that are ripe for the taking for These kind of companies. So a lot of potential in this sector. We'll discuss it with Raul in our show on Thursday. I think, I think I'm very interested to hear his view on this. He's more into the technical analysis than I, so he might have some view on these charts. But a couple of interesting notes here as, as I know a lot of you are looking into defense stocks. Okay, that was all I had about Ukraine and Europe. We can get a little more into that a little bit later. On the rim of Europe, I should probably say lies Turkey. I'm not going to do a deep dive analysis of what's going on there. Obviously Erdogan, the leader of Turkey, imprisoned and arrested Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and one of his main rivals in Turkish politics. He used to sneak a little maneuver because he managed to get Imamoklus college degree revoked because he had cheated. And that's, you would say, okay, obviously that's a bad look for a politician, but it's not the end of the world. It is in Turkey because you need for, to, to reach the highest offices in Turkey, you need a college degree. So, so, so that's actually a very, very sneaky way of getting a rival out of the picture. Obviously, markets didn't like this. Some have even called this a coup d', etat, meaning that a power grab from Eran essentially and obviously s the lira spiraling down again. I know some people have had a lot of fun investing in, in Turkish equities over the past couple of years. It's not a game for me, I have to say. But, but very, very interesting developments. We're, I'm very curious to see the role that Turkey is going to be playing in the peace negotiations. If it weren't for all these political shenanigans and all the, these disastrous effects they, they have on the Turkish currency and Turkish inflation, Turkey would be a very, very good investment candidate. But for me, this is simply, yeah, too, too violent, too, too volatile for me. Moving a little bit south of that. Another very, very contentious topic here, the Middle East. So I'm not going to go too deep, too deeply into the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but we are going to touch a little bit upon it because it obviously affects commodities and energy a great deal. A couple of months ago we had the Trump brokered ceasefire. It's always a debate. Was this something that the Biden administration put in place and Trump took it over the finish line? Who should get the credit for it? In any case, it's now broken down. So if Trump gets the credit for the ceasefire. He should also get the heat from the steel breaking down. Essentially. Israel asked for Trump's permission to initiate a new offensive into Gaza. They were dissatisfied with the, with the pace of the hostage, hostage release of Hamas. And this means that this is not simply a blip. This is a full scale breakdown of the ceasefire and a return to open hostilities both in Gaza and potentially also in Lebanon. We're seeing that this obviously had the ribbon effects that the Houthis in Yemen had all the excuse they need to start launching missiles at the sea, at international, at US Shipping at very least, and even the Harry S. Truman, the massive U.S. nuclear carrier. So we were just at a point, just about ready to have global shipping flow back through the Red Sea. It was an insurance question. We hear that from many of the great freight companies here in Copenhagen. And now that's all down the drain. So what does this mean for market? Well, I was hoping for the reopening of the Red Sea to relieve some of the inflation pressure in Europe even further. Could be a half to 0.5 to 1 percentage points. That's obviously not going to happen right now. It's going to take a lot of months for this to resolve. Furthermore, we've had the thesis throughout the year that geopolitical risk was on the decline and that's been very, very true. I mean, the geopolitical risk premium in oil for instance, has decreased. It has to go up a little bit again now, I think. And that's also what we're seeing in oil prices. I know it's dropping a little bit today, but I think we are seeing a short term rally in oil before we get back to the overall trend that we've seen for the past couple of months, which is a declining price. I mean, both OPEC in the US are looking to at least maintain, if not remember, production and we are seeing relatively modest demand out of China. So in the short term, potential for a, for a little rally in oil. In the slightly longer term, we still hold the view that oil needs to come down a little bit further. There are limits to how long low oil can go. If all goes below 50, we are getting into danger zone for US Shell industry, the fracking industry. So, so, so that's probably the, the bottom level you, you should be looking at here. Okay guys, we're getting well into the show. We have a couple of questions here. I'll just dive into one of them here. When do you see tariff negotiations coming to a close with China? And that's A very good bridge to, to talk tariffs. Well, I think China is the one country that's not overly concerned with the, the, the outlook of US Tariffs. China's probably hoping for a broader scale tariffs and they're not, they're not, they're not left in, in, in in a state of panic as many state, as many other countries are. Obviously this is at the end of the day could be problematic for, for Chinese exports, but they have such a strong market position and they also have the capital to, to, to stomach these, these new tariffs for a while. So I don't necessarily see a quick tariff deal with China. I still think you need something done done in Ukraine, perhaps even on Iran that could be part of the same equation and then you're probably going to have some side deal with China at one point. So I don't expect too much positive news on this