Hello everybody from Barbados. The sun is just about to set here on my last night and I wanted to share with you what I've been doing here and why I chose to be here. So first of all last September a client told us that a global meeting was going to be had here in Barbados in January. Of course I was delighted never been here Caribbean January what's not to like but after that I decided that I would stay on. My husband and business partner came out with me to the client meeting and then went home on Wednesday and I have been here since so I've been here this is as I say my last night so I've been here for an extra five nights on my own. I took an Airbnb and I decided to solely settle into deep work. Now deep work is a concept from a book called Deep Work by Cal New Port and the whole idea is really settling into the things that you know when you say if only I could get an hour to myself to focus on this well I decided to take five days to solely focus on all of those things and I decided to do so here and as I say I took an Airbnb on my own and the beach has been here right behind me now it sounds idyllic doesn't it and it has been but there's a couple of do's and don'ts that I will say and that is that you know when you're on your own solely focusing on the hard hard stuff the stuff that's really going to make a difference to the months and the years ahead of your business it's the type of thing when you're at home you tend to say I'll do it now when I have time but now you have time you've no excuses you've nowhere to go you've nowhere to run well sorry just the waves have just come in my feet there as I'm talking to you so the thing is is that you have to put a huge amount of mental energy in and if you don't have the discipline to do that then the time and the money that you spend here is completely wasted now I know some of you will say well it's alright for you you can head off to Barbados and I did this before in the Cliffs of Moher I've done this before in different parts of the world I tried to do it once a year and it doesn't have to be very far it certainly doesn't have to be expensive at all but the key thing is is that I just rule out everything except deep work for a period of time the other thing I want to tell you though is that your normal system of you know motivators or the things that can reboot reboot you aren't here so maybe it's talking to your partner at night or maybe it is you know catching up with a friend for glass of wine in the first evening or maybe it is settling into your TV show I've had none of that there's none of that I take you take I well press it the way I did it I took away all of that all of my natural boosts and they're not here because I'm here on my own I don't know anybody and I've nobody talked at night except myself and that kind of gets scary when you start responding as well but the point is is that you then you have to replace that with other things but you have to do it in such a way where you're not on holiday so I haven't been off snorkelling and I haven't been off you know lying down at the beach looking up the sun the only time I've been doing that is in the morning I came I would come out every morning and I don't know if you've come across blaze Brosnan's book you are the limiting factor it's a great book when you're trying to really think and really focus and really answer questions it's almost like a workshop within itself so I've been using that to journal in the morning and then secondly what I would do then is then I would have any calls that I needed to have and some you know yourself some calls you absolutely need to have but again with the focus on deep work I did the very same thing I made them extra long so that we could do all of those things that we would we might have said before oh I'll get around to that at another stage or whatever there's no getting around to it this is the stage so I did that and then you see the other thing that I want to tell you is that the quick wins aren't happening here I'm not focusing on quick wins I'm focusing on the wins that are going to make a difference but in months and years to come so you know that feeling of oh I'll just do that now and I'll spend a half an hour and then it feels like I've achieved something for the day I haven't been focusing on that these things that I've been working on I won't see the result of them for months and years but that's the point was that I had to keep that discipline so instead your quick wins become your wins that take a longer time so I'll tell you what I have been doing I've been working on a consultancy project since last June that I am literally going to finish tonight and that I've really it just needed a good hard sprint to the end that has taken I spent a couple of hours in it every day so that I've been working on and there's another project I can't tell you about it yet but when I can I certainly will and a really big project that I that I just now obliterated into a million smaller tangible much easier practical easy to get done pieces and that's what I'm going to be focusing on now for the next couple of months and I also I also wanted to read now I didn't I didn't actually get around to doing that and that's another thing that I'd say is that you know you can also say okay I'll do that during my week of deep work or I'll do this during my week of deep work or whatever it doesn't happen like that because if you if you give yourself too much to do well then it just won't happen so instead what I did was that I really really focused on the priority items and another thing I did was that I took the solitary time to really unravel some of my own limiting beliefs and so I'm just going to try stepping somewhere here where there's extra bit of light sun is going down faster behind me and so for example what I did there was that I wrote down my objectives for January now they've been percolating around on my head a lot anyway but I wrote them down and then I wrote down and this was an exercise that I got out of Blaise Brosnan's book is that I wrote on why I hadn't achieved them before right so they're some of them are new you know some of them aren't but so of the new ones and and when I really looked into why I hadn't done them before then I realized why what was holding me back and then what I did was I went one step further than the exercise suggested I then wrote down why I was going to achieve them now so actually what I did was that I unraveled a couple of things that was holding back my mindset and you know we all need to do this that was holding back my mindset and I now think that I'm in a much stronger position mentally to go ahead and to do all of these things along the way what I will say that that really helps is setting yourself up so that you can succeed I didn't put anything on I wasn't going on tour buses or I wasn't doing anything in the evenings or anything I had a couple of things to do every day one was my calls and I mostly did those in the morning because Barbados time is four hours behind Ireland and then I had a couple of calls in Europe and in the States so I just worked them around that and I swam every day or almost every day so I went to a pool for that it's a bit I wouldn't swim in the sea as you can see there it's a it's well it's you know it has a personality and and the other thing I did was that I made sure to eat out one meal a day and that was to get the literally to have the interaction with other people and what I absolutely didn't do was go out for breakfast in the morning because it's so easy to say okay I go out for breakfast now and then I come back in and I'll settle in didn't do that either I made sure that that was something that I did later on in the day and I have also kept my eyes very wide open to the personality of Barbados and enjoyed it like I've been here the first five days were a client meeting the second five days were for this I'm flying back tomorrow couple of things about the island that you might want to know so it's got a population of under 300,000 it's surprisingly expensive I don't just mean you know the tourist side of things you know that's often gonna be the case but it's actually when you're living like I've been doing for the past couple of days when you're actually living here price of food and the price and they're in the grocery shop I mean I got my nails from yesterday just to have a chat actually with the person who was doing them god lover she had to be a mini economist because I was asking so many questions and the price of well of transport is pretty reasonable but I did ask her and and I've asked a number of people and the cost of living here is pretty high and the weather is amazing it's absolutely amazing it's of course you'd expect that being the Caribbean it's actually started to rain now I can't I don't know if you can actually notice it or not but anyway I'll be dry again two seconds afterwards and it's also a place where people are so friendly like super super friendly people stop not stopping on the street but saying hello to you as you go about your day and and music is in their bones I was at mass this morning and just you know just to watch the way in which the congregation were swaying with the music like it's just it's everywhere and it's and it's lovely the food pink fish pink pineapples and pink cocktails they have a lot of their own take on cocktails and they have a great saying here which is that they put everything from wine to iodine in them obviously the latter one is a you know tongue-in-cheek reference and so really really lovely I would say first impressions I can say were amazing but like a lot of people that I've spoken to here it the place grows on you it really really does and they do a lot of water sports that a huge amount of tourism they had a record breaking year last year in terms of cruising where their the cruise numbers were up 3% there also that and that was into the port here in Bridgetown which is back that way and they're also looking to have another port in the north the north east of the island as well in time to come so it's an interesting place so therefore as you can see literally that's the see that what that white light over my head there now that is actually the flight that I will be taking home tomorrow night and right back across it's only eight hours really well served from London I have to say not as well serve from the US but really well start from London and then then back home again so it's been a super useful week it hasn't always been easy but I've made sure to have the discipline to make sure that I could do what I had wanted to do and so delighted that I had the opportunity both to meet the client here and enjoy what Barbados has to offer which is a huge amount so happy new year everybody happy new decade and I hope this has been useful bye


My name is Janet Lawnmore, and I'm here to talk about addressing the digital divide. We have seen of late, right across the world, a massive mobilization, particularly among the young generation. People connecting is very powerful. People are sharing experiences. In some cases, skill development is happening online and over the internet. But in these human networks, they are simultaneously inclusive and exclusive. The ones who are included are really the digitally wealthy, and those excluded are the digitally poor. There are 650 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, but the penetration of smartphones is 5%. Over 90% of the world's population doesn't have broadband access, and this means access to the data that we need to work effectively to learn effectively. So what needs to be done to address this? There are monopoly markets still out there that create huge barriers. Affordability is an issue. Prices have to come down, and we really need to equip the next generation to be that smartphone generation and create a more level playing field. We had some encouraging news about new platforms that are being built that are mobile friendly platforms that don't advantage the West but are there for a young person who creates an app in the slums of Nairobi that that app can be applied and be readily available without having a gatekeeper approval on it. Locally relevant creativity and locally relevant content. And let's skill up these young people in a digitally literate way to know how to use all these new tools of technology for their own economic development, for online learning. What we need to do is reduce the gap between the digitally wealthy and the digitally poor so that on a level playing field basis, young people in particular are able to have the skills and the technologies that will allow them to innovate in the use of technology for their own economic development.


