MacroVoices #521 Jeff Currie: The Great Rotation

This is Macro Voice. Finance. Individuals, family ownership. 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, Eric Townsend and Patrick Serezna. Macro Voices episode 521 was produced on February 25th, 2026. I'm Eric Tenson.

Carlisle Group partner and former Goldman Sachs Commodities Chief Jeff Curry returns as this week's feature interview guest. Jeff and I will discuss the commodity bull market, why metals are outperforming almost everything else, why Jeff says they'll continue to outperform hydrocarbons and other things that are tied to affordability. Energy demand from AI and data centers, precious metals, China stockpiling commodities, and much more.

Then be sure to stay tuned for our postgame segment after the feature interview when Patrick's trade of the week focuses on a precious metals long built around the sanctions, de dollarization, and hoarding themes. And as always, we'll give you our latest perspective on all the major markets. And I'm Patrick Serezna with the Macro Scoreboard week over week as of the close of Wednesday, February 25th, 2026. The SP 500 index up 94 basis points to 6946.

It remains in the center of a multi-month trade range. We'll take a closer look at that chart and the key technicals to watch in the postgame segment. The US dollar index down eight basis points, trading at ninety seven sixty four. The April WTI crude oil contract up fifty seven basis points, trading at sixty five forty two. The April Rbob gasoline up two hundred and twenty seven basis points, trading at two and a quarter.

April gold contract up four hundred and thirty-three basis points, trading at fifty-two twenty-six. Gold continues recovering from that short-term selling pressure. The May Copper contract up 310 basis points, trading at 598. that March uranium contract down 113 basis points, trading at 8775, and the US ten year treasury yield down three basis points, trading at four hundred five.

The key news to watch this week is Friday's PPI inflation numbers, and next week we have the ISM Manufacturing and Services PMI's retail sales. And the closely watched jobs numbers. This week's feature interview guest is Carlisle Group partner and former Goldman Sachs Commodities Chief Jeff Curry.

Eric and Jeff discussed the re-emerging commodity super cycle, the weaponization of critical materials, why gold and strategic metals are increasingly treated as reserve assets in a sanction heavied world. and what it means for oil, natural gas, and the broader energy transition. Eric's interview with Jeff Curry is coming up as Macro Voices continues right here at macrovoices.com.

Eric Townsend. Joining me now is Jeff Carit, partner at Carlisle Group and also well known as the former commodities chief at Goldman Sachs. Jeff, it's been way too long and it's great to get you back on the show. Since you're Mr. Commodities, I've gotta a ask you I think what we're seeing is the stock bull market of the early twenty twenties is giving away to even bigger

commodity bull market of the late twenty twenties. Is that what's happening? And if so, what's the macro driver? Why is it happening? Oh, absolutely. I think started back in October twenty twenty, through the middle of twenty two. You know, oil got up to like a hundred and thirty, uh we saw a big run up in commodities during that time period. of you know, we in fact we made a call when I was at Goldman, you know, for a commodity supercycle in October of twenty twenty and I'd argue everything

Point that we made at that point in time are valid even more so today than it was then. So if you liked it then, you really got it out. So why don't we just kinda go over the big drivers and a you know, from a supply perspective, you know, it was You know, the the under investment. You know, y you know, years of poor returns going back to twenty fourteen, saw capital redirected into other sectors, you know, like like tax.

Um, and as a result, you know, you look at like whether if it's metals or or oil or uh yeah, agriculture, most of these real assets. Have faced years of underinvestment with like with oil. This year is the last time you have big surge in non-OPAC.

production. In fact it was in the you know, this coming month of March. That's it. There's really nothing behind it. Refineries, there's nothing behind it. Copper, I can go down all the metals. You know, the y you y the under investment thesis. It's been in place since then still very much in power. And when you look at medals, they've just been a straight line since

twenty twenty. Actually you look at the equal weighted, you know, commodity indices like you know, the underweight oil, and we'll talk about oil a little bit later, it's just been a straight line since since twenty twenty. So what were you know, the the drivers on the demand side? And I really the same three are there, and it was deglobalization. decarbonization, let's call it electrification for current terminology. And then the third one was redistribution.

So another way to say it is the you know, the deglobalization is the war on free trade. The decarbonization was the war on climate change and the um redistribution is the war on income inequality. So let's go with the first one, de globalization.

it is so much further than what I ever envisioned. You you know, whether if it's defense spending, supply chains, you know, like to say we've weaponized the periodic table. Um it's gotten so severe since Um with, you know, China curtailing critical mineral supply, um in twenty two natural gas. you know, even more recently with the US sanctions on Iranian and in Russian o oil, you know, all of it's been what So that story, that theme is just turned up in volume.

And that's even what's driving gold because ultimately you de dollarized'cause you don't want any owned any dollar assets'cause the Americans can employ sanctions on you through the SWIFT system. So even gold is going up because the so that D globalization theme, you know, live and kicking and you know, again another data point, Europe.

five percent of GDP committed to defense spending. It's all commodity. So anyway, that theme I was let's go to the next one. You know, we called it decarbonization in twenty twenty. Today Call it electrification, turbocharge. By the way, US, I'm putting US, Europe and China.

record installation of renewables in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six and in China as you and I are one of our favorite topics to talk about, nuclear capacity installation. China is just leading the world in that. So electrification, that story you know, is and then you throw data center demand on top of that electrification story is far stronger than we ever dreamed of. And then the the third one, the redistribution. And that really goes to fiscal policy.

and the need to, you know, redirect capital into lower income groups to to deal with the civil unrest and the problems that are associated with it, which are um all over the world right. And when we think about the spending, and this is the argument and you you and I have talked about in the past, Eric, is when you money goes to the lower income groups, you get a proportionally larger spend on commodities.

