On this note, to scott wapner and the half. Thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. Im scott wapner. We begin with stocks moving higher this hour on pace for their best day in more than a month. This as earnings season begins hot and heavy tomorrow. Can the rally continue . Well ask that question today to one of wall streets legendary investors, leeon cooperman. Also with us lets begin with a big day on wall street and welcome in lee from florida. Welcome back. Nice to see you again. Nice to be with you. Thank you for having me. You bet. You were with us some three months ago and you said you werent sure if we were in the seventh or ninth inning of the bull market. Do you have better clarity on that today . No. I would say were not in the early innings. But the conditions that could bring significant market decline are not present. Bear market rs associated with the stock market sensing a recession hitting all the Economic Data looks fine. Chinas getting stronger, u. S. Economic growth is accident. Second cause would be u fork price iing in the market. I think the market is fully valued. I dont think its euphorically priced in any way. We have a fed that is moving very, very slowly. They are afraid to raise rates and the tok market is the conditions for a big decline are not present and so the line of least resistance is probably still up i would say at a very gradual slope. Very grad yaual slope. What gets you more bullish . Is it going to be earnings, which i said at the top, beginning tomorrow, expectations are that youre going to have the strongest quarter since 2011. You say gets to be more bullish, id have to want to bet on euphoria. My theme rightly or wrongly, is were heading back to normalization. Weve been in a very ab normal environment. Op the political side, president obama successfully portrayed romneys wealth as a liability and during this recent election cycle, President Trump got up there and said im richer than you think and the public ate it up. Weve been in an environment with 14 trillion of solvereign debt carried negative Interest Rates, which seems crazy, right . Tenyear government bonds in germany are 25 bases. Negative in switzerland. U. S. Interest rates are 2. 3 in a growing economy nearing full employment. So the world has been turned upside down and my theme is were heading to normalcy. If i have to define what is normal, the labbe r force growing about a half a percent a year. The productivity grows about 1. 5 a year. Labor force and productivity growth define real growth. Nominal gdp growing 4 . In a no, maminal world, the ra belonged to 2 , not 65. The tenyear belongs at 4 , not 2. 3, now may take a couple of years to get there, but thats where were heading. In that environment, a full, but not unreason bable in the s p would be 17 times. Now, we have to discuss the president s tax package. If it get it all through that adds between 10 and 12 to s p earnings. I think if memory serves me right, thats like 2414 and the s p the to 20. 70, so modest upside. I guess id have to bet on higher earnings or higher multiples, which would require more animal spirits. When i look at the fact Profit Margins are at an historic high, where we are in the business cycle, i would want to bet on a high multiple and more earnings, so, id have to pet that maybe what happens if we go higher than im thinking is go back to john temperature l tons great, great phrase about the arc of a market cycle. Bull markets grow in skepticism, mature on optimism and die in euphoria. If we went up, we would be knocking the door of euphoria and id want to get negative, not positive. I want to buy a lower price. Youve given us a lot to work with in that statement you just made. Lets take tenyear first. F are you concerned about what message if any that the drop in tenyear note yield is sending . Is is it telling us something that the stock market is not . I dont know what its telling us, but sure. Im concerned about everything. I dont think rates belong here. I think its largely result of experimental monetary poll where Central Banks around the world are flooding the markets with liquidity. It has a lot to do with the savings rate, the ageing demographics. And so, its not clear as to why the rate is where it is. And sure, it is concerning, whether its telling us something we dont understand. The great Warren Buffett, that was on squawk box said if the rates stayed here for a long time tharks the stock market would be not expensive, i think he implied inexpensive. I agree. The trouble is, in the world we live in you dont make 65 basis points sitting in cash and more than 2 in bonds and make 10 orn the stock market. Theres a linkage. When you make in sfok market, turn to less ris can ki instruments, so i dont think mr. Buffett is buying bonds. Hes saying its going to rise and bonds will have a capital loss associated with it, but i worry ab it. Its interesting. The yield. On the tenyear has come down 30 basis points since right before the fed until now and some worry that if it continues on the trend and gets closer to 2 , it could cause a correction of some sort of magnitude within the s p 500. Do you share that view . Yeah, i would share that view, but i dont know if it was a year and a half ago, tenyear bottom, 140 or 150. So Interest Rates have been b a soft rise. Were in the process of seeing the fed raise rates, normalizing