MacroVoices #520 Michael Every: USD Stablecoins in The Age of Economic Statecraft

Summary

• Economic Statecraft: The guest outlines a shift to economic statecraft driving U.S. policy, with the Fed’s role reshaped under Treasury to serve strategic national objectives rather than traditional hawk/dove frameworks.
• US Dollar Stablecoins: Extensive discussion on USD stablecoins as tools for trade, capital inflows, and policy leverage, channeling global savings into T-bills, lowering front-end yields, and enabling dollarization via smartphones.
• Banks and Credit: Stablecoins could pressure traditional banks (most lending not productive), nudging them toward Treasury-aligned, productive-capital lending, while introducing deposit-like fee yields that banks may resist.
• Global Architecture: Potential emergence of currency blocs—a U.S. dollar stablecoin bloc vs. alternatives (gold-backed or Bitcoin), with allies steered to USD stablecoins and non-allies pushed toward neutral rails like Bitcoin.
• US Manufacturing: Freight and logistics point to an endogenous U.S. industrial pickup, aided by AI/robotics and strategic partner capital (Japan, South Korea), consistent with reindustrialization goals.
• AI Volatility: AI is a major cross-market driver of volatility and sector disruption, creating resource price pressures that may invite policy intervention to cap inflationary spikes.
• Precious Metals: The guest questions gold’s safe-haven behavior amid high volatility and challenges the coexistence of gold-centric architectures with a USD stablecoin-led system.
• Market Implications: Hosts highlight a structural USD bid expressed via EUR shorts and flag Nvidia (NVDA) earnings as pivotal for semiconductors and broader equity sentiment.

Transcript

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 Serezna. Macrovoic's episode 520 was produced on February 19th, 2026. I'm Eric Townsend. Rabbel Bank's global strategy for economics and markets chief Michael Every returns as this week's feature interview guest, and I'm here to tell you this is an episode you don't want to miss. This began as a broad macro and geopolitics interview covering the wars nomination risk of a kinetic escalation in Iran and so forth. Then when Michael ventured into US stable coins, saying that he thought a lot of people don't yet understand their full potential, I thought to myself, okay, the audience will enjoy this, but hey, you know, I'm in the know here. I'm the guy who pretty much has this all figured out. I couldn't possibly have been more wrong when Michael integrated his concept of economic statecraft, which we covered in my prior interviews with him, and then described several possible future use cases for US dollar stable coins for use as tools of economic statecraft by the Trump administration. I came to a whole new understanding of just how big of a trend this really could become for the remainder of the Trump 2.0 O presidency. So if you thought President Trump had already been awfully aggressive with tariffs, just wait until you hear what Michael thinks he and Scott Besson might do next with US dollar stable coins. Then be sure to stay tuned for our postgame segment after the feature interview when Patrick's trade of the week focuses on a bullish US dollar setup expressed through the euro. And as always, we'll give you our latest perspective on all the major markets. and I'm Patrick Szna with the macro scoreboard week overweek as of the close of Wednesday, February 18th, 2026. The S&P 500 index down 86 basis points to 68.881. Markets continuing to grind in a trade range above support. We'll take a closer look at that chart and the key technical levels to watch in the postgame segment. The US dollar index up 96 basis points, trading at 9772. The March WTI crude oil contract up 65 basis points trading at 6505 continuing to trade at multimonth highs as geopolitics continue to dominate. The April Arbob gasoline unchanged on the week at 220. The April gold contract down 175 basis points to 5,09. The March copper contract down 268 basis points to 580. The February uranium contract up six basis points to 8875 and the US 10-year Treasury yield down nine basis points trading at 408 as yields now are within range of that 4% level. The key news to watch this week is Friday's core PCE price index and next week we have the PPI inflation numbers and the much anticipated Nvidia earnings. This week's feature interview guest is Rabbo Bank's global head of macro strategy, Michael Every. Eric and Michael discuss economic statecraft, the evolving global monetary architecture, and what it means for the US dollar, Treasury Markets, and geopolitical positioning, and more. Eric's interview with Michael Every is coming up as macrovoices continues right here at macrovoices.com. And now with this week's special guest, here's your host, Eric Townsend. Joining me now is Michael Every, global strategist in the economics and markets team for Rebel Bank. Michael, I've really been looking forward to this interview and getting you back on the show because frankly, I've noticed that you have an uncanny ability to translate what President Trump says into what he really means and even go the next step is to intuiting what maybe he intends to do next. Frankly, I'm confused by a lot of the things that are going on right now. It seemed like the president was signaling that he was really going to go just max dovish on his choice for Fed chair. But then he picked Kevin Worsh, which surprised a lot of people. Uh, then we had absolutely positively striking Iran. No, wait a minute. The entire fleets on the other side of the planet. We're repositioning the fleet. Now we're going to strike Iran. No, we're not going to strike Iran. Oh, maybe we made a deal with Iran. I I don't get it. Can Can you help me sort out the geopolitics and what's going on? >> Thank you very much for that hospital pass, as we say in in British football. Yes, I'm very happy to be back on the show and very happy to try and be some form of Trump whisperer there. But what I would say first of all is a welcome to 2026 and b welcome to President Trump because these are these are things we have to get used to when we're dealing with both of those particularly you know conflated together. Let's start with what you mentioned in terms of Kevin Walsh. I've I've mentioned already in writing that I really think that the market got things wrong in terms of portraying this as a hawk dove decision because first of all let's get down to the brass tax of it. Everything that Trump looks for in a new appointee is loyalty first and foremost. And you know, Walsh has a close relationship with Bent at Treasury, which is incredibly important, and he's the son-in-law of one of Trump's friends, Ron Lauder. So that already speaks volumes in terms of why Trump may have wanted to look to him. Secondly, and this is, you know, more in terms of a political economy architecture above and beyond the fact that we now have one where being close to somebody matters more than it did in the past. although I think it always did matter to be honest with other presidencies too is that what we are going to see unfold this year and in 2027 and 2028 as well I'm quite sure is a new Fed because if we have economic state craft to the four now as the driving force in the US and we've spoken about that on more than one occasion recently so I don't want to go over that again, but I think you understand what I mean and I hope most listeners understand what I mean by economic statecraft. It's really completely irrelevant or just a complete tangent to reality to worry about whether the Fed is hawkish or dovish. In fact, it reminds me of that old adage of um you know that from feminists in the 60s, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. It's just two different things that you're looking at because where interest rates need to be low is abundantly clear in the US economy. Where interest rates probably need to be high if you're trying to reshape the US economy in a certain direction, which Trump is and Bessent is, is also abundantly clear. And you don't have one interest rate to do that. I if the Fed were to be really doubbish and slash rates to 2% or 1% purely hypothetically, I think, you know, you you'd be immediately eager to say where you think markets would go and where the investment opportunities would be. But that's not economic statecraft. Economic statecraft is where do you need the USA Inc. to be? What does the ship of state need to look like? And maybe parts of it get where they need to go with a 1 or 2% rate and parts of it do completely the wrong thing. So in other words, Walsh is being brought in A because he's loyal to Trump and B because he's friendly with Bessent, but C because obviously, although he won't say it out loud and he shouldn't do politically, he is going to be completely on board with this new reshaping of the Fed into a very very different institution with a very very different toolkit which I think will sit under Treasury, under Bent, under economic statecraft to try and make the and the world around it look very different. >> Okay, that's a huge difference from the theoretical and I I do emphasize theoretical concept that the Fed was designed entirely for independence. It's theoretically not even part of the government. So you're saying it becomes a subordinate under Treasury, you know, do what you're