So you put it together, um, you know, demand, even an oil surprising to the upside for many different reasons. We'll talk about oil later, but we're seeing it across the board. And I just want to address one last point here before we le leave this topic is

A lot of people are gonna go, you know, Curry, you're so wrong on oil. Yes, I was so wrong on oil it went And we think about commodities, all the ones that have a atomic number associated. That are in the periodic table, and the I like to say the weaponization of the periodic table have gone straight up. Anything that has a carbon-hydrogen have really struggled. What's carbon, hydrogen? Hydrocarbon, so oil, gas and coal.

carbohydrates like corn, wheat and so forth, what do these organic chemistry commodities all have in common? Affordability? They drive And when we think about what, you know, the primary driver of every politician in the Western hemisphere, um, in the west west is get inflation down at all times. And so we think about what happened is that we go back to twenty-two, twenty-three, and we saw that the drop of inflation was globally synchronized. It occurred against record demand of commodities.

very strong US GDP growth, relatively good GDP growth in China, so it really could not have been demand. It had to have been supply. Because again, globally synchronized strong demand. So where do they get the supplies? Turn a blind eye to Russia, Iran, Venezuela. Hey guys, turn up the volume. And then you look at immigration.

Where do where how did you get the wages down? I mean just I tell you I go back and look at immigration across US, Canada, Europe and the rest of them, it's a line going straight up. Get your wages down. Um, how did you get the food prices down? Uh, we don't care about what's you know, the palm trees in Philippines or um, you know, d the the land in Latin America. Just harvest as much as you possibly can, turn a blind eye to environmental regulations.

So they did that. Now what problems are all these countries facing with right now? Well, US went into Venezuela, you got a problem in Iran, you got a problem in Russia. You're not doing that trick again. These guys are producing at max. And then you look at and so you're now you're turning them off again. And then you look at what happened with

you know, with immigration. By the way, places like Canada were up I think like two or three X and here in the UK it was up like a hundred percent, US was up fifty percent. And now you're getting the backlash from that. So Yeah, I'm not gonna say, you know, I'm not there I know there's a lot of sensitivity around immigration, I don't wanna put it down, but but I think the key point here is those CH commodities, those affordability, anything associated with affordability was forced down.

Eventually you're running out of those tricks. There's no more insurance policies next time around. You're not gonna be able to open the f floodgates on immigration. You're not gonna call up Iran going, Hey, uh, we don't care

start exporting again against the um sanctions. This is not happening again. Anyway, I think you get the point here is that story started back at the beginning of this decade. It continued on in the in the metal space, in the organic chemistry, the C H commodities, grains and oil and food and fuel it was delayed. And I think what we're witnessing right now, especially with the hype of AI settling down, that commodity super cycle is reasserting itself and as you point, I think it's not it

It's a continuation story, and it's only going to get bigger as we go to the end of this decade. I can say, where are we in this right now? We're in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Jeff, a quarter of a century ago, you wrote a piece called Revenge of the Old Economy. You were diagnosing what went wrong with the dot-com bust and so forth. You told me off the air you've recently written a piece, uh I'm not sure if it's titled The Revenge of the Revenge of the Old Economy, but basically the same theme is back. Why is it recurring now? What's the new piece about?

Yeah, we we just bas uh basically it was a cut and paste of what we wrote back quarter century ago. A few years back, how's that? Yeah, yeah, okay. All right, all right. But the but I think let's let's Talk about what we observed there. By the way, at the time I thought it was a one off and I'd seen something at su you know, and now I realize it's a cycle. So let's go what I thought about it in two thousand is that the story we told was due to poor returns in the in the old economy.

And by the way, the stat that we had for it in in Yeah, two thousand, nineteen ninety nine. was that US EMPs destroyed twenty-seven cents on every dollar they were given during that decade of the nineteen ninety. So they they they returned they kept seventy-three. You know what that number is in the twenty tens all the way up through twenty twenty one? fifty four cents was destroyed. That means they kept forty six.

So, you know, th that's the type of wealth destruction that that occurred back in the in the nineteen nineties on that side. So all the capital chased where the returns were, which was the new economy. Eventually you choked off so much investment into the old economy, you got short it. And by the way, that bull market really started in the late 90s, early 2000s.

And then took a breather around September eleventh and then the whole thing came crashing down in, you know, late oh one, oh two and then you had that rotation. the story why we called it the revenge of the old economy was pretty simple. Lack of investment in old economy, you starved of the capital it needed, and then you're off to the races. Then you throw in a demand shock like China on top of it and then it got to Now

Let's go back and I'm gonna say at the time I thought, oh, it's unique. Then we started realizing, no, this stuff happens all the time. And what are the two most important industries in the global economy, technology and energy. If you can't, you know, if you can't turn the lights on, nothing ever happens. If you don't innovate, you never progress. So technology and energy are the two most important sectors. And all we do is rotate over time between technology and energy.

And in fact I saw somebody put up this chart going, what are the big themes in investing? You look at it, you know, they don't really absurdly they call it, oh, it was China or something like that. And but reality, you're always rotating between those two. And let me give you give you so I really realized it was about twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three. It's not old economy, new economy, it's actually asset light, asset heavy.

