Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. We need to have a talk about the transfer market on FIFA 20 and how low it is right now. It is Sunday. Weekendly sell off is in full swing. Actually, as you can tell by this graph, I'm recording this on Saturday evening, basically like midnight UK time on Saturday into Sunday. And the market is very, very low. If we actually look at the daily graph, according to the index 100, this is the lowest point that the market has been on the average for the day since the beginning of FIFA. This is literally the lowest point of the market so far. And a lot of people are wondering, and they're curious, why is the market this low? As you can see, a lot of stuff peaked on Wednesday and then actually went down to Thursday and Friday and as the weekend league happened and went on, a lot of people are selling their teams right now. That's kind of what's happening. Little weekend league sell off action. With the market already being somewhere where it didn't rise up before. And that's what I wanna look at some cards today and kind of talk about. What's kind of going on with the market because a lot of people wanna know why are these cards not rising? What is keeping the market low? And are these cards ever gonna rise? Or are these the prices that we're gonna see? And are these the prices that we're gonna be dealing with in this part of FIFA? I'm here to tell you today that the prices are definitely gonna rise. But I just don't think that anybody has coins right now. And you're probably wondering why would nobody have coins? Well, EA has played this promotion very, very smart. They've been putting out SBCs that are very affordable for people to do. Basically, since the beginning of the game, almost every SBC that we've gotten has been very doable. Joseph Martinez has been like the most, what you could call overpriced SBC. Everything else has been pretty doable. Team Upuki being around what, like 25K, 11 Dotskies around 100K, 120K, maybe 150K, depending on his fluctuations. But I feel like that SBC is decently worth it for the card that you get. And then these Once-to-Watch Prom as SBC. This one's like 20K. Both of these are like 60K of these combined SBCs. And people are suckers for Once-to-Watch cards because they have that opportunity to be upgraded through the rest of the year. So people have done these SBCs. People have gone and done the advanced SBCs as well. They added the National Pride SBC this year, which is disgracefully expensive. Like it's like what? It's like 120,000 coins over here in Fupin. Yeah, it is over here. It's 121,000 coins to do this SBC on Fupin, which is pretty expensive.  This SBC is literally not worth it unless you're spending less than 40K for the entire thing. In my opinion, but people are getting sucked in. They do SBCs like this because they get packs and they're willing to do anything for packs. So people would probably spend, if you're doing all these SBCs, over 200,000 coins on SBCs. And for the average FIFA player, that's a lot of coins at this state of the game. So that's why I think you're seeing the market in a still a relatively low state. And that's why you're not seeing a lot of card prices rise. But what is gonna make that change is more rewards continuing coming on the market, less SBCs as the ones to watch promo ends. And of course, just people being able to grind the game, people using objectives to get cards that they're using to then play more games, people building their teams wanting to play the game more and stuff like that. So again, the rewards are the thing that are gonna drive this market continually up because when people don't have coins, they either have to open packs, they have to trade, or they have to get rewards from playing the game. And the most common ways are just gonna be opening packs and doing rewards. EA did drop promo packs today. They've been putting 15K packs in the store every once in a while. They did again today. And people are opening these from what I hear. People open these packs of the coins. Sometimes the 15Ks actually aren't even that bad. That's what I hear. So that could help the market out a little bit as well. But the ones to watch promo runs through Monday. That's when these SBCs expire. I think it's like Monday at six PM UK. That's when the ones to watch cards will go out of packs as well. Yeah, you see these two SBCs expire in one day, 17 hours. So I think you should see through this next week. We said it last week. We said last week, yeah, the market's gonna be rising throughout this week. It should be flying with rewards. But what we didn't realize was that last week, nobody had coins in here. The market was the highest on Wednesday because people were scared to sell anything or to buy anything because they thought that that, obviously we had the SBCs come out and pushed some of the gold cards up for the UCL market matchups. So that caused some rise in the SBC fodder, like the Byron players, the Barça players, the Spurs players, not rising stuff up there. And we had some ones to watch move as well, which moved cards in the midweek. But now those things are gone. The UCL hype is kinda gone with the gold, the UCL rare cards. We don't know what's gonna happen with those just yet. And the market continues to go down because people are selling their teams this weekend. So what is that allowing for us to see right now? An opportunity to buy a lot of different things. So you know the market is getting too low when you see things like out-of-pack team of the week cards dropping below what they were when they were in packs. The young is 170,000 coins right now. That is very low for him. Mertens 399, Aria is 25K. Team of the week won, Serge Aria, who was 30,000 coins on Thursday. The graph's gone now. The daily graph on Thursday showed him at 31 to 32K almost all day. He's now down back to 25 and a little bit below that, which is what he was almost in packs. 25,000 coins up here while he was in packs. Maybe a little bit of over-investing. I don't think it's over-investing with this card. I just think it's people using this card in Weekend League and they're selling their Weekend League teams to get those coins back in their club to do stuff this week. So if you're somebody who has a lot of coins, obviously you see me over here sitting on 100K. I'm not doing a lot of investing. I am doing all trading. A lot of center backs, a lot of defenders. I've been flipping a lot of this in Diddy cards. Some of the ones to watch is today. A couple of just lazy cells that I've been doing and a lot of flipping of midfielders, defenders, and of course listing stuff for lazy buyers as well. Position change and chemistry style trading is how I am making my coins right now. FIFA picked up a couple of ones to watch. Sarabia's after his game today, when his price started to go back down. That's a possible place that you could look as well because I think he's gonna get informed this week. Let me check in on his price really quick. I bought mine for 25K. What's he at right now? All right, so is that one just an undercut or? Yeah, so Sarabia's about 26K. So he's kind of still chilling in that same area. He was at 32K in the hype for his SBC or when the, not SBC. When he scored those goals, IRL. So that's something that you could watch as well. But all in all, we look at so many things on the market. So much of this stuff is low. Benzema at 110K is a little bit low. I think this DeYoung card is disgracefully low at 170,000. You can see here that he was 170K last week while he was in packs. Rose a bit above that. I mean, I remember seeing this card almost at 200K. But he has the ones to watch, so you had to kind of factor that into mine too. But even Team of the Week two is very low and since this market is low, it's causing Team of the Week three, which is in packs right now, it's causing this Team of the Week to be very cheap as well. I'm honestly still appalled that this Inditi card on PlayStation 4 is around 50,000 coins. 50K for this card. He is the second best center defensive mid in the Premier League. This Inditi card behind Kante, it is Inditi. And honestly, Inditi is not that much worse than Kante. Yes, you heard me say it. He does lack a little bit of passing stats, but his passing is very solid. This is a very, very good CDM in FIFA. And the fact that his Inform is 55K, I could easily see in a couple of weeks, maybe this market is gonna rise slower than what we thought it would in compared to years past. But maybe in a couple of weeks, we see this card at 70,000 coins. I don't think that's too crazy of a number to think. So if you're somebody that's got over 300 to 400,000 coins sitting in your bank balance right now, and maybe if you're liquid right now and you're thinking about picking up some Inform investments, this might be somebody that you look at. He's Premier League. People are looking to upgrade their Premier League squads. They're always looking forward to doing that. But this could be a great card to do that with right now in FIFA. I think this card is a fantastic investment for around under 55K on PlayStation. I would like to get one into my club at some point. On this weekend as well, because I think that's gonna be the low point for a lot of these cards. I do think you're gonna see prices start to rise throughout the week as people are playing games. People will get squad battle rewards Sunday night. And if they don't release any big SBCs throughout the rest of this week, which I don't think they will, maybe something on Monday or Tuesday, they did throw a flashback SBC out last