Stick around, we'll do a little Q&A, I'll answer all your questions, the best of my abilities, we'll go from there. But you gotta take off, take off. But now let's go into a little question and answer and I'll go from there. Aristotle or Plato, it's very cold. I'm sorry, man, wherever you're at. Beautiful day here in Puerto Rico, I'm telling you. If you guys have an opportunity to vacation here or just live here, this place is great. It is great and get here before the next bull run. Because when I got here in 2020, 2021, it was a lot of people coming in, but great news in the bear market, everybody leaves. So if you got a chance, I would do that. So it says, Rob, thank you. I got my, oh, we got your 70 bucks worth. Cool, let's see if it goes up. Meme coins are weird, man. They can go up exponentially or it could not be a big thing. Who knows, I'll probably sell mine because I don't really think it's, maybe it's got some, maybe it goes to the moon, I have no idea. If you have, here's the thing about taking profits. I can't tell you what to do, I mentioned dad, not a financial advisor. But if you did get this one token and you got 70 bucks, might not be a bad idea to take like half, maybe 60, 75% and just take that out into just cash and do whatever you want with it, as opposed to watching it go to zero. Just a pro tip.  Anyhow, give it a shot. Foopie says, what was the video called or Rob wore the shirt? I will show you what that is. That is this one. Let's see, see, see, see, see. This was the shirt with me and Simon Dixon. It's, if you just do a Google search or on YouTube search for a T-shirt, should be the first one that comes up. And that was the video. Fun times. I was wrong. It was funny because I was, the whole bet was I didn't think that we're gonna ever get a Bitcoin ETF and it did. And I said I was happy enough to be wrong and rich, then right and poor. Unfortunately, as soon as that ETF came on, I was wrong and poor because it kept going down. I'm just kidding. Everybody thought it would go up. I was like, I don't really think it's gonna go up that fast, but here we are. Yeah. Exhortion says I'm bored now. Sounded like the same C everyone else says. So look, that's the thing about crypto, digital assets. And it's actually a funny thing because like, if you look at some, here I'm gonna show you something. This is actually a pretty good tweet or a pretty good piece of information. Just think about this. What does a meme coin do? Does it do anything? Does it help you out, pay for your groceries? I mean, I guess if you can sell it, but I think that's kind of like the greater fool type of theory. So like, what's the point?  Of course, if you're gonna say, well, Rob, it's community-based and da-da-da. And I don't really think that's really what it is. So take a look at this one. Let me pull this up so you can see it. Talking about utility, where all the people are at price action. This was a post by XeroX Master Crypto. It's a pretty good name actually, Master Crypto. Hey, and he says, look at this. BNB has 1.3 million users daily. So they have a 96 billion market cap. Makes sense, right? All right. Solana, 750,000 users daily. They have 40 billion market cap. And of course, we can verify this if we go over to Artemis.xyz, right? Matic, Matic, has 658,000 users daily. They have a $7.2 billion market cap. Ronin, which is essentially the main gaming, not the main gaming chain, but a gaming chain, Ronin, has 675,000 users daily in line with all this. And where is their market cap? 717 million. If you don't know, there's a game called Pixels. Hey, he's always talking about this. Every time I see on a cat, he's like, hey, we got, and their daily active users are like in the hundreds of thousands, right? But yet price action doesn't really go up too much. It's kind of, actually, let's see what it is. Ronin, I'm sure it's in the top 200 by now, 93. Yeah, look at that, 16%. But just looking at that, you think to yourself, why is it, it's kind of lagging. Let's see, what's it going over? Seven days, 20%, 14 days, 45%, 30 days, 36%. And one year, 245%. Hell, Bonk did like 1,000% but yet here we are. So I know like when people say, ah, this is boring, this is what it is. Sometimes the utility and the price just does not equal. And this is, we're all in price discovery.  People who are gamblers. Case in point, I want to show you one more thing too. There was a project that I really like, Aluvium. Aluvium, if we take a look at the max out, see this in 2021? It was $1,844, almost 2,000 per token. What is it now? It needs two bucks. Let me show you something. And what they had as far as a game back in 2021, they had renders and screenshots and nothing. And now you can go there and actually play these games. I wish I could get an actual video of it. Let's go, yeah. Like this is actual, is this gonna go or not? No, this is like actual live gameplay footage. And you're telling me that it's not worth the $1,800. It's all speculation and price appreciation. That's all it is. That's all it is at this point. So I know like people say, ah, bored, it's not really going up. Hey, that's how it goes. Ah, shoo, pool, man. That's a good question. Why doesn't my balance and coinbase update itself automatically, anybody? I don't know if there's, that might be an issue. I haven't had that issue per se right now. The only time I have an issue with balances is MetaMask. I don't know if you guys have that issue too.  It looks like I will open it up and like, hey, where'd all my crypto go? I don't really keep that much because I know it's this hot wallet.  It's gonna be in those types of wallets. But I'm like, hey, where's my 25 bucks? You know, 25 bucks, 25 bucks. And then I have to go through a couple steps and update and that's a pain. But for you, pool, man, I'm not for sure it should do that unless they're having a slowdown. It was a lot of activity. I think we're due for a coinbase shutdown just like the old days. And pool, man says, I hit the like button. Thanks, man. It's nice to you. He said, 7.22 says, I got wind air drop and bought more, good deal. Benny's here. Do you think Trump is cute? Trust wallet does the same thing. Yeah, trust wallet, the same thing. Trump is cute? It's not for me to say. Let's see, crypto space is booming. Beardy's here. Report is a basement to a troubleshoot. Kagar says, did you claim the winner? I did, it was very simple. My friend, Steven, showed me how to do it. Like that was one of the easiest ones you could possibly do. If you've ever used any kind of wallet, your slant of wallet, and integrated in with the Jupiter exchange, which is essentially what they want you to do, just use the stuff and they'll give you free tokens. And yeah, the problem is, is when you go through a lot of different air drops and you connect your wallet, and then all of a sudden, all the work that you do for air drops or trading, it's all gone because it's a trainer. Which leaves me another point. If you guys would follow me on X, you don't have to. But, there was a really good post here. I'll show you about wallet draining and how to protect yourself. Where did, this one right here. It's from Pix, Pix sorcerer. He clicked on 100 scam NFC ads and here's what happened. And I'll just have you, I'm not gonna go through the whole thing, but essentially it was 98% of them that drained his wallet. And he just did that to show you just how easy it is. So, if you're gonna interact with anything in a hot wallet, make sure there's not much in there because you're gonna get taken for a ride. And that's how it is. Jeff, good to ask a good question. How can YouTube allow scammed Bitcoin ads from Michael Saylor? I have a lot to report a dozen and still give them every 50 minutes. Look, I have my theory. I don't wanna go get sued, but you can kind of assume where I'm going. I will say this though. I'm glad you brought this up. Because in the description of all of my videos, there's three videos I'd like everybody to watch. One is why and when I'm selling 80% of my crypto in 2025. The second one is don't make these crypto mistakes which kind of gets you out of trouble. It's on how much you make it's how much you keep. And the third one is don't fall off this AI scam. It's six minutes. It's not monetized. You don't have to worry about having an AI generated Michael Saylor or Brad Garling House or anybody pop up. And it just shows you what to do and how to combat that. Now, it looks like Jeff already knows or has done this, but this is something that I think we should all be aware of, especially the people that are new to the situation and go, hey, I know that guy. He's the Michael strategy guy. He's gonna give me two Bitcoin. All he had to do was send him one.  