Thank you. Thank you. I was going to start by asking, who reads cookbooks in bed in the bathtub? Probably not in the bathtub these days. We don't have enough water, right? Anybody collect cookbooks? Who cooks? Who bakes? I guess I'm in the right room. I am a huge, huge fan of national public radio since I don't have a shop anymore or a bakery. A lot of my work happens at home, and it could be product development, or it could be working on a cookbook, or it could be writing. When I'm not writing, and I'm in the kitchen, the radio is usually on. I'm not saying this because the things I enjoy the most are, anytime an artist or chef or a writer or a scientist is interviewed, it could be Terry Gross, or it could be city arts and lectures. What I love is tying the story of the person from childhood to what they are privileged to do and what they love to do. I even remember enjoying watching Mr. Rogers when my daughter was a toddler because he would always ask the famous artist, what did you like to do when you were little? And I for years thought my entire career was accidental. But if I go back and look at my family and my growing up, I see that it all makes total sense. So I thought I'd just give you a teeny piece of that and leave enough time for a lot of questions at the end. I know there's a ton of you students here, and we might want to talk more specifically about things. But I grew up on Hershey Bars and Hot Fudge Sundays in the 50s in a suburban part of Los Angeles. And in my family, what was important was books and music and getting a good education. That was valued a lot and verbalized, I think. What wasn't spoken of, but what was amply demonstrated was the importance of being able to build or create or make something with your hands. And this was demonstrated and lived in a way. My mother kept us a wash and crayons and pastes and craft things. And we sewed and we cooked and we did all the things that are called DIY today. And my father was a self-taught electronics engineer. This is back in the 50s, mind you. He did not finish college. He was in his spare time. He built furniture. He was a wonderful woodworker. He was a gifted black and white photographer. In our eyes, he could make or fix anything. And there was a summer when he decided to build a small cabin cruiser. And we lived through his learning process. And we lived through weeks of itching because the fiberglass got into the laundry. And two summers later, he built a wooden sailboat with no fiberglass. But anyway, we watched. What we learned from my parents is that not only could you be anything you wanted to be, but you could learn or figure out how to make or do anything you wanted to do. So I think that's been the thread for me. I've never been afraid to try to figure something out. And I've never been afraid to look at something differently than other people look at it. And I think that that's been pretty much the story of my life and my career. When I was 20, I was married and had the good fortune to move to Paris, where my husband had a job. And I didn't. So I roamed the streets. And I went to cooking classes. And I took French. And I chatted with the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker. And I cooked. And I tasted things I'd never tasted before. It was a year of revelation, strawberries that tasted like nothing I'd tasted ever before. Chicken that tasted like chicken, tomatoes that were amazing. And it was also a year when we lived in this very, very quirky private home. It had been a really grand home. And by the time we moved in, the land lady was living there herself with her dog. And she'd carved up this magnificent house into a couple of little flats. And the two of us lived there. And from her, when we first moved in, she gave us chocolate truffles for our fall birthdays. And by the time Christmas came, she felt comfortable enough to invite me into the kitchen to sit at the table and roll these truffles into rounds. How many of you, this is a young crowd. Anybody remember Coca-Cola? Good, great. So the house truffles of Coca-Cola were Madame Lestel's original little chocolate truffles. And on the eve of coming home from Paris, I asked her for that recipe. And I spent the first couple months at home applying to graduate school and trying to figure out this recipe that was scrawled down there. And how many of you remember the pig by the tail in Berkeley? It opened up, I think, while we were away in France, right across the street from Chez Panisse. So I walk in there one day to probably the only charcuterie in the country, run by a couple of American women with this little, I remember it as a handful, but I'm sure I didn't go in with a handful of truffles, a small quantity of truffles. And said in this very small voice, I make these chocolate truffles. Maybe you would like to buy them. And they did, and they were interested. And I found myself making hundreds of dozens of chocolate truffles in the next several months at home. And I think the statute of limitations is up on that, so I don't care who you tell. They were all made at home. And it got me a repu- it certainly increased the reputation of the pig by the tail and got me some reputation as well. Chuck Williams called me out of the blue one day about those chocolate truffles. And at a certain point, I decided that maybe I would expand my repertoire a little bit. I had gone back to Paris a couple of times to do a stag at the Ecole la Note. And in those classes, I was the only person who'd never worked in a commercial kitchen before. I was one of, usually I was the only woman, sometimes the only one of two women, or the only American, or the only one of two Americans.  And a lot of things went right by me. And a few things sunk in. I came back and decided to increase my offerings at the Pig by the Tail. And what I would do is every Monday I would go into the Pig by the Tail, the charcuterie, and post a sign with some elaborate French layered cake. And I would describe it elaborately. And it would either be something I tasted or something I sort of learned at La Note or something I kind of made up from all the elements that I had then learned, right? And I took sign-ups. And these cakes were to be delivered on Friday or Saturday. And I had a limit. I could only take up to six orders, because these were happening in my kitchen at home. And what this really meant was that I had, from Monday evening till Friday morning at 10, to figure out how to make the damn thing. And it also meant that sometimes at 3 in the morning on Friday, I'd finally gotten it and was making it all over again. Because I finally figured out how not to have the buttercream curdle and how not to have the genoise sink in the center. And so, you know, I'm very much my father's daughter in the sense that I have had some training and I know where to go for resources, but I feel pretty comfortable jumping in and figuring these things out. So after a couple of years of doing that, I actually opened a shop called Coca-Cola. When I think back of it, it's frightening how much I did not know, but it was a time and a place when people were eager for something delicious and new and French and chocolate. And it was Berkeley and very forgiving. And what was thrilling was we were putting such amazingly good ingredients, such expensive, wonderful ingredients into cakes and selling them on the street. And we had to, of course, sell them for a great deal more than anything else being sold on the street, but people came for that quality. And what I remember, I mean, that went on, you know, I had Coca-Lovers 14 years or so. And one of the things I remember most fondly and most proudly is not only were we making these delicious things with wonderful ingredients, but the problem solving that it took to increase that production and scale things up, doing the kind of product that really wasn't being done at the time. You guys are all learning it at Second Nature. I mean, it's all part of vocabulary, but really people didn't know these kinds of desserts back then. Much less did they know chocolate truffles. But anyway, to figure out how to increase the scale and volume of that without diminishing the quality, that's something I remember really fondly and that I'm very proud of in that time. Arguably, we even got better at what we were doing over time. By the time I sold Coca-Law, there were seven stores. And chocolate truffle was a household word. And we'd introduced these really too big chocolate truffles that came to be called the American Chocolate Truffle, which were quite the rage for a couple of decades. And in those last few years, I inadvertently reinvented myself by writing my first cookbook, which was also called Coca-Law. And at that point, I found that what I loved about writing a cookbook, you couldn't go and learn to be a cookbook writer at that time.  You just sort of plunged in. I mean, who knew how to do that? I don't know. So it was another kind of plunging situation. But after starting that whole dessert thing, plunging into cookbook didn't seem like a big thing to me. What I found that I loved doing then and has served me well in the years since is that I loved taking what I knew how to do with ingredients and with my palate and with my hands and put it in words on a page in a way that somebody who really wanted to learn could learn and could replicate those recipes. And that was actually quite thrilling. And I was incredibly encouraged by getting a James Beard cookbook of the year award for that book. And in addition, and this is really wonderfully bittersweet and cherished, I also got the Julia Child Award for the best cookbook by a first time author that year for that book. So I mean, since then, there have been about nine cookbooks. And as I look at the pattern, which always seems accidental, it certainly isn't accidental. What I find is that I always like looking at a topic differently than someone else looks at it or looking at a topic that someone else hasn't looked at. And the couple of examples I can get, well, I don't know. I could go back and say that the second cookbook I wrote came quite organically after being invited to teach a cancer education dessert class at Summit Hospital in Oakland. And I did that three or four years in a row. And I realized the first time I was invited to do this, it was all about less fat. Cancer education was about eating with less fat at that time, which it still is in part. But I realized that when I was invited to do that, I could, because I was a dessert person and we were trying to cut down fat and make eating more smart, that I could have gone in there with a poached pear. And it was my husband at the time who very smartly said, they don't want a poached pear from you. They want chocolate. And it just, I realized then that really the challenge of doing a cancer, doing desserts with less fat and less calories and doing it really well was to stick with really good chocolate, stick with all the delicious ingredients and juggle them in a way that the person eating them still felt indulged, that they were still eating dessert, that they weren't giving something up. And I don't know how many of you remember this era of low fat, when low fat was all about substituting prune puree and or applesauce for fat, using egg whites instead of whole eggs, what else? And a lot of low fat chocolate and really awful stuff. So of course, with my background, what I wanted to do was use all the good stuff, the best chocolate with the most flavor, butter when I needed it, cream when I needed it, all those good things that make up dessert and just juggle it.   