Oakland Unified, our motto, is every student thrives. And we accomplish this through a community schools approach, where we look not just at a child's academic progress, but we also look at them through a whole child approach. Oakland Unified is completely committed to changing outcomes for children in preschool and TK and K. And it's really about making sure everyone's at the table. That's representing where all of our little ones are at. I'm Charles Miller. I'm principal here at Allendale Elementary School in the Oakland Unified School District. We serve 373 students, 90% of whom are free and reduced lunch. Over the last four years, we have worked to kind of create a series of early learning programs throughout the school. You guys ready? Lotus Bloom is a family resource center. Our mission is to really help increase the school readiness of children and families living in Oakland. About 10 years ago, when we started Lotus Bloom, 86% of the third graders in our district two were not reading and testing at grade level. And so we really wanted to close the education gap for children and families. What we found out is that a lot of children were coming into elementary school with no preschool or early learning background. And do you know what this is? This is that, the horse's head. At Allendale, we have what's called a school readiness playgroup. And what it is, is it's a zero to five playgroup that offers the parent-child program as an entryway into the elementary school. We try to create a loose routine for families where they get to come in and explore and do some arts and crafts, or play with some new toys, or do some counting and sorting with their parent or their caregiver. So we're increasing the capacity of our parent group and how they work with their youngest children. We're using the language of school, walking through the hallway, how to play on the playground, so that they arrive here just knowing what to do and how to be in school. Because their parents have been here with them. Parent Voices just did a study where they found that over 56% of people used informal caregivers. And so it's really important that we build programs in those neighborhoods and places where informal caregivers are gathering and provide the resources and support so that these are the children that get better outcomes. We really believe in building on the strengths and the knowledge of the parents that are within our program and our community. And then when they're ready, we'll ask them if they want to train with us. And so we have a parent leadership pipeline where they go through a three-day training with us and then they become a substitute teacher or a storytime leader. And then from there, they get to come on as staff. So it's not some stranger that's coming in and telling you what's right or wrong about your child, but it's someone who is an ally with you and who have been a witness to your life experience. And I think that is what makes a difference. The better that you can advocate for yourself, the better that you can advocate for your child, the better you're able to protect to your family and provide a better trajectory. Hi. Are you enjoying school? Do you like school? The greatest impact I see is culture and climate. Parents come to a school environment that's positive, community-based. They establish relationships with their kids with other families. They like just walking in. The next impact I see is on academic readiness and increased production of language. Children are hearing more language. Many of them are coming and reading. They have the academic language for instruction, counting, song, rhythm, drumming. Those are all kind of the components of development that will pay off for them academically. I think the biggest piece of change that's happened since the Starting Smart and Strong Initiative has begun is that all the right people are at the table, including partnerships with community-based organizations, with the city, with the mayor's office, with outside funders, and the school district at the core. And low-discipline has been sitting at the table helping to build out the informal caregivers, but also informing the work so that we could figure out how to maximize impact for the early childhood programs in the school districts.


presentation that's a bit personal for me because for 15 years ago I actually worked on standardizing this peep protocol so I'm very happy to see that it's it has been completely broken and this will be a nice nice demonstration of how so welcome Sergei. Hello my name is Sergei, I'm from Belarus, I'm a computer science student, the fourth year student. Today I'd like to present you an amateur work just as an open source hacker. I've been interested in wireless security and in this paper I was studying the way how many of the middle attack can be implemented in the setup of WPA enterprise standard when we use peep with MSChap v2 protocol. The initial goal was like I have discovered that I'm using insecure not secure setup of wireless communication because at my university they they stimulate you to skip certificate verification just to enter your user and password and that's it. So it's not secure because the history behind peep. Peep it is a protected extensible authentication protocol it is based on IP framework it is a general conception of various authentication protocols they are they all operate in the way of IP state machines just like a graph with vertices and edges and each time the machine stays in some state and getting a new message it processes it and then goes into another state taking some actions. If we will look at peep state machines the RFC is 4137 in the draft they proposed a conceptual implementation of state machine for client and the server and there is a host app project you usually should be familiar with WPA supplicant and host app d applications one of them is used for client side and the other one can work as a server side application both of them share the same core but they diffuse in the way who uses them why did I choose host app because they had an example it is called eep example and in there they configured a demo communication between the peer and server side state machines without any hardware layer so we can just play around with it without having set an up rogue access point put an additional man in the middle node so that example it has the exact setup peep with ms chap v2 without radius just credentials were built in and I wanted to simulate man in the middle attack as it was written in the paper man in the middle man in the middle attack in sorry the name of the paper is man in the middle in tunnel authentication protocols it is dated to 2002 it has been available at spring publication in 2005 and on Wikipedia you can you are able to access it since 2013 and in previous year I have studied to read it at first time and it was a bit difficult to understand how to implement this man in the middle attack because it usually looks like this these are mostly it is written mostly the same way in that paper just like man in the middle okay waits for a legitimate device to enter an internal let us say remote authentication protocol and it captures the initial message if you are operating in wireless networks the proceed the previous step is to capture the attention of the client it is called association usually what can we use we can create a rogue access point we can make it to look like the same way as the legitimate server that is we usually configure the same SSID and of course the inner protocol should be the same it shouldn't be WPA PSK should be WPA enterprise and the second point you need to get the client connect to you if he is talking to legitimate server we can send the authentication packet to brogue the session and ask the client to reconnect also very useful technique is to come closer to the victim this way our rogue access point has the highest signal and usually they prefer hotspots with a better signal but it's not always in general it works so we capture the attention of the client it associated to our rogue access point and at the moment we begin if authentication so I have decided to call the server Alice the client Bob usually they call it drop a millery but I have called it if it doesn't matter at all so in my simulation the man on the middle node it it consists of two if state machines the if pure and if server so if pure communicate with the legitimate server and if server this are this is our rogue access point that captured the attention of Bob so actually I think that they usually even make it another way with the names of Alice and Bob usually Bob is the legitimate server and Alice is the client it differs here so peep it is a wrap over eep protocol usually all those leadership protocols like ms2p2 they send credentials with various problems it can be weak password problem like hash can be cracked in 2012 there have been a talk about cracking ms2p2 credentials in less than 24 hours the platform is called cloud cracker if I'm not if I'm correct and it utilizes FPGA nodes in this simulation I was interested in proxying the ms2p credentials from Bob peer to Alice server and backward in January around January 15 I have discovered that there was really cool paper in 2014 about not this trivial attack but about really cool attack it is called okay it's about double we pay enterprise exploiting and they call proxying of messages like let's let use ms2p1 oracles because ms2p2 protocol it is the inner protocol in peep and there is leap protocol that uses ms2p1 and iOS 7 had a problem like you connect to the you draw maxes point for example you provide your credentials but if I will create a rogue access point with leap protocol your iPhone will leak credentials and even more that protocol even does not use tiller's tunnel so if there is somebody interested in more deep study of the problem you can refer to that paper the link is provided at first them page so in peep at first parties established tiller's handshake the usual way server provides the certificate to the client client is to verify it the thing to steal the certificate there is no certificate authority usually because it's not good it should be another trusted storage the easiest way is to provide self signed certificate into a client and usually Android phones allows you to unspecify this certificate this way you connect