Thanks for the thanks for the invite and the opportunity. My name is Yanko Pajitavela and today we're going to speak about Transition from engineering to product management The agenda today is we will talk a little bit about my own transition Then I would like to share with you some lessons that I've learned In my experience from moving from engineering to product management share some mistakes that I have made and hopefully to help you deal with Future similar situation better than than I did Then we'll talk a little bit about how can you improve your product management skills coming from engineering background? And of course at the end I would love to to get some questions from you So about my transition Until I started preparing this presentation. I didn't realize that I was actually in product much before than I thought so This is my this is not the actual picture But it's something very close to this is my first product that I built when I was 10 It's a homemade portable a pinball machine. So It really addressed user problems we as kids we wanted to play pinball a lot We we couldn't spend all our money on it But also you wanted to use it for our own convenience So I went ahead got a board and I built this this little machines made few users happy But I don't know what happened afterwards. I didn't know how to scale it. Maybe I didn't have Investment in seed funding. So I just dropped it there so I Went to school in the Think serial and Methodist University in Skopje. That's in, Macedonia. That's where I'm from and that's why I was Born and raised I graduated in 2005 with a degree of computer science And then right after I started working at Seavus, which is International software consultancy and development company they build their own products as well and that's where actually my Engineering career started. So I came fresh out of college. I thought I knew a lot I was lucky to get into a very great team of engineers and those guys were just amazing and then I realized then that there is a so much learning that I Need to have in order to be even close to what they are They were very helpful. They're very smart and they helped me grew within my own role But also grew within within the company. So at Seavus I had a various engineering roles I started as a junior engineer. There's an engineer. There's a tech lead At one point I was head of engineering for our product division. I Was also at one point we had a branch office R&D in Belarus So I was head of that office as well and that's where my actually my transition happened into product management. So Seavus was partnered with Thompson Reuters. You might have heard it's a big financial and news news company and Then they needed we had some developers working there And they also needed someone to substitute for a product manager. So they recommended me and The role sounded interesting and I remember everything went so quick. It was maybe Monday I was in Belarus working there leading the office. I got an interview on Tuesday They said they want you right away on Friday. I went back home in Macedonia to repack Sunday I was in New York Monday. It was my first day as a product manager It was a little bumpy and I will speak more about it later And then this was a temporary engagement. Then I moved to education technology company called Implify. I Had a various product management roles over there. We were focusing on helping Kids mainly K2-3 to learn better. It was based a lot on data and now for the past year and change I'm at Olapec, which is Visual visual marketing company. So through our platform and services. We help global brands discover and Reach and then activate visual content in the channels throughout the whole whole user journey so as I mentioned before my transition was bumpy when I Started being a product manager. I realized even though I was a senior professional. There were a lot of Skills that actually I did not have and much more junior people than we had and then I Realized that I'll have to invest a lot Into into building them. They could speak better with customers that could present better. They could communicate better. So If you're going through this currently or some of you have went and it and it was bumpy for you as well I think that's okay. It's not really a Natural transition and some of us come from engineering to product management. Some come from design business analysis Sales marketing and so forth and Though we know very well as engineers how to build products Knowing that is just one one one One skill from all the skills you need to possess to be successful in your job so I would encourage If you want to do the transition to try first within your own company and that often It's easier. So try to look for opportunities Within your company share your intense with your manager Most of your manager will support you because you will still be doing something in service in your own company And what is very important is your colleagues know you so they know you're competent They know they can trust you and they will be more willing to give you the chance To move into the role rather than applying as an engineer to a completely different place There's a product manager and then this is you know connected to what I mentioned about the skills Don't be concerned about taking more junior role than the role that you currently have in engineering There is a quite a lot that you need to learn to Be a great product manager Me I was at one point head of engineering and then my first product manager role was much much roller lower in seniority than what I had but I Really Was interested in product management. I still love doing it So throughout years, you know, you can get to the point you want to be So I would like to share some lessons that I've learned having product management and engineering head One of the first thing I thought of was There's there can be simple solution To important problems as engineers. We sometimes tend and want to use Cool technology to solve the problems after all we are engineers, right? But as the product managers what is important is What it what is the problem that you are solving? How you're solving the problem doesn't doesn't really matter that much I'll give you an example in my a few years a few years back that amplify we we realized that basically we had a product which was assessments observation assessments for kids and it which was proving to be very efficient, but If the teachers would not take this assessment that regularly Then the difference of the student outcomes was huge So we we wanted to see like how can we Sort of make some of these teachers in certain districts to take the assessments more regularly than others With the being thought of a super fancy algorithm technology and whatnot and But then later we actually what we decided was To send them a text message at the right time and just to say hey go You have students that you need to assess go do that that was it all the teachers care deeply about their students But they're super busy. They have no time.  I remember we built a solution that was super Super quick there were had so many manual steps. I went to a couple of conferences for teachers I was writing down their mobile phone numbers in a spreadsheet. We run the experiment few times. We got a improvement on over 200 percent so Doesn't matter if you use cool technology and not what matter is the problem that you are solving I Think that even though details are important Focusing on detail. It's more critical for engineering in product management What is more important is to focus on the low long-term goals on the road map on the big picture and Remember that the time that you are spending focusing on Details is time that you don't Spend on focusing on the long-term goals and all the other important things don't focus too much on details and miss the Big picture, right? I just an example. I put some impression this art That the detail itself is only brushstrokes, but when you look at the whole thing, it's pretty pretty beautiful You have to be comfortable That some of the products and features that you are building in especially in early stages might fail completely And this is a sort of a different This is also different when you're in engineering or in product in engineering if you are good engineer and let's say You need to build certain service that will return certain data from a database The likelihood that you will gonna build this and then it will not work at all It's very low. You're confident. You know what you're doing, but as product managers we have sometimes a lot and only assumptions and It's okay. If you have a probably the product or a feature that will fail completely As long as you can learn From that experience and as long as you can limit limit your investments into how much you invest to validate an assumption and Try not to be a touch a touch to it I think that Myself as well when I would build and code and we'll write a code the solutions You're really a touch and proud of the product that you build because you always try to build the best possible engineering solution But in product you're solving problems. You don't build products So if if the product does not solve the solution and it fails just don't be attached. That's it doesn't really matter Focus on outcomes or outputs in you will read this in Every product management book But it's actually in reality can be can be trickier, especially moving from engineering to product, right? as a engineering manager or tech lead you often try to Optimize the output of your team and and you want to be more efficient, right? If you have agile development process You solve important problem in the second day of the spring you're not just going to stop working right? You want to be able to produce as much as possible, but in product Whether you have a hundred percent completion rate of your sprint or not doesn't actually Automatically mean that it's successful or it's a failure if you don't have hundred percent What value you and your team provides to the customers is actually and the stakeholders is what matters the most? I remember in the first years of of being product manager I was really bothered when we would not complete all the stories in the screen I would be like we committed to this like why why are we not completing it? This is important, but then in retrospect when I try to think about it. I really cannot find a correlation of Success in the product versus completion rate. It's everywhere.  