And by the way, in what is a commodity super cycle or a at asset heavy boom or an old economy boom, it is nothing other than a capex cycle. Really simple. And if you I we look at some of these charts we have, just look at the CapEx cycle and that's these are, you know, twenty-five, thirty year cycles and that's what what what happens here. But I wanna go back to the nifty fifty. Let's start there and why do I wanna use the term asset life? So we we we began the nineteen sixties.

We have excess commodity supply from the rebuild from the the the the Second World War. Um this put downward pressure on on interest rates. So you got low and stable inflation. And boy, equity markets like low and stable inflation leads to low interest rates. You know, you had LBJ Browbeat Arthur Burns get interest rates down as much as you possibly can, and then he started. And so that you laid the foundation of those low interest rates. Now what do low interest rates do?

A lot of people think low interest rates should lead to capex boom because money's cheap. No, it leads to a duration boom. You go you you wanna buy growth way out in the future when interest rates And what were the Nifty fifty? McDonald's. Coca-Cola, they're all brands. Franchise. Think about McDonald's. It's identical to Microsoft. It was infinitely scalable at zero marginal cost because it was a franchise.

So it had that long term growth story. It was all the same stuff in that nifty fifty as the dot com boom was in the nineties because it was all long term growth. technology companies. Again, software, infinitely scalable. Zero marginal cost. And then in the 2010s, when you had the low and stable inflation, it was like Google. And so you look at the rotation in like 1968, Coca-Cola was the most valuable company in the world and like Exxon was at the bottom.

Fast forward to nineteen eighty, after you ran out of commodity supply, you had a huge inflationary shock. Exxon was at the top and Coca Cola was lower down. But I think the point here is don't underestimate the demand shock. What was the demand shock that caused that inflationary boom in the in the seventies. It wasn't, you know, OPEC just turbocharged it with the Arab oil embargo, but the real cause of it was L B J's Great Society. Remember, guns and butter

And then we go into a period of a commodity boom. You we debottleneck the energy and then you go into the you know, the eighties and the nineties, interest rates low, you get the dot com boom, now it's Microsoft at the top, Exxon at the bottom. And then you run out of supply, and then your big demand shock was ch was China. Note that all those demand shocks were policy.

It was L B J in the late sixties with his, you know, war in Vietnam plus the um the the the war on poverty. Um the Chinese one was a decision by policymakers to let them into the WTO and then you get to the the the twenties, it was um COVID. You know, it's a shock to the system on the air vesting. Now what is it gonna be this year, twenty twenty six? Big beautiful bell. Germany with i by the way, you have a

fiscal policy bonanza this year. You've got big, beautiful bill, you have Germany, you have Japan, you have China. I think we've we haven't seen this big of a global synchronous pop to the system, actually I would argue, since since COVID and look what COVID did. So I you know, I you know, I'm thinking a long thing about why these size cycles here. So just I think the way we w I could think about it now is it's a

rotation between asset light, asset heavy. Asset light is usually tech. Asset heavy is usually energy and and commodity.

Now this one last twist and I'm now I'm I'm dragging on here, I so bear with me, is that if you can think about the the asset light bo booms being driven by bits. And the outset heavy booms being driven by One thing that is really different, and this is the core of the twist in the piece we put out um yesterday, is this time the bits meet the atoms. And how do you get the bit atoms? Think about think about what is AI compute?

the the technology companies are becoming asset heavy. They're putting steel in the ground. And as they put steel on the ground, the bits meet the atoms, you get a bit atom commodity called AI Compute. By the way, you know it sits on your Bloomberg screen, you can trade it. AI Compute send um, I think dollars per hour.

And you have cryptocurrencies or mining where you're burning vast amounts of atoms to get a bit. So we're in a new world where the bits meet the atoms. So the yeah, that may be a normal rotation, but I think it's we're in an exciting new world and And I think it's just gonna uh create even more demand for the physical world. Think about AI requires less labor, more commodities. So, um this one's gonna be bigger.

In the past. But I think around the long answer to your question, these are big cycles. We're in the beginning of a new one. I'd say it's the bottom of the first end.

Jeff, you mentioned China several times. I want to come back to that and I'll get to AI and energy demand in just a minute. First, let's just touch again on China. They are stockpiling everything like it's going out of style. Actually, let me correct myself. They're stockpiling everything as if they are preparing for either war or major sanctions and embargoes.

Is that what's driving this? Are we headed imminently toward a US China conflict and what will it mean in terms of commodity markets if it happens? By the way, everybody's hoarding. It goes back to the geopolitical going back, what was one of the key drivers to the supercycle call? It's the deglobalization. And you know, deglobalization and the war on free trade. You can't get it.

And if I'm China, think about this. I'm China. I watched the US go into Venezuela, just cut my oil. I put a hundred billion dollars into that country to develop all that oil. And they just stopped it. And they the Russian escort to the tanker just got stopped, pulled over. My supply is being curtailed. And by the way, I we wrote a piece recently talking about Venezuela, Russia, and Iran. These guys are all Chinese colonies.

I mean let's just be blunt about it. But I think the key point here is if you are a consumer of oil, you're China, you're India, you are Europe, world's really dangerous. Because the US just cut your supply off, you know, there's these sanctioned orders, particularly if you're India or China. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna hoard. What did President Trump just announce? The vault. He's hoarding critical minerals.

Yeah, I can go down the list. I mean, if you're if you're sitting there and you're you're procurement officer in one of these companies, you gotta be going, Hey, how's my supply chain look like for tomorrow? So I I think what you're you're arguing, whether you want to say you're preparing for war or whatever, bottom line, the world's more dangerous and let's put gold into the story. Why is gold into the moon? You're hoarding gold. Why are you hoarding gold? Because owning dollars is dangerous.

