Welcome back to the Trade Hacker Mindset. We are going to be continuing with our discussion topics from the Mark Douglas book, Trading in the Zone. And in this episode, we are going to talk about the trader's edge, thinking and probabilities. Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach. Professional traders have a secret.  It requires the Trade Hacker Mindset. OK, let's jump into our discussion of thinking in probabilities. In the last episode, we talked about the market's most fundamental characteristic, which is that anything can happen at any time. And so if anything can happen at any time in the market to be able to be successful, we have to be able to think and trade in probabilities. At Navigation Trading, we always talk with our community about how we trade in statistics and probabilities, not hype or emotion. In other words, we're not trading on gut feel because we think a stock is going to go up. We're not trading on gut feel because we heard on CNBC or we heard some gurus say that something is going to happen in the market. Trading is a game of numbers. And if you can internalize that into your trading mindset, into your trading methodology, it's going to help you become a successful trader much quicker than you might think was possible. So let's dive in. So what exactly does it mean to think in probabilities? And why is this so essential to you becoming a successful trader? Because as we've talked about in previous episodes, we know that each individual trade has a very uncertain probabilistic outcome, meaning there is a chance that every trade you enter could be a loser. So if that's the case, how can you produce consistent results with something that's so uncertain? So to help provide some context, we're actually going to look at the gambling industry to help provide some answers to these questions. Think about this. If you've ever been to Las Vegas, you know exactly what I'm talking about. How do you think that they justify spending all this money on the bright lights, on the huge massive hotels and casinos when their primary function is to generate revenue from an event that has a purely random outcome? As professional traders, we want to think like the casino, not the average gambler. Many uneducated people compare trading to gambling. But the reality is, there are a lot of traders who gamble in the market, but professional traders are not gamblers. Let me say that again. There are a lot of traders who gamble in the market, but professional, the best traders are not gamblers at all. So here's an interesting paradox. Casinos make consistent profits day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, in an environment that has a purely random outcome. So how could this be? And at the same time, most traders believe that the outcome of the markets is not random, that it is somewhat predictable. Now, whether you believe that the markets are random or predictable, wouldn't you agree that, shouldn't a consistent non-random outcome produce consistent results and a random outcome produce random inconsistent results? Well, the answer is that think about from a casino owner's perspective. What a casino owner and the best traders understand that the gambler or the typical trader finds difficult to grasp is that even if something has a probable outcome, it can also produce consistent results.  The best traders in the world treat trading like a numbers game similar to the same way that casinos approach gambling. As an example, let's look at the game of Blackjack. So in Blackjack, the casinos have approximately a 4.5% edge over the player. This means that over a large enough sample size, a large enough number of hands played, the casino will generate a net profit of 4.5 cents for every dollar wagered on the game. And this takes into account all the players who walked away as big winners, all the winning streaks, it includes all the players that walked away big losers and everybody else in between. And at the end of each day, at the end of each week, at the end of each month or year, the casino always ends up with approximately 4.5% of the total amount wagered. So that 4.5% might not sound like a lot, but think of all the people that pour into Vegas or pour into these casinos, and suppose $100 million is wagered collectively at the Blackjack tables over the course of a period of time. Well, $100 million wagered, 4.5% of that is 4.5 million dollars. So what casino owners and professional traders understand about the nature of probabilities is that each individual hand played is statistically independent of each other. This means that each individual hand is unique, where the outcome is completely random relative to the last hand or the next hand. And so if you focus on each hand individually, there will be a random, unpredictable distribution between winning and losing hands, but on a collective basis, just the opposite is true. If a large number of hands is played, patterns will emerge that produce consistent, predictable, and statistically reliable outcomes. And that's what makes thinking and probabilities so difficult. It really requires two different layers of beliefs that on the surface seem to kind of contradict each other. So in the book, Trading in the Zone, Mark Douglas talks about the first layer, he calls it kind of the micro level. And at this level, you have to believe that the uncertainty and unpredictability of each hand is unique and uncertain. And you know that these are uncertain because there's always a number of unknown variables affecting the consistency of the deck that each new hand is drawn from. Think about this, for example, you can't know in advance how any of the other participants are going to play their hands. For example, if you're sitting at a table and there's five other players, you don't know if they're gonna take a hit, you don't know if they're gonna stay on a hand, you don't know if they're going to act a certain way based on which cards that they have dealt. So we know that each hand is random and statistically independent of another. However, the second layer is this macro level, this big picture level, where you know that if you have a series of hands, if you have enough statistical evidence, if you have enough number of occurrences from a very predictable, reliable way, you'll know the outcome of what happens. So there are constant variables, and these are basically in Blackjack, for example, these are the rules of the game. So even though you don't know or you can't know in advance the sequence of wins or losses, you can be relatively certain that if enough hands are played that whoever has the edge will come out in the end with more wins than losses. And the degree of certainty is a function of how good that edge is. So thinking in probabilities from a casino owner's perspective, it's the ability to believe in the unpredictability of the game at the micro level and simultaneously believe in the predictability of the game at the macro level with a large number of occurrences. So because casinos don't have to know what's going to happen next, they don't have to know what's gonna happen from on a hand-to-hand basis, they don't have to have any significance or emotional attachment to each individual hand. So they don't have this unrealistic expectation about what's going to happen, nor are there egos involved in a way that makes them have to be right. And as a result of that, as the casino thinks in probabilities, it's easier to stay focused on keeping the odds in their favor and just continuing to execute flawlessly, which in turn makes them less susceptible to making costly mistakes. The casinos stay relaxed, they're committed and they're willing to let the probability, which is their edge, play themselves out. And they know that their edge is good enough and that if the sample size is large enough, they will become a net winner in the end. The best traders in the world have the same mindset. They have the same thinking strategy as the casino. And not only does it work to their benefit, but the underlying dynamics supporting the need for such a strategy exactly the same in trading as they are in gambling from the casino's perspective. In gambling, the known variables are the rules of the game. In trading, the known variables are our strategy or your market analysis. Your market analysis finds behavior patterns in the collective actions of everyone participating in the market. We know that individuals will act the same way under similar circumstances over and over again. And this produces observable patterns and behaviors. And forget about trading, if you're just interacting with groups of individuals, you're gonna notice that they produce different behavioral patterns. Well, remember the market is just made up of participants. They're just made up of groups of individuals and humans act and they have patterns that reoccur over and over and over based on fear and greed and the decisions they're making based on how they're trading. The known variables in trading can also be the analytical tools that you're using. Whatever it is that creates your edge in the way that you trade. This could be a price pattern that happens over and over. This could be the implied volatility level that you use to create a certain option strategy. This could be the way that price reacts to a spike in volume. It could be a number of these different things. Next, we know that in gambling, a number of unknown variables act on the outcome of each individual game, right? So in Blackjack, going back to our Blackjack example, the unknowns are, how is the deck shuffled? How are the different players choosing to play their hands? If you've ever played the dice game, craps is how are the dice rolled? People roll them differently off their hand, right? If you've ever played roulette, it's the amount of force that someone applies to spin the wheel. All of these unknown variables act as forces on the outcome of each individual event that causes each event to be statistically independent of any other individual event. And that's why it creates a random distribution between wins and losses. So if you compare that to trading, how does that compare from a number of unknown variables? Well, for one, a trader might have a perception of different behavior patterns, or they see different patterns develop in the markets.  So each trade contributes to the market's position at any given moment, which in turn means that each trader, acting on belief about what is high and what is low, contributes to the collective behavior pattern that is displayed at that moment in the market. So if you see a recognizable pattern, and if the variables used to define that pattern conform to your definition of an edge, then you can say that the market is offering you an opportunity to buy low or sell high based on your definition. So if you take the opportunity to take advantage of your edge and you put on a trade, what factor will determine whether the market unfolds in the direction of your edge or against it? The answer is, it's the behavior of other traders. Think about that. At the moment you put on a trade, and for as long as you choose to stay in that trade, other traders will be participating in that market. They will be acting on their beliefs about what they think is high and what is low. So at any given moment, some percentage of other traders will contribute to an outcome favorable to your trading edge, and the participation of some percentage of traders will negate this edge. So there's no way to know in advance how everyone else is going to behave and how their behavior will affect this trade so the outcome of the trade is uncertain. The fact is the outcome of every trade that anyone decides to make affected in some way by the behavior of other traders participating in that market at the same time that you're in the trade. And since all trades have an uncertain outcome, then each trade has to be statistically independent of the next trade, and that has to be statistically independent of the previous trade. Even though you as the trader may use the same set of known variables to identify your edge in each trade. So if the outcome of each individual trade is statistically independent of every other trade, there must be a random distribution between wins and losses in any given string or set of trades, even though the odds of success for each individual trade may be in your favor. Remember, the casino owners, they don't try to predict or know in advance the outcome of each individual event or each individual hand.  So think about this in your own trading. The biggest factor that I've seen affect whether a trader becomes successful or not, and this goes right in line with thinking and probabilities, is your position size. And if you've noticed in a casino when you sit down at a blackjack table, there's a minimum and a maximum that you can bet. Why do you think there's a maximum? You know, a casino wants you to bet as much as possible, right? Well, they want you to bet as much as possible, but they would rather have you do it over a large number of occurrences rather than one big lump sum bet. And the reason is, is because each individual hand is unpredictable, but a large number of occurrences is predictable.  But if you keep your position size in check, if you keep your position size small enough so that you have the ability to let the probabilities play out and you can use that pattern, that whatever it is that you use to trade, that strategy that you have an edge in, and you can do that over and over and over again with small position size, you're gonna have the ability to let those probabilities play out. Whereas if you traded too big and it happened to be the time that you hit a bad trade, you could be out of the game. So keep your position size small, think in probabilities, and we look forward to seeing you become a successful trader. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to be part of our trade hacker community, it's free to join. Just go to community.navigationtrading.com. We've got hundreds of traders interacting on a daily basis, not only about the mindset stuff, but sharing trade ideas and helping each other become more successful. Just go to community.navigationtrading.com. I'll see you in there or I'll see you in the next episode. Take care.