They will not put you in a tough position, but When you are product manager, it's a very very different story you have to be very prepared when presenting to customer and you should not assume that you will be only able to stick to your part and You have to be ready to face questions outside of the domain and you have to remember You are the face of the company and the image that the customer will have for your company can be really Influenced by by what what you present and how you present things. So This is something that I have learned through not so great Experience I remember I was pretty new in the company and we were about to meet with the very very known global brand So I prepared my part that I was going to present I Practiced it. I spoke with the account manager. I showed her what I'm presenting. I'm ready. I'm gonna nail it So I go to this meeting and they come in I start presenting my stuff in just two minutes in the meeting The customer says what about this thing that we talked a year ago. I'm like, oh, wow, what is this thing now? So they completely Found me in surprise. I I didn't know I didn't know how to react. I I was putting a really tough spot And I think the they started challenging some of the things that I was presenting the any and that was mostly because they were not happy that they did not see this thing that They talked about last year. I had no idea about it. And I think that The only good thing that I did that meeting was since I was pretty experienced I I did not bend on on on the pressure. I didn't promise everything even though a lot of the things they said made sense, but Even today I tend not to commit On deadlines in meetings unless I'm ready to do that before Before the meeting obviously we came back we regrouped we we plan we came back to the customer They they were really pleased the second time. They they would say what such is amazing. This is great but I the but the lesson that I learned was when you meet with with customers you really really need to Understand all the background don't If they're meeting multiple people from your company see who they are they're meeting if you're the only person From product that they will be meeting What else they might ask you have to be competent to you can obviously answer all the questions But you have to be prepared to give certain answers that will be Satisfactory to them and back to the story. I remember, you know writing my by home I was also upset that I was put in that spot I thought I need to kind of wanted to blame the account manager, but then I realized How many of you when calling? You know yourself or company or cable company and someone responds and they transfer you and they ask you to like Oh, can you please, you know verify your name? What was your problem? You're upset about it. It's like you're one company even though they're 50,000 people and it's about a Service that you pay a hundred bucks per month Imagine if you pay Magnities of that, right? So you have to be really really prepared From time to time and especially if you are more a technical product manager you will have some people call these engineering Initiatives or tech debt or things that you need to do in the infrastructure for the system to work better and What do you need to do? I would I would recommend you to do is to Be ready that not everyone speaks the engineering language and especially the business the business leader and leaders and You really need to Find their language and Try to use some visuals to to be able to convince them for something For example, I remember we had you know on one of our projects We were growing the users, but the solution was not Horizontally scalable Business leaders don't understand necessarily and they don't need to understand what is horizontally scalable and the engineers were a little upset because These guys did not understand the importance and they did not want to invest into this but these Our business guys were saying like why should I invest in something where I quote unquote don't see any value, right? So I said to the team let's try a different approach and I remember Walking into the office of one of the managers and I and I drew something like this And I said, okay, so I'm gonna explain to you what's gonna happen So this is how much users we have now and this is the low time that they experience using our product If we get to the point of number of users where we want to be in a year This is what's gonna happen on their own time of the low time the solution will not work at all With what we are trying to do Regardless of how many users we are adding Not just the low time will won't change, but it's you know ten times faster use language companies use like Internet companies small companies You know when some of them says this is three times faster or five times more reliable. What does that really mean? I don't know if someone knows but it works is something people can relate to you know faster is better more reliable is better alright, so Moving from engineering to product manager How can you improve your product management skills? Everybody knows that right but There is you can't emphasize this enough how important is to Understand your customers problems and needs. They're very very important part of your business Try to talk with them as much as possible get as much as feedback as you can You can learn a lot By looking into data, but the data itself doesn't cannot tell you everything right so for example You might look into data and and and and see that your products is being used Let's say on desktop 99% of the time does that mean that you should be focusing on the desktop experience or Your product is accessed via desktop 99% of the time because your mobile experience suck right So data can tell you something what have happened But it can't always tell you why why that happened so Regardless of all the tools that you have I would highly encourage you to talk with customers and speak as much as possible with them Try to develop Empathy and try to to walk in their shoes so One of the things you will notice when Starting to work with your team being previously an engineer is that you That your relationship is usually much much better than people that have not been technical right you understand each other Well, you can communicate well but I Don't think that's only because you understand them I think that that you understand their language I think that part of it is that you have empathy you have been an engineer You know, you know how it feels you know what kind of problems are facing and That that is helping you build a better relationship with your team So try to walk in customer shoes as much as you can Another important thing is to really really need to communicate clearly and simply Every group and department has their own languages and I would encourage you to try to adopt your language according to the Audience every time you communicate whether that's a verbal Where you write something or you present try to put yourself on the receiver side and Then try to think about it from the point of view of what do I get out of this? I Would encourage you to present and do demos of your products and features whenever you have a chance Trust me. It takes a lot of times and practice To be able to do all these short and great presentations that we have seen In my previous job We had a new product That was we were building it very quickly. We had a short one-week cycles and I decided to record one-minute demos and to Share them with the stakeholders and the management to report on our progress and people I send a couple of them people like them So I continue doing it But even though they were one minute videos Trust me took me much more than one one minute to to record them at the best It would take me five or ten minutes to record them and You will see if you try to do it yourself try to record the video of a minute of the feature you want to present You will start like hey, I would like to show Okay, stop record again. Hi, you know you start and then you get to a point is a user you often struggle with the and then Stop record again. So it takes time and takes practice to be able to Do short Demos I'm sure that and this is something that I sometimes is challenging for me still I'm sure that when I see the recording of this presentation I will find at least a few places where I could have done better job Then then what I'm doing now And I wanted to also share with one interesting quote from bless Pascal French physicist philosopher scientists In one of his long letters well at the end he says I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time You probably have heard this expression Try not to fall between two souls if you are a tech lead and at the same time product manager and Some of us and I've been in that spot I've been put into the situation whether your companies introducing product management Positions and someone needs to take that role or you're the product manager quiets. So you as a tech lead you try to Cover for for him or her Try to drop one of those roles because it's these roles are really Complementary and it would be really hard to be successful in both Deciding what to build and then deciding how you're going to build it and what you're going to commit on and to execute It's it might be smooth because you are one person making all the decision, but It's not going to be the best for the customers and in a retrospect when I think about this and my Situation when I was managing a team and being a product manager. I I don't think I did the best job for the customer so if Some of you might have The the world or title of technical product manager and being known as a technical can Can have its own on on biases you will Likely be by default assigned to more technical products and that's for If you think about it, if you're putting your shoes in your manager not The whole team of product managers will not be technical and even your manager might not be technical and very often You have products that require more technical knowledge.  So you would need to work harder to To be asked to be given ownership of Non-technical not technical products In my in my own experience. I am I I had the role of technical product manager for some time and I remember I wanted to not I Wanted to own products that are not necessarily just technical and I went to my manager said hey Can we you know just erase this this technical work from my role and he said like you really care about this You're gonna do the same job. Anyways, he's like, I don't care. We can remove it if you want. He said yeah, let's do it So we did that and and suddenly it was so much easier just by that For me to be seen differently and to be given products and more exposure to the customers and You probably from time to time will get on linking these messages. Hey so and so there is this interesting role Are you interested to talk about it? Before when I was technical product manager, maybe eight out of ten would be for a technical product manager spot Then it was the other way around nothing changed in my experience In my resume, but just the perception sometimes can make quite of a difference. So be be just be conscious about it It's a product manager Pretty much every department in the company is your Stakeholder so you really need to to to build good relationships with them and And this is sort of like a like a domino effect right try to understand how what you do can benefit them and make their jobs easier So when doing that, this will create the willingness of them to collaborate more with you which will then lead to For you to be a influencer and being an influencer can make you more successful in your job Technical conferences are always great, but As a product manager, it's also very important for you to attend non technical Or industry-related events and when on those events try to network and learn about With people as much as possible and try to learn about their perspectives and experience Rather than just talking about your your experience. I remember In my first year as in education technology I would attend this South by Southwest EDU. It was maybe the best conference for education and Even though you do your research and everything is available online I would find so much great stuff there. I will meet so many interesting people They would really change my perspective. I will always come back with a lot of enthusiasm and ideas Oh It's a park manager you might have a remote team that will not be sitting next to you and This is this is reality these days I would highly encourage you to to put an effort to go meet and spend time with your team from time to time We at my current company at at all of it We have an engineering hub in core of Argentina So we we periodically go there To work and collaborate with the team. I think that it's You know, there is no the digital tools are getting better and better, but we are humans. I don't think that any digital tool can completely Replace the face-to-face be a storyteller. This is very important. So and why stories are easier to remember and Ability to tell good stories can really help your career and your success as product manager I hope that some of the stories that I