Welcome to the Endless Knot. A little while ago we did a video about the word Marvel to tie in with the Captain Marvel film. Now that Avengers Endgame has wrapped up, we thought we'd have a look at the word Avenger and see what it has to tell us about the hero figure. No spoilers though. The word Avenge comes from old French avangier, ultimately from Latin ad to and windicare to claim Avenge Punish. Windicare in turn comes from Windex. No, not that Windex. Defender or Protector, a compound made up of Dikare to devote and Wease, Strength, Power, Virtue, from which we get Vim as in Vim and Vigor, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European route Weia to go after something pursue with Vigor, which also gives us such words as gain and violent. So an appropriate etymology for Marvel's Avengers who are protectors of Earth, but go after Thanos to avenge the death of half the life in the universe in the movie Avengers Endgame. The Latin phrase Windex Terai, Defender of Earth, is used by the Roman poet Ovid to refer to the hero Hercules, the grandfather of the comic book superhero who also appears in the Marvel Comics universe and is even a member of the Avengers, but more on him later. As for the word Endgame, ultimately from the route Ant, Front, or Forehead and Old English Gamen, game made up of the collective prefix Ga and Maan, person, from the idea of participating together, it was first coined in the 19th century to refer to the final stage of a game of chess, before being broadened to refer to the card game bridge and eventually other uses as well. As for the ancient noun Avenger, it was first used in biblical translations such as the 14th century Wycliffe Bible and the 16th century Coverdale Bible, where it rendered Latin Ultor, Punisher Avenger Revenger and Redemptor Redeemer, which in turn stood in for Hebrew Nakam and Goel. In addition to this biblical usage, Latin Ultor was also used as an epithet for the Roman god of war, Mars, meaning Mars the Avenger. And in a roundabout sort of way, Mars sort of is one of Marvel's Avengers. You see, Mars originally seems to have had thunder associations rather than being a god of war, and may therefore have descended from the Proto-Indo-European god Perkunos, a god of thunder and oak, whose name comes from Proto-Indo-European Perku, oak, which became Latin Quercus, oak, as well as Old Norse Fjör, tree, and Old English Furghulu, fir tree, pine, also giving us modern English fir tree. Trees and groves held an important place in Germanic religion and mythology, as in the world tree Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, and another descendant of Perkunos is Thor, the Norse god of thunder, and in the Marvel Comics universe, a superhero and one of the Avengers. We don't know where the name Mars comes from, it may be connected to the Etruscan god Marus, and the name Thor or Donar in Old Hyde German related to the English word thunder comes from the root Stena to thunder, but the name Perkunos does survive in the name of Thor's mother, Fjörgen, often rendered as Mother Earth. Yes, that's right, in Norse mythology, Thor's mother isn't Frig, who appears as Frigga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as played by Rene Russo, making a significant appearance in Avengers Endgame. The oak connection is also reflected in an early reference to Germanic religion in the Roman writer Tacitus's ethnographic book Germania, in which he refers to Joes or Jupiter's oak. Joes being the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Zeus, and who through the process of Interpretatio Romana or the understanding of foreign mythologies through the closest Roman equivalents was Tacitus's name for Thor, so really Donar's oak. Incidentally, Donar's oak, which was said to be located somewhere around modern day Hesse in Germany, was cut down by the Anglo-Saxon Christian missionary Saint Boniface, and the wood was used to build a church dedicated to Saint Peter, Christianity being insensitive to local religious beliefs for 2,000 years. Now, getting to Marvel's Avengers specifically, the superhero team was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, originally featuring the characters Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, Ant-Man, and Wasp, and soon after Captain America, with many other characters becoming Avengers over the years. The team replaced the earlier 1940s all-winners squad of Timely Comics, which later became Marvel Comics, and was the Marvel counterpart to DC's Justice League, introduced in 1960, and originally featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter. But Marvel's Avengers were not the first to use the name. 1939 saw the introduction of the pulp magazine character The Avenger, who was an amalgam of two other successful pulp characters, Doc Savage and The Shadow, himself known as The Masked Avenger. These characters would go on to become a major influence on the figure of the superhero, but more on that later. In 1955, a short-lived Cold War superhero character called The Avenger was introduced by magazine Enterprises, and of course, there's the British spy TV series The Avengers, introduced in 1961, most famously featuring John Steed and Emma Peel. There have been many historical groups too known as The Avengers. In the Middle Ages in Sicily, there were purported forerunners of the mafia, secret societies, such as the Beattie Paoli, whom the modern Sicilian mafia still hold up as a model, that meted out vigilante justice, often working counter to the state authorities and the church, and analogous to Robin Hood in terms of their popular conception in Sicily. One such group was said to have been the Vendicatori, or Avengers, in the 12th century, led by Grandmaster Adior Office of Ponte Corvo in avenging popular wrongs, until he was hanged and the society was suppressed by King William II of Sicily. Incidentally, Vendicatori is the name used in Italian translations of Marvel's Avengers. As for the word mafia, it likely comes from an Arabic source, as Sicily was ruled by the Arabs for two centuries in the Middle Ages, though the precise Arabic word it came from is a matter of some debate. Revenge killing is of course not limited to the Sicilian mafia, but is a phenomenon in many cultures around the world. For instance, the blood feud was a key element in early Germanic culture. The word feud, related to foe and Old English fath, feud, comes from proto-Germanic phyha, hostile, ultimately from proto-New European peg, evil-minded hostile. In Germanic hero culture, as depicted, for instance, in the Old English poem Beowulf and the Old Norse sagas, such as Brenu Njalsaga or Burt Njalsaga, whose titular character is killed by being burnt alive in his house, revenge killings were an important element of family honor, with men duty bound to avenge the death of a kinsman. So, blood feuds could continue without end, with each side exacting revenge on the other back and forth, sometimes over generations. The only remedy to unceasing blood feuds was to pay a weargelt, or man price, though such restitutions were not always accepted. The second part of weargelt is related to the word yield, and comes from the proto-Indo-European root geld, to pay. The first element, wear, man, is the same as the first part of the word werewolf, literally man-wolf, and comes from the root weero, man, also giving us such words as virile and virtue, because apparently, virtue was a specifically manly quality, and is a derivative of wea, the root that lies behind avenger. Anthropologically speaking, the sort of behavior that lies behind blood feuds is understood in the context of face, as in losing or saving face, and the guilt-shame-fear spectrum, in which a shame-based culture will act on the basis of pride and honor, and will try to avoid appearing shameful publicly, which thus can lead to acts of revenge if someone were to cause you shame. Similarly, guilt culture acts on the basis of internalized guilt, and fear culture acts on the basis of fear of retribution. Another word we get from the same roots as avenger that refers to this idea of blood feuds is vendetta, from Italian, often associated with the mafia culture we mentioned earlier. In the world of comic books, it is most known through the V for Vendetta series by Alan Moore, set in a dystopic, post-apocalyptic, fascist, and white supremacist Britain governed by a Nordicist political party. In the comic, the main anarchist character V dons a Guy Fox mask in his pursuit of revenge and revolution, in reference to the historical Guy Fox who attempted to blow up the British parliament in the 1605 gunpowder plot in order to re-establish the Catholic Church. Subsequently, because of the popularity of the comic book and its film adaptation, the Guy Fox mask has been adopted as a symbol of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Now we're turning finally to the biblical Hebrew words Goel and Nakam translated as Avenger. In the early Jewish society depicted in the Bible, the Goel was a formal role of the next of kin who was responsible for such things as redeeming a relative from slavery, repurchasing of property sold, marrying a kinsman's widow to produce an heir, or avenging wrongful death. The word Nakam was adopted by a group of Holocaust survivors in 1945 who wanted revenge on the Nazis after the war. Comic book superheroes often reflected the realities of World War II, with some characters, such as the later Avenger Captain America, being created specifically to battle the Nazis. And indeed, many early comic book writers and artists were Jewish immigrants whose families came to America to escape European anti-Semitism prior to the war. The first true comic book