their policies. I thought normal would be 2 fed funds and closer to 4 tenyear government, so im firmly of the belief rightly or wrongly that youre going to have capital losses in bonds over the next couple of years. Its going to unfold slowly. At least the fed is reluctant to move. Theyre reluctant to move in part because of the problems of income despaisparity in the eco. We have to see more of the ek wit bable sharing being created or else going to be a revolution of the country. Thats what the election was about. I went to a seminar focused on Artificial Intelligence and income disparity. One of the speakers, who did a fabulous job of explaining whats going on in the political world it was anger versus fear. And president , candidate trump represented anger and clinton represented fear. And you know, anger triumphed over fear. And so but i think the feds Monetary Policy is designed to get more people to work to reduce the income disparity and reduce social stress. I think theres an element of correctness in that. Since you mentioned the political environment, how would you characterize how the market has reacted to President Trump and his agenda . As i said, you were with us three months ago, so prior to the inauguration until now. How would you characterize the way stocks have gone up . I think the market is acting like its being run by a bunch of capitalists, most thoughtful people are not thrilled about the style of the president. But theyre very thrilled, myself includes, regarding his economic ideas. Hes appointed a lot of sane, intelligent people in his cabinet. In his advisers around him and the idea of repate rating earnings from overseas, lowering the Corporate Tax rate, rebuilding infrastructure, i think resognates well with the public and myself included. And his style is very different. But who am i to tell him what his style should be. He vanquished 16 opponents, a large minority of the population like his style. And very few people thought he was going to be elected president. Why should he list b b b ben to nose . Hes going to stick with his style until something goes wrong. Do you think the market has overpriced his agenda . A lot still that needs to to meet the road before a lot of these things happen. I think that what im trying to say is that the market is not overvalueded. Its reasonably fully valued. If youre dealing with a fully valued market, negative things start to appear. Cracks in the armor. Secretary treasure. Reporter is talking about august, get a tax package through. People i talk to say no way thats going to happen. A failure of the health care package. So i think when people start to see theres more tensions, this whole problem with electing a new Supreme Court justice. Were back to business seems to be as usual. Theyre not guilty getting alon. People want things done. People want leadership and we are being let down by congress. Weve got to Work Together and were not working together. So far. You know, one the answer to your question is room for disappointment. Yes. I got you. One of the areas that people are banking on pardon the pun are the banks. This regulation coming down of course, Interest Rates tie into that whole equation as do earnings. What do you think of the financials which got out of the gate so strongly in the first say 50 days of the president from actual election day and then over the last 50, those gains have all but evaporated. Theyve stalled. Say the financials have stalled. What do you make of that . Were of the view theyre reasonably fully priced, our exposure to financials are in the nonbanks, but the truth of the matter is we missed the banks and i always like to listen more attentively to people who got something right. We missed the rally in the banks. We have thought very well of jpmorgan and citibank, but we werent there for the move, but we have other financials, we have aig. Air cap. We have others, nav irk ient wh are financial ly oriented. The banks are okay. Theyre like the market. Reasonably fully valued. Cant sit here and make a the markets had a a big move and the conditions for big decline arent present. I want to make it clear. I think the mark will end the year higher than it is now, but theres plenty of risk out there. Theres a protectionist risk. A Dollar Exchange risk. Corporate debt levels are high. Were running deficits and have political uncertainty. Are we going to get the tax package through congress on a timely basis. I think theres plenty of uncertainty against a a market discounting not all, but a lot of the good news. I mentioned the folks who are with me today, john is one of the guys on the desk with me. Has a question for you. Hello, thanks for join uing. I agree with with you that a the taxes are likely to be addressed in the late second half of this year. Perhaps that kicks in this year, perhaps it doesnt, but doesnt that sort of mitigate some of your fears about the quick r jump to the upside and the longer it takes out on the timeline to gettous that tax package, the more its likely that we make these little stair steps rather than the big euphoric top you spoke of. I just try to set out what are the things that can change our mind. We saw december 25 s p calls. Were short a bunch of call premium where we think the market will trade at. Theres somebody out there selling the public on the idea that if you invest with us, youll never have