The Taliban takeover of most of Afghanistan has alarmed the world while developments are still unfolding there. It's important to look at what this really means for the region and around Afghanistan and for India. We have with us former ambassador of India to Tajikistan, Belarus and Azerbaijan, Mr. Muthukumar, Mr. Bia Muthukumar, welcome to NewsClick. Sir, can you begin with trying to evaluate the situation for India right now in Afghanistan? Considering the recent statements of the Taliban, do you expect it to change? Ma'am, I'm not so sure what India's position is at the moment because we seem to be very clear that the Taliban is someone that you're not going to deal with. Now, that is a very, very difficult situation if we want to do something in Afghanistan. Taliban must be accepted as another facet of Afghan politics. Afghanistan is a land of minorities.  So it takes two or three communities or ethnic groups to form a majority. Now that being so, in the land of minority, we must accept the Taliban as another facet of Afghan politics. In India also we have a similar situation where we have politics that are at times difficult to stomach. But nevertheless, that is a facet of our current politics. So if we can accept the current politics in India, there is no harm in accepting politics of Afghanistan is their choice. If they have decided that the Taliban are forcing themselves, what would the story be? So what we see after 20 years is that the US has spent $3 trillion almost, be it $2.4, $2.5, what was that, the number is not important, but they spent trillions of dollars to remove the Taliban and bring back the Taliban. Now that is the fact today and that is the fact we have to accept and accept that historical fact also. Now you cannot, like for example, I heard someone, clever man, speak from Delhi from our own ministry saying that it's a, the Taliban are a de facto group. Now I don't understand that they are, they are ruling there and you're referring to other de facto group. Now, some way we have to get pragmatic and pragmatism means that we have something to say or something to play. Actually at the outset, let me tell you, India has no role in Afghanistan.  We have stakes there. There are no stakes. We do not have stakes there. What stakes are you talking about? The assistance that we are given is no state. It is our assistance program, which we have done. They were in need. We gave it to them. It's part of the Bonn Conference where we assured certain amount of assistance or developmental assistance. So, let us not take it as an investment, that is not an investment. It is a developmental process that we participated in Afghanistan at that time. We started at that and we were very genuinely and correctly we went about doing what we can and as usual, we like to be doing a part on our back to say that we have done a good job. Yes, we did a good job. But then that should not be a criteria for us to think that it's a leverage for us to play in Afghanistan. We have no leverage. There's often talk of India's soft power. Are you saying that doesn't mean anything? We would have stakes in peace. Ma'am, very frankly, let me tell you, I do not like to beat around the bush to say talk about soft power. I do not know what soft power is. The real, what we must talk about is the real power. Do you have the money power? No. Maybe yes, sometimes on certain occasions. Do you have an influence over the Afghans? Let me tell you, zilch. So we are only good boys in the neighborhood who are willing to help and we have done what we could within our own means, sacrificing our own needs to give the Afghans what we can. We did it. So that is, we can say, yes, India is a good boy, done a good deed. So we are like in a more, you know, if you have to compare anybody else with us, I think it will be like Japan, which can only be a do-gooder, keep giving some assistance. If it's useful, useful, and if somebody takes over and benefits out of it, fine. Like the Taliban, they're trying to derive a benefit from the Zaraans that are on highway. They wanted to share on the road taxes or whatever, you know, a return on that. Basically highway hunters. So that's sort of that highway, 606 or whatever, we built it. So even the Taliban want to say, if they want to benefit out of it, okay, fine. That is why it was never destroyed by the Taliban. So Taliban will also use what is available. Like for example, the Afghan National Army has very nicely handed over modern equipment to the Taliban. So there are many things that can happen in Afghanistan. But nobody, I'll tell you from the time Afghanistan was founded by the Duranis till today, nobody can say what will happen in Afghanistan the next minute or the next hour or the next day. We are all educated, informed education we have, informed opinion, certain aspects of history. We co-link some facts and we try and make some sense to it. But then Afghanistan is very much like what we'll call, you know, that what is the Sanskritic word, Afghanistan. So it's a confused stan or a board of confusion or, you know, many, many connotations are there. So that to an extent defines what the situation and it's all because the foreigners have always interfered in Afghanistan. If foreigners don't interfere in Afghanistan, things may be different. So we have, everybody has been interfering in Afghanistan.  How, how, what it should India be at least on the twin fronts of narcotics and terrorism now that the Taliban is in control? Man, man, let me tell you one thing. The narcotics trade before 2001, all the opium trade, many things were controlled by the ISI. And that is why the ISI had the cloud, the money cloud. Now, post October 2001, there were many actors and Western Union outlets were open all over Afghanistan, where the economy is on crumbles. But you have the Western Union where remittances keep coming or remittances keep going. Now that to an extent, there are many things, many explanations to be given on that. But the important thing is the ISI have lost control on the drug trade. The Taliban who are out of the scene were also out of the opium trade. Now who else can you name for the, for the opium trade? So what's happening is lots of NGOs have recycled what you call it laundered drug money for their, their operations. Some places, micro loans have also been given from this laundered money. And then they are paying back quite legit money. So these things are happening in Afghanistan. So well, the Americans have played a very good game. Now, if anybody has to talk of drug cartel, we can learn from Americans. So what does this actually mean? So don't blame the Taliban. The Taliban are not, pardon? I was going to ask, what does it mean for the region? For example, is this an untrammeled victory for Pakistan? Like many people are saying, the Pashtuns don't accept the Durand line. Could the problem come home sooner than? Yeah, the Durand line is another issue. But the present day Taliban, it's no brainer to say that the 1994 Taliban are different from the 2021 Taliban. It's a no brainer, very different. The late Mullah Omar is also known, not much around his son is confused.  