Gold Bear ...

15:23 - 28 juin 2013 par Marc Collet

L'or bientôt sous les 1.000 dollars?

Ce qui est sûr, c’est que la plupart des analystes ont revu à la baisse leurs prévisions pour les cours de l’once d’or.

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1.400 dollars l’once, 1.200 dollars, 1.100 dollars, voire même 900 dollars. Les analystes rivalisent d’estimations pessimistes pour l’évolution à venir des cours de l’or. C’est que, les uns après les autres, le métal jaune perd tous ses soutiens, confinant son prix dans un tourbillon baissier sans fin depuis maintenant quelques mois.

L’or est du coup bien en route pour achever le deuxième trimestre de cette année sur une chute proche de 25% à Londres! Soit sa plus grosse perte trimestrielle jamais enregistrée depuis au moins 1920, constate l’agence d’informations financières Bloomberg. À 1.222,04 dollars l’once (939,35 euros), l’or a touché au cours de la journée de mercredi son plus bas niveau depuis le mois d’août 2010.

Fin de cycle

Après une première secousse en avril au cours de laquelle ils avaient déjà perdu près de 13%, les cours de ce métal précieux sont repartis de plus belle à la baisse ces derniers jours. Une baisse qui coïncide avec la volonté affichée il y a huit jours par la Banque centrale américaine (Fed) de cesser, d’ici la mi-2014, de faire tourner sa planche à billets dans le cadre de sa politique d’assouplissement quantitatif (QE). Cette politique, qui avait été entreprise en 2009 et s’était déroulée en trois étapes, avait pour but de soutenir la reprise économique aux Etats-Unis.

Avec la perspective d’un retrait de cette politique monétaire de soutien, de plus en plus d’analystes estiment que prend fin désormais le cycle haussier de l’once d’or entamé en 2001, et qui l’avait conduit en septembre 2011 à un plus haut historique de 1.900,20 dollars.

Appétit retrouvé pour le risque

Jusqu’où peuvent tomber les cours de l’or? On l’a dit, les analystes ne se montrent guère optimistes sur ce point. Les bas niveaux auxquels les cours sont tombés devraient logiquement attirer des candidats acheteurs. Mais il faut bien reconnaître que peu d’éléments militent pour un rebond durable des cours.

La meilleure santé de l’économie américaine laisse entrevoir une hausse du dollar. Si le billet devait effectivement reprendre de la hauteur, il risque de mettre davantage sous pression les prix des matières premières, y compris ceux de l’or, dont les échanges se font dans la monnaie américaine.

La baisse du métal jaune est censée par ailleurs attiser l’appétit pour l’or des Indiens, reconnus pour être parmi les plus importants consommateurs d’or au monde. Mais le repli récent de 10% de la roupie indienne face au dollar et la taxe de 8% récemment introduite sur les importations d’or par le gouvernement indien, ne leur permettent pas d’en bénéficier.

De leur côté, les grandes banques centrales paraissent rester pour le moment sur la réserve. Pire, certaines d’entre elles sont plutôt enclines à profiter d’une embellie sur le marché de l’or, pour s’en délester. Cela a été le cas, par exemple, de la Banque centrale de Tchéquie en mai.

Avec l’éloignement des craintes de dislocation de la zone euro qui, avec le QE américain, avaient beaucoup contribué à alimenter la hausse de l’or, les investisseurs ont retrouvé depuis près d’un an le goût pour les actifs à risque, comme les actions. Ils délaissent du même coup une matière première comme l’or.

Objectifs de cours réduits

Tous ces facteurs défavorables au métal jaune ont conduit les analystes à revoir à la baisse leurs objectifs de prix pour l’once d’or (Voir infographie). Pour 2013, les estimations de cours vont de 1.409 dollars (Morgan Stanley) à 1.000 dollars (ABN Amro). Pour 2014, les prévisions varient dans une fourchette de 1.313 dollars (Morgan Stanley) à 900 dollars (ABN Amro).