told kind of organization. >> It already is to a degree. In fact, I I >> Well, I've noticed that, but they they used to pretend that it wasn't. Well, pretend is the accurate word because let's not get into real conspiracy theory stuff here, okay? But let's just be honest. So, the Fed is much younger than most other central banks. Most other central banks in the Western world were set up a long time before the Bank of England, of course, being, you know, the grandfather or the grandmother, the old lady at Thread Needle Street, as they call it, that was set up specifically to help the government fight a war against France. So there was no pretense whatsoever of it being independent until 1997 which is pretty recent you know even in market terms and the Fed even though there had been previous iterations as you know in American history only got set up in 1913 it's always been a quasi government quasi private entity if you actually look at the architecture of it it's not structured like modern western central banks which are purely in the public realm it's always been a kind of hybrid As soon as it gets set up in 1913, it gets dragged into World War I. Well, there's an opportunity for a bank to show that they're only interested in market forces, he said sarcastically. So, of course, it was involved in statecraftraft within a year of being set up. Then we have the 1920s, which are absolute chaos globally. Then we have the 1930s with the Great Depression, which are absolute chaos globally. Then we have the 1940s, World War II, in which the Fed proudly says on its own website, they helped win World War II. Nothing to do with being independent there. And it isn't until 1951 that we actually have any kind of compact where the Fed turns around and says, you know, in the Korean War, if we have to finance that finance that too, um, now that the economy isn't locked down like it was during World War II, it's going to be really inflationary. And only then do we start moving towards any kind of pretense of independence. But what I want to add on top of that is in a piece that I wrote fairly recently um looking at the structure of the US economy. I said if we're really genuinely cynical and realist and take a step back, the US economy now is overly financialized. And I think you would agree with that that term. Most people objectively would. But the part and parcel of that is that asset prices in the US have to be high. If you want cash to flow in from the rest of the world, capital to flow in from the rest of the world to fund your trade deficit, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, and we can have a separate conversation about that. You need to have assets for them to go into. Erggo, those assets can't just crash left, right, and center. So the Fed's role is to make sure the assets are unaffordably high for foreigners effectively. It doesn't say that anywhere. It talks about financial stability. So I I really think we have to be quite cynical and realist in terms of how we're framing it and recognize that that role of the Fed doesn't help the US anymore because the trade deficit doesn't help it anymore. The capital inflows from large exporting countries like China don't help the US. They're a hindrance as it needs to re-industrialize. Erggo, there is no way, shape, or form that the Fed as the tech quote unquote neutral, apolitical, technocratic animal that it pretends to be, which it is not, is going to be able to carry on with the same technobabble and gnostic nonsense that Greenspan and and his ilk were coming out with year after year. And whether it emits it or not, it's going to have to be part of USA, Inc. to try and get it out of the foxhole that it's currently in. So it sounds like your perspective is essentially uh Bessant sits down probably behind the scenes with Worsh and says look if we make you Fed chair do you understand that the name of the game in 2026 is economic statecraft we're we're changing the world we've got a big agenda uh you work for us you do what you're told and you're going to be part of our negotiating toolkit do you get it war says yeah I get it and that's how the nomination comes about obviously it wasn't quite that blunt but is that the gist of what you're saying. >> Well, let's try the counterfactual to that because when you put something forward like that, people may immediately push back. Let's put it the other way. You have a US administration which I think everyone would recognize is running really radical policy in almost every direction simultaneously. Whether it's in terms of domestic things, economic things, international things, it's really pushing the envelope everywhere all at once. And you think against that backdrop where it's trying to reshape everything it can, they're going to appoint a Fed chairman and say most important thing in the world for us is 2% CPI. Oh, and keep the stock market up, please. But apart from that, do whatever you want. Make whatever political statements you want. Adopt whatever position you like. We really don't care because that's the most important thing. I I really think I have a bridge to sell you. I don't mean you personally, Eric, but I mean anyone listening who thinks that's how the world actually operates. very clearly what you just said is what did happen. >> Okay. So if that's the agenda, help me with the next step because it seemed like and this is very much consistent with what I'm trying to understand of the president's style of diplomacy, which as someone recently said is kind of like throw a hand grenade into the room before you enter and then as the dust settles sit down and say, "Hey, you want to make a deal?" It seems like we've had a lot of really heavy messaging. Boy, you don't want to be Iran. They're about to get hit. That's it. It's a strike. It's It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. We're moving the fleet into position. Then there's a tweet over President's Day weekend saying maybe we're going to make a deal and there's an economic u you know transaction to be had here. Maybe there's an investment. Was this whole strike Iran thing a a leadup to a negotiation on some economic front? >> On that one, we have to wait and see. I think we won't have to wait long to see visav the Fed even though it's still a few months until WSH officially gets in. I think from Iran we'll have to wait and see another few weeks at least until all the pieces are in place. You can absolutely understand that Trump doesn't want to get sucked into another Middle Eastern war because if there's one thing ahead of the midterm elections that wouldn't go down with either independence or his base, it's hey, we're war in the Middle East again. But that didn't stop him bombing Iran last year. And very pointedly in the run-up to it, the media were completely fooled. Completely fooled, you know, that there was a disagreement between the US and Israel whether there was or wasn't going to be an attack. And people thought that the US had basically chickened out and wasn't prepared to do it and had talked tough and wouldn't attack because no one actually uh well at least in the mainstream press thought that he was prepared to bomb Iran's nuclear sites because of what they saw as the you know the fat tail risks there. Is that going to be repeated here? I think in his heart of hearts Trump would very much like to avoid doing that because Venezuela with Maduro went as well as something as risky as that can possibly do. And while Venezuela has not been quote unquote dealt with or sorted out, the message was sent globally, the geostrategic and geopolitical table was definitely reset in a way that many people were shocked by. And if he tries again in Iran and that fails and you do get sucked into a war, the US is very very significantly weakened. Equally, if you knock out the Iranian regime, but what you get coming back is ISIS in the broader region and absolute chaos. That's not such of a big win for the US either. But if he can manage to get them to agree some kind of deal, and I actually think the chances of that are extremely low, but if he were able to do that without any fireworks, that would be a geopolitical win where again the US can say, "Look, I talked tough, didn't have to do anything. Now I've got Iran on board." That's that's something he would aim for. And if that doesn't happen, if you look at the continuing dayby-day movement of military power into that region as we speak, uh, that's continuing to go on and I would imagine on the day this podcast goes out, it will still be going on in the background. It seems very hard to climb down from that tree because all the geopolitical credit as a, you know, as a tough guy that he got from acting completely by surprise in Venezuela and even though he had a fleet off of Venezuela, it was still a surprise when it happened. that would be squandered if you then move everything to the Middle East and actually don't do anything. So I would say that the the local intelligence in that region still suspects that you have an irresistible force meeting meeting an immovable object when it comes to Trump and Iran and that will end up with military action and then we have to see what happens on the other side of that. Let's talk about the road in this environment as you describe it of economic statecraft, the road from here to the midterm elections because it seems that one thing is very