And if you think that's laughable, just wait. Just wait till all the tourists come and they're gonna do the same thing. It's gonna be awful. I shouldn't have laughed, but you gotta learn somehow. Dad, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. Ah, John Louise always sending me great stuff. John Louise sent me two great pieces. One was, it was Brian Brooks. He was the former head of the OCC Comptroller. And Brian Brooks talked about why JP Morgan and the banks were so upset with Bitcoin. And he said it goes, because he said it's a misnomer. It's not cryptocurrency. He said, in reality, it's not really to be used for currency, but it can replace the banks. And he gave a great example of it. And that was one of the videos that John sent me. Another one was, if you could explain Bitcoin in another nine seconds. And I forgot the guy's name. He wrote the cost of tomorrow, the price of tomorrow. And he said, in nine seconds, he said, it goes like this. If you don't get into Bitcoin, everything that you buy is going to go up. So if you keep yourself in cash, everything will appreciate and you'll be left in the dust. That was essentially it. I knew he was totally right. Going to John Louise's question. Hi, Rob Popley, I don't interviewed Fred Teal, CEO of Marathon, his personal facets. The new Bitcoin all-time high, late Q3, early 2024, then a sell-off in the mid-40s, low 50s, a new all-time high, end of 2025, we did the 120K range. I could see that. I saw a piece of that, what he was talking about as far as ordinals and how much they got paid as miners. He said it was actually pretty good. So they got paid more than a couple of blocks for ordinals, transcriptions, than actual mining Bitcoin. Interesting. Yeah, you know, it could be. We'll see what happens. I personally think that we're all in the right place at the right time, especially right now. A little bit on, I heard a rapper saying, stacking Bitcoin. That was probably beardy. Press one if you've been a victim of scam. That's everybody. Nas is here. Adam says YouTube makes money from these schemas. That's very true, actually. Underpaid YouTube workers with his tip chart. That could be true. Ben's haircut is here. Good evening, everybody. Yeah, the whole, the trifecta of Benjamin Cohen is here. That's right. Yeah. And it tells us, hey, everything he said and he was trying to do, I see peace in me doing already. This is the thing. Nobody knows which one's gonna be the big winner, right? So maybe diversify instead of going, you know what? I remember when I got in in 2017, it was Bitcoin or nothing, essentially. And then I was like, well, maybe Bitcoin or Ethereum. Then it was like, maybe Bitcoin or Ethereum, XRP. And XRP was like the greatest thing of all time.  Now here we are. So it's time gone on. I realized that it best to diversify because no one knows squats sometimes. There you go. I read it online. Good afternoon, Rob. How's your Satoshi VM bag doing? So there's a funny thing. Women covering this on X, people don't like me covering on X though. They don't like me covering it at all. Like why would you talk about a scam coin? It's fascinating. So Satoshi VM, if you don't know, this has been, first of all, to answer your question. Satoshi VM, I bought a little bit because it's a gamble. All this stuff's a gamble, right? But then when we did a video not too long ago and said, hey, and especially on X, we're like, hey, this Satoshi VM, which is supposed to be a layer two solution, EVM compatible so it can do everything that it does on Ethereum and help to scale Bitcoin, sounds pretty good. So this whole thing was great. Sounded good, but it was just white paper and hope, which is essentially what a lot of things are. So I bought a little bit, but then I heard of rumblings from Ape Terminal and a couple of influencers that got caught for essentially pumping and dumping. So as soon as I heard that, I'm like, I'm out of here. And I did a, I posted on X and I did a quick video, said something about it and it's one of them. And that was it. And now it seems like these Ape Terminal and the influencers are all saying, no, no, no, it was a misunderstanding and it was this outside development team. I don't know, follow me on Twitter, but really what it comes down to is this, that was a bad situation from the get go. And that's what you get when you gamble. That's all. And it's all gambling. So yeah, Rob, do you believe in the Goldilocks zone? Like as far as galaxies? No, I'm just kidding. So I don't know what you're talking about. So talking about it's this. We talked about this a couple of times, but lately, the Goldilocks zone is the time right before having and right after having. And if we took a look at this, going backwards in the 2020 timeframe, I think the last having was May 11th, somewhere around there, 2020. Correct me in the comments. But you had a lot of big projects that popped up, Matic, April, Axie, Solana, which quintidentally Axie is now on Ronin, or that's their main chain, Ronin.  So I believe that this is the time if you're a smart project, you don't wanna probably launch in November 2022. Maybe you wanna launch when everything's going up, just the thought. So I believe in it, but you gotta understand that for every 10 things that launch, only one actually works out, rest are just trash. And that's why we gamble. That's essentially what it is. Or you can just say like this, I'm just gonna invest in Bitcoin and sleep easier at night. Have you ever noticed how like stress-free Ben is on NFA? He seems like pretty relaxed, right? That's all he's like, I'm just gonna get into Bitcoin, that's it. You know, and then sometimes, you know, we take a look at guy and he looks a little bit tired.  I look awful. So yeah, that's what it is. Farqana, so Farqana, another web three game, G2 behind that for the Esports platform and then the rewards were in Bitcoin. Let's see, I don't know how it's doing. Cause I have a lockup period for like six months. Holy smokes, doing pretty good. Well, that's awesome. If I didn't have a lockup period, that's the problem. Like when I get into these projects, I have to lock myself up. Well, that's just how it works. You know, if you're in a good project, they're not gonna let you dump on everybody. So like with sweat coin, I have a lockup of like, I get, the lockup was a year and then I still have, I piecemeal it over the next two years. Go figure, right? And I actually paid them to talk about it. I like the project. Farqana, six month lockup and then it's seated over, I think like another year. So if you're in a Farqana, congratulations. Got any idea? It's a pretty good product. I like it. It looks like a pretty good game. You'll seem to love that stuff. Alt later, I have not, I'm sorry.   No, I have a 2019 Hyundai Venue, which I roll around in because it's first of all, it's cheap and I can buy more Bitcoin and stuff. And second of all, because I can park it anywhere. If you live in Puerto Rico, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, cracking is risky. Saludos, saludos. You're not, that was a joke. I'm a half a century. So yeah, I don't know about 60, it's kind of harsh. So you're buying a Louisville, I am buying a Louisville actually. I had Kieran and his brother on. They seem to really love games and want to make this thing work. I like, I can appreciate that. John says he need a Jeep Wrangler there. My friend John's got a Jeep Wrangler, likes it. But again, it's hard to get around and park and stuff like that. Good hold tells in Puerto Rico, some of the best. Some of the best. Yeah, here's another thing. I'm glad I got in a sweat coin, you first put the video, I walked out over 8K and sweat coin for free, yeah. There's another one with utility, just seems to be a stable coin. BM says, what amount of, this is a great question, we'll stop here. What amount of Bitcoin do you tell your friends to get to? None. You know why? Because I'm sick of telling them.  If it's a pop fly and it's coming in my direction, I'll put my glove up, right? But I'm not running that ball down and doing a dive and catch. If you want the information, you got to come to me. I don't care about it, people anymore. The only thing I care about is the people that come here to watch because you've made the effort. But I'm not here to convince anybody to like really get into it and do those things. I'm like, hey man, if you want to learn about it, I got a website. I'll tell you a little bit, but it's up to you to do it. Do your own research. And that's it. I think people appreciate that more than you trying to ram it down their throat. They'll figure it out. And if they don't, hey, I did my minimal excellence. That's it. Anyhow, everybody, thanks so much for stopping by. I do appreciate it on a Saturday night. It's great. If you liked today's video, give it a thumbs up. Consider subscribing. Everything we talk about is time sensitive. But that's it for today. Guys, again, thanks so much. And then tomorrow I'm going to have Tony from Thinking Crypto is going to be on the show. I love having guests. It's always fun to get a different perspective of what's going on. So Tony will be here. We'll do it probably around this time tomorrow. So see everybody at that point. Thanks everybody. Adios.