Llyfrin ar y cyfrifwyr ydw i, rhaid i'r ffordd gyda'r cyfrifwyr a dyn nhw'n ei dweud o y cyfrifwyr yma. Fe'n rhai cyfrifwyr ar gyfer yn cyfrifwyr yma, mae'n olygu'r gweithio'r cyfrifwyr yn y cyfrifwyr yn cyfrifwyr yma, mae'n olygu'r cyfrifwyr yn cyfrifwyr yr oedd yn cyfrifwyr. Mae'n ddweud o'r cyfrifwyr yma sy'n ddweud o'r cyfrifwyr am ymgylcheddau newyddol hefyd ac yn y Llyfrin. Mae'r dwylo'n gobeithio wych yn angen i gael yw'r myfweith wahanol yn y rhan o'n pryddreig iawn ac'i swyddwch gydag y mahau'r cyfryngor iawn, ac rydyn ni'n teidelio'n gael o'r padd o'r ddweud ac nhw o'ch bod nhw'n trafio'n gwmnasol y ffordd o'r ddweud i ddechrau yma. Yw'r rhan o'n myfweith yn cyfrifio, ac mae'r porwogaeth CBC, oherwydd mae'n clywodd a'r cyfrifio yn amlwgr yn y bwylltol. Rhyw unrhyw ddweud y cyfnod o'r mach, ac o'r gyfrannu i fy llun oedd wrth yn ymlaen. Fi yw'n dweud, mae'r ffnogau yw'r gyrhau, heb fel mae'n dweud warniaeth gyrhaf, mae gennym i ychydig addill o'r cyflwyno global. Mae ydw i'n dwi'n dus i'r cyflwyno global ar yr edrych oherwydd wybodau y myl efo'r rhan o'r peir ydwyll yn ysgrifennu ar y glosbeth ar y cyflwyno. Cyflawn o'r 2008, lle y cryys yn sgwrs yng ngyllte, byth yn èl an suspended in the private sectors of the economy. We really haven't managed to get rid of debt. We've just shifted it from the private to the public sector or from the private sector in some developed economies to developing economies, and in particular China. I think we are at a stage where the burden of that debt and the difficulties of escape from the deleveraging attempts that comes out of that, means that there are some very strong deflationary effects round the world, added to by labour market effects. I'm struck by the fact that arby economics, which I support, I think it is the right thing to do, it really is not yet delivering the increase in inflation that it said it would. I'm very struck by the fact that China slowdown is significant. I don't think it's going to produce a financial crisis, but I do think it's going to produce a significant slowdown in both China growth and China inflation. I see that the latest figures on the surveys for manufacturing growth are down. If you look at the producer's price index, the retail price index all of those are signaling down in China and I think people sometimes don't pay enough attention to China and realise what a depressive effect that that is. I think all of that was creating a context in Europe where the outlook for Europe was undoubtedly very slow growth and very low inflation and it's against that context that we've seen the ECB measures. Mae'n ddweud y gallai rhai ddweud. Mae'n ddweud yn olygu'r cymdeithasol wedi'u gweld yma'ch byd. Rwy'n credu bod yn ddweud ymlight mae'r ddweud eich eu cynnwys ffwrdd o'r cyflwynt fyddgylchol ymlaen. A yna, byddwn yn bwysig i'r cyfeiri, Mae'r ystyried i'r cyfw�edd yw'r environment ond mae yw meddwl hwyl o'r cyfwyrn sy'n arddangos oedd ddefnyddio'r gweithio fel ddweud cyflwynt y bydwch yn ei ddechrau'r economiad. Mae'n dweud cyflwynt y bydd y cwyrnodau yw'r mecan sy'n eu rhaglenu a'r oeddennig mewn cyffredinol. Felly mae'r cyfwyrn sy'n ymddangos oedd y byn oedd y bydwch, y swydd, y ddain, o'r wneud i'r ddweud y rhan o'r eu cyfnodau o'r euro, o'i gwybod i'r rhan o'r dweud o'r rhan o'r dweud. We have Japan would like, again, part of its transmission mechanism, of its extreme QE, to be a somewhat weaker Yen, but you then have the Koreans worried if the Yen goes down too much against the one. And if you talk to Chinese policymakers, they say, well, one of the things that they could do to offset a bigger than required or desired slowdown in China is it might be good if the renminbi went down. Now not everybody can go down. There's a lot of people around the world faced with relatively deflationary times, slow growth, low inflation, believe that part of the transmission mechanism to escape from those problems is a low currency. And that can't be true for everybody. So I think we are in an environment where that means that the one currency of the country, which is robustly growing, the U.S. is likely to go up. But I think that will also place a bit of a headwind against how fast the U.S. develops, in a sense some of the deflationary and low growth from other countries will create a headwind to the U.S. through the appreciation of the currency. All of which says to me that we are still in an environment with interest rates around the world where they are staying lower for longer than even people have woken up to now. I think the only country where we're going to see an increase this year is the U.S. And I suspect that that will be very mild. But overall, we're still in deep, potentially deflationary times in which a whole load of different countries around the world would rather like their currency to go down as part of the solution to that. But they can't do it. It sounds like the new normal is currency volatility. I don't know how much volatility it is. I mean, interestingly, if you compare the volatility that we've seen recently, it's nothing like as much as we used to have in the early 80s. I mean, I remember first time I went to lived in the U.S. in 1981. It was absolutely wonderful. It was $247 to the pound. And four years later in 1985, there were $1.05 to the pound. And then that, of course, produced the famous plaza record, which was trying to place a limit on the decline of the dollar. And then we had the dramatic appreciation of the dollar. Then we had the appreciation of the yen, which was seen as part of the cause of the 1990 crisis. So actually, although we seem to have a world of there are movements, there are very significant short-term spikes as people change policy. As we saw with the Swiss franc. But what is intriguing about the modern world, a very significant financial crisis in the 2000s and 80s, we have not seen the enormous swings in exchange rates, which were part of the pattern of the 1980s. We'll take questions from the floor for Arlie. OK, so let's just develop that for a moment longer and look about resilience as well because it's something you've talked about before in the past. Are our institutions resilience enough now to withstand any further movements? Bearing in mind, you may think that volatility won't be something we need to be too concerned about. Well, I think the major financial institutions of the world are much more resilient than they were six years ago because of the very significant increases in capital and liquidity position which were enforced by the regulation of Basel III and regulation of derivatives markets, et cetera. So I think we went through a crisis and I remember people like Jean-Claude Trichet at the time saying one of the surprising things of the 2008 crisis was foreign exchange was the dog that didn't bark. I mean, you know, it played no role in the crisis. Nobody ended up as a bankrupt bank because they lost money on the foreign exchange markets. And I think actually we have a more resilient system in its absolute core of, you know, the big systemically important financial institutions. So I would be very surprised if volatility in foreign exchange markets is a major driver of problems within the financial system itself. I mean, obviously it may wipe out relatively peripheral players as we saw with some of these retail forex brokers which are either in trouble and one actually went bankrupt earlier this week. I think what we should be more worried about actually may be not financial institution volatility but some exposures of large corporates, et cetera. What we know is that we have significant numbers of corporates in emerging markets which took advantage of the opportunity of very low dollar rates to take out debt in dollars. And obviously if they have both an appreciation of the dollar and an increase in the interest rate and if those dollars are not matched by dollar export receipts or naturally arising dollar revenues but they've been taking simply a position which I think many of them have. It's been a carry trade of, you know, borrow the dollar and invest either in local financial instruments or in businesses with local currency revenue streams. I think that's where we should look for some of the stresses that will come this year with the appreciation of the dollar and some increase, I don't expect a dramatic