clear which is President Trump is not the personality type to say, hm, seems like the Democrats don't really approve of everything I'm doing. Maybe I should back down and moderate a bit. That's not his his emmo. So, it seems to me that he's very committed to the Hail Mary passive. He's got to do something to win the mid midterm elections because let's face it, when he was impeached twice, they didn't really have a whole lot of dirt on him at the time. the Democrats, regardless of whether you think President Trump is right or he's wrong or he's the best or the worst president ever, there's really no room to debate that his actions in this presidency have been more aggressive and uh and more radical, as you put it, radical policy, than in the past. So, if we get to the Democrats taking the House of Representatives and especially if they got both houses of Congress, uh it seems to me that we're back to impeachments and gridlock and nothing but that. Would you agree with that forecast? And if so, does that mean that the economic statecraft is all going to be focused on somehow making sure that Republicans keep the House of Representatives in November? >> Uh yes. Uh and yes because on one hand it's crystal clear that were Trump to lose first of all the house and of course the house and the senate it would be a political disaster. It would be for any sitting president and very much so given the the radicalness of what he's trying to achieve on multiple fronts all at once. So on that basis, it was very clear to me from last November when the special elections didn't go very well for him that he would pivot immediately to being as radical as possible on all fronts, but that includes focusing on affordability. Now, I'll admit the messaging on that I think is not getting through to some of his base. For example, if you say the Dow is up at, you know, record levels again, that doesn't speak to people who haven't got, you know, a couple hundred bucks to put together. That's exactly the kind of language that we saw from president after president in the past which just sailed over people's heads and actually ended up with people like Trump being elected. But that doesn't mean he isn't actually trying to move things significantly to genuinely put money in people's pockets. Let's just go through a few. Obviously, there have been a couple of different measures floated but not yet acted on housing to try and get mortgage rates down. I expect we're going to see a lot more being done on that over the next couple of months. We've had attempts to try and get credit card rates pegged down to 10% temporarily. Again, very controversial. Obviously, credit card issuers don't like it. I'm not making a judgment. I'm just listing. That makes a big difference for some people's income short term. You've had uh attacks against meat packing companies, particularly foreignowned ones. Of course, that's a long-term issue, but again, it's focused on affordability. Uh you've got this new discounted uh drug company where you know you can get the the fat jabs uh much much cheaper now than they were previously which is uh you know an interesting policy move. But you can actually join that one up in a couple of ways because if people have more money in their pocket because they're not spending money on other drugs because they've managed to bring their weight down to a manageable level rather than being really big. Well on that level uh they have more money to spend on other products. And guess what? you might be able to afford a made in America one if there's a one-off price shift to that cost basis that you know if it's made in America one off it's going to cost you more than in China and then after that it will level off the price or maybe even start to drift lower so you can join lots and lots of different dots and in fact it's a no-brainer an absolute no-brainer if you understand what economic statecraft is to see that it would be foolhardy to think of anything other than that being the policy backdrop for the next couple of months and in fact I think that would be the case in any normal election anyway that you want to do well in November but doubly triply so this time >> well let's talk about what that's going to mean for financial markets then because as you said the Trump administration has already taken a bit of a risk by you know telling everybody look stock markets at record highs that's all because of me which means if that starts to reverse in any way uh you know it's going to be a loss of credibility but it seems to me markets don't like uncertainty and if you assess this situation objectively. Again, regardless of whether you love President Trump or hate him, you know, the best that can be hoped for is if his radical policy works and he is able to save the midterm elections so that Republicans keep both houses of Congress. Well, the best you can hope for is his political opponents will be even more pissed off and we will have gone through a period of great uncertainty because until that election is actually over, nobody really knows that that's the outcome. On the other hand, the market, I think, is going to start discounting, well, wait a minute, what if he doesn't keep and particularly what if he loses both houses of Congress? then we're going to have basically I think a hard stop on all of this radical policy as a new Democratcontrolled Congress intervenes to block it and we end up with the last two years of this presidential term basically being a gridlock that's about you know the next 17 reasons for impeachment. So, how do we get to here to November without the market uh really being subject I think to a lot of headwinds from uncertainty? >> Well, there are only two things that I would add to that. The first one is that were Trump to suffer that political setback, the logical thing for him to do is if he can't enact as much policy as he'd like to just move over to executive orders, which he's already relying on anyway, and then probably have to be even more radical again to try and use them to clear the way through to 2028 for whoever succeeds him. Uh, and at the same time, of course, presidents traditionally when they have trouble at home do even more internationally. So that can also be very very radical because there are lots of ways in which what happens internationally now directly interfaces with what happens in the US like trade deals for example. So I wouldn't think that it ends just in November. That's the first thing I would say. Uh and the second thing and this is not in any way to try and segue because I think you're asking a very good question or making a very good point. It's this a lot of what I think we're seeing in terms of market volatility over the past few weeks. Even though it's very related to Trump's agenda at core isn't actually being driven by anything he's said or done specifically. It's much more to do with the AI effect, which is something that Trump of course is very aggressively backing as I think any US president would uh in this particular situation because it appears to unlock so many magic boxes as well as Pandora's boxes. But that that destabilizing impact of course is just rolling through markets like a herd of elephants. Uh and that I think is going to absolutely guarantee volatility going forward even if we were to see Trump suddenly have a complete change of heart and say okay here's complete predictability over everything I'm going to do and no one's going to stand in my way or do something bipartisan. Even if those very unlikely scenarios were to unfold, that wouldn't change the fact that on an almost daily basis, you're seeing suddenly some new sector of the economy where people hadn't thought up until recently, well, that doesn't need to exist anymore because of AI. Suddenly thinking, well, maybe that doesn't need to exist anymore because of AI. So, yeah, it's it's it's it's already what you were saying, but it's even more on top. >> So, what would the opposite scenario be? Because, frankly, I'm having a hard time seeing one. I do see where there's significant left tail risk to markets. Things could get uncertain heading into the election. Uh we're definitely at 9 months out now. We're we're in the scope of where the the timing is right for the election outcome to start impacting the market. I see the left tail risk. Is there a right tail risk where economic statecraft is somehow fantastically victorious and somehow takes us to you know much higher highs on stock markets? >> Well, yes and no. Let's let's take the yes part first of all. If you actually look at the leading indicators not on your Bloomberg screen but looking at logistics and this is this is publicly available. I'm not talking about proprietary sources. Freight companies are now saying that they are seeing the signs, the early signs of a really significant industrial pickup in the US. But what they're finding interesting in terms of the amount of freight that they're shipping is it isn't coming in from US ports as it traditionally would. I.e. the US is importing more, particularly from China, for example, as a precursor to the fact that it's going to invest more or consume more. No, no, actually this is shipping freight around within the US as part and parcel of making things in the US. you are starting to see that, you know, just under a year into the admitted chaos of these new Trump trade deals and liberation