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

Mikkel Rosenvold (0:22)

Hello out there, welcome to Real Vision, welcome to another edition of Macro Mondays. My name is Mikkel Rosenvold, And I am slightly delayed here with you for another Monday show with you, Andreas Steno. Welcome to the show, Andreas.

Andreas Steno (0:35)

You're doing okay?

Yeah, I've had my issues with the Wi-Fi for the past 30 minutes, but hopefully we'll be able to send to you live for the next 30 minutes without any hiccups. Fingers crossed.

Mikkel Rosenvold (0:47)

Andreas, we have plenty of material and topics for those 30 minutes. We're going to be covering as much as we can here. But let's kick off, Andreas, with a direct question. I like to do that, a harpoon, as we would usually call it.

How much of your AI back have you offloaded to buy into this crypto rally?

Andreas Steno (1:07)

Nothing yet. Okay, let me start by saying one thing when you address this question, Mikkel.

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

Mikkel Rosenvold (1:24)

That's it.

Andreas Steno (1:25)

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

Mikkel Rosenvold (1:39)

But you don't see those AI stocks doing 15% today, Andreas.

Andreas Steno (1:42)

It's too slow.

Mikkel Rosenvold (1:43)

Sure, sure, fair enough. We'll dive much more into this, talk a little bit about the situation in the Middle East, the upcoming US China Summit a little bit, maybe a little bit Greenland, I don't know. Lots of content to discuss that, Andreas. We're going to start at one of my high points of this weekend.

We had a lot of action, but this was probably definitely the best tweet I've seen maybe all year.

Obviously, you had Logan and Jake Paul visiting the Pentagon, as well they visited the Scott Besson in the Treasury Department as well. And of course, the analysis is that the whole tour girl should have been Secretary of the Interior by now. Andreas, do you think this is Jake and Logan Paul? Is this the 2028 ticket for the Republican Party, do you think?

Andreas Steno (2:27)

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

Mikkel Rosenvold (3:02)

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

Andreas Steno (3:15)

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

At least for me, that's been the first catalyst, and you could, of course, argue that catalysts have been added over the past weeks. But it all dates back to that rally started by Scott Besson's buyback operations that suddenly revived the whole narrative and the whole momentum of the space.

Mikkel Rosenvold (4:30)

Yeah, I get that, Andreas. That is probably the correct analysis. I still have a feeling that this is a much more healthy or wholesome rally than we're looking into in crypto, because it seems to me that this is at least correlating with the huge focus and huge debate around the US deficit, the bond yields.

And secondarily, we begin to see stories of, especially, SUI being used for inter-AI or agent-to-agent transactions. So in my opinion, you have some of the original story. This is not driven by politicians. On the contrary, you have politicians, they couldn't get the Clarity Act passed and still crypto is rallying. So this is not some government bailout driven rally. And actually, we're starting to see blockchains being used for something.