to the server without we refine his authenticity and so man in the middle is possible so we have established tiller's we have finished tiller's handshake it is a part of tiller's protocol and now we begin tiller's communication both parties other server and if peer and the same is true for if server and both peer they come up with a shared master key that is the basis for future encryption so since we performed man in the middle if peer and if server they pose they are in possession of both secret keys for tunnels between other server and if peer and for the tunnel between if server and both peer and now we are actually working with a with a pure MS chat with two protocol here I presented the actual implementation of proxy in of the inner protocol because it's not that easy to process the protocol there are some things that differs so I have decided to went into the code of host app and at first there are was only two machines I have created four machines then I added communication and pairs these two communicate between themselves and those two between themselves then I started to configure the setup like I have I disabled the verification of the certificate in Bob peer machine then I meet the following problem we can skip the certificate verification but we can be still sure that we were communicating to legitimate server this functionality scored is called crypto binding the ideas the following we generate special integrity value with the help of hash function that takes as arguments both secret materials the master key from TLS tunnel and special secret key generated on the basis of MS chat with two credentials and then we exchange these values and both parties can be sure that the other end was in possession of both materials and I was really trying to disable this functionality because with it you can perform simulation crypto binding they have been created in 2004 by Cisco I'm not sure at least in Cisco they had this functionality since 2004 and it's usually only for okay it's usually only for peep we zero because in peep you one they don't even have this crypto binding so in my simulation I have configured peep you one protocol but just to make my life easier so then I started to add communication between these two money on the middle state machines like Alice server sends a challenge request to if peer peer if peer does not have a password even the hash of this password then if peer starts a pending state it's just specific functionality of the implementation host step and sends the data to if server if server waits to the initial message from if peer and sends a change request just putting inside the same data that was sent from Alice server to if peer both peer computes required response if server obtains it enters enters pending state and sends the data to if peer if peer successfully builds a forged MS chapter to challenge response as a server verifies it everything is okay and sends success request if peer have to verify this request because it is a part of protocol but since it is an attacker she skips it and sends the request to if server because both peer won't skip this verification so we need to deliver the success request to the end so after that the authentication is completed everybody thinks it's okay I mean those ends and we are as attackers in possession of required secret materials and we are permitted to access network resources that were protected with double pay enterprise authentication and as well we can proxy application layer messages from both peer to Alice server and analyze this traffic it's very true attack you can protect from these with the help of VPN HTTPS it works still it's more about network resources like some kind of university email or like like that so that's it thank you for attention thank you sir J questions we have time for questions raise your hand yes how is the certificate normally checked against the host so I thought about sometimes you get the CA from your university or something like this then does it trust them all certificates which are signed by the CA also binding between the common name of the CA and the name of the radio server something like this so for the next step okay usually you have you can you have to provide some kind of verification chain like an usual trusted storage in HTTPS in Windows they usually mix these certificate authorities and Linux actually in host app you can provide separate certificates specifically for this network the actual way how to


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Good afternoon and welcome to this week's Monday market webinar on the 30th of June. And we're looking forward to a fairly big week. It is the end of the quarter and end of the half year. But overall, markets have been slightly negative this morning. Not really too much of a surprise given the fact that we are still not far off record highs, particularly in the case of the S&P. And certainly in the context, I think of what is going to be a pretty heavy date a week over the course of the next four days because it is going to be a slightly shorter week. While I talk over the risk warning, you can just digest that. It is going to be a very significantly, hopefully volatile week, albeit a shortened one, given the fact that U.S. markets are off on Friday because of the Independence Day, Fourth of July holiday. With that in mind, non-farm payrolls, instead of being on Friday, is actually on Thursday and actually overlaps the ECB press conference at the same time. So certainly this week's non-farm payrolls webinar, which will be on Thursday, Friday, Thursday, starting at 1.15, could well be an interesting half-hour session. So I would certainly urge you to tune into that so you can sign up on the education section of the CMC Markets website. And for that, you get two significant market events for the price of one. Certainly something not to be missed in the short to medium term. So just to sort of give you a bit of a preamble, markets are slightly lower today. European markets are on the back foot slightly. It's the end of the quarter, end of the month, looking ahead towards a raft of key economic announcements starting tomorrow, not only from the U.S., but also Europe and the U.K. And I think we really need to look ahead to this week's market events in the context of obviously the climax later this week on Thursday, which will be non-farm payrolls, which will be at 1.30, and obviously the European Central Bank Press Conference as well. So as I say, two for the price of one should be very interesting. Let's start this week with a look ahead to tomorrow's PMI data and tomorrow's ISM data out of the U.S. Now last week we had a very disappointing GDP number, a Q1 GDP number out of the U.S. It came in at minus 2.9%. The statistics don't really appear to be too perturbed about that, but given where our expectations were at the beginning of this year with respect to U.S. growth and given where they are now, you would think that would be factored into the market sentiment, and it doesn't appear to be the case. The CIS warned at the weekend that stock market returns certainly aren't being backed up by economic growth, and I noticed something actually quite interesting over the course of my looking at the markets over the weekend was that for the past six months the U.S., S&P 500 and the German DAX have pretty much moved in lockstep with each other over the course of the last six months. There's been a fairly good correlation between the two. Now those of you who are probably regular viewers of my webinars will know that I'm probably not the most bullish person in the world when it comes to stock markets at this present time simply because really the economic data doesn't really bear out where equity markets are at the moment. Really equity markets are at their levels at the moment simply because of the expectation that central banks will be keeping their foot hard on the accelerator over the course of the next few days, weeks and months. Now if we look here at the correlation between the DAX and the S&P 500, it's pretty much been fairly constant over the course of the last eight to nine months, but I actually have noticed a slight weakening in sentiment with respect to the correlation between these two indexes and I really noticed it over the past month. We've seen the S&P 500 continue to make new all-time highs on a month-to-month basis. Now the Germany 30 index which we have here, let me just show this to you, has continued to make new all-time highs, but over the past month or so it's started to tail off. You can see this purple line here. There was the peak in early June. It corresponds with that peak there in the S&P and the peaks here, here, here, here and here. But now the DAX is starting to roll over and that for me is a little bit of a concern given the fact that the correlation between the S&P and the DAX has been fairly well solid for a very, very good proportion of the last eight or nine months. Now we appear to be getting early signs of a bit of a roll over in the DAX and we can look at what are the reasons are for that until we're blue in the face, but if I actually look at the underlying chart I can see straight away that we're at a very key point with respect to the DAX and a potential reversal pattern. I'm not going to suddenly say stock markets are going to collapse. I don't believe that for one moment, but what I would say is a warning sign in the DAX suggests that the recent upward momentum that we've been seeing in that particular index over the course of the last few months is starting to give early signs of a possible roll over. So let's look at the actual index itself. What we've seen here is it's finding support round about the 50-day moving average. It's bounced off that. It's currently holding above the previous highs at 9,790 apart from obviously a brief dip below that last Thursday. But overall there does appear to be some signs that we are starting to lose a little bit of momentum. We can see that from the lower lows here and here. So what we need to see now on the DAX and we're at a very key level in the context of that is for a move below the 50-day moving average. Will we get it? It's very difficult to say, but certainly the data that we've got so far this week could actually reinforce that. So let's concentrate on what we've got tomorrow. We've got the Italian, Spanish, French