← Macro letter

Portfolio changes

Every time the macro letter opens, closes or resizes a position, a mail goes out. These are all of them, newest first. The notices are written in Swedish.

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Guldet trimmas med en tredjedel

Guldet har stått still i fem dagar trots flera nyheter som borde lyft det, och föll sedan. Det uppfyllde gränsen brevet satte dagen innan, så ungefär en tredjedel av guldet säljs. Pengarna läggs i kassan.

  • Sälj en del: Guld (GC-terminer / IAU)

    Size: full → minskad

    Sex handelsdagar utan att guldet svarar på goda nyheter (mjuk inflation, krigsupptrappning, svag jobbrapport). Ett storleksbeslut, inte ett byte av tes – guldet behålls som krigsskydd, bara mindre. Stängs helt först under 4 000 dollar.

→The letter that day, in brief (English)
  • ●Stocks hit fresh records again Tuesday, but this time the driver was AI/chip demand, not M&A — a more macro-relevant catalyst than Monday's, though still not a signal about the war/inflation thesis. The S&P 500 closed at 7,818.93 (+0.58%, its first close above 7,800 and a record for the first time since August), the Nasdaq Composite closed at a back-to-back record 27,599.79 (+0.45%), and the Dow closed at 51,521.28 (+0.49%). Nvidia and AMD both touched record highs — NVDA closed at $239.24 with its market cap nearing $5.84 trillion (closing in on $6T), and AMD jumped 2.80% to $649.42 after CEO Lisa Su said the company will "substantially increase" 2027 supply, with Foxconn's strong earnings reinforcing the AI-capex story, per Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Finance.
  • ●A concrete, named inflation-transmission channel from the war-risk leg emerged: US diesel prices hit a fresh record above $6/gallon, and the administration responded with an emergency fuel-cost measure. The national average diesel price stood at $6.199/gallon as of October 5, driven by lost Middle East and Russian/Ukraine-war-adjacent barrels and inadequate global refining capacity; Trump signed an executive order temporarily allowing truckers to use cheaper red-dyed (farm) diesel through year-end, while Goldman Sachs projects diesel stays elevated through 2027, per CNBC and CNBC. This is the clearest concrete link yet between the war-risk leg and the sticky-inflation leg ahead of the October 14 CPI print.
  • ●The war-risk leg multilateralized for the first time: Pakistan and Turkey triggered their mutual-defense pact with Saudi Arabia in direct response to Houthi strikes on Saudi infrastructure. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (signed August 2026) was invoked Monday for the first time since signing, after Houthi ballistic missiles and drones targeted Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport, an Aramco refinery at Rabigh, Abha International Airport, and the Khamis Mushait military base; the pact commits Pakistan and Turkey to "rapid deployment" of troops to Saudi Arabia, per Foreign Policy and PBS. This is a genuine new escalation vector — more parties with formal defense obligations now in the conflict.
  • ●Who actually controls the Bab al-Mandeb strait is now a direct, unresolved source conflict, which complicates yesterday's "early de-escalation" read of the Yemen front. Some outlets report Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces claim "full control" of the strait and Perim Island after retaking Dhubab, Bab, and Hadeid, per ABC News Australia and The Japan Times, while Euronews, reporting the same day, says Houthi forces still control the Yemeni side of the strait following their September seizure of Mocha. We flag this explicitly rather than pick a winner.
  • ●Gold finally moved — down, not up — meeting the trim threshold we set yesterday, so we are acting on it. Gold closed at $4,121.39 (-0.44%) on October 6 per Trading Economics, its first real decline after five sessions of going essentially nowhere. Yesterday's letter said a sixth consecutive non-performing session would move the position from "monitor" to "trim" — this session qualifies, so we are recommending a partial trim of the gold position below, independent of the (still comfortably unbreached) $4,000 invalidation level.
  • ●What to watch next: whether the Mecca pact's troop deployments stay a deterrent gesture or draw Pakistan/Turkey into direct combat; who actually holds Bab al-Mandeb as the government-vs-Houthi control claims get resolved one way or the other; whether oil's Brent-WTI spread (blown out to a reported $13.80 on record Gulf tanker freight costs) persists or normalizes; whether gold's first down session extends into a genuine trend after the trim; whether the 10-year's dispersed readings (5.27% per Trading Economics vs. ~5.31-5.32% "highest since 2002" elsewhere) resolve; and September CPI, still scheduled for October 14 with no shutdown delay currently indicated.

