Hello everybody, thank you so much for joining for this open ed 2022 session today. My name is Amy Song and I am your host for today's session entitled English is also foreign discussion with an ESOL practitioner. ESOL being English to speakers of other languages obviously. This tongue-in-cheek title is to signify how overlooked ESOL learners and education is and why good ESOL education matters and how we can make use of OER to help accomplish that. To talk about this topic with an with an appropriate approach I wanted to bring an experienced practitioner of open and ESOL to talk about their approach. So I'm joined by Tim Krause an ESOL instructor from Portland Community College who has produced over 20 ESOL OERs over the course of its time in open. My goal is to not only provide exposure about ESOL at open ed as it is not a topic that is frequently spoken about but also about but knowing that the viewers of this presentation are likely already familiar with ESOL and or open pedagogy I wanted to specifically address the the intersection of both and practice. We only have 25 minutes to get today so I want to get the ball rolling so I want to start by more formally introducing ourselves and then we will jump right into the conversation. So my name is Amy I am the Customer Success Manager at Pressbooks. I am also an English every second language learner so I am an immigrant and at one point I learned how to speak English and I think that if I were to have learned English now I would love to have access to good and free and accessible educational material so that is what prompted me to do this presentation for you all today and I'll turn it over to Tim. Thanks Amy. Hi everybody my name is Tim Kraus and as Amy said I teach at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. I've been teaching there since about 2015 teaching ESOL of all levels and all different kinds of skills and I also teach online for the Open University of Catalonia in Spain where I focus also for ESOL classes but with a much more narrow focus on English for business so it's my pleasure to be here and share a little bit of my experience working with Open Oregon and Open Educational Resource Materials over the past five years or so. Thank you so much Tim that is a great introduction and you do some incredible work so I'm excited to share today. So this is our outline for today's discussion we have four questions and Tim and I will be going through them and then as you know with these pre-recorded 25 minute presentation formats at Open Ed after the recording has ended I will take some questions from the crowd or and I'm happy to take them during the chat as well while the conversation is ongoing. So with that said we can dive right into the topic and we are recording just with our faces now so I'm just going to I want to pull up the questions and my first question is what does good ESOL education look like and what can it do for learners? Thank you yeah that's a really great question and in my opinion I have an easy answer I think good ESOL education is whatever serves the students needs right it's whatever the student needs and for example it can change it can vary a lot so for example most of our beginning students especially those who recently moved here are really seeking communication skills that serve everyday life like everyday things like things that we might take for granted like going to the doctor riding the bus going to the grocery store right that's the what's the focus really for a large group of our students but other students are coming to our college are seeking more academic study they're getting ready for academic studies after ESOL either at you know community college or at another university so their needs are a little bit different and so for example we need to not only teach more academic language but we also need to help them understand what is it like to be a student at a US college so what are the expectations how should they talk to students and classmates and teachers what's kind of vocabulary do they need what are the experiences they will have after ESOL so you know you might hear the word adulting like people are learning how to be adulting well we're yeah student team as well right we're teaching student team about what's it like to be a student in the US and some examples of that might be something like critical thinking which can vary a lot from culture to culture writing forms which change from culture to culture of what's a good essay for example the structure things like that can be really different so we want to help students understand not only language vocabulary and grammar but there's a whole lot more to academia there's one more group there's a third group of students who come into our classrooms and they're already highly educated you know they know student team they know basic they know you already have a good command of English for example and they probably already have an advanced degree from their own country but they come here and they need to get a degree from here or a license from here or just be able to become more fluent to start working here and so their focus might be more vocational something like that instead of life skills or academics so when we talk about well what is good ESOL I think it really needs to be what does the student need what are the modalities a student works best in what are the what is the content the student needs what is the accessibility the student needs you know for example what's their level of digital literacy stuff like that right so yes what can we provide to be most successful and sometimes for example the commercial textbooks aren't are not exactly what we need and through OER we can we can make what we need yeah that's that's an amazing answer especially because you're so experienced in teaching for lots of different kinds of levels and you're talking about different groups of students who who are looking to learn English so I think that's a really great approach not only for ESOL but I'm currently learning French right now and I think that's you know in every language that's so you know important and probably a very integral part to teaching and learning language so sort of related to that but sort of shifting gears into the open education side of things what do openly licensed materials afford you as an ESOL instructor that you can't do a copyright material so you were just talking about those textbooks that are not necessarily catered to they're not necessarily made with let's say a student's best interest in mind where that's sort of what you're alluding to so I guess to wrap up that really long question if I could sum it up into two words why OER yeah well it's a good question because really this is twofold and I think a lot of people know the first answer a lot of people know that OER me openly education resources are generally free or low cost like the cost of printing at you know at the bookstore something like that and so that cost savings is a huge factor and it is like the probably the foremost factor you know commercial publishers are you know in it to make money that's their purpose OER textbook creators are really has education as the focus and not not making money and those those textbooks can be really expensive even in ESOL whether textbooks aren't as expensive maybe as other disciplines it still can be a cost barrier and it could be a barrier to enrollment in fact some students might need to make a choice it could be a deal breaker whether they take a class or take two classes for example because textbooks can be so expensive but money isn't the only thing money is important part of it and the cost savings are real places like open Oregon where I work with open Oregon educational resources they document all the cost savings for like whenever we get a grant to make something we have to report the enrollment and and so they have numbers that prove how successful this is but on the other side of things is what we were talking about a little earlier the content and the control I don't want to say control of content but the ability to curate the content that your students need is really important and I don't think yeah I think it's maybe underestimated a little bit by people who are new or not familiar with OER using OER really allows teachers to deliver the content the students need and so like we're saying what is good OER it meets the needs of the students well how do I do that if I look at a commercial textbook maybe it's got some of what I need but not but there's a lot that I don't use and so there's a little bit of waste there maybe if you don't use a whole book things like that right yeah and making an OER or using an OER allows us to customize the experience for our students and that might be as simple as just representation like who are in the photos right are you represented in the photos or are these photos of people that are not representative of students in the classroom or the local culture see that OER can also be tailored geographically maybe there's something I need or want to share in Oregon that might not be appropriate or pertinent to somewhere else in the country or even around the world for that matter right yeah a culture in the United States you know would be very different than culture in Australia or New Zealand or something like that and it also allows me as I mentioned to focus on specific skills that I think my students need that may or may not be in a commercial book or a book that you know is existing but beyond that so that's that's where you're starting with but also the thing I want to mention too is that OER is so nimble right it's very nimble if you buy a commercial textbook you might have to wait a year or two for another edition that changes but with OER I can make changes right away a good example of this is I have a reading book that I have an article about the Olympics that were recently you know couple of years ago and it was a really popular article but it's getting less and less relevant right now so it's easy for me to take out that one story and replace it with something new and I have a brand new edition there is no reprinting of a whole run of thousands of books or something like that it's really flexible and because it's flexible student teachers can also um what do I want to say customize or personalize their work um through downstream editing so all of my work for example you could take and it's in google docs or press books or whatever format it's in you can take that format and you can edit it and not only you know this is good for fixing typos for example but it's also also really good for fixing not for fixing for um updating content or just changing something that you might think oh this will work a little better for my students so I have the ability to edit OER and you don't have that that you don't have that ability with commercial textbooks so yeah those are the things that I'm thinking about you know as as some of the really strong advantages for OER over commercial textbooks for sure and um I'm going to sort of promote your book here I suppose but I know you have a couple of books about Portland in particular and OER about Portland which is so interesting because not only is that inspiration to other ESOL practitioners about what what kind of material they could produce or if they're in the Portland area they could you know use your book or reuse your book but this idea of localization that you're mentioning which is like a I suppose like a fancy OER term but also kind of it's a you know it's a sensible word um how important that is and to really customize that learning experience so for example you know if you have a grammar book in the US it might be different than an ESOL grammar book if you were to teach in you know the UK for example or in Canada um so so that's that's such a that's such a great point that you bring up um and then I this question is related so you can totally repeat your answer if need be but um