Thanks for checking out this video. So this is the announcement for what film we're gonna be tackling next for the new watch parties That we've been doing. We've now done two of the watch parties. They have been a lot of fun So what you will need for this you need a senior account, which senior is an extension that comes off of Google Chrome So you will have to have Google Chrome as well If you have any issues with getting Google Chrome or senior or anything like that YouTube tutorials, there's plenty of them out there. They're very well done so you will also need a shutter account an active shutter account because once you get into senior and you Try it. Well, it'll ask you to access whatever streaming service. You're gonna use it will make you sign into shutter So the way I'm doing these watch parties at the moment We are doing it with a private room room Looking at maybe doing a public room at some point so people can kind of come and go a little bit easier I don't have to send out a code but at the moment We're doing private until I mess with the public rooms a little bit and kind of see what I can make happen But basically what we do is we watch a movie together at the exact same time I control stop and start but pretty much as soon as I started it's not stopping and People, you know, you just keep yourself on mute You can be on video on video and audio on audio only or just in the type chat Whatever you feel comfortable with and we talk about the film as the film goes on You just kind of you know, I will you know Cut into the film a few times while it's happening and point some things out that I think are important about Directorial style or themes going on or certain things that I think people should notice about the film So we really try and break the film down and it's not just me It's everyone else showing up So if you decide to show up feel free to throw in and say whatever you have to say about the film It's been a lot of fun And then after the film is over we hang out just for a little bit longer and kind of talk about the film Kind of wrap it up and everything and our feelings on it. So it's a lot of fun This is for true horror movie nerds who like to break things down So if that sounds like you you should join us So when is this the next one will be on Saturday December 19th at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Now if you want to be getting the code, there are a few ways to do that You can send me an email at brutal battle podcast at gmail.com and brutal spelled BrwTal so brutal battle podcast at gmail.com Send me your email address there and then I will add you to the roster of email addresses I send the room code to so I'll end up setting up the room and then sending the room code out about 650 p.m. So that people have enough time to kind of get in the other way you can get it is if you follow me on Twitter which I am just at brutal battle or carlin at brutal battle I will send out the code on Twitter after the people I've emailed have already gotten in and kind of get their spots So Yeah, that'll basically be how it works So once again Saturday the 19th of December at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time We are planning on doing the original black Christmas, especially because this is the last watch party before Christmas So we're gonna do the original black Christmas, which is on shutter now I've heard talk online that it may be leaving shutter before Christmas time or before even before the 19th when we're gonna have this watch party So if that is the case we have a backup film and that is the film called body From 2015 which is currently on shutter Which I don't know much of anything about other than reading the little blurb on shutter about it sounds interesting So that will be our backup if we go there and black Christmas is not available But we're looking for doing black Christmas So you can do things a few ways some people show up blind and they've never seen the movie before and that's how they want to Experience it is with the watch party. That is cool Some people watch it ahead of time and take notes and really want to talk things out as the film goes That is also cool. Whatever you're comfortable with so anyway Once again black Christmas and as a backup if it's not their body from 2015 all on shutter On the 19th Saturday 19th of December at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time But send me your email addresses if you want in on this or Follow my Twitter so you see it. But anyway, I hope to see people there Do do me a favor real quick hit the subscribe button Especially if you want to keep getting these notifications because we're gonna continue to do the watch parties every other Saturday So look out for these videos. I'll always have them out the Friday before That's it's not the Friday before that weekend, but the weekend before that if that makes sense I've probably said that in a very confusing way. So I apologize, but yeah So just hit the subscribe button on this and then also hit the notification bell and that way you'll know what I'm putting up Videos so but anyway, thanks for checking this out. Hope to see you there and until next time keep it brutal


Let me ask us a quick question, folks. Simple question here. As a trial member, feel free to participate, really. What's a bigger size? 69, 58, 35, 78. This one here, 3,000. Or 29,223. Can you tell me what's the larger size? The 29,000, right? So, when you are watching this stock reopen and you have your 50 cent levels mapped out and your whole number levels mapped out, let's take a look to see what actually showed up on the time and sales window here at this point. If I could, if I could, let's see. Bingo, right there, 29,000. And hey, maybe for other stocks, this wouldn't be as big. Maybe for other stocks that we trade routinely, 29K off the halt really wouldn't be that large. But for this stock, it was, right? For this stock, it's much bigger of a level even than the 950, right? So, that was at the price of 972. I'm gonna move this line here quickly. Maybe I'll plot a new one there coming up at 950, but I'm gonna make that yellow just so everyone sees the price there. Now, what happened off the reopen? So, let me ask us here really quickly for Darren, who I'm excited to speak with after traders talk coming up on a coaching call and for Ray, Carol, and all of us here. How about this? Every student here of CTU, I want you to answer this question for me and you know where I'm going with this. I hope you do. What are my best entries to buy stock, folks? What are my best entries to buy stock? I want you to tell me. Give me my catchphrase for me if you could. And for any asking, what is the yellow line? That is the halt print that we just went over at 972. It's showing there on the time and sales there, right? Barbara and Darren, all of us. Michael R. and Carla, everyone of us saying pretty much the same thing. After it breaks through a big level, on the way up, on the way up, folks, I need you to add that last part to it. Not on the way down, on the way up. Now, that part might like make the most sense to you. Like, oh, of course, going up, right? Well, think of it like this. If this stock reopens at 972, when this reopens from the halt and it's at 972, well, $9 is under it, right? So in essence, if we are looking for support, well, nine could be that level. It could be. But we would actually want to see this stock break under nine first. We would. We would want to see this break under nine in this case. Why is that? Because that's the only way that this stock is going to break through that level again on the way up. So if you were assuming for support to be off of nine, then you try and look for this under and over. It actually gives it to you not just once, but thankfully it's so strong in this case. And that's a very Captain Hindsight comment, of course. But it held once here under and over. It held again under and over. Made the same exact move, if not even sharper. You don't want to wait for anything else. So in that case, since nine was the intended support, you would want to see it break under the level, break right back through the level on the way up, and you enter. You don't wait for the close of the bar.  That's for sure. But either way, you could see what had happened shortly after. This stock had a pretty easy breakout after. You know, regardless of the level, it seems like a very simple breakout and easy breakout. But every trade begins with the entry, right? Like if you're going to jump into a trade, let's not focus on like taking a profit yet, let's focus on getting into the trade and making sure you have a clean entry, right? So that's where I harp on 972 off the reopen. Like this is obviously a massive level, even if it falls broke it once here and then made the better pop later on. It's simply to say that is the level that you were trying to jump in on, if not from nine. You know, if not from support at nine, then of course when it breaks over this level, it provides, you know, of course easy to say it, but the entry that you're looking from a cyber group member today, just click the link below and receive all these amazing products and a world of knowledge for just $9. Do it today.


