Having been bullish of stocks in recent weeks, Dennis Gartman is starting to turn in the other direction. The catalyst for his latest bout of skepticism, aside from stocks having been "universally lower" when he posted his daily note sometime in the early morning (that is rapidly changing) are, well, the stars - namely that today is the Summer Soltice. We'll let him explain.
SHARE PRICES, UNIVERSALLY, ARE LOWER and they are sharply so as all ten of the markets that comprise our International Index have fallen in the course of the past twenty four hours, and as two of those markets…that in Australia and that in Brazil… have fallen by more than 1%, with Brazil’s market actually having fallen by 2.0%. Universality of direction… whether higher or lower… has always been a rarity and has tended to mark either highs or lows as major turning points, and especially after extended moves in one direction. In this case, since the previous direction has been upward, the fact that all ten of the markets in our Index have fallen has put the very nature of the bull market in jeopardy.
Too, there has been a historical precedent for market turns of consequence to have taken place at or very near to solstices and equinox. Given that today is the Summer Solstice we are on guard, for as the chart this page suggests the past may not perfectly be the prologue to the future but it is at least worthy of note. We note further that in 1987 stocks peaked one month before the Fall equinox and completed their violent “crash” one month later.
The 1976 top and 1978 bottom in the Dow were both within 2 weeks of equinoxes. In 1929… a year of true market ignominy… there was a minor “Crash” on March 25 hard upon the spring equinox and the Dow topped in early September of that year, two weeks before the autumnal equinox, while the London stock market crashed on the 20th of September, precisely on the equinox. History does not always rhyme, but it does tend to have meter. Today is the summer solstice; be prepared. The “meter” is running: