Today, I want to talk to you about why results do not matter as much as you think they do and why I don't focus on the results nearly at all. What's up everybody? Ricky Caruth here. Welcome back to my channel. So a couple weeks ago, I went up to Birmingham, Alabama for the Remax Awards Banquet for the State of Alabama 2018 and I was super surprised to get the number one Remax team in the State of Alabama for the third time. I hit this award in 2014, in 2017 and now 2018. The reason why I was so surprised is because I had no idea that I was going to hit that award. So I was surprised this year that I hit number one. I was even surprised last year when I was there and hit number one. The reason why I'm surprised about these awards is because I don't focus on the results. I'm not concerned with what's going to happen at the end of the year. What I'm more concerned with and what matters the most to me is the effort that I'm putting in on a daily basis and what am I prioritizing, what am I time blocking for, am I doing the things that matter, am I being most efficient every second of the day, am I squeezing as much out of every hour that I possibly can. We all have the same amount of hours and it's up to us to decide how we're going to spend those hours. The problem that I see with most people is that they're doing things that don't really matter. They think they matter but they don't really matter and they're spending all their time there on things that don't necessarily create the real results that you're looking for and at the end of the day you wonder what did I do wrong.  You have to develop the skill to recognize what matters and what doesn't matter. I've said this before, I don't wake up January 1st and say I want to do 100 deals this year. I don't do that. What I do is I go to work and give it all I got to be the most efficient, to be most productive and to do all I can do to help the most people that I possibly can. When I go to sleep at night, I know that I've done all I can do and so therefore I sleep very, very well. Another big problem that I see out there is people creating these goals. For example, they want to sell 100 properties in a year or they want to make so many phone calls every day or every week or they want to get so many listings every month.  You see guys, you can't necessarily control the results. When you're making calls, you can't control how many people actually answer that day. You can't control any year if the market decides it's going to crash or slow down like we saw last year. You can't control those things. You can't control if people are going to buy and sell right now or not. That's up to them.  What we have to focus on is not the results, but we need to focus on our day to day, our actions, what are we doing, are we most efficient, are we doing all we can do to help the most people. That's what's most important. If you do that every day, you should be very proud of yourself and happy regardless of what the results are. This year, of course, I would like to hit 100 deals again, but the thing is, is this. If I hit 50 deals this year, I'm going to be just as happy as if I hit 100 because I know that I did all I could do to hit that 50 and that was all I was going to do. I can't control that. I'm happy because I know that every day I worked just as hard or harder than I did the last day and I'm putting forth just as much or more effort and I'm trying to get better every day. I'm trying to figure out how to be most efficient. I'm always trying to tweak what I'm doing or learn something new or change something and adapt because here's the facts. The world's always changing. These are always changing. The market's always changing. Technology's always changing. People's attitudes are always changing. There's always change happening and you have to be on top of these changes. Go with the flow of the market and do what you're supposed to do to talk to enough people to find those people that want to do business with you for the rest of their life. There's an unlimited amount of loyal clients, loyal, that will only do business with you for the rest of your life. It's up to you to put the work in and go find them and that's what we're not doing. We're stopping after 100 calls, 1,000 calls, 5,000 calls and we're stopping. We have to keep going. Our job is to filter through all the people out there, talk to them, introduce ourselves, show them how much we care and see if there's a connection and if you go through enough people you're going to find an ungodly amount of people that will only do business with you for the rest of your life. Let me talk about the Remax Award real quick. The number one Remax team in the state of Alabama because I know that I proclaimed that I'm a single agent. Here's how that works. Me and my father are considered a team in the Remax system, but we operate as single agents. Our businesses are completely separate. He does his thing. I do my thing. All the numbers and everything that I talk about on this channel and everywhere else are all just my single agent stats. I operate as a single agent and everything I do is focused around being a single agent. Now, when I go get Remax awards, we're classified as a team. But that's very interesting because it's just a father and son team basically with Remax, just two people and we're going up against people with teams with more agents. We're in different categories. Remax created different categories. There are the team category of one to five agents, which that's what we're in and that's what we were number one in. There's also a six to ten agent category and then there's a eleven and up category. It used to be and in 2014 when I got number one in the state, I was up against the people who had eight and ten agent teams. I still hit number one. Last year was the first year that they did. They split it up in the different categories and that's kind of another reason why I was surprised last year. That was the first year they did that and then I really thought my broker was going to beat me this year. But he had a few more agents than I thought on his team. So he actually was in a different category than me. So I hope that clarifies a lot of stuff there for you about what's going on with my awards and the fact that it says team on the award and all that good stuff. So what are my goals for 2019? A lot of you already know this because I did 2019 yearly goal and planning training at the beginning of the year. But for all you new subscribers, first off, welcome. And my goal this year is to hit 1.6 million in GCI, 182 deals. That's what I'm going for. So I'm just, I'm not married to the result. I'm married to the process. And even though if halfway through the year it doesn't look like I'm halfway to my goal, I'm still going to be super motivated. I'm going to have high energy. I'm going to be super happy about wherever I am in the process because I know that I'm giving it all I got to reach my full potential. What is my full potential? You don't know until you get there. You don't know until you've put everything you got into something and see what comes out the other side. Okay, and the more you push and the more you push and the more you push, the more that's going to come out the other side. And it's a compounding effect. It's the little things. Like if you make two contacts a day, you might think that wasn't really a good day. I made two contacts. They don't want to buy or sell anything, but you had two really good conversations and two really strong contacts. You got their email. You're following my program. You're doing the weekly email. And what will happen is, is if you keep pushing and be happy about those two contacts instead of being down on yourself. Okay, and realize that two contacts a day could equal 50 to 60 a month. Okay, two months goes by. Now we're at over 100, okay? We're over 100. Now we're at 150 in three months. We're over 200 in four months. 200 people that you had great conversations with that are property owners in the area who buy and sell property, who are going to do something at some point in the future. And some of these people are going to do things now. They're going to buy and sell property now and you have to keep going. You have to keep pushing. And those two little contacts a day add up to be huge over time. So focus on the day to day. Focus on helping people. Focus on having these great conversations and watch your business explode. For those of you who are new to my channel, I'm Ricky Caruth. I'm a 17 year real estate agent. I'm doing over 100 deals a year as a single agent for the last five years. And I'm the very first completely free real estate coach. I want to change the industry. I want to reduce the failure rate. And I'm doing it one agent at a time. There's over 10,000 agents in my completely free real estate coaching program. So that can all be found at zero to diamond.com. And also click subscribe to this YouTube channel because this is where we do all of our live training and I'm posting at least four videos every week focused around building your business and how to be more efficient so I can help you be the best agent and human being that you can possibly be. And I just want to see you guys succeed. That's all I want out of this. And if you have any questions or if there's anything in the world that I can do for you, just reach out and we'll talk to you soon.