what is a crucial or major consideration in an ESOL that is perhaps in an ESOL OER that is perhaps different when you're comparing it to OERs of other discipline I took me a while to think about um this idea when we first um talked about this question I don't think because I don't on the surface I don't think there is much difference between OER for ESOL and OER for other disciplines I mean some of the major considerations are the same for example um for me when I'm making a starting a new OER project I think about how will the students get get the material so in that term in that sense I'm thinking about what platform will serve the material best so there's a lot of platforms out there press books it's one of them google docs you know google sites all kinds of things that you can use and I need to stop and think okay what is the best way to serve the material that I'm making first right right you know what will support that material because every platform has strengths that maybe some other platforms don't um I also like to think more recently about digital and analog I used to be all like oh wow digital digital we're all pushing for you know don't print don't wait don't save the paper save the ink let's just have it on your phone or have it on your your um your device and I think that's great in many ways but especially in ESOL but I think everywhere we have many students coming to college who um may not may have some barriers to internet access and so an analog format or a printed format is sometimes very beneficial especially in ESOL when we have students who might have low digital literacy skills they're coming to here not really knowing a lot about using the computer or using the internet so thinking about that that can be that should it be digital or should it be a print should it be both ideally both another thing I think about is how am I going to meet the accessibility concerns in terms of students with disabilities and online that might be you know tagging pictures and doing the right formatting so that screen readers can read it and then offline it could be the simp also things like contrast I'm printing and things like that um and then other thing that's come up recently is uh what am I providing in the OER like what is this a textbook for students or is this a teacher facing book that it's just a collection of things that you will print and hand out or display on the screen but you don't give it to students it's for the teacher to use in class I've I've tried all of these things is it an interactive workbook or is it really just a reader you know those kinds of thing what is the format that you need that will serve the material in order to meet the students needs and then lastly one of my list I think which is a global consideration is how how is it best shared with other instructors or other schools because that's the purpose of OER right that we share everything sure yeah yeah and so like well how am I going to get this out there for me open Oregon is behind me we have a database and all that kind of stuff but there are many repositories right around the country and around the world that you can list and find things for OER for ESOL and for others so that's those are some questions that I think are universal but um one thing I think that might be a little more specific to ESOL is that maybe our range of what do I want to say this mar um range of subject matter might be a little wider than some disciplines like I'm thinking yeah for sure a book about chemistry is a book about chemistry but um a reading book in ESOL might cover 10 different topics right yeah absolutely yeah especially if you are involved in content-based learning where you really want like really want to focus on giving authentic and genuine and interesting content that is really useful right that's not stale you know or has you know has been reused a million times so exactly and I think something that I really appreciated about your books and the reason I wanted to talk to you specifically is because you you know you have books about you know Portland but you also have like a like a learner friendly version of a Christmas Carol so there's you know so many different there's different varieties and I think that with the beauty of open being that it's you know shareable and reusable oftentimes um there's such a breadth of material that you can take from and take inspiration from and I think that uh that's that's super important I'll give you a couple examples to the breadth there of is beyond like a Christmas Carol in Portland like you said I also have a curriculum based on Shark Tank the TV show which is oh my gosh also around the world right so many different languages and then I'm working on a reader right now of short stories from what we call the Outer Circle of World Englishes so World English is places where English is one of the standard languages in the country um and things stories that people there are writing in English not just from the United States or or something like that so it's really you know all over the map literally yeah honestly yeah literally that's so funny um so that might be a that might be what's different I think in ESOL and maybe it's not really so much a challenge I think it's an advantage actually that we can draw on so many different things again to come back to meet the needs of our students what is relevant what is culturally relevant what is linguistically relevant what do they need absolutely and I think that uh you know globally there's um a lack of attention on ESOL learners especially because English is almost expected oftentimes so I think to take the time to really localize and to think about who's who is going to be reading this material uh is is super super crucial when we think about it from like um like a justice standpoint as well I remember we were talking about that prior to this call so and and from a practical standpoint because when you mentioned that um teaching English the foreign language for example teaching teaching English in Japan is really different than teaching English to as a second language or to speakers of other languages here um the their the motivation is different the the goals are different the strategies are a little different and so again OER can meet those different needs whereas a commercial publisher may not be able to have two different versions of one book you absolutely that's a very that's a very fair point as well um and I'm a very good point to to add uh we only have about five minutes so I wanted to ask you my last question before I show you some of your beautiful work um I just wanted to ask my last question being how can others advance the OER work and yes so all and what does this community need? Sure sure get involved right that's what I would say yeah get involved and think of it this way um we need more materials so that we have more diversity of things to choose from because every teacher teaches a little differently and you know I may think Shark Tank was a great idea you may think oh I want something completely different so we need choices we need choices so get involved but I also want to clarify one thing about that is when I talk to teachers who are just getting into OER just hearing about it they're often really intimidated by this oh I have to make I have to write a book I have to like create all the stuff from scratch yeah and really the truth is there you don't have to that's what OER is about is that you can there's a lot of good material out there that you can choose from and just use it as is adopt it like a book or take it and personalize it a little bit or however much you want you don't have to start from scratch but if you do is if you want to you certainly can but I just want to make sure that people know there are different ways to sort of dip your toe in the OER world yeah that's that's a that's an awesome recommendation I think it's a really uh I think I think it's really the fact that we are open ed and we're talking about you know remixing especially in a discipline that's often overlooked I think is super important and I think something that all I think ultimately that ESOL learners can really benefit from so thank you so much for all your answers you're so wonderful and I'm so happy that that we got to have this competition today yeah it's my pleasure thank you so going back to our presentation here hopefully you can see my slides this is our Reasers page these are all linked so this will take you to 10s ESOL OERs I've already switched screens a bunch of times so I won't switch again for the sake of our viewers but there are over 20 resources on here all on different platforms and available in different modalities which I think is really wonderful so please please please if you're interested go and check them out I'm sure many of them if not all of them are opening licensed so you are welcome to read them and adapt them to your liking there's also a couple of other places where you'll be able to find 10s 10s books the open organ repository is where a lot of 10s books were produced and a couple of selections of his books down here that I think were I chose some that had a high interactivity so lots of h5p activities that you can draw from as well as some with very pretty covers that touch on different language levels as well so I thought they were great did you have anything to add about your book stem only to please explore OER explore my work for everybody's works try it and I think that you will be pleasantly surprised by the success you'll have thank you so much again and if you do have any questions about the presentation this is a little bit about me and thank you very much to everyone once again for joining us for this open ed session and I hope you have a lovely rest of open ed 2022 and thank you again time goodbye thank you


Hey, good morning everybody. This is Lee Lowell here from SmartOptionSeller.com. Today is Saturday, May 1st, 2021. Finally got into May. Yes, we're moving along. Welcome to another edition of our Saturday YouTube videos, where we would discuss an options trading strategy. And we look at the charts. We see what's going on in the markets. That's what we call our Saturday synopsis. I like to do this for you, give you guys some great options information, try to help you become a better options trader. As you can see on your screen right here, the option strategy that we will be discussing today is buying deep in the money call options. It is one of the four strategies that I lay out in my book. It is the only option buying strategy that I lay out in my book. I've got three option selling techniques and one option buying techniques technique. And if you don't know about my book, here's a little shameless plug. My book, Get Rich with Options. Four strategies straight from the exchange floor, from my time being a floor trader.  