Dennis Gartman

[winston]

Dennis Gartman on Fast Money:-

1) People are not bullish but they are not bearish either
2) People are no longer reacting to bad news. They are saying "so what" and "what's next"
3) Markets will rebound but it will not go back to the previous levels for 10 years. The baby boomers are waiting to sell.

[winston]

It does appear, if we are to believe many of the reports [Tuesday] morning, that President Bush is about to release a rather sizeable sum of money remaining the TARP for Detroit. We oppose this openly, and think this shall be one of the worst decisions made by the Bush Administration in a long series of bad decision. We shall be rewarding bad behaviour in the process of giving several tens of billions of tax payer money, and we shall be sending a signal to the market that "good behaviour" will be treated with disdain.

...And how can we even begin to explain how bailing out Chrysler, and thus Cerberus, the private equity fund that now owns Chrysler, with taxpayers' money is right. Taking the taxes from the plumber in Cleveland, or the wheat farmer in Kansas, or the small builder in Sacramento and sending them to Cerberus' management is utterly noxious to us... and yet that is where we are heading? Shame upon the Bush Administration if the decision to give Detroit money is made... today... or tomorrow or next week or ever.

– Dennis Gartman
The Gartman Letter

[winston]

Of real interest [Wednesday] morning is news out of Japan that the Diet plans for legislation that shall end all capital-gains taxes levied on foreign investors beginning April 1st according to the Nikkei. This is apparently an attempt to attract investment to Japan, and if the Nikkei's report is correct, it shall do that... in spades as they say!

According to the Nikkei, foreign investors will have [to] hold their investment for more than a year and there will be some limitations upon the amount of equity foreign investors will be able to hold in some companies, but on balance, the "zero" capital gains will be available to all foreign investors.

Currently, Japan taxes approximately 40% of the profits earned by foreign investors.

– Dennis Gartman
The Gartman Letter

[kennynah]

if this becomes reality....of cos....many will flog to japan...if not for anything else, but launder $$...tax free...

[winston]

Since August, when the real process of deterioration in the [Russian] Ruble began, it has fallen almost 25%. Weakness in commodity prices generally, and weakness in energy prices specifically, weighs heavily upon the Ruble, and so long as commodity prices wane so too shall the Ruble.

Moscow's budget for this year is predicated upon Russia's chief oil export, Ural's crude, trading above $70/barrel. It is instead trading approximately $43.

We do indeed tend to forget that it is not the Saudis who are the world's greatest oil exporter, and it is not Norway, nor Mexico, nor Venezuela, but is indeed Russia.

Falling oil prices are a weight dragging Russia down, and so long as crude prices fall, so too shall the Russian economy, and so too the Russian ruble.

– Dennis Gartman
The Gartman Letter

[winston]

Gartman: Oil Headed Higher, Sooner By: Dan Weil

Economist Dennis Gartman, editor of the Gartman Letter, says oil is headed higher, possibly to $50 or $55 per barrel within the next three months.

It’s now in the mid-$40s.

“A huge sum of oil has been put in storage,” Gartman told Bloomberg TV.

“Over many months, when the contango was extraordinarily wide, you could make almost 30 percent or more.”

Contango refers to the situation when distant-month futures contracts trade at a higher price than front-month contracts. In a wide contango, prices would be much higher in far out months than nearby ones.

You make money off that “by buying front month crude, taking delivery if you had the storage facilities, and then selling deferred futures,” Gartman says.

“If you were borrowing money at 5 percent and lending money via the crude future contango at 35 percent, you would have locked in profit.”

But now, Gartman says, “we are seeing the inordinately wide contango coming in dramatically. When contango narrows, it is really saying to crude itself, we need you. There’s demand; please come out of storage.”

Bottom line: “That’s bullish for crude,” he says. “We can trade to $50 maybe $55 over the next two to three months,” Gartman says.

Other oil experts are bullish too.

Nimit Khamar, an analyst at Sucden Financial, told Agence France Press that “noise of further production cuts from OPEC nations this week, ahead of their meeting at the weekend, might push oil prices toward $50 per barrel.”

Source: Newsmax.

[winston]

From the March 19, 2009 issue of The Gartman Letter

ON CHINA: RONALD REAGAN WOULD SMILE

Speaking at the People’s Congress in Beijing recently, Premier Wen Jiabo made it quite clear that China intends fully to achieve 8% growth in GDP this year. Not next year; not two years hence, but this year...’09; the year of the Ox... this year.