superhero is generally considered to be Superman. He was the creation of the children of Jewish immigrants, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, and there is something of that experience in the Superman character as an alien immigrant who is trying to fit into 1930s America. As teenagers, Siegel and Schuster had dreams of creating a comic strip. The first iteration of the Superman character created at that time had little resemblance to the superhero we know today. Siegel had been producing science fiction fanzines using the school Mimeograph Machine and brought his friend Schuster in to illustrate his stories. The first version of Superman was one of these fanzine creations called The Rain of the Superman. But instead of a muscle-bound good guy, the main character was a vagrant, Bill Dunn, who had been given telepathic and mind control powers by an evil scientist and was depicted by Schuster as a bald villain, rather more like Lex Luthor than the Superman we know today. Dunn uses his powers for his own benefit and malicious amusement before the powers wear off and he is left a vagrant again. The name and the character of this version of Superman draw more on the concept of the Ubermench, which Friedrich Nietzsche described in his Azo Sprach Zarathustra as an ideal superior man of the future who transcends conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values. Which George Bernard Shaw translates as Superman in his play Man and Superman. Siegel would revise the character over and over again in the attempts to get him professionally published, making him a good guy instead of a villain, giving him superior strength instead of psychic abilities, though still given to him by an evil scientist, but no special costume yet. He then became a man from the distant future when humans had naturally developed superpowers and eventually a child who was sent back from a future earth at the point of cataclysmic destruction. In the final iteration of the character, the one picked up by DC, with Siegel and Schuster signing over the copyright of the character in a notoriously unfair but standard practice deal, Superman becomes the alien immigrant and orphaned child with a tights and cape costume that drew on the figure of the circus strongman and futuristic costumes of Flash Gordon. And, as Siegel later recalled, he was a character like Samson, Hercules, and all the strongmen I ever heard of rolled into one, only more so. But perhaps the real masterstroke was the hero's alter ego as mild-mannered Clark Kent, a bumbling bespectacled nerdy figure much like Siegel and Schuster themselves, with the lowest lame character in love with the bold hero Superman, but repulsed by the nerdy Clark Kent, not realizing that they were in fact the same man. For Clark Kent, Siegel and Schuster drew on the face of comedic actor Harold Lloyd and his so-called Glass character with his horn-rimmed glasses and everyday manner. Lloyd was one of the major comedians of the silent film era, along with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and spanning over into the era of the talkie films, and is perhaps best known from the iconic image of him hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street. Lloyd, who had married one of his leading ladies Mildred Davis and then discouraged her from continuing her acting career, kept tight controls of the copyrights of his films after retiring from acting, and only sporadically allowed them to be shown, as he didn't like them to be edited for commercials for TV broadcast, and didn't want them to be shown in theatres with piano accompaniments as they were intended to be accompanied by the organ. His last film appearance was in continuation of one of his earlier films, a 1925 silent film The Freshman, using footage from that earlier movie with newly filmed scenes with Lloyd as the central character in Middle Age. It was initially released in 1947 as the sin of Harold Dittlebach, but was unsuccessful and was pulled from the theatres by the producer, the famous industrialist Howard Hughes, who, by the way, also produced the 1950 film Vendetta about a Corsican girl who pushes her brother into taking revenge for their father's murder. Hughes shot some additional footage, re-edited it, and re-released it in 1951 as Mad Wednesday. Lloyd was upset with the whole thing and sued Hughes for damaging his reputation. Interestingly, Howard Hughes, businessman, record-setting pilot, engineer, philanthropist, eccentric, and notorious playboy, was also an inspiration for our comic book character, Tony Stark, otherwise known as Iron Man, one of the Avengers and part of the MCU. Many of Stark's characteristics were based on Hughes, as well as his look, complete with the Howard Hughes mustache. As Stan Lee later stated, Howard Hughes was one of the most colorful men of our time. He was an inventor, an adventurer, a multi-billionaire, a ladies' man, and finally a nutcase. And, without being crazy, Stark was Howard Hughes. By the way, Tony Stark's father was also named Howard. Now, as we've seen, another influence on the superhero figure is the Greek hero, such as Hercules or Heracles as he's known in Greek. It's not surprising that comic book writers drew on Greek mythological elements for their superheroes, since Greek myths often featured hero figures, demigods who had powers beyond normal human abilities, like Heracles and Achilles, and that, along with having a hero cult dedicated to them, was the basic definition of a hero in Greek culture. The word hero comes from Greek heros, and may be related to the name of the Greek goddess Hera, like the Zeus, and therefore, also Heracles, as he took on the name in order to appease the goddess since he was the product of Zeus' flandering with a mortal woman. The ultimate root is Proto-Indo-European Ser to protect, also the source of Latin serware to keep preserve, and thereby of English words like preserve, conserve, and reserve. The feminine form heroine is not used as often anymore to refer to female superheroes, since it has the connotation of the damsel in distress who needs to be rescued. This is not to be confused with the word heroine without the final E, which is the now illicit drug that was so named in the 1890s in reference to the euphoric feelings of power the drug gives you. The prefixed word superhero was used in 1908 as a translation of Nietzsche's Ubermench, mentioned earlier, though it may also have been introduced to English through an earlier French use of the word. After the word gained its comic book sense, it was registered as a joint trademark by both DC and Marvel Comics, and though the trademark status is likely spurious, who's going to go up against the comic industry giants, and their even more giant parent companies, Warner Brothers, and Disney? It's interesting that the two comics publishers should get along on this as the two dominant companies in the industry, as they're often seen as rivals, with very different approaches to their superheroes. DC artist Ramona Fradden described the difference between the two in mythological terms referring to two Greek dramatists. You would never think of having Superman be neurotic or have doubts or anything like that. That was true of all the DC characters. It was like Greek drama. There was Aeschylus where the gods were in their heavens, unquestioned, and then Euripides came along and decided to analyze them and bring them down to a human level. Maybe it was time. You can't have those characters running around forever without beginning to wonder what they did in their off hours. So what are the qualities that make a hero either ancient or modern? In the modern world, heroes are often said to be strong, smart, selfless, caring, charismatic, resilient, reliable, or inspiring. The more of these characteristics a hero possesses, the more popular heroes likely to be. Real life heroes often fall into one of two categories, those who act selflessly for the benefit of others, such as a first responder, and those who have overcome adversity or trauma, such as someone who, in spite of illness or disability, is an inspiration for others. It could be said that typically superheroes fall into both of the categories, selflessness and adversity. Not only are heroes there to save the day, they often have origin stories featuring some kind of hardship, such as Batman watching his parents being murdered as a child, or Superman being an orphan and an immigrant trying to fit in, or Spider-Man dealing with the rejection and ostracism of being an unpopular nerdy teen, as well as feeling responsible for his uncle's murder. Furthermore, superheroes often have an Achilles heel, such as Superman's Kryptonite, Green Lantern's powerlessness over anything wooden, or the Hulk's susceptibility to anger. Of course, the very first Achilles heel was the actual heel of the Greek hero Achilles, by which his mother Thetis held him as an infant when she dipped him in the river Styx to make him invulnerable, everywhere except his heel. What generally makes superheroes different from ancient heroes, though there are exceptions, is their motivations. Superheroes do heroic things for the common good, whereas the main motivation for ancient heroes is glory, pride and fame, things that superheroes usually go out of their way to avoid to such an extent that they often maintain a secret identity, with the exception of fame-hogging heroes like the Fantastic Four and Iron Man. This makes sense given that ancient heroes come from orally transmitted myths from a time before writing was invented. In such a preliterate world, the only way to be remembered is to have people tell stories about you, and so you try to win fame and glory. It's