I listened over the weekend to an interview of Dennis Gartman from last week. Dennis has some odd calls on gold of late, but the man is very smart, gets up very early every morning and is able to charge an awful lot for his investment newsletter.

Dennis was saying that he thinks banks, if using a time frame of at least one year, are a great buy; specifically mentioning JP Morgan and Wachovia among a couple of others. Yes, Wells Fargo did report better than expected earnings last week, but WFC has seemed to run a better ship than most banks over the last few years, and its stock price has been rewarded accordingly.

Part of his rational on buying bank stocks here is the old adage

“when they’re crying you should be buying” and “when they’re yelling you need to be selling”

There is no doubt there is a lot of crying going on with bank stocks, the question is will there be more?

All I can say is “Mr. Gartman, with all due respect I’m still short the financials and I believe I’ll stay that way for now”. Who knows, maybe he’ll be right. I think the bank stocks are still risky waters right now.

Other comments from Dennis were that he thinks corn and other commodities might remain under pressure for the next few months, and that we just saw an important break in the price of crude oil. Well, oil is up again this morning a couple of bucks so I’m not totally convinced about the “break” in oil price - it could just be a minor blip.

We’ll see, won’t we?

I don’t think Jim Rogers would agree with Dennis Gartman; Jim has said that if Fannie & Freddie recovered he would short them some more. I presume he might feel that way about all banks.

As for corn and other food commodities especially, it wouldn’t shock me to find Jim Rogers buying on the dips; but I could be wrong - I can’t seem to locate his phone number to ring him up and ask him!

In the mean time, I’m sticking to the advice that has served me well the last few years; Casey Research and the TREND letter.