Unlike a certain JPMorgan quant, Dennis Gartman has been on a roll lately. As the world-renowned commodity guru said about a month ago, when most of his erudite Wall Street peers were banging the table on “BTFD”, Gartman not only moved to the sidelines but said to expect much more downside from “what is clearly a bear market.” And he was right.
Then, three weeks ago, Gartman while still “aggressively net short”, said he was expected a near-term bounce in an overall bear market. And, with the S&P surging almost 9% since the weekend in which Steven Mnuchin said he had called the plunge protection team to stabilize the market, Gartman e was right again.
So in this world in which Gartman has suddenly mutated from the most reliable contrarian indicator to a beacon of accuracy, we have some notable news: the commodity guru has once again flipped by 180 degrees, and as of today Gartman is no longer “aggressively short” but in very much the same old bull that we grew to love and fade for so many years.
To wit:
Stock markets everywhere are materially stronger following the “about face” that Mr. Powell made on Friday which we think has changed the game of investment sharply… violently… dramatically… in the opposite direction from where it had been. We are now of the mind… after having been manifestly and loudly bearish of the global stock markets and most particularly of the US stock market because the Fed had been removing the fuel from the markets and from the economy via its continued and material running off of its balance sheet… that stocks are headed a good deal higher; that the dollar is headed a good deal lower; that commodities… and especially gold… are headed demonstrably higher and that the great game has changed. We do not make this statement often, but Friday was a WATERSHED shift on the part of the Fed and a WATERSHED shift on our part.
And the requisite invocation of Keynes:
As Lord Keynes once said, when he had been overtly and rather publicly bearish of a certain company’s share price and had suddenly turned bullish of it and was asked why he had changed his mind. “Well sir, the facts have changed and when the facts change, I change. What then do you do Sir?” The facts regarding monetary policy here in the States, as we understand them, have changed. Wiser words for investors and traders have rarely been spoken as were those of Lord Keynes. To this end, Mr. Powell said that the Fed’s continued running down of its assets shall have to be reconsidered. That, we suggest, is about as far as a central banker can and should go in announcing that his previous policies were wrong. This is the central banker’s equivalent of the full volte face, and is one we take very, very seriously.
Could he be right? Well, the last time Gartman made a “watershed” call was in March of 2018, when he declared that “equity market have hit a multi-year top”, only for stocks to surge much higher, and for Gartman to flip bullish just a few weeks later.
And just because Gartman felt his call would stand up to scrutiny, he added the following:
We are certain we shall be taken to task by the bloggers and others… Zero Hedge being first and foremost… for changing our view as swiftly and as materially as we have and we are prepared for that. But we were consistent with our bearish view of stocks and our bullish view of the dollar as the Fed ran off its assets taking reserves en masse from the system. If that is going to stop… if that has changed, and we believe that it has… then we’ve no choice but to change with it. And so we shall and so we are. We trust we are clear?
You are Dennis, you are indeed, and a lot of bearish algos out there are very grateful.
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