Hello, this is Roger Burley for Community Kitchens, and today I am standing in the kitchen of Patty and Cyrus Hagee in the east end of Portland overlooking beautiful Casco Bay. It's a spectacular winter afternoon and I have the honor of being with our special guest Ethan Stremling whom I would assume every one of you knows is the newly elected mayor of Portland. You've been in office for almost two months. Yeah, I don't see any blood. No, no wounds open wounds. No, not yet. No recall petitions as far as I've seen. Well, you never know about those. I'll get back to City Hall a little later today. We'll see. Yeah, okay. Well, I'm assuming that's not gonna happen for a few months. Anyway, all right. So Ethan a little bit about yourself You ain't one of the natives is yeah. No No, I was I've been in Maine for almost 30 years though So I grew up I was born in New York New York City grew up there mostly in Manhattan Right in Manhattan I was born on the Upper West Side and really grew up on the Lower West Side down in the Chelsea area and moved to Maine in about 1987 what brought you here? Well, I was on a path when I was in New York to be an actor I went to the High School of Performing Arts and then I went to the Juilliard School and my father was an actor did a Lot of downtown off-off Broadway stuff. So I grew up my grandmother was also an actress in the Midwest And at some point I just decided that this was not the path. I wanted to take any more. What made you decide that? You know, I've been in therapy for a long time You know, I think there was When you grow up in a certain world you say to yourself you do what you know And so, you know, the Sun becomes the mechanic because the father was the mechanic my father was an actor So I was becoming an actor. I seemed to have some talent for it So I was walking that path and at some point around age 19 or so I said, I'm not sure if this is my choice or if this is Something that I'm just doing because I know it and so I decided to step away and came up to Maine and Just disappeared for a year or so into the woods and what did you do in the woods? Well, I have some friends of mine lived up in Sedgwick outside. Oh, beautiful. That's not really in the woods It's down down east right on the water there to the lower west side of Manhattan But yeah, I was up in Sedgwick and I worked on his farm for a year I learned how to work on cars and garden and stuff like that and do some did some Building around the as you do in Maine You just kind of learn to do everything to keep things going and and then I went to the University of Maine about a year later You said I want to go back to school. Did my undergraduate. So you took a gap year gap summer I did two years of college then took a gap year Okay, the University of Maine in Orlando got my undergraduate up there And you have a graduate degree I do yes, I got my graduate degree at Harvard and education master's master's degree So yeah Wow, and so what have you done with your education degree? Well, I'm educating voters. Yes, but beyond that. Well, I am I ran a place called learning works, which used to be called Portland West and we Work with at-risk kids low-income families immigrants and refugees really trying to use education as a tool To help people build a more stable life low-income folks. So I did that for almost 20 years and loved it And you've left that job only to become mayor. I left that job only to become so you would probably still be there Yeah, I think I probably would I loved it very hard to leave. It was a bitter sweet moment You know, there's I think it's sort of like going off to college, you know You don't leaving home is hard, but you know you need to so it was time to move to Move to a new adventure. So sometimes moving on is not easy for many of us and so to have it a precipitating Event to move us in another direction. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Yes That's in the circumstance changes. Change is good. So, yeah So all during this time you've had to do An activity on average three times a day and that is to eat Although my you know my trainer would say I need to eat five times a day a little snacks But yes, well, yeah, we all deal with that stuff, but if food tastes good, you keep eating it until it's too late so I Understand from a previous chat that that you are not a TV chef no out there with Amaral and Paula Dean and all those people that I really don't watch myself So have you been cooking for yourself from time to time or all the time? I Gotta gotta be honest. This is a little intimidating for me because cooking is not Is not my forte. I can make a bagel I can do that pretty well and I can usually make a bowl of spaghetti But I'm not much of a chef. Okay. I've seen you boil the water. Yes. I've actually said you do it Yes, I think I can I think I can boil a pot of water But I I've never both of my parents my parents split when they were very young and I was with my mother until I was about age 10 or 11 and She would cook but she was going to graduate school trying to raise two of us Didn't have a whole lot of resources. So so never really taught me to cook but I watched okay Well, that's that's part of it and So I think you're gonna prepare a dish that was your mother's recipe. Yeah, tell us a little bit about it before we get going Yeah, this is a recipe that she actually pulled together with a bunch of other graduate students I think it was very inexpensive and she could cook a lot of it So feed us for a couple of days my brother and me and it's tuna fish casserole And this is her handwriting. This is her handwriting exactly. Yeah, and this is for the archives Yeah, this is for the archives for sure. Is your mother still alive? She is a professor out at UCLA. Oh, yeah So hopefully you'll watch the show. Yeah, hopefully we'll do her recipe justice Absolutely, of course, we will I hope so you will and I'll I'll be the sous chef for you More than that because I'm definitely let's start with the your skill at boiling water. Yeah, how much I can do Okay, we'll start with that.  Either through your learning works board of trustees or with your fellow city counselors sort of fellow city counselors Yeah Do you think the skills that you learn served you well at times? Yeah, no doubt about it You know that I think one of the best things in terms of the best actors or the best theater schools are really trying to Help you get in touch with yourself because if you're gonna try to be somebody else on stage You really need to know that that all has to come from you So you build a lot of confidence in terms of who you are and what it is that you want to Achieve and so I learned a lot of that through theater, but also learn to Stand in front of a group and talk and be willing to That's a huge thing is to stand up there and be confident that you're whether you win or lose a discussion Yeah, but you're ready to talk up to talk it. So let's yeah get this. That's not here. I Think some of it too is in the in the theater with me. You also have to learn to take risks As an actor you've got to be willing to every every night right every night And you've got to be willing to be vulnerable and I think that helps you connect with people in a way That's important in politics, you know, if you're not I love this meal I mean this is and I bought all these ingredients to come here. It's probably about ten bucks Yeah for the entire and that's really important to know if there's someone looking for some counsel on this Yeah So absolutely a good taste for for a little money Especially for kids that's always especially for kids. Do you have any kids? No, we never had kids Cats cats. Oh, I think given a chance. They probably go right at it Just leave it out on a little counter. That's true or any counter for a cat. Yeah. Well, one of my cats actually has Diabetes so he eats all the time. That's good diabetes. Yeah. We have to get a shot every day. It's very boy It's very sad, but he's doing well, but he gets very hungry. So so we have to try to keep food away from him So can you give me a couple of sentences on your experience of the first seven weeks in City Hall? You know, yeah, Rod brush it's been You know, what I've been saying to people is that I I'm I kind of I'm letting the job come to me as opposed To sort of going after it and that's been healthy for me because usually I'd be right in there and trying to save the world by Tuesday and Instead I'm really, you know, I've anybody who wants to meet with me. I've set up a meeting with them I've been spending a lot of time with the City Councilors So I can understand what it is they're looking for as the year goes on and we can have good communication and Probably the most important relationship is with the city manager And so the two of us have been getting to know each other and going out to lunch and really just trying to meet on a Regular basis so that we're that sounds like a good idea I think that in the very first four-year term of the elected mayor I think there was a bunch of Trying to figure out what the heck was going on and who's going to do what and what kind of approval and and and what kind of Billing a constituent base for a particular project or line of endeavor I think Mike in some ways had to struggle through that because it was the first time and I'm certainly learning from what he did Well and where maybe he could have done better. Yeah, and also Maybe in everyone's defense the manager's position wasn't stable During that time period yes at all and so I've met the new manager John Jennings And I think highly of them so far and You're kind of coming in within the same six months of each other and as you just said you've been out to lunch and coffee with I'm in and so that you're not at opposite ends of the building Loving grand hand grenades at each other actually moved to the mayor's office a little closer to his office Right in the same section and that actually I think is helping quite a bit in terms of communication So there's much more wonderful interaction just on a regular basis. Yeah, well speaking of communications Here you knew newest chum is the governor. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we're good buds. We're good. Have you checked with Justin? You learn from him The governor and I Actually have had a decent relationship because of learning works He he was always very supportive of our work because we would work with at-risk kids He was an at-risk kid and we were very outcome oriented so very much based on metrics And and he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into learning works came down a number of times We'll talk to the kids about his own experience listen to their so be valuable. Yeah, it really was listen to the governor saying I was in the same place you were well and for a kid to see Like you said for a kid to see somebody who was homeless whose father was an alcoholic Who had almost dropped out of school to now be governor? That's an invaluable experience whatever your politics are an invaluable experience So he did that so you know, I mean the governor and I ideologically could not be further apart And there's probably about 2% that we really agree on but in that 2% we found a connection and I Went up I met with him had had lunch brought a little bottle of wine. We enjoyed a bottle of Cabernet and It was really good. Isn't he all the office? Wasn't the old plane house in the plane house? We did yes, we had lunch in the plane house and he You know what we sort of committed to each other is we're just not going to do battle in the newspapers We're gonna disagree and actually within you know my second week a week after we had met He called me about some issue that was going on with the department of labor I got a little press around minimum wage and he said just want to give you a heads up This is coming. Let me know what I can do to help and so we're trying to wrestle it to the ground And we'll see so hopefully it'll be a different relationship What we'll see yeah, well a lot of work to do for good. It's it ain't easy Portland's always had a tough slug in Augusta and you should know because you were a state senator for how long six years And how are you how was that experience almost there with the noodles okay, how how is that former experience playing out with your interaction with with the council with Everybody constituents, you