a 2008 again and theyve been paying high prices for put protection, so weve taken advantage of that. Lirl this this year, only six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, putting for almost 30. Agreed. Thank you. Its josh brown. Ri really nice to see you. Sxwl thank you. I have this thought that the trump u trade was very short lived. From lasted from the election to the first week of december and all of those trends have since reversed course. None of those have been b working since before christmas. Transports have been all over the map. But have end ed up in the same place. In the meantime, its the stocks that have nothing to do with the president s policies like technology. That have just been absolutely scorching everyone. The nasdaq up an improbable 13 since december 7th, so if were not in a trump trade world and were focused on fundamentals, tech seems to be the only game in twoun. Are we crazy to stay long . Long amazon, fas and lornlger size with how big the pos, google which has not been doing much. I think the market is all about growth. Investors want to go with growth. In a slow dwroeing world, its not easy the find growth. All these mergers are about slow growth. Because companies are trying to find growth through cost cut us, so i think if you could find growth, the market could pay you a decent price. Its about growth. Jim. You said something and i agree, the conditions arent there for a bear market. Were far away from a recession. There doesnt seem to be any overlending in the financial situation, but one of your names piqued my interest, aircra cap. The reason i bring it up is there are a lot of people b who say weve been oversold in the aircraft area. That airbus and boeing are going to face consolations, perhaps from the least, a place of pressure on Aircraft Leasing price is. Is that an area that maybe you see overbuilding going on . I dont know, but i have a terrific team. There are 35 of us at the firm. 12 are analysts that know their companies extremely well. Ive met with gus kelly on a few occasions. The ceo and the guy is solid citizen, a very large owner. Can do a book value of the company, its 50. Stock is mid 40s. We believe they have appreciation in their depreciated lease, so the book value in real terms is well over 50. Buying at 45. Buying back a lot of stock. And we dont see signs of overcapacity. But we could be wrong, but we dont see it. And the company clearly doesnt see it. Its one thing when a company is buying back stock and has no skin in the game with the ex executives. I believe that the gus u owns about 2 200 million worth of stock. Hes got plenty of skin in the game and would be a fool if he was buying back stock that was overvalued. So hes making a judgment and its according to his vumt, so were fine. Want to note that stock is up about 1. 5 . Call your attention to whats happen ng the market. First want to take you to the white house where the president is meeting with King Abdullah of jordan. Lets listen in from the oval. Thank you very much. Hold it, hold it. Hold it. I just wanted to thank our friends, great friends, these are very troubled times in the middle east. And we see what happened just recently yesterday in syria, horrible. Horrible thing. Unspe unspeakable, but u i want to thank you both very much for being at the white house and were going to have some very interesting discussions. Thank you. O. Okay, thank you very much. That of course president of the united states. King abdullah of jordan, the queen and first lady. Theyre going to have a News Conference later this afternoon in which well take you back to washington. Eamon javers list rning to this at the white house today. Thats right. A little bit o f a departure in form with the queep and first lady in the picture. We havent seen that with other spouses in past events with other world leaders, so thats something to note. We are expecting this Conference Today in the rose garden this afternoon and i just came out of the white house where i had a session with a few of the reporters and senior white house official talking about the removal of steve bannon from the National Security council. The white house as you might imagine, is minimizing the significance saying bannon only ever attended one Principles Committee meeting of the National Security council. Senior official saying that the whole reason that ban p was placed on that council in the first place which was controversial at the time, was to serve as a check on mike flynn, the now departedadviser. The reason was because they wanted to ratchet back the role of National Security council, which they felt had gotten to large under president obama. Now, they say they are going to slash it back dra mmatically an bannon was on the council to do that. Now that mcmaster is the new adviser, theyre saying that role is no longer needed. The official pointedly declined to say who it was who removed steve bannon from this office. Whether it was mcmaster or the president himself. The official going out of his way to point out that steve bannon will retain his security clearance here at the white house and his other roles remain unchanged. Eamon javers, big day in what is a big week of foreign policy, meeting with the chinese president tomorrow down in florida at maralago. Scott, heres what we have. Police stun gun u and body camera maker taser is announcing a new initiative to outfit every Police Officer in america with a body camera for free. Its also going to provide service and support free of charge for one year. In conjunction with the announcement, the company is changing its name to axon, the name of the body camera product and effective for trading tomorrow, the ticker changes to aaxn from tasr. Rick smith says the is meant to show the evolution of taser to cloud solutions, connected device, maybe Artificial Intelligence. The stock had been up earlier on 6 of speculation what the announcement, but now is down by 1. 