a kind of immortality. This naturally leads to ancient heroes possessing the quality of pride and engaging in ritualized boasting about the deeds they have done or intend to do. Today, we typically use the words proud and pride, which came into Old English through Old French from Latin Prodessa, literally to be in front, in the pejorative sense, referring to someone who has an overly high opinion of themselves, influenced by the Christian notion of pride as one of the seven deadly sins. Though having pride, if you're part of a typically downtrodden group, can also be a positive trait. In the ancient world, that positive sense is perhaps more to the fore, with pride being considered a virtue in ancient Greece and Rome. In the Germanic heroic tradition, pride and boasting were also expected of the warrior. Germanic heroes would engage in ritualized boasting sessions, called the Beot in Old English, which for instance Beowulf does before each of his monsterfights in the Old English epic. In the Norse tradition was the height-stranging, in which a warrior would place hands on the bristles of a sacrificed boar and make oaths of heroic feats to his chieftain, often while very drunk. The word boast doesn't actually appear in English until the Middle English period from Anglo-Norman Bost, but it likely comes from a Germanic source, Proto-Germanic Bausia, to blow up, puff up, swell, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European imitative root Beow to swell, also giving us words such as pocket, pouch, puff, and boil. Old English Beot is a contraction of the prefixed verb Behatan to promise, vow, threaten, related to modern English behest, from Hatan to command, name, call, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root Kea to set in motion. This root also gives us words such as excite, incite, telekinesis, and cinema, reminding us of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which got us to this point in the first place. Related to all this boasting by Germanic heroes is flighting, a kind of ritualized exchange of insults or ridicisms. Flighting can occur in lieu of battle, as in the encounter between Beowulf and Unforth, in which Unforth calls Beowulf a faker, and Beowulf calls Unforth a drunken coward, or it can occur just before fights, as in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, in which the English leader replies to the Vikings asking to be paid off to leave without a battle by saying they'll give them a payment in the form of spears. In other words, they'll throw spears at them. Lol. And this is somewhat reminiscent of the witty banter between comic book superheroes and their supervillains.  In the Germanic tradition, the greatest heroism often lay in fighting a losing battle. Since the hero had made vows and boasts of his heroism, it would often be shameful to run away from battle, and he was expected to continue to fight for his lord, even if it meant his own doom. This heroism of losing a battle is perhaps most notable in the myth of Ragnarok, in which the Norse gods battled their enemies to the death, including Odin being swallowed by Fenrir, and Thor killing and being killed by the midgard serpent Jörmengander, with the battle ending in The Destruction of the World, a story which inspired the MCU film Thor Ragnarok, not to mention the apocalyptic ending of Avengers Infinity War. Now coming back to the parallels between superheroes and Greek heroes, we can also see how they function as myth, as Stan Lee described superheroes as 20th century mythology, with an entire contemporary mythos, a family of legends that might be handed down to future generations. Superhero stories function similarly in society, especially in their theatrical forms, a common cultural currency that everyone can draw on and experience together in an almost ritual-like way in the movie theaters. Ancient myths often have multiple, sometimes conflicting versions, as they are told and retold in different media over many generations. The same is true of superheroes, whose origin stories often change over many retellings, both in the comic books and in the movies, and both types of heroes fit well into the hero's journey pattern outlined by theorist Joseph Campbell. I should preface this by stating that there are a lot of problems with Campbell's theory, I mean a lot, because it tries to reduce all hero stories to a single, one-size-fits-all pattern that mirrors the psychological process of a boy passing into manhood. Not only does this not work for girls becoming women, but it isn't even a universal experience of all boys, as it's founded upon some very outdated and very Western psychology. Nevertheless, it's useful to know about since writers of comic books and films often draw on Campbell for structuring their stories. Basically, the way it goes is a boy upon reaching the age of maturity undergoes a rite of passage, going out into the dangerous world after receiving a call to adventure, and with the help of supernatural figures undergoes a series of trials or labors, achieves some kind of enlightenment or boon, and returns to society much the wiser for his adventure. So most famously, Heracles had his twelve labors that he had to perform to atone for the killing of his family, which by the way he was made to commit by Hera. During one of the labors, Heracles fought the half-giant Antias, son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and Gaia, the earth goddess. Antias was invincible as long as he was in contact with the earth, drawing power from his mother, so Heracles defeated him by holding him aloft and then crushing him in a bear hug. The name Antias means literally hostile opponent from the same root that lies behind the word end of endgame. Revenge is a frequent element in Heracles' myth, for instance, Hera taking out her jealousy about Zeus on his illegitimate son, or Heracles himself taking revenge on those who wronged him. Similarly, the plot of Homer's Iliad revolves around Achilles taking revenge on Hector for killing his friend Patroclus, and in the story of the Roman hero Aeneas, a survivor of the Trojan War, who avenges Troy by fending what would become Rome, which eventually subjugated Greece as part of its empire. Also, reflecting the Iliad in the climactic moment of Virgil's poem The Aeneid, Aeneas takes revenge for the death of his friend Pallas by killing his killer, Ternus. A 1962 Italian film about the Aeneas myth was given the English title The Avenger. As for female heroes, examples from Greek mythology are few and far between. There are some female protagonists, such as Medea and Clytemnestra, but their stories are still, in our sources at least, secondary to the male heroes in myth. There are figures we may find admirable, like Penelope or Antigone, but they don't have the superhuman abilities of their male counterparts. From an ancient perspective, the best example would be Helen, who was the daughter of Zeus, and was worshipped as a demigod in her own cult, satisfying the main ancient definition of hero. Typically, women were figured in myth as victims or prizes for male heroes to win, almost always passive. The active women were usually the villains. One notable fairy tale example of a female hero who does play an active role in her story is Gretel in the Hansel and Gretel story recorded by the brother's grim. It's Gretel who pushes the cannibal witch into the fire and frees her brother Hansel. And though there are female superheroes, with some exceptions like Wonder Woman and the female heroes in The Avengers, many of them are simply the girl version of male heroes, like Supergirl and Batgirl. The original Faucet comics Captain Marvel, now known as Shazam, had a female equivalent to Mary Marvel, twin sister of Billy Batson, who was actually created before Supergirl. The new Captain Marvel film was the first in the MCU to focus on a female superhero, with the character subsequently appearing in Avengers Endgame. In addition to female spin-offs, superheroes often have young sidekicks, the classic example being Batman's Robin. And like the superheroes themselves, the sidekicks are often orphans as well, as in the case with Robin. The original Captain Marvel had Captain Marvel Jr., disabled newsboy Freddy Freeman, who along with Mary Marvel appeared in the new Shazam movie. It's interesting to note that in the comic, when Freddy Freeman transforms into Captain Marvel Jr., he stays a kid, as did the original Mary Marvel, unlike Billy Batson. Captain America's sidekick was Bucky Barnes, who supposedly died in World War II, later reimagined as the adult Winter Soldier, and now part of the MCU as well. This pattern of hero and sidekick is prevalent in ancient myths as well, with Gilgamesh and Inquidoo of Sumerian mythology, Heracles and his nephew Iolus, and Achilles and Patroclus. One special type of hero in mythology is the culture hero, who discovers or invents something of great value to society and is thus often seen as a founder of that society. For instance, Prometheus gave fire to human beings in Greek myth, thus allowing for all of Greek technological progress, and Ineus, escaping from the fall of Troy, founded the Roman people by bringing in a superior culture to the Italian peninsula. Odin can even be seen as a culture hero for acquiring the meat of poetry and discovering runes in Norse myth. We can maybe see a hint of this kind of hero in Iron Man and Batman, whose heroism comes from their intelligence and inventiveness rather than any superpowers. A similar idea to this, but applied to the understanding of history, is the Great Man Theory of History, developed by Thomas Carlisle. He identified six types of great men, which he called heroes, who were most responsible for the progress of history.  