Okay, so in order to make this into an actual tiling texture we need to do a couple more things All right, and I want to show you how I go about making these types of patterns tile So I can then render it out to a texture and work with it and you know cops or in rocks and stuff like that All right, well, let's get going All right, so we are almost there what I want to do now is I want to center this guy up in the world So I'm gonna drop down a transform node and a good way to center this up really quickly It's just to use the centroid values. So where's the centroid of this particular object? All right, and that's stored in these global variables called CEX and CEY So if I do dollar CEY and dollar CEZ That's the center of this particular objects bounding box in the X Y and Z directions But you'll notice that it actually offset in the wrong direction. I just need to negate all these guys All right, so you see you put a negative symbol in front of all that Voila, look at that. We're nicely centered up Very cool. Okay. So what I want to do now is I need to get or extract just this centerpiece All right, I don't need all this other stuff Okay, let's go and Create a clip node to do this. All right, and I'm gonna demonstrate this So if I drop down a grid here, all right, let's just put this on a template And then let's put this grid on the XY plane and we're gonna just make it a unit grid size All right, and get rid of all the rows and columns So now if I hit three on the keyboard, you can see this is the area that I want right here All right, if we cut out just that particular piece We will be able to tile this into a texture. So when we render it out, it'll tile perfectly seamlessly Okay, so let's do that So I'm gonna keep the grid there just for reference But all the values because we're working in a unit grid are really easy So the distances that we use are going to be 0.5. So in this case I want to move down in Y because currently in my clip node is set in the Y direction right here I want to move this down negative 0.5. So there's the bottom of our grid right there Very cool. And then I'm going to duplicate this and we're gonna put this up to The positive 0.5, but we're gonna keep all the primitives below the plane. Look at that We are now getting a perfect tiling texture. So let's do the X directions now So in our clip node, we need to actually change this to a 1 in X and a 0 in Y so we clip off that side and then I'm going to make another clip note and Make this negative 0.5 and keep all the primitives above. Look at that. That is a perfectly tiling Chain link fence Object and I can prove that by coming down here and creating a couple more copy and transform nodes Let's actually just get rid of that guy. All right. So now if I tile this two times in X I got a perfectly tiling texture or mesh in this case And you could totally use the mesh instead of rendering this out to a texture All right, so let's move that up one in Y there Look at that. How cool is that? All right, so a couple more things I want to do before I close out this lecture I want to go and make sure that I can render this out also inside of a unit grid Okay, and so to do that we need to basically fit our pattern now We have going here into a unit box or the unit grid. Okay, so Let's go and do that. I'm going to go and drop down a match size. No, this is very handy to accomplish this task All right What it does is it allows us to match the size of one object to another and in this case? I want to use a unit box So by default the box is a unit box to value as a size one in all axes All right, so I'm going to feed that in for this Second input. All right, and I'm going to take our pattern and feed it into the first input Okay, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to say scale to fit All right, and we want to do a uniform scale Look at that. We now fit perfectly within our unit box And you know, we can always bring the the size and z down to like point two five just to make it look a little more official Doesn't really have any effect on it. All right So now what I want to do let's say I want to have more than you know This amount of chain links in my texture. Well, we can control that from these two guys Okay So what I want to do is I want to take this total number right here I'm going to copy that parameter and put it into this second copy and transform node so now when I go and move this the match size is always going to keep our Pattern in a unit box Very cool, and it tiles perfectly. Okay So with that we are now ready to turn this into an actual texture Okay, so in the next lecture we're going to go through setting up our camera and rendering this out in mantra


Thanks for coming. So I'm going to talk about transparent snarks from Dark Compilers today. And this is joined work with Alan Trapaniak and Ben Fish. And the main problem that zero-knowledge proof solve is something that you can see here in the Bitcoin transaction and the same holds for Ethereum transactions. It's that if I want to check the validity of a Bitcoin transactions, then I need to know the check for a Bitcoin transaction is that the sum of the inputs is greater or equal than the sum of the outputs. And to do this check, to check that the transaction is valid, I need to know these amounts. I need to know how much money is being sent. And very similar in Ethereum, I need to check that the person who's sending some money has enough balance in their account to send the money. The difference is actually the fees here in Bitcoin. The problem is that this is actually really bad for privacy because everything is public. So what this means is if I get my salary in Bitcoin, for example, in Ethereum, then my salary will be public on the blockchain and everybody can see it. And that's not something that I want to have. So for example, also if I'm a supplier, then if I'm a company and I buy some supplies for my company, then all of my competitors will exactly see how much I'm paying for these supplies. And that's an important business secret. And this really leads to this maybe slightly controversial statement, but that Bitcoin in the way that it works now, it's really unusable for businesses. And in a similar way for Ethereum, if I run maybe some investment fund on Ethereum, then everybody can see exactly what my investing strategy is. My whole bit of this secret is the whole secret sauce is my investment strategy. But if this fund is on Ethereum, then everybody can exactly see if it's on Malin or something, then everybody can exactly see what I'm investing in. They confront me, it creates all sort of problem. And this really means that Ethereum is unusable for many financial services. Well, luckily, we sort of know how to solve these problems. And that is by using cryptography and especially something called zero knowledge. And there the idea is that instead of having a Bitcoin transaction that looks like this, I'm going to hide all of the amounts. So I'm going to use something called a cryptographic commitment to hide all of these amounts so no one can see what these amounts are. They're basically encrypted. And the question though is then how do I check that the transaction is valid? How do I check that the sum of inputs is equal to the sum of outputs plus the fees? And similarly, in Ethereum, how do I check that the sender has enough money in their account to send the transaction? And the way to do that is using something called a zero knowledge proof. And this is really a magical cryptographic tool where Peggy can convince Victor, so the prover can convince a verify, that something is true without giving up any information about why it's true. So for example, I can convince you that I'm committing to a positive number, like the remaining balance that I have is positive. But I reveal no other information, and especially I don't reveal what my balance is. All of that remains private. And the way that this works is basically one way to imagine it is through this interactive challenge response protocol where Victor gets to ask questions that Peggy wouldn't know the answer to if this wasn't true. She could not answer these questions if the statement wasn't true, if the balance was negative. But the answers don't reveal any information whatsoever about what the statement is. So what we really need, though, in a blockchain setting, is not this sort of interactive proof. And in the end, Victor has no idea what access, but it's positive, and Peggy must know it. And what we really need in this interactive setting is a NISIC, a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of knowledge, where basically the prover can just write down the proof, and the verify can read it and check it, and everybody can read it and check it. It's publicly verifiable. And this relies on some common reference string that both the prover and the verifier have access to. And there's many different kinds of zero-knowledge proofs.  There's a tremendous development happening in this space. And I'm going to vastly oversimplify. Ooh, this went wrong. The orange ones should be green. The orange ones are good. So the vast oversimplification is that looking just at Snarks, Starks, and Bulletproofs is that Snarks and Bulletproofs, they're good on the proof size, Starks not so much. The verification is great for Snarks and Starks. And Snarks are great now, but unfortunately they have this thing called the trusted setup, where someone needs to perform a trusted setup. I'll talk about the trusted setup and why this is a problem in a second. But basically, there is this party who creates a proving key and a verification key. And if that party cheats, then really bad things are going to happen. And maybe a little bit more and more in-depth comparison that I don't want you to read, but this is a recent comparison. And basically, there's no Snarks without trusted setup that doesn't have our no-proof system without trusted setup that has logarithmic proof size and logarithmic verification time. And this is exactly what I'm going to present today. The first practical Snark with logarithmic proof size and logarithmic verification time. So Snarks have this trusted setup. So what is the trusted setup? It means that there's some party, some really nice guy, who creates a proving key and a verification key. And the prover uses the proving key to create the proof. And the verify uses the verification key to check the proof. But if that party colludes with the prover, if that party cheats, then it can break math. Then it can say that 3 plus 3 is equal to 4 or 7 or whatever. And why is this a problem? Well, if the trusted setup is subverted, the prover can create fake proofs. And what this means is, if we have subversion, then I can create money out of thin air. I can have one z-cash coin and create a million out of them because I can break math. And that's really problematic because suddenly we have undetectable inflation. The privacy still holds. It's really, really bad. You can alleviate that through a distributed setup, which is what z-cash did. And they did a really good job with it.   