Hey everyone, welcome. I'm Ritesh Patel, I lead products at Nirmata and today we're going to talk about backstack, so Yeah, no, and I'm Murph. I'm Responsible for field engineering in EMEA at Upbound Awesome, so let's get started So, you know, thank you everyone actually, you know, it's nice to see so many people This in last day of coupon show up for this talk So this is the agenda we start we'll talk about, you know platform engineering and you know How that's kind of evolving and the value it provides And then we'll get into the the actual, you know, meat of the discussion On on what we've kind of seen the patterns we've seen emerge in the community and and you know how we've collaborated together to Come up with with a reference architecture for platform for a developer platform So I'm assuming most of you know, you know What platform engineering is all about? There've been I think last year. There were like barely any talks on on this topic, but this year the 20 plus talks you know platform engineering ultimately enables Enterprises to deliver shared platforms that can be leveraged by by multiple teams and As a platform engineer, there's several things that that a platform engineer is responsible for right from designing the platform to You know implementing it, you know, making sure all of the various capabilities are automated And then operating that platform providing any assistance needed for troubleshooting You know monitoring things of that nature and and and ensuring that you know Platform continues to evolve as the need of you know, different applications and teams evolve So obviously all of this is kind of you know Work like there has to be some business benefits for any organization to invest in this right so some of the core benefits that that You know, we see organizations kind of get out of investing in in platform engineering is You know reducing the overall complexity having to deal with, you know, a single platform versus multiple disparate platforms One one goal and the benefit is Enabling developer agility with things like self-service eliminating eliminating, you know silos and different teams doing different things Obviously helping in helping with collaboration Having shared platforms enables, you know, better resource utilization. So that also helps overall optimize overall cost and then, you know Having to just secure a single platform versus a lot of different, you know infrastructure Mitigates risk. So these are some of the key benefits, you know that we've seen Initial adopters of platform engineering Get right. So so when you start looking at what does a platform require? Some of the things that a platform kind of requirements that come up are you want the platform, you know, to be composable? There's no one size fits all every organization is different You know, so being able to pick the right tools pick the right, you know Components for a platform becomes important if you're running on cloud I mean, one of the reasons Kubernetes is adopted is for its Uniform API independent of, you know, which infrastructure you run on. So obviously being cloud agnostic is a key key requirement and most of the times Using components if you're, you know, Kubernetes native helps actually, you know Make the platform easier to operate And then, you know in in this case We'll show how we'll show how so we are using some of the mature Cuban cncf components for a platform and You know as you as the platform evolves you want that flexibility extensibility to be able to add more capabilities as as needed So if you if you're not familiar actually cncf as a platform working group They've active, you know, put out a ref kind of a high-level I Wouldn't call it an architecture but more like what a platform should include what are the different, you know Components and and even highlighted some other projects. So we're gonna kind of go off of this Reference architecture and show you what we have, you know a scene Some of the earlier adopters do build for a platform. So and we are calling this back stack back stands for Four projects that are involved in this reference architecture first one being backstage That's for developer portal. Most of you may be familiar with it several talks, you know on backstage It was originally conceived by Spotify and then donated to cncf Next Argo CD GitOps is very important. So, you know Argo CD is one of the core Components of this stack and to provide that gitOps capability and you know shout out to Nick here from Argo CD who kind of helped Collaborate on this on this stack and this platform. So, you know, thanks Nick Next one is crossplane crossplane as you may know is universal control plane helps with provisioning automation and you know, we'll go deeper into how this enables a platform and and finally Kibirno for policy escort governance security automation For your platform, right? So together these form the back stack and we're going to jump into the demo Murphy is going to lead the demo. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Ritesh So let's have a look at how all these things are put together and we're not the first people to combine these four technologies we represent The organizations that are chiefly maintaining these technologies and we wanted to build An example of how you can put them all together because if you're starting from nothing it can be quite challenging So think of this as the seed for For what you can do and to highlight some of the key areas of integration where the different technologies are complimentary To begin with Let me actually start with this little diagram here Our use case today is as a platform engineering group We are tasked with exposing several different capabilities to our organization, but the first one is Kubernetes clusters as a service or parts of the organization need to spin up Kubernetes capabilities in different clouds. They need EKS. They need AKS and we're going to give it to them so the backstage environment the catalog itself Contains the the components of itself in the catalog so you can see all four of them Sitting here as running in the demo cluster. They're all running in a single cluster but one of the things that we've created is We're using the backstage scaffolder to create claims for infrastructure We'll talk a bit about what that actually means, but let's go ahead and ask for a new AKS cluster We're going to give it a name that we're going to use to to respond to refer to it. Let's call it back stack demo Very creative. We're going to put it in West Europe because I know that I have quota in West Europe We're going to make this thing real big. We're going to say we want five Five nodes in our our node group and we're going to go from there Ultimately our scaffolder is going to create a pull request in our repo. So let's identify the repo here cross-plane Trib and We're putting in the back stack repo because mono repos are fun the Scaffolder is really not doing a whole lot of heavy lifting one of the advantages and challenges with backstage and I'll admit that about 80% of my time building this demo was spent learning how to use backstage because I'm not a react programmer and about 90% of the remaining 20% was spent getting my install script to work right because I really wanted to be able to just say Bash install and and have it all work and as anyone who's ever built a demo knows that's where everything goes in your time so I want to highlight that because Barely any of the time building this demo was actually spent building the parts that are getting the work done But they are getting the work done and so we'll look at what they look like. So this creates a pull request We open that up and let's go over to GitHub and accept it We can actually see the The request has come in the shape of the claim here that big enough to see yeah, excellent Is a Kubernetes resource? This is a custom resource type. It's exposed by cross-plane cross-plane allows you to define your infrastructure API and And expose custom resource types for it. So all backstage had to do was scaffold out that claim yaml and once that gets moved into the control plane the control plane can go off and do its thing How will it get from here into the control plane? I wonder So let's confirm the merge and we'll follow it around the circle and Before we go. I want to highlight that we have these checks running the DCO check is mad at me because it wants me to sign things off but here we're we're running a Caverno workflow where we're able to run Caverno in the in the the github as a response to the pull request and Validate the cluster ahead of time so we can deny Pull requests at this level and then we can again run those policy same policies Inside the cluster to perform audit and enforcement Once the request gets submitted into into the environment So that should be enough time For this to synchronize and I will collapse the pre-built one So this is our new Backstack demo and I didn't put this on On auto sync because I like this part. This is my favorite thing Just starts going right so all that was submitted into the control plane was that single YAML that single claim and The composition as defined by cross-plane is going out and it's build it has two Sub-compositions here one for the network one for the Kubernetes cluster itself And then each of those has a set of managed Resources that compose together the total platform that's being exposed And so great. We've gone from UI to Git Awesome, we've gone from git into our control plane great and now we're building out External infrastructure that we can use but it would be really lovely if that external infrastructure Made it back into backstage so what we want to see now in our resource list are the Existing clusters now. I apologize for the formatting here. I remember I said I am not a react programmer So the the styles are a little sideways But we have our our Kubernetes clusters here and we can even see the Cube config the cube configs that are registered by these clusters are registered as secrets in the Control plane and then we can externalize them to external secret stores in this case vault so the We're using vault in a very insecure way. It's configured in dev mode, which means you all know the token But luckily it's only on the loopback interface, so it's fine The Cube config here is is available so that if we want to start talking to our cluster We want to start deploying things into our cluster. We can with any tool that's available to us But wouldn't it be great if that cluster was already registered within? Argo so that we can start Targeting applications there so wiring so not only are we loading the cube config into vault so that External users can use it, but we've already registered that cluster ID Into Argo so I can use my other not the radar my other scaffold a new application deployment and For our purposes, we're going to borrow the guest book from from the Argo demo environment, so we'll just call this guy guest book and The source repository and let's see if I can type this without error And that tell me if I get it wrong We'll see the example apps All right, and then the path is just helm not absolute path this book and We want to send it over to the pre-built cluster because the demo cluster is still building and We will Again, we're just creating a pull request, so we're going to go around the circle We're going to go around the circle again, so crossplane contribute back stack Now we're creating a new application request pull request Fetch our template scaffold our pull request and let's go accept that pull request All checks have failed because I did not sign it off We we just moved this into a more stringent repository last night So I didn't have time to add the sign off to the scaffolder Fortunately, I'm an admin on this repo so I can push it anyway So now we have our our application is Set up in the Set up in the git repository, but nothing is sinking here because what we're missing is an app of apps to Register from that location. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to actually enhance my My hub to now pre-build that We're looking here at the the implementation for the hub cluster itself So if we think of the the back stack hub is having key components, we've got our go CD backstage caverno vault Cert manager so we can self sign everything and then importantly if we look here We can see that we were pre-creating this clusters application What I would like to do is enhance my composition to now include the applications composition in Application in there, so we're gonna copy did I copy? I did not copy Highlighted but did not copy We'll paste this here No They do twice in a row Isn't that the rule in jazz if you make a mistake do it twice? Paste haha, there we go Everything is off by one There we go So we're gonna call this the Argo applications application We're gonna call it applications We're gonna look at the Applications path and one of the things you'll notice here is this repo URL is It's just nonsense. We're using the patch and transform mechanism within cross-plane to take The URL that was passed in via the API we built the hub API we built and we're going to patch it in replace it here if we want to look at the the API shape itself we can we can actually query that straight out of the Clear that there we go We can actually look at the shape of the API by asking Kubernetes to Explain it to us. So we're going to explain the hub spec parameters So these are the parameters that we passed in when I when this thing provisions when the hub provisions step one Spin up local cluster step two install cross-plane step three Deploy a hub and cross-plane will go out and do it and it needs a bit of information Argo CD config backstage config these are the Just the host names For ingress control in order to configure those charts properly and then importantly this repo URL So we pass in the the repository URL URL where everything's going to be Where everything's going to be connected so we can go back here We see that we've finished updating our composition to now use that same information and to deploy this additional application so all we need to do is Update our composition within the control plane now There's a whole life cycle for packaging and deploying into a