Hello, hello. Good morning. Andrea Majesca here with Dental L Tutoring. So the board is going to boot camps are quickly filling up both for dental hygiene students and dental assisting students. So if you haven't checked it out yet and if that's something that you want to sign up for please please let me know. I will post the link at the bottom so please feel free to click there. There's only a limited number of seats. It is all online but I'd like to be able to answer everybody's questions and be and be able to focus on everybody. So then that way if you have any questions if you want to talk to me after the board exam boot camp you can. So that's why there are only a limited number of seats but the nice thing is though is that if you're not able to attend online I will send everybody the full recording after that. So we go through mock exam questions and case studies specific to the board exam. So there will be a variety of topics and I just go through multiple choice and you all answer the questions okay. So you can hear and see me but I can't hear or see you.  So then that way I can see how everybody's doing. If everybody gets let's say that one question wrong or a lot of people do then that tells me that that's a harder question and that I need to stop and explain it in a different way because as you all know for the board exam two answers are always correct but I will teach you guys how to pick the best answer. So the board exam boot camps are coming up. I have done them a little bit earlier this year. That way if you guys have any questions or think that you need extra help there will be time for that because I do do private tutoring as well but admittedly you guys I'm fully booked. I am fully booked where I am literally working from 7 in the morning till 11 30 at night to teach as many people as possible. I have I think I gave myself like a half an hour lunch break because I realized that I need to step away from the computer because I do do tutoring all online. I've been getting a lot of emails you know things like that so I am working overtime to help you all out but the nice thing about the board exam boot camp is that I can teach all of you guys at the same time. So a variety of mock exam questions and case studies there's one for dental hygiene students and one for dental assisting students as well. So I think I have about four spots left in the dental hygiene board exam boot camp and there's 10 spots left in the dental assisting I believe. I wrote that down but of course I don't have my notes with me so I apologize but something like that. If for some reason you do sign up and there's no spots left then I will send you an email and give you the option of talking to you at a different time. Plus the board exam boot camp is fully recorded and I will send that to you right away also. So let me know if you guys have any questions I'll be doing some tutoring prep all day and doing some tutoring so just send me an email and I will get back to you guys tonight okay. Thank you so much for watching and hope to see you guys inside the board exam boot camp.


Hello to everyone and thank you for joining us today for this Capital Insider series where we are joined today by Surya Mantha who is leading United Switches here in India. It's a leading venture fund largely investing in early stage startups in technology with a big focus on health tech, on ed tech as well as big tech and also as I could tell logistics is a large part of their portfolio here in India. What is also good about United Switches is because they have a presence in the USA they are able to in fact ensure that there is a good cross-border moment of startups and they are able to find the resources, talent or any other health that they require from the US. So thank you very much for joining us Surya. We delighted to have you here for the Capital Insider series today and you know things have changed so dramatically. I mean these last six months have probably changed the entire landscape of how we looked at business. So particularly for you at United Switches, I mean the pre-pandemic and the mid- pandemic as we are sitting in currently, how are you looking at things differently? What kind of business trends is it that you are today seeing there in your own portfolio and also looking at particularly from a new startups perspective, new investments perspective, how is it that you're now evaluating startups differently? I mean how have your lints has changed? Sure, yeah thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. There are so many questions rolled into that one question so I hopefully I'll be able to answer each one of them in sequence. If I don't please remind me. So yeah so you know one other point that I would like to add to the introduction you gave to United's Ventures is two points actually. One is that in addition to being an early stage tech venture fund which is looking for great entrepreneurs and opportunities in the health tech, fintech, job tech, ed tech spaces. Another thing that is incredibly important to us and which is core to our thesis is that we look for companies that are going to make a difference, a positive difference into the lives of disadvantaged peoples, low income populations at scale. So we are in that sense, we have a laser like focus on on commercial returns, benchmark returns for our investors but at the same time it is critically important that these companies make a significant impact whether it is in terms of access to financial services or better healthcare or better livelihoods and hence better life outcomes that is critically important to us. The second piece that I wanted to say was yes United's benefits tremendously from having presence in the US. Two of our partners and a part of our team is there but an equally important part is that we are a member, we are in fact the founding member of the Capria network. Capria Ventures is a fund of funds founded by a couple of our partners, of our own partners who invest in the you know for-profit commercial but impact-oriented fund managers across emerging markets from Southeast Asia to Africa to South Asia to Turkey to many in Latin America. So there is a network of over 20-30 fund managers like United's who have the tremendous opportunity for cross pollination, for learning, for understanding deals, for sourcing deals, for taking companies you know introducing new markets to our own entrepreneurs or bringing companies from those markets into India. So that's a tremendous network that United's is also part of. Now coming to the to the pandemic, so one thing is clear I mean people you can call it a Black Swan event though it is not a Black Swan event by the strict definition of the term. Everybody knew that it was going to happen, this was going to happen sometime. Bill Gates had had given consistent and clear warnings for a lot of the period of time and over the last 10-12 years we've had several such things you know which were fortunately contained much faster like Ebola or SARS and so on. So but it is certainly true that an event a pandemic of this nature has not happened in the lives or careers of any of our entrepreneurs or any of our own lives as fund managers and professionals and I can probably wager a bet that it not happened in the in the lifetimes of any of the other portfolio managers or entrepreneurs in India, whether it is early stage or mid-stage. So this is trial by fire, this is the kind of thing that separates the men from the boys and the women from the bills right, though it is good to be young actually but in any case. So but so essentially you know that's when you look into the mirror and look at yourself and say okay what do I need to do to survive this, that is the first question you ask right and in our case in particular and I think this applies to many of the early stage funds our companies while you know our thesis that is that at some point in time you know over the next five, six, seven years they'll grow to be big valuable resilient robust companies they're all fairly early in their life cycle and have are constrained by the resources that they have. So the first thing that comes to mind is how am I going to survive this if I had no revenue how long is my runway if I had zero revenue that's the first plan and then you look at various scenarios of if I had if I got to 20 percent of my revenue if I get to 50 percent of my revenue and so on right then okay and and that that's a very sobering moment then you look at your costs okay what can I live with and what then it becomes like a household budget immediately right then you're saying okay what you know everything is up everything is up for discussion there is nothing there are no sacred costs right whether it is and when it comes to and this and and I'm proud to say that almost every single one of our entrepreneurs and I hope that that's the case with if you talk to any of the other venture funds stepped up to the plate and took the hard decisions and showed the leadership that would require right for instance you know if it is trying to trim the the payroll cost okay so now this is an opportunity to get any way you are planning to get let go of the bottom 10 percentile in terms of performance this is a good time to do it if you are instituting pay cuts then you lead by leadership you know through example it is the leadership team that takes the deepest cuts and then it's a graded cut also for your most if you are giving them if you're if you're instituting a pay cut then are you compensating that through ESOPs this is a fantastic time to reward your employees through ESOPs because that goes towards building long-term value and it kind of shows who's in it for the long haul and who is not right then for instance all all vendor payments all arrangements with whether it is with your customers or vendors they are all up for discussion many of our B2B companies they they they complete they change to in many cases a prepay mode in many cases raising in voices twice a month and reducing payment terms from 60 days to 30 days right just just having a laser like focus on your cash and on your or your on your working capital so every business becomes a cash flow business and not a balance sheet but I mean not a P&L business right for a while so these are these are the things that you do immediately right and and say okay am I do I now have the length of runway where I can step back and look at my business as to how it has what can I now really do from a product strategy from an offering strategy go to market and so on perspective right now clearly if you are if you are in retail or or things that requires large physical gatherings of people right then that the problem becomes that much harder right even there there are examples actually of companies who have completely pivoted their business model and made things go totally digital there are a few a couple of examples I can give off in the US and so on but in the Indian context or in our context those are the most challenged companies right retail brick-and-mortar retail entertainment gyms and so on and so forth so and those companies whose business model has used technology as a way to reach customers they have a more inherently resilient and robust model when when when these kinds of disruptions happen right so that that is that's something that's applies across sectors across sectors whether it's an edtech it's entertainment it is e-commerce it is it is online sales what have you even in jobs earlier you know there is a there is a portfolio company of ours which is in the business it's a it's a fintech company it's an mvfc which gives loans to students and young professionals for job directed training courses classes right now and and they're of course agnostic about jobs whether it's a physical job or a or a online job now they