Dans une étude publiée mercredi et signée par Georgette Boele, stratégiste sur les marchés des matières premières, ABN Amro indique qu’"il n’y a aucune raison pour les investisseurs de détenir de l’or actuellement, alors que les perspectives de plus-values sont faibles et que cet actif ne paie pas de dividende". En outre, estime encore la banque, "l’or dépendra énormément à court terme des indicateurs économiques américains. Si les données sont meilleures que prévu, la pression augmentera sur les cours de l’or". ABN Amro a les prévisions les plus pessimistes du marché. Si elles se réalisent, l’once d’or aura perdu plus de la moitié de ce qu’il valait quand il évoluait à ses sommets historiques.

De son côté, dans une déclaration à Reuters, Bernard Sin, senior vice-president de MKS Capital, indique que le marché de l’or est actuellement techniquement survendu. "Une série de fonds et d’institutionnels cherchent à clôturer leurs positions sur ce métal avant la fin de ce trimestre. Sans doute que jusqu’à ce vendredi, il va falloir s’attendre à d’importants dénouements de positions".

Up ? Down ? 700 ? 2300 ? Who knows ...

MARK HULBERT 

June 28, 2013, 2:23 p.m. EDT

Gold: Is the bad news over?

Commentary: Some say it has further to fall

Bloomberg News

Is gold undervalued or overvalued? The question is all the more relevant now that the precious metal is trading at $1,200 an ounce, having shed $700, or 38%, over the past two years, including nearly 14% during June alone.

One study stirring much controversy among gold enthusiasts suggests it has more to fall.

The study — titled “The Golden Dilemma” — was published earlier this year by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan think tank in Cambridge, Mass. Its major finding is that regardless of how you define gold’s “fair value,” gold sometimes trades well above it and at other times well below. An ancillary finding: Whenever bullion deviates significantly from fair value, it eventually returns to trade at that level.

Click to Play

Gold on track for worst quarter in decades

Gold price continued to slide on Friday, hitting the lowest level in almost three years.

Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University and one of the study’s co-authors, concedes that there isn’t one agreed-upon definition of gold’s value. But he says that he and his co-author closely analyzed all the criteria of which they were aware.

The list they studied included defining gold’s value as a hedge against inflation, currency fluctuations, or low real interest rates, or as an insurance policy against hyperinflation or collapse of the financial system. They found that each definition was unable to explain more than a small portion of gold’s price swings over the shorter term.

While this finding is frustrating to traders who want to forecast gold’s shorter-term moves, gold is hardly different in this regard than the other major asset classes.

Consider the price/earnings ratio, a popular valuation metric for equities. According to research conducted by Cliff Asness, co-founder of AQR Capital Management, which oversees $80 billion, the P/E ratio historically has been unable to explain more than 5% of the variation in next-year stock-market returns.

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The return of the two-week vacation

The two-martini lunch may be extinct, but another perk common to yesteryear’s workplace, the two-week vacation, is making a comeback among workaholic Americans.

The situation improves when we focus on the very long term, however, according to Harvey. When measured over many decades, gold is a decent inflation hedge, maintaining its purchasing power. His study therefore provides confirmation of the conclusion reached by a seminal book that enjoys almost biblical status among gold enthusiasts: “The Golden Constant,” which was written in the 1970s by the late Roy Jastram, a professor of business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Gold bugs need to be careful drawing the proper investment implications of Jastram’s conclusion, however, according to Claude Erb, a former commodities portfolio manager at TCW Group and the other co-author of the National Bureau of Economic Research study.

“For Jastram, the short run was the next few years, and the long run was perhaps a century,” Erb said in an interview. “And over the short term of a few years, both Jastram as well as our recent study found that gold’s track record as an inflation hedge is quite poor.”

Consider: Investors who bought gold at its January 1980 peak of $875 an ounce are today still below water in inflation-adjusted terms. They even were showing a loss two years ago when gold was trading for more than $1,900.