shared tonight will stick with you and that will help you deal with situations better than me And there are always online resources, right? So these are I've selected few that I've used myself so to get you started I would recommend to read the lean startup book There is a short course from Steve blank on Udacity about how to build startup And then there are a few blocks including the product school blog that I think it's It's it's a good start and just to close the presentation The reason that I transitioned into product management was I wanted to be closer to the customer and their needs I wanted to be to have more say and decision-making power To be more involved in the product strategy and to have to be part of the whole life cycle of product development so But I realized that you don't You sometimes can you end up being in the role you don't always know that you want to do it, but I would And that's a great opportunity But I would recommend you like don't stay there if you're not interested or if you have not built some interest Stay there if you if you want to do it Because product management, it's not better than engineering nor engineering is better than than product management They're both you can have amazing careers and you can be very happy and engage in both of them Try to make the career shift based on your interest All right, thank you I Don't think I I can say there is an ideal candidate. It really depends on the Role that you are hiring for it also depends on the current structure of the team and what kind of a competency you need sometimes You need more industry knowledge sometimes you don't so it really depends but When I'm interviewing what I want to see is that? That the product managers have a business owner kind of thinking That they really Can't understand customers problems that they know how to prioritize Then that they're passionate about the work that they're doing that they have great analytical skills In the past I've also looked a lot into how strong technical skills they have but I've realized that That's not necessarily that that important so being a business owner Kind of thinking it's much more important than having great technical skills. Yes Well bad examples it's obvious is when people tell you what they want and This also happens when you I would say this is can also be typical when you transition from engineering and product Now you're suddenly closer to the customer and they say this is what I want. You are great I got this and then you switch your mindset.  You know how to solve this great deal But that's I think that's a bad example. I think that you should always Challenge Regardless what they say challenge try to understand what actually they need and what kind of problems you're solving because What I ask you to do Might be very different than what their intent is and why they're asking you to do that and keep in mind There is no there is no formula I've I've Speaking with many park managers and some of them that I've interviewed you say well We have this matrix and we assign weight about this this and that there is no formula There are a lot of factors when prioritizing Some of them can be and first you start with the business value and what kind of problems you're solve Then you look into current commitments and and how this new new new thing fits into your current commitment that you have made then You look into how does This thing fit within the strategy of your company. It might be something that Even though it's important for certain customers. It's not does not really fit within your strategy or the strategy at the moment then other factors even beyond that could be You Can build things or new products if for example if you want to be focused more on growth So you're focusing on your products. You don't care. You can just put more people to service them You don't care about How easy or harder to be used you can also try for example your company might be in a period when They say you know what now. We really want to be profitable. So what we want to do is make sure that We can support a Lot more customers with less effort. So in that case you're looking into How much this improves the whole onboarding process? How much this improves the ability of the support team to respond to this question and whatnot? So it really depends. I will summarize again. It's the business value What how does this fit into the strategy of the company and Whether your company is focused on growth whether your company is focused on efficiency I'm sorry. Can you can you say it again? That's a good question. I in which sense breakthrough. I I would say let me think I would say really the shift of the mindset between Outputs and outcomes was one of the one of the biggest one. I Was puzzled. I was really puzzled how With the very little work or just by talking with a couple of people In the kitchen you can actually Deliver a lot more value than just spending hours and hours in building things. I was puzzling It even bothered me to the point like oh, this is so easy, but it's actually the right focus That helps you so output Understanding how much more the outputs. I'm sorry the outcomes are important than the outputs itself No, no, we are not we are not biased towards hiring more technical I mean product manager with technical experience that's Understanding how the products are built. It's always an advantage But we are really looking more for business owners In my career as I mentioned earlier. I thought having the great engineering background It's a very big Advantage because I myself am an engineer and I went through the path, but I realized that that doesn't make a huge difference maybe if I don't want to say that this is universal of course, but If if the role is super super technical Maybe yes But for the most of the most of the roles that I've seen with most of the people I've I've talked with it Doesn't matter as much Yes So once it transitioned and then being product like do you think you? Like change as a person as well like you know in product You're just like thinking about so much so many more things and maybe you're like talking to more people Do you think over the years like why you did at your job? Is that like how did that influence like I? Don't know how you feel or like how you think what sort of things like would you say you came out the more Around the person or do you think? I I I think that that helped me be more well around the person One of the things it helped me do is learn how to listen Because you will You will be speaking with people that have so many different perspectives and And that's that's where you get the most value from so Knowing how to listen It's it's really really important and that helped me and not just professionally, but also also privately Yeah The product Yeah, so My transition actually was was very very quick and sort of coincidental So I would say that When I made a decision to take this job at Thompson Reuters where I would be a technical product manager in the same time Being an acting engineering manager for all the engineers we had I Don't I don't think that I really thought this through in too much detail. They really happened so quickly I think that from one end I was comfortable that there was part of that role that I've been doing for years For the engineering manager, so that was fine. The other part was was interesting. I think that after that when I went from that position to Implify I Didn't have so much fear, but I had more sort of frustrations because I Soon realize why I had to start from from scratch Because I it was obviously when when I would speak with more senior product people. I did not have those skills but I've always Wanted love to learn and I I often try to get challenged by some problems or Every now and then I want to learn something new so to me that was pretty motivating So there is whole world that I've been part of in the engineering that I don't know about and these guys are great So it was really motivating for me to to learn that and to to catch up Yes Customer Whether I had challenges to get to get yeah I've had that I think that Actually, we were we were at amplify we had a consulting consulting project and then but For us the problem was that that our key contacts were not actually the customers But it was this consulting company that was channeling requirements through through the consultants and We we were raising our concerns all the time because we really did not have Access to the customers neither the users and we were building a lot of stuff in vacuum We used a lot of the Institutional knowledge that we had in the company because we had a lot of educators to try to get as close as possible To the customers. So we had a lot of teachers there. We had a lot of principles But I would say that that was a hack. It wasn't a solution and at the end the project was not that successful and right now, I think this part of manager and very sort of I try to be not not not forceful, but like persistent into getting what I need and But I've been lucky to have To be in a company that really encourages that our questions. Yes I think that The challenges is first I believe in a in every healthy organization both of them are full-time jobs so you're practically trying to do two full-time jobs and What I've learned in my experience is You'll be easier it will be easier for you to do your manager job Then to do your job and your colleague's job at the same time. So in terms of you can be a tech lead Successful tech lead if you not do not complete Everything your full-time minute also, I think that the way those two roles are are so sort of They're built to challenge each other So It's harder, you know to challenge yourself and say oh, this is what I think that we need to build and then oh, yeah This is great idea. Let's do it and then you come up with the solution That's that's hard and I think that our space both in the product space and Engineering space is changing a lot. So to to keep up with all the the greatest and latest technologies That are coming out By spending just part-time on the job It's it's really really difficult, you know, you can be competent and and providing good solutions for engineering But in a year or so unless that's your main focus You cannot you cannot keep up with that So I would say drop if you're in that spot and you like product management try to drop one of the roles And be special as the AI one thing That we have realized in the last company exited Listening to customers is of course But what we have seen in a few cases is talking directly to customers and the journey of them might need you Because they try to Though the features might not be good for them in the long term because when we were pushing for AI They were pushing for a real customer service executive What was happening is that would only increase the cost and reduce the quality of service What are some of the other tools that you have that you can use to gather feedback But Yeah, so that's a great question. So we use a lot of data So you can look into a lot of quantitative data and see That on top of the feedback that you get from the customers what you also and we do this often is when Speaking with customers you you try to to try to understand and not just the part of Like how they use your own product, but you try to really understand how how does their work look like? What are the challenges in what you do? So you try to look beyond your product You also I think especially if you want to be one of the more successful ones You should be looking into some industry trends and and shifts that are happening and sometimes you just have a vision, you know, you want you need to be visionary and you will I would encourage to Have a way and have your organization be open to try to experiment different things In our company we do this a lot. We experiment