year. So that's a possibility. I mean, they could do something with that this year. I don't know what the plans are for that. But I do think the SBCs should slow down and that's gonna help people out on this game a lot. It's gonna help people out a lot when they're able to actually have the coins to do something instead of feeling like they have to go do an SBC. Because I feel like that's where people are getting trapped and that's why the market is down. But since the market is down, if you guys do have coins, if you're losing on some of your week in league investments, you might take this as an opportunity to say, hey, the market is really low. I'm seeing a lot of stuff that is down right now. Maybe I should take the small loss and some of the stuff that I bought for week in league flips that never really panned out. I have some cards like that for myself. Malinkovich Savage, I bought him at like 9,000 coins. I think he's now under 9K. I might take a little bit of the loss so that I can get extra 100,000 coins in my club for investing. Spending 100,000 coins maybe on this Golovin card instead of keeping those Malinkovich Savages on my transfer list, there's probably a higher return on investment on this Golovin card than on those cards on my transfer list with the Malinkovich Savage. So since the market is very low right now, somebody said doorbell, like you just heard that. Since the market is very low right now, a lot of these cards are maintaining a low price because people just don't have coins to buy them. And that's why they're low, which gives us a great opportunity to pick them up. The informs I think you should pick up this weekend, but the rewards coming Sunday night, I think is gonna push the market up through into this week. And again, Thursday, I think you're gonna see a big push. As you know, this weekend with rewards or this weekend with foot champions, a lot of casual players probably weren't able to qualify for foot champions. So this Thursday's weekend league rewards probably won't be a big search of coins on the market like we thought it was gonna be last week. It probably is gonna be another slow rise again this next weekend, but we can look to last week and see what stuff rose a lot, what meta cards rose a lot. And I would expect to see some of that same stuff rising in this weekend. Of course, more informs on the market. But this is, I just wanna kind of bring you guys like a state of the market video, I guess, because as we looked out on the index 100, as we looked at on foot bin and in the game, stuff is just low, all right? Stuff is just low and it's just kind of too low. People are gonna get coins this game. It seems like it's gonna take longer this year because EA are kind of nickel in diamonds with SBCs. I said that in yesterday's video and I really feel like it's true right now as well. People just can't stay away from SBCs. And when SBCs come out that are pretty cheap, the 20 to 50K range for SBC, so many people feel like they can afford that and they can get that card in their club, like the Promes or like the Levandosky. I've seen a lot of people with play of the month Levandosky, so I think this week is gonna be another rise in the market. It's gonna take some time, especially EA is gonna keep, I think EA is gonna keep putting out these small SBCs like they have been doing this week. It just seems like it's what they're trying to do. They're trying to keep this market lower. They don't want it to explode just yet and they want to make it a slow gradual climb. So I think that's what they're trying to do and I think they're honestly succeeding in that so far. So GG foot economists, if that's what you're trying to do with this market right now, a slow rise instead of the big boom like we had last year for the first week in league. But again, as more people spend time on the game, more people play games, cards are going to rise in price. So if you feel like you're losing money on your team and you bought it what you thought was the cheapest price or your investments aren't going up, don't panic, okay? Don't panic. We know this game. We know the people on this game. People will begin to get more coins in the next coming weeks, all right? So if you got a team, I'm kinda rocking it. I bought a couple of guys from my team. We packed the Soco, we packed Martial and Tradeable. I bought Nabri as you see there. So I'm finishing N-Dombele. I'm gonna put him in the middle and the team is gonna be set for me. Obviously I need to work on upgrading the defense, but yeah, the teams are coming together and everybody else is playing FIFA like that too. Their teams are coming together as well but I just think at the moment a lot of people don't have coins because they're getting sucked in to SBCs to get packs or to get those untradable ones to watch players and hopefully this week in FIFA we don't have as many of those SBCs so that stuff could rise. But again, right now the market is very low. Weekend league sell-off is in full swing and I kinda wanted to just bring this video to you guys talking about what I see on the market in terms of the low and the low tier cards. I mean, we can look at the cheapest by rating tab. We're gonna probably have more SBCs coming in the future. You're gonna start hearing people talk about the second coming, the second month of Premier League player of the month. That's gonna be coming soon. So that's gonna be something to watch out for as well. Another SBC that people could possibly drain their coins into. But again, the market seems low and I kinda just covered it for you guys why I think it is gonna be low but have faith it's gonna rise, okay? It's gonna rise. People will buy their cards on this game. It's still a great time to be flipping, icon flipping, flipping with those chemistry styles and with the position changes because people are still building squads. Once to watchers are very fun to flip with. A lot of them this year are very active in terms of possibility to get in forms. So even though we're not having a lot of just overall rise in the market or the market is still low overall, these once to watch cards still move a lot and provide an opportunity to make coins. Same with once to watches or same with icons, my bad. Same with icons as well. Both of those types of cards, once to watchers obviously are very easy for a lower budget, icons for higher budgets but those two areas are still fluctuating a lot because icons are still very rare at this point in time and once to watchers have all the hype of being new in the game and connected to IRL performances. So if there's nothing at all that you think you can trade with, look at those once to watch cards. We do have international games this week. So make sure that if you're investing in once to watches as they go out of packs, make sure you look and see, do those players play for the international squads and we might cover some of that this week in a video on the channel. I wanna cover icon flipping as well this week because I'm getting to a point where I can start to do that myself. I've been off to a slow start this year but we're really picking it up today. I've sold all these 35 items on the transfer list have been sold today. So we've been doing a lot of selling today, a lot of trading, made definitely probably 100K at least today using about 100 to 200,000 coins at the most to buy players and sell players. So it feels good to be making coins again and even though the market is low people are still buying players, all right? People are still buying players and I think you're gonna see that market rise up a little bit this week, a little bit at the end of the week again, kind of like jump up in little increments and then I think it's really just gonna take two weeks for this market to fly. We'll see what happens with SBCs and stuff and people able to get coins in the game through rewards and stuff like that. So if you enjoyed this video, smash thumbs up on it, comment down below if you have any questions and subscribe to the channel if you are new. It's been Nate, The Photo Counting, catch you guys later. Peace out.


The partnership here with Creek of Victoria will be a couple of things. One you'll see around the 200 metres around the fence here will be having the fire safety message around the MCG, particularly as we go towards the Boxing Day Test and other Premier Class matches over here. We've got also our Premier players that will be travelling, not only here in Melbourne but across Victoria and matches that will be able to send the message out there for people to be fire safe and ready. We're currently in the middle of Fire Action Week and certainly the message from Victorian cricket is for everyone to start thinking about the preparations for the summer. When we think about Boxing Day Test and local cricket games and Christmas festivities, we think about lighting up barbecues but the threat of fire isn't too far away so it's hugely important, it's a natural fit with the biggest summer sport being cricket and the fire ready message, particularly as many of our vibrant clubs are in those high risk and fire areas. What's your message to Victorian cricket fans who might be thinking about relaxing over a beer, watching the bush rangers have another incredible victory like you did the other night? What's your message to them about the summer coming? Just make sure, if you're in any doubt whether there's a bush rull or whether you should leave, just make sure you get out of there and make sure you leave early and just give yourself enough time to get as far away as possible. Thank you.


