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The highly respected trader and commentator has called his shot boldly, but you might be surprised at the other investments he’s recommending, writes MoneyShow.com editor-at-large Howard R. Gold, who also writes for The Independent Agenda.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has added more than 2,000 points since its October 2011 lows, a 21% gain.

The S&P 500 index is up nearly 250 points from its lows at the same time, a 22.5% advance.

The Nasdaq Composite index has hit 11-year highs.

And Dennis Gartman is still “wild-eyed bullish” on stocks.

Those were his words, folks. I’m not clever enough to make stuff like that up.

The noted trader, who is editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter and a contributor to CNBC, was wary about the market until recently. Now he’s thrown caution to the winds, declaring that stocks can go much, much higher in what he described as a “multi-year secular bull market.”

He’s also bullish on gold again after selling last year, and likes “non-US-dollar English-speaking currencies” and markets, particularly Australia and Canada.

His “wild-eyed” optimism puts him in the company of other raging bulls this column has profiled, like James Paulsen of Wells Capital Management and Laszlo Birinyi.

• Read Howard’s column on why Laszlo Birinyi saw a big run for stocks ahead.

If Gartman’s right, then the big sell-off last spring and summer that drove the S&P down to just below 1,100 on October 3 will have been a great buying opportunity that just about everybody missed—and which many investors even fled.

US investors pulled an astonishing $134.5 billion out of US-equity oriented mutual funds in 2011. Since 2007, they’ve taken a net $469 billion out of US stock funds, while pouring nearly $800 billion into taxable bond funds, according to the Investment Company Institute. Clearly something is out of whack.

“Investors are terrified of stocks,” Gartman told me. “You can’t get people to buy Procter & Gamble (PG) with a dividend of 3.3%.”

Besides bond funds, people have been sticking their cash into the proverbial mattress. “Baby boomers are laden with cash,” he said. “Checking account balances are outrageously high. They’re paying out nothing at all.”

What’s going to get these terrified people with bulging checkbooks back into stocks?

“Greed,” Gartman replied simply. “Greed and the need for yield will bring them in. That’s what the Fed wants them to do.”

Take note, conspiracy theorists and Ron Paul supporters (not necessarily the same people): Gartman largely agrees with you—the Fed is behind the whole thing.

By promising that short-term interest rates will stay near zero until 2014, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is offering savers what is in effect a Hobson’s choice: earn nothing and watch your capital deteriorate, or jump in the pool and take some risk. And don’t worry, the water’s fine.

“Keeping rates low and long will force boomers to…move into the equity markets,” albeit kicking and screaming, Gartman told me.

But it’s not only boomers. The large contingent of Generation Y—the ones who aren’t living in their parents’ basements or sleeping in tents with Occupy Wall Street—have been quietly accumulating wealth, but they’re the most conservative investors of all.

A recent Harris Poll found 41% of people between 18 and 33 say their savings are primarily in bank savings accounts and CDs—nearly twice as high a percentage as boomers, and significantly more even than retirees.

And less than 20% have invested in money market funds, stocks, bonds, or a mixture of stocks and bonds—again, the lowest percentage of any demographic group surveyed.

So, at an age when they can afford to take the most risk, Gen Y-ers are hiding under a rock. But not forever, said Gartman. From risk avoiders, “they will become risk accepters,” he said.

When? Who knows? Probably as the market moves higher and people become more confident. Crazy, right? But that’s how it works.

NEXT: How Long Will it Last…and How High Will it Go?