All right guys, so today the vlog is Q&A. I got that bullenized with me. We're going to answer all of your guys' questions. So super excited. Let's get started. All right, so on today's show, if you want to ask a question in the future, make sure that you use the hashtag The Matt Beck Show or send a message, email, direct message. Direct message. Private message. If you want a message that you want anonymous, then just send it through like a direct message. Otherwise, I make a post on Instagram every week and you can ask the question in the comments below on that. And that is at Free Salon Education on Instagram. Okay, so... If you're close enough, send smoke signals. We'll learn. Yeah, exactly. All right, so let's see. I'm just going to go down the list of the questions on Instagram first, then I have a couple other questions as well as a bonus if we get to it. All right, Jonathan McFerrin on Instagram asks, he says, Hey Matt, I'm getting back into the business after being away for about six years. What advice do you have on ways to build a clientele? Thanks. This is something that we've definitely gone over quite a bit, but it's the biggest challenge in the industry. And I think the reason that people have such a big challenge with this is their... The patient level, like it just takes a while. So my thought to you would be the best way to build a clientele, and this is to everybody, this isn't even just to you, the best way to build a clientele is to kill it with every single person that sits in your chair. To make sure that you go above and beyond with every single guest, you will win them. By word of mouth, you'll get more clients from that. It's the best way to do it. The best way to build a clientele is based on your reputation. Any marketing class you take there, they'll tell you word of mouth is the best form of marketing. Yeah. You're going to spend... You could spend money on Facebook. That's fine. You can do a lot of other things. You can go hand out business cards. But really, I mean, do you keep a business card if somebody gives it to you? Probably not. But if you target your business card towards your Instagram and maybe have a really good portfolio on there, that's a different story. What I would do is just get to their Instagram and go follow them. I would look up people in your town, businesses in your town. Start getting involved in the conversations of the businesses in your town on their Facebook pages and become friends with people. I remember 10 years ago when I started, I would go to the bar or whatever, and that would be kind of the way that you would connect with new people. We handed out so many businesses, we would be left like piles of them, put them on like tables, and they probably just got thrown out there. They definitely got thrown out there at the end of the night. Exactly. That doesn't work. But if you think about it, the now a day way of going to the bar is social media. It's better because people can analyze you. I think we're getting ... What are we getting? He's going to just drop it off in the back. Okay. Packages? Yup. Okay. UPS. Sweet. Hopefully it's something good. So here's the deal. So the now a day way of going to the bar, doing things like that, is going on social media, go to different people's pages, think about how people look you up now. I know Christina is like, I've decided she's a professional at finding people on Facebook. She's a private eye. She literally, so I was going to get Flyers season tickets, right? So I ... Did she slap you out on that? Did she get them before you? No, but so I call the Flyers season ticket hotline, right? We start talking to this kid named Asher. So he is super nice ... Is it Asher Roth, is it? No, I don't know. Super nice kid from Philadelphia, right? He's got a big, strong Philadelphia accent. Sounded like a really nice guy was telling us all these benefits of having season tickets. And Christina, literally while that's happening, is finding him on Facebook to make sure that we trust him. It was like, it's that kind of thing. So think about if you get involved in chats in your town, I know there's a New Hope page where it's a group. So you can get involved in your town group, start making conversation. People start getting nosy. They start looking you up.  That's another ... It's a roundabout way of doing it. Decide note on that. I was always somebody who held onto business cards, but I've never gone back to them. I have a jar. You have them, right? Yeah, I have them. But whenever I needed something, I wouldn't go to my pilot business cards and look through them and be like, oh, I met so-and-so at this bar or at this function. No, at Google. Yeah. So I don't want to be like hairstylist or body paint for cars or stuff like that. Yeah. Exactly. And that's why I don't even collect business cards anymore. It's not ... Right away, if you give me a business card, I will email you my information so that I now have your information and then I just throw the card away. Because I can't ... Because you end up with a pile of them, and no one else. I don't know. I'm sure droids have a similar function, but iPhones have an amazing feature on them where you create your contact. It will have your cell phone, your email, any business information that you need to have on it. Yeah. And then you can just share contact. Yeah. Exactly. It's a virtual business card. And then they already have it in their contacts. They have your name, they have who you're working with or what your company's name is that you've created, yada, yada, yada. It blows me away the amount of people that ask me for a business card. I know. Still. And on top of that, once you have their contact in there, you can add notes on that person. So if you're ... If I met you at IBS, I could put in Matt Beck, IBS, Freestyle in the Education booth, he interviewed me or wants to interview me next show, stuff like that. Right. It's amazing. Yeah. All right. Cool. So hopefully that helps. But my biggest thing would be take care of the person in your chair and be patient because it takes time to build up, but this business, and I'm going to say it forever, the only way to be successful in the hair business is to find a place that you love and stay there because as soon as you start moving around, you lose your clients and you have to kind of start over. Yeah. I never understood that. Like when I first started in school, everybody was like, oh yeah, such a nice profession. You can just like get up and go. I'm like, not really. I mean you can. If you want to make 20 grand a year forever. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I guess theoretically you could bounce from chain to chain and you're going to steadily have that. Right. But if you're an accountant, you have an easier chance of moving around. Everybody needs numbers done. You just work. Well, everybody needs their hair done too. That's true. I mean, it would be better if you had a job like, I don't know. But you could be working in Philadelphia for Urban Outfitters Corporate. And then be like, I really want to move to San Francisco or San Diego and then look for a company that's out there that needs an accountant, apply, get the job and then you're already making that salary or you know what salary you're really making. Exactly. You don't have to save up. This is not a salary business. All right. So Angela asks, she says, thank you so much for the information, educational videos. You're welcome. I was wondering if you have any advice for salon apprentices slash assistants. I'm about to graduate cosmetology school and start my apprenticeship at a hair salon. I'm going to be starting out doing shampoos and assisting the stylist by cutting foils, sweeping, et cetera. My goal is to become a stylist at this salon. Thanks. I think you're doing what you have to do. You want to be a stylist at that salon? I would be, here's what you don't do. I think that'll be better. Number one thing for me, when I know somebody's not going to work, if I see, don't play games on your phone, don't sit around doing nothing. Every second that you have free, you should be studying something that has to do with your job to help you grow. If she's going to be an apprentice, you're going to have grunt work. You're going to have the cleaning out the drains, cleaning it out like shampooing, assisting the other stylist. If you have free time, make sure you're staying next to that person that you're practicing. Find somebody that you look up to in this salon that is doing things right, is making money and watch them and learn. Don't just study how they do hair, study how they are with their clients, because there's a reason that they're that busy, and it probably has a lot to do with how they treat people in the salon. If you're being hired as an apprentice, make sure that you're working at a salon that is going to be working with you that it's not just hiring you as an apprentice, but it's using you just as an assistant. Right. Cool. Nailed it. Boom. Like that. So this one was funny. So this is Shayla Lynn Jones on Instagram says, do you guys have a daily self-care practice that you'd like to share in regards to taking care of your bodies away to show up fresh each day because energetically and physically this job can be quite demanding if one works full time doing hair. I actually developed one when I first started working here. Before I started working for you and Christina, I was the person who woke up five minutes before I had to leave and I was also five minutes from work. So that means I woke up 10 minutes before I was supposed to be working. Right. Yeah. And I just showed up and just like woke up there. It might have been like here. It might have been the age that was at, but I decided that I didn't want to be doing that anymore. Right. And I started waking up about an hour and a half early, getting a cup of coffee, making myself breakfast, waking up like in a peaceful like setting. Yeah. And then going to work. So that way I was like energizing. I was ready to go. That's a good, I mean, that's a good call. I'm somebody that is like 10 minutes late for everything. So I'm very, I'm always rushing. The reason I laughed during your question was not because of your question. It was because this is something I'm trying to work on this year and my life. I have been starting to get to work earlier, not get to work earlier, but starting my day earlier and then and getting some work done prior to coming here. And then, but the problem is I work super late till 2am, 3am sometimes, or sometimes I work till midnight and then I spend till 3am with Christina because I don't see her throughout the day as much. So it and I drink monster all day long, which is a terrible thing to do. So I'm trying to flip that. I do go to the gym now, which helps me feel good. The gym.  