Who's the head of the political wing? And he just arrived from Doha a few days ago. So what he says, what he does not do is what people will watch. But within the Taliban, also we do not know whether he has an assured place to lead the Taliban administration. And the Taliban are not trained to administer. So therefore they are asking the previous government, civil servants, to come back to office and run and operate or whatever, run the show. But then so the Taliban of 1994 and 2021 are very different. Like for example, the other day I heard even more in Bhagavad talking about giving us assurances on the Hindutva ideology and so on, so forth, and none made the thing. So if we have accepted that kind of an assurance from our own leaders at home, why not we also accept the assurances given by the Taliban that they'll give the necessary attention to governance that the women's rights will be absorbed, of course, as for the Sharia. So that is there to know that there we are managing. We should believe it to them. So I get your point. But even in India, not everybody agrees with the assurances that are given. And in Afghanistan, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Ma'am, it is not. Assurances is something that someone has told you. You believe or you don't believe. If you don't believe, do something about it. If you believe, then you go along with it. As they say, in the Bollywood language, tension lenega ne, tension lenega. So it depends upon how you look at it. So the important thing is that the Taliban are there. That's a reality. Now, we have to accept that reality and see what is our act and define our act on that basis. But the most important thing in all this is if we do not accept the Taliban, then if you want to have a role in Afghanistan, you have allies only in the opposition to Taliban. Would you like to go back to the square one of the Northern Alliance? Or do you want an all-inclusive government, which even Ahmad Masood, son, Ahmad Masood, he also wants while they are going to resist. He has vowed to fight. But he's also willing to talk if it's an all-inclusive government. Now, if they are considering those on those lines, and it is for us to also understand the Afghan point of view, because Afghans can only solve their problem. For us to say, we have no business in even telling anybody that there must be an all-inclusive government in Afghanistan. Who are we? What local strength do we have on that? Can anybody tell us that we must have a government with an all-inclusive government and that does not violate human rights, that issues are not taken to the UN, the United Nations, the issues are not taken to the human rights, Iqabista, can anybody dictate us those things? We don't accept it. So why must we dictate or keep staying redundant statements like, well, we want an all-inclusive government? Mind your own business first. Mind your home. Look after your people. Look after the people's welfare. Then talk, think about something else. If they need help, they'll call you. Right. So do you see a greater scope for cooperation at least among the neighbors of Afghanistan? Because now the US is no longer in the picture. And would not the US also understand that there exit and the Taliban take over affects Russia, China, Iran, perhaps India much more than it affects them? Ma'am, to say that the US have exited is a matter of perception. The present day Taliban is very much playing and hand in hand with the US. Otherwise the US would not have handed over the country to them the way they did. They are definitely consulting each other. They are much of collaborators. If anybody says it is not so, maybe they are just blind to choose to be blind or choose to be blind. So that is the thing. The US is very much there and they want a hold there. And like if the Afghan, the Taliban is saying, just they've made a statement saying that beyond 31st, there's no question of extending the US presence. Even the Taliban cannot stop the US presence in Afghanistan. If they want to say, they'll stay there. You see, the Americans are very much like this magician, Houdini, you know, put them into any locks, he'll break the lock and be there and then still be playing ball. Would the Indian establishment, the Indian state, try to milk what's happening in Taliban for their domestic political interest? No, ma'am. No? No, not at all. I mean, if we compare with what happened with Myanmar, you know, there was a refugee crisis which became a political issue and a social issue in India. Ma'am, you know, in Myanmar, what is an issue there? Because the Muslims are being persecuted in Myanmar. In Afghanistan, Muslims are going after Muslims who are not following the Sharia. So it's a two different games. Now, how weak are maybe, we can influence the Myanmaris or Burmese in many issues, wherever we think we can play a card. But with the Afghans, we can do nothing. The Afghans will play their own game, they'll call the shots. If they win, as I said, when they want any help from India, they will come to us. The question of, we trying to derive a mileage from the Taliban, the Taliban, of course, will come to us. On their own, they will come. The moment it gets too hot with Pakistan, the only alternate is to find their old friend, India. Persons have always been friendly to India. Taking the Taliban also, by and large, they all have some affection for India. They're not anti-India. I will not say if anybody says the Taliban is anti-India, we have not yet seen that aspect of it. It's the certain drive of the Islamic forces that is taking its own course. In the Afghans, per se, are not anti-Indian and that we must accept. And in that process, even Taliban are Afghans, so we must accept certain aspects of their thinking. And you must remember this now, that the Taliban today are not controlled by Pakistanis. I think we are over-emphasizing that the Pakistanis are controlling the Taliban. Absolutely not. Because the Pakistanis do not have the resources. They just do not have the resources to sort of get their agenda fulfilled by the Taliban. Even if it's to pay $65 per month to a Taliban, Pakistan cannot afford that. That kind of payment. And there are 80,000 Taliban. Calculate, multiply it even at $50 per month. Pakistan can't afford that kind of a payroll, you know? And it does not have the resources by way of funds coming from drugs or anything. They lost it all out. There are others who operating it and the Americans have left it and they have left their agents behind who will keep running that operation. So the drug money is out. So Pakistan playing any major role, no. That is why you'll find, everybody is opposed to the Taliban or in Islamabad looking for employment. Like for example, Kanuni is there in Islamabad. Wali Masood, young brother, he was there. The other brother, he was also there. Karim Khalili is there. Mahakkit, all these fellows, the two Azaras, they're all went there for employment. Why are they there? Pakistan is talking to them, they can't talk to the Taliban. Taliban are not interested in talking to Pakistan today. To say that Pakistan is full control of the Taliban is some kind of a myth. It was in 94 maybe when ISI was cash rich. Today, Pakistan economy is in doldrums. They have no, it's like in India we say, somebody will call you up and say, PM desires, this has to be done. Now who will call up the prime minister and say the PM desires? So you have that similar situation here that the Pakistan is constantly imagined and pretend that they control the Taliban and we think it is true. The Taliban are there one more time today. Even Afghanistan has no money, so would it need a lot of support and assistance from its neighbors, which brings up the question of recognition sometime in the future? Madam, thanks for WTO. Today, a country does not need much foreign exchange result. The man who wants to sell TV will sell TV even in Afghanistan. The man who wants to sell refrigerator will keep selling. The MNC is our wonderful way of conducting international trade. We are, we are naive to think that, you know, you need money to do trade. You can't get food in Sasa maybe, in Zair, Congo, but you can get the best of TVs, the best of cars you can get. How does it come? So if you see even in Kabul, the kind of cars that are there, traders are there who will find a way out to, to developmental money is what is not there. And even in that given situation in Afghanistan, every Afghan will try and be a success and will be a success. Afghanistan may not be a success. Afghans by sheer grit, their own resilience will live. No thanks to the government or no thanks to Taliban, which we have seen for the last 20 years. And of course, everybody is, everybody says that the leaders have run away with the money. Yes, some have run away, some have run away with the money because they need the money. The milk cow is dead. So whatever they could have milked, they want to take it away, they'll take it. So a new lot will come to find another new milk cow and keep milking. Okay, thank you, thank you very much for joining us. And thank you for watching NewsClip. Thank you very much, Ma'am.


