The Gartman File (It's about time this fraud was exposed)

Well, after publicly calling out Dennis Gartman, celebrity investment advisor and frequent guest on CNBC, and trying to sign up for his newsletter (thegartmanletter.com), Money Daily editor Fearless Rick has received no response.

Now, maybe it's because the people at The Gartman Letter are really, really busy, tracking stocks and currencies and ETFs and what not, though that's a serious doubt. It would make more sense to believe that Gartman is indeed lying - to his subscribers, primarily - about his year-to-date (as of March 10) performance of 12.3% and outperforming the S&P by 14%, especially after digging into Mr. Dennis Gartman's history.

On March 29, 2016Gartman "admits" that he's up 8.2%.

At one time, Gartman was pegged to manage an ETF for Horizons, a Canadian-based investment firm with various funds and ETFs under management. Specifically, the fund was known as the Horizons AlphaPro Gartman ETF, which was founded in March 2009 (perfect timing, being that was the market bottom), and went out of business four years later, on March 22, 2013.

Gartman, expert trader and analyst he claims to be, managed to lose money for the ETF and its clients while the S&P was up something on the order of 132% (from about 670 to roughly 1550).

Here's an article from the UK's Guardian (note: no mention of this on CNBC or any other US news media), published just before the AlphaPro Gartman ETF closed its doors at 7.90 per share, after opening four years earlier at $10.00.

But the Gartman ETF, named after advisor Dennis Gartman, ubiquitous author of the Gartman Letter, an investment advisory, couldn’t harness the benefits of its fortunate timing. The fund went public at $10 a share. Those same shares now fetch around $7.90.

More astonishing is that this closed-end fund actually saw the equivalent of massive redemptions. That’s unheard of in the closed-end world. With the asset base, and therefore fees, down sharply, it’s no surprise that Horizons Alphapro has decided to shut the fund down next month.

Here's an earlier article on Seeking Alpha, (June 23, 2011) that notes the fund had done OK for some time, but as of the article's writing, was down 7.7%.

Here is a rather humorous note from Peter Grandich, on Gartman's performance with a chart comparing his fund to the price of gold.

Nowhere to be found on any of Mr. Gartman's various postings and appearances are mention of his Hedge Fund, formed in August of 2009, as the River Crescent Fund (apparently named for the street on which he lives and likely does business from, in Suffolk, Virginia). At the time, Gartman was looking to raise the modest sum of $200 million from investors, and, according to his SEC filings, would accept a minimum of $5 million for starters.

Apparently, anybody with five million bucks didn't need Gartman's advice, because since its inception, there's been no news, no investments, no nothing, except for a lonely SEC filing. That's probably a good thing for most investors.

So, what does Gartman manage today, after failing miserably during one of the great bull markets of all time? According to sources, he manages his own retirement fund. And that's the one he claims is up 12.3% on the year, while the stock market was beaten down severely in January and early February, and gyrating in negative territory for the better part of the past month.

Essentially, from March 2009 through March 2013, Gartman should have had worn disclaimers every time he appeared on CNBC. whether he was or not is a question for the way-back machine. Certainly, there are clips from that time period and Money Daily will investigate further. Oddly enough, no mention is made of Gartman's failure with the AlphaPro Gartman EFT on his official CNBC biography.

Here's a particularly bad call, when Gartman said he was getting out of stocks in August of 2012, just prior to the Fed's launch of QE3, a mammoth stimulus, less than a month later.

Also, as far as can be discerned, Mr. Dennis Gartman is neither a registered equity trader, a member of FINRA, nor a futures trader (since 2005). Nor is Mr. Gartman a registered investment advisor.

The only conclusions one can reasonably assume is that Dennis Gartman, being well past his prime, is living off the $50 to $100 per day he makes appearing on CNBC and whatever meager earnings he derives from his newsletter.

Speaking of his newsletter - which I have never seen and doubt ever will as my request on his website has not elicited so much as a response - here are a few reviews. They're generally unflattering, again, begging the question as to why the clownish Gartman is even on CNBC at all.

Updating on April 21, 2016, Gartman says he likes Alcoa (AA) and Gold in Yen or Euro terms. Naturally, as soon as he had finished his on-air mouthings, gold fell $20... in US dollar terms, of course. As for the Alcoa call, it's a pretty safe one, since AA has been as high as 17.75 (November, 2014) and, recently, down to a multi-year low in January of 6.12 (intra-day). Calling it a buy around $10 a share isn't exactly rocket science. Gartman may actually have a winner here, but it won't be much of one.

UPDATE: Gartman has gone from bearish (in light of a face-ripping 200-point rally on the Dow, May 24) to bullish in 24 hours. This is the typical Gartman flip-flop and more evidence that he's a complete buffoon and plays with imaginary money.