before the summer. On the other hand, I don't think you should panic too much about the tariffs when when, when looking at China. There are much bigger, bigger issues out there. Speaking of tariffs, we had a look into how, how do you, how do you play these upcoming tariffs in the, in the early April? Obviously you could play the, the chance that, that they are simply postponed for another month. I think we are getting close to a level where most people expect some tariffs to, or more tariffs to actually be implemented early April. So we, we have a couple of angles here. Let me know what you think in the comment section here. First of all, as we talked a little bit about last week, we've seen a major front loading, major hoarding of copper essentially, which makes a lot of sense. I mean if, if I had a factory using copper for my production, I would be holding the stuff as well before the anticipated tariffs. So it seems logical that this is obviously over the top and once we get these tariffs in order and people stop panicking about the unknown, we should see a slow sell off in copper. So that is potentially a very interesting position for the next few months. Especially as we've also discussed that the growth picture in China is not as strong as many would have you believe. We did see some strong performance in equities on top of the announcements around the Chinese stimulus. We're not quite seeing that pick up in resources demand yet. So sell off in copper being short copper is an interesting position. We're in that position position. So, so very much looking for that. Another part of this picture in, in, in commodities is obviously gold. We had a question on that. So, so I'll just, just reach into this the big question for me is whether tariffs on gold will be sector based. Will they cover the entirety of Europe or will there be exemptions from this? Most notably Switzerland. Switzerland were very, very preemptive in the fall and, and lowered their industrial tariffs to almost zero level. And that's could be a step towards being excluded from this. If, if Switzerland are excluded from these tariffs that would relieve a lot of the pressure on gold. We all know Trump that, that gold has been on an incredible rally even to an extent that, that this is beginning to worry the US Administration. We know the US Administration is worried that a lot of what you would call global, global south countries are, are establishing huge gold reserves instead of having, having, having dollar reserves. And that's obviously a result of a lot of Russian assets being frozen even more so if the UK and France, the European countries decide to actually seize all these assets that will make this move even worse. So I think the US administration is worried that this is limiting the demand for dollars, limiting the role and the leverage that the usage of dollar is giving the US and all these countries. And so I think they're going to be a little bit more lenient on gold perhaps excluding Switzerland from those. And that should put a dampen on the gold price price could put us well below the three thousand dollar mark here. So this is another way of, of, of, of playing this territory waiting game that we're very much in. I think many investors we're hearing that from a lot of our clients are, are in waiting road mode right now. Our central banks going to react well. This is one way to play them. Perhaps some of the initial effects that you can look, look out for and then let's see what happens with the, with central banks, etc. That's pretty much all I had. I have one more point here because we've talked a lot about the, the Eurozone party. European equities doing incredibly well. A lot of money being moved out of US equities and into European equities. Well the question is how long can that go on for? We know that the EU is, the European economies are obviously getting massive stimulus out of Germany. I believe that is to some extent priced in already. The question is what do we need to keep this train going? And to keep this train going you need strong consumer sentiment in the U.S. you need the U.S. to be buying, keep buying European products. And that's very much not what we're seeing at the moment. We're seeing very lackluster numbers out of the US Slowing growth numbers and that will at some point affect also European equities. We are seeing the first trends of this in our regime models. As you can see in this chart here, we are seeing a slight reversal in the growth growth trend in Europe which has been on the rise for the past seven or eight months, more or less. So we're not in crisis mode at all yet. We're still in a very good position in the, in the eu but we are seeing some trends towards a slowing growth picture in the US swimming over into Europe. We also have some, some indicators that the, the U.S. that the European equities are actually quite fairly priced at the moment. So perhaps we don't have that lack of valuation that, that, that we have had a few months back and, and over the past couple of years. So maybe it's time, at least for us, it's time to consider the timing of these European positions. I'm not saying you should short Europe or that you should run for the hills in these European positions, but you should consider whether how much longer this the story can go out can go on for that is perhaps my, my, my final trade idea here. So I think we got around a lot of the questions that we had in here today. Thanks to all of you for, for watching this special edition. We'll have hopefully have Andreas back next week to to give you even more perspective on things. We also have a Pro Macro show on Thursday, so lots of stuff to look out for. Obviously all our research is available at the Pro Macro Tour at Real Vision. So to all of you, thanks a lot for joining in this time. We'll see you next Monday.