pivoted and there was a lot of opportunity for what I call online for online online training online courses for online work right so every company there is another company of ours which is called Avigna which is sort of the the which has it's a gig black gig economy company where they have a platform a technology platform that takes the last mile work that large distributed companies have whether it is FMCG or new age companies for due diligence or mystery audits or revenue leakage or business development and so on or or retailer onboarding and so on and they take those projects and pass them out into smaller tasks and they have a distributed workforce at the other end that executes these tasks and and and you know the the the clients the corporates can rest assured that these projects are being done by one vendor at you know within budget and on time and so on so what they did was immediately because they saw a dip in their business obviously like anybody else but they came up with a covid compliance offering which is you know after the first month or two were over that hey I can use the same platform the same systems process technology and people combination to actually help large distributed corporations implement covid compliance among their employees right so basically these are two examples of innovation in your business model or in your product offering where you say okay the world's changed what can i do differently to to respond to that in addition to whatever cost measures and so on and so forth you've taken so basically every company some things are common to all companies they all have to do that the cost measures others depend on their context on their business and and and their inherent you know set of capabilities and they have to they look at the market and say how do I pivot what new offerings can I bring to the market that that work in this in the circumstances that I find myself and and the latter part is an ongoing journey okay so that's where that's I mean the last five months have been I must say probably the team at united's hasn't worked harder in their lives you know we've been uh shoulder to shoulder with our entrepreneurs helping them through this difficult journey but uh you know all of them most many most of them barring up one or two obviously who are struggling have have come out of it stronger because they realize that there was probably some bloat their costs could have been lower right but you don't realize in normal conditions it's only these kinds of things that that that help you really focus on things that matter and yeah it's it's it's still early I mean don't know how long this whole thing will last and maybe there's a new normal at least for the next year and a half to two years and I think entrepreneurs are adjusting to that adapting everything all their operations mindsets and all to to work in the new world sure no I think that's that's very valuable Surya what you've shared you know my something that and I mean you've given us a cross spectrum look at how you how are you dealing with your existing startups as well as you know how startups should largely think but from a pandemic's perspective and also from a perspective of the fact that you know we are in completely new environments today we're working from home we've not been used to it we've not been brought up with working from home as a culture so you I mean what is it and I I read you had once said that it's the founding team that counts the most you know so whenever you're looking at investing in any particular startup you look at more I mean well of course the idea is very important and what is it that they're trying to achieve to sort of bring a change is very important but also you look very closely at the founding team and you know what what perspective that the founders bring so particularly evaluating what the founders bring to the table how how is it I mean what qualities of founders is it that you have found coming out during this pandemic and I mean how are you trying to work with particularly your own portfolio founders to make sure that they they not just resilient I think but they're able to sort of hold on I mean you know things are falling apart for everybody I mean for your founders pretty much for every startup founder today and just to sort of first have the you know the patience to say that look I'm gonna put everything together is really hard and particularly our founders are so young so how how is it that you know what qualities are there that you look at in the founders during that early days of actually investing in them which now you feel are sort of because you did it at that time is now coming to fruition it's now sort of showing its best phase right you know a terrific point see I mean we all talk about these qualities and it is only not very often more simply that those qualities get tested right and this is this is a god couldn't have sent a harder test I think almost every quality of every entrepreneur of every portfolio has got tested simultaneously right so it's it's the it's the same thing that there are a few things about the founders and there are a few things inherent in the about the business model that they have if they're really dependent on their company strategy is irrevocably attached to physicality to people coming in then even your strongest founder will will not be able to do much you may do something else you may say I will do something else right but so barring that barring that it is the same qualities it is it is clearly you know intelligence and capabilities at table states right if you are slow if you're dull you will not be able to respond to it second two most important things is one is willingness to listen and agility and the ability to respond fast and third is a is an is a very interesting mix of urgency with calm so there has to be a sense of urgency right but at the same time you know not not radiating anxiety but doing it from a sense of calm however anxious you may feel at night as an entrepreneur you may not go to bed but with your team with your investor and with your and particularly with with the junior and mid-level teams projecting a sense of confidence and calm that we will get through this right and then with entrepreneurs with investors and advisors the the willingness to learn to listen and incorporate ideas you know council advice and so on and check the ego at the door sure that those those are huge qualities right because obviously when somebody has has undertaken an entrepreneurial journey they have crossed a certain threshold of off-risk taking ability passion and and being self-motivated and so on and so forth but there are these there and there are these other qualities right a certain level of humility ability to listen you know uh and all of those that those get tested needs a lot plus plus urgency agility right i mean you are you you the ability to deal with uh take decisions without having all the information sure and pretty much here you have very little you don't know how tomorrow will be right with lockdowns you know it is like wakamoli i mean we had a we have a driver service company where if Bangalore is open today Mumbai is locked down tomorrow if Delhi opens Hyderabad gets locked down right so so you have to have the ability to to deal with that i totally agree with you i mean you know we i mean the severity of the storm is such that you don't know how to so it has to be managed in patches really as you said yeah so if you have a widespread sort of customers even if it's a digital business it becomes as much difficult because you're not able to service some customers exactly and and your business model goes for a toss in that exactly yeah so you know another another important area that i would love to know from you is that particularly i read that these are the three sectors that you sort of always looked at at unites ventures is fintech, edtech and health tech and i do feel that there has been some good movement which has happened in these sectors particularly if you look at edtech that's been the longest challenge for educational technology companies was the adoption of technology at the teacher's level to be able to broadcast it to the children and now suddenly the pandemic just made it happen yeah yeah i mean you know particularly from these sectors perspective all the three health tech i mean health has certainly become you know the number one priority today so how is it that you're now evaluating startups for investments i mean you know considering that it's a good place to be in these these three sectors so within this what i mean what what particularly you see is going to be more suitable for making an investment in so let's very interesting so let's take edtech as an example see we were one of the early investors in edtech and we have a real star in our portfolio called q-math and q-math was actually very interestingly had a very physical business model they would supply technology content process expertise and all of that to stay at home moms who would then get you know the neighborhood kids and teach them math at the k6 levels and clearly the pandemic changed all of that overnight right and they were able to move all their teachers online within a month so without missing a heartbeat they went back to their original level of business but more interestingly uh they took their best teachers and went international and they are growing they've grown exponentially international and with much you know uh because it's all online and uh you know a good teacher if she's uh teaching math in an innovative way to a kid in her neighborhood she can do that to a kid in Cincinnati or Seattle or or Birmingham or wherever right so they the last eight months their growth literally has been scorching sure so so so right right so we were fortunate you know we were one of the pioneers in edtech early on and now we we our thinking has moved a little uh from edtech to what we call more job tech where the education educational content or training content or what or assessment content leads to a very tangible outcome immediately right gets a job or gets a better income or or or so on and so forth so in fact uh so that's something uh we feel uh is a sector where particularly in India where we have one million kids coming into the job market every month and that's going to continue for the next 20 years right just just just wrap your head around that problem I think uh one of the probably biggest challenges in India is creation of jobs and not just creation of jobs second is matching supply with demand and uh decreasing the employability gap because of our fairly variable quality of our education system uh way too many kids come out of college with degrees even engineering degrees without the skills required to to uh do their job in fact just yesterday we announced a an investment in a company called Masai school like the Masai driver for Africa where they have a seven month long boot camp like approach to programming uh and software engineering and they take kids from you know second to tier two tier three colleges engineering colleges some dropouts and almost many of them have no background in computer science they just give them a test in math and logical reasoning and through a mastery based progression strategy after seven uh months of this course curriculum most of them get employed not in you know IT services but actually in serious product development jobs and in startups and serious companies right they were largely online delivery was online they had offline centers in Patna and in Bangalore for because there's always a value to kids meeting bonding informal sessions you know there's all of that value they had to go fully online so one of the things that they have to figure out and which are figuring out as they go is is making sure