day, some of the dust is settling and potentially it's it's, you know, it's not a done deal yet, but they're starting to see it could be. We are going to get a genuine indogenous pickup in US manufacturing. Now, a lot of that may be driven again by robotics and a lot of it may be driven by AI. It may not be as labor intensive as it used to be, but it is exactly what economic statecraft aimed at. So watch that space really carefully because if it were to unfold, it is a significant feather in the cap for Trump. And whether it can be translated across to a voting populace, I don't know. But it's really important. Where I was going to say no though is at the same time alongside that you are seeing of course extreme price pressures and overheating in some sectors of the economy again primarily led by AI but also linked resource areas. And on one level people will turn around and say well that's where I'm going to make my money. I'm not going to be able to make my money in services anymore, which is where I thought I was going to, or in it because AI is destroying that, but I can go into raw materials. But statecraft again isn't about making easy money. Uh, it may sound completely counterintuitive because Trump obviously doesn't dislike the stock market and doesn't dislike people making money. Far from it. But statecraftraft as a whole, even if not Trump's iteration of it, is not the kind of entity or thought process which says, "Okay, the Fed's going to cut rates to 2% because of Statecraft. Therefore, you need to invest your money here, here, or here to make a 10 or 20% return." Uh, I've made that point to you before. I don't think that's the game anymore. And if it looks like, well, resources, that's the area to go. Well, no. The state will step in and say, "We're capping that. we we are going to do everything we can to make sure that price inflation doesn't get out of control one way or another. Um and so expect a lot more leaning on or you know fingers on the scale there which will again make it more difficult to invest because what you're looking at logically and rationally within a free market environment isn't the environment you're in anymore. I want to come back to something you said a couple of minutes ago, which is when things are not going ideally well in the United States, a lot of presidents have tried to divert attention by getting much more active internationally. Okay. Well, the usual way that tends to go down is Middle Eastern wars, but as you said, President Trump is strongly incented not to do that. So are you thinking when you said that in terms of a military escalation in other parts of the world or are you thinking about trade deals or or tariffs or or what kind of international distraction would uh would come to mind? Well, I'm in no way thinking of a wag the dog scenario where a war is started to distract people's attention because even though you can get a rally around the flag effect, I I don't think that would last very long and I think it would be a very a very foolish move um and certainly one that you know any American would tell you is unlikely to play well with Trump's base which he needs to motivate. What I was implying instead or what I I will state openly rather than implying is that yes, this sits firmly within the world of trade and investment deals and particularly what I expect to be with a new Fed chair under Walsh, a shift towards dollar stable coins as part of the nexus of US trade and of foreign investment flows coming back into the US as part of those trade deals. which we are now starting to see crystallized particularly visav Japan and South Korea. We are starting to see those two countries in particular being given blueprints of we need your money to go into these sectors right now. And by the way, they're not the 10 20% return sectors that you might do if you were a private sector investor just trying to maximize your return, you know, in the shortest possible time. These are long-term strategic plays which are good for USA Inc. which will therefore be good for Japan Inc. and South Korea Inc. and I think a lot more of those will be inked and one of the levers to get us there will be dollar stable coins. >> You know that really set a light bulb off in my head when I join that with what you said earlier about the outlook for Kevin Worsh and the Fed. Are you imagining a scenario where Kevin Worsh takes office and says, "Okay, everybody, first press release or first press conference. I have a slightly different view than Jay Powell. The Fed is going to lead the charge on replacing the US dollar as the world's global reserve currency with, you guessed it, the US dollar stable coin. And the Fed is going to champion this. And it's going to be a new digital uh CBDC type of move that we're making. But it begins with US dollar stable coins which are tied back to the US currency and we're going all digital. Is that the the kind of thing you're thinking of? >> Let me caveat that. I don't think it will be a CBDC which is a central bank digital currency. I think quite the inverse. I think it will be private money very similar to what we had preWorld War I uh in the in in Europe in particular but globally which were called sterling bills of exchange where the most commonly used trade currency was tied to sterling which was tied to gold but it wasn't the bank of England issuing it. They were just basically promisory notes issued by private sector firms, banks, trading houses, individuals, etc., etc. uh and everyone thought they were as good as gold and and they were literally but the Bank of England had nothing to do with it. So I think that's what will be replicated but yes it will be digital. I'm not forecasting this will happen to be abundantly clear, okay? But if it were to happen, I would just whistle and you know look eyes at 45 degrees like wow who's surprised by that because it's entirely logical were that to happen within the realms a of what we have heard from Ben from Iran what we are seeing being chatted about in Washington in terms of how they want stable coins to work where we only have one piece of key legislation waiting to be finalized which is the clarity act which is going to determine whether stable coins can effectively earn a yield or it won't be called a yield of course it will be called a fee but whether you can get paid a fee for holding them similar to a bank deposit and of course banks don't want that and but and what the Fed thinks banks should or shouldn't be doing in the US will be part of this equation once that's passed you've got the new Fed chair you've got the clarity act following the Genius Act you have these new trade deals you have these pledged investment schemes coming in which are basically capital controls being steered into the US at the highest geopolitical level and geoeconomic level and a very very good guard rail or mechanism to encourage that capital to come in where you want it to go and to make short-term borrowing costs in terms of T bills much much lower which will therefore of course mean you have a low T bill rate inside the US but and this is getting technical but not necessarily the same low cost of borrowing offshore It could be a significantly higher interest rate in dollars and stable coins offshore, which is an interesting weapon for the US to have and interesting arbitrage opportunity for some. If you were to have all that, it makes perfect perfect logical sense within Statecraft. But again, if you're not starting with Statecraft, every single point of that will appear madness and unconnected. Now, it occurs to me that there's an angle here that I'd have to think through, but you know, all investors understand there's a profound difference between holding a large cash balance in US dollars as a bank deposit versus holding T bills, which uh you know carry the the full faith and credit of the United States government and you don't have to worry about bank failures and so forth. Do you envision a stable coin being engineered that has all of the same uh safety characteristics of a T- bill, but you can transact it more like a bank deposit? Because it seems to me that could be somewhat revolutionary and if the Fed were driving it and basically saying to the world, look, forget about swap lines. We're going those are antiquated uh mechanisms. We're going to replace it with this new idea of the US having a major stable coin reserve that's that's backed by US treasuries and anybody who holds those stable coins both earns a yield like they do on a T- bill, but they also have the same safety characteristics of holding T bills as opposed to a bank deposit. That would be revolutionary. >> It would be and it's what I think they're aiming towards. Just to add to that, of course banks don't like that. Of course they don't. I mean, this feeds back to, you know, investment angles and should you shouldn't be holding the financial sector. I don't give advice on that, but I'm just talking thematically. Let me ask you a question before I I continue making this point. Off the top of your head, Eric, do you know what percentage of US bank loans actually go into productive capital in terms of capital stock? As in, we're going to build a factory here. We're going to build something with a machine that makes something. Have a guess. What percentage of US bank loans do that? productive capital, not consumer capital. So, we're not counting