know, it's very interesting with the council. There's definitely this There are a few things up in the legislature that I've said to the council how come we don't do it that way Because it's very different right so I'm used to a certain way for instance You know how bills get referred to committees and there definitely is a real difference and they're and there needs to be a Difference and so a lot of counselors for sure like well that may be how you do it in Augusta But that's not how we do it here and here's why yeah So I've had a quite a learning curve to make sure I don't try to just impose what Augusta does On the city and you've got some counselors who have been sitting there for a couple of decades Yeah, Nick Mabadon has been there for a long time Jill do so. Yeah, so yeah, actually we have a good mix right now We six of the current counselors Including including me in the mayor's seat It's in we're within their first term. Well, I think that's a lot of people in the city of Portland We'll think that's probably a really good thing. Yeah, I have my hats off to anyone who does that job for one three-year term, let alone six or eight three-year terms, I mean It's it's labor love or Just a passion that they take on you all take on to do this the work of the public I actually love the campaigning side of it because it's a great opportunity to shut this off I think great opportunity to get to know people so let's use this so let's bring Let's bring that over to the this is the one part that I know, okay making a pot of pasta And then straining it Well done. Thank you Very proud of myself the recipe calls for all these things right here, and what do you think should go in there next? That's a question What about the eggs yeah, okay, I think I saw all right, so we're gonna go to appeal one more egg Good just chop it up start chopping and I don't think there's any diagram to follow just I do it that way and then go the other way Perfect Yeah, it's good right there pick up the this and just dump it right now. I'd like to do that. It keeps it off the floor My experience yeah, so you've been cooking for like 50 years. Oh At least 50 years a good buddy of mine started cooking when you were six which worked for the Appalachian Mountain Club in New Hampshire He said you know what we drink we we cook and we drink beer while we cook and I was 18 And so that was where it started and he was a great cook He was fearless and I learned to be fearless and then my dad Was a good cook, but he let my mom who was also a good cook very conservative but when we would come from Massachusetts or I spent the winters up to Casca Bay Uncle Phylan and often It would be with him and particularly in the off-season and so we'd be Batching it you know and so we did it together. It was great fun I have that great memory of doing that with my dad the when I told you earlier that I've been up in Yep My friend up there that I lived with was a chef actually never really taught me to cook He was a chef in the South Pole for a year. Wow. Am I supposed to mix this up? That's good enough for now Okay, yeah, we'll keep doing that now. What I got the onion now watch the blood, you know It's a sort of beef dish. You could bury the blood no one would notice, but this is a white dish What does that mean watch the blood you mean from my fingers? Yeah, I cut my finger If you've got a dark dish, it's fine, but you know a white dish it doesn't sell very well I'd say won't down once down the middle. That's it. That's nice. I like them bigger rather than smaller Okay, I need to take that part out. No, it's fine. I'll do it a few whatever you're comfortable. We're gonna eat it I'm fine with it. All right. We'll take those little things out. All right. That's enough and yeah in there and Do that and then the other half Just a little old-age just like me Okay, so this is fun, I'm not a member of What is it garbage to garden, but they are yeah, so the haggies are and so it's fun to not have not have it sit not putting it in the Just dispose all All right chunk it in That's good now An important element at the tuna. Yep, and here You break that up a little bit with a fork. I think I get it all go for it. Never hell All right, so Do you have folks that you work within the Senate up there that you will be hopefully getting some Guidance from or alliances built sure today's legislature Yes, certainly. I'm I'm still a good friend that you know in the legislature a lot of people stay there for a long time So a few of my colleagues from my Senate days are still there and I've certainly built relationships Between all of this I was doing some political commentary on TV and on radio So oh you were doing it with Phil Harrowman. I was yeah, that was fun. I really enjoyed that. Thank you Yeah, very much enjoyed that. All right. Let's see a great guy. Okay All right, so let's get that let's get into the liquid here So I think the rest of the calls for what two cups Well, it calls for two cups of water, but my mother said if we use milk We don't need to use she my mother used powdered milk. Oh, I remember that. Oh, it's not a happy memory Yeah, I grew up with that So I'm gonna pour two cups Then she said okay or two she said that I want one of each Oh say one cup of milk and one cup of water or we want to do it No, no too good you know better we can do two cups of milk Whatever you yeah, let's do two cups of milk. All right if we got two cups of money water was relatively free Look this little perfect thing holds two cups of water. Okay, so I think this can go in there next Let her rip. Okay, and then I suggest the old standby cream of mushroom soup Is this a standby for casserole or something? Well, I think that's the way people start out making you know Casseroles and so later on a lot of emphasis on fresh ingredients individually every single thing in this can or a lot most of it would Be bought separately at farmers market like we got in Monument Square. What a great thing that is All right, and now for flavor Yes stripper and so you told me what I do here is the wrong direction Yeah, just anyway. Yeah, there you go Roast Mary so so this is the first time I need to tell you just the first time I've ever made this meal Okay, I mean I don't cook very much anything, but this is for something that I have probably eaten more of in my life than anything else Maybe maybe spaghetti maybe. All right. Well, this is it's pasta. So that's it is We would have spaghetti with like some kind of canned sauce or something Okay, so how much are these beans that we want one or two cups? She says so let's just go half way They're gonna be cooking the casserole dish All right, let's dump them in. Yep. You have so much confidence. I'm like So it makes me very whenever I did there's this thing called blue apron. Have you ever heard of that? You were talking about a set of ingredients and I get all the fun out of it I don't have no interest in that whatsoever. Okay. It's cooking for dummies Are there so the whole world divided world of Portland divided into two parts the east down in the west end Yeah, pretty much in downtown divided in three parts. Okay Parkside every neighborhood. What we're all very well connected. So that's that's a good thing. Okay I think you should I'll just dig in just make my doing here with your hands with your hands Okay, you're gonna blend it together and then I'm gonna suggest we add some Just go for some of it's hot some of it's icy cold. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah. Oh boy. You're getting there And you got to get the soup and the milk spread through the whole thing for the whole thing Well, the milk's kind of sitting at the bottom, but well just keep going at it I know keep coming up and this will help with that the cheese So if you don't mind, I'm gonna put in a please do carefully measured amount of cheese Which is the way I cook All right, not a not an ounce or more or an ounce less Now that'll take care of the milk. Oh, that's looking Looking good. Ah, now you see you're gonna see I'm trying so hard. That's good I'm gonna bring it. I don't want to get to Patty and Cyrus is Bad luck. Yeah, exactly All right. So here we are. I think you're Wow. I think you're there Seems like you're right the milk got absorbed right in I didn't think that was gonna happen Okay, but now what just ding it in there. Just put it in. Yep so this is actually looking really good and There's some pepper. We're gonna How we should have done that earlier, but you do it on top and maybe you can Swizzle it around a little bit and There's some salt right over there that I see so I'm not a big fan of adding salt, but we're doing this according to your mother's recipe more or less Well, the you'll be pleased the mushroom soup I got was full of sodium. No, no, I got the low sodium I got I got half sodium. That's what I do Real real grinder. That's that's a good thing. I Never had salt. I had So much pepper that I think someday the newspaper headlines are gonna come out saying pepper is really bad for you Okay Should I mix it in there?  I'm just kidding Too much for me. Do you want me to mix it? Yeah a little bit. That's here. That's right here just a little So let's let's put this in the oven Okay, so I'm as your sous chef.  There's anything left There you go Well Ethan this is smelling pretty good here in the oven and so I think it's time my first time ever. All right, let's do it Yeah, you do those Looks just right a little golden. Oh, it's perfect All right, let's go over to the counter over here and let it kind of breathe for a moment That looks great You bet it does I like that. I like I'm glad you were here to help The just a little touch of brown on the top of it. So that's good Okay, let's just count to five and then take it to the table and enjoy eating it. I think that's the Eating is the best part of the best part Well, Ethan it not only smell good enough to take out of the oven, but it sure looks just about right So Let's see what you got here. You want to serve or something? No, I don't use your service your creation Probably got you on the wrong side It was just lunchtime so to two spoonfuls I think that's that's not for you. Yep Oh Closer gets to me. It smells just a lot the way it's supposed to smell So so you said you might actually take this to your city council meeting tonight Yeah, I'll take a few points. Yeah, see if I can you know, maybe the secretaries might yeah Who runs the place anyway? Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna let mine cool down a little bit because I got a very tender mouth at least Food wise temperature wise, but I can't do it yet So I'm interested to see if you survive the first bite Hmm Satisfied yeah, we've been Acquainted or colleagues or friends for for quite a while now and how the heck are you going to To aim yourself Well, we have a few very pressing issues and those are half to sort of come First but I think they relate to conservation for sure But our most immediate crises are around housing just when there's not enough housing out there for Especially working-class folks in the city that there's a tremendous affordability gap Which basically means it costs you about five hundred dollars a month more than you earn To rent an apartment in the city of Portland, and that's unsustainable So we have to confront that housing crisis another is wages We really have to try to help people earn more money in the city that would help with the affordability gap But setting minimum wages what a what a turf war that is Which what's your take on it? I'm very supportive. I'm glad that the city of Portland Raised the minimum wage of 1010 Michael Brennan was a leader in that and there's going to be a statewide referendum And I hope that passes that'll set the wage at $12 an hour in Portland won't be an outlier So those are both very important, you know, I really hope that people are able to enjoy the culture of Portland Our diversity is just remarkable in it and it feeds our economy and our culture in so many ways from restaurants to To galleries to just wonderful just across the board to the languages that are spoken in our schools So I always encourage folks get to know somebody who's different than you so mayor Ethan Stremling a longtime friend and colleague and fellow resident of Portland, I thank you for Being in the kitchen. Thank you Hague's kitchen today with me and with the community kitchens on channel five Thank you


