MacroVoices #497 Dr. Anas Alhajji: The Impact of Trump Polices on Russia, China, India & OPEX+
Summary
Energy Market Dynamics: Dr. Anas Alhaji discusses the recent OPEC+ decisions to unwind production cuts, highlighting Saudi Arabia's role in leading efforts to adjust oil production levels to stabilize prices.
Production and Demand Insights: The podcast explores the triggers for unwinding production cuts, including declining global oil inventories and strong growth in demand, particularly from countries like India and China.
Geopolitical Factors: The impact of U.S. trade policies, including tariffs and sanctions, is examined in relation to their influence on global energy markets, particularly affecting relationships with India, China, and Russia.
Market Perception and Reality: Dr. Alhaji criticizes the International Energy Agency's forecasts, suggesting they underestimate global oil demand and contribute to a narrative of "manufactured bearishness" in the market.
Pipeline Developments: The revival of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline project between Russia and China is discussed as a strategic response to geopolitical tensions and trade disruptions.
Electric Vehicle Market: Concerns are raised about the accuracy of electric vehicle adoption data in China, suggesting potential exaggeration of figures due to various scams and misreporting practices.
Investment Opportunities: The podcast suggests that despite short-term volatility, the medium-term outlook for oil remains bullish, presenting opportunities for strategic investments in energy markets.
Transcript
[Music] This is Macrovoices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance, high- netw worth individuals, family offices, and other sophisticated investors. Macrovoices is all about the brightest minds in the world of finance and macroeconomics telling it like it is. Bullish or bearish, no holds barred. Now, here are your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Szna. Macrovoic's episode 497 was produced on September 11th, 2025. I'm Eric Townsend. Our countdown to Macrovoic's episode 500 continues this week with the return of Energy Outlook Advisors managing partner Dr. Annis Alhaji as this week's feature interview guest and our number four all-time macrovoices regular guest. Annis and I will discuss all things energy from this past Sunday's group of eight meeting to secondary sanction strategy on India to the reincarnated power of Siberia 2 pipeline project. And I'm Patrick Szno with the macro scoreboard week overweek as of the close of Wednesday September 10th 2025. The S&P 500 index up 130 basis points trading at 6532. The market continues pushing new all-time highs but with material momentum loss. The US dollar index down 36 basis points trading at 97.80 remains in its multimonth trade range. October WTI crude oil contract down 47 basis points trading at 6367. The October Arbog gasoline down 50 basis points, trading at 2011. The December gold contract up 129 basis points, trading at 36.82, trading at all-time new highs. December gold contract down 22 basis points, trading to 462. Uranium down 20 basis points, trading to 76 and a quarter. And the US 10-year Treasury yield down 16 basis points, trading at 405. a material breakdown in yields as both the long and short duration bonds are rallying after last week's jobs numbers. Key news to watch this week is the University of Michigan inflation expectations. And next week we have retail sales, the FOMC statement and press conference and the Bank of Japan monetary policy statement. This week's feature interview guest is energy outlook advisor managing partner Dr. Anas Alhaji. Eric and Anas discuss OPEC, oil production cuts, outlook on oil prices, India, Russia, and the US tariffs. Eric's interview with Anas Alhaji is coming up as Macrovoices continues right here at macrovoices.com. [Music] And now with this week's special guest, here's your host, Eric Townsend. Joining me now is Energy Outlook Advisors managing partner Dr. Anis Alhaji. Honest, I I have to tell you I'm so excited to get you back on the show because first of all, I I think a very strong compliment to you that you're not really even a macroeconomics guy. You're an energy guy, but you're one of the most valued among our listeners on this macro podcast because of all the excellent interviews you've given us. And you've also been named the number three most influential voice in energy markets. So you're actually a bigger name in energy than Dan Jurgen although you come on macro voices whereas Dan likes to play hard to get. So congratulations sir. Let's move on to the topic of the day is the group of eight. OPEC group of eight met this past weekend. They're talking about unwinding the production cuts and basically increasing uh oil production. Apparently all of the sudden Saudi Arabia is seemingly leading the way on an effort to bring energy prices down. What's going on? >> Sure. So let me explain this especially for the audience who are not familiar with these issues. People are familiar with the name OPEC which is the organization of petroleum exporting countries. OPEC is this year is 65 years old and OPEC in 2015 when the prices when oil prices collapsed they looked around and say okay I cannot do it alone and the reason why they they couldn't do it alone because there was major producers who are not OPEC members that includes uh Russia Kazakhstan Norway of course the United face and they said, "Look, I'm not going to cut production. I will leave prices down unless nonopic producers come to me and literally cooperate with me and all of us will cut." And that resulted in what is known right now as OPEC plus because 10 countries being in this new group or added to this group. So we had 13 members from OPEC plus 10 members from outside OPEC. The total is 23 and that's what we call OPEC plus. Part of this new group is Russia and Kazakhstan. In 2022, late 2022, oil demand was not as high as they expected. Growth in oil demand was weaker and inventories started building. As a result, they met and they decided by 2 million barrels a day. So we have this cut from the whole group OPEC plus of 2 million barrels a day from late 2022. Here comes 2023. The market was weaker. So eight members at that time it was nine but Gabon basically withdrawn. They met and they decided to voluntarily cut production by 1.6 65 million barrels a day, a million and 650,000 barrels a day. And the whole idea was it will be only few months and then I'll bring it back. But the situation deteriorated farther and in November 2023, they met again and they decided to go for a cut of 2.2 2 million barrels a day starting January 2024 and ending in March 2024. So just for those who are new to this, I have three groups. I have OPIC, I have OPIC plus and I have the group of eight and I have three cuts. The first cut is 2 million bars a day is done by OPEC plus and the agreement now is not to bring it back until early 2027. And then I have the first voluntary cut which is 1.65 65 million barrels a day. That was extended until early 2027, but we know now from yesterday that they changed the date to October 2025. And then I have the 2.2 million barrels a day cut and they are already done. they unwed all of that and they are they will be completely done by the end of this month. So the 2.2 is already out of the way. They are left with 165. It was designed to come back online in early 2027. They decided yesterday to expedite that basically bring it forward and start in October 2025. So that's what happened on Sunday. If you go a back a week ago, this was a surprise. But if you go back to Thursday or Friday, it wasn't. So they agreed to start doing this, but there was some conditions to that. And one of the things they've done is they did not give any guidance for the future. So although they took 1.65 65 divided by 12 months which means that their plan is to do it over 12 months and they ended up with 137,000 barrels a day in October additional production ceiling and I'll explain that in a minute. They did not say anything after that but they are emphasizing the point that we are going to go month by month and we are going to assess the situation. We can stop unwinding, we can cut or we can expedite like what they did with the previous 2.2. So all the options are still on the table. In this case, the idea of unwinding is extremely important because the 2.2 again was designed to come back online on April 2024 and they delayed it for a year. And for this 1.6 65. It was supposed to be only 3 months and it's been there since it's been there for a year and a half. The justification for it is very important and it's very important for the audience to think to to understand what are the triggers for these unwinding. OPIC and OPIC plus ministers cannot talk about prices. They took this decision based on lawyers advice in 2016. So they cannot talk about prices. They cannot react to prices. In general, we end up with situations when let's say prices decline in one day by $45 and I will get those messages and I will get the comments on Twitter. Where are the Saudis? Where are OPEC cuts? Why they are not responding? Why they are not making statements? Again, they cannot talk about prices. That's number one. Number two, everyone has to understand that the Saudi price is the average monthly has nothing to do with the changes during the day. It's the average monthly. So this is very important to realize. So the idea here is okay what are the triggers? There are two triggers for unwinding. The first one is a major decline in inventories, global oil inventories. And the second one is strong growth in demand. And what we've seen is that when they decided to unwind in April, they looked at the inventories and inventories were low and they declined substantially. So the first condition is met. The second one is a growth in oil demand and according to OPEC and their view especially the V8 or we call it that that the group of eight or the V8 V4 voluntary they saw an increase in demand and that increase in demand part of it is related to the sanctions uh especially on Venezuela Iran etc. And the reason why is related to sanctions because we always have companies and traders who panic and they want to make sure that they have enough supplies. So the demand for oil from the group of eight increase especially from the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and its allies increase. So for them the two triggers are met and then they decided to unwind and that's what we've seen. Then they expedited that because they saw the situation can handle the additional oil. At the same time they want to get rid of the headache of overp production coming from Kazakhstan and Iraq. Now for the 1.65 that they agreed on yesterday. The question is very clear. I mean anyone who is looking at the data will say look I need to do this and I need to do this for various reasons. One of them is among the whole group of 23 countries only four can increase production. And here I would like to emphasize the point that the unwinding and the numbers we hear about the 2.2 and 165 these are for production ceiling. These are for quotas. These are not actual production. actual production is way lower because some countries cannot increase production. On the other side, what matters to the market is not really production. They talk about production because OPEC's charter when it was written in 1960, it talked about production and they are still with it. But what matters to the global oil market is exports. And if you look at OPC plus exports, they are about half of the headline number. So we know that the headline number is 2.2 million bars a day. But what we saw in the market is about half of that. Now the situation for 165 is going to be even a lower number or lower percentage simply because there are fewer countries that can add production. >> Honest, you mentioned only four countries are capable of increasing production. I'm guessing that that starts with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Who are the other two? Iraq and Kuwait. But Iraq and Kuwait capabilities of increasing production forward is also limited. So a few months from now and it's over. They they will max out and everyone else is maxed out including Russia. So that will leave only Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And here I would like to point out to the audience that it is not necessary that Saudis and the Amiratis will increase production up to the maximum anyway. They are free to do it because they have no agreement but they may not do it. And if we look at Saudi Ramco, Saudi Ramco based on history, it is very comfortable producing between 10 and 105 10 million and 500,000 barrels a day. And right now they are probably around 94 95. So they can add probably 500 to a million. And that's really the range of comfort for