container registry You can use Argo in order to synchronize that back down into your control plane or you can cheat and just Apply directly. So if we want to apply the hub We can just update our hub directly And what we'll see is the Application will get updated that the new resource will get pushed out. We can actually have a look at that if we want to let's have a look at the Resource objects is what it's called objects. There we go So we can see our new application here, which is being which is being provisioned and we can see the Values that we put in there directly successfully created our new application and we can see that it's been Put in place right and again because I didn't make it auto sync. It's out of out of date, but now we can synchronize it and The guest book application which was synchronized down in there will now deploy into our Into our target cluster. We can synchronize this one layered into the The remote endpoint and if we go back while that's starting, let's grab our cube config download that And we're gonna we're gonna cheat again We're gonna use some port forwarding because I didn't want to set up ingress on all these clusters But if we pull down from downloads to Cube config We'll grab our service We can see our helm guest book here. This guest book is is ready to go Let's forward this port locally to let's make it 180 does not want to send that You know, this is what you get for doing it live But ultimately oh, it's still starting. That's why Too fast for the demo See here. Oh, we even have our scan report from Caverno telling us about all the things we did wrong with this deployment Luckily, we have it set to We have it set to audit, but it's letting us know, you know, are we are we meeting the pod security standards are we meeting our different deployment targets and I Didn't call this out earlier, but I should have done we actually have the Caverno generate policy in place that is Making sure that these app sets get deployed into the new cluster So when a new cluster comes in we're deploying these app sets into those clusters We're layering in applications. So each of the technologies in the stack has its part to play And there's a there's a natural assumption Which technology can do what? But then you find that they can do all sorts of new and exciting things around that when I was first setting up the relationship between cross-plane and Argo CD I Needed to be able to register those cube configs into Argo CD and to be able to Set up the relationships with these additional clusters. Oh look the demo cluster finished provisioning But I couldn't do that because Argo has its own format for How clusters are registered and how you set up the connection information You can't just drop a cube config in there and call it a day. You need to provide specific information in a specific format I didn't know how to do that So when I went looking for a tool it turned out the tool I needed was already in my hands And I'd been using it to enforce policies on my cluster. So a Caverno generate policy stands in between cross-plane and Argo in order to make sure that the Inputs are correct and the outputs are correct and and matches up with what each technology is expecting And we can actually see that back here in the in the composition where we set it up if we collapse this down this Generation cluster policy here right so this this policy is responsible for watching for cube config secrets and Transforming them into an Argo friendly Config that can then be used to set up the connections into everything So we've gone around the circle twice we've we've Asked our catalog to build us a To build us spoke cluster Once that cluster was up and running we went back to the catalog and asked it to deploy an application You can use The standard scaffolding to create whole new applications to and load those into the environment at this point You start to transition from well how the hell am I going to build that to what else can I build? And I really want to stress None of my time was spent actually doing this stuff It's a handful of the ammo files for Building the API's when I decided I wanted a hub API This is all it took to to build that out and anytime I needed a new component It was just as simple as what we did earlier For the policies these all exist right so all of these Caverno policies that are enforcing correctness on the cluster size on the node counts on the Pod rules they're just out there Argo has been synchronizing things from get into control planes and making sure that is done Efficiently effectively and you know with Rollouts and all the different workflow that goes around that for ages right and it just works and all it takes is a little bit of YAML to say oh, yeah watch this repo and make sure things happen properly So the effort required to actually build it up and tie them all together was really Remarkably easy the harder part was getting this bash script to do what I wanted it to do So at that with that I think we've covered everything we wanted to cover demo wise So just a couple things to wrap up with What's next obviously? The bootstrapping that's happening here is being driven primarily by this install script It's all aimed at a local Deployment however that hub composition nothing in that requires you to be running locally You can deploy that into any Kubernetes cluster you want you could even host the root control plane External to that cluster and it'll layer in everything you need into that environment additional use cases right so Name space as a service workload environments as a service and then starting to load in Additional capabilities from your control plane So I just recorded a video for a customer this morning their use case is we need to provide Object storage as a service and so how do I how would I as a platform engineer? Build out that capability and ensure that I'm building my S3 buckets with the right set of policies with the right set of Configurations, but only require the developer to give me a bucket name as I go And you can build that out so that that Composition already exists and you can define that API and roll that out within your application So all all these different use cases start to become available to you Other things that we wanted to add were around yeah around things like you know providing adding dashboard So we're using several different components making sure those components are up and running as a platform engineer You don't want to know there are go CDs healthy kevano is healthy You know cross plane providers are up and running so having that kind of central, you know dashboard using Prometheus or something like Prometheus or Grafana, you know that would be something we would add next and then potentially integration with other other You know projects right so that's those are things we are looking at next, but you know the rip was already live So please you know tried out provide feedback You know file issues We'll continue to evolve this we know working with You know the QT team the above team And you know the backstage community Absolutely, yeah, we you'll notice we already snuck one extra letter in there with with vault right so it's This can get you can add letters all day long But this is really the core of what what you need to go full circle And then please please please if you liked what you heard Leave feedback on this session And if you didn't that's okay, too. You can you can leave the feedback Thank you very much any questions Yeah, I think we have microphones here There's a mic here Yeah, this this is less of a question more of a comment, but I really just wanted to say thank you For this idea and this stack I've been participating in the working group on platforms for the last couple months as part of the maturity model and some other things and The idea of reference architecture for platforms has come up a lot. There's been some discussions going on and For you to sort of say there are so many tools available in the landscape These four you can draw a nice line around them and deliver a ton of value with this package It works really well together. I think it's extremely valuable and As an end user like I'm gonna go home and try this like these are already tools. We're starting to use we're using our go CD We're not using the others yet, but we're trialing backstage like I want this package as a whole You know, I don't want to have to solve it on my own. Yeah, I appreciate that you've provided this like Which trap? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you Yeah, thanks for the talk I had a quick question on do you do like time to live in Coverno? How do you control the spread of this if I'm pushing something out to a cloud? I want to know I'm not gonna build up my bill Yeah, great question, right and Coverno. So, you know, we mostly talk about You know validation mutation generation policies, but Coverno can also have that's cleanup policies So you can actually set up, you know Exactly what you're talking about if you want to clean up certain resources be after a certain period of time that can be done as well so one thing to mention about Coverno right a lot of times it's used for like, you know Security checks, but it's a great tool like, you know, more pointed out for automation and what we've heard from a lot of users is they've had they've You know stop writing controllers custom controllers and leverage Coverno for that kind of automation right through webbooks and so on Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. So I guess So I'm into the first comment. This is amazing I'm familiar with backstage in Argo, but crossplane is new to me and a big problem that my team has been facing is You know backstage is great for spinning up stuff that looks correct at the time of creation But what people are calling the day to problem right of hey I've just realized I need a new type of user in this reference application or a new type of permission or whatever It sounds like crossplane is a solution to that right? I would define a type of application in crossplane update the definition in crossplane and everything else would magically Filter out. Am I reading that right? Yeah, absolutely So for those we've had a few different talks and it afterward the fact you should absolutely go back and watch the talk with Jared and Clamont from Consensus they did a great one about streamlining infrastructure with crossplane Two days ago. I think it was on Tuesday Watch their talk because it was it was excellent but at a base level crossplane is a The answer to the question of what if Kubernetes but for all the things there's essentially two abstraction layers There's a set of providers that integrate with any external API We're using it here to drive Azure and AWS and to drive the external things But we're also using it to layer in Helm charts to layer in other Kubernetes objects and to then expose it And that's where the second abstraction layer comes in is to expose that behind a custom API I define the shape of the API based off of that definition and then I can have multiple different implementations behind it where and so I can have my standard implementation everybody who wants a cluster gets a cluster except for these guys They're special and we're gonna build them a one-off composition that they can select So they're still using the same API But they're providing some kind of metadata usually an annotation or a label or or even if it's if you're building out Choice directly within the platform. You'll make it a parameter in the spec But you have sort of those different layers, but if it's a one-off, it's usually a label You'll define a label on that type that then allows the back end to choose the right Composition that has the correct behavior Publication of a new version of a cross-plane whatever the entity is called. Yeah, that's the idea Whatever, we'll get picked up by consumers. Exactly. Yeah, the default behavior is to auto update You can change that to manual update But the default behavior is if I put a new composition revision out there, which is what we saw earlier I changed the composition. I cube CTL applied it into the cluster and then a new composition revision was generated and The any instance that had been tied to the old revision jumped to the new revision and started doing that new behavior Yeah, this is staggering. Yeah, it's it's great. Yeah Yeah, I think we are out of time, but we'll be here if you guys have any other questions any other questions meet us up here Thank you so much You


The Ministry of Youth Development and Sports has unveiled a new logo. Ryan O'Brien has the details. The Ministry of Youth Development and Sports has unveiled its new logo in an effort to create a refreshing new look for the ministry to help in connecting with the youth. The unveiling was done during a brief ceremony held at the ministry's conference room recently. As we continued to use CODOL arms for all government agencies, we felt it necessary to bring the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports against this backdrop. We threw out a challenge to our young people and they responded well and the tail is behind us. We received more than 70 logos and then the prize winners were chosen. The Minister for Youth Development and Sports said the logo was brought to cabinet and embraced with open arms. The logo will appear on all our literature, our shoots, our caps, you name it, in all print and digital media including the website, all of our social media platforms and all functions associated with this ministry. It is certainly a brand new day for us at this ministry and we are happy to share it with you. This logo now gives us instant recognition as it allows us to stand out from the crowd. The logo focuses heavily on portraying togetherness and patriotism as highlighted in the use of the national colors. The trophy in the logo represents sports and winning. The blue circular shape adds aesthetic appeal and serves the purpose of keeping our youth together. It shows the importance of working together to ensure the improvement and continued development of the youth as the young people continue to fly the flag of St. Lucia with pride and dignity. From the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports, I'm Ryan O'Brien.