Well, first, I'd like to thank you for having me and also for the funding for my SARE project, which was great. So, North Coast Lamb Co-op, we're going to be talking about ultrasounding today. And I suppose the theme of my presentation is you can't manage what you can't measure. So, the objective of the project was to provide quality lamb to local restaurants and groceries to recruit producers to participate in selling lamb locally and to assist members in producing the required product to man it, which is consistent quality lambs. Now, about three or four years ago, the American sheep industry did a study they called the Roadmap and they found some problems in our industry. For example, the average American only eats about one pound of lamb per year, 70 percent of all the lamb consumed in the United States is coming from outside of the country. One of the things they found was that we have too much inconsistency in lamb. And so, you would have one lamb going to market, which has a great loin eye and lots of meat and another one that has a small loin eye and lots of back fat. So, there's a lot of inconsistency in the industry and we need to solve that problem. So, I think I just mentioned these bullet items, but the excess fat and inconsistency are probably, was determined to be the biggest, detraction from the lamb, premier status and buying slaughter animals on weight is a problem. Everybody finds it much easier to just drop off your lambs in Ohio at the Mount Hope auction house than to try to direct market. So, you have a lot of inconsistency and when you look at an animal you can't tell the quality of that meat sometimes. Some people say they can, some people can go and, you know, do their body score and think that they know what they're getting, but there's a lot of inconsistency. And so, buying at weight and yield provides no incentive for any producer to start producing that value added product that the American lamb industry feels that we need to be moving towards. This is another image from the American sheep industry's roadmap market and as you see here they're talking about marketing lamb and some direct marketing. And specifically what I'm going to be talking about today is our project which we focused on a co-op of marketing. The average size of a sheep farm in our state of Ohio is about 40 head. So, even if you're lambing at 200 percent, a lot of these restaurants that approach you and say we'd like to have lamb for our business, they'd like 500 lambs. If you've got 40 youths lambing at 200 percent, which most people lamb at 160 to 180 percent, there's no way you can supply that demand. So how can we get farmer A, B and C all producing the same quality of lamb and putting them together to market to give a quality consistent product? Again, the typical thing is the auction, another problem that we found is that the auction houses, all these lambs are being shipped to packers out of state. And we know that when local food is consumed locally, that means more money stays in our local community. So that was another one of our goals here. And based on the multiplier that can generate quite a lot in economic development locally. So I'm going to give, there were three farms involved in this project, but for time's sake I'm just going to talk about my farm. We are one of the Kaga Valley National Park Farms located between the city of Akron and Cleveland and Peninsular Ohio. And one of the things that we did was in the project is we reviewed all of the data on who consumes lamb, you know, the reasons for it, et cetera. And based on the literature review, we were able to determine based on population density and demographics of who lived within a one hour, half hour and 15 minute drive of my farm what my potential market would be for lamb. As you can see here, just with a 15 minute drive from my farm, I've got, you know, 769 people who would be buying from a farmer's market and 384 based on extrapolating this research that would be buying from the local market, let alone restaurants. So the point we're trying to illustrate here is, you know, knowing who your market is, knowing what your demand is and clearly there's more demand, potential demand and then look at here, you know, we have, we have close to 3.6 million people with a one hour drive of our farm and the village of Peninsular, which is in the heart of the National Park, is also a tourist area. So we have 2.6 million people at village, visit the village every year. So a lot of potential to market lamb. How do we meet this demand and what is our competition? Our biggest competition is not other producers. We need to come together to market our lamb. But our biggest competition is Australia and New Zealand. And again, 70% of lamb is, is that's being consumed in the States is coming from those countries. Now, the interesting thing was, is that we have locally a better loyni. Now, in research on the yield of meat in lamb, they've determined that the loyni between the 12th and 13th vertebrae is the best indicator of overall the quality of meat and lamb that you're going to have producing out of your lamb product. So take note of this, because this is what we're going to be using in this project. Again, before I mentioned that we have too many breeds and too many producers. And so, you know, what we need to be working with in the industry, which I just mentioned, is, you know, this is what the produce, the consumers want. And this is what some of the producers are supplying. So how can we move from here to here? Or how can we have a group of people market together and have this quality product? So our solution was to use this, this muscle eye measurement as an attribute necessary to come together as producers to sell to restaurants at the higher value. And so we're using carcass ultrasounding of lamb crops for the market acceptance into our group. And if people aren't up to that speed yet, perhaps we can help them market their lamb to another market, maybe as, you know, lamb stew or ground lamb or something like that. And then help them bring them along so that they can produce quality lamb with the higher producers. So we borrowed this measurement from seed stock producers. So one of the many things that seed stock producers are measuring when they're trying to say why their lamb is better to buy for breeding stocks than someone else's is they're measuring things like birth weight and weaning weight and, you know, was it a twin and of course, you know, the muscle eye, carcass weight, et cetera. So we focused here on the ribeye, the loin eye between the 12th and 13th vertebrae. And the nice thing about the ultrasounding is you don't have to kill the animal to see what you have. So you can actually go in there and ultrasound and find out what quality of lamb you're producing. And the good news is that while maternal characteristics are hard to encourage in the lamb industry, the terminal meat characteristics are the easiest to develop in your flock. So for this project, luckily I had already gone out to and gotten certified as a national sheep improvement certified ultrasound carcass scanner. And this is just what the scanner looks like with an ultrasound machine here. And you're basically the sheep has to be shorn and you provide contact on there and then you grab an image on the screen marking that so you match the ear tag and you have the weight of the animal. And then a later point in time after you've done the entire flock or in our case what we did was a random sample, then you can go back and measure the loin eye. So again, this is just another statistic here showing that we know that fat death is a problem and that muscle loin eye has a value in terms of selling your lamb at market. And there's a lot of studies on there and a lot of literature. And if anybody wants copies of any of the secondary source review or reviews, be happy to share these data, just let me know. So instead of, it takes time, it takes about one to four minutes to scan each animal and you have to have a good holding system and you know, there's a cost involved with it, you know, for people's time and labor. So instead of coming up with a model where we would go to every flock that want to participate in this co-op and scanning each and every single animal, we decided to use a random sample and we actually copied a methodology that was used in Ireland to do this where the actual national industry funded a project where they went out and they did random sampling. So what we would do is we did, for our farms, we did a random sample of all of our animals and you know, by myself as a technician we did both males and females and we noted their dates before we scanned our sheep, we had all of our records for our sheep and we also had weighed them that day that we scanned them and this was all plugged into a database. And the graphic that you see on the right side of the screen, which is hard to read right here, is the sort of checklist of what the scanner brings with them, what they're responsible for, excuse me, over here and what the producers are responsible for and that's basically a holding system and warmth enough that the ultrasound equipment will work and electricity, et cetera. So getting to our results, we scanned our several flocks of lambs randomly, scan them and this included both spring, fall and winter lamb crops from the three farms and we found that no flock had an average linoin under 2.5 square inches so that became our standard for as a group, anybody that wants to join our group, you have to have a 2.5 square inch linoin to participate in this as putting together these lambs to market to grocery stores or restaurants in northeast Ohio. So by setting this