Hi there welcome back to toffee TV. It's me Paul and this is the FPL show now You might be thinking there's no one in the Everton team worth putting on our FPL teams However, I might be bringing one in myself this week. Let's go have a look and see what that is all about shall we? Okay, so first off we're gonna have a look and see the game week three and Doncaster talking points My Everton long-term FPL pick. I've got a new one this week and this is the player I may well bring into my team myself My Everton differential shout zero point two percent owned for those like in a differential and my top-scoring Game week for Everton player who I think is gonna get the most points in this game week There hasn't been one yet. Nobody's got over two points for Everton. So Yeah, this week. Let's hope for hope to God There is somebody to shout about in the next show and then I shall share with you the most owned players by Evertonians as well Right. So who what have we learned from the games against Wolves and against Doncaster Rovers last night? Well, in all honesty, we have been playing very low in confidence Absolutely, you could see it in the game the way we played against Wolves Nervous nurse around tension and it was just not very Good and that carried through to Doncaster Rovers Last night as well. It's Thursday morning at time of recording. So Disappointed in that first half in fact very disappointed in that first half But things did did pick up in the second half Danjuma as a talking point Danjuma started centrally versus Wolves. There was no Dominic Carver-Lewin as to his Cheek fracture and he played on the wing versus Doncaster and he actually scored as well So he's off the mark not just scoring hitting the bar, too unfortunately our defense against Wolves was all over the place and We conceded again But Jared Branthwaite got his start Man of the match for most Evertonians over 50% in the player ratings votes poll on toffee TV So yeah, a lot of people impressed with his debut as well I'll not debut because he's played for us before but first start this season Since his loans fell and better was arrived He was a game changer last night when he came on wasn't just him Tristan Garnagay did really well as did actually young when they came on at halftime But for me, he was the man of the match last night as well So absolutely fantastic to have a striker Everton and I don't know about you If you're an Evertonian, I've woke up this morning with a little bit of a hope again Which has been missing for a very long time Okay, so my long-term Everton pick is Jared Branthwaite I know he's only played one game, but he is a great option for your bench Is the fourth highest defender for expected goal involvement at 0.37 according to sofa score in game week three? He's four million pounds as well. So a fantastic option I do believe it's his place to lose after his matter of the match display last week as well And this by the way boys and girls is the player I might well be bringing in He will be a bench player for me But I have Bayer on my bench as a four million pound player not not who's out injured I've got Luke Shaw who's injured and I'm just looking to free up some funds moving forwards to maybe bring in a Kieran Trippier down the line or somebody like that. But yes, Jared Branthwaite. I think he starts every week I think he's a goal threat. He's massive and he's very composed on the ball There was one point in the game last week where the ball came to him and to be honest I expected him to turn round because he's left-footed and pass it back or pass it along But he just hit it first time with his right and it was a and it was a pass, you know straight down the pitch I think I remember it was to Dan Dume or somebody like that, but it was an attacking pass And it caught me by surprise. So he's got that in his locker, too And I think he's gonna be don't want to jinx it He's just started on a put too much weight on his shoulders But I think he's gonna be our starting center back moving forward alongside James Tarkovsky So yeah, I think he's a great long-term pick As you can see there that was supposed to come at first a four million bound playing option I believe so my differential shout. It's the same as last week and there's good reason for that He got his first goal versus don't cast the last night as I said before he hit the crossbar as well And he can play across the front three. He did play across the front three Since he's been at Everton in the last two games He's played on the left He's played on the right and he's played up front So I think his minutes are very fairly guaranteed at the moment in time Things may change once Harrison's fit once Dwight McNeill's fit we shall see but he started I don't think you could have asked for a better start really he's scored and he's getting some minutes Well, you could have asked for a better start obviously, but he's done. All right. He's done. All right He is 0.2% on which makes him a differential and at 5.5 million pound Now just to clear up. I've said I'm not saying go and settle in set go and get him I just think he is the player below 1% own that there's one in time Who will probably do the best this week apart from my highest scoring FPL pick His ex gi was 0.52 in 89 minutes versus Wolves It was 0.3 in the game the week before in 50 odd minutes So, you know, he's looking at one in two. He's got one last night as well could have got another And yeah, I'm excited to see what he can do for us Everton And my top score in Everton player pick for game week three has to be better He got his debut goal last night. He's a striker. He plays like a striker. He's a number nine He is what we have been missing Since plus it's Rom left really a player like this and I know we've got Dom But he's a slightly different type of player. I would say Certainly he's got a better touch on the ball One of the reasons I've picked in this week is Sheffield United have conceded most of their chances through the center 20 chances conceded through the center in three games this season They have conceded 18 down each flank as well And that which has resulted in them having the fourth highest expected goals conceded its joints at six point six And the joint third for goals conceded at five So I think he starts after his performance last night He doesn't look on foot. He looks sharp. He looks ready. He looks hungry And he looked He brought the rest of the team along with him as well. He scored one in three for you Denise He's so he's got a he's got a you know a stable attack and return and hopefully in the Premier League Which isn't as defensive minded as the Italian League can be that can increase as well And I can't wait to see him and Dwight McNeill linking up to be honest with you Not just the balls Dwight McNeill puts in but his hold up play and then playing that ball around the corner You know for you know the give-and-go with Dwight McNeill. I can see Dwight McNeill really doing well With this striker once he's back in action as well What else DCL still not in the squad at Doncaster. Will he play this week with something on his face? Maybe But there's no need to rush him. There's no need to rush him now Which is fantastic to say we've needed that for a very long time. He's going to be loved by other Tonians I could just see it. He's just that type of player. He'll have a song instantly The only thing about him is he's got no price yet. He's not been released in FPL But I fully expect them to be for the close of play tomorrow. How much will he be? That's the million dollar question I think somewhere between I'm hoping for 5.5 just because I want to bring him in cause I do. He's an Everton player and he's a striker But I'm thinking possibly around the six to six and a half million pound Maybe where he comes in for us at Everton if he does come in at six He will be our most expensive player currently that Privilege lies with Dominic Carver-Lewin at 5.8 million pounds So there is some great value to be had at Everton if we can get it together Yeah Which brings us to our most owned Everton players by Evertonians Still Pickford in goal at 50% of teams Tarkovsky second and then Branthwaite as you can see in third So if you're watching this for the first time Branthwaite is highly regarded by Evertonians I mean we've been desperate to see him there He is a four million pound option and I think he plays there are other options out there at four million pounds I like some Gusto who's just gone up to four point one For Chelsea, but how long does he play for once Reese James comes back? There's Cabore at Luton Who are like expecting goals can see did very high And yeah, I just think he's a really good option like I've said before Okay, so that's I'm interested to see how that changes next week Okay, guys, if you've enjoyed this show and you are liking Everton stuff And you want to join the channel and join premier of which I am a member Hence why I'm making these videos for softy TV There's the QR code to join and if you want to follow me and see what I do with my personal team Players I'm bringing in and out and see my journey in my season how I'm going had a great week last week 60 odd points Happy days yet. Don't do an FPL focus and Paul lives it at FPL double underscore Focus if you are a premier member and you haven't joined the toffee TV Premier League the code for that will be in the description below as well. That's it. Thanks very much for joining me I shall see you here next week on the FPL show on toffee TV. Take care Up the up the blues this week. Come on. We've got this Tara