and German manufacturing PMIs for June. Now while we're not expecting any significant deterioration in the Italian, Spanish and German ones, there is still some evidence that the growth that we've been seeing in those three economies is starting to slow down. As for France, well, France is basically a law unto itself. We're expecting in a contractionary reading there of 47.8. All the other three are expecting readings that are in or around 52.5, 53, 53.5. If we get weaker readings than what we're expecting then obviously that is going to be a concern for growth going forward and it's certainly going to be a blow to the European Central Bank given the fact that earlier this month they put interest rates into negative territory and also announced a new LTRO. The only problem with that LTRO is that it doesn't start until September. So this week's meeting of the ECB is only important in one respect. There will be no change to monetary policy and really then it's just a question of what does Mr. Draghi say at his press conference because he's already stated that interest rates can't go any lower. He's said that they are at the lower bound of where they are. So any further easing measures from the ECB will have to come in the form of monetary stimulus. What form that takes we still don't know yet. We know that there's a $400 billion TLTRO which is due to start in September but between now and September there is not likely to be any further policy movements by the ECB certainly in the context of interest rates and that's very, very important. We saw this morning that CPI inflation came in at 0.5% but more importantly than that, core CPI which strips out more volatile factors like fuel and energy actually jumped higher to 0.7%. So that in itself suggests that the previous, sorry, 0.8 my mistake, it jumped from 0.7 to 0.8 so that suggests that fears about deflation may be and only may be slightly overstated. So that's likely to keep the ECB on hold for quite some time to come notwithstanding all of those points I made earlier and furthermore it's more than likely expected to see the euro continue to try and push higher. Now what am I looking for on the euro? Well you can see my comments in the chart forum. That's in the bubble up here on the right hand side but essentially the key level that I'm keeping an eye on ladies and gentlemen today is this red line and the 200 day moving average. That level is around about 136.75. If we are able to sustain the move above 136.75 then there's a good chance we can go back to 137.30 and then these series of lows just below 138. Now just quickly draw that horizontal line on there. There is a significant area of resistance around about 137.80, 137.85 and what we need to see for that to happen is from a sustained move through the highs in June and that trend line resistance and the 200 day moving average at 136.90. So between 136.75, 136.90 the market I think the euro is definitely going to have a pop at that. The key question then remains is to whether or not the momentum is there to push it through that. Now also on Tuesday we've got a whole host of other data items out of the euro area. German unemployment for June is expected to remain at 6.7%. We've also got Italian unemployment for May. We've got EU unemployment for May. Italian unemployment is expected to stay at record levels of 12.6% and we've also got EU unemployment 11.7%. So again it's expected to remain at fairly elevated levels and that more than anything else is probably going to continue to be the case irrespective of what the European Central Bank does. Certainly in terms of policy mistakes the French government seems to be moving from one disaster to the next. Because over the weekend they announced that they were going to be increasing tourist taxes by quite a substantial amount which is more than likely really going to help the Paris economy grow a lot more than it already has. The heavy note of sarcasm in that last statement. On Wednesday we've got first quarterly GDP revision for the EU area. That's expected to be confirmed at 0.2%. And PPI for May expected to come in at 0.1%. Then on Thursday main event we've got services PMIs for Italy, Spain, France and Germany. Again France is going to be the weakest link there. So again we need to be watching for further divergence between the German economies and the French economies. That's certainly going to raise tensions between France and Germany going forward. And retail sales for May. We've got a very disappointing German retail sales number this morning. We're expecting a big jump in that number given the fact that consumer confidence in Germany continues to rise at a significantly increased rate. Yet what we got was actually a minus 0.6 reading for the month of May. And yet German consumer confidence has been the highest levels it has been for five or six years. So again you've got confusing data points pointing to completely different outcomes with respect to the German economic recovery. Are we getting a slow down? We're certainly seeing some evidence that businesses are losing confidence. The IFO survey came in at a seven month low last week. We've got ZDW survey again showing signs of weakness. And we've also got PMIs at last week which came in slightly below expectations, albeit still in the mid 50s. But early signs that maybe the German economy is starting to lose a little bit of steam. So for the hearing now let's look at euro sterling and look at what the key levels are on that particular market. And we are starting to see what I would call a little bit of a bottoming out in that particular market. We've been in decline since March. The March highs around about 83, 90, 84. We found a bit of a base around 79, 60. We are starting to wedge a little bit higher. But we haven't as yet been able to take out this 80, 35 level that we saw in the middle of last week. And I think that's the next resistance level on euro sterling. Again I've outlined my comments on that in the chart forums on that particular currency pair on the right hand side here. Very, very easy to access that. Post your own comments even. And by all means, if you have any questions that you want to address to me, please feel free to ping them across using the chat feature which is available to you on the WebEx platform in front of you. So we culminate the weeks events in Europe with the ECB rate meeting. No real policy changes expected there. I think it's really going to be okay. How does Mr. Draghi sound in his press conference? Is he going to be overly dovish? Is he going to change his message to any significant extent from what he said in June? And obviously one of the key questions I think he will get asked is how effective does he think the events of or the policy changes that he made in June have been in the past month or so? I would argue that there's little evidence that they've had any effect at the moment. And if I'm honest, I don't think they'll have an effect over one month or two months or three months or four months. It's going to be very, very difficult for the ECB to do much more without a certain degree of input from politicians. And really now it's a question of what can politicians do to try and institute reforms to their economies to try and basically kick-start the European economy on an upward path. At the moment the signs don't look particularly promising. So looking at euro sterling we've got a little bit of support around about 79.80 on the downside but on the top side we've got 80.35. I think there's a good chance we could get a little bit of a push up to this upper trend line here but overall the downtrend remains intact simply because of the fact that monetary policy for the ECB and the Bank of England remain on completely divergent pathways and they're likely to remain that way for quite some time to come but as with anything with the euro sterling it sometimes short squeezes you when you don't expect it to do that so certainly worth keeping an eye on that. So that neatly brings me on to the UK. It's also a fairly big week for the UK. We've had an awful lot of what I would call mixed smoke signals from the Bank of England. Mark Carney was in compared to an unreliable boyfriend blowing hot and cold and sending out mixed signals and I suppose that's one word for it but overall the message hasn't changed. The likelihood is we will probably see an interest rate hike in the UK sometime over the next 12 months. It's really about the timing and nothing more than that. So let's look at the pound. Now those of you who will have watched my videos or will have listened to my ramblings on YouTube will know that I've been looking at the pound against the dollar for quite some time and I've been identifying this 170 level as a key, key level going forward. We look as if we're going to get a monthly close above 170, 170.50. Let's look at how important this 170, 170.50 level is because no matter how often I mention this I still think that it really needs mentioning and bearing out. If we change this to a monthly chart we look at the 2005 lows. We draw a trend line from the draw tools button here. Horizontal support and resistance line right through there. 170.50 we can see straight away how absolutely really important that level. 170.50 is on this particular chart. Blow it out here. We can see once again I'm going to put it on the chart forum so you guys can have a quick look at it. So you can see the line that I've drawn. 