You only need four of them. Three of them are option selling techniques and one is an option buying technique. And that is what we were going to talk about today. Buying deep in the money call options. Why do we want to buy deep in the money call options? What are they? And why are they so great? And why am I so gung-ho on those? So let's jump right in and talk about it. The strategy of buying deep in the money call options. What is that exactly? And what is deep in the money mean? Well, if you're a bullish on a stock, obviously you can buy shares of that stock, but there's another way to get exposure to those shares of stock. And that's by buying call options. Now, if you're a little familiar with options, you understand that there are different levels of strike prices. And there's ways to describe them. There's at the money options, out of the money options, and in the money options. And they all have a different reaction to how the stock moves. So what I've figured out over the years is that instead of buying shares of stock, you can buy call options. But there's only one very specific call option strategy that I recommend. And that is buying the deep in the money call option. And why is that? Because a deep in the money call option will act almost just like the stock itself. And there's great benefits that come along with buying deep in the money call options that you can't get with the stock. So my goal here today is to change you from a stock buyer to a deep in the money call option buyer. And I think once you understand the strategy and once you've done it a few times, you will be a true convert. You will convert over to buying deep in the money call options only instead of buying the stock itself. So let's discuss what the actual attributes or the characteristics of a deep in the money call option and why it works so well. And by the end of this presentation, you will see that, yes, you know what, Lee, you are right. Buying deep in the money call options is a much better way to go if I'm bullish than just buying stock shares. So let's go over my cheat sheet. I have two cheat sheets for you today. The first one here is just basically describing what a deep in the money call option is. And the next word document will go over an example. So buying deep in the money call options, you want to see it as a substitute for buying the stock itself. So obviously, if you're going to buy stock, you're bullish, right?  So you have to be bullish if you're going to use either buying stocks or if you're going to use the deep in the money call option buying strategy. So number one, you have to be bullish on the stock. And to use the strategy, it's going to act as a substitute, almost a pure substitute. Okay. So the way I describe it is, you know, if you're if you're in a store, you can buy and the title of the video is you don't want to pay retail. And by that I mean, when you go into a store, you can either buy the name brand product, or the generic brand, which is basically the exact same thing as the name brand, you go into, let's say, you know, a drugstore and you want to buy some some Advil, which is really ibuprofen. Okay. Advil is just the brand name. And you can buy the generic store brand of ibuprofen for a lot cheaper, or you can go into a supermarket and buy a name, a name brand product of a food item, or you can get a generic version of the food item, same ingredients taste the same, it's just cheaper. So this is how I see buying deep in the money call options. You're buying the generic version of the stock, and you're getting the same benefits. So it's just basically a substitute for buying the stock. And and some of the great attributes are is that when you buy a deep in the money call option, you're going to have upwards of 70%, sometimes more, less risk. Okay. When you buy a stock, your risk is the stock can drop all the way to zero, and you can lose your your full investment. And the same thing with buying a call option, you can lose your investment if the stock drops, but that investment is going to be a lot less buying call options versus buying stocks will cost you a lot less in dollar terms, capital outlay right here. So these are too big, it's right here number two and three, you're going to have 50 to 70% less capital outlay, sometimes more, sometimes greater than 70%, which means your risk in the trade is going to be 50 to 70% less as well. So and in the next screen in the next Word document, I'll show you were look at an example, and I'll show you the actual numbers. And then your returns, your percentage returns, your return on investment ROI, a lot of times could be double triple or even more than what you can get versus just buying stock shares. Okay. So remember, all option contracts have are all option contracts consist of 100 shares of stock, one option contract, which is the minimum amount you can trade consists of 100 shares of stock. So we're always going to be comparing the call option buying method to buying 100 shares of stock, because that's the only way to compare it. So we have to round up the number to 100 shares of stock. If you only want to buy one or two shares of stock, then you have to stick with buying the stock because you can't buy option contracts, because they always consist of 100 shares of stock. All right. So let's just get that out in the open. Now, along with the deep in the money strategy, we're going to look for an option strike that has a 90% Delta. Now some of you may or may not know what Delta is, but there's a couple definitions of Delta. The one that applies directly to this type of strategy is that in options Delta, and I'll show you where you find that, and I'll show you how to get it from your your your broker's platform. The Delta tells you how much the option price is going to move in conjunction with the stock price. So if the stock price moves, the option price will move as well. But not all options are created equal. Options have different Delta. So that means the option price will move along with the stock price at various speeds or levels. So what a 90% Delta does is that if the stock moves up a dollar, the option price will move up 90% of that value, which is basically 90 cents per contract. So if the stock moves up a buck, your option contract moves up 90 cents per contract. That's $90. So that's 90% of the move. A 50% Delta option will move about 50% of whatever the stock does. So if the stock moves up a dollar, your option contract will move up 50 cents per contract. We want to stick with deltas of 9% or higher because we want the option to move almost in lockstep with the stock. We almost want to have the pure substitute. And in my opinion, a 90% move is really just good enough. It's almost acting like the stock and you're saving all this money. Now a 50% Delta will only move about half the amount of the stock. To me, that's not a good enough substitute. But that's just my personal preference. A lot of people play 50% deltas which are actually at the money options. A 90% Delta is an in the money option. And why is it called in the money? Because when we're talking about call options, if the stock is here, let's just say at 100, and a call option that's deep in the money has its strike price set well below the current price of the stock. And we'll look at the example. And it's called deep in the money because it actually has true value. It has a lot of value built into that option. So an option that is in the money has a lot of money built up into it, a lot of value built up. That's why it's called in the money. And at the money option means the stock, the strike price is roughly the same price as the stock. So if the stock said 100, $100 call option is considered at the money. All right. So in this type of trade, buying deep in the money call options, we're down here, number six. Since we're looking at it as a substitute for the stock, we're taking a longer term view here. We want to hold for the long term. We want to gain capital appreciation as long as we're bullish and the stock moves up. We want to hold for a while. I consider this more of a longer term investing type of strategy. If I'm buying shares of stock, I'm holding for the long term because I want to see capital appreciation. I want my portfolio to grow. So we have to look at the deep in the money strategy in roughly the same light, at least six months out in time. Expiration dates for options can go out to three years in time. You can choose whatever expiration date you want. I suggest at least at a minimum six months out in time, you got to give yourself some time for the stock to move. If the stock doesn't move right away, you want to give yourself some time. So consider at least six months in duration. And the other thing that's important to understand when you buy deep in the money call option is that you want to figure out what the breakeven level is. When you buy a stock at 100, your breakeven is 100. That's your cost base is 100. But when you buy an option contract, your cost basis is different than where the stock is. So you want to figure out what your breakeven is. And I'll show you on the next screen. But the key here is that you want the breakeven of the option contract to be pretty close to what the breakeven of the stock is or where the stock price is. And I'll show you what that means. Now, a couple things that that people get confused about is what happens at expiration. You know, if I'm holding an in the money option, whether that's a put option or a call option, what can I do with that option? Once expiration draws near or comes on the day of expiration, what do I do? Well, there's three things that can occur at expiration if you're still holding an in the money option. And in the money option, we'll have value on expiration. So there's three things, there's three things you can do. You can sell your option, right? If it's profitable, you just sell it back to the market, and the trade will be done. You can exercise the call option, meaning you actually turn the option into shares of stock. And now you'll have shares of stock in your account, and then you just become a shareholder just like everybody else. So if you sell it, if you sell the option at expiration, the trade will be over and you won't have any shares of stock.   So you still have the shares of stock. The other thing you can do at expiration is what we call rolling the trade. Now if you bought the deep in the money call option and expiration is drawing near, and you don't want to sell it, and you don't want to exercise it, but you want to continue on with the trade, what you can do is you can sell out your call option that you bought, and then just buy a new deep in the money call option for another six months out in time or one year out in time.  Now if you exercise it, you have to pay for the shares in full, the balance of those shares at expiration. You know, some people don't want to put out all the cash to buy the stock. So rolling it would be your best choice if you want, if you're still bullish on the stock and you want to continue on into the future. So rolling just entails selling your original deep in the money call option, and then just buying a new deep in the money call option for another six months out in time. So you can continue rolling for years on end, and you'll never have to pay for the stock. And if the stock keeps going up, that option value keeps going up. So these are your three choices of what to do at expiration. Now we always have to talk about the risk, the drawbacks, whatever. Buying a deep in the money call option, since it acts just like a stock, the downside is, is if the stock drops, okay, if the stock drops in price, all the shareholders will lose money and call option buyers will lose money as well. So you have to understand if the market falls or the stock falls, you can lose money. That's just the fact of life with holding a bullish position in a falling market. So I don't want to have anyone confuse that this is a win, win, win type of trade. It's a great trade. But if the stock moves against your prediction, you're going to lose money. So just understand that. But as noted up here, buying call options will have a lot less risk, and you'll have a lot less money on the line. So if the stock does fall, you have a lot less money on the line versus stock holders or stock buyers. So that's something that's, that's one of the great things about this strategy. And the other thing when you buy call options is that you don't receive dividends. As a stockholder, you receive dividends. But as a call option buyer, you do not receive any dividends, nor do you get any voting rights, right? If you're a stockholder, you get to vote your shares for, you know, officers of the company, you get to go to the annual shareholders meeting, whatever, whatever else there is involved with being a shareholder, you don't get those rights as a call option buyer. Okay, that that's only for the shareholders.  