them. >> Now back in April when the decision was first made to unwind the 2.2 2 million barrels. That was basically a panic moment in markets. Everybody was bearish saying, "Okay, this is going to crash oil prices." I think you were the only voice that I can remember at least from from that time frame going back to late April, early May. And we had you on macro voices on May 8th talking about this very issue. You were very outspoken saying, "Not only is it not bearish, but it might even be bullish." And sure enough, it seems like the price action has actually supported your very uncommon view. What happened there? How were you able to see that? Why is it that that you were able to see something people didn't see there? >> Yes. Uh the analysts who were bearish basically, they did not uh look at the real situation on the ground. For example, the uh Hajj, which is the pilgrimage that we talked about in that show on May 8th, uh where millions of Muslims fly from around the world to go to holy city of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Oil consumption increases substantially within Saudi Arabia because of that. So gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, oil, etc. Because you are talking about millions of po of people going to the same place at the same time. So they usually it takes a year to plan for these things and that increases the demand within Saudi Arabia. So they need that oil but the world is not going to see it. While those analysts counted the increase in uh or the unwinding as a net supply to the world while the world did not see any of that. At the same time they missed another point that most of the increases especially in the first period that oil was already in the market because of cheating. So what they did in April and May basically just kind of legitimize that cheating. So it was on paper. So they missed that point too. And then they missed the third point which is the uh demand for oil increases substantially in the summer and that demand could add up to about 1.2 million barrels a day. So basically domestic consumption between Hajj and domestic consumption and oil was already out there that most of the unwinding. So it was clear from the beginning but they did not see these things. Now anus you have used the phrase manufactured bearishness in some of your tweets and Substack posts lately. Why are you using that particular phrase? What do you mean by manufactured bearishness? >> You look at the IEA forecasts and they predict that next year we will have the largest surplus in history and right now they are talking about a surplus of 1.8 million barrels a day. You look at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stley, JP Morgan, etc. And there are some really strange stuff going on here because the same narrative that the IA is pushing, the same narrative is being pushed by the Chinese oil majors, which is very strange. The Chinese oil majors basically are going public in English broadcasting the view that oil demand in China is going to peak. gasoline demand in China is going to peak and that's what the IIA is saying. So to have a western organization saying exactly what Chinese companies are saying that's the first question mark there. The second one is the Chinese are talking about peak oil demand peak gasoline demand. That means they have the forecast and they know what's going on but they will never ever release the actual numbers. What does that mean? That mean they are broadcasting something to the rest of the world to the oil producers to the companies to the US and everyone else what they wanted to broadcast. Otherwise if this was a normal thing they would have published the actual numbers. So if you look at the IA forecast for example and and please allow me because I'm going to take my time show showing the evidence here. The first thing is the IEA when we talk about 2025 and 2026, I'm just going to give you an example how this is manufactured. The IEA predicts that US oil production will increase by 560,000 barrels a day in 2025. We already have the data for the first half of the year and there is no way you can get to 560. So what they did is they exaggerated US or production. But the story is not on the production side. The story is on the demand side. According to the IEA, US o oil demand would increase by 60,000 bars a day in 2025. You look at the data for the first 6 months. They are not double that. They are not triple that, they are quadruple that, quadruple. And then you move to 2026 and all of a sudden they say, "Oh, there is no growth, zero growth in US oil demand in 2026." No one on earth believed that except them. So right here we have several hundred,000 barrels a day that's being taken out and counted as surplus while it is an actual consumption. So that's one. But the IEA expect all demand to grow by I think 680,000 barrels a day which is extremely low. Our number is 1.1 and OPEC number is 1.3. So you can see that the divergence is really large. But why we have the concern here? We have the concern on two fronts. First of all we have something called circular information. Circular information is when you have widespread news all over the world and people think, "Wow, this must be real because I'm hearing it from all over the place." But when you do investigate the source, you find out it came from only one source. And then most of the media and social media etc., they will be quoting like in a chain. Like I'll say, well, um, I heard this from CNBC and CNBC quoted CNN and CNN quoted ABC and ABC quoted Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal quoted the International Energy Agency. So, we have circular information. Where is the problem? I will go back to this point of circular information in a minute after I explain where the problem is. You go back and look at the forecast of global oil demand by the IEA in 2022. The IEA discovered that all their numbers and all their estimates of global oil demand were way low and they revised up oil demand back to 2007 to 2007. So we're talking about 15 16 years of data that's been underestimated all this time. Then you move. So that was from 22 back. Then in May, this May, last May, the IEA announced that sorry, and they did not say sorry. Of course, they'll never say sorry, but we underestimated demand in recent years. So we are going to revise up the numbers for 2022, 2023 and 2024 which is a continuation of the the era from 2007 to 221 by how much? 350 million barrels the total adjustment in those three years 350. That's the underestimation of demand by the IIA. So you start from 2007, they were wrong all the way to 2024. And just two weeks ago in its latest report, they said, "We are revising up Mexico's oil demand by 100,000 barrels a day." And listen to this, back to 2020. So what is the problem? First of all, we have a proven record of underestimation for almost 18 years. So why do we have to believe their low estimate right now while all the other evidence point to higher oil demand than their number? But to go back to that circular information, this data since 2007 that's been revised, not every analyst paid attention to it. So many computers at many banks still have the old data and they are still using them. So back to that circular information that the the the data being published by one source is still in use and therefore when they do the forecast in term of growth could be correct is wrong. So we do have a serious problem. I want to move on to India, China and Russia starting with India because the spin that the western press has put on this is basically what's going on with the 25% tariffs. Why did the Trump administration just impose 25% tariffs on India? Well, the reason they did that according to the news flow is it's all about the uh Russian oil. Russia has been selling oil to India. They feel that that's working around tariff. So now the Trump administration is going to punish India for buying oil from Russia according to the news. But according to Dr. Annis, you don't think that's really what's going on. So what is going on? First of all, we have the 25% tariff which is the general tariff on India. And then the Trump administration added another 25% because India is importing oil from Russia and Navo the White House advisor basically accused India of uh supporting Putin in the war in Ukraine by buying Russian oil. And he was very vocal about it and almost on daily basis. He kept talking about it, tweeting about it, giving speeches, giving interviews, etc. And right now the tariff on India is 50%. Here's the problem. Yes, India imports about 1.8 to 2 million barrels a day of oil from Russia. But that was by design and the design did not come from India. It was the G7 and the Europeans who designed that. So when they import the sanctions in the sanctions itself that for the first time they agreed on this they said that the EU and the United States basically can import Russian oil if it is modified and modified in the oil business mean it is refined. All they need to do basically is find another third party to do that and India and China basically did that and some other countries. But the idea here is the Biden administration has no problem with it. Even Secretary Blinken at the G20 meeting in New Delhi basically he defended India for buying Russian oil above the uh what they call the price cap of $60. So that was by design. But here is the issue that why it is really not about Russian oil import. If the issue is importing from Russia and paying them and therefore you are supporting Putin's war in Ukraine, then we have a serious problem because US imports from Russia this year increased over last year. The second point is the EU still imports massive amount of natural gas via pipelines and large amount of LNG from Russia. In fact, if you we just released a report the day before yesterday and in that report it shows that in August 12% of gas imports of the EU came from Russia. But no one accused the EU of supporting Putin's war and China imports everything from Russia in a sense. They import the crude. They import coal. They import natural gas. And the Trump administration did not accuse them of supporting the war in Ukraine. But here's the bigger story. The bigger story is Turkey. Turkey imports the Russian gas and send it to Europe. Turkey imports the Russian crude and send it to Europe. Turkey imports the Russian petroleum products and send them to Europe. And Turkish exports of petroleum products to Europe is larger than that of India. And what's strange about it is Turkey does not refine that that those products. Turkey basically just transmit those from place to place while India at least they refine it. So why they pick on India in this case? It just does not make sense. There is more to the story than Russian production. For those who do not know, we still import enriched uranium from Russia until today. >> Honest, I want to broaden this picture out because on one hand, we can talk about the supply and the demand and the cuts and the so forth, but it feels like the mood has changed. It feels to me like OPEC plus and the group of eight were really working on uh an agenda that was not cooperative with the United States. It feels to me now like some deal has been cut and for some reason the Saudis want to support President Trump in trying at least in the short term to bring energy prices down. Quite frankly that makes me wonder if they're doing that because they think energy prices are going up later because of perhaps some geopolitical things that they see on the horizon. So what's the broader picture of what's going on and and how the influence uh model has changed from the Biden administration to the Trump administration and the decisions that are being made cuz I have the sense that the relationship has gotten better with the US but at the same time they're preparing for maybe a relationship that gets worse over time. >> Well, a few things here. If you want to talk about expand this to various areas including politics, I'll be happy to talk about that. The issue here is this that first of all oil prices declined in 2025 mostly because of President Trump policies not because of the unwinding of production by the group of eight. And to prove this point, the unwinding started in April while oil prices declined earlier. And even when the unwinding started in April, the supply of OPEC plus declined in April and May. We did not see the increase until June. Even when we saw the increase in June, it was a portion of the what was expected and then it declined in July and August. So you cannot blame the large decline in prices on the decision to unwind. The reason was the trade wars, the tariffs and other policies, the immigration policies, the visa policies, the treatment at the airports etc. We have even clients basically refusing to come into the United States for fear of being