increase but some increase of dollar interest rates. I expect it more in some subsets of the corporate markets particularly in emerging countries who've borrowed dollars and have unhedged positions. That's where I think we'll see a major stress. Go back to the landscape you painted at the beginning of this conversation with almost all the major currencies looking to depreciate in value. As you quite rightly say, not everybody can do that. Who will be the winners and losers? Well, I don't know who will be the winners and losers. Well, I think the answer is some currencies will tend to appreciate versus the dollar. I mean, we've seen, of course, quite a significant downshift in the euro against the dollar that was occurring in any case because of expectations of future interest rate movements that has been reinforced by the QE programme and I suspect it will tend to be reinforced this year as and when the Federal Reserve takes its first steps towards interest rate increases. I think other ones are more difficult to predict but it's clearly one of the hoped for transmission mechanisms of the Bank of Japan's huge QQE programme that they will keep the yen low. I would be, you know, I always find these things very difficult to predict. I mean, my overall assumption would be that on the whole, the yen and the euro, maybe also the renminbi, the one sterling will all most likely go down against the dollar. But of course, if they all go down simultaneously against the dollar, then the stimulative effect of that on their economies is somewhat muted because, yes, they're getting an improved competitive position versus American competitors but Japanese are not getting an improved competitive position against German nor German against Japanese. So, I think I would be very wary of suggesting that one knows within the relative ranking of all the different economies which would quite like somewhat weaker currencies, which will be more or less weak. But the crucial point is, you know, if they all go down by an equal amount against the dollar, then the stimulative effect on their economies, you know, is more limited than if one of them was able to go down against all the currency, all the other currencies in the world, which I think is much more difficult to achieve. And just to stay with that scenario for a moment longer, what should be the priority of American policymakers? Well, I think the priority of American policymakers, and in particular the Fed, should be to meet their dual mandate. That's what they're legally required to do, and I think that's appropriate for them to do. And I think we now know that the US has fairly robust growth, both in output and in employment. My own gut feel is that this may take longer to translate into inflationary pressures than some people are imagining, because if you actually look at the employment rate of the US economy, despite the good jobs growth of last year, 2.5 million or so new jobs, the employment rate is still well down on where it was in 2000. And so I suspect that as we tend to get an employment increase, more people will be brought back into the labour market. I think also there are many aspects of industry and service activity today, which can be automated, and at the first time of wages going up, some of that will be offset by automation. So my own gut feel is that the feed-through of a robust US economy to any inflationary pressures, whether in prices or in the labour market in wages, will be relatively slow. And my suspicion, therefore, is that that will be reflected appropriately in a relatively slow pace of the increase in interest rates. I would anticipate that sometime in the middle of the year as the markets anticipate, there will be an increase in US policy interest rate, the Fed funds rate. But because I think there is probably more slack there because of the lower employment rate, because of the headwind of an appreciating currency, and because in an environment where the rest of the world is growing slower, there's only so far that the US can grow, my anticipation is that I would not expect a rapid return to high rates of inflation. And therefore, I think the path of the increase of interest rates that the Federal Reserve will introduce will be pretty gradual. And by 2017, we may still be looking at US interest rates, which are more like 2.5% than anything higher than that. Can I have a microphone here for the adjustment on the front row, please? Graham, we know you, but our audience don't. So please give us your full name and tell us where you're from. Hi, I'm Graham Manuel from Financial News in London. At the banking panel on Wednesday morning, I think the three big bankers that you had there, they all seemed pretty pleased at the way the currency markets had handled the shop moves last week, even though I think on one day there was more than 10 billion traded, which is an extraordinary volume. The market I think that they were concerned about as causing a huge potential dislocation and potentially leading institutions to fail was the bond market and how that would react to potential rate rises in the US because of the lack of liquidity. FX markets, as we know, are incredibly liquid. They work very well. It was the bond market that we were worried about. As a former regulator, what are your thoughts on that? Well, first of all, I do agree that the FX market works very well. It has very well-developed ways of doing settlement, taking away settlement risk. Of course, they were put in place several decades ago after the great problems which occurred with the Hirstat failure, et cetera. So technically, it's a market that works well. It's also a deep and liquid market. It can be volatile, but people are able to position within it and to lay off risk. And as I said, I mean, I don't think we have in those markets people taking huge risks within the banking system itself, within the trading books of the banking system, which are suddenly going to crystallise into losses if one of them has gone the wrong way. I think, as we saw last week with the Swiss rank, there's a whole load of individual retail investors who've been encouraged by retail brokers to take positions who've suffered large losses. But I think the more professional players at the core of the market have been more cautious. As for the bond markets, my personal belief is that this issue of the withdrawal of liquidity may be somewhat overplayed. The argument is that a combination of the higher trading book capital that we have, and also the Volcker rule, means that it is more difficult and more expensive to be a market maker and take positions in the bond markets and therefore to be a natural counterparty. The reason why I'm always a little bit wary of those arguments that we desperately need more liquidity in the bond markets is, of course, back in 2007, we thought we had lots of liquidity in bond markets and securities markets, and then when we needed it, it wasn't there. Liquidity tends to be a fickle thing. I'm not... I don't think we should overreact to some of the events which occurred, you know, the spikes which occurred in October. And I mean, we shall see. But there is no inherent reason why a world in which the US gradually returns to, let us say, 2% interest rates while the rest of the world is pretty much stuck at zero. There's no inherent reason why that is also a more volatile world if it is anticipated. And I think it is anticipated. And broadly speaking, I believe that the path of US policy rates and of long yields will probably be pretty much what the market expects it to be at the moment, which is some sort of take-off in the middle of this year and then a very slow increase thereafter. And if there aren't unexpected events, if simply the market evolves in line with what the swaps curve says we should expect, I think we somewhat overstate the idea that there is an inherent problem of a world in which there is a differential of interest rates between major currencies. Let's remember that throughout the 1990s and 2000s, we had an environment where US interest rates were typically about 5% and Japanese interest rates were typically about zero. It didn't produce, you know, disruptive volatility in either US or Japanese government bonds. So I accept the argument that there has been less liquidity in major bonds, but I'm not