170.50 key resistance on a monthly close. I'm going to post that there so it appears in the chart forum box on the market post section of the website and that should appear up there in the course of the next couple of minutes. But as we can see from this chart here, ladies and gentlemen, we can see that when we've broken through this 170.50 we've carried on going and then some. So I think if we can close above 170.50 then I think there's a good chance we could get all the way back to 173.5. Why do I think that? Quite simply let's do the Fibonacci retracement from the 2007 highs to those lows that we saw there in 2008, 2009. And 173.35 is the 50% retracement of that entire down move. Now it's probably going to be within 10 or 20 points of that. I would certainly be looking for around about 173.30, 173.40. But certainly if we can sustain a move above this 170 level as we move into July then the chips are starting to fall in favour of further sterling gains. I would only revise my view on that if we fell back below 169.10 on a short-term basis. But here and now even though the pound is struggling and trading sideways between 169.10 and 170.50 I would only revise my review of a lower pound if we drop below this level here which I'm going to draw a little arrow under right there. That's the level that I'm looking at to maintain further sterling gains going forward. So let's move on to Dolly Yen because I think Dolly Yen could actually get quite interesting this week given we've got non-farm payrolls on Friday. Now we've also made a key technical breakout on Dolly Yen. We've broken below the 200-day moving average and we've closed below it for the first time in a very, very long time. We have to go all the way back to 2012 for the last time we closed below the 200-day moving average. So we're not only below the 200-day moving average. We're also below the Sichi-Muku-Kumu cloud resistance level as well which currently comes in around about 101.80. So certainly keeping an eye on 101.80, keeping an eye on the 200-day moving average I think will slowly move lower towards the lows that we've seen this year which are around about 100.60. So for the here and now we look as if we're starting to trend lower. Certainly keep an eye out on US Treasury markets in that context and with this strong Yen, I think it's unlikely that we're going to see a strong rally in the Nikkei either. So looking at US Treasuries, the 10-year note yields are starting to look a little bit soft. While they remain soft, dolly yen will struggle to go higher and we're certainly seeing evidence of that at the moment. We still remain in an uptrend for Treasury prices. That's going to put downward pressure on Treasury yields and the likelihood is we could actually see a move back to this 127 level that we saw at the end of May. So to get an indication of what the yield comparison is with respect to those prices let's have a quick look at my Bloomberg chart which I'm just about to bring across right now. So here we go and it comes. So we can see once again 252, 250, the low is 2.4 at the end of May which correlates with those peaks that we saw in the price at the end of May and again we can see this downtrend here, downtrend in yields. For this downtrend in yields to come to an end we really need to break above this series of highs around about 2.65, 2.66% in the short to medium term and at the moment there is a concern about US inflation which at the moment appears to be being disregarded by the market and the Federal Reserve. I would caution against that but at the moment bond markets seem fairly indifferent to it and so do these prices as well. So it's certainly worth keeping an eye on that particular market, the US bond market and in that context certainly worth keeping an eye on tomorrow's economic data out of the US. We've got ISM manufacturing for June. That is expected to come in around about 55.5. Let's look at the key levels on the S&P 500 in that regard because I certainly think that's important as well. We've had a bit of a pullback. We've got resistance at the two peaks here around about 1969, 1970. So given the fact that we've got the employment report on Thursday I think it's highly unlikely we'll get much in the way of any strong movements one way or the other and I think it's more likely, though I'll probably get this one wrong, that we drift back towards this uptrend line here around about the 1940 area, the 1945 area over the course of the next few days because the Fed is still fully much in taper mode. We've had James Bullard who's actually not a voting member on the FOMC suggesting that rates could rise by the end of the first quarter of next year. Well that's not too different from the Bank of England but certainly yield differentials aren't reflecting that in the bond markets so again that's going to be very much data dependent in the context of that particular move. It would be very, very interesting to keep an eye out on the prices paid element of that ISM manufacturing number tomorrow. While we're expecting just a slight improvement on the main number from 55.4 to 55.5 I think there is a chance the market could react more to the prices paid component of that so those prices paid is expected to come in at 60 which is actually fairly high. It does suggest that maybe there could be an inflation problem starting to permeate through into the US economy. Certainly the CPI numbers appear to support that supposition and certainly the PCE numbers last Thursday appear to suggest that maybe pricing pressures are now starting to filter through into the supply chain. On Wednesday we've got the ADP employment report and that was very weak in May. It came in at 179. Everyone was expecting a 210 plus number for that. It came in at 179. We're expecting a number of 205 for that on Wednesday. Again that will basically be a fairly positive number. Then weekly jobless claims, non-farm payrolls on Thursday and the unemployment rate as well. The numbers that we're looking for on Thursday are 210 slightly down from the 217 in May, 210,000 new jobs and unemployment dropped quite sharply in May from 6.7% to 6.3%. Key question, will that drop be sustained? More importantly, what does the labour participation rate do? Does it stay at 35 yellow at 62.8? Those are the key levels to keep an eye out for. I'll just have a quick look at gold in that context because gold's actually been quite interesting over the past few weeks. It's been actually surprisingly resilient despite the fact that the Fed continues to taper but I would suggest that it's in a range. Certainly we can see from the candles, the daily candles in this particular chart that the market doesn't really know which way to send it. You've got long upper shadows, you've got long lower shadows. At the moment with the event risk with respect to Iraq, percolating away and simmering away underneath, there is certainly an appetite for gold. But at the moment it's finding support just above 1300 and it's finding resistance at 1,330. So at the moment we're in a little bit of a range. The oscillator is starting to roll over which suggests that maybe we could see further declines over the course of the next few trading sessions. That is more likely to be the case if we get a significant improvement in the US economic data over the course of the next day or so. More importantly, what's Brent doing? Well Brent after spiking higher is now starting to run out of a little bit of steam. It's starting to slip back which is obviously very good. We're quite pleased about that because it lessens the inflation risk of higher fuel prices. But we can certainly see that from the beginning of the year. If we look at where Brent was at the beginning of 2014 and where it is now, it's pretty much, it's up ever so slightly but not an awful lot. We can go back to the beginning of January and we can see from here, if we look at that there, 0.55% up on the course of the last six months. So that should be good overall for petrol prices at the pump. This is actually quite an interesting chart because if you compare that to WTI prices and this is why I think there's more of an inflation risk in the US than there is here in the UK is while Brent is only marginally higher, the pound is actually quite significantly higher from the beginning of this year. So it's gone from 165 to 170. So there's actually a slight deflationary risk here in the UK because the pound is stronger over the course of the last six months and Brent's hardly moved which essentially makes Brent prices when converted to sterling lower. On the other hand, if we look at where US prices, crude oil prices were at the beginning of the year and where they are now, they're 12% higher. Well that's quite a significant move higher in fuel prices which at the moment does appear to be starting to percolate through into the supply chain because if you look at US CPI, it's at 2.1%. UK inflation is at 1.5%. Everyone's talking about rate hikes here in the UK but no one's talking about rate hikes in the US and yet their inflation rate is 0.6% points above ours. So I think you can see the general thrust of what I'm saying is that I think markets in the US are underestimating the inflation risk in the US particularly when you actually look at energy prices and those crude prices there, 12% up on the year. The likelihood is we could start to see that filtered through into the supply chain over the course of the next five to six months. So it's certainly worth keeping an eye out for that. Okay, just before I wrap up just a quick reminder that the non-farm payrolls webinar this week is on Thursday starts at 1.15. We'll also be going over the ECB press conference. So you've got two major market events of the price of one on the webinar this week. You can sign up on the CMC Markets website under the education section for that particular webinar. Should be interesting, should be volatile and hopefully be able to make, certainly make available quite a few significant trading opportunities over the course of the afternoon. Before I sign off and put this up on YouTube, does anyone want to ask me any questions about anything that I haven't covered already? Go on, someone asked me about the Aussie. You know you want to. I'll cover it anyway because we've got a rate decision overnight from the RBA. Rates 2.5% currently, likely to remain unchanged. If we look at where the Aussie is now and where it's been, there's a big, big top at 94.60. So that big top at 94.60 really needs to be taken out for us to go higher. If we drop below this trend line support, which is currently around 93.50, we could well see further declines towards the 200-day moving average. But overall, I think the likelihood is that we continue to remain in this uptrend from this inverse head and shoulders here. While we remain in this uptrend, there's a good chance we could take out this resistance and head towards this price target just above the 96 area. But initially a break of 94.60, 50.60 should push us up to 95.20 and then towards 95.80. Certainly worth keeping an eye on the Aussie dollar at these levels at the moment. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, well, if that's it for this week, please, please join me on Thursday. Otherwise, I will see you all again same time, same place next week.


