Welcome to Stan Energyman here. Stan Osterman coming to you live and direct from Kailua, Hawaii, where it's an absolutely gorgeous day, probably about 83, 84 degrees, nice cool breeze. And if you need a vacation for months, no, come on over. Looking pretty good over here. Before we get started today, because it has been a very, obviously very busy, busy week since last week with everything going on in Europe and in Ukraine. But before we get started on that, I do need to make a pitch for Renew Rebuild Hawaii has a webinar going on this Friday, the 4th of March. It starts at 10.30 Hawaii time and goes to noon. And they're gonna be talking about putting together a space mission or space missions or space industry in the state of Hawaii and what that could mean for our economy. So if you're interested in that kind of topic, check out the Renew Rebuild Hawaii website and sign up for that webinar. Today, we have back with us, one of my favorite, favorite guests, Dan Goen. And it's gonna be kind of, I don't know what, I wanna say eye-opening for most people because I think we've been distracted by so many different things between coronavirus and just inflation happening and everything going on in the U.S. But there is a lot going on in the world that unfortunately, I don't think we've been paying attention to or very good attention to for the last few years. And so Dan's gonna talk about it and I'm gonna probably bring up some questions for him about what's going on with the price of oil and is this just a transitory blurb on the price of oil and things that go back to normal after Ukraine's over and things like that. We're gonna talk about that today. So we're back on the macro energy scale today and the implications, I don't wanna be a spoiler but the implications are much bigger than just inflation. So Dan, Dan Goen, welcome back to the show and I appreciate you being on because I know you've had a really busy weekend and you're looking at a whole lot of stuff but welcome back. Well, thanks, Dan, you and I talked quite a bit and you actually asked a lot of good questions from me and that makes me dig and that helps out everybody else whenever we all dig and we've got a lot better information. So everybody that's watching this YouTube, this is, well, if it isn't initially painful if you've slept on this one for a night, it probably will become a little bit more painful. We can get slide number one, please. Okay, and I'm just making a pitch for the company and we'll switch quickly switched over to slide number two, please. Oh, slide number two, the previous one. Great, oh, okay. Okay, we're missing one there. Oh, there it is. Okay, so what that is, that's a graphical depiction of all the pipelines from Russia going into Europe. The green ones are for the natural gas, the red ones are for oil. The Russians provide approximately 40% of the gas that flows into Europe. As far as the oil, they provide anywhere between four to five million barrels per day of oil going into Europe. Just as a note, last week, the Russians turned off gas going into Ukraine. The invasion was Thursday. This weekend, already two of the pipelines in Ukraine have already been destroyed. Currently, it looks like Russia is in the process of starting to slowly close off all the other supplies of energy going into Europe. Dan, let me interject there. We had some other data that we don't have a slide for, but just for the sake of discussion, NATO is already pretty dependent on Russia for oil. Even the US has a dependency on Russia for oil. But just to give you an idea, Northern Macedonia is 100% dependent on Russia. Finland is 94% dependent. Bulgaria is 77%. Slovakia, 70%. Germany, 49%. Italy, 46%. Poland, 40%. And France, 24% dependent on Russia for natural gas. And there's their energy. The only one in that list is not a NATO member, is Finland. Every single other country there is a NATO member. Yeah, and I'm gonna add another one to your list there. That's not, I know what side you're looking at. For example, Turkey. And I'm gonna say Turkey is 100% and here's why. So the countries that provide natural gas into Turkey are Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. The gas company in Iran is Gasprom. The gas company in Azerbaijan is Gasprom. Gasprom is the state oil and gas company owned by the Russian government, right? So effectively Russia controls 100% of the natural gas going into Turkey. So next one, please. Okay, so now there's a couple of the commodities we're gonna talk about that are not less, but there's quite a good thing here. So between Russia and Ukraine, between those two countries, that's 80% of the world's sunflower oil, 30% of the world's wheat production. If you throw in China with them, that's over 50% of the world's exports of wheat, 20% of the world's corn. There's another aspect to this too, and everybody needs to realize this, that one out of every five bags of fertilizer come out of Russia. So on January 10th and 13th, that was the date that the Russians sent that list of demands to the United Nations and were turned down on the 13th. January 19th, the president of Iran, Ibrahim Rasini, made his first speech in front of the Dumas, asking for a permanent Russian military presence in Iran. And January 23rd, the following countries stopped the export of fertilizer to the world. Those four countries are Russia, China, Turkey, and Egypt. All those countries on exactly the same day stopped exporting fertilizer onto the world market. The Russians also produce 45.6% of the world's palladium, 15.1% of the world's platinum. They own the second and third largest gold mines in the world. We've already talked about oil and gas. They provide all the nickel that the Europeans used to make stainless steel. It's about 5.3% of the world's stainless steel, coal, copper, silver. The Russians were at all the coal that goes into Korea and all the coal that goes into Japan. Oh, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we talk about Russia actually increasing their holdings in gold and decreasing their holdings in dollars? Yeah, yeah, I sent you out some graphics from the Russian finance ministry, almost 30% of the Russian rubles backed by gold. No dollar, no gold. No rubles backed by gold. No dollars, they de-dollarize their economy. And why they de-dollarize, we're gonna find out here in a minute why they de-dollarize. Okay. We can go to the next slide, please. Next next slide here, this is taken from the Mercantile, the comics, and that's just all the commodities that are denominated in dollars. Up there in the right-hand corner where DAX, you see there it says the 30 year, 20 year, it was a five year, two year notes, those of those bonds, U.S. government securities, what they actually use to trade all those commodities, and that's from crude oil to pork bellies to soybeans, right, it paid for in dollars. The reason why I'm pointing this out is we're gonna find out how important this is here pretty soon. Yeah, we know that that slide's a little complicated to see on a screen, on a computer screen, but we know that folks are gonna be watching this on YouTube and be able to stop and freeze it and blow it up and look at it, but that's some really important data to be looking at right now. Yeah, go to the next slide, please. Okay. What this has to do with currency reserves, so currency swap. So the Central Bank of Turkey and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates have a currency swap, and that's a Turkish lira for U.E. Durhams. The following, and basically how this works is where the two central banks get together or banks in those two countries, and they basically trade VPN information and they put together a agreement to basically swap each other's currencies. In the last six months, the following countries have put together currency swaps. There's currency swaps between Argentina and Russia, between Brazil and Russia. There's a three-way currency swap between Venezuela, Russia and China. There's currency swaps between Saudi Arabia and Russia, and there's currency swaps between India and Russia, and all that's happened in the last six months. Argentina and Brazil, that's happened in the last two months. And could you give us an idea of how much that activity has displaced trading in American currency, the reserve currency? We're gonna talk about in the next slide. Okay. We can go to the next slide, please. And to remind everybody, we talk about these currency exchanges and the reserve currency of the world, which is basically the U.S. dollar right now, because it all ties back to oil and purchasing oil, where the oil reserves are, where it's traded from, and how many economies depend on it. And that's why this stuff is so important, and it is all energy related. The point is that last slide is there is no dollars in it. That's the key. Was not, does these countries swap on their own currency? So, well, that there basically is, that's the question that went about Taiwan. That one right there, what's going on there is, remember, we talked about the Palladium. Palladium is used in CPU and computer chips. What's in Taiwan is a company called TSMC, that's Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, that is 90% of world's chip manufacturing capacity. Vladimir Putin is in the position to hand to China, 45.6% of the world's chip manufacturing capacity, disease and pain. The Chinese have always coveted chip manufacturing. Now, understand that when it comes to this capacity, that the Chinese don't even have to invade Taiwan. All they have to do is they could destroy or capture TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility. And since this is all, this chip manufacturing is in a very specialized factory, it has to be hermetically sealed, no dust or so forth. So just by simply taking that building out, the Chinese could capture at least half the world's chip manufacturing capacity. Not only that, but force chip manufacturers to force them to do their manufacturing inside of China, for simply because they won't have access to the Palladium for making those computer chips in the last slide. And if you hadn't been watching the news, the trouble with auto production in the US has been lack of chips. So that's why this all ties back to the US economy. Yeah, as a matter of fact, here in Indianapolis I could take pictures the areas surrounding me. We've got a huge lots full of hundreds of cars.  