To me, the benefits of buying call options outweighs this drawback right here, you know, because I'd rather have less money on the line, less risk versus getting dividends or voting rights. That's just, you know, my opinion. So, you know, I went over this rather quickly. Let's just go over this real quick one more time. Buying a deep in the money call option can act as a pure substitute for the stock with a lot less money on the line, a lot less risk. And your returns on investment can be a lot higher. So let's go over an example. And I'll show you exactly what I mean. And I think the light bulb will go on over your head saying, you know what, this is really a great strategy. So let's move on to our cheat sheet number two, where we're going to look at an example of Apple. We're going to look at an example.  Now this is purely an example. This is not a real recommendation. It's not, you know, investment advice of any type. This is just an example of what you can do. And you can see how the numbers work. Okay. So as far as Apple goes, let me just bring up my option chain here. And we're going to look at the option prices. So Apple finished at roughly $131.52 yesterday, April 30, 2021. So we're going to use that price in our example here, we're going to round it down to $131.50 per share. So here's how the deep in the money call option example works, and why it's so great to buy the call option instead of buying shares of stock. So if Apple's at $131.50 to buy 100 shares, it would cost $13150. Okay, remember, we have to compare it to 100 shares of stock. Now on Apple, in October 2021, 100 strike call option, which has a 91.3% delta, and I will show you that cost $32.80 per contract. Now, in order to figure out your actual cost, you have to multiply the option value times 100, which is the option multiplier of 100 shares. So 30 to 80 per contract times 100 equals $3,280. So number one, right here, to buy 100 shares of Apple costs $13150. To buy one deep in the money call option for October expiration only costs $3,280. Right here is a big deal. That's a savings of $9,870. That is a 75% discount to buying the shares of stock. You can save almost $10,000 just by buying the call option. And you have $9,870 less at risk. If Apple drops to $0 per share by expiration, all the stockholders will lose $13,150. All the call option buyers will lose $3,280. That is a 75% discount when you're buying it. And it's also 75% less money on the line. Now, where did I get this? How did I pick the October 2021 100 call option? And where did I find the delta? And where did I find the cost? Well, that's what you do when you look at an option chain for any stock that you're interested in. Okay, this is an option chain for Apple. And I'm going to move myself over here to this side. Here are the call options. This is an option chain. Here are the call options for Apple for the October 15, 2021 expiration. So 167 days in the future. Not quite six months, but I'm using this as an example. So when you're going to search for a substitute to the stock, when you're going to search for a deep in the money call option, what is the first thing you do? How do you pick the strike price? How do you pick the call option? Well, the most important column in your option chain is right here, Delta. Okay, every option chain, and every broker should offer you the opportunity to see what the Delta is. Now, remember, the Delta tells you how the stock, how the option price will move when the stock price moves. And you want to have at least that 90% Delta. So you scan down the Delta calm till you reach the option that has the closest to a 90% Delta. And in this case, it's the 100 strike call has a 91.3% Delta. Delta's range from zero to 100%. Can't get any higher than 100%. Me personally, I choose the 90% Delta or the one that's closest to 90%. Because I feel that getting 90% of the movement is is good enough. It's almost the same as just buying the stock itself. Okay, so 91.3% Delta is the 100 call. So you're going to buy, not sell, you're going to buy the 100 strike call option. And here's where it went out yesterday. On the close $32 and 70 cent bid at 3290 offer. We always want to try to do something right in the middle. So right in the middle is $32 and 80 cents per contract is the fair value for that option. We go back to our our cheat sheet here is the Apple October call is 3280 per contract is $3,280 that you will have to pay when you buy that call option, you always have to pay the full price for the call options value right when you buy it. Just like when you buy 100 shares of stock, you'd have to put up $13,150. Here you're putting up $3,280 delta of 91.3%. So we've picked our we've picked our deep in the money option for this trade. Let's talk about the breakeven. Because remember, breakeven is a very important thing. Now when you buy the shares of Apple at $131.50, that's your breakeven, that's your cost basis. To figure out the cost basis or the breakeven on the call option, you have to add the strike price 100 plus whatever the option cost $3,280. So the breakeven for the option is $132 and 80 cents. All Apple has to do is move up above $132.80 within the next six months. Apple's at $131.50. Now all it has to do is get up to $132.80 in the next six months. I have a pretty good idea. It's a pretty good chance that Apple can move up to $132.80 by expiration. That's only $1.30 per share higher. Apple could do that within minutes. In the next six months, Apple could be up $30 per share. So the breakeven is very close to the current price of the stock. In this case, it's about $1.30 higher than where Apple currently is. That's great. You want your breakeven to be very close to where the current price of the stock is. In this case, it's pretty close. It's $1.30 off. So I know Apple could move up $1.30 in price within the next six months. So that's the breakeven. Once again, the maximum risk here is $3,280 for the option versus $13,150 for the stock. That is a huge, great benefit to buying the call option versus the stock. And you're going to get 90% of the movement. So if Apple goes up $1, your option contract will gain $90 in value. If you have 100 shares of stock, it goes up $1, you're making $100. The option goes up $90. That's 90% of the movement. So you're getting just about all the same bang for the buck, but you have thousands and thousands of dollars less at risk. So let's look at the example of what happens if Apple goes up. What do the numbers look like? So this will make you understand why buying the call option is so superior. Let's just say Apple goes up to $150 at expiration. By October, Apple reaches $150. What are the profit loss and return percentages for the stock versus the option? In this case, the stock will gain $18.50 per share. You bought it at $131.50 and now the stock's at $150. That's an $18.50 share gain, which is $1850 actual dollars, which equals a 14% return on investment. Not bad for six months, 14% return on investment for the stock purchase. The option purchase, the call option purchase, if Apple's at $150, the option would be worth, at that point, let me rephrase this, the call option profit, call option profit would be $17.20 per contract. The worth is, let me see if I made the calculation here. Yes. Okay. So let me show you how that works. The call option profit would be $17.20 per contract at expiration versus $18.50 for the stock. Now, how do I find that $17.20 per contract profit? At expiration, Apple's at $150 per share. You subtract out the strike price, which is $50, then you have to subtract out your cost, your original cost of the option of $32.80 and that equals $17.20 per profit. Okay. There's a couple numbers involved. It's easy math, but the end game here is the end profit is $17.20 per contract profit, which is $1720. Now, here's where we compare the two. The call option gain of $17.20 is a 52% return on investment, 52% return. How do you find out the return on investment? Well, you take your gain, your $1720 gain or $17.20 per contract gain, you divide it by your original cost. $17.20 gain divided by $32.80 cost equals 52% return for the call option. The stock had a 14% return on investment. So here's the numbers you need to concentrate on. The stock made $18.50, the option made $17.20, almost the same amount in dollar terms. It's $130 difference, but here's the kicker. The returns for the option is almost quadruple, almost four times better than the return for the stock right here. Call option ROI is almost quadruple, 52% return versus 14%. That's 3.75 times better, almost quadruple the return. And the dollar gains are almost the same. Dollar gains are almost the same, $17.20 versus $18.50. So I'm getting or we're getting almost the same dollar return, but yet the percentage return is almost four times better than buying the stock itself. Now, what happens if Apple goes up to $200 at expiration? Well, the stock would have, you'd make $68.50 per share gain. The option would make $67.20 per contract gain. Very similar dollar wise, but here's the return. The stock makes 52%, the option 205% return. Once again, almost quadruple the return. You're getting so much more bang for your buck return wise because you're only spending so much, you're spending a lot less money up front to buy the call option versus buying the stock itself. So the deep in the money call option is so superior to buying shares of stock, mostly because you have a lot less money on the line and you have a lot less risk on the line. If Apple drops to zero, your loss is going to be so much less than the stock shareholders, but on the upside, your dollar gains are practically the same, but your return percentages are triple almost quadruple. So all you have to do is go through the option chain for any stock that you're interested in, look in the delta column, figure out the 90, find the 90% delta, figure out what the cost would be, and run the numbers. Now, some people will say, all right, well, what about a 50% delta? So let's look at an option. So the 50% delta would be roughly the 135 strike right here. It's got a 47.7% delta, that's pretty close to 50. That option will cost you about $845 per contract. So you're spending $845. Now with our 100 call, we're spending almost $3,300. So yes, the deeper, the bigger delta options cost more dollar wise than let's say the 50% delta. But remember, the option's only going to move 50% of what the stock does. Do you, is 50% of a move good enough for you?  