Hey, welcome to Prosper Church. This is Prosper Church campus number one, where it all began back in 2010. What is all this? Oh, of course, right over there is our newly installed coffee bar sponsored by Starbucks. You can get all the same drinks. You can get there in their stores. You can get that here. What is Starbucks? Oh yeah, and we have a bookstore and gift shop area right back there. We just got Pastor Larry's bobble heads in. You'll wanna pick up one of those before you leave. They did such a good job on the goatee. They got it absolutely perfect. Will we be worshiping together? For sure. I mean, we have a professional band that'll play later and they play all the hottest songs by Maverick City and Elevation. We crank up the music so loud that you can't hear yourself sing. So don't worry if you can't follow along. That's why we leave it to the professionals. What? You've lost your salt. Not sure what that means, but I'm gonna take it as a compliment. Hope to see you at the event center in about 10 minutes for the worship experience. I'm digging those sandals, by the way. I gotta get me a pair.


This week's episode is sponsored by Ryan at Change. If you are looking to get involved in e-commerce and bulk their successful online business, then check out my good friend Ryan, who I have been working with the last few years and attended many events and retreats all around the world spending time with members who are making some serious money. I have been promoting Ryan for a while now because I believe in what he does and not only has he helped and supported me, built my own businesses but I have seen first hand how he helps and supports his members, take their businesses to new levels and give them financial freedom. So if you are interested in getting into e-commerce and building successful online stores then message Ryan on his Instagram at ryan.com to join his winning team. You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. Thanks for watching. So I grew up in a council estate, obviously. I was born and bred in Redding, four barks. We then went to a place called Winnish which was a little rough council estate area and then from there we went from Winnish to a place called Woods Hill and Wokenham which is where my little journey started. Other than that it was more like just a normal upbringing really. But I think a council estate for me, I say normal.  It's just a council estate for my home. What about school? School went to St. Paul's. I was a naughty kid in there. I was just an average naughty kid. I wasn't the worst or anything like that. I think back then a naughty kid was the worst. Other than that he was alright. When I went to secondary school, I got expelled from secondary school. I was just like 11, 10, 11. And then that's when I went to boarding school. What did you get expelled for?  So I was just playing up and then the caretakers are back then. I don't know if you remember, they weren't computers like they are now. They were like the tape player ones.  And they would go mad. And the caretaker was in like, he opened up the box. There was all the switches and stuff. And I would turn them all the other way. I would just sit there. I'd been naughty. I would sit outside waiting on a chair. And he opened the key. And I would switch them all off. All the lights went off.  And then the woman come out and go, what's going on? This is all the paperwork. And so the stuff they'd had on the computers all been lost and stuff like that. So then they put me to the sixth formers and they were doing their exams. And it's actually in my book. There's a big bit of paper in there that says what I'd done in the school to get expelled. When I went in there, I had a Bunsen burner tube on a tap. And I turned it on. And I was just playing with it. And they didn't know I was doing it. And it sprayed the water. On the end of a hose. I didn't mean it to. And it went all over their writing. Went all over their papers. And then obviously all the inks were running. They had to write it all again. I was like, get out. They just basically pulled my mum in. And I was like, yeah, we don't want to go to my own school. But I don't think that was that bad. Nowadays, people are getting stabbed up at schools or smashed up and stuff like that. I had ADHD. So I was like, one of them. What about mum and dad? Mum and dad, yeah, loving parents. My dad was, even to this day like, I got married the other week. And he put his hand on my shoulder for the first time. I was like, okay, a bit of affection. You know what I mean? But my old man, he's like, he's not really affectionate person. You know what I mean? I think I'm going to play football with him stuff like that. He was just there. But I didn't like, I think later in life, I realised my old man, he went to work every day. He was a grafter. He used to think, oh, my dad didn't even play football with me or doing stuff like that, you know what I mean? So I didn't have that bond with my dad. My mum, obviously me and her, I love my mum to pieces and stuff like that. But yeah, my dad, just like affectionate-wise, there's nothing there, you know what I mean?  How much do you think that affects you? Not having that, obviously, listening to your dad's providing that, that's love. Yeah, yeah, but I don't be having that affection. I think it does affect you later. I mean, when I was in trouble, he'd smack me up, but his dad used to hit him. Back then, he was allowed to hit your kids. He was legal, you know what I mean? But yeah, sometimes it would be a bit like that, you know what I mean? And it'd affect me a bit like that because he didn't mean something like that. I'd be like, oh, that's a bit of a shock, you know what I mean? But I don't think he really realised what he was doing. I think like, now, like, I mean, I've got a good friendship, you know? What were they saying when you were getting into trouble and getting expelled, though? Usually, it's normally the broken homes. The father's not there. Well, my dad wasn't there. I mean, I got beat up once and went back to my house.  My dad gave me a pickaxe hand. I didn't hit him with that. That's the kind of dad I was. I mean, back then, so I had this pickaxe hand on my hand and I went out to help this kid. I couldn't even lift it off the floor. He was there big back then. I'm like 10 or 9, I think it was. And I'm trying to pick this axe up. I ran back to me front door and banged on my door. My dad went and answered the door. I'm like, please let me in, dad. Please.  I was so scared. I was like, thank God for that. Trying to teach you a lesson. But again, knowing now with the science and stuff, that's not normal. Abandonment issues, kick me in for kids who don't. That's not loving and not sure. The way it is, it's the closest thing I can hit them with. That's not the way you should be taught listening. You've got to defend yourself. I'll be able to say a percent. But the old school mentality is even when kids are born, let them cry, they cry out. Abandonment issues are so strong with that. You've got to love your kids and not show them the skin. I literally said this the other day as well because I've got two kids with someone and the rule is put them in their bedroom, let them cry, shut the door. I think that's the worst thing too, to love them and keeping the bed where you would hug them and cuddle them and stuff like that. Giving them that bond of growing up of love and they won't have that sort of separation in their brain and stuff. Separationings, that's what it causes and it causes massive effects of abandonment.  I felt like I was a band when I was born. I felt like I was a band and that was quite bad for me. That's when my whole chain of events went. This was in your whole life took a ton for the worst. That's when your books caught a lawn. That's when you entered boarding school. You felt a lawn and the abuse started. How long were you in boarding school for? How did you get sent there for? We went to I remember going to this little hospital and it's like it's like a small little hospital and there was a therapy in there and that's where the social services was and trust me, I don't ever get involved in social services. The UK is just the worst. My mum and dad were talking like a terrapin.    Joe, I've been like I haven't seen my kids in months when did you get stabbed?    Amazon so it's gonna be on Amazon this Friday so it'll be on Amazon and then it's gonna do like a book launch and then pre-order is it they do a pre-order and then it'll then assist itself for anybody watching this for me being through that leaf or struggle the same as yourself what advice would you have for them? to be honest if if you're going through anything especially like mental health and stuff like that I say to all my friends that you have to have goals goal-setting and there's a thing that we've lost is pen to paper we've lost that it's all phones concentrating and eyeballing TV screens there's something really beautiful about pen to paper brainstorming on pen to paper if you're gonna get a bit of paper and just write down how you're feeling how you can like set a goal for a week to two weeks to three weeks to four weeks six months and do baby steps so say next week I'm gonna go fucking Legoland with my kids because they don't have to be about men they can be about families as well women that ain't got a father or something in their life so I'm gonna go to Legoland next week even though I don't do nothing on my life and then after that you can say well the week after I'm gonna go and I'm gonna they ain't got a job they can start looking for a job and say well I'll apply for these jobs or I'm gonna start building like businesses or anything like that any just keep your brain occupied it's got to be occupied if you don't occupy your brain your brain does itself in you start thinking thinking thinking thinking if I don't occupy myself I go straight back quite quickly I say slowly but I go back quite quickly I go back to my past and I start thinking thinking thinking that's why I'm like people know I've had so many different businesses because I just I get one minutes finish I feel like oh no I'm gonna crack up again so I go and set another up oh no I'm gonna crack up again so I keep changing but goal settings the main thing like I know people who won't leave the house because they're paranoid they've got like panic attacks so I said to them like just take baby steps just like you know go to your front door then outside the door then have a walk around the street but write it down on paper I feel that's the main thing is writing it down and trying to goal set do you know what I mean that for mental health definitely mate Steve, listen mate proud of you brother I wish you nothing but the best for the future good luck with the book and listen bro see you soon yeah thank you bro