Thanks Susan for the introduction and so thank you everybody for joining us today. I'm Molly and I have I'm the social media manager at TechSoup and I have a lot of experience planning events and optimizing them for social because it's one of the best ways that you can promote your event and really get the word out there about getting attendees to join and then during the event. So I have a presentation I've prepared for you and please feel free to ask questions and I will get to them at the end and I'm really excited to answer the questions so please ask away and think about how you know what type of event you're hosting and how this can apply to you and I will also try to we will be following up with a checklist so go back to the course and a later on and check back and we will have a checklist that you can go through so if you are taking notes today just remember that we will also have a checklist that you can go back to at the end so let's get started I'm going to share my screen with you now. So how to make your event a social success so we're going to talk about planning the promotions how to create buzz what to do during your event and also what to do after event. So if you missed the last TS30 it was about how to plan your event so thinking about what type of event you're going to host more of like the logistics of setting all of that up so if you did miss that course and you don't know what kind of event you're having yet I encourage you to go back and check that out first because you need to have selected the type of event that you're hosting what speakers are going to be presenting if you have speakers if it's that type of event what partners you're going to have involved the location time and date and once you have those sorted out this is when you can really start thinking about the social social logistics for your event. So let's get started so your social profiles are the first thing that you're going to identify so you're going to ask these questions does the events the speaker of the event have a Facebook page or Twitter handle does the organization you're partnering with have social platforms you should tag does the event have a sponsor you must tag on social so collect all of these and put this in your planning document next pick a hashtag so this is a very important part of the event your hashtag needs to be one hashtag unless it's a huge conference then you might have additional hashtags but your hashtag is really going to represent the entire event and be the one thing that everybody is looking for in terms of engagement for the event so you really need to think about what is going to work across all platforms so Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn and Google Plus all support hashtags in it in the next to an extent LinkedIn's a little bit funky but they do you can search and so you need to think what you what is going to be good across all of these so here's some tips keep it short relevant and memorable so a long hashtag is never advisable because no one's going to be able to remember it and it's going to be hard to promote and it's also going to be hard to tweet and also search the hashtag and make sure it is not overused so go on all of those platforms I listed above and see if you know if there's thousands or hundreds of thousands you're going to evaluate based on the the least amount of hashtags used so if it's a really popular hashtag don't use it if the event is recurring keep it consistent and unique so if you have an event every month use the same hashtag every month if the event is yearly add the year so some examples is for our global summit our global tech soup gathering where we bring all our partners together we used TSGN summit it was a little bit long but summit is you know a lot of people use this at the end so it is a good way to use it and it was really memorable and for the online community managers happy hour or I'm sorry online community managers meet up and sometimes happy hours that we do this is OC tribe and it's used monthly so it's it's pretty memorable and it's it's very used and then and 10 hosts a conference and they do 17 NTC and this is pause real quick we're getting messages that people can't hear so no sound but some people can hear so I would say just double check your mic I make that all right keep on going hopefully you all can hear me still and sorry if you're having we're having some technical difficulties here so back to the hashtags so the 17 NTC so they put the year in front you can put it in front or after your abbreviation for the hashtag and each year you would change that out so if it's yearly event you would change it each year to the year so here's some examples of our use of the TSGN summit hashtag for our event you can see here that you know everybody was using it at the event so this was considered you know pretty pretty exciting and you want to encourage throughout the event people use it so just think of a very memorable hashtag so the next thing you're gonna ask yourself is are you gonna be live streaming the event so will you be streaming the event on YouTube live Facebook live Twitter Periscope Instagram Google Hangout or other there is a lot of options so just determine this it's not you know it's optional you don't have to do this for your event but it is it is something you can do so I advise that you use Facebook live it it is one of the easiest platforms to go live and it really helps boost your audience Instagram's also really easy but Facebook live has a great way to archive the video so that's why I'm suggesting it and then I also suggest that you stay tuned and join our Facebook live event for our next TS 30 will a few upcoming it's not the next one but it will be coming so if you are trying to get into how to how to do the live stream join us there and here's an example of that same same TechSoup Global Summit we did a bunch of Facebook lives at this this was a big event so it was more than one Facebook live but they did do pretty well we got you know 1.6 K views on one of our our Facebook lives and we were able to create a playlist so if you're gonna have multiple lives from the event you'll be able to create a playlist on Facebook so that's kind of fun so join us for our upcoming stay tuned for that one TS 30 so next you're gonna talk about establish a ticketing platform and event promotion sites so this means are you gonna use a ticket site are you gonna try to get RSVPs or get tickets in charge and I recommend using Eventbrite or Universe there's a bunch other there others out there but Eventbrite is great because it really has an audience already on there so it also helps promote your event to their audience and I also suggest using meetup maybe to get RSVPs but you can also use Eventbrite and meetup and meetup can just be a way to really increase promotions and you can send people back to your ticketing website you can also create a Facebook event page and this will be another additional promotion and you're gonna link in your ticket site there's also Airbnb social impact experiences this is something new that Airbnb is doing and it allows you to host an event with them and fundraise for your cause no cost to you and you get to keep the fund raising but it it promotes it to the Airbnb anybody visiting the location so if somebody's coming to San Francisco they will be promoting to this audience the experiences and so check it out there we have the link and then there's also another option is to reach out to local event listing sites so for San Francisco some that I have in mind you're like fun cheap SF if it's a free ish event other ones would be like your local newspaper sites your local blogging sites kind of just do a search on where people are listing calendars for events and think of creative ways that you can just ask to be promoted on there so another tip is that if you're live streaming create a virtual ticket and send out the link before going live so I have an example here if you're using a vent right and you can say watch it online and you can have people register for this and they're gonna provide their email and then right before you can send them the link so it's a great way to actually lead generation and to get more people to attend your event even if you you sell out of your seats so also visual content is very important so think about how you're going to create a social graphic what kind of graphics you're gonna create are you gonna have one that all the partners are gonna use or are you gonna have multiples are you gonna create a promotional video or gift a tip you don't need to have design experience of course you can use Adobe creative cloud with Photoshop or Illustrator but you can also just use Adobe Spark or Canva which are free platforms and you can make these amazing graphics and you can also make a gift on Giffy or use existing gifts so just think about that and have a plan so next social promotions so let's talk about how you're gonna really start promoting this thing so first you're gonna start selling tickets or RSPs online at least one month prior to your event that's what I suggest the earlier is better when you start setting up your page but you're not really gonna do heavy promotions months in advance you're just going to set up the page and kind of have your have those promotion sites kind of starting to promote for you then you're gonna create sample tweets and posts with visuals the visuals that you already created and send this to your presenters your partners your team and any attendees that are interested in promoting and you're gonna add and you're gonna tag and use the hashtag so on the right hand side here you can see this was for a Twitter chat that we had we curated a bunch of sample tweets and and posts that we sent to all of the partners involved so that we had a cohesive message about how to attend this event and how to get involved and it really created a lot of buzz next you're going to add event promotions to your social calendar so schedule out for you know that month before you're gonna post twice a week or you're gonna post three times a week and then leading up to the event one week before that's really when you go heavy with the promotions and you promote about four times a week or really depending on how much other content you don't want to flood people on your feet you need to make sure that it also fits with your posting schedule so keep that in mind I think people would get annoyed if it's the only thing you're talking about so make sure it fits into your whole social calendar so also create social ads on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram this is if you have a budget for it it's not necessary but it is really helpful we do sometimes do this and you can see on the right hand side here if you create a Facebook page you can actually boost that page so you can send a promotion of the event you know directly in the newsfeed of for Facebook so people can you can basically try to optimize for people to say that they're interested or going to attend and that that could be the optimization of your ad and so Facebook has a lot of resources on how you can do that so if you are interested go check that out and I do encourage it but it's not necessary if you're really big with the other social promotion sites you will definitely get people to find you that way and even just on a Facebook page people are searching on there people are searching events on Facebook and they can still find you and then also post the event to relevant groups on Facebook or LinkedIn so this is kind of a pro tip but if you know any Facebook group that is relevant to your topic post the