What a clod!

Dude, Where's My Retirement Pension?

Stocks took another punch to the gut on Thursday, extending the February losses on all global indices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average officially (-10%) entered correction phase.

The NASDAQ is within a hair of a 10% drop, from 7,505.77 to 6,777.16. 6755.19 is the magic number in this case.

On the S&P 500, the January 26 top of 2,872.87 is far away from the close into correction territory (at 2585.87), achieved in today's session with a triple-digit loss.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average Scoreboard looks like this:

Date	Close	Gain/Loss	Cum. G/L
2/1/18	26,186.71	+37.32	+37.32
2/2/18	25,520.96	-665.75	-628.43
2/5/18	24,345.75	-1,175.21	-1,803.64
2/6/18	24,912.77	+567.02	-1,236.62
2/7/18	24,893.35	-19.42	-1,256.04
2/8/18	23,860.46	-1,032.89	-2,288.93

That's in just six trading sessions, people. All the major averages are down for the year, but, hey, it's only February. Plenty of time to boost those profits.

This is only the beginning of a collapse that may be unprecedented. Considering the adherence to antiquated Keynesian economic theories spoon-fed to the masses, the unwinding will be a farce, fed by propagandists, though it's effects will be somewhat permanent on the financial status of almost everybody.

Precious metals were among the few gainers on the day.

At the Close, Thursday, February 8, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 23,860.46, -1,032.89 (-4.15%)
NASDAQ: 6,777.16, -274.82 (-3.90%)
S&P 500: 2,581.00, -100.66 (-3.75%)
NYSE Composite: 12,270.65, -416.53 (-3.28%)

How is Your Money Doing? Here's the February Dow Scoreboard, Day 5

In the sports world, all manner of statistics and scenarios are routinely trotted out in attempts to reinforce how one team or player is better than another. All of this analysis is done every day on TV and radio talk shows, but the in the final analysis, as so perfectly expressed by the king of sports talk radio, Jim Rome, is "scoreboard," as in, who won the game, no matter the stats.

The same kind of metric can easily be applied to stocks and investments, as it no doubt should be. Thus, there's no need for analysis, no need for bald-headed, econo-speak commentators, no need for inverse correlations, causations, or extrapolations. All that matter can be found in the daily closing prices for individual stocks, or for individual stock indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the measure by which everybody measures success.

Over the past four trading sessions, there's been more than sufficient ammunition for all kinds of wild speculation and analysis of what happened and why, and there may be a thousand reasons why the Dow and other indices were slaughtered last Friday and again this Monday. The more simplistic answers appear in the comeback sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday, which failed to recoup all of the losses. Thus, it's all in the scoreboard, i.e., the daily closes on the Dow. Nothing more, nothing less. No analysis necessary. You either won or you lost.

Let's just track the Dow through the month of February and see how well those precious stocks are doing.

Here are the only numbers that matter:

Dow Jones Industrial Average dates, closing prices, gains or losses:

Date	Close	Gain/Loss	Cum. G/L
2/1/18	26,186.71	+37.32	+37.32
2/2/18	25,520.96	-665.75	-628.43
2/5/18	24,345.75	-1,175.21	-1,803.64
2/6/18	24,912.77	+567.02	-1,236.62
2/7/18	24,893.35	-19.42	-1,256.04

So, as can clearly be seen, even adding in the smallish gain on Feb. 1, the Dow is down a massive amount. The contention here at Money Daily is that there has been a sea change in the market. Not only is a correction in the works (-10%), but a bear market (-20%) is quickly developing. We'll keep tracking so you at home can keep score on your "investments."

At the Close, Wednesday, February 7, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average, 24,893.35, -19.42 (-0.08%)
NASDAQ: 7,051.98, -63.90 (-0.90%)
S&P 500: 2,681.65, -13.49 (-0.50%)
NYSE Composite: 12,714.83, -30.62 (-0.24%)

Dow's Dramatic Comeback 4th-Best in History

That was something to behold.

Not only did the Dow open down a whopping 500 points, but it battled back and forth across the unchanged line - as did the other major indices - until finally launching itself into a hyperbolic ascent in the final hour of the session.

While the Dow's rise was the 4th-biggest point gain in its long history, there's still work to be done. Just to get back what it lost last Friday and Monday of this week will take two more days of equal heavy lifting, something that is unlikely unless one lives on the planet Utopia, where unicorns spit skittles and money grows on trees.

Even more daunting may be the return to all-time highs (26,616.71), a mere 1,700+ points away. It could happen. It very well may happen. However, if it does, stocks will once again be more expensive than ever before (they are still).

