I'm just absolutely delighted to be here today on this gorgeous day and to be part of this wonderful celebration of all of your accomplishments. You will now see the way I have prescription dark glasses is this way. Graduates, families, parents, President Sullivan, Board Chair McEnany. I just want to say one thing about this commencement proceeding. 8.30 in the morning, are you fricking kidding me? I'm just amazed there are any students here. I am a verronter by marriage. My darling husband David Rines went to med school here and loved it so much that he stayed to do his residency under the famous Chairman of Surgery John Davis. For you out of staters, welcome to Vermont, a rock-ribbed Republican state where Patrick Leahy is the only Democrat ever elected to the United States Senate. Yes, that's actually true. Of course, times have changed since the dark ages when Leahy was first elected. Welcome to the new Vermont, a state so liberal that Republicans or Democrats, Democrats or progressives and progressives are socialists. And dear graduates, welcome to Vermont where the state legislature appropriates a whopping 7% of the university's budget, which is why you will be getting fundraising letters for the rest of your natural lives and perhaps beyond. And since I am, as I mentioned, a vermonter by marriage, let me suggest to you that you give and keep giving to UVM and to NPR, of course. Both are fine investments in the future of the country. Today's graduates really are very lucky. The shoeboxes are being torn down after you leave, meaning that you will miss the largest construction site on campus in its history and the accompanying mess which will last for years and years and probably more years.  I know that each of you wants to be someone who counts, who makes a difference, you want love, family, you want it all, which is the title of a couple of poems that I've written for the class. And first, I need my water. I forgot to bring it up. I have too many things to account for. I need a keeper. So, hold on. I think the only way to do this is, I don't know what you did here, Tom. Let's see. There we go. As I was saying, so I composed these little poems for you folks. So first, the women. I want the whole life experience in a ball. I want it all. I want adventure, love, career, kids, short or tall. I want it all. Don't tell me I can't have my drother.  I want to feel for once a little greed, play the market and own a steed, or at least dump my Subaru and get a car that's new. I want to be Michelle Obama and Michelle Pfeiffer, or maybe Margaret Sanger or Margaret Thatcher. I want to be like Diane Feinstein, queen of the clandestine and with such a steely spine. I will be undeterred like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Lead the charge like Sandra Day.  I want to be Loretta Lynch and Loretta Lynn. Lock them up and sing a hymn. I want to be Hillary Clinton, Hillary Duff and Hillary Swank or maybe instead the head of the World Bank. I want to be a hot date. Eat chocolate without gaining weight. Have a shishie pad and be secretary of state. I want a 28-hour day, six figures of pay. I want forgiveness on loans and acute erogenous zones. I want to run the marathon and do it with flair, be an academic chair who is beyond compare. I want to bleach my hair, invite guys to my lair, find a great au pair, spend tons on what I wear. I want to clean up the sludge, maybe be a judge. I want it all. And now, and now for the guys. I know it's a shocker. I want to run Hedy Topper. Drink champagne with Anthony Bourdain and find a cure for acid rain. I want forgiveness on debts and to manage the mess. I want to be Scott Turow, combine art, fame, and dough. I want to buy a place on Jay's Peak so I can sneer at Pike's Peak. I want to be Michael Douglas, Michael Jordan, Michael Bloomberg, husband of the year, player of the year, billionaire of the year, whatever the sphere. I want to be Andrew Sullivan, Gilbert and Sullivan, and of course, Tom Sullivan. I want to be Henry K. and I am Pay. Count Basie, Kevin Spacey, and Senator Leahy, or as it were, I could mess up my hair and be Bernie Sanders so racy. I want to be Thurgood Marshall, George Marshall, and Marshall McLuhan. I want to run the Fed and play the air to the Grateful Dead. I want to be Tom Brady, Tom Wolf, Tom Cruz, and on the side, I'll make headline news. I want to be Clarence Darrow, Clarence Thomas, Rand Paul, or Ralph Nader on whatever side, a fearless crusader.  Or let me just be Justice Breyer, taking common sense to a plane that is higher. I want to fight the crooks right like David Brooks, negotiate deals, and eat five-star meals, be a loving dad, a supportive mate, have a shishie pad, and be Secretary of State. I want a great chip shot, drop shot, jump shot. I want to wear a smile, run a four minute mile. I want it all. So Vermont is a very special place. People here take their citizenship very seriously, from town meetings to stewardship over natural resources. All those things I expect you folks have absorbed in your years here, if you hadn't already absorbed them. But I want to talk to you very briefly about what it means to be an informed, and therefore useful, citizen. In an era when newspaper readership is plummeting, and there are literally thousands of easy ways to get information, what we know is often a good deal less reliable than it once was. And there's considerably less sense of a shared community. People bookmark subjects they like, leaving out vast swaths of information that they would be interested in if only they knew about it in the first place. When Franklin Roosevelt was president, he delivered 30 fireside chats over 12 years. And the whole country tuned into those things. If you walk down the street in Chicago, for instance, you would hear FDR's voice coming from the open windows of apartments, from the taxis, from the radios and stores, and then people would talk about what they'd heard, agreeing, disagreeing, but they talked. Today we have endless TV channels, websites, streams, and lots and lots of radio stations. But in the broadcast world anyway, the content has changed dramatically. Before 1987, and the advent of cable, if a broadcaster wanted to keep its license, it had to comply with something called the fairness doctrine. That meant it had to cover controversial issues of public importance, and to do so in a fair and balanced way. The result was that all TV and radio stations had regular news broadcasts, and that competing viewpoints were expressed. Another element of the fairness doctrine was the so-called personal attack rule. It required that when individuals