event on there and let people know about it if there is a LinkedIn group you know women in tech LinkedIn group or something relevant to your topic go ahead and post that event in there as well so next let's talk about creating buzz so we've kind of understand our promotion schedule and how we're going to do that how can we create even more buzz so share relevant content on the topic for a few months before so if you have this way in advance start generating content and sharing that to your social handles so if the topic is about social media a few months before we're gonna or that month before at least you're going to start sharing content and using hashtags relating to social media also search Twitter users on LinkedIn and LinkedIn or search Twitter users or LinkedIn members sorry by the hashtags and location and invite them this kind of an aggressive push but you can actually go and start looking at people who might be interested especially if it's a local event you can get pretty curated there you can also invite people to the Facebook page so encourage your staff and team to do that as well and also you can do that in email promotions create a contest this is if you really want to create a lot of buzz you can create a contest and give away a ticket and another thing is to create a blog post written by the event presenter or on the topic so if one of your presenters wants to do a blog post and talk about the topic and then kind of tease in like learn more at our upcoming event that's a great way or you can write about the topic and link to the event another thing is to send an email obviously inviting your members and with the hashtag don't forget the hashtag it has to go in all of your promotions but basically you can send a mass email and tell people to do that as well so next during the event you want to continue the buzz so it does not stop once you've promoted it and you've gotten all your attendees and people of RSVP'd you really want to continue this buzz so this is where mostly a lot of people use Facebook and Twitter but also Instagram is really big now but live tweeting is a very great way to continue buzz during the event so I highly recommend that you encourage live tweeting so encourage social during the event so you can print out hashtags print out the hashtag and put signs up so on the top right hand corner here you see South by Southwest I love this sign because it they have two different hashtags that there they put these signs all over before you go into the conference room and do something like this you can print out kind of whatever you want make a social graphic in cam though or Joby spark and just encourage people to tweet throughout the event with the bright hashtag because people always forget what hashtag it is unless you're constantly reminding them and then display a live Twitter feed on a TV projector or an iPad with the hashtag so this is going to be you can see here is like a live feed so you can see everybody using it during the event so you won't really want to encourage this so if it's next to the presenter everybody can kind of see what they're quoting and it really encourages people to also participate because they see it right in front of them they want to be part of the conversation they want to capture what the presenter is saying or what's being done during the event so this can be with an additional projector like I said I've also have a bunch of links that we're sending out of free ways you can do this who feed is one that is kind of just uses Twitter but it works really well and this I can't say it enough it really does encourage people to use the hashtag if you don't have an extra TV or printer you can even use a computer and iPad but just make sure it's visible otherwise people will forget about it and then of course ask the audience to tweet throughout and have presenters add their user names to their presentation this is super important one time there was an example where everybody was during one of our events everybody because the presenter didn't put their Twitter everybody unfortunately was using the wrong Twitter and they were tagging the wrong person but really the presenter didn't have a Twitter so make sure that's known so that people don't try to go find a user on Twitter's assuming it's the person because they've the same first and last name it kind of looks like the person because then all of your engagement for that event is kind of ruined because it's not properly tagging the right or attributing right people so always refer back to that beginning step of identifying those user names and make sure that's all promoted as well so there you have the free hashtag feeds and you can do different things like if you're trying to encourage more Instagram use or picture use you know you can really promote that throughout the event you can have a wall and then have a hashtag and say take a picture here with the hashtag and so there's different ways to encourage depending on which which platform you want to increase visibility on but I typically find for presentations that Twitter is live tweeting is the best way for presentations but if it's a more social fun event it might be Instagram or Facebook and so after the events this is post event I still have some work to do to see if your event was a success so track social success and engagement from the event so to do this you can track the hashtag you can track your specific posts but the hashtag is a great way to see your overall engagement so I have a few tools that you can use but you can always do this manually you can go onto Twitter search the hashtag go to Facebook search the house tag each one and try to capture how how how many people were using it how many times it was used what was the highest amount of likes or retweets or shares and kind of capture that into like a one-page or so you can say you know this time we got this many likes or tweets or engagements but next time we want to get this many and you can really evaluate if it was a success on social or not and then you can also kind of say why wasn't it so also create a moment on Twitter or a store five so I'm stored by is to capture more than just Twitter but Twitter has this great feature where you can actually go back and capture all the tweets from a specific hashtag and add them to a story so you can basically bring together all the different engagements and have one place that everybody can go back in and kind of see that story so if they weren't a part of it or if you want to you know capture this in a better way moments are a really great way to do that and then it pops up into your feet and reminds everybody and then this is also a great way to pull all the attendees into a Twitter list so you can take all of those attendees that were tweeting during the event and you can add them to a Twitter list and you can make that public or you can make that private but this is a great way to continue to engage these people so that they go to your events again and then follow up with a thank you email to the attendees and ask them to follow you on social for more events don't be afraid to ask them to follow you on social if they weren't already and send them that moment on Twitter and send them also the live recording or the actual recorded video depending on if you're recording the event if you do make sure you send them that link and also post it to YouTube and then also go back and post that recorded video or live video that ends up becoming recorded post that back on your Facebook page or your meetup page or your ticketing page so just make sure you continue that conversation and buzz and that people can go back and review the presentation as well if it was an event with presentation so I think we still have a little bit of time for questions so I want to thank you so much for listening to me but please let me know if you have any questions also don't hesitate to reach out happy to follow you with the TechSoup account and get connected on social so please tweet or message us and let me know that you followed our presentation and you want us to follow you on social and I will definitely make sure that happens so let me know if you have any questions thank you sometimes the audio we're sitting in the same room so we've been in our audio between talking so we apologize for that we do have some questions about like how do you really measure some things the social success how you know what would be an indicator you talked about the measurements in terms of statistics but what are some other indicators that your social event has been a success yeah definitely so I think that it can be you know it really depends on the size of attendees so if you have let's say only 30 people who attend your event and you know maybe like half of them tweeted or posted about it or liked you on social or started following you like that would be a success I think that's a pretty large portion it really also depends on what type of audience so I often times how you know we do a lot of events where people are really social I'm so you know maybe everybody is almost tweeting but you won't always get everybody so really just depends on the size of your audience and how much engagement you've got you can always track you know how people found your event was it through social media but for me I personally love to see people engaging on social events and for me that is the biggest success you know you have all these promotions that help get people to your event and there's a lot of different tactics you can get people to your event through email marketing and other ways and other types of promotions so when you see people engaged and wanting to share that to me is a social success so even if you get you know a few people really excited to do that to me that would be a social success and you can always say okay these people really excited why were they so excited and how can I get more people in the future to be be that excited so you can really learn from that one other question you know you talk a lot about success and measuring success this is easy for me to say statistically and using all these tools or just tracking it yourself but you know sometimes we we have events that aren't so successful can you talk about a time where this might have happened to you and what sort of lessons did you take away from that so not every event is successful and a lot of times you just really need to try and it really depends on what type of event so I've hosted a lot of events and I used to host when I was managing a co-working space I was hosting so many events and it was you know sometimes like just the day is off like you do on a Thursday and it's it's not that exciting of a topic and if we're talking about you know presentation learning style workshop or something like that and you just don't get the engagement RSVPs you want or sometimes you get tons of RSVPs but you don't get enough people actually coming and I think that each time you just need to to document it so you need to take notes and and make sure you go back and say okay why wasn't this was the topic not that exciting was the time not that exciting did we not promote enough in advance did our partners not promote it enough because that can be huge is having your partners really engaged with you on social as well and then did we not encourage it enough so you just go back through that checklist and make sure you you did all of those things and if you didn't do one enough maybe that's why it wasn't a success but also keep in mind that sometimes events just there there's almost no real explanation why they were in a success like you have to kind of see the time