a lot of things and most of them Most of them Will not succeed, but we always try to learn from that Some of it is just it's not a good idea. The customers did not respond the way you wanted Some of that is it's just not about the right time and we will revise this in the future. I think it's It's it's challenging But as you know most of the for the product managers that the fear I read one serve run survey and most of The main fear of the most of the product manager was that I'm not confident if in what I'm building is the right thing So that will always I think remain like that. So we use We do we do in-person interviews With customers and visit them as much as we can we look into the standard analytics like Google analytics. We also use chart here to build chart here to build to reports You know for whatever we want Sometimes we we also use if you've heard a full story That's an interesting tool that helps you understand. It's it's it's more like a recording of how everyone is I wonder if you have suggestions for things that I can do I Would say be I'm not sure if you have the opportunity currently, but if your company Speak with the existing product managers or account managers. I don't know what the structure is though that are having Meetings or research session or co-op session with customers try to listen in Ask them to include you in those meetings. I think that That's a that's one one. What good thing to do Often in many companies there will be one or for temporary or small projects Where you don't necessarily have a real team and real product management structure Try to partner with some product managers and try to see whether you can be a lead on a small Project, it doesn't have to be big. I would try that Then you know speak get to know them better speak with them tell them that you're interested in it if you work with the product manager as the product manager whether you can whether they can delegate something to you and Try to get some more experience about it as them for advice People value, you know like to be asked for advice. You just If you have any formal groups of product management in your company try to join that and That's that's some of the things that you can do to put you up there, but Share, you know share your intentions tell your manager this I'm really interested in this Tell a good story why you're interested and why you think you can do that Then maybe they will have some creative ideas. How can they? Help you get some skills at the very minimum so they can trust you with with that role


All right guys, here we are again day number three at the 21 convention London the men's conference of The century. Yeah, exactly. So coming to the stage next is a very animated fun guy and If nothing else, you'll love his hairstyle. Please welcome Sasha day game Thanks, dude. Cool What's up? I know you're all thing.  No, no, how you guys doing you guys enjoying the cell?   Trust me. Trust me. Look at me.    It's always been about just having fun entertaining ourselves. It's like a really key thing And like me personally I've been doing stand-up comedy my whole life Since I was like 18 years old. That's that's it. I've never done anything else. I've never had a real job I've just always been telling jokes and And that's kind of really permeated through throughout my existence and And I just I just love making people smile.  I want to you know, that's my whole life is about just making people smile I love it and throughout the years. I you know I brought other elements into that so like, you know being really direct recently I've been on this massive direct thing.    Oh, I gotta I gotta keep my shoulders back and I gotta I have a good body line No, man, do you think do you think if you come to a girl and you're having a blast and you're just immediately?   We'll just don't look at that.   There's just a group of people and they're just having fun. They don't care They don't care. They're being loud. They don't care people are watching them.      I don't have to fake any stuff. I don't have to build any attraction The chick like like I'll be telling the girl what I really feel. I'll be like, oh my god Because I'm being me.   You're you've got a great energy. I fucking, you know, I love you You're so cool and that's all true.  That's just fun and uh And always it's always about me. That's the thing. This is always about me It's not about oppressing anyone. It's not about anyone else but you it's all about you Hmm, this is the one area where you can just be selfish man.  Okay, and this is something that Marcus taught me actually initially. That's right I told you I would plug you properly Uh, so much of the stuff like I've learned more from this guy than anybody um And so it's pre frames


And welcome back to the trading floor on the AmpliMe podcast. It feels like it's been a while. It does. But Piers has returned. He's been on, I feel like he's been Frodo Baggins out on his journey through Middle Earth and he's returned to the podcast. So how's it going Piers? It's going well. Yeah, I've returned to the Shire to the comfort of the podcast seat. Yeah, no, it's been good. Been on a bit of a trip, not too far. It's still a European road show, Paris and Dublin. So yeah, good to be back. Yeah, well, welcome back. And look, no other person better than to break down what is our main topic today. Because we're going to talk about one thing, because when you actually take the lid off this subject, it starts to unpack a number of contributing factors. And that is the one that you probably would have read a lot about this week, which is oil prices. And from a consumer level, I guess, just when you thought, oh, we're on the other side of inflation now. It's looking good. Interest rates in the UK. Maybe we're not going to go higher. Well, you might have to hold your horses at the moment. Because inflation is back on the table. But mainly oil prices. We know energy is very volatile. But oil does look destined for $100 a barrel again. And if that is the case, it's the first time in more than a year. But what exactly has been supporting this consistent run-up in prices? Because we've been going up now for a number of consecutive weeks. And we know Saudi Arabia and Russia. And we will touch a little bit about OPEC. That is a major contributing factor to why oil has been doing what it's been doing, i.e. moving higher. But what we're going to talk about is a couple of other things to kind of deconstruct this. And that's talk about the bigger, broader macro scene. So since Piers was last with us, we've had a hawkish-fed materialized. And we've had some really super interesting moves across global markets. When I say that, I mean multi-asset. And actually looking at correlations gives you a really good snapshot of market sentiment. And we'll look to have a look at what that snapshot is telling us right now. Then we'll look to talk about things like infantries in the US. This thing called Cushing in Oklahoma you may not have heard of. But it's critical really to understanding oil prices. We're also going to have a look at the shape of the futures curve and this thing called backwardation. Again, may not have heard that. I'm really going to test Piers' ability to try and explain that in as simple terms as possible. And I'm sure he can even touch a little bit on his own experience of having traded spreads many years ago when he used to trade for a US firm. And then we're going to look at, more importantly, the impact that this could have then on forward-looking monetary policy. And therefore, as a consequence, the wider economy. So that's what you're in for. So to kick us off, why don't we start Piers with the bigger picture? And then we'll look to drill down. Well, it's been an interesting week and month. And of course, we're sliding into the end of quarter three here. So from a trading point of view, this is the last trading day of quarter three. So it's always a bit of a moment to go right, how things been performing across the quarter and then year to day. And it is a fact. Here we are on this final day. And right now, the S&P is down 5% on the month. And it's heading for its first quarterly decline in over 12 months. So stocks have really come off the boil. In combination with that, treasuries, so US bonds, their prices are also dropping. So you've got stock prices going down. You've got bond prices going down. And actually, from a yield point of view, with bonds, yields move in the opposite direction to price. And right now, 10-year yields at the highest level they've been since 2007. Two-year yields, highest since 2006. Oils smashing it up through the ceiling. You've got some really, really big action going on across global markets. And it's all about, I mean, what happened last week, what happened on Wednesday evening last week, which was the Fed's meeting. And the Fed were more hawkish than expected. And ultimately, you'll have been reading in the press, its interest rates higher for longer. And it's just that message being hammered home by the Fed. And it's really led to a sharp adjustment of future interest rate expectations. So what do we think's going to happen to US interest rates? It's quite dramatically changed. If you go back a few weeks, then markets were basically pricing in and expecting that by the end of 2024, the Fed are going to start to cut interest rates. And by the end of that year, rates would be down to 4.2%. That was the expectation. Now, given what's been happening, the US economy has been strong, much more resilient than expected. Oil prices are now rising, leading to fresh concerns that inflation, the inflation saga isn't over. Maybe we'll get another bout of inflation, which hawks back, by the way, to the 1970s. Because in 1970, or in the 70s, sorry, we had a big inflation scenario. And there was a double oil spike. Oil went up just as we thought inflation was coming back down and it's back under control. There was an oil price spike that led to a second bout of inflation. So people are starting to think, oh, hang on a minute, this oil move, is that going to lead to the same scenario? But ultimately, those interest rate expectations, as I said, it used to be we thought, right, cuts next year, like four interest rate cuts to take rates to 4.2%. Now the expectation is that rates will be at 4.8% still by the end of next year. Also, so there's a thing called the dot-plot matrix. This is Fed officials at the end of each quarter. They adjust their forward guidance. And they tell us where they think rates might be at the end of this year, the end of next year, 2024, end of 2025, and then in the longer run. And really that is the dot-plot matrix that set the cat amongst the pigeons and why all these markets are pinging off to levels we haven't seen for years. And ultimately, the Fed have told us through that dot-plot that there's maybe one more rate hike this year. We thought we were done, but they're telling us there might be one more to take to rates up to 5.75%. And then more importantly, because we're basically at the top, right? One more hike, yeah, okay, it's not going to make too much difference, but we thought we're at the top when maybe not quite, but the big point is about 2024. We thought they would have to start cutting rates and basically the Fed are telling us that they're not going to. So connect the dots for me here then. What's this domino effect? You're saying the odds are up. They're the highest they've been in a long time. How does that impact all of them? Well, I mean, I would say, so basically everything's gone down, right?  