mistreated at US airports. Uh the student visas as you know because of the demonstrations because of Gaza and others. So that reduced travel substantially and reduced oil demand. Why this is important? Because if you go back to our reports at the end of 2024, jet fuel was the brightest spot in the energy complex and now it tanked because of those policies. So that's the first part of it. The second part of the story is Bloomberg published something about Saudi MBS. The crown prince is going to visit with Trump in November and therefore he wants to make sure that the oil prices are cheap etc. Let's be clear on this because it is very important. Do the Saudis want lower prices? No. Do they want to please Trump by lowering prices? I don't think so. They can please him in different ways. They can just dedicate certain amount of investment like they did with the one uh uh trillion or half trillion whatever amount they want to invest and that will be enough. It's not going to be the oil. But what the Saudis want, and we've seen this several times before, and I'm glad you asked this question because the point I'm going to mention is important for everyone to remember all the time. What the Saudis want, and they've done it before, is to isolate oil from any discussions. They don't want to discuss oil. The NBS is going to be here in the United States for a certain purpose, and they want to focus on it. When Trump visits Saudi Arabia, they wanted to focus on why he is there. They don't want oil to be the main issue. When the president of China visited Saudi Arabia or the president of France, etc. They always make made sure that oil is not on the table. So if by increasing production and keeping prices at current levels that will isolate it, that's a big win for Saudi Arabia. The other issue is, and this is a reply to the Bloomberg article when they mentioned that this is a political decision. So what? Oil is a strategic commodity. Oil is a political commodity. It's always been. In fact, oil and LNG right now are part an integral part of US foreign policy. Why they are not saying anything about it? In fact, even if you want to look deeper into this, the US is using LNG and oil as weapons and they are using of course the sanctions and everything else. These are weapons and they are not saying anything. Why would Saudi Arabia basically look to them as if they are lowering prices all of a sudden is something strange? But the main point here is the Saudis want to isolate oil from the discussions. oil is not on the table and if that what it takes then they will do it. The other issue here I would like to mention is when we talk about market and market surplus and what the analyst missed there is a very important issue related to India of course and the sanctions on the refinery that we have people saying look inventories are not really that low like what OPEC is claiming look at oil on water it's the all those guys even in in April who predicted that oil prices would decline to 30 they missed the point and I'm going to mention a real story here that tells the whole idea. About two months ago, there were six oil tankers carrying Russian orals going to India. Those six tankers belonged to a certain company. By the time the first tanker arrived to the Swiss canal, the Houthies hit a ship in Red Sea and sank it. So the Norwegian insurance company refused to insure the shipment. They told them, "Look, if you are going to go through the Red Sea, I'm not going to insure it." So the company decided to reroute the six tankers around Africa. So imagine going back after they went through the Mediterranean, they have to go back and go around Africa to go to India. That increased the time to arrive to India by about 3 weeks. So oil and water went up. For those who focus on it as increase in inventories, all they see is increase in inventory and therefore we have a problem in the market. No, this has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the market because if you want to do the balances right, then you have to subtract those six tankers from 3 weeks earlier to have the balance right. So they missed that. They did not subtract those tankers and they added them as oil and water. So this is one of the big problems. So whenever we have new sanctions imposed, we end up with this confusion in the market and tankers stop in their place. Basically they get stuck at sea until they get more information from their management on what to do. So every time we have new sanctions, we have delays in shipping and then oil and water goes up. This has nothing to do whether we have surplus or not. In fact, we have a shortage because they are not arriving to their destination and the analysts missed that. So, in the case of the 18th round of sanctions by the EU when they imposed the sanctions on Nara energy uh refinery in India, there was a lot of confusion for about a week and all the shipments going to Niara stopped and all of a sudden someone can claim well look oil and water is going up, storage is going up, there is no demand. All of these things are political issues. they have nothing to do with the market fundamentals at all. And the other issue that is important to this discussion when we talk about politics is that when NBS comes to visit Trump of course like we've seen in Riad we have those major investments we have major joint ventures we have all kind of things etc. And if you look at oil in that discussion or even if it's brought to the table, it's something small relative to those big contracts, whether the defense contracts, the AI contracts, etc. Oil looks really small relative to it. Honest, let's move on to where this is headed a little bit further down the road because some news that I found very interesting is China and Russia have agreed to develop what I think it's called the power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline. So gas pipeline from Russia to China new investment. Now I thought that idea was dead. What happened? Why was it resurrected? And particularly uh I kind of got a feeling that it fits into some strategy that I'm not fully uh grocking yet here. Do you have you figured this out? >> Yes, I think your feeling is absolutely correct. Uh there is a big story in fact here early in the '90s when Russia basically they started reviving the economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They realized that they have a lot of gas and there is not enough market in Europe for it. So they tried to talk to the Chinese about a pipeline. So the idea is really old. It did not catch any any interest until 2007208 when the Putin administration basically agreed that it should do that but nothing happened. But when the Chinese basically Chinese economy was picking up and economic growth was very strong. We're talking about 11% etc. They needed the gas so they agreed on one pipeline. But what we ended up with a case where Putin goes to Crimea. He annexed Crimea and the EU and the US and the G7 imposed sanctions on him and that affected gas sales to those countries and he wanted an outlet and the Chinese outlet was there. So it was the sanctions that imposed in 2014 that opened the doors or opened the floodgates of Russian gas to China. So we had two pipelines, the Power of Siberia 1 and Power of Siberia 3. And Power of Siberia 2 was proposed. It's a massive pipeline. But the Chinese found themselves in trouble because they said, "Look, I don't want to repeat Europe's mistake with Russia. Europe depended heavily on Russia and they got stuck. I don't want to repeat the same mistake. To maximize my benefits and enhance my energy security, enhance my national security, I need to diversify my imports. So, I'm going to buy LNG from all around the world, including United States. And they ignored the power of Siberia, too. From the Russian point of view, when Europe or exports to Europe declined by 80%. They looked at the map and said, "Okay, the only two places I can send pipelines is Europe and China." And if Europe is not there, then I'm I'm putting all my eggs in one basket in the Chinese basket. And if we end up with political problems, I am a hostage to that. And if the Chinese economy tanks, then I have to pay a very heavy price for it. So I need to diversify. But I cannot send pipelines to other places. So the only way to diversify gas exports is to focus on LNG. So they started building LNG plants just like the United States to export GA with the idea of diversification. So they built Yamal and then they built the Arctic LNG 2 and after they finished Arctic LNG 2 the their interest in the power of Siberia 2 basically became very weak. They were not interested because Arctic LNG2 basically was the way out. So it wasn't. So when you said it's dead, yes, it was dead because China has no interest and the Russians have no interest. China wants to diversify imports. Russia wants to diversify export. But everything changed this year. First, we have the trade wars and we have the tariffs. And as a result, China stopped importing LNG from the United States last February. So, no zero imports of LNG since February. Remember, they wanted to diversify. They wanted to go everywhere, including the United States. Now, the United States basically being cut because of the trade wars and the tariffs. Now, China wants to sign contracts. Before their idea was I'm going to sign contracts with those new emerging LNG companies in the United States part of the diversification but because of those trade wars and the tariffs they did not sign it. Now they want to go somewhere else. Australia is maxed out. The only two places where they can get LNG is Qatar and UAE United Arab Emirates which is in the Gulf. And they did sign those contracts and the Trump administration got pissed off because of that because they thought that they will get more contracts from China. All of a sudden, Israel start hitting Iran and we started the Iran uh Israeli Iran war. That was not a surprise for political analysts who were predicting this to happen for the last 20 years. And this is really not the big issue for China. The big issue for China was when the United States suddenly hit Iran. So when the Trump administration hit Iran and they hit them really hard, that's when China basically started paying attention. Why? Because all of a sudden the Western press, especially in the United States, started promoting the idea of Iran closing the horistry. And China looked and said, "Hold on just a second. I cannot import LG from the United States. Now I have those contracts with Qatar and UAE and now I cannot import from them anymore. What is the alternative? The alternative is power of Siberia too. So that was the major change and this fit with the Chinese policy of reducing energy imports via sea. So they wanted all the seaborn imports or the seaborn energy imports to decline substantially. And the reason why because they think if there is a war or there are sanctions or closure of Malika straight then they they are ready. So they are building this massive inventory. Right now we are speaking about the highest oil inventory ever in China 1.1 billion barrels and they have inventories of everything being built. So for China it was the US trade policies, the tariffs and then the US attack on Iran and then the promotion and I emphasize the word promotion of the idea that Iran will close the heristrate. If you look at it from a Chinese point of view, it's not Iran who is going to close the heristrate. It is the US who is going to to close the heristrate. And therefore they needed the alternative and the alternative is power of Siberia too. From the Russian point of view, again, they had weak interests before. All of a sudden, they have strong interest. Why? Because the US imposed sanctions on Arctic LG2 and all the tankers associated with it. And now Russia got stuck. They want to diversify exports, but they cannot because of the sanctions. What is the alternative? Power of Siberia too. So in a sense it was the US policy whether you look at the trade wars the tariffs or the attack on Iran the promotion of the idea of closure of her trade that pushed those two two countries to cooperate together and to start building this pipeline and related to that something we covered in the previous two shows if you recall and the question I raised and I'm going to raise the question without answering it the question I raised was the following most of the Russian or Raji crude goes through the Red Sea but not a single LG tanker from Russia go through the Red Sea. Every single LG tanker have to go around Africa. Now in the summer some of them basically go through the northern rout northern route but for most of the year they go around Africa. Qatar when they when it sends LNG to Europe historically it went through the Red Sea. Now it goes around Africa. So why no LNG shipments going through the Red