involved in public issues were attacked, the station was required to provide a similar time slot for a response. In 1987, with cable channels and FM stations abounding, the Federal Trade Commission abolished the rule, figuring that there were now plenty of avenues for expression. The result is that many radio and TV stations carry no news at all. Some cable channels have an obvious political agenda, think Fox, MSNBC for instance, and talk shows or talk harangues have become ubiquitous. I wanna make a couple of observations about all of this. Opinion shows or opinion newscasts do not present news. News are packages carefully reported, researched, and edited. That would cost a lot of money. Opinion shows generally feature smart people, confidently popping off, often with few facts or facts that are half truths, with a little video or audio thrown in for good measure. The same is true of many opinion pieces on the web and in print. Now there's nothing wrong with reading, listening to, or watching any of this, but being informed means actually knowing something that you can rely on that has a genuine element of truth to it. That means reading a well-edited newspaper or magazine or, forgive me, listening to NPR where we spend millions and millions and millions of dollars on reporting and editing, or watching TV broadcasts reported by people of distinction, integrity, and journalistic reputation. I'm not ignoring excellent analytical opinion pieces, but for God's sakes, don't just read or listen to things you just agree with. If you're a liberal, read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. If you're a conservative, read the editorial page of the New York Times. It might make your blood boil, but every now and again you'll learn something or even better, you'll be forced to think. If you're a liberal who can't bear to read the journal, well, then try the more moderate and totally reliable conservative David Brooks on the Times op-ed page. And if you're a conservative who gags at the New York Times editorial page, then try the more moderate and less predictably liberal Ruth Marcus on the Washington Post op-ed page. The point here is that this all feeds into not just the notion of being an informed citizen, but being able to hear each other as citizens. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center last year is or at least I think probably should be troubling to those of us who believe in our democratic system of government. The year long study found that increasingly people are more likely to interact with those who agree with them. There are striking differences between consistent liberals and consistent conservatives. The conservatives are tightly clustered around one main news source, Fox News, which 47% almost half of consistent conservatives watch. The consistent liberals are not clustered like that. The largest group, 15% watch CNN, 13% listen to NPR and 10% read the New York Times, go figure. Consistent conservatives distrust most of the 36 major news sources listed in the study. In contrast, consistent liberals trust most news sources. But the liberals are more likely to de-friend someone on a social networking site because of politics. The consistent liberals and conservatives share one important trait. They are all very interested in politics and public policy and are more likely to drive political discussions. In other words, they're leaders rather than listeners. The result I would suggest is the kind of gridlock we see in Washington.  One final note on all of this. I know the fashion is to think that social networking has produced so much more information and it has. It started the Arab Spring, it's toppled governments and in this country it's shown that we do have a serious problem with police practices. But having said that, raw data and raw opinion are not the same as news. Just having someone tell you something does not mean it's true. I can't tell you how many times I've had a good story ruined by the facts. In my view, two things are critical for reporters. Rules, i.e. standards and editors. I'll tell you just one story to illustrate the point. During the Clinton-Lewinsky debacle, I was writing the roundup lead for the top of all things considered one day and the Wall Street Journal website moved a story online saying that a secret service agent had actually been a witness to the liaison. So I quoted the Wall Street Journal story in my roundup and my editor asked me who my source was.  This isn't even close, he said. He made me take it out because I didn't have independent confirmation. Well, I grumped around for a while saying he was a purist. Lucky for me he was. The story wasn't true and the journal ate it hours later. Let me note parenthetically that I don't think that story would have ever made it into the newspaper. One of my colleagues at a top newspaper said to me just a couple of weeks ago that when he writes a web piece it gets a look from one set of eyes other than his own. But if he writes a piece for the paper and it's on the front page it's likely to get 10 other sets of eyes. I think that that would be true for all of us in the news business. Dangerously true. We have so many platforms we report for that it's the one that's the centerpiece in NPR's case radio that gets most of the eyes or in our case ears prior to publication. One other thing, if you want good information you have to pay for it. There is no free journalism that will last for any period of time because if there's no money to pay there's no money to pay reporters and editors. So get used to it. You want something good you have to pay for it. Finally I want to talk about something just a bit more personal. When my late husband fell on the ice more than 20 years ago nobody could have known on that morning that it would take three brain operations and four months in the hospital before he could come home. Frail and learning to walk again. Nor could anyone have known that a year lady he would return to the hospital and spend seven months in intensive care reeling from one crisis to another. At the time I really wondered whether I was capable of doing all the things that needed to be done for him. I managed in large part because of my family my friends and colleagues. They wind me and dined me to keep my spirits up. They sat with me in hospital rooms. They went to doctors meetings with me. They took notes at meetings with social workers and then read them the riot active promise services were not delivered. And let me tell you you do not want to have Koki Roberts reading back to you from her notes. There is of course a lesson in all of this besides friendship and family. It's a lesson that involves a rather old fashioned word duty. When you come to a crisis in life I think you will find that doing your duty will serve you rather well. Whether it's your crisis or someone else's crisis. The path is clear. The choices are few and there are no regrets afterwards. Indeed there are rewards. You're a better person for one of a better expression.  