The market action over the past week has been a warm-up, conditioning the masses for more carnage to commence and shaking out the weak - or wise - hands. Those who cannot allocate by themselves (like people with 401ks or government retirement plans) will be stuck with whatever the fund managers deem prudent. Call them bag-holders.

The swift and the wise are playing the ups-and-downs, though that was quite the challenge in today's session. Volatility has returned and it should be pointed out that some of the greatest one-day gains (in fact, the two largest occurred in the fall of 2008) happened in bear markets.

The fun has just begun.

At the Close, Tuesday, January 6, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 24,912.77, +567.02 (+2.33%)
NASDAQ: 7,115.88, +148.36 (+2.13%)
S&P 500: 2,695.14, +46.20 (+1.74%)
NYSE Composite: 12,745.45, +172.53 (+1.37%)

Dow Sheds Record 1,175 Points, Global Markets in Panic Mode

Anybody already not convinced that stocks have been relentlessly pumped by buybacks and central bank interventions over the past nine years may have had a rude awakening over the past few days and especially on Monday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost a record 1,175 points in the week-opening session.

While the percentage loss was nowhere near record-setting, it still managed to crack the top 20 of all-time percentage losses for a single trading day. Combined with Friday's collapse, the Dow is down over seven percent in just the past two sessions, wiping out all the gains from an over-exuberant January.

What happened?

Interest rates exploded. That was the first salvo from massively intertwined markets. The ten-year note, which has been comfortably below 2.5% for most of the last nine years of "recovery" following the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) from 2008-09, smashed through 2.80% on Friday and continued its ascent Monday before some odd force pushed US treasury rates lower across the curve. The 10-year note ended at 2.79, still higher than anybody expected, but not at a level that would cause a panic.

Other than the obvious villain in the bond pits, the other dynamic at play is the obvious overvaluation of stocks, and that is a global problem. By artificially keeping interest rates too low for too long (avoid the pain that should be measured across the board), boosting asset prices in stocks alone, the Fed, ECB, BOJ, PBOC and Swiss National Bank (SNB) created a market structure with one sure feature: failure.

Because borrowing money was such an easy proposition, many of the major corporations on the Dow, NASDAQ and S&P took to buying back their own shares, enriching only major shareholders and especially top executives with cushy compensation plans. That gambit appears to be over, and it's troubling, because when companies buy their own stock at inflated prices, they own it at those prices. Selling it back into the market at reduced prices causes a loss, which in turn causes earning to collapse. That is the expected conclusion, already evident in some recent quarterly filings. More carnage - much more - is to come.

It has been reported that 84% of all wealth created in 2017 went to the top one percent globally. That's an unsustainable level of wealth inequality largely gone unreported by the news-speakers, analysts and squawkers on Wall Street and the economists in the government. The one percent at the top of the wealth ladder will only be marginally affected by losses, largely because they have more money than they need and probably have been doing most of the trimming over recent days. Who will be harmed? Pension funds, which are already massively underfunded and cannot maintain any measure of credibility in a market crash currently gaining momentum.

Those who have been derided for warning about just this kind of occurrence are now being proven to have seen the most obvious overvaluation and manipulation of markets early. Being early and being wrong are two different animals, but anybody who isn't invested at the moment is - at long last - looking fairly smart.

The global economy has been sputtering and stuttering ever since the crash of 2008. Nothing that caused the problems then has been fixed. In fact, credit has been extended even further than the levels seen prior to that singular solvency event.

Claims (especially those by President Trump, who has unfortunately embraced the massive gains and now will bear the brunt of blame for the losses) that the economy is strong and growing are largely a smoke screen hiding mountains of debt and poor financial management in government. The US Treasury is more than $20 trillion in the hole. Other major governments, especially Japan, are over-leveraged and broke.

The continuing narrative that the economy is strong - which will be heard repeatedly as the market correction (or slow motion crash) extends - is complete garbage, shoveled to an unsuspecting public that desperately wants to hear only good news. The federal government is broke. State governments are broke. Pension plans cannot deliver on the promises made to employees and retirees. Households are deeply in debt and businesses have enriched only their shareholders in recent years. The recipe for collapse has been ripe and the meal is now on the table.

As Wall Street prepares for another onslaught of selling, markets in the East have already taken the low road. In Japan, the NIKKEI was down over 1,000 points. The Hang Song dropped 1,600, or five percent.

This is not over by a long shot. Instead of an end of the bull market, this should be characterized as the beginning of the end for globally-induced monetary madness and an epochal message to believers in what were once known as "free" markets.

Nothing is safe.

At the Close, Monday, February 5, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 24,345.75, -1,175.21 (-4.60%)
NASDAQ: 6,967.53, -273.42 (-3.78%)
S&P 500: 2,648.94, -113.19 (-4.10%)
NYSE Composite: 12,572.93, -512.42 (-3.92%)