that the student engagement student satisfaction learning outcomes or learning the the rate of learning they do not get uh impacted by going purely online so you have to obviously anything that can be delivered online is going to benefit it i mean it's not a profound statement it's not a key insight it is if we are seeing that i'm sitting here you know we are we are we are doing this interview on video where all of us have been on five zoom calls five to six hours a day for the last five months right doctor uh we've done doctor consultations on on video who would have thought in India that you do doctor consult we've been trying to do that for years and this pandemic has compressed behavioral changes into a matter of months right now since you mentioned this i mean what what i mean particularly i was going to ask you about telemedicine becoming a very important area and then e-pharmacies you know we've seen so much sort of back and forth moment and corporate interest and you know consolidation and acquisitions happening over there so particularly from a health care perspective i would say e-commerce has sort of made a huge comeback i i would never have imagined health and e-commerce being so you know hand in glove with each other so yeah really what what movement do you see within health tech health tech is very interesting uh it is obviously i mean e-pharmacy was something that had attracted a lot of investor interest and also three four scaled up players have emerged over the last five years right so e-pharmacy is certainly uh something that that is scaling up very fast but what is interesting to me is that for some reason um India being as big a market as it is and uh and and honestly our health care if you go beyond the top metros is so patchy and so poor that we have not seen many many more large companies scaling up uh in the health care space whether it is electronic health records or tele medicine or or what have you uh apps for mental health apps for women's health apps for diabetes control you know and not just just apps that people can use but with proper business sound business models for which people will pay right so it it remains uh it is i think the opportunity is there uh it is a bit of mystery to to us uh as well i mean the only things that have have uh uh uh scaled in india from an investor perspective of brick and mortar hospitals okay and that's a very different couple you know they don't they're they're in the in the delivery you know brick and mortar delivery space right whether it is a multi-specialty tertiary hospitals or or single specialty chains and so on and e-pharmacy but the rest of health care rest of health care has has not seen huge opportunities huge companies being built everybody believes everybody believes that this is one of those disruptive moments that uh uh the pandemic will change behaviors will throw up opportunities uh in the health check space as well if i had the answer to exactly where it will show up i wouldn't be sitting here but we are thinking we are all thinking very hard we are all putting on our thinking caps and i'm not the only one i'm sure every guy in every early stage fund is saying okay where is where is that opportunity which is gonna be the the next you know big thing in health tech because we've seen for instance practice practice there was a lot of initial uh a lot of money has gone into practice and they did a recent round at a big with a big with a big haircut so the problem the issue in india is you need to have your revenue model very clear because indians are very very value conscious it is very difficult to part an indian from his money very very difficult right so it is very easy for him to get used to a free service him or her so i really admire companies that are able on day one to get an indian consumer to say this is interesting i'll actually pay money for it and i salute such an entrepreneur so i it's gonna happen in health check it will i don't have a very specific pieces as to where it will emerge which two three areas it will emerge but emerge they will intelligence i can tell you that sure and also just to touch on what you mentioned about the other area sorry the other area that is that is largely untouched by technology and innovation is hospital management hospital management hospital procurement a lot of those things and there's a lot of corruption and so on and so forth you know incentives or incentives over there so there is that whole area of bringing efficiency to hospitals of various sizes uh is we'll see a lot of innovation and the third area that will see a lot of innovation is insurance tech india is very under penetrated when it comes to insurance cost of insurance is high fraud is high there is not a lot of technology there so in fact we have a company in that space so another third area where i believe there would be a lot of innovation is in uh using data machine learning yeah all of these things will use that is in short insurance tech so telemedicine hospital efficiency and productivity management insurance tech all of these are are are ripe for for innovation and destruction totally you know you also mentioned about edtech and i mean you know the fact that you know you've invested in messiah school which is also into coding and helping as you said children in in hinterlands to actually you know get into a more employable skill i mean do you think at some point of time you mentioned about hospitals having problems but i also feel the same problems exist with Indian universities you know wherein we get a degree but it's not essentially an employable degree at all so i mean do you think that at some point of time we've already seen national education policy which is quite disruptive it's you know we all need the school is only going to be till class 11 now and then you and that too you're going to have a lot of skills which are going to be now dealt with at the school level only so do you think the college particularly the degrees that we have in india they might get disrupted and people might not want to go to you know for your course unless they have something very specific in mind and they might want to actually take this one year course and get into a workforce it might happen you're absolutely right barring barring the top few universities in the private public sector and the private sector the new exciting new entrants like ashoka kriya flame and so on sistea and so on and then the old faithfuls like the ii t's and the and the and the big spelani's of the world and presidencies and stephens of the world you know education in this country is is is so man i mean there is really kids just spent three years i mean they make great friends they have fun uh and they waste their time right which is fine which is fine as a life experience but they're not getting the skills they're not getting the skills right and this i'm talking about even the better colleges but if you go go into the beyond the top 20 cities the education system is is abysmal right so the importance of skills over degree that that phenomenon is going to only strengthen there is no question about that in fact as i told you may at least a few of my high school grads are dropouts yeah i mean right and in fact one of the founders is himself one of the founders is himself a dropout from ii t so so you know the uh importance of skills and ability to perform and deliver over degrees and pedigrees you're seeing that in the in the in the us as well and and and there will be another phenomenon that's on the rise is evaluation of of candidates not through their resume but through their ability to to actually perform particularly in programming engineering software engineering jobs and so on you you you can do that you don't have to do that through through just the resume because many of them they need just like an artist has a has a as a portfolio these young guys in software engineering and software they have programs at the post to get up okay and they they get fan following based on the quality and and and efficiency and the difficulty levels of their of the work that they have done so you're absolutely right that we are we are we are gonna see a lot of that and we will also see a lot of online certifications that will come up which may not be your traditional degree degree granting institutions whether that is in programming whether it's in design whether it's in marketing whether it is in soft skills you know my good friend Pramat Sinha has just launched a harappa dot iron which is basically leadership skills he's he's distilled his 30 years of corporate experience as well as experience starting the isb and ashoka university into into an online offering right so you will see we will see a lot of that absolutely no question about that sure totally agree so we've also got some questions pouring in surya which i think we should take up so you know if we can please give the audio to Doreen LeWang is Doreen there go ahead yes yes i'm just looking for fundraising and the in my pandemic through and all during my during my this time i have a lot of problem for manufacturing also unable to and even during this time how can i just come up beyond this pandemic to overcome this situation that is the man i just want to know the like my question is this how to overcome my pandemic this pandemic issue see i i mean that that's the question on the minds of almost every entrepreneur the point is i don't i will not be able to unfortunately give you a very specific answer because i do not have know the nature of your business and if it is a look if it's a manufacturing business in the small medium sector then the government has several programs for loans that will to tide you over you know this difficult period see investors particularly equity investors will look for companies that can grow big and deliver the kinds of returns that they have promised their own investors right so not every company is is investable is equity private equity or venture investable and which is fine not every company needs to be in fact many india in many companies in india it's a debt they are there they need debt right so i don't know the nature of your specific problem in terms of what you do and and and your own issues where the issues are whether it is working capital or or your you know you're just basically demand has collapsed or what's going on so but but you need to the probably government programs you can access debt and and look at various explore that because this now is unless you have a really strong post pandemic story uh investors equity investors will be very shy of writing checks we've got another question which says tourism and hospitality industries need to give a complete makeover 3d and virtual reality is something we're looking at last geo meet they have proposed some good plan but how can small-scale business do that makeover good question good question i i i can imagine the users of 3d virtual reality augmented reality for say training for telemedicine uh for you know uh all manner of educational training and so on purposes to give give a feeling of of of of being in the situation but uh and for gaming certainly gaming very important very critical uh but i don't know that they can you quickly so quickly innovate and and replace you know tourism uh regular tourism with virtual reality it will be hard i don't think that the experience will be close to it i would love to be wrong maybe in certain in certain uh very specialized situations like uh uh say going to a museum now you know the metropolitan in new york uh are the our own national museum in delhi uh uh of the salarjan museum in hydrabad may be able to come up with an online experience which is very rich right uh but those are very specialized niche applications uh but but the experience of going to banaras or or