Dennis Gartman is one of the most respected figures in the financial world. As the editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter, he has provided insights and analysis on the markets for over three decades. In recent years, Mr. Gartman has become known for his appearances on CNBC, where he offers his thoughts on the market and the economy.
He is also a regular guest on Bloomberg TV. Mr. Gartman’s views on the markets are highly respected by both professionals and individual investors. His insights and analysis offer a valuable perspective on the market and the economy.
As we round the corner of another crazy year in the markets, Dennis Gartman popped his head up recently and called for a bear market and it shot up several points.
Oddly enough it was the end of 2019 marked a historic end to a tumultuous time. The Gartman Letter may be over, but Dennis Gartman, editor, and publisher, called the top of the stock market when his last letter told readers to sell.
Unfortunately, 2019 marks the end of the daily publication of The Gartman Letter, a newsletter that has been going on daily for 30 years. Gartman has had many fans and about an equal amount of haters.
Personally, I have thought he was wrong more than right, but that happens a lot when you try to call global capital markets. One of his biggest failures was on bitcoin when bitcoin was less than $5k, but so did most of the investing world.
The last Gartman Letter was published on the last day of 2019 by the almost 70-year-old “world-renowned commodity guru” Dennis Gartman. As mentioned above his calling of commodity markets has been a bit mixed. He was frequently quoted on Bloomberg, CNBC Marketwatch, and other popular shows for his equity research and commodity analysis.
After completing graduate work at North Carolina State University Gartman was an economist and financial analyst in Charlotte and Chicago. Before he joined Cotton Inc. in the 1970s, Mr. Gartman was an economist. This included NCNB National Bank Charlotte, N.C., and A.G. Becker & Co.
Dennis started producing The Gartman Letter in 1987. It is a daily commentary about the global capital markets. He is a frequent guest on CNBC, BCC-TV, and other television stations, lecturing on capital market creation.
The market analyst has decided to shift from waking up at 1 AM and talking about the changes (or lack thereof) in the market, and instead has decided to pivot “to a totally different and much less rigorous life… perhaps producing a biweekly commentary and a podcast or two each week as we deem it necessary.”
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A Final Piece of Advice From Dennis Gartman, Editor and Publisher of the Letter
Before Dennis left, he had one piece of advice to leave, though it looks more like a warning than anything else.
Dennis Gartman says that many asset classes these days have disappointing long-term expected returns and that stocks “[are] either overvalued or extremely overvalued right now.”
Where does Gartman get this pessimism from?
If you were to ask Mark Hulburt from Barron (who recently interviewed Gartman), this warning comes from a more base belief: a lack of experience and a lack of fear among those participating. Some might argue the movements by the central banks.
Warning that such optimism is dangerous and that severe market drawdowns haven’t happened in generations, Gartman claims the coming bear market will “do real and perhaps severe damage to portfolios everywhere.”
A Quote From Mr. Gartman In The Final Gartman Letter
… we are quite certain that when this bull run ends it shall end very badly for such markets always do end badly. The buyers have enjoyed having the investment winds at their backs. But those winds will eventually shift course and when they do shift, they shall swamp everyone… the reckless neophytes as well as the conservative, sophisticated investors alike. When the next bear market comes… and IT WILL COME!… those who out-perform will be those who lose the least for when the market does fall 25-30% in some twelve-month period the manager who is down “only” 9% will be the hero of the age.
Thus these all-too-easily-made profits enjoyed so readily by the neophytes will evaporate with these inevitably changing investment winds just as the profits of 1999-2000 evaporated into the thinnest of air in 2001—2002 and just as the profits of 2005-2007 evaporated in the collapse of ’08-’09.
Gartman claims the current situation a “kids market,” a term originally coined in the 1960s in George Goodman’s book “The Money Game.”
The phrase describes a market in which the majority are too young to have invested in the last bear market.
Dennis Gartman describes these “kids” as “young, brash, utterly naive, ill-educated, egregiously overconfident, neophyte-yet-fearless ‘investors.’ And with the so-called kids gaining more and more presence, “market veterans” like Gartman are left on standby, “fearful yet envious” of the kids’ profits.
Global Capital Markets, Financial markets and Commodity Markets
Each day, the Gartman Letter delivered a commentary on global capital markets to subscribers at 5:30 a.m. EST. His subscribers included top banks, brokerage firms, and hedge funds as well as mutual funds and energy trading firms. He also included some technical trends and was part of the investment committee of The University of Akron Foundation
From 1987 to 2019, Dennis Gartman published The Gartman Letter. He has presented and taught many courses and presentations on topics relating to derivatives and capital markets for different brokerage firms, central bankers, and U.S. government agencies over the years. Recent years have seen Mr. Gartman frequent guests on major financial radio and television networks.
Similar To The 2018 Crypto Crash
This isn’t Gartman’s first “kids markets”, he’s been in the business for a long time.
He points out that he’s been through multiple and that they all have ended badly; so this one is likely to do the same.
When that happens, the “easily-made profits [of today’s] kids” will evaporate,” similar to the early 2018 crypto crashing, turning bitcoin billionaires into bitcoin busts.