I started going to the gym like I had a regular bedtime. Like it's amazing. Well, I think I'm going to switch my gym time to the night time because I try to go in the morning and a lot of the times I have to get to work and I have to start filming or try to film before the salon opens. And the trick to that is that you got to leave 100% on the floor. Yeah. You have some people who are like go to the gym and they're like, okay, you need to like put like 75% effort in like that way you have energy for like the rest of the day. You have energy to rebuild. Right. You have to leave 100% on the floor because otherwise you're going to go home and you're going to be awake. Yeah. And I think that that's the challenge of me working out at night is because throughout the day I'm like go, go, go all day long and then by the time the night comes I just want to like. Yeah. But you shouldn't have a problem like leaving 100% on the floor. You don't do anything less than 100%. Well, so that's my shifts that I'm making. I cannot be somebody that tells you how to do daily self-care practices. My self-care practice is do whatever the hell I have to do so that I can keep working as hard as possible. And I'm probably from a health standpoint not doing well. So but that's changing and we're working on that. All right. So thanks for the question and the and the reminding that I need to do that today. All right. Any suggestions on educational events that you would recommend? Any suggestions on any educational events you would recommend? This is from Studio 151 Salon. It's a cool name for some reason. I think because it sounds like Studio 54. I don't know why. All right. So educational events, here's the thing, it's hard to find like it's not hard to find them. I would follow people on Instagram that you like and look for them to be doing events. I think nowadays you don't have to worry about. There's no like that scheduled events like to my knowledge like that I'd be like really excited about.  Yeah. It's going to be like focused on the hair. Yeah. I don't think that there's a ton of companies out there now, not companies, but individuals doing education. So definitely just follow them on Instagram. You'll see the flyers. That would be my recommendation. I don't really have certain people that I'm like, oh, you should go see their education because honestly, I just don't, I'm not really watching their education that much. So I don't know. What you'd be looking for is different than somebody who's just had school or who may have been in the business for 30 years and is looking for something else. Right. Yeah. The education is definitely something that's very personal that you need to like figure out like what you're looking for and then find that person. For sure. All right. So Stephanie on Instagram, she says, hey, Matt, I have some questions. How do you keep track of your income and expenses? How do you budget for your business and how do you pay yourself? Do you do retail income slash expense a separate way than income from services? Okay. So this is actually a cool question because I've made some shifts since we started the salon and how the salon is now. So how do you keep track of your income and expenses? We have an accountant. So I recommend that any salon out there, we tried for three years when me and Christina first started the salon to do it on our own. It's a big, gigantic mess and an accountant keeps everything very organized. And it was always my goal to have a company that is a legit company and will, you know, all the records stay, they're filed the way that they should be. It's hilarious to me because my accountant every year is like, I can't believe you claim that much in tips because everybody's tips go in there from their credit cards. So she's like, I just can't believe that you do it. She's like, I'm happy that you do, but a lot of salons don't because it's a big tax. I mean, you get taxed a lot of money. Obviously everybody knows that. I mean, like, if you're going to plan on buying a house, that's only going to help.  And and you're building a business and a business is something for me that you're growing a business. You never know what's going to happen. If you ever wanted to sell your business someday or you want to do whatever, I mean, you have to show everything that's coming in. How do you budget your business and how do you pay yourself? I have actually a follow up question before. OK. So we've always like, like, because you've had a question like this like before. Yeah, you're just like hiring account. And I'm like, I've always like people who've like come to me and said, hey, like, I know you don't own a salon, but do you have any advice for it? I'm like hiring account. What do you look for an accountant? I mean, I have an accountant, but I got one because my friend who owns a business had that accountant. And is he your dad an accountant? No, I thought your dad was an accountant. He works in finance. Oh, OK. He's not an accountant. He just does Dreyas taxes. Correct. But I can't sit with my dad for that length of time doing works like that. So so I've gone through we started off with a good accountant and then decided to take things on our own. Then I had a recommendation for an accountant from one of our clients here. And I started with them.  Like we went all of a sudden, like one year, they were like, you owe 15 grand in taxes at the end of the year. And and then the next year was eight grand in taxes. So then all of a sudden I'm 25 grand in debt to the IRS. And and then I got a good accountant and they cleared it all up. So really, it turned out that the accountant wasn't doing any of their work whatsoever and wasn't doing any write offs or anything, just getting through it. And so be very careful. You know, try somebody out for a year. If it seems crazy, they'll get a second opinion, for sure. Because for the the majority of it, like even if they do a terrible job, all your paperwork's done, so you can take it to somebody else to analyze it and make sure that they did it right, if it seems wrong. How do you pay yourself? I for the first five years of the business, I didn't pay myself from that. That's why I do education events and I teach. I started the free salon education website. I still to this day do not take a paycheck from any income that I do based on the salon. It's just not the way that I like to work. I like to reinvest, whether it's in the remodel that we're going to do or the trips that we take or the dinners that we do. I just reinvest everything back in to the business for now. I understand that that's not the way that everyone can work. It's just the way that it works for me. If I was going to pay myself, I would pay myself exactly like I pay everyone else because that would be how the business model would work. So if you're doing hair five days a week, I would pay yourself your commission for doing hair. And if there's stuff left over at the end of the quarter, then you could write yourself a check for that. But always write yourself a check so you don't owe money in the end. Do you do retail income slash expenses separate? This was something that a long time ago, I learned that maybe you should take a separate retail account from your main account. And then so every dollar you make from retail would go into one account and every dollar you make from services goes into the other so that you see the retail account constantly growing. Always thought this was a good idea. Never did it. But I definitely think it's a good idea. I mean, when we honestly, when we first started the salon, I couldn't even afford to buy retail. So we had literally like maybe 100 bottles on the shelf at a time. So, you know, it's just a whole different world. Now I could probably start that account and I would I would see it.  It'd be kind of cool to do. It's definitely something that I'm I would like to do later. It'd be really good for like to show me people, the people that like have to see like see the income coming up. I mean, I learned it from a product company from Paul Mitchell. So I mean, it makes sense that they want to teach you that. So but I but I do think it's a good idea. All right, cool. So that's pretty much it. You feel good? I feel good. That's the Q&A. I hope you guys liked it. Let us know in the comments below. Also, if you haven't hit the subscribe button, hit the subscribe button and check out our videos pretty much every day. Yep. Follow that that bonus and follow us everything at free salon education. And don't forget, you can ask those questions right on social media or signals. Yeah, or smoke or smoke signals. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks.


