If crude oil is able to stabilize between $40 and $50 per barrel, that would be fantastic for both the economy and the stock market, Gluskin Sheff economist and strategist David Rosenberg said Tuesday on CNBC's "Futures Now."
First, lower crude oil prices reduce a major expense for many households and businesses. Second, stocks as a whole would cease being victimized by the uncertainty caused by free-falling crude.
"It's not just the fact that you're still going to have the lagged impact of having lower fuel costs being a positive for margins of the non-resource producers and for the household sector," Rosenberg said. "But I think for the broad market, if we were to find a bottom and then stabilize within a range … at least it would inject some certainty into the general market place."
Crude oil prices fell again on Tuesday, hitting a new multiyear low, before bouncing back significantly, even breaking positive at one point in the day. This has reinvigorated calls that crude oil has bottomed.
But far from expecting oil to rise back above $100, Rosenberg says oil could well settle in just about here.
"That's happened in the past," he noted. "We had a similar decline in oil in '85 and '86, and then we went through 20 years of a relatively stable range. That would be nirvana, because not only is that a net positive for the consumer and for many businesses," but it would give equity investors one less thing to worry about.
In fact, Rosenberg says he can make one prediction with great confidence.
After the 1985-86 decline, "by 1987, we were not talking about oil," he said. "Remember the Economist magazine with the cover in 1999, '[Drowning] in Oil'? In 2000, we weren't talking about oil. I'm going to give you my forecast right now: In 12 months, we're not going to be talking about oil anymore."
—By CNBC's Alex Rosenberg.
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