Hey everyone, welcome to this week's video update recording this the morning of Saturday, August 1st Hope everybody had a fantastic week of trading We're gonna jump into the alerts talk about our current positions and update you on the day trading strategy. So Let's jump in to the alerts starting with Monday the 27th The first trade was opening a weekly double calendar in SPX We didn't get one on the week before just because of where the volatility was and so we put this on this one had four days to expiration in the front week seven in the back and We ended up taking this one off on Friday booking a hundred and some dollars 195 I think so decent little trade but you know What we're seeing is and and I know there's been some discussion in the community about this But we're seeing what we're seeing is on the day of expiration If this is a fossil update here for me, but on the day of ex expiration You know, so once this you know currently at six days to expiration You can see when we put these on we always like to have the front week that we're selling the vol be higher The implied volatility is higher in the front week than the back And that's how we're getting some of that favorable pricing and that good risk reward Now what we're seeing what we're seeing happening is in the last day expiration day Those can sometimes flip meaning that will go higher and that will be lower meaning the back week is Contracting quicker than the front week and so, you know, there's a lot of a lot of folks in the community saying You know, I'm just gonna start taking it off on Thursday or you know with one-day to expiration instead of waiting till zero days to expiration I think there's some validity to that You know in in the back testing and just in our experience and we've had some monster winners When we took it off the day of expiration, you know a few it's probably about a month ago now But we had one that was like over $1,300 winner per contract And had we taken it off? One-day to expiration we may have only booked for 500 and on the day we booked like 1300 so You know, it just depends on what the options do, right? But but I think from a consistency standpoint over time I think I think there is some validity in taking it off with one-day to expiration And I wouldn't necessarily take it off in the morning of the Thursday in the morning with one-day to expiration But maybe later in the day because I've been watching them and really seeing some Expansion in your profits later in the day on that Thursday as well But then as soon as you open up on Friday That implied volatility differential has has kind of flipped and it makes the break-evens and the and the max profits really kind of Sync in on those calendars and and so watching that closely and just just be aware of it I'm not I'm not saying we you know, we'll still we're still gonna hold some till the day of expiration depending on the situation We're still gonna take off some on Thursday with one-day to expiration But just some thoughts and some things to be aware of so, you know You've so as an example with this one here, you know Here's here's the current break-evens and we know implied volatility is gonna expand and contract these break-evens throughout the life Of the trade the max profit can expand and contract because essentially we're Selling a strangle in the front week and we're buying a strangle in the back week And so it's the difference between the volatility between the front and the back that really makes the biggest difference And so what I was kind of saying is on on Friday the day of expiration You know what we've been seeing at least the last few weeks is we wake up and we get this vol contraction between the differential where it brings in the break-evens Pretty significantly and it and it and it brings the the max profit down So it's it's it's sinking our profit line. So we're not booking as much profit now. We've still Price has been staying within range. And so we've still just been booking profits week after week after week And so that's been great, but obviously we want to maximize that profit So just some thoughts to to consider when you're determining to take this off, you know We I always talk about, you know, 90% of what we do is we want to be mechanical But there's also a 10% sub subjectivity that comes into trading And so, you know, that's kind of that 10% taking it off the day of expiration taking it off the day before Overall back testing these strategies taking it off the day of expiration over time actually performs better but Taking off with one day at expiration also performs well. So Anyway, just just a couple random thoughts on that to help you be aware when you're managing these things Okay, so that's one that we put on that that's when we put on Friday, but the one that we took off We ended up like I said booking I think 195 bucks on this one here next trade opening adjusting trade in GC in gold So gold obviously precious metal silver gold have just been on a rampage to the upside and implied volatility has spiked So we had an iron condor on price has breached the upper break even of that iron condor and An implied volatility has expanded and so let's take a look at that one first You can see prices out of range here However, I meant and I mentioned this in the in the community if you look at the untested side, you know Typically at that point we would be taking off the untested side But you can see there's still a decent amount of premium in these options now if price continues higher We'll go ahead and close that out and see if we can get a little bit of a reversal but You know, that's that's why we're not making an adjustment yet by closing that that put vertical side because there's still a Lot of premium premium in there due to the spike in implied volatility So what we did do is we went ahead and added a new one in the same cycle And you can see we're up about 120 bucks on that one since we since we put that one on So just gonna continue to manage these as mechanically as we do Next trade opening trade in SPY. So we added an iron duck in SPY Did this one with 20 days to expiration. So we've got a few different ducks on and So let's take a look here in SPY. We've got two two of them in SPY We've got this one here that I just Actually, this is not the alert. I just showed you but this is one that we already had on prices hanging out right here up in the beak and So this one expires 813 so we still got a good chance of price getting back down to the duck head So we're just gonna hold that for now the alert that I just showed you Which was at 20 would 20 days expiration at the time We put it on because he prices run higher up the beak in this one as well But still a decent chance it could get down to the Down to the duck head and so we're gonna go ahead and hold this and see what happens You know even when price runs up and you know, even if you're at max on the beak profit We've still got a lot of time left and still a decent chance I like to hold that because that that even though the trade shows as long Delta It actually in reality is giving you some you know a decent amount of downside protection because if price You know drops and now it's in the duck head. Well, that's where we wanted it anyway Right, so I don't mind holding those now if price runs really higher And you know like I like we talked about in the course if we have less than a 10 or 15% chance of price getting back To that max profit area we will just go ahead and book that beak and move on free up that capital and redeploy that capital While we're here. Let's also just take a look at one other spy position we have and that's this iron condor I feel like we've had this thing on forever, but price is hanging out up here in the upper end of the range now with this one Unlike the gold iron condor if we take a look at the put vertical and we were basically maxed out on that So I just I'm just giving it over the weekend, you know If we do get a downside move we'll continue to hold it But if it if price stays right here or moves higher We will close out that put vertical side hold on to the call vertical side and see if we can't get a little bit of retracement down and then Depending on where we're at with everything else. We may add another iron condor Onto here a new centered iron condor in the next cycle. So we will see on Monday Next trade closing trade in SPI so we had another duck on and We went ahead and close this so this is one where price did run higher had a very little chance of Getting back down into the duck heads. We went ahead and close that out early booked beak profit on that one Opening trade in Starbucks. Okay, so we did some post earnings long post earnings trades on a few different stocks We're in the heat of earnings season, which is great. We've getting getting some more different opportunities So in this one, this is a little bit different than what we taught in the course, right? We we taught if if price opens up above the expected move The stock has a tendency to go sideways to higher And so a lot of times we'll look at a short put or a short put vertical I just I didn't want to do a short naked put and with Starbucks being a you know a 70 mid 70s Priced stock you're just not getting enough premium to do a vertical Because buying that buying that one for protection just really reduces the amount of premium you get and so What I did here is I just bought a long call and we did it deep in the money to kind of minimize that theta decay Now what happened with Starbucks is let's go to the chart. It did not do what we hoped it did it would do so SB you X and So zoom in here a little bit. So here's here's the here's what the expected move was price opened up above it It ran higher look like it was gonna be a nice trade and then it just came down and the next day really dropped Then it bounced and I thought well, we still may have a chance and the next day just kind of petered out So I I still think that Starbucks It will next into next week will potentially continue higher So we'll be watching that but I didn't want to I didn't want to roll this I didn't want to you know, it was in this cycle here with You know at this point six days to expiration So the theta decay will really start to kick in over the weekend and into early next week So I didn't want to hold it over the weekend. So we went ahead and just closed it and took a loss on the trade You know these these these trades have been so good over the years I mean just so high percentage winners very few losers that I'm gonna still continue to take these But this one just did not work out. We had another one that didn't work out as well I'll go over that one here in a second And then one of the other ones AMD the one that did work out booked about a $650 winner on this one Let's take a look at AMD So we did the same thing on this. It's a low price stocks. I didn't want to do a short naked put and And it's too too too low price to do a vertical So we just bought a deep in the money call See price opened up. It came down. I think we got in like right here We got into a really good price and then prices shot up We closed it out the next day up here booked booked a nice quick $650 profit on that one And then the other one was Shopify and this one was the this one was the painful one. So shop. Let's take a look at shop SHOP So this one opened it opened it up well above the expected move We let it come down a little bit got in about right here and then prices, you know really came through again It bounced and and here's what you will see a pretty a lot. In fact, I was considering adding here when it was down here because What you know, a lot of times it'll come down It'll bounce off that expected move and rock it higher Well, this and so that's what I was kind of hoping would happen here Well, the next day it didn't it came down and it came right down to here And I was I was actually very close to adding to it right here, but I didn't want to do it for the alerts portfolio I didn't you know, I just I didn't want to add that amount of risk it was already a pretty decent sized position and so just did not do it and And and what happened is it really rallied hard off that point And I