From today's Gartman Letter..... (7-29)

"COMMODITY PRICES HAVE FALLEN AS THE DOLLAR HAS RISEN and we wonder very publically is it possible for us to have traded gold more poorly than we have in recent weeks and months. From a genius gold trader two and three and four and five years ago, we’ve become comically inept at it presently, buying strength only to find the market plunging shortly thereafter, and selling weakness, only to find the market rising. There comes a time when we must say that we are out of synch with gold, and that time is now. Let the gold bugs snicker, we care not a whit, but clearly we’ve had gold wrong in recent months. Perhaps ‘tis best we leave it to others wiser… or dumber, we really know not which… for a while. Perhaps it is that we are simply our own worst enemy give our extreme transparency as the market knows where our actions will be taken and waits to visit its punishment upon us.

At any rate, we bought the break out in gold two weeks ago, and we bought the break out again earlier this week, and yesterday, as prices collapsed we were stopped out… again. Fortunately we kept the losses to 1-2%, and we can live with that. So long as one keeps one’s losses to 1-2% the damage wrought will always be small and the ability to hold one’s trading account reasonably intact will allow us to fight another day… and so we shall.

Looking at the chart of spot gold this page in daily terms we note that in the great scheme of things the recent action is almost impossibly unimportant. We’ve lost our 1-2%, but the market continues to consolidate the gains earned late last year and earlier this year, and perhaps a test back to $915-$920 is in the cards. For now, we’ll leave gold to others wiser than we; we’ve other fish frying...."