Some say the super cycle for commodities is over, but not Gartman. “Given the numbers of people who have truly thrown up their arms and given up on commodities, and the number of commodity hedge funds that have been forced to close—that’s  the hallmark of a market that’s about to go in the other direction.”

Demand for food will rise because the developing world is growing. History shows that populations increase grain consumption as they advance economically. “You move from eating grain to feeding livestock, and livestock chew up a lot more grain than do human beings,” said Gartman, who recommends owning agricultural commodities for the next five or 10 years.

When commodity prices drop, not everybody goes out of business, said Yusko. For instance, copper prices have been falling and a number of producers have been forced out of the market. But those that remain have seen their stock prices rise.

“The thing that people are missing about commodities is China,” Yusko said. Although some think China’s economy is getting worse, Yusko said it’s getting better. “The One Belt, One Road project might be the biggest industrial project in the history of mankind.” The development strategy, which seeks to link China with the rest of Eurasia by land and sea, is expected to consume an enormous amount of commodities.

Gartman said he’s not a “goldbug” betting on the world ending. He’s “quietly bullish” on gold because of political conditions. He recommended buying it in a currency that could be devalued. “The euro is basically a doomed currency at this point,” Gartman said. He’d rather spend euros than dollars to buy gold, because he thinks the dollar will strengthen.

In one of their few areas of significant disagreement, Yusko said he thinks the dollar will get demonstrably weaker over the next few years. While his is a contrarian view right now, Yusko said the Fed can’t and won’t raise interest rates.

Recession Coming

“The U.S. stock market is the most vulnerable it’s been since 2000,” Yusko said. “We will have a recession sometime in the next 12 months. And when that happens, stocks will go down a lot in the U.S. as a broad index.”

Neither Gartmann nor Yusko indicated they thought the recession they anticipate  in 2017 will be devastating but they did think that nine years after the last recession began, another one was to be expected. Since the Great Recession ended, most of Europe and Japan have suffered two small recessions.

Citing Warren Buffett, George Soros and others, he said, “The best investors in the world who manage their own money have huge amounts of cash. Why? Because valuations in the United States are stupid, and stupid things end.”

Gartman said we’ve been in a global bear market for the last 16 to 17 months. The wild fluctuations in indices that investors have witnessed lately are the types of swings that accompany peaks. He agreed with Yusko’s timing that a recession would likely arrive during the coming 12 months. “I think you’re going to be better off sitting in cash, being very quiet, being patient, and if you have to own something, hedge it up.”