Not long after my husband Floyd died in 1998 I started dating my Vermont her husband David whose wife had also died after a long illness. Our friends and family I think rejoiced at our wedding every bit as much as we did. In part because they had shared in our grief and loss and our climb back to the living. This provides a segue for me to turn to one last subject, your work life. The thing that if you're lucky will drive you and provide great, great satisfaction. My late husband Floyd was a lawyer who changed careers at least three times. He enjoyed all of them. My husband David is a trauma surgeon, vice chairman of surgery at a huge hospital and a teacher of surgical residents and med students. One of the many things I admire about him is that he's always willing to look at what he does with a fresh eye, to think about new training for himself and to change the emphasis of what he's doing. And we both know that however much we love our jobs and we do and however hard we work and we do that life is ephemeral and that in the end there are times to say, no, I'm going home. So take those diplomas, go home, knowing that there's so much more to come. Good luck, Godspeed and thank you for adding me to the roster of Vermont degree holders.


I don't know how to do it with a basic skill, it's turning. Yes, it's turning. This is the low sound. Don't worry. Do you know how to do it? Then? Yes, we will see how to do it with a basic skill. Yes, it's very easy. Yes, very easy.


Hey everyone welcome to this week's video update actually recording this on Saturday morning March 27th So let's jump in talk a little bit about the markets Give you an update on the day trading and then we'll go through our alerts and current positions in our portfolio To start with looking at the S&P 500 big, you know, we've last couple weeks We've seen a little bit of weakness but big rally on Thursday and Friday to put us all the way back up at All-time highs just under all-time highs. I was talking about Last week that actually right here. I was thinking we'd probably bounce from here and And go up to all-time highs but took a little bit more weakness a little bit more time But here we are right back up there. So What as I mentioned the last couple weeks, we are expecting continued higher prices So we are still carrying a little bit of short Delta in our portfolio But we're less than one-to-one on our short Delta versus our theta ratio. So So basically for every dollar of theta that we have we've got about 50 cents of short Delta and that's beta weighted to SPY so On this downside, you know, we got we did get smoked out of a couple of iron ducks this week in rut Rut saw a lot more downside than the S&P for example And so we you know, we put on one up here thinking that the market was probably gonna bounce or have a little bit Downside and we put it we had two on in here So on this big flush and that's a that's a big move from the expected move in rut That is quite a bit bigger. Remember we have our downside break even on those iron ducks at about a one standard deviation move So we saw some significant Down movement in small caps and that that's reflective of the financials as well if you look at XLF Pretty pretty big flush in in financials as well The Russell holds a lot of the smaller banks and so is even even weaker than XLF But I got a couple of questions like, you know, should we should we keep trading rut for the iron duck? You know, what you know, maybe maybe we should trade something else and the answer is no I mean rut is a an excellent vehicle for that Really any index is and we like these big European style because the expiration and because the because the high price But you know just because that had a flush the last few days. Don't let that deter you from trading it You know, you're gonna get caught in some of those We're just we're playing the probabilities over and over and the fact that we had two losers in a row and rut Has nothing to do with the fact that we should still continue to trade it, you know Obviously, I've I had some iron ducks in a personal account in NDX didn't have near as much downside I had some iron ducks and personal count in SPX didn't have near as much downside and I and I also had some in rut So, you know, it's important to spread the love around. You don't want to be loading up all in one thing just because of that reason But rut is still fine. We and we've seen more weakness here, which in turn has spiked the implied volatility So we actually added another one in here So we've got we still got a couple and we're now we're seeing a big bounce So saw a big flush on the way down and we're seeing a huge bounce on the way up, too So just remember when you're when you're trading the strategies that we teach It's all about the number of occurrences, you know, the fact, you know, one losing trade two losing trades in a row I mean you could have five ten losing trades in a row that that does not matter You've got to have the mindset of focusing on the number of occurrences over time playing the probabilities You're always gonna have strings of losers and think about that Especially when you're trading in iron ducks and you have a huge flush You know, if you look back to the corona crash We got, you know, we got smoked out of a few here as well.  