Good morning everybody, Lee Lowell here from smartoptionseller.com. Today is Saturday, April 17th, 2021. As you can see on the screen in front of you, today we will be talking about buying straddles, option straddles, for earnings announcements. It's been getting lots of questions this week especially. We've got Q1 earnings, quarter one earnings here in the U.S. That means companies are going to start announcing their earnings. So I get questions from people all the time emailing me saying, Lee, I want to take advantage of earnings. And typically I know that a stock could go either higher or lower depending on how good or bad the earnings announcements are. Is there a way for me to take advantage of a stock move that can go in either direction? How do I do that? Well, yes, there is a way to do that. And that is called buying an option straddle. What does that mean? Well, that means you're going to buy a put and a call option at the same time for the same expiration in the same amount of contracts. So that way, depending on whichever way the stock moves, you buy a call option as a bull strategy, you buy a put option, that's a bearish strategy. So no matter which way the stock goes, you could potentially make money in either direction. So yes, there is a way to do that, but there's a lot of caveats to that. So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about buying straddles for earnings announcements. And then after that, we will go into our usual Saturday synopsis, which we like to do every weekend, and take a look at stock charts, take a look at the indexes, see how the market fared over the last week and over the prior few weeks, and see what may be coming down the pike. So let's jump right in and talk about buying option straddles for earnings announcements.  In my opinion, buying straddles for earnings announcements is, or trying to take advantage of an earnings announcement can be kind of a crapshoot, right? You never know which way the stock can move after an earnings announcement. And a company could have a great quarter, they could have great numbers, blah, blah, blah, but the stock will fall, right? Everything looks great, but the stock falls. And that's mostly because the stock didn't meet the analyst's estimates for the future, or the future might not look so bright, even though they beat current estimates. It's all about the future. What is the stock going to do for the future? So if a company has really good earnings for the prior quarter but says, you know what, this next quarter coming up might not be so good, the stock could tank. And conversely, if a company has bad earnings for this prior quarter but says, but things are going to be looking really good for the future, the stock might go up. So it could be hit or miss, it could be, you know, a crapshoot. So when people want to take advantage of a move in either direction, what you can do is buy a straddle. And a straddle is buying a call option and a put option at the same time. So you're straddling the stock, okay? If the stock goes up, you could potentially make money on the call option. If the stock drops, you can potentially make money on the put option. And I always say potentially, because it's never a guarantee that you're going to make money on the trade. So let's talk about what are some of the things you can do and some of the details about buying option straddles for earnings. Now, the number one, if you look at my cheat sheet here, you want to use the at-the-money strike prices. What are the at-the-money strike prices? Well, those are the strike prices that are the closest to the current price of the stock. And we'll look at an example. If the stock's at $100 a share, you're going to be buying the 100-strike call option and the 100-strike put option. Those are called the at-the-money strike prices. So those will, because as the stock's at 100, you want to take advantage of a move in either direction. You don't want to buy an out-of-the-money put option and then an in-the-money call option. So if the stock's at 100, you don't buy a $70 put option and a $70 call option because those strike prices don't match up. That would be buying an in-the-money call option and buying an out-of-the-money put option. You don't want to do that. You want both strike prices to be right at the stock price. That's the at-the-money straddle. So let's just say the earnings announcement comes out. Let's say it's Monday and the company announces earnings on a Wednesday of that week. So basically what you want to do is in number two here, you want to buy the straddle with the least amount of time left possible. That minimizes the time value that's left in the straddle. Meaning you're buying an option with very, very little amount of time left to expiration and that straddle will cost the least amount in actual dollar terms. The less time till expiration, the less it's going to cost dollar-wise. So let's just say the company announces it's a Monday and a company announces earnings after the bell on Wednesday. The tip is buy that straddle right before the close on or very close to the end of the day if you want on Wednesday because the company's going to announce earnings after the close on Wednesday. So if you buy the straddle on Wednesday, that straddle should cost you the least amount of money compared to if you had bought the straddle a couple days prior, whatever. Because each day options lose value. So the longer you wait to buy an option, the cheaper it's going to be dollar terms. It still might not mean that you'll make money, but at least you're putting the least amount of money on the line. And this is what I consider an all or none type of trade. It's either going to move in your favor or it's not. When you buy a straddle, the day before earnings announcements, the stock either moves in the way that you want it to or it doesn't. And if it doesn't move in the direction you need it to, you're going to lose basically all the money you've paid out for that straddle. So it's really an all or none proposition because you're really giving yourself very little time for the stock to move in your favor. So most stocks have weekly expirations that they expire every Friday. So like I said, if the company is announcing earnings on Wednesday, you buy the straddle that expires that Friday. So you'll have about two days for that stock to potentially make a move in your favor. If you buy the straddle on Wednesday, all you have is Thursday and Friday, you'll have two more days of that specific week in order to potentially make money. And if the stock doesn't move in your favor, the whole thing will expire very quickly and those option values will just crash on you and you won't make any money. So it's really an all or none proposition. If you like that kind of gambling mentality, that kind of speculation, you buy the shortest term expiration date which is typically every Friday and you see where within that week the company's announces earnings and then you buy that straddle pretty close to right before they're going to announce earnings. That's just going to help you keep the actual dollar cost small.   The stock's going to move in some direction. I just don't know yet, but I want to give myself a little more time to be right with the straddle, buying the straddle. So what you can do is buy the straddle that has, you know, 60 days until expiration. It's going to cost more. It will absolutely cost you more in dollar terms because the longer until expiration, the more options cost, right? More time equals more money. But if you want to give yourself a fighting chance to, you know, go with the trend after earnings are announced, you buy the straddle about 60 days before expiration. Okay, and you buy that straddle a couple days before the company announces earnings. So let's say a company announces earnings on Thursday of the week. You can buy the straddle on that Monday for two months out in time. Okay, you don't have to. What happens is as the company gets closer to earnings announcements that week, let's say the volatility of that stock starts to go up. So the option prices, the option implied volatility starts to go up that week. People are buying calls and puts because they want to get in on the action. So you might want to buy that straddle a few days before that flurry of activity starts to come in. You still buy it 60 days out in time, but buy it a few days before the actual earnings announcement. Okay, so that'll allow you to get around all that increased volatility those few days before the actual earnings announcement. And then when the company announces earnings, it'll go up and down, whatever. But over those next two months, those 60 days, the company should show you the trend where it wants to go. Let's say there was bad earnings, so the stock starts to drop. That way, the put option of the straddle that you bought should actually start to increase in value, whereas the call option value will go down in value. So what you can do is you can unload the call option, get rid of the call option. It should still have some value to it. You sell out the call option, and now you ride that put option lower. I mean, you ride that put option as long as the stock is going down, that put option value is going up. So you can ride that put option value. Conversely, if the stock starts to go up after earnings over time, then you can sell out the put option, reclaim whatever values left to it, and then you ride that call option. Hopefully that the stock will move far enough for you to be able to make money on the overall straddle that you bought. So there's your two ways to buy the straddle as an all or none proposition or giving yourself a little more time to find the trend of that stock. Now, number three here is all about knowing your break even levels. I don't know why I have two number threes in there, but know your break even levels. What does that mean? Well, you need to know where the stock has to move to in order for you to break even on the trade, at least break even if you're going to hold the straddle until