All right, separate traders welcome on back here this Thursday afternoon October 27th shortly after 2 30 p.m Eastern time welcome on back here for our afternoon meeting great to see Michael who's picking up some money just earlier on Shopify great to see Warren and Mark s Bullside are really nice down Shopify as well a few of us did pretty nicely on that stock actually great to see Chuck Andre Leda Jean all of us of which can hear me loud and clear That's nice to see great to see all was back on social media if he spoke live and YouTube So folks right now the markets are squeezing down clear lower high pattern and making the drop off at least back down to the Low of the day we'll look to see if we break lower and if we do break lower Is it just gonna be a little head fake or is it gonna look to begin to really drop off a lot more? What I mean by that is if you see my five-minute chart here the spy What I'll even try and do is look to do a little mini trend line right off the lows here you could see that pretty evidently so far throughout the day and That should be some support for right now So even if it breaks below that Trend line and breaks a bit lower Is it a real break or is it a false break? And then it snips back up through that level and then it runs back up That's what you would hope to see at least for all this year that are long I'll tell you what I don't have my note there from it. That's not good All right, so I'll tell you what we ended up doing pretty good at least from the morning at least You know before things slow down things dropped off right now, but things that slowed down a little bit You're if you're following some of the more expensive name brand mega cap stocks like of course meta down still over 24% dropping off right now Apple that recently ended up breaking below support off of 145 and has been dropping off We're calling that out earlier So, you know, you're following a couple of those but at least across the early afternoon early to mid-afternoon It's been kind of slow kind of quiet. So, you know, here's Shopify, of course That leads me to this year on the screen up over 17 and a half percent right now Ended up making a beautiful pop from earlier this morning. You know, this was quote-unquote on our list Yeah, I don't think Fausto ended up actually posting it But we were all over this trade beginning from pre market myself and one of our students Chuck and then from that point It took off right away. Now. Here's the issue on the stock for me I ended up picking this up from the VWAP as a day trade But more so heading into the late morning early afternoon when it came down to test it for the second time I missed it off the initial pullback down to the VWAP. It made a perfect bounce two separate times But the first time here would have been prime ideal for this to be a swing trade Opportunity so even with the markets dropping off a little bit right now I mean Shopify coming off of great earnings isn't really, you know showing as much weakness It's not popping mind you, but you know, it's been holding strong So with the news that came out We were just talking about this even from yesterday in the phase two stock course our day trading class that is You know with the stock that ended up dropping off as much as Shopify did over, you know The amount of time that it did like nope. Let's go back more Yeah, right around there. I guess I mean this is before they did the split, right? They weren't Originally 160 plus out there were much more than that technically over time Then they ended up doing the the split but either way they dropped off quite a bit from high to low at that point So for a stock that is dropped off as much as it does you're looking for a marginal a fractional recovery So you're not looking for a full dead cap bounce, but this could be a great swing trade opportunity And you know, perhaps could still be a great swing trade opportunity over time Maybe end of this week or beginning of next should should it make one more dip and pull back But from here, I was like really itching for that as a swing trade I kind of just moved on from it at first and then I look back a little too late after it had bounced off the VWAP And I felt like I was chasing him So I got my day trader led to us a nice trade on the day trade here I wouldn't have been as keen to hold on as a swing trade from above 33 as that would be from above 32 You know, you have a little more leeway there a little bit more cushion room But now getting back to this as a day trade. Well, if anything, it's building a fowstow flag, right? Holding the top really well roughly off that 34 60 building higher lows across the way through I mean if I if I put this into a like what 15 minute chart perhaps Maybe even more maybe like a 60 minute chart 30 minute chart You could see the higher lows the top building pretty nicely it looks probably best even on a 60 minute So with that Shopify, I'll put on our main list at least to begin, you know name brand stock But trades really good liquidity, you know, otherwise more than our price range now Maybe over time they'll fall out of our price range get too expensive, but you know, right now looks pretty strong on the way up here All right, so I'll tell you otherwise a couple of other stocks making some smaller pops But not off the best volume. We'll just go from top to bottom We'll probably find those stocks as we go through but you know for any of the other bigger movers that pop from the morning We'll look to recap them, you know, just as we go So each TCR is one of them ended up having like more of a low-volume pop at first to where it got halted It reopened up now. Let me just do a little playing around here right now Just I got a little time got a coaching call coming up at three o'clock with one of our students But not a formal group class at least so we could take a little time. Don't need to be as prepped So 220 for right now that was a key level coming off the halt That was the opening halt print Broke above it head fake once it came back down below it even as it comes back down to it You're like, ah, that's not a good sign You want to see it explode off that level and make the true higher high and run So once it pulls back under that level, it's a wrap game over I mean it made like probably a scalp little bounce, but that's not what we look for really at that point So even afterwards ended up making another run back up a true false breakout where it broke out above it again and pulled back Yeah, so right now this HTCR looks to be finished up with it at least I Shouldn't have even looked at this one user. It's a buyout, right? AG FS ended up making a nice move from earlier this morning So probably our best play from pre-market that we had on our pre-market watch list and then into the open I ended up making a nice little pop afterwards, too So I ended up going from like 240 broke back above 250 pretty quickly Then ended up taking off up towards just about 279 280 that that is Yeah 280 So for right now, it still seems to be kind of near said highs You know it's still showing a little strength But you know if anything it looks like around the top looks like lower highs of late So, you know, maybe I'll come back to this stack at the very end You know if it ends up showing more life here And I'll put it on our list if we could maybe show a little volume on the bid coming in if it pushes up a few more pennies We'll keep it going here folks MCLD pop and drop Pop and drop to in a row there Talk about a pop and drop geez so view I forgot about the drop-off on this trade end up having a huge run from the morning So if anything, let me just zoom in on this chart I mean the drop-off makes the run-up look like tiny But really from the morning the run-up that we had on this stock was beautiful from like 120 all the way up to 160 at first then ended up breaking the higher and ran up towards just about two So this was pretty much our trade of the day this and the AG FS from the pre-market but And this is the big but here right Ultimately on any stock that we call out inside our live trading room, you know, unless other specified otherwise It's a day trade right and you know, I say that in relation to a swing trade But with a day trade, we're not holding on throughout the day. We're not scalping We don't look to scalp necessarily either But you know, we at least follow the stock and once we happen to see a decline in the volume traded Especially for as much as us as much of a run-up as a stock like view makes you got to wonder anyway from 125 up to near two. All right. Well, what points does this begin to pull back? Well, you'd normally look for a false breakout over to pop and drop to then the pullback But let's see if any news came out on the stock.  I I'll tell you I'm Benzinga pro right now I'm looking up the news on this stock looking at the drop-off that it had I got halted off a circuit breaker volatility halt like two times But I don't see any news now. We ended up having a stock. I think it was AV DCT I could be wrong. It could be another stock to be a traded from the past week or so But stock ended up making a big run and then just one day Ended up coming out news and getting smashed. It could have been a different trade. Maybe just shoot from the hip here AG FY Maybe this could be it One of the stocks to be a trade at this past week, but midday very similar to the type of drop-off You just had there on the view I mean, you normally don't expect that right, but otherwise for as much of a As much of a run that the stock like view makes you got to expect at some point for it to begin to pull back and not to say Make this drop-off, but over time eventually likely get get back down to this price here now slower decline All right, let's see what else we got here Otherwise folks Shopify back down to 34 that that's been a really strong level throughout the day today a Lot of big buy and let's believe off that 34 and from other prices too, but 34 is really strong from the elite morning All right, no real familiar names otherwise on the gainer side or at least up like 8 plus percent here If there's anything else that's up that looks really good folks type it in the chat board I think one of us I think Michael had mentioned the array just earlier So we'll take a look at that in a bit There's anything else though from the gainer side. Let me know. I'll just jump over to the loser side in between here BW Mark called this out earlier as a short when it you know dropped off at first But there is still seemingly a lot more room to go afterwards So it called it out I think as it was on the way down to six and then just completely dropped off from that point so You know, I'll tell you this stock is tradable shortable and trade station my platform at least just double check if it's shortable for you But you know for right now support off of five You would assume major support off of five bucks We only have Shopify on our main list actually as of right now. So BW will join that at least here in the meantime meta We'll put on our list right a little expensive But obviously trading a ton