obsession. Too few, however, recognize that danger sign in the eyes of a woman whose mind is fused with an obsession of escape. A slow burning fuse that sputters with an angry hiss towards its destination of dynamite. And thus our story starring Susan Hayward. Stout the inland California highway route from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Some carry produce from Imperial Valley. Some carry oil from the refineries at Long Beach and El Segundo. Some, which travel a special route, carry cargo identified only by a small red flag and a sign which reads, danger keep your distance. These trucks carry nitroglycerin, dynamite, whose dormant power and force of destruction burns like a fuse in the minds of the drivers until dynamite becomes an obsession. Work in Joe's place. It's an eating place just off the main highway about 30 miles south of Bakersfield. Most of the truck drivers who stopped there call me by my right name, which is Maple, except for one or two who think they'd be in real clever when they call me Toots. Very beautiful. So I guess it was mostly on account of the way this Fred first spoke to me to caught my attention. The Bakersfield crowd had just pulled out and I was cleaning off the tables in the back, so I didn't see him come in. And suddenly I didn't say. Oh, miss. Hello. Hello. Say, can I get a cup of coffee? That's what I'm here for. Cream and sugar? I just cream. How's the apple pie? Terrible. I'll have a piece. New on this run? Uh huh. Just out of the day. What are you carrying? Oil. El Segundo or Long Beach? Long Beach. You ought to carry a cheese. You make more money. What's a cheese? High explosives. Glisser and dynamite, that stuff. Here's a fork. Oh, thanks.  I know a lot of truck drivers. They look like they're still alive to me. Maybe they're just lucky. Maybe they're just smarter. The guys who drive produce and oil have to work three months for what you make in one H.E. run. Yeah, that's what I mean. They wouldn't pay that kind of dough if it wasn't plenty dangerous. Well, he'd been one blow up on the route in over two years. Well, just the same. I think I'll stick to oil. I always figure if you gotta die, it's kind of nice to die of old age. You know, I'm a fatalist. I always figure that when your time comes, you're gonna go and nothing is stopping. Well, that's no reason to go out looking for it. It's no reason to be afraid either. Why'd you say that? I don't know. Maybe it's because I think you'd be afraid.  Do you always look that way? I guess I do.  How much is the pie and coffee? 15 cents. You're mad at what I said, aren't you? I don't care what you say. You don't mean anything to me. I might. What do you mean by that? I just said I might. You mean you think I could fall for you? Why not? You sure must think you're something. Don't you think I'm attractive? Yeah, to some people maybe. You remind me of a well of... Of a what? One of those H.E. trucks you were talking about. The little signs on them that say danger, keep your distance, dynamite. My name's not dynamite. It's Mabel. What's your... Fred. I'm late now on a count of talking to you. So long, Mabel. Suppose I'll be seeing you when you buy this way again. Now I doubt it. No? No, you were right. The apple pie here is terrible. He was a funny kind of guy for a truck driver. I'd never seen anyone like him before. He even made me feel a little foolish about the things I said to him. I guess that's why I was glad to see him leave and glad to hear he wasn't coming back. He sort of got on my nerves. Then one night a couple of weeks later, I was waiting on an H.E. driver named Steve. Steve and me, we'd go out on dates sometimes when he wasn't running H.E.s. I think he really liked me. Gee, that coffee hits the spot, Mabel. How about some more cake, Steve? I haven't got time. They're repairing the highway a few miles down. They'll probably hold us up there for a while. So I better get started. You gonna be down south for long? No, I'll be back for the weekend. Oh, safe. If you can get off early, maybe we can take in the Saturday night dance up at Bakerfield. All right. Okay, I'll see you Saturday night. Still on there? Still on, Steve. Hello, Mabel. Oh, it's you. Yeah, I'm back. I thought you didn't like our apple pie. Well, didn't have any complaints about the coffee. How about a cup? How about a cup? How about a cup?  He might be. What do you want with it? Just cream, remember? There'll be five things. And I haven't any change at all. Just got a 20. Oh, Mabel. You know what I stopped in for? To get changed for your 20. Now, I wanted to talk to you. You don't like? Remember? No, I didn't say that. I said I thought you were dangerous. You should change. You always steal when you want something? I never steal. I just saw you. Why didn't you put my 20 in the cash register? We keep big bills separately. Yeah, but there's other 20s in that register. I even saw a 50. Are you calling me a thief? You called me a coward when I said I wouldn't drive a cheese. I told you you could make more money driving a cheese. If I wanted money bad, I wouldn't steal it. I want money bad. What for?    I want to get away. I'll drink your coffee. It's getting cold. Now, look, Mabel. Hey, hey, what's that? That felt like a quake. No, no, it wasn't. I know that sound. Oh, what was it? That was a truck, a dynamite truck. Fred said we should drive down to where it happened, see if we could help. Well, we might as well have stayed at the restaurant. When we got there, all we found was a couple of pieces of twisted steel, part of a steering wheel, and Steve wasn't going to be able to keep that date Saturday night with me after all. Oh, Mabel. What do you think about it now? About what? About driving those H.E.s. I've seen it happen before. Doesn't it bother you at all? Steve knew what he was doing when he took the job. He wanted the money. I'd have done the same thing. Would you? You said yourself it was better than stealing. Mabel, you'd do anything to get away from here, wouldn't you? I think so. I've never met anyone like you. What do you mean by that? Well, I just haven't. That's all. Tell me something. Steve, well, he was your boyfriend, wasn't he? We got along. You liked him, didn't you? As well as anybody?  Don't you know how to cry, Mabel? I never cry over truck drivers. A week went by, and the dynamite company was having a lot of trouble trying to find someone to take Steve's place. The chief dispatcher, a seller named Nick, was talking about it at the counter one morning. That's the way it goes, Mabel. One blow-up, and every guy on the run starts getting buck fever. Still haven't found a driver yet, huh? No. Of course you can't blame the poor devil. Most of them have wives and families. All it takes is something like this to make them realize... Nick? Yeah? Do you know a driver named Fred? Oh, yeah, he's a new man. Been driving oil, I think. Yeah, that's the one. Have you talked to him? Nah, those guys are hardly ever interested. They thought they'd get a tax of that safety runner there. This one might be interested, though. How do you know him? Well, I don't. I just have a hunch he might be. Hey, Nick. What? Why don't you talk to him? See what he says. What's the idea, man? No idea. You said you needed a driver? Well, this might be a man. Okay, I'll see the guy if you think there's a chance of getting him. Be sure you don't say anything to him about me, huh? No, I won't. Look, what's your connection, Mabel? Let's just say I'm interested in seeing the guy get ahead. I didn't see Nick again that week. And then, Friday night around 11.30, I was getting ready to close the place up. It would be raining all day long, and business had been pretty slow. And then, just as I was turning out the light, Fred! I'm going down south tonight, Mabel. Be going for five or six weeks, so I thought I'd stop in and say goodbye. Oh, what are you going to do down there? I got an LA to Tucson to run. Why don't you take that? This morning, a pretty important run. Pays good. That's nice. Yeah, a fellow gave me the job. Didn't seem too happy about it, though. Why not? Now, he said he didn't want to kid me. Said it's real hard to keep from running over stones in the road when you're driving at night. And how you have to concentrate on turning the wheel just right. So you don't drive the truck. You're driving AT. He said you're going to be especially careful when you come to bridges. The pavement's usually uneven. The truck hits a bump, and well, and where are you? Maybe just where Steve is, huh? What did you take the job for if you're afraid? I'm not afraid, Mabel. I need the money. Why? You know why. What are you telling me about it for? I just wanted to be sure you're away. I wanted to make sure you were a good investment. I've been here a long time. Dance to reason.  