Sea since January 2024 kind of one one and a half shipment in a sense one of them from Oman going to Turkey but I'm mentioning this just for accuracy but in general there were no shipment no Russian shipments going through at all so why oil is all right to go but LG is not and now you look at what China is doing and the idea of LNG in the Gulf and the closure firm trade you you start having an idea on how that LNG war is playing. So yes, you are right that this came out of nowhere. It was a dead idea and now it became the center of attention simply because of the US policies. >> Now if you look at the electric vehicle adoption rate data coming out of China, it's awfully impressive. The thing is, I don't think you believe that data from what I've seen on on your social media and so forth. What's going on there? Number of EVs on the road in China. Why would they exaggerate that? >> Well, we have a serious problem as we discussed in previous shows because the media keep reporting sales. Sales do not matter. Uh what matters is the number of EVs on the road. And those who promote EVs or obsessed with EVs, they always literally mention sales and that's it. But they don't focus on ideas like I my neighbor basically just bought a new EV, new Tesla to replace the old Tesla, but yet they still counting it as something new. So really kind of you can see it's part of the PR for EVs to focus on sales. But what matters is we have to focus on the number of cars or at least registrations in every country rather than the sales. But in China we already have several scams being investigated uh by the Chinese government and uh yes or the day before yesterday I learned about new scam in addition to the two that I knew about before. So I'm going to go over them quickly here. The subsidies to EVs in China are given to EVs in China. So the those EVs have to be sold in China. So the first one is of course they have to create a system the they have a tax system, they have a rebate system and they have to create this bureaucracy of course to work it out. So how to define a new car that deserve a subsidy? Somehow they ended up with an exact definition that is controlled by a bureaucrat and the exact definition is you have to have a zero mileage on it. And some smart Chinese guys said okay that's fine. So they go and buy all those old junkies at a very cheap price take them somewhere play with the diameter and basically bring it to zero. And then they bring all those old EVs and count them as new and give them a new registration and then get the subsidies and the gang whoever operating on this they basically they split the money. So new vehicles being or old vehicles being reported as new ones and some of them probably sold multiple times. So that's number one. Number two, again the subsidies are given to what is registered in China. So what they discovered was couple of manufacturers had an agreement with dealers or some shell companies belong to them. They will literally take those cars from the factory and sell them to that entity and that entity within 30 minutes will have a registration and insurance on them and immediately of course they will cash in on the subsidies and a few hours later those cars will be on ships going to the rest of the world whether Brazil or or Kenya or or Europe or any other place. What that means is those cars are counted twice. one in China and one as export. And uh uh the recent one I heard about a couple of days ago that all you got to do basically is just show a purchase of the car. So some manufacturers basically created their own companies and they buy from themselves but under the new entity and they just park the car in parking lots and cash on the subsidy and that's it. So the numbers are exaggerated regardless. And I know that some of your loyal listeners heard me saying this several times. Regardless of that, even if you take the headline number, you take the maximum number, you look at all of that and you look at the number of cars in in the worldwide right now, it's about 50 million EVs on the road. And the impact of that in term of replacement of oil demand is only and that is the direct replacement only 1.3 million barrels a day and that's it. All this talk about peak oil demand does not make any sense at all because the impact on oil demand is highly exaggerated. >> Well Annis, I can't thank you enough for another terrific interview. But before I let you go, I want to talk a little bit about what you do at Energy Outlook Advisors. your Substack has become really the uh the talk of the industry. Tell us a little bit more about what you do, where people can follow your work and what services are on offer. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. In fact, I was surprised that although uh the Substack uh newsletter, we have a newsletter and we have the daily energy report. The newsletter is intended for institutional investors and the daily energy report is for institutional investors and individuals and it's cheap enough for individuals basically to to subscribe to it. Uh but I was surprised that the energy newsletter although it is energy it was classified among the top 15 business newsletters on substat which is a great honor basically to be associated with some of the top people in the business. So that that was really something made me really proud and happy. So we have those two that we have the newsletter. We have the the daily energy report. Uh of course all of those are sisters to ata in Arabic means energy which is the number one media outlet in the Middle East and the Arab world that focuses on on energy and it is a very prominent publication. But the aside from those really uh the the big business for me is the speaking engagements. And now uh this is the time when companies plan their events especially for their investors at the end of the year or the board uh uh meetings etc when they look for speakers. Uh so u I already have two two kind of speaking trips around the world coming up. But for those who are interested, especially to schedule speeches for the end of the year, I'm still available. >> Patrick Szna and I will be back as macrovoices continues right here at macrovoices.com. [Music] >> Now back to your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Serzna. >> Eric, it was great to have an NAS back on the show. Interesting take on oil production cuts and the outlook for energy prices. Listeners, you'll find the download link for the postgame trade of the week in your research roundup email. If you don't have a research roundup email, that means you have not yet registered at macrovoices.com. Just go to our homepage, macrovoice.com, and click on the red button over on NASA's picture saying looking for the downloads. Folks, because of my international travel schedule, we're keeping this week's postgame segment short and focused. So, we're going to skip our usual postgame chart deck, but only for this week. Patrick, we've had some great feedback on the new segment that we aired for the first time last week, the big picture trading trade of the week. So, let's keep that momentum going this week. Patrick, tell our listeners how you'd put a trade on to express Anus' views on the oil markets going into year end. So, Eric, my takeaway from Anas's market view is that he's medium-term bullish on oil, but he also expects short-term volatility. If Anas is right and demand growth turns out stronger than expected while supply stays tighter than markets anticipate, then any short-term pullbacks in oil are likely to quickly mean revert back towards the current fair value zone where prices have been trading. So what trade do I think of where the downside risk is manageable and the short-term outlook is not immediately bullish? For me, this is a perfect candidate for income writing on the futures. On page two of the trade of the week download, I've included an oil chart with the volume profile to help define the fair value zone for the year. What stands out is that the majority of the volume traded has been contained within the $60 to $70 range with the intraday lows of the year occurring during the liberation day volatility down near $55 a barrel. On page three, I've also highlighted the crude oil futures term structure, which shows an uncommon setup. We currently have the natural backwardation going into next year, but further out into the end of the decade, oil prices are trading above spot prices. To me, this aligns closely with Anas's longerterm bullish view, suggesting that while short-term volatility is likely, the broader trend continues to support higher prices over time. While one could take a more aggressive approach to selling puts in the low60s to capture larger premiums based on the fair value zone, I'm taking a more conservative stance. Personally, I'm attracted to selling puts further out into the end of the year where my break even would be closer to the yeartodate lows near the $55 to $57 range. On page four of the trade of the week download, I've highlighted the $57 strike on the January 2026 crude oil futures chart. Then on page five, I've included a snapshot of the December 16th, 2025 crude oil options chain, also highlighting that $57 option strike for the put. Now, at the time of recording, the 3mon 96-day put is bidding around $1.82. That works out to a little over a 3% premium on the notional assignment value, which translates to an annualized return of roughly 12% for an unleveraged cash secured put. Right? Now, for our more risk-seeking listeners, you can also leverage this trade. This put generates roughly $1,800 in premium per contract while requiring only about $3,000 in margin to carry the position. This clearly implies that leverage traders can amplify the percentage returns, but that naturally comes with higher risk if crude oil trades below the $57 strike. That was a great explanation for our professional audience. Now, we don't have time to delve into all the details of a retail version of that trade, but how about just the quick 10-second overview for our retail audience? Well, retail investors that agree with Anas's view on oil and want to express the trade without using futures, you can use ETFs like the United States Oil Fund or express the trade on highly correlated energy companies for doing similar style income rights. Now, Patrick, you did a live webinar on Monday explaining your trade ideas on Jim Biano's rates call from last week's show. How about you do that again since I'm sure a lot of listeners would also like to hear a more complete explanation for this week's Big Picture Trading Trade of the Week. On Monday, September 15th, on our members webinar, I'm going to walk through exactly how retail investors can set up oil and energy stock trades to take advantage of Anas's oil market outlook with no futures required. If you're a macrovoices listener and want to see how it's done, you can jump on for free. Just register for a free trial at bigpicturetrading.com. No credit card is required to try it out. Folks, that does it for this week's episode. We'll be back next week with our normal format, including the postgame chart deck. Patrick, tell them what they can expect to find in this week's research roundup. Well, in this week's research roundup, you're going to find the transcript for today's interview and the chart book we just discussed here in the post game, including a number of links to articles that we found interesting. You're going to find this link and so much more in this week's research roundup. That does it for this week's episode. We appreciate all the feedback and support we get from our listeners and we're always looking for suggestions on how we can make the program even better. Now, for those of our listeners that write or blog about the markets and would like to share that content with our listeners, send us an email at researchroundup@macrovoices.com and we will consider it for our weekly distributions. If you have not already, follow our main account on X at macrovoices for all the most recent updates and releases and also follow Eric onx, Eric S. Townson. That's Eric spelled with a K. You can also follow me at Patrick Serzna. On behalf of Eric Townson and myself, thank you for listening and we'll see you all next week. [Music] That concludes this edition of Macrovoices. Be sure to tune in each week to hear feature interviews with the brightest minds in finance and macroeconomics. Macrovoices is made possible by sponsorship from bigpicturetrading.com, the internet's premier source of online education for traders. Please visit bigpicturertrading.com for more information. Please register your free account at macrovoices.com. Once registered, you'll receive our free weekly research roundup email containing links to supporting documents from our featured guests and the very best free financial content our volunteer research team could find on the internet each week. You'll also gain access to our free listener discussion forums and research library. And the more registered users we have, the more we'll be able to recruit high-profile feature interview guests for future programs. So, please register your free account today at macrovoices.com if you haven't already. You can subscribe to Macrovoices on iTunes to have Macrovoices automatically delivered to your mobile device each week free of charge. You can email questions for the program to mailbag@macrovoices.com and we'll answer your questions on the air from time to time in our mailbag segment. Macrovoices is presented forformational and entertainment purposes only. The information presented on macrovoices should not be construed as investment advice. Always consult a licensed investment professional before making investment decisions. The views and opinions expressed on Macrovoices are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the show's hosts or sponsors. Macrovoices, its producers, sponsors, and hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Serezna shall not be liable for losses resulting from investment decisions based on information or viewpoints presented on Macrovoices. Macrovoices is made possible by sponsorship from bigpicturtrading.com and by funding from fourth turning capital management LLC. For more information, visit macrovoices.com. [Music]
