The Trading Floor: Is the US Dollar Losing Its Safe-Haven Status?
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Welcome to the Market Maker podcast, hosted by me, Anthony Chung, where every Friday I talk to a member of the team about what happened in markets this week. From macro themes and single stock news to cryptocurrencies and careers in finance, our aim is simple, to make finance interesting and easy to understand for everyone. So let's get to it.

Hello and happy Friday if you're listening. End of the week, so time to summarize all the action that's been going on in global markets. And you're going to love some of the headlines I'm going to throw at you, Piers, in this conversation because I know you like a little bit of Friday sensationalism. But before I begin, quick shout out to Lina Malane who messaged me this morning and

And I love this because she's a mathematics and statistics student, decided to come along to a finance accelerator, which is the market simulation we do in partnership with Morgan Stanley and UBS. She absolutely loved it, strengthened her interest in finance. So she's a non-finance student. She says she's a huge fan of the pod. The reasons why is because it makes learning about the industry very accessible. Cool. Perfect.

That's how you make, in my mind, not being too grandiose on a Friday because the sun is shining, but if you want to make the industry a more equitable, inclusive place, that's how you do it. You've got to make it accessible, interesting, fun, engaging, and then other people. The economics people will always find finance, for example. But if you want a broader subset and more inclusive industry...

I'm so happy to hear that people like Lena are getting involved. That's, I love that, that comment, that's fuel, fuel for our, for our mission. And, uh,

Yeah. All right. Well, let's carry on doing this podcast then, I guess. No pressure on your breakdowns then of these various headlines I have for you, where we're going to cover why is the euro trading at its highest levels for this year? I know we're kind of into the end of Q1, so still pretty early, but we were only a few weeks ago talking about the euro going south in euro parity.

And the tide has changed pretty quickly. And now the euro has hit its 2025 high versus the dollar on European defense spending predominantly. So I know you're going to break that down for me. And then as a consequence, Deutsche Bank came out with a pretty spicy comment midweek talking about the risk of the US dollar losing.

That's losing its safe haven status. And that's a pretty bold, punchy call. So we'll also take a look at that as well in the context of the euro move. And then a good segue will be into how just generally the market is performing at the moment. US stocks still pretty soft. Wall Street banks have been sounding the alarms, or I should say flashing rising recession risk signals, Piers, is what Bloomberg were reporting yesterday.

And then to top it all off, China have come out and blasted Trump, talking about two-faced acts and evil tariffs. And we were talking again, just it feels like a week or two ago, about how kind of calm the Chinese response had been. They've been retaliating, but in a fairly coordinated and a lighter touch, perhaps, than many might have thought. But that seems to have shifted as well in the last few days. So perhaps we can start

With the euro, please. Yeah. I mean, there's a hell of a lot to kind of unpack here, but quite an extraordinary week, I would say. And actually, I mean, just an extraordinary year, probably. And, you know, Trump, you could blame Trump for a lot of this, but not all of it. But certainly, he's obviously come in shaking things up. You know, his style means uncertainty has spiked.

And this is fueling some of this, well, it's fueling a lot of this market action. It's also gone as far as now fueling proper, you know, hard change in fiscal policy in other parts of the world, which actually is the underlying driving force of this euro spike. And it is a spike. You go and look at a euro dollar chart and it's quite extraordinary. We've gone from 104,

1.04 to 1.0865 as we speak. That's a 460 pip move to the upside. That's just this week. I mean, that's an extraordinary move. And everything's kind of flipped on its head when we think about the euro. Pretty much every bank on the street

coming into the start of this year, had the Euro-dollar exchange rate trending down, continuing to trend down, to breach parity.

and to continue to head lower and to kind of for context to breach parity i mean look the euro dollar hasn't been at parity well we briefly dipped under the one handle for a couple of weeks back in 2022 okay but other than that it's basically hasn't happened right so what's happened well look

Why did all the banks think that at the start of the year? Well, look, we were off the back end of 2024 and it was the US exceptionalism trend, which got a little bump because of Trump expectations. This is after Trump won the election, but before he hit the White House, right? So here, tax cuts are coming.