So I'm right in the middle, but I'm a witness to all of it. Okay, so the last page there. So what that is, that was taken on August 6th of 2020. So Russia and China just a dollar removed for financial reasons. So since 2015, Russia and China have been reducing their dependence on using the dollar for trade. What they've put together is something called the Shanghai Corporation Organization, the CSO. China has a system that does the same thing, the SWIFT system, that's what we transmit dollars using the SWIFT banking system between banks here in the West. Well, the Chinese have developed a system called SYPS. The Russians have a similar system. It's called the system for transfer of financial messages so it's SPFS. And what those two have basically agreed to do is take those two systems and merge them together. And that culmination, that the decision to make that happen happened at that meeting with President Ibrahim Rissini, the president of Iran, basically when Russia decided to do the 20-year deal with the Iranians and move permanent military assets into Iran. Hey, Dan, what is that article from? What publication is that from again? I know you sent it to me, but I don't have it on my computer. It's called Crest.co. Okay. Crest.co is what I sent it from. And I guess that's some publication there in the Middle East that we're talking about. I've been trying to get some clarification on that system. So today, this afternoon, I was talking to some futures traders that are in Qatar. And what they're telling me, well, first of all, the three founding members of the system, they've got accounts in the system and that's Russia, Iran and China. And understand this is initially, they started using this system for trading energy, mainly oil and natural gas contracts. They've since then added a number of countries to this new system. The countries that they've added to the system are Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman. So these countries have already started using this new banking system for trading oil and gas futures. And with that list of materials that Russia exports like the palladium and the weed and those commodities are probably start trading those commodities on this new system also. Now, going back to your crane, and I'm gonna talk about the oil here in a minute, right? And the ramifications for everybody. And this is kind of a note. So I was talking to some of my, some players in Africa this weekend. And what they told me is about every Russian millet mercenary in Africa is pretty much packed their bags and they're headed for your crane. To understand this, well, to understand Russia begin, Russia is basically an oil company with an army bolted to it and a weapons lab. Russia uses conflicts to basically try out new military hardware and prove them into product improvement. And they use those conflicts for weapons sales. So sometime here in the future, more likely the Russian army will move out of your crane. The mercenaries will move in and it'll turn into a low burning conflict like Syria and Russia just pours in money, food and ordinance. And it's been a low conflict over the last 10 years and that's probably what it's gonna continue to be. I know here in the West, we'd love for it to go away really quickly but that's probably not gonna happen. Now, the trading system that these guys have put together, this new CIPS system, it's denominated in Yon, so that's the reserve currency they use in this system. According to my calculations, the unholy trinity, the trinity is Russia, I don't know if it's China, right? According to my calculations, they have jammed up at least 38.2 million barrels of oil per day. If the United States is to maintain control of the world's economy, we need to replace at least 29 million barrels of oil production per day as soon as possible. If that means tapping into the US strategic oil reserves isn't gonna do spit. 660 million barrels divide by 29 million or yeah, no, it isn't gonna survive a year. The World Bank, somebody asked the World Bank to see what it would take if we could replace the natural gas that Russia is supplying into Europe. And according to the World Bank, it'll take at least five years for us to build out enough infrastructure to replace the gas that Russia is pumping into Europe right now. So if I'm gonna make a military guess, the Taiwan equation is gonna be settled by China and if China's gonna settle that, they're gonna do it in the next 12 months. And the reason why is because our new chip manufacturing capacity won't be online until next year. So there's a 12-month window for China. And remember what I said, the Chinese don't have to invade, take out Taiwan, all they need to do is take a building out. Yeah. They can change the Taiwan until they capitulate, especially if they control 38% of the world's oil. So as we look at the big picture, we have a demand for oil and natural gas in Europe and the US that is gonna be shut off with the sanctions we're pressing on Russia. So the US is gonna have to produce more oil just to meet its own requirements because we buy it from Russia and we haven't shut off the purchasing of oil from Russia, but that's literally the only lever we have left and sanction mode to slow them down. Europe is totally dependent on natural gas right now. The only good news is it's coming spring and pretty soon summer, so maybe the requirement will drop off a little bit. But also we have this, like you call it, the unholy trinity of Iran, Russia and China building their own currency reserve currency trading for oil, natural gas and other commodities, other critical commodities. And right now the real power that the United States has had historically since World War II has been the reserve currency. The US dollar can be used, I've been to Guatemala and gone to the little Chick-fil-A place there, of course it's not called Chick-fil-A, and whipped out American dollars and they took the dollars and they gave me back their currency as change. You can do that with US dollars. You can't do that with every currency, but it looks like the Chinese, the Russians and the Iranians are working on replacing the American dollar. Yeah. Well, that last page I showed you, that was from August 6th of 2020 over a year ago. They've been planning this for a long time. We import right around four million barrels of oil a day from Russia. If the Russians and the rest of those players on that group, they could turn around and say, yeah, we only sell our oil on that exchange and it's dominated in Yon, we're gonna be hurting because looking at our latest consumption numbers, we burned 22 million barrels of oil a day and we produce about 12, that means we're importing 10 and somewhere magically 10 million barrels of oil a day will have to come out of somewhere just to supply our own economy. Not us trying to deal with Europe. So what would you say the impact has been when President Biden shut down the pipelines and the oil leases on federal land to shut down oil production in the US based gain natural gas production? What impact has that one single move had in this whole European debacle that we're going through right now in Ukraine? Well, the pipeline was painful because I understand that was already motion and when he counseled that, if even if today we wanted to put all that back in place, it'll be two years before those guys can fire up arc welders again, right? That's just what it takes to line up those huge construction projects to do that. When it comes to the oil drilling when he killed all those leases and those drillers went in a bankruptcy and scrapped a thousand rigs, we got to build a thousand rigs and we have supply shortages right now. There's a supply shortage for fracking sand.  And even if we are able to ramp up from the 600 rigs we have now up to 1600 and we can get our oil production up to 13 million barrels of oil a day, we're still short nine. And when you're talking to, for example, the Canadians, the Canadians were working on a second oil sands project, that's all been mothballed, you know? And Mexico, their cantrel is in terminal decline. We already talked about what's going on up in Alaska. You know, just because they're building that LNG pipeline up in Alaska, that means Purdue Bay is in terminal decline. That's the only reason you would do that. So we got some real problems here. So as we restricted our own production of oil a year and a half ago or a year ago, we automatically kicked off a, basically a supply shortage and a demand surplus. Therefore we have prices going up on the gas and oil markets, period. Like it's not a transitory thing. We're gonna have that going because once we turn off the Keystone Pipeline and we turn off all those leases, it's like driving a big aircraft carrier. You can't just turn it and expect it to make an immediate turn. It takes months and months and months to get that equipment back on site, get the workers all signed up, get the equipment all orchestrated, get the resources you need lined up. It takes months to just get the thing back in production and years to actually see the return on investment where oil's coming out the other end. It's hard if people understand these systems are so huge, they have their own inertia. It's like the Titanic, you can't turn it on a dime. It's like you pointed out Stan, a lot of us have too. Even if we found a new Saudi Arabia today, you won't see that oil for five to 10 years just because of what you have to put in place to put it online, to put all the production online. So this is gonna be painful for all of us. Very painful. I wish I didn't have to tell that to the public, but I, yeah. Well, I go back to my mantra.  Those kind of poorly calculated decisions by our government has caused some significant problems and tonight, we're gonna have a state of the state. I'm sure the president will say how rosy the whole world is and how great a job he's done.  So I'm gonna make that political statement right now. I'm just totally beside myself with how insane things are right now.  China is definitely, and I showed you the evidence they're in the middle of this, right? There isn't any denying it. They planned this out for years. They waited for the perfect time to spring this plan and you talk about Lamar Putin, probably his health is figuring into this whole thing because he's done some speeches the last number of weeks and he's been very emotional about some of these speeches. So something's going on with him personally and the way it is, right? But it's going on. But the thing about it is just the weak thing, okay, we're gonna get riots in the Middle East because a lot of those countries are very dependent on the rise coming out of Ukraine and Russia and because of the trade sanctions, because of conflict that's offline. Now, the farmers around the world because when I add up those four countries to shut down fertilizer exports, that's really close to half the world's fertilizer, half. So that means that farmers aren't gonna be able to do plantings this year. This year's crop harvest are gonna be poor. We're going to see famine in 2023. It's not if, it's not a theory. It's not a conspiracy theory. That is a fact. We're gonna see a famine. Is the ammonia production based on the natural gas availability? Is that the main source? Okay. Yeah, remember we did the whole thing about the ammonia. Five percent of the world natural gas is consumed making ammonia. Yep. Yep. So it's really a sad state and just like the world has fragile ecosystems, right now the world's economy is a fragile system. And you can't just go making willy-nilly decisions that are politically correct in your own country, especially when your country is United States and turn around and have those decisions or those choices cause such huge ripples across the globe. And we have done multiple, I think, horrendously bad choices that are wreaking havoc around the globe today. And I just shudder to think what it's gonna mean for us in the not too distant future as a country. Yeah. It really troubles me. I apologize to everybody who listened to this YouTube. I wish this hadn't played out this way but it did. Yeah. For the perfect time to do the same thing. Yeah. They truly did. That was our weakness point. Something I haven't seen on the media much from any media is the fact that if you look at Ukraine's history that goes back to, you know, at least to World War II, they've always been the occupied land. You know, the Germans occupied and just destroyed them. They did a lot of the ethnic cleansing, the killing of Jews and stuff was done in Ukraine to the Ukrainian population. And so at the