buying SUVs. >> A a very small percentage. I don't know a number, but not much. >> Yeah, it's around 20%. So, four out of five bank loans don't do anything to help build up the capital stock, which is absolutely crucial at the moment. They are for consumption or they are just to other financial entities. So, it's just money for money on money. Um that's just financialization for you basically. So if you are the Fed and you have got state craft in mind because that's what the Treasury has in mind. Obviously you don't want to blow up the financial sector. That's the last thing they want to do. But what use is a financial sector if four-fifths of it don't do anything for you? If if four-fifths of it are doing everything to inflate the parts of the economy which are of the least use when you're trying to take on China in any different dimension over any time frame. What's it for? And that that of course flows back to the question I asked you when we first talked. You know what is GDP for? That's what economic statecraft is all about answering. So it wouldn't surprise me to go back to that stable coin if you do end up with something whereby it is a form of threat to banks to a degree because banks then have to get with the program. They have to realize okay we can't just have this asset base which is purely consumer and financial. We need to be getting approval from the treasury to actually start doing more useful stuff and then then we get a gold star and a pat on the head rather than being hit with the stick. And that's a way in which you can use a market mechanism, and it is still a market mechanism, to actually achieve a statecraft outcome, which is what it's all about. >> Do you think there's an angle to that that plays out as part of this now to the midterms time frame? Because I could imagine Kevin Worsh coming in as the new Fed share and then the White House making an announcement saying, uh, look, with the the new Fed in place, uh, don't put your money in the bank. You can now buy these, you know, consumers can get a much better return on your savings by just directly buying stable coins. You don't need banks anymore. Now, Scott Besson has been messaging pretty hard that it's time for Main Street, not for Wall Street. Is there room that the Trump administration kind of does a frontal assault and says, "Screw the banking system. You know, we're going to fix the money system through our reforms in a way that Wall Street's not going to be happy about, but we're not here to take care of Wall Street. We're here to take care of Main Street. By the way, make sure that you vote for us in November. Is Could it all happen that quickly? >> Thematically and logically, I think it could. I'm not saying it will. And obviously, you're walking a razor's edge doing that because this is a Fed which everyone knows has always been there for the financial sector. That's what it's there for. I already made that point earlier. Suddenly saying that's not what we're there for anymore. That's not who we're there for. And you know the the the push back would be enormous particularly in terms of lobby groups going into the midterms if nothing else in you know also looking of course at the the macro effect and the market effect. But I do think that is the logical game plan. The question being how you get there you know with with the least bumps along that particular road and they would be the best uh arbittors of that those individuals. they would have the best read on the economy. But I I think there's not again taking the counter counter argument which is how I try to do everything. Nothing else makes sense if they're not going to do that and this is the same Fed with a different person running it just moving a mechanical Fed funds rate which is less and less use to anybody less and less of a guide to anything up and down which is either inflating all of the economy the good bits and the bad bits or deflating all of the economy the good bits and the bad bits. How does that help anyone achieve anything? Not just in the midterms, but longer term. So, yes, logically I think we go there. Yes, logically I think stable coins are part of that journey. And I can't tell you how few people actually grasp this yet. And I understand why. It took me a long time to get my head around it. And I'm not even looking at the technology of how it works. I don't even focus on that side of it. I'm not not a tech bro like that. But I'm just looking at the geopolitics, the geoeconomics, and the balance sheets of it. And if you can suddenly get a flood of funds going into T- bills and not just from within the US but internationally too. So you have a flood of dollars going into the US, a flood of dollars going into T bills which push down the T bill rate significantly. You can refinance a lot of Treasury debt at the short end of the curve at a much much lower rate and suddenly you can be spending a bit more into the midterms too or you can be pumping up the military-industrial base and getting back into ship building etc etc or at least saying vote for me and we continue to do this. we've just broken ground on that. We need another couple of years to to really get, you know, the steel pouring. I think it's a very very powerful combination with big risks, with big caveats that it can be done wrong. But again, I think it's a more logical outcome going forward than just going back to where we were and moving something mechanically up and down and hoping for the best. If these stable coins are transacted internationally on open digital markets, does that open up a whole new realm of investment capital for the US Treasury market? In other words, in lower yielding countries where like Japan until very recently where the the interest rates are next to nothing, there wasn't a good way for the average, you know, individual investor to buy US Treasury bills. If they were a sophisticated investor, they might figure out how to do that, but it's not something the average guy knows how to do. If buying these stable coins was simple enough that everybody in the world could do it on their iPhone, does that potentially create a whole bunch of indirect US Treasury paper demand? >> Trillions. And while there may be large entities where it doesn't play well, and I think Europe, for example, it won't pay particularly well in Europe for, you know, patriotic, political, and even economic reasons that you have the euro. So why would you look at anything else? Fair enough. But in most of the emerging world, which is a big big slice of the global population, provided that they can manage to make them attractive enough that supply is less than demand and yet supply is still significant enough to help the US achieve what it wants. Yeah, you can manage to make sure that there's a decent yield on that which competes with any local currency. And as you said, it's on your iPhone, out of reach of the tax man, out of the bank even, so no one knows where it is. And you can still transact in it both domestically within that network and internationally. And you've effectively dollarized much of the global economy alongside, you know, the existing Euro dollar network, which frankly operates for the financial system and for the, you know, the global commodity trading system and at the highest level. But for the man in the street, unless you're somewhere like, you know, parts of Africa or Southeast Asia where they still have physical dollar notes, doesn't work the same way. Now, it can, as you said, it can be on your Android phone, on your iPhone, trillions and trillions. And then on top of that, just to add to that, you can even start saying that US importers, you know, huge, huge import demand globally, start saying to people, well, we're going to pay for you, sorry, we're going to pay you in stable coins. So for example, a US importer instead of sending dollars to a factory in Southeast Asia, hypothetically, they send dollars to a stable coin issuer in the US who use them to buy a T bill. Again, T bill yields go lower. They get that stable coin and they send what is a digital token, not a dollar, a digital token backed by a T bill, which stays in US hands in the US, funding the US government at a low rate to that Southeast Asian entity. And from there that can flow on and on and on. You can either say, "Okay, we now want you to bring that back into the US as investment capital and build a shipyard here for us because you've your government has signed a trade deal with us and that's part and parcel for that." So it's buy one get one and you get it invested back into the US or you can say do whatever you want with it. There are no guard rails. Just don't send it to this country or that country because if you do we'll cancel it because electronically the US can. So the the amount of power that puts in US hands potentially if it's done right is phenomenal and it is market moving in a way few people realize and it takes us from a two-dimensional world into a three-dimensional world and most balance sheet thinkers can't conceive of how it's going to work but I can assure you it could and I think it will. >> Michael the the light bulbs going off in my head are just phenomenal in this interview. I'm just thinking from all of my travels around the world, I've never met anybody in Latin America who trusted their own nation's currency and who didn't want to keep any savings they had. Although