you know decreasing regulations you know fueling this you know extension of the mag 7 driven rally okay now at the same time you had a weak your recession risk in europe you know ecb bank of england cutting rates expectations that there'd be a lot more rate cuts in 2025 in europe than there would be in the us okay so this was all fueling us strength europe europe weakness if you like

But it's kind of all, a lot of it's pivoted on its head here. So, you know, you take the US firstly, you know, that US exceptionalism idea. Well, that's being chipped away at, right? And certainly the MAG-7, we talked about this last week, I won't repeat, but MAG-7 have really come off. They're no longer, they're not leading the rally, more so they're actually leading the sell-off now. And actually, you look at the S&P.

by the way and the nasdaq they're they're about to knock their third down week in a row today as in the today being the end of week three right of this sell-off the nasdaq's down over nine percent here three weeks down in a row this week the third one being the biggest down week of the lot right and we haven't had three down weeks in a row for well i'd have to check but certainly into the middle of last year at least we haven't had three down weeks in a row for six months

And so look, what's happening is this, I guess, signs a US recession. We talked about this last week. Economic data starting to take a turn. Sentiment starting to shift lower. We had more evidence of that on Wednesday.

with the labor market report, the ADP employment report coming in weaker than expected. We've got key US data this afternoon on non-farm payrolls. Let's see what that brings. But look, it's been a bad run over the last two weeks from a US economic data point of view. So that recession risk thing is inching higher. And look, this Trump, the Trump show, I mean, it just hasn't been a good look, I would say externally,

from a non-US person looking in, you know, it just hasn't been a great look with the whole Zelensky thing in the Oval Office thing

And so China are willing to be a little bit more brave in the negotiations and the retaliations. And Germany even, we'll talk about Deutsche Bank's view on that dollar safe haven status in a minute, but there's pushback now against Trump. And I think this is all wound up into this kind of flipping sentiment. Now, to be specific on the euro then,

Obviously, Trump's way about trying to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war has forced Europe's hand. Now, I won't go into the politics. Is this a good thing, bad thing? Park that, right? It's forced Europe's hand to increase all of a sudden quite sharply and in rapid time from a European kind of political speed point of view. It's forced the hand to dramatically increase their defense spending.

And actually, the Eurozone Commission president

Ursula von der Leyen, and she announced that they're intending, this was earlier this week on Tuesday, that they're going to fund an $800 billion defence spending budget across the continent. Because the idea is the US are pulling out their funding of this Ukraine defence and Europe are going to step in place. Now, what does that all mean economically? Well, 800 billion euros, that is a massive amount.

Fiscal stimulus package.

Now, I know it's geared towards one sector, but 800 billion euros, that's like, bang, that's like, hang on, emergency recession fiscal policy stimulus package, right? And so it's kind of flipped things here. You can evidence this by looking at the European defense companies and their share prices. I've got a few here. You might not have heard of any of these. In fact, I'd be surprised if listeners have heard of any of the three I'm about to mention.

One's called Leonardo. It's an Italian defense stock. That's doubled. Share prices doubled in the last six weeks. You've got Thales in France. That's up 75% in the last four weeks. You've got Rheinmetall. That's a German one. That's up 93%, you know, year to date. These stocks are through the roof right now.

What does this tie into this euro move? Because the euro has spiked for a few reasons, right? Number one, it's just the money flow. Cash is coming into Europe.

And this started back in the beginning of the year when the idea was that Europe's going to... That divergence between the US and that US exceptionalism trade and Europe being so weak, that divergence, a lot of analysts were saying, has got to its widest point and it will now revert. So the trade there was, well, look, I'm going to sell my Nvidia stock, book profit, and I'm going to swing that cash

and buy European stocks. Now that requires an FX transaction first. You take your dollars that you've got from your Nvidia share sale, you're selling dollars and buying euros so that then you can buy European stocks denominated in euros, right? So that FX transaction ahead of that equity rotation in your portfolio drives up the euro dollar exchange rate, okay?