of volume today really good volume on the order book for as expensive as it is So, you know, this is exactly what you would want to follow in terms of a short going into the market close Actually really quick So they got a little time I Have this at least prepped up right now because I was helping Fausto out for his webinar tomorrow So with that meta ended up dropping off It was holding support off a hundred here really well throughout the day a couple of different bids that were filled But with lower highs and the the testing and testing of support off a hundred You got to expect it's gonna break and once it ended up just Rebreaking fully through the iceberg here Ended up holding as resistance dropped off beautifully has been a great short But right now meta Facebook is on the way down to 98 testing a 263,000 share bid Right there. So I would say that's pretty big in relation to even what we had at a hundred had a hundred seventy nine thousand shares roughly off a hundred from earlier you also had a little bit more that was there like a Yeah, 227 K there. I mean since a hundred. This is your next biggest level 99 There was something 90 50 But in terms of how much volume is on the order book at one sitting This is definitely your next biggest level that's out there after that 97 you see there So, you know, keep your eyes on meta on the short looks pretty strong on the way down Can't do that for every stock that we go through folks, but Metta I ended up having up just right there. So that was easy Let's see what else we got here on the downside though I mean, hey the Chinese EVs like expev neo Lee all of them are dropping off big today expev down over 9% neo down over 5% I think expev just eh tradable And they're down big if they were near the low as much like meta is right now Then I'd be more inclined to put them on our watch list I mean great sideless stocks neo seems to be the weakest out of these right now You know, it's down over six six and a half percent right now just near the lows actually so You know out of any of them I would be more inclined to put neo on the watch list as a short drop down to 10 I'll tell you though if the spines upholding this trend line here Should it false break it squeeze back up above it then, you know Perhaps you get a dead cat bounce collectively throughout the market And maybe neo could hold that 10 and lead to a nice little push upward. That's always a thought Alright folks, let me know if there's anything else that looks good We have four stocks on our watch list if you don't like expensive stocks and that makes it three. I Always like to point that out, right? You don't want to let an expensive stock like meta be a distraction to you if you're not as inclined to you know Trade a more expensive stock and that's okay, but for right now meta just as a trade looks incredible as a short Michael says roblox not big percentage gainer, but near high the day. Well, at least take a look You know just for a more expensive stock though, that's where I would say I want to see more volatility like that is more expensive But that's like really giving you more bang for your buck, right? So, you know even a check out an AMD on the downside not big percentage loser But the you know chip sector has been really volatile and in a good way Roblox we've traded you know oftentimes and if it was looking sharper than definitely that's where I felt like GM yesterday Had the chance to make a stronger push if we ended up getting a pop up up higher in the market But obviously we did not necessarily get that right ended up getting just more of a consolidated push and GM just kind of held Right now at the market's dropping off. You want to follow some stocks that are moving with the market definitely weaker than anything like meta AMD Getting back to this. I mean hey, it would be a good one to put on your watch list, right? I mean, you know very liquid all the way down to big icebergs support at 59. I Think I'm selling myself on doing that All right, so AMD will put on our watch list You know, I wasn't a fan of having so many expensive stocks on our watch list any way from this morning that included Nvidia So, you know from comparing the to AMD Nvidia will go AMD But otherwise I want to keep it more contained with what most of us look to trade within like 1 to 30 at least Or you know 1 to 20 perhaps otherwise. So, you know, I neo I American Airlines not really doing it for me here just kind of slumping off UAL actually up over 2% or up 2% right now with the market dropping today. So I guess holding strong as far as a potential swing All right, let me just check out Benzinga pro folks then we'll just finish up here. So I Don't really have much on the gainer side as you can imagine Even if you see views sneak up a little bit. I have no interest in that trade now. So pass on view nrbo Nah, it's too illiquid. I should add one of us on YouTube just mentioned that right now So nrbo starting this, you know squeeze back up a small amount, but it dropped off badly from the morning Just there's no real volume out there That's where I'll tell you if our whole MO for a whole, you know catch freeze here is to follow the big money Follow the smart money and you don't see any big money any smart money out there Probably not best to treat it right and it's okay to think of it that way We need to be very blunt and real with ourselves at times, right? That's where you hear me emphasize certain, you know Rules that we go through in class. I don't see much else even on the loser side here for Benzinga pros So I'll tell you folks. I think that'll just just about wrap things up. I guess we'll check out actually a ray I forgot about that from Michael from just before it's up over 5% Nice day for a raid today at least ended up just dropping off now Yeah, I mean, you know that could be a good side of the stock. I Think folks we're gonna call it. We have about five stocks in total though to work with you know more on the Downside than anything, but you know, that's where we'll be diligent with scanning from this point Don't look to force any callouts out there. Don't like, you know, call out of stock It's like flat not really doing anything But scan be very diligent with scanning and you know here if there's a stock that is Making that move up that you find to be pretty attractive and call it out that then let us know at that point I'm sure there will be something over the next 70 minutes that will look to you know Call out whether it's off of news or not, you know, I'm sure that we'll be able to catch a nice pop Taking us into the market close. All right, so for all of us on Facebook lab in YouTube Folks if you have any other questions feel more than free to send it over through email I always like to post my email address here at the end of the streams Josh a C2 trading comm is my email If you're interested in joining our live trading room, just go right down to the link on the blue banner below Normally yellow I got to make that yellow there next time But normally I'll say go right down to the link on the blue banner below right there the stream to get yourself Started for all of us there inside the live trading room right now lead a grant Michael mark Etc. I look forward to chatting with you folks coming up here in the next hour. Take care Come a cyber group member today Just click the link below and receive all these amazing products and a world of knowledge for just $9 Do it today


Up until now, we haven't been able to test for conditions. When we ask a person for their age in years, as in this program, if they enter a negative number, we do the calculation anyway, even though it doesn't make any sense. We'd like a way to tell if the input is valid before we do the calculation. And that's why Python has the binary if statement, which has this generic model. If some Boolean expression evaluates to true, we do some statements. Otherwise, the expression worked out to false, and we do other statements. That's a bit abstract. So let's put a binary if into this program. We're going to say if the years is greater than zero, everything's okay, and we'll indent the things that we want to do as the result of the if. We want to calculate the days, and we want to print the result. Otherwise, the years is not greater than zero, so we need to print age must be greater than zero. Let's run the program again. This time, if I say the age in years is 35, it does the calculation, run it again, give it a negative 24, and it gives me the error message that age must be greater than zero. In most cases, you're going to have an else to go with an if. You'll want to do one thing or some other thing. Sometimes, though, you'll want to have an if part only without an else to go with it, and that's called a unary selection, one way, as opposed to this binary selection, which is two-way. Let's add some code to ask for the user's name and print it in the output. Name equals input of what is your name, and here in the output, we'll put another placeholder and add name to the things to be output. Let's clear the shell and run it. So, if your name is Nancy and you're 42 years old, that's Nancy's age. What happens if I press only Enter for the name and then put the age in years? It says, you're about 15,330 days old, comma period, and that's fairly ugly. Let's put in a unary selection to provide a name if the user hasn't given us one. If the name is equal to the empty string, and notice I'm using two equal signs here. Remember, a single equal sign means assignment. A double equal sign is asking a question. Our name and the empty string, the same thing. That's a yes-or-no, true-or-false question. If the answer is true, then we're going to set the name to mystery user. We don't need an else. If the name wasn't the empty string, it's the name they entered and it's the one we want to use. Let's clear the shell and run it. First, with a name like Fred, who's 19, and let's run it again. This time with no name, 19, and it gives us the name mystery user instead of Fred, and the output is a little bit more humorous and at least not as ugly as it was before. Some people like to have an else with their if, no matter what. If you're one of those people and you insist on having an else, Python has a construct for you. I can say otherwise, else, pass. Pass is a special keyword that means do nothing. Line 6 through 9 now tell us if the name is the empty string, I set the name to mystery user. Otherwise, I have a valid name, pass on to the next statement, nothing is needed here. And this also works.   To summarize, there are two types of if statements. One is the if with else where you have two choices you do one thing or the other. If the years is greater than zero, it's valid. If the years is not greater than zero, it's not valid. That's a binary selection. The other kind is a unary selection. If the name is the empty string, we'll set the name. Otherwise, there's nothing to be done and so we don't even need the else part. However, if you're one of the people who insists on having an else for every if, you can always use pass to tell Python do nothing.