MacroVoices #497 Dr. Anas Alhajji: The Impact of Trump Polices on Russia, China, India & OPEX+
Summary
Transcript
[Music] This is Macrovoices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance, high- netw worth individuals, family offices, and other sophisticated investors. Macrovoices is all about the brightest minds in the world of finance and macroeconomics telling it like it is. Bullish or bearish, no holds barred. Now, here are your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Szna. Macrovoic's episode 497 was produced on September 11th, 2025. I'm Eric Townsend. Our countdown to Macrovoic's episode 500 continues this week with the return of Energy Outlook Advisors managing partner Dr. Annis Alhaji as this week's feature interview guest and our number four all-time macrovoices regular guest. Annis and I will discuss all things energy from this past Sunday's group of eight meeting to secondary sanction strategy on India to the reincarnated power of Siberia 2 pipeline project. And I'm Patrick Szno with the macro scoreboard week overweek as of the close of Wednesday September 10th 2025. The S&P 500 index up 130 basis points trading at 6532. The market continues pushing new all-time highs but with material momentum loss. The US dollar index down 36 basis points trading at 97.80 remains in its multimonth trade range. October WTI crude oil contract down 47 basis points trading at 6367. The October Arbog gasoline down 50 basis points, trading at 2011. The December gold contract up 129 basis points, trading at 36.82, trading at all-time new highs. December gold contract down 22 basis points, trading to 462. Uranium down 20 basis points, trading to 76 and a quarter. And the US 10-year Treasury yield down 16 basis points, trading at 405. a material breakdown in yields as both the long and short duration bonds are rallying after last week's jobs numbers. Key news to watch this week is the University of Michigan inflation expectations. And next week we have retail sales, the FOMC statement and press conference and the Bank of Japan monetary policy statement. This week's feature interview guest is energy outlook advisor managing partner Dr. Anas Alhaji. Eric and Anas discuss OPEC, oil production cuts, outlook on oil prices, India, Russia, and the US tariffs. Eric's interview with Anas Alhaji is coming up as Macrovoices continues right here at macrovoices.com. [Music] And now with this week's special guest, here's your host, Eric Townsend. Joining me now is Energy Outlook Advisors managing partner Dr. Anis Alhaji. Honest, I I have to tell you I'm so excited to get you back on the show because first of all, I I think a very strong compliment to you that you're not really even a macroeconomics guy. You're an energy guy, but you're one of the most valued among our listeners on this macro podcast because of all the excellent interviews you've given us. And you've also been named the number three most influential voice in energy markets. So you're actually a bigger name in energy than Dan Jurgen although you come on macro voices whereas Dan likes to play hard to get. So congratulations sir. Let's move on to the topic of the day is the group of eight. OPEC group of eight met this past weekend. They're talking about unwinding the production cuts and basically increasing uh oil production. Apparently all of the sudden Saudi Arabia is seemingly leading the way on an effort to bring energy prices down. What's going on? >> Sure. So let me explain this especially for the audience who are not familiar with these issues. People are familiar with the name OPEC which is the organization of petroleum exporting countries. OPEC is this year is 65 years old and OPEC in 2015 when the prices when oil prices collapsed they looked around and say okay I cannot do it alone and the reason why they they couldn't do it alone because there was major producers who are not OPEC members that includes uh Russia Kazakhstan Norway of course the United face and they said, "Look, I'm not going to cut production. I will leave prices down unless nonopic producers come to me and literally cooperate with me and all of us will cut." And that resulted in what is known right now as OPEC plus because 10 countries being in this new group or added to this group. So we had 13 members from OPEC plus 10 members from outside OPEC. The total is 23 and that's what we call OPEC plus. Part of this new group is Russia and Kazakhstan. In 2022, late 2022, oil demand was not as high as they expected. Growth in oil demand was weaker and inventories started building. As a result, they met and they decided by 2 million barrels a day. So we have this cut from the whole group OPEC plus of 2 million barrels a day from late 2022. Here comes 2023. The market was weaker. So eight members at that time it was nine but Gabon basically withdrawn. They met and they decided to voluntarily cut production by 1.6 65 million barrels a day, a million and 650,000 barrels a day. And the whole idea was it will be only few months and then I'll bring it back. But the situation deteriorated farther and in November 2023, they met again and they decided to go for a cut of 2.2 2 million barrels a day starting January 2024 and ending in March 2024. So just for those who are new to this, I have three groups. I have OPIC, I have OPIC plus and I have the group of eight and I have three cuts. The first cut is 2 million bars a day is done by OPEC plus and the agreement now is not to bring it back until early 2027. And then I have the first voluntary cut which is 1.65 65 million barrels a day. That was extended until early 2027, but we know now from yesterday that they changed the date to October 2025. And then I have the 2.2 million barrels a day cut and they are already done. they unwed all of that and they are they will be completely done by the end of this month. So the 2.2 is already out of the way. They are left with 165. It was designed to come back online in early 2027. They decided yesterday to expedite that basically bring it forward and start in October 2025. So that's what happened on Sunday. If you go a back a week ago, this was a surprise. But if you go back to Thursday or Friday, it wasn't. So they agreed to start doing this, but there was some conditions to that. And one of the things they've done is they did not give any guidance for the future. So although they took 1.65 65 divided by 12 months which means that their plan is to do it over 12 months and they ended up with 137,000 barrels a day in October additional production ceiling and I'll explain that in a minute. They did not say anything after that but they are emphasizing the point that we are going to go month by month and we are going to assess the situation. We can stop unwinding, we can cut or we can expedite like what they did with the previous 2.2. So all the options are still on the table. In this case, the idea of unwinding is extremely important because the 2.2 again was designed to come back online on April 2024 and they delayed it for a year. And for this 1.6 65. It was supposed to be only 3 months and it's been there since it's been there for a year and a half. The justification for it is very important and it's very important for the audience to think to to understand what are the triggers for these unwinding. OPIC and OPIC plus ministers cannot talk about prices. They took this decision based on lawyers advice in 2016. So they cannot talk about prices. They cannot react to prices. In general, we end up with situations when let's say prices decline in one day by $45 and I will get those messages and I will get the comments on Twitter. Where are the Saudis? Where are OPEC cuts? Why they are not responding? Why they are not making statements? Again, they cannot talk about prices. That's number one. Number two, everyone has to understand that the Saudi price is the average monthly has nothing to do with the changes during the day. It's the average monthly. So this is very important to realize. So the idea here is okay what are the triggers? There are two triggers for unwinding. The first one is a major decline in inventories, global oil inventories. And the second one is strong growth in demand. And what we've seen is that when they decided to unwind in April, they looked at the inventories and inventories were low and they declined substantially. So the first condition is met. The second one is a growth in oil demand and according to OPEC and their view especially the V8 or we call it that that the group of eight or the V8 V4 voluntary they saw an increase in demand and that increase in demand part of it is related to the sanctions uh especially on Venezuela Iran etc. And the reason why is related to sanctions because we always have companies and traders who panic and they want to make sure that they have enough supplies. So the demand for oil from the group of eight increase especially from the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and its allies increase. So for them the two triggers are met and then they decided to unwind and that's what we've seen. Then they expedited that because they saw the situation can handle the additional oil. At the same time they want to get rid of the headache of overp production coming from Kazakhstan and Iraq. Now for the 1.65 that they agreed on yesterday. The question is very clear. I mean anyone who is looking at the data will say look I need to do this and I need to do this for various reasons. One of them is among the whole group of 23 countries only four can increase production. And here I would like to emphasize the point that the unwinding and the numbers we hear about the 2.2 and 165 these are for production ceiling. These are for quotas. These are not actual production. actual production is way lower because some countries cannot increase production. On the other side, what matters to the market is not really production. They talk about production because OPEC's charter when it was written in 1960, it talked about production and they are still with it. But what matters to the global oil market is exports. And if you look at OPC plus exports, they are about half of the headline number. So we know that the headline number is 2.2 million bars a day. But what we saw in the market is about half of that. Now the situation for 165 is going to be even a lower number or lower percentage simply because there are fewer countries that can add production. >> Honest, you mentioned only four countries are capable of increasing production. I'm guessing that that starts with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Who are the other two? Iraq and Kuwait. But Iraq and Kuwait capabilities of increasing production forward is also limited. So a few months from now and it's over. They they will max out and everyone else is maxed out including Russia. So that will leave only Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And here I would like to point out to the audience that it is not necessary that Saudis and the Amiratis will increase production up to the maximum anyway. They are free to do it because they have no agreement but they may not do it. And if we look at Saudi Ramco, Saudi Ramco based on history, it is very comfortable producing between 10 and 105 10 million and 500,000 barrels a day. And right now they are probably around 94 95. So they can add probably 500 to a million. And that's really the range of comfort for them. >> Now back in April when the decision was first made to unwind the 2.2 2 