minimum linoin and grouping the average lamb linoin and putting these lambs together for marketing, we felt that we'd accomplished our mission by creating consistent quality and then for those, in our case, we didn't have anyone, but for those who would be, have more back fat and less muscle eye, then that becomes a measurement by which they can look to improve their crop in the future with, you know, various management tools. So I feel like our project was a success in terms of demonstrating the ability to produce consistent lamb for multiple producers, but I think our biggest challenge in this project was that despite showing this and we've been doing some presentations in Ohio and et cetera, and our biggest challenge is getting to people to make change because it's really easy to just take your crop of lambs and drop them off at the auction house and be done with it all and not be measuring all of this. So it's going to take a little bit of challenge to talk people into why they should, you know, be gathering all of these data and measuring their sheep. So my closing thoughts today would be that I think that, you know, using this tool, which is already out there being used by seed stock producers, commercial flocks can really improve what they're doing and come together and market locally directly and especially those breeds like ours and our particular case where Dorsets, which do ACs and lambing, we have a really good opportunity to expand and have hot house lambs all year round. And what we see the next steps is really marketing lamb and continuing the marketing as the healthy red meat. There's a lot of data out there also, which was in our literature review of, you know, there have been studies how it's more flavorable and has more positive nutritional value, et cetera. So our strength and the position to probe the market lays in the attributes of the lamb and making sure getting all this literature out to folks who are potential consumers and then using something like this ultrasound scanning for acceptance into the co-op group of lambs that we're marketing together to make sure that we're delivering high quality product so that everybody has a great experience eating the lamb. And that is what I wanted to cover today. Here is my contact information, too. So if anybody wants any of the literature reviews or data or methodologies or information for you, feel to contact me. The question was, do other livestock producers use the technology of ultrasound? And I would answer that by saying that it's very common in the beef industry. And most of the ultrasound scanners actually do both beef and lamb, and lamb tends to be on the side, you know, side business. So what we need to do is get more people certified to scan lambs. But it is a common practice in other countries. In England, Australia, New Zealand, everybody does it. You know, we're about 10 years behind, I would guess, from the rest of the world in our industry here. And, you know, it's just kind of interesting because, you know, our American sheep industries, the oldest livestock organization in the United States, but yet it's probably the least consumed protein that we have. No, well, everybody that we're we've worked with is is is keen on moving forward. And we also are finding that some people who also sell to the auction house are saying, well, maybe we should scan to show how much better ours are than other peoples. So while that's at the auction house, that's also a sort of, you know, marketing tool for them that they can say, well, we scan and we have, you know, we've got a three point muscle eye. In fact, we have an Amish producer that you know, one Amish producer produced, participated in this project. Another Amish producer has been asking to scan his sheep for me to scan a sheep before they go to the auction house so he can see what the quality of his of his lambs are each year. The average rate that people are charging for scanning an animal is about, I'd say, seven to ten dollars in animal. And then, of course, you know, the travel cost. But if you're good at this, you can scan them through there in about, you know, 30 seconds when you take your test to become certified, they give you four minutes. So you figure four minutes is your worst case scenario. The most important thing for making it all work is having the right handling system and not everybody has a handling system that is convenient for a scanner to keep them moving through at that rate. So that's another barrier, potentially, as if producers don't have a good handling system to manage the animals moving through. Oh, so what happens after you scan the animals? You're the we the the animals scan at that day have their ear tag numbers and have other data that the producers been collecting, such as the weight of the animal that day, its birth weight, etc. And so then after the animal is scanned, you take the images, usually grab more than one, just to be safe.  And then they get, you know, that spreadsheet back of their animals and what their loin eye is so that they can say, well, my two thousand and seventeen crop had, you know, an average loin eye of this or I had a range from this to this, so why am I having these these outliers and they can improve their production or, you know, they can make a better informed decision. And again, back to my theme of you can't manage what you can't measure. So this provides us with a lot more information, you know, considering that the ultimate product is, you know, meat in this particular case. I we worked with some different chefs in the Cleveland area on this project to get feedback from them. So we only worked with three particular chefs. But what people are, what they're finding is it's hard to find that that quality lamb. And if you need lamb and you just go by lamb, doesn't mean you're going to get what you want necessarily because you can, there's a lot of meat. And I'm hearing this nationwide, you know, there's a lot of meat going through these auction houses that is just a lot of back fat and not much, not much meat. So and people are so desperate for lamb because there's so little of it that they buy it, but then they're not happy with it.  So they're going to want that that quality product.  I do a lot of direct marketing off of my farm and the ones that there's a few that don't get direct marketed, they get used for lamb stew and ground lamb and other dishes on the farm for the family or special occasions where we're not trying to sell the quality leg of lamb or the quality rack or or something along those lines. So if it's not good enough to sell the customer, they'll never come back. If you sell them something, that's of a low quality. The question is, are the restaurants? Yes. Well, my big problem again is supplying demand. So I need to I think the next step is recruitment, you know, so I need to recruit people and I have a friend who has hair sheeps. So she's going to get me over there and better start. I've never scanned his hair sheep yet. So I've got to get over there and do that next and make sure that there's no practice on that before we move on. We've also been talking to some of the local academics and maybe they get involved right now. The National Sheep Improvement Improvement Program is is working on recruiting more people to get certified as scanners so that this becomes more commonplace in the industry just like it is in the beef industry. Well, again, I would not be recommending that they try to tap that market. They might find other use for that meat such as you know, the lesser quality product that's maybe processed. But also it's an opportunity to say. You know, what are some is it management? Is it is it breeding? You know, what is it that I need to improve so they can begin to look at their flock and say, you know, I better get a better ram or maybe I need to start over. I need some better genetics or maybe they need to have better management what they're feeding them. It could be a number of things, but at least they can identify the point the fact that, you know, their lamb is not. Value added, you know, there's an issue. You don't necessarily know what the issue right. And the idea to with with creating the co-op is that this group will get together and we plan on meeting quarterly as we get people together in our region and just getting together and having maybe a guest speaker or presentation or talking about an issue and networking and sharing and mentoring. And so the idea is that not only will we have this tool available to everyone, but also that, you know, we'd share our knowledge and how we get everybody to succeed because if everybody succeeds, then the individual producer has a better chance as well.