I won't say the name, you can say it down there, Amy. So unsatisfying that the person who bought it would end up eating the whole box and still feel unsatisfied. So that's exactly what I wasn't going for. And I found this whole project to do desserts. It was called Chocolate in the Art of Low Fat Desserts. I found it so difficult, so thrilling and so challenging and so difficult, so much so that I'd wake up at night and say, God, why did I say I would do this? But so satisfying that, and I learned so much about fat. I learned so, everybody at the time, chefs especially, were saying, well, you know, dear, at a dinner party once a colleague of mine, a well-known colleague of mine, whom I love, asked me what I was doing. And I said, well, I'm working on chocolate desserts with less fat, such and such. And he said, well, dear, he said a lot of lovely things can be done with cocoa. And right then, just because he said that, it became really important to me to not just use cocoa, but to use chocolate in these desserts. Anyway, I learned so much. I've almost never learned so much in a project as that. And the payoff was the book did really well, but also another cookbook of the year and not cookbook of the low-fat year or cookbook of the diet year, but cookbook of the year. So it was quite thrilling. So I think that my best projects since then have always been look at something a different way or pull something apart and put it together in a different way. I think the other book I could talk about before I get up to what I've just done is the book Bitter Sweet and now seriously Bitter Sweet. In about 2,000 chocolates started to change in this country, we were starting to see a lot of European chocolates with less sugar and more cacao in them. And all of those chocolates had percentages labels on them, which we hadn't seen in this country. And about 2,000 Scharfenberger comes along, the first American company to make a 70% and the first American company to start putting percentage labels on there. And meanwhile, since I had sold my company and I was somewhat at large and freer to experiment in the kitchen than I had been in a way, when I was kind of more on the line, I had been experimenting with a lot of chocolates and realized that these new and better chocolates could easily ruin a dessert if the dessert had not been developed in the first place with a chocolate of that level of cacao in it. So I started looking into this and experimenting and noticing that no one was talking about it, no one was writing about it, as though no one was noticing it. I mean, everyone was having a good time nibbling these chocolates and eating them. But I wasn't seeing any professional advice from chefs that were talking about what happens when you put these chocolates in a recipe. And I certainly wasn't seeing it being written about for the home cook. And so that was Bitter Sweet. That was the book Bitter Sweet. The real challenge of that was that while I saw all these changes happening in chocolate, and I knew for a fact, and I said it in the book, that within five or 10 years, every chocolate in this country would be labeled with a percentage. Now we've got origins too. And now it's about blends and all that. That's a whole part of it. And that did happen eventually in not too long a time. But at the time that book was published, my book was published, most of the chocolates in the market were not labeled with percentage. So I had to talk myself into a pretzel trying to explain what I was even talking about in this book. And it was complicated. It was a wonderful collection of recipes with a sidebar that told you how to alter the recipe if you were using a chocolate other than what was called for. So there was a ton of information in it. But a short 10 years later, my publisher came to me and said everything you said would happen has now happened. Now all the bars have percentages on them. Now is the time to revise and update this book. So it reads a little bit more simply and add a few things and just sort of catch us up with it. So the book at the table out there called, what is it called? Seriously, Seriously Bitter Sweet is that very book. And it reflects an incredible change in chocolate in just less than a generation. And it still has a sidebar that tells you how to use the different chocolates if you don't want to use the one that's in the main recipe. And it has an enormous geek section in the back with formulas that I kind of derived myself and charts and explanations, mostly in language that non-scientists can understand because I'm totally not a scientist. And I still don't see. I still don't see this being addressed very much in books. And so I still think this is really a valuable resource for people who cook at home, because it's usable for people who cook at home and certainly for students. I'm sure these topics are getting covered at school now a lot. But I also know that it's in schools you guys don't get a whole semester on chocolate probably, right? You get an introduction and then you're kind of on your own for a while, ultimately. So that was another project that I sometimes, as much as I love what I do, there's moments of abject terror, which I understand are a good sign for a writer. You're supposed to have those. It means you're doing a good job because it was such new information. And I was worried about the formulas. I was worried about the theory. I was worried that somebody had been trained more scientifically than I would would come along and say no, no, no, no, and no. That hasn't happened so far. And my most recent book has had that same kind of satisfaction of looking at something in a completely different way than has been. Is anybody doing any cooking or baking for the gluten-free world out there? And are we doing this at school? Are we doing anything at school? You guys so much. There's a growing community of gluten-free people and those people probably range from people who have decided, who find that they're sensitive and have different symptoms from gluten all the way to celiac. And in any case, there are a lot of people looking for gluten-free. And the way this has been handled in most baking, as you probably know if you've looked at any recipes, is that the idea is to put together a whole group, a whole blend of flowers and starches with a huge amount of starch that kind of behaves like wheat, and to use this as an all-purpose substitution for wheat. So it's all about the substitution, the sort of whole substitution mentality. And when I started to taste these things, I'm not gluten-free. I'm not gluten-sensitive that I know of yet. I didn't taste anything I liked, and I didn't like the idea that these non-wheat flowers were being treated as substitutions as opposed to viable, wonderful, flavorful ingredients. So the concept for this book, although it is gluten-free, was to take a set of what are called alternative flowers, non-wheat flowers, that my co-author and I found interesting and delicious, and just see where they would go, where we could go with them, taste them, look at them, try them, ask them what they wanted to be, if you will, sort of like a character in a book. And as a result, the collection is it's divided in chapters by that flower. Many of the recipes use that flower alone or with a small partnership. But there's no great all-purpose blend. The only blending that is done is when we want the flavors and textures of all the flowers in there to do something. So we've treated these ingredients like heroes, like a chef would treat a good ingredient. And we've created things that are both familiar, like a chocolate layer cake, that you would never need to tell anybody it was anything other than a delicious chocolate layer cake, unless you want to tell the celiac person that they could indeed eat the cake. Two things that have never been made before, as far as we know, and that we invented because we used these new flowers. So that, too, was a thrilling and difficult and sometimes terrifying project. And I think, to date, people are not yet looking at these ingredients in that way. And that, for me, was very thrilling and very challenging and very fun. And I'm going to stop because I'm hoping there's, you'll take me somewhere else in the conversation or ask questions. Do we have cards? Or raise your hand. I don't care. Have one card? These better be good, you know? What should we do to temper chocolate in hot weather without any air conditioner? Oh, dear God. I don't see how you can do that. You need a fan. You need a room with a fan. I don't think you can temper when it's hotter than what, somebody tell me. Can't do it. If there's a cold room anywhere where you're working, go there. I can't answer that. Advice for Basie and Chase Street graduates. I think for anybody graduating professional school, you're going to be working with a lot of different chefs. You're going to be working with a lot of different people who have different ways of doing things. Being open to those things is a way to learn, not assuming that everything you got in school is always the way or the only way. A lot of us came up. I mean, I would love to have had a pastry education in school, but I didn't. And I think that some great things about not having the formal education is that you're open-minded about some things and open-minded about different ways of doing them. I think travel is a good thing. I think tasting is a good thing, especially if you're young and you've just come out of school and gone into culinary school. There's just a whole world to experience beyond what you've just learned in school, which I think is a really good start. And I know that most of the good programs can help place you in places where you can learn the next thing. I think it's lifelong learning is what I think it is. I mean, I think it also, I hate to skip beyond the years of being totally fit and able to work in a kitchen, but it helps to develop some skills that you can use, maybe if you want to stay in the industry, but you can't necessarily work in that kitchen. Writing skills are good. Communication skills are good. Public relations skills are good. There's a lot of different things that can keep you in the industry, not just cooking. Will I be writing a vegan dessert book, especially chocolate desserts? I don't see that. And that I'm still interested in these flowers in a very big way. So if I have another project coming up, I don't think I would be going in the direction of vegan, but going more in the direction of savory with some of these flowers and maybe some of the other non-wheat flowers because there's so many flowers out there. There's the non-grain flowers, which I've barely touched, and there's the cricket flower and all of those other protein flowers that I'm still fascinated with. And I feel like carrying the flavor flowers theme into more into savory would be an obvious, sort of organic direction for me. That being said, I think, I don't see vegan. I see myself being more and more sensitive to dairy issues, which a lot of people are facing. I don't know enough about vegan. I'm not motivated in that direction, particularly right now. What about Fran Costigan? Do you guys have her book, Chocolate and Vegan? It's Chocolate and Vegan, I forget what it's called. Have a look at that. Oh, I love this one. This is an interesting choice of words. What is your decision process for picking recipes that go into your cookbooks? Decision process for picking. Well, when we say picking recipes that go into cookbooks, it strikes me that there is a feeling that recipes get looked at out there in the world and chosen to go in. Whereas I think we know it's a more developmental process than that, there's a huge amount of trial and error that goes into developing new recipes for a cookbook. It's not so much picking, but I think really maybe what this question means is what's the standard, maybe? Delicious, it has to, even if it's meeting some sort of special diet, whether it was the low-fat thing of years ago or this non-wheat thing, it has to be delicious. It has to make people feel happy and satisfied when they eat it. But also, I think there has to, ooh, okay. Shorter answers, shorter answers. I also think that these recipes need to be, if you're planning on doing this, especially if you're in culinary school right now, sometimes it takes a lot of iterations of a recipe, not just to make it taste good and feel good, but to make the instructions rational. I mean, even recipes of my own that I come back to, I think, gee, why did I do it that way when I could have simplified? In fact, there's a book in the back there called Sinfuleasy where I did actually take apart some recipes and simplify them hugely, just to prove I could, and because the book was called Sinfuleasy and I needed to streamline things a little bit, but really, I mean, it's a communication skill.  