Okay, so eBay quarter three earnings report is finally in and there is a lot of information to go through. So stay till the end. There will be points throughout that will be focused to your business and your goals and your future strategies on the platform. So let's get straight into it and we'll start off with Jamie's opening statement and then we'll progress from there. Good afternoon everyone and thank you all for joining us today. Our team delivered solid results during the third quarter. We generated gross merchandise volume of approximately 18 billion dollars while revenue grew 4% to 2.5 billion dollars. We delivered non-gap earnings per share of $1.03 up 3% while returning over 780 million dollars of capital to shareholders. We achieved these results despite continued challenges in the global macro environment. Inflationary pressures and rising interest rates continue to weigh on consumer confidence and pressure demand for discretionary goods. As Steve will discuss in greater detail we've observed softening consumer trends to date in Q4 and particular challenges in Europe, suggesting we may see a more muted seasonal uptake over the holidays. We are focused on controlling what we can control, being prudent about our costs, lenient operational efficiencies and continuing to drive innovation for our customers. So let's just stop that for a moment and just look at that statement there. So we can see that Jamie is acknowledging that there is a pressure on the discretionary products that are being macro affected across the platforms. Now this is softening sales and is affecting many sellers as a high proportion of what is sold on eBay in the number of items sold as opposed to the value and the ASP is predominantly lower priced discretionary products. Now this, he will go on to explain, affects more highly the UK and Europe platforms but does also acknowledge that it is implementing an effect on the US platform as well. So where we are seeing a drop in sales for Q4 and as I've mentioned on yesterday's video that around Q4 saying where are the sales are they going to be improving and I stated that no this is what it is, it is in actual fact this is what it is. So we can expect a lower level of sales through Q4 unfortunately. There will be those of course that aren't affected there will be those that will be massively affected and may impact how they look forward and this is hopefully something we can all work together and within the community and find ways and ways to move forward and let's see how it goes from there. So yes so definitely good that Jamie has acknowledged this it's not obviously all of the impact but it obviously has a large impact on the platform and on us as sellers. So let's just move along and see where he's moving to the future of what they've been implementing over the last six months and what they expect to be doing going forward. Last quarter I discussed our vision of reinventing the future of e-commerce for enthusiasts which is focused on three strategic pillars relevant experiences scalable solutions and magical innovations and I'm pleased that we made meaningful progress against each of these pillars during Q3 which I'll discuss in greater detail. I'll start with our first pillar relevant experiences. Our relevance focus categories continues to drive underlying growth in our business and we've observed a meaningful improvement in our growth relative to the market in every category we've invested to date. Focus categories grew roughly seven points faster than the remainder of our marketplace in Q3. Year to date our focus categories have grown at approximately four percent year over year. For context we estimate market rates of growth in those same categories were in the low single digits on average during the first half of 2023 as several of these categories are comprised of highly discretionary goods which have been more acutely impacted by the challenging macro environment. We continue to push the envelope of innovation in motor parts and accessories or P&A by developing features that enhance our customer value proposition. The eBay guaranteed fit program has contributed to this momentum by delivering a game-changing level of trust. This program enables tens of millions of P&A shoppers to buy with confidence knowing their auto parts will fit or then receive their money back which is yielded a measurable uplift in conversion. Given the success this program has had in the U.S. we were incredibly excited to roll out similar programs in the UK and Germany during Q3 where unaided awareness among P&A shoppers is significantly higher than it is in the U.S. The guaranteed fit program is underpinned by multiple years of investment in P&A technology including our acquisition of My Fitment. We've been steadily onboarding sellers into the My Fitment toolkit to enhance their P&A listings with more robust fitment data which improves findability for parts and protects buyers from unnecessary returns. By the end of Q3 roughly two-thirds of large U.S. P&A sellers have adopted the toolkit. On average sellers are observing conversion uplift of double digits or higher for listings enhanced by this toolkit driving incremental GMV for eBay. So from that just this far we can see that eBay Motors is still one of their major major focused categories and they are expanding exponentially throughout the marketplace and increasing their revenue and this is well it can't be a bad thing it can't be a bad thing. This is not the only category they're expanding in but as we can see they've moved to UK and Germany being their second and largest platforms out there and obviously U.S. being the number one so we can see that they are still investing they're continuing to invest and they are expanding into other areas as we will see shortly. During Q3 we continue to deliver relevant experiences for the collectibles category across a number of areas. We generated over 10 billion dollars in GMV from collectibles over the last 12 months and more than one in four eBay buyers purchased at least one collectibles item over the past year. These buyers carry some of the highest conversion repurchase and retention rates on eBay and they are also among the heaviest cross category shoppers on our platform which supports our other categories. Our goal is to remain the world's most loved destination for passionate collectibles enthusiasts providing access to the most compelling assortment of inventory across multiple categories in a high trust environment. So we can tell from here that they're moving heavily more into collectibles. The enthusiast buyers as we are aware from the previous quarter earnings report was their next goal. So they're looking to do the same in this category as they did in the eBay motors. They're expanding, they're growing. They're not filtering out what they're doing is looking to improve the trust on the platform and to drive more enthusiasts to the app and the platform for their purchases and their collection growth. As they've quite clearly stated that the average enthusiast buyer additionally purchases a lot more from the platform outside of the scope of their collections as well. So they're growing from within is what they're looking to do here. They're looking to expand the collectibles, trust the specifics, the search results and increase the revenue from that side. So we can see now that the continuing investment in eBay motors, which is great for anybody that deals with reputable parts and accessories. I'm sure there will be teething issues along the way, but I'm at the same time. If you are dealing with this category, you will know the ins and outs of this side of the business already. In service of that vision, during Q3 we launched direct submissions to the eBay vault. This enables any US resident to send in trading cards valued at $250 or higher from their personal collections to the vault, even if they were not purchased on eBay. In July to coincide with the National Sports Collectors Convention, the industry's biggest event, we announced vault enhanced submissions, which now enables us to gather large amounts of high ASP trading cards in person at 10 pull events attended by top collectors. During Q3, we also wrote out a revamped condition grading system for trading cards, which greatly improves transparency for collectibles in this category. New listings now carry more precise details, including whether a card has been professionally graded and a numerical grade or one of several predefined card conditions. Existing listings will be also migrated to the new standard over the coming months. The collectibles is now their next target, should we say. So if you are looking at selling in the collectibles market, you can expect additional investment into the platform to get your products in front of more eyes. You've got, as they've mentioned, the eBay vault. You've got the grading system that they've implemented for the trading cards. So that seems to be the direction they're expanding heavily at the moment as well. So not affecting everybody else, but in these areas they are more focused. So you can only expect good things, positive things once they have got passed their teasing stages. In response to our growing community of collectors and enthusiasts, last year we introduced eBay Live, an interactive live shopping experience within eBay app. This feature marries eBay's unique scale with an engaging shopping experience that we believe enthusiasts across the collectibles, luxury, and fashion categories are increasingly seeking. Fires can interact with influential sellers and check out in real time without leaving the stream. And sellers have loved this tool as they can move items at scale and increase their sales velocity while listing items at fixed price or as extended auctions. eBay Live is currently in beta, but we continue to expand its availability to more sellers in categories. While you've been thoughtful about the pace of onboarding as we fine-tune the beta experience, Q3 market inflection point, as we hosted over 1,000 live events, saw our millionth buyer tune in and grew GMB from eBay Live by 4x quarter over quarter. So we can see from here that they're now going after the whatnot market. So they are really, really investing big time with this and we can see a massive growth spurt coming I feel in 2024 with this launch. I reckon definitely across US, if not across the UK and Europe as well. Obviously trying to pull the sellers