The setup was broken. They luckily caught it before something bad happened. Or at least we think so. We don't know. But the setup was broken. So it's really difficult to get this right. And one other thing that is really annoying is for the most efficient Snarks. Every time you have a new functionality, you need a new setup. So for example, if I want to have one snark per smart contract, then I need to have a new setup every time. And every time that setup can be broken. So this is quite problematic. So really the goal is to remove this need for a trusted setup. And Bulletproof, for example, does that. But Bulletproofs works for small and medium complexity transactions. But for large complexity transactions, it just takes too long to verify. It doesn't have the succinctness property where it proves they are very efficient to verify, even if they are very complex. And Snarks have that. So this is why we built Darkproofs and SuperSonic. So how does that work? Well, the main thing that we built is a new polynomial commitment. So what is this? So this is a cryptographic tool where the prover has some polynomial. So 3 plus 2x plus 5x squared and so on of degree d. So it has d plus 1 terms. And the prover sends this commitment, which is a small value, even though the polynomial is large. The verifier can send a point z. And then the prover can tell you the polynomial evaluated at z is equal to y and give a small proof that this is true. So this is a polynomial commitment. And recently, there was this cool new proof system called Sonic, which is a new kind of Snark by, I dropped the reference there, but Mary Mahler and Chambault and others. And it's a Snark system that uses a polynomial commitment scheme. And it has a trusted setup still. But the trusted setup is only for the polynomial commitment scheme. So nothing else requires a trusted setup. And it's also, it already is universal. So it already removes this problem that you need a new trusted setup per circuit. So it already is great. And it got even improved. The constants got improved by new proof systems called Planck and Mahlen. But they're all the same family of proofs. And what we do is we build a new polynomial commitment scheme, which uses so-called DO-14 arguments of knowledge. So integers, integer equations. And that's why we call it a dark. And it uses these so-called class groups. And it has logarithmic communication time and logarithmic verification time. And most importantly, it doesn't have a trusted setup. So what does this give us? Well, we have Sonic. And now then we plug in this new dark proofs.  But we get, what happened here? I'm going to fix this piece for this slide. We're going to get supersonic, which is the first snark with short proofs and no trusted setup. The proof size is less than 10 kilobytes. Verification time is less than 100 milliseconds. So it's very nice. So how do we build this? Well, we built this something. And now we're getting into the technical part, trying to understand how this actually works. So we're building this using something called a polynomial IOP. So what is a polynomial IOP? Well, basically, think of it as if the prover and the verifier have access to some polynomial, maybe in multiple variables in the sky. And then in every round, the prover sends maybe a new polynomial, the verifier sends a challenge, and you get some new polynomials, and so on.  And these polynomials may be large. But what we can then do if we have a proof system like this, and Sonic is a proof system like this, then we can use a polynomial commitment scheme to not send the polynomials, but just send the commitments to the polynomials. And it turns out this is interactive. So there's a generic transformation called the Fiat-Chemure transform to transform this from an interactive proof to a non-interactive proof. So basically, all we need now is this thing, and then we can focus on compiling these things down. So this is the general recipe of how we can build these snarks. And a lot of different snarks actually fall into this category of polynomial IOPs. So if we build a new polynomial commitment scheme, it helps improve all of these snarks and make them all of these proof systems and make them have no trusted setup. So that's exactly what we did. And Sonic, as I already said, gives you a five round IOP with 24 oracles. But in general, we can make this work. So let's focus on the main construction. So the first thing of this polynomial commitment scheme. So this is what we're trying to do. We've boiled it down to we just have to build this polynomial commitment scheme. So let's recall what a polynomial looks like. So what we're going to do is we're going to take this polynomial and encode it as an integer. So what we do is we simply pick a large queue. So all of these, normally these polynomials are in a field, in a prime-order field, zp. But what we're going to do is we're going to represent it over the integers and pick a queue that is larger than each of the coefficients and then just simply evaluate the polynomial at queue. So this might seem a little bit weird. Why are we doing this? What does this mean? Well, let's think about it very concrete. So our polynomial is 4xq plus 2x squared plus x plus 3. And then we take q equals to 10. And we evaluate f hat at 10. Well, what do we get? We get 4, 2, 1, 3. It's literally just the coefficients written next to each other. Because 10 is where we're thinking in decimal. So with 10, it looks really nice. But you can do this with any other number. If I had chosen 8 or 5 or whatever, this would have worked as well, or 100. So what we do here is we transform our polynomial into an integer. So why do we do that? Well, this integer encoding has very nice properties. So if this queue is large enough and there's no overflow, then actually this has homomorphic properties, additive properties. So I have one polynomial, 4, 2, 3, 1. I just give you the integer representation. And another one, 1, 4, 4, 3. And it turns out that if I add these integers, I get the encoding of another polynomial, which is literally the sum of the original polynomials. So if I add the polynomials and then encode, it's exactly the same as if I encode and then add the integers. So this is what we call a homomorphic property. So this is an additive homomorphism. And it turns out there's also a multiplicative homomorphism or monomial homomorphism. So if I want to shift the polynomial by a degree x to the k, say x squared, then this is simply equivalent to just multiplying it with q to the k. So x squared times h of x is 5x squared plus 6x to the fourth, blah, blah, blah. And this is simply equivalent to just multiplying 100 times the encoding. x is 10, or q is 10, 10 squared is 100. So all of this works. So now we've transformed our polynomial to integers. So why does this help? Well, there is these cryptographic tools called a group of unknown order. These integers are still large. If my polynomial is large, the integer is large. So I cannot send you the integer. That would be way too large. But now cryptography comes into play. And we have this thing called a group of unknown order. And all you need to know is that basically this is a commitment to integers, which shrinks down the integer. It doesn't matter how large the integer is. Could be hundreds of millions of digits. It shrinks it down to something that is constant size. But the homomorphic properties, these additive properties, are still preserved. So I can give you a commitment to integer 3 and then 1 to 4. And then if I add these things, then I get a commitment to 7. And so what I can do now to commit to my polynomial is I lift it to the integers, I evaluate it at q, and then I compute g to the f of q. So now I have a way. And then I can still do all of these additive operations up to a certain bound. So this is the way that we commit to the polynomial. And this is the main tool that we're using. And then so what are these groups of unknown order? Well, there's different ones. But one that you could use is this class groups, which in general cryptography, it's important to think about abstractions. So don't go looking up class groups. It's not worth your time. Just use them as a tool. But there are a group of unknown order. And so we believe that computing the order is hard. We believe that taking roots is hard. And most importantly, they do not require a trusted setup. So I can generate this group. I only need to do it once. And it doesn't have to have a trusted setup. And they're a little bit, compared to, say, elliptic curves, which, by the way, elliptic curves are not an integer commitment because I do know the order. So if I commit to some large integer, I can reduce it and mod the so-called order of the group. But the problem is that these groups of unknown order to be secure, they need to be quite large. But that's unfortunately something that we have to deal with. So how do we build a polynomial commitment? So let's think of this, again, just in terms of polynomials. So what I want to do is I have a polynomial of degree d, so with deep terms. So it's this large polynomial. And then we're going to use recursion. So to use recursion, we'll split it up into two parts, the left half and the right half. So fl of x and fr of x, such that fl of x plus x to the d over 2 times fr of x is equal to f of x. The prover then sends fl of x and fr of x to the verifier. The verifier checks that this equation holds. Checks that f of x is equal to this. Using again in the end, this will use these homomorphisms. And then the verifier sends a random challenge. So this is a random alpha. And then the prover combines these two polynomials just using the linear combination, fl plus alpha times fr of x. And this gives us f prime of x. And importantly now, after this one step, we now have a polynomial of degree d over 2. So we reduce something from degree d to something to degree d over 2. And then we can just repeat. And if you do the math and you had, how often do we need to repeat? Well, we need to repeat log 2 of d times. So say the polynomial is of degree a million. We need to repeat 20 times. If it's of degree a billion, we need to repeat 30 times. So of course, we cannot send these polynomials in the clear. So what we're going to do, we will really send these encodings. Again, we evaluate the polynomial at q. We raise it to the power and so on and so forth. But it's important to think about this interactive thing. But I also want to evaluate the polynomial at a point. This doesn't, there's no evaluation here. So what I'm going to give you is additionally, I'll give you, I'll claim that the polynomial evaluated at z mod p is equal to y. And then basically, in parallel to sending these things, I always also send you, you know, fl of z in zp and fr of z in zp. And these things are constant size. So these things are small and you can efficiently check. And then again, you can efficiently, you know, check this equation, right? So this would be yl plus z to the d over 2 is equal to yr plus yr times yr is equal to y. So I can check this equation both for the polynomials and for the evaluation very efficiently. And then I can compute my y prime. And the last round I compute my y prime, which is equal to f prime of z, which is equal to yl plus alpha times yr. So maybe that was a little bit too fast, but it turns out that basically, you know, like I send you these polynomials, I split them in half, take a random linear combination and then recurse. And if I want to evaluate this polynomial, I also do this on the evaluation. And then in the final step, I have a polynomial, which is just a constant degree, right? It's just a single element. Doesn't have an x term anymore. And I also have the commitment to the polynomial and I have the proposed evaluation. So the proof is just since then f0 in the clear, degree zero, and the verified checks that f0 is a small constant and that c is equal to g to the f0 and that f0 is equal to y, right? Or f0 mod p is actually equal to y, but you know, that's the detail. And so what this gives us is a polynomial commitment with two log d group elements in every round. Two log d field elements and we can use lots of batching tricks to make this really efficient. And you know, there's some more tricks that you need to apply to make the verifier efficient. So for example, you know, you need to use some tricks to make sure that this check here is efficient, but using some recent work in the space of PDFs, we can also do that and yeah. So I am done with the main part of the talk. I think maybe it's, I can talk about some optimizations, but maybe, you know, there's some questions and I think I'll just take the questions now. Thank you.