My first book was filled with the recipes of a professional pastry shop. Some of those recipes had several parts to them, which in a bakery, you can wander over here and grab the genoise and go over there and get the buttercream, and if you need praline, it's over there in a bucket that you've made, or not, but we did. And you can put it together, but somebody cooking at home, unless they're a big project baker, is not gonna wanna make five elements for dessert. So maybe thinking about your audience would be, I'm rambling away from this question a lot. Thinking about your audience is good, and learning those communication skills to that audience, you can't write like a chef. I mean, chefs are notorious for not writing well, and that's something that probably could be addressed. That's why chefs have co-authors, that among other reasons is why chefs have co-authors, because they don't know how to write a recipe, they don't know how to communicate a recipe outside the professional kitchen. What do you think the next big thing in culinary industry is, honestly, I do not know. I do not know. I do not know. I do think more things will be done with these flowers, which is what I'm interested in. I don't know what the next big thing is. If I think of it while I'm talking, I'll come back to that. Oh, dear, oh my goodness, so many questions. How did you adjust the different type of ingredients you use, saying, because you moved from Paris to San Francisco, there's a different ingredients? Different types of flour. You know, when I moved back from Paris, I was pretty inexperienced, so I had to sort of learn it all here. I pretty much learned it all here. But today, if you're thinking about, honestly, I think you should read David Lebowitz, because he's cooked there and he's cooked here, and he has an eye on these things, you know, the exchange between flour and France, for me, that is so old. I mean, that goes back 40 years already. Well, okay, 35 years. So I don't remember the details of learning the difference between those things, but I mean, there are sources now, and people like David, who probably can't weigh in on those things. I make brownies. I learned the recipe from a friend. Why do we use oil in brownies? Can it be substituted? How can I keep the brownie moist or make it more gooey? You know, oil is the thing that keeps things moist and gooey. You know, you can try, you know, there's a, I suggest you experiment with brownies or find good brownie recipes from different people that have different characteristics. Sometimes it's hard to make those changes yourself. It's just like the difference between using unsweetened flour, unsweetened chocolate, and a brownie versus cocoa powder.  Oil in a brownie, that's for moisture, and it also may be if the brownie is going to be served in some sort of frozen state or it be used in an inclusion in ice cream where you want it not to be rock hard. How to make a new recipe? Yeah, well, I like that question. How to make a new recipe? A lot of recipes get born from good recipes you already have. I mean, I kind of believe that if you have a great recipe, it can become 100 different recipes by taking it in different directions, substituting it for a recipe has nuts in it, substitute the nuts, or toast the nuts instead of use them raw, or don't toast them if they're already toasted. Those are the little things that can make a difference, or even baking it in a different pan or substituting the fat one fat for another using oil and part butter. These are all things that we do to create new recipes, staying pretty close to home with a recipe we're familiar with. One pit of advice is to not make too many changes at once because if you get something good, you don't know which change got you there, and if you get something bad, you won't know which change got you there either. Sometimes a recipe is a total new inspiration, but oftentimes it comes from something else, something you've found or something you've done yourself, and you've had an inspiration to change it. You know, I think rarely do things come out of thin air. Looking through old, old recipes sometimes inspires us of recipes that have fallen out of fashion that could become new again, tweaked with the sensibility of today, for example. I did a luncheon, a recipe from a 1990 something Sunset Magazine recipe. I was invited to a luncheon at Sunset, and we were all making different recipes from Sunset's history, and here was this chocolate recipe, and it was a mousse, and it looked like it was really delicious, but it looked like it was a little bit 90s instead of 2020, and I made it as written because I am respectful that way, and I wanna know what the thing is to start with, I wanna know what was in that chef's head and what they were aiming at, and I made it, and I thought, okay, this is good, this is good, but it's too sweet for the way we want our chocolate now, and I felt like with the professional experience that I have that I could rationalize the method too, and I tweaked it in several ways, and I modernized it, and it's a delicious, wonderful recipe, and it says nothing about the old recipe not being that, it's just a different time, a different sensibility about how we wanna taste chocolate, the new recipe needs a little bit of salt, it has a little salt, it's gonna be posted on Food 52 if you wanna see it, it's hazelnut chocolate mousse inspired by a recipe from Sunset, so that's another thing you can do for new recipes, is you can go back and pick something that was fashionable and wonderful at a certain time and look at it with today's palette. Am I still working with Scharfenberger? I just was at the Northwest Chocolate Festival for Scharfenberger chocolate, so I do sometimes still work for Scharfenberger, and the question is, do you feel the chocolate has changed since being purchased by Hershey's? I think that there are still a signature set of recognizable flavors there, we don't know exactly how this chocolate would be if it had not been sold, but I feel that it's recognizable chocolate and I still find it flavorful in baking and I still use it, I use other chocolates as well. Oh, favorite bakeries in San Francisco, I only recently, I'm embarrassed to say only recently went to be Patisserie and was knocked off my chair, I just unbelievable. I also like the little corner cafe called 20th Century Cafe, which has lovely desserts, and I had something very delicious at Neighbor Bakery in Dogpatch, I think. Oops, oh gosh. Oh, how many tries did it take to adjust recipes to the correct percentage of chocolate? Sometimes it took a lot of tries, but when I started to realize that it was all about the composition of the chocolate and I realized that I could figure, I could know or figure out what percentage of the chocolate was sugar, what percent was fat, and what percent was dry cocoa solids. I actually used a lot of math. I'm kind of a math girl, and the math will, it was unbelievable how quickly I could make those substitutions once I understood that I could do it with math. So that information is in the back of Seriously Bitter Sweet. That's what all the formulas are there, showing you how to take a recipe that you make with 60% chocolate and use a 70% chocolate instead. And honestly, it's all the math, and it just means adjustments in sugar, sometimes adjustments in fat, and the use of less chocolate or more chocolate. So it's actually much simpler than you think. I can't answer this question, but I'm gonna read it. What are some of the more complex and delicate flavors you found for use in pastry? For example, leach and rose. I mean, I love these lovely floral flavors, but I've been so focused on working with the flavors of the flowers themselves, that I've kind of been neglectful about the flavors that we add to desserts. But I love all the sort of almost Middle Eastern rose and orange flower water and all of those things. I think that they need to be used with a really, really, really light hand. But honestly, I've neglected that side of things for a couple of years now with focus on the flavor of flowers. One of the things that happened in flavor flowers is that, because I didn't know how these flowers would work and I was kind of starting with a blank slate, I did what came natural. I took a package of each of those flowers and decided to make one cake, the same cake out of each one of them, just to see what the structure would be like and what the flavors would be like, whether they would even work, whether they would taste good. And the cake I picked, because my training is so French, was a Genoise, partly because we're talking four ingredients and I could do it in my sleep and it's really easy. And because I guessed that, I guessed and hoped that the eggs would give enough structure to allow me to succeed with these cakes without using any xanthan gum or any of those added things that go into gluten-free baking. And I really got lucky. I mean, one after another, these Genoise were almost all pretty damn good and tasty and they had enough structure. Some of them needed a teeny bit of alteration of the amount of flour, something to keep them from sinking in the center, but they worked and as a result, I felt the whole book was gonna be really easy because I was able to make these sponge cakes. But what I learned was that each of these flowers had a most sort of a miraculous flavor and some of them were so distinctive that it was hard for me to pick the usual sort of butter creams and fillings and frostings to go with them because they either overwhelmed or were overwhelmed by the flavor of the cake itself. And so I ended up with an awful lot of things that just get this sort of fruit and whipped cream treatment because the flavor of the flowers was sort of important enough not to want to sort of overwhelm it. And I also found that when working with a flower, let's talk about oatmeal, whether you like it or hate it, we all know what oatmeal takes like, but it's very dominated by its texture, right? But if you take oats and you use oat flour instead, you have access to creating things with an entirely different texture. So