same time, when the Russians took over Ukraine from as a Soviet Union moved in, they killed millions of people with starvation and brutality as well. So Ukraine has been brutalized from the Russian side and the German side. And the sad part is that the resistance against Russia, a lot of those are neo-Nazis or they still go back to the, you know, when the Nazis were fighting Russia in World War II and so they have those roots and a lot of the people that America is supporting now, if you look back in their resume, they have some neo-Nazi stuff in them. And that's making the discussions really complicated when it's like, how much money should we give Ukraine and who should we give it to? There's another country out there that has a similar relationship and that's Poland. And Poland is in other ways countries, they've been sandwiched between the Germans and the Russians and the Polish people have been abused by both those countries. So I've known quite a number of Poles. I've been a Polon like a number of times and it's hard to understand it unless you've lived in one of those sandwiched countries and Poland's one of those sandwiched countries. And Ukraine sent a lot of the same history, a lot of the same painful history that goes back a very, very long time. Well, I know we hit the end of our time slot but I'm just gonna close it by saying, I've actually been behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany when it was still behind the Iron Curtain and it was highly depressing and it was a life-changing experience for me. I did in the military as an occupation troop in Berlin. I got to go into East Berlin and it was still damaged from World War II. People were living in buildings that were still half the building was bombed out because the government couldn't fix it. You know, this Europe has a whole different way of looking at what's going on in Ukraine right now than the US. And I feel like we have this self-centered view of the world that's gonna end up eating our lunch. So anyway, Dan, thanks for being on the show today. I wish it was a more cheery upbeat show but I think it's an important message that a lot of people need to be hearing and I thank you for helping present it and we'll have you back in soon. Yeah, thank you, Stan. The last two weeks have been pretty painful but thank you for letting me come on. Thank you. All right. And from Kalua, Hawaii and Think Tech, Hawaii. Aloha. See you next week. Stan Hoffman, signing off. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech, Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Come and forgive me for interrupting our lunch I'm delighted to be able to help celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America I'm delighted to celebrate anything that's older than I am But But 75 years of unparalleled service to the youth and the families and the communities of our nation As you might imagine in my job, there's some things I must do and some I want to do and A few special things that I just can't wait to do and this celebration is one of those special moments On inauguration day. I I spoke of the American sound those symbols of our democracy and echoes of our past That give us purpose and guide us forward and I said that sound our Heritage our song is hopeful big-hearted idealistic daring decent and fair You know come to think of it. I could have added trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind and the rest of the scout law Because the Boy Scouts of America and the values that you hold close Are an important part of the American sound and have been for 75 proud years And it was in the early days of scouting that the Life of a young New Yorker was changed forever Manhattan's Lower East Side was a very tough neighborhood And far too many young men were drawn into the turmoil and violence there and never recovered But this particular youngster from the Lower East Side found the Boy Scouts He was challenged to learn positive values leadership camping fitness Aaron took up the challenge and gained in moral strength confidence and ambition He became a successful attorney and his son became the second Eagle Scout in the family But Aaron never forgot his roots and in 1943 left the practice of law to give more of his time to Boy Scout fundraising and his son Well during our first term Ken Duberstein served here in the White House as my assistant for legislative affairs So I'm very pleased that they're both here today You know America sure turns out winners and much of the credit belongs to organizations like the Boy Scouts And so it's not surprising that yesterday's scouts have helped to shape our today in Business government the media science medicine education show business and whether list goes on and on Former scouts have walked on the moon become president and won the Heisman Trophy Today they serve as cabinet secretaries as my press secretary and in the Congress In fact about two-thirds of the members of the Congress have been in the Boy Scouts to You know, I can't help but think two-thirds of them Boy Scouts How nice it How nice it would have been if the Boy Scouts had a merit badge for a balanced budget Amen You can be certain that today's scouts will help shape America And when they do I'll bet there'll be scouts like the ones who are with us today Like Randy Reid of nearby Vienna, Virginia Two days ago Randy received the Boy Scouts highest and rarest award the honor medal for life-saving with crossed palms for extraordinary heroism and He's not alone. I've just been sitting beside a young man here Freddie Hill who also is wearing that medal very proudly but Randy Also at the extreme risk of his own life rescued a young man who had slipped Who had struck his head and fell unconscious wedged between rocks in 14 feet of murky water With great bravery and skill Randy did everything his scout training would tell him to do and more And Randy congratulations and God bless you Let me ask Freddie How many others in here are wearing that medal also of scouts? Are you give them a look at you, too? Well, you know, it's easy to understand why the Boy Scout badge the American Eagle Superimposed on the north sign of the Mariners compass means Follow me. I know the way The Boy Scouts of America do know the way The way to set high standards and how to live by them and the way to build character train in Citizenship and foster fitness of mind and mighty and here's one last thought Without the thousands of adult leaders corporate sponsors and other caring Americans It would not be possible for young Americans to capture the scouting spirit and the special joys of camping fellowship service and love of country so thank all of you for what you're doing for our young people and For America's future We're in good hands So God bless you all and God bless the Boy Scouts of America Mr.. President, it's a real honor for us In scouting to be here to give the annual report to the the nation Especially on this day this very day the 75th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America Now we've got just a few little Awards to give out today, but before we do I'd like to note that the some of you may not know President Reagan is the honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America And I happen to know that Mrs. Reagan Likes supports and is very enthusiastic about scouting So with the honor and authority invested in me as the national president of Boy Scouts. I hereby complain Proclaim that Mrs. Reagan is now an honorary vice president of the Boy Scouts of America Mr.. President the Boy Scouts don't often give out the distinguished scout citizen of the year award But on this case and this occasion we take great honor in presenting to you This award because of your tremendous support of God country and the Boy Scouts of America And now to perform the rest of the the ceremony I'm going to turn it over to the young people The following will please come forward Cup Scout national representative Nathan Hadfield who is from Pleasant Grove, Utah Bob Scout representative Thad Bibb who's from Broken Era, Oklahoma and Explorer President Brian Sims from Logoti, Indiana It's all yours Mr.. President I'm pleased to present with your registration card for the coming year We are glad that you are continuing to serve as the Boy Scouts of America's honorary national president. Thank you very much Thank you Also, mr.. President and part of our report. I'd like to tell you that for the fifth straight year scouting membership has increased and we're starting something new it's called scouting for tomorrow and It's prepared scouting for whatever tomorrow brings whether it be in this century or the next and Also, we have Added emphasis on the Scott earthen law the Cub Scott promise the varsity scouting pledge and the Explorer codes So right now we'd like to present to you the National presentation to the nation in fact sir. There are many people representing this report There have been seven of us all week who represented this and I'd like for them to stand up Helping me present this. They'll just stand up Alex Holsinger Kim Stefani, please stand up Our young gentleman in the corner Steven Memnall and Freddie Hill also, please stand up all sevens are Proud to present to you this award Who blows the candles out on that That's your birthday. I Think we all together My honorary capacity I can join in We will have dessert


Welcome back to the Trade Hacker Mindset. We are going to be starting a series, so over the next several episodes, we're gonna be diving into discussion topics from the Mark Douglas book, Trading in the Zone. In today's episode, we're gonna be talking about the shift to mental analysis. Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach. Professional traders have a secret.  It requires the Trade Hacker Mindset. All right, let's jump into our discussion of the shift to mental analysis.  So in the very beginning, it was just fundamental analysis is what's a company's cash flow? What's its price to earnings? What's its corporate debt versus revenue? And net profit margins and company sales and all that stuff that they talk about in a company's quarterly earnings announcement. And then in, I think probably about the late 90s, I started trading in about the year 2000, but I think it was really in the 90s as computers and technology started getting more and more proficient. Technical analysis started becoming more popular. And when I say technical analysis, I'm talking about just basic charts to indicators, trend lines, support and resistance, volume, Fibonacci, anything you can think of from a technology-driven data point about a market. And so there's always this debate of what's better? Is it fundamental analysis? Is it technical analysis? And I think the answer is you always want to look at both. There's certain factors that relate to both that could certainly help you with your trading. But the question is if technical analysis and fundamental analysis work so well, then why today is there more and more in the trading community, in the trading industry? Why is there more of a shift of their focus from technical analysis or fundamental analysis to mental analysis of themselves? Meaning your own individual trading psychology. So to answer this question, you probably don't have to do anything more than ask yourself, why are you listening to this podcast? This entire podcast is based around the mindset of traders. The most likely reason is that you're dissatisfied with the difference between what you perceive as unlimited potential to make money and what you actually end up with on the bottom line. The problem with fundamental or technical analysis, if you want to call it a problem, is that once you learn to identify patterns or read the market or understand financial documents, you find that there are literally limitless opportunities to make money. But as I'm sure you already know, there's a huge gap between what you understand about the markets and your ability to actually transform that knowledge into consistent profits or a steadily rising equity curve. So think about this. How many times have you looked at a price chart and thought to yourself, huh, looks like the market is going to go up?  