Mabel, if anything should happen, would you cry about me? I answered that once before. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, guess I better get going. Red. Huh? Good luck. Oh, thanks. Oh, and, uh, and Mabel? Yeah? You didn't have to ask Nick to talk to me about the job. I was going to take it anyway. He told you about me? Now, he didn't say anything. I just knew. Nobody has to tell me about you, Mabel. Pete Critt, can't you see the little red flag that indicates the five-inch sign that warns? Danger, keep your distance. The bump in the road, remember? The bump that detonates the obliterating flash of dynamite. But in this case, a new brand of dynamite. A supercharged high nitro ready to blow at the touch of the sputtering flame of a relentless obsession. In just a moment, we return to our story. To return to the explosive laden atmosphere of the story of dynamite, starring Susan Hayward, fought by on the undeviating calendar of the pendulum. But the same monotonous pattern weaves in the shimmering heat of Joe's place. The same roaring diesels of the trucks backfiring to a stop. The same pungent venison of hot coffee to bolster red rimmed eyes in the long trek. The same drivers, the same loud, almost obscene laughter over the same jokes of the coast-to-coast highways. And the same Mabel, her mind quickening with the ever-building selfish strength of the bursting germ obsession. I didn't hear a word from Grant, not even a postcard. Of course, I didn't hear of any accidents down that way either, so I figured he was okay. Probably just being stubborn, thinking maybe I'd worry about him if he didn't write. Well, if that was the case, you ought to know better. Hello, Mabel. Hello, Fred. Miss me. How did you make out downtown? Pretty good. Come on, let's take a walk. I'll tell you all about it. Can't leave the counter. Ah, come on, just for a minute. We can watch the door. All right. It's well night, isn't it? Uh-huh. You look pretty swell yourself. Thanks. I've been thinking about you. I thought about you a lot. You did? I even imagined things about you. Do you ever do that? Imagine things about people? Some people. Did you ever imagine anything about me? I don't know. I don't think so. Once or twice, I imagine you and me being married. Now, it's kind of crazy, wasn't it? Yeah. Of course, all this talk, it doesn't matter much, but... Well, I made 3,000 bucks down south, and here it is. Hey, that's a lot of money. You can leave here now, anytime you want. Where to, Mabel? San Francisco? The East? No, Los Angeles. I like it down there. How come you're doing this for me? Well, you expected me to, didn't you? I figured you would. That's why I asked Nick to give you the job. Why the act then? You got what you wanted. Yeah, but... Well, kind of a surprise, getting it all at once like this. Ah, that's the best way. Keeps us from kidding each other. I wanted to give you the money, and that's why you got it. No other reason. You're a good guy, Fred.  I'm sort of crazy, that's all. I got one more HE run, San Francisco to LA. I'm going to quit after that. Will I see you again? No. Fred. Yeah. I want to see you again. Honest. Why? Well, I lied to you just a minute ago. I have imagined things about you. Even like... Yeah? Well, even like the things you imagined. Well, I thought it was just a dough. I thought so too. Oh, Mabel. Look, it was just you and me. Just you and me. Would this place still look so bad, you know? I don't think so. I told you about that last run of mine. Well, I'm going to make it. And when I get back from LA, see if you still feel the same way. Will you do that? I'll wait for you. When are you going down? Come our tonight. Stop in before you go, huh? Okay. Don't you want to take some coffee with you? All right. Better hurry it up, though. I'm late now. Hey, y'all. Hope it stays warm. Thanks. Well, I'll be seeing you. Fred. I'll be back Saturday. Say, uh, you like dancing? Sure. They're having a big dance up at Bakersfield Saturday night. Maybe we could go. That'd be swell. Okay, then it's a date. It's a date. And, uh, Mabel. Yeah? Hang on to that dough. I'll have another thousand to put with it when I finish this run. Maybe we can buy something we both want with it. Sure, Fred. Hey, Fred. Oh, Nick. Hi, Nick. Hi. I thought I saw your truck out there. You're running a half-hour behind schedule. You better get going. Oh, yeah, yeah, right away. Well, Mabel, I...  What? Oh, sure.  Take care of yourself. I will. Goodbye. Bye. See you, Nick. Yeah, okay, Fred. What do you have, Nick? Gee, you like that guy, don't you? What do you have, Nick? The usual. Pie and coffee. He's a good driver. Glad you recommended him. I'm not. He told me today he was quitting after this run. That wouldn't be on account of... Nick, why don't you just forget it? Oh, dear, if you say so. I didn't mean any harm. I'm sorry. I guess I'm a little jumpy or something. I don't know. What's the truck? No trouble, exactly. The truck.  Did you... Yeah, it was the truck all right, but... Listen, Mabel, it wasn't so bad. Fred jumped before it happened. He was thrown clear. Something must have gone wrong with the truck, and he noticed it before it was too late. Fred's all right? Well, not exactly. You see, he got a shock from the concussion. Where is he? I called the company ambulance. They're taking him to the hospital now. They'll do everything they can, Mabel. Is he going to die, Nick? I don't know anything about those things. But look, I'm going to the hospital myself. I'll call you as soon as I find out something. I'll be here. Hello. Hello, Mabel. Operation. Going to cost a lot of dough. When Fred came to a while ago, he said he gave you $3,000 to keep for him. Better hop a bus, easier. Money? You got it, haven't you? Yeah. Yeah, I got it. Good. Well, catch a bus up here right away. Stand for the hospital in Bakersfield. All right, Nick. Goodbye. Money. $3,000. He gave me that money to get away to go to Los Angeles. No other reason to get away. Nick, Nick, where's Mabel? No, over there. There's a pencil and paper. Write it down. Yeah, I should have been by now. Yeah, can you read that? She should have. What do you think's keeping her? She probably couldn't get a bus. She probably couldn't. But if you called her four hours ago, I don't understand. I... Fred! Nick, maybe you ought to... Oh, Fred, I almost did a terrible thing. Oh, look, honey. I can't hear a thing you say. You'll have to write it all down. Fred, I almost did a terrible thing. I can't understand. Just wait here. Here's a pencil. I want a pen or two. Even if you can't hear me, you can look at me anyway. I'm ashamed of Fred. For the first time in my life, I'm ashamed. All right. Write it down, darling. Please. Look, I started to take the bus for Los Angeles. And then I got off, Fred. Because I realized... I did realize, Fred, you've got to believe that. All I want now is for you to get well. Please get well. Oh, Mabel. Mabel, you're crying. Why are you crying, honey? More apple pie? No, thanks. I think that'll do me. Yeah, what's the damage? 30 cents, penny tax, 31. Yeah. Just right, thanks. Mabel. Hello, Fred. Honey, I got some terrific news. What is it? You know those oranges I've been carrying from Santa Anna? Uh-huh. Well, I always have to make a check-in stop at LA with them. This morning, when I stopped off, the guy there hands me this. Oh, Fred, this is swell. I'm going to be at this spot.  What do you think of that? He is wonderful. Yeah, and you better start packing. We'll be leaving for Los Angeles the first of the week. We're going to live there? Sure. Y'all, we said you wanted to, didn't you, honey? And next week, we'll be leaving, Fred and me. No more Joe's play. No more watching the trucks go by. Oh, by the way, they re-rooted DHEs. They don't come by here anymore. And maybe it's just as well. You know, any guy that would drive one of those things is playing with dynamite. If properly handled, dynamite becomes innocuous. The laws of physics decree that no power is released without a reason. The fuse must be lit. The detonator set before the sleeping destruction is loose. And thus, on the San Francisco to Los Angeles run of high explosives, the fuse was snipped in time. The detonator removed from a case of dynamite created from obsession. In just a moment, I'll be back with a preview of next week's story. A different twist on one of frustration when love fails to recognize the symbol of its own creation. A story as free of mystery and murder on the distance side, as it is filled with the hesitant seas and doubts that arise from the vice-like grip of an obsession. You'll find many forgotten moments of your own life tucked away in the building part of wind songs. A story you'll hold at the monument to your own happiness and security and love. That is sung on the sweet Aeolian zippers of the wind. In next week's story of Direction of C.P. McGregor in Hollywood.


Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to CMC Markets' monthly non-farm payrolls webinar with me, Michael Hueson, on Friday the 5th of February. And let's look at some of the market events of the past week or so, as well as obviously the US Employment Report, while we mull over that. One of the questions that I got asked fairly recently is, why do you do a webinar over the non-farm payrolls report? It's so last decade. And I suppose that's a fair question. It's a fair question. Before we get onto that, let's just get some housekeeping out the way with various disclaimers and what have you. It is a fair question, but ultimately it's not so much about the payrolls report per se, but it's about myself and CMC having some sort of engagement with our clients over the course of the past, say month or so, because ultimately I think since the advent of lockdowns, we can't do monthly events anymore, which means that the only way that we have of engaging with our clients is by virtue of these types of events. So while it's labeled non-farm payrolls, pretty much it's going to be about what I think about the markets. And you can usually follow that on my daily commentary, which goes up on the CMC Markets website under the Insights section, News and Analysis. But more broadly, I think it just gives you guys an opportunity to ask me questions about the markets, where I think the markets are going and whether rightly or wrongly. You know, you can agree or disagree with me to your heart's content because ultimately that's what makes a market. There's no right or wrong answer. I tend to look at things very much through a prism of technical analysis with a little bit of fundamentals thrown in. But ultimately I think the most important thing as far as I'm concerned is I think what the price action is telling me. And the price action is telling me that for the moment, equity markets continue to be very much a case of by the dips. When you look past all the headlines, and there's an awful lot of them from a bearish and a bullish point of view. For me, the most important headline that I look at when I look at markets in particular is what's the price action doing. So, if we look at say for example the S&P 500, we can see that amongst all of those lines, the line of least resistance is very much by the dip. And we're on course in just over an hour to open higher on the cash open 3885. So, looking at 3,900, potentially 4,000 on the S&P, my long term targets, which I get asked on a fairly regular basis by Bloomberg, half for the FTSE 100 to go towards 7,000. Now, on that particular point, I'm very much lagging behind a little bit, but I think you can pretty much blame this week's earnings from BP and Royal Dutch Shell and Unilever for that. They've lagged behind and obviously the strong pound, strong ish pound. I don't like to use the old pound analogy because when when you've got cable at 135, 136, you know, it's not that strong relative to say, for example, 10 or 15 years ago when it was up at 170. So, nonetheless, a slightly stronger pound is seen as a little bit of a little bit of a drag on the dollar earners in the FTSE 100, of which there are many, and they probably make up around about sort of 30, 40%. And then you've got the banks to throw in on top of that, which takes up another 10% and they're very exposed to the UK economy. So you've got an awful lot of what I would call very cyclical stocks on the FTSE 100 to the exclusion of everything else. So, you know, let's talk about payrolls, shall we? Well, payrolls, disappointing number in December. We saw a minus 140,000 on the headline number. Could well see a significant adjustment to that number. More importantly, I think the markets are thinking perhaps it's just a one-off. What we did see, what we've seen over the course of the past week or so is all of the concerns about the GameStop rally, the Reddit rally or what have you approved to be slightly wide, slightly overcooked, overbaked, whatever you want to call it. You've got the US Democrats signing off, trying to push through $1.9 trillion stimulus plan that got approved by the Senate earlier today with Kamala Harris, pushing it through on the casting vote. Now needs to go through Congress. I'm just quite likely it may get tweaked a little, but I think what we're seeing at the moment is some concerns about the reflation trade.  We've seen US Treasury yields, 10-year yields spike upwards quite substantially over the course of the past week or so. We can see that very much on my Bloomberg chart here, which suggests that the dollar is starting to come back as a little bit of a haven of choice, which is not surprising when you look at the euro and the vaccine response that's playing out there, the political instability in Italy. The fact that you've got European leaders not exactly singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to a vaccine response and the fact that the EU is likely to find that it's behind the curve, behind the UK, behind the US in terms of getting some sort of herd immunity when it comes to vaccinating all of its population. And you're seeing that reflected in the Bank of England's outlook yesterday when it came to its prospects for the UK economy. You're getting a bit of a vaccine put on sterling that's helping there, steepening the yield curve, not only on US Treasuries but UK Guilts as well, which is helping UK banks. So at the moment, if you're looking at the vaccine response through a prism of US, UK, Europe, Europe is a laggard that's pulling down on the euro and it's pushing up the pound and it's pushing up the dollar. So from that perspective, you could argue that what we're seeing at the moment is optimism over a Q2, Q3 recovery combined with the prospect of additional stimulus from the US and potentially further help from the UK in a budget next month. So you've got a little bit of what I call a goldilocks scenario when it comes to stock markets, the sterling and the dollar. So what does that mean for markets going forward? Well, certainly if you look at what US yields are doing, very much an uptrend there. The big level for me on the 10 year is 120. Now we're three basis points higher today. If we change that to say, for example, a candle or bar chart, you can see now how much more important that 120 level is. If we then compare that to say for example the dollar index, you're seeing a little bit of a similar move higher here. What we've also seen in euro dollar is a breakdown on the euro dollar chart. Let's not forget that when you look at the dollar index, 57% of that dollar index is euro dollar. So any move in the dollar is certainly going to be reflected in a similar move downwards in euro dollar. More importantly, if we just remove that, just remind you of what we're seeing here in US 10 year yields, we've seen a move higher from the lows in August last year. If we now look at, let's get rid of that, we now look at gold and see where gold peaked. It peaked at exactly the same time as US yields bottom. So what you're seeing here is an inverse correlation between gold and US 10 year yields. So if you're longer gold, I'd be a little bit twitchy if we break through 120 and US 10 year yields and we break below those loads that we saw in November last year on around about 1760 because it does appear to be a correlation between the highs in gold and the lows in US 10 year yields and that 120 level in 1760 on gold. So I'm looking at those two markets there in terms of where gold's going to go next, where US yields are going to go next, and potentially if US yields do break above 120 that could have an impact on further upside in equity markets. It could slow the move higher down quite substantially in certain areas, in certain frothy areas of the equity market space. So what are we expecting for non farms? Well, first and foremost, let's look at the calendar, which can be found in the dropdown from news and analysis and area numbers. We've also got the Canadian payrolls report as well. So that is going to be equally important if you're a Canadian dollar trader, but it generally doesn't tend to get anywhere near as much traction as the headline US payrolls report number. So big number non farms, 50 K personally, I think that's too low, given what we saw with the ADP payrolls report earlier this week, where we saw a fairly decent number for that. We've also seen weekly jobless claims come down from the peaks that we saw in January, around about 965 we're now below 750 on that. So that would suggest that the US labor market is improving. Bloomberg's got a consensus of not 50, but 100. I've gone 150 ADP came in at 174 the expectation for ADP was around about 47. Now there isn't precise correlation between two. I think it's important to understand that sometimes you don't get a very precise correlation between non farms and ADP and sometimes the correlations are not there at all. But I think on the balance of probabilities fact that the ISM numbers earlier this week for manufacturing and also services showed fairly decent rebounds in the employment component. I think any positive number is likely to be fairly well received. That being said, I would be disappointed if we get anything below 100. But even if we don't get a number. If we even if we don't get a number above 100. I'm not overly concerned because all that will do is it will shift the focus back to Capitol Hill and increase the pressure on US politicians to agree another stimulus plan on top of the $900 billion extra $900 billion that was passed at the end of last year by the Trump administration. You've had two stimulus plans out of the US already the one that expired at the end of July last year. Then the new $900 billion one that was passed at the beginning of this year, plus an extra $1.9 trillion that could well get pushed through the US Congress between now and the end of March or the beginning of March rather, which is when the $900 billion plan rolls over. So we've got. I've just been asked it seems dollar index markets thrive on both good and bad news is that fair. Yeah, I would I would say that it is. If you look at the US dollar, and you look at it through the prism of what's the safe haven what's not what's not a safe haven. Ultimately, I think someone once said it's the cleanest dirty shirt. So if you look at it through the prism of yen euro sterling in the dollar, then it employs it acts as not only a safe haven. When things are bad. But also, it can, it's not going to drop too significantly when things are good. If that makes sense, at least I think it makes sense. I'm sure you'll tell me if it doesn't anyway. For me, it's about how what the price action is telling me about the dollar. Now, if we look at euro dollar, what we've seen over the past few days has been quite compelling. In terms of this particular chart that we're looking at here.  