It's just one-tenth of the size So make sure, you know, I pound this all the time position sizing is key position sizing is key So keep that in mind, you know, when you get flushes like that You're gonna have situations where you're gonna have to take some losses and that is part of the game All right, so that's the that's the S&P up at all-time highs already showed rut We're gonna at the NASDAQ NASDAQ is definitely not as strong It's definitely seen some headwinds here as you can see it's still making lower lows and has not made a another higher higher high yet, so You know NASDAQ I would expect we still continue to see You know the NASDAQ you see tech stocks stay a little bit weaker than some of the large cap value with the Dow If you take a look at Dow DIA, you can see DIA is close to all-time highs similar to the S&P We're rut and NASDAQ are staying weaker and I would expect we see something similar to that in the short term But I also want to touch on the bonds a Lot of what's driving the market right now is the bonds and interest rates So remember bonds move inversely correlated to interest rates of interest rates are going up bonds are going down We're seeing that significant Slope in bonds right now if we take a look at the Opposite side of that the ten-year treasury you can see interest rates are continuing to push and had a little pullback and Now we know we could be back up So keep your eyes on the bonds keep your eyes on the treasuries that is what's really driving the markets I mentioned this before and most people don't realize the bond market is actually about 30% larger than the stock market So there's a lot of a lot of money and when this thing starts moving. It's going to affect all asset classes All right, so that's the market before we jump into the alerts real quick update on the day trading I had a decent week total profit for the week 2006-1275 on the runners booked over 1200 on the pairs trades 655 and on the mighty 90s 729 I started tracking my P&L by day of week I got to go back and still Capture the previous previous weeks, but as you can see kind of the middle of the week, you know Tuesday I thought was actually better very small sample size But as I suspected middle of the week is my best performing so we'll start increasing size on those days you can see Wednesday and Thursday the last few weeks have been solid and Eventually, I'll go back and get the rest of that data so I can make a little bit better informed decision So day trading keeps going well P&L year-to-date a little over 21,000 on All-day trades and then if we look back Since we started tracking back in August total profits a little over 57,000 so continuing to do well there So let's go to our alerts starting with Monday The date on Monday was what the 22nd? So the first alert of the day of the week on the 22nd here. Let me scroll back Starting with SPX. So we did a weekly double calendar in SPX We already had one on in the same cycle So we just added this one with four days in the front week seven days in the back And we ended up taking that off. So I'll get to that closing trade here momentarily Rut, this is one of the iron ducks that we opened did this one with 14 days to expiration SMH Had a short strangle in SMH and we just rolled this out. We were we're dead centered on this SMH Strangle which we had adjusted into a straddle. We were at 50% of max profit So we just rolled that out to extend duration We weren't quite down to that 21 days to expiration We were 24 but we rolled it out to 59 still in our wheelhouse of under 60 days to expiration So if we go to SMH, let's check out the risk profile big day in SMH at 5% on Friday You can see we're still fairly centered here, and we're up about 160 Some dollars since we did that roll. So we'll continue to manage that one Not not back to profits yet on that one We're it's gonna take a couple more cycles and for price to stay in range for us to book a profit on that But we'll continue to manage that DE rolling adjusting trade and DE so we've got this long put vertical that we've been rolling keeping his short Delta Got to a point here where it was way far out of our range And so we went ahead and just rolled it if we take a look at DE You can see a big move here the last couple days on this bounce So it's it's bounced out of our range a little bit but looking for some downside to get back in range Holding that for short Delta In Adobe we did an earnings iron duck so they announced earnings did this one with three days to expiration We on Friday price was hanging out in the duckhead area. We had a chance I thought to potentially book close to max profit But with the market just exploding higher on Friday. We we ended up just booking a beak profit on that one Rut closing trade So here's one of our rut iron ducks that we got smoked out of so price moved lower past our exit point So we had to close that out at that point We were still holding two one with eight and one with 14 days to expiration FDX had a we added a long call diagonal So remember we added a short put vertical after earnings it opened above the expected move price came down right at the and held right at the Pre-earnings price level. So if we take a look at the chart So this red line signifies the expected move after earnings it shot up came down a little bit We got long right here and a lot of times what will happen is it'll kind of trend sideways or just shoot up now We got caught in the flush of the market So the market came down right to that pre earnings level right here on this bar And so I was waiting for to see if it would hold hold and once it did we added another bullish position and Benefitted from not only a fdx, but the rest of the market pushing this thing up But big push in fdx so on both of our positions. We're now profitable Here's the short put vertical that we put on right after earnings Could have taken this off, but you know, it's pretty close to the end of the day when we saw a real massive part of that rally So on Monday, hopefully this kind of stays up or even pushes higher and we'll book that one for a nice You know at least 50% of max profit and then we've got our long-call diagonal Which we're using what do we use in here about? 386 dollars in buying power and risk and we're already up 181 So we're already up at about 50% of max profit on that one So we'll probably take half of that off and then let the other half ride See if we see if we can get some more upside out of that one Amazon closing trade so we did an iron duck in Amazon Amazon stayed pretty strong It was way up the way up the beak So we just closed that alley close that out early booked a beak profit if we take a look at a chart of Amazon Kind of compare what Amazon has done to the rest of the market. You can see it's just been kind of chopping sideways I mean it had definitely had some couple big down days several week up days, but just kind of chopping sideways, which is just fine for our ducks Next trade closing trade and rut So this is our second iron duck that we got smoked out of on that huge down move So at this point we were just holding that 14 day duck that we put on earlier this week So if we take a look at Actually, I added one more here. So I'll go to rut here in a second IWM. This is one of our short Delta plays. This is a long put vertical We're over 50% of max profit on this. So this is like I said IWM's one tenth the size of rut So this is a short position that we had at IWM. So that benefited us So even and here's the other thing