This theory of history was very popular in the 19th century, for instance with Nietzsche, but was not without its critics, such as philosopher and polymath Herbert Spencer, who also coined the phrase survival of the fittest, and was responsible for social Darwinism, who argued that such great men were the products of their society, not the other way round. The American psychologist and philosopher William James, in turn, gave a defense of Carlisle, criticizing Spencer. Counter to the Great Man Theory of History in the 19th century was the idea of the zeitgeist or spirit of the age, developed by Johann Gottfried von Herder, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. According to this view, it's the cumulative effect of this spirit of the age, which drives history, though Hegel himself didn't see these two approaches to history as necessarily incompatible. Today, social history and history from below, or people's history approaches, have largely replaced the Great Man Model. Now of course, the context in which Greek heroes and modern superheroes operate are quite different. Superheroes exist in a world which has a civil authority, so they are therefore acting as vigilantes, breaking the law for the greater good by doing what the police can't or won't do. On the other hand, Greek heroes, in myth at least, live in a world with only minimal state authority and no police force, and so they aren't seen as transgressing, but as providing necessary protection against the many dangers too great to be overcome by ordinary people. By the Imperial Roman period, there were such institutions as the Wigiles, related to the word vigilante, who acted as both firefighters and night watch, keeping an eye out for burglars, but full police forces didn't come until later. The word vigilante, related of course to vigilance, actually comes into English from Spanish, and initially referred to the members of a vigilance committee in the American West, who are groups of private citizens who enforce the law with respect to things like cattle rustling, gangs, and gold prospecting, because official law enforcement wasn't effective on the American frontier. Ultimately, the word comes from Latin Uigo, awake on the watch, alert, from part of the Indo-European weg to be strong, to be lively, appropriate enough for superheroes, which also gives us words such as wake, wait, and watch. And who watches the watchman, a question originally posed by the Roman satirist juvenile and famously used in the Watchman comic book, which deconstructs the very notion of the vigilante superhero. Vigilante precursors to superheroes, who also take the law into their own hands to defend the defenseless, include characters such as Robin Hood in the Middle Ages and Zorro, who is invented by Johnson McCully in the pulp magazines of the early 20th century, only a little before the invention of the superhero, but whose stories are set in the period of Spanish California in the late 18th and early 19th century. Zorro, with his mask and black cape, was a particular influence on Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Indeed, the adventure heroes of the pulp magazines and later comic strips were a major influence on the comic book and superhero genre, with heroes such as Zorro, Tarzan, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon. Many of these heroes were translated to the big screen serials, which were also a huge influence on the then-teenagers, who a few years later were to invent many of the superheroes of the 1930s and 40s. A lot of the action of superheroes was inspired by Swashbuckler films, with such actors as Douglas Fairbanks, who was the first to portray Zorro and also famously portrayed Robin Hood and D'Artagnan in an adaptation of the famous adventure novel The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas. The word Swashbuckler means literally one who makes a menacing noise by striking his or his opponent's shield with a sword. From Swash, an onomatopoeic word imitating the sound of either splashing water or the fall of a heavy body or blow, and Buckler, a type of shield. Buckler in turn comes through Old French from Latin Bucula, meaning the boss of a shield, but originally the mouthpiece of a helmet, the diminutive of Latin Bucca, meaning cheek, possibly borrowed from a Celtic word, but ultimately from the same imitative root Beo, which we saw lying behind the word boast. Another famous Swashbuckler novel that had a big impact on the superhero figure is the Scarlet Pimpernel, written by the Baroness Emma Ortsy in 1905. Only in this case, the most important element was the idea of a hero with a secret identity. In the novel, the eponymous character, known only by his symbol of the flower Scarlet Pimpernel, is actually the English gentleman Sir Percy Blakeney, who appears to be just a wealthy fob, but is in fact a fine swordsman and cunning escape artist, who uses his abilities to rescue French aristocrats during the reign of terror at the start of the French Revolution. This double life of a mild-mannered witless man-about-town on the one hand and daring hero on the other is perhaps most recognizable in the Playboy characters Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow, and Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, but is in fact the first clear example of a hero with a secret identity, inspiring superheroes from Superman to Spider-Man. An even earlier forerunner of this concept is the main character of Alexander Dumas' other famous adventure novel, the Count of Monte Cristo, in which the framed and falsely imprisoned main character Edmundantes takes on the identity of the mysterious Count in order to exact revenge, so not exactly heroic, though his powers do seem supernatural. Now in order to maintain their secret identities, heroes often wear masks, as Don Diego de la Vega does when he becomes Zorro, though notably Superman instead hides his face behind glasses when he's Clark Kent. The word mask originally has rather obscure origins, and may in fact represent the merging of several sources. What does seem clear is that mask, along with its relatives mask and masquerade, comes into English through French mask from Italian mascara mask disguise. This may in turn come from a proto-Germanic root mask, meaning mesh, from the proto-Indo-European root mesg to knit, also the source of the word mesh, from the idea of a mesh breathing mask used to filter out soot and dust like a modern surgical mask. Or it may come from a pre-Indo-European root mask, meaning black, blacken, also related to Latin masca, evil spirit, spectre, witch, which also produced the word mascot. Or yet again, it may be related to mascara, the makeup you put on eyelashes, and go back to Arabic mascara, buffoon, mockery, from sakira, to ridicule, laugh at, from a proto-Semitic root meaning to be fearful, intimidated. We can see a number of these aspects reflected in the superhero mask, including the element of buffoonery and laughter related to the idea of comics. For the superhero, yes, the mask is part of maintaining their secret identity, providing them with anonymity to act outside the law and protecting the safety of their family and friends, but it also acts as a symbol. For instance, Batman takes on the disguise of a bat to frighten and intimidate criminals, an idea evoked by the proto-Semitic etymology of the word mask. What's more, the anonymity itself is a symbol. Batman could be anybody and is therefore not reducible to any one individual. And psychologically, the mask transforms the civilian into a superhero, creating an identity distinct from the self. Wearing a mask is a conscious creation of a new and powerful identity who can both frighten and inspire. Plus, crucially, a mask hides the face, which is one of the most important elements of identity and self, and of non-verbal communication, thus cutting off those channels. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the superhero The Question, who has a plain, featureless mask completely without identity created by Steve Ditko as a hero who could operate completely objectively without the subjectivity of having an identity or expressing emotion. William James, that defender of Carlisle's Great Man theory, also developed a theory of self which divided a person's mental image of the self into two categories, the me and the eye. The eye is pure ego, the thinking self of the stream of consciousness, a phrase James coined, whereas the me is empirical, your social self, and things like your core values. What's more, he believed that one's clothing is second in importance for the material self only to the body, and that clothes were crucial for forming one's self image, and obviously that's even more true for a comic book superhero. So the story of the mythological hero can be seen as a quest for identity, gaining a new role while coming to terms with who you really are, while the stories of superheroes often focus on them having to negotiate between two or more conflicting identities, with or without the help of masks and suits and costumes. And we can see that theme all the way through Endgame, as each of the Avengers has to come to a decision about his or her role and identity in the world left behind by Thanos' terrible actions, and in the fight to restore it. you can make a contribution to help me make more videos. I'm at alliterative on Twitter, and you can visit our website alliterative.net for more language and connections in our podcast, blog and more.