On behalf of the United States Institute of Peace and in partnership with US Agency for International Development, USAID, I want to welcome you to the public event Women Entrepreneurship and Rebuilding War-Torn Communities. My name is Kathleen Kienist. I'm the Gender Director here at the Institute and I'm looking forward to being a moderator of this event over the next 90 minutes. In addition to the participants we have in this room, we are webcasting live today.  We would most appreciate that. Also if you are joining us by webcast today, we would love it if you want to join in on the Q&A session by emailing any questions to our speakers and discussants today at gender at usip.org. And we will certainly be able to collect those and during our Q&A session today, we will hopefully be able to read those. We are focused today on the understudied yet notable role that women's entrepreneurial activities can and do play in conflict and post-conflict societies. Although we know that violent wars disrupt the social fabric of communities, our policies and practices are only beginning now to grasp what it means when social, political and economic roles for women and men are suspended. It's just temporarily, sometimes for a long time. Much of the literature to date has correctly identified the severe limitations for women's economic access during and after conflict. But today we want to focus in on this window of opportunity when gender roles are shuffled, turned upside down or not adhered to at all, a period of time in which in order to survive innovations take place. Take place during this loosening of social structures of traditional gender roles. We have several decades now of experience in defining the microfinance world for women. But I'd like to suggest to you today what we are on the threshold of is really a new era of policy development where we are reframing women's economic potential, especially after war or disaster, and focusing on women's agency to see the unanticipated and to bring this innovation to a broader scope even in war-torn societies. Just last Wednesday President Obama asserted that countries where women are empowered are more likely to be peaceful and prosperous. Today we have further evidence to underline the President's statement on the correlation between women's empowerment and peaceful and prosperous societies. We are very fortunate to have with us two experts today who have focused in on this important niche of women entrepreneurs in war-torn societies. These women who are reshaping business as we know it, a landscape that stretches far beyond the micro-landing niche. In order of presentation I'm happy to introduce today Paddy Padish who will discuss her new U.S. aid report, Women's Empowerment Arising from Violent Conflict. It is available on the table out beyond the doors here as well as it will be on the website. This study draws upon 125 women's lives stories to examine factors shaping women's agency and local recovery processes in four conflict-affected countries. I also want to introduce Gail Tezmuk Limon who will present her findings from the widely acclaimed New York Times bestselling book that she authored, The Dressmaker of Kair Kanan, Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Women Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe. I've asked both of them to speak for about 15 minutes and then we'll ask my colleagues here today from USA to weigh in on the issues raised. Barani Pan is the Senior Economic Advisor in the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs. She has been a real partner with USIP in bringing the panelists you see in front of you together so I want to say a special thank you to Barani. And Stacey Young who is USA's Senior Knowledge Management Advisor for Micro- Enterprise Development. She comes to us today. We thank her at the last minute because Karen Gron was ill today and we really appreciate your effort in being here. So without any further delay and really getting us into this conversation and I want to emphasize we have purposefully allowed a lot of time for Q&A because I know within this room and abroad there are so many experts who can weigh in on this and so we expect at the end of the presentations and the end of the discussions for you all to take the mics with comments and questions as well. So first of all I would like to welcome Paddy Paddish. Paddy, I think I'm going to take away my take away. Excuse me. There we go. Good afternoon everybody. I am delighted to be here and very delighted to speak before Gail, the New York Times Prize-winning journalist. I have to say thank you very much to Barani Penn and Stacey Young for making it possible for me to undertake this study. I want to thank Kathleen and USIP for cosponsoring. Mercy Corps hosted me for the research and QED provided very valuable coordination support. Due to time constraints I cannot present my entire presentation that I have in the slides but they'll give you a broad overview of my study and I hope you'll take a look at them. The origins come from the World Bank for my study. It's a very large data set of 15 countries. I am going to be talking particularly about the set of countries affected by conflict and those findings were written up in volume four moving out of poverty rising from the ashes of conflict. My study on women's roles in recovery processes just draws from four countries and the largest data set of life stories that was available in those countries. It focuses on a period from 1995 to 2005. I want to start the presentation by giving you two take away messages that I hope you'll bring with you from the presentation. The first is that the women who are living in communities that were directly affected by violent conflict rated more highly on empowerment measures than the women who are living in communities that were not affected by conflict in these countries. The life stories reveal that conflict and recovery while bringing great suffering were also periods of opportunity for women and this is as Kathleen alluded to in her introduction. Gender norms were disrupted, livelihoods were disrupted, local institutions were disrupted and I'll be talking about some of the other sources of change that allowed women to play more active roles in their economy and also in their communities. The second take away message just focuses on the set of communities in my study that were affected by conflict and what I found is that the communities that recovered more quickly, the communities that experienced more rapid poverty reduction in the period of time after conflict ended or the worst forms of conflict ended were also the communities that featured more empowered women. Where women had the opportunity, they made a real difference in their own lives, in the recovery of their families and in the recovery of their communities. To understand the analytic approach that I used, it's all framed by empowerment and I define empowerment as a product of the interaction between women's agency and their local opportunity structures. Agency, I define as women's capacities to mobilize their assets and resources, their assets and capabilities to pursue their own interests. To receive a rating of substantially empowered, a woman had to have indicated during the course of telling her life story that she made independent decisions about her education, about her occupation, about her marriage and child bearing decisions, about her friendships, about joining a local group and about political engagement. So in three of those six areas, she had to specify her role and her decisions. Now, the life stories were not designed for this analysis. I had to develop this retroactively, but it provided an amazing data set for me to do this. Under the second half of my report, I look at local community opportunity structures that support women's agency and empowerment and I focused on three factors, security, markets and local democracy and governance. And looking at the final factor, I also looked at how communities made use of the post-conflict aid that was coming down. So here is a snapshot of my sample. Due to time constraints, I need to refer you to the report to get the details on how the study approached the sampling, the data collection tools that were used, the subjective measures of mobility or poverty reduction, and also the war context. Very quickly, though, I want to say the data set is very large, very rich, offered many opportunities for me to triangulate findings and solve puzzles. Nevertheless, the sample design is uneven. So I hope this study encourages more quantitative and qualitative work in the future on these set of issues. So this slide compares the women's empowerment ratings across, whoops, I'm sorry, I just found out today that I would have PowerPoint capability. So you're going to have to hang with me. I don't have time to present on all the slides. So this slide compares the women's empowerment ratings across the four countries. Or more specifically, the share of women in each country data set that received a rating of substantially empowered. What emerges are important commonalities and differences between the countries. Most women have little education, significant numbers work during childhood. As adults, a large majority of these women were economically active prior to the war, as well as after, mainly moving in and out of farm and on farm work. Generally, they described their family life as harmonious, although there were important exceptions, and quite a few mentioned participating in at least one group. However, the women from the Philippines, and there the study is set in Mindanao, the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao. And they were the most educated, controlled the most assets, they enjoyed the most respect and support in their family, they displayed the most advantageous social capital. This surprised me. And I hope you'll dig into the paper to find out what's behind this very strong agency in Mindanao. When I look across the assets and capabilities of the women, four big messages stand out. And today I'm going to give you two. I can give you the other two in the Q&A, if you'd like. One very important finding for me was that the dowry practices in Mindanao and the inheritance practices also in Mindanao and in Indonesia gave women control of substantial assets, physical assets, land and houses, and sometimes businesses that were passed down to them that they controlled and they intend to pass on to their daughters. These assets were very important to understanding their recovery and their resilience and also their important economic roles and their status in the household. The second big dimension is on women's economic initiatives and their coping mechanisms during conflict. They were compelled to do this. But in the wake of conflict, they often pushed this further in many communities. Sets of forces contributed to this. One that was very important is that in post-conflict aid, a lot of new infrastructure, electricity, water, and roads came into communities that did not have these services. Women not only found their household burdens becoming much lighter as a consequence of the infrastructure, but it