Hello everyone, welcome to this course on supply chain digitization. This course is floated by Indian Institute of Management Bombay and is jointly taught by the three faculty members including myself, Professor Priyanka Verma and my colleagues Professor Sushmita Narayana and Professor Devavrata Das. So we are in the first week and we are trying to understand the fundamentals of supply chain management. If you refer to our previous week discussion, we have tried to understand that what is a supply chain and who are the players who play a critical role in managing any supply chain. Along with that, we have also seen that how one supply chain is different than the other. So we have discussed about oil and gas supply chain, we have seen how a pharma supply chain works. Then we have also seen that how a automobile supply chain is very unique where a large number of suppliers comes together and plays a very critical role in manufacturing one final product. Similarly, we have also seen a new business environment related to e-commerce and we have tried to understand that how a e-commerce supply chain works. So going through those basics, we have understood that not every supply chain is same and thus the challenges are different. We will try to understand that how these challenges need to be addressed and in this particular course, how digitization and data analytics can play a critical role in managing these supply chains better. So before going forward, we have seen in our previous example that there are different type of stakeholders who are involved in managing a supply chain. Here is a broad list of the supply chain stakeholders. It is not necessary that all these stakeholders are present in all the supply chain. So let us see into the role individually. When we talk about the suppliers, the suppliers are majorly related to the provider who are involved in buying and selling the raw materials or components which are required for making a final product. The manufacturers again are the players who convert these raw materials that they have received from the suppliers into finished goods. The manufacturing again is a very big area and involves different type of production processes which can be used for converting the raw material into finished goods. The next stakeholder in any supply chain are generally the transporters which are the logistics provider and are majorly responsible for moving these raw materials from suppliers to the manufacturers or once the manufacturer has made the final product, they move this finished goods to the other part of the world. The distributors are again playing a critical role because they are responsible for the storage of these raw materials and finished goods and depending upon the production cycles or depending upon the schedule, the raw materials and are consumed in the manufacturing environment and similarly depending upon the demands which are required to be fulfilled, these finished goods are moved from the distributors to the next stage in supply chain via the transporters. The retailers are someone who are very closely linked with the customers and they are responsible for selling the finished goods either in the online or in the physical stores. So online industry as we all know, online business has come up recently especially after pandemic and because of that this is again a new type of business which has emerged recently. The consumers are the one or the customers who are buying or using these types of these goods who are using these goods and services and here typically a supply chain ends. Now with the process that we have discussed so far is has started from suppliers to the manufacturers, the transporters are responsible for moving products between the players then to the distributors and finally to the retailers. So these are my suppliers, these are the manufacturers, these are the distributors and these are the retailers where transporters is actually connecting these links together and ensuring that products are moved between these players. But the retailers are the one who are connected with the customers and customers can procure these retailer can get their products directly from the retailers. So typically what we have discussed is called as the forward supply chain. But in today's time when we are trying to ensure that the customers are happy and the requirements are fulfilled it is very important that we keep a check on this. So suppose the customer is not happy with the product and would like to return this product again the supply chain can be seen in the reverse direction where customer returns the product, the product can be collected by the retailer or by the distributor depending upon the network design and it is moved in the backward direction towards the manufacturer. So depending upon the type of returns if it requires some major changes, some major exchange then the product can go till the manufacturer where the manufacturer can offer a new product or if there is some minor repair is required which can be handled by the retailer level or at the distributor level then the product will go till that level the repair can be done on the product and can be returned to the customer. So in today's time to improve the customer satisfaction the returns are also required to be managed appropriately and thus your supply chain are required to be seen with new lenses where these returns are managed appropriately. So we have seen about the forward supply chain and we have also seen about the reverse supply chain. So both these supply chains are playing important role in today's time. Now let us try to understand a basic difference between two terms which are widely used in literature. The first term is about the value chain and the second term is about the supply chain. People are often confused that what is value chain and what is supply chain and sometimes there is a confusion about how this value chain works or how a supply chain works. So we will try to understand these two terms by looking into the definitions and with the help of an example. So when we talk about value chains in value chains the focus is totally on adding value to the products or the services at each step. So this can be done at the planning stage or at the designing stage or in the product development stage and even in the delivery stage. So you can see that the processes remain same which we have discussed. However the value chain is all about how you ensure that the value of the product gets improved in all these processes so that the customer is ready to pay that amount or that value that you have added. And typically the value chain always offers you a benefit related to your competitive advantage. So it ensures any business that how a company is able to perform better compared to its competitor by adding more and more relevant value. However, when we talk about supply chains supply chain mainly focuses on the efficient movement and the delivery of goods and services from the suppliers till the end customer. So it is more about how these products are produced and transported starting from the suppliers till the end consumers and the focus is more on ensuring that the customer is satisfied and the product that the customer needs has reached to them in a right manner. All these concepts are essential in understanding a business operations overall dynamics and interactions with the market so that the things can be accordingly planned and the understanding about value chain and supply chain will help you in managing your process in a better way. So let us see the example related to value chain and related to supply chain. In a value chain suppose we will look into the example of a simple cup of coffee that we can order from a coffee shop. Because the expectation is to get a coffee which is of very high value for the customers the sourcing is done for the high quality coffee beans from the region which is well known or which is famous for this particular brand of coffee. In the next part these coffee beans are roasted to perfection and this can be done in house to see that the quality of the coffee beans remains intact and this can be passed on to the final products. Then when we refer to the when we refer to a coffee shop there is a welcoming store environment is available which tries to provide a comfortable seating and ambience for the customer and thereby attracting thereby attracting the customers to such environment and in the next part for ensuring that the value is adding to the customer service a personalized customer service can be offered where the customization options can also be given to the customers and depending upon their requirement the product can be made which is a cup of coffee. So if you look into all these activities whatever we have discussed so far which is either sourcing high quality of coffee beans or roasting them appropriately or creating an environment for the customer or providing a customized type of product to the customers in all the steps we are trying to add value to this final product which is a cup of coffee where the objective is to enhance the overall customer experience and thereby increasing the value of the product with this additional value which you are trying to offer the coffee shop is able to charge these coffee at a very premium price. Now what is happening in supply chain when we talk about supply chains and let us take a look into this example with a simple smart phone based supply chain. So for making a smart phone the complete focus on ensuring that how these components which are required to make a smart phone is sourced. So sourcing the components such as microchips, screens and batteries are done from the global suppliers because these suppliers which are available which are present in the global environment are well known and are renowned in the given field. Then these components are transported to the assembly plant and these assembly plants can again be located in various locations. So obviously lot of decisions are taken over here that how much quantity of these components needs to be required and to be moved to these different locations depending upon the production plan. Finally the assembly of these components are done at these assembly plants into these smart phones and your final finished code is ready, your final product is ready. Once the final product is ready the focus is all about distributing these finished smart phones to the final retailer stores and thus the retailers are able to sell this product to the customers and these are available in the global manner. If we talk about supply chain in this given example it is trying to ensure the timely availability of the components starting from the beginning and ensuring that the production process is efficient, there is minimal wastage and finally the distribution is done for the global markets to ensure that the customer demand is met for all the company products that they want. So if we see over here in supply chain the focus has totally been on ensuring that how these raw material is obtained and how they are converted into finished codes which is further moved across the different part of the globe to ensure that the customer demands are fulfilled. So both these definitions look similar, the terminology looks same but the meaning or the interpretation of these two terms are very different. So here if we have seen we can make it out that the business has got different focus, some of these companies are trying to focus on providing the product at some minimal cost and some of the companies are focusing on providing products with large variety. So here it is very important that we try to understand the strategy which works behind it with which the company decides about their functioning and which drives the whole supply chain. So here we are trying to introduce a new term called as competitive strategy. So what is competitive strategy if we see it is actually for any company it is all about searching for a favorable competitive position in an industry. The company is striving to achieve a profitable and a sustainable position against all the market forces, this is one of the requirement and if you talk about what are these possible strategies, some companies are focusing on creating a strong brand recognition that is all about offering products but these are coming, these are being accepted because of the brand which is offering them or sometimes it can be on based on economies of scale where the companies are trying to take the benefit of economies of scale. So here if we talk about the competitive advantage in the marketplace, let us try to understand it with different example, how these different example are trying to demonstrate the competitive strategy with which they are working. If we talk about a simple retail supply, retail chain store, retail stain store and we look into their strategy, the strategy what they have adopted is on cost leadership strategy which they are trying to fulfill by offering large