istanbul or wherever your heart wishes to take you is not going to be replicated by augmented reality or going to masai mara uh i i i i i mean it sounds a bit naive just because there is augmented reality doesn't mean that the world will fit neatly into it at least over the next two three years i think a lot more technology innovation user experience innovation needs to be done but there are clearly niche applications which which will benefit from sure we have another question from madhukar if we can give him the audio please um in the meantime as he comes on you know there's another question which says that what are the biggest hurdles you think the because of the pandemic uh the hurdles have come in people management in the work from home systems do you think hr tech software's will be able to cross these hurdles good question see one of the the things that a few things that we've we've seen in our own work is is uh uh we've all at least uh early stage or any investment firm or any company we've been working harder than ever and particularly early stage because our portfolio it consists of young companies with limited amounts of cash and and uh you know they they can just go belly up quite fast they don't have the resilience of large corporations with huge you know cash balances and so on uh so but everybody has delivered but what it does lead to is is uh fatigue okay a few things happen the uh the boundary between work and non-work vanishes unless you have really really disciplined so two things we've done as a firm is that Tuesday before lunch and Fridays after lunch there are no meetings no calls so that you can do your own work so you have to create me time okay second every week there is a compulsory video social so typically most calls what we do are audio calls so so how do you keep a sense of coherence a sense of you know it's been five months since I have seen my colleagues honestly in person we went we as a firm went into lockdown into virtual mode March 15th today is August 20th or 24th or whatever it is right over five months that that that particularly for for many people can be fairly uh disorienting a sense of belonging can go away I mean in fact one one colleague a young colleague of mine said I've been in this room this room is where I sleep where I do everything and where I work it's just this room so then work non-work boundary is is is non-existent right so these issues of of fatigue of exhaustion of getting away from work of being staying mentally healthy all of these things become very critical right we are a small firm but how do large companies where there is distributed project management how do they how will they deal with this over a period of time I mean so many IT companies are saying that till the end of this year you pretty much work from home right and then there is a matter of productivity right while people are some people have said that I'm working harder but I'm not as productive right so there is clearly role for technology that that makes processes more streamlined and to to help with this but but this is is certainly again a very rich area for innovation and disruption is how do you make distributed teams working online together for extended periods of time productive engaged mentally fit and healthy and with a sense of identity with and and and and loyalty or commitment to the company the fact that I work for ex I you know as opposed to you know I'm a freelancer or which is also fun there is a whole freelance way of life but if you're an employee of a company how do you feel that I'm still an employee of that company how do you keep that engagement so I do expect to see interesting innovation there but this is not an easy problem to solve these are all all fairly challenging nuanced problems and they also have cultural contexts what works in the US may or may not work in India right unlike unlike swiggy unlike say a restaurant delivery or taking a shared cab which is a similar experience there's not a whole lot different here or there maybe payment modes are different or there they pay with credit cards here we pay with whatever you know pay tm and so on but these things that involve psychology and and and so on and so forth they have to be very nuanced and specific to specific context sure yeah totally agree um you know madhukar if you would like to ask your question now unmute yourself please first can you unmute and ask your question madhukar okay so there is another question which is from nara kalyani who's asking how can he a social helping idea be a good idea for business do you think there can be a conflict in that in that session how can it be good how can it be possible without good marketing but the validation of the idea is there so I think I I'm not sure I understand the question I think the asking is that if it is a socially I mean if it's a social idea how is it how can it really sort of translate into business no you have to there there is no sacrifice I mean you find it may it may be positively impacting you know either through access as I said improving incomes or or improving access to health care financial services getting a job or and so on but if you are providing a service if that service is valuable then somebody should be willing to pay for it and you should be able to deliver that service at a cost that is less than what the customer is willing to pay for it that is where the proof of the pudding lies that IE in other terms in jargon it needs to have healthy unit economics that is the fundamental premise behind for-profit impact investing is that you should be able to provide a service for which somebody is willing to pay so the beneficiary see look in the world there are there is a whole cross-section of needs at the lowest rung of the pyramid there is not enough money to make to create profitable profitable businesses so there is a strong role for the government for philanthropy and so on for grant based NGO based offerings okay where the beneficiaries are essentially recipients of grants of help you go to the next layer above where you have the aspirational hundreds of millions of people honestly beyond the first hundred and fifty million in India who all want to improve their life they all have some income 20, 25, 30, 15,000 a month or 20,000 a month they want to be customers the moment somebody is a customer he can demand better service there is a dignity in being a customer as opposed to being a recipient of a grant so you your your if your service or offering is targeting that segment then you need to to have a value proposition where the customer is willing to pay that money to you on the other hand if your business your idea your social idea is looking at improving the lot of people who are at even a much slower level who can't afford to pay for it then the then the way you get that service to them is a different model then you work through grants then you write that you are not building a for-profit profitable business that can scale by attracting investors so there are different models for different strata of of of society in the in the socio-economic pyramid am i making sense to you you're making sense to me for sure okay so there is somebody who's asked us on facebook Shalabh Dhingra who's saying what is the scope of domain specific edtech solutions say for example only for hospitality and all something else i mean if it is a large domain i i prefer horizontals because you know then they they are inherently a little more robust if one sector goes down the other can right so if it is a design skills marketing skills software engineering and programs their data analysis and and and those are applicable across uh oh nara kalyani likes my explanation you're most welcome uh um so yeah but but if you are if you are if you've taken a very large uh uh segments i mean verticals then obviously the uh that's fine uh and clearly hospitality requires a lot of help at this point so uh you know if you have uh innovative interesting ideas that could help that sector then more power to you don't don't get into markets that are that are are very small because they are if they are smaller small niche markets then you have to make sure that you have you you you assume get a get to a leadership position so for that your your uh offering has to be that much more compelling from a value or a cost perspective and uh also if you're going to get into markets that are winner take all and and which will largely be be uh propelled by the momentum of capital then be very careful it right so my my counsel to to kids to people who are building real businesses uh is to ensure that you have sound unit economics sure i think we'll take one question from uh you know that has come in from again from facebook which says that you know that the covid has given a death knell to the gym culture but fitness is very important so do you think four startups are going to come in or like fitness apps to keep track on users health i mean this i would love to know because you know i know initially we had these iot products these watches which would help us track our you know our body and how we were exercising and they were quite a rich and they still are to a large extent but i mean do you think we need more products like these in order to be able to now probably do it at home i mean do it in our own times so how do you think things might change in that direction you know this is a this is a very relevant and question to in my own life and both my wife and i go to a used to go to a trainer a local specialized gym our daughter used to go to cult fit which is our cult fit or one of those i think it's that that network see what a trainer does is by having a routine he or she motivates you okay and plus also that trainer has the ability to fine tune and and and create the program suited to your needs and your progress and your problems on an ongoing basis the both of these aspects are very important even if if let's say that the personal trainer bit maybe if it's expensive for people but the motivation it is very important when you paid money to go to a gym at a certain appointed hour you will and there is a day you go there right you can do a lot i mean in theory you can actually buy weights you can buy all the some of that equipment and do all of that shit at home right there is nothing stopping you from doing it it is the fact is that unless you are so inherently motivated and the sad thing is most people are not they require external products whether in terms of paying a trainer or the trainer sort of thing or the gym saying that you better show up on this day or whatever right so how do you simulate that through an app to get the same level of motivation so that you don't fall by the wayside after after you know a few sessions or a month or a couple of months that to me is is a very important the efficacy of the training it's not so difficult i think it can that can be done what will require a lot more thinking is how do you complete the feedback loop how does the trainer if there is a trainer at the other end of the app in real time watching your progress how do they see whether how you are doing in terms of a muscle strength this that in the other and accordingly you know fine-tune the the training schedule and regimen right if if somebody can really solve for the motive motivation problem the rest of the things can can can i think fall in place quite well there is motivation and and also the the fact that you go to a gym there are other people over there you know there is a sense of shared pain so so there are all those aspects which are which seem trivial they're not trivial they're just not trivial sitting in your house in your room you'd probably much rather switch on Netflix and stuff your face with chips then switch on this app and and start roll on the yoga mat and