So it's all of the same story. Look at the US in the Comex. It's hoarding all of the world's copper into the Comex. Why? Fears around terror. Um, so I the list goes on and on and on. So you're absolutely right. China is hoarding all sorts of commodities, but we're seeing this everywhere. And people go, Oh, what's going on in in in

China's gonna end tomorrow. Let me remind all these listeners that the US hoarded oil like this in the nineteen eighties, late seventies, from seventy seven to I think to like eighty eight or eighty nine for over a decade. It doesn't stop. And so when we think about how long this can go on, it can go on for an incredibly long time. And by the way, we I don't in fact I do want to get into this oil glut narrative. I've never seen a gl a narrative take hold with zero credibility or evidence behind.

It you know,'cause it this stuff is demand. It's real demand. And I think gold is the one that's most sym symbolic of Jeff, I definitely want to come back to Gold and Silver and the oil glut, but first I wanna go a little bit deeper on what you said before about AI and the bit atom connection. It seems to me like AI is something that has become an existential

if you will, uh an arms race of AI technology, its military implications are so strong that you can't just say, oh well, AI started to take off too much energy, let's scale it back. They can't scale it back because it's an arms race. So I think we're gonna get into AI becoming the bad guy on the public stage that used up all the energy and made everybody's electric bills, you know, double. I is that a realistic fear and if so, how do you see it playing out?

By the way, the the digital demand for for power is just a steady upward trend. It was crypto before A AI, it was big data it was cloud, big data, it keeps going back. This has been going on for two days. People talk about it's just a steady It's just becoming so large now that it uh it's it's now starting to put some demand growth in places like the US where we haven't seen it before.

Am I willing to say it's going to be the primary driver? I mean at the edge, we're talking, you know, moving from flat to two to three percent or maybe even four percent starts to put a lot of pressure on it. But I but I think th that people are Underestimating the technological innovation and the ability to do this stuff. You know, I look at the the I always compare AI to the shale remote. You know, on the eve of twenty fourteen or thirteen, on the eve of the the collapse in oil prices

you know, everybody was investing in shale because they there's gonna be the demand, everything's gonna be there. It wasn't the demand that destroyed shale. What destroyed shale is the engineer pumped out three times more than what anybody ever Um they you know, I to say don't bet against an engineer. Give'em enough time and money, they will solve the problem.

By the way, in twenty thirteen, they loved energy and they hated tech. By the way, there was a tech supply glut back then. You didn't it was peak PC demand, didn't want to go near it. Just wanted energy, energy, energy. But the reality is, boy, did those engineers create an oil supply glut in twenty fourteen and fifteen.

I think when we think about what's going on in AI today, I would argue, you know, the uh e by the way, you look at AI compute, yeah, it's going down because of obsolescence, but that price has weakened from like

three bucks down into like to the two dollar range. And part of it is they just get better and better at. So I would be cautious about um AI. By the way, everybody's focused on the oil supply glut today. And nobody thinks there's an AI compute I'd be a lot more worried about an AI compute clut, because these engineers are so bright than I would be of an oil model.

You're worried about an AI compute glut, too much computing capacity, including the energy to run that computing capacity, or do you just mean too many computers? Too too many but the price of compute goes. By the way, if it goes down, they'll even use more of it and use more energy. But the but the the ability to by the way, every single one of these technological revolutions Always ends in tears for the equity guys. Always.

Um you and I live through the g through the shale one. And by the way, the shale one looks identical to the AI one. Even the SPVs, the the structures of the financial engineering, identical. It's like they took the pitch book. from the shale guys, rubbed out the names of the energy companies and wrote in all of these open AI and the rest of it and just redid it.

'Cause think about they had the MLPs. Um the only difference is is the oil guys went downstream into the MLPs. Here the data center guys go upstream into the power guys. Other than that, it looks like So you know, I I I I look at that's why so when I say it AI compute uh I'd be l less worried about energy collapsing than I would about the price the'cause remember there's a commodity called AI compute. It's H one hundred. You can look at silicon H one hundred on your Bloomberg terminal.

You know, it's gone up to two hundred forty two, but it's still well off the three dollar range. So I think the the the key point here is I would be I'd like to say don't bet against the engineers. Um give'em enough time and money. Um they can really On that theme, I'm convinced that the give'em enough time and money for the AI compute demand ultimately is going to lead to a really increased nuclear renaissance because that's the right technology solution.

for AI energy demand. The problem is until we get off of conventional light water reactor technology onto something better, and that's going to be a while, it takes just too darn long to build a new nuclear power plant. I think it's going to create a natural gas boom. It's an interim boom, you know, from now until we can really build out the nuclear.

I think we're gonna have to figure out how to build more energy some other way. And I think natural gas is the obvious benefactor. Would you agree? And if not, why not? A hundred percent agree with that. And by the way I'll be very careful. While I say the price of compute's going down, it doesn't mean I'm saying that it's it's gonna lead to less energy demand. I just think they're gonna get more efficient at it.

But the when we think about the about the demand out there, ultimately when we think about AI, where are the bottlenecks gonna be? It's gonna be the natural resources and the data that you feed the L L M bottles. That's it. Everything else the Rogers are gonna get crushed. And so you wanna own the commodities and particularly power, and you wanna own the the d the data that it's fed into the L LMs. And so if you're thinking about power

you know, the place that you're gonna get the the the most efficient increase in power is gonna be through nu through through nuclear generation. So I absolutely agree, but that's not gonna happen for another

two decades or a decade. So what's your best bet for today? It's gonna be natural gas. It's the easiest, fastest way to bring on powers. But I know people who put that trade on last year and it's been a really rough, rocky road. We went up to Seven dollars recently and came crashing back down.

to three twenty of where we are today right now. But I think the yeah, the key message there though is I think you're absolutely right. You start to get the summer of this year, summer of next year. I think gas natural gas is going to see a lot of up.