guys Even though we got smoked out of those couple iron ducks and those were painful our P&L was still positive partly because of our short Delta positions that we had on and partly because of our other You know positions like fdx and some of those others that benefited from the from the bounce So you've got to have that balance in your portfolio that you're comfortable with Obviously, we don't know what's gonna happen ahead of time if we if we know the mark's gonna crash We're gonna load up on short Delta But that's not realistic and we're holding very little short Delta because we anticipate higher prices But part of our short Delta was in IWM and on that flush We got to a point of being over 50% of max profit. So we just rolled that out from 22 days out to 57 So if you take a look at IWM Now price is obviously bounced up since we did that roll So it's a little bit out of range, but just holding this for some more downside if it comes and Then QQQ same exact thing. So we got to a point. We were over 50% of our max profit on that so we just rolled out in time and Just you know rolling some of these April's we like to spread out our rolls So we've got several Vertical spreads that we're carrying for that short Delta exposure and so we like to spread those out So that day we did IWM and QQQ again cues have bounced a little bit So it's slightly out of our range now, but we've got a lot of room to the downside if things do turn south Rut so this is the opening trade so we added another iron duck in rut did this one with 13 days to expiration So if we take a look at rut, we've still got two iron ducks delete these theoreticals So we've got this one here With a 4-2 expiration now you can see Prices on that bounce prices really moved up the beak here and there's very little chance of price getting back Into our duckhead area. So next week. We'll probably just close that out Book a profit wait for a little downside and potentially put another one on Then we've got this one here We just put on as well. This is got the 4-8 expiration pretty close to where we put it on So still a decent chance that we could get down into the duckhead area. In fact, yeah, I mean, it's we've got about a This is pretty close to where we put it on so about 85% probability that we'll we'll stay in range here So we'll continue to add ducks on any downside movements into next week as well SPX opening trade. So this was a weekly double calendar in SPX put this one on with seven days to expiration And 11 in the back week. So if we check out SPX got a lot of theoreticals here, let me get rid of those All right, so this one this one we put on and With the big jump in price and we started out right here in the center and it's all the way up at our break Even here so Monday Unless things just drop on Sunday night and the market's open much lower We'll be adding another weekly double calendar with that four days to expiration. Well at that time It'll actually be three so we may not we may go out to the next cycle with with ten and or nine and 13 Nines we like to stay between that six and eight days But nine's okay too depending on where implied volatility is obviously if the markets going down if implied volatility is spiking We're not gonna put one on but if the market continues to rally and implied volatility is contracting We'll look at this cycle here the April 7 April 9 to add another one And then just like we always manage our weekly double calendars. We are going to you know If price continues higher, we'll wait for our exit point which in this case is About 50% of our debit paid so about 954 So we've got a max loss on this one of 500 bucks So if it if it makes a push way out here, so we're if we're down 500 we'll close that out Otherwise, we'll hold it and see if we can get a bounce back into range and add another one to kind of widen out our overall break Evens on our weekly double calendars SPX so this is one of the weekly double calendars we closed so price was near the downside break even We kind of waited till later in the day and we almost got to a point of profit But I didn't want to hold this in case the market flushed lower Didn't want to take a big loss. We ended up closing this out for a small loss Had we waited a little bit longer like a little bit closer to the close of the day We could have even booked a small profit on that one, but just Scratched out of small loss and then in SPY we added a vertigo with the with the markets cranking higher and implied volatility contracting Vertigo was a good strategy to put on now with this one I mean we had that we had that late-day rally on Friday to a point where we could have actually taken this off I mean we're only targeting about 250 dollars on this trade total and we're at 240 right You know as of right now now the markets closed so that may be a little inaccurate, but I didn't I wasn't looking at this position specifically in the last 10 minutes Otherwise, I probably would have closed it. I know a couple people in the community went ahead and closed there We just put this on Friday and had that quick rally on Friday could have booked a profit same day So hopefully price holds up Maybe goes a little bit higher and we could book a little bit more But we might potentially just take this one off on Monday and book a quick profit Apple rolling adjusting trade so that another one of our short Delta plays that we rolled out We were over 50% of max profit on this piece. So just rolled it out from April to May So if we take a look at Apple You can see prices just inside range here pretty close to where we rolled it SPX this is our second weekly double calendar on this one. We managed to scratch out a tiny profit Got a big collapse in the implied volatility, which which is pretty normal on Friday And so we were we had a little bit of a loss on Thursday So we held it one more day we were able to scratch out a little profit on it And so just close that one out Adobe this is our earnings iron duck. I already mentioned we we ended up booking beak profit on this price ran higher Had it thought we had a chance to potentially book close to max profit But then when the market is ripped higher ended up just booking the beak profit, which is Which is green as well Lowe's okay, so on Lowe's we had a our initial strategy was this long call diagonal We took it we took half of it off and booked a nice profit. We held the other half looking for more profit now If we look at a chart of Lowe's We put the so we had this initial flush right after earnings on this bounce. We got short and This thing flushed lower and we booked half of our contracts