number of products and also large volume of products but these products are being offered at the low cost. So this we can see is a cost leadership strategy which is a retail chain store generally adopts and similarly let us pick up one more example which is about smart phones. So if we talk about smart phones, they are trying to offer different smart phones and this difference they bring by introducing new technologies, new systems and the gap between these two new products are generally less. So that is what this appeal to the customers and customers remains hooked up with the new phones being offered in the market and here we can say that the companies are following a differentiation strategy by offering new products on in a time to time basis. The next type of example we can pick up of hypermarkets, hypermarkets are nothing but it is a combination of department stores and grocery supermarkets where you will get all the type of products under one roof and people are happy to visit to these places as their most of their daily requirements and their family needs are taken care over here. So for such hypermarkets which is trying to offer almost all the type of products which are family needs, their strategy is all about focusing on volume sales but again because you are selling products which are high in volume the pricing that is offered is low and that is why because of this part the high volume and low price it is able to attract more and more customers and this is leading to increase in your high footfall. So we have seen three different examples in all these examples if you see the strategies which these examples have focused or which these companies have focused are entirely different from each other and one thing which you can conclude from here again as not all supply chain is same similarly not all strategies for the companies are same they are different and it totally depends on what is a competitive position that the company is trying to make in a given industry and obviously it is driven by the market forces in which they are trying to decide about the strategy. So here based on our last discussion we can see that the companies have got different competitive priorities let us see what do you mean by this. So competitive priorities are nothing but they are the critical operational dimension of processes or supply chain must possess in order to satisfy the customers. They signify a strategic focus on building specific manufacturing capabilities many decisions related to capacity, technology, production process, planning, control etc are dependent on the type of the competitive priorities that is decided by the company. Now it is very important to understand that not all competitive priorities are required to be selected by the company they can select those that are most important to be followed. So here let us look into the competitive capability that can be developed by the companies. Typically we have a list of these competitive capabilities which includes cost, quality, flexibility, delivery and innovativeness. So cost is all about ensuring that the cost incurred at every steps whether it is supply chain, manufacturing or any other process is monitored very closely and the focus is always on ensuring that the product is offered at the minimal possible cost. So here the low pricing strategy can be followed very easily. Quality is another competitive capability where all the products and its processes are performed and ensure that they comply with the specification so that the quality norms are achieved and the product is accepted because of the quality that is being offered with it. The third type of competitive capability is related to flexibility where it is expected from the company that it is able to offer you products different volumes and even with the different product mix which is the company is able to manage very easily. Similarly about delivery performance the competitive capability lies in with ensuring that the delivery is reliable and quick and also the stocks are available as and when the demand comes up. The final competitive capability is about innovativeness which is focusing on how quickly you are able to introduce new product into the market so that the time to market is as low as possible or if any point of time you are trying to implement a new product or a processes in your system how quickly that can be implemented. So this is all different types of competitive capability with the businesses can focus on and depending upon the positions in the market they can plan their processes into this particular capabilities. So once we know our competitive capabilities and also our competitive priorities which can because quality delivery flexibility or innovativeness we need to translate them into the corresponding manufacturing processes and here we are going to discuss the major type of manufacturing processes available and also in which scenario they are being used. The first type is all about managing projects where you can refer to examples like your construction industry or construction of any massive structure like ships, aircrafts or so on. So in this type of manufacturing you can rely on project type of systems. In this the product remains stationary and all the manufacturing processes which are required are brought at the product end. So very simple is all about building a skyscraper. The second one is about job shop where the work centers group similar task or equipment together and the products move through different work centers each focusing on a specific operation. A very simple example is your customer furniture workshop and we can take a we can try to understand this example with the scenario that all not all of us will order the same products. So obviously there will be a difference in our orders and that can be taken care very well with the help of the job shop type of manufacturing processes. The third one is the batch production which is actually taking care of producing goods in batches or groups where each batch will go through the same series of processes before moving to the next step. A very simple example is your baking process where you can make multiple type of items but the steps involved in making that particular batch remains the same. The next process is about the assembly line which are mainly used for high volume production with the standardized items. The all the work processes are following a sequence in this particular process and the products move through different stations but in a controlled manner. A simple example of it is your automobile manufacturing. The last type of manufacturing process if you see is about the continuous process where there is no interrupted flow of material and every flow is uninterrupted and they are following a sequence of steps. They are very common in industries which are mainly dealing with liquids or gases as example which we have seen in last session also is related to petroleum refining. So if you observe with respect to the proposed five with respect to the given five manufacturing processes each approach is trying to offer a unique benefit. So when we talk about projects layout system it works on a single product or maybe lesser volume of the product very low volume of the product but if you refer to their varieties they are very high not every construction project is same there will be some difference with that. So we can see that they are referring to production of simple production of products with low volume but high variety but as we are moving away from project layout system whether it is job or it is batch or it is assembly line or continuous we can see that the focus is changing and it is slowly moving towards more towards standardization. So in order to understand their role of the manufacturing process it typically depends upon the competitive priorities which the businesses own and depending on that the corresponding manufacturing process can be selected. So by selecting the most appropriate organizational approach the businesses can optimize their processes and enhance their efficiency and we can also target on delivering high quality products which is useful for getting the customer demand. So whatever we have discussed if you summarize it up all together and make up this table on the x-axis if you see we have got volume and on the y-axis we have got variety. Now here if we refer to these 5 manufacturing processes that we have discussed the project type of environment will always be linked with those products which has got very low volume like construction projects that we have seen or similar projects whereas in terms of the varieties this is going to be at a very high level. When we talk about job shop again the volume increases the volume is little higher than that compared to the project environment whereas the variety is again significantly high. So in this job shop system we can make it out very easily that the flow of the material in that environment is going to be quite jumbled up because you will be using the similar set of machines and resources for making the variety of the products. When we talk about the batch system a batch system has got higher volume compared to job whereas variety has reduced and that is why this is useful for such business environment which is focusing on making low volume products but multiple products. So here we can have disconnected line flow and the line flow can be dedicated to one specific batch here the next one is your the assembly lines are again used for those production environment where you are making higher volume but the variety offered reduces to a considerable level. And finally we have the continuous systems continuous system has got very high volume but the varieties being considered are very very low. So that is why we can see that in continuous environment the flow of the product also have a continuous flow type. This again if you relate it back to our competitive priorities we can make it out very easily that the production systems that is being selected depends upon the type of competitive priority which the businesses has decided products with a lesser cost. So the focus will be more on selecting a production system which will help you in making products at lower cost. So in this in this mostly assembly line of continuous will be useful whereas if the focus is more on providing unique products or every time there is a different products being offered then obviously we can go for job shop or batch shop or batch type of production system. So we can see that the competitive priorities that are being selected is also linked to the type of production systems and now as we have discussed about our production system we have understood how they both are connected with each other and how the competitive strategy that businesses has decided is being translated to the decision of production environment. In the next stage once we know that what type of manufacturing processes are being selected it is important that we link it with its corresponding supply chain. So both these are interrelated depending upon the manufacturing processes that we have its supply chain can accordingly be decided. So with the previous discussions we know that a manufacturing process can be a job shop type of manufacturing process or it can be continuous flow as well. So we can see that sometimes the focus is more on providing products with huge variety whereas sometimes the product is more on providing with minimal cost. So this we have taken care with the help of the manufacturing processes. Now when we have to take a similar decision with respect to the supply chains then this can be translated into two types the supply chain can be responsive or the supply chain can be efficient. So when we are saying that supply chain is responsive the focus is all on ensuring that the product reaches to the customer in minimum time and as quickly as possible and as per the customer requirement whereas when we say that the supply chain is efficient is all about to ensure that the product reaches to the customer in minimum possible time. So the focus is more about managing your cost in the efficient supply chain part. So here we have tried to link both manufacturing and supply chain together and going forward we have seen that depending upon the competitive strategy the manufacturing processes are being selected and how this is being translated to the supply chain requirement in terms of supply chain being responsive or in terms of supply chains being efficient. So till now we have seen the connection between the competitive strategies and the decision related to manufacturing processes and supply chain. We have discussed little bit on the responsive and efficient supply chain. In the next sessions we will take this discussion further and we will try to understand how these different players work to make your supply chain responsive or to make your supply chain efficient. Thank you. With this we will close this session. Thank you everyone.