start doing exercise that's just human nature and other than the this may work for the really disciplined five percent how do you get the other 45 50 percent do this i think that that if someone cracks that nut i think that'll be very interesting the rest of the stuff i think can be dealt with so let me ask you a question which may sound very philosophical but i think you know we at some point of time i think the humanity needs to answer it at least in the next year or so we're going digital very fast whether it's education fitness uh we you know watching movies everything i mean you know and practically we are like almost 16 hours in front of a screen give or take particularly in the times that we are currently but do you feel that it will take at least a generation or two before we learn and i mean learn to imbibe um you know remote remote and probably digital culture of learning performing productivity um uh you know being able to give our best through the digital way and being responsible enough you know we used to be office culture where people were right in front of us and we could tell them that okay no look ready you're not going right there let's let's try to work it out like that now i mean i don't know what this person is you know it is one of my people sometimes i don't know what they're thinking they can't help my office door to say no but you know i i have this problem just help me out here so do you think it's going to take that and i mean for even for let's say even an edtech for teachers teachers were not ready to teach students online students were not ready to learn online so i mean you know by the time real outcomes will come out of all of this right now we are still in the infrastructural mode of it you know infrastructure is getting created but at some point of time there is going to be uh you know result orientation that we will all have so how do you think we can sort of speed it up how can how do you think we can ensure that we are able to get results out of it sooner so so uh my own thinking is that um see we are now at a point where the pendulum has swung to the extreme end the other end where we are sort of prisoners in our own within our own four walls those can afford to be right many uh so schools and colleges and you know so many universities in the us even in india are doing complete online sessions for the next semester i think that you know we are inherently social creatures we like physicality we like touch we like people you know we like to go out and and and walk in the park or or eat in restaurants or go to mess so i think there will be a vaccine uh uh you know there there clearly uh i mean in fact i was watching a a i saw a photograph of uh some water body i think it was a seashore or somewhere with chock a block with people and and it said this was in Wuhan they were they had a post pandemic party and and because the fear of the virus has largely gone in Wuhan so this will happen over the next year you know so the the the world will come back to a point where uh it's not going to be all digital for for ever and ever right there will there we will figure out a lot of of uh as individuals as families as corporations large and small and large medium and small companies as neighborhood businesses community figure out a way to incorporate digital more integrally into the way we do things right but it is not going to be all it feels that way now but a year and a half year two years on there are people will go out people will be back to what we're doing and i hope so there will be a vaccine there will be immunity it will hopefully uh uh you know get to the point where it becomes like a more virulent form of a cold virus what i i do hope i don't know i mean we have not shown the ability to learn that lesson is to be more respectful of nature and less wasteful in our consumption and in our our really this it's huge destructive waste with the environment so this this is yet another this is one thing you know that small virus failed the entire world and brought it to its knees for a few months now man humans have a have a fairly deep sense of arrogance uh that god made all of this for us so whether that whether we learn this lesson in a for for the long haul or we'll go back to our usual ways two three years from now i don't know i hope that we will and we are less destructive of the surroundings around us but uh do your question everything's not going to be purely digital it will become more important clearly uh uh as i said many behaviors got accelerated people will innovate to make it more sustainable more productive uh uh and not just you're doing it because you have to do it there is no other way of doing it uh so it will become one of the another important channel of how we do things right uh but it's not going to become the only way i i i don't think so i don't hold uh such a pessimistic view of i think uh we do we as you said we do like things in physical format and touch and feel uh you know as humans and i think hope that continues and comes back soon as we know i think after few months started missing it quite a bit yeah but you know thank you so much surya for taking making time for us and talking to entrepreneur india here today uh for all our pleasure who were there today and asking questions thank you for you know keep it up in fact in fact you have more questions we are on facebook live with this talk keep on posting your questions we're going to ask surya or his team to answer some specific questions that you are likely to ask and uh surya hopefully next time when we meet it will not be over a screen but in person and when we can actually handshake and really talk about and show things to each other that you know and i mean you know given the fact that i think this person was a gentleman was not able to ask his question but i mean really i mean how how is it that somebody has a product to show to you how is he going to show you exactly oh yeah yeah you're exactly right so i mean you know things need to change and eventually we need to come into a physical way of doing things and hopefully we keep on bringing and educating you all our viewers at entrepreneur india through this channel and thank you surya for making time today and thank you thank you so much my pleasure indeed take care be safe take care


Good afternoon everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Armour the Stocks. What should I'm here today to review Amazon? I did an option trade in this today. I took it and then I took a little bit more and then I took some right into the clothes. It was very very late. I tried to get filled. In fact, the last fill was Shoo, five seconds before the close. My last fill was 15.59.50. Here, look at this. This is really funny. Look, I tried to get 10 more and Then I didn't get filled the rest. I only got filled six. Let's go over it. So I decided to do an option in Amazon today. Why? Because it gapped up. It had a big move. I did calls. I bought calls. You can do this tomorrow morning. It's absolutely fine. They expire on Friday. Price point is 800. That's the target. But also I'm looking at a target really up here 785, 786 really also 790, which is the resistance. This is the resistance 789, 790 is the resistance. If it gets over this, the stock could blow go well over 800. Tomorrow there's an FOMC announcement. My expectations for that are what? That there's a positive reaction to the market. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the morning. What I'm looking for Amazon to do tomorrow morning pre-market is to gap up in this area here from where it closed into the high of the day. So I would like it to gap into the tail. It closed at 774.45, I think. 46 is off by a penny. And I would like it to gap up over that area in the tail area here. So if that does that, here we're gapping up a little bit. If it gaps into the area here, it'll rally up onto the day over the high here. Now I will tell you something. I took this and I was, you know, when you're doing these options, you have to decide what is a good price? What am I willing to pay? It had a beautiful move this morning, which I'm going to go over in a minute. And then I thought, I'm trying to get this to one. I want to get it to one. And then the day went on the day when I thought, you know what, 130, 140, under 150 is good. I bought some at 135, some at one. Here, what did I spend on this? 135, then I got 149, then I got 120, then I got the rest at 74 cents. So my average cost is basically what is fine to pay, which is 125, except I'm down in the trade right now into the close, because I took some at prices over this. Maybe I should have waited to the close. Actually, I ran to the bank. I did some things. I came back. I might not even have gotten this if I hadn't gotten back before four o'clock. It was like 358 when I came back home and I saw it and I was like, ah, maybe just take some more. Anyways, bottom line is I'm down $1,700 in this, but the trade is good. It's really, really, really good. So I have 36 contracts, which is 3,600 shares. What am I looking for this to do? So let's look, well, I told you the targets. Let's look at the option chain. And then I'm going to go over the chart again, like that this does all these different squares. This is perfectly good to do tomorrow morning. If you didn't get it today, I'm giving you a trade. Go do it if you want. So wherever this opens tomorrow, this says three, but I didn't see that run up to that. I saw it run up to two. I don't think that's accurate, but whatever. Anyways, last fill was probably me five seconds into the clock. Anyways, that probably was me. Anyways, to make a long story short, low today was 38 cents. So if you bought it today at 38 cents, you could have made a huge amount of money because it ran up to two. Huge. And I was just, I was looking at other things in the morning to day trade, but you can day trade options. You could have bought it at 38 cents today and you could have sold it at two. And how did I know to do it? I'm going to show you in a minute, but I really quickly, this is very good. You could still do it into the open tomorrow morning. You could put an order out before the open actually to do it. One, one, two, five, good prices. You should be able to get this tomorrow at one, two, five where I have it now. My average cost one, watch it. It's spreading in the open, but put an order out into the open because if it runs up, it's going to, it's going to rally. Anyways, to make a long story short, this here, huge volume here today. Look at that. Almost double the volume of the open interest here, which is 48.76. Today's, this is, this is, you know, these are new trades in here. Some may have sold, but I doubt it. And why? What's the reason? Because the stock itself is making a turnaround. Today's the turnaround day in this. And it's, and it's a, it's a day in the market actually, which I'm going to go over the market next, which is gives me a hundred percent conviction that everything is higher. And it's really going to be a bullish year in 2017. But let's go back. What am I really looking? Let's just say this goes to 790. So here we are at the 7, 7, we close at 775. Say we run up to 790-ish minus some time value between two, two and a half-ish. Okay. Tomorrow, if it runs up to there, if it gets to the strike 800, which I don't know if I'll hold it to that because I'm going to try to run this up tomorrow, 770. Mm-hmm. You know, it'll be like five to six. That'd be amazing. But again, the idea is that you take a certain amount of risk and you take it. If you can double your money in one trade, you get out. So I'll be perfectly happy with this, making 1,000, 2,000 or doubling my risk, which actually was quite a lot because I took 3,600 shares. I tried to get 40, 4,000, but I contracts, but I didn't, I didn't