The investment implication is to pay careful attention to gold’s longer-term cycles before buying gold — or be willing to hold it for many decades.

• The six best investment lessons 'The Sopranos' can teach us

 

So how should you decide where gold is in its long-term cycle? As a rule of thumb, the researchers urge investors to calculate a ratio of gold’s price to the level of the consumer-price index. This ratio’s historical average has been about 3.4 to 1, so it is a good bet that gold is overvalued whenever the ratio is well above that level.

When gold hit its high over $1,900 an ounce in September 2011, for example, the ratio was more than 8 to 1. In January 1980, the ratio stood at more than 11 to 1.

Unfortunately for the gold bugs, the current gold/CPI ratio — 5.3 to 1 — is still above average, even in the wake of gold’s plunge over the past three months. To be in line with that average, gold would have to trade for $780 an ounce. “Note carefully,” Erb says, “our research doesn’t provide a basis for predicting when gold will once again trade at fair value, however — only that it will eventually do so.”

Michael Bordo, an economics professor at Rutgers University and director of its Center for Monetary and Financial History, also is not surprised by gold’s pullback. Referring to the statistical tendency for high or low readings to eventually move back toward the longer-term average, he said in an email: “My research has shown that there is a lot of mean reversion in the nominal price of gold, reflecting the relatively steady very long run behavior of the real price of gold.”

Erb acknowledges that his study’s conclusions are controversial. But that is at least partly because the “gold bugs believe bullion has some exalted status that exempts it from the price fluctuations that cause every other major asset class to sometimes trade well above or below fair value,” he says.

Also controversial is the suggestion that a gold/CPI ratio can be helpful for determining if gold is undervalued or overvalued, since many believe the CPI understates inflation. But gold will fluctuate wildly relative to whatever inflation index you choose, Harvey says, and it will inevitably regress to the mean following any period of extreme undervalue or overvalue.

If you believe, like the study’s authors, that gold is still overvalued, you might consider an exchange-traded note that gains in price to the extent gold declines: PowerShares DB Gold Short DGZ -2.25%  , which carries an expense ratio of 0.75%, or $75 for every $10,000 invested.

If you instead believe that gold is undervalued, or just due for a rally following its recent plunge, you might consider the SPDR Gold Trust GLD +2.73%  , an exchange-traded fund with fees of 0.4%. Another gold-oriented ETF is the iShares Gold Trust IAU +2.92% , with fees of 0.25%.

Still, there are more conservative — and cheaper — ways to hedge against inflation than by investing in gold. Investing in the U.S. Treasury’s inflation-protected bonds, or TIPS, is one example; an ETF that does that is Schwab U.S. TIPS SCHP +0.24%  , with fees of 0.07%. 

Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Chapel Hill, N.C. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980. Follow him on Twitter @MktwHulbert.

Intel vs ARM & others @ The Fool

Intel Corporation (INTC) and ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (ARMH) Entering a Price War?

By THE MOTLEY FOOL in News

Published: June 25, 2013 at 1:22 pm

INTEL CORP (INTC)

23,88 USD 
+1,27% | +0,30 
 25/06/2013 22:00



One of the largest investing stories over the last several years is the decline of the PC and the rise of mobile computing. One of the companies with the most to lose is Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) which controls 85.2% of the PC microprocessor market and receives 64% of its revenues from that sector (J.P. Morgan). Furthermore, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) made a large bet on Ultrabooks that hasn't panned out yet, and likely never will.

ARM HOLDINGS PLC ADS REP 3 ORD GBP0.05 (ARMH)

36,31 USD 
+1,99% | +0,71 
 25/06/2013 22:00

However, this is all old news, in fact even the capabilities of Intel's new Haswell processors and next-generation Atom processors and what that may mean for Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH) is old news. Intel's stock has risen substantially, while ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH)'s has fallen.