million barrels. That was basically a panic moment in markets. Everybody was bearish saying, "Okay, this is going to crash oil prices." I think you were the only voice that I can remember at least from from that time frame going back to late April, early May. And we had you on macro voices on May 8th talking about this very issue. You were very outspoken saying, "Not only is it not bearish, but it might even be bullish." And sure enough, it seems like the price action has actually supported your very uncommon view. What happened there? How were you able to see that? Why is it that that you were able to see something people didn't see there? >> Yes. Uh the analysts who were bearish basically, they did not uh look at the real situation on the ground. For example, the uh Hajj, which is the pilgrimage that we talked about in that show on May 8th, uh where millions of Muslims fly from around the world to go to holy city of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Oil consumption increases substantially within Saudi Arabia because of that. So gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, oil, etc. Because you are talking about millions of po of people going to the same place at the same time. So they usually it takes a year to plan for these things and that increases the demand within Saudi Arabia. So they need that oil but the world is not going to see it. While those analysts counted the increase in uh or the unwinding as a net supply to the world while the world did not see any of that. At the same time they missed another point that most of the increases especially in the first period that oil was already in the market because of cheating. So what they did in April and May basically just kind of legitimize that cheating. So it was on paper. So they missed that point too. And then they missed the third point which is the uh demand for oil increases substantially in the summer and that demand could add up to about 1.2 million barrels a day. So basically domestic consumption between Hajj and domestic consumption and oil was already out there that most of the unwinding. So it was clear from the beginning but they did not see these things. Now anus you have used the phrase manufactured bearishness in some of your tweets and Substack posts lately. Why are you using that particular phrase? What do you mean by manufactured bearishness? >> You look at the IEA forecasts and they predict that next year we will have the largest surplus in history and right now they are talking about a surplus of 1.8 million barrels a day. You look at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stley, JP Morgan, etc. And there are some really strange stuff going on here because the same narrative that the IA is pushing, the same narrative is being pushed by the Chinese oil majors, which is very strange. The Chinese oil majors basically are going public in English broadcasting the view that oil demand in China is going to peak. gasoline demand in China is going to peak and that's what the IIA is saying. So to have a western organization saying exactly what Chinese companies are saying that's the first question mark there. The second one is the Chinese are talking about peak oil demand peak gasoline demand. That means they have the forecast and they know what's going on but they will never ever release the actual numbers. What does that mean? That mean they are broadcasting something to the rest of the world to the oil producers to the companies to the US and everyone else what they wanted to broadcast. Otherwise if this was a normal thing they would have published the actual numbers. So if you look at the IA forecast for example and and please allow me because I'm going to take my time show showing the evidence here. The first thing is the IEA when we talk about 2025 and 2026, I'm just going to give you an example how this is manufactured. The IEA predicts that US oil production will increase by 560,000 barrels a day in 2025. We already have the data for the first half of the year and there is no way you can get to 560. So what they did is they exaggerated US or production. But the story is not on the production side. The story is on the demand side. According to the IEA, US o oil demand would increase by 60,000 bars a day in 2025. You look at the data for the first 6 months. They are not double that. They are not triple that, they are quadruple that, quadruple. And then you move to 2026 and all of a sudden they say, "Oh, there is no growth, zero growth in US oil demand in 2026." No one on earth believed that except them. So right here we have several hundred,000 barrels a day that's being taken out and counted as surplus while it is an actual consumption. So that's one. But the IEA expect all demand to grow by I think 680,000 barrels a day which is extremely low. Our number is 1.1 and OPEC number is 1.3. So you can see that the divergence is really large. But why we have the concern here? We have the concern on two fronts. First of all we have something called circular information. Circular information is when you have widespread news all over the world and people think, "Wow, this must be real because I'm hearing it from all over the place." But when you do investigate the source, you find out it came from only one source. And then most of the media and social media etc., they will be quoting like in a chain. Like I'll say, well, um, I heard this from CNBC and CNBC quoted CNN and CNN quoted ABC and ABC quoted Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal quoted the International Energy Agency. So, we have circular information. Where is the problem? I will go back to this point of circular information in a minute after I explain where the problem is. You go back and look at the forecast of global oil demand by the IEA in 2022. The IEA discovered that all their numbers and all their estimates of global oil demand were way low and they revised up oil demand back to 2007 to 2007. So we're talking about 15 16 years of data that's been underestimated all this time. Then you move. So that was from 22 back. Then in May, this May, last May, the IEA announced that sorry, and they did not say sorry. Of course, they'll never say sorry, but we underestimated demand in recent years. So we are going to revise up the numbers for 2022, 2023 and 2024 which is a continuation of the the era from 2007 to 221 by how much? 350 million barrels the total adjustment in those three years 350. That's the underestimation of demand by the IIA. So you start from 2007, they were wrong all the way to 2024. And just two weeks ago in its latest report, they said, "We are revising up Mexico's oil demand by 100,000 barrels a day." And listen to this, back to 2020. So what is the problem? First of all, we have a proven record of underestimation for almost 18 years. So why do we have to believe their low estimate right now while all the other evidence point to higher oil demand than their number? But to go back to that circular information, this data since 2007 that's been revised, not every analyst paid attention to it. So many computers at many banks still have the old data and they are still using them. So back to that circular information that the the the data being published by one source is still in use and therefore when they do the forecast in term of growth could be correct is wrong. So we do have a serious problem. I want to move on to India, China and Russia starting with India because the spin that the western press has put on this is basically what's going on with the 25% tariffs. Why did the Trump administration just impose 25% tariffs on India? Well, the reason they did that according to the news flow is it's all about the uh Russian oil. Russia has been selling oil to India. They feel that that's working around tariff. So now the Trump administration is going to punish India for buying oil from Russia according to the news. But according to Dr. Annis, you don't think that's really what's going on. So what is going on? First of all, we have the 25% tariff which is the general tariff on India. And then the Trump administration added another 25% because India is importing oil from Russia and Navo the White House advisor basically accused India of uh supporting Putin in the war in Ukraine by buying Russian oil. And he was very vocal about it and almost on daily basis. He kept talking about it, tweeting about it, giving speeches, giving interviews, etc. And right now the tariff on India is 50%. Here's the problem. Yes, India imports about 1.8 to 2 million barrels a day of oil from Russia. But that was by design and the design did not come from India. It was the G7 and the Europeans who designed that. So when they import the sanctions in the sanctions itself that for the first time they agreed on this they said that the EU and the United States basically can import Russian oil if it is modified and modified in the oil business mean it is refined. All they need to do basically is find another third party to do that and India and China basically did that and some other countries. But the idea here is the Biden administration has no problem with it. Even Secretary Blinken at the G20 meeting in New Delhi basically he defended India for buying Russian oil above the uh what they call the price cap of $60. So that was by design. But here is the issue that why it is really not about Russian oil import. If the issue is importing from Russia and paying them and therefore you are supporting Putin's war in Ukraine, then we have a serious problem because US imports from Russia this year increased over last year. The second point is the EU still imports massive amount of natural gas via pipelines and large amount of LNG from Russia. In fact, if you we just released a report the day before yesterday and in that report it shows that in August 12% of gas imports of the EU came from Russia. But no one accused the EU of supporting Putin's war and China imports everything from Russia in a sense. They import the crude. They import coal. They import natural gas. And the Trump administration did not accuse them of supporting the war in Ukraine. But here's the bigger story. The bigger story is Turkey. Turkey imports the Russian gas and send it to Europe. Turkey imports the Russian crude and send it to Europe. Turkey imports the Russian petroleum products and send them to Europe. And Turkish exports of petroleum products to Europe is larger than that of India. And what's strange about it is Turkey does not refine that that those products. Turkey basically just transmit those from place to place while India at least they refine it. So why they pick on India in this case? It just does not make sense. There is more to the story than Russian production. For those who do not know, we still import enriched uranium from Russia until today. >> Honest, I want to broaden this picture out because on one hand, we can talk about the supply and the demand and the cuts and the so forth, but it feels like the mood has changed. It feels to me like OPEC plus and the group of eight were really working on uh an agenda that was not cooperative with the United States. It feels to me now like some deal has been cut and for some reason the Saudis want to support President Trump in trying at least in the short term to bring energy prices down. Quite frankly that makes me wonder if they're doing that because they think energy prices are going up later because of perhaps some geopolitical things that they see on the horizon. So what's the broader picture of what's going on and and how the influence uh model has changed from the Biden administration to the Trump administration and the decisions that are being made cuz I have the sense that the relationship has gotten better with the US but at the same time they're preparing for maybe a relationship that gets worse over time. >> Well, a few things here. If you want to talk about expand this to various areas including politics, I'll be happy to talk about that. The issue here is this that first of all oil prices declined in 2025 mostly because of President Trump policies not because of the unwinding of production by the group of eight. And to prove this point, the unwinding started in April while oil prices declined earlier. And even when the unwinding started in April, the supply of OPEC plus declined in April and May. We did not see the increase until June. Even when we saw the increase in June, it was a portion of the what was expected and then it declined in July and August. So you cannot blame the large decline in prices on the decision to unwind. The reason was the trade wars, the tariffs and other policies, the immigration policies, the visa policies, the treatment at the airports etc. We have even clients basically refusing to come into the United States for fear of being mistreated at US airports. Uh the student visas as you know because of the