The Globe and Mail

So warns investment newsletter writer Dennis Gartman on Friday, saying the massive plunge in equities in the past 24 hours “dwarfs anything seen previously,” and is far more severe than the crash of 1987 or the emerging markets-Russian collapse of several summers ago.
He is rejecting any talk on the Street that this weakness a mere correction in the context of a global bull market. “It is not merely a correction. It is the signal of the end of the global bull market that began several years ago, and before this near bear market is done, we are likely to see share prices materially ... indeed very materially ... lower.”
Don’t be surprised, he predicts, to see bellwether stocks that led the market higher trade down 50 to 60 per cent from their highs “before this has run its course, for that is the nature of bear market.”
In retrospect, he figures the recent IPO by Blackstone Group LP was the “very top of the bull market. They will be seen from the perspective of history as one of the strong hands who sold their holdings to the weak.”
While some market pundits have criticized Blackstone for going public only to see the stock price fall relentlessly since then, Mr. Gartman writes that “Blackstone’s management did not err; the public erred in buying it. The strong hands sold to the weak, and the weak have bungled the job.”