Trading range for rest of year? Rick Bensignor joins Alpha Trader
This week's Alpha Trader podcast features hosts Aaron Task and Stephen Alpher talking with Rick Bensignor, president of In The Know Trader, and a former chief market strategist at Morgan Stanley. Bensignor's thesis for now is that the market has seen both its high and low for the year. He's inclined to be a seller of S&P 500 (SPY) rallies above 3,000, and a buyer below about 2,650. For bulls, the potential for more bad news, i.e. a possible 2nd wave of infections as the economy reopens, likely caps upside. For bears, the bad news (and the market's reaction) won't ever be as bad as it was in late February to mid-March, likely putting a floor on the downside. Bensignor cut his teeth as a pit trader, and he's got plenty to say on the subject as it pertains to crude oil. First, novices need to avoid trading the U.S. Oil Fund (USO), which is no longer a very good proxy for front-month oil. Second, he sees oil's current rally topping out in the mid-$30s, which would somewhat fill the gap set in early March when the Saudis over a weekend launched a price war and sent crude plunging on the Sunday evening open. Moving to gold (XAUUSD:CUR), Bensignor is a long-term bull, but currently kicking himself a little bit after cashing in on the current rally about $40 per ounce ago. He's looking for a spot to get back in, believing the global central bank rush to paper over the current crisis means new highs are in store for the metal. The next level of resistance: Roughly $1,780-$1,805. As opposed to the oil ETF, he's got no issue with the popular SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) or the iShares Gold Trust (IAU) as acceptable vehicles. And don't forget the folks who actually mine the yellow metal - the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) two weeks ago broke through long-term resistance. There's plenty more, including Task and Alpher discussing some of last week's big stories, the dour outlooks by the Jay Powell, Stan Druckenmiller, and David Tepper among them.