of day and there's a lot of different factors that play into it so if you had a lot of RSVPs and not a lot of people show up it can happen so just learn from your bike by doing learn by doing that's that's how I think most of us are able to to do that great thank you Molly we are actually about one minute before time so I did want to remind everyone that we do record all of these events they are posted in the course just by month and day so you can simply go back through the course navigate through the different modules we do curate them by month so at the end of July I'll have one module that will say July 2017 when you click on the module you can see all the different topics that we've covered you can view the recording again you can look at all the resources and of course you can provide us with the survey your feedback on that particular event so you can always go back and view anything that we've conducted in the past I would like to ask everyone to take that minute to right now you're in the live event if you go to the module for today which is July 18th how to make your event a social success there is a survey right in the middle if you take a moment I can actually show it to you so you'd be able to take the survey to give us your feedback so when you go to how to make your event a social success maximize my screen I will be posting the recording right here and here's the survey and all of the links that we tried to share out today like I said I will try to clean those up for everyone so you can review those share those or do whatever you need with Molly's experience and expertise and I will also share the Prezi as well once we have that I'll okay so let me go back and see if there are any other questions I don't see any other questions okay all right well Molly if you'd like to say goodbye thank you so much and please connect with us on social and we hope to see you next week on our event that we'll talk to you about webinars how to create and deliver a successful webinar thanks so much everyone have a great rest of your day all


Good morning. I'm Chris Baldwin research associate with the Department of Crop Soil Environmental Sciences Department at Auburn University. I'm going to talk to you today about pod blast and peanuts from optimum maturity. Here we are approaching the fall of the year. We'll start digging peanuts here in about three weeks. So it's prime time to start thinking about that and how we're going to decide when to dig those peanuts which is always a hard decision and tough decision for for many people there to call on and decide on when's the best time to dig. So here we have a method that is a little bit easier and making that decision gives you a good look at the peanuts and a good average look of those different pods on that plant since they're all the time blooming every day when they're setting those pods. That's what makes it difficult to decide when to dig. So this gives you a good look at those and you can see how we decide on the optimum digging time. One of the first tools there that we'll need for this is a just a low-pressure pressure washer. This is a small one you can see it's 1600 psi. Anywhere in that range of 1200-1300 to about 1600-1700 psi is a good range. You don't need one of those big hard fast ones those huge ones that are on most farms. Just these real small ones will do a really good job and that'll keep you from busting a lot of those peanuts pods up more of the immature ones so that way you can get a good look of those pods. Here you can just a wire mesh basket that we've made there to put those pods in the blast them. You can see here on the left side we have a floor in it subfloor there. This will hold the pods up there off from the bottom by that water to flow through and come out the bottom of it. Just keeps those peanuts in there as we spray them with the pressure washer so that we can knock off that outer layer of those holes to see what color is underneath. Here we have the peanut profile board. This is what we put those on after we blasted them. We took off that outer layer of the hole that's revealed the inside so that we can see that color and that color helps us decide on maturity of the hole there and see how close we are to digging. So that being said what we do is it's much like soil sampling when you're pulling those collection plants there to pick off pods from. Here's the shot of a peanut field here getting close to dig you see it's lapped up well looks pretty uniform across it but as most farmers know soil types are different that also in turn may have different disease spots out there or problem areas in the field so what you want to do is randomly select sites to collect those samples from across the field much like soil sampling you know you can zigzag across there and pull those sites and that way you can get a good average of that field. So in those spots you can look down try to select a spot that's uniform plants free from disease because that disease would deter your sample you won't get an accurate reading there from from those from those disease there being on there just pull up a small bunch of those peanuts from these different locations and examine those pods because even though it might not show disease on top you could be having pod rod or something there underneath or underground white mold so you want to look at those pods make sure they're good and healthy and that way that's going to give you a good sample reading if they have disease on them that's going to deter it because those those pods are in turn dying so that's not going to be an accurate reading there when we put those on the board to look at maturity there. I isolate those plants when you pull up a small bunch of peanuts from each one of those locations you want to isolate those individual plants look at the foliage on them look at the condition of the vines like I said let's look at them make sure they don't have any leaf spot on them make sure they don't have disease on them and that way we know that plant's going to be there for the long haul until we get ready to dig it those plants in good shape and hold those pods until they get mature if it was either with disease or you know at least spot there would have you that that's going to shorten the life of that plant those pods won't make it all the way to full maturity then once you isolate those little plants what we want to do is pick off all the harvestable pods from that plant that would go into the combine basket that way we get a good uniform sample of that complete plant we're picking off everything that the combine would pick off and blow into the basket and then what you want to do is repeat that from those different sites that you pulled those plants up all across that field isolate those plants individually completely pick them off like what you've seen here in the picture put all those pods together until you have about 200 pods and that's what we use for the sample once we have those 200 pods we'll put those in that mesh wire basket and then we'll take that pressure washer and blast off that outer layer of the hole is just as you see here you can tell you don't have to have that wand down there too close if you get it too close to the pods like say you're gonna bust them up it's gonna be too much pressure on those more of those immature pods for sure you know they have a lot of water in them so they're easier to bust those harder more mature pods or are a little bit more solid so it's it's not as easy to bust those but you've got to take any consideration those immature so you can look at the different size props that are on that plant so that's the reason why you don't want to bust even those immature ones as you can see here is as you begin to wash and spray those there with that blaster you can see as it takes off that outer layer how they change colors like said that color compared on to that profile board will tell us that maturity range once we get all those blasted off good then we'll dump those on to the board and begin to separate those out by the colors just as you see here the darker ones to one side going across the board to the lighter color the more immature darker being the most mature I want once we separate out those colors then we begin putting those placing those on that board and those different maturity ranges it's good to shell I'm open that this way you know because not a lot of people can differentiate those colors there on those holes and the percentage of them like you can see how that board works a different percentage of a brown goes in one class a different percentage of a black goes in another class so forth across the board so it's good to shell them open and we have different characteristics inside on those pods on how we determine the maturity ranges there of them there just like you can see here just from this distance of this picture taken here you can see those peanuts to the far right we should open notice how they are copper color that means they're fully mature those peanuts have all the way turn loose in the hole so they have that tan color on the sea coat and they're they're fully mature and so we have them on the three-day category the next class there that you see next to it you can tell that sea coat is still a lighter color on the skin but also you see those dark spots on it and those are the oil spots that are there as a peanut gets close to maturity that oil content increases comes more to the surface right there and that's what darkens up those spots on those nuts and that tells us when we get those real dark oil spots we're generally about seven days away there from maturity that helps us place those on the board because like I said looking at that hole you can just tell it's dark you can't tell anything else that's reason it's good to shell them open and look at the inside look for those oil spots there's a tell-tale sign on the maturity here's another instance right here where you have one nut when it shelled open that's copper the other one is in that like that seven-day category that we just talked about so it's there with those darker oil spots on it but it's still a light sea coat the nut on the left shows us that copper color skin being that it's fully mature so with it fully mature we need a few more days to bring that other one on long we call that three to five-day range right there here for instance you see a one that is immature is not dark there on the outer layer of the hole that was knocked off by the pot blast but then again when you shell it open it's begin turning tan copper color and what's happened here is that peanut is turned loose dry weather has come in increased on this field and it's not having any more soil moisture out there we've sucked all the life out of the vines continue to go without rain and those peanuts have turned loose and that's what you'll get in a situation like that when you begin shelling those open they'll all fall over there in that three-day category and they'll all be that copper color like what you see there and you can see here here's just an example of those other categories like the seven days as we talked about with the darker spots and then you notice in the 10-day category we have the light sea coat but you don't see that all spots near as distinct as you do in the seven-day category so any time you're looking at those well with a darker hole they're going to be in that 10 to 14-day range without having those all spots distinct and you can you can determine where they go place them on that board by looking at those all spots it's just a clear all spot we usually have them 14 to 17 if they start getting that color to them we