so I got a butter tattoo. My motto to life is just add butter. That is particularly true when it comes to apple pie crust. Apple pie is warm cozy, yummy, delicious, it's elementary. I have the quintessential spruce eats apple pie recipe that gets the job done every single time. You want to know what makes apple pie, apple pie? Today I'm going to show you. My name is Lauren. I'm an associate editor at the Spruce Eats and today we are making apple pie three ways. The must-have ingredients for quintessential apple pie are apples of course, flour, butter, sugar, salt, and then those warm spices. So I'm talking cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, allspice, clove, all of that. Today I'm going to make the quintessential old-fashioned American classic apple pie. I'm going to make a caramel apple pie with the crumple topping and then I'm going to make hand pies. The first step to any apple pie is all about the crust. I love an all-butter crust because I feel like it adds rich flaky textures and the different layers so for this old-fashioned it will be a double crust. So I'm going to start with just some flour, salt, and then I'm going to cut in some butter. Alright so this is kind of where I want it. There's some nice bigger pieces as well as smaller. I'm going to only add about half of this water right now. I don't want my dough to be too wet and it will start binding together. You want most of your dough to be flour and butter. The flour is what binds it all and then the butter is what creates those nice flaky layers and so if you don't have enough butter you'll miss out a lot on that. It's a nice shaggy dough. There's still some loose bits but that's okay because I'm going to finish kneading it on the surface and then it'll all come together. This is kind of the fun part because it's working with your hands and it makes you, it makes me feel like I'm like a little kid. Alright so I'm just going to make this into a nice ball and then we're just going to wrap it and we are good. So my dough is chilled. Now I'm going to roll it out to put into my pie plate. So for this old-fashioned it will be a double crust. In addition to the old-fashioned I'm also going to have a caramel apple pie. That one is just a bottom crust. So we're going to roll this out. I'm going to put some flour down so it doesn't stick. I have a nine inch pie plate so I want to get it about 12 inches. This helps with a good amount of overhang so that way I have enough room to crimp it for both the double and the single crust. Quarter inch thickness. It's ready to go into the pie plate. I don't grease the pie plate. Sometimes I can make it actually soggier and so it's just depending on the kind of pie plate that you have you can just put it straight in. If you find that some of your sides are shorter than others or let's say when you're putting in a kind of tour in some parts you're totally fine with taking some of your pie dough from one end and kind of mashing it in there and then chilling it again. It's not going to be the end of the world by any means. Because this is just a bottom crust for the caramel pie I can go ahead and crimp it. What is the definition of a crimp? I've never been asked that before. The crimp is where you take your fingers or another equipment item and you decorate dough. That is my super high-tech elementary definition. So I have both my bottom crusts done for both my old fashion pie and my caramel pie and now I'm going to chill these while I cut the dough for my hand pies. One of the things that the pie dough is doing when it's chilling is it's taking in all that moisture from the butter and from the water and hydrating.  If there's any scientists watching that want to really dive into the nitty gritty of the proteins and the molecules let us know in the comments.  This feels particularly scary on camera because I'm like do I know math? The main thing is that you just want to make sure that both sides of your hand pie are roughly the same size otherwise you might get the filling oozing out from them. Now that these are all cut I'm going to chill these as well and then we'll come back to them whenever my filling is ready. So now we are at the heart of the apple pie which is the apples, the star of the show. What are good baking apples? These are apples that hold up their structure whenever they are baked or they're cooked down a bit. I'm going to start by peeling my apples. So my favorite technique is I kind of I take a wide peeler which yes there is such thing as the right peeler and it is a wide peeler. So I just go around the top in this circular motion and then same with the bottom so you have the bottom and the top peeled and then I just do some nice strips and it's totally okay if you have some bits that have some of the peel still on it. You can totally eat and consume the peel it's totally fine but in terms of when you're biting into baked apple pie it can really affect the texture and make it more toothsome in the end. So I really like peeling them I think it's just more enjoyable in the end. So we have three different apples I'm going to show you three different ways you can cut them. For my old-fashioned apple pie I'm going to take a granny smith so now we are quartering them and the way that I like to take out the core is I like to cold right here and then kind of go at a diagonal and it kind of cuts out that core area. All right so we have our slices that's for the old-fashioned I'm just going to set those aside. So for the salted caramel generally I like to dice these I feel like dicing the apples makes it not only easier to cut the slices of apple at the end but I also find it easier to eat. I feel like it's also easier in terms of getting that even coating with your filling of your spices and your butter and all that rich gooeyness and then for the hand pie you actually want it to be pretty fine because of the size of the hand pies you want to maximize the amount of filling that you're putting inside. So all my apples are sliced and now it's time to move on to the filling. The first thing I want to do in terms of making these fillings for