freed up time and it made it easier for them to grow their livelihoods. For the first time, women were selling prepared foods and cold drinks from their refrigerators and therefore could earn much higher profits. And there were examples like this across the communities, how infrastructure made a real difference in their lives. Part, I have to skip. And maybe I just leave the slides, because my time is limited. The fourth part of the report examines local opportunity structures. It looks in particular at a subset of communities that I call the superstars. And to be labeled a superstar, you had to get out of it. You had to get your community to recover fast. And lots of poverty reduction happened in my superstars. Secondly, almost all the women who were interviewed for their life stories received very high ratings of empowerment. And when I looked across these superstars, three sets of factors were present in them. And the first was, after the war, a modicum of local security was established. And this is really fundamental to understanding women's economic opportunities. They really need local security. And I provided a case study where this wasn't present. And you can see how their initiative unraveled because of it. The second really key factor is that these communities, for all sorts of reasons, had access in one way or another to an active market, either a road or transport. Women's effective labor markets are much smaller than men's because of their household responsibilities. And so they need physical proximity or infrastructure that eases their access to active markets. And then the third factor is, very often in these communities, they had effective local leaders who could tamp down a lot of crime and violence that surrounds conflict regions. They also attracted a lot of post-conflict aid and they made sure that all the social groups in their community could benefit from this aid. I think the period after conflict, these leaders need to reestablish legitimacy and they're working very hard to do so. And there's a great drive to recover in these communities. And so you see 100 houses go up in six months' time. There's all of this energy and drive and thirst to get life back to normal as fast as possible. And in communities that had the local structures to get the aid in, widely distributed, you saw very fast recovery. And women clearly benefited from this. There was one superstar region and this was North Maluku. In this region, all five of the conflict communities in the sample experienced very rapid poverty reduction. All five of the communities had very empowered women. And this was a special context of a short conflict, 11 months, and then full peace. It's a special context of strong economic growth. It was a very diversified economy on North Maluku, including in agriculture. They were exporting spices on international markets. And then finally, you had strong local governance, which is a tall order in many contexts, I know. But they also had very effective, decentralized, participatory, community-driven, post-conflict aid. And women, substantial resources were decentralized down to women's groups. They used it for their economic initiatives. They could participate in and benefit from the post-conflict period because of this. And I think North Maluku is a lesson for other conflict contexts to learn from, even though it had a very good set of conditions supporting the outcomes there. So the report outlines a set of entry points for policies and programs. Some of the interventions are also needed in non-conflict communities because gender inequalities and other barriers to women's economic, political, social participation are widely present. But the post-conflict period offers a rare window of opportunity that should not be ignored because local institutions and gender norms are in flux. There's a lot of aid coming down. And it's a very wonderful opportunity to take advantage of four women on the ground and supporting them. Thank you very much. Thank you, Patty. I think that set up a very good framework, even though we don't have the entire report in front of us. I think you've added to some new ideas to contemplate and certainly controlled physical assets, access to technology and infrastructure. We rarely think about that. And of course, the transport, the vicinity, the prospect of how actually you can make a market happen. And now I think with Gail to follow up here, Gail can bring a story that will illustrate a lot of the points that I think Patty has laid out here in the work with Camila Cumula. Please, Gail. Thank you. It's lovely to be here. Thank you all for coming out on a warm afternoon. At least it's nice and cool in here. I want to sort of, you talked about reframing at the beginning, Kathleen. So I think I want to pick up on that on three areas. First of all, I think when we think of war stories, we don't think of women. So if I say, tell me a war story, it will almost never involve a woman. And that is part of why I wrote The Dressmaker of which tells the true story of a young woman whose business created jobs for women all around her community during the Taliban years. And I'll tell you a little bit about how I backed into writing this story. I went to, and I talk about this in the beginning of the book, I went to Kabul from Boston. I was in my second year. I'd been at ABC News and then went to business school, quit journalism as my day job and went to business school. And I was really befuddled at the beginning of business school because people were using nouns that were verbs and verbs that were nouns. I had no idea what in the world I'd gotten myself into. But I went to business school because exactly as how he was just talking about, and as Kathleen mentioned, to be in economics is where the action is. That is what makes the difference in women's lives and in family's lives. And so I went to Kabul to write a story for the Financial Times about women entrepreneurs. And the guy at Dulles Airport said to me, I have no idea why you're going for a couple of weeks because that will take you about half a day to interview women entrepreneurs. And I think that's what everybody thought. And so I ended up actually at the offices of Mercy Corps on a very cold December afternoon meeting this young woman who was telling me about how she had given up the opportunity of a job with the international community that would have paid her about $2,000 a month because she was going to start her next business. And she said to me, money is power for women. And earning an income earns respect. And that is incredibly true in a traditional society like Afghanistan. And she said that honestly, I really believe that why I'm starting this next business, which is a business consultancy that's going to go all around Afghanistan and teach entrepreneurship skills to men and women, is because nothing will get our society out of all of the decades of conflict, like economic stability. And it's business that will make the difference long after the set of international's leaves Afghanistan. So I looked at her at that point. And I said, well, you know, I'm barely 30. And I'm pretty certain you're not 30. So why in the world and how in the world do you know this much? Why are you so passionate about entrepreneurship? And she looked at me as if it were the most natural thing in the world and said, well, Gail, I had this great business under the Taliban. And it was actually the Taliban years that made me an entrepreneur, to your point, about the opening of opportunities for women because I was supposed to be a professor. And I had just finished two years of teacher training. And I was planning to go to work and go to university and then go to work. And everything went away. And I had absolutely no ability to do anything I'd ever been trained for. So I did the one thing I still could. I became an entrepreneur. And it turned out that this business, that she started. And I talk about in the book a lot of how there were so many obstacles to overcome. First of all, she didn't know how to sew. Because I think like so many educated people, she had never bothered to learn the skills her mother had been trying to teach her. You should learn to sew. You should learn a marketable skill. Oh, I'm going to class. I'm going to university. I don't have time for that. And then came the Taliban years. And everything else was closed. So that was a big obstacle, obviously, to get around. But she did it because I think like all good entrepreneurs, she looked around and saw the set of circumstances she faced, which is, OK, I have five brothers and sisters at home who are counting on me to survive. And there are a couple market opportunities, to your point about market linkages. First of all, male tailors cannot sew for women anymore under the Taliban rules. Second of all, women can't be in offices that can't work, they can't go to school, they can't do anything outside, but we can work at home. So there's an opportunity. And the third thing is there is still a market for dresses. And it's even better market for people like us, because all the wealthy people have left Kabul. So everybody who had money, who used to be buying fancy dresses imported from China and Pakistan and Iran were no longer there. So the market for dresses was for kind of cheap, handmade goods. And at gailaman.com, my website, you'll see the book trailer, has some pictures of those dresses in case you're interested.  And that is as true in Taliban-era Afghanistan as it is in Washington, DC. So these young women, they found a market opportunity. And so she started this dressmaking business under the Taliban that ended up creating work for women all around her neighborhood. And it created jobs at a time when there were none, and hope in a city that was really starved for it. And I honestly was shocked when she started telling me that it was the Taliban that made her an entrepreneur in many ways. She said, war brings us terrible things, but it also uncovers opportunity. And the five years I spent bringing the dressmaker of Karkinah to life, I think really taught me so much about the fact that even I had seen war stories as men's stories. And here was a story about women who had made sure there was a community to go back to when the conflict was over. And I think that that ability to find opportunity and even the most grim circumstances is what entrepreneurship is about. And women do it every day in communities all around the world, and almost no one pays attention. Which brings me to the second thing I want to talk about, which is that I think we see women as victims of war to be pitied rather than survivors of war to be respected. And this has real economic ramifications because you don't invest in victims. Now, I went to Harvard Business School. I never saw a class about investing in victims.  