absolutely convinced that this is a major risk to the financial system. And I'm not convinced that the mere fact that we return to a world in which one currency, you know, has a higher interest rate than another, necessarily implies that there must be a high level of volatility. If you look at the volatility events of the last couple of years, some of them, the ones in last October, seem to have been a set of technical causes that we don't really understand, but it was pretty much a one-day wonder. The famous Taper Tramper, a Taper tantrum of early 2013, May 2013, was because the market didn't anticipate it and slightly odd that they didn't anticipate it, but, you know, Ben Bernanke's words for whatever reason surprised them. I don't personally think that what the Fed does this year will surprise us. I think it will be pretty much what the market anticipates. What? Hillary. Is this working? Hillary Jaffee, I'm from Business Day in South Africa. I wonder if you could spell out some of the implications of what you are saying for emerging markets and particularly who might be the winners and losers within the emerging market universe? Well, I think clearly the slowdown in the Chinese economy, which is essentially because the maturing and the ending of a credit and asset price boom and an infrastructure and property boom is already to the disadvantage of the major commodity producers. And, you know, we don't need to speculate whether that's occurred, that has occurred. I mean, the key fact which I think a lot of people were ignoring till about six months ago and is now expressed in the commodity prices and along with supply factors in the price of oil is that after 2009, China kept the economy going with an enormous credit boom which drove the investment rate up from 40% of GDP to 50% of GDP. This investment was fundamentally in infrastructure, in railways, in property, in convention centres, sports stadia, museums, you know, every city in China saying that it was going to put itself on the map as the city that people wanted to go to. And, you know, it kept the Chinese economy going, but it was a particular form of stimulus. It was a stimulus which we can define essentially as a concrete pouring stimulus. And, you know, some people have calculated that China poured more concrete in five years than America did in the whole of the 20th century. I'm not quite sure whether anybody's actually checked that fact or whether it's become an urban myth that we repeat, but it's certainly poured a hell of a lot of concrete. And if you pour a hell of a lot of concrete and you build a lot of buildings, you consume a lot of coal, you consume a lot of oil, you consume a lot of energy, you consume a lot of steel, you consume a lot of iron ore. And what happened during 2014 and the second half of 2014 is a very significant slowing of that, which we're seeing in falls in industrial production, falls in steel production, and a sign that the Chinese government, although they want to maintain an adequate rate of growth, realise that they've got to switch off this machine before it just has too high a level of leverage and too much wasted investment. But switching off a machine like that, there's no easy way to do it. You will end up, you know, producing very major reductions in commodity prices. And we've seen that in the oil price, which is also, of course, driven by the shale revolution, but we've seen dramatic falls in iron ore, in coal, in copper. So the easy thing to say, and it's obvious already, that what has occurred has been bad for the major commodity producers and that includes, to a degree, South Africa, it includes Brazil among the developed countries, of course it includes the Australian economy, which has slowed down very significantly. So that's clearly a straightforward bit of what has occurred. I think outside that, in the export manufacturing sectors of a developing economies, of course it tends to be then much more specific to their specific competitive advantage.  So we have, in addition to a very clear and very strong commodity price fall, which then drives down the currencies of the big commodity producers, we have a more generalised fall, which we have seen in the significant downgrades of world economic growth, which have come both from the World Bank and the IMF within the last week. OK, thank you. Great, you have another question. I think we can fit one more in. One more in, OK? Hi, it's my experience that most currency forecasts are wrong. Do you agree, and why is it that it's such a difficult market for experts to forecast? Most currency experts, forecasts by experts are indeed wrong, and I'm pretty sure mine would be. I've managed to keep them sufficiently general that I hope they might be directionally correct, but you may say I noticed I very carefully did not avoid being clear about all the different bilateral pairs, because if I knew how to do that, I'd be trading away and making myself a fortune, and I've never worked out how to do that. So why are they so wrong? And you're quite right that even the huge swings, which I described back in the 1980s, not many people saw before they occurred. I think two things. One, it's inherently difficult to be sure about the shifts of relative to performance that change the fundamentals, but even more important, foreign exchange markets have a tendency once they start moving in one direction to exaggerate the fundamentals, but because that is a process essentially internal to the market, internal to self-reinforcing expectations, internal to the weight of money which is being put against at positions one way or the other, those sort of things in markets are inherently difficult to predict. So in an environment where if it is believed that a currency is going to go up, and if it is believed that it is going to increase its interest rates, you basically have a set of carry trades of people borrowing the currencies which are going to depreciate, which are often also the currencies where the interest rates are very low and putting money into the apprecating currency. That because it's not a fundamental real economic phenomenon like how much oil the world produces or what's happening to manufacturing bad hitness. It's something which has some strong self-reinforcing features and it's strongly delivered, determined by expectations and exuberance, et cetera. So that can drive very significant divergences, movements in currencies which are far bigger than you would logically say were driven by the fundamental economics. So I do return to the point I made earlier that relative to the size of the oscillations that we saw in the 80s and 90s, we have not seen those recently. It's in the 80s and 90s that we really saw self-reinforcing trends which were way beyond what was required. I returned to the point that between 1981 and 1985, the numbers of dollars to the pound went from 247 to 105. First of all, the pound had soared against the dollar between 1979 and 81 and then it went all the way back. And it's really very, very difficult to explain that fluctuation or the dollar-yen fluctuations of the 1980s on the basis of any theory of competitive advantage or relative inflation rates, et cetera. There are strong self-reinforcing tendencies, but if anything, they seem to be less than they were back in the 1980s and 90s. Well, I think all financial markets are subject to irrational exuberance. I personally do not believe in the efficient market theory. I think we are staring both in equity markets and in foreign exchange markets and in many markets the fact that they can overshoot rational equilibrium levels and go to extremes from which they come back. I mean, I think that is a generalized proposition which has been well explained by people like Robert Schiller about the way that markets work. And I think that is just a central fact of the way that markets work across the world. We see that continually in equity markets. And as I say, we used to see that much more in foreign exchange markets than we have seen over the last several years. So, low inflation, low interest rates likely to stay with us as are the poor predictive powers of forex experts. Thank you very much indeed, Lord Turner. Thank you all to our audience here, both here and online. We'll see you back for another issue briefing shortly. Thank you.