But look, it's more than that. It's not just cash flowing into Europe. It's also then, well, look, this fiscal stimulus package via the defence sector, well, is that not going to trigger an uptick in GDP growth expectations in Europe? Is this not going to drive maybe inflationary

pressures then if we get an economic recovery. So if economic performance is going to be better than was previously expected in the Eurozone, then actually can the ECB cut rates as we were expecting them to throughout the entirety of this year? So you've got a wall of cash coming into Europe. You've got quite

all of a sudden step up in economic growth expectations and a step down in expectations of europe being able to cut rates so all of these three together are flipped this trade and it's such a crowded trade everyone was short euro dollar this is going through paratry and all of a sudden they've had to adjust their positions and this is why it's flipped this massive rally

just over the space of literally seven trading days and we've gone up 460 pips two questions i have then so that was really well explained so thanks for for breaking that down but one of the things is i know vonderlijn you said has said that but everyone knows that europe moves at a snail's pace because of the way of the composition of europe being europe it's many countries acting as one

So obviously markets move on the first whisper of something happening. Is there a threat though of when does that actually materialise? Does it materialise in its current form? So it's not like, oh, I should rush to buy these defence stocks. That's done now. Yeah. So that's right. Markets will react immediately to price in the future.

So that's that. I mean, our defense stocks in Europe, is that the rally over? Is it as it spikes too high? Is there more to go on the upside? That's a hard question to answer now. If you go back to the start of the year or four, even four weeks ago,

That was when you should be buying European defence stocks, right? When all of this stuff was happening, you know, with Trump and Zelensky, you know, this is weeks old, right? So you needed to have been buying them back then. I don't know if there's now more upside, you know, if that Italian company's doubled in share price, I don't know if it's going to go higher again or not. That's now, that's a real tricky trade. If you've missed this first rally, I wouldn't now kind of jump in. But look,

The unintended consequences of Trump's actions are actually to drive European politicians closer together.

Europe's, if you like, a bit more unified now with this kind of singular defense, for want of a better word, against Trump and his actions. My point being, it's likely to speed up political movement in Europe. Historically, Europe is just a nightmare to get things done politically, unless...

Everyone's unified and something's forcing their hand. We saw it in the Eurozone debt crisis back in 2010. So this is a bit like that. So I would say this is going to move faster than would normally be the case for this type of policy, but it's still going to take months. So you are right. And this is markets pricing in this stuff happening in the months to come.

So at the moment, you can think of two lines, and they were diverging in terms of like European fundamentals economically and the US, US being strong, Europe being weak. This is a few months back. Now they're converging, given what you've described. So you might see as this fiscal stimulus comes in, better growth, as you were saying, that would be stimulative. So I'm guessing increased demand, so inflation. However,

One other consequence of this is that if there is a peace deal, and it's looking like, you know, again, politics aside, but Ukraine doesn't have much leverage here in terms of they're going to probably have to cut this minerals deal with the Americans, which is going to appease them, whether or not it's in the form of a deal that they want. It's probably going to, it can't happen without US military support.

European natural gas prices then have continued falling. So just like your defence stocks are going up, almost in parallel, complete mirror, gas prices are falling on the premise that there's a deal coming, so therefore the flow of gas can come back and the supply-demand equilibrium, if you like, kind of recalibrates again. The other thing here, you've got

weather forecasting which is obviously super important when you talk about a lot of these commodity products and obviously how warm is it going to be how cold is it going to be as a pre-indicator of how much demand there will be for something like gas and we're starting to get forecasting of more milder temperature in europe and then asia just generally china

isn't exactly booming at the moment and demand's been still the pulse of that is relatively lackluster for a lot of these these kind of types of energy products so if energy comes down as a byproduct of a deal getting done does that counterbalance then we've had this big shift like you said everyone was kind of short euro caught in this position you've had this big bump like you said you've gone from 104 to 108 in the euro dollar pair

Is that kind of exacerbated by that positioning? And now we kind of almost potentially, you've got to counterbalance this economic stimulus with a bit of inflationary or deflationary forces.

Yeah, 100%. And I think that it's interesting. A lot of these banks had price targets for this currency pair below parity like this year. They've now changed those price targets, given the reasons I've said. But it's not like they're not now saying the euro is going to strengthen against the dollar for the rest of this year. They're basically, look, we're at 108 at the moment. I can't remember which bank it was now, but they basically lifted their

exchange rate target to 102. So they've gone from below parity, right? And now they're saying, look, it's not going to go below parity, but it's not going to go up either. So the point being that this spike might be short term. And as you're saying, quite rightly, there's deflationary pressures that might come through to counterbalance that. And you might get the euro coming down again. It's not like we're going to rally above

to 120 or something crazy like that, right? And don't forget the dollar. Like whenever you're trading currencies, you've got to remember there's another currency here. And don't forget the whole thesis around dollar strength was linked to Trump's tariffs. You know, the theory was that his, well, not only his tariff policy, but also his tax cuts and his deregulation stance, they were all, they're all on paper inflationary.

