Gartman Letter
Gartman Letter
Gartman Letter
Kan has been an outspoken supporter of even more 450 thousand yet again. Well not argue with that
aggressive easing policies by the Bank of Japan, and thesis.
should he become the party leader and then the Prime
Minister, we can expect him to name a Finance Well also see Factory Orders for April, which is rather
Minister that shares his ideas. a long look backward given that this is June, but the
trend for orders has been inexorably upward since
Going back into the past year or so, the trend has been making their lows back in the first quarter of 09. The
for the Yen to strengthen, and so long as the Streets consensus is that orders rose another 1.8%,
Yen/dollar rate remains below 95 the last point of US with the range of guess-timates uncommonly wide
dollar resistance made in late March and again in early from +1.5% to +3.5%.
April we have to believe that the trend is still toward
a strong Yen, a weak US dollar. But if Mr. Kan We are more interested in the Non-Manufacturing ISM
assumes the Prime Ministership, we suspect that that index that is due out later today. This Index is for May,
trend can be and shall be readily broken. Time only so it is far more timely than Factory Orders, and since
shall tell of course, but the fundamentals will be shifting making its low at 36 back in November of 08, the
substantively enough under Mr. Kan to allow that to Index has been steadily moving higher, having risen
take place relatively swiftly: above the all-important 50 level last autumn. In April
the index stood at 55 (55.4 really, but as is our wont
06/03 06/02 round numbers suffice for our purposes), unchanged
Mkt Current Prev US$Change
from March. The consensus has Mays figure rising to
Japan 92.55 91.60 + .95 Yen
EC 1.2300 1.2213 - .87 Cents 56. Were fine with that.
Switz 1.1510 1.1560 - .50 Centimes
UK 1.4695 1.4670 - .25 Pence Finally, Eric Rosengren, the President of the Federal
C$ 1.0355 1.0540 - 1.85 Cents
A$ .8510 .8305 - 2.05 Cents Reserve Bank of Boston and Mr. Thomas Hoenig, the
NZ$ .6895 .6740 - 1.55 Cents President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City,
Mexico 12.76 12.95 - .19 Centavos speak today at different times and different venues, but
Brazil 1.8170 1.8480 - 2.10 Centavos
we shall pay a bit more heed to what they have to say
Russia 31.16 31.09 + .07 Rubles
China 6.8313 6.8283 + .30 Renminbi than we might otherwise for both men are voting
India 46.60 47.21 - .61 Rupees members of the FOMC this year. They serve in that
Prices "marked" at 09:15 GMT capacity in rota with Dr. Pianalto of the Fed Cleveland
and James Bullard of the Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Today is Thursday and that means weekly jobless
Louis.
claims once again. Claims have hovered at or near the
450 thousand level, causing us, and others, a great
deal of concern several weeks ago when they bounded COMMODITIES PRICES ARE BIT
toward 470 thousand, but settling back to 460 WEAKER with energy leading the way higher, as
thousand last week. Like a weak the US dollar is a bit weaker and
stock that needs to break to new Gold In Yen Terms
as the dollar/commodities
lows to keep the bearish trend correlation is holding this
intact, claims need to break morning in energy terms.
down below 440-450 thousand However, the grains continue to
soon in order to prove the thesis weaken, as do a number of
that the US economy is getting agricultural commodities, and
stronger. The consensus is that the strength in energy is not
that wont happen today, with substantive enough to trump the
The Street looking for and very
likely to get something close to
month but what if? It is always wise to ask and be away for the privilege of having diversification. To the
prepared for the "what ifs" that plague all trading. short hedger this is nirvana; to the long side speculator
this is painful indeed.
Finally, as an outside Director of the Kansas City
Board of Trade, we are proud to report that volume in The DOE inventories will be out later today, delayed of
May was the second largest in the Exchanges history course for one day because of the Memorial Day
for that month, second only to the volumes done in holiday. The API report last evening was modestly
May of 06 and was nearly 1/3rd larger than the volume supportive of energy prices with crude inventories
done a year ago. Open interest too continues to falling 1.4 million barrels; Gasoline inventories fell
expand and for the year-to-date, total volume is also but only 1.0 million barrels, while distillate
running 23.2% ahead of last year at this time. . inventories rose 0.9. Thus the aggregate fell 1.5 million
barrels. Refinery runs were strong and crude imports
ENERGY PRICES ARE SHARPLY were weak. The increase in distillates was about as
HIGHER and that is quite evident from the price expected and very near the five year average for this
week. The most bullish aspect of the report was the cut
matrix of WTI crude below. But what is also quite
in gasoline inventories given that the five year average
evident is how sharply has the contango widened once
for this week is for inventories to remain essentially
again, doing so even as prices rise. This is not how a
unchanged. Futures traded higher on the news, but
bull market should act, for in a true demand driven
once again the API numbers are of very limited use
bull market the contango should narrow and should
when trying to guess-timate the DOE figures.