What's up navigation nation? We are back with another coaching video for you today is Wednesday, November 22nd The day before Thanksgiving, and I'm here with our contest winner Matt King Matt. How are you? Hey, what's going on glad to be back? So we are let's take a look at where we're at with with all of our different positions We're on the monitor tab in the account here, and you can see we've got Well the current positions that we have on our oil Which is which is one that we're going to be booking profits in today? And then we've also got a position on in Nat gas 4 slash NG Which we've got some profit there, but not enough to take off yet. We want we want some more and Then we've got NQ, which is our little problem child. We're getting back to a point of Break-even and and we had a huge rally yesterday In the in price of the Nasdaq and so we're back in the hole on that one. So we're gonna let that one Fester a little bit and and hopefully Hopefully we can get a little bit of downside movement in price and get back to get back to where we need to be Nasdaq still owes us some money. They're holding out on us, but I have a feeling they're gonna give it back. Hopefully Yeah, hopefully is right And then we've got Costco, which is a trade that we just put on a few days ago And that's we did an iron condor in Costco. So just put that on so Down a few shekels 15 bucks not much profit or loss there. So we'll continue to monitor that one But and then I'd like to put on a new position, but before we do that Let's go ahead and book our winner in oil ford slash cl If you go to the analyze tab there, let's just check that out show everybody where we're at in that position Yeah, it's like three thirty about three thirty out of nine ten Yeah, and we and we put this trade on only about seven days ago. So if you You know from our course on strangles, you know that any time we we make, you know, 30% profit 30% of max profit in 10 days or less We're gonna book that we're gonna take that money and run and there's no reason to wait around especially with price So centered right now, you know if it moves a decent amount in either direction We're gonna we might start to lose money from where we're at. So we want to go ahead and book that profit Gotcha So I do that right now. Yeah, let's go ahead and let's go ahead and do it All right, sure. I'm Select these down here. Yep. Yep Yep That's the wrong one. So they're both selected. So we want to both be selected and then create a closing order buying Looks like we're right there 58 cents. So we should get filled right there. I was gonna say I guess 58 cents looks good It doesn't get doesn't get much tighter than that Send yeah, there it goes and it's out. All right, so good deal booked in a nice trade there booked a nice profit there Mm-hmm. So Yeah, we already talked about where we're at with the other positions go ahead and click on the Nasdaq Ford slash NQ So you can see this we've got these two different positions on this is the aggregate of both positions So you can see prices just kind of hanging out on our upper upper end of our range So we really need just a move down in price And we we can you know if you if you kind of drag your mouse down to about, you know the 6,300 level Hover yeah right there I mean if we get to that point I mean we'll be we'll be back in the profit So it's not gonna take much of a down move We we do want to eventually roll this to January So, you know if price just kind of stays where it is or continues to move higher We're gonna roll this out to January if you go to your trade tab To see how many days we have left to expiration Yeah, hold on Yeah, so 23. Yeah, so we've got 23 days left to expiration and Again is taught in the strangles course the mechanical thing to do is once we get under that 21 days to expiration That's when the that's when the gamma, which is one of the option Greeks It's kind of a it's one of the measures of risk the gamma or the risk in the trade really starts to accelerate once you get under that 21 days to expiration with these strangles and so What we would do is we would simply roll that trade out to January But at this point nothing to do if in the next couple days Price moves down. We'll just book the profit and get out of it if it continues higher or kind of stays where it is We will we'll look to you know sometime early next week. We will look to roll that out to January Okay, I hear you So this I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'll just say this one's has been It's been an interesting ride with the Nasdaq. Let's just say that Yeah, and you know that's it's pretty normal, you know just based on the probabilities, you know one One one underlying symbol and we try to stay pretty diversified. You know, we've got some in stocks I'm a natural gas. We had oil. We've had bonds We've got Costco, which is individual stocks or we're staying very diversified But you're always gonna typically have a problem child in the bunch, you know, it'd be nice if we just Put it put it put the trade on and book the profit took it off and made it easy But unfortunately, it's never that easy You've got some of these you got to you got to manage and adjust and roll and and eventually, you know The probability do always play themselves out over time But but the other part of it, you know, is we've we're in a very finite a very short period of time here We're just trading this account for three months during this coaching and In contest session, so You know, I think we'll I think we'll be all right We just got to continue to work work the trade as we do and stay mechanical I agree. Yeah So let's go ahead and so now we've got we've got $35,000 of buying power available and So let's go ahead and put on another position We've got with the market the way it is kind of going into a holiday weekend You know, we've got a lot of premium just kind of being sucked out of the out of the different options and a lot of different symbols But one that that still is continuing to kind of hold up Hold up its wings as far as the implied volatility goes is EWZ so go ahead and click on EWZ Go to your charts tab And so you can kind of see it's implied volatility is down some today But it's still above that 50 level the percentile is at the 58 level now the 57 So still some decent premium in those options So let's go ahead and go to the trade tab and and put on a trade in EWZ Okay So the 50 58 days Yep So we'll be in the January 19 cycle January 18 19 January of 18. Yeah, January 19th of 2018 is kind of how you how you read that I don't know why I don't know why they make it so complicated in such a weird order But hey, that's that's the exchanges that we deal with In the in the military, that's the way that I would read that 19 January of 2018 Okay, that's actually I don't know why the military. I always thought that that was weird that the military did that But just some weird trivia for you. Well, they got a weird 24 hour clock to you. So yeah, they do Took me took me 20 years to figure it out and then Then I was done with it so Let's hit a 23 here and Sell a strangle selling our typical Typical strangle kind in that There's a 21 20 class. Yeah 37 so I got 44 on the call 37 on the put and Did you want to change the the contract amounts? Let's go ahead and move it over to the analyze tab and then we can adjust it over there Okay Let's look Analyze that trade So, I don't know if that's accurate 99.96% Well, it's accurate based on the ability where the slices are currently set and where the date Oh, so once we set our slices, we'll get a more accurate reading Yeah Still and then we're gonna change your little calendar