This brief initial comment  from the Legendary Trader Dennis Gartman.  For subscription information for the 5 page plus Daily Gartman Letter L.C. contact – Tel: 757 238 9346 Fax: 757 238 9546 or E-mail:dennis@thegartmanletter.com HERE to subscribe at his website.

Again, for simple comparison’s purposes, the previous year saw America’s farmers growing 162.9 bushels of corn/acre, and the year previous it was 153.9… and remember, it was not that many years ago that we were growing less than 100 bushels/acre, and indeed as the chart included here this morning… one of our truly favourite charts given that it shows the enormous productive gains enjoyed by America’s farmers but barely understood by America’s consumers…it was only in the 80’s that we broke above and have remained permanently above that figure!]. How much of that corn was left in the fields is anyone’s guess, and it is indeed a guess, for even once we have a strong figure on the sum of acreage left there it is a further guess as to how much of that corn is truly lost.

GOLD IN STERLING TERMS: 
New Highs Lie Just Ahead:  We are and have been bullish of  gold, but in non‐US$ terms and that risk aversion has served us well for as gold broke more than 11% in US dollar terms in the December market-clearing correction, it fell by half that in EUR terms. In other words, rather than facing a material loss of funds that might have been debilitating, we lost a much more amenable sum which we far more readily survivable and we’ve been well served being so.   The market has advanced; it has  consolidated; it has advance and it has consolidated again and again.  We are heavily involved and we intend to remain so.

Mr. Gartman has been in the markets since August of 1974, upon finishing his graduate work from the North Carolina State University. He was an economist for Cotton, Inc. in the early 1970’s analyzing cotton supply/demand in the US textile industry. From there he went to NCNB in Charlotte, N. Carolina where he traded foreign exchange and money market instruments. In 1977, Mr. Gartman became the Chief Financial Futures Analyst for A.G. Becker & Company in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Gartman was an independent member of the Chicago Board of Trade until 1985, trading in treasury bond, treasury note and GNMA futures contracts. In 1985, Mr. Gartman moved to Virginia to run the futures brokerage operation for the Virginia National Bank, and in 1987 Mr. Gartman began producing The Gartman Letter on a full time basis and continues to do so to this day.

Mr. Gartman has lectured on capital market creation to central banks and finance ministries around the world, and has taught classes for the Federal Reserve Bank’s School for Bank Examiners on derivatives since the early 1990’s. Mr. Gartman makes speeches on global economic and political concerns around the world.