However, this change has not been as big as some analysts argue. A few even argue that Intel will eliminate the ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH)'s architecture's like it did PowerPC. The key point here is that the success that Intel has happened because of its technological edge. Over the last several years, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) dumped billions of dollars per year into researching ever better microprocessors and performance has risen proportionality. They managed to out-research IBM, which is quite a feat, and may well out innovate ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH).  However, the PC and mobile sectors do not work the same way.

How will ARM and Intel compete?

The historical key in PC's has been strong demand for processing power. Consumers will pay to use their PC's in computationally complex ways.  The demand for performance in the mobile market is much smaller. Consumers just don't push the envelope as far. This is precisely why ARM has done so well.  It's true that consumers are willing to pay for extra performance in the form of longer battery, and its Intel's solution to this problem that excited people so much.  However, how much battery life does someone really need?  Again, once we get all-day battery life, we'll be hitting diminishing returns pretty hard. We will soon hit that point.

So if Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH) designs are both powerful enough and efficient for most users, how will they compete? There is only one logical answer -- Price.  Herein lies the problem for Intel. Historically, it has always been the more expensive chip producer. It has focused on out-performing its competitors, while letting them under-price it. However, if it wants to compete in the mobile space long-term. It simply can't do that. It is already heading in that direction. Its new processors are substantially cheaper than previous iterations. Furthermore, most of the potential smartphone growth is in the developing world in places such as India and Brazil.. These consumers there don't already have a smartphone because they are poor, and poor consumers are more responsive to price than wealthier ones.

What does this mean for Intel

No matter how you slice it, if Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH) enter a price war, this will cut into both companies' margins. Intel simply won't be able to keep them around 60%. They are already starting to fall, going from 64% to 56.2% (ft.com).  This will likely have two main outcomes. 1) It will cause downward pressure on Intel's investment and hence its ability to create better chips than its competitors.  2) It will reduce Intel's profits, and hence its ability to return value to shareholders. Intel will likely remain profitable, but it won't have the moat it had.

Potentially better opportunities

Since we're looking at was is gearing up to be a fiercely competitive fight in the microprocessor market, the products will inexorably get better and likely get cheaper.  This will cut into Intel's and ARM's margins, but it will also create a better, cheaper product for the consumers. Many other companies will directly benefit from this.

The most obvious one is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). It operates precisely in the high-end mobile market that will be the most competitive. Instead of basically being stuck with ARM chips, it will be able to choose between Intel and ARM chips. Which one it chooses will have a major effect on that those companies, but Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) wins either way. It can offer a better product without having to raise the price at all.

Another slightly obvious one is Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). It benefits in a multitude of different ways.  First, its able to produce better quality and less expensive products through its Motorola Mobility and Nexus divisions. Furthermore, and more importantly for its bottom line,  these chips will benefit consumers worldwide causing many of them to get online sooner and spend more time there. This feeds straight into Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)'s advertising business, and thereby make money hand-over-fist.

Other companies such as HTC and Samsung will also benefit a great deal from this competition for similar reasons. Sadly, they are not listed on U.S. exchanges which makes investing in them riskier. To wrap things up, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH) are entering into what is essentially a zero-sum game in the mobile space. This will cause both of their margins to shrink. However, no matter how that fights ends up, the firms who buy their products will be better off, and so it might make sense to invest in those companies instead.

The article Intel and ARM Entering a Price War? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Paul Sangrey.

Paul Sangrey has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Apple, Google, and Intel. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Google, and Intel. Paul is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

Copyright © 1995 - 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) has dominated the microprocessor industry for two decades. Now there are rising fears that Intel may have trouble competing with emerging processor design firm ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH), whose chipset designs have become dominant in mobile.

ARM’s processor designs populate most smartphones and tablets. The line between PCs and mobile devices is blurring, with ARM attempting to move upstream while Intel tries to extend its presence downstream with its Atom chips. The emergence of the tablet has provided a battleground for the two, and ARM has been much more successful so far.

There is evidence that ARM-based tablets are cannibalizing PC sales, which in turn has  pressured Intel's processor sales. ARM has been highly successful in chips for mobile devices and tablets because of the low power consumption of its designs, something that Intel has been unable to match despite being able to offer higher processor performance.