Ukraine attacks on Russia's Black Sea Fleet support grain exports. A recent spate of destructive Ukrainian attacks on Russia's Black Sea Fleet may have as much to do with Ukraine's economic prospects as its military tactics according to insider publication. It is noted that Ukraine has managed to lay claim to parts of the disputed Black Sea after ramping up its assaults on Russia's naval fleet in recent weeks. The attacks have caused so much damage to Russian equipment and infrastructure in the occupied Crimean peninsula that British intelligence said this week Moscow's fleet was probably losing the ability to defend itself. The heightened activity in the Black Sea comes two months after Russia pulled out of an initiative brokered by the United Nations that allowed Ukraine to continue exporting tens of millions of tons of grain amid the war. In July, Russia said it would end the guarantee of shipping safety in the southwestern Black Sea, sending additional vessels to patrol the area and firing warning shots at a freighter last month as part of increasingly tense efforts to block Ukraine's economic exports. The key to the current spate of attacks in the Black Sea Fleet is the grain and wider exports issue. Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke's University-Sanford School of Public Policy, who is a historian of the Soviet Union and US-Soviet relations, told Insider, If Ukraine can't get grain out, its budgetary woes are even more grave, Miles said. In recent weeks, however, the country had established a new shipping corridor in the Black Sea that avoids Russia's port blockades, Ukraine's Navy said this week. Seven cargo vessels had successfully sailed the new route already, the country said. The New York Times cited analysts this week who said the new corridor's success might be thanks to Ukraine's newfound ability to target Russian warships and deter them from entering Ukrainian waters as well as the country's efforts to hamstring Russia's intelligence operations in the Black Sea.


of Traders.  The following is a presentation of TFNN. Trade what you see with Larry Pezzavento. Call now toll free at 1-877-927-6648 or internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Now, Larry Pezzavento. Okay, looking good. Billy Ray feeling good, Lewis. Billy Ray Valentine, Capricorn. Well, folks, we posted the chart of the eBini S&P that we've been watching here for the last three days. Yesterday we went short at the 4158 level. We got down to 4127. That was 30 handles. We ended up taking about 12, I think about 18 points out of that one. And then we left our stop in at 4178. And boy, if you didn't think that was a little scary because we got to 4172 last night in the middle of the night. And of course, the old Skype messages were popping off the hook saying, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? And I said, let me look at it. Just keep your stop in and go back to sleep. That's basically what I said because if you watch it darn screen, folks, it's going to drive you absolutely nuts.  They don't. So just do your own thing and go in and do it. That's all you really have to do. Nothing more, nothing less. But that's what we were watching last night. But at the same time, people say, what are you doing? And I says, well, I'm watching the structure of the market in different areas because we have not just the Dow Jones and the S&P. We've got the NASDAQ and we've got the Russell and everything else. And what I was watching, of course, was look at the NASDAQ. Now, this was the NASDAQ doing last night. And you'll see the numbers that we were looking at. And of course, it's broken way more than 100 points off that high today, about 140, I believe. But anyway, you'll notice as we look at this, there was our 1.618 number, folks, within just a heartbeat of that. So I said, if we get above there, that means our stop at 4178 on the S&P would be valid. And then you don't have to worry about it. I mean, you don't have any control over it. These are just numbers. The patterns fail. Heck, we see them fail all the time. There's nothing unusual about that. But at the same time that I was watching the NASDAQ and the S&P, I was also watching the Dow Jones because it happened to be the weakest. Because I'm going to show you the reason why it was the weakest in just a second. Well, my interpretation, of course. But anyway, let's take a look at it. This is just a three-minute chart so I can see what was happening as the NASDAQ was making its high. The Dow Jones was making its high right up here. And also the S&P was making its high at 4172. This showed a perfect, you can see the beautiful three-drive to a top pattern, the multiple ABCDs coming in here. And of course, we've fallen way below all these numbers since that pattern was hit. But that's what we were watching. And so I knew that the stop was placed correctly. Now, when you're trading the S&P, you're trading something that's worth a quarter of a million dollars. So you have to risk at least 20 points nowadays if you're going to trade the E-mini professionally. That's 1,000 points. Once in a while, you can get in for a little less than that. But that's pretty much the ballgame of what you're looking at. So you can't get it any closer than that.  You're at 30-minute, whatever it is, and get to the point where you think your risk control is going to be. And then you have something to actually put together. Now, at the same time, if you remember yesterday, I spent a lot of time on this because the same thing happened again last night with the Russell not even able to make a new high overnight. You'll notice here was the Russell from the high that we made back here in February on the 6th of February. All we could do yesterday was make a 382 retracement and then we came down and then we went up and we couldn't even make a high above that last night when the markets were going crazy. The Russell could get up on the day, but it couldn't take out the previous day's high. That was another sign of weakness.  We'll be able to see what's happening here. Now, let's do one other thing, and that was sent to us by our good friend, Rich Anderson, Anderson Capital Management. He follows, well, we follow these together, of course, because we've been doing this for so long. I mean, Rich has been in this business 54 years. I've been in business 62 years. I knew Rich when he was 19 starting this business, but look at this. This is the oversold index and overbought index for the S&P. Look how many times this thing has been pretty close to a spot to look at. Now, we got Stan Harley as our guest today and Stan said sometime in mid-April. As I recall, that there probably would be an intermediate top and he was looking for this rally and he certainly nailed it right to the cross. And I think it's sometime next week that he's looking at it. I'm looking for, you know, a shorter-term version of that, but that's pretty much what we're looking at as far as overbought and oversold.  I have to send someone a message. Okay, all right, there we go. Let's move on here to the next one here that I wanted to talk to you about. The same thing, the same time that this was happening with the S&P, the Dow Jones, the Russell, and the NASDAQ, we were looking at the German DAX. This was the same chart that we were looking at yesterday, folks. And if you take a look at it, we were completing multiple ABCD patterns here in the German DAX and the same thing happened. You take out all of these highs with this double ABCD pattern that's right here, and that's what brought the reversal down in my opinion. But I'm just looking at pattern completion. That's really all I'm paying attention to, okay? So the next thing we're going to do is we're going to go across the channel and we're going to go look over, well, you know, across the channel in Germany, you take the train. You're going to take a look here at the E-mini. It's not an E-mini, it's the FTSE, which is the London stock. Hold on just a second here. My beeper is going off and it's a good beeper. So let's move on here to see what's moving on here. Anyway, you can see here the same thing we went up. We didn't quite make that 1.618, nor did we make just a minute, boys and girls. I have to make a technical thing here. I hope I'm doing it. Oh, this is a good one. I'll show you what it is in just a second here. But hold on just a minute. Let me get this up here for just a second. Anyway, as you can see here, the FTSE was the weaker of the indices because it couldn't even make new highs. And this is really weak compared to the others are way up here and this is way down here. You want to sell the weaker so this has already started to sell off quite a bit. The problem with the FTSE folks, it's a London exchange, but most of those stocks are foreign stocks. I mean, they got them from Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Israel. I mean, they're from all over. So there's very few London. There's some London stocks in there, but not very many. The DAX is the one that's equivalent to our S&P. That's a really good one to trade. But the FTSE, nah, not so much. I bring it up because we have so many friends and students over there that we chat with every day. So we find out what's going on with the things that are happening now. What we're going to do now, since we're talking about the folks over in London, we're going to do something really special for the next few minutes after we take this break. I'm going to break down a trade that is happening right now just like we did in the S&P. It's going to be the same thing, but it's not going to be the S&P. And we're going to take a look at it when we get back from the break because people will say, how do you ever keep track of this stuff? And I just like doing it, boys and girls. That's the bottom line. So we'll be right back and we're going to look at that British pound. Currencies, commodities, and bond markets are as important as ever right now with how they're driving the volatility in equity markets across the globe, which is why it's a great time to try out Teddy Kegstad's Tiger Forex report. Teddy Kegstad breaks down the Forex markets every Monday using his 30-plus years of experience as a trading veteran of futures, Forex, stocks, and options. Teddy releases his weekly Tiger Forex report every Monday morning with coverage of all the major currency pairs, including the dollar index, the