there And then we held the others for a little bit more downside Well, as we can as we can now see this thing just actually absolutely Exploded higher to new all-time highs and so we ended up taking a loss on the second piece so what we did here is Because we've got a long put and a short put we went ahead and just let our short puts expire worthless Okay, so those were max profit So we just let those expire worthless and we just went ahead and held on to our long put So in case by chance Lowe's decides to make a big move lower into early next week Then we'll then we'll be able to book some profits on this long put now not very likely But if that happens, we're gonna hold on to this if we do get some down movement We'll be able to get back some more profit and you know potentially still be able to be profitable on this trade But we may be based on what we already took off and then the the explosion of the move afterwards We will probably be somewhere around a small loss, but we'll see will those expire on for two So we'll be either closing that out or just letting these expire worthless into next week and Lastly Twitter, so we had a long call diagonal in Twitter and we let our Remaining calls expire here. So if we take a look at Twitter We were we had a bullish play on Twitter, but it really got weak with the When the market started flushing with tech kind of flushing and so it did definitely didn't have the bounce that we are Looking for with with some of the other stocks in the market but so we So we ended up just Letting letting those expire and took a loss on Twitter So those are all of our trades. Let's take a look at some of our other positions We've got a an iron condor and oil you can see we're up about 160 on oil We'll want to book about 30 to 40 percent of max profit Oil's been on a wild ride. So after this little flush down it started to bounce That's when we put our iron condor on a couple days later This thing just flushed like it was going lower and then bounced all the way back and we're talking That's a 6% move down 5.5% move up 4% move down 5% move up. I mean just big swings and oil You can see the volume compared to normal Is pretty crazy, but all that motion and we're dead centered in our iron condor. So hopefully that kind of stays in range You know, maybe by the end of next week if things calm down and implied volatility can track some more We might be able to book that one Yes, we've got a long put vertical and yes is one of our short Delta plays You can see prices out of our range here need a little bit of downside to get back in in bonds So bonds I made a comment on our Position updates in the community this week that we were you know, we when prices a little bit higher We're we're right at 50% of max profit. We're gonna continue to roll this one a couple reasons one We're we're still Managing it back to profitability We're down on this one and so we're gonna continue to do it now But the but the main reason is that we've still got some nice juicy implied volatility So I like being short premium in bonds if you look at TLT, you know, you got about a 49% IV percentile You know if these if IV percentile IV rank were down, you know under 20 under 10 We would just close this thing out But based on everything else available in the market sell premium with bonds are a good choice They're moving and the implied volatility is higher And so we'll continue to extend duration on that one and continue to try to roll back to roll back to profits I mentioned Apple Boeing so Boeing had that real big strength. It pulled back I was looking for some continued strength and it just hasn't given it to us until you know Thursday and a little bit on Friday So we're down on this one a little bit Zoom this in a little bit You know, so we're down a little under 200 bucks on this one. So looking for some upside to benefit Boeing DE I mentioned DIA I mentioned Disney same thing Disney had been very strong and we were looking for some continuation and it hasn't kept up either So a couple of our long call diagonals have not have not been doing that well But remember we're keeping these super super small, you know, we're talking about $300 in risk And so we position size these two, you know, if it completely falls apart and goes goes against us We're fine taking full loss. So make sure you're position sizing correctly Because these and then on the on the flip side when these when these really go in our favor, you know We're booking 50 to 100% of max 50 to 100% of profit DK and G same thing DK and G's been super strong And then we put on a bullish play and this thing is really pulled back But I wouldn't doubt if this thing rips up to new highs here in the next week or so and on this one We've got we've got a week. So we'll see what happens if we can get some upside there We'll continue to add these in to help balance our portfolio and look for opportunities of stocks We think have more room to the upside obviously on these few we have we didn't hit those very good But for example on FedEx we did right? We only had that on for a day and it's already at 50% of max profit So we'll continue to use those a lot of it is balancing our deltas You know, we want to we want to be fairly bullish, but still keeping a little bit of short delta in our portfolio IWM I mentioned lows I mentioned QQQ's rut SMH SPX SPY as a vertigo and that lastly XLK So we're right at pretty close to where we put this on just in range Using looking for some downside to benefit that XLK is part of tech. So if we get a little bit of downside in the next week We'll probably roll this out and keep it as a short delta play We'll roll that from April to May So that's all of our alerts. That's all of our positions. Everybody. Have a good rest of your weekend Don't forget next Friday. Good Friday. The markets are closed but we'll be streaming live in our day trading room Monday through Thursday and Sending alerts Monday through Thursday as well. So see in the community. Have a good weekend