most of them don't unfortunately have very much savings. What they do have, they want it to be in US dollars. In a lot of those countries, the government restricts banks and doesn't allow them to offer US dollar denominated accounts to retail banking clients and so forth. But you could easily see the Trump administration go on a crusade to announce to the world on X that look uh a lot of the world's corrupt and we're going to fix it for you. And the way we're going to do that is by making it possible for anyone on the planet who's got a cell phone to invest in something that is first of all eliminates the foreign currency risk of staying in your own home country's currency. You can invest in US dollars, which across most of the world most people trust much more than their own country's currency. And you can do it all on your phone and your government can't stop you. And your government can't even know what you're doing because we're going to engineer the system. So you can deal directly with us, the US government, and our banking system and our stable coin system. Oh, by the way, there's this fellow named Don Jr. who just might be launching a business associated with that pretty soon. uh and and that would make Trump a hero in Latin America. That would mean that a lot of the Latin American immigrants that maybe were otherwise inclined to vote Democrat in November might change their vote. There could be all kinds of consequences to this. >> Well, absolutely. And in fact, you've hit the nail on the head. you I'm glad the light bulbs are going off because I do get for example resistance from some people who you know very very smart people who have said well you're basically just substituting a Euro dollar for you know a token a digital token rather than an actual dollar outside the US why would anyone agree to that and I said for the reasons you've just stated I never met a guy in Chile who was buying Euro dollar futures I know lots of people in Chile with cell phones that would love to buy US dollar denominated uh savings that their banks and their government doesn't know about. >> Well, ex exactly my point. But secondly, I mean, these tend to be uh, you know, from Europe, these people, but then they turn around and say, well, you know, well, we wouldn't want that. You know, we're happy with euros. Why would we accept that? And I'll say because the US can make you because of NATO, because of others, you know, other forces, energy, etc., etc. But above and beyond that, it's even more devious or clever or cunning than than that. Because think about the balance sheet dynamics of it for a moment. I know this is really dull and dusty, but just for a second, indulge me. So, imagine you've got one of these countries, you know, country X, and within country X, somebody wants to hold that dollar stable coin, and they've got local currency. Well, the way it works is they're going to have to contact a stable coin, stable coin issuer. They're going to have to basically transact and give them their local currency. That local currency at some point is going to be given back to their central bank. Their central bank is going to swap that for the requisite number of dollars. Those dollars go via by the stable coin issuer to the US Treasury which issues the tea bill for the stable coin which is given to the individual who's buying it. Right? You follow me? That's a very simple dynamic. But what are you having there? The dollars are sucked out of that economy. FX reserves disappear and they're replaced by stable coins. So not only do you have this liberalization where everyone can get hold of them and they will do but the the financial tier which again goes back to banks and that their 80% of their loans are financial rather than productive that global tier of Euro dollar liquidity at its the base of collateral the actual FX reserves starts a decline. So suddenly countries which are reliant on the Euro dollar have a Euro dollar squeeze which pushes up the interest rate even more which makes the stable coin even more attractive. So, so you basically lock others into a spiral where they're just rewarded more and more and more for doing it. Now, can it blow up? Sure. Can it go wrong? Absolutely. I'm not I'm not here to say there aren't ways it couldn't go wrong, right? But I think it's a very very very misunderstood and a tactic which I think is likely to be deployed well, as I said, as soon as this clarity act is passed. Uh and of course you can see why lobbyists who don't want it to happen don't want it to happen because it upends so much of what remains of the global system. But it will be a very different system on the other side of it and I think one in which America sits a lot prettier and potentially so does Mr. Trump. Michael, this just tracks very closely with a lot of the between the lines that I've been trying to read from Scott Bessant. It's very clear that they have an agenda to do something big and I wasn't sure exactly what it is and and you've just painted a picture in my mind as to what it might be. I do want to move on to one other topic before we close uh this interview which is at the beginning of the interview you said that you think the market got the message wrong about the worst nomination. Now, one of the things that happened in reaction to that nomination was just a huge uh correction in precious metals. Both gold and silver just really took it on the head. Did the market get that wrong? And I I think clearly they were they had been on a a very overextended run, so they were overdue for a correction. But did the market misinterpret that? Is the market still misinterpreting that? uh you know should should we expect this to continue for a long time or is this going to be oh wait a minute we got that wrong and we move back to the trends that we were on before? Well, we were just discussing one kind of revolution. And let's be clear, everybody who's piling into gold and silver, unless you are just a trend follower, you are of course and and very often openly banking on a very different kind of revolution and saying that fiat money is over. we're going to go back to a gold standard or a silver standard or some kind of bimetalism etc etc and everything around us which is based on fiat is done. That's a really revolutionary stance and we take it as normal because that faction have always been in the markets and if you look at the the debt levels in many western economies and if you look at the the bill for you know re-industrialization and for building up a defense base again in most of them to say nothing of you know future welfare requirements you can understand why some people are voting with their feet like that but it is still a revolution that they are marching towards in doing it whether they recognize that or not. And what worries me is that while the logical argument is there, number one, you're talking about something which is supposed to be the ultimate safe haven and which, you know, gold bugs in particular will always tell you, you know, under gold, we didn't have any inflation. That's not true. Actually, on average, you didn't, but you had massive inflation followed by massive deflation. And so that the, you know, the average was low, but you had incredible swings up and down. Uh, and ironically, that is what you're seeing here now. you're seeing something that's supposed to be a safe haven trading trading like a crappy meme stock which is not very reassuring. So that's one thing that I think everyone should be cognizant of whatever they whatever they're doing with their money. But the other one is this. If we're looking at this potential revolution via stable coins and I think we are but again you know that's open to debate and you've got issues over Bitcoin in the background which is having a terrible time a bit but uh you know is the US going to potentially move towards using that in some form too? That remains to be addressed. They promised they would, but they haven't so far. Gold in particular is still being held up by some as a potential new architecture as I just said. But I wonder how many potential new architectures you can have. So if for example, you back the view that I just put forward that dollar stable coins are going to be a big thing. Is there really room in the marketplace for that and for gold at the same time? >> Well, what if it was dollar stable coins and gold stable coins and Bitcoin? What if those were the the three digital assets and the Fed was actively promoting all three of them including a strategic Bitcoin reserve? >> Well, okay, that that's an interesting question. I think you're more likely to see a duality in the US where you have dollar stable coins and Bitcoin and where that would happen for example to give a very complex answer very quickly is that I think people who are US allies will be using dollar stable coins and if they're not allies now by dollarizing them they'll become them. and people who really push back and say, "We're not going to allow that to happen. Capital controls, you know, whatever is necessary to stop that happening. Fine, we're not dealing with you. You're going to use Bitcoin. We're not you're not going to get Euro dollars from us the way that you used to. We're just going to switch to something neutral instead." So, that's what I think the US may do, but that has yet to unfold. And at the moment, as I said, Bitcoin's having a bad