euro dollar, pound dollar, dollar Swiss, dollar yen, as well as many more. And he also has weekly coverage of the crude oil market and the 30-year T-bonds as they both influence Forex markets tremendously. When you sign up for the Tiger Forex report, you also gain instant access to Teddy's 60-minute webinar archive. He just hosted Forex Strategies and Fundamentals What is Behind the Tiger Forex Report? For all the details and to start your 30-day Tiger Forex report subscription today, visit the front page of TFNN.com. TFNN Educating Investors Steve Rhodes started his trading career as a student almost 20 years ago and the student has now become the master. Steve won the prestigious Timer of the Year award in 2018 and barely missed that mark again in 2019, finishing it number two for the year, an amazing accomplishment. Steve Rhodes is committed to sharing his techniques and knowledge with anyone who wants to learn. And he shares his vast amount of trading knowledge every day in his Mastering Probability newsletter. Steve's award-winning newsletter, Mastering Probability, is delivered every trading day with updates throughout the afternoon. Sign up for Steve's market newsletter, Mastering Probability, and you'll receive access to seven of Steve's educational webinars absolutely free. At TFNN, all our newsletters come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Visit TFNN.com and try Mastering Probability 30 Days Risk-Free Today. TFNN Educating Investors. Are you looking for a way to consistently add winning trades to your portfolio? Tom O'Brien is here to help. Tom O'Brien has been successfully trading markets for over 30 years. A frequent contributor to TD Ameritrade Network and CNBC, Tom O'Brien founded TFNN over 20 years ago to help educate investors just like you. Tom's Daily Market Newsletter, Market Insights, is published every morning when the market's open to give you the competitive informational edge you need to succeed. These newsletters are packed full of Tom's advanced technical analysis and are geared to deliver comprehensive strategies for a successful portfolio. Get Tom O'Brien's newsletter, Market Insights, today, and try all of our products and newsletters 30 days risk-free with our money-back guarantee at TFNN.com. TFNN, Educating Investors. Okay, folks, I posted a chart of the British pound. This is a daily chart going over the past several months. But as you can see, if you're looking at this chart, and a blank chart, not knowing anything about patterns, it doesn't mean very much to you, but if you were to do some of the work, just like what we did with the E-mini S&P and cocoa and everything else that we watch, you'll see that there are some really significant things that are happening here in the British pound. So I'm going to bring this up. I'm going to show it to you in several different ways so that you can get a grasp of what we're looking at. First of all, this is a daily chart. So this is something that should be around. Hold on one second. Get it up here so you'll be able to see it. Now, as you look at this, you can see the bottom was made here. You can see this is what we call a double bottom. You can see the multiple A, B, C, D patterns that are forming, okay? But look on the upside. Now you have the same thing. You have A, start here folks. You have A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, coming up to this area, which is 1, 25, 20. That's the area that we were looking to go short. Now it hit there. We backed off just a little bit, not very much, but the risk on this trade is very, very well-defined, much like it would be with the S&P. So what we're going to do now is we're going to look at it just a little bit closer and get up the numbers. You'll be able to see it just a little bit. I've got one more besides this. Hold on and you'll be able to put it together and see how we see multiple swings coming together. I've got one more to show you and then that'll be completion of this because we know that once we get to this level, right here, look at this folks. We have one A, B, C, D pattern right here. We have another A, B, C, D pattern right here and we have another A, B, C, D pattern right here. All of our culminating at this area of 1, 25, 30. So if we sell in that area, we know that it runs at $6.25 a tick. All we have to say is, oh, we raise a 50-point stop, so that's $300. Well, a move like this, a stop and a think, a move like this is several thousand dollars, well over $3,000. And by golly, you're only risking, you know, $300 to try to make something like that. I'm not saying it's going to go down there. I'm just saying that's what it looks like, you know, when it's finally completed and that's the name of the game. I've got one other one I believe. I think that covered it. Yeah, that covers it of what we're looking at. So that's what that British pound trade looks like. We've got some questions. We talked about that dynamite triangle, that, you know, just basically a flag formation. I don't want to get into that because I'm an ABCD type swing trader.  If you remember yesterday, we were watching the, because we're so bullish over in gold. I'll just get this up here to see it if I can get it one more time here. This happens to be the chart on the silver that we were watching and we'll get this up here. You'll see this was, we had, there was a winner here, a winner here, a winner here, a winner here. Then we had a loss right here. It went a little bit lower. Okay, then we had a winner here and then it ended up being breaking even. But you see, you're not going to win all the time. I hope you realize that. So what we did was we're following this because we have people that are involved with something like this. Here's an update of what happened. And if you like strong trending markets, boy, we've got some tools that are very, very helpful. And as you can see here, there was the loss if you remember. See, that basically a break even. But look at the one today, folks. Look at this one. This one, this was a monster. And so that's why, you know, they're powerful. Do they work all the time? No, they don't. I'm trying to get TFNN to maybe do a little webinar on it to show how to use dynamite triangles. Because with these wild markets that were happening, they work just as well on the downside as they do on the upside. We've seen that, you know, in both up and down markets. So they're working, if you were watching the S&P today, was doing the same type of thing on the way down. It was breaking and making new lows. And then finally we had this rally that we're into right now. We've come back about 200 points in the Dow Jones, which is actually a pretty substantial rally as we start to look at some of these things. Now, okay, now that's the basis of what we're looking at with the British pound. We've got everything. What did that take? Five minutes? So what you have to do is you have to learn, you know, to pick the highs and lows and how to figure out what the ABCD patterns are doing. That chart in the British pound, folks, is no different than this chart right here in the S&P 500. There it is right there. It's exactly the same chart. There are ABCDs everywhere. Now you have to learn how to count the timeframes, you know, so that you know the distance between your highs and your lows is equal in time and price. That gives you a really good indication that you're in a really good area. And there was one that we did last week that we talked about on this show. And that was cop, cocoa, hot chocolate, believe it or not. And I haven't traded this, but probably twice a year. But look at this beautiful pattern that we had here, like the S&P. You see the beautiful three drive to a top right here. There's drive one, there's drive two, there's drive three. You come down, you make a one, three, five pattern on the downside. Look at that perfect parallel channel, folks. That's right out of Gartley's book, page 249, Parallel Channels, AB Equal CD, also the formulas from Mandelbrot. You go up, there's your profit objective right up here. You can go short and guess what? It's probably going to come down to the lower part of this channel. Now the channel is starting to go higher now. So you realize that these markets, when they back off, sometimes they're only going to back off to a shorter retracement. And then you have something that you're able to really look at. So I hope that helps to understand, you know, what we're doing is we're setting up a trade. You start out with the daily chart. You move on to your four hour, you can do a four hour or a daily, then go to your 30 minute. If you want to get down to a smaller timeframe like eight minute or five minute to get to where you want to be. Now I wanted to bring to your attention one other one before we have stand on. This is one that was applicable today. And I wanted to bring this up and show you this is a gold market. Very similar. Now if you remember that Nasdaq thing that we're looking at, you see how gold today with this big, there was the buy. Remember we pointed that out perfect 61% retracement just right on the money. There was the original buy at the 382. There was your secondary buy, profits today. There was your 1.618 expansion at the high folks 2045. We're a little bit lower than that, but not much. And you can see that it was an ABCD pattern to the upside also. This was a tough one right here because you see that 382 right there. But look at that dynamite triangle right here last night folks. This morning at dynamite triangle, boom, risk is about four bucks and they ran four grand without even taking a deep breath.  So got some active markets, which is great. You know, sometimes they're not active, but they're still great. And these are very, very active. And I'm thinking they're going to be continuing on because, you know, we got interest rates are actually dropping with bronze going up. And so when the Fed finally does come in and do their last rate cuts, it's going to be really interesting what happens after that. And I still believe that our banking system is still not out of the woods because these banking stocks have not done very much. And speaking of stocks, you remember our number that we were watching yesterday in the Apple. And we want to get this because this was another perfect 135 that we had here. And I did get above my magic number of 165 and 3 quarters. It got to 166 and 3 quarters, I believe. And then, of course, it started to sell off with the rest of the market. We're going to stay tuned. Stan Harley, the Harley stock market letter, don't miss it. We'll be right back.