Last week, everyone's favorite "world-renowned commodities guru" Gartman dipped his toe in a new trade, a EUR short, to wit:
Yesterday, December 17th, we sold another unit at 1.0865 giving us an average of 1.0970 and now we shall sit tight with the EUR trading 1.0930 A move “for an hour or so” above our average price shall be our stop.
Moments ago it broke out to 1.095 so we wait to see if Gartman's latest FX reco is again stopped out in under a week.
So that was then, but what about now? Well, in his latest daily letter, Gartman is now suggesting that the downtrend in stocks will continue...
Given that the markets yesterday traced out what the technicians often refer to as an “inside” day where the lows and the highs of the day are bounded within the range of the previous day and given that such “inside” days are almost always continuation patterns, we fear that prices are soon to head lower… and perhaps materially so. Thus, it is not only wise, it is reasonable, that we shall increase the size of our derivatives positions to make quite certain that our net long position is covered completely and that we are indeed as “net neutral” as we can possibly be.
... even though in the very same letter Gartman thinks that the primary catalyst for any correlated market move, namely crude oil, is poised to rise
... we do find ourselves quietly… very, very quietly… turning away from being manifestly and overtly bearish of crude to being bullish as the term structures continue to shift; that is, as the contangos continue to narrow. Note that the averaged front month contango for Brent and WTI has now narrowed to $7.86/barrel from $8.10 yesterday… from $7.97 a week ago. As noted here yesterday, the contangos have narrowed even as the spot price has weakened and this we find to be an anomaly, the sort of which happens at turning points. Attention then must be paid.
How is one to make sense of this contradiction? We don't know, although we are concerned about gold: last night on Fast Money, the guru who invests with his retirement account said he is long gold, and "will get longer at $1085." Hardly the news gold bulls wanted to hear.