get it. It was just too late, but I'm happy with what I got. It pulled my price down a lot. Now let's go over the chart. Why did I like this? First of all, it was a bullish gap up. I only trade gaps. I'm doing gaps. I'm doing gap ups. I'm doing gap downs. They have to rate. Well, what do I like about this chart? I love the fact that this had the turnaround day today. This stock has been struggling. I've been watching it for a while today. Finally, finally today, it got over this area convincingly for the second time. Do you see this here? This was a gap down here that happened and it dropped hard and it finally went over it. It also closed over this area here, which was the resistance. A secondary resistance. Here was the first area. Here was the secondary area. It got over it. It closed over it. And it also was a bullish gap up that happened here. Open was 77405. We closed above that. We closed. So we closed over this area here, the resistance. But that's not even what made me decide to do it. Besides the bullish gap, what's the reason that I did this trade? Well, I'm just going to tell you right now. It opened and swished. It did a stock swish. A stock swish is something that happens in a gap. And it opened and did a stock swish today. And when it came in, even when it came in, which it only did because the market fell in the after and in the last 15 minutes of the close into the close, it came in and it held. Look at this people. This held. So this big massive bar here, lowest 762, highest 776 happened in the first 15 minutes of the day. And it held 90% of this bar, 85%. Whatever the number is, this is institutional buying people. Look at the volume. Look at the move that it had. It's amazing. So this tells me that institutions bought Amazon today. They stepped in with power, huge volume, massive move, and it did a stock swish. Let's go to the one minute chart. And so I'm in this trade because it did a bullish gap up and it opened, did it a stock swish. So I'm seeing follow through that the institutions that bought the stock on the day will continue to hire immediately and will not let it break. So I'm in this here and like I said, you could even take it tomorrow morning. It does it as anything, anything under two at this point is a good entry between one and 150 would be perfectly good. Like I have anything under one is a gift, but it's probably going to open over one tomorrow morning if we gap up. But anyways, here's the open and here you have it. So do you see this here, highest 769.44 $7.64 $5 it opened and swished. So I mean, look at this, look at this. This is look. So I'm in it. And this is the turnaround day for the stock. I've been watching it for a while and waiting and waiting and waiting and the stock is so strong it's going to every number and then some far exceeded expectations almost went to 850. There's nothing wrong with this. It gap down on the earnings and then fell and did all the stuff in here, but it's recovered finally today. Today is a recovery day. The confirmation for many people to buy back into it probably will be here, but it will be very expensive then today is still affordable. I'm predicting that it's going to follow through in today's thing. It's that you're taking a chance when you make predictions to get in a cost at a good price. But that's how you make the risk to reward. That's how you make money. That's how you make 100% return investment and sometimes more than that. And I'll be very happy here if I just get that. Now let's quickly look at the market and then let everybody go for the evening. The overall market, which we're going to look at the QQQs finally made a brand new all-time high today. 121 was one of the targets that hit it. It went over the number tomorrow's FOMC minutes came in a little bit in the close, but actually that's good for the market to continue higher tomorrow. If the market had closed very strong near 121, it probably would have gapped up high or gapped down a little and been hard to get over and waited for the minutes. This is better the follow through right now where we are tonight. Again, I don't know where we are in the morning. This is the follow through in the live day tomorrow is better for the pulling that we had into the close. I don't know if you understand what I'm saying, but I'm telling you that's a fact. And the spy obviously is higher as well. And the next number is 230. We got to 228 something today, 2834. So I mean a lot of people think they missed the move. They're not long, but you can't short this. How could you possibly short this? This is a breakout bar, the QQQs. You can not short this. You wouldn't be short of this. This is not a top. This is a brand new breakout bar that has happened in the QQQs. And every strong stock that exists, everyone in the planet and Amazon is one of them despite the way it's traded in the last six weeks. It made the turnaround day to day. Every strong stock is going to follow through higher in 2017. It's going to be an extremely bullish year. I thought it was going to be 2016. It was a bullish year in the market. We recovered well from the way we began, but I actually believe that in the next 60 to 90 days, we see extreme bullishness in the market and meaning that it will give people the confidence that they need to really full on buy and believe in the market. You can call it optimism. You can call it whatever you want. You can call it anything at all. But people now are finally feeling good about the market and they're feeling confidence again. And it is all about those emotions that create people wanting to take trades. My emotions in this today were high. As soon as I saw the stocks whoosh, I was very, very happy and I wish I would have bought it at 38 cents, but I didn't. So anyways, have a great day everyone. You can get this in the morning again. Amazon 800 calls expiring Friday. You'll pay up if you get it out later. First target is 785-786-790-792-800 and FOMC Minutes tomorrow. Good luck everyone. It's capping up a little bit tonight. Close at 774-46. Right now at 774-79. And this bar here, which is a real bar here because you can see the volume was at 777. I'm looking for a gap up in Amazon tomorrow between here and here. Have a great night everyone. If you'd like to sign up for the Golden Gap course, the last class of the year is Sunday and Monday. I'm very excited. It's been an amazing year and 2017 proves to be much, much better. Thanks everyone and have a great evening. Gotta be kidding me. You have got to be kidding me. Good afternoon everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Armel with the Stock Swoosh. Tonight I'm reviewing Amazon. Why? Because I did an option in this and if you want to do this, it's not too late. You could do it tomorrow morning into the open between 9.30, 9.35, 9.45-ish. You can wait until it settles out a little bit and jiggles and wiggles or you could put the order out before the open. If you get this anywhere under one and a half now, the price is good. My price in this is 1.25. This morning it opened at 38 cents. What is the reason I did the trade? First of all, let me just show you.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebrakes.com. Our last wax party break. Can you believe it? We finally made it. We're here. And the last one is 2022, Panini 1 football, 10 box, pick your team number 8, the second half of the case that we just opened up not too long ago. And not surprisingly it being the last break. Yep, sold out straight up. We didn't have to do any give away break or anything like that. Alright, so here on 720, 23, thanks everyone for getting in. Carl with I think his quadruple last bot mojo, or Chris. He answers to both. That's CKH in the chat. But he got quadruple last bot mojo to help sell out this break. Thanks everyone for making it happen. We're finally here at long last. We did intend for this, the wax party, to be sort of a marathon-y kind of break, or promo. And we finally made it. I appreciate everybody being part of it. We'll see you for the randomizer in the next video. Alright. But the first of the hits, we've got Wondale Robinson. That's going to go to Will and the Giants, where there's a Will, there's a way. Or a Wondale, like the case making. Next up is Nike Swoosh on-card autograph Malik Willis. Two out of five. Sort of a bummer that kind of seems like they're moving off from Malik Willis, but still nice. Nike Swooshes are always cool. That goes to Chris. See CKH and all aboard the Big Hit Express. 111 out of 149, two-color patch and autograph. Going to Pittsburgh. Jan Wallace with the Steelers. And then we've got Kenneth Walker III. Two-color patch and autograph 24 out of 99. RPA for Seattle. Chris, that's one of his last bot mojo teams. And we've got some Terry McLauren. Nice. That's a Lone Star Jersey and Autograph. That's seven out of 25. Nice one for the commanders. That's going to be for Chris. Last spot mojo. Alright. Another five. We've got Precision Jersey and Autograph, Jalen Tolbert. Two-color patch and autograph. 57 out of 99. We've got a new camera, ladies and gentlemen. So I can kind of, I can really zoom in here. We can really read the text right here as well. Yeah. I agree, Jason, that Panini One is a good-looking set. What is this? A bonus pack? The hit is for my Raiders. Lone Star, Jersey and Sincturd, Marcus Allen. Nice. 34 out of 35. And that's going to be for who's got my Raiders. Joseph K. has my Raiders. It's a surge. It's a surge. What is it? A surge? Something? A super short print. I've never gotten an extra like that, but Jason's acting like he's seen that before. Ooh. It looks like a metal plate. I know this guy. It's Tom Brady. Tom Brady's surge. That's Buccaneers Edition. Buccaneers were one of the last teams picked up by CKH. We've got kind of a paint splatter look on the background there. It's like a Jackson Pollock painting. That's awesome. Carl, congrats. Still three more to go. Next up is day one autographed Damien Pierce for the Texans. 23 out of 99. Steve Locke with Houston. Second to last one is what a case. Three out of 15. Quad relic and autographed Desmond Ritter. Desmond has a bow in the market place. Never was a singer in advance. That goes to Chris and the Dirty Birds. Got a new camera. We've got to mess around with that. Okay. Last one is nice. Jason Jaspy is going to like this one. Formula one dual relic and autographed Brian Westbrook. Jason, if you're listening, tell me your favorite Brian Westbrook story. That's pretty cool. That is kind of catch that in the lighting right there. 10 out of 15. Yeah, look up the Brian Westbrook numbers, ladies and gentlemen. It was real good. That's for Aaron Salinas and the Philadelphia Eagles. The Fly Eagles Fly. All right. Our last wax party invite being given away here. And slip back over here. Big thanks. Once again, everyone for filling this up straight up. Let's gather everybody's names one through 32. Jersey. Dice, new dice that is an autograph. Jersey and autograph. Jersey and list. Dice and list. Losing my mind. All right. Last wax party invite. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it five and four nine times. Name on top gets it after nine. The last invite. Fingers crossed, everybody. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And once more, ninth and final time. After nine. Good luck. Last wax party invite is going to go to two. Unfortunately, it will not go to number two, which is the saddest spot because you're so close. Jay Goins. Very close, but just not quite. But I appreciate you and everyone for trying. But after nine times, there can be only one winner and that's going to be Joseph Kay. There you go, Joe. Congrats to you. After nine times, your name's on top. You got the last wax party invite. I'm Joe for jaskiescasewrakes.com. I'll see you for the wax party invite randomizer. Bye-bye.