<PHONE_NUMBER>. Everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence. This mathematical principle is responsible for everything from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market. To see more information on the Fibonacci sequence, please visit our website at www.fibonacci.com. And if you're interested, please visit our website at www.fibonacci.com. And don't miss out on the next great gold trade. Sign up today. Everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence. To stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of, sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at www.tfnn.com. When you subscribe, you'll get a weekly report from veteran day trader Larry Pezzavento on stocks you need to pay attention to. And you can trust Larry's analysis. After all, he's got 45 years' experience as a day trader. Larry will also provide daily charts, videos, and data on the key markets that he's tracking. 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From the moment the market opens until the closing bell sounds, Tiger TV has eight different shows with expert hosts to help you make the right moves with your money. Watch online at tfnn.com or on TFNN's YouTube channel and become the investor you were born to be. TFNN Educating Investors. This segment is brought to you by Think or Swim. For more information, just click the Think or Swim banner on the front page of tfnn.com. We're back folks and I believe we have Stan Harley, the Harley stock market letter in the house. Stan, how are you doing today? I'm just doing awesome, Larry. Good. Listen, I know you have some stuff on high translation, so I'm anxious to see what you have for us. So you want to tell us what we're looking at today? Absolutely. First chart I thought we'd take a look at involves the stock market. Okay. And first we have on the screen here is a weekly chart of the S&P 500 going back several years. And what I've done here is I've shown with purple lines each of the major troughs. And this forms a variable cycle that spans non-learning about 34 weeks, roughly eight months. And that cycle contracts and expands, but not only it spans about 34 weeks, eight months at last occurred in mid-October. And based on my analysis, this is once again a mid-gen. Very good. Okay. The next chart we have here is a daily chart of the S&P 500. And what I've done here is I've highlighted what I call the trading cycles.  That if you took 34 weeks, eight months, spliced it in a four, you have four distinct cycles averaging about 40 to 42 trading days. That's not actually how it occurs in the world. They kind of expand and contract. But what this shows, this is the chart I ran off, just a few moments before our meeting, the first trading cycle off the October low of last year went 49 trading days, bottom to bottom. The second went 53 trading days and we're in the third trading cycle. Okay. What I try to do is I try to analyze this with my technicians magnifying glass. And what I want to look for is evidence of either right or left translation. That's something that I've talked about in the earlier presentations. And what I do there is I look for the crest of the high point in the cycle. And if it's to the right of the midpoint, that's what I call right translation. If it occurs to the left of the midpoint, that's called left translation. Right translation is associated with a rising market environment. Left translation is associated with a good point. From the January high of last year all the way into the October close all of the trading cycles, all four of them were characterized by left translation. Marketing up a lesser amount of time talked and asked and went down. The overboding things changed. The first trading cycle saw right translation. The second trading cycle, and this is where it gets a little interesting, the second trading cycle in the S&P of 500 saw right translation but not holding one trading day. So the crest occurred one trading day to the right of the midpoint. But I think it's helpful to look at more than just the S&P of 500. Here's a chart of the down industrial. A few moments ago as well. As the S&P we had left translation all the way to the October bottom. The first trading cycle to October 13th late December lows was characterized by right translation. Hey Stan, look at the second trading cycle. Hey Stan, I have a question for you now. I'd like for you to do if you could reset your mic because it's coming through a little scratchy here and if you'll reset the mic that might help and also tell the folks where that high translation came from. It was from Walt Brescher I believe, wasn't it? Here. How is that? Is that a little bit clearer? Oh, that's much better. Yes, that is much much better. There you go. The problem is computer issues on my end so I apologize. I'll have it fixed next time. Okay. But to your question I was originally alerted to this concept of translation by the late Walt Brescher. Yes. And I've studied the pattern and indeed it's a very valid one. Very, very valid. Surprisingly other technicians haven't glommed onto this but it's something I spent a lot of my time on because I'm a cycles guy. Me too. I like it. Most of the decisions are for most people. The reason they aren't is because cycles are variable and they're looking for the Holy Grail and they want to see a 80-day cycle come in at 80.00 days with no variation. Well, that's just not real world. So, most technicians kind of they go market cycles and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't so they pretty much discard them but when you approach this from a little bit of a more mathematical reality you understand the nuances and that's what I strive to do and I have been for years and that's what I strive to do when you and I talk here on the air. I take it a step further, not just the timing. I want to look at the structure. I want to look at the translation function. Do we have right? Do we have left? Or do we have center translation? So with the Dow, oh my gosh we've had a shift towards left translation. That means the next cycle is likely to convey lower highs, lower lows and that's what happened in the second one and indeed I think it's going to happen in the third and the fourth. Okay. So, I'll spare you all the math and charts here but what I did is I just summarized what I call the big five major indices. The big five for me are the SMP, the Dow, the NAS, the New York Conf, the transports and I got out my calculator and did pretty calculation on all of those. Summarized whether or not the prior trading cycle had exhibit either right, left or center translation. Here's the summary and as you can see with the naked eye we've got left translations then right or centered. What does that mean? Hmm. It means probably the market is peaked for the current 34 week cycle and we're going to head south. It seems. Very. Speaking of cycles, sometimes cycles do a pretty dandy job of coming in pretty close to on the market. Here's one that has it very much more than I think five trading days over the course of two years. Eighty trading days, a very common number that shows up in the markets, particularly the stock market, across multiple time frames but look how regular this has been. This has gone back two years and I've put all these dates into a trading. It's done a progression analysis and it says look for the next high in the vicinity of April the 10th and the standard deviation on that computation is three trading days. Wow. April 10th next week, there's a holiday on Friday. So what the analysis is suggesting is we should see a high coming up pretty soon. Three, four or five days either side of that date. Standard deviation computes three trading days so we're getting close. Stan, one of the listeners is asking from Cheyenne Wyoming is asking why do you pick trading days as opposed to calendar days? Is there a specific reason for that? Good question because with calendar days you've got holidays, you've got weekends. It's just not as clean. For me, I use trading days because that's how I count how every single day trades. Now it gets a little cumbersome, you've got to manage it in a spreadsheet to do the analysis. But I do that, I use the V-lookup works well. Okay, stay with us, we'll be right back with Stan Harley, the Harley stock market litter. Thanks Stan, you might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market you're going to need a crystal ball. After all, it's impossible to predict the future, right? Like any endeavor in life, before you decide it's impossible get some advice from the experts. You might find that it's not so impossible after all. For daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices, selective stocks and commodities subscribe to the opening call newsletter at TFNN.com The opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman, creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman Wave. The Chapman Wave up down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices.  First time subscribers also get a 30 day money back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. 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Folks speaking with Stan Harley, the Harley stock market letter. Stan, I really like that part about that high translation that brings back a lot of memories, my friend. Well, thank you. I reconnected the microphone. How's the clarity in my voice? Boy, that's a mucho better. This is spot on. You got the... This is just great. 100% better they're saying, so that's super. Some computer issues on my part that I will get corrected next time. I'm glad I never have those. I understand there was a problem seeing all the charts as well and I know we're going to be doing another segment later in the day and we will review them carefully again. I thought I'd go into interest rates and some related items there too. This next chart, Larry, is a chart of bond yields going back to the 1750s and while I cannot find a definitive cycle although post civil war there's a 40 year cycle in the data series but this is something that I find very interesting. All of the highs and lows, every one of them can be defined by the Lucas numbers. You can see I noted the time counts in years. The first high to high sequence was 44 years, that's Lucas number 47 is the operative function. The next one went 78 years that's Lucas 76 and the next one was 61 years, that's Lucas 29 times 2, 58 years. So you've heard me talk about this a lot with of course the stock market but the Lucas numbers are operable in the Treasury complex as well. Very, very interesting. I find Lucas numbers to be far more powerful than Fibonacci in terms of timing. Okay. You've been doing a really good job with the timing my friend so don't change anything. You said this rally was going to happen in April and by guys it's happened. Well, thank you. I have to keep my pencil sharpened and stay at it. This business never rests.  