And what you thought was going to happen actually happened, but you didn't do anything about it. You just watched the market move while you just kind of squirmed over all the money that you could have made, right?  So there's a big difference between predicting that something in the market's going to happen and the reality of actually getting in and out of trades. And this is kind of what Mark Douglas says in his book is a psychological gap, right? They can make trading one of those, the most difficult endeavors that there are that you could ever undertake and certainly one of the most mysterious to master. So the question that I asked when I very first started trading is, can this trading really be mastered? I know there are people who are ultimately ultra successful and ultra consistent, but is this something that I can master is a better way to put it? Is it possible to experience trading with the same ease and simplicity when I'm just watching the market, when I can just look at it and say I think this is going to happen, is it just as easy to actually be placing trades? And the answer is yes, but that's also what this podcast is designed to give you is the insight and understanding that you need about yourself, about the nature of trading so that the result is actually doing something and becomes easy and simple and stress-free and when you're just watching the markets and thinking about it. You know, if you've ever paper traded or used a virtual type of account, there's a huge difference between trading with real money and paper trading. The reason is because you have zero emotional attachment when you're paper trading, whereas even if you're trading with a small amount of money, there's something about that inside of us that provides that emotional attachment and causes you to make different decisions. So this may seem like something that's really far out there, but it's really not. I mean, there are people who have mastered the art of trading who've closed that gap between the possibility and their actual bottom line performance, but as you might expect, these winners are relatively few in number. I've heard statistics that over 90% of traders fail and part of that is because they quit too soon. They never get into the mental mind state part of trading. They just try a couple of strategies and that doesn't work and they give up. And then there are others who just keep trying and trying and trying, but they keep failing because they're not focusing on the right thing. They're trying to focus on gaining more knowledge about the markets, they're trying to figure out, oh, it must be that strategy doesn't work, so they're jumping from strategy to strategy and consistently continuing to lose over time because they're not focusing on the right thing. The difference between consistent winners and everyone else is simply mindset. We all have the same technology. We all have access to the same information. The difference is mindset. There used to be a big difference between institutional traders and individual traders. Institutions had the edge. They had better technology. They had more access to information. They had lower fees, but I would argue now that today the individual trader actually has the edge. They can be more nimble. They're not having to go in at such large position size that they can't just send in an order where as a retail, an individual trader can. Commission rates have been reduced next to nothing today. The technology that we use is good or better than the institutional platforms. I've looked at so many different institutional platforms and I think think or swim or tasty works or some of these platforms that we use are light years past what some of these just archaic legacy institutional platforms are. So the individual trader today actually has the edge but it still comes down to your mindset and your training and your preparation of what makes the difference between a successful trader and somebody who is unsuccessful. And when it comes to mindset, I mean the difference between these two groups of traders that consistent winners and everyone else is really kind of like the difference between the earth and the moon. I mean it is that far apart. You know, the earth and moon are both bodies that exist in the same solar system so they have something in common but they are as different in nature as night and day. You know, in the same light, anyone who puts on a trade can claim to be a trader but when you compare the characteristics of a handful of consistent winners versus everyone else, you'll find that they're also as different as night and day. What I've noticed today as trading has become cool and as trading has become kind of part of our culture, some of these different Robin Hood apps and targeting younger generation. Now there are a lot of, and I air quotes, wanna be traders out there. Anyone can place a trade and call themselves a trader. Anyone can put that I'm a portfolio manager or I'm a trader on your Instagram profile but that doesn't mean you're a successful consistent trader, right? Whereas somebody plays in the NBA and on their profile they have NBA player, well, that's kind of proven, right? You know that they're an NBA player, you know their statistics, you see them play at night but anyone can say that they're a trader these days. So anytime the market is open, on any given day, any given week, any given month, the market makes vast amounts of money available to anyone who has the capacity to put on a trade. And since the markets are constantly in motion, this money is also constantly flowing which makes the possibility for success greatly magnified and seems like it's just within your grasp. And I use the word seemingly just inside your grasp because between the two groups of traders that consistently profitable and the others is what Mark Douglas calls a threshold of consistency. So the money is not only within their grasp but they can virtually take it at will. Consistent, profitably traders, they make it look so easy. Think of like Michael Jordan playing basketball. I mean, he just looks so smooth when he takes a shot. He makes everything look so easy.  Well, consistent traders do the same thing. They make it look so easy that people come into trading and think, oh, this is no problem. I'll just click the mouse a few times, boom, boom, boom and I'm gonna become consistently profitable but what they're not seeing is what's going on in the mind of that consistent trader and I'm not even putting myself in this category. I mean, I've become very consistently profitable trading over the years but there are still times where, you know, if I have a position size on that's too big, you know, that's gonna affect my mindset. That's gonna make me do things that I'm gonna be making trading decisions that are not necessarily the best if I'm not focused on self-awareness and the trading plan that I need to be taking. And there are certain days when I just feel in flow with the market, when I am in sync with the market and there are other days when I'm at odds with the market and part of it is just understanding those days that you are at odds with the market where you're just not in sync and cutting losses quick or just stopping trading at all for that day. So for the inconsistent trader, what happens is they always have this kind of feeling that it's almost within grasp but it just keeps slipping away. It just keeps evaporating before their eyes. If they had just done this a little bit differently they would have made a huge profit. Instead they broke even or lost money. You know, so it's a constant battle of this kind of illusion of thinking that you have a grasp on the markets but yet things just keep slipping away from you just slightly slipping away from you in ways that just frustrates you, make you angry, cause anxiety, disappointment, betrayal, regret, all the emotional factors that you can imagine. So the question is what separates these two groups of traders, right? What separates these consistent winners from the inconsistent winners? Are the consistent winners just that much more intelligent? Are the consistent winners just plain smarter? Do they work harder? Are they better analysts? Are they, do they have better trading systems? Do they have better access to more information? Do they have better technology? Do they possess inherent personality characteristics that just make it easier for them to deal with the intense pressure of trading? All these questions sound reasonable, except when you consider that most of the trading industry's failures are also some of our society's brightest and most accomplished people. The largest group of consistent losers when it comes to trading is primarily your most successful in other professions, your doctors, your lawyers, engineers, scientists, CEOs, entrepreneurs, wealthy retirees. Furthermore, most of the industry's best market analysts are the worst traders. Think about that. The ones who supposedly should know the most about the markets, the best analysts, whether it's a technical analyst or a financial analyst as a presentation that covers certain stocks, those people are typically the worst traders that you can imagine. Now, intelligence and good market analysis, I mean, those can certainly contribute to success, but they are not the defining factor of what separates the consistent winners from everyone else. So if it's not intelligence or better analysis than what could it be? Well, at Navigation Trading over the years, we've been teaching traders to become more successful for the last four and a half years. And I've worked with some wildly successful traders. I've worked with some really terrible traders and have helped terrible traders become successful traders. So I know for a fact that there are specific reasons why the best traders consistently outperform everyone else. And I think Mark Douglas is spot on with this in his book. He says, the best traders just simply think differently from the rest. Now, that sounds pretty simplistic, but, and, you know, obviously to one degree or another, all of us think differently, right? Everyone thinks differently from everyone else. In fact, the way you think is probably, you know, compared to other people is probably more different than your actual physical looks. You know, a lot of times I think people assume that each other kind of share the same perceptions or same interpretations of different events, but think about how many, you know, disagreements that you've had with someone at some point in your life when you both experienced the exact same thing, but you disagreed on the perception of, you know, one aspect or another of that event. I can remember specifically when I was first starting trading and I was extremely naive, okay? I was extremely naive when I first started trading. You know, I'd