It actually, it doesn't. Oil's actually doing its own thing. Oil is rallying for a set of entirely different reasons. And actually the oil price rally is exacerbating our concern that inflation is going to go back up and the Fed aren't going to be able to cut rates and rates will be higher for longer. So oil's doing its own little thing here and we'll talk about that in a sec. But, you know, yield's going up. This is like, I want to talk about this because this is really, it's really important what's happening out there. And you need to go and if you can dig out like a long-term sort of US 10 year yield chart, go on to like tradingeconomics.com or something like that. And yields have really spiked and they've smashed up through 4% on a 10 year basis. They're up above 4.5% now. I mean, the move in the last seven trading days has been awesome. I mean, for bonds, it's like one of the biggest moves, certainly the biggest move maybe of the whole year, right? And this has put us at levels we haven't seen since pre-crisis now. So we had a big move up in yields in 2022, but we got to 4% and then that was the kind of ceiling and then we pulled back down. But this is a proper move into territory that we just haven't seen now for over 15 years. And so what does that mean? Well, it means borrowing's more expensive, right? Because the US 10 year yield is a classic benchmark upon which yields for corporate debt is really set, right? So if a company wants to borrow money, a big company, they'll issue bonds. And right, that's borrowing money. You've got to pay interest on that. Well, what's the interest rate? So this is the yield on these bonds, right? And the yield is really a function of that US treasury. And so companies will borrow at a rate that's higher than the US 10 year yield. And so, yeah, ultimately this rate move is quite extraordinary. And it's been actually on the longer end of the curve. So if you listen to our podcast regularly, we haven't mentioned it for quite a while, but we've been talking about things like yield curve inversion where shorter yields, so let's say a two year yield is higher than a longer yield, let's say 10 year. It's an unusual scenario and it's, we call it the classic recession indicator, right? So it hardly ever happens, but basically I think the last, whatever the stat is, the last seven times we've had the yield curve inverting every single time we've had a recession, except for this time, maybe. It's always the first time, Piers. There is always the first time, but at the moment we haven't seen that recession yet, but the thing is these yields moving higher, I would say make the recession risk higher, because right, borrowing costs are greater, so people are gonna borrow less, then they're gonna invest less, they're gonna spend less, and that kind of starts to erode away at that consumption story, which ultimately then could possibly lead us down the path of a recession. And at the same time, you've got oil ramping higher and then, oh no, is inflation back? And actually the Fed gonna have to hike rates and then yields will go higher again, and we might be caught maybe into year end here for quarter four, maybe we might get caught in this little bit of a kind of negative feedback loop. If oil does continue to rise, then yeah, we could be in for an interesting end of the year. Well, just sticking with central banks to continue this line of questioning then before we go into what happened so much this week. One being then, I saw a comment out of Standard Chartered and they suggested that a hawkish Fed could turn out to be a blessing in disguise this time round, since it's likely to cause OPEC producers to be more cautious for longer. What do you take of that? Um, so what do they mean by that? OPEC producers being more cautious, do they mean that the OPEC producers will continue to maintain their production cuts? So I'm not sure what they mean by the caution word there. Yeah. I just try to see if I can dig out the full piece and what they're referencing. But I guess maybe what they're saying is that ultimately if the Fed stay hawkish, that's a negative for the whole sort of broader growth story. Right. That would mean that demand for oil dampens, because one of the contributing factors to this oil price rise, and there's a few, but one of them is that, well, the economy's, the economic situation's been way better than anybody could have possibly imagined in 2023 so far. So that resilient growth story has meant demand for oil has been greater in 2023 than we had expected. So that increase in demand thing has led to prices going up. Maybe they're referring to ultimately the Fed's gonna damage that demand story by being more hawkish and therefore prices will come back down. So OPEC don't have to continue to, or even if OPEC stand pat and continue with their production cuts, it will be the weakening demand story that helps to bring oil prices back down. Maybe that's what they mean. And then what about someone like the ECB where late to the game was always with loosening and tightening of policy. Yeah. And they're facing a more protracted slowdown in economic growth, but a more slightly different prospects in terms of inflation and where they're at with their hiking cycle. Are they the one that you talked about Q4? So is the Eurozone the one to watch in Q4 in particular? Yeah. And to add to that story, of course, the engine room of the Eurozone, Germany is having a shocker at the moment. Economically they are looking, I mean, wow, it's like all of a sudden it's like they've just fallen out of bed and it's the economic outlook is incredibly negative. And again, talking about kind of negative feedback loops, when the economic situation becomes so dire, it kind of feeds the narrative and feeds people's then behavior and they start to prepare for the recession. But of course, starting to prepare for the recession means the recession happens sooner or is deeper. Because when you prepare for a recession, well, you maybe start to save rather than spend. And of course, that's the action that leads to consumption dropping and the recession coming. So the Eurozone, if it's big engine room, Germany being the biggest economy in the Eurozone, of course, if that does falter and stutter and stall, then that's a big issue for the Eurozone. And if you've got oil prices, because obviously, the Eurozone is a big importer of oil. They don't produce much oil. So they got to buy it. And so they're very vulnerable to energy price spikes like this. Which makes me feel like I'm gonna put my Putin radar on. Feels like a Putin-esque time. Yeah. If you're gonna talk a little leverage now. Yeah, just to put the boot on the neck. Yeah. Interesting to watch on that front. But let's take a look then at oil prices this week and particularly mid-week. So from kind of Tuesday through Wednesday, we essentially rallied from around 88 bucks to 95 bucks a barrel. And that's a large move in a 24-hour period. And we've had some pretty seesaw price action actually. After rising that much, we then have declined from 95 and we're trading a just sub 92 handle at the moment. So it has come off the boil a little bit. But when you see a move like that, long trend has been up, but that move has been accelerated over that timeframe. So what was the reason for this week's jump? Because that Wednesday move was the biggest we've seen since early May. Yeah, monster move. Let's just quickly cover up. So the trends higher anyway, right? And that's mainly because of something I've already mentioned, which is the demand story has been much more positive than we have thought because economic resilience, despite interest rates being high, certainly in the US, the economy's still firing, right? So demand's been high. Secondly, OPEC and OPEC plus, so including Russia, cut production. And then they extended those production cuts. So just as demand's been a positive story, then supply has been dropping. So both of those two factors, force price is higher. And just to give you an idea on the supply side, so those OPEC plus, those extra cuts will have basically removed 125 million barrels from the market by the end of September, okay? And then by the end of the year, if they maintain those cuts, which we expect them to, then basically the market from a supply point of view will be 245 million barrels worse off, okay? So that's that supply side. Now, this week, so the market's going up anyway, but then all of a sudden this week, something happened, an entirely different thing, that led to a big spike in a monster rally that took us, yeah, in sight of the $100 mark. We didn't make it to $100 yet, but this is all about US supply.  It's basically banned dead center of the United States. And other than being geographically dead center, it's big claim to fame is that it's the biggest storage facility of crude oil in the US. And it's the key facility that the golf of Mexico production, that oil gets piped up to Cushing in the middle. And then right from Cushing, it then kind of fires off in all directions to kind of supply the whole country. So Cushing is an incredibly important, the most important delivery point for crude oil that's been produced in the Gulf of Mexico, okay? So right, the supply of oil at Cushing is a really key factor when it comes to the oil supply. Derivatives markets. So if you trade what's called WTI crude oil futures, okay, so a future being a derivatives contract, then these, when you're trading a derivative where the underlying is a physical asset, so crude oil, a barrel of crude oil. So a derivative, a futures contract is basically a financial agreement between a buyer and a seller where you're agreeing a trade that will take place in the future. You're agreeing price and you're agreeing volume and you're agreeing a date on which the buyer will buy barrels of crude oil from the seller, okay? Now, on that date in the future, that's the delivery date, okay? Now, if you're trading WTI futures contracts in the contract, you can only take delivery at Cushing. Now, you can only take delivery at Cushing if there's enough supply at Cushing. And what happened, the trigger point for this big rally to the upside last Wednesday was inventory data being announced from Cushing and Cushing showed that inventory yet again had dropped and actually it's fallen 12 out of the last 13 weeks. Inventory levels in Cushing have been falling and stocks are now down 19 million barrels and that puts it at a 10 year, that puts it at below the kind of 10 year seasonal average basically and we've got a big deficit of, yeah, here we go. So it's the Cushing stocks are actually the lowest they've been since 2014 and then again a moment in 2008, all right? So these are extreme, extreme levels. And by the way, just a side point, the last time Cushing inventory levels were this low in 2014, what was the price of oil? $121. And then in 2008, the other time Cushing inventories were this low, what was the price of oil? $148. $148. So those out there that are gunning for oil to smash the $100 barrier and move higher, well, there's some pretty compelling evidence that would suggest that that may well happen in the days to come. But so you've got this supply issue in Cushing, right? Now, go back, I've got to tell the story, go back a few months now because the whole macro picture was, well, the Fed's been hawkish, the rate hiking cycle accelerated, surely we're gonna have a recession, the yield curves inverted, right? So some hedge funds were starting to build some pretty big short crude oil positions using WTI crude oil futures contracts. They were short oil because they thought the demand story, which had been amazingly resilient, well, that story's over, we think demand's now gonna drop and fight, let's get short crude oil futures. But the problem that these hedge funds have had is that actually the demand stories continued to stay resilient and now there's a chronic supply issue at Cushing and basically they've been forced and as the price is going up, they're losing money on their short position and they're being asked to post more margin and they can't take delivery anyway because there's