He's the author of Advice for Lovers, which is out on City Lights, Gowanus Atropoulos, and the co-editor of No Gender, Reflections on the Life and Work of Carrie Edwards. Please welcome Julian Telemantez-Brolasky. Look, gentle people. The only source of likelihood is a fist in a gentle orifice. If I'd have been a ranch, they'd have called me bar none.  The tub of butter thereafter was rancid. We put zur and zur mouth to rest along with the chickens in our maw. Hey blood, hey sucka, as like to one is to the other. Do you love your sibling? As they do. As they do. So thank you all for coming. It's a real honor for me to be reading with this lineup and and thank you to the library for hosting and to Michelle for inviting me to this. This is a poem called Band Poetry Words and it has an epigraph from the Wu-Tang Clan. It's not the Russian. It's the Wu-Tang Krushan. Slip up and get creped like Suzette. Travel on to that earth's wild millia. Steeped in toxins, ever flushing them out. Along the crick, the fried fishlings foam and soak their minor manticores. Battered eyeballs batting at you. The way the waves and the painting curve, so many tell-tale infernal tickings. I knew I had to stop writing nonsense.  And I used a poem with all the band poetry words.  There are more I reckon. Paul's was thighs. So if you have any more to suggest to me, come tell me afterwards. This is called Against Breeding with apologies to pregnant people. It really should be, it doesn't really imply to queers, it really should be like Against Idiots Breeding. Against Breeding for C.A. Conrad. Garbage-gut humans should not continue ourselves. It can only come a frightful cropper. Hair bulbs would I mistook to be a form in nature. Albatross with plastics crowding their gut. What Julie Patton is calling, Superfragia, Lily of the Valley, Veronica, Heterofilia, Snapdragon Nature Preserve. Pulp them, Shropshire, Constabulary, Queen of Haven, Sailing for Caracas with a gun in its sling. Sissy Jesus Hag. Point to the exact place where the flies should go and the ballow under pants. Just where the points come to an end triangulately. Fifteen thousand fish dead at the mouth of the Mississippi. Plains go sip, sip, saying to the poor people, Walk fast, walk like you're on hot coals. Matisse had to get up real close to see that was a bird. Turn that veal de gamba right forwards and added a noose. Even more cliche than peaches in a bowl. Curvy long pear stem and butter dish suspended in air. Perhaps the stem is penetrating a clear butter dish, Conrad suggested. And I knew I was being drawn into a fun house of mirrors, but I couldn't stop. Odilon, Radone, Roger and Angelica. Why I am against breeding. The death of script. I can't go kicking this rusty blade no further. We can all name ourselves Smurfs when the terrors of modernity seem quaint. Plash of water. Monumental tree trail.  Only gods themselves.  A Gog and eight foot waves of totally tubular efflorescence. Remembers those impassioned tweets on the theme of cursive handwriting. So this is like a retranslation of a Sappho poem. It's called some say an army of horse people. Some say soon the handle will fall right off. Only to be ambiguated by a single letter. Who hath bespoke. Whelis. Fine upright. Who sat bolt upright in their coffin. Look, it's Victor Hugo, the great poet talking to Chopin. Who hath commandeered all tusks. Only the particulate matter. The very fallen. All tusks. Only the particulate matter. The very follicles.  The god-offless thing on this bleak earth. Some say an army of horse people. But I say it's. So I'm going to read a few poems now from Advice for Lovers, which came out a couple of years ago from City Lights. copies if you want to buy one for me later. This is the epigraph for the book. I think is relevant. It's from George Herbert. His poem, Love Three. And he writes, You must sit down says love and taste my meat. So I did sit and eat. This is called the Philistines smitten. Bien sûr, j'arrive. I take this kerosene teamly at tombé orte. There was no open vision. Phineas is dead and the Ark of God is taken. Tombé sur le nœud. They brought about the Ark of the Dead to us. Also my sir, hey Zee. Plagues were sent. Ark. Philistines. Trespass offerings. Idolatrous priestesses and Dagon upon its face. Zee is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure. Then we shall begin to say to the mountains, fall on us. This is called on not being able to perceive angels. And it was set to music by the poets Brandon Brown and Ali Warren. So I'm going to try to sing how I remember they transliterated it or mutated it or whatever. On not being able to perceive angels. In the twilight low, I stood before the twilight. Without even a moon, jacking up the artifice. The proverbial number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin. Before whom and in what habit I speak. Stop me at the very vestibule and rip up my ticket. One frosty address will not diminish one job. My vegetable love. My vegetable love. My vegetable love. My vegetable love. Deep image to Venus. And it has two epigraphs, one's from Elizabeth Marie Young. Eels caught bright-eyed in the rafters.  Horses gleaming and healing in the white sun. What horse went gleaming headlong and chuffing. What ghost went wheezing purple and chuffing none. Meanwhile, the ants are fat on the fat, lugging the cake lit. The wind moored after that. To the Bato East juggling the rigging. Confounding the sailor with chest ringing, I sang my song. I lost my joie de vivre and so I sing this since I hate to live.   Let's this or that, let's hard and then let's harder. Beast at my back, love at my garter. And this is called On How to Transfigure the Body Utterly. And it has an epigraph from Elizabeth Browning. I wail, I wail, and certis that is true. I practically ran to get out all these lonesome shoes.  Maddened in the minutes of the race, reaching more up than across, I saw the gold foil facade of a house built on corpses, of a sea composed entirely of horses all running to their death. Oh, I wish to the Lord I'd never been born Or died when I was young Then I'd never have seen your shining blue eye Or heard your lying tongue Into this ugly and howly world was I awakened The morning star met with its wanderer All the good times are past and gone This habitat and bred me like a shrivel Be with me always, take any form Love is like, love is like falconry. Okay, so I'm just going to read one more. This is a poem I wrote for the San Francisco poet Evan Kennedy. And he writes, he's writing these poems inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. And if you remember, St. Francis had this famous sermon to the birds. And so this sort of is responding to Assisi through the mouth of Evan Kennedy. And in his poem he addresses you birds. And so this is from the perspective of the birds. And Evan's quote is senseless metiers, my welcome into a kind of gaggle if you birds will. And from Don Lundy Martin, I opened my unfit beak. So this is called We Birds. The first false spring is here. The dirty snow is melting. We birds arch our neck for the worm, believe in turning a blind eye to get it. We molted too soon. Spring was receding ever as it tempted us to deal in cryptocurrencies. And Mount Gox is bust. We birds fly into the orange sky, illumined against the gray flash above the Marcy Street projects. Little one breaks flock. How long do I have to stay in character? The sun finally bore no resemblance to the one who stood before us, all esteemed with moxie. The last time a human stood, nose quivering against the scene of devastation.  Who can distinguish between civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight? Eye rocked of, eye seagull, rat of the sky, worm wings like an eagle. I'm told I am getting more of everything, more cake, more worms, more orifices and things to go in the orifices. Two horses succeed where the truck failed, despite their clumsiness and their face blindness. I lost my fortune to the wild boar what gored me. I pressed my eye to the keyhole and fell away. The scientist was pointing to the tell-tale snow leopard scat saying, from my own species perspective, I salute you. Are we all just worms in the wind trying to stick ourselves to a branch? You'll know it's cold when the mountains turn blue. Lizard that looks like a dandelion, beetle that looks like a rock, whose skill in catching fishes like water off a duck's back, only a bear in the river shaking its coat. Bear with the fondness for fishes, bird with the fondness for crab cakes, river that flows both ways. Painful rube and the shallows don't know how to smoke, fuck, drink, eventually was made to eat the meat. Shakespeare had a sovereign, not a sister. I said to the dog, you're every creature, and if the stars do seem in night to pray, who prefers this springy grass to the salted concrete? We birds go down to the milky river between the ochre cliffs. Knowing life depends on the consumption of bodies by other bodies. An arm or a channel or a valley reveals itself. Parched begonia, long-suffering aloe. To top it off, it was the end times. One bird called it lagrim de lagrim. Candles were conveyed, hmm, placed as if a gift. Gazelle predator, predator gazelle, snow leopard in snow. The whole thing was a mare's nest. Students placed glasses in a shopping cart. Now it was a drone. Now it was a gnome that sat itself on a rock that could disappear itself at will, that seemed to dispense wisdom. Saying things like, picture a collie made entirely of melons. Melon collie. The face, the face of the one that took your meds. I love not snow leopards the less, but birds more. Converted into aversion. Converted into aversion. March is by turns a lionish lamb, a lambish lion. Uncouple us from our crime, where castles are horses, objects for fire or war.  Something wicked this way comes. Books will be made of oblong coal, styluses of liquid metal. I know what the story is supposed to be, and supposedly my place in it. By the time it was not supposed to have mattered, I had given up my crumpet. And the creature that climbs on the high crags, something St. Mary. Nor will we use technology, nor will we hook up from where we're seated ten feet across from each other. Who is the creature itself and not its avatar, at least for now. The mountaintop stone flinch as the avalanche gets going. We birds do not pluck at the cakes given to Osiris on that eastern side of the Narrows, whose hair was thought to be made of lapis. In the end, we all had to eat worms.  In the end, we all had worms to eat. Thank you. Thank you, Julianne, Talamantha, Gulaski. There's books here, you can get them afterwards. Advice for lovers is amazing, so you should grab some.