Very very good morning guys. It is Wednesday the 25th of March. I hope you're doing well I'm just gonna have a look at this to start with. This is a heat map of the S&P 500 So rather than always be here every morning telling you about the doom and gloom I thought I'd bring you a bit of green and a bit of positivity On this Wednesday morning. So as you can see here quite a spectacular move really yesterday and as we'll look in the Dow In you know, we're talking about a nearly a hundred year biggest move that we've seen in that in stock index So yesterday, obviously Apple you know gains of 10% and I was looking at some of the energy majors Chevron's shares were up 23% Microsoft nearly 10% so yeah quite incredible moves and when we look over at the The lights of the Dow the Dow actually gained from a points perspective yet over 2100 points and that would have been again in excess of 11% the biggest since 1933 As you can see here this this access on the bottom going all the way back to that that data point of when we were I guess that The depths of the the Great Depression and the the ensuing volatility that we saw there And you can see despite the the 1987 kind of crash that we had on Black Monday Exing that out. You can see we're right on the extremities of the overall outlying Areas of volatility that we've had most recently as a statistic the Dow has swung an average of 7% since the 12th of March. I mean, it's quite phenomenal The level of volatility that we have had but overall I would say what has been quite apparent over the last Day or two is the violent nature of the blips and the swings sure there was a little pop when the Fed made that new Kind of policy announcement two days ago But otherwise I think from comparative to The say two weeks ago a week and a half ago when it was really flying around I think things have calmed slightly so perhaps this combination then of what central banks have done and it's kind of Whatever it takes coordination with the governments Paying some dividend you could say but certainly that was the key story underlying We'll talk about that more the US fiscal package that's said to be over the line now And that's going to be key as well because it's a it's a real quite unprecedented unprecedented in terms of the size of the deal and This is one of the things I was looking at This was you know if you want to take a look at this This is just a statistics Pulled from whenever the Dow has gained More than 10% what happens next? You know this is a common question that you know if you're looking at the stats in history It's quite interesting to look back at you know the other times we've had these types of moves I mean obviously 2008 as much as it was Decisive more moves to the downside the word days when there was big snapbacks higher and there was two of those occasions in October of 2008 Otherwise most of these are based in the 1930s and obviously just following the the crash that we had in 87 There was a day bouncing back plus 10% But you can see here the average returns one month later after a kind of a 10% plus move in the Dow Typically is around a 3% loss over three months four and a half percent over six months 7.87% it's not until two years later. We're actually higher so Obviously when you look at these types of things, I mean for me I mean this guy is great Ryan Dietrich. I think he works for LPL financial in America If I did reshare or retweet this that he posted last night So if you just go on my Twitter account, you'll be able to find it just search for my name but here You got to put this type of thing into context obviously what the market was like the market dynamics The kind of underlying structure of the market the context of the monetary policy and play at that point the valuation In terms of the overall stock market as a whole there's a lot of considerations here So I don't blindly think well look I bearish because this the stats tell me that the market generally goes down in the period Thereafter and you can't be that simplistic, but it certainly helps I think add a bit of a layer of context is generally to your overall broader kind of thinking You know why has the market rallyed like it has well, this is the big one of course that people are looking at This is the Trump administration They've struck a deal with the Senate Democrats and Republicans and a historical package We're talking you know more than two trillion dollars in size. So this is one of those things where I think Sam did a great It's kind of montage Video tweet about Trump and it only goes back about four or five weeks and it was Trump saying this virus is nothing It's fake news and then he kind of ramps it up and he's gradually gone to where he is at the moment And you know one of the things here was this idea that they start with a kind of relative small package It then went up to one point two trillion you remember when I was doing the briefing I think it was only Friday and now we're talking in the excessive two trillion And this is one of the things that we've been point pointing out here amplifiers This idea that you know did these governments will continue to add to this number and it's not it's not I don't think going to be that unusual But certainly the market seeing you could argue a bit of a meaningful response down the fact This is going to go through is looking most likely I got some details here just to break it down an additional level So you know what you're dealing with the plan includes 500 billion dollar chunk that could be used to back loans and other aid to businesses Checks of $1,200 to most Americans most Americans more than 350 billion for small businesses to maintain their payrolls More expensive unemployment insurance deferrals of taxes and numerous other provisions according to those familiar with the with the details So if anything it kind of mimics very similar in a sense to what the UK We're doing and probably in a proportionate sense from a size perspective The same kind of firepower is being unveiled at this point and this is what's you know, so keys coordinated global effort To give you again bit of context in the I think it was five months after The financial crisis hit in 2008 President Barack Obama at the time did an 800 billion dollar Stimulus package what Trump's talking about now is in excess of two trillion dollars. So it's just to put that Again side-by-side the Trump package is you know huge in that sense One thing that Trump has been saying is he's been talking about Trump starts national debate on when to reopen the economy now the president faces a pushback He says he wants to have the US fully open for business by Easter now Easter is the 12th of April is that right? But it's not that far off. I mean we're talking about three weeks and I'm gonna say it now. I think there's absolutely No way the US will be fully opened by Easter. I feel pretty confident with making that statement I was just having a look at the coronavirus kind of live tracker And specifically locking in on the US So as you can see here It really is picking up traction now here in America and particularly on the The areas of which we know it's kind of Washington State in the North West so Seattle and then the state of Oregon California and San Fran and then look at the East Coast in New York in specifically. So I think there is no way He's gonna be able to fully reopen America in April I think he's probably off the mark from a time perspective at least three months Probably for full reopening like what we're seeing tentatively in Wuhan in Hubei province in China on the 8th of April So for me this the lockdown measures things like what we've seen in other more popular cities like in New York In LA for example, what we've seen now deployed in London and of course in mainland Europe I think the only way for the US to go now is getting more Onerous measures put into place not the other way round And that that's not going to be the short-term measure either I don't think hence the reason why you're getting these monster kind of packages coming in on the Spending side to support the economy in addition to the Fed as well as we saw doing everything that they can possibly do so Guess the big question then Before I get on to the charts and talk about the big question being where the stocks go next You know, this was one of the other things this is the FT's live tracker of the trajectory of the different rates of which deaths tolls in certain cities are In regards to that's doubling every day every two days three days every week This is a graphic we've looked at before but the one that's actually moved where the curve has gone that way And the curve getting steeper generally is a negative Right that means that the death rate is becoming accelerated and what you can see here is New York Now New York has gone from pretty much a kind of mid Level in terms of comparative to other areas to now one of the sharpest increases almost Deaths doubling every single day now That in addition to Madrid having followed a similar path But New York and Madrid could pass Lombardia is the worst affected Subnational regions now and that was obviously that first initial breakout that we saw in mainland Europe Where the Italian numbers if you go back on here on the left-hand side are still extra ordinarily high You know, some people look at the demographics of Italy generally quite an older population they have co-generational Habitation which is very different in terms of family units living together You know older grandmas living with young children and so on and that of course increases the risk and further spreading So Italy is a little unique in that sense, but you know, I think New York is Quite a worrying one here. I mean London still numbers are increasing But at a less rapid pace at this point side and point being I think Trump is doing what Trump does He's kind of trying to spin positive lights on this He's going to say that he brought Congress together for this this package to bad out America And as we're going to see at the moment, he's also trying to manage this ongoing tension with China As well, which is fairly precarious at this point in time With that in mind, let's just quickly jump over to China This was something the FT this morning And I'm not saying that this is moving markets But it definitely helps to supplement this kind of global action that's taking place at the moment This is China's central bank is considering deposit rate cut Now what they're saying is a reduction could come in the coming days according to those familiar with the matter in the FT lowing lowering rates on a hundred and seventy five trillion yuan that quakes to around twenty five trillion US dollars of household and corporate savings with boost bank margins and free up capacity for lenders Who are feeling the pressure generally from the the rising of bad debt that they've been seeing given the pressure that they've been under So to put this in a bit of context, this is what the benchmark interest rate for saving deposit looks like At the bottom and the old benchmark rate for loans is in the blue But you can see the last time we saw a real cutting action from the PBOC So remember when we've seen the Chinese central bank cut rates before it's the reserve requirement ratio So now we're talking more specifically about other measures So the benchmark deposit rate which would be slightly different now This is kind of their main core rates if you like and here 2014 2015 you remember This is when you know oil prices saw that quite catastrophic downward move The whole global economy we saw that was one of the memorable moments when we were hitting limit down in US Indices back in that period because of the fears of a Chinese hard landing So that's when they took multiple steps to lower rates quite aggressively and I haven't really done that at all Since then so if they do cut rates in the coming days as is now broadly expected It's gonna be the first time that they've done that since 2015 So again further measures that they're looking to deploy at this point the other thing