put them there about 10 days and once they get real dark and distinct we put them on seven days and then as those nuts begin that sea coat turns tan copper color we put them there to three days and then once we get enough peanuts there to break our projection line there on that graph then we know it's time to start digging like in this this situation here he's got two distinct crops he's got one early crop obviously we went through a dry time then we've got a late crop over here the problem is is you got a lot to risk when you're looking there to crop that saw say half and half as we show those peanuts open here all those were copper colored on the inside we didn't have any over here that was in that seven to ten day category and that situation my opinion you just can't afford to wait with those peanuts there in the ground you've got so much risk to lose if it was to come in and start raining now if you do have some moisture in the field but the weather forecast is open yes you could wait and give those another few days there and then fall in there and dig them and get them up by the ground but right here's your main money crop there you got a lot of big solid harvestable pods there and even when you look at this pile here you see a lot of real imatures as you pick through there you also see some damage there like from corn bores and letters and so forth that would create problem with those and that's that pickers gonna separate that out for that light stuff out of the back so that don't go into the basket at all anyway and so really when you look at that pile there there's not as much there which you really think compared to this here so certainly when you've got that higher percentage there this and that copper gold color it's time to go ahead and start and notice how there even not all the way black you can see just some of they're really kind of just brown seems like they would be more over here in this 14 17-day category that's reason it's always important to shell those open so just a few things there to remember always a sample must be as good a good representation of the field to be accurate recommendation for the digging I also look at it a couple times it's hard to really get it exact by just doing one sample out there so the first time you take a sample take it when you think you'd be about 10 days out from digging and then pull another sample whenever your first sample said to dig and that way those two checks will give you a better target on when the proper digging date is to ensure that you get the top dollar for your crop because it's very important when you think about selling the peanuts by the ton they're on the grade point average and you may be looking at four to five dollars a point they're on a price per ton so it really adds up to a lot of money there per acre thank you this morning for your time and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to y'all there about a pop blast and for maturity Chris I had a question where do people get those charts those peanut maturity charts yeah they can contact us here at the Wiregrass Research Station and we can send those out all the REAs have those scattered about the state and then we try to pass those along I think Senjina put those charts out years back and we try to keep some of those printed up here they could probably even ask your Senjina rep that's in their area or contact us there through the extension office and so all right any other questions


Yo, what's going on guys Preston here from Xtrades and today we're going to be talking about how options differ from common stock or shares as Well as the advantages and disadvantages of trading options so the differences are Shares themselves when you buy a share of a stock it gives you a small piece of ownership in That ticker so you buy five shares of Apple that is a small piece of ownership in Apple the company itself Options on the other hand give you the option to buy shares at a certain price for that ticker so You get you buy an options contract you have the option to To buy Apple shares at the price of your contract or at the at the strike price of your contract for Apple so if you have Whatever it is like the strike price of 300 and apples at 500 then you can buy 100 shares of Apple for $300 instead of 500 so Shares have no expiration date. You can hold them for as long as you want. It doesn't matter Just Hold them sell them. It doesn't matter Options on the other hand have an expiration date and by that expiration date You either have to sell the contract or execute it, which means buy the shares And if you hold the contract through expiration, there's nothing wrong with it It just The contract expires worthless And so you would lose all the money that you all the capital that you had in that contract Which doesn't necessarily make sense use either sell a contract make whatever money you have left back or whatever capital or you execute the contract because You are the strike price that your contract is you want to execute and buy the 100 shares At or buy expiration So share price itself is based on the company's evaluation When there's news this the price will go up earnings can drive the price. It's all around Speculation of the company's evaluation or the current company's evaluation like where people think things will go for the company We're on the other hand option price is Based on a multitude of things but for the most part the movement of the share price itself And so obviously there's Greeks, which I'll get into on another video Like time decay implied volatility all these things that Have to do with the options contract price but for the most part It's mainly based off of what this share price does and that's why we do technical analysis to see okay, will the stock be jumping because we want to catch that jump and Not let the option decay because the expiration date comes into play there With time decay where as shares can't decay over time All the only time that your shares lose money is when the company's evaluation or the stock price goes down whereas The stock it's weird, but the stock price say you buy a call option the stock price could be going up but your contract is going down because of a multitude of other reasons that it could be doing that So the advantages of trading options you have greater potential returns because a stock could move Two dollars like the share price could move two dollars and in return your options contract could move like $50 or even more than that and so That's like the kind of high-risk high reward Part that drags people into trading options is that greater potential returns for a smaller move of the share price itself So a small move of the share price in the right direction for you Given the other things that drive a contract price are in your favor. You will See greater returns Options are cheaper to trade than actually buying shares because you think about it when you're trading options you are basically Leveraging in a way because you're you have the ability to buy 100 shares of that stock and so You're getting an options contract for like 100 200 300 dollars That's like a big sum of money We're in you're just getting it for one to three hundred dollars when you're trading like say weeklies that a lot of people will trade and so it's pretty cool in that sense that you could get a contract for a hundred dollars to three hundred dollars and then With some of the contracts that us members at x trades buy it's like You could get double your money in one day or anything like that and that's pretty much unheard of in shares when you're buying shares and As well another advantage is the ability to strategize you can sell contracts You can place spreads to help yourself with the share price going in the wrong direction You could do puts which is when that you make money when the stock goes down Calls you make money when the stock goes up. There's all these different things that you can do With options which you can't necessarily do with stocks Obviously you can short and you can buy shares but the spreads are are Really awesome and selling selling premium or selling contracts to basically make passive income and It's complex when you think about it, but definitely with a good amount of studying It's it's not too hard that no one can learn it and that's one of the great parts about options trading So the disadvantages of options trading with the greater potential gain comes the greater potential loss In the sense that yes options contracts are cheaper to trade but in the same respect They can you could lose just as fast as you win and that's where stop losses come in handy but The options contract can technically go to zero really fast even without expiring worthless I mean, it'll be like 0.01 but They can in the same respect where the stock price goes up two dollars this the contract goes up 200% or whatever it is if the if the share price drops two dollars on a call option then You are down whatever $200 or however much capital you have in that position And so you need to be tight with stop losses tight with taking profit when you're trading options Because it's such a high-risk high reward game and it's a fast game So you always got to be on your toes and make sure all your all your bases are covered So you're not caught with cake in your face I know there's advantage of options is less liquidity I mean, there's ways around that you trade options that have good liquidity you trade tickers with good liquidity that Have good options volume itself but you could in Theory like definitely get caught in a trade like an options trade where there's no buyers Because you're too far out of the money you could be too far in the money where your contract is so expensive like no one can afford it or buy it so You always like think or swim. That's why I mainly use they have You can see the open interest the volume on the contracts and you can see that people are actively trading this people are holding this Contract so you never want to get caught in a jam where you can't sell a contract and then you're forced to just lose your money Um time decay. I went over this already, but It's pretty much just the options contract since it has an expiration date It can expire and there's time decay So an options contract is a decaying asset in essence. So every day the contract is Worth less and less the closer you get to expiration Even though it could be going up in value. There's there's different aspects that go into making the price of an options contract And yeah, that's all I got. So this has been Preston from X trades and thank you for your time