no oil at Cushing and they're basically being forced to cover their short positions, which means if you're short and you need to take that position off, you need to buy. So on Wednesday, the Cushing data was the trigger point, it was like the last nail in the coffin for these hedges to go, oh, God, we've got to get out. So huge buying volume with not much sell side volume on the book led to a big spike. So the upside and we got, yeah, WTI got up to what was it, like $95 basically. So that would explain then the mechanics of that short covering, then finishing, why the price then drops pretty immediately down $3 after it gets pumped. Yeah, well, that's right. So what's happened overnight, like, oh, yesterday, so it wasn't it, yeah, we dropped from $95 down to $92 or actually lower, sorry, $91 or yeah, we got down almost to $91, so big, big move. So that, like, once all the hedge funds are out, well, prices, I guess you could say, you could argue that price is artificially and temporarily too high because you've had a rapid move to the upside purely based on this slight technical trade situation with these hedge funds. And so once all that's played out and the price skyrockets, well, then you get other speculators coming in going, well, hang on a minute. It shouldn't be that high yet. So you've probably got some short-term money coming in and selling, you know, as you expect a mean reversion because that move was so rapid, you're like beyond the two standard deviation away from the mean and you're probably gonna get, so this is like a short-term mean reversion now that's going on, which is why the prices dropped back to 92. But look, I think the long-term trend is, well, we've obviously added to the upside, you know, over the last few days and yes, it dropped back yesterday, but I think, yeah, the trend, you know, the trend's gotta still be higher over the weeks to come. You would have thought given all the fundamentals. So just touching on OPEC and then maybe that kind of leans into a little bit the political side to talk about Biden and the SPR. One thing I read this week was that OPEC might actually want to be careful about overtightening the oil market for the reasons being that they'd be shooting themselves in the foot, essentially. So if, as they have done, kind of everything comes together. So originally, oil was declining consistently. They took that action and we've gone up 30 odd percent. But now all these other things are starting to crystallize. Are they shooting themselves in the foot? If they push price levels too much, they start to see an increased risk of demand destruction. Then the price, maybe this is what they were talking about, standard charter with that cautious nature is that maybe we need to come off this a little bit because if the price goes too high inflation kicks off too much. The Fed starts tightening too aggressively again. Yeah, it's actually gonna, in medium term, go against us.  If you're looking at WTI, we kind of spent the summer at 70 bucks. And that's too low, right? You often talk, people talk about, what's the right price for OPEC? What was their ideal price? And it's kind of thought to be about $90. And so, right, they cut production. Now, not in their wildest dreams, did they expect us to get to $90 so fast. And that's what they'll be concerned about. I think the current price today was $91.50 right now. Perfect, right? But what they need to be concerned about is the speed of the trend higher. And the problem is, if the speed of the trend higher now continues from this point, smashes $100, $110, right? Well, then it's too high. Then you're gonna get a negative economic outcome from energy prices being so high. And ultimately that leads to that demand destruction story. And ultimately you'll get global recession. And you'll see oil prices seesaw and swing all the way back down to too low again, right? So it's a super fine line, that kind of sweet spot between prices being high enough but not too high. So, yeah, I think the next few weeks are quite critical with this whole cushing thing, the futures contract that all this trading's been going on in. It's been the October expiry contract. So that contract will expire. I think it's on the third Thursday in October, if I'm right. And so I think once we get to that point and past that point, maybe this slight technical scenario in the oil futures market will kind of play out and come to an end, at least for a period. And then that might help to calm things down. But yeah, so the next few weeks you've got to be watching oil, that's where it's going to be at. And then kind of tying this in then to the US and their structural issues and then therefore the government's problem, I guess. Particularly with an election year looming. So one of the things was the US as we have been seeing leaning on OPEC, whether or not that relationship can yield results any more to have the desired outcome for the US administration. But the lack of drilling activity in the US has meant, and you've talked about this a lot, this kind of chronic lack of investment because of the economic climate and so forth. But it means then the US are only seeing modest supply growth and therefore not enough to offset these large deficit forecasts. And that forecast to give it some meaning, I read that the balance at the moment shows a deficit of more, this is physical, of more than 2 million barrels a day deficit through the fourth quarter of this year is what's forecasted at the moment. So when you talk about supply and demand dynamics, you're 2 million short on a drilling basis. It's interesting, that's the number because what was the OPEC cut? It was 2 million, wasn't it? I thought it was one. And I suppose Russia did top it up though and actually when you throw all the bits in. Not far off. Yeah, OPEC have got a tricky couple of months ahead. Do they maintain these cuts or actually not? So ultimately US supply is not really gonna help here. That's not gonna go up in any meaningful way to plug that gap. So if the US don't have a lever, or let's say a more of a circular wheel to crank, to open up the floodgates of oil, then they do have this thing called the strategic petroleum reserves, the SPR. So how does that play into this? Cause at the moment, if I'm right by my stats, after significant drawdowns last year, so this being the fact that when we were going through this price crisis, and when oil was surging higher as a byproduct of COVID compounded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and so forth, they dramatically took action as much as Biden was putting the heat on the lights of Saudi to pump more, to flood the market. So it's the opposite kind of where we're at in the OPEC strategy at this point. He then dipped into these reserves, this SPR. But that SPR is now the lowest levels since a very, very famous year, 1983. The year I was born. Infantry levels have never been so low. So the strategic stockpile the Americans have. Yeah. Is incredibly low in historical measure. So what, can he not just dip into that again? It's a dangerous game.  Yeah, I guess. So just thinking politically. Yeah, Biden's got an important 12 months, of course, where we just don't, whatever, 12, 14 months away from the election, right? And one thing that's incredibly important to the US population is the price of gasoline at the pump, okay? And it's, if it's really high, then everyone's annoyed and they blame the government, okay? So Biden tapped the SPR summer last year, when by the way, that's the last time oil got above $100. So this $100 level, that is a very, very key like psychological level. So if we get above 100, will he tap the emergency reserves like he did last time? But the big, huge risk with that is the more that you tap it, the less those reserves become. And imagine a moment where we've got oil above $100, you've got, you know, a structural deficit in terms of supply in the market and there's no emergency reserves to tap. Well, then where does the price of oil go? $150, $200, I don't know. So short-term, fine, you could go, oh, well, I wanna win the election, I'm gonna tap it. He probably will, because that's the problem with politics, right? It's such a short-term. You know, all he can see is I've got to win the election, I'll do whatever I can. But of course, long-term, that could cause some massive pricing, energy pricing issues like in the years to come. So it would be a super high-risk game, but he's probably gonna be desperate and might well go for it. Wow, watch this space. Okay, cool. Well, look, I think we should look to wrap it up there. So quite a few things that were going on. I do know that on the Spotify platform at least, there is an ability to leave questions directly on the episode. So please do make use of that function. If you joined in conversation, wherever you're watching this, don't forget to follow, like or subscribe, whichever one it is, and we will catch you again next week. But thank you, Piers. Have a great weekend.


In today's video, we're opening every Legendary Collection Game Board ever made. What's up, guys? We're back with another epic video, and we have all five Legendary Collection Game Boards, all the different ones, like Legendary Collection Yugi's World, Joey's World, we have the original with all, like, the God cards and stuff like that in it. But before we open those, we have a giveaway. I'll be giving away this Ancient Guardian's first edition booster box. All you have to do is like this video, be subscribed, turn on notifications, let me know your favorite Legendary Collection Game Board and your favorite pull from any of these. All right, guys, let's get into this. But before we do, let's just talk a little bit about the Legendary Collection Game Board. So the original Legendary Collections were not actually Game Boards. The first ones were like Binders. This one and Legendary Collection 2 both had a binder edition, and then they came out with these Legendary Collection Game Board editions, which I much prefer these because I don't have to, like, you know, move my camera around to show you guys everything. The Game Board actually fits on the camera, unlike the other thing, which is just insanely hard. It's a binder. You guys know how we do with binders. Inside all of these, there's like promos, there's different packs. Like, this is the only one specifically that has, like, actual packs. That's not, like, specifically Legendary Collection Mega Packs. This one itself has, like, Legend of Blue Eyes and stuff like that. So we're going to save this one for last because this one's actually maybe Yugi's World. This one will be towards the end. I think we're going to start off with Legendary Collection GX. This is another one that had the binder edition. It was the first edition print. This is unlimited. Some of these will be first edition because they came out first in the Game Boards rather than the binder. So we're going to open this one up first because I believe this is the cheapest one, except maybe Joey's cheaper, I don't know. Well, no, probably not because this is unlimited. So, yeah, I think this is the cheapest one. So we're going to start off with Legendary Collection 2. I thought this would be fun to open up all of these in one video. We'll go kind of go through the prices of each. I think this is around $75 for this one. So inside we have the Raviel. There's tons of promos. And then we have five Legendary Collection 2 Mega Packs. And they give you a Game Board thing. They're, like, kind of hard, though. They're a little bit map, but they're kind of hard. So you can't roll them up. They're not, like, rubber or anything, which is a lot better. All right, so we are going to do a Legendary Collection battle, basically. So we're going to see which one has the best value out of all five. So there's going to be a total up on the side. Keep