The Dow industrials had a trading range of 90.78 points from the low to high on Monday. That’s the narrowest range since Christmas Eve 2015, when the index had a high/low range of 62.39 points. For the S&P 500, Monday marked the sixth day of a trading range of less than 20 points. That’s the longest streak of its kind since a six-day run on Aug. 5, 2015.
Some are no doubt just fine with that home-on-the-range trading and with a lesser serving of excitement than was doled out at the start of the year.Others are unsettled, with the sense that something big is brewing. Seabreeze Partners Management’s Doug Kass says being long Wall Street could be the worst strategy of all right now.
“I have a high degree of conviction that staying out of the U.S. stock market could be an appropriate move for the balance of 2016,” There’s no alarm in our call of the day, though. Deutsche Bank strategist David Bianco says go with the flow here, and don’t try to fight the market or chase any gains. He suggests what to do in a slow-go market.That’s not to say there isn’t some excitement bubbling somewhere. Our chart of the day zeros on the pile-in seen for commodities, and how a reversal of that could turn this year’s oil rally on its head.
Deutsche Bank strategist David Bianco says investors should expect the S&P 500 to stick to a range of 1,925 to 2,100 until after this year’s U.S. presidential election.“We do not expect the S&P to fall back into correction territory, as a double-dip correction already happened and it would likely take clear signs of an impending U.S. recession or a new global shock to cause renewed investor panic,” says Bianco, the bank’s chief U.S. equity strategist. While the S&P 500 usually fares pretty well during April to May, the upside is capped ahead of the release of first-quarter earnings, which are expected to turn out a bit worse than a year ago, he says. Other obstacles to big gains? Hawkish Fed chatter as markets stay elevated, Brexit, and the usual “summer softness,” which could be vulnerable to the U.S. presidential campaign and geopolitical risks. And don’t expect a big dollar drop or rebound in commodity prices. Bianco says stay focused on industries. He’s overweight health care (he sees a rally during earnings season, led by pharma and big-cap biotech) and tech (specifically big-cap consumer and software). Banks won’t have great results, but he still finds them attractive. He has cut utilities and consumer discretionary to equalweight, and expects poor results from commodity-linked stocks.
Big bets that oil prices won’t fall apart could be crude’s undoing, says Barclays in a new note. Over the last five weeks, wagers that oil will rise have climbed to the highest levels. “The risk for commodities is that investors seek to liquidate long positions quickly and in unison, with potentially highly negative consequences for prices,” the Barclays commodities research team, led by Kevin Norrish, says in a note. The kind of investing going on right now is “short term and opportunistic,” he adds. Given an upbeat first-quarter performance, investors may want to get out and lock in profits.
The below chart shows what they think could happen, judging by an analysis of investor positioning and recent price movements — 20% to 25% downside.
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