demonstrations because of Gaza and others. So that reduced travel substantially and reduced oil demand. Why this is important? Because if you go back to our reports at the end of 2024, jet fuel was the brightest spot in the energy complex and now it tanked because of those policies. So that's the first part of it. The second part of the story is Bloomberg published something about Saudi MBS. The crown prince is going to visit with Trump in November and therefore he wants to make sure that the oil prices are cheap etc. Let's be clear on this because it is very important. Do the Saudis want lower prices? No. Do they want to please Trump by lowering prices? I don't think so. They can please him in different ways. They can just dedicate certain amount of investment like they did with the one uh uh trillion or half trillion whatever amount they want to invest and that will be enough. It's not going to be the oil. But what the Saudis want, and we've seen this several times before, and I'm glad you asked this question because the point I'm going to mention is important for everyone to remember all the time. What the Saudis want, and they've done it before, is to isolate oil from any discussions. They don't want to discuss oil. The NBS is going to be here in the United States for a certain purpose, and they want to focus on it. When Trump visits Saudi Arabia, they wanted to focus on why he is there. They don't want oil to be the main issue. When the president of China visited Saudi Arabia or the president of France, etc. They always make made sure that oil is not on the table. So if by increasing production and keeping prices at current levels that will isolate it, that's a big win for Saudi Arabia. The other issue is, and this is a reply to the Bloomberg article when they mentioned that this is a political decision. So what? Oil is a strategic commodity. Oil is a political commodity. It's always been. In fact, oil and LNG right now are part an integral part of US foreign policy. Why they are not saying anything about it? In fact, even if you want to look deeper into this, the US is using LNG and oil as weapons and they are using of course the sanctions and everything else. These are weapons and they are not saying anything. Why would Saudi Arabia basically look to them as if they are lowering prices all of a sudden is something strange? But the main point here is the Saudis want to isolate oil from the discussions. oil is not on the table and if that what it takes then they will do it. The other issue here I would like to mention is when we talk about market and market surplus and what the analyst missed there is a very important issue related to India of course and the sanctions on the refinery that we have people saying look inventories are not really that low like what OPEC is claiming look at oil on water it's the all those guys even in in April who predicted that oil prices would decline to 30 they missed the point and I'm going to mention a real story here that tells the whole idea. About two months ago, there were six oil tankers carrying Russian orals going to India. Those six tankers belonged to a certain company. By the time the first tanker arrived to the Swiss canal, the Houthies hit a ship in Red Sea and sank it. So the Norwegian insurance company refused to insure the shipment. They told them, "Look, if you are going to go through the Red Sea, I'm not going to insure it." So the company decided to reroute the six tankers around Africa. So imagine going back after they went through the Mediterranean, they have to go back and go around Africa to go to India. That increased the time to arrive to India by about 3 weeks. So oil and water went up. For those who focus on it as increase in inventories, all they see is increase in inventory and therefore we have a problem in the market. No, this has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the market because if you want to do the balances right, then you have to subtract those six tankers from 3 weeks earlier to have the balance right. So they missed that. They did not subtract those tankers and they added them as oil and water. So this is one of the big problems. So whenever we have new sanctions imposed, we end up with this confusion in the market and tankers stop in their place. Basically they get stuck at sea until they get more information from their management on what to do. So every time we have new sanctions, we have delays in shipping and then oil and water goes up. This has nothing to do whether we have surplus or not. In fact, we have a shortage because they are not arriving to their destination and the analysts missed that. So, in the case of the 18th round of sanctions by the EU when they imposed the sanctions on Nara energy uh refinery in India, there was a lot of confusion for about a week and all the shipments going to Niara stopped and all of a sudden someone can claim well look oil and water is going up, storage is going up, there is no demand. All of these things are political issues. they have nothing to do with the market fundamentals at all. And the other issue that is important to this discussion when we talk about politics is that when NBS comes to visit Trump of course like we've seen in Riad we have those major investments we have major joint ventures we have all kind of things etc. And if you look at oil in that discussion or even if it's brought to the table, it's something small relative to those big contracts, whether the defense contracts, the AI contracts, etc. Oil looks really small relative to it. Honest, let's move on to where this is headed a little bit further down the road because some news that I found very interesting is China and Russia have agreed to develop what I think it's called the power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline. So gas pipeline from Russia to China new investment. Now I thought that idea was dead. What happened? Why was it resurrected? And particularly uh I kind of got a feeling that it fits into some strategy that I'm not fully uh grocking yet here. Do you have you figured this out? >> Yes, I think your feeling is absolutely correct. Uh there is a big story in fact here early in the '90s when Russia basically they started reviving the economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They realized that they have a lot of gas and there is not enough market in Europe for it. So they tried to talk to the Chinese about a pipeline. So the idea is really old. It did not catch any any interest until 2007208 when the Putin administration basically agreed that it should do that but nothing happened. But when the Chinese basically Chinese economy was picking up and economic growth was very strong. We're talking about 11% etc. They needed the gas so they agreed on one pipeline. But what we ended up with a case where Putin goes to Crimea. He annexed Crimea and the EU and the US and the G7 imposed sanctions on him and that affected gas sales to those countries and he wanted an outlet and the Chinese outlet was there. So it was the sanctions that imposed in 2014 that opened the doors or opened the floodgates of Russian gas to China. So we had two pipelines, the Power of Siberia 1 and Power of Siberia 3. And Power of Siberia 2 was proposed. It's a massive pipeline. But the Chinese found themselves in trouble because they said, "Look, I don't want to repeat Europe's mistake with Russia. Europe depended heavily on Russia and they got stuck. I don't want to repeat the same mistake. To maximize my benefits and enhance my energy security, enhance my national security, I need to diversify my imports. So, I'm going to buy LNG from all around the world, including United States. And they ignored the power of Siberia, too. From the Russian point of view, when Europe or exports to Europe declined by 80%. They looked at the map and said, "Okay, the only two places I can send pipelines is Europe and China." And if Europe is not there, then I'm I'm putting all my eggs in one basket in the Chinese basket. And if we end up with political problems, I am a hostage to that. And if the Chinese economy tanks, then I have to pay a very heavy price for it. So I need to diversify. But I cannot send pipelines to other places. So the only way to diversify gas exports is to focus on LNG. So they started building LNG plants just like the United States to export GA with the idea of diversification. So they built Yamal and then they built the Arctic LNG 2 and after they finished Arctic LNG 2 the their interest in the power of Siberia 2 basically became very weak. They were not interested because Arctic LNG2 basically was the way out. So it wasn't. So when you said it's dead, yes, it was dead because China has no interest and the Russians have no interest. China wants to diversify imports. Russia wants to diversify export. But everything changed this year. First, we have the trade wars and we have the tariffs. And as a result, China stopped importing LNG from the United States last February. So, no zero imports of LNG since February. Remember, they wanted to diversify. They wanted to go everywhere, including the United States. Now, the United States basically being cut because of the trade wars and the tariffs. Now, China wants to sign contracts. Before their idea was I'm going to sign contracts with those new emerging LNG companies in the United States part of the diversification but because of those trade wars and the tariffs they did not sign it. Now they want to go somewhere else. Australia is maxed out. The only two places where they can get LNG is Qatar and UAE United Arab Emirates which is in the Gulf. And they did sign those contracts and the Trump administration got pissed off because of that because they thought that they will get more contracts from China. All of a sudden, Israel start hitting Iran and we started the Iran uh Israeli Iran war. That was not a surprise for political analysts who were predicting this to happen for the last 20 years. And this is really not the big issue for China. The big issue for China was when the United States suddenly hit Iran. So when the Trump administration hit Iran and they hit them really hard, that's when China basically started paying attention. Why? Because all of a sudden the Western press, especially in the United States, started promoting the idea of Iran closing the horistry. And China looked and said, "Hold on just a second. I cannot import LG from the United States. Now I have those contracts with Qatar and UAE and now I cannot import from them anymore. What is the alternative? The alternative is power of Siberia too. So that was the major change and this fit with the Chinese policy of reducing energy imports via sea. So they wanted all the seaborn imports or the seaborn energy imports to decline substantially. And the reason why because they think if there is a war or there are sanctions or closure of Malika straight then they they are ready. So they are building this massive inventory. Right now we are speaking about the highest oil inventory ever in China 1.1 billion barrels and they have inventories of everything being built. So for China it was the US trade policies, the tariffs and then the US attack on Iran and then the promotion and I emphasize the word promotion of the idea that Iran will close the heristrate. If you look at it from a Chinese point of view, it's not Iran who is going to close the heristrate. It is the US who is going to to close the heristrate. And therefore they needed the alternative and the alternative is power of Siberia too. From the Russian point of view, again, they had weak interests before. All of a sudden, they have strong interest. Why? Because the US imposed sanctions on Arctic LG2 and all the tankers associated with it. And now Russia got stuck. They want to diversify exports, but they cannot because of the sanctions. What is the alternative? Power of Siberia too. So in a sense it was the US policy whether you look at the trade wars the tariffs or the attack on Iran the promotion of the idea of closure of her trade that pushed those two two countries to cooperate together and to start building this pipeline and related to that something we covered in the previous two shows if you recall and the question I raised and I'm going to raise the question without answering it the question I raised was the following most of the Russian or Raji crude goes through the Red Sea but not a single LG tanker from Russia go through the Red Sea. Every single LG tanker have to go around Africa. Now in the summer some of them basically go through the northern rout northern route but for most of the year they go around Africa. Qatar when they when it sends LNG to Europe historically it went through the Red Sea. Now it goes around Africa. So why no LNG shipments going through the Red Sea since January 2024 kind of one one and a half shipment in a sense one of them