subtract the texture of oatmeal as we know it and just consider a little sponge cake, a little genoise made of oat flour and it's soft and delicate and has this kind of toffee caramel flavor just from the oats, which I don't think that we really pay attention to when we're eating that bowl of oatmeal. So anyway, that's what I've been doing for the last three years. I haven't been paying attention to leachy and rose, I have to admit. Advice for people who like to experiment while working in a structured kitchen. Man, somebody tell me how to do that. It took selling my own business to be able to experiment a whole lot more for a few years. I don't know how you do. Somebody who's in a kitchen, tell me how you do that. I don't know. Don't know how you do that. What was your favorite childhood dessert? I always liked a hot fudge sundae and I still do. I like the juxtaposition between that cold creamy ice cream and that warm, bitter, sweet, fudgy, starting to become chewy chocolate sauce and I'm sure that fudge sundae I like today is quite different than the one I liked then but that's a kind of memorable thing to me, a hot fudge sundae or a bar of dark chocolate. Just a bar and I'm sure the bar, I know the bar that I was eating when I was a kid was nothing like the bars that we can eat now. My interest in all of the small chocolate manufacturing now is so great that I'd almost rather nibble some artisan bar than eat a dessert made out of it. Oh my gosh. Favorite item to bake, you know, that's just very mood related. Is that not true for you? I mean, sometimes you wanna bake a brownie and sometimes you wanna bake something really light and airy and spongy. I don't know how exactly to answer that question except, you know, sometimes it depends on who I'm serving and what I think will please them or interest them. Too hard to say, too hard to say. What do you consider your greatest failure and how did you learn from it? I, you know, these days people talk about failure as an important tool for success that you have to fail to succeed.  And when I look back at the history of my business, I see something that was successful so quickly that I failed to see the peril in expanding. And so if you don't fail, you don't think you can fail.  So I think that for creative people, it's very, very important to have some business wisdom in a partner or an advisor because it can't happen all with pure creativity and good recipes. So I did learn that. I did learn that. Yes. I think it's, is it a good time to stop? I think it's been lovely. There are books in the back, if you'd like to purchase a book or if you'd like Alice to sign your book, they're in the back of the room. And I want to thank all of you. I want to have, I want to, I want to take one more question because I love this question. I just saw it. Okay, did you work with Joseph Schmidt on chocolate truffles? When I started my company, Joseph Schmidt was working for Fantasia Bakery. And his, and Fantasia, does everybody remember Fantasia Bakery out there in the avenues? Okay, we were the young, we were the little upper whippersnappers and they were the, you know, the well-trained, educated German pastry chefs and Joseph was one of them. And we did this bridal, we were at a bridal festival and they had these fabulous, classically decorated cakes and we had our very weird counterculture, oddball, Coca-Cola cakes. And Joseph came over to look at our work. I didn't know him and he didn't know me. And years later, he told me that because of Coca-Cola, he thought he decided that he could go out and open his own place. So no, I did not work with Joseph, but Joseph paid me this wonderful compliment of saying that when he saw Coca-Cola and he saw the sort of, the work that we were doing, he realized he could go out and be creative on his own. That's great. This is your inspiration. Thank you very much. And again, books are in the back. Please sign our mailing list. And if you could fill out your evaluations, we particularly wanna know where you found out about the program so that we can advertise more. And if you wanna be on our mailing list for more programs, please do. Otherwise, we'll keep advertising. Take good care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Let me start by joining Philip in welcoming all of you to our ECB Conference on Monetary Policy. Welcome. We are privileged to have a rich set of papers being presented over the next two days by some of the world's leading academics. The questions that will be discussed go to the heart of the challenges that Monetary Policy now faces in the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic. The supply and demand effects of COVID-19, the interplay between central banks and financial markets, monetary, fiscal interactions, the distributional consequences of Monetary Policy. All of these are central to understanding this unprecedented shock and determining how to best respond to it. These issues are not only crucial for current policy discussions, they are also reshaping the landscape for Monetary Policy and have fundamental implications for our policy frameworks. In that sense, they are also relevant for our ongoing strategy review and they underline why we have deliberately set out to make this exercise broad and exhaustive. As I said, no stone unturned. And we want to listen and we want to learn. Events such as this are a key part of that process. Interactions between academics and policymakers, between science and between practice are vital to help us evaluate our new environment and decide how Monetary Policy should operate within it. There are few who have done more to inform both research and policy than our keynote speaker today, Professor William Nordhaus. He has been a member of the Faculty of Yale University for over half a century and has made seminal contributions to a number of fields including on price and wage behavior, productivity and political business cycles. Today, thank you. You will focus on climate change. A topic you have been researching since the mid-70s, a time when the terms climate change and global warming were barely known outside a few scientific circles. You are a pioneer in combining scientific models of climate into long-run economic models for which you were awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics. These integrated assessment models enable an analysis of the long-run trade-offs between global climatic conditions and economic growth, helping to shape an optimal response for policymakers of all stripes. Your lifetime interest in climate makes you an ideal speaker for today's conference because there are reasons to believe that climate change will affect monetary policy in the coming years. Climate-related shocks, including those tied to the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, can increase economic volatility and affect our policy aim of price stability. At the same time, our policy arsenal to counter macroeconomic shocks may be affected by climate-related structural changes. And the overall increase from greater short-term volatility and underlying structural changes is likely to make our policy assessment much more difficult. Starting with our policy aim, climate change can create short-term volatility in economic activity and inflation through severe weather events such as droughts, floods, windstorms, heat waves, fires. There may also be a significant impact on inflation from transition policies, for instance via higher carbon prices. At the same time as the economic outlook becomes more volatile, climate change may also affect our policy arsenal to react to shocks. Damage to the capital stock may lower productivity growth by limiting knowledge production and knowledge spillovers. And the greater degree of risk aversion can increase household saving and lower business investment. And both of these factors may weigh on the long-run equilibrium real interest rate, and so affecting the available space for conventional policy. Moreover, climate-related risks could affect the stability of the financial system which can influence the transmission of the monetary policy stance to the financing conditions faced by households and businesses. The transition to a carbon-neutral world, particularly if it is disorderly, can create stranded assets, can impair collateral, and can generate losses for financial institutions. At the same time, a successful transition to a carbon-neutral world would foster the development of new technologies, speeding up the emergence of new productive firms and new sources of growth. The euro system itself could also be impacted by these developments, depending on how the assets obtained in our purchase programs and that collateralize our lending operations would be affected. That is why we are carefully considering the parameters of our collateral framework and why we are currently carrying out a climate stress test of the euro area financial system. Finally, by increasing short-run volatility and causing significant structural change, climate and transition risks are likely to inject substantial uncertainty into our policy assessment. For example, disaster caused by natural hazards usually depress output in the short-run, but since they typically affect both demand and supply, the effects on growth and inflation in the medium term are less certain. Upward pressure on inflation from the destruction of crops, capital and housing, can be offset by lower inflationary pressure from reduced wealth and higher uncertainty. Indeed, as Nobel Laureate Lars Peter Hansen and co-authors said in a recent paper, the challenge of climate change is, I quote, a problem for which aggregate uncertainty is a first-order consideration and not just a second-order afterthought, as it often is in quantitative macroeconomic analysis. The prospect of climate shocks growing in frequency, its magnitude and in persistence also has implications for the horizon over which we assess policy. It requires the central banks to lengthen their visibility over the evolution of the economy much beyond what we conventionally consider to be the medium term. In short, climate change pauses a massive challenge for our entire society and monetary policy will not be spared from its effects. And that is why the impact of climate change is an important focus of our strategy review. Our knowledge and understanding have their limits, however, and we are sure that we will benefit immensely from the collective wisdom shared by you, the participants at this conference. I look forward to hearing your voices. Thank you.


The Moments Protester's mother learns about son's death in Iran. A video has been circulated in social media showing mother of Iranian protester Mohsen Shaqari learn about her son's death. The heartbreaking video shows the mother crying and screaming in the street. A woman nearby tries to console her. Mohsen Shaqari was hung on Thursday morning after being found guilty of waging war against God. This was the first known execution related to the anti-government protest that have rocked Iran since September. Shaqari was detained in the early days of the protests that were triggered by the death of Masa Amini who was in custody at the time of her passing. Mohsen Shaqari was accused of blocking a street on September 25th and wounding a member of pro-regime Baji militia. Before his execution, the government circulated the video of Shaqari's alleged confession. Iranian President Ibrahim Rassi said on Friday that the authorities would pursue punishing anti-regime protesters.