But what we've seen since last Friday, we've seen a break below one twenty forty one twenty fifty. Now that for me is significant in the overall direction of where we've been and where we've where we come from. Since November, we've been in a fairly decent uptrend. We've broken through those series of lows through here and about one twenty forty. And the likelihood is that now that we've broken this pattern, we could well see a move towards one eighteen seventy and one seventeen sixty over the course of the next few weeks. So for me, the calculus has shifted away from buying euro dollar on dips to now selling it on rallies while we're below one twenty and a half. So that's why I think the dollar has the potential now to go higher rather than lower. And the only way that I am going to you say the dollar should go higher rather than lower and the euro should go lower. I'm also negative on the euro, given the fact that euro sterling has also broken a very key support level on the daily charts as well. So that feeds into my lower euro story in the context of what we're seeing here. Look at this seventy eighty seven eighty eight sixty area here. That was a very, very big support level. It's gone. And a week ago, I said, I think euro sterling is going down and I still think it's going down. I think we're coming back down here to around about these lows that we saw last April and May. This is around about eighty six ninety eighty six eighty. So for me, you know, the dam is broken on euro sterling. And thanks to the matter is that we should see we should see a lower euro stronger pound over the course of the next few days and weeks. So that also helps feed into my slightly strong stronger sterling story whereby if we look at cable here, similar story. But we need to break through one thirty seven and a half. That's a little bit of a barrier on the upside, but it's still fairly decent support all the way through here. We're still getting higher lows. And what we need to see now is higher highs and break through that one thirty seven sixty. I still see I still think we can see cable at one forty haven't changed my mind from the beginning of this year. And I'm steadfast in that unless we break below one thirty five. So I'm still looking for one forty cable. I still think we can see seven thousand on the footsie one hundred between now and the end of Q one. At the moment we're struggling and it is a little bit troubling. But if we look at this chart here, there's nothing that's dissuaded me that we can't continue to go higher. Now the price action is not great and we have broken below the 50 day moving average. So that is a bit of a worry. So we need to get back above the 50 day moving average. We need to break it back above this trend line here. But ultimately while above six thousand three hundred, my bullish case for the footsie one hundred remains pretty much intact in terms of where we go to next. Sometimes you'll find that you have to adjust your strategy as the price as the price moves. But ultimately this key line here now is my next key support line for the footsie one hundred. So I'm still very much plan of buying the dips on that while that support line remains intact. It's a similar sort of story for the DAX. We're up near record highs. It's difficult to really sort of make a case of buying the dip on that at the moment, given where we are. But if we do see any pullbacks in that, then I would certainly be looking to get back in. But at these sorts of levels, I'm cautious about being long because we're below the highs that we saw back in January. And ahead of the weekend, you also remember that ahead of the weekend, people are going to be very reluctant to basically take on big long positions ahead of that. Aussie dollar. Right. This is my Aussie dollar chart. This is how we're trading on Aussie dollar. So for the moment, we're trading towards the bottom end of this trading range. So I'm very much a seller of Aussie dollar on rallies at the moment, got fairly decent support in and around where we are at the moment. But the longer term trend for Aussie dollar is for a slightly is a slightly lower Aussie. So we're just coming up to the numbers now. Tell you what I'm expecting 150,000 on non farms, unemployment at 6.7%. Let's just quickly open a Euro dollar five minute chart so we can actually see what the immediate market reaction will be. But I think obviously a weaker number will be initially dollar negative. But ultimately, I think they're not really going to drive the market that significantly, unless they are significantly wider the mark. So I'm going to be quiet now, wait for the numbers to break and see what comes out 6.7 unemployment. Those are not good numbers. Okay, for non farms, we've seen a bigger revision downwards. That's negative for the dollar. So you're going to see the dollar, you're a dollar push up towards 120 now on the back of that potentially as high as 120 40, but what it will do. Now that we've seen a much larger downward revision and a very disappointing headline number is it's going to increase the focus on US politicians to push ahead with that stimulus plan. As we look ahead towards the next four to five weeks and those Canadian numbers are really rubbish. I mean those are very disappointing numbers on dollar CAD. The unemployment rate, however, and this is the thing that's I think going to temper the headline number is dropped from 6.7% to 6.3%. So that's a significant decline. Average earnings are higher up from 5.1% to 5.4%. Again, that number is skewed by the fact that an awful lot of the jobs that are probably coming back are slightly higher paid jobs as opposed to the lower paid ones that skewing the number higher. So trying to make sense of that. In terms of the fall in the unemployment rate and the disappointing number there. I'm going to have a look at the participation rate because that could skew. The headline number for non farms. I'm just going to have a quick look at that and see whether or not we've seen a similar fall. In the labor force participation rate, which is currently at 61.5%. And that's that's seen a little bit of a fall to 61.4%. So 0.1% of that decline in the unemployment rate has been as a result of people dropping out of the workforce. The under employment rate has also fallen quite sharply from 11.7% to 11.1%. So I'm guessing that we have seen some significant revisions to not only the December payrolls report, but I would suggest the November payrolls and October payrolls report as well because certainly in the context of what we're seeing at the moment. In terms of the headline numbers, it would suggest to me that we've seen significant adjustments in terms of previous months numbers to reflect the fact that the unemployment rate has dropped as much as it has. So I'm going to try to see if I can find out what previous adjustments we've seen to the headline numbers. I'm just trying to find that on my Bloomberg. Right now changing non farms. Going to go historical price. And not seeing. Right. Okay, this is where we are November was adjusted up from 245 to 336. So there's a there's a significant upward adjustment there. That's about 90,000, which offsets the 80,000 net decline that we've seen in December. Let me show you that now on my Bloomberg. And let me get rid of that. Get rid of that. Get rid of that. And we can bring back this. So these are the adjustments. These are the revisions on the right hand side. These are the headlines here. So we've seen minus 140. It's got a minus 227, but you've seen 245 and that's gone up to 336. We've seen various revisions, so on and so forth. So ultimately, the headline numbers disappointing, but it's certainly not sufficient enough to warrant a significant amount of dollar weakness going forward. But I think, given where we've been this week, we're not going to see euro dollar back down to around one 1970 in the short to medium term. So what we're going to see, I think today is a little bit of a short squeeze on those dollar longs and a little bit of a pullback perhaps towards the highs that we've seen so far this week, we can see that here. So let's draw a little draw a little bit of a line on my euro dollar hourly chart to see where the potential is the short squeeze to come back to. That's not right. Here we go. So there's a series of levels through here around about one 2031 2040 where we could squeeze back to any interim or even here to around about one 2010. So I'll be interested to see where your dollar reacts around one 2010 in terms of initiating a potentially new short position or one 2040. I'm surprised if we move significantly much above this area of resistance through here over the course of the next few hours. Let's not say it won't happen, but I'd certainly be more comfortable getting short those sorts of levels and I would be where we are at the moment. In terms of dollar yen. If you've got any questions, please feel free to fire them over. I know I've covered an awful lot of ground. Let's look at dollar CAD, because obviously that's Canadian jobs report is a little bit of a disappointment. And that would suggest that perhaps we could well see a little bit of Canadian dollar weakness going forward. Let's have a look at this market here. Bear with me. Sometimes line drawing can be a little bit fiddly. You need to have a little bit of accuracy. But certainly these peaks here around about 128, 128, 90 are going to be a tough nut to crack now. And we could well see the Canadian dollar weaken and start to drift back down over the course of the rest of the day. Now someone asked me about crude oil. What I thought about the fact that crude oil is around about $60 a barrel. And I've got to say, I'm a little bit concerned at crude oil at these sorts of levels. Why? Because we've seen a decent rebound. We're getting a fairly decent recovery. But there has to come a point where a high crude price above $60 a barrel starts to act as a little bit of a break on an economic rebound. And I think we're getting to that sort of level right now. So in terms of oil prices, I've got to say that we're reaching the boundaries whereby now I think the OPEC plus they've done a great job so far of driving the oil price back up. But there'll come a point. We're still below the levels that we were this time last year. So I don't think we're quite there yet. But I think anywhere around this sort of level here, which was the February peaks of around about $5970, $5975. If we break above $60 a barrel, there's going to be a tipping point whereby you've got to ask yourself whether it could act as a break on the economic rebound that we're probably going to get Q2, Q3. Because you can talk about suppressed demand. You can talk about build up in extra savings. But no one's going to be traveling abroad, which means oil demand, or very few people are going to be, I'm going to say no one. It's not quite true. But I think what you'll find throughout the rest of this year is the topic of vaccine passports, which could stop people from traveling. And I think for me, more than anything else, if I've got to prove that I've had a jab going forward, then I'm going to think I don't want the aggravation of that. Thank you very much. Why should I have to prove that I've had a vaccine so that I can travel abroad? And this is also the fact that European holiday destinations could well be behind the UK. So if they haven't got on top, if Spain, Italy and Greece, for example, haven't got on top of their vaccine, their vaccination program, why do you want to have the aggravation of going abroad? You might