be studying a system or an indicator or, you know, some type of trading strategy and it was typically through some group that was selling a system or selling a course or selling an indicator and they would make it sound so good, almost magical, like if you just do this, you know, your computer's gonna turn into an ATM machine and just start spitting out $100 bills, right? And I remember specifically wondering, like why doesn't everyone just use this? Like everyone should just use this and everyone would just be successful. This is so simple, just, you know, buy when it turns green and sell when it turns red, right? Now, of course, this just sounds ridiculous to me now, but that's how a lot of new traders think. They think they find this holy grail of trading and it's just gonna start spitting out money and they can't understand why others just don't do the same thing until they actually start trading and start to realize that, A, there's nothing like that from an indicator or technology standpoint. It's all in your mind of how you perceive the information and how you execute that actual operation of your own trades. The defining characteristic that separates the consistent winners from everyone else is this. The winners have attained a mindset, okay? It's a unique set of attitudes that allows them to remain disciplined, focused and confident. You know, the market's always throwing adverse conditions at us, right? I mean, companies come out with crazy earnings announcements but yet their stock falls or they come out with bad earnings announcements and their stock goes up or we seemingly have a great economy but the market is tanking or we seemingly have a terrible economy but the market just continues to climb, right? There's all those different adverse conditions but at the same time, the best traders will consistently have this mindset that allows them to remain disciplined, remain focused, remain confident. You know, I mentioned before, a lot of times people don't get to this threshold of consistency. They never make it to become consistently profitable before they quit and it just, it kills me. I hate to see that because sometimes people, traders are very, very close and if they would have just kind of started focusing on their mindset as opposed to, you know, technical analysis or fundamental analysis or the strategy or whatever, they would, they could have pushed themselves over the edge and this is the defining factor that separates the two groups of consistent winners from everyone else. And the beautiful thing about trading mindset is it's something that you can work on. It's something that you can master. I'm a Kansas City Chiefs fan and at the time of this recording, it's the first part of February in 2021 and the Chiefs are getting ready to go back to the Super Bowl for the second time. So I'm a huge Patrick Mahomes fan, right? And I love football. I played football. I can throw a football pretty well but no matter how much I practice, if I practice eight hours a day, there is no way I'm ever going to compete at the level of Patrick Mahomes, right? You know, I can play basketball. I can shoot a basketball but I'm never gonna be LeBron James. I can practice singing. You know, I'm a terrible singer but you know, if I practice singing eight hours a day, I'm still never gonna be as good as Beyonce, right? So, but the thing with trading is that in the mindset specifically, is it something that you can work on that anyone can work on that anyone can master and you don't have to have some of these, you don't have to be born with some of these, you know, physical abilities to be a professional athlete or some of these other successful professions. So why are emotional and financial disaster common among traders? The simple answer is that most of us just weren't fortunate to start out our trading career with the proper guidance. You know, unless you were born into a trading family and you kind of were brought up with the mindset and everything that goes along with trading, most of us from a human nature standpoint are just not wired correctly. And so the part of rewiring your brain and methodically changing your mindset over time is the difficult part of trading. Mark Douglass in his book, In Trading in the Zone talks a lot about the market as a paradox. According to the dictionary, a paradox is something that seems to have contradictory qualities or that is contrary to common belief or what generally makes sense to people. And that's why I say financial and emotional disaster are common among traders because some of the perspectives or attitudes or principles or goals you said or things you would otherwise use and that would make perfect sense in other areas of life, they just don't work in trading. Think about this, if you've ever been part of a team of a company or you're a business owner or involved in business in any way, you know, setting financial goals is not only viable, but it's almost a necessity, right?  Setting goals in sports is the same way, right? When I used to play football, we would set goals. Number one goal every day was to practice hard. Number two was to win that game this week. And then we had the larger goals that extended to, you know, win conference, go to state and win the state championship. So all those things, you know, setting goals is important, but if you set performance goals in trading, it can actually work against you. Think about this, if you have a goal that you wanna make $10,000 a month trading, well, what happens is when you're actually trading, all of a sudden, you're gonna start making trading decisions based on reaching your goal, not because it was the best opportunity or setup in front of you on the charts. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't make sense to set some type of goal in trading, but the goal should be more focused around making good decisions, taking good trades, only focusing on high quality setups, not on a financial goal of a certain amount of money per month. You've gotta trade and take what the market gives you, you can't force anything, otherwise it's gonna work backwards. I think most people would agree that trading is inherently risky, right? I mean, no trade has a guaranteed income. So, you know, the possibility of being wrong and losing money is always present on a trade. So when you put on a trade, do you consider yourself a risk taker? I think that most nearly all traders would say, absolutely yes, I'm a trader, so therefore I am a risk taker. You know, if I engage in an activity that's inherently risky, then I must be a risk taker, right? In fact, most traders kinda take pride in thinking of themselves as risk takers. The problem is with most traders is this is actually very far from the truth. Now, of course a trader's taking risk when you put on a trade, but that doesn't mean you're accepting that risk. In other words, all trades are risky because the outcomes are probable, not guaranteed, but most traders don't believe they're taking a risk half the time. They haven't really accepted the risk. They haven't really accepted the fact that it's non-guaranteed, that it's probable. They haven't fully accepted the consequence of what that trade could actually do. See, most traders, they don't have any concept of what it means to be a risk taker in the same way that a successful trader thinks about risk. The best traders not only take the risk, but they've also learned to accept and in fact, almost embrace that risk. So there's a huge psychological gap between assuming that you're a risk taker because you put on trades and actually fully accepting that risk in each trade. If you learn to fully accept the risk, this is gonna have a huge impact on your bottom line performance. The best traders in the world can put on a trade without the slightest bit of hesitation or internal conflict. And just as freely without hesitation or conflict, they can admit they're wrong and get out of the trade. Even if it's a losing trade and they can do so without the slightest bit of emotional discomfort. I've been trading for over 20 years and I'm definitely still not perfect at either of these, whether it's getting in a trade or getting out. And recent trades that have happened leading up to that maybe in the same day or recently that week, they're still going to have an effect on me of, you know, should I put this trade on? The last one I did kind of like this didn't work out. So I still have those conflicts daily and I've been doing this for 20 years and I'm a consistent trader. So it's definitely a process and it doesn't happen overnight. And I don't, you know, I mean, I'm sure there are traders that this is true about where they just have zero emotional discomfort, but I still think I still have it sometimes. And part of it comes down to position size, right? I start, these emotions are enhanced the bigger my position size. If I'm trading super small and it's at a level that doesn't really affect me from a percentage of my account value or just my overall risk tolerance, then it makes it much easier, but the larger position size I get, the more these emotional discomforts and things when I'm entering or closing losing trades impact my mental state. I mean, if you can get to the point where you're trading without the slightest bit of emotional discomfort, especially fear, then that's when you're gonna get to a point of getting profits flowing in with ease. Because here's the problem. Whatever degree that you have not accepted the risk is the same degree to which you will avoid the risk. And remember, every trade has risk. So you're trying to avoid something that's unavoidable. We always hear about two of the biggest fears that humans have is dying and public speaking, right? Well, I think losing money and being wrong are kind of at the top of that list as well. So, you know, admitting that you're wrong and losing money, those are both really extremely painful to do. And I know this firsthand because it even works even further against me at Navigation Trading because we show all of our members all of our trades, the profit and loss and everything that happens.  Number two, I was wrong.  Number three, I have to share how much money I lost and that I was wrong on the trade with our entire community. So reducing or eliminating that emotional discomfort is so difficult, but it's so important. The cool part is when you start to learn this trading skill of risk acceptance, the market will not be able to generate information that you define or interpret as painful. You know, if the information the market generates doesn't have the potential to cause you emotional pain, then there's nothing to avoid. It's just information. You know, it's just possibilities. I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast or watching this video has gotten into trades too soon before your stock or the market has actually generated a signal or you've gotten in too late, long after the market kind of gave you the signal to enter, right? We've all entered too late, got out too early, got in too late, got out too early.  Remember, these are not market-generated errors. Okay, this is between your ears. This is your decision-making, this is you making decisions based on your perception of the markets. Remember, the market is neutral. It just moves and generates information about itself. That's all the market is. It's movement and information and it provides you with the opportunity to do something about it. In the book, Trading in the Zone, Mark Douglas talks about the four primary trading fears. 