All right cyber traders good afternoon and welcome on back here this Monday, February 1st top of the month to everybody here I should say let's get a quick sound check just to begin make sure everyone can hear me loud and clear I hope to be good to go across both ends across the live trading room and of course across social media Facebook live and YouTube Walk mom back Man, it's been a pretty interesting day to say the least right so great to see all of our students here Michael David Lewis Bonnie Bill great to see you Mario Ron latest Stefan Gary as well And for all of us in social media as I just said welcome on back So we have the BCR X trade pushing up heading into the afternoon I guess I'll start with this on the screen But our focus is more so been on well of course the silver stocks and ETFs that were potentially getting squeezed up Heading into this morning. We'll talk about that in a moment, but alongside that, you know We're still following the vaccine stocks, right? Sorrento INO VXRT we had a really hot morning. So we'll break it break it down all up in front of everybody right now So let's jump into the BCR X to begin We ended up seeing the stock pop shortly after the market opened up little pullback and then as Fausto would call it the slingshot right back up Broke above 1050 from there hit a high the day at the time roughly around 1150 You could see that on my five-minute chart, you know pulled back down Expectedly so the volume died off and I really didn't look you know at this much afterwards up until I saw rich Make a comment on this heading into the early afternoon. I told them to you know make a couple posts I was gonna whip up a quick lunch and I come back and you called out the BCR X. It's pushing back up here So fantastic call out at the time although it's now you know dropping back down from resistance at 12 This is still very well tradable heading into the afternoon So we'll start by putting this just on our list to begin I don't know where we'll end up at the top middle bottom But you know at least for right now a very well tradable both ends You know on the way up and then if it ends up really dumping off from 12 another pop and then drop back down from 12 It actually would set up for a good short opportunity. It is shortable for those of us on trade station Alrighty, so let's jump to the vaccine stocks first and we'll talk about the silver So I start off with the VXR T trade This wasn't the biggest winner that we caught from the morning and I say that just so you know This stock ended up making a pretty good move broke out from essentially 1350 It made a slingshot as well from 1350 all the way up towards high the day at the time like 1540 made a second move back up, you know fantastic run up there for VXR T We saw the stock back from Friday of last week make a big squeeze Sorrento right now SR&E is closer to its highs heading into the end of the day here So I might just slip this on our list right now. I'm actually long on this trade full disclosure Currently in from 1494 average price. I took some shares off from right around 15 like I don't know where like 1520 So I still have like a thousand shares left on that. I'm also in on Givo. We'll talk about that just as we scan through perhaps That's not making the biggest move now at this time But yeah, Sorrento another vaccine stock ended up breaking out shortly after the market opened up really held 14 broke out above 1450 and then from there had a really tough time trying to clear above 15 So that's where I'm long from essentially right now I had to do a little bit of an average down type thing to where I ended up jumping in again at 1480 and then ran back up fortunately, so it's made a great recovery since that happened But yeah for the afternoon, maybe I'll check back in on this just at the end I'll probably slip this near the bottom of our list as we go through just obviously it's on our list to start So yeah, Sorrento, I got a couple of us in here on YouTube right now talking about INO Which well that was my segue there. So, you know, I was gonna show the VXRT. I was gonna show the Sorrento but of course of course INO is the biggest mover of them all ended up making the same type of move at the market open but damn this just kept going and Part of my reason for following Sorrento is off there for as long as I did heading into the day is Because I thought it was gonna make a very similar move to this INO but yeah This is where I'm on the wrong side of fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me because Actually, this Sorrento trade didn't really run as strong on Friday when the VXRT trade and the INO trade both moved up So I tried doing the same thing where I thought this would actually run back up I'm I mean a Sorrento with the INO that is but man all three of them right in tandem And that's pretty much what happened going back into March April May Spratically throughout early to mid last year right when when all the vaccine news came out It wasn't just one of them It was one and then another and then another and then just a few at the same time pretty much, right? So, you know, they're all on our side list the Sorrento the INO the VXRT Looking at this INO trade. It looks like it's made a lower high off that 18 and pulled back pretty sharply I mean a variable tradable still, but we can't short it like we can BCRX Check back in on Sorrento here right now I want to make sure this doesn't like crap out the other way if this ends up pulling back with the INO trade That would be pretty tough But yeah for right now Sorrento actually still seems pretty healthy near its highs and the INO might be pretty exhausted at this point So hopefully from my own position now, you know happened to where Sorrento runs back up higher heading into the close We'll check back in like I said just in with it in a moment But yeah, I mean all of our good plays at some points or another right now Sorrento I'll probably check back in with the others later on this afternoon if not then tomorrow morning All right, so with that of course the focus outside of these really I mean though the main focus heading into today Coming off the weekend was silver and I know that you know for those of you that were part of house To his morning meeting you heard him talk about silver He gave his opinion about what will happen to the markets entirely not just with silver But also with the short squeezes still in GameStop and AMC, etc But you know essentially what happened here was that the redditors, you know all these retail traders I mean we're all retail traders included right so a couple of us perhaps were following too But you know online we ended up seeing and a lot of fundamental analysis research heading into it But a lot of banks are short on silver Like they're shorting physical silver against the dollar, so you know with that we were hoping or not we but retail traders We're essentially hoping to see a really big run-up on silver across the day today It's the thing is though is that you have to buy physical silver, you know more than the stock itself in order for it to run up in price At the same time we ended up seeing all these different Currency metal websites, you know just AP mechs all these different websites out there that offer gold silver, etc They all stopped offering silver They said that they're just out of stock or the very limited on supplies So you know hey heading into the morning today SLV was up big in pre-market, but after the open Unfortunately, we ended up seeing a lot of people take profit perhaps more people and just you know banks brown Who knows just more people going short on it still after driving, you know the ETF down here driving all the other Silver and mining related stocks down So we had PAAS Pan American Silver now popped at the open, but same move happened shortly after right CDE same thing unfortunately, this is just a metal mining stock. I believe and then the LODE This ended up making the best move of them all This is a mining stock this ended up making a sharp run It took a little while to get it going But man it rebroke above 250 from there ran up beautifully up to four So, you know for all this live inside the trading room We'll probably talk about this tomorrow inside our traders talk workshop for any of our students that have trades on the stock I would like to go over it tomorrow just send it right over to my email address And we'll cover tomorrow live inside the trading room for all of us in social media Just join us if you're interested that being tomorrow morning. All right, so yeah the LODE trade here at this point I feel pretty exhausted heading into the close So probably scratch it from your list, but great trade from earlier You know definitely keep it in mind across the remainder of the week if we happen to see silver entirely metals Perhaps I know this I know that silver was much more shorted than gold or any other Metallic perhaps, but you know also check in with this stock here, too All right, so that takes us just from top to bottom here folks. I mean this is number two So I don't know what number one is here LACQW try saying that three times fast This thing is pushing up beautifully. I guess just bit of a big spread lack of volume on the book This is a warrant LACQ I'll just type in How about this? I already got a trade from one of our students here So it's that student. I won't name them, but I appreciate you sending over your journal right away here LACQ yeah, I mean I guess that's the warrant there the W But yeah, I mean this one's pretty wacky. They're both pretty wacky. I'm not too interested in it really probably another SPAC another, you know acquisition company, but I'm gonna pass I'll tell you what I'm gonna pass on and I know I'm gonna pass on this because the second this thing ended up making its move Like right after 830. It was holy smokes this CLRBZ and pre-market here I called out the pop right around 830 or whenever this thing was breaking out off like 80 cents 90 cents here and This thing flew up, but holy smokes. This thing came back down fast So that's what I was wary of I thought that this thing would pull back down pretty sharply Based on the lack of volume on the book within the pre-market trading at this point now It's like dead not really you're moving at all here So, you know, maybe I'll pop back up tomorrow Wednesday. I don't really care much forward Even if it does we see that type of stock, you know all the time really This is the type of stock that we would like to see more often the DVAX here, so BCRX DVAX here both moving up pretty nicely This one beautiful push up to 1150. Ooh, not only 1150 check out the ask right now 1155 There's 112,000 share order on the ask at 11 at 1155 So that's your bigger bigger level to work with heading into the close so long as that stays there So definitely this this trade at least, you know moving up beautifully Liquid order book very easy to read level at least on the book there So this one definitely make the top so far of our list. I Want to watch this see if this can like bust over 55 look at this Just bounced right off it Some volume just got filled there I'm gonna try and go back. Ah Not much you had more off 1150. Yep bounced right off that guy, too. It's good timing All right, so we keep it pushing out at this point folks the TCHB or THCBW I'm sorry there pushing up pretty nice. It's a Jerry call this out just before so I guess he was calling out the non-warrant stock THCB is that it? THCB. Ah, there we go. Okay See this one's making a sharper move I guess this is another SPAC to but compared to what was it the LACQ stock this looks way better You know definitely more of a level five stock. I'd say this I'll slip this on our list for right now the THCB Again, try saying that three times fast and then the warrant here THCBW For a warrant it actually looks somewhat tradable, but I'm not a big fan of somewhat. I like