Woo, painful. Look at that. Sure is. Surprised you're even selling anything. Well interestingly enough this little volcano we've seen in interest rates has had effect on the next chart. Let's look at home prices. This is the case Schiller data series. I pull this from the US government red website and plot it in a spreadsheet. The blue lines are the monthly price bars that are reported by the US government reported by case Schiller. I've also added in red an 18 month moving average. This is the national index and there are 20 various regional indices and 10 major metropolitan area indices in addition to the national index they all exhibit the same wave form that you're seeing here but the amplitudes can vary typically out west the amplitudes are a little bit more and in the southern region and eastern United States a little bit less volatile. How is it where you are Stan? You live in New Jersey right? I'm in New Jersey they're not as volatile as they are out west this next chart is close to the home where you are this is the Los Angeles area index and the Phoenix index looks just like this of which you are a part I used to live there as well and I also live in Southern California but as you can see this has got the same exact same wave form as the national index and you can think of housing just like the stock market I mean the Dow, the S&P, the NASDAQ the New York composite the national index is kind of like the New York composite and various sectors of the housing market are sort of like the various sectors of the stock market think of it the same way well we have cycle highs and lows and this can be measured and analyzed and plotted and I do a regression analysis of the data I found there's about a 63 to 64 month cycle in home prices what I call changing trend cycles so it could be a high or a low but that is a very very regular recurring cycle it lasts peak, peak last year home prices are heading south and what I noted in the past every time the monthly bars have crossed the 18 month moving average a buy sell, a buy signal or a sell signal has been rendered there was a fake out a little bit in 2009 2010 but nevertheless generally speaking when the monthly bars cross either to the upside or the downside you need to get a pull or you get a buy signal or you get a sell signal and look what's happening right now the last day just came out a few days ago and we are now crossing we read 18 month moving average and that is highly suggestive of the sell signal right now in real estate and I think it's out those are great I just I'd love seeing these because it brings back so many memories when we were since folks those I've known stand for 40 years and we were we didn't even have we didn't have computer charts we got our charts from commodity perspective you it was a lot different when you had to draw your own lines on and do your own calculations of moving averages that's for sure I mean we live in just it's certainly in the career field that you and I are in we couldn't be in better times but the information we have available the charting sharing real time data is just it really is it's just totally mind boggling that's the actual word you want to use I don't know if you know this or not Stan but you know Walt Bresser was one of the reasons why we have desktop and all this data and stuff and he was one of the original guys along with Tim Slater down a compi track that started that back in 80 81 82 and it came out in 83 and look at where we are now 50 years later and holy cow my gosh it's it's really it's really amazing and I started compi track and then a lot of well the MACD that they put in there kind of the stock MACD numbers were 1226 9 and you often see people using that even to this day yeah that's for sure and Walt Bresser a brilliant man I personally he was a great friend and I sure he's a great friend of what he was well well that's why I live in Tucson because he lived here he used to come to visit him and I liked it so much I moved here and then he moved to Mexico well you know interesting you see a lot of people in the 70s 80s 90s the entire southwestern the United States from Los Angeles to Tucson in my experience had a overwhelming plethora of really smart market technicians I don't know why that was but I found that the southwestern part of the USA had the preponderance of some of the best talent this business has ever seen well that's certainly been my experience too yeah right I used to carry their bags I mean that's for sure hey listen we're going to have you on again in the second segment of the next hour okay so we'll chat some more about some of these things and I wanted to ask you a couple other questions about yeah I know we will hey thanks for joining us Stan and we'll be back with you in about 50 minutes or oh let's see wait to be 40 minutes so we'll see you then okay okay Stan Harley folks he'll be back at the next segment of the show we'll pay a few bills now we'll be right back<PHONE_NUMBER> if you're looking for potential trading setups in the stock market then Rocket Equities and Options Report is a newsletter you should try Tommy O'Brien delivers options about equity trades when the markets present them using a combination of fundamentals and technicals sign up for Rocket Equities and Options Report today with a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to risk for all the details and to start your subscription today visit the front page of TFNN.com TFNN Educating Investors you might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market you're going to need a crystal ball after all it's impossible to predict the future right? Like any endeavor in life before you decide it's impossible get some advice from the experts you might find that it's not so impossible after all for daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices, selective stocks and commodities subscribe to the opening call newsletter at TFNN.com the opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman Wave up down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices get the opening call newsletter by Basil Chapman in your inbox every day first time subscribers also get a 30 day money back guarantee if you're not satisfied let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up TFNN.com Educating Investors everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence this mathematical principle is responsible for everything from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market to stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at TFNN.com when you subscribe you'll get a weekly report from veteran day trader Larry Pezzavento on stocks you need to pay attention to and you can trust Larry's analysis after all he's got 45 years experience as a day trader Larry will also provide daily charts, videos and data on the key markets that he's tracking expect notifications from Larry on market movement you need to act on at any time first time subscribers also get a 30 day money back guarantee if you're not satisfied let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up subscribe to the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter today TFNN.com Educating Investors TFNN.com TFNN has launched the Tiger's Den hosted at Discord TFNN has been educating traders for more than 20 years with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours the Tiger's Den available to all tigers and tigers for just $1 for the year there's no catch or added costs when you join our community of traders sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders just visit TFNN.com don't forget you can listen to TFNN live on your mobile device 24 hours per day go to TFNN.com then hit watch Tiger TV that's TFNN.com then hit watch Tiger TV okay folks I posted the chart of the Dow Jones industrial average from the high that we made back in January it was December the 18th right before Christmas you'll see that big spike that we have here and then if you'll notice that the 61% retracement of that whole move came in at 33,846 well the high last night was 83,880 so it went 30 pips above it of course it's backed off 350 points from that level so that would definitely after hitting it two days in a row yesterday we missed it by 10 points last night we went down to the point where we missed it by a little bit during that other pattern that I had posted for you earlier showing you what was happening on the 15 minute I think that was an 8 minute chart showing you how the patterns were lining up because that's what you do is you get down to the point where you're watching for something good to happen you go down to a smaller time frame looking at it microscopically to get your risk down because when these patterns fail and they do fail at a time but not many golfers win 66% of the games anyway let's keep an eye on this one because if we ever close above that number and I mean look like we were going to do it last night for sure and yet boy golly something happened and you know the market moved down and now it's starting to say well maybe this is very important on the second part of the show that I'll be doing shortly here in the next 10 minutes I want to be looking at the bank stocks folks because it's not over there I mean we've had this huge rally in the stock market I mean we've gone you know bonkers well just to give you an example if you remember I pointed this out to us that we had not seen anything like this this was just back on the 28th if you remember we had that monster update and when we had something like that happen you want to see what the outlier is and as you can see here when you S&P is on the left right here and I'll be back in just a little bit<PHONE_NUMBER>