Speaking of the car you got some gas tips to share following up from a previous episode John I'm gonna share some of the Don shirt Don shared with us, and I'm gonna regionalize a bit because he regionalized it so He's saying it's common knowledge that gasoline is expensive in California, and I saw somebody post a Little while ago, and it was it was almost like a dollar more than I pay out here right now It's about three bucks a gallon. Anyways So a couple categories so one membership stores like Costco Sam's and one that we have out here is called BJ's But typically these are places where you pay a membership fee, and then you can get mass quantities of things for little money So we got that out here. So that's one suggestion Yeah, cuz they sell gas they they often have gas pumps at a discount for members, right? Yeah RBJ's in Fairfield does not but the one what other ones do and Then so the second suggestion is grocery stores Albertson Ralph's Vans none of which we have in Connecticut that we have stop and shop Same thing is that for every dollar you spend like here It's every dollar you spend you get ten cents or every hundred dollars you spend you get ten cents off a gallon Now the thing is the little tricky offered here is that You can buy things Like gift cards at the grocery store and get points for that Right right All right, so I guess that's you know Maybe not an obvious tip, but yeah, so if you buy a gift card You get credited towards your gas points So you could yeah, so you can you can what's the what's the right word for time shift spend shift your Future grocery purchases if you need gas today, right buy a hundred dollar gift card for groceries that you're gonna spend two weeks Anyway, and then use it to leverage a discount for gas today. All right.  That's good. Yeah


The purpose of this program is to take a phone word and translate it into a phone number. Let's do some examples and see how it works. Let's start with the word, airline. We're going to process letters and digits as we find them and ignore everything else. The first character in the string is the letter A. Once a letter, we look it up and that corresponds to the numeral 2, which goes into our result. The next character is a letter I, which corresponds to the numeral 4. The next character is a letter R, which corresponds to 7. The next character is a letter L, which corresponds to 5. The next character is a letter I, which corresponds to 4. The next character is letter N, which corresponds to 6. And the next character is the letter E, which corresponds to 3. We're out of characters and we have 7 digits and that's a valid phone number. Let's try this one. Good for you too. The first character is a letter G, which corresponds to 4. The next character, letter O, corresponds to 6. The next character, letter O, corresponds to 6. The next character is a letter D, corresponding to 3. The number is already a numeral and we pass it on unchanged. The next character is a letter U, which corresponds to 8. And the next character is a numeral 2 and it gets added to the result unchanged. And we have another good 7 digit phone number. Now let's try some things that don't fit the pattern. For example, discovery. These are all letters so I'm going to omit the part about this is a letter. D corresponds to 3. I corresponds to 4. S is numeral 7. C is numeral 2. O is numeral 6. V is numeral 8. E is numeral 3. R is numeral 7. Y is numeral 9. That's more than 7 numerals. The solution is drop everything after the 7th numeral. And now we have a valid 7 digit phone number. Let's try this one. Bad-cats. E, the letter, corresponds to 2. A corresponds to 2. D gives us a 3. This is not a letter, it's not a digit, so we don't add anything to the result and continue to the next character C, which is a 2. A, which is a 2. T, which is an 8. And S, which is a 7. And that's a valid 7 digit phone number. What about this example? Go-kart. G is a letter corresponding to 4. O is numeral 6. Dash, not a letter, not a digit, don't do anything. K is the number 5. A is number 2. R is a 7. And T is an 8. That's only 6 digits, which means it's not a valid phone word. We're making the decision of whether it's valid after we've processed the phone word, not before. If we look at it before, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 characters, and we might think, oh good, that's going to be valid. But we don't know that for sure until we look at the final result and find out that it happens to be too short. Let's do one more. OK, comma, space, great, exclamation point. O is 6. K, the letter, gives numeral 5. Comma, not a letter, not a digit, skip it. Space, not a comma, not a digit, skip it. G corresponds to 4. R is numeral 7. E is numeral 3. A is numeral 2. T is numeral 8. Exclamation point, not a letter, not a digit, skip it. And we end up with a valid 7 digit phone number. Here's the pseudocode to accomplish that task. I'm doing this on the computer because I type faster than I write and also my handwriting is pretty difficult to read. We'll input the phone word and we'll set our result string to the empty string. Now we need a for loop that has an index that goes from 0 up to the length of the phone word and we'll have a character, CH, which will be set to the phone word of the current index. If the character is a letter, then we're going to find the corresponding digit and add it to the result. And that's going to be an if-else chain that'll do that. Otherwise, if it's not a letter, we want to see if the character that we're looking at is a digit. If it is, then we'll add it to the result. Everything else is going to be ignored. We don't need an else to say do nothing. But if it makes you feel good to have one, you can say else and then put in a comment saying do nothing for non-digits and non-letters. That way, the person who's reading your code will know why you have an else that doesn't do anything. After we've finished processing all the characters in the phone word string, we now need to look at the result string. If the result length is less than 7, then we're going to print an error message. Otherwise, it's 7 or greater and we can use the substring function to get the first 7 characters and print that result. It's the phone number. And there's our pseudocode. Again, it's half English, half Java, but this is the outline for how we're going to write the program.


Hi, everyone. Kim Jenkins here. It's an honor to be part of the fashion culture futures symposium. I was asked to share a presentation that expresses some of the work that I do as an educator and researcher, specifically when it comes to contemporary fashion representation and race, which is my specialization. So I have put together a little slideshow for you in anticipation of the conversation that I will be having with three distinguished guests that will hopefully get you thinking a little bit about the role of fashion history, the implications of racism, and the importance of positive representation. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen now. And I'm going with the limits and possibilities of fashion reflecting on race and representation, a lecture in two parts. And so in this presentation, I want to talk about what the role of dress and fashion and style can have when it comes to limiting us in society and also what it makes possible, what do we need to transcend certain socially constructed obstacles throughout history. So for the limitations of fashionable dress, I want to just share a couple of historical moments. And so one that I share in my course, fashion and race, is the Negro Law of 1740 in South Carolina. And this is sort of an archived document here of it. And what I want to share this with you is just kind of taking you all the way back into the 18th century, where we are seeing how clothing and materials can be used to mark and exclude certain groups of people, specifically Black Americans in the United States. So I just want to read a little segment here of just how we were able to, well, they were able to legislate excluding certain groups of people through dress. So this 40th section of the act of 1740 regulates the apparel of slaves, unless you are sort of working as a Liveryman, and prohibits Black people from wearing anything finer, other or of greater value than Negro cloth, which I'll explain in just a moment to you. Duff holes, curses, Ogner birds, blue linen, coarse garlics, calicoes, checked codons, basically anything that was considered valuable or fancy dress. This is the extent in the United States of America to which laws were put in place to exclude and oppress Black people from engaging in fashionable dress, being able to access and wear on their bodies the fanciful clothing. And so as the document mentions Negro cloth, in case you haven't heard of Negro cloth, it's the sort of umbrella term to describe essentially the worst kind of clothing that was reserved for Black enslaved people to wear all the way through the 19th century. And so this was used as a marker for individuals to easily see and read who was lower class in society and then who was in power as juxtaposed or vis-a-vis white individuals or slave-owning individuals.  So these are just examples of how design throughout history was used to mark an exclude. Another example I draw upon is this illustrative series called Life in Philadelphia. And so this satire here from 1830 is mocking Black people attempting to be fanciful or engage in fashionability. So it's showing them in a very unflattering light. It's showing them attempting to be fashionable, but they're wearing the outfits all wrong or their bodies are drawn to look distorted and things like that. So here you have the Black woman saying, what do you think of my new pope on it? And so I won't repeat what is on the illustration of what they have the man say. But these are just some of the examples again throughout history of what we have had to endure and transcend from being denied the opportunity to be fashionable or wear fanciful clothing, dress up and style ourselves. And then when we do have access to clothing and try to be fanciful, we are mocked.  So kind of moving forward a century, it gets me thinking about where do our bodies fit in an industry designed around whiteness? And so just kind of looking at these photo cards here used in the modeling industry, and it's not representative of all that modeling agencies use, but pretty indicative of what's been common in the last 20 years, 20 to 30 years in the fashion industry, which you can see here is pretty homogenous. And while homogeneity is useful in the fashion industry just across the board in having these kind of quote unquote standardized or uniform bodies coming down the runway, it also is glaringly white. And so you see Black bodies struggling to fit in into these standards, especially when you also have models discriminated against for their hair texture, the size of their nose and lips, the shapes of their bodies, and having to feel forced to fit into these moles. A peer of mine, model Ashley Chu, I wanted to use her here. She's a model and artist, among many things. But several years ago in 2016, she was just really so fed up with being excluded as a model and just having to endure all these obstacles compared to her white colleagues when it comes to going on go sees and trying to get jobs in the fashion industry. So she painted this tote bag that says Black models matter and she'd carry it around. And she had this to say, people don't realize it, but the fashion industry is really cutthroat. People will tell you straight up if they don't want Black models or natural hair. Skin pigmentation doesn't matter either, light, medium or dark, you're going to be treated as Black. I feel this is why Black models matter to be such a buzz because it's been an issue for a while. There's nothing worse than getting turned down for your natural composition. And this has been, as we all know, persistent for decades, all of the obstacles to engaging in fashion, participating in fashion, being accepted in the fashion industry from luxury fashion to fast fashion. So one example here I have at the top left is when Trayon Christian, then 19 years old, was stopped inside of Barney's New York in 2013 for trying to purchase with his own money at $350 belt by an Italian designer. Due