definitely, right? I like certainly positively a certain, you know Definitive words so I'm not really too keen on the warrant just yet and even on THCB. I wouldn't recommend new students to be trading that Based on my tone I would hope to for you for you to know that already but you know This thing the THCB one at least here coming up this thing has huge spread very thin order book So it's tradable, but it's a level five stock. So you got to be really careful trading this one Rather you trade a stock like GSM. Should it make a pop? I don't know if it will and end up making big squeeze and pre-market here Or perhaps this is right at the market open rather From two all the way up towards three and above made the same move up here again and dump back down move back Up pulled back flattened this thing has been through the spin cycle I don't know if it's gonna make this big move up that you'd hope to see here It looks good based on the chart the volume. It's trading per minute Maybe a good sideless stock, you know keep it on the side for the meantime. This GSM Another silver stock from this morning here silver and gold mining stock ASM I think this is Australian stock I read up on this just because it was up early within the pre-market hours So I think that Australian markets were trading that's moving it up early and then by the time even by like 8 o'clock 8 15 It died off. So Unfortunately, this kind of joined the list of all the other silver plays out there that pulled back after the open Heckle mining too if I'm not mistaken. Yeah Unfortunately, I'm being pop and then drop so All right. What was the one I said was gonna reopen after right around 235 Eastern time I wrote that in the chat board here. Let me just scroll up ADMS Jump to this stock here ADMS. Yeah, there we go Maybe a little late to the draw seven minutes late from the reopen But this thing I we knew was gonna reopen during this meeting here. We got halted going into the early afternoon I don't know what the the news is here folks. I don't have my Benzinga Pro up unfortunately right now So a little hand handicap with my signals page not being up or my news feed not being up But I mean this will be a good example to say I mean, I don't really care what the news is I'm more following the volume the volume the liquidity on the order book so to say So I would really want to make sure this could like re break above the big resistance like eight bucks hold above eight and then Go from there. It looks like a dump off here now at this point So yeah, I'm gonna pass on this unfortunately. We were probably gonna run into this anyway I think this was actually next on our list if I'm not mistaken. I was like I had my like finger over this anyway All right, what else we got let's see what else if there's anything looking As good if not better Fun from earlier today pre-market move died off really early though Space I saw a space make a really fantastic run and look at this thing still go now Damn just broke above 55 right now folks. So that's a really major resistance I would expect a pullback down under 55 and then perhaps a move back up higher from there But yeah, this space is rocking right back up here So maybe I'll check out the AMC the blackberry bet bet beyond all these others Nope, none of these seem to be Blackberry doing all right on the way up to 15 pretty good setup actually actually on this BB stock Bed bath beyond maybe nope. Never mind Game stop. I wasn't gonna put this on our list anyway. Just just for fun. We'll check it out But not all of them are making the same pump Genius GNUS same thing. All right So what were the ones that did pretty good there BB didn't look too bad It's only up 6% compared to everything else, but Not a bad setup. Should it re break 15 pretty pretty nicely here So I'll put this on our list for right now a very tradable stock probably more of like a level 2 to level 3 Then the space one we definitely want to put on our list Ron was in from 54 and out at 55 right now inside our trading room So Ron great great catch. Nice in and out there I'd wait for it to make another under and over and see if it could re break higher from that point later on All right, folks I'll tell you we probably have a lot up as you could see the Dow right below my main chart here is a big So you might have some stocks with the market up big this TIGR is rocking too. Wow Familiar names, so I wanted to just jump to it here before I went over to the loser's list So I'm happy I did just broke above 19 right now I'm definitely gonna put this near the top alongside that Dvax trade alongside the Probably put space on the top of our list too. All right anything else NAK cheapy not really too interested in that and you folks let me know unless it's really good. I just want to conserve time here You wave yes, I saw a late a chime to me earlier that made a big pop I still pretty strong in terms of it being near its highs So I do like that just not really much of a volume-based order on the s to You know work with a volume-based resistance. I should say So I'll put this on our list for the meantime All right, cool Let's hop over to losers list see if there's anything looking just as good if not better And then we'll jump right back to the chapel where it's here inside the trading room and then for anyone on social media Oh, I don't know why I click this one. This is always like the test stock here I don't know why I click that cost man. This thing is just dumping off So probably we'll run into GameStop probably running, you know, here's the bath beyond you see so This cnce I know made a move up here today or it's making the move up right now Actually looks like it was down big it was down like 55% in pre-market here So you would hope to see like some sort of dead cat down some sort of squeeze back up Temporarily so it's making a little bit of a run back up right now, but just very thin order book very spaced out Orders on the bid in the ask Don't need it. I got a list already The Sun power here. This looks pretty interesting though down 10 plus percent This one's very tradable on a day-to-day basis and that's back before it was like a $48 stock it like it is right now. I mean we used to trade this back when it was like a 10 $12 stock here So to see this run up I mean, I don't know if this made the same type of squeeze up as like plug did as f cell did but SPW I know had higher short interest so at the same time as blackberry all those moved up this did too but this is shortable still this is tradable on the way down should it really crap out the other way but I Kind of like if you on this right now, too, I'll kind of keep this on the side. I guess I'm not a fan of the price if anything, you know, we already have space on our list. That's pretty expensive I'd rather trade the cheaper ones not to say like a dollar stock But give me like a 20 25 dollar stock as opposed to this even Yeah, Madonna too cheap itself DD I didn't mean to click this either, but you know, all right, so folks Workhorse from Gus that one also getting up there in price not to say it's $48 stock but getting up there Still has a decent order book in terms of liquidity and in terms of its trend beautiful move up 40 a major resistance you'd imagine what's the what's the all-time high here 40 45 So again pretty close to that too You know what? We're familiar with the stock at least so work horse on them on adding to our list Good call from Gus From Leda XL going anywhere or is it just a pop and drop nice move? definitely a good squeeze up so far and For right now, I'll probably jinx it but spreads aren't too too big All right, cool Like this one too From JP's calling out. I bi oh it is. Yeah, moving up really nicely here up 16 plus percent right now Another vaccine stock to be honest with you. I don't know I don't want to be wrong. It could be a vaccine stock. It could be a testing stock like an antibody testing stock I forgot off the top of the head, but this stock, you know back in March April time ended up running up with the rest No doubt about it. So hey with Sorrento moving up. Hopefully that breaks out higher Although it is still pulling back down a little bit. I bi oh looks really strong here So definitely could call from JP and then from Andrea if I'm not mistaken that is G8 co short if you can Looks like we can It is shortable from trade station just very spread out order books So again, I don't think that we need to put this on our list But for right now and Drey if you're short, you're probably killing it. So Kudos if so From norman he's calling out PBI sub 17 percent better order book. It's at the highs. So Yeah, now the only thing about this trade that I'm not too big of a fan of and I'm gonna put this on our list is That if you look on book map for those that have it, it's like very Maybe we'll go over this in traders talk, but it's it's more or less It's like very algo driven. It seems it's very very like spaced out funky looking order book based based on book map Here looks like tight spreads looks like there's decent volume at a few different price levels So it's grinding on up for right now. I appreciate the call out and we'll slip this on our list, too All right, let me jump to YouTube right now. I kind of been leaving some folks on YouTube stranded. So NAK LODE Yeah, the NAK pumped and dumped already ended up moving up nicely So if you jumped in early on that one, you must have done pretty well LODE just going lower now at this point. No, man We got a guy in YouTube here saying he got in on I and no one Friday at 12 He sold a 17 just before that's a fantastic swing trade You beautiful job. Congrats. Alrighty folks. I think for right now We have a pretty decent list heading into this afternoon. So I'm gonna call it I think in total how many do we have here? We got two four six eight ten twelve packed out list here, actually So I'll copy and tweet these out to everybody across the board for all of us in social media Feel free to join us live Monday to Friday live in the cyber trading room here Especially tomorrow tomorrow is our weekly workshop traders talk So, you know if you're finding it a bit confusing as as to what I'm saying as to why we're making the callouts that we're making as To why we're putting the stocks on the list that we're putting on and come join us You'll see really you know every Tuesday morning. That is just a really in-depth Q&A session All right, and that goes across the board of course for all of us are already in this inside the trading room I'll talk to you folks in just a few moments there I'm gonna just refill up on the water here jump back on the mic taking into the final hour of the day Alright folks. I'll talk to you soon