Now you also have to understand, well, what's the break even? You take the 135 strike and add it to $840. So that's roughly $143.40. $143.40. Apple's currently at $131.50. The break even here would be $143 and change. So Apple has to move up an extra $13 per share by expiration just to break even versus your 100 call where Apple only has to go up about $1.30. It has to go up $1.30 here versus Apple has to go up over $13 for this strike. So the break even prices start to ratchet higher if you choose a smaller delta option. Yes, the cost will be less. So you have to figure out, okay, do I want to pay less money or do I want to hire delta? Do I want my option to move more with the stock or do I want my option to move less with the stock? So you have to figure out, you have to run some numbers, figure out what works for you. The theory is, and the way I do it is I stick with the 90% delta because regardless, the option will always cost less than the stock itself. But some people get hung up on the option cost versus these other ones that they can buy because it's cheaper than these deeper in the money options. You have to remember how much delta do you want to get, how much do you want to see the stock move? And you make the decision. So that is your lesson for today on buying deep in the money call options, why it's superior to buying shares of stock itself. Remember, here's all the information. You're going to spend a lot less money, have a lot less at risk. The option is going to move almost just as much of the stock as long you stick to 90% delta and hold the trade for a while. This is a longer term investment trade. So I hope this has helped you understand why buying deep in the money calls is a great strategy. That's why I put it in my book. It's the only option buying strategy that I recommend on a long-term basis. So there you go. I hope it's been helpful. Let's move on to the next part of our video, which is our Saturday synopsis, where we like to take a look at the charts, look at the indexes, look at individual stocks, see what they've been doing over the last week, and we can try to make a prediction of what's going to happen moving forward. Let us open up the charts to the SPY exchange traded fund for the S&P 500. We always like to look at the S&P 500 because I feel it gives us the best overall view of the market as a whole. We've been, if you've been watching these videos for a while, we are bullish on the market. I am bullish on the market and obviously the market has been going up since we hit the lows of the pandemic last March, 2020. We have gone straight up since and the market continues to go straight up since. Doing technical analysis is the cornerstone of the way that I trade. I look at the charts. I like to see where stocks are moving. I like to see if they're an up trend or a down trend, and then I can make my decision on what option trade to take. I mostly focus on bullish strategies. Why? Because the market goes up over time. In the long run, the market always goes up. So there's no sense in me trying to take bearish positions. If you want to take a bearish position, you have to get in and out pretty quickly because the market usually ends up going back up. You have to be pretty good with your timing. I just stick with the long-term bullishness and I pick bullish trades. In order for me to analyze what a stock is doing, I look at the charts and I have a very small number of indicators on the charts that I use. I go over this each week. I have a 20-day simple moving average, a 50-day simple moving average, and a 200-day simple moving average. Down here is the RSI, the 14-day RSI indicator, which shows overbought, oversold conditions for that specific stock or index. What I also do is look for price patterns. This is a W pattern. I look for W patterns, congestion patterns, bull flags. I look at support and resistance. Simple things like that to tell me where I think the stock might be going next. Here is the S&P 500. It has been very strong. This little move up right here, this piece. This is a daily chart. Each bar here is one day's worth of trading. The market got kind of ahead of itself. When it does that, what we need to see is some sideways action or a little downside action so the moving averages can catch up. We don't want the mark to go vertical because when the sell-off does come, we get that nasty quick down move that scares everybody. We like to see these nice controlled moves higher. When it starts to get ahead of itself, meaning you got a lot of space between the prices and the moving averages, then we're starting to get a little overheated. That's when we have some pullbacks. We get some sideways action as you can see. Right here, finally made the high here, and it started to pull back sideways action, so at least the 20-day moving average is starting to catch up to it. When you're looking for an entry into a bullish trade on a bullish stock, it's a good thing to try to wait for the pullback to one of these moving averages, either the 20-day or the 50-day. When the market is really strong or stock's really strong, it might only pull back to the 20-day moving average. It might not pull back to the 50-day. If it only pulls back to the 20-day, that shows that the stock or market is super strong. Here, back in this era, it bounced almost every time it came back to the 20-day moving average. Hit the 50-day once here, moved up again, hit the 20-day, got below the 50-day, but bounced right back, and here bounced off the 50-day. Then it had this huge power higher, we've had a little bit of sideways action pullback, but the market did manage to hit all-time highs again this week. I'm still bullish, but I understand that there are going to be pullbacks, and those could be great for buying opportunities. If you're looking for your next buying opportunity, you might want to wait till it pulls back to at least the 20-day. You can nibble a little bit there, and if it starts to pull back more, wait to see if it connects with the 50-day here and bounces again. It bounced off the 50-day a couple of times here, right here, and here, and here, so three times it bounced. You can look for new entry points on a pullback. As long as the stock's still in an uptrend, it should bounce off one of the moving averages. We don't really want to see a pullback all the way to the 200-day moving average because that would be a pretty large move. Obviously, you can see a strong uptrend. It hasn't even come close to hitting the 200-day moving average. The general mark, the S&P 500 looks good. This past week was a big week for earnings announcements, and most of the earnings are coming out pretty good, and the forward guidance for the next quarter seems roughly pretty good as well. The market still looks pretty strong. I'm staying long here. I like the market. Let's move on to the Dow Jones. See what that did. Dow Jones is strong as well. Open this up a little. The Dow has pulled back right to the 20-day moving average. Yesterday, Friday, Thursday, this week pulled back right to the 20-day moving average. Let's hope that it's just gearing up, storing some energy. It's getting rid of some of the froth. I had this up move. We want to see a pullback. Now, it's touching the 20-day. Let's see if it'll continue to move higher, or maybe it might have a little more selling to do and might catch up to the uptrending 50-day moving average. We'll have to see, but I have to believe the market is just gearing up for the next move higher. Let's look at the NASDAQ because the NASDAQ's really been a mover. Most of these big tech stocks can really drive the market higher. It had been going up. It kind of came down. Back in February, March had this little downtrend, but it was able to power higher and move back up above this resistance line. You can see here, it almost touched the 20-day moving average yesterday, Friday, April 30, 2021. Let's see if it can hold here during next week. We've got more earnings coming out, and let's see if the market can continue higher. I really don't see anything on the horizon in the very near term to derail this. At least here in the U.S., the coronavirus vaccines are going along well. Almost 40% of the U.S. population has been vaccinated now. At least one shot of a two-shot vaccine. You've got the one-shot Johnson & Johnson. We've got a good amount of our population getting vaccinated. Businesses are opening up. People have cash. They're starting to buy things again. That means companies' earnings should be going higher, and the stock prices will follow along. I'm bullish. We have talked from our President, Joe Biden, about possibly raising taxes, raising capital gains taxes, but that still has to pass, still has to go through Congress. We're not really worried about that yet. Interest rates, inflation, not really a big concern here. I think things in the U.S. are good, are conducive for a nice bullish market. In the long run, the market goes up, so I'm staying long. Let's take a look at some individual stocks. We talked about the Apple example earlier on, but let's take a look at Apple itself. Apple had earnings Thursday after the bell, or was it Wednesday after the bell this week? It rallied higher. This move right up here, this bar rallied higher, but it could not hold its gains, so it has sold back off. It's touching the 20-day moving average. I'm long Apple. I always say that in every video here. I want to see it bounce. I want Apple to get back to at least its all-time highs, 145. It's sort of been just trading in this range, not really doing anything. It's been frustrating, but I have to believe Apple had great earnings, so I have to believe Apple's going to keep going up over time, just meandering a little, but I'm still bullish. Let's take a look at Amazon. Amazon had blowout earnings as well, but during the normal day session yesterday, it tagged, got up to the resistance line here in this wide channel. But before the bell, after earnings came out, the aftermarket session, I'll open this up, and it'll show you what Amazon did. Here's what Amazon did. It went all the way above $3,600 a share in the aftermarket Thursday after the close, but then all of Friday it retreated. Here's remember, $3,660 is the number, almost $3,670 per share. Let's go back to the daily chart. During the day session, it couldn't get above $3,600, but the aftermarket, it was trading up here. During the day session where most of the players are, it couldn't get above the resistance line. Let's see what Amazon will do next week. It may get knocked back down a little bit, have to see, or let's see if it could push higher through this resistance line. Let's look at Tesla. Tesla is still meandering around here, just kind of congesting again. Tesla wants to find out where it wants to go. I've got a lot of congestion patterns in here, got an uptrending support line.   I really can't get a gauge on what Tesla wants to do. It's kind of hanging around here. In our spread newsletter, we did get into a bullish put option spread, but we have lots of cushion for that one. I'm hoping that, and I'm thinking that Tesla is going to kind of stay around this level, which is fine. It's fine for option selling of a stock just kind of meanders. That works out well as also. Tesla's just kind of a jumbled chart here, but I'm hoping this little, it got during the day yesterday, it rallied from the lows. It's kind of sitting on the 20-day moving average here just above this resistance line, so I'm hoping Tesla can get its mojo and start to move higher. What else do we have? Let's look at some other stocks. AMD, we got into AMD this week in our newsletter selling put options. AMD had this W pattern, been waiting for it to move above 85. We talked about this last week as well and two weeks prior. It got above 85, 86, 87, and I thought that was it. That was the breakout after their earnings popped up nicely, but has since sold off. But it's sitting on at least, it's above this uptrending channel here. It's above some of the moving averages. We want to see AMD catch its footing and start to move higher. But when we sell the put options, we have a lot of cushion. We pick strike prices way down here to give us buffer for directional error. I like AMD for the long run, hoping it will go back up next week. What else we got? Microsoft, Microsoft still in moving up had a little pull back this week because of the earnings. Earnings will have an effect. There's no doubt, but Microsoft was getting a little ahead of itself. It's got a little pullback. I don't really have much of an opinion on Microsoft here, but it did break out above this channel, finally moved higher. I think Microsoft in the long run should move higher, but I don't have a near term prediction for Microsoft right now. Let's see what else. Netflix, take a look at Netflix. Netflix is still meandering in this channel here, sort of right in the middle of it. Had earnings, got knocked down. Now it's sitting below the 200 day moving average. I don't really have much an opinion on Netflix right now. It's just contained in this long term channel, not really doing much for me either way. We can take a look at, how about Nike? Haven't really looked at Nike much. Nike was moving up nicely, but now it's sort of in this. This is how you do it.  