95% of your trading errors are likely to come from these. Number one, your attitude about being wrong. Number two, losing money. Number three, missing out. FOMO, fear of missing out. Number four, leaving money on the table. Write those down. The four primary trading fears, this is what causes 95% of your trading errors. Number one, your attitude about being wrong. Number two, losing money. Number three, missing out. And number four, leaving money on the table. Obviously, the two emotions, and we always talk about this, is fear and greed. But fear, for most people, is the number one issue that holds them back from being successful. And Mark Douglas in his book says, I don't think I could put the difference between consistent winners and everyone else more simply than this. The best traders aren't afraid. And the reason they're not afraid is because they develop these attitudes over time that give them the greatest degree of mental flexibility to flow in and out of trades based on what the market is telling them about the possibilities and the probabilities from its perspective. Okay, so you're not afraid, but at the same time, the best traders also have developed attitudes that prevent them from being reckless, right? We're talking about fear and greed. If you get reckless, sometimes that comes out of greed and euphoria if you're on a good run of winning trades, right? So you've got to balance that. So you've got to have a lack of fear and you also have to have a structure and a discipline to keep you from getting reckless. I think a lot of times for a lot of people, it's human nature to want to place the blame elsewhere outside of you. You don't want to take the blame. You don't want to take ownership.   And so it's very difficult for us to think that the issue is actually internal. You know, it's not the strategy. It's not the indicator we're using. It's not the fundamental analysis that we did. It's not the charts. It's actually us, it's what's between our ears that's actually causing the problem. Now these are kind of abstract concepts and certainly something that most traders, they, you have to concern yourself with this. Because what we now understand is that the relationship between your beliefs, your attitudes, your perception is as fundamental to trading as learning how to swing a golf club is to golf. Understanding and controlling your perception of the market information is important not only to actually trade, but to become consistently profitable. But to think about this a different way, think about this, like you don't have to know anything about yourself. You don't have to be self aware. You don't have to focus on mindset. You don't have to do any of the things that we've been talking about to this point in this episode to put on a winning trade, right? You don't, like you can go in, click the mouse, buy a stock, sell it however long later, book a winner, and you didn't do any of the stuff that we were talking about here today. Anybody can place a winning trade, right? And so that's part of what gives the illusion of ease of trading is that do you have those winners and you think, oh, that was easy. Why can't I just keep doing that? And I relate trading to golf a lot because I think there's a lot of psychological and mental aspects that are similar between trading and golf. But think about that.     I mean, there's all these different, tiny techniques. Without even knowing all that, you probably hit some good shots.  It's the same thing with trading except it's working on your mindset. Most traders when they have a, you know, a string of losing trades, it's like they go back to studying the markets. It's not market analysis that will lead to consistent results, okay? It's not another strategy. It's not another indicator. You've got to take, you've got to internalize it and make it you, working on you, working on your confidence, working on your lack of fear of the markets, working on thinking like a trader and thinking in probabilities that's gonna make the biggest difference. So if you continue to rationalize and justify and hesitate and procrastinate and hope and all these things, if you're not able to trust yourself, then you're not gonna be able to be objective enough to act in your own best interest when it comes to trading. You know, trading looks so simple. It seems like it should be so simple, but yet it's gonna be one of the most difficult things that you do just because we're humans and our brains are not wired in a way that makes it natural to be successful at trading. But the cool part is once you have the appropriate attitude, once you've kind of acquired this trade hacker mindset, which is what this podcast is all about, you're gonna be able to remain confident no matter what happens in the market. No kind of uncertainty is going to phase you and you can always come out with that confidence and continue to be successful trading. So the solution is you have got to learn how to adjust your attitude. You've got to learn how to adjust your beliefs about trading. You've got to create a mental framework so that you can trade without the slightest bit of fear but at the same time have a framework that does not allow you to become reckless. As you continue to grow as a trader, you've got to look at yourself in a kind of a future projection of yourself that you're going to grow into. Growth doesn't happen overnight. Growth implies expansion, learning, creating a new way of expressing yourself. And this is true even if you're already successful. If you're listening to this podcast or watching this video to become more successful, then all of these things still pertain to you, even if you think that you're self-aware, you still need to be open to the idea that there are other possibilities. Some of these possibilities you may be aware of and some of these possibilities you may not be aware of. If you hear in your head, if you feel thoughts creeping in, don't dismiss those. It's cool to have internal arguments with yourself. That is part of the growth of becoming a more and more successful trader. So I hope this was helpful. Thank you for tuning in for this episode of the Trade Hacker Mindset. If you'd like to join a community of like-minded traders, just go to community.navigationtrading.com. It's free to join. We have hundreds of traders interacting on a daily basis, sharing trade ideas, and helping each other become better traders. We hope to see you there. Happy trading.


Erica, Ben was saying yesterday in the locker room that just after a game, you'll be the first to pick his brain, you know, what can I do better? It just, what is that relationship like with you guys and a guy like that who's clearly puts it out on the line every day too? Ben's a smart guy. We've seen a lot of football and knows a lot of football and, you know, won't lose on his team. So anytime I, you know, I want to get advice from my one pick his brain about something I'll always ask. That's how he's always been since he's been here. You know, giving that early morning text to Ryan on Monday and how much do you kind of keep an eye on him? Wondering about his status for Sunday. Yeah, us in the text and, you know, he said he was feeling better than what he thought.  But, you know, I can't speak for Ryan just, you know, the best for him. And hopefully he's out there. That's some big games against Houston. Does it, you get a little juiced knowing, you know, when you start studying them knowing what you've done in the past? Every year is different. I really don't try to live in the past, you know, have some good games, but, you know, every year is different.  Just take it day by day and get ready for Sunday. You've had success against divisional opponents for a long time. Why is that? I guess he's played well as a team. And that's all I can think of. And me just trying to go out there and do my job, and everybody doing their job well. 36 games for you. I know you said every year is different, but from a recovery standpoint, is it still the same and what are some of the things you're doing to be able to bounce back after, you know, like a 30-carry game like you had? I always do my same routine. I don't really do anything different. It's always the same. I don't really change out too much. How much have you been able to work with him out here since then? Whenever we get a chance to, you know, he gets in on offense. We do exchange before practice, you know, things like that. And yeah, pretty much. I feel like you guys are kind of building some momentum in the running game, three straight 100-yard games for you, and it seems like you're having maybe more success each passing week. Yeah, this mindset just continuing to improve, build off the good, and how the mindset of wanting to get better every day, and that's all you can hope for. That's what my mindset is. I know as many as anybody else's mindset, just every day is getting better until Sunday and letting it all pay off. When you guys are playing the style that you want to play and you're getting carry after carry in the fourth quarter to finish off an opponent, do you get a sense of when that breaking point happens for that defense, or you just keep handling the ball and doing your thing? Yeah, I mean, I'm not really worried about, you know, the defense and just worried about what I can do and how we play and how we execute a play and the efficiency of it and just try to guard there and make another play. So, you know, just focus on what we do and not take much on the defense. Derek, you worked with a lot of coaches. What is it that Tony brings to you in the running backs room and how's that relationship been since you've been with him? Yeah, you know, he's always on me the little details, all the fundamentals, the techniques and everything that, you know, I need to focus on to be better, to be a great back in this league and, you know, we work on them every day in the meeting room and out here, just focus on getting better. You know, you never arrive and I feel like that's his mindset and placing, always stay hungry and come out here with a growth mindset to want to get better and be the best player you can be. But, you know, just being a great leader and have the will to want to work and get better every day. How much would another rushing title mean to you? I'm not thinking about that right now. It's week eight. You put it on the list though, me. Yeah, I'm not thinking about that. I think you know the answer to that when you answer that question. I'm not thinking about that.  Is that something that you see him as maybe having that kind of personality fit? Is that a job you think he could handle easily? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I pray that's in his future. I mean, I can't predict the future. And hopefully he can stay with me as long as he can until then. But I think he has all the traits. He's a great coach. He's a great leader of men. And you know, he, you know, wants us to get better. He's always honest about wanting to get better in the meet room. And, you know, it's never too much work put in, you know, whenever you're on the field and at work. So, What stands out about Houston's defense? I'm going to do a lot of moving things. They play with a lot of energy, put a lot of effort. The guys are always around the ball and I think they play well together on defense. You and Don Trell on the field together. How much you feel like that's been effective and how much does it make teams have to prepare for something else from you guys? Oh yeah, it's been fun to have us both out there.  