Nonetheless, the Atom processors are becoming much more competitive in power efficiency, which should allow Intel to achieve more design wins in tablets and smartphones, and ultimately encroach upon ARM's turf in the next year or two.

Also, Intel also bolstered its capabilities as a chip supplier for mobile devices when it bought Infineon's IFNNY wireless chip business in 2011. More recently, the firm scored a key design win when Samsung decided to use Atom for the 10.1-inch version of its Galaxy tablet.

ARM holds an extensive library of microprocessor intellectual property, and has particular expertise in low-power, high-performance chip architectures. It's IP is the backbone of most processors used in handsets and mobile devices today, and strong tailwinds from the shift to higher-end smartphones and tablets should bode well for ARM in the years ahead.

ARM essentially develops the blueprints that allow a variety of the world's leading chipmakers, such as QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM), to design and actually manufacture many of its semiconductors. ARM's IP is the solution of choice for processor chips used in the handset industry, where low power and longer battery lives are critical factors. Intel is working hard to get into the mobile market, and it faces some long-term competitive obstacles against Qualcomm in the chip making market.

Qualcomm displaced Intel as the wireless baseband chip provider in all of Apple's iPhone 4S and 5 devices, which should drive higher chip sales in the years ahead, and also give the Qualcomm tremendous diversity to Apple, Android, and Windows Mobile devices.

Qualcomm’s design win in many of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S4 handsets gave the company a shot in the March quarter, and will contribute to solid revenue in the current quarter as well. Meanwhile, licensing revenue, or QTL, was up 17% sequentially.

On the other hand, the recent weakness in the global PC market has put pressure on demand for Intel’s processors, and it showed in its first quarter report.

No surprise in Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s and ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:ARMH) first quarter reports

Intel saw headwinds from continued softness in PC processor demand, as well as first quarter seasonality. Revenue was $12.6 billion, down 7% sequentially, and a decline from $12.9 billion a year-ago. In Intel's PC processor segment, sales were $8 billion, down 7% sequentially, and down 6% year-over-year.

ARM Holdings reported strong first-quarter earnings and gave investors a solid second-quarter outlook. I believe that the company's stock price reflects overly optimistic assumptions about long-term royalty growth, particularly from PCs and servers.

ARM's revenue for the March quarter was GBP 170 million, up 4% sequentially and up 29% from the year-ago quarter. Processor licensing revenue was GBP 52 million, up 26% from the year-ago quarter as ARM continues to strike new IP deals for its big little technology, advanced Cortex-A53 and A57 processor cores, and Mali graphics IP. Processor royalty revenue was GBP 80 million, up 37% from the year-ago quarter, thanks to healthy shipments of processors using ARM's Cortex-A and Mali IP during the seasonally strong December quarter. In turn, ARM earned a hearty 38% operating margin this quarter, up from 35% in the December quarter.

Conclusion

1). Because ARM's IP is widely available to all licensees, the company is only able to capture a small part of the value pie because its IP does not offer its customers much differentiation. 

2). ARM's physical IP division has been a drag on the firm's overall profitability and it could take some time before the division contributes materially to ARM's bottom line. 

3). Intel is striving to reduce the power consumption needs of its x86 architecture via its Atom chips, in turn becoming a more credible threat to ARM's ultra-low-power architectures in the mobile chip market. 

4). Although ARM will benefit from greater, more-advanced chip content in smartphones in the near term, its customers will probably see price declines over time as the smartphone market matures.

Perhaps more important, ARM still has plenty of room to see explosive growth from the mobile end market in the years ahead. Higher-end smartphones require greater, more advanced semiconductor content, which allows ARM to earn three to five times greater royalties from the sale of a smartphone than a basic handset. I don't see the shift toward smartphones slowing anytime soon, and I expect ARM's IP to continue to make these all-in-one devices possible.

All in all, ARM may generate hefty profits if these markets take off in the years ahead, but the firm's profitability may also flat line or come crashing down if the firm fails to live up to these lofty expectations.