You want to connect maybe six months worth of lines here. If you can go that far, at least a couple months worth of lines. It's kind of hard to, you kind of have this channel here. It's not exact. It's sort of the eye of the beholder. Charting is a little more art than science, but you can see the downtrend. Here's the general direction of Nike. Got a little bit of a downtrend here. It's kind of bouncing in this thing. I wouldn't get bullish yet until I can see a breakout above the downtrending line here. Nike needs to get above $135-ish or so before I would feel comfortable getting into a bullish trade on Nike. Intel, another chip stock, got knocked down earnings this week. It was moving up nicely, trying to get its action back from AMD, but it hit above $68, and now it's dropped about $10. So Intel, eh, not much to say here. It has to work off this sell-off here. Not much to say about Intel. Walmart. Let's talk about Walmart because I like Walmart as a company. As far as a stock trade, it has to get above, solidly above this resistance line here, about $140-141 per share. It's in this uptrend it just couldn't blow above it. Walmart has earnings soon, I think. I don't know what the date is. So we're watching earnings numbers. I think it's in the next couple weeks. It has to get above this area, but I wouldn't take a trade before earnings because we don't know which way it's going to go. Let me go scan through my list here. Cisco, anything on Cisco? You know, a lot of these companies' earnings are coming up, so I don't really want to jump into a trade until the earnings pass. Let me see what else I got down here. Costco has bounced back. McDonald's. McDonald's looks pretty strong. I don't know if McDonald's had earnings yet or not, but remember, we're in earnings season, so we're a little light on the trades until earnings passes, but McDonald's looks pretty strong. It went below the 200-day, but has rallied pretty good sitting on 200-day. So if you're long McDonald's, I would say stay long. It's probably going to bounce here, but earnings will tell the tale. Oh, Twitter. Let's take a look at Twitter because Twitter got knocked down. We just got out of a trade on Twitter. We got out, took our profits before earnings. Here's earnings the other day, so it got knocked back down about $8 yesterday, $8 or $9. Twitter, maybe if it finds its footing, we could possibly jump in for another put-sell trade, but for right now, we watch and wait, see where Twitter wants to go. All right, we're getting a little long on this video. Quickly, we can look at Mara because that's one of our positions, Bitcoin-related. Wherever Bitcoin goes, Mara is going to go. Marathon, patent company, it moves along with Bitcoin, so it's trying to get back up into this channel here, but whichever way Bitcoin goes, Mara will go as well. All right, so that pretty much does it. We're getting a little long here, almost 50 minutes now. I know these videos are long, but I want to give you the information. Lastly, once again, market for next week, S&P 500. Market looks strong, might have a little bit of a pullback, but that's no reason for pause, no reason for a concern. Markets pullback, that's just what they do, and you can get in for the next round if you so desire. All right, that's it for your Saturday synopsis. I'm still bullish. Let's quickly go to our website, Smart Option Seller website, Put Selling Basics. If you have not downloaded our free guide yet, come to our Put Selling Basics page on our website. Click here, and you'll scroll down. You can put in your name and email address, and we will send you our Put Selling Basics guide. Learn how to sell put options. That's what we do. That's our bread and butter. Here's our services tab. We have two newsletters, Smart Option Seller newsletter, Sell Naked Puts, Vertical Spread Newsletter. We sell Put Option Spreads, and we have our one-on-one coaching. I have great sessions with people that want to get to that next level. If you need a little help, consider our one-on-one coaching. All right, I hope this video has been helpful to you. Don't forget to hit that red subscribe button in the right hand corner of the video. I will put in a link if I don't already have it for my book. So in the description of the video, I'll put in the link from my book. And leave me a comment. Send me an email. Give me a thumbs up. I appreciate that. I want to make this channel the best channel for options traders. All right, that's all for me today. I hope everyone has a great weekend, a great trading week ahead, and I will see you all next week. This is Lee Lowell, signing off.


Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. Today, we are going to be embarking on an exploration of the series through the very tinted vision of alcohol. Well, more accurately, we'll be examining the characters in the series who choose to view the world through such a blurry, drunken haze. Now, just a quick disclaimer here, this video is not intended to glorify alcoholism in any way, but at the same time, this is your source for everything One Piece, and through the course of the series, we've met quite a lot of permanent members of the Church of Inebriation. The criteria for this list is as follows. All characters featured must spend the majority of their time in the series intoxicated, preferably all of their time, I suppose, but even the most raging of alcoholics do have sober periods. Furthermore, all characters on this list must be canon, because we do not invite filler characters to our drinking parties. But with that out of the way, let's begin. Welcome to the top five acute alcoholics in One Piece. At the commencement of today's list, we have the great assortment on Fishman Island, Hiozo, a blue-ringed octopus-fishman who carries a gourd of alcohol with him at all times. And that kind of dependence is really all we need to consider him an alcoholic. However, in this case it turns out that indulging in the odd bit of brain poison actually has a positive effect rather than a detrimental one for Hiozo. Referred to as the drunken assassin, Hiozo quite literally becomes stronger, faster, and a more proficient swordsman depending on his state of inebriation, which is pretty crazy because sober Hiozo was already quite powerful. Well, perhaps sober is the wrong word because he does constantly sit from his gourd of miscellaneous alcohol, possibly implying at least a permanent state of tipsiness. Sadly, Mr. Hiozo was unable to stop it abusing a mere one substance, and he also became highly dependent on using energy steroids provided to him by his dealer, Hody Jones. As a result, Hiozo was subject to rapid aging as well as imprisonment for, well, you know, attempting to destroy Fishman Island. Just a minor charge really. But the latter consequence being something that will heavily hinder Hiozo's alcoholism going forward, but he certainly still deserves recognition for the dastardly drunk he was. Number 4 Kokoro Moving on to a more tragic story, now we have an ice fish mermaid who left her home to take up life amongst humanity only to turn to the path of binge drinking. After her close friend and boss Tom was sentenced to death for crimes fabricated by some panda looking man. Not that one, he's cool.  And Kokoro wasn't the only one either, as she had a drinking buddy in Iceberg and apprentice of Tom, although he was a much more occasional drinker than Kokoro. As part of her now full blown addiction, Kokoro will generally be seen with a bottle of something something in her hand, as well as a pair of rosy red cheeks indicating inebriation. Unlike Hiozo, Kokoro receives no benefit from drinking, save for dulling the pain of her past. But I should also say that it doesn't exactly hinder her abilities either, as she was entirely capable of conducting the rocket man, as well as saving most of the straw hats from drowning during the any sloppy arc. Thankfully these days, it seems that Kokoro's depression has simmered down, however she still relies on alcohol in much the same way that a baby would rely on its mother's milk. Number 3 Vasco Shot Known to the world by the epithet of heavy drinker, Vasco Shot is a somewhat mysterious character in the current makeup of the series. However, the one thing we do know about him and therefore what has come to define his character thus far is that he is a perpetual drunkard. In fact, his surname Shot is entirely likely to be a reference to shots of alcohol. As with both of our previous contenders on this list, Vasco Shot carries an ever important vessel of alcohol on his person at all times. But unlike the other two this time around, we seem to actually know what he's drinking, as the kanji for sake appears on his gourd. And as with all addicts, Vasco Shot has a keen interest in keeping up a never-ending supply of his chosen substance to abuse. Even going so far as to suggest to his Captain Blackbeard that they invaded town for the sole purpose of gathering more alcohol. And just a side note here, as anybody ever noticed that Vasco Shot's nose is actually higher than his eyes on his face, that's weird. In any case, I feel like a character who is defined only by his drinking addiction and weird nose placement is more than qualified to land the solid number 3 spot on this list. Number 2 Kaido Never fear anime only watches, I'm going to keep this as spoiler free as I can, but at the very least we are all well aware that Kaido enjoys a drop of alcoholic indulgence once in a while. And by once in a while, I mean always. In fact, Kaido is probably the most accurate presentation of a real-life drunkard on this list so far. Whilst intoxicated, Kaido goes through a whole range of emotions, from wallowing in despair at his inability to increase the number of gifters in his crew, to feeling extraordinarily angry and violent at the slightest hint of opposition. But he's also not above becoming a goofy, smiley drunk Kaido. And I guess the main thing about Kaido is, in order to make a creature that huge inebriated, you're going to need a hell of a lot of alcohol. So in terms of pure consumption, Kaido would almost certainly top this list, but alas, that is not the criteria. So what being in this world could possibly top 100 beast Kaido? Number 1 Sam Alright, temper your disappointment, I can hear it from here. I know I built this up to be an amazing finish, but seriously, let me introduce you to Sam. This absurdly obscure man is an Easter egg character who appears in the series from time to time, always wildly intoxicated, of course, and holds the title of an ordinary everyday person. That's going to become very important in a second. But Sam first appeared in the series at the end of the Arlong Ark and was seen celebrating with the wonderful citizens of Kokoyashi Village, which is cool and all, except he isn't from Kokoyashi Village. According to Oda Sam was on his way home from his daughter's wedding, saw a party, and decided to join in. He would then go on to appear in the alabaster arc, to which Oda explained that he had a second daughter getting married, which saddened Sam, because it meant that she was leaving the family home, and in a drunken stupa, Sam somehow ended up in the grand line as a result. Yes, that is correct. An ordinary everyday person became inebriated and stumbled their way into the grand line, a place where an overwhelming amount of pirates die, simply attempting access. And with that feat alone in mind, I don't think there is any doubt that Sam is the ultimate master of the drunken arts in the series. But that pretty much does it for the top five acute alcoholics in one piece. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produces in general, then please do consider donating to the Grand Line View Patreon, because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. Also, I've recently launched a Teespring store, if you're interested in shirts, hoodies, and other miscellaneous items, with proceeds going directly to support the channel as well. And if you'd like to join the fun, then please do head over to my Discord server, where a wide array of shenanigan retakes place on a daily basis. And finally, please do comment with your own favorite alcoholics in the series. This has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.