up top there Make sure that way it matches the expiration date I Should remember it since we just talked about it in detail 19 19 January 64 percent. Okay. That's about more right Yeah, the 19th is actually the Friday, but technically options expire this Saturday after The Friday expiration just a little FYI. So you actually want to kick that up to 120 to give the most accurate reading Okay, and and you'll see that's that's reflected in the in the little box the bottom left of the graph where it said So always shows the expiration date of the teal color 120. Yeah, son of a gun sure does doesn't it? so hundred and $21 max profit with one one contract there Yeah, so collect the credit and get it a little over 64 percent Probability of success if we held it all the way to expiration Obviously we like to book our winners and a percentage of max profits. So our probabilities of winning is closer to 80 85 percent and And yeah, so based on the amount of capital Let's go ahead and you know, we don't want to get too big and we've got You know premium like I said kind of being sucked out of the markets right now implied volatility being with implied volatility dropping But let's go ahead and put on a let's go ahead and put kick that up to five contracts And that'll be a good position And then if we need to if we want to if implied volatility spikes back up or if we have a big price move We can we can always add another another layer and scale into that position Sounds good to me so that'll give us a max profit of 605 and So go ahead and ship that order in Okay, so using about twenty five hundred dollars in capital Yeah, that's what I wanted to look at there Stop that Hopefully I did everything right there. You did we just need to we're gonna need to adjust that one not gonna get filled At $1.21 probably get filled at $1.20 or $1.19. I Always have like a moment of hesitation before hitting that send button cuz it's like oh did I do everything right? did I select the right amount and You know, it's it's always You know so the more you do this the better it gets But it's always a little bit of a moment of hesitation as I'm about to hit that Yeah, but I didn't screw it up. Yeah, no, I hear you I mean and that's part of the reason I kind of go through the steps that I did that I Have taught you and I teach in the course to bring it over to the analyze tab Set your slices make sure your probabilities are in line for for kind of the this type of trade Set you know make sure your calendars on the expiration dates He kind of get an accurate reading and give you that kind of visual visual picture So yeah, but and then even that you know when with only, you know trading for a short amount of time Yeah, you're gonna have that hesitation Eventually, you know the more it's just like anything the more you do it the more comfortable you get with it Next thing, you know, it's second nature and you don't really even think about it, but So no problem. I can I can imagine that One day one day. I'll be there So go ahead and go ahead and pop up your little arrow down below there. Yep and let's go ahead and Cancel replace on that working order. Let's kick it down to 120 see if we get filled there So it looks like a pretty tight spread there. So hopefully that does work EWZ stays pretty liquid pretty tight. So yeah, I get it's got filled at 120 Yep, dude Cool. So we are in a trade And we've got so we've got four different positions on we've got Nat gas we've got NQ which is a basket of these a lot of technology stocks We've got Costco, which is an individual stock and then we've got EWZ, which is the Brazilian stock market index ETF So good diversification here, you know, hopefully we get a little bit more implied volatility spike potentially, you know next week and And that would give us an opportunity to put more positions on if we don't we still may put another position on and You know depending on what happens with you know, especially especially with Nasdaq We'd love to we'd love to see it down moving that because that would do two things for us one if stocks are moving down we'd get a spike in implied volatility and then two that would really help our Nasdaq position just to To get back some of that that money that they owe us Yep. Yeah, definitely. We want to get some money back on that Well, cool. Well, that's all we got today Matt any other comments or questions before we sign off I Don't think so. I think it was a pretty straightforward day and we'll definitely keep an eye on that that NQ and See what happens? Cool. Well, I'll help you and your family have a great Thanksgiving And uh barring any major moves so just to give you an idea the the hours for the for the market So that it's closed on Thanksgiving Uh, and then it uh, the markets actually open a half day on Friday So it's open till noon central or one o'clock your time So if if we do see some kind of major move, uh, I don't want to bother you on your holiday But we'll at least correspond and kind of talk about what's going on and if we need to make a make a move We probably won't record it But uh, but we can definitely place a trade if needed Yeah, definitely stay in touch. Uh, we'll make something happen if it needs to happen Cool sounds good. Have a great holiday. Yeah, and happy uh, thanksgiving to you and everybody that's listening as well All right. Take care. Okay. Take care


Yo, have y'all been keeping up? Listen, if you haven't been on Twitter, you're missing out on a whole lot. My house is kinda messy. Ignore the mess. Somebody's gonna be like, Agent, what's that plate doing over there?  Yo, people man, today's an exciting and also a depressing day. First of all, FCC, what are y'all doing over there, man? Now, we know that for a while, NBA2K has been working on a new game mode. Basically, they're creating a new program type mode that makes sense competitive. So, I don't know if that means different sliders, different animations. I don't know if that means different arenas. I know they're gonna have different types of broadcast modes that make sense. Nah. It's too cold for that, yo. It's too cold. Hey, I love Toronto. I'm too black. I love Toronto, but damn, yo. Hey Google, what's the weather right now? Right now in Ajax, it's 20 and partly cloudy. Today, it'll be partly cloudy with a forecasted high of 20 and a low of 13. Guys, I'm not built for this, yo. Every winter, I'm out here completing, man. I can't buy a $1,000 winter jacket to stay warm. Hey Google, turn the lights off. Pretty much all 17 NBA2K League teams announced their designs. They have videos dropping. I'm like all in the same like two, three day time span. I've been trying to hop in streams and, you know, just kind of find out a little bit of information. So, I can know. I need to know some stuff. And for the record, and I want to talk about something important. People keep asking me, especially on Twitch, if you're not following my Twitch, is where I stream pretty much all my pro-am games at this point. We ate. I don't want to brag or nothing, man. But we may or may not have just hit Elite Five, man. Hey. And by the way, one more update.  