back to the platform that are looking to list elsewhere because of the slowing down in sales. They're also looking at bringing the buyers in that are shall we say attracted to the shiny objects style of whatnot. And this is yet another example of eBay working in the background to pull people back to the platform, trying to bring the buyers in, appeal to the next gen shall we say as well of buyers and keeping the platform moving forward as a future proofed business. So yes, good stuff. I think there's a lot of scope in that. There could be a few teething issues, I think along the way, there may well be a process you need to go through to be authorized to do the eBay Live or they may just open it to all. But I think it's more likely to be the previous than the latter. So there is the Jamie intro to the earnings report. Now I want to kind of move over to the more nitty gritty areas that cover us as sellers. I'm not interested in percentage growth, etc. etc. We know eBay is going to be around for a long time to come. We know that they are making a profit. They have expendable income, which they have been using to buy up eBay stock. So that way it's not taxable. It also pulls that revenue back into the business where they are then able to push back out to the shareholders keeping them more happy than they may well have been. This could be more of a pulsating effect whilst they reinvest and wait for the generation of income from these new areas of investment. This could well be a good, good sign for the platform. We don't want to get bogged down by points up points down shareholder prices share prices blah blah blah. That's fine. That doesn't affect us. Doesn't matter how much eBay is making. That doesn't make us any money. What it does do is give us the comfortability knowing that eBay are looking to expand into areas that they have previously not been in or as strongly. They are reinvesting into the platform, which can only benefit us in the long run. There will be teething issues. We have to accept this. There's always going to be teething issues with change, but we can get through it working together. So let's have a look at the next part of the earnings report. This is going to be moving on to the Q&A section. I'm going to trim down financial jargon and things. We don't need that. I'm going to be more focusing, looking at what they're saying regarding us as sellers, how it's going to affect us going forward, what they're looking to implement and what we can see from that. And that is the point. We need to be looking forward to the future. We need to be looking at restructuring our strategies, our game plan for 2024. Okay, so let's get into that now. Thanks. Good afternoon. Appreciate the questions. I guess first off, Jamie, there was some discussion of the seller conference a few weeks back about extending focus categories to more verticals. I think home and electronics were a couple of those in discussion. I wonder how quickly we should see focus coverage grow in proportion to total listings. And if that's true, you know, is that something that could drive volume growth in, you know, through 2024? Yeah, Colin, thanks for the question. So as you know, with focus categories, we don't preannounce the next categories that we're going into for competitive reasons, etc. We do continue to roll out new areas as well as invest back into areas of the business. So have a look at this quarter. We launched UK authentication for jewelry in our UK business. We're actually opening up a authentication center in Japan to allow for cross border trade out of Japan, which is great. We launched or expanded in P&A our guaranteed fifth program. So that had launched just in the US. We've seen great results by creating a game changing level of trust in that category. And we've expanded that now to UK and Germany this quarter. And we're excited to see the impact of that on those markets. Our other categories like refurbished continue to do well. We've seen double digit growth from that perspective. We launched some new enhancements and trading cards. This quarter with the new classification system that we've put in place and new direct submission into vault. So we're going to continue to balance new focus category opportunities, expansion to other categories like we did with jewelry in the UK. And like we did recently with streetwear, as well as investing back in the focus categories and what's working because we like the ROI of those investments. So we can see that they're definitely looking at expanding into more categories with investment around expansion through the platform. As you can see, it was mentioned around household products, electronics. So that could well be the next area could be. There was also talk around by Steve with regards to how the current softening of sales in this quarter and the current quarter quarter four are being affected by the the financial environment, the economic environment across the world. Now, he stated that obviously, yes, there is a large softening in Europe and UK, as we all know, for us in the UK and Europe. But there was also a softening starting to appear at the moment in some degree on the US platform. Now, with that, he did say that CBT, the cross border trade from the Far East has actually helped lessen the impact of the softening of sales throughout the platform. So they have a lot of sellers that sell from the Far East.  You know, we're not talking that. But what we are talking about is quality products from the Far East coming in at a lower overhead cost. Therefore, the sale price is reduced. Therefore, it is a better value for the buyers. Now, this is down to the discretionary products. And this is fundamental, I think for as far as the platform, as far as eBay is concerned, which is soaking up some of that loss, because they're still getting the revenue from the buyers, or the portion of buyers that are either one time or long time eBay purchasers that now need to purchase at a better price. And this is where it gets competitive for us in the UK, the US, Europe, etc. Because if we're not sourcing at a lower price, we will find it difficult to compete against the Far East products, depending on how you source. And this is going to have an impact on sellers, especially resellers, you know. So yeah, there is room for discussion around here, obviously, keep some notes put aside, drop it in the comments if you have any questions later, we can discuss those and help the community grow that way. But with regards to the Far East products that everybody puts in speechmarks cheap, or low quality. Yes, we are aware there are those out there, but we will address that further on in the discussion on the video. So hang tight and we'll get to that shortly. So let's move along with the questions and see where he goes from here. But I definitely think we can see that they are expanding and they're looking to expand further. And that I think that's the key we need to remember is expanding. It's not looking to cut out sections of the existing business that they get unless they're looking to maybe trim the poor quality, the counterfeit, the products that fall under the Vero or branding issues that we've all faced along the years, especially in the last six months or so with the AI system. Obviously, we're aware they're implementing more and more things on the platform to counteract against counterfeit or Vero policy breaking products, rightly or wrongly. But yeah, so that could be something they're looking at. So that may be something worth taking into account. So yeah, let's carry on. Let's carry on. Hey, Steve, just to follow up on that macro comment. As you guys look across different discretionary categories and price points, do you think it's just mostly like the macro conditions you described with the consumer weakening around GDP, etc. Or are any of these new competitors like Kimu and Sheehan having an impact at the low end as some of your peers have flagged? And then the second question is pleasantly surprised and happy to hear about the operating margin increase next year. So can you just flush that out a little bit for us? Is that a function of lapping some of the international shipping investments and kind of discreet R&D investments? What other factors might drive that up margin increase next year? Thank you. Thanks, Ross. I'll kick off the macro one and then Jamie can add and then I'll cover the margin question. So from a macro basis, just to reiterate, we did see a macro level softening in September, seeing that continue through October, we described Europe as being softer from an overall perspective based on the macro data that we all see. The U.S., we have continued some softness across the board. It's really a function of discretionary spend. As consumers, consumer sentiment is down, inflation is up and obviously the impacts of interest rate. So Jamie, maybe Ross's question. Yeah, no, I don't think it's in particular any specific other competitive thing like your question on Timo. We have not seen a significant impact from Timo or Sheen on our business. When we look at our cross-border trade, as Steve talked about, it continues to remain healthy. We believe that because of our differentiated strategy and our approach, if you remember, we've been talking about this for a while. We've been strategically moving away from low quality, low ASP items and that hasn't been a focus for us for years. So I think it's very important to jump in here for a moment. This is fundamental importance. Now, many have already mentioned in previous content on the platform, on YouTube, around eBay not being interested in the smaller sellers, the lower ASP, and I think this is misunderstood what's being said. It could just be the interpretation and understanding of how they're wording it. So what I'm basically trying to get at is, as Jamie just mentioned there, that they're not interested in low quality, low ASP. Now, it's whether or not you break that into two things. Whether they're not interested in low quality and low ASP or do they mean low ASP, low quality products. So are they talking about poor quality, cheap products or are they talking about poor quality products and also cheap products? Now, you have to also read between the lines of what they were saying there is that the softening of the lack of sales has been soaked up partially by the discretionary products that people are buying that they are looking for value for their money. So