It's a good day to set out to sea. First things first, I've got to get a crew. I think about 10 should do, and I'll need a pirate flag. Lookout world, here I come. I'm going to be the pirate king. Hello and welcome to One Piece 101, the series that breaks down every one and everything in the One Piece world. Today we are going to be taking a look at the boy who started it all, our main protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy. Monkey D. Luffy, better known as Straw Hat Luffy, to the world at large, is a carefree yet extraordinarily driven young man who happens to be the captain of an ever-increasingly infamous group of pirates, rather creatively named the Straw Hats. Luffy formed his crew with the purpose of embarking on a grand adventure to find the One Piece, and thus accomplishing his dream of becoming the pirate king. This is a dream Luffy developed when he was seven years old, when he encountered the pirate red-haired Shanks, while he was living in Fusha Village, a small province located within the Goa Kingdom in East Blue. Initially Luffy wanted to join Shanks' crew, and even went so far as to stab himself under the eye with a knife, just to prove he was tough enough to become a pirate. Despite this action, Shanks stated that Luffy was simply too young to join his crew. During this time, Luffy also accidentally consumed a devil fruit in the possession of the red-haired pirates. I say accidentally, but more accurately, Luffy intentionally ate the fruit, he was just unaware that it was a devil fruit. Quite specifically, it was the Gomu Gomu No Mi, which is a paramecia-type fruit that turns its user's body into rubber, more on that later. But the unfortunate result of eating a devil fruit was the loss of the ability to swim. So when Luffy was kidnapped by a bandit named Hugu Mother Bear and subsequently attacked in the water by the Lord of the Coast, things weren't looking too great for Luffy. However, Shanks was able to arrive in time to save Luffy, although it cost Shanks his left arm. After this moment, Luffy's drive increased significantly as he looked ahead to become a pirate even greater than his role model Shanks. Upon the departure of the red-haired pirate, Luffy exclaimed that he would one day surpass Shanks and become the pirate king. And Shanks, acknowledging Luffy's sheer determination, left him with his straw hat, and he told Luffy to return it once Luffy had surpassed him. And that really was that. From this day onwards, Luffy became a singularly focused individual, training hard for the day that he would set out to see and begin his journey. Of course, things weren't quite that simple, due to the influence of Luffy's grandfather, Monkey-D Gar, a decorated hero of the Marines, who was extremely opposed to his grandson becoming a pirate. And just while we're on the topic of family, Luffy also happens to be the son of Monkey-D Dragon, who was the figurehead of the Revolutionary Army and the most wanted man in the world. So yeah, look, Luffy's family is complicated to say the least, and as part of a long string of questionable parenting decisions, Garp decided to take Luffy away from Fusha Village after he was influenced by Shanks and have him raised instead by mountain bandits. Essentially, in a stunning display of logic, to prevent Luffy from becoming one type of criminal, Garp had him raised by another type of criminal. Sound parent and Garp. However here, Luffy would meet Ace and Sabo and after a very rocky start to their relationship, involving a stint of child torture, the three eventually formed a very strong bond and even became brothers through the ritual drinking of sake. The three of them shared their dreams with each other and even briefly considered starting a pirate crew of their own. Although this idea was quickly shelved after it became apparent that they all wanted to be the captain. And unfortunately, after a complicated incident involving the Blue Jam Pirates and the corruption of the Goa Nobles, Sabo was attacked by a celestial dragon while setting out on his adventure and presumed dead. After a brief period of mourning, this reinforced Luffy's desire to get stronger. From here, Luffy watched Ace depart for his journey when he reached the age of 17 and three years later, Luffy himself left the Goa Kingdom to commence his journey to become the Pirate King, smacking down the Lord of the Coast in a single punch in the process. He would then adventure around the East Blue Sea, managing to recruit a swordsman, a navigator, a long nose and a chef, many of whom initially refused the insane request to sail into the Grand Line, but all eventually succumbed to the charisma of Luffy. As a leader, Luffy is unorthodox to say the least. He displays very little forethought and has actively been known to plunge both he and his crewmates into certain danger simply for the sake of adventure. With that said, Luffy is extraordinarily caring, loyal and has complete faith in his crew to overcome any form of obstacle encountered. He has a very simple view of the world in his belief that he can punch his way out of any problem and his profound success with this philosophy is all part of the old Luffy charm that wins over most characters he encounters. But while charismatic he may be, intelligent, Luffy is not. His simple-mindedness boils most situations down to their most basic possible form. For example, Luffy has a tendency to disregard people's actual names in favor of giving them simplistic nicknames based on their appearance. He's also just a goofball in general, even in combat a lot of the time. Although when push comes to shove, Luffy is capable of an unwavering level of seriousness, which generally occurs when someone has threatened one of his friends, and you really don't want to be on the receiving end of one of these moods. As such, throughout East Blue, Luffy continued to defeat stronger and stronger opponents until he was finally noticed by the Marines and a bounty of 30 million berries was placed on his head. But by this time Luffy was saying goodbye to East Blue and entering the Grand Line. Here, Luffy visited a whole host of crazy islands, recruited four more crew members, defeated two warlords of the sea and declared war on the world government, eventually owning himself a bounty of 300 million berries.  Luffy primarily takes advantage of his stretchy rubber body to increase the velocity and thus force of his attacks. However, it should be noted that Luffy is only able to access his sort of strength as a result of an entire childhood full of rigorous training. When he originally ate the Gomu Gomu no Mi, his powers were essentially useless, but over time Luffy built up the strength to make his abilities a force to be reckoned with, as demonstrated frequently in the Grand Line. Furthermore, after encountering Marine Admiral Alkegi on Long Ring Long Land, Luffy realized the need to evolve his abilities and ended up creating gears. Gear 2nd involves the speeding up of Luffy's blood flow, providing parts of his body with increased levels of oxygen and thus allowing him to move at great speeds with heavily increased power. And then there's the much more crudely developed Gear 3rd, whereby Luffy inflates a part of his body becoming capable of delivering devastating attacks, albeit at a fairly regular speed. And in addition to his combative achievements, Luffy made an absurd amount of friends and allies, as well as even crossed paths with his brother Ace. Upon reaching the halfway point of the Grand Line and landing at Sabati Archipelago, we would also discover that Luffy was considered to be one of the 11 supernovas, a term which refers to a set of rookie pirates, all of whom had bounties over 100 million berries, who arrived at this point in the Grand Line at roughly the same time. Although the term supernova would later be dropped in favor of referring to this group as the worst generation, also on Sabati Archipelago for the first time in the series, the Straw Hats would be completely defeated. In the process, the Straw Hats were sent flying all around the world by Bartholomew Kuma, with Luffy ending up on the island of Amazon Lily in the calm belt. Alone for the first time since the inception of the Manga, Luffy's goal was initially to return to the Archipelago. However, this very quickly changed when he heard the news that Ace had been captured by the Marines and was going to be publicly executed. Luffy then resolved to break into the underwater prison of Impel down to save his brother, and despite completing the monumental task of reaching level 6 of the institution, he arrived too late as Ace was already being transferred to Marineford. Here, Luffy's charisma would be put on full display, as he managed to corral a band of prisoners, many of whom were former direct enemies of his, a force of hidden revolutionaries and even a former warlord of the sea or two, into one fighting force, and thus he led the one and only mass breakout of Impel down in recorded history. Luffy made swiftly for Marineford with his new makeshift crew, where he encountered more allies as well as significantly more enemies, and rather sadly, his efforts ended up being for naught, as during the battle Ace would be killed by then-Marine Admiral Arcainu. This sent Luffy into the darkest emotional place he'd ever been, but he did eventually recover thanks to the help of Jinbei as well as the thought of his comrades who were still alive and well. But recognizing that he was not currently strong enough to continue his journey, Luffy took up a training offer from Silver's Rayleigh, the first mate of the former pirate king, Goldie Roger. And this would be absolutely invaluable, because Rayleigh taught Luffy how to utilize and master all three types of haki, including conqueror's haki, a rare ability that only one in several million people possess. And you know, of course, Luffy has it, because he's the main character after all. And after two years of training, the Straw Hats finally reunited on Sabadi Archipelago, and within a few days had already picked a fight with two of the four emperors of the New World and defeated a third warlord of the sea. The latter achievement sent Luffy's bounty up to 500 million berries, but more importantly, it showed us Luffy's new combat capabilities. In addition to mastering all three types of haki, Luffy had fused the techniques with his former abilities in order to create a new gear known as Gear 4th. This form differs greatly from the previous two incarnation of gears, in that it is far more versatile and allows for greater control of his body, allowing him to cater Gear 4th for specific opponents or scenarios. The most commonly used form is Bound Man, where Luffy essentially becomes a haki covered bouncy ball, giving him access to ridiculous speed and absurd power. Although other forms do exist, including the improvised Tank Man, which Luffy achieved after eating more than his fair share of biscuits against Charlotte Cracker, and the yet to be animated Snake Man, which Luffy conjured in his battle against Charlotte Karakuri. Speaking of, after causing untold havoc in the New World, specifically on Holkake Island, Luffy has now earned himself a staggering bounty of 1.5 billion berries. In addition to this mighty number, his following is now so large that he is unofficially considered to be the fifth emperor of the New World. But even then, Luffy still has an awfully long way to go before becoming the pirate king. Some more fun facts about Luffy. According to Drakeil Mihawk, Luffy possesses the most dangerous ability in the world, which is his tendency to turn pretty much everyone around him into an ally through sheer, unintended charisma. According to a Chura Oda, if one piece was set in the real world, then Luffy would be from the country of Brazil. Furthermore, if Luffy did not become a pirate, then he would have pursued a career that's a firefighter. Quite often, you will see the number 56 or 5 and 6 associated with Luffy. This is because in Japanese, 5 and 6 can be pronounced as Go and Mu, which is a reference to the name of Luffy's devil fruit, the Gomu Gomu no Mi. Luffy is one of the rare main characters in Shonen Manga, who has never been dethroned in a character popularity poll, having comfortably secured first place in six official polls conducted over the last two decades. And finally, a truly useless fact. Luffy's favourite food is meat. No specific kind of meat though, anything will do really. And his least favourite food is cherry pie. And that pretty much shows up for Luffy. Well, no it doesn't. It doesn't even come close actually. Summarising a protagonist we've been following for over two decades is a pretty rough task, but I hope you've been engaged in this ever so brief overview. If you enjoyed this video then please feel free to like, favourite or subscribe. And if you are in any way keen on supporting this independent channel then feel free to check out my Patreon, Discord server or Twitter, the links to which are in the handy description below. Finally please do comment with who, what or where you'd like to see featured in the next One Piece 101.