And I was like, I kind of needed hoodies. So, I made my own hoodies, Agent Range hoodies, Hall of Fame and Real Life hoodies on my site, thecomeupdistrict.com. Link is also in the description. I just created my new build that Slashing Sharp. Y'all seen a couple videos back. I never had so much fun like that, man. My hands is freezing, though. All right, take the scene. I've been trying to tell you how prime is lit for multiple amounts of reasons. But this happened on a stream. It's a comp game against a team called Lockdown. It was close. We were leading the first three quarters. The fourth quarter, they were slowly making their comeback than the last play. Very pass, man. But just, this is the game time, just one-on-one, man. This is just you, one-on-one, man. Hey, boy. This is what I'm talking about. You don't get those moments on the park. You don't get it. So our team has, right now, 102 wins, I think, or 103 wins and eight losses. We've been doing pretty good. I'm hoping I can start playing some more competitive teams for a guy who only really plays prime like 10, 15 hours a week. I like to think I'm coming along pretty well, man. So people's first question when they hear that is, Agent, you're going to be in the 2K League, aren't you? And from what I hear, they're saying eight, nine hours a day. For me, YouTube would have to be in like, I don't even know if I could do YouTube and do eight, nine hours a day. There was a point when I was in my third year of university. It was the summer. I was taking summer classes. I was working a nine to five job where I had to wake up at seven to make it there at nine, taking the bus. On top of that, I was trying to ace my classes. On top of that, I was volunteering at a bunch of different places. And I was doing YouTube. Trust me. I wanted to jump out of building. It's too much work.  I couldn't get anything done. So I'm not about to relive those zombie days. I think those days are past me. You know, cool six hours of sleep nowadays. And I'm cool. I'm waking up and I'm fresh.  Toronto has a 2K league team. You're telling me agents not going to be involved. There's no way. Right? I think hopefully. I don't know, man. I hope. But I wanted to be involved in some way and you know, I love to talk. So I've been trying to and you know, I've been working on this for the last couple of months now.  You can commentate the games. You already love to talk.  And you have attention in the exact space that the NBA 2K League is trying to build upon. It's a perfect formula. So I don't know. There's a cool 1% chance I become a caster or is 99%. It really depends on the perspective of the person who's hiring and hopefully you guys are going to support me. Right? Y'all going to show love. Right? Y'all good. Hey, agents can get the spot. Y'all going to show up to the games and I'm going to be. Oh, I don't really have any serious experience. And so that's probably my biggest downfall.  Didn't upload it. Didn't nothing. Just trying to get some practice in watching eSports myself focusing on what the casters say and like anything in life, bro, you'd be surprised, man. The most simple things when you watch him or when you see someone else do him, you try and do them yourself. You're like, yo, it's pretty complex. Anyway, so that's what I've been working towards literally for the last couple of months and for the next few months. I'm just casting by myself doing my own thing. Hopefully I get a real shot because that would be a really dope way to be involved. The, you know, it would still be a model. I would have to work on it, but I can still do my YouTube thing and do that at the same time, right? It'd be hard for me to not show bias, bro. If I see my Toronto Raptors pull up with a game, what am I going to go crazy? Yo, people love to stare at me when I'm on a vlog. And it's weird, bro. Why y'all looking at me, man? I haven't seen a man with a camera.  Like this happens everywhere I live at. People just don't think I belong. You know, I had to the airport. I'm the guy that they randomly security screen. You know, y'all saw me at the Raptors game security just happened to talk to me at all the tens of thousands of people in the stadium. I need to start dressing fresh y'all for real.  What am I wearing right now? I want y'all to guess shorts. I'm wearing shorts and beat up running shoes. You know, I look at me twice too. So basically 17 NBA teams now have a 2K team. So they draft five 2K players and they play in a season and in the playoffs. So like any other esports, you watch Call of Duty, League of Legends, CS Gold, just like that.  I don't know too many people that know too much about 2K more than I do. I've been uploading 2K since 2K13. I had to go back. Y'all know I have every single 2K in the book. Original 2K, 2K, 2K, 4K, 7, 8, name it. It's in my house. I'll show you when I get back. So I'm just saying in case somebody from the 2K League watching one, my hands is frozen right now. Two, why don't you want a guy casting? Who knows how to defend a five out or what to do when there's a four out pick and roll or there's a two man game from the high and the low post? You need someone who knows that kind of stuff. You know what is so cold outside? You're just out of breath for no reason. I didn't mention this, but I'm going to be at sneaker con. So if y'all can be there, show up. You know, I'll give you rocking the towel. I'm going to have my shades on, man. I'm going to look fresh. Trust me. I'm most definitely going to get some weird reactions. I have some pretty dope video ideas that I'm planning on shooting. I need to invest in some gloves immediately. My lens is kind of foggy from the cold. Allow. No, I should bother me. Oh, my lens kind of foggy. But yo, check this out. This is what I call the big box of everything in this box is everything you could ever imagine. We got GTA five. We got NBA two K one black ops two. Hey, is that so calm? Is that so calm? I grew up playing so calm. So calm was the first game I took competitive. Y'all know uncharted. I was top 1000. The last of us top 1000, right? Watch dogs online hacking top 10 name a game. I play competitively. I was top on that game. Bro, if I was in a YouTuber man and I spent all my day playing program, I guarantee you what would I be the top of program? Name it top of program. Surprisingly, even though I've lost interest in park, I'm having fun. Yo, yeah. Again, the twitch link is in the description, bro. There's always lit moments on the stream, especially once I badge out and upgrade my new slashing sharp. It's going to be game over. Y'all is going to be game over, man. Do you know a person who's going to be able to? Hey, okay. Everyone always says agent. We hate when you get cocky. You're not number one. Yo, on YouTube, I try my best to upload fun videos where I'm laughing just having fun. What you should be doing when you're playing games? Y'all think just cause I'm not uploading that I can't drop off your favorite YouTuber. You don't underestimate me, man. Yo, the stream saw me drop folks off and plat lobbies on rainbow six. By the way, I finally have some new headsets. What y'all know about the 840s? I think I showed my credit card. I'm playing, but I know when y'all was about to scroll back, what, what, what, what, what? You're going to use my credit card? I promise you, man. I'm as basic as it gets, bro.  I was working at the Pan Am Games in 2015 when it showed up. This is my wallet, y'all. I'm never getting a new wallet. So this one breaks down facts. I don't have design or anything. Y'all just going to have to get used to that, man. By the way, this is the wall of greatness. Check this out, y'all. Who is that? Who is that? No, no, no. Move out the way. Who is that brown shirt? It's a new build, y'all. Don't worry about it. Hey, if y'all want to know why there's a sea of water bottles, y'all are going to have to watch my Instagram. Hey, hey, my house isn't usually that. I was recording a skit. Allow me. It's going to be up sometime tomorrow, man. I'm just letting you know it's crazy. Anyway, I'm going to catch you on the next one, man. If you enjoyed, make sure to drop a like, subscribe if you guys are new. I'm out. Peace.