Okay, good morning traders and welcome to the book map pro trader webinar series today for December 11th. We have Enrico Stuckey. He is both stocks and futures trader. And he's got a really excellent performance here he is in Italy. And there, he was, he wanted to of course show live market examples. Unfortunately, he won't do to some of the coven and impact on the connections over there so he's going to be showing the static presentation but you guys really this there's a lot of information here, it is excellent. I can't wait to see what he's going over he's going to be looking at larger players commitment of traders and really go into depth here and then show examples of that using book map. Okay, so it should be excellent. And not only should be excellent for today. There's so much material that Enrico has put together that we're going to include this a part two on Tuesday. Okay, so that's going to be the plan here. This is basically part one. Alright, so I'm looking forward to both parts here. Quite a bit let me go through some risk disclosures and a bit of news and then we'll get started right away with with Enrico. The general disclosure all book map limited materials information and presentations are for educational purposes only, and should be should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations live trading is in simulation demo paper trading mode, and strictly for educational purposes live trading executed in simulation cannot accurately represent realistic trading performance risk disclosure trading futures equities and digital currencies involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. An investor could potentially lose all or more than the initial investment risk capital is money that can be lost without jeopardizing once financial security nor lifestyle only risk capital should be used for trading and only those with sufficient risk capital should be used for trading. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Alright, a little bit about Enrico. He started his his career as a part time trader in 2002, working for large telco company in 2009 he decided leave his job and become a professional trader. Quite a quite a risk to take. And you can see that he's been quite successful with it uses a quantitative approach to determine specific edges in the market currently he's managing proprietary trading firm with diverse diversified strategic approach, automated systems and quantitative investing Enrico combines his quantitative methods together with order flow and liquidity analysis from book map to support his trading decisions. He is classified as a larger trader by the CFTC. And if you're interested in reaching out to Enrico, you've got his email here, his Facebook page, and there's some special offers from book, book map from Enrico, their longer term options or offers. So, I'll put this link into the chat for you. I'll follow this information here so you can reach out to Enrico, and one more element here or item is that the other is a special on book map with a coupon code I put it into the chat there for you. It's basically good through Sunday it's 50% off for the first month of global or global plus name is only monthly and use this coupon code here. Now we're going to offer it again on Wednesday. The reason that we, I'm offering it to you now is perhaps you're interested in book map right now, and I can extend that to you now with this coupon code. All right, so let's, let's get started I'll give the presentation here to Enrico, and we'll take it away. Okay. Just a quick audio video test do you. Can you hear me, you copy. Yep, you sound great. A little bit in, I guess, a distant using I guess computer microphone. Yes, yes. Okay, no, no problem we can hear you just fine. And the desktop looks great. We were looking at the, let's get started. So, which screen, what do you, what do you see the. Yeah, the let's get started connecting to go to webinar has a green on the top there. Okay, but I cannot understand which screen can you can you see now. Yeah, I see your mouse, moving. Yes, but I want to share another screen. So, did you see Google Chrome, or just a mouse. I'm looking at Google Chrome. How can I change my screen. Okay, let's see here. Okay, okay, maybe. Now, now I see Enrico Stuckey in your book map presentation. Okay, do you see the, the presentation mode or the structure mode. I see the presentation mode. So full screen. Correct. So, good. Sorry for this. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon here in Europe. Good afternoon to our Italian friends. And this is basic the summary of what we are going to talk about today. But before starting, I would like to apologize for my broken English. That's my first webinar in English. It's going to be very boring and even irritating to listen to someone who doesn't master the language and devastates and destroy grammar and pronunciation and you has got a very narrow vocabulary like me, but please forgive me be patient because I hope that the skill and the quality of the topic in itself wouldn't be no worse than my linguistic. Anyway, Bruce speaks a perfect Italian so he can help me interacting with me and supporting my language deficiency if necessary. Okay. I would like to deal with two macro topics. One, the first one is just a little bit more theoretical. And the second one, this one, can you see my, my mouse. Yes, yes. The second one is more practical. I know that many of you would want to go to move directly to the practical one. Maybe they are hoping that I can bring the Holy Grail. That's not the case. And I think the most of the value is in the first topic is the theoretical one. Because I never heard anyone talk about this topic in trading education, so it could be new, maybe. So we have a lot on in our plates today. So let's start. The first topic is that I would like to talk about is regarding strong hands, institutional traders, smart money, big money. And I tried to show you who are those guys, what they need, how they act in the market. And the second part, I'd like to show the second part, maybe we are doing next Tuesday. I would like to show how to trade Nasdaq future looking on the charts and liquidity levels of Apple and Microsoft stocks. Because in my humble opinion, they are much cleaner, sharp and more readable than that on NQ future. Okay. So the second webinar I take for granted that you already know how Bookmap works. So the enormous edge and inside that you can extract using Bookmap instead of common trading platform. If not, I recommend you to take a look at the huge and high quality amount of material that is available in the Bookmap channel in English that Bruce has prepared in those years. In Italian, there is available the recording of my webinar made on February 25th this year. And also some videos in my YouTube channel that is called trading con le palle. So if you are Italian, make a Google research in YouTube, trading con le palle literally means trading with the balls that can sound just a little bit rude. Excuse me for that. Okay, let's start with the first topic right away. And let me use this metaphor. That's a very famous sentence of Lincoln to understand why it's so important to spend time learning the context. So which player are on the battlefield before starting playing pressing sorry buy or sell button. Because usually we do trade we do over trade. But we don't understand who are the people we are fighting against, who are our enemies, who can be our allies in that battle for it. Remember that the market is not a playground is a battle ground. If you want to survive is better to learn this before the button starts. Okay. All traders know the strong and institutional traders smart money big money, but no one, not everyone has understood who this subject really are. So many believes that this these people are sharks that are feeding on the losses of retail traders. And so they spend their day hunting for hours of losses. That's not really true, because the strong hands don't play the trading game against retail trader. Because if you compare you can imagine that the big player like a whale or a whale shark, they can feed on small krill and plankton. Okay, but that's not true because they are starving if you do that because retail traders are irrelevant. So they do not provide enough liquidity for the transaction of institutional operators. So they must necessarily trade with each other. How can you prove it? Can I prove it? Sorry. I'm just looking at CFTC commitment of traders. So the cut report. Okay. What's the cut report? Maybe most of you know very well what is that at the end of every Tuesday trading session. If you own a position larger than a specific threshold. It's called reporting level. You should report to CFTC. Okay, this task is accomplished directly by the brokers or the intermediary. But if you have for the first time a position larger than the reporting level, you are considered as a reportable trader. You must fill the form 40 of the CFTC in order to be classified by CFTC in different categories. This happens only the first time that you cross above the reporting level and at every change in your structure. Okay. In form 40 you have to describe who you are with your structure and should explain the reason why you own the disposition. And this information that you provide with form 40 CFTC classify you as five traders in different categories. This is the kind of mail that you receive when you do that. And this is the older version of the cut report. This is called the legacy version, which was mainly used for commodity futures because cut report has started many years ago for reporting position of commodity. And here in this legacy report, there are just two categories. One is commercials and the other is non-commercials. Commercial are people involved in physically touching the commodity while non-commercial