5 . Speaking of rick smith, he will be jim cramers guest tonight, mad money, 6 00 p. M. Eastern time. An interview to see what theyre talking about. Thanks. Look forward to that. Were going to take a quick break, but before that, will you give me a comment of how you ewe this meeting tomorrow between the president of the united states, the president of china in your neck of the woods . How you think the market is going to view those events . My main concern is they have dinner tomorrow night up in palm beach and traffic and how its going to affect me. But i have no view. Make nice. With each other. Sniff around each other and i think its very, very, very important that we avoid a protectionist type of attitude. Im a believer in free trade. I think we benefit from it. And im hopeful that the dialogue is constructive and optimistic and upbeat. Going to take a break. Just sit tight for us. Be back in a couple of minutes. Dows up 160 or there abouts. A lot more ahead on the Halftime Report. Coming up, leons other p picks. See what one of the best stock pickers in the business likes right now. Hell make his case for specific stocks in the industrial, airline, retail and tech sectors. Plus, if you listen to pete on monday, you scored big on Tech Resources, the stock is up 8 since the start of the week. See what petes watching in todays unusual activity coming up on the Halftime Report. Hey gary, whatd you got here . This bad boy is a mobile trading desk so that i can take my Trading Platform wherever i go. You know that thinkorswim seamlessly syncs across all your devices, right . Oh, so my custom studies will go with me . Anywhere you want to go the markets hot sync your platform on any device with thinkorswim. Only at Td Ameritrade the power of 100 of the worlds top companies. The power of a proven 15year track record. The power of an etf. The power of qqq. The thinking we put in, clients get out. Power your clients portfolio at powershares. Com qqq. Before investing, consider the Funds Investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Call 8009830903 for the prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully. Distributed by invesco distributors inc. Back with leon. We havent talked about oil. You dont have the level of exposure to Energy Stocks the way you may have in fast, but with oil now at 51 or just above, whats your view on Energy Stocks in general here . We are very select i haive. Participated b Global Economic growth, 3 variety will be high ner years time. We can see oil getting to the 60s next year and we are disposed to companies that have a president obaositive producti. So hess is a decent sized position for us. Trading at seven times cash flow. Discount value, were positioned in wpx. Their basically, we think, we pegged in the asset value at 60 odd dollar oil and 3 gas, close to 19. The stock is trading over 13. We like that one. We have a position in neighbors. Were looking for recovery in exploration, so if you aggregate everything, maybe we have about 6 in Energy Related companies and were looking to raise that as we market validates our confidence in higher prices. Interesting. Were watching those stocks as well on the move. In terms of other areas of the market that seem attractive, you mentioned your position in alphabet and some of the other places. I noticed as well, united continental. We talk about the airlines with some level of frequency on this program. What do you make of whats going on in that space and how theyve traded . Well, you know, basically, the Airline Industry has benefitted from the consolidation of the industry. Mergers by their nature are anticompetitive. You can consolidate and give companies more pricing power. Really in the case of united, its a company that could earn about 9 pbt . 50 next year. Buying pack stock. Just got the one of the Great Investors of all time, Warren BuffettsBerkshire Hathaway owns almost 10 of united. The recognition of the consolidation of the industry and better pricing power, so its a value. What youve quot to understand, our basic approach first figure out if the market overvalued, going up or down. And then figure out where the value is within the market. So, if i look at the s p 500, which is an index of 500 companies, its trading around 17 times earnings. Which i think is right. For this Interest Rate environment. Its growing about 5 a a year. It yields about 2 , settles around three times book value and has 35 or 38 debt to total capital, so what were looking for in our game is companies are growing at our greater than the market or having more value haves price. So, its very much of a bottom up stock picking thing now. Youre one of the Largest Companies in the world, facebook, not facebook, google, would not appeal to a value investor, but google is setting at a 16 times what we think