Jeff, let's go back to gold and silver. We just had a j I don't know, what to call it, a gut wrenching correction, twelve hundred dollar correction in gold, the catalyst probably that triggered it. was the market misinterpreting the Warsh nomination. I think it was really just the the market was so overstretched it needed a correction.

I thought with something of that magnitude, surely it would take months and months and months to consolidate before we could move higher. But the news I think this week, at least so far, is we're recording this on Wednesday afternoon. is gold has moved above the sixty one point eight percent Fibonacci retracement. The the old adage in technical analysis is once you're past the sixty one eight you're probably headed to a hundred percent retrace.

Um if we get a weekly signal, if we're above five one six six on gold and I'm looking at five two two two four as we're recording, if we're above five one six six uh at the end of the week, it says to me that you know, maybe this is already recovering and headed higher. Could that be true this soon after such a big correction? Absolutely. And do you think about

the period in the 2000 supercycle. It was incredibly volatile. I like to point out that you know these these supercycles are just sequence of of price spikes. Yeah, I mean they go, Oh, you know, it's down and then then you catch'cause here's the way I like to think about what happens, particularly in silver and is the the system gets overstretched, investors buy it and they run the price up so high

and demand's pushing up against supply constraints, eventually the demand gets so high, demand collapses underneath it. Then it falls off the supply constraint, comes crashing back down.

And then people go, Oh my God, this is cheap. They start buying again and boom, smashes into the supply constraint again, explodes, and it just does that over and over and over. And by the way, that discourages the investment because everybody gets scared. Oh, it's gonna collapse again. It's gonna collapse again.

And so you don't get the investment on a long term basis. And that's why the you know, the initial phase of these super cycles, they get really by the way, you remember like aluminum and power back in two thousand one and two thousand two?

It was that same type of dynamic. It was like you're going up and down and up and down and it makes it nearly you don't trade this stuff unl you know unless you absolutely have And so I think, you know, that's this is gonna be what you're seeing in gold and silver. is we're gonna see this across the the the the com commodity complex. And that's what all these supercycles

that becomes a common feature of again, the equities, by the way, the equity trade for the for the metals and energy has been a nice smooth easy ride. So by the way, if you if you want this nice, easy, smooth ride, own the equities. Don't own the commodities. But the commodities, it's gonna be it's gonna be a rough rock like we're just talking of natural gas. Seven bucks to three twenty.

And by the way, we all it takes is, you know, give you throw in some more weather and, you know, put some data center demand on it. You'll be up the races on that one too. So, you know, I think hang on on gold, this I don't see how you come up it's not as price sensitive as silver or natural gas. And the underlying theme there in this environment, it's like the Swiss franc as strong as it is. Th there's there there's no end in sight.

Um and I you know the where the demand is coming out of not only people hedging themselves against the debasement trade, but you have de dollarization going on by central banks all over the world afraid to own dollars for sanction reasons. And then you gotta own the stuff for diversity reasons in your portfolio. Everybody's still underinvested this space. You like to point out the metal space

two hundred billion a market cap. You know, so you know you start throwing money and it's explosive. Anyway, I think this is a a feature of a of a super cycle and expect to see a lot more of it. And I we're gonna go higher.

Let's talk about silver. Some people have suggested the dynamics there are different because Silver had really gotten ahead of itself before the correction. Some people thought that that was really a result of the people who were pimping it, the Wall Street sil silver and all that kind of stuff.

And maybe after that blow off that we saw, uh well certainly it it it is recovering, but it's not recovering on a percentage basis as strongly as gold is and it was outperforming gold before the correction. What do you see ahead for silver? Well, I mean you're you're back to ninety one right now.

Yeah, it briefly got up above a hundred and hit I think a hundred and twenty at at at at the high. You know, long run, you know, it's a turbocharged version of gold. I mean, y that was one of our favorite picks back in twenty twenty when when we first made the supercycle call because it you know, it has the same underlying precious metal dynamics as gold, but it's a key input to all this electrification. Back then we called it decarbonization. Today we call it electrification.

solar panels and it it's a core input to all of that electrical equipment that places like China make. And again, China short this stuff, which is part of the reason why China has been, you know, a big buyer of it. And again the demand from corporates to ford it and things of that nature. I'm not in the forecasting business anymore, but some of those banks.

I think it's B of A, Michael Wibner, I think what does he have? Like a hundred and seventy or something like that? And he's been doing this as long as you and I have. So I think there's a uh you know, the potential here there's a you know for significant up.

Jeff, let's come back to the inflation outlook which you mentioned uh earlier in in your first answer, with all of this uh appreciation that we're seeing in gold and silver. What are we really seeing? Is the price of gold going up because of greater central demand? Are we really seeing the value of the dollars that gold is priced in going down?

I I think it's a combination of both. The the initial surge of the de dollarization occurred the first time the Trump administration used sanctions against the Russians back in twenty eighteen. that was a shock to the system and you realize you own US bonds, you got problems. Then it then after you look at when it got turbocharged, soon as the US

seize the Russian central bank assets in twenty twenty two after the invasion, you're off to the races. That is de-dollarization. You don't care. You're getting rid of your dollars because you don't want to get sanctioned.