is also called large speculators. Okay. For difference, you can calculate non-reportable also called small speculators position because small speculators are calculated from total position minus commercial minus large speculators. Okay. Commercial, as I said, as people involved in commodity, so they may be producer, farmer, for instance, for corn or coffee, dealers, processors, I mean for processors I imagine the cracking of oil or crashing of soybeans or extracting soybean oil or soybean oil. And users are, for instance, for coffee could be Starbucks or Nestlé. Okay. So people, the farmer that use and sell those commodity. They use future generally in order to cover the commercial risk arising from commercial deals. Okay. The legacy version remains today the most widely used version of cut report to date. But it's not suitable for use, for instance, in financial derivatives such as future or options in non-index bonds, currencies, because the total speculator for this kind of future is quite obvious, but the commercial is not. So they CFTC has created a reclassified commodity traders and financial traders in TFF report. So the TFF has four different categories that you can find here. Dealer intermediary asset management institutional leverage funds and auto reportable for difference. And also for commodities, they have reclassified because there were some borderline situations so they created different categories. So producer, merchant, processor and users, that's quite clear. Swap dealers is just a little bit tricky, manage money and auto reportables. I don't want to go deep inside the explanation of what cut report is, but you can find the definition here. This is a definition for commodities. So the disaggregated commitments of traders. So producer, merchant, processor user is quite evident. Swap dealer, like I said, is just a little bit tricky. And money manager and auto reportable. You can go deep inside the disaggregated and explanatory note that you can find in CFTC website. I will put the link in the description if you want. Okay, for trader in financial future, we have four categories. And asset manager and institutional is quite clear. Leverage funds is quite clear because they are hedge funds, CTA means commodity trading advisors, CPO, commodity pool operators and asset managers is quite obvious. The first one is the most difficult to understand because this participant are described as the sell side, but they do not predominantly sell future. They sell various financial assets to clients. They have to edge their position against clients and against market. And they are building structured products using vanilla derivatives. So vanilla derivatives, for instance, are future options. And with those vanilla derivatives, you can build more structured products that you can sell to order player in the market. Okay, you mainly large player in the market because usually retail traders don't buy, don't use structured products. But for instance, the swap or order derivatives can be used by those guys. Okay, let's see what you can see in the code report. This is how it's published directly on the CFTC website. This is the code report in some trader information future for ES, E-mini future. Okay, what you can find here, the position of long, so the dealer intermediary are long for 218,000 contracts, short for 519,000 contracts and so on. This is the manager, long, short. This is also spreading position because you can spread, for instance, have longer, shorter calendar spread or such kind of spread trading. Leverage funds and order reportable. For difference, so the total position in the market minus this, this, this, this, and you can calculate non-reportable position. Okay, that's number is very important. Okay, so for instance, non-reportable positions are 10.8% long, so the total long, if you make 100, the total long position, only 10% is owned by non-reportable and 12% short position of the total short position are owned by non-reportable. Okay, and you can see also a very interesting number, the number of trader represented in each category, you don't have this number for non-reportable. If you are non-reportable, you don't have to report, so they don't know how many traders in this category. Okay, but in those categories, you can find the number. So you can see that the total number of traders in this, in on those category are 542. So 542 traders accounts for 88, 90% of the total open interest in the market. And the rest is for non-reportable. Okay, that's a really important number. So this is the picture, the picture of November 17. And this is the movie. So you can obtain a chart with the evolution of the net position in legacy report or in TFF of different categories. For instance, large dust per craters, morse per crater, and commercial. As I said, commercial for Imini, it's a definition that doesn't make sense. So you have to use TFF, so dealer intermediary, asset manager, leverage funds, and other reportable. I don't know if you can see those number, but this is the evolution. So this is the whole movie. Okay. The movie is related to Tuesday and the photo report is issued on Friday, at the end of the Friday session. Okay. So maybe I just a little bit old, but useful, believe me. As we saw in the previous report, this one, remember those number, non-reportable accounts for 10, 11, 12% of the total position. But non-reportable traders are not retail traders. Why? Because you have to consider the reporting level. So if you own, for instance, 999 ES contract, you are non-reportable. How can I say that if I have 500, even 100, 999 contracts of ES in my pocket and my retail trader, I'm still a large player. So I cannot say exactly how many retail traders are in the market for years, but for sure is a subset of this number. Okay. Okay. This link, please write it down, because it's very hidden in the CFTC website. So easy to find out. So if you want to know for every future, which are the reporting level uses this link. Okay. But here I can show you the reporting level for different future, for the most common future. For instance, ES 1000 contract. Okay. And Q2000, YM, mini-doujols, 200, Y200, and so on. Okay. Very big reporting threshold for bonds, such as T-notes or T-bonds. Okay. So then ZV 2100. So those are reporting levels for energy future. So if, for instance, you own 100 contract of CL, you are non-reportable, but you are not a retail trader, in my opinion. Natural gas, 200, 18 oil or diesel, 150, and gasoline, 150. Those for metals, 200 for gold, 150 for copper, 150 for silver, and so on. Greens, corn with soybeans, every meal, every oil, those are the figures. Soft commodities. So from coffee, the smallest one with 50 contracts of coffee, coffee is a very heavy contract, or 50 for island juice, 100, 100, 500 for sugar. Okay. Those are reporting level for livestock, lean-o, staff cattle, feeder cattle, 150. Okay. And those for currency future. So, URFX 400 and 400 for the main future, except for New Zealand and dollar index, or Bitcoin becomes very, very little. Bitcoin has a very heavy contract also, the CME, but as the CFE contract has disappeared. Okay. So now we can just have a look to some other cut report in order to understand these numbers, those figure, for instance, this is natural gas and G. And so you can see that no reportable position are from 3 to 5% of the total market. But reporting level is 200. This is crude oil from 2.9 to 4.1% reporting level 350. This is gold, this is iron, 3.8, 11.5, reporting level is 200. Okay. Now, in the report, you can find another number that's here, that the percent of open interest by the largest trader, the largest for trader. Okay. So this is E-mini, for instance, for E-mini, you can see that the largest for players accounts for an average of from 15 to 20% of the EAS market. So just for trader account for a quarter of the market. That's a very important figure to remember. I saw yesterday that Scott Balsini was trading 10% of the EAS market, so a very huge number, impressive. And that's your effects. So that's your effects. You can see that the largest for player accounts from about 20 to even 60% of the market. That's NQ. Okay. The average is 20, 40. So that's the concentration of the player in the market. That's very important number. That's crude oil, crude oil, 20, 35. Okay. The average, let me say 20, 20% of the market for largest player. Okay. I would like to show you another concept. As usually misunderstood in my humble opinion, so at the distribution or accumulation, because in my opinion, distribution or accumulation is a relative concept and not an absolute concept. Because if you do a trade, someone needs to buy, someone else needs to sell. So it makes sense that if one trader is accumulating a position, another one is distributing them. So many traders believe that larger trader distribute their position to retail traders. But this belief is completely false and you can see here. Okay. This is soybeans, for instance. So small speculators, small speculators are those with less than 150 contracts account only for 6% of the market. So here we can see that the large speculators are increasing their positions. They are accumulated net position. Okay. There are accumulated contract on soybeans while commercial are distributing those positions and non-reportable are irrelevant. Okay. So distribution and accumulation. It's a false concept in my opinion because there is only one who is distributing one is accumulating and those players are big. So no retail trader cannot accumulate the position that are distributed by large player. So that's really important. Now you can see also that if you see the contract report that net position are