There are certain phrases or ways of using/displaying words in written English that I find annoying. Here is an incomplete list of these minor annoyances:

1) Saying “literally” when what is really meant is “figuratively”

For example: “When Jim’s boss found out that the report was a week late, he literally exploded.” No, he didn’t literally explode (the room didn’t end up being covered in the boss’s blood and body parts); he got very angry. For another example: “Jane was literally swept off her feet by the charming man.” No, the man didn’t assault Jane with a broom; he used words to figuratively sweep her off her feet.

2) Saying “could” when “couldn’t” is what’s really meant

This is something that people from North America tend to do, most often in the “could/couldn’t care less” context.

When someone says “I could care less” they are saying that they care at least a little bit, which is the opposite of what they mean. The correct wording is: “I couldn’t care less”.

3) Writing “the proof is in the pudding”

This makes no sense. The correct saying is “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”.

4) Writing “personally, I”

Although it is probably not grammatically incorrect, I find it slightly irritating when someone writes “Personally, I…” or anything else that involves putting the word “personally” before or after “I” or “me”. As soon as you use “I” or “me”, the “personally” is implied.

5) Writing “she” to mean “he/she”

Writing “he/she” is a little clumsy. The correct alternative is to write “he”. Using “she” as the abbreviation for “he/she” is a blatant attempt by the author to be politically correct, and political correctness in all of its guises is annoying.

6) Replacing letters with asterisks

I have no problem with swearing. Words are just sequences of sounds and no sequence of sounds is inherently more offensive than any other sequence of sounds. Also, social conventions are constantly changing such that words that were considered profane in the past are no longer considered so and words that are considered profane today will not be considered so in the future. For example, the terms “dark meat” and “white meat” in reference to parts of a chicken or turkey started being used in Victorian times because in that period the words “breast” and “thigh” were widely viewed as vulgar.

That being said, many people are offended by swear words. That’s why I never swear in blog posts and rarely swear in my private life. However, some people apparently believe that they can swear without really swearing by simply replacing some of the letters in the ostensibly offensive word with asterisks. But if the word that is being ‘concealed’ with asterisks is still obvious, which it always is, then how is using the asterisks anything other than an insult to the reader’s intelligence?

Either swear properly or don’t swear at all. Don’t insult my intelligence by inserting asterisks in part of what you believe to be an offensive word.

An increase in the amount of gold bullion held by GLD (the SPDR Gold Shares) and other bullion ETFs does not cause the gold price to rise. The cause-effect works the other way around and in any case the amount of gold that moves in/out of the ETFs is always trivial compared to the metal’s total trading volume. However, it is reasonable to view the change in GLD’s gold inventory as a sentiment indicator.

Ironically, an increase in the amount of physical gold held by GLD and the other gold ETFs is indicative of increasing speculative demand for “paper gold”, not physical gold. As I’ve explained in the past (for example, HERE), physical gold only ever gets added to GLD’s inventory when the price of a GLD share (a form of “paper gold”) outperforms the price of gold bullion. It happens as a result of an arbitrage trade that has the effect of bringing GLD’s market price back into line with its net asset value (NAV). Furthermore, the greater the demand for paper claims to gold (in the form of ETF shares) relative to physical gold, the greater the quantity of physical gold that gets added to GLD’s inventory to keep the GLD price in line with its NAV.

Speculators in GLD shares and other forms of “paper gold” (most notably gold futures) tend to become increasingly optimistic as the price rises and increasingly pessimistic as the price declines. That’s the explanation for the positive correlation between the gold price and GLD’s physical gold inventory illustrated by the following chart.

Now, speculation in “paper gold” is both an effect of the gold price and an important short-term driver of the gold price. It is therefore fair to say that although changes in GLD’s gold inventory don’t cause anything, they often reflect changes in speculative sentiment that at least on a short-term basis do have a significant influence on the gold price. At the same time it is also fair to say that the influence of speculative buying/selling in the futures market is vastly greater (probably at least an order of magnitude greater) than the influence of speculative buying/selling of GLD shares. Refer to “The scale of the gold market” for details on relative size an influence.