they're not saying they're not interested in lower ASP products. That's not their concern for growth. I agree. So where they're expanding and covering other categories such as eBay Motors, the collectibles, the enthusiast buyer, etc. where they're expanding into streetwear, etc. etc. where they're expanding into those areas of investment as a micro level within the platform. Excuse me. Then no, they're not looking to invest specifically in lower ASP items but you have to understand that not everything that's bought in the world is a thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds or a million pounds or whatever. It's the entire platform covers all price brackets and they are still going to continue improving the platform globally as a platform for all selling strategies. So they are happy and continuing to improve the ability to list and sell products that are of a lower ASP and that's fine. But they're not looking to currently grow and reinvest specifically for those products. You've also got to remember that the the new AI algorithm or part of the new AI algorithm takes heavily into account your sell-through rate. So you could have a, as been mentioned, the the subject mentioned many times before, with regards to say phone charging cables. Okay, you have a high quality phone charging cable that sells a lot. So you have a low ASP but you have a high strike-through rate. Now obviously for the individual reseller you're looking to make the most money with the least effort necessary. I get that and that's fine but there is also always always going to be a market and a a business strategy that will cater for the lower ASP but higher sell-through rate product. Okay, so from that level the algorithm will take you into account and it will service you with more boosting capability within search capability if your self-strike-through rate, sell-through rate is higher. So they're not saying, they're not interested, they don't want you on the platform. What they're saying is that currently in order for them to grow and their future growth plans they are focusing, focusing on the higher ASP for their category investment. That's what they're saying. So dispel any worries about if you were more the, and I mean this in no disrespect, the James-style products and you know what I mean James are more my boring real-life seller. There's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely, it works. It's worked for 23 years for him and it will continue to work as long as he readjusts certain aspects within his business to fit the future, the future AI algorithmic searching system. He will see that grow again without having to put more mass products to soak up and build up that loss in sales. His plan has worked for 23 years and it will continue to work with just a few few tweaks. So there is always going to be room for the seller that does that style. It's just that they're not focusing on that category style for their reinvestment as a focus group. That's all. Okay, let's carry on. I think the other big difference for our platform Ross is that we're a vast vast majority of our traffic is organic so I think you know as others are implicated by kind of the paid search or other marketing spend out there in the market we're less so and more resilient just because so much of our traffic is driven organically on the platform. And then with regards to question Ross on 24 obviously that'll be a number of puts and takes that will impact 24. We're in the middle of planning at the moment. The thing I would say is we will continue to be very disciplined and get the balance right between growth and profitability. We've been making investments over the last few years which will we will continue to leverage and scale as we get into 2024. We are looking at every area of our cost structure. Obviously in terms of external spending with suppliers we've been very measured in terms of our approach to the structural cost program this year with the influx of AI that will really help us sort of lean in to support the operation next year and use the benefits of that as we go forward. And we can control our cost structure. I mean we we are operating in a rather dynamic macro environment and so we will lean in as we've said and make sure that our costs grow more slowly than revenue in 2024. As you think about prioritizing kind of the highest ROI investments next year you know what initiatives are really making that top of that list and which ones are you maybe more willing to push out a little bit if times get tougher. And then on the focus categories it's kind of nice to hear the market share stability. When you observe what's changed pre and post your improvements is this a function of conversion rates functionally improving or are you also now able to kind of drive better traffic to those focus categories. Yeah so first on the you know initiatives we're still obviously you know in planning for next year but I'd say a couple things you know as Steve talked about the cost structure one of the things we're looking at is how do we leverage AI and technologies so that our costs don't grow as our volume grows. So I'll give you the example of you know one of the areas we've been investing a lot in is our customer support and so if you look at like our GCX expenses our customer support expenses we've been rolling out conversational help bots over the course of the last few quarters really advancing what we're doing there so that we can you know focus a lot of our efforts into handling more calls and greater volume with higher customer satisfaction. As an example we just launched that as a trial in Germany we've had that live in some of our English markets an example of some of the initiatives that we're going to do next year to manage the business and make sure that as Steve said we're going after the growth opportunities in the business while being prudent about our expense structure. So yeah so they're basically saying that they're looking to improve the platform and the costings by introducing the help bot on the the assistant you know the ebay assistant which I'm sure you've all been aware when you try and get a call back or you try and speak to someone you end up having to ask for a few questions first they seem to be now and I have experienced this I think they stopped it and then reintroduced it keep testing it a little bit it's frustrating to say the least it's you can ask for a call back and then it'll ask you for details and then you give it some details and then it'll throw you in a different direction so it's actually negatively impacting getting through to someone to discuss an issue so from the seller's point of view I would find this a negative point from their financial point of view I can see where they're probably going the likelihood is to reduce the amount of staffing in call centers and focus more on possibly training higher training for the remaining staff and focusing their time freeing it up for more in-depth conversations where needed when you think about focus categories and what's driving the success there I would say it's a couple of things one is that you know if I look at like for P&A for example this is our third quarter of seeing mid single-digit growth which is in line with markets and we're just now launching guaranteed fit which is one of the big value propositions for us in that category to our markets our second and third largest markets in UK and Germany where we do have a leading marketing position from that standpoint and then when we bring them on we're having a better experience for them in converting them into sales and converting them into repeat buyers because the changes we've made in trust because the changes we've made in experience I mean think about like our luxury category this is the third quarter where we're seeing positive growth in luxury even in this market and you're seeing kind of what's happening and what others are saying and it's because of the customer value proposition that we're bringing to these categories that we're seeing those results so we're going to continue to innovate and push forward on that strategy because we like the results that we're seeing and the consumers responding and then we're enhancing the focus category work with a lot of site wide investments and those site wide investments not only help us in focus categories but they help us in our other core categories in the business so I'd use the example of magical listing it certainly helps sell a sneaker faster or a training card or watch or a handbag but it also helps sell a musical instrument faster or a board game or a book or all the things that people sell on eBay because we're taking so much time out of a listing process that we're looking to unlock more of what's in people's closets garages and basements with this technology and we think that those investments will help both focus categories and our other core categories on the business okay so there you have it right there now if you look into that and read it as it's being brought out Jamie's basically saying that even though they are focusing on these categories for things like magical listing etc and their focus groups the benefits of what they're implementing and investing and implementing across the platform the item description boxes the item specific information population etc the AI search tweaking the and learning that's happening at the moment with the algorithm all these things are to benefit the entire platform so there are going to be parts of each progressive change within a particular category that they're investing in that will actually be able to be rolled out or are rolled out across the other products across the platform and he specifically stated at the end there about taking items from your closets taking items from your garage or garage however you want to word it or taking items from where your basement whatever wherever you're sourcing your products from those products are going to benefit when listing through the use of the new technologies that they're implementing onto the platform through these category changes and investments so with that what he's basically getting at there is there is still a place for and there is still room to sell your products that are thrifted that are unwanted any more and there is definitely a place on the platform they're not at any point along the entire breakdown of the report are they saying we don't want the small seller we don't want the