to the fallout of what happened of being followed out of the store, the city of New York ended up having to pay out Christian in 2016, several years later. Also I have this picture of Narnia Shev Willis, designer of the ghetto until proven fashionable sweatshirt. And this statement that she's making here is something that many Black folks have been saying in response to the fashion industry. And what it's speaking to, in case you haven't heard of this phrase, is oftentimes Black people in the past entry, through all of these things that we have been trying to push through and navigate, being excluded, we come up with our own style. And whether it's braided hairstyles, long stylish nails, gold jewelry, anything like that. And that is uniquely our own in many ways. And you see people in society kind of look at that and call it, quote, ghetto or ratchet. But until the fashion industry decides that it wants to co-opt it and borrow it, borrow from it and trot it down its runway and put it on a white model, for instance. So that is when it becomes fashionable. So when it's on our bodies, it's considered ghetto, but then it becomes fashionable when it is appropriated and refined, quote unquote, or elevated by the fashion industry. But moving on from the oppressive aspects of what can happen with dress and fashion and how society has grappled with the Black body navigating through society, I want to kind of wind down and talk about resilience, the more glowing aspects of what we've been through. And I can even go back in history for that. This image here in 1903 of two Black actors dancing the cakewalk in Paris, you can see them in one of them in sort of drag dress. So these ideas of drag did not just suddenly come out of like the 1960s or 70s or even Paris is burning, this has been happening for over a century. And thanks to researchers and scholars, they're able to excavate all these images and show that these queer identities have been playing with dress, using dress as a tool for quite some time. And specifically, I want to point to this news clip in here to the right from the evening star. So over at a website I run called the Fashion Race Database. One of our researchers put together this piece on William Dorsey Swan, who was also known as the Queen, who in the 19th century was holding drag balls and was advocating effectively for queer rights in the 19th century. So we had this drag queen who was fighting for their legal rights and you know, taking this to court back then. So I encourage you to go over to fashionrace.org to read the full story that our researcher Adriana Hill put together. But these names need to be said and these stories need to be told. And also when we think over to the right here, this image of Michaela Cole, who was lensed by Tygo Mitchell for the Wall Street Journal magazine last year, oftentimes we see these sort of editorials put together where we are celebrating nostalgia, like old ways of dressing and harking back to like the 1950s or 1960s. And oftentimes we are reflecting on or thinking back to certain socialites. It's always Jacqueline Kennedy, amongst others, over half a century ago. But I love this image because you have Michaela here kind of slipping into these sorts of dresses and the jewelry worn back then that oftentimes would see white socialites or white models wearing. Even today when we have editorials that kind of try to look back at historical styles and things like that, you'll still see white models put in that place. So I really love seeing Michaela here, especially with this hairstyle that it's speaking to these kind of oftentimes what you see white hairstyles that white women have worn. So I just really love how disruptive this image is and also how elegant it is. Dominant ideals, we are still navigating this though. So when it comes to what we are transcending in fashion now, at long last, these moles that I was speaking to are being broken from oppressive narratives and images. So these dominant ideals that I'm speaking to that we have been navigating in the fashion world and in the world of beauty have been that you've had the fashion and beauty industry prioritizing thin or anti-fat, anti-curvy bodies, white bodies of course, white passing or white adjacent, also able-bodied. We'll get into that in our conversation today. Straight or heteronormative bodies. So I love this image here of Lizzo on the cover of the October issue of Vogue in 2020 to illustrate just how we're moving forward. And also, I just, you know, want to celebrate also this image of in, again, sort of in sort of this ballroom scene in 1989 in New Jersey. The fact that we have mastered the skill of survival and transcendence, and I have this to say, shattering through dominant narratives with our ingenuity and talent, shocking normative hierarchies with our beauty and blindness and sporting oppressive notions of appropriateness that attempts to other us or put us in our place. I believe that preserving our heritage and cultivating a knowledge itself is an everyday act of resilience. And I also want to emphasize that we are complex. We are not a monolith. We don't all dress the same, walk the same, talk the same. You know, the fashion industry also, and this is including the fashion education realm also like fashion universities, fashion schools. They love to just kind of put us in a box of urban fashion or urban design, as if that's all that we can do. And so we are complex. Fashion enables us to express the many possibilities of who we are and how we feel. Our clothes, and this is what I teach in my field of fashion studies, are closer and intermediary between self and society. This thing, you know, inside of these clothes is my body, my lived experience, my sense of self, and there is society surrounding me. And my clothes, my hair, everything is used as this kind of intermediary. It helps kind of reconcile how I feel about myself and who I feel I am and what I want to express. And it also navigates sociocultural norms. And I make decisions every day as to whether I want to confront them or not. So that is the power of dress. And that's why I love teaching this sort of thing. And I love this image. We use this at the fashion-based database in a section that we call our fashion history. And I created this column called our fashion history as a way to start collecting kind of crowdsourcing family photos from the black community globally that says we're here and we've always been here. Oftentimes when people think of fashion history or fashion history, photo albums, it just seems very homogenous. But it's really exciting to see black people come together and contribute photos of their family or themselves in the past. And that we can contribute and co-author this narrative of fashion history. So this image that you're seeing here is from Aaron Francis, who founded Vintage Black Canada. And this is Aaron's uncle, Errol, who won a Juno in Canada. So this is family in Canada, which is like the Grammys in Canada. And so that is his uncle, Errol, in a very kind of Prince-like outfit to the right with his parents for their anniversary. And so in closing, I want to say to the fashion industry that they have an opportunity to shed its outdated systems of thinking and operation. As we'll discuss today with various topics, it's time to not only prioritize diversity, but sustainability. What does sustainability mean? It is an all encompassing term that not only includes our issues and concern around the environment, but also the sustainability of human beings, especially black people. And it should also prioritize liberation. So a couple of images I'm going to close with is this gorgeous cover styled by Ibtamara in 2020 for the cover of Love magazine and also Corvijon Raymond here wearing this kind of top or jacket says, if you're just learning about Hermos, we forgive you. So thank you. I'll close with that.


Do you ever find yourself carrying multiple goals and you know you find well I feel a bit conflicted here in this. I mean, maybe I'm not focused enough But on the other hand you feel like yeah, but I don't want to be single-minded either. I need balance So I'm going to answer a question on this and I'm going to give you a very unique way To stay focused and to avoid self-sabotage by taking on too much having multiple goals Stay with me. So this video is all about Having more than one goal can be problematic. It can lead to this self-sabotage that we experience I'm going to give you a way to navigate this and it's a weird way. So just bear with me here. This isn't This isn't maybe something you you've heard too much before but This is a question from Roger now see if you resonate with anything Roger's been going through here I know I certainly did So Roger's question is I'm struggling to find balance with the multiple goals. I'm working on. Okay So can you resonate with that? How many goals are you carrying? Maybe you've got a few goals, right? A few different things you're trying to grow in So Struggling to find balance with these goals some days I managed to get everything done other days are a complete failure But more commonly I'll get a few things done but feel guilty for not doing the things I missed very very common and I can definitely relate to this So I feel conflicted. I Think I'm not focused enough because I have several goals But I don't want to drop any of the goals either Any tips on this conflict and this is Roger's question Okay, so what I'm just going to say here and if you find yourself in it in a kind of a similar situation to this Notice that we're only seeing two options Option one is that I drop these other goals and I only focus on one thing Yes, I'm going to be much more focused on that thing But there's kind of a problem there with that too But the other option is that well I try and maintain a balance between these different goals But what if there's a third option that we haven't considered before and that's really what this video is about is But kind of introducing you to the possibility that there is a third option So what's the problem with the first option this first option of okay? I'm going to drop all my other goals and just going to focus on one thing Well, look what's going to happen emotionally with that approach What we're going to start to feel with that is after some time of focus than being single-minded on one goal is we want to start to feel resentment and And because this is because those other goals that we have and we've decided to put them down They're probably incredibly valid and they're meeting some sort of an important emotional need for you So this is hence those emotional needs that are now being neglected are going to start feeling resentment And the thing is if we feel resentment like that for long enough those unmet emotional needs start to send Very very difficult emotions into the body that will ultimately end up sabotaging our attempts To actually stay focused on this one goal. You know, I see this a mistake. I see made here a Lot is with young people. Maybe they're in school or something and they're they're studying and it's coming close to their exams or something like that Or maybe they're in their last year of high school or college and Maybe a well-intentioned parent might say, you know, okay, look, this is a big year get focused drop all your sports drop all your hobbies drop everything else socializing and The person tries to stick to that for a while, but invariably they they get to this sort of resentment and The wheels fall off that plan pretty quickly. So that's not a great thing especially for a young person So there are big problems with this thing about dropping your other goals and just focusing on one thing granted. That's true So you could say well, look, let's have balance. Let me try and carry all of these goals at the same time simultaneously However, our problem with that is that the nervous system does not like complexity So it also doesn't like to feel overwhelmed, right? So if we feel overwhelmed we're also going to start to feel very indecisive because I'm now trying to juggle multiple things at once here and Typically what this will look like like imagine you're working on your career You're working on you're trying to learn the saxophone you're trying to write enough, okay, and you're you're carrying all these different goals and What will happen is? We will be