The speculative demand for “paper gold” has certainly ramped up over the past several months. This is partly reflected by the increase in the GLD inventory shown on the above chart, but it is primarily reflected by the rise to an all-time high in futures-related speculation. This is illustrated below.

Chart source: http://www.goldchartsrus.com/

The extent to which short-term speculators are bullish on gold is a risk. An unusually-elevated level of speculative enthusiasm will never be the cause of a reversal in the price trend from up to down, but it will exacerbate the decline that happens after the price-trend reverses for some other reason.

James Altucher wrote a blog post several years ago that has stuck with me. The gist of the post was that the best way to deal with crappy people is to not engage with them in any way under any circumstances. Do not argue with them, do not attempt to give them advice, and do not make any effort to get them to like you. Just ignore them.

Altucher’s message has saved me a lot of aggravation over the years. Once in a while I fall into the trap of interacting with someone I should ignore, but I’m usually successful at preventing crappy people from disrupting my peace of mind — by essentially blotting them out.

I don’t have any crappy people in my personal life. At least, I don’t at the moment. However, as someone who publishes stuff on the internet I regularly attract emails from crappy people I don’t know. In the distant past these emails would sometimes annoy or disturb me and occasionally I would get sucked into a ‘tit for tat’ exchange, but no longer. I’ve learnt that there is no point trying to mud-wrestle a pig, because you both end up dirty and the pig enjoys it.

Just to be clear, I have no problem with polite criticism. In fact, when I write something that is logically or factually incorrect I am grateful if someone takes the trouble to explain where I went wrong. Crappy people, however, do not disagree in a polite and well-reasoned manner; instead, they launch insults.

Nowadays when I receive an email from a crappy person, I never respond. As soon as I realise the nature of the email, I delete it and add the sender’s address to my “blocked senders” list, thus ensuring that I will never hear from them again.

The best emails sent to me by crappy people are the ones that have an insult in the subject line, because I don’t have to waste time opening these. For example, last week someone sent me an email with “You are a moron” as the subject line. I don’t know what the email contained, because I never opened it. I just added the sender’s address to my “blocked” list and then deleted it. My guess, however, is that it was a reaction to a post I had published a day earlier (https://tsi-blog.com/2016/08/does-the-fed-support-the-stock-market/). The post in question debunked the claim that the Fed routinely props up the stock market by purchasing stocks, ETFs and/or futures, and I’ve discovered over the years that the surest way to provoke a vitriolic response is to write something that casts aspersions on a popular market-manipulation story or that expresses anything other than unequivocal optimism about gold and silver.

It has become easy for me to ignore emails from crappy people I don’t know, but it’s a lot more difficult, and not always possible, to ignore such people in our personal or business lives. However, if there are certain crappy people you can’t completely blot out, for example, if your boss is one or your sister is married to one, then you should at least minimise your interaction with them. Life is too short to do otherwise.

Here is an excerpt from a commentary posted at TSI on 6th August.

The monthly US employment reports have no relevance except for their influence on the Fed and market expectations regarding future Fed actions. The moderately strong employment data reported last Friday, for example, provides no information about the current or likely future performance of the US economy, but was noteworthy because it led to a slight increase in the expected level of the Fed Funds Rate (FFR).

The change in the expected level of the FFR in response to Friday’s employment news is illustrated by the following daily chart. The last bar on the chart shows a fall of 0.09 in the price of the January-2018 Fed Funds Futures (FFF) contract, which means that the expected level of the FFR in January-2018 rose by 0.09 (9 basis points) last Friday.

Now, under more normal circumstances a 0.09% change in the expected level of the FFR in 17 months’ time would not have a significant effect on the gold market, but these aren’t normal circumstances. These are circumstances in which the actions and expected future actions of central banks are dominating all other considerations. Consequently, just as a minor decrease in the expected FFR during the final week of July and the first two trading days of August propelled the gold price from around $1310 to the $1370s, a minor increase in the expected FFR on Friday predictably had the opposite effect.

Does this mean that if the expected FFR builds on Friday’s gain over the days/weeks ahead then the gold price will probably trend downward over the same period? Yes, that’s exactly what it means. It also means that if something happens in the world to cause the expected FFR to move below the lows of the past few weeks then the gold price will probably move to a new high for the year.