they can earn next year, which is lower than a market multiple, its sitting on a fortress Balance Sheet generating Free Cash Flow and we think they have a project bable growth rate around 20 , growing four times the market at a lower multiple han the market with a fortress Balance Sheet, so you know, makes sense to us. Is it crowded . Yes. Is the company pursuing the best financial manager . No. We think they should take a leaf out of apples book, who took a leaf out of carl icahns book. Which turned out to be a good decision for the time being, so we like google. As an example. Discount to market multiu principle growing at a premium to the market with the fortress Balance Sheet. Pete has something. Quick question, so, when youre determining some of these stock positions that you have and the best ideas list, youve got mgm. Why mgm as opposed to a win. For instance, youve got to love the commitment from steve wynn himself in buying as many shares as he has from the basically the mid lower or the mid to upper 50s up into the 90s. Why mgm over wynn right now . You know, ill be monster with you. My Analytical Team proposes, i dispose with the Stock Selection committee. We werent bearish. We cant kiss all the ladies. I dont want to get in trouble for being sexist here, but we cant own everything. Were not the Federal Reserve reserve board. We dont print money. Mgm looks, which has been a good investment for us, has been, we thought on a numbers, some were attractive. And wynn, but wynn is is very fine company. And steve wynn does a great job, just not there. Cant own all the stocks. Nothing wrong with itment. You spoke president obaositi facebook already, but in more detail, lee, why is that your social media pick . What do you like about facebook . Again, fortress Balance Sheet, 17 times earnings. Growing we think 20 in a very dominant position. What they do. Theres nothing no secret sauce. Its a combination of multiple versus return on equity, versus growth rate. And how secure the companys industrial position is. Were looking for value and find it in many places. As much i think the market is fully valued, we have 50 names spanning a lot of different industry groups, so maybe theuation is being pumped up, but there are a lot of individual stocks out there that look to us to represent excellent value. Pa nernera bread, my son god bless him, terrific money u manager, owned 10 of panera bread when it had under 100 million market capitalization. I think the takeover today was for 7 pbt 5 billion. Thats what investing is all b about. Finding a good business, run by honest, hard working management that is properly incentivised and go with the flow. Well take another break. Much more ahead with Lee Cooperman, plus, well trade some of the days big movers inchuding apple and panera. First though, the s p sector check. There you go. Materials leading the way today. Halftime report back in two minutes. With e trade you see things your way. You have access to the right information at the right moment. And when you filter out the noise, its easy to turn your vision into action. Its your trade. E trade. Hey. Pass please. Im here to fix the elevator. Nothings wrong with the elevator. Right. But you want to fix it. Right. So who sent you . New guy. What new guy . Watson. My analysis of sensor and Maintenance Data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days. There you go. You still need a pass. The Syrian Government conducting deadly air raids in syria just a day after a suspect suspected occurred. A massive car blomb blast a a rest yaunt in somalias capital killed at least seven and injured several others. No immediate claim of r responsibility, but al shabaab has carried out attacks like that in the past. Ebay founder will contribute 100 million to support investigative journalism, fight misinformation and counteract hate speech around the world. The head of hids group telling the Washington Post its important to act now. And Shia Labeoufs picture sold one ticket. Came to about 8 70. The film play ed in one locatio and was released digitally on demand. Thats the news update this hour. The Halftime Report back after a quick break. Trading tools, give you access to indepth analysis, and a team of experienced traders ready to help if you need it. Its like having the power of a trading floor, wherever you are. Its your trade. E trade predictable. The comfort in knowing where things are headed. Because as we live longer. And markets continue to rise and fall. Predictable is one thing you need in retirement to help protect what youve earned and ensure it lasts. Introducing brighthouse financial. A new company established by metlife to specialize in annuities life insurance. Talk to your advisor about a brighter financial future. Please repeat the objective. Thrivent mutual funds. Managed by humans, not robots. Before investing, carefully read and consider fund objectives, risks, charges and expenses in the prospectus at thriventfunds. Com. We are back. You know that technology has been doing especially well, guys, today, apple, microsoft among the big name stocks. Hitting all time highs. I was surprised. I know lee has been in apple on many occasions many time, but he is in microsoft as well and this nyom, youve got to love it because of the cloud space. Efb in tech growing now thats old school tech, they have figured out the transition on