Ahsan Aslam Khan has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Intel. The Motley Fool owns shares of Intel.The article ARM Still Flexing; Can Intel Muscle In? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Ahsan Aslam Khan.

Ahsan is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

Copyright © 1995 - 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Jobing in 2121 ...

June 25, 2013 4:12 pm

Embrace the slasher within to thrive

By Luke Johnson

We should abandon the concept of a job being permanent

Aslasher is not just a type of horror movie, but also a new category of entrepreneur. It describes someone with a portfolio career – a photographer/journalist perhaps, or a programmer/property developer. I believe it is the way ahead for this generation.

After all, most of us will need to work and earn for 50 years or so because of rising life expectancy and lack of pension provision. To pursue a single-track career for half a century risks boredom – which I think of as almost the greatest enemy. Moreover, technological change means many roles will become redundant – necessitating retraining in a new vocation anyway.

More

ON THIS STORY

• Brian Groom Put the workplace revolution on hold
• Lucy Kellaway The portfolio career is over
• Growth expected to spark increase in job moves
• Skills shortage worries employers
• Flexible working – the backlash

LUKE JOHNSON

• Titans can always be cut down to size
• The wrongs that write a business plan
• Pessimists be damned, it is time to buy
• The benefits of business with no fixed abode

And a 30-year retirement is a recipe for stagnation, idleness and misery. The only solution is to embrace the concept of life-long learning and a slasher existence of combined careers almost from the beginning.

Of course, many specialist fields need complete focus on a single profession: it’s difficult to be a part-time heart surgeon. And I’m not suggesting that a founder running a growing business with 500 staff should have lots of other jobs as well.

Meanwhile, certain professions naturally involve a range of activities: academics, for example, with teaching, researching, writing and so on all part of the package.

But obsessing about one thing for 25 years or more can be wearing. In the meantime, it’s sensible to prepare for a second act, which will probably involve several part-time activities. That is the nature of the modern world. The record numbers of self-employed and part-timers in the workforce reflect these shifts.

Freelance and part-time work can make sense for both employers and employees. Companies increasingly seek to contract out tasks, and avoid taking on permanent staff. Traditional job security and final salary pensions have all but disappeared, at least in the private sector. We should abandon the concept of a job being permanent, and instead see each position almost as an assignment.

Individuals who contract can enjoy flexibility and variety, while being less dependent on one organisation for their entire livelihood. I never liked being defined exclusively by the company where I worked.

Managing a portfolio career takes some juggling, as it is by no means for everyone. You may even get accused of being a “jack of all trades and master of none”. But online, mobile communications mean you can stay connected and multitask in a way that was previously impossible.

As I’ve written recently, it is no longer necessary to attend an office in many organisations since working remotely is becoming increasingly common. A majority of new businesses are started at home as a side activity to a day job. Some will become a full-time and growing pursuit, but others will remain modest enterprises that operate as an income supplement.

Many entrepreneurs go plural after selling their business and realising capital. They take up several appointments as a part-time or non-executive director, mostly in companies in which they are an investor, or sometimes serve as a trustee at charities that interest them. The hope is that they can cross-fertilise their knowledge between the various companies where they have ownership. I’ve had parallel involvements with a number of different businesses for some years. Depending upon the circumstances, one might contribute as an adviser, mentor, steward, custodian, referee or consultant.

Albert Camus wrote about the “wager of our generation”. I think our great wager is a bet that career structures in the 21st century must be more flexible and project-based. The old model of work is dying. Countries such as Spain and Italy that have rigid employment systems suffer massive levels of worklessness and poor productivity as a consequence.

To wait passively for the perfect job is to court unemployment and disappointment. Instead, we must each construct a series of overlapping initiatives, using our skills and networks, which can deliver diverse experiences and probably a higher standard of living. Such a way of life can be more stressful and appear riskier; but it helps make us more resourceful and usually excludes irritations such as routine, commuting and office politics.