time of it on a lack of faith in that, which which may be justified. But in terms of gold, I don't think that the US is going to do that because dollar stable coins are still fiat but a digital token for fiat. And so you're expanding the tea bill supply, albeit into what you hope is productive sectors rather than financial areas or consumption areas, but it's still fiat. To then go to gold at the same time seems to be really mixing your metaphors from a monetary policy perspective. I don't see that helps the US. So, I can see them maybe revaluing against gold, which is a separate argument people make, but then basically cashing in and walking away from it. It's other countries, I believe, that have been leaning towards talking about maybe trying to do some kind of stable coin backed by gold. But that, and this is a critical point to make in 30 seconds, if that were to occur, we don't have a global architecture anymore the way we do now. We have multiple global architectures. We have different currency blocks the way we did in the 1930s. a US block, a US stable coin block and a goldbacked block doing their own thing their own way and not trading so much with the US block. But that's the risk that's always been there and that is certainly something that still should be at back of mind and in fact front of mind when you're looking at these assets move because it's ultimately about who you think has the power and who sets the rules and draws the board game for the 21st century that tells you what you should and shouldn't be buying. So if I draw an analogy to the 20th century cold war arms race, we could be looking at a 21st century stable coin arms race where the US says look the the answer here is US dollar stable coins. Russia and China partner to counter and say no no no that's that's basically stable coins for fiat currency. What you really want is stable coins that are backed by gold and we're the ones that are going to give that to you. And you end up, as you said, with blocks where there are some countries that are gold-based through a goldbacked stable coin and others that are US dollar-based through a US Treasury paperbacked stable coin. And you have very similar dynamics to, as you said, the 1930s in different country, different economic blocks in different parts of the world. Is that part of the future that you foresee? >> Again, not a forecast. It's a it's a tail risk which I've been warning of for over a decade which you can start to see gradually emerging. Just a few caveats that are really really important. If were that to happen what you will immediately see is the other block basically saying what you use is not tradable here. So there's no clearing. So in other words, if you're using dollar stable coins, don't even try and get a market exchange rate on your screen for our gold bank stable coin into that dollar stable coin. They're just different things which you've had in the past. We did during the Cold War. you couldn't transact between the Soviet ruble and the US dollar except very narrowly at a ridiculous exchange rate via a couple of guys in Moscow. So if that were to happen, supply chains from upstream to midstream to downstream downstream have to fragment because you have to have two different blocks for everything with everything you know in contained within them. That's the first point. Second one is of course you know in China's case they still have massive fiat. I mean you know they they're borrowing and printing money like no one's business just like everyone is. So it's not as if they would actually be, you know, goldbased in the way that you would expect. It's just that because they run a huge trade surplus, they can afford to, you know, nominally peg to whatever they want because it flows to them except it wouldn't flow to them from the US. There's no exchange rate here which would allow trade to clear. That's the clear that's the key point. Don't think that if China were to do that, somehow the US devalues against that and therefore the US and China are friends again just at a different exchange rate. No, they're separate. don't talk to each other. Berlin war between them. And and the last point very quickly is you've probably seen the headline that came out last week. There are rumors going around although they haven't been substantiated. The Russia's already saying they want back in onto the dollar system and are walking away from any talk about doing something with China or gold. So the big players potentially are more flexible than one might think. >> Michael, I always enjoy our conversations. I'll look forward to the next one. But meanwhile, before we close, I want to touch on what you do at Rabel Bank. tell our listeners a little bit more about the services on offer and what your team in the global strategy in economics and markets is all about. >> Sure. Well, that's the easy part basically is what I was just talking about to you there. We don't give investment advice. We talk to stakeholders from you know farmers to the seauite trying to help people understand what's going on in the very chaotic world around us and trying to explain what we see as the underlying themes and drivers that are emerging and to try and translate that into effective strategies for them to then implement because it's as much about risk mitigation as it is looking for opportunity and you both of them have to go hand in hand. So that's that part of the story and of course Rabo Bank uh is the leading one of the leading banks in the Netherlands and the world's leading food and agri and energy bank uh and is attempting to you know grow a better world together. So those two sit alongside each other. Patrick Szna and I will be back as macrovoices continues right here at macrovoices.com. Now back to your hosts Eric Townsend and Patrick Sesna. Hey Eric, it was great to have Michael back on the show. Now listeners, you're going to 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, macrovoices.com, and click on the red button over Michael's picture saying looking for the downloads. Patrick, for this week's trade of the week, you're zeroing in on Michael's idea of a structural bid under the US dollar. How are you thinking about positioning around the greenback here, especially with the euro having been in such a strong uptrend? >> Well, Eric, coming out of Michael Every's framework, the dollar story isn't just about rate differentials. It's about structural capital flows. If the US policy and financial architecture are pulling global savings into dollar assets, then the dollar may have more embedded support than the market appreciates. And on top of that, any global risk off impulse can quickly add a safe haven bid, reinforcing the broader thesis. The cleanest way to express that is through the euro. I'm looking at shorting the June 15th, 2026 6E euro futures contract, currently trading around 11850. The challenge though is that the primary trend has been a strong euro. And so there's a real risk of being early. And in currencies, being early can mean enduring a squeeze before the macro narrative turns. So instead of running a naked short futures position, I want to dampen the early entry risk with a shortdated hedge. Here's the structure. Short that June 2026 Euro futures at 11850. Against that by the April 3rd, 2026 120x 122 bull call spread. The spread costs spot 0030 or about $375 per contract. It's 200 pips wide, meaning it can be worth up to $2,500 for every contract for a maximum payoff of roughly $2,125. What this does is straightforward. If the euro squeezes high over the next 44 days, that call spread offsets much of the marktomarket pain. And alternatively, if the dollar thesis plays out immediately and the euro rolls over, the hedge simply expires for a $375 loss as a cost of insurance. So, the intent is simple. Express a structural bullish dollar view via the Euro futures, but use a shortdated call spread to manage the timing risk and avoid getting shaken out if you were early. Patrick, every Monday at Big Picture Trading, your webinar explains how retail investors can put on our most recent trade of the week. For those listeners that want to explore how to put on these trades in greater detail, don't miss out on a 14-day free trial at bigpicturetrading.com. Now, let's dive in to the postgame chart deck. Eric, let's talk about these markets. What's going on here? Patrick, the more I think about this equity market, the more I think about the midterm elections. Let's face it, whether you love President Trump or hate him, nobody could possibly argue with the fact that his policy actions have been bolder than they were in his first term in office, and they've infuriated Democrats more than ever before. So, the midterms represent a massive fork in the road. If Democrats take both the House and the Senate, there could be no question that the final two years of Trump's term will be punctuated by more impeachments and lawfare. If Republicans somehow pull off a miracle and keep control over both chambers of Congress, well then there's little doubt that Trump will be even bolder in carrying out the economic statecraftraft policies that Michael Every spoke of in the feature interview. Markets hate uncertainty and it's hard to imagine anything other than diminishing certainty through the midterm elections. So I think that presents a massive headwind for equity markets. It's not necessarily