And at this point emerging markets are doing this all over the world and now they just continue to add to the reserves. That's not that has nothing to do with the debasement demand, which is mainly from investors, that's what you're talking about But you put the two together, it you know, I like to point out dollar, yeah, it's trading what, one point three four against the pound sterling, uh well, one point one seven against the euro.

The only c the only currency out there that it's just been s you know, slaughtered by is the the Swiss finance. you know I think it's trading point seven seven against the dollar. So there, yeah, I think the story you're talking about, the rest of them, it's not that big of a shift. And when we think about the dollar, you know, it's it's Weaken, but in nowhere. Think about an 08 at the end of that commodity super cycle. It was trading 1.61 again.

The euro the euro. That was the peak of the dollar against the euro. So we're at 1.17 today. That's a long way to go. So the answer to your question there's been a little bit of it, but this is real like, hey. all these fiat currencies are in a bad shape. Another way to think about this is this is not the dollar being singled out as being the bad character. This is fiat currency being singled out as the bad character.

Let's come back to the oil glut narrative that you said you wanted to debunk. I couldn't agree with you more that uh the notion that there's a fundamental oil glut is crazy. I think that the long term fundamentals for oil are extremely bullish, but Hang on, between now and the midterm elections, President Trump really doesn't have anything more important on his agenda than keeping energy and affordability prices low through the elections.

So it seems to me like there's likely to be a l a lot of invisible hands at work trying to keep energy prices low for the next six months. Would you agree with that, or are we looking at fundamentals that nobody can manipulate? I'm gonna answer that question is I think there is gonna be a t a tipping point where it can't be manipulated. But uh but there's no ev how do how do you manipulate it? I I I look at back at this And

I asked myself, how did this happen? I've been doing this thirty years. I've never seen a narrative. without any real fundamental evidence and when you look at the actual fund the real data, inventories are low. Do you know they're in the OECD countries today, they're lower today than they were a year ago. a lower d a day than a year ago. That's f that's the real data yet. Yeah, you mean the satellite data some and even there they show that the inventories floating at sea have turned over.

The curve has been very backward dated as you and I both know a backward a curve is bullish. Refining margins are really wide. spreads are really yeah, the OSPs of the OPEC countries have come off, but they come off from relatively high levels. I'm just going, what are they looking at? And I don't know where the narrative It how did it get started? And where did it come from and how did it get it go on for eighteen, nineteen months? You know, when we think about AI in the productivity game.

Yeah. The one thing is that is you is that you that you've got to verify the results of AI. We don't know if it is is telling the truth or not. And as people in workplaces start using it more and more and more, you need more humans to actually verify that what they're doing that's not measurable is right.

And you could think of it about the same way in in markets. You have more markets being traded by algorithmic trading than we've ever had before. They tee off sentiment numbers and things like that that can drive it down because Every other measure that you and I know says this oil market is bullish except for the flat But the flat price can trade off the sentiment, but there's nothing there left to verify'cause it's too expensive to verify.

And I think that's it, you're gonna see that in the productivity. The the workshop's gonna go, Hey, the cost to me to verify this is so much and the potential for an error becomes so great, they're just gonna quit. And it's the same thing going on in oil that is being driven by algo's trend followers and the you know, sentiment to a point

where it cannot correct itself unless you can get down underneath and go at the micro level and create enough upside to it. Maybe it's the you know, an invasion in Iran or something that gets us out of this trap. The price level is driven by

not by fundamentals or anything like that. And the liquidity's been drained out. People are just s they don't want to trade. The other thing is that a lot of people have lost a lot of money trading oil, whether it's short or long over the last But to answer your question, it's gonna happen, when is it gonna happen and there'd be a crude awakening?

And so, yeah, I it's you know, is it between now and the midterms? Um, is it you know a potential with Iran? It could be. Um, but I think it it's definitely it's not a question if it's a question of

Jeff, final question. You told me off the air that you're expecting an explosion of liquidity. What's that about? And the other thing I wanted to follow up with you on is you've been in touch with our good friend Josh Crumb, founder of Abix Technologies. Those guys were doing some really exciting stuff specifically around liquid natural gas.

and uh futures trading and so forth. Do you have any update'cause we've had a lot of interest on our listeners for an update on what Abex is up to. Yeah, I think it they the the this discussion just goes hand in hand. You know, when we think about the liquidity explosion, I like in you know, what we've seen in the Genius Act, Web three point oh, I don't like the word crypto, call it D L T distributed ledger technology or whatever it might be in AI.

You put those three together, it's just like the CFMA Act of two thousand and Web one point oh that unleashed a liquidity explosion in commodity markets like we'd never seen before in the two thousand. Why? Because the technology allowed you to go downstream and trade things we could never trade before because of Web 1.0 was big data. And what we're on the cusp of right now.

you know, Web three point oh combined with AI, combined with the Genius and Clarity Act, I think you're ready to unleash a liqu a liquidity explosion like the world has never seen before. And what's really gonna be allow us to get down really what it's gonna do is allow us to go downstream and trade things that we've never traded before. And how is it going to do it is is is crypto was never made for human beings.

It was made for machines. It's clumsy. It's hard to do. We're gonna have AI bots trading crypto. are trading you know tokens. I don't like the coins. I don't like the crypto. I like the DA the the technology. I like the tokens that are in commodities like gold and silver, real world assets, tokenized real world assets.

that we can partition into levels that are going downstream unlike ever before. And I could point out in the first wave, like when I was at Goldman Sachs, we could never trade plastic because we couldn't get downstream enough into the plastic markets because they're so fragmented. When you put AI and crypto together, we're gonna be able to go and make markets there. And we take somebody like like ABEC.

