I don’t have a problem with his shorting Berkshire. I am hesitant to go long BRK due to reasons of my own (primarily, key man risk and Buffett’s reticence to publicly begin the succession process).

I’ve always thought Loews was an interesting case but decided I’d rather just own DO &/or LO than L (I don’t own any of the 3).

As for him being tongue-in-cheek, what was the point? I know we live in a world where even bad publicity is good and I would understand if he was a tweener pop star who didn’t like to wear underwear in public. Is Gartman angling for the Bad Boy of Investment Newsletters mantle?

The problem being that the WSJ blog doesn’t tell the whole story. Gartman is not naked short Berkshire, he’s short it against Loews (L – the holding company not the home improvement co.), his reason being that BRK trades at a much larger premium to its portfolio holdings than does L (he might be long GS also as part of the trade, but I can’t recall). As for the Buffett is an idiot line, he’s clearly being tongue and cheek, and rightly figured that WSJ would feature that prominently.

I happen to read Gartman daily, even though I’m primarily an equities guy, and I find him to be pretty well thought out. Sure more into technical than I, but then again he’s much more active in FX and commodities, which perhaps lends itself to that more so.

Either way, I’ve been tracking his “short Berkshire” trade, and he’s been pretty clear this has nothing to do with overvaluation, Buffett losing it, Buffett being old and it getting crushed when he dies…ti’s merely a relative value trade.

Bp