impossible to overcome that headwind, but all it would take to bring on a big downside risk event in markets is just a strong hint that Republicans are losing ground in the run-up to the election. I don't have a strong view as to when or how that would come about, but my thinking is that downside risk will continue to increase as the time towards the November elections decreases. So, I think from now to the election, the left tails are fatter than the right tails. All right, Eric, let's talk about the S&P 500 and the key levels. We're trading below the 50-day moving average and we're just above the 6800 trip wire where a lot of systematic trading will accelerate on the downside. So, we're at a very sensitive moment. We're going to find out what happens next. And the interesting part here is is that we've seen that the MAG 7s continue to be very weak. This is a thesis that I've had which is essentially the market really does simply would not be able to rally unless the Mag 7s join the party. They're just simply too big and too important. And what it really comes down to is next week before we do our next episode, we're going to get the release of Nvidia's earnings. On page five, I have that semiconductor ETF, the SMH chart. And what you can observe here is that it's been in a very strong bull trend. and that it's been in that bull trend without Nvidia's participation. It is important to note that Nvidia makes up 20% of this index. And so with Nvidia having simply not participated up until this level, it's going to be very important what happens to it on its earnings. If it breaks to lower lows and start some sort of sell-off like many other MAG 7s have, it will break the semiconductor index and probably open up the floodgate on the downside. Now, I'm not saying that that's what I'm predicting to happen, but I do believe Nvidia's earnings are that important. And if the bulls want to keep things together and it's going to really be on the shoulders of Nvidia to beat and uh have an positive upside move on its reaction. All right, Eric, let's talk about that US dollar index. What are your thoughts here, Patrick? My long-term outlook is still bearish, but we're in a consolidation pattern here, and the next leg could go either direction depending on headlines. We've got, you know, imminent threats that there may be a major military strike on Iran coming this weekend. Okay. Obviously, US dollar usually responds to the upside in an event like that. Uh there's probably a lot of that is already built in. That means if nothing happens, we have another taco event, then perhaps it sells off next week. I don't want to be taking a directional bet either way going into the weekend. Longer term, structurally, I'm still bearish. Well, Eric, we just talked about the US dollar in the trade of the week. Overall, the primary trend of the US dollar has been down. It has broken key previous lows, but it never has followed through on the downside and dips are being bought. I view this 97 to 98 level to be a neutral zone appear a place where the dollar is consolidating and we're going to see whether or not the US dollar uh can make a bullish breakout above 98 in the week to come. That's going to be a very critical technical level to show a pivot in the trend which is currently to the downside. All right, Eric, let's talk about crude oil. Patrick Crude oil is rallying on rumors of the imminent Iran strike coming this weekend or maybe coming this weekend. We know that President Trump's style is very much to use these big threats as bluff and intimidation tactics. But we also know that striking Iran in specific is a threat that he's proven himself willing to actually carry out. I think this weekend is going to be the tell for the next leg in crude. Obviously, a military strike over the weekend will spike the market higher on Sunday's open, but some of that is already priced in. On the other hand, if there's no action over the weekend, well, that would suggest this has all been a big intimidation or bluff tactic, and I think that might lead to a significant sell-off next week. Bottom line, though, we don't know what's going to happen until it happens, and I think it will be news that sets the next leg for this market. So, Eric, we've been talking about the fact that crude oil has been so resilient all year. Every bad news event that has occurred has uh caused one day of selling and the buy on dip traders would very quickly come back in and buy the dip. We've now spent over a month above the 50-day moving average, higher highs and higher lows, each pullback being held. This is structurally an accumulated market. Technically, it actually looks very bullish. What it'll be interesting to see is whether or not uh they will make a a breakout stick here where we can potentially see a return back to last summer's highs up in the low70s. Now, Eric, what are your thoughts here on gold? Well, Patrick, we're still in a great big consolidation pattern here after that major correction that we saw on the Worsh domination or I should say catalyzed by the Worsh domination. I think the real cause of it was the fact that the market was overextended. We took a dip down to test the 38.2% fib retracement level at 48.8824882 on the recent correction into posthol thin liquidity. Then we briefly rallied back up above the 50% fib uh level at 5024 in the Wednesday to Thursday overnight session. Now just couple hours before the New York open, we're trading just below that 50% level. And you know, we'll see what happens as we get through Thursday into Friday. I think we're in a consolidation range here that's bounded by the 38.2% fib on the downside at 48.882 and an upside at the 61.8% fib, which hasn't really been meaningfully tested yet at 5166. That's 5166. Looking out beyond just this weekend and the upcoming news events, what we have not yet seen is a regular trading hours test of the 50-day moving average. I think that could be coming, particularly if there's no news from Iran over the weekend. Well, my views on gold are actually very simple and it's literally the same as what we talked about last week, which is we had an extraordinary bull run, a very violent correction, and now the remainder of the first quarter is most likely going to be simply a consolidation. And so, um, it's very possible that the low, uh, near 4500 that was put in a few weeks ago is likely going to be the low of the consolidation, but it wouldn't shock me here if we were rolling into March and April, just bouncing around within this trade range as gold kind of absorbs all of this volatility and just calms right down into this trade range. Eric, any thoughts here on uranium? It looks like the swing low is probably in and the technical setup looks good for another leg higher, but broad market weakness or an unwind of the AI trade are the big downside risks in the room. Either of those events could bring another leg lower and the weekly stochastics leave plenty of room for that outcome. But the slow stochastics on the daily chart are set up nicely for a swing trade to the upside. So that's my base case. barring a AI or broad market risk event. If those things don't happen, I think we're well poised here for another leg higher. If either of those things do happen, I think there's another leg lower. Well, Eric, when I just look at this purely technically, the bull trend is very much intact. Dips are being bought. Uh these retracements are holding moving averages and still holding retracement zones. So, I want to give the bulls the benefit of the doubt, but there we are at some very important support lines that do need to hold here. And so, uh, let's see how it develops. Finally, I wanted to just touch on these charts on copper. So, overall, copper put in its short-term high about the same time as a lot of the other metals did, and it's now in a mean reverting correction. It's trading right at its 50-day moving average, has done a retracement of its prior rise. So, this is an area where we'll be watching to see whether Copper can develop some key support lines. Patrick, before we wrap up this week's episode, let's hit that 10-year Treasury note chart. A very decisive breakdown in yields coming off of that 4 and a/4 level all the way down to 405. We're at a situation where we're now a stone throw away from that 4% yield level. So, bonds have been strengthening, yields have been weakening. It'll be interesting to see if this move becomes a big new trend. Folks, if you enjoy Patrick's chart decks, you can get them every single day of the week with a free trial of Bigpictur Trading. The details are on the last pages of the slide deck or just go to bigpicturetrading.com. 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, as well as the trader of the week chart book we just discussed here in the postgame, including a link to a number of 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 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, we 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. You can also follow Eric on X, Eric S. Townson, that's Eric spelled with a K. You can also follow me at Patrick Sesna. On behalf of Eric Townson and myself, thank you for listening and we'll see you all next week. 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 bigpicturetrading.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. 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