Right. So we're at peak. I would probably say I'll go out on a limb. We're at peak Trump uncertainty right now. This is that point in time where he's waded into office. He's got his baseball bat out and he's gone out swinging. And I reckon we're now at the kind of peak of that uncertainty now.

Negotiations are happening. Stuff's going to start to get agreed. And that's like on the Ukraine side. That's like on the tariff side. You know, in one month's time, two months time, there's going to be agreements done and signed. Right. And that uncertainty factor will reduce, in my opinion. So you might get back to this idea. Well, OK, well, tariffs are going up.

Trump's trying to get this stimulative tax cut package through Congress. Are we going to see inflationary pressures in the US preventing the Fed from cutting? Worst case scenario, they might even have to hike. So that will support the dollar, right? So I think this is most likely a short-term blip up as all of this Trump uncertainty and European unity happens.

And their fiscal package, you know, kind of hits all the headlines. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think also the other part of this is the, again, we've talked about it before, the optics of three down weeks in the world's most powerful stock market. And as you said, as we go into peak and probably until some of these things do come through, come to fruition, these deals,

then it could remain even softer at this point. And that again forces the hand to kind of rein it back a bit because you don't want it to soften too much. And on that note then, probably further fueling that uncertainty at the moment, a lot of US banks have come out updating their recession models. So what are some of the latest figures on Wall Street? Yeah, I mean, JP Morgan...

They all kind of run these models. Everyone's trying to, obviously, these analysts, the macro analysts, their job is to monitor economic conditions. And they'll have various different ways of reporting on their current thinking. And one is like a model that basically computes the probability of things like a recession.

And so all of these models, the probability of a recession in the US, their models have suddenly jumped, right? And actually, so JP Morgan's back in December, their model was printing there's only a 17% chance of a recession in 2025. Remember, a recession, that's two quarters in a row of negative GDP growth, right? Right.

Now, all the data we've been receiving, right, so sorry, their model has gone from 17% chance and it's jumped to a 31% chance now. By the way, that's a sharp increase, but they're still saying the most likely scenario is no recession, right?

There's a 69% chance of no recession, but it's the direction of travel of this model's probability that's fueling some of this negative sentiment out there in markets. And so, yeah, look, I'm looking at the NASDAQ chart here. It set an all-time high on the 19th of February.

okay but in that last three weeks it sold off nine percent so actually we're back to levels we haven't really seen since kind of october november last year and actually it's the same we had a little spike last summer so actually you could say that the nasdaq is trading the same price today as it was at the end of june last year right so really this market hasn't gone anywhere for like eight

eight nine months right that is that was a really good look though for the administration right going into the back end of last year it was like i'm in full control congress guns blazing it's all happening and at the time it was like super robust economy and here we are three months it'll be interesting i think so far trump's been look there was going to be a bit of short-term pain because of my actions

Now, what's his pain threshold from the point of view of stocks selling off? The Nasdaq's just hovering above 20,000. Very important kind of psychological level.

If it were to break that, I mean, it could even break that today if the payrolls number is like really weak or something, but, or maybe it breaks it next week. You could get another kind of leg lower on this trend. We could be talking four weeks down in a row, five weeks down in a row. Then, you know, that might even force Trump's hand to kind of rein his neck in a bit.

and be a bit more considerate to some of these aggressive tactics he's got. But we'll see. But one thing, sticking on the political theme, Deutsche Bank came out to question, well, the headline was basically, is this the end of the US dollar's status as being the reserve currency? Is it the end of it being that kind of global safe haven currency? Now, obviously,

I would say, reading between the lines, that's a bit of a political jab, retaliation. Do you think on the analyst desk at Deutsche, there's like a red phone with a glass case on it with a direct line from the treasury or the government?