With major technological, social, and economic processes of change underway, we are fast moving away from the well-established model of the industrial age and into a new form of digital networked economy where the traditional, well-defined parameters of economics are being once again revisited as we search for a new model better suited to this new reality. One aspect to this is a reconceptualization of the very foundations of economics. That is to say, the idea of value. With token economies, we are really re-exploring what value is and how we quantify and exchange it. Part of this equation is the differentiation between intrinsic and extrinsic value. The economic system that evolved over the course of the modern era has come to be based on utility as a measure of extrinsic value. Token economics is a more generic form of economic model that lets us define not just utility, but also intrinsic value. To make sense of this, we need to first look at what we mean by utility and intrinsic value. Things can have value both in and for themselves and as means to other ends. For example, a tree has some kind of value in and for its role within an ecosystem, but it also has value in use as firewood for heating. The first form of value we call intrinsic value, and the second extrinsic value or utility. It is important to make this distinction because the two have very different properties. For example, most of us recognize that having many friends and connections has a certain value, but we also recognize that this is different from financial capital. Buying friends is not the same thing as having friends. Why is this so? Because money is a measurement of utility, while friendship and social bonds are seen to have some form of intrinsic value. Though our traditional monetary system does not capture this form of social capital, in some way token systems can. For example, likes on social media can be a form of tokens, with those tokens representing your social capital. This subtle difference between intrinsic and extrinsic value and how we may harness and capture them through tokens is very complex and something we are just beginning to explore. Our traditional financial system and the basis of neoliberal free market economics is the construct of value as utility. Utility is the value that something gives to some person. Utility implies that it has a general and immediate usefulness that people would be prepared to pay for. Utility is a measure of extrinsic value. Utility is instrumental, like a tool or an instrument. We use it for what it can achieve. We don't care about the system itself. Utility is always relative to what someone is prepared to pay for. Due to this, we can measure the value of something by looking at its supply and demand curve to derive a single price that is defined as the measure of its value. In contrast to utility is intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is the value that something contributes to the maintenance and functionality of a whole system. With intrinsic value, we have a unit that values the functionality of the whole network. For example, the social capital contained in the bonds of a society that enables it to function as a community is a form of intrinsic value. A mangrove swamp that preserves a local ecosystem and prevents coastal erosion is a form of intrinsic value. When we chop the mangrove down, that may deliver something we can exchange on a market and utility, but it has lost its intrinsic value in maintaining the functional integrity of that ecosystem. Utility is a measure of some derivative value, while intrinsic value is inherent to the network or system that delivers the value. For example, we are able to quantify, buy, and sell wood, but not the functionality of an ecosystem. We are able to buy care for elderly people, but we are not able to buy with money a functioning community that might provide this service organically. Intrinsic value is like a fixed asset. It is non-liquid. You can cash in the value of an ecosystem or of a community or culture, as we have done in many ways, but you lose a massive amount of the value when you do that. For example, research has shown that a mangrove swamp is worth orders of magnitude more when it is left intact than when it is cashed in. As a metaphor, we can think of utility as the lowest denominator, being divisible into many things and easily exchanged, whereas intrinsic value is the highest denominator, being non-divisible and non-exchangeable. Because it is intrinsic, it is inherent to the system and can't be easily ported to other contexts. Traditional currencies in the free market system only let us quantify and exchange utility. They do not account for the value that may be inherent to a system that is not of immediate utility to any actor. But token systems enable us to expand economic activity beyond the realm of utility. Token economies can be understood as a natural evolution to our economic system that responds to the broader set of values that people come to hold in post-industrial economies. The industrial age was all about the provisioning of basic tangible products, which the market system and utility captured effectively. A post-industrial economy, which all advanced economies are today, goes beyond this basic provisioning of goods. As people's basic needs are met, they move up the hierarchy of needs and start to care about and value a broader spectrum of services. The traditional model of utility tells us about the exchange and consumption of goods. It does not tell us about the quality of the social, cultural, or natural environment within which agents exist. Thus, actors can end up living in a severely degraded social, cultural, and natural environment, which significantly reduces their quality of life. While still, the economy is churning through vast amounts of resources so as to make up for this. And our metric of utility, in this case GDP, would still tell us that the system is in an optimal state. The economy is supported by a vast heritage of natural capital, such as clean water, sunlight, oxygen, etc., which stays providing the conditions for the inflow of natural resources. Whereas in the previous industrial age, these may have seemed infinite. Today, it is becoming more apparent that they are finite, and we are increasingly looking for means to quantify and integrate them into market decisions. Likewise, an economy is embedded within and dependent upon a massive nexus of social and cultural institutions that are required for it to function effectively. This value that is in social bonds that enables trust and frictionless exchange is called social capital, and the economy benefits all day every day from huge complex networks of social capital that go unaccounted for. But again, we are starting to take note of the value of social and cultural capital as important to the success of enterprises and economies. Increasingly, what people in advanced economies want from their economies is not just GDP, but quality of life, which is a much more complex thing involving many different forms of value. This is why a post-industrial economy is a services economy, and the best model for a services economy is a token model, because token networks