This was the first time we had a therapy dog come visit Alden and the response was really really great. We had so many students come to pet bandit and relax and get a little break from the pressures of studying for finals.


Our environments, both physical and digital, affect our behavior. This creates both challenges and opportunities. By putting people into the right environment, we can help them to deliver better results, collaborate more or less, and even have better health outcomes. GitLab team member Christopher Wong will share how and why transparency in a unified working environment can help you to create the kind of workplace where you and your team can thrive. Hello. Hope that you're joining this year's GitLab Commit so far. My name is Christopher Wang, and I want to explore a little bit of a different topic. There are many presentations in this conference that have to do with how technology can improve and make your engineering processes more efficient. But one of the things that I want to talk to you about today is how technology can be used for human good. So that's the reason why I titled this presentation a more human reason for DevOps platforms. A little bit about myself. I'm a solutions architect here at GitLab. I serve the sales development organization, and I run a program called Tanuki Tech. And one of the things that I want to start off with with this presentation is a question. How do you influence people? There's all sorts of different theories on this, but really what I've seen in my career is a couple of groups of leaders. And this really has to do with how they think, sometimes their personality and backgrounds. Sometimes you have leaders that have a background from sales, typically. In a lot of the times, these leaders think about motivating their teams through incentives. So what I mean by that is bonuses, promotions, how to leverage these things to get certain types of behaviors and then how to get certain other types of behaviors reduced. Another type of leader that I've seen in my career is what I categorize as a cultural leader. And so sometimes these people are really great team builders. They're really great at making people feel valued and heard. Sometimes these cultural leaders have really big emphasis on human development and recruiting. The reason my recruiting is such a big important thing is the idea that if we hire the right people, then we can build the right type of team. Other types of people who have more of a background in enablement, they try to get certain types of behavior through lots of enablement sessions. And so the idea is if I want certain types of behavior in my organization, let's go find out what these behaviors are, what they look like, let's build training curriculum around them. Sometimes these types of leaders, they also like to hook in their certification pathways into things like promotion. So the idea is if you want to get a promotion, then you have to go through this, this and this class and take this test. And this is part of your promotion accreditation. And so now asking ourselves the question of is there anything left? The world that we live in right now is really competitive and there are really large complicated problems that need decisive leadership. What is there anything else in this toolbox that we can use to motivate and influence people? And the answer according to VitalSmartz, one of the largest and leading leadership consultancies in the world, is yes. This is a company that is responsible for the book Crucial Conversations and it's also a company that has worked with over half of the Fortune 500 companies here in the United States. And one of the things that it says is that the most overlooked influence technique today in businesses around the world is changing human behavior through changing environments. So what do I mean by that? Why change environments? Well, the answer is that sometimes it's the simplest and most innovative solution. So I want to talk about a little bit of a story. This story has to do with a hospital network in Pittsburgh in the United States. It was a hospital network of around 30 hospitals. And one of the things that it found is that when the children and infants came in to get certain medical procedures that needed CT or MRI scans, that almost all of these children needed sedation. And so the actual statistics on this is almost 100% of the children who needed MRIs and 80% of the children who needed CT scans that they would actually need to get sedated to be able to just even go through these procedures. So this was a really big problem for the hospital network. The reason why is because neurologists are really expensive, they're rare. It also created really poor patient experiences. So a lot of times the children really weren't happy. The parents were scared about their kids being sedated. And so what ended up happening in this story was that this hospital network tried many different things. A lot of these pilots failed. But eventually what ended up happening was that there was an industrial designer by the name of Doug Dietz, and he came up with an innovative solution for this problem. What did Doug do? Very simple. What Doug did was he repainted the rooms in these medical devices to look like an adventure series. And so this is a great example of how if you change your environment, you can actually change behavior. In this particular example, this is a physical environment that we're changing. Some of the outcomes of this change is that patient satisfaction scores went up by 90%. Some of the kids actually had so much fun in this adventure series, they actually wanted to come back the next day. And after these changes happened, an extreme minority of these kids needed sedation when they went through these procedures. So it was an example of a huge win because of an environmental change. Example number two is one that affects businesses all around the world. And the fundamental problem is employing more around retention. So the solution for this, according to a major study done by Northwestern and the University of Illinois, was pretty simple. Just include windows and your offices. What the research actually found was that if you have windows in your offices, your employers, your employees are happier and healthier and more active throughout the day. And so just one specific statistic that came out of this study was that employees actually had lower BMI scores and they actually slept better. So in the group of employees that had windows in their offices, on average, these employees actually slept 46 more minutes per night. Study number three is an example of an environmental change that wasn't fully thought out. And you may work in an open office. For those that aren't familiar, what an open office is, is that it's an office that encourages collaboration by breaking down physical barriers between employee workstations. So opposed to many of the walled-off cubicles that you had in the 1990s, let's break down all of those walls, which should, in theory, encourage people to collaborate. But what ended up happening, because this change wasn't fully thought out, was the fact that this change actually had the exact opposite consequence. So to put this into numbers, the Harvard Business School did a study of a large, global Fortune 500 multinational. After this business shifted to an open office, it found out that there were actually 73% less face-to-face interactions and that digital communication skyrocketed. As an example, email went up 67%, and instant messaging went up 75%. So this is an example about how a digital change actually had an unintended negative consequence. And so now that we've established how physical change can result in different human behaviors and outcomes, I want to start pivoting and talking about how this same principle applies to the digital world. Right now, we're coming out of the coronavirus pandemic here in the United States. And one of the things that we've experienced is that instead of people interacting in offices and in coffee shops, almost everything and work itself was done on digital platforms. So the applications that our businesses used, our chat platform, email. So how does application design influence human behavior? Well, the answer is application design actually hugely impacts human behavior. This is a picture of an iPhone. One of the things that you notice is that there's a proliferation now of notifications for all of your applications. Whenever I look at my phone, I usually have two or three of these notifications. And so now asking ourselves the question of why is this happening in the first place? The reason why this is happening is because it works. There was a large study that was done by a company called Braze, which is a customer engagement platform. Analyze tens of thousands of messaging campaigns by hundreds of application companies. What I found out is that by sending out the right notifications at the right time, you can actually drastically increase app and user retention. So what I mean by this is that after application initial download, the study found that if you send one push notification, this actually increased your application retention rate by 71%. It also found out that if you send out multiple notifications by different mediums. So for instance, you send out one email and then one text message or one text message and one push notification, then you can actually get this notification 130% increase in retention rate over baseline. So what I hope to establish here is the fact that application design actually really powerfully impacts human behavior. In this particular instance, customer retention rate. And before talking about some of the solutions that we have over here, I really want to start and highlight some of the problems in many of the digital environments around the world right now. And so the first problem and this is a problem of what I call complicated digital environments is what ends up happening is that you have lots of siloed organizations, especially I'm in the technology industry. We talk about silos among your different engineering teams. And so fundamentally, what ends up happening is in a siloed organization, you may have many different business units. And what ultimately happens is that these business units don't collaborate with each other. And so you have missed deadlines and missed opportunities to work on the same projects and to collaborate. So as an example, you may have one engineering team in Philadelphia. You may have another engineering team in Austin, Texas, and a final team in Portland, Oregon. And so what ends up happening when these teams don't collaborate is that you have lots and lots of missed opportunities. What I mean by this is that oftentimes you'll find out that one team is reproducing some work that another team has already done. I've