move toward backwardation. Instead, the spot market
price is rising but the contango is going out as crude JulyWTI up 177 74.20-25
bids for storage. Something is terribly awry in the crude AugWTI up 209 75.84-89
oil market then, and under no circumstance would we SepWTI up 235 77.10-15
OctWTI up 245 78.01-06
follow this market as a buyer, but rather it shall be our NovWTI up 249 78.79-84
strong propensity to sell strength rather than buying DecWTI up 250 79.50-55
weakness. We have learned our lessons regarding Jan WTI up 252 80.02-07
OPEC Basket $70.48 05/27
contango and backwardation over the years and we
Henry Hub Nat-gas $4.11
are not about to forget those lessons now.
Regarding the oil spill in the Gulf, only an hour or so
If we have the opportunity in the next several days to ago British Petroleum reported that its latest attempts
sell the nearby WTI futures at or near $77.50-$78.00 to stem the leak have again failed. The pipe they had
we almost certainly shall be doing so; however, at the hoped to cut cleanly and then cap has proven to be a
moment that seems like a rather long way to the
more formidable foe than had been feared, with the
upside and shall require some fundamental news that
saw the company had been using via remote control
we are, at the moment, not aware is on the horizon.
became stuck. Now the company is forced to shear
We can hope, however.
the pipe with a giant garden-like tool that will leave the
Further, we stand in awe of the sums of money that the cut rather unclean and make capping it all the more
long only funds shall be losing in the crude oil markets problematic. With each passing day, BPs future
over the weeks and months ahead as they continually becomes dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and
pay up to own deferred futures that must eventually dimmer.
make their way to the spot price. At the moment,
ownership of August WTI crude will cost the long only STOCKS HAVE GONE BALLASTIC to
funds 2.25% more than the nearby July. Over the
the upside in the past twenty four hours, with our Intl
course of one year, rolling that over again and again
Index rising 115 points or 1.6%, catching us
and again is huge expense, which the pension funds,
completely off guard. The market here in the US was
endowments and the like seem idiotically willing to pay
strong early in the session, but it began to rise skyward we must therefore trade in bear market manners,
immediately following the Presidents comments selling high-beta stocks, with low dividends while
regarding US energy independence and his focus upon buying, or hedging those positions, with low beta
domestic on-shore availabilities, including the now stocks paying high dividends.
more famous shale plays in the Midwest and the
In light of yesterdays and todays massive strength,
upper Midwest. The nat-gas companies tore to the
our comments above might appear to many to be
upside, and in the process carried the rest of the
specious at best. However, we draw everyones
market higher in their wake.
attention to the chart at the upper left of p.1, sent to us
However, we do pay heed to the 200 day moving by our good friend Mr. David Wienke of Bache in
averages for we have come, over the years, to see Chicago, noting that even with yesterdays strength the
these broad moving averages as the indicators of S&P remains below its 200 day moving average. That,
trend. That is, if the 200 day moving average is we think, is worthy of note:
trending upward, weakness is to be bought; strength is
Dow Indus up 226 10,250
not to be sold. Conversely, if the 200 day moving
CanSP/TS up 209 11,781
average is trending downward, strength is to be sold, FTSE down 12 5,151
weakness is not to be bought. The difficulties with that CAC down 2 3,501
DAX unch 5,981
tendency come at those turning points not always as
NIKKEI up 311!!! 9,914
readily see-able as one might hope they would be at HangSeng up 420 19,830
the time when the moving average is still trending in AusSP/AX up 100!! 4,486
Shanghai up 32 2,562
one direction by the index itself, or the stock itself, is Brazil up 1101 62,942
moving contrary. Those, as Thomas Paine might have TGL INDEX up 1.6% 7,339
said, are the times that try mens souls. We note
then that the NASDAQs 200 day moving average is ON THE POLITICAL FRONT just on a lark
still moving higher, but the Index has been closing hard we went to Google to look at the various tenures in
upon, and even below that moving average for the past office of Prime Ministers and Presidents in the
nine or ten trading sessions. Souls are being put to industrialised world, believing that the relative
test. shortness of the Japanese Prime Ministers tenures in
office since the end of World War II. Since the end of
The S&Ps 200 day moving average is also still the war, Japan has had 33 Prime Ministers (some of
trending upward but the Index itself has closed below which became Prime Minister again, and which we
that moving average for the last nine consecutive therefore counted twice); the US has had 12
sessions. Clearly this is not a one-off event, and just as Presidents during the same period; the British 15
clearly this portends a very clear trend change. And Prime Ministers (again, some were duplicated); the
we might say the very same thing for the DJIA, which Canadians a far quieter political crowd have had
like the S&P has closed below its 200 day moving only 13 Prime Ministers during that period. The
average for the last nine days in a row, and where the winner is Italy. Italy has had 41 Prime Ministers
moving average itself is only a week or so away from during that same period of time. In average duration in
turning lower. office, Italys Prime Ministers last only 18.8 months;
Japans last 23.3 months; British Prime Ministers last
These broad moving averages are like air craft 51.3 months; American Presidents last 64.2 months
carriers: they move in one direction for long periods of and Canadas patient Prime Ministers last an average
time and they change direction infrequently given the of 59.2 months.
