MacroVoices #538 Lyn Alden: Is The War Really Over and What’s Next For Markets?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
This is Macro Voices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance, high net worth individuals, family offices and other sophisticated investors.
Macro Voices 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, Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna.

**Erik Townsend** (0:33)
Macro Voices, episode 538 was produced on June 25th, 2026 I'm Erik Townsend.
Traffic is starting to flow through the Strait of Hormuz, and many indications suggest that the Iran conflict is finally coming to an end. Although the jury is still out on the nuclear negotiations, with US and Iranian officials making diametrically opposing public statements about what has and hasn't been agreed to.
And to my great surprise, the dollar index broke out to the upside and the stock market started to roll over slightly lower coincident with the news suggesting that the conflict is finally ending, which certainly wasn't what I was expecting. So to make sense of whether the conflict is really over and what it all means for financial markets, I'm pleased to welcome back bestselling author and Macro Voices all time listener favorite Lyn Alden as this week's feature interview guest. Lyn and I will discuss the Hormuz crisis status, what to expect from the Federal Reserve and its new leadership, budget deficits, the AI trade, and whether it's a bubble that's about to burst or a trend that still has legs, the demands AI will place on energy markets and much more. Then be sure to stay tuned for our postgame segment after the feature interview, starting with Patrick's Trade of the Week based on Lyn Alden's interview. Due to my flight schedule this week, I'll be leaving the postgame segment in Patrick's able hands.

**Patrick Ceresna** (1:58)
And I'm Patrick Ceresna. We continue to see aggressive repricing of oil week over week. WTI dropped roughly 885 basis points falling to 6928 As the market continued to price out geopolitical risk and unwind the prior risk premium.
At the same time, the US dollar staged a technically significant breakout, rallying 210 basis points to 101.54 on the dollar index and decisively breaking above a 15-month trade range.
Another notable move was the continued selling in gold, which has now declined roughly another 900 basis points, falling back towards the 4,000 level we have not seen since October of last year. So some very important macro levels have been broken this week. We'll take a closer look at those charts. And the key technical levels to watch in the post-game segment. This week's feature interview guest is best-selling author Lyn Alden. Erik and Lyn discuss fiscal dominance, stable coins and dollar demand, the long-term implications of persistent deficits, and why energy, infrastructure and hard assets remain central to the evolving macro landscape. Erik's interview with Lyn Alden is coming up as Macro Voices continues. Right here at macrovoices.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:27)
And now, with this week's special guest, here's your host, Erik Townsend.

**Erik Townsend** (3:32)
Joining me now is best-selling author and Macro Voices all-time listener favorite, Lyn Alden. Lyn, you live in Egypt part of the year, very close to the Iran conflict, so I'm particularly curious to get your take. It seems like most of the world is celebrating.
That's finally over. It's all wrapping up. It's ending. The secretary, Chris Wright, said on Wednesday that traffic has returned to normal in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran no longer has the ability to shut it down. It's over, folks. Celebrate. Yay, pop the champagne. Is it really over? Are there still concerns? I know you wrote a piece about this for your subscribers recently. Can you give us at least a quick summary of what it said and what your take is?

**Lyn Alden** (4:16)
Sure. So first of all, thanks for having me back. I'm always happy to be here. I certainly hope for my sake that it's over. Back in April, Egypt had to do an energy curfew just because all these countries are scrambling for natural gas. So they had to do a forced pressure on companies to shut down at certain hours of the day, just to preserve energy. They were luckily able to get out of that in May. And I kept watching the situation to say, I really hope this doesn't return. And so I think like many other people, I'd be happy to see that the conflict is resolved.
I think this is unfortunately going to be a headline that continues with us probably for at least weeks, let alone months, because the memorandum of understanding still leaves a ton of details to work out. And even in the opening days, around the signing and around some of the talks that go into some of those details, there are still pretty big divides. What's going to happen to the enriched uranium? What's going to happen in terms of on-site inspectors being able to go in? Enforcement mechanisms? What type of funding? They talked headline numbers, but in what form does that funding take? How do you manage political headlines around that funding? And can Iran toll the strait after, say, a 60-day period?