It's your same daily debrief and it's your same people's dispatch. But we have got a completely new look starting today. And it's not just this big screen. In the coming days, you'll be seeing more guests from across the world in this new show which keeps asking the important questions. What are the people's movements struggling for? How are people across the world mobilizing against imperialism? And how do geopolitical developments that are happening around us today affect our future? In this spirit, we go today to the summit between Russian and African leaders. Think about what lies ahead for BRICS and also take a look at the struggles in Latin America. But before you go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button under the video, just so that you can watch future episodes of this show and other videos we produce from across the world. So there we have it. Let's start off with this revamped daily debrief. Our first story in today's episode is from Russia, where heads of 17 African countries and leaders from many more have gathered for a summit. The two-day summit between Russia and the African countries began on Thursday. Now there's a lot of interest in this summit due to the war and the recent debate about the grain deal. Russia withdrew from the Baltic Sea grain deal saying that none of its conditions had been met. But it also made a very important point. It said that most of the grain had not gone to poor African countries as had been the plan. Now the Western media has been actively trying to portray this summit as a failure. But is this really so? We go to analyst Kambali Musawili to find out. Kambali, thank you so much for joining us. Very significant summit. Of course, leaders from many countries going to Russia. The Western media seems intent on portraying this as a massive failure. And you get the sense that there have been some behind the scenes moves to ensure that some of the leaders from Africa don't make it to Russia as well. I believe the DRC where you're from is also one of those countries. Indeed. I mean, it's not even a question of failure or success that the way we have to look at it, right? We have to look at it on a historical background. There have been a China Africa summit. There have been a US Africa summit. And there is a Russia Africa summit. The way I'm looking at it is that Africa is at the center of the transformation of the world. And people are engaging Africans in seeing what is the contribution to the transformation of the world. If some leaders have not attended, it's not an issue. It's the same for any other forum that existed before. You mentioned the DRC. It's quite fascinating. Whenever we're looking at the Russia Africa summit and the fact that the Minister of Defense is actually the one who's attending at the moment. Champion member and not the President of the DRC is to go back to the egg contradictions that the tri-continental has shared in terms of how we look at this moment in the world. The President of the DRC visited China not long ago. He has also shown that he's close to the West. And how do we look at a President where he's speaking to everyone? That's not clearly show the political ideology. On the ground in DRC, we are understanding why he's taking that posture. He wants to be able to protect his reign. But at the same time, there are some gains that can happen from that. But concretely, what unfolded? Before he traveled, before he was announced that the President of the Congo will travel to Russia, it was the government did share that before he arrived to Moscow, he will go to Kiev. He will meet Zelensky prior to arriving at the Russia Africa summit. That was already a problematic inside of the DRC. There were a lot of discussions around technocrats within the government and advisors of the President from primary sources that we have. This was a political suicide that he should not actually go to Kiev before going to Moscow. And a day later, he was announced that he has cancelled the entire trip and that the DRC government will be represented at the meeting. And as you know, the DRC government is represented by the Minister of Defense. And the Minister of Defense did not go to Kiev. So clearly, the Congolese government or the Congolese President was influenced by outside forces. There is no clear evidence, but the way is very close to the United States on some issues. Reminds me of Modi in India and how he is fendering to the United States and so on. But I think when we look at the Russia Africa summit, when we look at the China Africa summit, when we look at the US Africa summit, the message that people should read is that Africa is at the center of the change of the world. Africans are taking agency that didn't exist before. When we had the Berlin conference, Africans were not participating at the Berlin conference. Now we just found out what the decisions were. But today Putin, his government, Russia as a country, they are looking at Africa as partners. And they want them to come to Russia and discuss not just peace and security, not just development, but how we could engage as equal with dignity we respect. Right, Kamala, it's an interesting point. I want to push that a bit further, because if you look at a lot of the coverage, one, it's centered on the fact there are two things that come up when these issues come up. One is this talk about Wagner, etc., etc. Or there is talk about the grain deal and how African countries are really struggling without the grain deal. And of course, grain is an issue. We must talk about it. But I want to take the point you said, which is about the people in Africa, the countries of Africa, being taking far more agency than before. So could you maybe elaborate a bit on that, especially the factors which are kind of contributing to it? Yeah, you mentioned Wagner, and that's something sometimes that also gave me a bit worried about the analysis. I remember the United States went to Iraq and Afghanistan and destroyed the world. And there was a mercenary group called Blackwater, if I recall. I don't remember these analysts speaking about Blackwater the way they are speaking about Wagner today. Wagner is a private company. They are working with some African countries. And these African countries have security objectives that they want to attain. They may decide to work with Wagner. They may not decide to work with Wagner. That's really a national decision. What? Countries deciding what would be good for them. Specifically now for the agency for Africa. This is really fascinating what is happening right now. And I will go back to the point about Ukraine. President Zelensky of Ukraine wanted to meet with African president at the African Union. I think almost all of them did not attend the meeting at the African Union. He pretty much just spoke to a room of diplomats. Why did that happen? Africans are saying we are in 2023. This is not the time where there is European conquest. Western invasions are still ongoing. But Africans are saying that if we need to change the conditions of our people, we need to get the expertise of the world. Humanity has a long history of how we solve problems. And there is not one country that has the monopoly on how to solve problems that African countries have. So Africans are saying we are going to speak to the east, to the west, to the north, to the south. Some nations are very clear about what they should speak to the east. What they should go to China? What they should go to Russia? Because let's say, for example, in the case of China, China achieved one of the biggest fits in the history of humanity. They eradicated extreme poverty, right? Took out of poverty the majority of the population. Africans are looking at what is happening on our continent and say that we have arable land. We have resources, human resources, and natural resources. How can we harness that in a way where we don't destroy the environment, but we put the human at the center? We know we have the response, the answer to that in Beijing. I'm looking at also Russia for energy, right? How can Africa have electricity? How can Africa learn all the astrology of agriculture? So these African leaders, they're looking, or some of them, of course, at what they can learn from the world to improve the condition of their people. Unfortunately, the west, particularly the United States, sticks to have a monopoly on who the African people have to engage with. And African leaders are saying no. That's why you're seeing many Africans, I think over 40 of them, are currently in Moscow to discuss how they could work with Russia to improve the lives and the conditions of their people. Thank you so much, Kambali, for speaking to us. Very valuable analysis, and I think very essential summit to look forward and to analyze also for the reasons you've mentioned. From an ongoing summit to another, which is going to be held in just a few weeks from now. We're talking, of course, about the BRIC summit. It's going to be held towards the end of August. Now, BRICS currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the last of which will be the host country. There's a lot of interest around this summit, as BRICS is re-emerging as a major poll in world affairs. Many, many more countries want to join the platform as well. More importantly, there's also interest in this summit because of the possibility of what a BRICS bank can do. There's been a lot of talk about even a new currency. We go to Vijay Prashad, who's in Brazil now, and has been chronicling the re-emergence of BRICS and its significance. Vijay, less than a month left for the BRICS summit, and I think in Brazil you would have also heard quite a few discussions. Brazil very much in the center of this summit because Lula has come back. There's, of course, a fresh push. Dilma has been appointed as the head of the bank. How do you say about a month before, what do you see as the main possibilities of BRICS at this point? See, this is the 15th summit of the BRICS heads of state, but in a way I think this is the most exciting summit. This is the first real summit where we've got this new mood across the countries of the BRICS. Of course, the political alignments within the countries are all very different. India is a far-right government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Brazil has a left-of-center government led by Lula da Silva, and so on. You know, these are not all of the same political tradition. Nonetheless, there is a common mood in all these countries, a mood that says that they want to now try once again, and I want to exercise once again. They want to try once again to establish a kind of southern pole that isn't entirely subordinated to Western interests. I say once again, Prashant, because this was indeed the reason why BRICS was created in 2009 as a way to exit the reliance upon the United States as the market of last resort, reliance upon Western investment, reliance upon the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Well, that first attempt to establish some sovereignty for these countries which is create separate institutions didn't quite take off. The institutions were created, but they were pretty hollow. Now, with this new mood across these countries, mood suggesting, look, we don't want to be, as the South African Foreign Minister Nalini Pandore said, we don't want to be bullied by the West. This mood is now what is going to come to South Africa. And really, let's see what the mood produces. Right, Vijay, of course, that's a very important point you made because we're talking about, say, the BRICS Bank, the possibility of a new currency, et cetera. So in many of these circles, what have you sort of seen as far as the economic aspect is concerned? Because I think that's really where a lot, and that is also maybe why many of the other countries who want to join BRICS seem so interested right now. Well, to be frank, and if you look at the statistics, investment rates inside Europe have declined precipitously. And foreign direct investment coming from the West to Southern countries on favorable terms has declined quite dramatically. It's pretty clear to most people that right now, the surplus-holding countries are not in the West. At least those that are willing to lend on favorable terms were infrastructure development. Not to finance debt servicing. So that means, of course, China is in the lead here, but also India to some extent and so on. So the idea is that countries are interested, thinking, look, the game is there. I mean, maybe at the G7 meeting, G20 meeting, the West is the powerhouse in terms of military power and diplomatic power and information power and so on. But if you want a good