As we noted in the overnight wrap, after sliding by 1%, and hitting an overnight low of 1,850, just as Europe opened US equity futures staged a furious rebound jumping nearly 30 point in under three hours for reasons largely unknown: surely it wasn't hope that the Saudis would do any aggressive oil production cutting especially when considering what the CEO of Aramco Amin Nasser said moments ago, namely that the global economy is not encouraging for demand growth, adding that "The current price is definitely a supply-demand issue" hoping that "With low oil prices, demand hopefully will also increase" and estimating that the market is oversupplied by 3 million barrels/day, or about 200% higher than consensus.
And yet, the E-mini did this:
Perhaps the reason for this is none other than Dennis Gartman, who after infamously stating that oil will not see $44 again in his lifetime, (after being "quietly bullish of oil" just one month ago), sent this out just as futures were at their overnight lows:
This bear run is not over. There is more to be gotten on the downside. If we must put forth a target to the market’ downside we can suggest accepting Goldman Sachs' latest estimate for earnings by the S&P listed companies of $110-$115 this year. If we apply a still higher-thanaverage P/e of 15 compared to the present level, that give us a target to the downside of 1690; a 16 P/e gives us a target of 1800 and in the broad scheme of things those are not illogical targets to the downside.
We shall strongly urge those who are still aggressively long of equities to become less so; we shall urge those who are upon the sidelines and are “punters” rather than long term investors to err obviously on the short side and we shall urge long term investors who’ve been fortunate enough to have gone to the sidelines to do what they can and what they must to convince themselves that things are not yet “cheap” enough to warrant even nibbling at equities. Patience and discretion shall be… as they always are… the far better parts of investment valor.
End result: anyone who "punted" on the short-side was immediately stopped out. But then again, the day is young, and Gartman may actually be proven correct by closing time...