It's also true that Americans have always accepted a degree of inequality, inequality of outcomes. What seems to have changed in recent years, or at least in people's perception of it, is something that the governor alluded to, which is that there seems to be growing inequality of starting place. That there's, you know, as long as there was a sense that, okay, some people are rich, some people are poor, but at least I have a chance. I can pull myself from my bootstraps. I can work hard. I can find a company. I can create something. My children's lives will be better than my life. As long as people had that sense, and also as long as they had the sense that they were participating in a bigger project, you know, that the words of the Gettysburg address, you know, and the constitutions on those are words that belong to all of us. You know, we share, we don't share everything. We have different lifestyles, but we all are part of the system, and we can be part of it, and we can grow with it. When people had that sense, when there was an economic growth, when they felt there was upward mobility, then people tolerate inequality of some kind. Inequality is a part of the human condition, and people accept it. But it's when that begins to stop, when people feel that there isn't a chance, when the starting point isn't fair for everybody, and when there isn't a chance that it will be fair, or it isn't getting more fair. This is when people begin to object, and this is the point that we're coming to now. I think Anne is right. We tolerate inequality when there's reasons for it, and when it doesn't have extraordinarily harmful circumstances. I think inequality today is doing two things that it didn't do at all times in American history. One, you know, the starting point argument, I think, is something that's been around for a long time, but it's gotten worse, that people are starting at a, the social mobility that the governor talked about is lowest than it's been in a long time. But the other is, and this is what Anne was just talking about, is the loss of a common sense of belonging to a single nation or a single project. I mean, two books that came out a couple years ago, one from someone on the left and one from the right, Charles Murray's Coming Apart, which really is about how the richest zip codes in America and the poorest zip codes in America just completely have a different language, have a different way of living, don't talk about the country in the same way, and don't experience the country in the same way. And they don't interact anymore. And then he says that's new, that's not the way it was before. And then George Packer's book, The Unwinding, about the unwinding of a common idea of an American dream. I think these two books in different ways, but in a similar way, talk about the loss of a common, hopeful project that allows inequality to be justified. And I just want to say one thing. You quoted DeTochville on the equality of conditions. And I just want to remind us that when DeTochville's talking about the rise of the equality of conditions and the equality of conditions in America, he's talking about a 700-year story which he tells, which goes from the fact that we had a landed aristocracy to the clergy. And the advantage of the clergy is that it was open to everybody. And then to the rise of jurists, again, open to everybody. The equality of condition that he's talking about is not actually economic equality. He says, one of the things that you know about America is there's not misery like there were in Europe. But there's inequality. But what he says is the equality of condition is the equality of everyone feeling that they're equal as equal souls, as equal in a democracy. And equal before the law. And equal before the law, which is why he says that the overriding core of the spirit of American democracy. Right, democracy for him is dangerous, right? Because what democracy does is it takes away the intermediate institutions of aristocracy, which protected people from the tyranny of government. And he says, democracy is happening. It's a providential fact that it's going to happen in Europe, and it's going to happen in America. Equality is happening. Our worry is how to protect ourselves from the danger of equality. And his answer, he says, the reason America was special, and the reason he went to America is because what he calls the dogma of popular sovereignty, the dogma of sovereignty of the people. And he says it rises up out of the townships. It's that engagement in politics, that engagement that we think we can come together and do things together and control our world. And let me just tell you, if you look at the rights of women over the last 30 or 40 years in America, I mean, in the 70s my own wife couldn't get a credit card, couldn't get insurance. We have dramatically, through our women's movement, increased the rights of women. We have dramatically starting with the civil rights movement, finally realized what the Civil War was all about, and increased realized rights for African Americans. We have dramatically expanded rights for gay people. We have a much more egalitarian society than we have ever in American history. Now that's part of the problem because it is a messy process. It seems divisive to some people. We now have a diverse nation, and I would argue diversity is a strength. But there are people in the society, various levels, not just all wealthy people, who find this social change and it's happened fairly quickly, very threatening. It is not the America, they thought if we go back to the wonderful cohesive America of the 50s, yeah, when black people couldn't vote, Latinos mowed your lawn, women couldn't get credit cards, they stayed at home. That was a great time, not for most of those other people. So I think, my view, I think the country's way, way better. We still have problems, but I don't think it's in some existential crisis. But before we get to the race question, and the race question obviously intersects and overlaps with other questions in American life. The race question, the gender question, the class question. But we began with the class question, and I want to go back to that. I agree that many respects America is there have been many advances in terms of socially quality on various fronts. But before we get to that, I think it's striking how often when we talk about inequality in America, there's the focus on the 1%. I view the shame of American political economy as the bottom, not the top.  The United States of America is a wealthy country. Yet a quarter of youngsters in America are in poverty. I mean, impoverishment in America brings social misery. And there is not nearly enough attention paid to that. Even the current, I admire Barack Obama. I'm a supporter, I admire him. Barack Obama, when he's talking about redistributing income in the United States, does not talk about the poor. They talk the politicians, all of the politicians, talk about the middle class. They do not talk. Sometimes they make a mistake and talk about the poor. But the question of poverty and what that means in America, denied, obscured, that, it seems to me, if we're talking about political economy, is where our attention should be paid. Now, obviously, everybody's going to be implicated in that. But it seems to me that the question of the impoverished, for a moment, it got attention in the 1960s, for a moment. But now, the problem of the impoverished does not get nearly the attention that it should get in the United States. Let's add to the impoverished, I know you care about this too, the imprisoned, I mean, which is an enormous, we have a higher population of imprisoned population in our country than any industrialized country in the world. And the absence of dealing with either poverty or the imprisoned population, and I think they go together, is, I think, shows an ability to think about that misery. People don't want to talk about it. I don't think there's a good solution for it, for a lot of people. I'm not sure. Here's an example of the world not coming to an end. There is a convergence on the left and right about changing sentencing guidelines. And if in Washington, this is happening state by state, in Washington, if it wasn't always, I win, you lose, you could have, there's a majority of Republicans in Congress that would call for a thorough review of the sentencing guideline of federal laws. And the president has expressed support. But instead of engaging, which is the duty of the president, in this particular case, he's using executive authority to try to solve this problem on the margins rather than deal with the core issue.  Let's deal with it. Now that happens, to your point, that happens at the local level more often than not. It certainly happens in state capitals. It's not happening in Washington, and it creates this deep disaffection. The other point I want to make is if we took all of Warren Buffett's money, and there's a ton of it, you know, 50 billion or whatever he's worth, and the FBI came and expropriated every asset that he owned, all of them. It wouldn't change someone who was born in poverty today. And so the conversation needs to get far deeper than saying, like the guy, I don't even know who he was, there's the left-wing guy that basically said, effectively, the rich guy is the reason why people are poor. Well, maybe not. Maybe it's because there's an inequality of education in America. And there are people protecting the status quo to make sure the economic interests of the adults are taken care of first rather than kids in poverty gaining a quality education. Maybe it's the inability to access the first job, which is true. And we're creating functional obsolescence for a whole lot of people that don't have skills. You look at the automation that's taking place today, it is not a joke to say if you're born poor in America today, if there's not a change in the path that you're on, that you will never get a job. And so these are issues that the political system historically in our country has been able to pause, make adjustments, create the capacity for people to deal with the current challenges. And we're not doing that now, and we're doing it at our peril. No, I wanna go back to your, you mentioned the very first clip, and I think you were right when you talk about, when you put front and center, the race question. So I wanna say something about the race question, and I wanna link it with a number of the personalities that have been mentioned.  All three of them spoke a lot, and thought a lot about the race question. All three of them were profoundly pessimistic. All three of them thought that the United States of America would never be a multiracial society. Lincoln, through most of his life, was very interested in colonization because he said over and over again, nope, we're not gonna have a society in America where white people and black people get along as neighbors and are gonna be on an equal footing. Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, his chapter, The Three Races of America, profoundly pessimistic, said no, we're not gonna see racial democracy in America. Jefferson too, again, another person interested in colonization. So, you know, these three very smart people, thoroughly pessimistic. Now, there is another tradition in American race thinking. There is an optimistic tradition. The great optimist of the 19th century was a former slave, the great Frederick Douglass. The great optimist of the 20th century was Martin Luther King, Jr. In our century, in terms of the race question, the most influential optimist is the current president of the United States, Barack Obama. Now, I know that you and Barack Obama have your differences, but one thing that you actually both agree on is that there is a, you know, he deeply believes that despite the history of the United States and despite the current problems that confront us and the problems are deep, we still live in a pigmentocracy in the United States in which the darker you are in the United States, the more you are at risk of the bad things happening to you. I don't care if it's incarceration, premature death, unemployment, what have you. But even in the midst of all that, Barack Obama believes that we shall overcome, and I believe that too, but we are being really put to a tough test. And unfortunately, there are people who think we shall not overcome. And unfortunately, it's not as if we can sneer at them and think that they're just, you know, being ridiculous. Unfortunately, the pessimists have reason to be pessimistic.


There is some question to be left, of how talented and how scary they are. Yeah. Some, I think they all think they have skill and they're good but- I don't think so Jim, I don't think so at all. Yeah you do, you're interested.  Yeah. Anyone that's associated with what happened in 2017 and most likely 18 and 19, I don't want them to do well. It makes me mad. The problem with that is, they're gonna do good. These are really good baseball players. So unless they've just 1000% completely been reliant on knowing exactly every single pitch, which I know a lot of them haven't, I've seen Michael Brantley hit before.  The guys are looking at our Correa, Bregman and Altuve, seeing Springer and seeing like what happens. And I think they're still good. Like I think they're very talented players, but I feel like we just all don't want to go hard on them. They did know what pitch was coming at crucial moments. Like that's not a lie. Maybe I'm undervaluing that aspect of it. To me, I just don't think they were doing it for three straight years every single pitch. 2017 definitely were, we know that.   When it's 60 games and anyone could have a bad 60 games, even if you know what shit's coming. Like if Altuve goes and hits 350 this year, he's gonna tell everybody, see, I was fine. And it's like, well you still cheated dude, nobody really cares. But now we're just John Boy's pawns living into it. I mean Carlos Correa, where's he going to hit in the lineup? I mean on Fangrass they have him seventh. There's no way he's going to hit seventh. But maybe he will because they have Jordan still not even in this stand. And Correa's numbers haven't, Correa's kind of on watch this year. His hitting numbers have not been what Carlos Correa is supposed to be. Dude he, last year he had 926 OPS, 137 OPS plus. Come on man. Yeah, it was half a season. But yeah, it was really just 18 that was bad. That's my bad and it was a half season. The year before was bad. He had a 728 OPS. About my career right there. Last year, well, this guy was a 1-1 right? I don't know, he's a weirdo. I know that. Yeah, I'm not rooting for him. This guy was number one overall pick in the draft. He had a full season with a 728 OPS. His career is great. He had a nice half season last year. He'll probably be really good.  No, that's a guy who could be two-hole on a lot of teams. Great a weirdo.