to the next level. Getting away pr the areas that were waning, dying, whatever, but theyve got an areas thats growing and growing at a rapid pace. So, correct me if im wrong, you own microsoft at the current time, but i dont see apple on your list of holdings. Is that the way it is . We mishandled that. Its worth in the 70s, thats where we think its heading. Very, very positive on their cloud position. And apple, we outtraded ourselves. Its amazing how an a l has brusheded aside those concerns. You dont hear people bringing up innovation, anything of the like. Its all about the ek p peckation for a new phone coming down the pike. Its an iphone company. Youve got the iphone 8 coming up. Thats going to be a big seller. Weve talked with a lot of analysts over the last few weeks about how old peoples iphones are on average. Clearly, this is a major, major upgrade cycle. What i think is happening here is usually, the stock rallies in the summer, before an iphone release. I think this clearly continues another 10 at least. Its still going to be a cheap stock at the that point in time, but this may well be a sell in may and go away story. If suppliers are telling everybody which they have been telegra telegraphing, that their orders are through the roof and just like jim was saying, this is quoing dob a monster release for the iphone 8, so of course, apples got more upside. Does it hit 170 or so before the release of the phone . Sure. No ones down on this name. Number two, its simpler. Every hundred dollars going into the etf six bucks goes into apple stock b and every time somebody pulls the trigger on the qs, nine or ten of those dollars go into apple. When you have flows now reversing, this is the time of name that has that tail enter. Go ahead. Just want to make a point that stocks go up because of buy orders and gown due to sell orders. The feds Monetary Policy is pushing everybody out on the risk curve so the historic buyer who said i dont want to take a risk, im going to buy t bills. He figured he cant survive with something close to zero. Im going to buy te bonds and ache a risk. Says i cant get buy on 230. The it will end at sim, but people are moving on the ritz k curve. I think the fed is forcing that. Theyve got ton mindful they dont push us over into territory where it becomes vulnerable. Were going to talk about the future of your industry. Hedge fund industry, active management, trying to knave gait everything you just talked about among so many other thipgs. Quick break. Dows up 162. S p is up nearly 16, twothirds of one percent. Halftime report is back after this. You totanobodys hurt, new car. But there will still be pain. It comes when your Insurance Company says theyll only pay threequarters of what it takes to replace it. What are you supposed to do . Drive threequarters of a car . Now if you had Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, youd get your whole car back. I guess they dont want you driving around on three wheels. Smart. With Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, well replace the full value of your car. Liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. Welcome to holiday inn whether for big meetings or little getaways, there are always smiles ahead at holiday inn. We are back. Some unusual options activity. What have you go today . Judge, yelp is up about 76 cents so r far today. Thats the highs of the day. Moving higher because of takeover rumors from various chinese concerns. I bet you can guess who. We see big activity in the 37 calls. The calls in may, so b about 10 out of the money. Theyre buying them in big numbers as you can see here this this representation. Stocks moving up on that. Does something happen . Does it go back into the mid to low 40s . It sure could with all the takeover activity theres been out there, so this is one of the names to watch. Im in it. You are in it. What about you, sneet. I got an energy name for you. I know its starting to get more heat behind it, then halliburton. The april 28th expiring, so the last weekend in april, these expire. Extends out an extra week. 22,000 of these were bought today, around a dollar up to a dollar 40. Dont have a lot of time, three weeks. Im in it. Another time you told us about on monday was Tech Resources. Yeah. We were talking about Tech Resources and coal and steel coal and actually, jim has been b talking about that a lot. Tech resources, we had great call buying in here. 160 was what theyre paying. Those are trading for 2. Those are august 26th calls. Youve got plenty of time, but if you want to start trimming, not a bad idea. Up 8 a week to date. Halftime report is coming right back. With leon. Welcome back to the Halftime Report. Im jackie deangelis. Crude oil hitting a onemonth high today briefly breaking above its 50day moving average for the First Time Since early march. Scott, you say that crude is actually in a big channel to the upside here. How much more room do we have to run . Thats right. Big upward channel. The bottom was put in last summer. And now that we see owe peck is actually doing a good job with cutting production, were continuing to continue upwards. I think what we see now is the top of this channel would be up maybe another 10 for crude oil. All right, brian, were looking at prices just over 51 a barrel. Do you agree with scott, another 10 . I dont know about 10 . It seems once we get up to the 53. 