Stoney is doing something that hadn't really been done in the NFL. You know, six straight games, 52 yard gross average minimum for each game. What, I mean, obviously you knew he had a strong leg. What is allowing him to have continued success now that he's getting a few games under his belt? Sure. I don't know that stat until Robbie just told me about it, which obviously is great for Ryan and the team. But you know, I think what Ryan does really best is he just works to a skill set and he understands that he's going to try to hit it as far as he can and not really worry about, you know, hey, I'm not worried about this line or that line, I'm going to just try to hit it as far as I possibly can. And it's right now it's worked out for us and we'll continue to try to help him out as much as we can because we know his skill set and really proud of how he goes out there and works and does some good stuff on the field for us. And how about Randy Bullock? He hit the 202 now, but what can you say about him, those four field goals put him at that mark? That's obviously big for us. Anytime that we can help the team win, he had two really big kicks obviously in the fourth quarter for us, especially the 48 yarder to put us up by two scores. I'm just really excited for him, happy for him because, you know, he's worked really hard and it's always fun to watch a player who's worked really hard, has success out there and him going four for four to help out this team win was big for us. How's Ryan doing when he needs the short iron so to speak, a 40, 45 yard punt? Yeah, you know, and really he hasn't had to use that short iron much. And that's the thing that, you know, when we went and watched him at Colorado State, that was something that we had to work with him a lot on and it was kind of difficult for him at first because he's got such a strong leg. How does he go back and go to a nine iron instead of hitting his driver all the time? But he's worked really hard at it and once he gets those opportunities, you know, we really try to tell him, hey, we're going to play pitch and catch with that returner, which they end up usually lining up at the eight yard line anyway. So, you know, if we go and just hit it to the returner, that hopefully helps him out too, where he doesn't need to feel like he has to hit it inside the five yard line all the time. You know, we're not looking to do that. We're trying to get it inside the 10 as much as we possibly can and if it's pitch and catch with the returner, great. But, you know, when he gets that opportunity to go out there, I'm sure he'll do fine. How consistent has he been with his hang time? So, yeah, obviously the past couple of games hasn't been as consistent as we would like and that's a lot of different things. You know, we had pressure on the very first one, which is not what we want and he had to kind of adjust a little bit to it and didn't hit a ball that, you know, he's capable of hitting. So, you know, obviously that's a big thing for us as long as getting distance, but also getting the proper hang time with that because we're not looking for a 60 yard punt with 4-0 hang time. We're still looking for a 55-60 yard punt with over 4-5 hang time. So, that's what we're going to work on again today with him is trying to get a little bit more consistent that he was earlier in the year with the hang time. Which we feel very confident he can do that. Happy with what you've seen from Manny in the first couple of games back and what's maybe he good at? Well, first thing that jumps out to us is his physicality and his energy. I think he ended up having to get an IV after he made that tackle inside the 20 because he ran about 30-40 yards to celebrate. But, you know, this guy is excited to come out there. Obviously he missed football when he was injured. So, he's raring to go.  We've got to try to tell him to scale back a little bit because his energy is just through the roof right now. We've got to try to scale him back a little bit once he makes those plays that, hey, we can celebrate with our teammates and get moving on to the next play. But, we're happy to have him back. He did a really good job for us with that tackle inside the 20 and in our punt coverage he did a good job too. Morgan's on the injury report this week. Who's your backup snapper and how much work does that person get, typically? Yeah, usually what we end up doing is we have to have a backup snapper and we try to get multiple guys to do it, especially during the offseason and training camp. And Jeff Swame has worked on it. Kevin Rader, those guys, heck, we even had some offensive linemen during training camp work on it too for us. But, you know, we usually end up getting Jeff and a couple other guys some reps during the week. And it might be one or two, but we've got to be prepared at any point in time just in case Morgan goes down that we got a guy that can come in there and protect too. Why Swame and not like a system? Well, usually we want to try to cover afterwards too. That's a big part. If we can get a guy in here that's athletic enough, like a tight end, like a linebacker that can snap, you know, if he can snap it with some accuracy and then run down there and make a tackle, that's what we're looking for. If we had an offensive lineman in there, obviously it would be just for protection and we wouldn't expect much out of him in the coverage unit. So we want to try to get more of a big skill type guy to do that. And Morgan is not a guy we talk about a lot, which I guess is a good thing if you're a long snapper. I mean, what does he do so well that makes him so consistent? It's consistency. That's the biggest thing. And it's really helpful having a guy like Morgan Cox that can help out a young holder in Ryan Stonehouse just being really consistent with his ball that he throws back, where Ryan doesn't have to move the laces. He doesn't have to worry about the ball working it way over to the right or to the left or down low or up top. That ball is right to him. The laces are there all the time and what Ryan just needs to worry about is, hey, I'm going to put this thing down on the spot. Maybe have a different lean depending on the wind. But he's just a professional and does everything that we're looking for him to do. And he does it really well. How nice is it to be in the fourth quarter when you can keep handing the ball to Derek to try to put away a game? Yeah, it definitely was a great feeling to be able to call those runs in and watch those guys finish the game the way they did. Really proud of the offensive line, the way they battled through some things. That's a really talented front they went against. Obviously, we'd like to be able to make it a little less interesting there but very pleased with how Derek finished the game and how the line finished the game. Still several days from Sunday, how do you approach maybe Ryan through a week when maybe he's going to be limited in some practices and trying to get him ready for Sunday? Yeah, he's a pro. It's not as much about physically him having to go through those things.  So we'll see how he progresses and I'm sure they'll let me know before we kick off. Do you spend extra play on Sunday? How valuable could it be for Malik to get to run the first team offense this week in practice? Yeah, I think experience is irreplaceable and Malik did a great job yesterday with the stuff we asked him to do and he's growing each and every day and he's learning what it's like to be a pro quarterback and so I think all that stuff's great for Malik. Is there a balance in preparing the offense with Ryan? Obviously a different skill set than Malik. Is there a balance you have to kind of walk with that when you're preparing for the week? Absolutely. Two different players with two different skill sets and so my job is always to put players in the best position to succeed and so that can mix and match some things but we try to run our offense here and have a foundation so there's certain elements that no matter who's under center, we expect a little bit of cooperation to flow a certain way and look a certain way. So there's definitely a balance there and as you're progressing through the week it's how much do you want to dabble in that would be there if it were one or the other but as we approach game day that picture will clear up a little bit more. Is there any way to be below 90% in the red zone now? Very frustrating to not help our team enjoy a fourth quarter with a little less stress. This is a prove it league and you have to do that weekend and week out. Tipped my cap to the Indianapolis staff but we expect to score every time we get down there. We got to see Malik in there and not just traditional quarterback role is that something that you're kind of bringing along like a package that you would like to present for him to have an additional impact? He's such a talented athlete and we all remember from the preseason I think he has the longest run to date preseason so looking for ways to have him on the field and then the first couple of times he was on the field it was make them say hey they got two quarterbacks out there and we were just running a bread and butter scheme so a little bit of a balance there and obviously had the exchange issue on the one it's a well blocked play Cody Hollister did a great job if we get that exchange I think we're talking about a pretty big play there so we'll see where that expands and how far we want to go with that. Do you look to other like you look at what the 49ers did with Kaepernick when he first came in Ravens with Lamar do you look at any of that and just kind of work to incorporate that into that package? I think there are some times in the offseason where you have time to kind of go back and study similar offenses or similar players skill sets and things like that and so you build a little bit of a bank that you can take a peek at a reference and then certainly things come up that you say hey that's a pretty cool scheme and see if it fits what you do so yeah I think there's an element of that you try to not get too far outside of who you are but maybe take a peek if there's something that works you pull out a new look Conley into the offense this weekend and what does he bring to this team coming in late? I've been very impressed with his study habits and how quickly he's shown a commitment to learn the offense I mean the second he got here with Rob Moore and working with Eric Frazier just getting the terminology down and kind of going Spanish to English on some things and so I've been very impressed with Chris we'll see where that goes what our numbers look like from an active standpoint that's always a decision that I'll hear from down the road but I think that he's worked very hard to be able to contribute if his number is called From a physical standpoint this may be size, strength and how he catches the ball Yeah he is an impressive physical on the hoof receiver so hopefully we can see him a little bit of speed work today and see what he's got and make decisions down the road Back to that little wrinkle with Malik or any trick play for that matter how often and how long do you execute something in practice before you actually implement it in a game Yeah I think there's a little bit of a sliding skill there right? Depends on how intricate it is that was a rather simple exchange sometimes you need things to marinate a little while and I remember we