inertia of moment that must be overcome to change
Interestingly, and we can of course be wrong on this
their direction. We are, we fear, in a bear market, and
and we are open to being corrected, the shortest
tenure in office was by Mr. Fanfani as Italys Prime boarded any of the ships, for whatever reason the IDF
Minister from and we are not making this up chose the path it chose.
January 18th, 1954 until February 8th of that same year.
20 days in office, but we guess it felt like a lifetime. The question is Why did Israel take this strange line of
Interestingly, Mr. Fanfani was hardly any more action? Mr. Ronen Bergman, in yesterdays Wall
successful when he became Prime Minister again 28 Street Journal had a most interesting take on the
years later, holding office from December 1st, 1982 question, wondering in print if the nations leaders and
until August 4th, 1983. Two lifetimes this time! the nation itself were not suffering from a form of battle
fatigue that now permeates all Israeli politics. He
Looking back on Mr. Hatoyama decision to stand said and we think presciently that
down, no one should have been surprised by the fact
that he did, although we might have been surprised by Israels fatigue and deep sense of ostracism is,
to say the least, unhealthy. It would be
the swiftness with which he abandoned office. unhealthy for any country at the best of times.
However, since he took office, his popularity ratings But it is particularly troubling when the country
have plunged while his disapproval ratings rose in question is at perpetual war and when it is
repeatedly threatened with annihilation by the
steadfastly. He took office with a support rating of 78% leader of a country who is actively pursuing
back in September of last year while his disapproval nuclear weapons. And, of course, it is
rating was 18%; 4% were undecided. His profoundly disturbing when the fatigued and
isolated country itself has the means to strike
approval/disapproval ratings crossed each other at the
pre-emptively and punishingly at its enemies,
40% level (with a rather large number of Japanese including in ways from which, realistically there
then undecided) in January of this year. At the end of may be no return.
May, in the days before his resignation, 78% of the We did not come away from Mr. Bergmans article
voters disapproved of Mr. Hatoyamas job as Prime
feeling warm, fuzzy and bullish of equities; we did
Minister, while 20% approved. We should remember
come away from the article bullish of gold however.
that this is not the lowest level to which a Japanese
Prime Ministers support had fallen. We believe that Finally, the USS George Washington, one of the US
that honour belongs to Mr. Mori who actually aircraft carriers, will join with S. Korean naval forces in
achieved hat sized support levels of only 8.6%. Mr. a show of strength off the coast of North and South
Mori, as we recall, remained in Korea next week. The ships
power for nineteen months about attending the George Washington will
twice as long as Mr. Hatoyama. also take place in the naval exercise,
The world is better fed because of GMO crop science. So where is the growth? In Asia obviously. China
The land grant universities of the world have done has 11 plants operating. It has 26 under construction
yeomans work in creating these plants; improving and it is currently planning for 10 more. Japan has 54
them every year and feeding the world more and more nuclear power plants operating; it has 3 under
abundantly and yet the eco-radicals take them to construction and it is planning for 12 more. The S.
task and want them controlled, if not ended. What Koreans? Theyve 20 nuclear plants operating; they
nonsense. are building 6 at present and theyve 2 being
considered. Finally, the Indians are rushing headlong
ON NUCLEAR POWER AROUND into nuclear power, with 17 plants operating; 6 being
built and 8 being considered. In Asia, the future is
THE WORLD: The situation in the Gulf is always being considered, and in this instance it is
obviously going to be deleterious to the entire off-shore being considered properly. Here in The West, as Borat
oil drilling industry here in the US, while it will almost would say, Not so much.
3. Long of One Unit of Low Beta/Dividend Long: 15% gold; 10% silver; 15% Canadian; 10% Australian
Paying Stocks/Short One Unit of High dollars and also long of 5% US Ten year notes and 5% WTI crude.
Beta/Low Dividend Paying stocks: It is time Short: 15% EURs; 15% Pounds sterling; and 10% Yen.
then to buy low beta/high dividend paying equities and to sell high
beta/low dividend paying equities. We shall leave the decision on the Good luck and good trading, Dennis Gartman
equities to be chosen to our clients individual preferences, but food
companies, personal care companies and the like should be bought,
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