overwhelmed and we'll be less likely to be able to Carry carry through on that But this indecisive thing it's sort of an undermining thing that will experience with that You'll be practicing your saxophone And you'll be saying to yourself. I really should be working on my career right now Or you know, you're working on your career and you're probably thinking about I Should be doing the saxophone Or maybe you've throw in your fitness goals into that as well and and you're you're at the gym And you're worrying about the work thing you have tomorrow So it means because you've got you're carrying all these goals consciously And you're trying to maintain a balance between it you start to feel overwhelmed and you never can stay fully present with one of the Goals, it's more difficult to do that. Okay, so if these are our two options and you know from for For most of us, I think we see these as the only two options available We will try we sometimes we we say well look this balanced thing isn't working I need to get focused and then we get focused and then we get resentful and we go back to balance again And then the balance overwhelms us and we say we'll go back to the focus thing again So what's it? What if there's a third man? What would that look like? Well? The third option and I talk about this in my book on procrastination in the book. I refer to it as delegating Okay, now who the hell are you going to delegate these things to they're your gold fair point So what I refer to it as I say delegate partially to your subconscious mind Now what that means is effectively you pick One goal that you want to really really focus on okay, and it's one goal that you're going to carry about your day in your life Consciously being aware of almost as if you are taking responsibility for just one goal consciously and You are subconscious mind To your subconscious we delegate these other goals of ours Now there are rules and ways in which this works and which it can work first of all you should have one goal in your conscious awareness intentionally that I am going to carry because We are conscious mind needs something to focus on without having any goal consciously like I've seen a lot of things like Subliminal things where they try and put everything on the subconscious and the subconscious is going to take care of it all Your your conscious mind needs something to focus on to anchor yourself in your life effectively So you can have one goal and typically for most of us That's going to be kind of about a responsibility that we might have it's usually a career goal or it doesn't have to be The main point is you have one goal you're waking up every day thinking I have one thing to do today right and You give these other Additional goals over to your subconscious mind now What does that mean to give these goals over to your subconscious mind? Well, here's the thing Yes, you have an intention you have an openness that I would like to see some progress in these other areas of my life These are the gold however You have to relinquish all control over What form that? Progress will take Okay, so we have to let go completely of control over those additional goals. We have an openness to it One of the things we can do is we can we can have an attitude of making it very easy for those things to happen With the conscious goal where you are carrying we can have very clear boundaries with that Okay, that's one thing we can do with our conscious goal and that having a having a Boundaries with that will leave a space maybe where your subconscious mind can move into to work on these other things But you're not telling yourself. Oh I'm working on my number one goal and I will have to get to these other ones soon because my subconscious is Doing them. That's not what it means. It means I'm going to do my conscious goal and if I do that I'm finished That's my responsibility don't That's my responsibility met for it for that for the for the day But we relinquish control over anything we give to the subconscious mind now Consciously you're in charge of your one goal and also relaxation Your default when you're not working on Your conscious goal is to just relax and the default will be to just do it very little Your subconscious mind is going to when it's when it's tasked with taking on these goals for you it is going to start to Influence you as soon as the space opens up in which you can be influenced, which is why we need boundaries with our conscious goal and You will start to notice yourself being more because you're letting go of control And you're not carrying all that weight. You're not being overwhelmed You're going to start to notice that these additional goals you just start to move towards them In a much easier way. There's less resistance around them But you have to give up control. So you can't say to yourself for instance, okay I'm giving the saxophone stuff over here to The subconscious mind and the subconscious mind Will influence you to the degree Where you play it for 10 minutes that day you can't sit back and be an armchair critic and say oh well Look, that's not really very good. It should have been for half an hour Maybe you see the thing is your subconscious mind has some kind of a plan that tomorrow it will be 30 minutes So when you're doing this approach, you have to give complete control to your subconscious mind You do have an intention and a preference For something happening there, maybe but you have to even release that Consciously what you're in charge of is your one goal and you can you can do your absolute best with that goal and Building psychological momentum that in that will help you probably with these other goals too, but that's not your major concern Work on my number one goal and also relaxation and rest guilt-free play that I talk about a lot If you can find that you will and you you'll feel like One of the really important things about having one goal consciously is you will get to the point a lot quicker in your day Well, you're telling yourself. Oh, I'm finished And there's much less in decision when you have only one thing to be consciously focused on With the boundaries, you'll notice that there's this opening in your in your time and in your day Where you're naturally drawn to do these other things without that control There's less emotional resistance to move it into them so I Hope that is a useful thing to think about for you. Give that a go. There is a third option one that doesn't involve feeling resentment Because you've given up on something you really care about and also one that doesn't involve Feeling overwhelmed because you're trying to carry all these goals and you're indecisive And you're also second-guessing yourself about where you're spending your time on what your time management is like So your subconscious will gladly take those off your hands for you But you can feel proactive and empowered in your life by still holding onto one of the goals And maybe it should be your main goal the thing that the thing that really you want to see progress in Maybe more urgently or above all other goals that you have So give me some feedback on that if you think that's a good approach. Let me know Maybe try it for a while If you've noticed that you fall into one of the two options that we mentioned earlier where you're feeling either resentful or Overwhelmed give this third option a go and see how it works for you and One of the things you can check out if you're interested in this Will be the book I have on my website. It's called forget happiness. It's a book on self-parenting and There's also a course on my website on it too But if you want to know what your emotional needs are and how to actually reduce conflict between these Emotional needs that sometimes feel like they're fighting for your time and your attention and focus It's there on my website. So the book is free. You can check that out Guys, thanks so much for being with me here and I hope that was a useful video and I'll see you again very soon Take care


Okay, very good morning. It is Wednesday 22nd of September and of course we get the FMC meeting later on today I will be covering that live on the YouTube channel And so don't forget if you're not already done so to subscribe to the channel hit the bell icon And you'll get a notification as soon as we go live I'll be kicking that off at around 15 minutes before the initial Fed statement So 645 London time for the statement at 7 and then we'll cover the press conference with drone power as well at 730 so hopefully you can join me But otherwise in terms of the briefing this morning There's a little bit of a relief seen overnight in the Asia pack region on the back of some latest news in regards to evergrande To make a domestic bond coupon payment So alleviating at least short-term some of those fears that have really been Shackling market sentiment of late and also the PBOC did a sizeable liquidity injection overnight Which we'll discuss in a moment Otherwise got an update on the BOJ meeting that also took place overnight Some movement on the US debt ceiling from the house as well late yesterday Talk about Jane Jane vaccines and then we'll have a look at the day ahead If there's anything else to be aware of outside of the Fed so to kick things off as we always do Let's have a look at the charts this morning And as you can see here, I'll take the S&P 500 and it as an example Yesterday pretty seesaw price action It did look a little bit precarious and whether or not we'll get a repeat of that Monday set off but that didn't materialize at the close the S&P and now we're relatively flat to very marginal losses Of just one tenth of a percent and as that actually finished up about two tenths of one percent But looking at the overnight session, you can see here quite a noticeable pop in futures prices And this came after those reports that I've just suggested about China ever ground. So what was said Was here so a couple of things the company's onshore property unit The name of that is called the Hengda real estate or Hengda real estate They said overnight that it has negotiated a plan with bondholders to pay interest due on its 5.8% 2025 domestic notes and remember it was the fears over the lack of payment of these notes or at least restructuring To able to deal with them that was creating fears of this default and systemic risk to the banking system in China And beyond banking I should say And so that was definitely a key headline that came out overnight It came out shortly after 2 a.m And hence the reason why going to the European Open the markets generally showing a positive footing in equity space elsewhere We're pretty flat with flat in the Dixie more broadly speaking pretty much unchanged in Gold and also tea notes as well this morning But oil's getting a bit of a light reprieve as well from the situation is trading up around a dollar and twelve cents Just about a seventy one fifty mark at the moment But we also had some infantry data last night that I'll make you aware of as well So the other thing is beyond this headline you had China come out and They basically have said that they've pumped a hundred and twenty billion Yuan that equates to around 18.6 billion US Dollars into the banking system through reverse repurchase agreements resulting in a net injection of 90 billion Yuan Overnight and the action there from the central bank Domestically aimed at just soothing nerves as the market continues to worry So as such providing additional short-term liquidity to the system a couple of other things to be aware of For one I guess understanding of what the next steps could be is quite key and listening to big bank commentary can be quite helpful in that regard and analysts at Morgan Stanley have said that Beijing may initiate a managed debt restructuring of the troubled property lender in the coming week followed by policy easing is what their economists are Anticipating in China in October to contain the spillover perhaps into the broader economy The other thing as well that I guess is a question right now is just given how large evergrande is I did see a couple of tweets yesterday of infographics of all the different units and it was just mind-boggling how How big this company is and how far reaching a potential default could reverberate across the globe not just in China and so a key question here are there any Western US based