can potentially capture and incorporate all the different forms of social, cultural, natural, and financial capital needed to provide quality of life. By excluding intrinsic value, we have created the notorious divide within the industrial economy between the market and the public sector. Markets were previously limited to utility exchanges and dependent upon public institutions to regulate the supporting social and natural capital. However, this is what changes with token economies as we can now begin to quantify, account for, and exchange social and natural capital. Going forward, we will be increasingly able to express social values through tokens via their programmability. Because tokens are digital, they may be programmed with certain rules, and when you have moved assets onto the blockchain, those programmable rules can be used to define what kinds of activities the token network supports or does not support. For example, if our society decided tomorrow that we no longer thought the eating of meat was a good thing and wanted to move away from it, we could do that by simply no longer purchasing meat products, and the entire industry would disappear quickly. In a token economy, we can put our money where our mouth is as proof of what we value. We could create a veggie token that could be programmed so that it could not be used to purchase meat products. Or, as another example, we may have a weapons-free token which is programmed so that it cannot be used to purchase weapons. If our societies had only tokens of this kind, then weapons could not be purchased and they would disappear. We could then see how much our society values peace by looking at how closely that token traded relative to another token that was the same but could be used to purchase weapons. If there was a big difference in the token traded at a very low price, then our society obviously doesn't want the token and is not willing to lock itself into a weapons-free world. We can see how this integrates social values with economic value in new ways and helps us escape from a world where people and politicians say one thing and do another. In many ways, it reflects the underlying blockchain proof-of-work or proof-of-stake system. The way that we prove that we value something is by locking ourselves into it. The way that we express our social values through an economic token is by locking ourselves into networks that express those values. This multi-value token system enables us to recognize and mobilize existing networks in new ways. Tokens help us to expand the economic system to incorporate more value systems and thus harness people's motivation along more dimensions rather than simply for utility-based profit. Tokens, because they are more generic, enable us to quantify almost any form of value, both extrinsic and intrinsic. When you hold a currency or an asset, you are making an investment in that network by saying that it has value to you. If no one wanted to hold dollars, then the dollar would have no value. By creating all these little economies with their own distinct currencies, we are able to say exactly what it is we value and invest our resources in that ecosystem. By holding the Liverpool Pound or the Bristol Pound, we are saying that we value that ecosystem and will invest our resources in it. When we cash our Liverpool Pound in for a British Pound, we are saying that we don't really value it. We are not prepared to restrict ourselves to making purchases only in that network and supporting the community value that it creates. This is why it is important to not think of Tokens as being like traditional currencies because they represent the possibility for a new kind of information services economy that is fundamentally different from the one we know and is a necessary evolution to our economic structures, just as significant as the evolution from a pre-modern feudal system to a modern industrial economy. Likewise, it illustrates the issues we are having surrounding regulation. A token economy is a different form of economy to the industrial economy. It will not fit inside the box of the industrial model because token economies expand the nature of markets to include a broader spectrum of values they can be self-regulating, which stands in contrast to our existing industrial age logic of the utility-based market, which always requires external regulation and support because of their incompleteness and narrow set of values that they incorporate. The token economy offers the possibility of creating self-sustaining economies by incorporating all relevant value systems within multi-value tokens and multi-value markets. While in the industrial economy, all forms of value could be reduced to a single metric of utility. A service's economy is inherently a multi-value economy. While extrinsic value may be reduced to a single metric, intrinsic value has many inherent forms of value, each requiring their own distinct token that is irreducible. To really understand the significance of token economies is to appreciate that society and economies evolve and change over time. And part of what is happening in the world today is an evolution in what people value. And that is a very profound thing that in turn requires a new economic model to capture and develop. Michael Bowens of the P2P Foundation describes this well when he says the three revolutions in human productivity. The first invention is coercive labor that gave us civilization, slavery and serfdom. That's how we created castles and temples. In other words, the motivation there is external negative motivation.  This is the social contract of slavery. I think capitalism introduces something new which is about self-interest. In other words, positive extrinsic motivation. I'm doing something because I'm going to get something from it which gives a boost to science and technology. I think we're going about a third revolution now which is actually moving from extrinsic to intrinsic. We are building systems, open contributory systems like Wikipedia and others where people are actually there for a variety of motivations. But there are mostly intrinsic motivation. I want to create a global internet encyclopedia. I want to create this. I want to learn from it. There are various motivations. Token economies is a new way for us to try and present intrinsic motives. It enables us to create economies that better reflect both people's intrinsic and extrinsic motives. But that relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motives is extremely complex and subtle. Figuring out exactly how that works is a long learning process ahead.