Guess what I've been cleaning out of the comments sections on posts this evening?

Spam scam mail of the day

Received today. Apparently, this nice mister Benny Tao wants to sell me 22.4 Karat gold at U$19,000/kg. That's U$590.90 an ounce, so subtracting the 6.66% difference of this stuff to normal spot gold quality, at today's spot price of U$1,100 that nice mister Benny Tao is offering us all a discount of U$436/oz on an ounce of gold.

What could possibly go wrong?

Hello

We are contacting you to know if you would be interested in buying our precious metals.We are licensed marketer , exporter & miner of Precious Metals : Gold AU Dust & Rough Diamonds in Republic of Guinea & Republic of Cote d'ivoire of West Africa. We are end-seller for the below commodity .

COMMODITY DESCRIPTION AND SPECIFICATIONS:-

a) Commodity : Aurum Utalium (AU)

b) Form : Gold Bar/Dust, 22.4 karat

c) Purity : 99.9% plus - after refinery

d) Quantity : 350 kilos (Monthly Delivery) / 10 - 50 kg for trial shippment.

e) Delivery : CIF Buyer destination.

f) Assay : Final assay to be made by the buyer refinery
and this assay value will be accepted by both buyer and Seller

.
g) Origin : Guinea Conakry & Abidjan Cote d'ivoire

h) Price : 19.000 dollars/ Kg

If you are interested in our offer, kindly let us know.

Regards,

Mr Banny Tao

Tin Foil Hat Spam and Jim Willie

A long-ish post, and it's possible that part two is more interesting to you than part one so that's why I've split it up. Here we go.

Part One
One of the nice things about this blog is the mail I now swap with an impressive cross-section of people (and a good % of mailers are wise enough to disagree with me but keep to the spirit of good, friendly debate). One of the boring things is suddenly being included in an unsolicited mailing list, and one such example happened last night. Some guy with the apparent name 'Randall' decided to include me in his spam sent to various others (quite a few recognizable names on his list) which urged us all to go read an article written by a guy named Jim Willie.

So just for once I decided not to immediately delete. Just for once I sent "Randall" a reply, asking him who he was. He very quickly replied with a smartass comment that included my real name and "and who are you?". So I sent him this:

"Allow me to explain; the person who sends unsolicited mail is the person who should explain himself. The addressee is under no obligations.

Now, let's start again: Who are you, and why are you sending me mails that i didn't ask for? This time, either answer sincerely or simply don't answer."

He didn't reply. Fair enough, I gave him the option. But I'd mention two things right now:

1) If Randall spams me again I'll publish his e-mail address on the open web. From there the spambots will pick up on it and I'd guess his mailbox will suddenly become very popular with people who'd just love to sell him a penis enlargement kit.

2) Sure Otto Rock is a pseudonym (says it out loud on my profile), but I've never made my real name an amazingly secret secret, either. In fact from the beginning of this blog I've laid a couple of internet breadcrumb trails to my real identity. And quite rightly, 99.9% of people don't give a damn as to who I am. FWIW, I like the dynamic of the pseudonym here, as it allows me to mentally separate this blog from my 'real life' and job. Every now and again I've received a mail asking me for my real name, and I've always supplied it (to the ones who don't come across as unhinged in mails, anyway). So Randall, your pathetic attempt at shocking me (that could almost be construed as blackmail) is a far greater reflection on you than it is on me.

Part Two
So on to the meat of the program. After being bugged by Randall and his link to this Jim Willie, I thought "well, just for once let's see what it's about anyway" and clicked over to his note, entitled 'Calling US Bonds Home' (I'm not going to link it here., but you can find it on kitco if you want to read it yourself...it comes with three exclamation marks in the title). What I found was a TA-loving goldbug tinfoilhat raver who can put together a train of logical ideas about the decadent society in which we live and how we're all gonna die and stuff but was so bad at forecasting that he probably couldn't predict tomorrow's sunrise.

It seems Mr. Willie likes his charts, so after reading his Technical Analysis-based forecasts for the days and weeks to come, I thought it'd make a lot of sense to have a look at how he's been getting on recently. First, here is how gold has performed in the time period:

Gold price, May 2007 to date (click to enlarge)

Now, here are the charts from five of Jim Willie's previous articles in this time frame chosen at random (honestly, I got bored reading them after five episodes and there are dozens more to choose from) ......

....and be it May, June or July...

....and as you can see.......

.....we can certainly call the guy consistent....

....because he's consistently bullish on gold.....

.....and consistently wrong. In fact, if I'd known about this guy previously I could have made a bundle by using him as one of the world's foremost contrary indicators.

The only question left in my mind is "Who's the dickhead?". Is it our man Jim for being so badly wrong all the time, or is it people like Randall who pay this guy subscription fees and praise him to all and sundry? My best guess answer is "both", but only one of them is getting rich from this total BS analysis.