expiration. Okay, so the example here is, let's say the stock's at $100 and you buy the $100 straddle. That means you're buying the 100 strike call and the 100 strike put. And let's say that whole straddle costs $10, $10 total, $1,000 investment. And the call option costs $5 per contract and the put option costs $5 per contract. So that's a $10 per contract straddle. Where does the stock need to move to either higher or lower in order to just break even? Well, the stock has to cover whatever the cost of the straddle is. So if the straddle costs $10, the stock either has to move up to $110 a share or it has to move below $90 a share. That's a $10 swing higher or lower above the 100 strike. And if you're going to hold it until expiration, the stock has to move above $110 or below $90 in order to just break even. If it goes farther than that in either direction, then you'll start to make money. So you know where your break evens are. Okay, and the other thing is that are you picking a stock that's even capable of making that kind of move over in the all or none proposition or over two months? So you want to know, does the stock move a lot? You'd have the opportunity to even go up 10% in that short period of time or whatever the distance it needs to go. In this case, with the 100 straddle, it's a 10% move higher or lower. Can a stock make that kind of move? You go back and you look at the stock charts and right here, number four we're talking about is the stock capable of making the required move. You can check the charts. Go back to the prior earnings announcements over let's say a year or so or two years. So that would be four or eight earnings announcements. And you watch the stock, see where the stock moved over that next month or two months. Was it capable of making the move required for the straddle? But in order to see what the straddle costs at that time, you can go to a company or a website called Market Chameleon. Let me open this up. So here's a website called MarketChameleon.com. And I'm sure there's plenty of other sites that can tell you prior earnings announcements, what the straddle was implying, the cost of the straddle tells you how far the stock would need to go in order to break even. So in Market Chameleon, I've opened up the earnings page for Apple. Part of this is a free site, part of it you can pay for. This is just some of the free information. So on the left-hand side is, first of all, you type in the symbol here, Apple, in the box over here.  This will tell you the upcoming earnings dates for Apple. And Apple has earnings coming out on the end of April. Like April 28th up here in this top portion. This is April 28th, 2021. It's got earnings announcements coming out after the bell. But over here in this column, it'll tell you the prior five or six earnings dates, what happened to the stock? How far did it move right after the earnings? And it'll tell you this column right here implied straddle. I'll tell you that Apple was predicting or the market, the options market was predicting that Apple would move here in October 30th, 2019. Apple was expected to move about 4.9% from where it closed that day and when earnings announced and where did it trade the next day? So this one right here on October 19, 2019, Apple was expected to move about 5% from where it closed the day prior. That's what the straddle was saying. And it only moved higher, Apple moved higher by 2.3%. So if you bought that straddle and you wanted to get out of the trade the next day, you probably would have lost money because Apple didn't move as far as it was being predicted. And then the next one, 4.7%, Apple price went up by 2%. In April 2019, April 30th, 2020 was projected to move 4.4%. Stock dropped by 1.6%. So these past three right here, Apple didn't move as far as it was predicting where the straddle was predicting. And then up here, this one on July 30th, 2020, the straddle was predicting only a small 3.6% move and Apple actually, the price went up 10.5%. So in this case, it actually worked out. Here, it was predicting a 4.8% move. Now that 4.8% move is not saying it's going to move up by 4.8%. It's just saying it can move either higher or lower by 4.8%. And in this case, Apple dropped, this column is telling you what it actually did. Apple price dropped 5.6%. And then the very last earnings announcements in January 2021, Apple was expected to move 6.8% based on the straddle price. But Apple price stock dropped 3.5%. So you can see it's kind of a crapshoot. You know what the straddle is telling you where Apple might go to versus where it actually went to. It's not really meeting the projections. Now, how do you tell how far a straddle, the price might move? Well, you go to the option chain. Let me pull up the option chain for Apple. And here's just, this is just an example. I'm just showing you some numbers here. This is Apple, Apple closed at $134 yesterday on Friday, April 16th. Let's look at the at-the-money straddle for April 30th options, April 30th, 2021. So the at-the-money straddle would be the 134 puts and the one, let me move myself here, 135 calls. The 135 calls finished around $3.85 a contract. And the 134 puts closed around $3.70, $3.70 per contract. You add those together. That's how you find out what the straddle costs. Take the call price and the put price, you add them together. So that's roughly $3.80, $3.70. That's probably, you know, $500, I'm sorry, $7.50 a contract, let's say per straddle. All right? So $750, it would cost you $7.50 per contract, $7.50. What is that telling you? Well, that's telling you Apple would have to move, you know, higher or lower by $7.50 a contract in order to break even. Well, what's the implied percentage? Well, what's $7.50 as a percentage of where Apple is today? That's roughly, that's maybe 6%, 6% or so. A 10% move would be $13.50. So that's probably, yeah, it's probably about a 6%-ish move. So that implied straddle is telling you Apple is predicting a 6% or so move. Higher or lower than $1.34, $134. So if Apple was releasing earnings, if you were to buy this straddle, it's implying that Apple will move roughly 6% higher or lower than $134 per share. Okay? So you have to understand, you know, can Apple make that move? Is Apple capable of moving 6% or so after it releases earnings? You know, Apple, let me see what Mark the Chameleon is saying. So for the next earnings, it's not projecting, it's not giving the projection. I think if you, oh, implied straddle right here, you can see, it's a little blocked off here, but right here, you can see the implied straddle is about 5.6%. And what do the, where do these numbers come from? Well, this comes from the at the money closest to expiration straddle. I didn't show you the closest expiration straddle. That's next Friday on, it's that April 23rd. Okay? So you go back and you look at the at the money straddle on any day that you're looking at, the most closest to expiration. And that's what's considered the most important barometer of the, you know, the percentage of the implied straddle and what it would cost. So I showed you what the April 30th expiration would be for Apple. And that's close to that 6% number. So this is 5.6%. So anyway, you got to look at some numbers. You got to see if, you know, what has Apple done in the past or whatever stock you're looking at, is it capable of making that kind of move? And, but if you want the all or none type of trade, you buy the straddle, the closest expiration on that current weekly Friday, and you buy it, you know, close to the closing day, right before they're going to announce earnings. If they announce earnings in the morning, then you buy the straddle at the end of the prior day because you want to minimize that time decay. If you buy, you know, if you buy that straddle that a couple of days prior, you're still going to pay for more time value. So you want to keep the time very short right before you buy that straddle if you're in the all or none scenario. If you want to take that longer term approach and you want to buy a straddle two months out in time, then you buy that straddle a couple days before the earnings announcements. If you're taking that longer term view, okay, that'll minimize that jump in volatility that I talked about those last few days before the earnings announcement. And then you ride it out. If you're doing the two month straddle buy, then you wait to see which way the stock starts to move. And then you get rid of the leg that's not working for you. So there's a couple of ways to play it. Okay. And what is the what does it look like on a profit and loss chart? I've shown this. I had another video showing how to trade straddles and I'll put that on the screen at the end of this video in this YouTube video. But you can go to a website and I've showed this before optioncreator.com and you go up to the top here and you can click on the drop down here and you can pick any one of these strategies. But I've defaulted. I've already put in the long straddle. Now we don't want to sell straddles because that implies unlimited loss potential. We're only talking about buying or long straddles because that entails unlimited profit opportunity. Okay. That's what you want. So in this scenario, we've got a stock price at $100 and we're looking to buy the straddle. In this case, we only put five days to expiration. We're doing the all or none scenario here. Okay. And each leg costs $5. So this is a $10 straddle costs $10 for contract. That's $1,000. And this chart will tell you what your P&L, your profit loss will look like if held until expiration. If you held it for five days. Now, if this chart is showing you down at the bottom are the stock prices of the stock and on the side is your potential profit and loss. Now, obviously you can see as the stock either declines in price or goes up in price. Your unlimited profit potential, you have unlimited profit potential as long as the stock keeps moving in that direction, one way or the other. If the stock doesn't go anywhere, if the stock stays right at $100 on expiration date, you're