And it's doing this in natural gas and getting into markets that you couldn't make before. The technology is allowing us to to make market in natural gas L and G hubs all over the place, getting into lithium carbonate, power markets that are further downstream. So Yeah, I I'm really excited about the future of trading. And you know, I I'm a I'm a NED and a you know a non-executive director at at ABEX.

Yeah, I I I think the technology is extremely well positioned as we go into what we like to say a liquidity explosion.

Well, Jeff, I can't thank you enough for another terrific interview. Before I let you go, please tell our listeners what you do at Carlisle Group. I know it's only institutional, so you can't help our retail audience directly, but for our institutional listeners, what services are on offer there?

I'm with the energy teams and and do work with like the aerospace and defence team. And i going back to this the this supercycle theme and theme around deglobalization, let's forget, you know, um, Carlisle cut its base in the aerospace defence sector. So extremely well positioned as we go into this commodity super cycle. whether if it's energy team, uh, you know, has got a long history of developing assets in in, you know, the upstream and refining and obviously

given the defense spinning on around the world. So I I'm super excited about the opportunities at Harlow. Patrick Serezna and I will be back as Macro Voices continues right here at macrovoices.com. Now back to your hosts, Eric Townsend. Patrick Serezna. Eric, it was great to have Jeff back on the show. Listeners, you'll find the download link for the post-game 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 Jeff's picture. saying looking for the download.

Patrick, for this week's trade of the week, let's focus on Jeff Curry's theme of de-dollarization and impact on metals. How are you thinking about positioning here and what's the most compelling way to express that view? Eric, coming out of Jeff's interview, my key takeaway is that gold isn't trading like a simple inflation hedge anymore. It's increasingly behaving like a geopolitical reserve asset.

in sanctions heavy world where supply chains and critical inputs are getting weaponized, reserve diversification into bullion becomes structural, not cyclical. So for this week's trade of the week, I want to look back at bullion. the gold correction has arguably come and gone, and after a meaningful twenty percent peak to trough reset,

This becomes less about timing a perfect entry and more about maintaining a core long exposure with a volatility dampener in case we get one more retest of those lows. This is where the options market helps. Gold continues to carry a fat right-tail skew, which means you can sell relatively expensive upside to subsidize downside protection and create a more asymmetric overlay.

So for this week's trade of the week, I'm looking at the 90 by 120 collar overlay on the GLD. The gold ETF is trading at$476 at the time of recording. Using the May 15th, 2026 expiration, we are buying the 430 strike put for eight dollars and selling the five hundred and seventy-five strike call for five dollars. That's a net. $3 debit or about$300 per collar per 100 shares. What you're buying is a defined risk envelope.

Ten percent below the price at four thirty, you've effectively put a floor under your position. On the upside, you stay long up to five seventy-five, which is roughly twenty percent upside. From here, you're paying a small debit to dampen downside volatility while still keeping meaningful upside over the next 90 days if gold resumes its primary trend.

This is particularly useful for those investors that feel maintaining a strong overweight is necessary, which always comes with some concentration risk. Bottom line, stay core long gold, add a low-cost collar to dampen volatility in case we get another shakeout, and use the skew to your advantage to keep the hedge asymmetric and inexpensive. 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 bigpictrading.com. Now let's dive into the postgame chart deck. All right, Eric, let's talk markets. What are your views here on these equities?

Patrick, the market was feeling pretty heavy flirting with the hundred day moving average support for several days this past week. For now we've bounced off of it. That's a little bit reassuring, I guess. But the market is still trading sideways at best and a resumption of the uptrend remains uncertain.

I don't have any strong timing views about what happens next, just concerned that if we do retest the hundred day and it doesn't hold, there's no obvious support until the two hundred day moving average down at around sixty six hundred on the S P. So hopefully we can stay above the hundred day, but if not, look out below. Well, Eric, the story has actually been the same on the S P five hundred for the last couple of weeks. For so for months we've been in a tight trade range.

and there has been no resolution. And that's because the market is actually torn under the surface. It has a huge and substantial correction occurring in the financial sector and in the software stock. while we continued to see and what I have on page four, the semiconductor ETF chart breaking to fresh new highs, with NVIDIA just beating on its earnings. As well on page five I have the COSPE, the South Korean index,

which is going full on parabolic. And so we have uh the these stories of these the the AI story working on the semiconductor side, but yet on the software side getting hammered. The Mag 7s remain weak. and this is structurally a heavy weight. Now NVIDIA did beat on its earnings, but there isn't any extraordinary upside. In fact it's relatively flat at the open. And so we have a scenario, well, what is going to drive an S P 500 breakout? And uh and really at this stage it would really take

many of these very overbought mag sevens to w uh to feel uh the need to mean revert and and actually potentially rally for a short period of time. And that is really in my mind the puzzle to solve. Uh, you know, if we find ourselves in two, three trading sessions with NVIDIA giving back all of its gains.

That will be uh a structural blow to the semiconductor story. And that uh could be uh what turns the tide, but it's too early to speculate. At this stage, we're in this trade range, the market is very heavy. Um, but we are gonna really need to see something give out uh for uh the sell cycle to kick in. It is noteworthy that near sixty eight hundred on the SP, only 150 points lower.

are a lot of uh systematic trading tripwires that could really s uh have flows pivot to the sell side. So it really is important for the bulls

if they want to maintain this primary trend to keep this market above this 50-day moving average and progressing higher. All right, Eric, what are your thoughts here on the dollar? The upswing stalled at about ninety eight on the Dixie, at least temporarily, but there's also no indication yet of any reversal to a lower swing trade.