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Blankningen av kryssningsbolagen stängs

Carnival levererade en rekordrapport trots höga bränslekostnader. Det motsäger hela idén bakom blankningen, så brevet köper tillbaka Carnival och Royal Caribbean. Pengarna ligger i kassan tills ett nytt case dyker upp.

  • Köp tillbaka allt (stänger blankningen): Carnival (CCL) / Royal Caribbean (RCL)

    Size: full → ingen

    Carnivals Q3 slog förväntningarna klart: rekordintäkter (8,43 mdr USD), rekordvinst, höjd prognos och rekordbokningar för 2027. Aktierna steg 13 % (CCL) och 7 % (RCL). Ett fundamentalt besked, inte bara en dålig dag – därför stängs positionen.

→The letter that day, in brief (English)
  • ●Stocks fell for a second straight session, but by much less than Monday, even as Treasury yields hit fresh multi-decade highs again — the "everything sells off together" pattern eased. The Dow slipped 131.59 points (-0.26%) to 51,349.92, the S&P 500 fell 0.16% to 7,670.84, and the Nasdaq Composite dipped 0.09% to 26,797.54, all finishing off their intraday lows, per Yahoo Finance and TheStreet. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to roughly 5.26% (highest since 2007) and the 30-year to about 5.57% (highest since 2004), per tradingeconomics and CNBC.
  • ●Oil reversed hard, its first down day in three, after Saudi Arabia got a damaged Red Sea export pipeline mostly back online — easing (not solving) the physical supply squeeze even though the Strait of Hormuz standoff itself remains unresolved. Brent settled at $102.59 (-$2.69, -2.6%) and WTI at $89.38 (-$3.22, -3.5%), as Saudi crude exports resumed at the Yanbu and Al Muajjiz Red Sea terminals — throughput recovering to roughly 2.0-2.65 million barrels/day (still well below the pipeline's 7 million bpd capacity and the pre-attack ~5.5 million bpd rate) after a September 11 drone attack, blamed on Iraqi militias, had forced a shutdown. Per Yahoo Finance/Reuters and CNBC.
  • ●The Fed got genuinely more dovish overnight, and this time it looks like real signal rather than the noise we saw Friday. Weak August JOLTS job openings (7.08M vs. 7.24M expected) and September consumer confidence cratering to 81.9 — its lowest since 2014 — alongside NY Fed President Williams saying an October hike is "not a done deal," pulled hike odds down sharply: per investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor (timestamped Sept 29, 11:35pm EDT), October 28 odds of a hike to 4.00-4.25% fell to 49.4% (essentially a coin flip, down from Monday's 74.6%), and December 9 odds of a second hike to 4.25-4.50% fell to 39.9% (down from Monday's 60.0%). This is the first crack in the hawkish-Fed leg of our thesis driven by weakening growth/labor data, not by improving inflation — July/August Case-Shiller home prices actually ran hot at 2.5% y/y vs. 2.0% expected, per Benzinga and Yahoo Finance.
  • ●Gold and silver bounced back on that same dovish repricing, and Carnival's earnings blew up our cruise-line short. Gold rebounded to roughly $4,172-4,182 (up ~1.4% from Monday's seven-week low) and silver to about $61.3-61.5, per Kitco ("soft data cools October Fed hike bets"). Separately, Carnival (CCL) reported record fiscal Q3 results — non-GAAP EPS of $1.43 (beating the ~$1.35-1.36 consensus), record revenue of $8.43B, record net income of $1.9B, and raised full-year guidance — and the stock surged 13.41% to $25.11; Royal Caribbean (RCL) jumped 7.45% to $260.67 on a Bank of America upgrade to Buy plus spillover, per GuruFocus and stockanalysis.com.
  • ●We are closing the cruise-line short. Carnival's beat is a genuine fundamental vindication of CEO Josh Weinstein's June claim that Middle East-driven cost/yield pressure would be "transitory" — record deposits, record 2027 bookings, and guidance raised despite the fuel-cost spike — not just a bad trading day for the position. We hold the other nine positions and the regime call.
  • ●What to watch next: today's (Sept 30, 8:30am ET) August PCE report — the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, not yet confirmed as of this writing — plus a final Q2 GDP reading and ADP private payrolls, whether Iran's expected "final" US response on Hormuz ever materializes, and whether Tuesday's dovish Fed repricing holds for more than one session or snaps back like Friday's did.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Guld och Newmont tillbaka till full storlek

Guldet höll 4 000-dollarsnivån enligt två oberoende källor, så halveringen från 9 juli tas tillbaka.