small products they are literally saying there is a place for everyone and you have to remember this there will be always a place for everyone whatever your strategy whatever your products price value there is always going to be the ability to sell it on ebay okay the additional investment the additional additional promotion that is a discussion for another day but at this point ebay has no intention of getting rid of small sellers so feel confident knowing that that is not an issue the issues are the learning curve the implementation of these new technologies and our learning curve to control what's controllable to learn how to use and how to benefit and use this system to work for us that's the area of concern and that is the area that I would say we need to focus more on going forward quicker rather than later into 2024 great thanks so much too if I could so you know the macro environment is obviously a massive challenge for the business at the moment but as we look at the next year can you maybe help us better understand what leverage do you think you have at your disposal to perhaps get volumes back to even modest growth if the macro environment proves to be persistently weak in the medium term and then you know just to contextualize some of the comments around slower cost growth into next year relative to revenue I think investors would be pleased to hear it but does this more cautious stance on investment impacting any way the pace at which you think you can roll focus category coverage out over the next 12 to 24 months or are those investments already fully baked and the pace shouldn't be intact in any way thanks so much yeah so I would say a couple things one is we're not going to get ahead of ourselves on 2024 and talk about that on this call you know we've laid out the strategy that we have for expanding focus categories for the site-wide investments that we're making and we feel really good about what we're driving and the underlying changes in the business on the expensive side I wouldn't think about it as pulling back in areas that we think will will drive growth in the business but more what I talked about earlier which is finding opportunities to create leverage out of the model when you think of things like cost of payments when you think of things like how we're going to use AI to enable our you know the efficiency of the organization you know the whole motto here is control we can control and you know that's why we we think we've planned for the architecture that Steve laid out and we're really not going to get ahead of ourselves on on anything more from 2024 but our our main goal and we've been doing this through the structured cost program is to drive efficiency in the organization without driving the key layers the key levers and the innovations that have driven growth on the platform so we can see from that that they are focusing on the AI they're not backing off on AI so that is going to be growing more so than ever before the platform is going to be data driven it's going to be analytically driven and that is the way forward whether we like it or not this is how it is this is the beast gone are the days of put a title put a picture no description putting your policies in and away she goes we now need to work harder you can like it or you could not like it you can do it or you cannot do it I absolutely I'm not telling anybody what to do but if you want to optimize your chances of getting that sale faster then you will need to start looking more data driven more analytical and more technical within your listing get it right first time you don't then have to go back and have this mammoth task of hundreds of listings that you need to tweak and change and do all these new changes to take a step back look at what you're doing and seeing where you can improve your process if you can improve the process it will become second nature when it becomes second nature you can work out a structured way of listing and selling that works better for the foreseeable future granted we can also from there can see that Jamie's not giving away any future categories and they're not giving any information forwards from there but you can guarantee there will be new implementations throughout the year there will be new category changes it happens every year expect it so don't throw all your cards up in the air and lose patience when these things happen we know they're coming expect it prepare for it and cover yourself ahead of time in order to progress forwards in a better way great thanks for taking the questions Jamie given that you know consumers are increasingly looking at deal shopping during this holiday season due to macro pressures and inflationary environment some of the other e-commerce platforms like SC are kind of incentivizing sellers to step up discounts and are also doing promos on their own to drive volume is that something that eBay can do do your buyers react to this and do you see opportunities to maybe mitigate some of these macro pressures with product initiatives if this kind of persists for a while next year yeah Deepak the only real couponing and promotion stuff we do we do it in conjunction with our sellers where they're kind of funding those coupons and and that does work and and that's in partnership with our sellers we sometimes also do that with the our external promoter listings product that we've been talking about one of our new ad products but we really moved away from the couponing that was unhealthy that we did back in 2019 and we have no plans to reintroduce that type of couponing because it wasn't driving the type of ROI that we wanted the bigger point for eBay overall has been the shift in strategy to focus on used non-nuoan season and refurbished because when when customers face these inflationary environments they're continuing to look at eBay for better value our refurbished business is up double digits because people are getting like new products for 40 off our used business is growing faster than our new business because the demand that people see and the values that they can get on eBay so you know we just did a survey and we found that 90% of consumers that responded to the survey said that they purchased pre-loved goods on eBay in the past year so our play on value is really the new strategy of what we're going after of driving those businesses and that's what's resonating with our customers Steve So what we can see there is Jamie acknowledging along with eBay as a platform that its buyers are always looking for lower prices looking for better value especially in the current economic climate and they're aware that there is no specific end date for this to happen to get beyond so they are planning forwards they are always innovating new ways on the platform to generate revenue and serve its buyers with good products high value high quality low cost products and the average day-to-day reseller like yourselves and myself we have those products and there is always going to be a place on the platform so we can take a breath in we can feel reassured knowing that they are aware that their bread and butter going forwards is us they are always looking to expand and they are always looking to grow and they are always making sure that they are legally covered for themselves when it comes to things like the branding the Vero and obviously with the authentication and with the implementation of AI growing exponentially across the world and specifically the platform they are investing heavily into this and we need to continue our knowledge growth of how this works how it can benefit ourselves and how we move into 2024 so if we successfully learn and take the time to implement these new selling styles into our business we can triumphantly come out the other side successful and profitable with this also said it wasn't mentioned anything really about promoted listings now promoted listings isn't going anywhere this has been mentioned many times and there are other YouTubers who have also stated it's not going anywhere and this is true it's not going anywhere how we utilize that is down to us the platform as a whole is generating a high proportion of profit margin through promoted impressions and promoted listings and they know that revenue is stabilizing their financial growth with this we need to understand that this is always going to be here and if you want to play the game you need to pay that is how it is strategy of not promoting won't work anymore too many of the players on the platform are promoting which is the goal that eBay always wanted it is now a pay-to-play sandbox and we need to get in the game if we want to survive we also need to take into account we've got too used to not promoting not paying for promotion for the newer sellers you may not or for the younger sellers you may not be aware but you've only got to go back 20 years and everything cost there was no such thing as free promotion we get free promotion with eBay to some degree with its implementing and indexing onto Google shop but we are now focusing back into a society on e-commerce where promotion is a necessity and we also need to structure that into our moving forward strategy if we find the the sweet spot for promoting we can take some of the money that we leave on the table for eBay and put it back into our profit but that will take some practice and it will take time and it will be individual to every individual seller so I highly strongly recommend taking the time and the effort to tweak you're promoted until you find that sweet spot for you as we can see there's a lot of growth there's a lot of platform implementation going on and there will be still going forward there's a lot of life left in reselling on eBay nobody is getting left behind there is always going to be a place for everyone we just need to move into the new era of selling on the platform so I'll leave a link below to the full earnings report for you in the description if you have found any of this to be insightful or helpful brilliant thank you if you could show the appreciation and help me spread this knowledge to other people if you could just hit the like button put a comment if you have something you'd like to discuss or you don't necessarily agree with anything I've said or something I've said by all means I'm happy to open to a healthy debate but yes at the end of the day let's keep it real and keep moving forward and make sure that 2024 is better for everyone take care