financial firms that could face exposure on any further complications at Evergrande and There's a report Bloomberg have released this morning talking about city group. Apparently has no direct lending exposure to Evergrande As according to the spokeswoman JP Morgan and Bank of America also have no such links according to people Familiar with the matter as cited by Bloomberg sources And so again the combination really of three things and so I'd say first and foremost the idea that For their major property unit in real estate that they've negotiated to plan with bondholders is very important You've then also got the net liquidity injection from the central bank and then a smaller third point as well It's becoming more apparent that there isn't this kind of more broader systemic risk that could Spread out into North American financial institutions as well. So a couple of those positive points I wouldn't say the markets in outright just run away positivity right now But it certainly has put a bit of a flaw on that negative developments that we're seeing at the beginning of the week Okay, elsewhere. We had the BOJ meeting overnight pretty boring if I'm being honest It kept its negative interest rate asset buying targets unchanged all very much is expected The bank trimmed its view of exports and production to reflect the hit to supply chains that we've seen from the continuous Kind of dealing with the Delta variant and covert outbreak that's been impactful in in Japan over the recent weeks and they kept their overall view on the economy then unchanged There the decision of course comes as well a week before the ruling party election to pick the new PM Suga's Successor so definitely on the political side We're going to be looking out for more information from that next week But again, not really too much to mention here on the BOJ. The other thing then it's US debt ceiling So amongst all the other things that Biden is trying to deal with at the moment This is another one that's on the near-term horizon that definitely will probably become much more of a talking point But to get you up to speed last night the Democratic controlled house passed a bill a bill that would suspend the US debt ceiling into December 2022 and provide the government funding to operate past the 30th of September However, Republicans are vowed to block it when it reaches the Senate over the debt limit provision now important thing to be aware of here is One alternative and this will probably help just make sense of that all of this would be to strip the debt ceiling Provision from the funding bill in order for it to avoid a government shutdown October 1st Democrats could then use the fast-track budget process to pass a debt ceiling increase without the Republican support So again, it's in the Democrats interest though to try and bolt on the debt ceiling provision Into the then the government funding bill. This is that really big one that's being hotly contested Not only by Republicans across the floor But also by people like mansion and so on other Democrats as well And so by unconnecting the two their house or the Democrats in a sense could probably deal with this debt situation But they're trying to force the risk of that shutdown in order to then push it through with a Sizable fiscal spending plan that they're after in the end a lot of this as always with politics is posturing There's a cliff edge, right? These politicians love walking up and peering over the edge of the cliff Threatening each other of what they're going to do It could well even be tantamount to a short brief period of a government shutdown We've seen this many times before but in the end deals are always done And so yeah, I think that's why the markets fairly sanguine about the whole idea of a government shutdown at this point But certainly it's something that you're going to hear a lot more about in the period ahead The debt-sitting suspension is obviously urgently needed though from the point of view of the Treasury Department They've warned they could run out of accounting measures to starve off a payment default sometime in October And the whole reason why this has come back to the forefront Of course is that the debt limit came back into an effect Last month in August after a two-year suspension, but given the likes of the US Treasury They're always going to sound like that they're kind of that's part of the posturing and optics to leverage then the side of the The democratic view at the moment to get that tied into the spending bill. So again long story short It's a talking point. It's going to become more. So is it that important? Yes, there are some risks around it in the end though I think it will be a non-issue personally is what I see at this point vaccines Yeah, very briefly Johnson and Johnson came out yesterday and said a second shot of its COVID-19 vaccine Given about two months after the first increased its effectiveness to 94% in the US against moderate to severe forms of the disease So by any stretch particularly high numbers and of course, this was a single shot Originally and so a second shot keeping that up and somewhere like the US Which is obviously critical not just for that economy But the global economy is heavily as well using that particular vaccine in terms of its rollout strategy So yeah quite quite a positive there to some respect in terms of the day ahead The actual calendar is really quiet for the UK European morning So it would not be a surprise to see fairly conservative trade Perhaps barring anything unexpected fairly respecting of technical near-term levels of relevance Perhaps range-bound trade because really it's until we get into the US session Even then there's no major 130s. We do have the US existing home sales at three. We've got the DOE Oil infantry numbers at 330 just briefly We did have a bullish headline last night in the API is a drawdown of 6.1 million There's almost double of what analysts were anticipating also draw across the board Cushing was a draw of 1.7 for 8 million as well And as I said WTI is on the front foot. It's got its eyes on 72 at the moment on the upside Which would be a bound with a near-term point of resistance from Friday's trading levels The big thing then of course is the FMC And as I said, I will be covering this live later So I'm not going to go into too much of greater detail right here right now But a few things to be aware of the September meeting obviously widely anticipated Since the central bank is expected to signal it's getting ever closer to tapering its bond purchase program again This isn't about yes, we're doing it It's about laying hints to then really looking to commence this thing later on in the year November December time is what most analysts are expecting This will be then the first big step away for policies put in place to counter at obviously the pandemic And so hence the reason why markets are so sensitive to this upcoming meeting this evening To quote and one of the banks Bank of America's US short-rate strategy team a couple of things They said that I think quite interesting They said power will probably do his best to distinguish and I think important Decouple the association of tapering and rate hikes again What they're trying to explain there is that there's a sequence to how policy Normalization occurs and so you taper you then start to taper down over a prolonged period of time so in this case several months where you reduce then the size of your monthly bond purchases and Then you have a period typically if we go put on historical precedence of no action But rates remain low as they are at the moment And then thereafter rates start to gradually increase and obviously the first rate hike key the timing of that Because then typically it's a sequence in the cycle of rate hikes going forward And so what Powell will be very conscious of doing is is trying to Decouple the two because what he won't want people to think is just because we're tapering we're hiking rates That's not what he would want to convey So he's going to try and potentially hedge himself in communication Tactics by saying yes things have got positive enough We are going to taper he needs to drop now more definitive hints if they are going to start at the end of the year Which is policy tightening, but he also doesn't want that to become a point of which their market starts get spooked by Accelerated overall policy tightening by hedging himself by using perhaps the outlook to soften the blow that look rates aren't going to rise Particularly soon and with that being said then given the recent data might give validation for that So they might mark down their growth estimates for the year. Obviously, we're going to get the projections as well going forward The key thing of course is going to be on the dot plots Probably and arguably other than just probably the first snap headline that we see on how he describes the tapering situation is going to be The number of dots for lift off in 2022 or 2023 As a reminder seven of 18 officials in June the last time we got these projection projections penciled in the lift off in 2022 though the median estimates or rates on hold into 2023 To give you a guide more than a third of economists surveyed think the median for 2023 could increase From two rate hikes and you remember that was the surprise at the time because people were anticipating one It came out as two that might well go higher again An indication that the first rate hike then could well occur in the first half of the year if there was going to be three conducted for example The forecast will also include the first year of 2024 because remember with the way it rotates now will bring in that year of where rates would be on that period Where three additional hikes are expected by that time? So again, I'm going to go through all of this in more detail. Obviously, I'll talk about potential scenarios probabilities Subsequent market reactions. I'll do that live When we come on at 645 later on this evening, but that is it gonna leave it there Any questions at all? Of course, feel free to drop me a comment if you need my morning notes So my Twitter account as ever and so have a good day, and I'll catch you online later on. All right. Take care


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Obviously, the bigger potential is to the downside, right? It's obvious. Again, you're talking about eight to 10 points in the queue to the downside. Welcome to Access a Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey, guys. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to a weekend edition of theaxisotrade.com. Nightly wrap up show. Hope everybody is doing well. If you're like me, usually Friday afternoons, the last thing you want to think about is the stock market and trading. It doesn't make a difference how good or bad your week went. It was more of you need some downtime. As you can see right now, it is October the first. It is five o'clock in the afternoon. The market closed about a week ago, about an hour ago. So he's trying to ask me, what the hell am I doing recording, let alone doing any type of deduction? Well, if you're any type of parent like I am, your kids at this time of year have 95 basketball games, soccer games, and softball games. So this is literally the only time of the whole weekend that I can sit down, kind of, you know, just relax a little bit, reflect, have some coffee, right? Have some coffee and kind of start going through some ideas for next week and kind of reflect on this week. And, you know, hopefully you guys had a good week of trading, a lot of bias to the sell side this week. If you've been watching this video or this broadcast, just in the last week, I've been sell bias for the whole week. You had so many different things on the table, right? You still have the on off again, on again, off again, Evergrande is gonna default, is gonna miss some payments, whatever the case may be, you have that on the table. You had the middle of the week, you had the Fed meeting, a potential to kind of rip off the Band-Aid and maybe start raising some sort of rates by November, you had that on the table. You have rising yields, rising yields, surging yields, bad for technology. You had so much stuff on the table. And oh, by the way, we spent the majority of the week underneath the 50 day moving average, which is kind of a big deal technically. And no matter what the market did this week, we saw a common theme over and over again, excuse me. And that common theme was every single time the market would gap up, literally every single time the NASAC 100 would gap up, it would literally get stuffed into supply every single day. The ironic part about it is it didn't just do this once, it didn't do it twice, it didn't do it three times, it didn't do it four times, it did it five times this week and every single time they were putting in lower highs into supply and they were just taking down stocks one by one by one. And again, this is what happens when the index is below the 50 day moving average. So there was no surprise if you put in your homework this week that technology was super duper weak. Again, it's surging, you have surging yields, it's not gonna be good for technology. And you had this really good aggressive decline this week and it wasn't that obvious to a lot of people but if you've been watching this broadcast, we've been pretty much doing a roll call, right? Amazon broke down, great move this week, right? Amazon broke down, Google for the exception of today had a great move, three day move down, 35, 40 points, really, really good move. Apple today broke down at some point, right? 