going to lose your full investment, which is, let me get out of the way here, your $10 shares minus $10 per contract. You will lose the full $10 per contract if the stock finishes right at $100 a share on expiration day. If it goes lower, as it goes lower in price, here's your break even $90 and $110 just like I told you, the stock has to move above $110 or below $90 in order to start making money. If the stock starts dropping, you'll make money. If the stock starts going up above $110, you make money in an unlimited reward potential. So the key is, can the stock make the move? Will the stock make the move? If you're going for the all or none, you really don't have a lot of time for the stock to make the move. If you buy the straddle on a Wednesday for that Friday expiration, you only have two days to be right. Maybe the stock won't make the move in two days. So if you buy the longer 60-day straddle, you're giving the stock an opportunity to move in a direction that will help your break even. At the same time, that 60-day straddle costs more. Let's go back and look at the option chain real quick. So here's an April 23 straddle for Apple. Let's look at the at-the-money straddle cost, let's say $1.80 for the put and $1.95 for the call. So that's $3.75 per straddle, $3.75. One week later, these April 30, I told you it costs about $7.50. So it's almost double, right? It's almost double, one week more in time. So if you go out two months, let's say to June, the at-the-money straddle, which will be now the $1.35 strike. So that straddle costs roughly $13 per straddle, $13. So the more time you give, the more expensive it's going to be. But at least you're giving yourself an opportunity for the stock to move above a break even. Okay, if you bought this straddle for $13, Apple has to either go up above $147 or below $121. So $13 either way.  Or do I want to spend more money and give myself more time? Because I know Apple's going to make a move. It might just take it a little bit longer to make the move, okay? So let's go back to the cheat sheet. You have to figure out which way do you want it. Do you want an all or none proposition? Or do you want to give yourself more time? And then lastly, let's talk about what happens if you're either making money or losing money on the trade. Let's say the stock starts to move right away, right away, and you're making money. Well, make sure you take some profit. Take some money off the table. You don't have to wait until expiration. You can sell out at any time you want. So when do you get out? Well, if the stock has given you a 50% profit, maybe a 100% profit.  Take the money off the table. Is a 50% profit good for you? 100%, whatever. 10% might even be good enough for you. Make sure you take some money off the table. And on the downside, if the stock doesn't move well in that all or none proposition, you're probably going to lose all of it very quickly. That's the all or none. If you have the two month expiration, if the stock's not really moving for you, maybe you can get out of the whole trade. You'll only lose a small part of the straddle. You might lose 5% or 10% of whatever the investment was. If the stock's not moving, you can get out. Or you can hold whatever. It's up to you. But the quicker you take the loss, the longer you can stay in the game. If you have the profit, take the money off the table. So there you go. There's your lesson on option buying straddles for earnings. You can make money in either direction, but the stock has to make the move.  So let's move on to the next phase of our Saturday synopsis here. Let's take a look at the charts, see what's happened in the market, and kind of get a gauge for what's coming down for the next week. So we always jump right into the SPY, the exchange traded fund for the S&P 500. What's been happening in the market over the last week? Well, we've been hitting all time new highs again. All the indexes, the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial, and the NASDAQ. All making new highs this week. It's been a good week for bulls. I like the action. I'm bullish for the long run. If you've been watching my videos, you know I've been bullish for a long time. The market is telling us it wants to be bullish. How is the market telling us? Just look at the stock charts. Look at the stock charts. You see the nice upward moving stocks. That's telling you the market wants to keep going higher until it tells us it's not going higher anymore. So let's take a look at the SPY. Blow this up a little bit. Take a look. These are daily bar charts. Each bar, each line here is one day's worth of trading. Look at this movement higher. Now, I will say I think we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves. As you're doing your technical analysis, which is chart reading, you want to see where the stock price is moving compared to what indicators you may have on the chart. Now, I always tell you what I have. A 20-day simple moving average, a 50-day simple moving average, and a 200-day simple moving average, and the 14-day RSI indicator down here. This is an overbought, oversold indicator. These horizontal dark lines gives you the overbought or oversold levels. And the line here, ping-pongs between overbought, oversold, or neutral areas. Here's the price action of the S&P 500. Getting a little ahead of itself because it's creating a lot of space between or from the moving averages. As you can see here, it hugs the lines. It hugs the moving averages. It goes up and it comes down. Well, it's really gone up pretty good over the last two weeks. We probably need a little breather, maybe a little sideways action, a little downwards action, and let the moving averages catch up to the price action. We want those normal ebbs and flows. But we still want to see the trajectory higher. But we can have the ebbs and flows. We don't want the market to get too ahead of itself because then you have that really crash elevator down moves, which scares a lot of people. We don't want that to happen. We like the normal ebbs and flows. So although the market's going up and we're all happy about that, it looks like it might be getting a little ahead of itself. We maybe do for a pullback to wait for the moving averages to catch up to it a little bit. Doesn't mean I'm bearish. Doesn't mean the next bear market is happening. Doesn't mean the next crash is happening. It just means we need a little normal ebb and flow. We need a little sideways downwards action, let the moving averages catch up, and then we can take the next move higher. That's how a beautiful uptrending market happens. Look at these moves. It goes up, hits the line, goes up, comes down and meets the 20-day. Goes up, comes down and meets the 50-day. So we had a little larger pullback here. Goes up again, comes down, comes down through the 50-day, but regains its footing, meets the 50-day again, and then goes up. So we want to see, we're going to see some kind of pullback. Now here on the RSI, we may be getting a little bit too overbought levels, a little too much steam might want to have a pullback. So that's what I'm seeing. Things are still looking good here in the United States. Vaccines have been rolling out. People are getting vaccinated. Economies coming back. People are getting jobs back. People are making money. The government is putting out stimulus money. It gives people more money in their pocket. They're paying their bills. They're buying more products. They're going out to dinners. They're shopping, which is good for companies. Companies can make money, and that just keeps their stock prices going higher. So that's what we like to see. Things are good. I don't see anything really to derail the bullish action. Yep, we're bullish, but we want to see some pullback here and there. Let's take a look at the Dow Jones industrial average. Also making all-time new highs as well. Right here. These just last couple of weeks. All-time new highs. Nice, slow, up-trending market. This is good. Goes up, pulls back to either the 50-day or 20-day, and keeps going up. When you have a nice up-trending market, a lot of people follow the 20-day, 50-day, 200-day. And when it pulls back to one of those averages, it will typically bounce in a nice up-trending market. So if you've missed the most current move, wait for the pullback to the 20-day or 50-day to help time your entry if you want to get long. So in most bullish markets, the stock or the index will pull back to the 20-day or 50-day. That can help you time your entry. Other people can use other moving averages. This is what I use. Some people will have a 10-day, a 40-day. I use a 20, 50, and 200-day moving averages in the RSI. People can use Bollinger bands, Stochastics, Fibonacci numbers. It's whatever works for you. It's the 30-day. Over the 30 years I've been in the business, this is what works for me. So that's the Dow. Dow looking good. Things are looking strong. Let's look at the NASDAQ. Now, the NASDAQ composite itself almost hit all-time new highs. So here's the previous all-time high. This is where we finished yesterday, April 16th. So the NASDAQ composite didn't hit all-time new highs. But the QQQ, which is the tracking stock, the NASDAQ made new all-time highs. See, here's where we ended this week. Here was the prior all-time high. And the NASDAQ futures also made all-time new highs. So I'm convinced that the NASDAQ has made all-time new highs, even though the composite index has it. QQQ and the futures have made all-time new highs. So I like where things are going. We're bullish. We really see nothing really to derail the bullishness. We can have the normal ebbs and flows. We look at price patterns. The NASDAQ had this nasty pullback, but then it made the sideways action. When a stock has a pullback, it starts to make some sideways action. That means it's looking for a bottom. Looking for a bottom. We talked about this W pattern. The W pattern here had the flat top. That was the resistance. The NASDAQ broke through it, and now this resistance becomes support. So once it blasted through this resistance line, it was off to the races. Let's see if I had it on the triple Qs. I had the congestion pattern here. We know congestion patterns means the stock is storing up a lot of energy for a blast-off, either higher or lower. In this case, the blast-off was higher. So the NASDAQ is moving up. The Dow is moving up. The S&P 500 is moving up. Everything looks bullish. Is there anything that can derail the market? Anything. In a normal functioning market, I don't really see anything to derail the market. We will have earnings. Earnings are starting to be announced. As long as the earnings are decent and the future is projected to be decent, stock prices will continue to go up. A world war breaking out, or some other new kind of pandemic, these are the things that can derail the market. In the short run, I really don't see anything on the horizon, but those things come out of nowhere. There's no way to predict that. So we stay long until the market tells us otherwise. And I'm bullish. So let's take a look at a couple of individual stock charts. See what we like. We look at some of the more popular stocks. I get requests all the time from people to look at certain charts. And I can't indulge everybody. If I did, I'd be spending all day looking at charts, emailing people back. So we look at some of the more popular stocks. Let's start with Apple. We always look at Apple.  