thought I was gonna get a little bit of a continuation into Friday But just didn't do it obviously that the market was pulling it down and and so we ended up closing that one out for a loss But again, you know, I'm gonna keep I'm gonna keep pounding these trades when we get the opportunities because these post earnings Trades when they open above the expected move. They're still super high probability So don't let a couple of losers defer you from taking these trades. You remember it's it's over time It's a large number of occurrences That that is is what determines, you know, if this is a good trade or bad trade Don't take two trades two out of three and say, ah two out of three didn't work I'm not doing that strategy anymore because these are very powerful very very profitable trades Next trade XBI short strangle So we rolled our short strangle and it had been adjusted into a straddle kept the strikes the same rolled it out to the 105 Just extended duration So if we take a look at XBI XBI down a couple percent on Friday, which is helpful kind of getting us back into center We're up about a hundred and eighty five eighty six bucks since we've done that role Next trade closing trade in AMD. So that's the one I just showed you booked about six. I think it was 650 bucks on that one opening trade in Amazon, so we did a an earnings iron duck in Amazon and What happened with Amazon earnings? Well, they exploded And so let's take a look at AMZ in So it opened up big. In fact, it was above the expected move as well You know with with the all of them that I had on I did not put a another one on here, but and then price moved lower, but we we got out of our Amazon duck booked beak profit two hundred and ten dollars on the beak. So nice profit there Next trade opening trade in Facebook. So we added another post earnings short put vertical in Facebook Facebook also had Really good earnings and so, you know, it opened up right here price came down I got in right here. It's rallied up. So we're up a little bit on the trade and we'll hold this into next week All we need is a is a little bit of a move higher We're looking to book about a 50% plus of max profit. Obviously if we get a rip-roaring rally, we'll book more than that If we get up to about 50% or so of max profit, we'll go ahead and book that and Then next trade closing trade in SPX, so this this is that closing trade I mentioned that we did on Friday in that weekly double calendar booked a small profit 100 plus dollars in that 150 maybe I can't remember exactly what it was And then we opened up a new one now One thing to consider is, you know, we again, we don't We like we would prefer to open these up on days when implied volatility implied volatility is contracting Now at the time we put this on Implement when price was centered implied volatility was actually up But it's still the difference between the front and the back week that matters that matters the most so You know the the front week we want to be higher than the back week And so that was still the case and so we went ahead and open it up because we wanted to have one of these positions On now price moved higher So the good thing is if price does move lower next week That's gonna do one of two things or it's gonna do a couple things one It's gonna get us back to center and be you know It's gonna spy complied volatility, which could be a benefit for this position So hopefully we get a little downside next week Next trade closing trade in shops. So that was that post earning short put vertical That was the Starbucks clothes Amazon that was the we just let that one expire in the beak so so far up the beak that And toss doesn't charge any Assignment or exercise fee so we went ahead and just let that one expire and that's a duplicate So don't worry about that we're gonna get that removed. So that's it for the week on our trade alerts Let's take a look at some of our other positions Starting with yes, so we've got two different long put verticals and yes, that one's way out of range. It's got How much time does it have? It's got 20 days to expiration. So we're gonna hold it a little bit longer. Our other one's got 48 days to expiration and It is it's it's just inside range here So just holding news for that short delta exposure speaking of short delta exposure We're about one to one on our ratio. So our theta versus our short delta We're about one to one on that ratio Gold I mentioned Natty gas. We're getting ready to roll this one. We're up We're up over $1,300 since we did our last roll and so Natty gas has been doing really well for us the last couple cycles We're at 25 days to expiration So, you know, when we get down to 21, we'll definitely roll this so so probably Monday and the fact that we're over 25% of our max profit, you know, this is a this is a prime Prime time to roll this so we'll be doing that on Monday Same was ZB now prices at a range. So our our puts need to be rolled up as well I just wanted to give this over the weekend. It was at 21 days to expiration. Yeah, so today Saturday It's it's at 20. So we're under 21 days on this one now. So Just gonna give it till Monday and we're gonna go ahead and roll that roll the puts up and roll that out to the next cycle Apple smashed earnings Up over 10% which is not and the reason I didn't do anything in here You know, it did it did open up above a suspected move and this would have been a really nice post earnings trade And that's that's a lot of times what you see with these things now in this case We already had a position on an apple. So I didn't want to add another one We've got a short position. So I didn't want to add a long position in Apple So that's why we didn't take this trade but Yeah, so we've got our long put vertical we're holding for short Delta. So that's going against us one thing to note on Apple They just came out and announced August 31st They are going to be doing a four for one stock split. So if you only own any outright shares in Apple So for every one share that you're you own you're going to You're now going to own four shares and the stock is going to be cut by 25% Which I don't like I like the big high-priced stocks juicy premium like your Amazon Tesla's Apple You know, I like these big high-priced stocks, but that's that's what they're doing so it's going to go down to about a hundred and some dollar stock instead of a $400 stock and So just look for that that's going to happen August 31st And so depending on what we have on from an options perspective We'll be keeping you up to speed on on what how that's going to affect that and what we need to do if anything So stay tuned on that DE John Deere. We've got a Short call vertical and John Deere holding this for that short Delta exposure Price is a little bit out of range there need some downside DIA we've got two sets of short call verticals This one is just inside range here and then this one is a little bit out of range Just looking for some downside to get back in there. I mentioned Facebook. That's our post earnings trade IWM so we've got a bunker here and it's getting to the point now with with a P&L lines going to start sagging Into Death Valley. So we want to get out of this now This expires 1017 so we always want to be out of these by about 60 days expiration We're less than that but we're gonna go ahead and close this out and then extend duration So this one's in October We're gonna we'll go ahead and do one out in November with which currently has 111 days So we'll just close that one out and basically extend duration basically we're not gonna roll it technically We're just gonna close it out as a separate trade open a new one in November But that's the plan in IWM on the on the bunker And then we've also got two sets of long put verticals. One is just just outside the range and This one is a little bit more outside the range. So just looking for some downside there Same with QQ queues. We've got a bunker here and this one is also in October so we won't do it on the same day But we'll also be looking to close this one out and and put on a new one with further duration in In the queues as well. We've also got a couple sets of short call verticals price just inside the range here and Just inside the range here. So one is in August one's in September And so just looking for some downside there one thing to note about bunkers too and and I want to make sure You all are clear on this. Remember this is this is for that that downside protection, right? For that for that short delta exposure if the market does really start to get crazy to the downside and You know, we've we've I mean these have these have not Performed from a standpoint of making you profits overall Over the last few months and but here's why I mean, you know, I think this is kind of goes without saying but oops It's kind of good. Why is that happening? I? Mean we you know we benefited from these during this period here but obviously when you have a Something like this go on of course bunkers are not gonna be profitable, right? But you don't know that this is gonna happen ahead of time And so, you know, we're gonna kill still continue to keep bunkers on as a hedge and keep in mind We're still you know, we're still booking profits on our iron ducks. We're still booking profits on our weekly double calendars we've got short strangles and iron condor so you've got to look at it holistically and The fact that we're able to continue to be profitable continue to book profits While still having this hedge on while still being basically fully hedged to the downside That's that's the key and so don't get discouraged if you know You keep having these bunkers that potentially got to close out their losers You got to put another one on because that's what they're there for and Anytime you get a rip your face off rally like we've seen here, of course They're not gonna be profitable But but you still got to have that downside protection to some extent now the amount that you have that's a personal preference You know, we we always talk about our ratio of theta versus our short delta and and what we're comfortable with and we've really we've actually Done really well with that in this in this rally. We haven't gotten overly short You know, we've stayed about one to one on our short delta versus our theta and that's that's kind of the ideal place We want to be you know, we've talked about in the past having a a range of you know Either between one to one and five to one on our short delta You know any more I think I think five to one is just I think that's a little bit too short specifically now that we've Introduced the bunker trade to you don't you know, you've got some really good down side protection But you don't have all the upside risk As opposed to like like some of our verticals, you know, yeah You've got some good short term downside protection, but you also have the similar amount of risk to