had this discussion after the first Colts game and the jig in the backfield roll pass that we did and that was only a couple of days and then we called it on Sunday so I think there's a balance there we felt good about it we obviously didn't execute well enough but it's not by lack of belief in the play There was obvious a little bit of a change and just draw up a play or is everything sort of tweaking this building on that sort of thing? Yeah I think there are always game plan designers based off of certain things that the defense is doing that start with kind of a clean slate you know and they got floor to ceiling grease boards in my office for a reason you know we sit in there and kind of get in the lab a little bit and see if there are some wrinkles that we can develop so that our guys can go play fast you know we don't want to put too much in that makes them think or remember oh yeah I'm supposed to do that on this we like to try to find that balance so the guys can go play fast One or two of those grease boards gets erased on a Monday? Yeah you talk about stuff that we liked and then decided hey we don't want to do it to start new for the next game plan? Oh yes absolutely yeah absolutely there's you know there's an opportunity to add in those wrinkles occasionally and you know a couple designers off of personnel groupings or tendencies we see yeah so there's opportunities to add new stuff each week The obvious challenges for you as you mentioned like Ryan there's some really different skill sets having the game plan and waiting to hear what Ryan's status is is there a time in the week for you as an offensive coordinator that might be like the ideal time to know just so you know what you have to bring on Sunday? You can bank as many reps as you can you know so certainly you don't want to get too far into practice without having at least an idea but the nice thing about where we're at is you know we're not a big volume offense there isn't going to be 8,000 different plays so if we can kind of add a couple of wrinkles here and say well if it's him then there are a couple things here or if it's Ryan a couple things here that's not stressing our guys too much from a volume standpoint so and I think our guys are committed to you know having whoever's back is under center. Dylan has done stepping in for last couple weeks. Yeah Dylan's fought you know Dylan's had his ups and downs and disappointments you know through the kind of stages of developing this starting offensive line but we knew you know back in training camp that his number was going to get called on at some point in some capacity and Dylan has been such a professional and a hard worker I was really happy for him to have some real good snaps out there on Sunday and again to be part of finishing the game the way we did that was cool for those guys and I really appreciate Dylan and the approach he's taken. What went into because I know the opportunities were limited but what went into him being able to have some impactful catches this past week. Yeah one of the things that we try to talk a lot about is you know don't count your chances just make your chances count you know and I think he's a perfect example of that. He's somebody who maybe his number didn't get called a lot the first couple weeks maybe it's coverage maybe it was situations whatever it is or we just didn't run enough plays to get to some of the stuff we had designed for him and on Sunday his number got called and a couple times in some you know kind of off schedule type situations right once to check down and once a quick game that Ryan kind of extended the play and and he made great plays you know three huge catches three huge catches two first downs one explosive I did a nice job adjusting to the ball so I think hoop is an example of taking advantage of your opportunities when the ball comes your way Shane what's been the key to maybe the defensive improvement since the you know over the last four games. Yeah I mean I think last week we we kindly finally got the X play and off our back a little bit I think they had one play for 20 yards and that was really it and I think our guys just have continued to fight like it hasn't been perfect by any means but ultimately I think early on the X plays overshadowed a lot of the good stuff we were doing so I mean I think when you eliminate those you got a chance to be really good and hopefully that trend continues for us. You went with Andrew I guess a deep safety and Imani and the nickel how do you think that combination went and what kind of went into that decision? Yeah I think just game plan based on the Colts I think it worked out well I think Hook did a good job in there communicating understanding what's going on obviously Adams has been here he's improved since he's been here so we'll see he'll be week to week kind of based on who we have available what we want to do at that nickel position. What's the biggest adjustment that Imani has to make going from deep safety to playing in the slot typical can that transition be? Yeah I mean I think there's a lot of similarities just in terms of our zone coverage and the run fits like we asked him to fit the run at safety like we do nickel at times I would say the biggest thing is probably some of the match man coverage type stuff right just understanding he's out there against receivers what their skill sets are where usually he's going up against tight ends as a safety for the most part. 2020 the third down every year you were almost at 52% dead last by a lot you're at 27 just under 28% now first by a lot. That's a huge flip. What's keyed the ability to flip? Yeah I think our guys are executing they're understanding the details of every call I think we've been good in coverage on third down we've been tight we've had our help in the right places you saw David with the interception last week as an underneath piece there I think our zones have been effective and then obviously the rush right rush is a big part of that the ability to be able to rush forward and affect the quarterback it opens a lot of things up for you coverage wise what you can do how you can delegate those seven pieces in the back but guys are out there they're executing they're executing as rushers together they're unselfish they're not in it for themselves and they know each of them is going to get theirs based on what the call is and what we're asking them to do and it comes down to those guys having a mentality of mindset they're going to do what they do to get off the field and I think our secondary has a lot of confidence in our rush and I think our rush has a lot of confidence in our secondary right now so there's an example when things are bad saying hey you know we can change stuff here in relatively short order yeah I mean I think it's week to week all the time don't get me wrong I do I think every single week you could be really great at something next week you could be pretty awful at something right so I think I think the mindset is each opportunity we get on third down we got to go out and execute and hopefully get off the field but it is something to build on I think culture wise from where we were to where we're at now defensively that's just an example of kind of the progress we've made Tietar he's kind of gone from being just a guy to being that guy up front for you what can you say about his growth over the past few yeah I think he's worked really hard in the off season I think he's understanding the game he's played a lot of football for us and I think he's realizing the fundamentals and the techniques and all the little things and the little tips you can get pre-snap based on what the offense has given you I think he's progressed in that sense so he's using that to his advantage he's always been an extremely strong powerful dude and he's now he's able with the technique and fundamentals it gets unleashed a little bit more and I've been impressed with his ability to rush I think that's where he's come a long way understanding who he is as a rusher power and then having some counters off of that but he has he's developed for us and hopefully it continues I don't know about that we'll kind of keep him rushing you guys have been huge obviously for you guys first part season I know it's something that very well harped on during the off season what's been the key to that getting so many takeaways lately yeah I think last week it came down to guys executing great adjustment by the players to get in that call on the pick six they were all on the same page they all got lined up in a timely manner and we were able to execute it and then obviously David as the rat piece being able now and then ultimately it's the techniques and fundamentals that we're preaching we're preaching the hammer the ball out like Mitch did at the end we're teaching the rake we're teaching the match the hand which has given us a lot of a lot of tip passes that whether you pick it or not but you're going to have opportunities to pick it off so I think the guys have taken ownership in that they work it we work it every single day and it's carrying over to Sunday force right now it's smart and as reliable as Kevin Byrd they're on the back and how much does that open up what you can do as a defensive play caller and what this defense can do yeah I think tremendously I mean it's I've said it before it's hard for for one guy to do everything out there communication wise I think the addition of hook Andrew getting up to speed a little bit more what's going on like those guys have to be our vocal communicators even our linebackers I think David's long long it's come a long way so you can do more the more they communicate and the more they can ultimately get on the same page and you need a ring later Kevin's a ring leader he he gets everything in order for us defensively but it takes more than just him but it does it opens up a little bit what you can do based on what you're seeing yeah I mean I think the I think Pierce is a hell of a back I think he is tough he runs hard he's got a jump cut ability stretches and cuts and he tries to finish runs like he is a physical physical runner and I think they're doing a good job up front I think to play physical and run game then the speed the speed on the outside obviously with cooks we all know about him they got some other guys that can stretch the defense so we gotta do a make we gotta do a good job make sure we're not getting letting those guys bias and I think the O-Lines done a good job protecting the quarterback quarterback's done a really good job not taking sacks not turning it over they're really playing the game the right way and not beating themselves right now coming in as a rookie and what the impact that he's had it's almost been quiet in a way for a kid to come in as a rookie and do what he's done how impressive has it been I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect it just from the spring and from training camp he's always been poised he's competitive he wants to be great he gets frustrated when it's not perfect I think last week he was down in dumps about one play in the logarithm I'm like what are you doing dude we just won that game and he's frustrated himself because he gave up a play so you got a mindset like that especially at that position it goes a long way but I've been extremely encouraged with him I think he's smart I think he understands what we're trying to get accomplished and all the different things that we do and he goes out there and challenges and competes