So I want Apple to go up. Apple's been sort of, you know, not really going anywhere. It's been in this range for a long time now. I got long Apple back here. After this run up, I try to get long on this little pullback here. And it's just been ping-ponging back and forth. Has the W pattern here, we talked about this last week, made this W pattern. Now the W pattern is somewhat of a bullish pattern. And if it got through this resistance line, then it would be, should continue to go higher. Well, Apple actually has finally broken through here. Finally broken through. And I'm hoping that Apple can get up to its prior all-time highs around $145 a share. Apple announces earnings towards the end of April. So we'll see what happens. If the future doesn't look bright, if Apple comes out and says, you know what, the future not looking so good, it's going to get knocked back down. Apple says things are looking good. People are buying products again. We've got new launches, new products. It's going to keep going up. So ombos for Apple hope it keeps going up. But I like how it moved out of the W pattern and above this resistance line. So let's see if it's catching its breath here a little bit. Let's see if the next move is higher. Let's take a look at Amazon. Amazon's finally starting to get its mojo back a little bit. Has had a nice run over the last two weeks. So it's sort of getting closer to the top of this long channel here. Let's see what Amazon wants to do. We could be having a little bit of a bull flag here. Bull flag is when it has a nice move up, has a little bit of a congestion and then it getting ready for the next move higher. So let's see if Amazon could keep going. Let's take a look at Tesla. Tesla looks like maybe it's getting its mojo back. Had numerous congestion patterns here. All these little triangles were the congestion patterns. But Tesla has had this nice down move. Had the sideways action. Here is the resistance line just this week. It finally popped above the resistance line and finally popped above the 50 day moving average. That's a good sign. That's a good sign. So maybe Tesla will find its support here. Here's the support, around $710 a share roughly. And we want to see it stay above $710 and continue to move higher for all you Tesla fans. So this is very constructive right here. These last two weeks, very constructive, has moved above both moving averages, moved above this resistance line. So Tesla could be getting ready to embark on the next bull run higher. What other stocks do we like to take a look at? Walmart is one that I think I've shown recently. Walmart. Okay. So here we go with Walmart has this nice. This is an ascending triangle. Let's get rid of this one here. And let me redraw this. So I'll let you see what I'm looking at here. So an ascending triangle is when you have all these, these higher lows, you connect the lows. And then you have this resistance line up top here. Okay. So looks like Walmart. If it can get above the resistance line, which is roughly $141 per share. It's above the 20 day above the 50 day. And it just has to pop above this, this line right here. So if it can get above 141 for a couple of days in a row, it looks like Walmart can get above maybe tag. It's all time highs near $155 a share. So you want to wait to see where Walmart opens up. You want to give it some couple of days above the resistance line before maybe getting long. And then hopefully it'll keep running higher. But this is a very constructive chart right here. It just has to get above this little resistance area right here, right below 140. It's kind of hovering. If it can get above it, it looks pretty good for Walmart. Let's take a look at AMD because we looked at AMD last week. We looked at the three stocks I was bullish on. It was Apple, the QQQ and AMD. But obviously Apple and the triple Qs have all gone up this week. AMD, we're watching and waiting. We weren't getting into a bullish trade yet. We are watching and waiting. We saw the W pattern last week. Let me blow this up a little. So here we were last week. AMD was touching upon the downward sloping 50-day moving average. So this is where we closed last Friday right around here. I said, don't get bullish yet. You want to wait for AMD to get above this resistance line right here around $86, $87 a share. Well, this last week started out getting hit to the downside, but ended up the week back to where it was last Friday almost. Now it's hitting upon the upper channel right here, this blue line here, upper channel. Here's the 50-day moving average. So AMD is still kind of hovering right around the 50-day moving average right at the top of the channel. We don't want to see it get knocked back down. We're hoping for strong action, but it has to get above $86, $87 in order for me to say, okay, now I'm seriously looking at a bullish position in AMD. I have to wait till it gets above here. If I try to buy it now and it gets knocked back down, I'll lose my money. So I'm waiting on AMD. So that's what we'd like to see. You've got to look for the price patterns. You've got to look for your timing, see where the support and resistance is, and look where it is compared to the moving averages. Let's take a quick look at a few other charts and then we will call it a day. What other stocks are showing some interest? Netflix, we look at Netflix. Netflix is still within this long channel, still kind of ping-ponging back and forth. It's hovering above the 50-day and 20-day moving average and the 200-day, that's good. So maybe it's storing up some energy here. Maybe it's getting ready for the next leg higher. We're all on bullish, so hopefully these stocks will get going. See what other stocks are interesting here. Just kind of go through my list. Oracle has been a great stock. It just been, you know, it hugs the moving averages. Here's, we got into some trades on Oracle as well, sold some put options, bullish trades, and Oracle's just been making new all-time highs. Let me make sure this is an all-time new high. Look at a monthly chart, yep. So Oracle hit all-time new highs this week. Looking good, but could be getting ahead of itself. Here's just an example. Stock price starts to go vertical like that. It's getting kind of ahead of itself. RSI hitting definitely overbought areas. Doesn't mean it's going to reverse right away. It just means, okay, we've maybe hit a top here. We've maybe hit a top. Let's take a breather overbought near the 80 level on the RSI. Price is going vertical. It may need a little bit of a pullback. So watch the price action compared to the moving averages and watch the RSI. Okay, if you've been long, maybe take a little bit of money off the table. Or tighten up your stops if you have some stops in place. So these are the things we look for. Some of the healthcare stocks looking good. We play the XLV, which is the healthcare ETF. We liked it. We got in healthcare as it was coming off, hitting the support near the 50-day, 20-day moving average, and it's just gone up. So you want to watch the charts. And then the pullback to the 20-day or 50-day. And then you get long. So we liked healthcare right here. Anything else of note? Anything else of note? Game stop. People are still in game stop. It's in this congestion pattern still hanging around $150 a share. So we've got a congestion pattern. It's storing up all this energy. Maybe it's going to go higher or lower soon. But I'm out of it. For your synopsis here, the market looks strong. The indexes are going up. We need the normal ebbs and flows. It might be getting ahead of itself. So be prepared. We might have a little bit of a pullback, but that's okay. It doesn't mean the next leg is going to occur. The next down leg is going to turn into a full-on bear market. People always get nervous, but that doesn't always happen. Normal ebbs and flows. Lastly, let's take a look at our website. SmartOptionSeller.com. If it would load up for me here. We have our services tab. Over here we have our SmartOptionSeller newsletter. Vertical Spread Trader newsletter. These are all about selling put option and put option spreads. And our one-on-one coaching sessions. If you need help getting to that next level, consider a one-on-one coaching session. Okay, that's it for me today. I hope this content has been helpful, useful to you. Give me a thumbs up. If you get to subscribe, hit that red subscribe button in the YouTube video. Leave me a comment. Send me an email. I always love hearing from you. I try to help. I'm here to help. Let me know what you're thinking. Okay, that's all for me today. I hope everyone has a great weekend. And I will see you all next Saturday. This is Lee Lowell, signing off.