And the narrative about women are sort of helpless and don't have agency is absolutely divorced from the reality you see on the ground. Because when you spend time as so many of you have in tough parts of the world, you see that women just get on with it because they have to. For the same reason that single parents here, often single moms, work two or three jobs or whatever it takes to make sure that their kids are fed, women in conflict, because they're the population you have left, because they're the people who are not all fighting, maintain the economy. And they make sure that kids are fed and kids survive. And yet we almost never think about their work. And I think even as a reporter working in a place like Afghanistan, you almost apologize for writing stories about women, because that's not the hard stuff. It's sort of the side show. The real story is what's going on with either men with guns or men in suits.  And so I think that what I wanted this book to show, and what I really think the Kamala story is so powerful in my own doing, is to show the fact that it is women who are pulling communities through.  And somehow it's those women who pick up the pieces every single day, whose work we see is soft, when it is really, really hard. If you want to talk about hard environments for business, think about the Taliban era. First of all, you couldn't be out without wearing a burqa. That actually, in Kamala's case, she turned it into an advantage because it meant no shopkeeper would ever see her. So if the Taliban rule said you couldn't do business with women, you could never identify her, because there were a lot of women with burqas running around Kabul. The second circumstance you faced was vice and virtue. So the Anurban Maruf, which is in Dari, which is the vice and virtue forces, which were entirely new to Afghanistan, entirely new to Kabul, these guys were the Taliban's foot soldiers. And they would drive around in Toyota Hilux pickup trucks, sometimes with Quranic verses on their side, looking for rule breakers. And they would sweep down with either a wooden baton or a television antenna, or an AK-47, whichever happened to be the most readily available, to bring people into line who were breaking the Taliban's rules. And so it was with great trepidation that Kamala's sister actually taught her how to sew, because she was terrified about her sister being out in the market or in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Kamala said, look, we'll do everything we can to stay within the rules. And so what they did was I think what you see, there's women in your study and the women we talk about in this book is they turned the disadvantage to an advantage, which is, OK, I will follow the rules to a tee. I will always take my younger brother out with me. He will be my chaperone or maharam, because women could not go out by themselves during the Taliban years. I will stay out of the market during the time of prayer. These are all the things Kamala promised her sister. So I will not be there during the time of prayer, although, as you'll see in the book occasionally, she does, because it's really hard to avoid. And third of all, I won't use my real name, because because the tailors can't see my face, they'll never know who I really am. And so if anybody ever comes looking, they won't see me. But there was a market, and this goes back to the point. There was a market because people wanted the goods and shopkeepers needed inventory, because all the stuff to import was too difficult. It was too difficult to get to Pakistan. It was too difficult to get to Iraq. So that is why there was a market for these dresses. And I think one of the things that I was so struck by was that as much as Kamala's business created a living room lifeline in terms of the economics, right? Because I think one of the stories people don't think of when they think of the Taliban years is the economics piece. People were desperate. They were selling baby dolls and shoelaces and doors and windows, and some people were selling their children in some ways. They would get money to send their kid to go work in Pakistan because they would at least feel like their kid would be fed. They had no ability to support it. And that's why a business like this, this dress making business that started with one dress and grew into a lifeline for a whole neighborhood, really did make the difference between survival and starvation for so many. And I think that as much as that economics piece was so interesting, it was also the fact that these women created communities for themselves. No foreign savior came in to give them jobs or to help them. These women did it on their own by themselves. And their story was largely overlooked for years. And so when I started to work on this and I would do research, and I would go to reporting trips in Kabul in 2008 and 2009, sometimes coming to visit Kathleen during those trips, I got a lot of criticism from journalists. I'm sorry to say it, but I will. Mostly European, mostly men, who would say to me, you know, Gail, you're really writing about the exceptions. And I had a couple of answers for that. And the first one is that these girls are as Afghan as the young women you think of when you think of Afghan women huddled in a burqa who never leave the house in Kandahar. These young women were in their country through the Russian years, through the civil war, through the Taliban, and now. And they have every right to have their story told in the same way. Second of all, look at your own history. In the 1970s in Switzerland, women couldn't vote. And the first group of women to graduate from West Point was 1980. In the 1970s, women in the Foreign Service who got married had to quit in the United States. So before everybody feels so superior about how far and advanced we are, this is recent history we're talking about. And the third thing I say is there's no society anywhere in the world that is not changed except by its exceptions. And these young women are homegrown role models and there are plenty of them.  Because if they're men, they're on the vanguard and if they're women, they're exceptions. And I say this as somebody who has a lot of fondness for my profession of journalism, but I do have to poke fun at it because if somebody like me goes to pitch a story about women entrepreneurs to a notable newspaper record, oftentimes they'll hear, well, I think somebody else did that a couple months back.  Somehow women entrepreneurs get an asterisk next to them when they're creating the same exact kind of economic growth. And that brings me to my third point and another reason why I wrote The Dressmaker. And I wrote it as a story because I wanted people who didn't care about women's stuff, who don't care about Afghanistan to pick it up and read it. And what has been so moving to me honestly is the entrepreneurs who've written me who've said that this book helped them with their own business obstacles, because at least they didn't have the Taliban to contend with. When they were out trying to think about how to raise capital or how to be out there every day. We don't often think of Afghanistan as a place people find inspiration. And yet it is these stories of women who are going around the obstacles and exploiting every single opportunity, not just for themselves, but for the whole community that I think shows the power of the human spirit to overcome almost anything you put in front of it. And if it happens to be women who are doing it so much, the better. But I think that my third point it is that we aim low and small dollar when it comes to women.  And if I say entrepreneurship, you think of men. And yet women are capable of so much more than micro. And in fact, we get them to the point where they understand power of business and then how do you grow out of micro? It's really, really difficult to grow from micro to small, medium, larger enterprise. And that's honestly and truly why I purposely did not write about microfinance. Because it is a wonderful tool. I have interviewed a lot of micro entrepreneurs who really are alive and thriving and economic contributors only because of microfinance. It is a powerful tool. But we have somehow confused a solution with the solution when it comes to women. And we don't do that for men. So when I first went to a couple of these countries to write stories for the Herald Tribune or for the FTE about women entrepreneurs, I cannot tell you how many international officials said to me, well, Gail, we don't have women doing small business. We do have a couple women selling cheese by the side of the road. So maybe you could go interview them. I swear, I could not make that up. I mean, that's a true story. And so when the story ran, it was a weekend business cover in the International Herald Tribune. And I said, oh, just in case you're looking for women for your next investment conference, here are a couple, one of whom is running the country's largest advertising agency. Another of whom is creating jobs in a textile business that has received almost no support from anyone outside a woman that she cleaned homes for who sent her a 20,000-year-old loan. And that's how she got started because she couldn't get capital at the beginning. So I think the story of Kamala and the power of business to create hope even at a time that was really drained of it, even during the Taliban years when every obstacle was against these young women, shows that this is a powerful example of the power of entrepreneurship to change lives and the power of women in business to create change on the ground. And the fact that women could be breadwinners during years in which they couldn't even be on the street shows you that if you can give women just a little bit of support and investment, it will go a long, long way because women are not just collateral damage when it comes to war, they are contributors when it comes to peace. And I hope that the dressmaker and the conversations we have go a little bit away to changing the discussion. So thank you so much. Thank you, Gail, for not only bringing these points home but in an entertaining way and reminding us of our own frameworks that we have to break through. And in doing that, Baroni, I'm gonna ask you as a discussant if you could help look at this confusion that Gail is talking about a solution with the solution and help give us some policy guidance on moving forward. Good afternoon. I'm pleased to be here and thank you, Kathleen, for joining us in this event and hosting us here at USIP's beautiful facilities. On the Mall, I think it's just wonderful to sort of capture the kind of work that you're doing in physical form. And I'd like to thank Patty and Gail for their comments too. They have different styles and they're presenting different cases, but I think there are many common threads that we wanna push on. Patty's work I'm very familiar with because she came to us, Stacy and I, and said I've got all this data from the World Bank and we wanna do a gender analysis on it. Could you help us? And so we agreed to it and it's been a year, I think, in the making and since I was partly responsible for it, I don't have any other comments but besides to say it's a great study, read it. But that's a bit biased and I would go into more detail about that. The event, I think, is very timely also because we have at the World Bank, they do these annual reports called the World Development Report and this current year is on conflict and the next year is on gender so I feel that we are sort of at the very