Good and carbon. You need some light? No, I'm just gonna get what I can. Cool, so we're just gonna get some mic audio tests. Can you say your name, rank, and do the title, ma'am? Captain Casey Bell, on-site vehicle commander. Lower thigh near the weed. We're going to pack this first. Is he gunshot? Is he taking contact? Nope, it's in the distance. Sure, are you doing alright? Looks like you got... Can you check the minutes? So for me, you just need the one from the intel. Correct? Yeah. Well, what do you need from me? Who's out of you able to get all your stuff imported? Um, yes, but... Pick the big ones for me.


Welcome traders to today's introductory session to trading the Micro E-mini S&P 500 futures. My name is Patrick Munnally and I will be walking you through this topic today. Before we get going, just some housekeeping here. Can you first of all just confirm that you can see the welcome screen and you can hear my audio feed loud and clear. Could you just type a Y into the chat box so that I know we're ready to get going. Good stuff, okay. Just in terms of questions, any questions you might have, if you could just make a note of the questions that come up during the presentation and at the end I'll open up a Q&A session which will allow you to post those questions either to type them into the chat or I can unmute your microphone if you have one and you can speak to me directly. Okay, so like I said, welcome to today's introductory session to the E-mini and Micro S&P contracts. In today's session I'll be introducing you to the instrument structure and advantages along with highlighting some unique market mechanics that enhance the trading information for this product. I will also introduce you to my core strategy for trading E-minis and demonstrate how you can consistently use my pre-market analysis to read consistent returns. But before we jump into that, let me just briefly introduce myself for those who are joining me for the first time today. Like I said, my name is Patrick Munley and after I graduated from King's College London, I joined a city PLC consulting firm. I ultimately left with some colleagues and went on to successfully co-found and exit a consulting startup which was focused on C-suite executive search for technology businesses. Having a front row seat, the dot com bubble, witnessing people make and lose a fortune in the markets, sometimes quite literally overnight, I decided to explore my curiosity for markets with some capital to play with and some time on my hands. I started day trading the S&P 500 or probably more appropriately day gambling. After some early beginner's luck, I racked up some pretty solid gains. However, as it's often the case, my beginner's luck ran out and as the market phase changed, I began to average down giving back all my gains and ultimately experiencing a significant six-figure financial hit. To say this was a gut-wrenching, sobering experience is an understatement. I had to stand back and figure out if it was feasible for me to make a living from the markets. So I decided to get serious about trading and sought out as a mentor with an excellent trading track record. Working with my mentor for a period of 18 months to two years, it was a time during which I upped not just my technical gain, developing a strategy that crucially suited my personality, extensively back and forward testing strategies, all of which were underpinned by a rigorous risk management approach. But most importantly during the period of mentorship, I significantly developed my mental gain. And probably the most important watershed shift I made was from being a highly goal-orientated individual focused on financial gains to becoming purely process-orientated. So what does that actually mean? Well, it means I had to stop focusing on what I could make from the markets and start focusing solely on managing my mindset to allow me to consistently execute my trading strategy, oftentimes in the face of negative feedback from the markets in the form of losing trades. But once you become process-orientated and have a professional trading mindset and you understand the true nature of trading being a numbers game in which you're simply playing the probabilities, you lose the emotional investment and that hellish emotional rollercoaster of living and dying by the outcomes of individual trades. I'm no longer concerned with the outcome of individual trades or even a string of trades. My focus is on the next 100 trades because I know if I focus on excellence and execution, my edge will demonstrate itself over an extended series of outcomes. My multi-strategy approach has delivered profitable annual returns since 2008. From 2013, I've also been managing investor capital through a managed account service, delivering annual positive returns. I'm currently responsible for managing a multi-million dollar portfolio. Since 2010, I've also mentored hundreds of private traders of all experience levels from complete novices to former CME floor traders in developing the technical and mental skills to reap consistent returns from the markets. In addition to my fund management and mentoring, I'm also a resident market expert exclusively providing market and trading analysis to TICML. My other passion project, I guess, is leading trader education for a premier trading education brand called FXcareerswap.com, offering development and, more importantly, funding to retail trading towns. At FXcareerswap, we don't just work on developing retail traders' market and trading strategy knowledge. More importantly, we also work on mindset development through a structured programme that culminates in managing the firm's capital at zero personal financial risk on a profit share basis. OK, so that gives you a flavour of where I'm coming from, so let's jump into today's material. The E-Mini or ES or MINI is a futures contract that tracks the S&P 500 market index. It is traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the CME, via their Globlex Electronic Trading Platform. Trading is 23.5 hours a day, five days a week using the contract symbol ES. E-Mini contracts are available on a wide range of US stock market indices, commodities and forex currencies. However, when traders refer to the E-Mini or the E-Minis or the Spooze, they are generally referring to the most important one, the futures contract that tracks the S&P 500 stock market index. The E-Mini futures were originally launched in September 1997 to attract non-professional investors into trading index futures. Previously, the only game in town had been the large S&P contracts, but it had become too expensive for the little guys of trade. So, the CME created the E-Mini contract, which was one-fifth of the size of the large S&P futures contract and required only one-fifth of the margin to trade. The E-Mini became a huge success, not only with non-professional traders, but also with professionals too. The micro E-Mini futures contract is the same as the regular S&P 500 E-Mini contract, in every respect, except it's one-tenth of the size. That is, each one-point move in the S&P 500 index is worth $5 per micro E-Mini contract compared to the $50 for the E-Mini or the S. Obviously, the margin to trade the micro contract is also one-tenth of the size. Let's think about some of the benefits of this product. It's equally easy to go long or short. You can either buy or sell the current E-Mini contract and there is no up-tick rule. We have 24-hour trading, which makes the E-Mini attractive to traders around the world. Overnight moves in related equity markets, like the DAX or the FTSE, can be played with one trading vehicle. The electronic trading platform means your orders are entered instantaneously and when executed, you are notified instantaneously. Changing and cancelling orders is trivial. No phone call required to brokers anymore. It's a level playing field because the Globex electronic trading platform means that large and small traders have equal access to the market and trades are executed in the order they are received, unlike the days of old when the pit-traded futures were equity, all the back-room gains are gone. It's a tight bid and our spread because there's so much volume trading through the E-Mini. The difference between the bid and our price is only ever one tick or 0.25 index points, which is the minimum price movement. Like I say, there's a large depth of market. Again, the E-Mini market is so liquid. There is plenty of volume either side of the last traded price for large orders to be filled with minimum slippage. It's volatile, yes, but not unmanagable. The E-Mini is active every day, which gives the trader plenty of opportunity to trade. Remember, a slippy market is impossible to day trade, but the E-Mini volatility is also manageable, except maybe around major announcements like the FOMC or the long farm payrolls data. Low brokerage rates mean that broker commissions for trading the E-Mini continue to fall. This excludes exchange clearing and regulatory fees. When you factor those in, your round-trick in and out brokerage commission is very attractive. Low margin requirements mean that to open a trading position with TIT mill, you only require $1,000 to open a micro account. Remember, these are the absolute minimums. You should be trading with more capital behind your position. There is a more attractive tax rate than trading forex or stocks. An income trading from the E-Mini futures is taxed as a capital gain. You also benefit from no trade-by-trade accounting, which is another advantage of the tax treatment of the E-Mini futures is that the tax reporting requirements are minimal. In particular, no trade-by-trade accounting, only the