I'm Xie Chen from China State Forestry Administration. I'm working for Forestry Economics and Policy Analysis. In China, there's a long history of forest restoration, even when China was just liberated in the 1950s. At that time, the eastern part of China, especially in the Yellow River, the old Yellow River part, the sandstorm was very strong and farmers destroyed farmers' houses and farmland. So even at that time, when China was very poor, we already started forest restoration like a short belt intercropping into the cropland to reduce the natural disaster to protecting farmland, to help farmers to gain more agriculture output. That's the early stage. When China opened to the outside world and the reform, we immediately started the three-nose short belt program. It occupied almost one-fifth of China. We called it Green-Grid War. The program lasted from the late 1990s until 2020. So it's a giant forest restoration program in China. In the late 1990s, when China's economy developed very rapidly and deforestation happened everywhere and it caused soil erosion, water-soil erosion in the Yellow River and also flooding. So in 1998, there was a big flooding in the Yellow River and caused a lot of life loss in China. So the Chinese government started to launch several national-level key forest programs. One is the Natural Forest Protection Program. We also called it Logging Band. The second one I involved in is the conversion of cropland to forest programs. The conversion of cropland to forest programs started in 1999. It's the first round of that program. It started from 1999 until 2016, this year. And the second round of that has started in 2014. It will last until 2020. So the goal of the program, one is for ecological restoration to combine the desertification in the northern part of China and to reduce water-severe water-soil erosion and to increase land productivity around the area. And also, poverty alleviation is a very important part of that program. At the very beginning, because the CCP is the top priority is to reduce water-soil erosion to the ecological purpose is the main target. But literally we found if we don't provide to improve farmers' livelihood then farmers won't maintain and care about trees. So we immediately, after we started the program to have many policy approaches to help farmers to increase their livelihood and provide subsidies to them. And that's one hand. That's the main policies from the beginning until now. And also, in the second phase of the first round that started from 2008 until this year we also started like a sub-project under the CCP like energy, rural energy, infrastructure and improve the crop and productivity, something like that. The main purpose of that is to strengthen the development capacity of the farmers and also rural livelihood. Because China is a historical and agricultural civilization country for thousands of years, our farmers used to cutting down forestry and to do agriculture there for thousands of years. It's like that. But since the CCP, we convert the cut-down degraded forest land especially the steep slope land. Actually, the steep slope crop lands previously are forestry. So in Chinese history, this is the first time Chinese government provides subsidies for farmers to convert their crop land to forestry. And also in Chinese thousands of years' history farmers always have to be levied. Sometimes very heavy, levied tax to submit to government. But this time, government provides money to farmers themselves to reforestation. So that's a big milestone in Chinese history. I think that's very important. I think it's unique in the world. We set up a very strict financial arrangement or institutional arrangement. That means all the money, all the subsidies were directly we call it a special money channel directly from the money directly from the Ministry of Finance to each of farmers' bank accounts. Each of CCP farmers will have their own bank account to receive the money. I had to say that bank account is not only for CCP. Other agricultural subsidies also goes to that bank. For sure, because if you have a chance to visit our CCP farmers, they really appreciate it. They get money and they see their village change a lot. Trees, the village become green and the water become clean. They told us something like that. Yeah, change a lot. At the very beginning, I don't believe that actually farmers always concern their short income returns because the program already lasted so many years and they do see the changes of the environmental change. The milestone is the first time farmers got money from government. Before that, they always submit money to the government. So at the very beginning, a lot of farmers don't believe that. So at the initial stage all the participants of the CCP are the leaders of the village leaders and they have to take it as a task to be finished but gradually the farmers see that they really got money from government. So more and more they are happy to involve in. And some of the places, especially in a very remote part of China like Guizhou and there are places like Bijie. Now the land is very harsh and all the land is steep like 60, 40 degrees, even more than that. There was serious land use degradation but none of the land has become CCP. But this time, for the second round they are the largest part of the program. The farmers are very happy to participate. I think technical support is a very important part of CCP's success. As I told you before, our local foresters are very good and at the very beginning they just use their hands and use old techniques. But right now China is quite good, not quite good compared with the US and still a little bit advanced to use G's to use land planning. So at the second round of CCP we will require that the CCP land use planning must be used G's and each of the plots of the household has to be four G's points. So it's a huge job work but I visited a very remote county. It's a Tibetan county, very remote near the angle of Yunnan province. I saw that the picture, I can show you that. It's extremely surprised me. Each of the plots has G's position with their bank account in that and farmers' stamp, farmers' finger stamp on that is really surprising. Coming to Ethiopia actually is my long design because years ago I read about literature about a plantation in Asia, in Africa. I know that in Ethiopia they also have a small holder, the forest station and the landscape and the temperature is quite similar. Semi dried and dried in China. So I think before I come here I read some history about Ethiopia. I found that even the institutional structure may have some similar. So I do expect we can exchange a lot of things especially through yesterday's discussion. We have many things in common and we can share knowledge and learn a lot. Several things. One is the small holder's role in forest restoration and land tenure and land tenure arrangement. Even it is more difficult, different with China and also conflict between agriculture and forestry and also the incentives. Maybe they lack incentives from the Chinese experience and also bamboo. I think bamboo is a great potential for China and Ethiopia to cooperate. As I know that FAO recently received huge money from the Chinese government that money was mainly used for soft soft cooperation. So I will try to help to contact some of our FAO. From her presentation I can see there is a long history between Ethiopia and China and bamboo technical cooperation. But for economic and policy exchanges still not started. So I think there is great potential to see how the technical apply to Ethiopia and to help to not only technical one but also marketing and something like that. Yeah, in China the tenure system is how to say after the reform. It's quite good I think. For crop land, it's farmer have very clear land and for forestry we start also start we call it collective forest tenure reform and from that reform the previous owned collective, I mean the village or township owned forest has been delivered to each of the households. So farmers do have some incentives to involve in forestry management. Yeah, currently it's quite good. Yeah, but it's different with crop. In China forestry always had two function, one is economic and another is ecological. So we have a very strict forest management laws and regulations especially concerned about forest management we have very strict laws especially for harvesting. We have a quarter, national quarter for harvesting timber. So for instance, but we divided forest into two groups. One is that we call it ecological function forest and another is commercial forest. Previously both of them has been strictly under the harvesting quarter but right now we released, relaxed the commercial part. We issued several policies trying to help farmers to have more autonomy to cutting the trees, something like that. But still it's an argument. I think their forest land is also owned by government. One thing we can learn is to have a certificate for forest land maybe not ownership but certificate to use that land for long period of time for instance 60 years, even 70 years then farmers may have a more secured land tenure sense. They may have incentive to involve in. For the first round of CSFP we have a very strict requirement for 80% must be ecological trees and 20% economic trees. But between, we designed, especially designed for CSFP we call it double. Double the trees like chestnut, we call it ecological trees. Bamboo is also we call it ecological. There are some flexibility. But for the second round of CSFP, farmers can choose what they prefer to plant. If the place is good for fruit trees, farmers can prove. But for the higher and very low yield of the crop soil, farmers will automatically choose for ecological trees. In bamboo forestry it's very important. We really regard it as forestry. It's especially concerned about ecological impacts. So we encourage, even in CSFP some of the places suitable for bamboo. Bamboo is part of our CSFP plantation. There is no problem. Do you think it's a good way to help forest landscape restoration bamboo? Yes, especially for the ecological purpose. It can stable the soil. For China the forestry, even though we developed very fast but we still have several challenges. One thing is for the technical part of that, most of the forestry is monoculture. So we need to improve that in many, many ways to diversify our forestry. So that's the one challenge. Another is for CSFP also. Because the first round of CSFP already finished this year, the subsidies. So some of the farmers already go back to their previous land use to cut down the trees and to crop again. But it's not so big, I think. The places normally have a higher yield of crop near urban. So the land value is much higher than forestry. It's not common, but really we need to adjust or maybe postpone the policy. That's one thing for CSFP. The third one I think is because of the urbanization, the young rural people move to the city. Most of the forests, no one takes care of that. Even abandoned forestry, no lack of management. And even the trees there, nobody could have capacity to cut it down. And also even some agricultural land has been abandoned. Yes, I think maybe through this discussion we can learn from Nepal, Ethiopia, their way, I think, the most valuable thing is their participatory approach. In China we also know the participatory approach, but we are used to the top-down and right-down we combine these two together. I'm very happy to be CFO's project because I'm a researcher closely linked with policy makers. So I can quickly know the inside of the policy. At the same time I can, as much as broadly, to accept the academic way of the research and quickly mix and transit between the two. So that's both benefit for China and also possible. That's what I want to see. Yes, right now I'm just starting to design the second round-up CSFP monitoring framework which I will use the experience of our first round. We will make monitoring more accurate. For instance, we will combine the ecological and the economic monitoring together. And also we will control groups so we can provide more accurate policy advice to the government.