increasing while the price is increasing, you can easily understand the large speculator are earning and making money because the price is rising. They are accumulating the position while commercial are losing money. That's not really true because they are hedging their position. Maybe they are also earning money because the price is rising. If I am a producer or I have to sell soybeans, I would be very happy if the price is rising. So the price is rising. I may be losing money in my future hedging position but I am earning money from my physical commodity that I am selling. So remember that they need that different players in the market are different. So the speculators need to earn money following the price. But a commercial doesn't because they can earn money even if they are at the wrong side of the future because they are losing money here but they are making money on the other side, the physical side. Okay, now let's see a very important question. Do strong hands make money every day? That is a legitimate question that may arise. Okay, maybe, but you know that retail traders usually lose money. Statistics are clear, 75% during a quarter, 90% over one year and 99% at the average, more or less over a three-year period. So we don't know if large players are making money. Maybe you have heard the story of virtual financial. Virtual financial is a large HFT, one of the first HFT that arrived in the market. Let me say 10, 20 years ago, it can be remember. So in the first five years of activity, they told they had just one losing day. So they did really better than me. So now the competition is stronger and so HFT are not so profitable than before, but anyway, you can see that strong hands usually earn money. You can see here in those figure because sometimes they lose money. For instance, here they are losing money on interest rates, future or interest rate derivatives here and credit derivatives, but usually they are earning money on commodity, credit, equity, or X and so on. Okay, this is the only official figure that I found out in, you can find in the OCC publications, government publications are quite important. Now you can see that, for instance, in derivatives markets, four banks dominate the derivative markets because they are really relevant. Okay, all of their banks top four. Who has this guy? JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, America, and so on. Okay, here we can find official statement of Morgan Stanley, the second quarter in 2020, earning results, sales and trading net revenues up 68%. Okay, they earn money. Air Force, trading revenues starts at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, so the big player usually earn money. And central banks. Don't forget that you have to fight against central banks. That's Bank of Japan, for instance, but also Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank, or FED, or even ECB are buying stocks and ETF, for instance. So they are really large player in this market. Okay, so the famous scientists don't find FED. Okay, what conclusion we can draw from figures that we have seen. The first conclusion that is that retail traders are insignificant in the future market. So, in my opinion, it's better to try to understand how big players act in the market and try to anticipate and follow the smartest guy in the market. One other suggestion is you don't have to think like you usually do. Don't think as a retail trader. Don't put your stop loss just under one tick after the low or one tick top on the high, because that's kind of trading doesn't work. The majority of retail traders do that and they lose money. So do not act as a retail trader. Remember that different player in the market equals different needs. Remember, someone is speculating, someone is edging, and they have different time and reason. Horizon, we can see this in a while. So, who are the different players in the market arena? The biggest sovereign funds, private pension funds, mutual funds, passive funds such as ATF, ATN, ATC, endowments, this doesn't exist in Italy that our university endowments doesn't exist in the US, the EV League, university are very, very important. We can manage a huge amount of money. Hatch funds, CDA, monitoring advisers, commodity puller operators, prop trading desk, very important, merchant bank, HFT, market makers. We can see what a market maker do in the market and dealer intermediaries as classified by CFTC, so people who is building structural derivatives products for over the counter or for managed saving products. Or can they can use future also and option to edge the risk arising from their position against market or clients. Okay. Sorry, just a little bit of water. Okay. So my suggestion is trying to be like a remora. What is a remora? It's a small fish that lives in symbiotic, in symbiosis with a shark. The remora, its sharp scraps of prey dropped by the shark. And this is protected from predators. And it benefits for free transportation through the ocean. You cannot move the market. So you have to follow people who is moving the market. Okay. That's the sense of this sentence. So my suggestion is not try to think like big players too.  Okay. Remember that big traders need to buy or sell a relevant position. We usually buy or sell just one lot, one contract, two contracts, but they have to buy or sell hundreds, a thousand contracts in a day or even in an hour. So they cannot act as we do. And you have to understand that because we can follow the flow of those guys that are moving relevant position. They cannot accumulate and distributing those position in a single trade. So they need minutes, hours, or even day for buy and sell in the position they want to buy or sell. Usually they try to hide their movement using what? Algorithms and strategies. For instance, iceberg orders. They don't want to be in the book. They want to stay in the book. They want to play hidden using the iceberg orders. But if you have trained eyes and if you have the right tool like book map, for instance, you can see because with book map you can see icebergs. That's really important. And remember that big players prefer to buy and sell in liquid and slow markets because they prefer to trade where trades are facilitated. So where? In balanced market. What is a balanced market? See what auction market theory is. If you don't know what action auction market theory is, use Google. Very important. I really like auction market theory. One of my favorite theory about market mechanic. They play during cash sessions and they play at liquid levels. That's very important. Why? So important to have a tool like book map because you see liquid levels, the more liquid levels. And they trade in the most liquid hours. So during the session, the cash session, the most liquid hours are open, closed and settled. Remember that. Okay, that's the essential of auction market theory. You have a balanced market where the price spend a lot of time so they can accumulate and distribute because here they are accumulating and distributing a large amount of volumes. This is the low volume note. This is our high volume note. In the low volume note the market is imbalanced. Okay. And the price usually moves very, very quick in imbalanced market. They don't want to spend a lot of time in balanced market.  Okay. Now I don't know how many time we have got. Okay, let's keep this. For instance, a pension fund needs to buy 10,000 years future. The market value is approximately $1.7 billion for 10,000 future. And that's to carry out this transaction to JPM or order broker at the best possible price before 12 a.m. Okay, remember that yes, average volume during last 30 days has been 1,600,000 contracts. So 10,000 countries just 0.62% of the total daily volume. Okay. Remember that average BBO best bid offer levels in U.S. during regular time hours is 120 contracts per side. So if you buy just with just 1,000 to 8,000 contracts with a buy and sell market, you can sweep 30 or 40 levels. Okay. Remember that the 300 big expansion fund have approximately 20 trillions of assets under management. So a 10,000 counter that can be considered as a huge amount of money is just 0.08% of the total market value. So it's peanuts. Okay. But this is for instance the impact on the market with a single to 8,000 to 10,000 contracts. Here we can see this is community order book, community order book is the order book that you have to cumulative every single level. So, okay, you can see that if you want to buy or sell 10,000 counter will sweep about 30 or 40 levels in the book. Okay. Here we cannot, you cannot see iceberg orders because in the current order book, you don't see iceberg order. But anyway, you can quite evident that you cannot put a 10,000 market order or even to put a buy limit order of 10,000 contract here. Okay. You cannot buy a 3,000, 6,000 with a limit order of 10,000 contracts. It's a huge amount of money. So you have to distribute this order in different trades. So, that's why algos exist. Remember that the majority of algorithms active in the market are execution. They are called execution alpha or max execution. So those algos are not in charge of the decision if buy or sell or how many contracts to buy or sell or when. They are not the classic trading system that we as retail trader are using. I'm using trading system for deciding if buy or sell.  