Dennis Gartman likens the current situation to Dante’s Inferno, where a younger investor requires the guidance of a mentor figure to avoid the 9 circles of a bad investment. “No amount of education can substitute for that experience,” Mr. Gartman says, and that’s why he doesn’t trust “a 26-year old who has just gotten his M.B.A. and has no experience.”
His advice: “Don’t follow anyone who hasn’t been around for at least an entire cycle.”
Of course, this analysis is all still speculation from Gartman. Currently, with the Fed artificially adding to the market, those untrained 26-year olds with a brand new M.B.A. are going to continue flourishing.
Of course, Dennis Gartman didn’t get this far by being impatient, and he realizes that the stock market will continue to rise at the current rate, at least for a time, before going from a bull to a bear market.
Even if it does keep rising, Dennis Gartman still believes that any potential upsides are overshadowed by the potential downsides for agricultural commodities, which Gartman prefers over other asset classes, as he claims they are “unbelievably inexpensive right now.”
The only thing left to do is go through this new year of 2020 and see what happens. If you would like to partake of Gartman’s wisdom, we’ve decided to republish his letter below.
Hopefully, some of his experience will reach you and help o make more informed decisions.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED: This being the final edition of The Gartman Letter as we drift off to a far less onerous schedule producing a bi-weekly written commentary and doing pod-casts on an as yet undecided upon schedule, we need to leave our friends/clients/readers around the world some thoughts on what we have learned about the markets and so we are today doing exactly that.
Firstly and perhaps most importantly we’ve learned that the single most import Rule of Trading is to never, ever, ever add to a losing trade. As our old friend, Paul Tudor Jones, says “Averaging losers is for losers.” If one buys a stock at $50/share and it goes to $45, why are you buying more when the market is telling you that your decision was the wrong on?
You may simply be early but early in our business is the same as being wrong; or you may have the trade/investment thesis entirely wrong and the stock is headed toward much lower prices or even perhaps to bankruptcy. Enron was a highly touted stock at nearly $91/share; it was bankrupt two years later! Better it is to wait until the stock in question is profitable for then the market is telling you that you are right; that your thesis is the correct one; that the investment wind is at your back and that the investment coast is clear.
We have learned this the hardest of ways, by having broken the rule; having averaged down and having almost always suffered even greater losses than we had originally suffered.
Indeed, the market’s gods are wily enough to entice you into averaging down once or twice and for that to have proven profitable, only to trap you into the third time when the market moves materially and seemingly relentlessly against you in a career ending collapse.
Secondly, we have indeed learned that as Lord J.M. Keynes and Dr. A. Gary Shilling told us, the markets can remain illogical far longer than we can remain solvent. Our investment corollary to that is that the market will return to rationality the moment you have been rendered insolvent and then shall turn on the proverbial dime and move in the other direction. It happens all the time. It will happen again; count on it!
Thirdly we have also learned that as Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change.” That is, when the market and/or the fundamentals as we had understood them turn against us it is best to admit that the facts of the investment in question have changed and that holding on is an illogical and almost always a very costly decision.
We have learned that markets move in very large cycles and that what is very popular now will inevitably become unpopular and that what is manifestly unpopular now shall become popular again.
As Ecclesiastes tells us, “To everything there is a season” or as Caesar’s servant reminded him “Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?”… Where are they now? We have learned too that trying to anticipate the turn from popular to un-popular and from un-popular back to popular is a mug’s game for as noted above, illogic can obtain for a very, very long while.
We have learned to listen to those who have in the past been the wisest for wisdom is a God-given talent and rarely is lost. The Wise of years past will likely remain the Wise of coming years. The Keyneses, Shillings, Wesburys, Kasses, Perrys, Tudor Joneses, Grants, Williamses, Coxes, and Buffetts et al were wise in the past and will be wise in the years ahead because they have all been battle tested and have survived.
We have learned that bad things happen far more quickly than do good things and that bear markets are far more severe and swift and terrifying than are bull markets. As the late economist, Rudiger Dornbusch, once so wisely said, “In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” This is especially true in the transmission from bullish to bear markets and from economic expansion to recession.
We have learned that economic news doesn’t matter until it matters and then it matters… a lot.
We have learned again and again and yet again that markets that won’t go up on bullish news are not bullish markets or have finished their previous bullish run; conversely, markets that won’t go down on bearish news are not bearish or have finished their bearish run.
We have learned that friends mean a lot in the business of trading/investing… perhaps more than anything else and we acknowledge all of the men and women who’ve been friends over the years too many to mention but who shall not be forgotten [Ed. Note: Steve, you’re #1.].
Finally we have learned that we’ve been involved… and will remain involved… in the greatest of all businesses that allows us to match wits with geniuses on a daily basis. There is nothing quite like it, really. We count ourselves blessed and very, very lucky to have staked out a position in the capital markets and that we’ve perhaps even added a bit to the accumulated wisdom incumbent therein. And above all, we’ve been lucky to report to the greatest of all CEOs… our lovely bride of 30+ years, Margaret, who kept us focused when times were rough and even when times were great. We’ve been fortunate. Thanks to everyone! We mean that sincerely. THANKS TO EVERYONE!
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