The Chancellor's there. You go, oh no, it's gone off. Pick it up. Hello? Yeah. Write this word for word. Yeah. This is going to be in your next report. Obviously, J.D. Vance was in Germany.

Well, that was a couple of weeks ago now, but delivered a speech that ruffled feathers to say the very least. And actually, the Germans came out swinging and blaming. And so it's quite fractious, that relationship. So I think this headline is a function of that. But it's worth kind of stepping back and exploring this a bit more broadly. Yes, the dollar's weakened and we have a function of the euro going higher.

The dollar is the undisputed global reserve currency. That status is not going to change for years. Now, there is a trend, though, which is that its position as the global reserve currency is weakening. It's still dominant. And these things, it takes literally decades.

for a global reserve currency to go from its peak strength to it being officially no longer the reserve currency. We've seen it in super cycles going back over the centuries. It can take sometimes like 50 years, I think is actually...

the kind of average time period for this to happen right but the transition is in play and has been really since i would say there's one good stat since the year 2000 right so if you look at um if you look at global reserves and trade what's the percentage of global reserves and the percentage of global trade that's in u.s dollars right it actually peaked in 20 in the year 2000 at 70 percent

So percentage of global reserve, and a lot of these reserves are at central banks. So governments' reserves at central banks. So it's at 70%. Today, it's 58%. So that's your direction of travel. That will continue to trend lower, okay? But it is still 58%, right?

what's happening? A lot of these, you know, why is that trending lower? So a few reasons, right? You know, the US also peaked as its percentage of the, you know, its economy and the percentage of the global economy that it makes up has been reducing as you've had the emergence of China and the BRICS. So again, it was basically the year 2000 that the US peaked in terms of its percentage of global economy, right? So

What's happening is you're seeing, I'd say two core things. So mentioning China, so there's a category of countries we call the BRICS, which were those really

emerging economies in the noughties, so China, Russia, India, South Africa. And these economies have been growing and growing and growing. And historically, they've been trading with each other. But as they're growing, the volume of trade between these countries is increasing and increasing. Historically, all of this trade has been dollar-denominated.

So when, whatever, Brazil sells pigs to China, well, right, it's in dollars, right, that deal. But the BRICS have been having meetings and getting together and bilateral trade agreements are getting done. And actually, they're now exploring a new currency.

for them to use for their trade within their countries, right? So that's threatening, obviously, the status of the dollar. The second thing is, actually, it goes back to the Russia-Ukraine thing again, to be honest. When the Russia-Ukraine war kicked off, the first approach was sanctions, right? In terms of the US's stance on it. And they kind of weaponized the dollar

And they basically made, like, you know, blocking Russian banks from using SWIFT, which is like the global payment system, for example, right? And so all of a sudden, Russia and other countries, let's say China, for example, were looking at that and going, wow, okay, that's a pretty powerful weapon that the US have. So actually, we should maybe change our strategy here and wean ourselves off dollar dependence to weaken...

that as a weapon that the US have in their arsenal, right? So all these countries, their global reserves that they've been holding in dollars, they've been starting to draw that down. So they're selling dollars and they're buying stuff like gold.

One of the reasons gold is rallying and gold's at an all-time high, one of the reasons, there's a few, one of them is because of that. It's almost like the composition of your portfolio as a government in terms of what you're holding as your reserves. They've been pivoting out of the dollar. So that's another reason why I'd say the speed at which the dollar is losing its reserve currency status has accelerated.

And look, all the stuff that's happened since Trump's come in is only kind of just accelerating that a bit further. Then you've got the US debt situation, which some would say is not sustainable. They've got $34 trillion of debt. And so that causes some kind of issues as well. Then finally, look, we're in a new age, Bitcoin, blockchain, you've got other

currencies coming in, digital currencies, to kind of shake up the whole currency world anyway. So again, that's another thing that's kind of drawing...

volumes, if you like, away from that kind of pure US dollar play. So it's all wrapped up, right? But Germany put a little stab in this week from Deutsche Bank's headline. But really, it's just a story that's been ongoing for 25 years already and will continue to carry on for the next 25 years. Yeah, it's so interesting, as you described, the kind of history lesson and the stepping out of the noise, taking a bigger picture view and looking at how history and the concept of change economically

then starts to lead to political disruptions and the intersection of geopolitics and economics. It's exactly as you described. You can go back in time. This isn't the first time this type of situation has happened. Us humans are very bad at continuing to put ourselves through the wringer and repeat the same mistakes again. But my final thing was I did read the Deutsche Report. And in the context of what you described, one thing I thought was quite interesting that they said was this.

