The greenlight to buy is over. On Monday, before the the S&P unleashed its latest rip higher on "hope for a dovish rate hike"we cautioned bears that "bulls may have one final trump card up their sleeve" - Dennis Gartman. This is what he said on Monday [7]:
On Friday we said that we were considering adding short hedges to our retirement funds in order to protect against the downside, but we failed to act; that is we did not make that an “official” recommendation and indeed we did not take any such action on our own. Clearly we should have. Clearly things were coming apart at the edges of the markets and clearly, in retrospect, we should have taken action. We’ll do so today on any minor intra-day strength that might evolve and as we write stock index futures are trading 12-13 “Big Figures” higher and that might serve as enough intra-day strength into which to sell.
Then yesterday, after the initial rip, we again said "Bears Beware: Dennis Gartman Is Having None Of This Rally [8]", to wit:
That said, we are very gravely concerned about the validity of a bull market and the harsh reality of a bear market in global terms, for one after another after another of the various markets around the world is breaking upward sloping trend lines; has topped out well below previous highs and is making new and lower lows. This we find disconcerting and this we find worthy of note. It is time once again to seek the safety of the sidelines. This is not the time to be aggressively bullish of equities but rather this is the time for… as we say here in the South… “hunkering down,” for getting smaller, for curtailing exposure.
So, another 20+ point in the S&P higher since his latest analysis, here is Gartman's latest take on the markets:
... given the material and very clear breaking of trend lines that extend back several months in a number of broad, international stock indices we moved to generally “neutralize” our positions by taking on derivative positions to hedge ourselves. We did so mid-morning yesterday and now are comfortable sitting through the Fed’s decision… or “non”-decision as the case may be… later this afternoon.
To summarize: he was shorting on Monday, hunkering down on Tuesday, and "neutralizing" and "hedging ourselves" this Wednesday morning.