net profit for the full year is needed. That gives us a sense of the product and its advantages. Now we understand the instrument and the trading venue. I want to demonstrate some of the unique aspects of this instrument. The fact that the E-Mini is a derivative of the S&P 500 allows us to access some unique information commonly referred to as market internals. Market internals are often compared to the instrument dashboard on a car, giving indication of the performance and alerting the driver to any issues occurring under the hood. Let's take a look more closely at what market internals are and how we can incorporate them into a consistent trading strategy. Firstly, volume. As unique features of trading the exchange-traded derivative, as opposed to a contract for difference or forex volume data, which is at best incomplete, there is no central forex exchange and the banks who dominate forex trading don't share volume data in real time. However, we get a true reflection of the actual volume, which is shared directly by the CME, available to all market participants in real time. I use volume as a tool to confirm breakouts and opportunities to fade the market. A spikes in volume will often be accompanied by intraday profit taking. Next tool I use is the NYSE tick index. This gives us the relationship of stocks up ticking versus down ticking. Tick is an extremely useful tool for intraday trading. For example, if there are 3,000 stocks trading on the NYSE and 1,500 trades higher from their previous price and 500 trade lower, then the last price the tick will read will be plus 1,000. But I guess you're thinking, well, what happened to the other 1,000 stocks? Well, it might be that they traded at an unchanged price from their last tick. When using the tick, we are looking for extremes to enter or exit a trade. Tick readings of plus 1,000 or minus 1,000 are considered very strong and we typically trade between 1,000 most of the time on the NYSE. Tick readings within the 400 level plus 400 or minus 400 more often than not indicate sharp and we want to ignore them. On a range day, we can look to fade tick extremes. I apply a moving average to make it easier for me to see the trend of the tick, or what I refer to as the tick distribution. When we get a high tick and a high in price at the exact same time, this could indicate the high of the day when a high tick prints without a simultaneous high in price, we can continue to make new highs until the new high tick is reached. And obviously the reverse is true for the low tick followed by new lows. The next tool I use is the advanced decline line or AD line for short. It's the second most important of the internals. This indicator tells us the net sum of advancing stocks minus declining stocks. There are roughly 3,000 stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange and 3,000 on the NASDAQ. An AD line reading of plus 1,500 is very bullish and a reading of over 2,000 is extremely bullish. On the flip side, readings of minus 1,500 and below are very bearish and readings below 2,000 are extremely bearish. These extreme readings are indicative of trending days where once the market continues to trend all the way into the clothes, we look to the AD line in conjunction with the breath ratio to confirm these trend days. For example, a day with 2,500 advancing stocks and only 500 declining stocks will yield a net positive of plus 2,000 which is, as I say, an extremely bullish reading. It will take a large catalyst to shift the market direction with a reading this bullish. If on the open, you continue to see the advanced decline line moving so it moves plus 500, plus 700, plus 900, this is a sign of market strength. If, however, the market is moving higher but the AD line is moving lower, a divergence has occurred and could be a sign that the market is about to reverse. Last but by no means least, the breath volume ratio composed of volume flowing into up stocks versus volume flowing into down stocks. The breath volume ratio is expressed as up volume minus down volume. This reading is important in relation to where it has been especially where we are now compared to where the day opens. So, for example, if at 10 a.m. we have 10 million shares moving up and 5 million shares moving down, the resulting breath ratio will be 2 to 1 positive. Twice as much volume is flowing into up stocks as down stocks. If at 10.30 a.m. the market has sold off but we have a breath ratio of 3 to 1 positive, this is a signal that the markets are actually becoming stronger and it's time to look to buy into pullbacks for a long setup. So, now we understand the market internals and the unique insight they provide. I want to briefly walk you through my strategy. By understanding the market context in which we are trading, I'm looking to execute two types of trades. Firstly, mean reversion in ranging environments and then momentum trades in trending environments always underpinned by the market internals. Every day, I plot pivotal support and resistance action areas that are derived from multi-time frame market auction theory and volume profile analysis. This allows me to avoid engaging the market in areas of heavy rotation or shop. Support and resistance action areas have three purposes. They can act as entry levels in mean reversion setups, which is the majority of the time. In directional or trending environments, the action areas act to confirm momentum breaks and lastly, they can be used as targets for trades. I also note additional key data from the prior day price action. These levels are often important to define the buyers for the day. The previous volume point of control, the highest volume price from the previous day. This is where buyers and sellers perceive the price to be fair value for that session. I confirm the current market context. This lets us identify the dominant side of the market in the overnight session referred to as the globe X session, and then on a one to three day time horizon, a one to three week time horizon, and a one to three month time horizon. There are times when neither side is dominant and it's important to assess how the cash session develops. I also highlight quantitative probability plays based on where the cash or regular trading hours session opens in relation to the prior days, either above or below or within the range. These give key levels and the probability of price testing these levels over an extended data set. This can prove useful for trade entry, exit, and trade management. Lastly, I note volatility or range analysis as this helps to inform the current market context. Is the market in balance in relation to current volatility? Equally, we can confirm the market out of balance and this can inform buyers for the trading session ahead. It also helps to inform trade execution and trade management. What I want to do now is take you through a few examples of how the combination of the action areas, market internals, and data deliver an edge in the market. Let's pull up an example day here. Like I say, the sport resistance levels are provided in advance of the cash session opening. You have these before the New York Stock Exchange opens at 2.30 UK time. On this day, what I also provide is a short video in which I highlight the high probability setups I'm looking at. From this day, I highlighted that because of the market context we were bearish on the overnight session, neutral on the daytime frame. What I was looking for here was a test and reversal from the initial resistance. The markets opened up here. We traded into the initial resistance zone. Note that we had negative internals. As we traded up into that resistance zone, the market under the hood was rolling over. We had a negative tick distribution. We had a negative advance decline line and we had a negative breath. This was an opportunity to get short into the resistance zone. Our target is the GlobeX session lows. GlobeX session is highlighted by this blue line here. We traded down into that area for an 18.5 point trade to the downside. Another session where we opened up, this session we were bearish and neutral to bearish on the near term time frames, but we were bullish on the longer term time frames. Price action at the open here I highlighted was very strong, responsive buying, strong volume in the bid. The trade here was to play the breakout of the resistance and notice we had these positive internals. That was telling us that the underlying activity in the market was bid and we got the trade through the resistance zone, primary resistance zone up into the secondary resistance zone for a 10 point target. Next set up here we were looking bearish on both the GlobeX and the near term bias was bearish as well. The primary support which was the high probability trade that I highlighted in the pre-market analysis. We had negative internals, negative tick distribution. We actually traded down for a 28 point profit there into the third support zone as highlighted in the pre-market analysis. Another session here. Primary trade here was to play because we were bearish to neutral in the near term time frames. The weak market internals into primary resistance set short positions which was the trade that we got and we eventually traded down into the target zone for a 16 point profit and again based on these negative market internals as we traded into that resistance zone. Another set up here we were bearish and looking for a pullback to fade primary resistance. We traded into that area, we had negative internals and so that was our signal to get short traded down, there was actually 30 to 40 points of profit opportunity with that set up. So let's now, I'll just jump into the actual