in mind that some cost more than others, so they have an advantage. But I want to know down below in the comments, which one do you think will win? OK, let's go. And keep in mind, only $1 cards count. So if it's, like, $0.95, that does not count toward the tally. So let's start off with this one. We have a Destiny Hero Doomlord. Very nice. Spark Blaster. Elements will hear a wild heart. Very cool card. We have a Destiny Hero Diamond Duke, so super rare. All of these Legendary Collection Mega Packs have a super and ultra, a secret and a rare inside. So there's our super and there's our secret rare destiny draw. As you can see, these are unlimited. Very nice. The Shuttendoji and the Bubble Shovel. So very nice. Flare Nios and Rottweiler. A lot of these Legendary Collections also have commons worth quite a bit, so those could add up as well. Next pack, Legendary Collection 2. Let's see what we can pull. We have a Hero Mariner. We have a Thunder King Ryo. I believe that this one might be worth a little bit as well. I'm not really sure. Rainbow Nios, this is actually pretty big value. Yeah, I think this card's worth like six, seven bucks. That's a very good super rare. Evil Hero Melissa's Edge. I believe this one's also pretty good, secret rare. We have a Crystal Tree. I still don't think this is good, even with all the Hyper Crystal Beasts, but not really sure. D-Time and then Instant Nio Space. Very nice. Card Trooper. Could be worth something as well for in like a Edison format. Third pack, I think we're doing OK so far for Legendary Collection 2. Not too bad. Let's see what we can get. This is a pretty fun opening. I was been excited about this for a few weeks. Non-Fusion, we got the Cold Enchanter, the D-Shield, very nice. Anishi Sheehan's Chancellor. All right, and a super rare. Phantom Sky Blaster. I feel like this used to be like 10 bucks, and I don't really know if it is anymore. Akasha, this is a card that was, I think this was in Duel Links for a little bit. Rosebud, we have a D-Spirit, and then we have a Mazuki, another really nice card for zombies. Two packs to go. So far, we're doing decent. Oh yeah, and also our promos. I think this is around 10 bucks for this, so that's gonna be added to the value as well. We have a Clayman, a Judgment Dragon. I think this one's actually money. I think that's a few bucks there. Crystal Pear, we have a rare value Crystal Beast back at it again. Gladiator Beast, Toplimus, not one of the best Glad's Beasts, but it is 2100 Defense. Card Blocker, and Hero Flash, very nice, and a Sparkman. Pretty solid performance, but we haven't pulled anything big out of the Secret Rare slot. Let's see if we can do that here. We have a Crystal Beast, Amber Mammoth, a Hero Heart, Elements of Hero, Aqua Nios. All these Elements of Heroes are at least a couple bucks, usually. Destiny Hero Disc Commander, also a pretty decent one, not bad. Elements of Hero, Divine Nios, and a Poison Rose. Okay, not the best showing for GX, but I wouldn't say it was too bad. I think we did pretty decent overall. I would say they probably got $30 in value, something like that, maybe a little bit less. I'm gonna give a guess, and you guys are gonna see how wrong I am, based on how well we did, versus the actual total. All right, next up, we have Legendary Collection, Joey's World. This is first edition, because this only came out in first edition, so that's pretty cool. They probably will re-wave it at some point in an unlimited, I would expect, so maybe the first editions will go up at that point, but right now they are the only version. I think this is around 100 to 125. I can't really remember exactly. Let's see what we can pull. The promo pack in here is actually worth something. I think it's like $15 to $20 for this. So this is actually pretty valuable. The Blue Flame Swordsman's really cool. All right, so we have our pretty expensive pack there. Then we have five mega packs of Joey's World. I really like Joey's World. It's similar to Yugi's World, but just a few differences. It's kind of weird. They took a lot of the same Cigarism, put them in here. I guess the Harpy stuff, and then of course, there's more Joey stuff in here, but there's a lot of like similar repeats. We have a Malevolent Mech Goku-In Fiendish Engine. We've got the Giganto. I wonder if this is worth something. I think this is like an old school card that just got a reparent for the first time in here. So this could be worth something. Red Eye Zombie Dragon. We've got the Dunamis Dark Witch. I like how they put the rare first in this one instead of like last, like they did in a Legendary Collection too. Dunamis Dark Witch. We got a Compulsory Evacuation Device. That's a good secret rare, very good. And then a Pyramid's Earl. This might be worth something as well, seeing a zombie super rare, very nice. Rival Jam and Kunai with Chain. What is this? All right, next pack of Joey's World. His world is Joey. Let's see. Can we pull something epic? We have, ooh, a Zoa right at the front. Very cool card to pull. All right, nice, common. We've got a Barrel Dragon. I think Zoa could be worth a little bit. Chain Instruction, rare. We have a Stray Lambs. I don't think that's very good, but ooh, look how shiny in rainbow it is when you move that around, that's cool. And then a MST Mystical Space Typhoon. That's nice. And an Elegant Egotist. So that's not really a bad pack there. Elegant Egotist is pretty decent, I think. I'll pal it on a First Dragon, Twin Barrel, and Metal. Metal Zoa, and Zoa in the same pack. Those are pretty decent. All right, three packs to go. So far, pretty decent, I would say. I don't, okay, because of the promo pack, that was like half plus of the value of the last one. Ooh, Chaos Trap Hole. Is this worth something? The original print is. I don't know if that one is or not. Ryukoki, all right, very cool. We've got the, oh, I wonder if the, yeah, this doesn't have a lot of prints either. So maybe that one's good too. Priestess, Harpy Queen, got a Lart print, so probably not as valuable anymore. And then a Gravekeeper Spy. I bet this one's pretty good, because it's a secret rare version of a Gravekeeper card. So if you're playing Gravekeepers, this is such a good card in like old school. And then an Amazonus Paladin, very nice. So seems like a pretty good opening so far. I feel like they might be getting close to the Legendary Collection GX value already, which is pretty insane. It's gonna be tough to beat Yugi's World, I think. I think Yugi's World's probably the favorite, but we'll see. We have a Volcanic Corruption. There is a lot of duds in Yugi's World though. The Zola added again. Okay, we got that. We got the Barrel Dragon. Beast of Tawar, very cool. The Imperial Iron Wall has been money like in like OTS pack, so I think it is. And Silva, Warlord of Dark World with the Dark World stuff coming out. These cards all went up. That's really nice. And then an Amazonus Paladin again. Okay, that's kind of weird. Tweed of King Rex and Magic Jammer. I think I remember this being like two bucks for some reason. I don't know why that is, but maybe it doesn't have a lot of prints. All right, let's go. Final pack of Joey's World. So far done pretty good. Shadow Ghoul. Okay, Volcanic Corruption. Can we get a big card? We got the Gravekeeper's Visionary. Gravekeeper's Stele. Saber Sword, this is not one of the secrets you want. Okay, that's kind of a dud. And then Super Rejuvenation. Okay, nice. Second Cointoss, maybe Decent as well. Snake Hair and Regenerating Mummy. Okay, that's gonna be close I think between Joey and GX. So far we are in an interesting battle here. I don't think anybody has a clear winner yet. Third up, I think it is time for Legendary Collection 5Ds. Let's go. Let's see what we can pull. This one actually came out in 2014. I didn't realize how late this actually came out. This is the only version of it I think. And I think there's not a first edition of this or not an unlimited of this. Is that we're about to find out? I can't really remember. I've only opened this a couple of times. So I'm not super familiar. These are first edition. So I don't think they made an unlimited wave of this. So that means that Yugi's World is actually the only one with unlimited and first edition game board if I'm correct about that. Then we have the Promo Pack. I really don't know what this one's worth. I don't know if there's anything crazy in here. So that could be a dud in terms of a Promo Pack compared to the other ones. We have five packs of Legendary Collection 5Ds. There's a lot of cards worth money in this. They're like just random cards. This is like random of commons and stuff. So we'll see if we can pull some of that. Some of those 5Ds, Siner Dragons, what I was trying to say there. Okay, got a dimmer on. Let's go. They're like commons and they're worth something. Earth, Bound, World Wind. Blackwing, Armed Wing. I think this is a great card. I think some of these like Blackwing cards are like $20 because they're like the highest rarity. Tuning Wear, Secret Rare, okay. And then Chaos Infinity, Super Rare, very nice. So I think that that was actually a pretty decent pull. We just got there. That's not bad. TGX-3, 100, and Mara of the Nordic All-Far, which is like, isn't it like an Ulti in one of the 5D sets? I think it is. Next up, we have Blackwing, Boreus the Sharp. He's very sharp. He's a Blackwing Raptor Wing Strike. Super Pay, very nice. And we have an HFairy Dragon, Ulti Rare. That's very beautiful. That looks really nice. That's probably worth a little bit. We've got a debunked. That's a Secret Rare, what? Okay, it's a Secret Rare, apparently. Shooting Star Dragon, super. Okay, we're getting some good pulls. I think these Siner Dragons are really good. TGJF Falcon, Recipro Dragonfly, and Gust the Black, the back, Gust the, wait, wait, where is he? I always forget about this guy, Gust the Backblast. That's just a hilarious name. Three packs to go in Legendary Collection 5Ds. What can we pull? We have the Graceful Revival, Dark Verger, Nordic Relic, Mejingjord, TG Striker. I didn't know this was an Ultra in here, okay, that's cool. And we have a Super Nimble Mega Hamster. This is probably the highest rarity of this card. That's actually really nice. I bet that's worth money. And then the Junk Archer. This is a really good card as well because in the Duelist pack where it's Ultra rare, it's like the best card. I bet that's worth a decent amount as well. So I think this might actually be in first place right now. This used to be like a $10 common, but it got a reprint, so probably not anymore. Two packs to go. Wow, this is a good 5Ds opening so far. All right, what do we got? We get the Raptor Wing Strike. I hope you guys like these older video, or not older, well, it's older opening, but longer videos, because there's gonna be five of these. So I hope you guys are enjoying it. Odin's Eye. We get the Ancient Fairy. It comes as a common too, so you can get common and hollow. I didn't know that. That's really cool. Okay, a common Ancient Fairy. Exploder Dragon Wing, that's cool. The Zvaltolf of the Nordic Alphar. And the Unknown Synchron Seeker Rare. That's very nice. The Junk Destroyer Earthbound Revival and Evil Throne again. Man, I wish that was still money. And then the final pack. Wow, this seems to be a really good opening for 5Ds. There's nothing like insane, but like in terms of like, whoa, that's like a super, you know, insane card like by Blue Eye Seeker Rare, but it's just a lot of cool stuff. Mech Time Blast, we've got the offerings to the Immortals. The Shield Wing, very nice. Advanced Draw, okay, that's cool. Dual Links reminds me of that. The Glypnir, the Fedders of the Fenrir. I don't think this is too crazy, Seeker Rare. And then Hundred Eyes Dragon Seeker. This is a jump promo and then a reboot. So that's probably the worst pack of them all, but