They said that two pillars of America's role in the world are being fundamentally challenged. Number one, the US's security backstop for Europe. And number two, the respect of rules-based free trade as part of their rationale of the concept of why they were talking about what they were. Yep.

And that's good old Donald for you. I mean, he's ripped up the rule book. But as I said, I think we're basically at peak Trump kind of chaos. I would say it's probably around about now. And Europe feel threatened, right?

That's the thing. Trump does hold a lot of ace cards. They are the biggest economy. Everyone is very dependent on trading with the US. And so-

Trump sat in the Oval Office thinking he's got a pretty good hand to play here, right? And so everyone's threatened by that. And so it causes this chaos and noise and that definite uncertainty always, you know, if we just get it back to markets here, this isn't a politics podcast. Can I just add one more bit though? I was just thinking, and I know I always sound massively pro-China when I come out with this view, but China must be loving this when they think about the long-term impact

Because all that's going to happen here is actually that the US can behave like the US does a lot because of global trade, because of that backstop of military might. But if Europe starts then ramping up military capability as well...

And it's almost like now there's lesser dependence on the US for any security on major trade routes. That softens the trade strength of the dominance that Americas have. That accelerates the further long-term decline of the American strength.

But again, the Western setup, as we've talked about before, isn't designed to think long term. But China must be thinking, OK, yes, we'll play it out. There are tipping points, right? These are multi-decade transitions, but there are tipping points and short-term things that happen to accelerate it. But look, you've got to think from the US's point of view as well, though. They've got $34 trillion of debt. They can't afford to...

or in Trump's view and the country's backed it they can't afford to backstop Europe's you know military defense anymore so it's kind of it's happening and yeah there's then you know there's second dimension third dimension ramifications to all of that and um

for now yeah europe's defense budget i mean they've turned on the tap right and you're getting great moves in markets you know this is so interesting from a kind of markets behavioral point of view so to convert this then back to as you said back to you know trying to get it back to the show on hand i apologize to all the listeners um so i'm assuming then that sell-side banks

will be loving some of the activity, which any activity is good activity, right? In terms of how they earn income. That's right. For sell-side banks, equity, fixed income, commodity, FX, trading desks, volumes are up. And this is great for their revenue streams on the market side. So this is great for sell-side banks. It's great for hedge funds.

right, who are a bit more nimble, especially like macro hedge funds. This is great, right? Where you're getting macro driven, you know, really rapid accelerated big moves. This is great stuff, right? It's not good for your more steady eddy, you know, long only, you know, more kind of long-term asset manager.

where you're kind of in your equity, you know, you're in your US or let's say your global equity portfolio where you're overweight the US, or maybe even if you've trimmed that and you're now underweight, look, stocks are selling off. They're long only. They have to be invested in this stuff, you know? So BlackRock's assets under management will be going down, right? And that's not a good look for them. So look, there's winners and losers in all of this chaos.

But I'd say, look, today, non-farm payrolls, 1.30pm, we're recording this on a Friday, of course, you want to look out for the 20,000 handle in the NASDAQ. Because if that gets broken and breached, then I think we're going to have a bad end to a bad week.

And that could accelerate lower. Now, it might not break that handle. The numbers might be surprisingly good later, in which case, fine. We might just kind of have a little bump into the end of the week. But this is definitely third week down in a row, no matter what happens today. You can't rebound all of these losses in one day. So, yeah, where this negative sentiment, you know, reversal of US exceptionalism trade is very much still ongoing.

We started the show full of positivity, sun was shining, big shout outs, much love, and we've ended a bit away from that. But look, as always, fascinating to chat with you, Piers. Any questions or comments at all, feel free to drop us a comment. I know you can do that on Spotify. And remember to like, subscribe, wherever you're consuming this show, and appreciate it if you could share it, if you enjoy it with a friend or a peer or colleague.

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