that they're saying here was talking about The White House's top trade adviser Navarro. He was talking quoted in the the press this morning Was set to be considering a three-month deferral of tariff payments on imported goods to ease the pain if the economic shut down caused by the pandemic now He has since come out and basically denied this How so as what it's saying he's denying it these press reports But more often than not there's no smoke without fire and probably this is up for discussion Interestingly in combination with this Trump came out yesterday, and he said he's no longer going to call it a Chinese virus He's not been as forthcoming saying he was wrong. He was saying well, that's what it is It did come from there, but I'm not going to use that word anymore And he was tweeting yesterday saying about how he supports American born Chinese and so on so He's definitely you know, this is one of the things it's kind of like the Easter promise that he makes He says something and then he flips it and you know the problem that you have is this kind of boy who cried wolf Means that it's a two-fold thing one a positive he can change then and pivot his view and People can deal with that because it's quite normal But the other thing is is that if he keeps doing it again and again and again When does it come to a point where people just don't believe what he's saying anymore? The problem you have I guess with the latter is he is delivering the Fed of cut rates to zero and The the US Congress has now signed off in a north of two trillion dollar package now again I'm not here to sound like I'm some sort of Trump fanatic, but just thinking through the the way that this is evolving I think it's one of those where you know, he kind of muddles his way through but relatively unscathed in in some senses So yeah, I mean that's that's pretty much getting you up to date with the main headlines for today One thing that you probably would have noticed earlier this morning is that the UK data I've just got the Calendar here UK data has already come out now. Obviously data normally comes out at 9 30 I've been on the phone and I've already called the guys at new squawk to ask them the analyst desk About what the deal is with this and they said that it is a permanent feature I'm not sure if that myself so we'll need to qualify that statement But UK data obviously is normally 9 30. I can understand logic probably if they did move it to 7 a.m.. Just looking to avert probably an excessive market volatility perhaps when everyone's in the marketplace dropping in earlier pre kind of generally round market open Perhaps that's the strategy there But here we had the inflation metrics coming out the UK And it came in at year-on-year 1.7% in line the month-to-month point for above the expected point three The core reading on the CPI came in at 1.7 above expected one five and point six I was expected point four on the month-to-month core again. These are February reading So quite frankly if you look at the sterling chart It hasn't even blinked and quite rightly so this is backward-looking data And I really don't think it carries any significance at all Because also we know the stance of the Bank of England as well and they're thinking very much so about the future This is all backward-looking data. So that has come out early some of the other things they were talking about Analysts when I was saying this morning about why this might have come out early is O&S leak And so they wanted to just get it out there before potentially then it does start to circulate that has I have seen that before over the years If they're aware of this for whatever reason they can just Bring forward the actual release time and the other thing is that they've apparently just removed the lock up now You'll probably would have read in the press. There was a lot of issues about unauthorized accredited news agencies getting access to certain feeds at the central bank and so on so perhaps they're going through a bit of a Restructuring process and might make sense because now Andrew Bailey's there Carney is left and maybe a review of these processes But overall I wouldn't read too much into it net net doesn't really matter this data today for any sterling strategies that you're thinking of Here then what else have we got we got the German ifo business climate Obviously going to be quite interesting. We're looking for a meaningful shift to the downside as you would expect given that this is Companies on the ground level in Germany what they think about current and future expectations They're going to have deteriorated quite substantially as you would imagine yesterday. We had the US manufacturing service Numbers coming out for March and they were that they fell the most on record This is something being felt as well across the Eurozone of which we saw in those flash readings and so if Business sentiment is going to be depressed in in Europe or in Germany in this case I don't think that's again too much of a surprise to be quite frank Otherwise we've got the war in the trees bit later They'll be coming out at two-thirds. You remember the UK clocks don't change till this afternoon If you ever did want to see what those API numbers were I can just bring them up for you now just so we can see it together Zero hedge is actually the best place zero hedge if you're not familiar with the markets is kind of a quite an influence blog site Where it gets a lot of traffic day-to-day especially from intraday traders They tend to be a little bit sensationalist, but they do put out some some decent stats and bank commentary and so on which can be quite useful So here's the numbers from last night Just so I can share them with you. You had a crew drawdown of one and a quarter million Let's bring them up here. That was against expectations of two and a half million Cushing was a bill of a million gasoline a draw two point six million broadly in line to still it's a draw of 1.9 million broadly in line so Let's have a look at the actual charts then and talk through a few things for one oil Here you can see Goes back to around when the data came out no real way too much in a way of response as you would expect I mean from the oil market There's so much other things going on at the moment in regards to the ongoing price battle between Saudi and Russia Obviously the growth implications from the pandemic. I still feel I still feel fairly bearish with crude to be quite frank I know we've had a Decent rally over the last two days or so coming off and that lower bound test of close to 20 bucks where we got to the That point on the 18th We kind of retested it right at the beginning of the week at the reopening of trade But ever since then we've kind of managed to claw back some losses But we've come up to this this area now here of the high that we had Yesterday we've retested that in the Asia Pacific session that has held I think that's a decent level of resistance to keep an arm for today's session You can see the R1 in the futures resides just above that point So if anything I'd still be looking to play that market back down today if I was having a kind of a directional bias for the equity markets Gonna have a look at the S&P and also We'll have a look at the dowel and then and the nose that now the S&P here has seen Decent rise this this ellipse here You can see with that big green candle that was when the Fed Conducted that surprise announcement on Monday at the beginning of the week We then reversed that but ever since that point came back to retest the overnight Weekly low before then moving higher. We've kind of respected here this trend line on a couple of occasions Just being here and here for the for the move higher I was also looking at this trend line here, but it's already really gone through that this morning See our response here as it's pulled off those initial highs So you can see as we broke higher through that trend line initial push up to yesterday's high point And then we've had a bit of an about turn here a lot of people asking me about, you know This whole dead cat bounce. It's come up quite quite aggressively decent move particularly on a daylight yesterday Whenever you do get a 10-11% day Generally speaking that does make me feel like the market is fairly susceptible for a bit of a pullback if I'm quite honest because the nature of the unless there's a new fundamental catalyst to just bump us up again which there hasn't been because the News what we've been talking about is all things from yesterday that created that initial price movement I do think perhaps a little bit of a pullback Could be warranted at this point if we did get that then perhaps if we come back down There's a couple of different areas that I'd Generally be looking at But really the lower bound level I think as a as a target here I should remove this would be around here really so if we come back down perhaps This level that high that we had on Monday in the afternoon You can see we respected it a couple times before and if it comes in around the trend line on the timing That could be somewhere to keep an eye on so if I just put a rectangle kind of looking around this area Or if we push further down here to encapsulate that initial fed spike high And the bounce off that trend line that we had in the overnight Asia Pacific session just having a look Elsewhere at some of the other Stock indices. Let's get the get the Dow into play. I think there's some key levels here as well So to keep an eye on if you're looking Looking on a slightly longer time frame here on the 120 candlestick So you can see a similar thing. It's had a bit of a breakout Just a short while ago as we've got above the overnight high and yesterday's high And so that pushed us up to the high that we have in the 17th But again, it's kind of similar you got that 17th high The R1 sat just above and if we look at the NASDAQ hasn't yet really had a concrete break of that same kind of set up slightly different in a sense that is holding for the moment but given the fact now the S&P and the Dow have turned slightly I expect that to hold for the moment But certainly it's going to be more meaningful to watch when we get into the North American session a few hours time Cable just a quick look We've been moving higher fairly aggressively ever since the Fed made that announcement Obviously the dollar got hit on the back of the extraordinary Lengths that the Fed are going to to to promote and support all levels of business really and As we've gone higher cable has been continuing to just claw back some of these Levels of which have been in focus ever since really the just move this up This tells the story of cable over the last Three four years really and this incorporating then the EU referendum level and as we come back up I mean we're trading still about 170 pips away from it at the moment But given the daily ranges that we trade at the moment obviously the big upside resistance level will be the 120 That was the key level that really gave way about a week ago or so and led to this big run down that we had quite quickly remember it was the levels we've traded since 1985 when we've got down to these lows and that big day came a multiple point move And so we're seeing just a bit of a bounce and I'd say perhaps it can continue But would be expecting whether today or in the coming days this week for the market to find some resistance up and around that level all right That is it for the time being a couple of final points if you are watching this and you've got this far in the briefing then obviously please do Follow us on YouTube just hit the subscribe button click the notification bell to get the alerts for every day when we go And we deliver these these broadcasts And then do check out the website amplify trading comm if you're interested in finding out more about what we do Whether on the trading arm or if you're a student and you're looking for further For the kind of training to develop your your prospects for your career. All right, that's it guys Have a good day, and I'll see you tomorrow