I have always worked on growing, healing, and evolving. And when I look at when I didn't want to have kids, I was really happy and content with where I was. But I was still trying to grow. Today, let's just say, let's just say I didn't have a child. I'd still see myself as evolved and continuing to. You never become fully evolved, right? But something happened and I just changed my mind. I said, you know what? Because, and it really is because I'm in a trustworthy relationship and I also I'm not being so hard on myself anymore and I've healed.  I want to be a mom. I chose it. I decided to shift my perspective and choose this for myself. This week's topic is one that everybody can contribute and relate to to some capacity. Should you change core parts of yourself once you get into a relationship?  Should those things be malleable once you now get into a relationship? This is what I discussed with Jeannie Mae Jenkins. This is a really meaty part of the discussion that I had with her. But if you want the full discussion, plus how I brought this dialogue into my personal life, you have to listen to the podcast, Lovers and Friends, available wherever podcasts are. But before we get into that part, let's get into this. Jeannie Mae. Hi, Shan. Hi, Boo. Hi. I am over the moon for you. Yeah, really. I really am. So there's a school of thought that when you get with somebody, they're supposed to love you for who you are. And you're not supposed to change for love. Yeah. Because love is about acceptance. And if you have to change for love, then it's not the right person for you. Right. But you changed a lot. A lot. I don't agree with that school of thought because I don't expect somebody to change for me, but I want them to grow and to become better versions of themselves for them. Like the person who my favorite quality in a person that I think is so attractive is self-awareness. I love when someone's self-aware to be like, you know what, that was kind of narcissistic of me, or that was kind of selfish of me, or that.  For example, I have a really hot temper. Not a lot of people know this, but it's just something in my family. I've seen it. My grandmother, I'm sorry. I saw it in my grandfather, to my grandmother, to my mom, to my aunts, to me. Right. But I didn't notice it in myself until I was with GZ. Interesting. You didn't notice in your previous marriage? No, no. Because it has to do with the type of relationship you have and the type of respect you have for that person to mirror things back to you, where you actually would stop you in your tracks and evaluate yourself, you know? So you had it. So I had it, but nobody ever called me out on it. Also, in my line of work, sometimes being a boss isn't so great for you, because you have a lot of people who just agree to what you want. They're yes men, right? And so I didn't notice that I had a hot temper until I got with GZ. And here's a person who is my equal. And I really respect. And when I would spew some of my old habits, and he was like, uh-uh, who, that's not flying here.  But I was triggering him. So through work, we learned that we both have certain habits that to the everyday person from friends, family, fans, they'll never see it. But to the person who loves us deep enough, you can press that button and boom, the dragon comes out. And we both have it. So we had to work on that. But he never told me to fix my temper. I just saw it and I thought, unless I want to stay in this place where I lose this person I love, and I stay in my comfort zone of doing what I want to do and function the way I have for the last 40 years where nobody else had to stop me. Which obviously has done quite well for you. Right. I could have. But this was something greater that I wanted. And also a great challenge to myself to say, what if now that I know it exists and the dragon's there, what if I got rid of that? How do I kill that dragon or store it in its place so that it never creates havoc in my life? And that took work. So for me, I think I don't want somebody who doesn't change. I want you to change and grow. If it means growing into an even better version of what I fell in love with. There's this theory that's called the self-expansion theory and it essentially says that humans are unique to other animals and that rather than just needing the basics of food, water, shelter, safety, belonging, we also need achievement. And that's what makes it different. So we are just as driven to find somewhere safe to sleep as night as we are to get up in the morning and strive for something. So when we're in a relationship, it's an opportunity for achievement because you can learn something else. You see the world broader. You have a new circle. So we are... When you're in a relationship, it's an opportunity for achievement. Yes. That is why I'm in my relationship. You just nailed it right there. What's that thing called again? Self-expansion theory. I'm all about the SET. That is, that, that, yes. That is me. Everybody always asks why in this relationship are you, has it changed you? Has it made you softer and different in these different ways? And I, of course, he's a great man, but what is it beyond his looks or his accolades that make me so attracted to this relationship and working for it? Like actually working for it. Like changing myself, growing, doing things. It's the ability to achieve. It makes me actually like myself more. I want to say something that someone said to me and I want to know what your reaction to this is. Okay. Okay. So we're going to role play and say, Janie, the last time that I saw you because I haven't seen you in a long time, you didn't want to have kids. Right. And now you've evolved into a woman who knows that it's her time to share a life and to give life. It's beautiful. You really dug in there with that evolve. You really, oh, I didn't like that one. I'm trying to process it because I'm forgetting you were role playing. But I was like, what do you mean by evolve? Like it has nothing to do with whether or not I chose to have kids be evolving to me, just means growing into understanding and accepting myself more. And that could also mean not choosing to have children. But that right there hit so low behind the beyond below the belt because you almost made me feel like I was stuck in a place that I would never recognize was lower than other women out there. That because now I changed my mind, I've caught up. And that is insulting. I really don't understand why and moms now that I'm a mom, I'm speaking to moms out there too. I don't love when moms make you feel like they feel bad for you if you don't see it. They actually sympathize like, but you don't know they're the real love of a mother. There's nothing like it. And you'll never experience life until you see it this way. And those things, I look at the I try to play devil's advocate and I see what you're saying in the sense of another type of love. I'll never know that until I've experienced it. Yes, that is true. But that doesn't mean I will be shorted on the type of love that is available for me because I didn't choose to have kids. And so when moms, which happened my whole life, looked down upon me because they were like, Oh, poor thing. She doesn't get it. Because you'd also hate the person who is super rich and you offer them a bottle of wine. They're like, you don't know. You actually haven't really had have you not been to the Himalayan Mountains? Right. There's a cave you got to go. You won't experience wine until then.  My $7 bottle of wine is delicious. And it works for me. Yeah.  And if you try some, you probably know. Right. For me, I feel great just saying, I changed my mind. I literally just changed my mind. I have always worked on growing, healing, and evolving. And when I look at when I didn't want to have kids, I was really happy and content with where I was. But I was still trying to grow. Today, let's just say, let's just say I didn't have a child. I'd still see myself as evolved and continuing to. You never become fully evolved. Right. But something happened. And I just changed my mind. I said, you know what? Because it really is because I'm in a trustworthy relationship. And I also, I'm not being so hard on myself anymore. And I've healed. I changed my mind. And I said, you know what? I want to be a mom. I chose it. I decided to shift my perspective and choose this for myself. You're finding yourself now in this space where not only do you love yourself more through the partnership that you're in and like yourself more, which I think is very, very different. Yeah. Liking yourself in reflection of your partner. But you now are creating something with your partner, which is another life. Yes. Have you thought about what does the next version of you look like with Baby J in your arms? As an American, it's my responsibility to understand the lives and the needs of the cultures that exist around me. So whether it's Black, Native American, Hispanic, I live and dwell with all of my neighbors that are of different races. So I need to understand what each journey is because not everybody is the same. But then now being married to a Black man, I need to understand even more. His journey and his perspective so that I can be of genuine support and allyship to him. But then now having a blood child who's going to be of those mixed races, I need to learn even more and adopt it because I can't have this Black child only be grown up to know Vietnamese culture. This Black child can't just be Vietnamese and not understand where his ancestors, his or her ancestors come from or what hardship the Jenkins had to go through specifically or what Black people had to go through to get a voice in this country. Like there's so much more now because you carry the blood of lineage and have so many who have done so much and died to be in your place, you know? Yes. So that's how that has evolved for me.