intersection of those topics and it's so very important to really understand at many different levels analytically, programmatically, getting those issues to be very well understood by the international community. I wanted to acknowledge Gail's comment about economics is where it is. I find that very refreshing since most people think that economics is a very dismal science and then to say this is where it is and this is where we should be moving on and as an economist, a program economist, I find that very refreshing since where we are sometimes relegated to the very technical level where it's not so exciting. The cases that you've heard this morning shouldn't shock you. There are many cases that have been presented in other countries where women have played such a pivotal role in their nation's recovery and I cite here Rwanda, Liberia, so it shouldn't be a surprise but I would agree with Gail that there's certain ideas of women in economics, women in these post-conflict environments where people may automatically think about certain solutions such as microfinance. Stacy is from that office and I used to be in that office and all I can say for now and I think Stacy will follow up on this is that that's very much true. There is a role for microfinance and it has been very central to helping women survive and have vital economic lives in very poor conditions and in conflict conditions that can be also very useful but what we are looking at in terms of research is to find out the factors that prevent them from coming from microfinance to small and medium enterprises. Is it a matter of household responsibilities? Is it a matter of risk taking? Because there are risks in scaling up a business from micro to small and medium enterprises so we have to be very realistic about that. If you put that expectation out there you also need to be dealing with both the risk and the reward. In terms of some of the comments that Patty has made on the importance of different types of assets I think we know very well that assets play a major role in whether a person can prosper or not but I think that something very important in these kind of environments is the non-economic factors such as the norms, the behaviors and the attitudes of community leaders, the role of social capital and networks. Those things are very intangible but you cannot underestimate their importance in environments where the formal structures are not there, the formal institutions are not there so I think that's also worthy of more study. Let me skip again on back to Afghanistan. I've recently joined the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at USAID so I'm still coming to speed on many things but we do know, I think if you're very familiar with the country that's the statistics for women in that country have been very dismal when we first arrived in Afghanistan in the early 2000s. Those statistics have improved in terms of health and education and even in terms of economic and poverty but there is much more to do and I won't go through all the things that USAID is doing in that country. You can check it out for yourself on the USA.gov website. I also have some handouts that I put on the table that you can access but we are supporting women in business training, entrepreneurship and education so many of those things we are looking at and we are trying to help with. But as we become more engaged in those kind of activities it's my personal view that we need to go beyond as Gail was saying, beyond microfinance. We need to look at small and medium enterprises. We need to see the potential women's leadership in the business community and other means. What is it that we can do to make this more of a market economy that is driven by supply and demand rather than subsidies and just one-off kind of interactions? What can we do to move the economy towards regional integration, international markets? That's the medium term, long term objective and there are many things that have to be done in the meantime and I again would think about the non-economic factors, the political factors, the political economy factors that would either accelerate or dampen that kind of progress. Those kind of questions are very complicated as you know Afghanistan is but that is the reality. Lastly I think that we would as a community benefit for more research of this type both quantitative and qualitative. Patty's study I think draws out some very important observations but what we don't know are the causality factors. What exactly caused this or was there a relationship of causality or was it some correlation that was fortuitous? Another question that I would have is can these kind of gender roles be sustained beyond on the post-conflict recovery? Would they revert back to previous status before the conflict or even worse were they be further regressed than they were before? And then finally can we open this kind of space for changes and improvements and gender roles without having to rely on conflict or war? What is the problem here? Is it a matter of having some dramatic revolution and thinking or information? What is that? It's that's the question for social scientists and I think again I urge more research on this and I think that today though we've gone as you can see from these two very potent presentations we've gone pretty far in looking at those issues but I hope in the future that we can even look even more in depth with more research. Thank you. Thank you Barani. I'm now going to turn to Stacy Young, Senior Knowledge Management Advisor at USAID in Micro Enterprise. Help us bring this into focus a little further in terms of the policy question. Sure, yeah and thanks for identifying that as a key issue because that is I think for those of us at USAID where the questions emerge. What of these findings of these two really interesting studies? What are the implications for what donors can influence and what are the things that donors can influence? So looking for example at the lists that both of you generated of conditions that need to be in place in order for openings to occur and then for women to be able to achieve different and better outcomes for themselves than were the case before. You know when I'm thinking of this from a donor perspective I'm thinking okay well we can't really go out and catalyze conflict, right? That's not really our job as donors and I don't think anybody would say that that is the best or most efficient or effective path to the kinds of changes that you're both highlighting but I think that there are some implications for what donors can influence that both of you have identified. Both of you talked about for example the importance of active markets and certainly donors can play a role in facilitating the development of dynamic markets. This is work that we know how to do even if we don't always do it as effectively as possible but that is something that we know how to do but I think what you identified as an area that really does need more attention is how to do that in a way that benefits women and I think that there are some real keys here to why in international development we haven't gotten more traction on women's empowerment and breaking down gender divisions than we have. Patty you know because of our conversation over the past week about your study that when I see the policy recommendations that you've made for donors there's a lot there that's familiar. There are things that we've been saying for a long time about what we need to do in order to produce better outcomes for women in a variety of contexts whether they be post-conflict or not but I think what is critical here and something that you've identified that's extremely valuable for donors is that window of opportunity and that specific context in which changes is possible more than it has been before because of the shifts in gender roles and the shifts in local structures so when I think from a donor perspective I think the reason that we haven't made more of that is because of this failure that both of you identified and Gail you were talking about this in terms of changing the way that donors approach markets for example so rather than coming in post-conflict and saying okay how can we restore things to the status that they were prior to the conflict really looking at the implications of what you've highlighted Patty and saying there is a window of opportunity here to make things different so maybe the goal shouldn't be getting back to where things were before but maybe really what we should be focusing on here is this brief window of opportunity understanding it better understanding that in this moment using the approaches that we've identified as being the ones that would be helpful on the gender front using those can gain us more traction at this particular moment in understanding the temporal nature of that opportunity and the urgency with which we need to seize that opportunity at that particular moment so really that requires us to look differently at I think what our role is in those particular moments again looking forward and seeing a window of opportunity vis-a-vis gender outcomes as opposed to saying what's needed here is to restore things to the way that they were prior to the conflict so I think that's one really important implication for donors. I wanted also to just circle back around as Barani suggested to this question about micro-enterprise and micro-finance and its relationship to small and medium enterprise and I really appreciate the thinking that has been done now in the comments that all three of you offered regarding women's role in small and medium entrepreneurship I think it has for too long been the case that micro-finance and micro-enterprise development have really been used as kind of a gender ghetto that sort of women's thing as long as we've got micro-enterprise development covered we've got women covered and we don't really have to think about women's role in other parts of markets and I think that it's exciting to hear you talking about women having an active role in small and medium enterprise in ways that we can help to expand that role for women. At the same time I think that it's useful to see that in a dynamic relationship with micro-enterprise development precisely because small and medium enterprises rely on micro-entrepreneurs to supply inputs for their enterprises so understanding that that the two are not separate and isolated parts of a market continuum but rather are dynamically linked and mutually reliant I think that also might produce some important insights into how we can recognize and facilitate the strengthening of micro-enterprise opportunities for women who may be juggling multiple responsibilities and needing to maintain multiple income streams but then also looking at how emphasizing small and medium entrepreneurship and women's role in that can yield multiple results not just for those women but as Gail makes the point for the many women and others in the community who might become their employees so I think investigating that dynamic relationship is also fruitful for donors. I think I'll leave it now because I'm sure that other people have exciting things to say. Thank you. Thank you.