Interestingly, Mr. Wen made it clear that not only was the government intent upon force feeding liquidity into the nation’s banks, but was also prepared to make material cuts in income taxes, across the board to sponsor such growth.

Wen made it clear that the only way he can see Chinese economic growth returning to the not-so-long-ago-lost halcyon days of 9% growth almost relentlessly shall require more than simple reserve injections.

Mr. Wen said that it is his intention to turn China from an export driven society to a consumer driven one instead. He know that liquidity alone will not suffice to do what Beijing needs the economy to do; hence Mr. Wen will begin this new era of growing consumer demand by cutting corporate and personal income taxes. According to The China Daily, Mr. Wen said, in the simplest of terms, that it is Beijing’s intention to spur the economy forward by “boosting domestic demand through residential tax cuts, in addition to the levy reduction for companies.”

The latter has already been put into effect; the former is coming. Mr. Wen’s proposed “residential” tax cuts include tax cuts on securities transactions; tax cuts on property sales; smaller taxes on exports and an end to a number of “administrative charges” on various goods and services. At a time when American law makers on the Left are debating the possibilities of taxing stock transactions, the Chinese are moving to end them!

Further, China is moving swiftly ahead with very real “infrastructure” spending. The new term here in the US is “shovel ready.” Our stimulus program is manifestly un-shovel ready; in China, the shovels are already at hand and the programs are being put into effect, with workers being hired and ground being broken.

Mr. Wen has the calendar working for him too, for this year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. As is always the case, China will have myriad numbers of building programs in place to commemorate that event. Too... and this is hard for us to believe, for time passes so quickly... this is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Uprising. Mr. Wen and Mr. Hu will want to make certain that things are on the economic mend in order to keep dissidents wrong-footed throughout the years.

This is a strange era in which we live then. We live at a time when ex-Communists are taking the more free market route toward a consumer led society. We are living in an era when Beijing reads Atlas Shrugged and Washington reads The Manchester Guardian. We are living in an era when tax cuts of all sorts are effected by Beijing, while Washington talks about and effects tax increases of all sorts. We live in an era when Beijing gets out of the way of entrepreneurs, and Washington throws rocks and rubble in their way instead.

As was said in Ecclesiastes, “To everything, turn, turn, turn...”

Good Luck and Good Trading,

Dennis Gartman

[winston]

Gartman: Serious Housing Shortage Ahead By: Julie Crawshaw

Financial guru and Gartman Letter editor Dennis Gartman, in a discussion about copper demand and copper stocks, dropped this bombshell: The U.S. will soon face a housing shortage.

“Housing (is) all the way down to 400,000 units now,” Gartman told CNBC.

“I think we’re going to have a shortage of housing in the not too distant future.”

“We’re going to run out of housing so quickly it’s going to be frightening.”

Gartman also likes "stuff," ie, commodities, especially when the stuff in question is copper.

"Even when the news is awful, it doesn't make new lows." Gartman points out.

"As a trader, as an investor, I think you have to own it."

Copper stocks, not futures, are the easiest way to play copper, Gartman says, now that commodity markets have evened out because hedge funds have largely quite speculating in them.

“The way to look at (copper) is where is the demand not going to fall any farther?” Gartman says.

“How many fewer cars can we sell, how many fewer houses can we build?”

Just getting the number of available housing units back to 1 million a year — which is a very low number by historical standards — will drive up the demand for copper, says Gartman.

The number of contracts to buy existing homes in February rose 2.1 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors, Bloomberg reports, a possible signal that the worst of the recession may have passed for an industry that has been in steepest decline.

Source: Newsmax.

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk ... medium=RSS

[winston]

Investment guru Dennis Gartman says the rise in prices of base metals like copper, zinc, and lead signals good times ahead for the economy.

"When you put all of the base metals together and see all of them rising together in anticipation of a stronger economy, they have a PhD in economics," he tells Bloomberg TV.

"They are very good leading economic indicators. It's very rare all base metals will rise, unless some growth is coming along. And that's what's happening now."


– Newsmax

[winston]

Long interview thru the Globe & Mail. The following was pretty useful for me. The rest are in the link below..

Sunil Dhall writes: When do you think the stock markets will crash ?

Dennis Gartman: The markets will crash when no one expects them to; markets crash from highs not from lows. Right now, everyone is looking for a crash of some sort, and I’m not

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-in ... le1179697/