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Market On Open, Monday 20 April

by Alex King, CEO, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc.

The powerful bull move last week has been a little bit tested over the weekend. The only thing holding back animal spirits, it seems, is the absence of a settlement in the Gulf. We have a fragile ceasefire (are they ever otherwise?) and a standoff in the shipping lanes. The US Navy disabled and boarded an Iranian-flagged cargo ship but appears to have done so by telegraphing a warning in advance and then boarding without the kind of drama hated by markets. But it did fire shots successfully at the Iranian-flagged vessel. Nasdaq futures are down 0.6% on Friday’s close as I write. That suggests the market is shrugging off this incident as a skirmish during a ceasefire and not a stepping stone to escalation.

Personally I opened some hedges into the close Friday and sold them in early pre-market today for a modest gain. (Specifically - long oil, short semiconductor, short Nasdaq via ETFs - all disclosed in real time for our Inner Circle members as always). We’ll see if they need to be re-applied later today but for now all looks calm.

Now let’s get into it.

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Alright. Let’s take a look at markets at the open.