Those algos are not HFT. So they are programmed to buy or sell a predefined number of contract in a predefined time window. That's possible average price. So the simplest execution alpha are called view up. So volume weighted average price. That's the same name of the indicator that you can find the platform. But this is the logo, not the indicator. Or another is WAP, Time Weighted Average Price or POV, Percentum Volume. What they do? These algos are programmed in order to buy a defined amount of money in a defined time window. They are trying to buy, for instance, at a price lower than the view up of this time specific time window. For instance, from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. I have to buy 10,000 contracts. If I am buying below the view up, my algos is effective. If I am buying above, my algos is not effective. Those algos are also available with some brokers such as Interactive Broker and other premium brokers. If you go deep inside of this topic and suggest those links. It would be very interesting if you want to understand what an execution alpha algo is, how they act. For instance, here we have best execution alpha. They are provided by Natixis. Natixis is a French farm. They provide those algos to their customers. So view up, view up, participate, target close, etc. Maybe you cannot read here, but we can find the strategy objective, how they are used, the main parameters, typical order example, and main behavior. You can go deep here if you want to download this document. Very, very interesting in my opinion. Okay, we are finishing. So different needs. Remember that we play different needs, because some of them are speculating, but also arbitrage. Because remember, for instance, that the main backbone, internet backbone then has been built in the United States, connecting Chicago to New Jersey has been built for this. The arbitrage between S&P 500 and the basket of 500 shares stocks in New York Stock Exchange. They can hedge, because a lot of players must hedge the variability of price for commercial transactions, such for instance for commodities. Producers and users use futures for that. Or maybe you can add a stock portfolio with futures and options. So you are long for a stock portfolio and you can hedge this position shorting futures when the market is moving against. Or you can add an option position. Okay, for instance, you are an option seller, and if you're an option seller, you have got a big risk. So you have to hedge the position is the price go against you. Another possibility is to be a spread trader. So a calendar spread, for instance, so I buy for instance natural gas in January and I'm selling natural gas February. Or long, yes, short NASDAQ, long BTP, this Italian 10 years bond and short boom to German one or Lousy ZN against ZF, so five years US, yes, 10 years. Or market making. So some player are just there for market making. So for providing liquidity, they are paid for providing liquidity, and also block traders block trader and BTIC basis trade a thickness close and they are liquidity provider for buy and sell the market is close. You can find here at CME explanation of that. We may have a different time horizon, for instance, an HFT has a very, very short time horizon market maker also a scalper also very, very short time frame time horizon, the trader to close the position before the close of the session. For instance, hedge funds, CPA, CPO, time horizon asset manager, pension fund and long time horizon. So when they comes into the market, they have different time horizon so they have different needs, so they have different way to trade than retail. Remember, if, if I'm hitting, for instance, they buy key, the buy, if I'm pressing the buy key on my platform. Maybe I want to open a long position, or because I have an upside view of the market, but not necessarily maybe I can cover a short position because I'm losing money so I'm taking my stop loss or I'm taking my take profit. Maybe I had just a portfolio, maybe I'm hedging as a position in a sell position in options, or maybe I do spread trading around trash. Okay. Do we have just one other minutes for market makers, Bruce. Yeah, absolutely. So two words about market makers, because market maker have an impact on our trades. Market making is an activity where a trader, a trader, a big institution, obviously, simultaneous provides liquidity to both buyer and seller in a solution market. They earn money from spread because they put limit order so they can buy at the best speed and sell the best offer and they are earning this difference and they are earning from rebates and from exchange fee. In some market, there are official market makers, also called specialists, and they are subject to some rules. They have to have a maximum spread, minimum size, minimum time in market. They have to be in both sides of the market so they have to stay in ask or in bid. These rules are established by the exchange, but there are also unofficial market makers that could be present everywhere. Market maker love sideways. They prefer to stay in balanced market because if the market moves quickly, they can lose money. So the risk increases in volatile and in balanced markets. So they can disappear from the market when the market is in imbalance. So what happens if they disappear, the volatility becomes more and more volatile. The volatility increases because they are disappearing so the book is less liquid. So that's really important to understand when they disappear. So to understand when the bid and offer are decreasing, the size is pulled by the book. So very, very important to understand because the market can become very, very quick when they disappear. For instance, when usually they disappear, stop runs occur. We'll see stop runs in the next webinar with some examples.  So if you hit the bid or if you lift the offer, why you are paid for market making. So if you stay in the book, you're paid if you are hit by an aggressor. This is extracted from CME education website. So market makers are those guys, a bit of a short-term oriented and they earn from spread while market taker usually are traders, investors and so on. Just we can see here how much they are paid. Okay, this is for instance the rewarding program of CME for be a market maker in T-Bot. So you have to stay 60% in the market, you have to provide different categories, 10, 20, 30 or 40 contracts per side. Okay, and you obtain those wavering discount or incentives. Okay, so you can understand how market maker act in the market. Okay, I finished the second part is the more practical one, how to trade Nasdaq, looking at Apple Maxus, but there is not time enough. So if you have some question, I am here to answer. Otherwise, we can answer in my email or the next webinar or in the comments in YouTube. Okay, yeah. Thank you, Enrico. It was just excellent. And really, one of the best presentations I've seen on giving details on and all consolidated here in one presentation of the market players and really what's going on within these markets. This is really invaluable for us as traders to understand this distinction here and you've put it all together for us. So thank you very much. Looking forward to the second part here and some of the practical uses with Apple and Microsoft where we'll see the rubber, you know, meet the road here. That will be on Tuesday, everybody at 10am. This will be open to all. So I'll put the webinar links, etc. I'll create them and disseminate them via email, etc. You will get the links, etc. for for this so that you guys can come to this part two of Enrico's presentation. Let's see. Lots of thank yous and excellent materials here from from users or attendees here. And then a question regarding the links. And I don't know how you feel about this, Enrico. The people are asking for all the different links if you were willing to share your presentation or at least put maybe together a document or I can help you with that on all the different links here. So that you put in the comments on YouTube channel separate indicating the number of the slides so they can easily repair that. Okay. Okay, yeah, that would be that would be excellent. So we'll put put something together, not only in the YouTube but maybe we can have a separate separate document, etc. For the email that I'll send out on this weekend on Sunday so everyone look for the email on Sunday. I'll send out for this second presentation on Tuesday for for Enrico. I think that's it. All these other questions here. Hold on a minute just a string of them coming in right now. Lots of lots of thank yous with audio. Everything was was was excellent. And your English as well. No, this is the painful part of the weather. Well, you know, I certainly do not speak perfect Italian, as you know, but I did appreciate that comment. So let's see here, a question. The same accent of Mario Draghi. Let's see Tom is asking a more detailed question here. Let me just take a quick look. I've wondered if you'd speak about the CO2 report and how it helps you treat yet Tom he's going to get to that in part two. Okay. He's going to show practical uses under this. This is where it's going to be really fascinating. You know, and Rico shared this with me earlier just to get an overview of his presentation. He's going to show practical examples and he's going to apply all of what we did. He just went through to book map order flow. So you're going to be able to see it, you're going to be able to use it. Like I said, I've never seen anything like this in terms of presentation breaking it down like this. So, very, very nice presentation. He's done a lot of work and put it together for us, and a nice little package, which is, it's hard to do. It's hard to find all this information together like that. All right. So I think, I think that's it then and Rico I don't think there's anything else. Yeah, because we are speaking on next Tuesday, so I can wish Merry Christmas next Tuesday. Excellent. Excellent. We'll see everyone on Tuesday. Thank you again and Rico. Okay, ciao. Ciao.