well think, well, I'll stay at home this year, and I'll think about going abroad next year. So I think of looking at a V-shaped rebound in air travel is optimistic, to be quite honest. And I think more than anything else, you're probably going to get a stronger rebound domestically than, say, for example, in overseas travel and leisure. So, you know, for me, I think $60 a barrel, we could break higher, but I'd be surprised if we sustain and move much above that going forward. So that's my view and crude oil could be way off. Also, you've got the fact the dollar is slightly stronger. How do I square a stronger dollar at a stronger oil price? That's how I square it quite simply. The US economic recovery is going to outpace European, UK economic recovery is going to outpace European, that's going to underpin the pound, it's going to underpin the US dollar. Obviously, COVID variants not withstanding, which could slow down any vaccination program and any recovery program. So there are fundamentals built in to my overview going forward. And that's always going to be the case. But ultimately it's price action first, and then obviously my gut feeling second, which is driven by how I view the economic recovery going forward. The ban on petrol going forward, yeah, four to five years is an aspiration. It's not going to happen because you need the recharging points. You need the infrastructure. That's going to drive demand for things like copper and silver. Because if you want people to migrate to away from petrol and diesel, you need to give them an alternative and you don't want to be running out petrol in the middle of Bloody Salisbury Plain. Excuse my French. Sorry. You don't want them to be running out petrol in the middle of nowhere without a recharging point in site. For me, it's about infrastructure. So if you want to push the renewables, if you want to reach out, if you want to push the electric vehicles, you need to have the recharging points. You need to have the battery technology. You need to have the storage technology. So I think for me, you know, it's, it's four to five years is optimistic. Even 10 years is optimistic. So you need to have hybrids. You need to talk about electric. You need to talk about a whole host of different things to actually make that thing make sense. So for copper. We look at copper. This is what I'm looking at for copper. There's a potential head and shoulders reversal playing out here. We still very much remain in by the dip mode. But I think while copper is looking fairly well supported, that should also help support equity markets more broadly. If you look at the S&P 500 and you look at the copper price, there is a broad correlation there. Yeah, the S&P is starting to move ahead of that right now. But ultimately what we're seeing in terms of copper prices, if we zoom all the way out. It's bullish. More constructively, you look at where the lows were much last year. It's bullish. So it's definitely a recovery story in terms of copper. Let's get a shot of that there. Gold and silver gold I talked about earlier. If you are late tuning in, there is a little bit of a correlation between copper. In terms of gold and US Treasury yields. So I think you've got to be a bit careful about that. I quickly reiterate the fact that if we in gold, I'll quickly reiterate. If we drop below 1760 and US Treasury yields go below, go above 120, 1.2. Then gold is likely to suffer as a result of that.  I am recording this so you'll be able to watch it back. The Germany Tech 30.  It's not something that I look at an awful lot. If we look at Germany and see whether there is the mid 60, here we go on the mid tech 30. It's the one you're wanting me to look at. Again, it's a similar sort of story to the DAX. The trend is your friend here. So you've got to buy the dips on that. The 3,600 is the next target on the mid tech. It's very much by the dip. In terms of silver, quickly look at that. I've got that lined up here just below gold in my watch list. That's in a range. I mean, what can I say? We saw that spike higher. It didn't break that $30 a barrel. $30 a barrel, $30 an ounce level. And I talked about that in my weekly video as well. So I just get rid of that line there. Fairly decent support around about $26. Why? Because it was the peaks here on this area here and these lows here. So if I actually draw that line in again for you, I deleted it, but I think it's important. You look at that level there is actually just support there and there. It's actually resistance there and there. So it is a bit of a pivot around about $26 on silver. So depending on how it reacts around $26, the likelihood is we'll probably edge back up. If gold starts to break down, then that could drag silver lower. There is a there is a little bit of a correlation there, but let's not forget silver is an industrial metal as well as a precious metal. So and it does get used quite a bit in the context of the automotive sector. If I draw a line in through there, that might be gives you a better indication of where other support levels are on the silver price. I can't be more precise than that. Unfortunately, Owen, but I hope that helps you. In terms of lumber and global uranium, it's not a market. I don't think I don't think it's even a market that we can maybe maybe I'm wrong. Let me just have a quick look for it.  Well, we've got uranium ETF, which isn't currently open. Let's have a quick look at that. Well, again, I mean, the trend is your friend there. So that looks that looks fairly positive, but it's not something that I'd be comfortable giving an opinion on. Let's look at lumber. Look at the lumber cash price. Again, you know, commodities doing well and looks fairly does appear to be very decent resistance in around 1000 though. So I'd be a little bit careful about being aggressively long in lumber futures at the moment, particularly on the basis of this particular chart. As I say, I always base my my views on what the price action is doing. So if we look at lumber prices there, it does look very overbought and it has gaps higher here, which suggests that we could well see a little bit of a pullback fill that gap before we go higher again. So hopefully that helps in the realm. Let me just have another quick look at all of your other questions, ladies and gents. Natural gas. Yep. Natural gas. I've missed that. Scrolling back for you. I can find it. There it is. It's all the way down there. Better remember, natural gas is very seasonal. But again, we're approaching a very key resistance level. We need to redraw that line. Seeing as it's not the line through there. Okay. Now you can argue that I'm curve fitting slightly, but you have to adapt your lines. But ultimately what hasn't happened here is the overall uptrend hasn't broken down. We haven't made new lows on any pushback below here. The key level for me is these November peaks here around about 305. We're around about there now. If we look at this daily high here, we're at 305. So we're at a very key level on natural gas prices on the cash contract. But ultimately how the market reacts around these sorts of peaks is likely to determine where we go to next. We're coming up to a weekend. So if you're long of natural gas, then I would suggest that you probably, if you are long, you bring your stop loss up a little bit in the event that we could see a retest of this 270 area, which does appear to be acting as a fairly decent area of support going forward. I'm always doing that. Let's do that again. Okay. Let's just scroll down. Dale Jones getting asked about the Dow. Yeah, absolutely. It's always a favorite. Again, record highs or approaching record highs when the US market opens. As I say, be careful about being aggressively long heading into the weekend. You don't want to be holding. Don't want to be holding significantly aggressive long long. I'm less of a fan of being of holding positions over a weekend than I was safe. For example, five or six years ago, simply because you just cannot account for a news item breaking over the weekend. Obviously now that President Trump or ex-President Trump as he is now, is no longer in Twitter. The likelihood of a presidential tweet is much less likely. That doesn't necessarily mean that something breaking over the weekend can't prompt an aggressive down moving stocks. That still remains, for me, a clear and present danger going forward. But certainly in terms of US markets, a line of release resistance is by the dip. And that continues to be the case for all US markets. Let's look at the small cap index. That, for me, I think is more of a leading indicator than anything else. The Russell, now that we're above 2,200, that is likely to be a key driver of how US investors view the US economy. And it's very much a case of trend as your friend here. You look at the Russell, very much parabolic. One thing I would say is that with the price action moving as far away as it is at the moment from the 200-day moving average, I'm starting to get a little bit nervous about being aggressively long US stocks. Because this situation here is not sustainable. So one of two things can happen. We can trade sideways for an extended length of time, or we will get a correction back down. And I think this is the key concern going forward that I have about US stocks in particular, particularly with the Democrats, increased regulation, particularly on the frothier parts of the market, could actually prompt a sell-off, particularly in the NASDAQ and in the more elevated areas of the US equity markets going forward. So looking at being asked about yen pairs, absolutely. Dollar yen I've talked about earlier. Let's look at Euro yen. Yeah, let's zoom that out. On yen pairs, I do tend to like to use cloud charts because they generally tend to act as a fairly decent area of support and resistance. So we can see that particularly in the context of the daily chart here on Euro yen. Decent area of support around about $125.80, $125.90 also coincides with this. But also if we draw in this trend line here, there's a nice area of support there as well. If we look at sterling yen, you've got to be constructive on sterling yen if you're constructive on Euro sterling and cable. So if we also look at sterling yen, that's down here. And this is a chart I drew earlier. This is the weekly chart. As we can see here, we've broken significantly higher and we're now looking to retest those February peaks. I'm probably gone beyond those February peaks from last year. But again, with sterling yen, line of least resistance is for a weaker yen and a stronger pound. So I'm constructive on yen crosses. Hopefully that helps, ladies and gentlemen. OK. So unless anyone has any other questions, that's it for this month's non-farm payrolls webinar. I hope you've all found it instructive and useful. As I say, I am recording it. So if you've missed anything, feel free to listen to it all back. In the meantime, I'd just like to say thank you for taking the time to listen to me today. And I hope you all have a great weekend, a restful weekend, and successful trading. Thanks very much for listening. This is Michael Houston from CMC Markets, signing off. Thanks very much for your time and your patience.