  • Köp mer: Guld (GC-terminer / IAU)

    Size: halv → full

    Testet av 4 000 dollar slutade till vår fördel – guldet studsade till ~4 040 dollar.

  • Köp mer: Newmont (NEM)

    Size: halv → full

    Återställs tillsammans med guldet, samma logik.

→The letter that day, in brief (English)
  • ●June inflation cooled a lot more than expected — but it's mostly a gas-price mirage that's already reversing. Headline CPI fell 0.4% for the month (annual rate down to 3.5% from 4.2% in May, vs. ~3.8-3.9% consensus); core CPI was flat on the month at 2.6% y/y (vs. ~2.9% consensus). The whole move was driven by a ~5.7-9.7% June crash in gas prices — but oil has already spiked back above $80-86 this week on the tanker war, so July's CPI will likely claw a lot of this back. Don't read this as "inflation is beaten."
  • ●The Fed is not declaring victory. Chair Kevin Warsh testified to Congress the day of the print, said the "inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past" but explicitly rejected "mission accomplished" and reiterated the Fed has "no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation." Separately, Governor Waller had already warned (July 13, ahead of the print) that another hot core reading would force the Fed to consider hiking — core came in soft instead, but the hawkish posture hasn't gone away.
  • ●Stocks liked the inflation number — futures are up again this morning too. The S&P 500 closed +0.38% to 7,543.59, Nasdaq +0.9% to 26,107.01, Dow essentially flat +0.02% to 52,508.27 (IBM -25% on a profit warning was a big drag that the rest of the market absorbed). JPMorgan and Bank of America both beat earnings big and rallied (+1.94% and +1.74%); Wednesday premarket futures are higher again (Dow +0.1%, S&P +0.2%, Nasdaq +0.7%) on more soft-CPI follow-through.
  • ●The war got worse, not better, and the June ceasefire framework is now confirmed dead. Overnight/Monday, Iranian missiles hit two UAE tankers in Omani waters, killing one crew member — the war's first confirmed fatality. The US blockade of Iranian ports went live at 4pm ET Tuesday and US strikes on Iran continued into Wednesday. The 14-point Islamabad ceasefire memorandum that Trump and Iran's president signed back on June 17 is not just fraying — Trump declared it "over" on July 8 and Iran formally renounced it on July 13. There is no live diplomatic off-ramp on the table right now.
  • ●Oil pushed higher again and gold held our $4,000 line. Brent is trading around $85.77-86, WTI around $80.14, both up on continued strikes and blockade enforcement. Gold sits at roughly $4,037-4,048 (two independent sources within ~$10 of each other, a real improvement over yesterday's scattered readings) — comfortably above $4,000, so yesterday's "is the line broken" question resolves to no, for now.
  • ●No position changes today. The soft CPI print is a genuine data point worth taking seriously, but it doesn't outweigh an operational blockade, a first war fatality, a still-elevated (if slightly reduced) September hike-odds reading, and a Fed that is actively talking down any "inflation is over" narrative.

Thursday, July 9, 2026

Guld och Newmont halveras

Guldet fungerar inte som krigsskydd just nu – det faller trots kriget, pressat av stark dollar och risk för räntehöjning. Brevet halverar guld och guldbolaget Newmont tills priset stabiliserar sig över 4 000 dollar.

  • Sälj en del: Guld (GC-terminer / IAU)

    Size: full → halv

    Guldet tappar mot dollarn och räntehöjningsoro i stället för att stiga på kriget. Säljs ner till halv storlek; stängs helt om guldet stänger under ~4 000 dollar.

  • Sälj en del: Newmont (NEM)

    Size: full → halv

    Guldgruvbolag rör sig mer än guldet självt, åt båda hållen – minskas tillsammans med guldet.

→The letter that day, in brief (English)
  • ●War is back on — the US–Iran ceasefire collapsed, so oil is rising again (Brent ~$78, +5% yesterday). Keep the oil and defense longs.
  • ●Gold is NOT working as a war hedge right now (~$4,030 and falling) — cut gold and Newmont to half size until price stabilizes above $4,000.
  • ●Inflation hit 4.2% and the Fed may HIKE in September — stay short long-term bonds (TLT) and keep short cruise lines (fuel + squeezed consumers).
  • ●Keep the AI longs (NVDA, FCX) — the Nasdaq is still the strongest part of the market.
  • ●Biggest daily watch item: any new ceasefire headline means unwinding the oil/defense basket fast.

A model portfolio, not investment advice.