the upside if price continues higher so we'll just continue to manage as Still continue to manage using verticals short call verticals long put verticals and bunkers but You know, just kind of staying it We're just trying to stay kind of in that one to one to two to one range as opposed to getting all the way up to five To one now if if this thing continues to rip higher at some point We will accelerate our short delta amounts And and and get some more on but for now I'm pretty comfortable kind of having that one to one two to one range at this point RUT we've got an iron duck in the Russell 2000 you can see prices up here in the beak This expires on eight eight. So that'll be next week Still got a decent little chance. It could get back to the duck head So we won't take this off too early, but if price continues to run higher We will do so SMH we've got this adjusted strangle you can see prices hanging out in the upper end of the range here If you get a little bit of downside movement, that would be a real big benefit to the to that position SPX I mentioned SPY I mentioned XBI I mentioned lastly XLK a Long-put vertical and XLK also holding for that short delta exposure. So that's all the alerts. Those are all the positions Let's take a look at our day trading results for the week super excited to Get this out to you all remember it's it's coming up this Thursday So if you have not already registered make sure you do go to navigation trading comm slash day trading dash registration sign up save your spot Thursday August 6th 4 p.m. Central is well where we're going to be sharing Our strategy called the mighty 90 and this is where we're just trading for the first 90 minutes of the day After the market opens and then you're done. You don't want to trade past that with this strategy It's the best time to trade and you don't have to be glued to your computer. So Been very good very profitable for us. This is this is all of our day trading positions for the week I love our eleven hundred dollars I'll go through kind of the details here and what I started doing this week is I started breaking out the strategy because I'm testing some strategies Which did not do very well at all this week in fact And so I broke it out with the mighty 90 these test strategies and then also some pairs trades if I I did add up just the Just the mighty 90 strategies and just if I just just showing the performance of the mighty 90 It would have been over 2,200 bucks for the week But I but I just want to include everything just to just see guys kind of know what I'm doing I'm not you know If I'm showing you losses, I don't I don't really care This is not this is not to show you how how great I am or how how awesome But you know, I'm not trying to just pump you up with performance I'm really just trying to be transparent to kind of show you what I'm doing because this day trading thing is really This is an evolution right this I'm not you know, this is not a You know, I'm definitely not 100% expert in day trading, you know, it's not something that I've I've done for a long time I mean I used to do it back in the day and then I pretty much wrote it off for a while And so just getting back into it. So this is really just more posting For you all's benefit to see what I'm doing and then for our benefit just to really track it and get it down to a science So that when we do start rolling out some of these new strategies that mighty 90 is Golden but some of these new strategies just trying to get our feet wet and and test and and doing it with real money just because Paper trading is great, but we also want to have that emotional connection to it Good or bad Anyway, long story short. Here's the results for Monday. So Monday overall, you know down a couple hundred bucks But as you can see the mighty 90 did really well as well as I had a nice Paris trade in ES versus NQ Next day just did all mighty 90 is a little Didn't have time to do much else and so nice nice day there for 21 And the other thing I'm doing is you know, Amazon's a big stock, but you know BA and Roku I mean these can be done in small accounts So one the other thing that I've been doing this week is really doing more trades in smaller symbols Because I know that's what you all when you first start out for sure are gonna be wanting to use smaller symbols You're not gonna be doing anything in Amazon. It's just it takes too much buying power too much risk For somebody starting out. So and then also, you know, trading in some of these micro futures So these this is not a Paris trade.  The rest were winners All these could be done in a in a smaller account as well On this day really I kind of over traded especially on the test let let this one kind of go But again, you know, the Paris trade worked out really well all the mighty 90 trades were winners a nice one in AMD and that was It was a mighty 90 trade, but I did have a bullish bias because of the You know, we had that post earnings trade So that was the day after earnings in AMD and so you can kind of take a look at that and have that kind of a bullish bias and And then I was so I really focused on getting on a mighty 90 trade in AMD after earnings and that worked out well This was Friday. Yeah, so we did I did a Paris trade in ESN queue That was a loser then did a Paris trade in NQ versus the Russell. That was a nice winner Did a bond versus note pair? That was a nice winner and then some mighty 90s couple few losers in there and test those a nice winner overall 731 25 So for the week, like I said a little over 1100 bucks total and that includes all the testing so Look forward to this Can't wait. We're gonna have some fun on Thursday 4 p.m. Central presenting this class I've we did do a beta of this class with a handful of our members who had been showing a lot of interest and and We're kind of excited about it and and I've gotten to kind of know over the years And so did a handful with a handful of members and they've been they've been testing it on their own And it's been doing really well for them as well So really excited to share it with everybody can't wait everybody have a great rest of your weekend. We'll talk to you next week


Hi, I'm Reed Kramer of the New America Foundation, and I'm joined by Jason DeParle of the New York Times and Monica Potts of the American Prospect. And each of them recently published an article on poverty in their respective publications. And when I read them, I was reminded once again how impactful long-form journalism can be in bringing to light issues in very nuanced ways and ways that policymakers and advocates often forget about. So I thought it'd be interesting to bring them both here to have an extended conversation about their works and implications for policy. So that's what we're going to do. Jason's correspondent with the Washington Bureau of the New York Times, which is written on poverty for many years, including a book on the welfare reform debates of the 1990s called American Dream. And he's also an incoming fellow at the New America Foundation. And his article was called Two Classes Divided by I Do. Monica writes for the American Prospect, and her article, which was in their latest issue of the Prospect's poverty issue, really interesting stuff, also was just awarded a prize by the Hillman Foundation. And it's called Pressing on the Upward Way, a Profile of Life in America's, in the country's poorest county. So obviously I recommend reading the pieces themselves, but to get oriented here, I wanted each of you to kind of talk a little bit about what your pieces were about. So Jason, let's start with you in your recent piece. I've been writing about growing inequality and impediments to mobility for the past six months or so. By mobility, I mean the ability of one generation to rise above its relative place in the economic order from the past generation. Inequality and mobility often sound like similar things to the casual observer, but politically they're quite different because liberals tend to worry about inequality and see it's growth as a negative thing, whereas conservatives in general are not troubled by inequality, often see it as an unequal society being a good thing in that people with different drive, different talents get rewarded differently, but I think both sides see reduced mobility as a problem. So the conversation about mobility, about whether we really all have an equal opportunity to advance despite our origins, tends to be a place where there's a little bit of convergence of interest right now. In that context, I got interested in the role of family structure and whether the growing number of single parent families and the correlation between that and college education was both amplifying inequality and impeding mobility. So there's a research that shows a growing correlation between college education and the likelihood of having two parents to get the two parent family, so what you've got is an effect where the people who aren't finishing college are more likely to form single parent families. So you have less pay and only one paycheck, whereas the people with the college educations who are getting the higher paychecks are also getting two of them. So you could quickly see how that would exaggerate inequality and then there's also some evidence that kids growing up in single parent families on average, I think you have to emphasize on average, face longer odds than people growing up in two parent families of attending college and getting a good job. So as another structure to tell the two stories, we found two women who worked together in a daycare center and by all outward appearances were quite similar. They were best friends, they did essentially the same job all day long, made similar pay. One was the boss, so she made a little bit more, but one was married and one was not, so their overall family incomes were quite different and their kids' lives were quite different. Both had children. Two mothers each had a couple of kids, two Midwestern women raised in modest circumstances. We would think they would have the same lives, but one went home to a bare-bones existence on food stamps. She was the single mother raising three kids by herself and the other had a husband, so together their income was three times what they could make alone. And that was Jessica was the... Jessica was the single mother. And Chris was the boss if we get back to the conversation. Correct. Okay. Monica, tell us a little bit about your piece and the story behind it. Sure. We decided to go to one of the poorest counties in the country, Asley County, Kentucky. It's actually the poorest county in America with a majority white population and it's also very traditionally poor since we've been measuring poverty. It's one of the poorest counties always to rank in all different kinds of poverty measures. And so I wanted to go there because the poverty rate's 40%, the number of