50 there will be selling pressure. The Oil Producers really look to hedge themselves and sell off, short the futures, turn around and meet the futures obligations. Even if the rumors of opec extending cuts or what not, once we get the 53 to 55 range, thats a time guys are going out and shorting the you futures. Its going to be tough to crack those levels. Im thinking more like 5 to the upside before we retouch 50 again. Head to the website f futuresnow. Cnbc. You can catch our live show tomorrow. Halftime report is back after the break. This is where i trade andrs. Manage my portfolio. Since i added futures, i have access to the oil markets and gold markets. Okay. Im plugged into equities trade confirmed and i have Global Access 24 7. Meaning i can do what i need to do, then i can focus on what i want to do. Visit learnfuturestoday. Com to see what adding futures can do for you. Over hereno ver here dog barking whoever threw it has to go get it. Not me somebody will get it. dog barking anyone can dream. Making it a reality is the hard part. From the b2 to the upcoming b21, Northrop Grumman stealth bombers give america an advantage in a turbulent world. And were looking for a few dreamers to join us. Remember here at ally, nothing stops us from doing right by our customers. Whos with me . Were like a Basketball Team here at ally. If a Basketball Team had over 7. Im in. 7,000 players. Our plays are a little unorthodox. But to beat the big boys, you need smarter ways to save people money. We know what you want from a Financial Company and well stop at. Nothing to make sure you get it. One, two. And we mean nothing. We are back with the Legendary Hedge Fund manager leon cooperman of omega. Lee, we have debated and discussed the future of your industry several times. When i asked you about the future of active management in the past you told me what was going on was cyclical in your mind, that it would come back maybe when volatility came back. Where do you think we are today . The same place. Money goes where money is treated best. One truism is you cannot charge a premium fee and dmrifr seliver performance. I mentioned this previously but its worth repeating, in 1970, one of the most distinguished writers for fortune wrote an article, the headline was hard times comes to hedge funds. It was january of 1970. The Largest Hedge Fund was 50 million. The second largest was a. W. Jones at 30 odd million and the entire industry was under a billion. The industry now today is approaching 3 trillion. So clearly it was a cyclical call that was right for a couple of years but wrong in a longer term context. And so i think if you look at the golden period for hedge funds was 2000 to 2007. Why . They were outperforming the index, outperforming conventional money managers. Money was coming in. They become Cocktail Party talk. 2008, the industry lived up to its billing but a lot of people invested in hedge funds didnt know what they were doing. The average hedge fund was down 16 to 17 . People said, hell, i didnt realize you could lose money. So they wanted to redeem out, and they redeemed out. We get in this period 2009 to 2017, youre in a trended bull market. Anyone who runs like a true hedge fund cant keep up with the index. So people are becoming disenchanted and pull out. The question you have to ask yourself eight years no a bull market, a market reasonably fully valued, you want to be in a long only strategy. Thats a personal, individual decision. All i know is if the ability to underperform exists, the ability to outperform also exists. And Warren Buffett and stan druckerman didnt get to their net worth by buying an index. Lee, go ahead, quickly. Go ahead. Its a sick cyclical phenome. Probably what we need is we need a bear market or more of a twoway market to bring hedge funds back into popularity. Theres no question its an expensive form of asset management. And fees are coming down. Fees are coming down. Its understandable. Everyone knows how to swing a golf club. Some people do it better than others. If you cant deliver premium performance youll see your asset base shrink. I have less than a minute left but can you give us an update on the insider trader trial looming later in the yaoer . In less than a minute. Every time you ask that question you get my attorneys agitated. You should be glad we have less than a minute left then. No, no. When these charges were brought, i said i had two goals. Provide my investor with the performance they want and deserve and, second, prove did i fin it tifl definitively they are without merit. The s. E. C. In my opinion has overreacted, and were anxious to go to court. Ill just read a statement my attorneys put out. Mr. Cooperman did nothing wrong. Were pleased the court agreed to our request you know what the window closed at 1 00. Technology bites you you know where sometimes. That does it for us. I want to thank Lee Cooperman for joining us today. Over to power lunch right now. Im melissa lee. Three big things were watching this hour. President trump is about to hold a joint News Conference with King Abdullah of jordan. We are live at the white house straight ahead. Were keeping an eye on the market as stocks rally on a blowout adp report. Traders turning their focus, of course, to the fed, minutes from the last months meeting, rate hike meeting, are out in less than one hour. And thats a l