I feel like, well, the problem is they had to make up for kind of a worse promo pack. Might be closer right now. I'm really interested. The score's gonna be popping up, but you guys will know, I have no idea right now. All right, I think we're gonna do this one, not last because Yu-Gi's World is like insanely expensive. It's like a $500 box. So we're gonna open this one first. This is more like 125 bucks. So yeah, this is pretty expensive opening just for like legendary collections. You wouldn't think they're that crazy, but the Yu-Gi's World stuff these days is just so expensive for getting first edition. So yeah, we did pick up the first edition because somebody hit me up and it was like 450 or something like that. And I was like, you know, that's actually pretty good these days. So let's go with that. All right, let's go with these old school packs. This is pretty cool. You also of course get the God cards and like the red eyes, blue eyes, dark magician. I think these are still like $10 promo packs. So pretty solid there. And then we of course have all the classic, let's start off with dark crisis because you know, it's dark crisis. It's the least exciting of the six. It also has an extra pack, six packs instead of five. Let's go, let's do a little pack trek on these because you know, there could be something insane. We could also get a skill drain rare, which is worth over 10 bucks. Alter for tribute, very nice. Gravity axe, raw. Dark scorpion, Gorg the strong. Precious cards are beyond. Pandemonium, very nice. Frozen soul. And wait, is it a rare? Oh, death for our limp. And we have an acrobat monkey. All right, next let's do a spell ruler pack. Let's see if we can pull a relinquished, very nice one, two, three, four or a blue astoon would be pretty sick as well. We have a chain energy. Giant total of feeds on flame. We've got the slot machine, very nice. The toe, the rye you ran. Umi Ruka, very nice. The with tail crow. We have a send you of the thousand hands. And here we go. What will it be? It is magical labrith, just a regular old common. And guess what guys? The value on this one might be really bad. Like if we don't pull anything, you know, we're just out of luck. There's not much we can do. Invasion of chaos. And compared to these other like legendary collection mega packs, I mean, you know, the value is just not quite there. I mean, there's some old school stuff. You can pull for big money, but we're not getting like super secret and ultra in every pack. You know what I mean? Coach Goblin, let's go energy drain. Let me know if you believe in legendary collection one right now down in the comments. Let's see if we can pull something crazy to win it. It's called Mark Ladybug earth chant. Gigantus, yellow luster shield, anti-aircraft flower. We have a chain disappearance. Can we get a chaos monster? Let's go. We have, ooh, it's a mention fusion. And that's one of the best cards you could pull out of any of these packs. I think this might even be close to a $50 card last time I checked, 40 to 50 even unlimited, something like that. That honestly might have just like tied it up with the other ones. That is insane. That's like literally better than like DMock and stuff. Like it's better than that. I think it's even better than CED. So this actually is the one that I never mentioned, but it's actually better than the chaos sponsors, which is insane. All right, so one pull is all you need when you're the old school. You know, you just got to pull something epic. So we just did it. If we can pull like another decent card, like if we put like a Genzo here, I mean, could they win it all? Like the old school stuff? Is that what's, that would actually be an insane upset. That would be awesome. So even with this and the promo pack, I bet we're at first right now with the old school. Spike Bob, we get the armored glass, the flying comic curing, numero of dose, four-star ladybug of doom, minor goblin official, very nice, the flame champion, a warrior protected by a flaming shield that malifies any attack, malifies, nullifies. We have a bubonic vermin. Let's go, Genzo. Gravity bind and we have a respect play. Respect, that's all these legendary classes. Respect, man. Good pull, good pull. Two packs to go. We'll save LOB for the end, even though Metal Raiders is my favorite set. We have two posters behind me. We have the OCG and the English one for Metal Raiders posters. Let's go. We have the Pump King, the King of Ghosts. Battle steer. We have the Mystic Lamp. We have the Launcher Spider. Soul release, Castle of Dark Illusions. 920 attack, 1930 defense, very nice. Gig attack wolf, okay, pretty cool. Little Chimera, can we pull something epic? Let's go. Lava battle guard. All right, this is a lava battle guard. So we are now one for five on our packs. We pulled an amazing Ultra though. Let's see if LOB can really put us over the top. By us, I mean legendary collection one.  So let's see. We have a Wasteland. Steal of Gragata Numero Uno. We have the Firegrass. Ray and Tempatura. Inotama Soul. Umi. Mammoth Graveyard. Charubin the Fire Knight. And we have a monster egg, okay. All right, so we really only got one pull out of the entire thing and these two might just win it. I mean, that's pretty solid value, like maybe like 50, 60 bucks right there. Pretty insane. Now we're on to the final legendary collection. The final legendary collection is Yugi's world. There's a little window right here. That's how you know it's first edition. If this was not a real card and not in a window, that would be unlimited. Also another way you can tell guys, if you didn't know, if you look at these like mini packs right here, this is a good way to do it for Kaiba. I just realized I didn't get a Kaiba legendary collection. Oh no, I forgot one. We forgot about Kaiba. Okay, well, we're doing this video where every legendary collection except one. Well, I wonder if how many of you guys noticed that. All right, well, let's just keep going. Legendary collection, Yugi's world. I mean, I don't have a Kaiba, so let's just just gotta go with that. All right, all but Kaiba. Maybe we'll do a redemption one day and actually remember the Kaiba. That's hilarious. I was gonna post this and not remember. Let's see what we have. So inside of this, there is a little window for your Silvore Calcos, which is really cool. There's a promo pack. I don't know what this one's worth. Probably something decent with a Necrophere. And then there are, is there five or six packs? I think it's five packs, yeah. Five packs of legendary collection, Yugi's world. Very expensive packs these days. All right, so this is a little awkward now that I forgot Kaiba, but that's okay. Let's just keep going. We have legendary collection at Yugi's world. Can we pull the Dark Magician Girl, which is worth like hundreds of dollars now in Secret Rare, which is pretty cool. Dark-free, let's, oh, we got a Ruxen special. Sorcerer of Dark Magic. I think Silent Magician level eight might be decent. We have a Tune Gemini Elf upside down. Then we have a Needle Worm. That's pretty nice. Okay, Needle Worm Ultra Rare, very cool. We'll take that and then exchange with the Rygeki and the Exodia on it, very cool. Morphing Jar Numero Dose. Level up pretty decent and Guardian Elma. Level up used to be money. I don't know if it still is. Four packs to go. I know these are like, I think these are like a hundred dollars for one pack. It's maybe even more than that. It's insane for Yugi's world first edition. Rod of Silence Chaos, very nice. Dark Master Zurich himself. We've got Tune Defense. Okay, last time the next one was not upside down. We're gonna do this. Necro Valley, very good. That's actually a good card. Then we have Secret Rare, come on Dark Magician Girl. Pyramid Turtles. This is like one of the duds, I would say, but it's at least usable in like an old school deck, so pretty cool. Shift, okay, and there's a little dot on that. Interesting, Shift Super Rare. So far, okay, Manju, okay. I've been printed a million times recently, but honestly right now, they're not really like making a great push or Yugi's world. So maybe the old schools might win this. All right, Legendary Collection, Yugi's world. I still can't believe I forgot Kaiba. It's like the newest one, isn't it? I think Kaiba's the newest one. It came after it, but they didn't call it five. They just called it Kaiba. I don't know, confusing. All right, Smith's Guy of the Fierce Knight. We have a Guardian Axe Grawl, very cool. The Horus Servant. Black Illusion Ritual. This one wasn't upside down. What does that mean? Is it gonna be the DMG? Let's go. The Summoner Monk. Oh, it's the next one. It would have to be the next one. Okay, Summoner Monk, pretty decent. And a Black Horn of Heaven. That's not great either. And then a Three-Legged Zombie. This is pretty cool, because this is a McDonald's pack card that got a hollow. You love to see that. It's really cool.  I never noticed there's another skeleton. I thought this was one dude. There's an S2. How did I just notice this? First, I'm ever in a Manga, very nice. I always thought this was just one big old guy. That is hilarious. I never have looked at that card closely, apparently. I even used to have one, but apparently I didn't look that close. All right. Fourth pack for Yu-Gi's World. This is looking a little sketch. We have a Guardian Trice, a Draining Shield, nice. We have a Mystic Box, Catapult Turtle, very nice. And a Green Gadget, pretty cool version. And will it be the Secret Red DMG? Big Shield Gardener is a secret in here? Okay, that's pretty cool. Okay, Big Shield Gardener. And then a Boganean. Boganean's a super? Why is Boganean a super? That's so weird. Okay, all right. Final pack. Okay, not great for Yu-Gi's World. I think Yu-Gi's World might lose. It might get like last. It's not looking good right now. Final pack. Can we get that DMG Dark Paladin and Zody Head? Something like that. Giant Soldier of Stone. We got a Solid Morning. That's probably money. The DD Warrior Lady, that might be decent as well. We have an Ultra coming up. It is, oh, a Mechanical Chaser. So we got Needleworm and Mechanical Chaser. That's pretty cool. Some TP Ultras and Graceful Charity. Okay, this is a big pull because this doesn't really have a clear high rarity winner when it comes to like old school format. It's like goat. Like there's like a couple of different options, but this is one of the coolest looking ones, I think. Secret Rare Graceful Charity, first edition. I bet this is big money. Very nice. Valkyrie and the Magna Warrior. Arm Dragon level seven. Okay, that definitely made a big difference there. So the Graceful Charity really saving the Yu-Gi's World and gonna make it really close. I'm really excited to see what the totals are gonna be for this because even though we forgot Kaiba, I think it's gonna be interesting. All right, here is what the final tally is for all of them. It's gotta be extremely close, I think. I'm gonna look and it's gonna be like somebody won by like $50 or something, but very interesting. I had a lot of fun doing this video. If you guys enjoyed it, let me know if we should do another one where we actually don't forget about Kaiba. Sorry, Kaiba. I didn't really mean to disrespect you like that. If you guys enjoyed the video, make sure to subscribe to the channel for more epic content like this. Shout out to Choice333, NightshadeGamingYT, Hayden Jameson, Squirtle, Hoppus, FlexiBoy, Dizzy, Ernesto DeAnda, Puffins of Doom, TCG Trouser Cards, JTcho, Tomato Juice, Daxter, Tonefo Show, Ananasai Show, Christopher Ward, Ian Musa, John Nolan, Junior Barting, Mike Nance, Mimic Echo, Seth Fisher, Stanley, Thomas McLean, and Tony Z. Thank you guys for supporting the channel and I'll see you guys next time. Peace. I forgot about legendary collection, Kaiba. Oh my gosh, man. I was like, five seems kinda low.