families who live in near poverty is another 30%. So I sort of wanted to see what it would be like to actually to try to live there and create opportunity there, which was what I wanted to kind of the question I wanted to answer in my piece. How do you start a business or how do you think about going to college or how do you think about getting a job in a county where poverty seems almost written in the landscape? So I went there in January and February and half of March of this year and just lived there for two and a half months and tracked this family called the Christians. Sue Christian the mother went back to college when she was 40 using WIA funds and a bunch of other federal help. The father is a handyman and an electrician and the son had come back after leaving college after one year to start his own business. So they were all trying to answer that question in their own ways. And just I wanted to ask, in reading your piece and the reaction is gotten, what was actually new about the story for you? It seems like we've seen the rise of single headed households dating back probably 30 years now. And it's always been inherently challenging to run a family with one parent there. And anyway, wanted to ask you a little bit about what was kind of breakthrough in your mind about why this is a contemporary story and maybe in addition to one that's being kind of played out over decades in America? Single parent hood has been quite common for high rates of single parents has been common for several decades or longer among African Americans and poor people. I think what's different now is that the fastest growth among single parent families has been in the white working class. So something that used to be confined to marginal populations or poor populations, minority populations is now middle America. More than half the children born to women in their 30s are now born outside of marriage. So I think that's what's new and the fact that there's so much attention being paid to the problem of inequality right now that there's kind of like the two things coming together in a way that I think hadn't been discussed a lot. Right. Yeah. I mean, I read the pieces. I mean, they're really captivating characters you feel for all of the characters in these articles. They're all working hard. They're all really applying themselves.  And that to me was one of the biggest takeaways. I think other people are reading your piece and seeing, you know, seeing you as a marriage proponent. I mean, that's just maybe that was the headline. But anyway, how do you kind of compare or tease out the various influences of family structure versus almost wage levels and compensation? The contributions of stagnant wages to inequality is it's an essential probably the major driver of inequality, but it's the one that's been the most discussed. So obviously, her pay is a huge part of the story. I think what hasn't been discussed as much is the family, the effects of family structure. And if you look at these two women, one makes $35,000, one makes $25,000, that's a difference. The bigger difference between the two of them is the fact that she's got a second income and a second set of parenting hands. Eyes, ears, heart, hands, you know, to help her with the kids. Yeah, no, it clearly emotionally, it has a big impact in the wife of the woman that has the partner versus the one that didn't. I mean, that comes clear. But there was no implication as far as I'm concerned that low wages are not a part of Jessica's problems. He says she's the assistant manager of the daycare center and she makes $25,000 a year, which is just over the federal poverty line for a family of four. So she's both in management and on food stamps. And she seems very responsible and hard-working, committed, like people are probably thrilled that she's there working away. I mean, I know that's how I approach the people that cared for my children when they were here. Well, I was just going to say, yeah, right, she's responsible enough to be entrusted with the most precious thing these parents have for their children.  There seems to be just also limited amount of resources and jobs in this county. And is that what your takeaway was, or were there other factors in kind of any kind of culture of poverty that felt like it was part of the story for you, even that's a very loaded term? So it wasn't destiny, but it mattered a lot. It was really hard to get around physically in that area. There's very poor infrastructure. The roads are very bad. Any amount of bad weather really shuts everything down. And that really changes the way that people think about commerce coming in. It changes the kinds of goods that you can get in. It changes who wants to start a business there. It changes the relationship that you have to the biggest cities nearby, which are an hour and a half away, Lexington, Kentucky. So all of that really sort of does affect the way that people think about themselves versus the world. And they do sort of see their little community as this sort of very separate from the world. And also they want to protect themselves from it because they always felt like they've been criticized from it. And some of that is culturally, I won't say culture of poverty, but they feel that they are a particular sort of Appalachian culture that is looked down upon by people in the liberal northeast and by people in bigger cities. And so that changes the relationship people have when they leave their hometowns and try to travel or try to go to college. And they don't necessarily fit in very easily. And it changes the relationship that they feel people have when they come in. There's just a constant influx of missionaries and do-gutters coming in all the time. And so it's not exactly an easy relationship, really, from the point of view of the people there. So I think that it matters a great deal. They are very physically isolated. And also they are sort of small town, the small town pride sort of affects the way that they approach the outside world, I'd say. Right. The family structure varies, obviously, in these two pieces. Here we have kind of an intact unit. But interestingly, the role of kind of breadwinner has kind of shifted in your family. It's the mother who has the earning potential. And the male in the household kind of comes and goes in the workforce. Not just the earning potential, but the maturity in your story, the grown-up. She's the responsible one. Yeah, so she wouldn't call herself the breadwinner. And she would really sort of fight that. But there are a lot of different ways in which she really was. And I would say that also she would say she doesn't know how to relax as easily as JC. And there's a way in which that's a detriment to her at times. She really did suffer through serious anxiety problems, I would say, through a lot of her adulthood, where she really sort of felt like she was the only, that all these burdens were only on her. But JC really helped her a lot. He drove her to school in the snow. And he helped her through her panic attacks when she had them. And so it's really hard to imagine Sue and JC making it anywhere alone. They really, really did help each other. And so that is one thing to think about when talking about family structure and poverty is that just the single fact that another adult is there helping you, I think, is very immeasurably good. And is he the father of the two kids? Or is he the, OK. So they've all, they've been together. But she was previously married, but there were no kids out of that. There were no kids out of that. Yeah. And they're both very committed to raising their children together. And so I think that helped keep them together over the years. But I do have a question for Jason, if it's OK. There have been a lot of policy debates about what policy makers should do with family structure, whether they should promote marriage or whether they should just sort of try to imitate the influence that marriage has in single family households or single parent households. And I was wondering if you thought about those debates at all when you went there. You asked us by way of preparation what were the policy implications of what we looked at. Even though both pieces stayed away from policy in some respects. You know, anyway. Well, the two most obvious policy conclusions that I could think of from my article had nothing to do with family structure. They had to do with food stamps and the tax credits because on a $25,000 income, Jessica relies heavily, heavily on the tax credits. She gets, I think, $7,000 between the earned income tax credit and the child tax credits. That's a huge supplement to her income. And significantly, also, she relies on food stamps. So the preservation of those supplement, earning supplements for low-wage workers, I thought was the most immediate and essential policy thing that flowed from that article. You know, the importance of those to her family. You know, I think one reason why family structure doesn't get discussed more is because who knows how to promote it. Gosh, if I knew that. Yeah, I mean, I think one place to start is at least by making it a topic for, you know, intelligent discussion and which it hasn't always been and it can be a divisive and a polarizing issue. But I think the left, at one point, you know, hurt it as a kind of blame the victim or even an anti-feminist language, you know, that why should a woman need a man? And I think that has substantially shifted, not entirely, but you've got very prominent liberal academics like Sarah McLanahan or Christopher Jenks who are pointing to it as a driver of inequality.  The, you know, what I'm always taken by in some of the conversations and the trends in family structure is just how diverse they are now in America. Like, they're, you know, it's, you know, seeming like rare to find this unique traditional family and mother, father, two kids, you know, they're still out there. But you see a lot of kids living with other relatives. You see marriages dissolve and reform. And so it becomes very hard to prescribe something with that in mind. Well, but the other thing you, I would slightly disagree with that. I think where you don't see that, you know, you don't see that in equal proportion depending on people's level of education. Among college-educated, college graduate, among women who've finished a four-year college degree, more than nine out of 10 are having children while they're married. And among, as you go down to women with or high school graduates, but with less, but some college, but less than a four-year degree, that jumps up to about 30% when you go down to high school graduates up to about 50%. And when you go down to people with less than a high school, you know, it's more than 50% are having children outside of marriage. So there's a real class gulf opening up. And how about the, some of the trends about when people are, when women are having children, I assume that the last time I checked, they were having them later. There was an issue around teen pregnancy focus kind of in the 1990s, some policy efforts and other attention. And I believe that has been moving where the teen pregnancy has been on the decline for a number of years now. That fits in as well. The other, to follow up on your point about, is the variety of living relationships. If you take, divide the American population into three groups, into thirds, upper income, the top income, middle income, and lower income, the upper two thirds, if you go back 30 years ago, one in the upper, the top level, I think it was 96% of the kids were growing up with two parents. And the second level was 95%. The two thirds of the income distribution were essentially the same in terms of the way the kids were growing up in the family structure. The bottom third was somewhat different. Now, a golf has really popped up. There's a 20 percentage point or so spread between the two groups where the upper third, the percentage growing up in two parent families has declined, but has declined much more rapidly in the middle group.  