seen that hundreds of times in my career. You also see that to just get information, I have to go request it from another team. And I have to set up a meeting with another team that may exist in another time zone. I may not even know who to request this information from. So I have to go ask someone who to request this information to, and that might take three to four different iterations before I finally get it right. Ultimately, how this affects businesses is that you have missed opportunities to collaborate and ultimately less efficient organizations. And so diving a little bit more into this problem, sometimes these siloed organizations is a product of tooling. If I have more tools, five, 10 tools, 10 tools, 15 tools, that's just going to make things more complicated. Imagine if your organization had instead of one chat platform, if each team had a separate chat form. So as an example, one team being on Microsoft Teams, another team being on Slack, another team being on IRC. Well, that's just going to naturally decrease the amount of collaboration that you have in your organization. Another times you have these silos according to geographical difference. So if one team's remote and another team is in the office, then that can create challenges as well. More on these siloed organizations, there are what I call operational silos. So I'm trying to collaborate, but I don't know how certain things work. So I have to go ask someone else in a different team because that information isn't accessible to me. And another type of silo is what I call a data silo. So if I'm trying to look up something, maybe customer data, sales data, something like that, I don't have access to the platform where that data is stored. That's on another team. And so ultimately, that requires me to set up a meeting with someone else, and that just slows down our entire organization. So to sort of highlight this section, if we have more complicated digital environments, we have more siloed organizations. One big study that dove into this issue of siloed organizations is a global CIO report by Dinah Trace. This was an interview of 700 IT leaders. And what it found out is that these type of silos affected 93% of organizations within the study. What really comes down to this, however, is the time wasted. 16% of all of IT's time it found in this study is spent simply chasing down information. So you really have to ask yourself the question, what is the value of that time to your business? One of the recommended steps for this study is the fact that what they, excuse me, what they recommended is investing in single platforms that enable cross team collaboration and visibility into an IT team's impact on business outcomes. So what I mean by that is if you invest in unified work platforms, you eliminate some of these silos that are in many organizations today. Example number two is I want to make this a little bit more human. A little bit about my background. I used to be a public school educator. I've worked with first graders, fifth graders, high schoolers, and I've done this for a number of years. And the fact of the matter is that in any organization, you're always going to have deviant behavior. And so as leaders, one of the things that we need to do is to create transparent environments so that deviant behavior is easy to spot out and to address. Deviant behavior thrives instead on opaque digital environments. So environments in which it's just not as transparent, not as easy to hold people accountable. Some of the research that goes into this in our particular industry of technology, 75% of IT professionals have reported being bullied at work. 21% of IT professionals in a separate study have actually reported being bullied in a single year. And among children, and I saw this a lot when I used to teach, was that around 59% of US teenagers have been bullied or harassed online. This becomes even more sad when you take into consideration that the types of harassment and the level of harassment actually correlates heavily with income. So teens from lower income families, they're more likely to get physical threats online, for instance. So one of the big questions is what can we do about it? When I was a teacher, when I was looking, very rarely did I have truly deviant behavior. And what ends up happening is people who want to do some of these things, they don't do them when the lights are on and when the teacher is looking. They do it in the dark hallways of the internet and through online platforms. That's the reason why cyber bullying is increasing as much as it is today. And so finally, asking ourselves the question of how do we turn on the lights on in our digital environments? How we do this is by building transparency into our digital environments. What I recommend for organizations around the world is to invest in unified and transparent digital work environments. So what I mean by that is for a unified work environment, instead of having five, 10, 15 tools, why not invest in one centralized platform for which large numbers of your organization and multiple teams can work out of that immediately breaks down some of our siloed organization problems and encourages cross-team collaboration. In terms of transparency, what I mean by that is as more people start investing in these platforms working out of it, it's much easier to see and spot deviant behavior. It's also easier for people to collaborate because I can see what everyone else is working on. It's much easier for me to contribute. And so let's now take a look at how this is done at GitLab. One of the things that you may not be aware of is the values that we have here at GitLab and collaboration and transparency are two of our central values. These are also values that we try to build into the GitLab platform itself. The idea is that we have designed GitLab so that naturally by adopting it, you get some of these benefits of collaboration and transparency. How do we do this? We do this by creating GitLab to be a platform where everyone can contribute. And so what I mean by this is lots of different types of engineers can work on the same platform, whether you're in development, whether you're in test, whether you're a DevOps engineer. But we also designed GitLab so that you can contribute on the platform itself if you're in the business side of things, if you're in operations, if you're in human resources. And so diving a little bit into the technical example, here we see a GitLab issue. People for multiple different teams are collaborating on this issue. And here's a merge request. A lot of times the best idea comes from outside of my team. Sometimes someone from another team is going to have some startling insight that I haven't considered. Because GitLab is one shared work platform for everyone, I am better put into a situation to get cross functional collaboration than I am on other platforms. So those two examples were examples of technical collaboration. But one of the things that you may not be aware of is the fact that people in the business side, they actually work and collaborate out of GitLab itself. And so over here you can see our marketing issue board. This is something that everyone can see. You don't have to be in the marketing group to see what people are working on. And so a lot of the time people from the sales side or people from product, they're actually looking up these marketing issues and collaborating on cross functional work. This is the marketing board. And this is the sales operations board. Virtually every single team here at GitLab has a public work board that other people can see and contribute to. So this is all an example of how GitLab is that shared work platform. And now let's talk about transparency. How we build transparency and embrace it as a company is by using the GitLab platform to create this thing called the GitLab handbook. And so what the GitLab handbook is, is it's one centralized location where I can go find out anything about anything happening in our company. The idea is that everything should be in the handbook because this allows for asynchronous communication. So as an example of this, here's a handbook page. We explain over here why we're handbook first. And as an example of this, something that's pretty maybe a little bit opaque in many businesses is how do we get a promotion? Do I talk to the right people? What sort of actions are required for me to get promoted? But because we are handbook first over here at GitLab, it's very obvious the things that management and leadership is looking for to qualify for promotion here at GitLab. All of our HR policies and procedures are clearly stipulated in the handbook itself. And so this page is for promotions. On the other side, the equation is under performance. All of this allows us to be super transparent as a company and allow people to know how to best motivate their behaviors and how to take their career. So now finally answering the question of what is the more human reason for DevOps platforms? And ultimately, it is a human reason. The more human reason for DevOps platforms is that DevOps platforms, which are shared work environments, enabling for better collaboration and transparency, that they unlock the best in the people that you bring onto your team. And they also have accountability mechanisms to create safeguards so that everyone can contribute in a safe way. Thank you.


Anthony Smith is coming to the Philippines. Our fifth person to arrive, he'll be here in two weeks. Do you want to work with me and freedom in the Philippines? If so, go to jobs.freedom.tm that will take you to the jobs site where you can apply to join us in Eastwood City. We are looking for more people who are really passionate and can help freedom grow and can help yourself grow because we are trying to create a career in video for people who are really hardworking and have that entrepreneurial spirit. Is that you? If so, apply at jobs.freedom.tm My goal is to bring 100 people here to the Philippines. We have 20,000 square feet of new office space and we are getting another 10,000 square feet for educational and training space and all of that needs to be filled up with good people. So if you want to join the freedom family here in the Philippines, just head on over to our jobs site and apply. When we do hit 100 people, we will continue to expand. We will get more office space. We will get more living space and you can be sure that we're not going to stop at 100 and I hope you will grow with us because this is the freedom family. This is the spirit of freedom that we help each other grow and the reason we're bringing everyone to the Philippines who wants to come is so we can work better together, so we can work from the same office and grow faster. This is freedom and who am I? I am George, CEO and founder of Freedom and you've been watching...