41 and a quarter, 41 broke down and went down all the way down to $39. You had Nvidia taking out recent lows traded to this next support as well. And you had a lot of these names, right? Baidu, right Baidu broke down below this 52 level. Again, still going lower. You have a slew of a bunch of Nasdaq names that just cannot get out of their own way. I mean, look at Peloton, right?  You know, there's a lot of names out there that just didn't even have a pulse. Again, a lot of names did kind of wake up. I would say the majority of companies, especially tech names are still way underneath supply.  Because if you do look on the Nasdaq 100 and you see a lot of people talking about this afternoon, well, you know, that was the bottom of the move. Why? Why was that the bottom of the move? Again, I don't know. But it's a very, very fair question. Like why was that the bottom of the move? We broke below the 50-day moving average. We had a measure potential move down to 356, 357, right? We talked about those levels in the beginning of the week. And to the bull's credit, again, again, I'm being completely unbiased, to the bull's credit, they did reclaim the 356, 357 level, right? That's the good news. The bad news is we're still putting in three days worth of lower highs and we got rejected on the five-day moving average. And oh, by the way, we're at day six, right? Or day five, excuse me, day five underneath the 50-day. So as much as today's reversal seemed to be really good and it was, right? You had the Nasdaq up 100 points. Okay, whatever, right? You had the Nasdaq up 100 points. The value this week was all to the sell side. Even a name like Tesla that had monster, monster, monster order flow and anticipation of China numbers, China data to be released either tonight or tomorrow, some point over the weekend, monster, monster flow, even a name like Tesla, you know, after this really, really big breakout, again, put in four days in a row of lower highs and lower lows. So not everything is rallying back, right? And the most important part kind of going into that next week is, well, what happens next? And this is kind of where we are. This is where, again, we talk about reality versus fantasy world. No matter how good or bad a market is, and just keep this in mind, I've been doing this for a long, long time. No matter how good the internet craze was, we still saw periods that, again, a lot of people won't remember, but even during that time, you did have times in the market, even though it only lasts like 15, 17 months, you had intervals of the market two, three, four days in a row that the market couldn't get out of its own way. The same thing is the opposite, right?  There were still periods in that area that the market actually had a two, three, four day run. So no matter how good a market is or how bad a market is, you're still gonna get those debt cat bounces, right? You're still going to have those days that it feels good, it looks good, but deep in your belly, you kind of know it doesn't feel right. And that's kind of so far where we are with this bounce and the queues. Now again, two things are gonna happen next week. And again, those two things are not a subjective, it's not worth an argument, it's not worth a debate. There's only two things are gonna happen next week. We're either going to reclaim, right, reclaim the five day moving average. And if you've been watching, if you've been watching the broadcast for a long time, you know how important the five day moving average is. For me, it's short-term sentiment. So we're either going to reclaim this five day moving average and start taking out the previous channel's highs and start moving back to the 10 day and the 50 day moving average, or we're gonna put in another lower high. And this is exactly what we've been doing now for the last one, two, three, four, five days in a row, right? We're either gonna put in another lower high, get rejected off the five day moving average, and today's low of that 354.30s level on the queues, that's gonna be the line in the sand. And again, we talked about this on Wednesday's video. The last thing the bulls wanna do technically, again, if you believe in the theory of stock trade from supply to supply and demand to demand, right? So here's demand, here's more demand, they reclaim demand. So if the queues reclaim, right? If the bears reclaim this 354 level, which is the low of today's session, you have another seven to 10 points of downside. And we spoke about this during the week. The first part of the sell-off might have not been that exaggerated. And yes, equity prices went down, technology names got beat up, but you might have not really felt it because it was so much speculation money, in the smaller cap names, a lot of speculation names, but I'm telling you, if we start reclaiming, right? If the bears start reclaiming this whole bottom channel here, then that next seven to 10 points on the queues is going to be felt.  You're gonna have a significant move. So if you are a bull, and again, we trade both sides of the market, it doesn't make a difference to us which side, as long as we are reading market sentiment the correct way, as long as we're putting ourselves in the position of data, not opinion, not what we think is gonna happen, not anticipating, but if we're putting our exit a basket of data, and we're collecting that data throughout the week, then we absolutely know there's two scenarios. We either reclaim the five day and start moving our way up, or we reclaim the bottom of this channel that was below on this whole rising support, right? This whole rising support of the 100 day moving average, and then we still have eight to 10 points of downside in any close below 54. I mean, I was pretty much 95% sell buys this whole week. That's how aggressive the action was this week, even today, right? Last night you had the futures lower because of the debt deal, then this morning you had the futures higher because of the debt deal, and then they pulled the plug on everything. Amazon got smacked this morning, the video got smacked, Apple got smacked, everything got smacked. Like literally everything got smacked this morning for only for them to reclaim. So you're going to have a little bit of a news cycle, a lot of spin, maybe going into this weekend, maybe going into early part of the next weekend. Again, I think there's been like nine or 10 government shutdowns over the last 10 years. So who cares, okay? What are you, not going to get your mail, right? Who cares? At the end of the day, who cares, okay?  There's been 10 government shutdowns. You might not be able to get a stamp at the post office. Adios mio, right? So life will go on. The moral, what's more important is what happens next. The stock market for September, putting it a horrific effort, right? Probably the worst effort since the May, what was it, the May pandemic lows, right? So the market felt it. So the fact that we had a little bit of a relief rally that started October 1st, doesn't really ring a lot of bells for me, doesn't really make me feel very, very confident or very, very comfortable going into next week on the long side. But at the end of the day, I still am a realist. I understand what happens when levels get confirmed. I understand when levels get lost and whatever the wind blows, whichever direction the wind blows, we are going to be comfortable in that direction and confident trading those levels. Obviously the bigger potential is to the downside, right? It's obvious. Again, you're talking about eight to 10 points and the Q's to the downside versus two points to the upside. So the value for next week is to the downside. But again, yes, we could have a second day rally off the five day moving average into the 10. And in that case, you have to be prepared on both sides of the market. So we look, I'm very, very, I'm very open-minded going into a Monday session. I think that is the best way to play it, right? I do believe we did have a little bit of a bounce today, whether that bounce continues on Monday, at least we'll be prepared for it. So let me give you guys some ideas that I kind of do like for next week. Netflix has been acting pretty well all week. This whole rollout of the whole video game part of their business, it looks good. You had some pretty good call buying, never really sold off this week compared to its peers. And listen, if it starts attacking this channel, maybe if there's a second day, you could get a nice bounce. Look at Boeing, right? Look at Boeing also had a really, really good run in the middle of this whole carnage. Listen, if they could start attacking the top of the level here, you still have room. You still have a pretty decent amount of room. Again, we don't know how big or if this dead cat bounce is going to last, but at least, right? At least we will be prepared. A name like DDOG again had a really, really good run, right? Reclaim the 10-day moving average, which is a good thing, right? If they could just get above this channel here, hey, I'm not saying it's going to go to highs, but hey, it might not go that far away from highs. Even names to the downside, like Micron. Micron is just flagging here, still waiting for it to crack those earnings lows. If that channel gives, you're probably going to have a two, three day run. If you guys remember, some of the better plays, especially shorts, the drifting shorts, have always been the names that missed earnings, rally a little bit, and then confirm the earnings lows, and you saw a multi-week drift. So for example, you guys remember when Amazon missed their earnings, right? So they missed their earnings, had this little pop, and then once it broke its earnings, it had a two and a half a week drift. If you guys remember a Zoom, right? Remember Zoom? Zoom blew up on earnings, right? Went up a little bit, confirmed the zone, had about three weeks worth of selling. So MU is probably going to be exactly the same thing. So it put in its earnings low here, double bottom here. If they could start cracking the earnings lows, then again, you could definitely have a two, three week way of moving down with a linear balance. Tesla, we'll see what happens. Tesla had a monster, monster run last week, right? Excuse me, Monday. Had a monster, monster run last week as well, but Monday, China inventories are coming out at some point over the weekend. You have for next week, 810s, 820, 830, aggressive, aggressive six, seven figure call buyers stepping in in anticipation of a good inventory number. But again, there's no guarantees they're guessing. Unless they know something, they're guessing like everybody else. We know the macro number and we will be watching that macro number for the next leg up. So that's it everybody. It is 515, right? 515, Friday afternoon, believe me, this has nothing to do about dedication and outworking. This is called being a dad, right? Guys, have a great weekend. I hope you guys have the best for all you guys who are coming to the pancakes and pivots Q&A monthly in the webinar on Sunday.  Guys, have a great, great weekend and with God's help, I'll see you guys next week. Take care.