So I think that's what, when you were asking me earlier, what's new? I think that's new. Yeah. I also, you know, thinking about the characters, people in your stories, definitely wanted to know more about them, and I wanted to know more about what they thought about kind of their plight and how they relate to kind of government and policy, like at large, like, you know, and then it raised issues for me of kind of almost political engagement and empowerment, whether they, you know, vote or participate and whether they see that as potentially being able to change their circumstance. So your family was very, or at least the mother was pretty avid Christian, devout, I don't know if she was an evangelical or not, but she was evangelical. So anyway, tell us a little bit about what you learned about how they thought about politics, political engagement and kind of government. So Sue, the mother, is very conservative politically. She came to, she came to politics after she came to religion, which was when her son was two. And so she really definitely is very Republican-leaning and conservative-leaning. She, this is really true of everyone in the county almost, not just her, but she sort of views a lot of government programs there very suspiciously. There aren't a lot of industries in town, and so government is an industry there. And there's sort of been a, but not a welcome industry. But not a welcome industry. They sort of viewed it as very, you know, critical of their livelihood. I think the bigger problem is that there seems to be sort of a new program every five years. It changes because of things that have nothing to do with the people on the ground in Owensley County. They don't necessarily have a huge say in how the programs come down. Sometimes they're run out of colleges nearby, and so that also feels like it's a separate kind of, a separate sort of thing imposed upon them. So almost everyone participates in some federal program, whether they know it or not. Very, very many people rely on food stamps, and very, very many people receive welfare. But I even had some families who receive welfare tell me in a way that was very critical that that family over there receives welfare. So they don't like it. They like thinking that they earn their money, and they like thinking that they have chances to earn their money. Did they view the food stamp SNAP program distinctly than other kinds of assistance? They do, and they, by and large, don't really wanna criticize anyone who relies on it for some period of time. But I heard a lot of stories that there were some people who just, that's all the money that they got during the month, and they were very critical of those people. I never met those people, but I'm sure, I'm sure there are some people who don't want jobs and just wanna get government checks. I'm sure those people exist, but it was out of proportion to the way that people talked about it. So that people who were striving and wanted to engage. Almost everyone had some sort of, at least temporary relationship to the workforce. Right, and I'm not sure how much in-depth time you spent with Jessica and Chris. I'm not sure you moved down as Monica did, but did you get a sense of their kind of view of politics and political engagement? I mean, I think of the lives of some of these single mothers, and I'm like, why did they even have time to vote or go to a PTA meeting or anything? I was surprised at how apolitical Jessica was, because she's a thoughtful, reflective person about other things, but the few times I tried to, she would reference some, like, earned income tax credit or the food stamps. And I would mention, you know, there's some discussion in Washington about cutting food stamps, and she hadn't heard that, and she didn't, it was kind of like, oh really, it didn't seem to go anywhere. She didn't, I don't think she had nearly the developed political consciousness that Supe did. But, you know, I wanted to ask you, why, she talks about not wanting her kid to go to the liberal college, but what does liberal mean? Is that a cultural thing, is it religious for her, or how does she define conservative, and why do you think she sees that as her identity? I think it's primarily religious. She came to politics through the issue of abortion.  And I also think that she sort of identifies, you know, liberalism is something that happens elsewhere. You know, it's a different kind of culture, it's a different kind of acceptance of everything that happens in the cities, and so she doesn't really see it as any way related to her life. At the same time, she used WIA funds to go back to college, and she didn't really see that as being a liberal or conservative program. She goes to the free health clinic in her county, which is mostly paid for by federal funds, but everyone goes there, it's always existed. She was on food stamps for some amount of time, yeah.  They were very ashamed. Did she get the Earned Income Tax Credit? She does, yeah, they do qualify. They, I think almost every year, they must have, and I want to say, 80% of the county qualify, something very high, yeah. So I'm not sure why she doesn't see those as liberal programs, and I'm not sure why she sees liberal as something different from how it manifests itself on the ground there, you know, that all of those, almost every program that's come in to the county and helped relieve some of the poverty is a program that came from liberal leaning politicians on her. Her conservatism isn't primarily the size of the federal government, it's about abortion. It's about abortion. I also think that she, like everyone in Owesley County, thinks that the government programs there prevent people from helping themselves. I think that that's the prevailing view. And I'm not sure why they think that that's true. But that's generally how they view it. That came through very strongly in your article, I thought it was very interesting. Please, it's your interview, oh no, I'm done. Why, why does she want to stay there and why does she want her children to stay there? Well, she has a immense amount of hometown pride. She's very patriotic. She really loves Kentucky. She loves growing up there. She did have, she moved away. She moved away for a brief amount of time, primarily because of her first husband. And she really wanted to go back when she and JC thought that they could go back and make a living. It's quiet, she knows everyone in the whole town. She can rely on them to help with her family and raising her children. She actually was president of the parent teacher organization for some amount of time. She's just really committed to sort of turning it into the kind of place that people want to stay. And the idea of leaving is both unappealing and also feels like giving up on that mission, I think, for her. And of course, the article ends with the tidbit that she has the prospects of a new job working in this college readiness program that the Department of Ed runs called Gear Up. And there were prospects for a grant to come through to the local Berea College that would create this position for her that could be somewhat steady, a salaried employment even if it was fairly low. It would be a nice boost. And again, that's another public funding stream that might help change her prospects. So I imagine it's something you're gonna go and check in on them over time. It's actually, it's very similar to Gear Up. Gear Up exists in her county, but the program through which she gets a job is Promise Neighborhoods. And she has it now, and it's starting next year. Yeah, great. All right, well we'll tune in and look for the follow-up. And with yours too, with your characters and... I thought of one other similarity between Jessica who I was following and Sue. They both seem like pretty smart people to me. And so whatever is responsible for their economic hardships, you earlier mentioned it isn't a lack of work. It's also not a lack of intelligence. There are times I hear in even in polite liberal company, why are people, especially people, maybe they're just not, they can't quite make it in the knowledge economy. They're just not quite smart enough. And I am always come back from a reporting trip reminded that whatever is limiting people, it's not that. And that really came through with Sue, and I certainly felt that with Jessica. This is a smart person who could have easily made her way through college intellectually and whatever held her back wasn't that. Yeah, now she does seem to have both drive and the ability to navigate some hard situations. I think one cultural hazard of believing that you're a meritocratic society is a tendency for many people to assume even unconsciously that the people who don't make it must not be bright enough. And one great benefit of being a reporter and going out and meeting low income people is it cures you of any suspicion that that's a factor. Well, that's one of the things that I think is uniting a lot of this work. Both the geography and some of the work that you've done on mobility and equality is that meritocracy in America is under threat. And that's part of one of the challenges. Good, smart, hardworking people are not having the economy return the goods and the shared prosperity we kind of expect. But there's I think a moral hazard for the people at the top if they believe in a meritocracy, then inevitably it must mean that I'm smart because I made it on top. Some of their colleagues also have to fall out of it at the top as well for it to be truly meritocratic. Well, thanks for coming in today and for your time and invite everybody to read the pieces online at the American Prospect in New York Times. And maybe we'll check back in later to see how your friends are doing down there. Thank you. Thank you.