from Oman going to Turkey but I'm mentioning this just for accuracy but in general there were no shipment no Russian shipments going through at all so why oil is all right to go but LG is not and now you look at what China is doing and the idea of LNG in the Gulf and the closure firm trade you you start having an idea on how that LNG war is playing. So yes, you are right that this came out of nowhere. It was a dead idea and now it became the center of attention simply because of the US policies. >> Now if you look at the electric vehicle adoption rate data coming out of China, it's awfully impressive. The thing is, I don't think you believe that data from what I've seen on on your social media and so forth. What's going on there? Number of EVs on the road in China. Why would they exaggerate that? >> Well, we have a serious problem as we discussed in previous shows because the media keep reporting sales. Sales do not matter. Uh what matters is the number of EVs on the road. And those who promote EVs or obsessed with EVs, they always literally mention sales and that's it. But they don't focus on ideas like I my neighbor basically just bought a new EV, new Tesla to replace the old Tesla, but yet they still counting it as something new. So really kind of you can see it's part of the PR for EVs to focus on sales. But what matters is we have to focus on the number of cars or at least registrations in every country rather than the sales. But in China we already have several scams being investigated uh by the Chinese government and uh yes or the day before yesterday I learned about new scam in addition to the two that I knew about before. So I'm going to go over them quickly here. The subsidies to EVs in China are given to EVs in China. So the those EVs have to be sold in China. So the first one is of course they have to create a system the they have a tax system, they have a rebate system and they have to create this bureaucracy of course to work it out. So how to define a new car that deserve a subsidy? Somehow they ended up with an exact definition that is controlled by a bureaucrat and the exact definition is you have to have a zero mileage on it. And some smart Chinese guys said okay that's fine. So they go and buy all those old junkies at a very cheap price take them somewhere play with the diameter and basically bring it to zero. And then they bring all those old EVs and count them as new and give them a new registration and then get the subsidies and the gang whoever operating on this they basically they split the money. So new vehicles being or old vehicles being reported as new ones and some of them probably sold multiple times. So that's number one. Number two, again the subsidies are given to what is registered in China. So what they discovered was couple of manufacturers had an agreement with dealers or some shell companies belong to them. They will literally take those cars from the factory and sell them to that entity and that entity within 30 minutes will have a registration and insurance on them and immediately of course they will cash in on the subsidies and a few hours later those cars will be on ships going to the rest of the world whether Brazil or or Kenya or or Europe or any other place. What that means is those cars are counted twice. one in China and one as export. And uh uh the recent one I heard about a couple of days ago that all you got to do basically is just show a purchase of the car. So some manufacturers basically created their own companies and they buy from themselves but under the new entity and they just park the car in parking lots and cash on the subsidy and that's it. So the numbers are exaggerated regardless. And I know that some of your loyal listeners heard me saying this several times. Regardless of that, even if you take the headline number, you take the maximum number, you look at all of that and you look at the number of cars in in the worldwide right now, it's about 50 million EVs on the road. And the impact of that in term of replacement of oil demand is only and that is the direct replacement only 1.3 million barrels a day and that's it. All this talk about peak oil demand does not make any sense at all because the impact on oil demand is highly exaggerated. >> Well Annis, I can't thank you enough for another terrific interview. But before I let you go, I want to talk a little bit about what you do at Energy Outlook Advisors. your Substack has become really the uh the talk of the industry. Tell us a little bit more about what you do, where people can follow your work and what services are on offer. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. In fact, I was surprised that although uh the Substack uh newsletter, we have a newsletter and we have the daily energy report. The newsletter is intended for institutional investors and the daily energy report is for institutional investors and individuals and it's cheap enough for individuals basically to to subscribe to it. Uh but I was surprised that the energy newsletter although it is energy it was classified among the top 15 business newsletters on substat which is a great honor basically to be associated with some of the top people in the business. So that that was really something made me really proud and happy. So we have those two that we have the newsletter. We have the the daily energy report. Uh of course all of those are sisters to ata in Arabic means energy which is the number one media outlet in the Middle East and the Arab world that focuses on on energy and it is a very prominent publication. But the aside from those really uh the the big business for me is the speaking engagements. And now uh this is the time when companies plan their events especially for their investors at the end of the year or the board uh uh meetings etc when they look for speakers. Uh so u I already have two two kind of speaking trips around the world coming up. But for those who are interested, especially to schedule speeches for the end of the year, I'm still available. >> Patrick Szna and I will be back as macrovoices continues right here at macrovoices.com. [Music] >> Now back to your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Serzna. >> Eric, it was great to have an NAS back on the show. Interesting take on oil production cuts and the outlook for energy prices. Listeners, you'll find the download link for the postgame trade of the week in your research roundup email. If you don't have a research roundup email, that means you have not yet registered at macrovoices.com. Just go to our homepage, macrovoice.com, and click on the red button over on NASA's picture saying looking for the downloads. Folks, because of my international travel schedule, we're keeping this week's postgame segment short and focused. So, we're going to skip our usual postgame chart deck, but only for this week. Patrick, we've had some great feedback on the new segment that we aired for the first time last week, the big picture trading trade of the week. So, let's keep that momentum going this week. Patrick, tell our listeners how you'd put a trade on to express Anus' views on the oil markets going into year end. So, Eric, my takeaway from Anas's market view is that he's medium-term bullish on oil, but he also expects short-term volatility. If Anas is right and demand growth turns out stronger than expected while supply stays tighter than markets anticipate, then any short-term pullbacks in oil are likely to quickly mean revert back towards the current fair value zone where prices have been trading. So what trade do I think of where the downside risk is manageable and the short-term outlook is not immediately bullish? For me, this is a perfect candidate for income writing on the futures. On page two of the trade of the week download, I've included an oil chart with the volume profile to help define the fair value zone for the year. What stands out is that the majority of the volume traded has been contained within the $60 to $70 range with the intraday lows of the year occurring during the liberation day volatility down near $55 a barrel. On page three, I've also highlighted the crude oil futures term structure, which shows an uncommon setup. We currently have the natural backwardation going into next year, but further out into the end of the decade, oil prices are trading above spot prices. To me, this aligns closely with Anas's longerterm bullish view, suggesting that while short-term volatility is likely, the broader trend continues to support higher prices over time. While one could take a more aggressive approach to selling puts in the low60s to capture larger premiums based on the fair value zone, I'm taking a more conservative stance. Personally, I'm attracted to selling puts further out into the end of the year where my break even would be closer to the yeartodate lows near the $55 to $57 range. On page four of the trade of the week download, I've highlighted the $57 strike on the January 2026 crude oil futures chart. Then on page five, I've included a snapshot of the December 16th, 2025 crude oil options chain, also highlighting that $57 option strike for the put. Now, at the time of recording, the 3mon 96-day put is bidding around $1.82. That works out to a little over a 3% premium on the notional assignment value, which translates to an annualized return of roughly 12% for an unleveraged cash secured put. Right? Now, for our more risk-seeking listeners, you can also leverage this trade. This put generates roughly $1,800 in premium per contract while requiring only about $3,000 in margin to carry the position. This clearly implies that leverage traders can amplify the percentage returns, but that naturally comes with higher risk if crude oil trades below the $57 strike. That was a great explanation for our professional audience. Now, we don't have time to delve into all the details of a retail version of that trade, but how about just the quick 10-second overview for our retail audience? Well, retail investors that agree with Anas's view on oil and want to express the trade without using futures, you can use ETFs like the United States Oil Fund or express the trade on highly correlated energy companies for doing similar style income rights. Now, Patrick, you did a live webinar on Monday explaining your trade ideas on Jim Biano's rates call from last week's show. How about you do that again since I'm sure a lot of listeners would also like to hear a more complete explanation for this week's Big Picture Trading Trade of the Week. On Monday, September 15th, on our members webinar, I'm going to walk through exactly how retail investors can set up oil and energy stock trades to take advantage of Anas's oil market outlook with no futures required. If you're a macrovoices listener and want to see how it's done, you can jump on for free. Just register for a free trial at bigpicturetrading.com. No credit card is required to try it out. Folks, that does it for this week's episode. We'll be back next week with our normal format, including the postgame chart deck. Patrick, tell them what they can expect to find in this week's research roundup. Well, in this week's research roundup, you're going to find the transcript for today's interview and the chart book we just discussed here in the post game, including a number of links to articles that we found interesting. You're going to find this link and so much more in this week's research roundup. That does it for this week's episode. We appreciate all the feedback and support we get from our listeners and we're always looking for suggestions on how we can make the program even better. Now, for those of our listeners that write or blog about the markets and would like to share that content with our listeners, send us an email at researchroundup@macrovoices.com and we will consider it for our weekly distributions. If you have not already, follow our main account on X at macrovoices for all the most recent updates and releases and also follow Eric onx, Eric S. Townson. That's Eric spelled with a K. You can also follow me at Patrick Serzna. On behalf of Eric Townson and myself, thank you for listening and we'll see you all next week. [Music] That concludes this edition of Macrovoices. Be sure to tune in each week to hear feature interviews with the brightest minds in finance and macroeconomics. Macrovoices is made possible by sponsorship from bigpicturetrading.com, the internet's premier source of online education for traders. Please visit bigpicturertrading.com for more information. Please register your free account at macrovoices.com. Once registered, you'll receive our free weekly research roundup email containing links to supporting documents from our featured guests and the very best free financial content our volunteer research team could find on the internet each week. 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