Hey guys, this is Hydra from Xtrades and today I'm gonna be making a video about basic technical analysis So I'm gonna be going over support resistance and trend lines in this video and this is a pretty I would say this is pretty basic. So this is mostly intended for beginners, but Advanced traders can also use this as well. So yeah, first I'll just go over a couple of charts and then I'll just You go go through the basics. So support is basically Any place where price tends to bounce basically and resistance is the exact opposite It's any place where price tends to reject or go down. So we'll take a look at this Amazon example. So so this is the weekly chart on Amazon and And I have a few lines drawn out here and I'm gonna next and I'm gonna go through all these lines and what they mean So this will go over this line first. So notice how every single time Amazon comes down to this 144 price it tends to bounce, right? That's the bounce here Comes down again and then bounces, right? So this 144 line is obviously a place where buyers tend to buyers tend to show up and Buy buy the stock, right? So every time we come back come down to 144 buyers step up and push this price back up And then this 171 line So notice every single time we get to this level we tend to reject So this is the first rejection second reaction Third reaction fourth rejection, right? And then the fifth time we actually break out But the breakout doesn't last too long either and then we just chop around for a while. So this Levels are also very important So we reject one two three four times, right? And then the fifth time it's successful when you see multiple rejections and then We were finally able to break out There's a good chance that it could lead to a big move for this case Amazon wasn't able to do that But this is generally Something that you want to look out for and then this one 88 level. So this is also another resistance level So notice we top out at 188 and then we end up chopping around for a little bit and then come back to 188 and reject again so this is obviously another resistance level that we want to take note of and So yeah after that we end up chopping around again and then we just fall back into this range and then we We end up under cutting this 143 level So we actually go below and then we form a hammer. So every time you see this type of Candle, it's a bullish sign. So that means So we undercut this so it created a shakeout candle. So we Yeah, undercut all these are all the support line and then we ended up bouncing From the lowest which is 135 and then we make a pretty big bounce here And then again, we touch this 135 level again, and then we bounce So this 135 level is something to take note of this is also another support level and Then yeah, so 2022 happens right and then we enter the spare market and Amazon completely flushes So when this line breaks that would have been a that would have been a good short play and then you know, we end up We end up making a new support level here around 101 point six five So many weeks we end up going down to this low and then bouncing off. So this is another Key support level that we want to take note of and then we actually bounce all the way back to this Prior support level. So before this used to be support. This this is where price used to bounce and this support level turned into resistance. So now that we're below this level When we touch it, we actually end up rejecting out because this is a key level. So Yeah, and an important note is to remember that key levels or support levels can turn into resistance Levels and resistance levels can turn into support levels. So Yeah, this previously used to be support here, but now it's it's turned into resistance and now basically Amazon's just been in downtrend and Yeah, the only only key level right now So there's some support over here at 88 and The next the resistance level if Amazon does bounces one oh one point six five. So those are the key levels for Amazon and There is also a trend line here. We can draw So notice every single time Amazon touches this trend line It rejects so until Amazon or so possibly Amazon could be chopping out for a while And then maybe we can see a breakout or we can end up making a third leg lower. So we'll see what happens So now we'll just take a look at another chart for examples So let's take a look at Tesla here I tried to pause this video and try to Try to see if you can spot the support and resistance levels if you can Okay, I'm gonna get started. So Here's a clear support. Alright, you bounce off once bounce off twice And then we tried to bounce here and ended up forming a hammer But now we're just currently chopping around it. So this is a definitely a key level that we want to be looking at Another key level here, right? Many or like yeah for many weeks we're just chopping around this level We were trying to break up But we just failed so this is definitely a key level and we were when we were finally able to break it We had a pretty big move. So um, yeah, that's definitely an important level and then again watch When we reject here again, we tried to we're at this level again, and we're unable to hold this resistance. It's just too strong Another level here So this is another resistance level notice many weeks We're just chopping around chopping around and then we finally break out and this is a good example of a trend line so So this would be a support trend line notice that we're actually flagging here so it's getting tighter and tighter tighter and tighter and then we finally break out and Yeah, that's pretty much it for Tesla. So Let me see if I'm missing any other points I would say I'd say you can draw another support here notice many weeks we were at the support level and then We're actually chopping in between this range though for one two three four five six seven eight nine ten almost ten to eleven weeks We were in this range stuck and then we broke out and then we failed back so Yeah, right now Tesla print analysis next support level is 151 But we'll see if we're able to hold this 185 level. If so, then we could possibly see a pasta 212 and then there's also a pretty major Down-trend forming for Tesla. So So notice every single time we touch this line. We end up projecting so this is a very important trend line that we want to take note of and When this trend line breaks, then we could possibly be entering a new trend But for now, the Tesla is clearly in a downtrend And that's pretty much it for Tesla. Take a look at one more So do any video? Again, you can try pausing the video and try to find the support and resistance level on your own, but Yeah, I'm gonna get started All right, clear support over here right Starts bouncing over here bounces over here then we also bounced just in October September time and then Resistance over here notice many rejections here. Fresh rejection second rejection third and then this time we actually break out and then We form a very nice old flag So yeah, this time we break out But we form a very nice flag and then we end up breaking out of the flag and then we make a really big move So this is this is a a plus setup right here when we break out and then we form a flag This is an important setup and something that you want to Make sure that you know This setup occurs many times I'm sure you can if you look at like a bunch of different charts, you'll see the same setup over and over again So this is a good setup to know. I would say there's another resistance line around here We reject twice here and then a couple more times here See if you can get a trend line here. It's not a clear trend line on and video for in my opinion Maybe you can draw one over here But this one doesn't connect this nicely Usually, I want to get it to like the top of the wicks or at least like the top of the candle her. Yeah, but And there's one so it's an okay trend line You get one touch to touch three touch and then on the fourth one you break out and so and video I would say it's not in a downtrend anymore compared to like Tesla Tesla is still very deep in a downtrend But in video I think has bottomed here Came all the way down to this key support level and we balanced and now we're just Yeah, we're just building and we're just slowly trending up higher and higher, which is good So yeah for Nvidia the next key level is 192. There's no real support or resistance to that point and We want to make sure that we're holding on to this 146 level and yeah, that's pretty much it for Nvidia and Do one more actually So Netflix is a good one so Netflix. There's no trend lines actually there could be but so first clear resistance here, right? There's tons of rejections here on the weekly chart And then we finally break out and then again we make a pretty nice bull flag So similar to Nvidia we break out make a bull flag and continue up higher Then friend video. Here's the support line one two three four five five touches there Let's see I'd say there's also Also some prior support here And I would say this matches up with this level So this level was actually resistance before because it was rejecting around that area before and then we were finally able to break out And then every time we came back this previous resistance line turned into a support I'd say there was some support here One touch to to just trying to bounce here, and then we finally flushed hard I think this was because of earnings report, but yeah, we flushed hard and now we're Trying to build their way back up Take a stick a look on the daily chart. So Let me adjust this line a little With the bottom so yeah clear support here right bounce bouncing that earnings drop and then let me So this is a very this this is a very key level for Netflix to 47 So this is where we first gap down and then multiple rejections here multiple rejections here And then we finally break out and then we um, you know, we break out we come back test this to 48 level And then we bounce again So yeah right now I would say Netflix is doing pretty well here compared to most dogs like Amazon's clearly down trending but Netflix is actually building higher highs here, and it's actually get trending quite nicely So this is a support trend line every time we touch we bounce. This is a resistance Resistance trend line every time we touch we reject so now Netflix is tightening up here And I'm gonna guess we're gonna get to this 331 level and then we're either gonna reject or break out hard So yeah, that's pretty much it for Netflix But yeah that anyways That's pretty much it for this video Let me know if you guys have any questions and always feel free to DM me if you guys have yeah any questions. Thank you


Rotational training units and support units with the United States Army Reserve participated in the combat training exercise, or CSTX, on Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, over the last two weeks. Commanders used the exercise to test their soldiers' readiness in austere training environments. Army Staff Sergeant Abdel Colón, with the 810 Quartermaster Company, used Big Sandy Lake located on Fort McCoy to provide clean water to training soldiers. Having clean water for the soldiers is important because they need to be safe and healthy and be able to hydrate properly to be able to continue their mission and continue our training. The tactical water purification system is at the heart of a system of pipes, pumps, generators, and storage containers used to clean water in the austere training environment. It basically can pull about 1500 gallons per hour from any water source that we could possibly think of, fresh brackish water or maybe even sea water. Colón explained to visiting Estonian soldiers that the water is tested every hour to make sure it is good for consumption. Reporting for the 214th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, I'm Army Staff Sergeant Marlon Stiles.