today's chart and you can see this was yesterday's set up, the primary high probability trade. I highlighted in the pre-market video was to play for a break of primary resistance based on bullish internals. So we traded up into the primary resistance, internals improving, tick distribution getting positive and so the trade was long through the resistance zone up into secondary resistance. That was a 10 point trading opportunity there. This was Tuesday, the set up we were looking for here. Again primary high probability play highlighted in the pre-market analysis was to go long through 41.91 based on broad market strength. So we had really positive internals here and we got the break through 41.91 and the target was secondary resistance up to 42.14 and that gave 23 points of profit as per the pre-market trade plan. Now I won't keep going back over and over these examples because I'm not a big fan of hindsight, hindsight trading so to speak. So what I'd like to do actually now is show you what the set up I'm looking at for today's cash session. So once I finish this webinar I'll be recording a separate video which I put into our futures group. I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute but what I'm looking for today, based on the current set up, we're bullish on all our time frames. So what the trade I will be looking for today will be a break of 42.5050 which is primary resistance and I'll initially be targeting a move up to 42.58. If I don't get an exhaustion signal there so when I refer to exhaustion that's a high tick of day with a high price coming at the same time and a potential volume spike, I'll hold the trade there to take us through 42.60 and then I'll be watching for a move up into 42.76. Now equally if we fail below the 42.25 then I'll be watching for exhaustion signals on the long side into this support zone here at 42.16 to set long positions. Again the initial target then will be the globe X lows which would be 42.31. Through there then I will target the globe X session high which is currently 42.48. And again I managed the trades by keeping an eye on the internals making sure that we're not getting any exhaustion signals so that new high in price for the day and a new high tick and a volume spike as long as I don't get that I'm happy to hold the trades and run them to the profit targets. So that's what I'm looking at for today's session. The only time I would consider getting short this market because of the bullish context that we've got will be on a break of the 42.02. If we trade through there and we have very weak market internals so negative breadth, negative AD line and a negative tick distribution all heading to the downside then I'll be looking to be short through the 42.02 and my initial target on that downside trade will be 41.87. So those are the trades that I'm looking at the three high probability plays I see developing for today's cash session. Like I say, I record a pre-market video I'm going to show you now the tick mill futures group where I highlight the setups for the day ahead you get a recording every day before the cash session opens I also provide other trading information for each session I update the trades as they develop in real time in the strategy group and you can get a two week free trial to the strategy group simply by registering an account with tick mill that you don't need to fund it during the trial period so you can get two weeks of seeing my trade analysis on a daily basis seeing how the market plays out versus my pre-market analysis and you can get I also post additional information from major investment banks giving you further market context every day so that you're constantly getting a feed of institutional insights along with my pre-market analysis so that you can then go away and execute these trades on your own so I strongly suggest that for all of you here today that you take advantage of the two week free trial what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to post the link for that into the chat and so you can actually request access here we go can you also see that link that I've just posted in the chat there for the futures group you just type a Y in the chat box if you can confirm that you can see that link it should be there for you all and all you do is request access and I will add you to the group and you'll get two weeks of my pre-market trade analysis I tend to deliver the analysis before 2pm UK time so you have plenty of time to review the information and set up for the trading session ahead like I say cash session begins at 230 UK time so that gives you plenty of time to set your trade levels versus my analysis OK well that concludes my presentation today I hope that's given you an overview of the contract the advantages of trading this contract using these market internals and also you can see how you can consistently reap profits once you understand how these internals work and you familiarise yourself with them so at this point I will open the floor up for any questions so if you want to type the question into the chat box or you want to unmute your mic I'm happy to do that we also have a Q&A box I think as well if you want to type your question in there so I can cover these off if you have any equally if you don't have a question if you type an N into the chat box so that I know we're all on the same page here and I can wrap this session up yeah I do give advice on trade management Tim let me just show you here so when I'm in a position I update the trading information through like you can see here yesterday so I update the trades update how I'm managing my position I also give in this volatility data I also suggest how you should use your how you should use stops based on volatility so if we're trading up into a reversion trade so if I'm looking to get short this resistance zone 42 4245 to 4250 I suggest a five point stop given the current market volatility beyond 4255 stop equally if I'm playing a continuation so if I'm looking to get long through the resistance based on the current market context then I use something called a continuation stop and that again is based on current market volatility and it's statistically driven and that's currently 7.5 points so I certainly do give trading parameters I'm very specific about the levels that I'm looking to to enter and exit trades and I also suggest how you manage your stops and then when in terms of the actual trade management like I said what I'm looking for to exit my positions or more often than not I'm either going to let them trade to the target or if I get an exhaustion signal that suggests that there's a potential for a reversal against my current position I will just cut the trade with whatever profits I have at the time that we get an exhaustion signal but like I say I do update the positions in the strategy group so you can always see pretty much how I am managing my trades so that makes sense team well I guess this is the beauty of it really it seems like there are a lot of indicators but really what all you're doing is if we're above the zero line for each indicator so for the tick, the advanced client line and breath if the moving average is above the zero line that suggests that we're in a strong market environment if it's below the zero line that suggests we're in a weak market environment so for example if today we get down into this support zone that I just talked about 42.02 level what I'd be looking for if I'm going to sell the break there what I want to see is the tick distribution to the tick moving average trending down I want to see the advanced decline moving average trending down and below zero and I want to see the breath trending down and below zero does that make sense it's more of a confirmation than it is that you need to you need to be watching every iteration it's really a confirmation that you're getting from these internals that allow you to play these trades with confidence so once you've watched these for a few sessions and you get familiar with the actual distribution then really there isn't a huge like all the great trading strategies they're pretty much principled upon this is a very simple premises and what we're simply doing here is we're using the internals to guide as to whether we want to play a momentum trade or a version trade this additional information here just helps in terms of where we are so for example today we're opening within range we're opening within the prior days range currently we are anyway and so what does that mean 73% chance that we test the midpoint so the midpoint is running here this is an automatic indicator that attracts the midpoint so high probability that if we open within yesterday's range we're going to test the midpoint before extending higher and so you can use that information because if we test the midpoint and then we break the prior high that can give you an opportunity to get in on the long side in advance of breaking the resistance I'd be looking to add to my position so this information again once you familiar with it and once you understand are we opening within the prior days range are we opening above it or are we opening below it then it's very simple to use that information the most important information really is this market context because that gives you the setup for the day the high probability setup for the day and then you're just looking for the internals to confirm that good stuff okay if there aren't any other questions I'll wrap this one up here and I really do encourage you all to request access to the Facebook strategy group the link is in the chat and I hope to see you all in there okay thanks very much for your time everyone and I hope this helps