So the jury's still out, but absent to war I think the rally is probably running out of steam here. The thing is, uh absent of war is not exactly to say it ain't gonna happen, because let's face it the very real possibility exists of a US attack on Iran. And I think that would be dollar bullish, at least in the short term. Well, Eric, it's interesting that the strength that we've seen in that US dollar over the last month has done nothing but a r 50% retrace back to the 50 day moving average.

And so the primary downtrend is still intact. If uh for whatever reason we're given a catalyst for the dollar to have a breakdown, we could easily find ourselves heading for either double bottom retest or even um a hit in the 94 95 handle on the downside.

But with us actually trading right at this ninety eight handle, um there is the window that if for whatever reason there's a risk off impulse and the dollar is bid, you could have a burst above that fifty day which could pivot flows simply on a technical basis. really we're at a really important fulcrum point of of uh where we're gonna determine what's next. This ninety eight level is incredibly critical in my mind.

And um and it's gonna really be where we're gonna find out whether the prevailing downtrend remains the path of least resistance.

All right, Eric, let's touch on oil here. Well, the rally in crude oil appears to have stalled because the fears of a strike on Iran haven't happened yet. Until a deal is reached though or an Iran strike is completely off the table, I expect the geopolitical premium to stay in the market, and I think that's what got us up here to this uh price level in the mid to high sixties in the first place. in the short term and only in the short term

There's no supply crisis unless that Iran conflict uh creates one. So there's plenty of room for prices to come back down to the low sixties or high fifties if the Iran strike comes off the table completely. Longer term though, the fundamentals are bullish, especially after the election window. Yeah, Eric, when talking about oil, it's actually challenging to do a technical flows analysis. when y it you got such a a huge geopolitical uh headline risk.

that could really uh change the uh the trend very, very quickly. Overall, over the last two months, oil has been uh very well accumulated. All supports and sell offs have been held, everything is in good trend, but really I think the next big move on crude oil will be uh headline driven. At this stage, uh everything technically remains bullish and if the news in any way spooks

uh um uh oil traders. We could have a a quick surge higher, very reminiscent of what happened last June when uh the nuclear bunkers were hit in Iran last time.

At this stage we're still very nice and clean in that bull trend and we want to respect that trend even though the risks are high here from that uh headline risk. All right, Eric, we gotta talk about gold here. What are your thoughts? Patrick, in my opinion, this week's move above fifty one sixty six, five one sixty six, which is the sixty one point eight Fibonacci retracement level of the correction that just occurred back on January thirtieth.

That move i that occurred this week already is unexpected and very significant. What we need to see here, and I should say as I'm recording, we're above fifty two hundred, if we can stay up here. uh above fifty one sixty six and even better yet, above fifty two hundred and close there on Friday so that we end up with a weekly close above that sixty one point eight percent fib level. That's a pretty good technical sign that we might already be moving toward an upside resolution.

to this correction. And frankly, uh that's faster than I expected it. I thought it was gonna be several months before this correction played out, considering how brutal it was and how it shook so many week hands out of the market.

Well, Eric, we did talk about this during our trade of the week and overall I view the long term trend of gold to be very, very bullish and it's very likely at this point That that low near 4500 that was established during the market correction is very likely to be the lowest gold is going to trade. but it is very common uh for after such a blow off on the upside

for there to be multiple months of consolidation before uh the bull continuation pattern. So the one thing we just wanna make sure to highlight here is is that while the primary trend is up While the macro conditions are very bullish and

one simply needs to uh make sure your duration matches the realistic time frame it's going to take for gold to make a new breakout. I think that uh if uh gold is destined to make fresh new highs It very much is a second quarter story and anticipating uh some consolidations and maybe even a retest of a fifty day moving average.

as a possible uh uh b outcome here on gold over the next few weeks. Overall old dips should be bought uh and used as a tactical opportunity. All right, Eric, what are your thoughts here on uranium?

The uranium stocks moved nicely higher this week, but not with the gusto that I was kinda hoping for. The daily slow stochastics are high again, but they're not overbought yet. So hopefully we can see this move continue and uh continue a bit farther, but I wouldn't be surprised if we do get another swing trade lower into next week.

Well the entire pullback on the U three oh eight has been just a traditional retracement. So the primary trend of higher highs, higher lows, above all moving averages remain intact. And so I'm I'm gonna give the bulls a benefit of doubt that uh there will be a re-resumption on the upside trend here. Patrick, before we wrap up this week's podcast, let's hit that ten year treasury note chart. Finally touching on that ten year yield.

We continue to see pressure on interest rates lower as bonds are doing well here. Uh we're coming right to that four percent critical level. This is this is a level that was tested numerous times last year, back in April and October, and uh and each time we broke below four percent, even on a temporary basis, it spurred a very rapid recovery.

We're gonna get a very important tell here as we come and test those critical levels again. Will we see the same type of gusto and velocity on yields to rise, or will we see that uh they stay down here on a sustained basis? and that we're entering some sort of a different interest rate regime period. Uh the tell is gonna definitely be on how we react.

Off of a test of this four percent level. Folks, if you enjoy Patrick's chart decks, you can get them every single day of the week with a free trial of Big Picture Trading. The details are on the last pages of the slide deck or just go to bigpictrading.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 gonna find the transcript for today's interview, as well as the trade of the week chart book we just discussed here in the postgame, 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.

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