deal, you've got to come to the BRICS summit. I mean, in a sense, this is returning to the source of what the BRICS was. It was meant to be a South-South commercial entity. It wasn't really a political or security alignment. There are some problems, though, both at the BRICS level and at the BRICS bank or the new development bank. Well, what are the problems? One, this BRICS process is only as strong as the central banks in the separate BRICS countries. Now, in Brazil, as an example, the government of Mr. Lula is in a pitched battle against the central bank regarding interest rates. The central banker is a person appointed by Mr. Bolsonaro, the previous president, is not popular at all. But nonetheless, there are some protections that are afforded to the central bank, not only the central banker, but there are structures in the bank that are not willing to go out in front and put money on the table. Forget for a BRICS currency. They're not even willing to assist in producing a currency of South America, a digital currency called the Sur. So one problem is the central banks. And by the way, the central bank in India, the reserve bank of India, doesn't have a robust attitude towards the potential creation of a BRICS currency. That's one big problem. Secondly, the politics of the world do impact these institutions. The new development bank, for instance, has been keen on lending in what are called local currencies, not in the dollar. On the other hand, most trade invoices in the world today are basically denominated in dollars. So it's not the case that it's so easy to shift to non-dollar trade regimes, not so easy. Look at the trade between India and Russia. India is sitting on rupees that it owes to Russia. Russians can't claim it, and they don't seem to want to buy enough Indian goods. These pose severe challenges. And then on top of that, there is the question of sanctions on Russia. Dilma Rusev was at the sidelines of the Russia Africa summit. She talked with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and essentially said, look, I don't think we can make new loans to Russia. This is an important statement of the fact that the sanctions policies around the world do impact the new development bank based in Shanghai. It's not immune from these pressures. So on the one side, there's the limitations posed by central banks often run by neoliberals. And on the other, there are the international currents that in their own different ways impose themselves on these countries. Right, Vijay. Thank you so much for that analysis. It does like the mood is very suitable. The objective conditions are very suitable for bricks to even soar further. But like you said, there are a lot of, we can call them nitty-gritty elements, but which are very concrete, which also have to be dealt with before we can take things further, these countries can take things further. Thank you so much for that. And finally, Friday, July 28th is the Independence Day of Peru, a country we have been covering actively for the past many months. This is because the people have been taking to the streets time and again against the de facto regime of Dina Baluarte. Now, it's important to remember that Dina Baluarte came to power after President Pedro Castillo was overthrown in a coup in December 2022. There have been multiple rounds of protests in Peru since then, and the Baluarte regime has responded with brutal repression. Despite this, people recently took to the streets of the capital city for what was called the third takeover of Lima. We have with us Zoe, who was in Peru a few months ago and has been actively following the story. Zoe looks like not a happy Independence Day for a large number of Peruvians who have been dealing with a huge amount of repression, brutal attacks by the government, just for expressing their dissent, for expressing their unhappiness with the government. So maybe for the benefit of our viewers, could you take us through what has been the trajectory of the past few months? Definitely. Well, I'll just say that in the past week, it has been these takeover Lima protests leading up to Peru's Independence Day. People for the past several months have been building towards this week of protests, which is not only taking place in Lima, but in cities across Peru, people once again, trying to raise these demands to demand structural changes, to demand that Dina Buaduarte resigns, to demand that the Congress be dissolved, that there be new elections held. And so once again, they're on the streets and as you said, they're facing a lot of repression. Organizations, as I said, for the since December, have been organizing, have been mobilizing, have been making these demands and in the past several months, we've seen serious setbacks in some senses because in the first couple of months, there was a lot of international attention on what was happening because of the multiple massacres that had taken place. We can remember that official numbers, don't say this, but all leading human rights organizations in Peru estimate that in the first several months of protest, anywhere between 60 to 70 people were killed by the armed forces, by police forces. The world's attention was on Peru, what was happening, what Dina Buaduarte was doing. This has somewhat decreased and this has seemed to be part of their strategy in a lot of senses to kind of wear people out to make it not a front page issue. And meanwhile, the United States has given its tacit approval and support throughout and in recent months, some of the positions that Dina Buaduarte previously held, such as being more open to maybe changing the date of elections, has shifted. She seems to be more emboldened than before. She in June said that she did not see that she would be stepping down any time before 2026. Her, the sex of power in the Congress that have rallied behind her, the far right parties which traditionally supported the Fugimorista trend have also really consolidated their support behind her and even made alliances with other parties from the left and from or formerly from the left, maybe they can't be considered left anymore. So there's been a strong kind of rallying behind this government despite what is an outstanding and utterly complete rejection of the government by the people. A recent poll said that 90% of people in Peru, 90% do not approve of the Congress, 80% do not approve Dina Buaduarte and 70 want a new constitution. So all of these moves that are being made in Congress by Dina Buaduarte are completely not a reflection of the desires and of the will of the people and that's what's especially concerning that despite the fact that there's this mass popular rejection, people on the streets mobilizing against her, she still is able to consolidate this power despite being isolated internationally as well. She's still kind of moving forward and completely disrespecting what the people actually want. Right, Zoe also to sort of get a bit more detail on the current ruling regime in Peru. We know that Dina Buaduarte herself was associated with Castillo before but there's been this coalition of various interests like you said. So maybe could you take us a bit more into what are the sections that have come together to run this government which is very clearly unpopular. Well, just to give to roll back a little bit in history if we remember that in 2021 when Pedro Castillo won the elections this was a very, very tense election. There had been, I think over 10 candidates in the presidential elections in the first round. In the first round, I think he maybe got he got less than 20% being the front runner in these elections. And right behind him was Keiko Fujimori who's from who's the daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori. And in the second round of the elections we saw face off between progressive and left forces that had rallied behind Pedro Castillo and the traditional right in Peru that has always held power that has really had a stranglehold on many of the institutions that it controls the media that controls business. These are the traditional parties of the ruling class that are also extremely enveloped in corruption schemes that are many of them are under investigation. There's dozens of members of Congress that are from these far right and center parties that have been under investigation by Peru's prosecution. And all of that being said is that they united and rallied behind Keiko Fujimori attacked Pedro Castillo at every single possibility. When Pedro Castillo was president there were three different impeachment motions put forth. These were given a lot of support by the far right by centrist parties. They were never successful because they didn't have an absolute majority. However once the coup actually does take place Dina Boluarte quickly proves that actually she despite having been the vice president of Pedro Castillo and having come from the Peru Libre Party she was quite willing to fall in line with these right wing sectors that for all of these years had been rallying behind Fujimori and had been trying to tear down Pedro Castillo. And so these are the major sectors that have been supporting her. If you look at who's in her government it's very clear but also I think beyond the actual names it's clear in terms of the media coverage it's clear in terms of if you look at the kind of challenges that were put forth in front of Pedro Castillo investigations of corruption of being involved in illegal criminal activity despite Dina Boluarte having been responsible for over 70 protesters being killed despite many many more irregularities during her government she has seen no such roadblocks. So it's very clear that the sectors of power in the country have rallied behind her and that they will continue to do so as long as she carries forward with their program which is not allowing the left to come back not giving any sections any concessions to people's movements not engaging in any sort of negotiations and doing everything possible to undermine them to belittle them to stigmatize them and to consolidate this project which involves denying people rights. Pedro Castillo was very gravely actually trying to take on many of the vested interests in the country mining corporations oil corporations he also wanted to tackle the issue of informal labor and subcontracting in Peru which is one of the major forms of employment the majority of the people are employed in the formal sector he wanted to actually create more stable jobs dignified jobs and this is the response so it's very important to understand that despite her having been part of this left party all of the major sectors of power have completely rallied behind this and it's they've made it possible for her to continue in government and to continue with a minimum level of governability absolutely thank you so much Zoe for that update as well as I think going through the trajectory of what has happened in Peru very tragic situation for the people of Peru but nonetheless they seem to continue their struggles for their basic rights as well as for democracy thank you so much for talking to us thanks so much for having me from the halls of diplomacy at the Russia Africa summit to discussions about building a different kind of world a different kind of order through bricks through the streets of Peru where people are struggling for democracy we have covered all these topics in today's episode of daily debrief we'll continue to do so in future episode talking about the struggles of people talking about the issues that matter talking about the present and the future keep watching and if you haven't hit that subscribe button already please do