the caramel pie as well as the hand pie I want to start this caramel sauce as soon as possible so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put some sugar in a pot. I like to start it with some water. You could do a dry caramel but I like to wet it a little bit. I feel like adding some water helps it from crystallizing so much. So my caramel is going and while that is cooking I'm going to make my old-fashioned pie filling. This is so so easy so I'm going to do both granulated sugar and brown sugar. Obviously cinnamon, clove, ground ginger is another favorite of mine and some allspice flour. So I like to just finish it with a little bit of that ground nutmeg. All right so all you're looking for here is you just want to get them nice and evenly coated. It looks delicious. I'm going to put it into my pie crust now. So the last part of this old-fashioned apple pie filling is I'm going to just dot it with some butter, about two tablespoons of butter on top. This will melt while it's baking and really help to create that saucy ooey gooey apple pie-ness that it is. So I'm just going to set this to the side. We'll finish it later with that top crust. So now I'm going to start on the rest of my fillings. Both of them are par-cooked apples for the caramel pie as well as the hand pies. So the first thing I'm going to add is some brown sugar. I'm going to put in some salt. I have ground ginger, lots and lots of cinnamon and then some allspice and then I also have some vanilla. You can kind of see the caramel's getting super close. It's a light light light brown and once it gets to this stage you kind of want to keep an eye on it because it's really easy for caramel to go from zero to 60 super quick. It takes forever to get there, but then once it's there it goes. As soon as it hits that amber color that I'm looking for, I'm going to turn off the heat, put in my butter, kind of melt that down a little bit more, put in my heavy cream and then season it with vanilla extract and the salt. I think this part is kind of fun. Other people, it kind of terrifies, I don't know. So the big aspect to caramel apple pie is the caramel. We have the caramel now. So I'm just going to put it in. I'm going to eyeball it. I want to save some to top my hand pies and my caramel apple pie in the end and then again this last aspect is flour. I want to put the flour in to really thicken it up into that nice sauce. I don't really want to put a hot filling into a nice cool buttery crust and so we want to cool it down. My hack for that is I like to then put the filling onto either a sheet tray or into a glass or ceramic baking dish, transfer it, freezer, fridge, whatever you have to really speed up that cooling process. We are now making an apple casserole, plot twist, pivot, apple pie possibilities are endless. So with this old-fashioned apple pie you can just as simply put this on top. I love a lattice topping and so this is my pie and I'm going to do a lattice topping if I want to. Lattice refers to the shape of the crosshatch of the dough on top of the pie. For mine I like to do kind of like a mismatch of thicker strips with smaller strips and so I'm going to cut out my strips now. I'm just going to eyeball these because I don't really want to measure them. So then to do the lattice you're going to take every other one, pull them back, start on one side, put a strip down, put those back. Now I'm going to take these other two same thing just back and forth all the way across. Some of these lattices didn't come all the way across and it just looks a little bit wonky. That's where crimping comes in and it just makes everything look nice and cohesive and like you meant to do that. So one of my favorite crimping techniques is I just take a butter knife and I kind of just do this diagonal little slit. As it bakes it kind of then puffs up a little bit. Crimping is something that's really fun and you can get really creative with it. You can also take some tools like a fork and you could do like a little crosshatch. You'd also just do some designs like that. You could take a spoon.  You could use the edge of this as well. So there's a lot of things in terms of like what's in your kitchen that everyone can do and it looks like a professional put it together but it's really just some things that were in your kitchen drawer.  Let us know in the comments. I don't know who I am today. Keisha is stepping in helping me with the egg wash for the pie crust. So you have this gorgeous egg. Is this what would you like me to do? Yeah I like the whole the whole egg approach. Yeah. What kind of pie do you usually make? Girl. Or what is your favorite pie? Sweet or savory? A pie that you made. That's my favorite. Because you can bake, girl. I love it. I love it. Say it to the camera. This girl can bake. Okay. How am I doing? It looks great. Okay good. Keisha if you could do the honors. I will. And you know I have copious amounts of cheddar cheese in the back. So if it comes back out with cheese on it don't be upset. Great. Bye. Thank you. You're welcome. So salted caramel apple pie. I'm doing a crumble topping because I like to mix things up. I think it's really tasty especially with the caramel filling. I like the textural difference as well. So the crumble is super easy. It's literally just flour, brown sugar, so that's cinnamon, some salt. We're gonna mix it all together and then I have some butter. You're kind of looking for like a wet sand texture and you'll see it'll be clumpy and that is totally what you're looking for. I'm gonna take some of this cooled down filling. I'm gonna transfer a little bit at a time. Let's see if I can do this nice. And then whatever leftover I have here I'm gonna fill some hand pies with. So we're all in there. You can see when I'm like mashing it together with my hand it's making one large clump and so I can kind of do that, break it apart, make some bigger clumps. Just kind of like sprinkle it all over. So that looks great. So I'm just gonna throw this in the oven with the old-fashioned pie. Last thing to do I'm making hand pies. First thing I want to do is I'm gonna prick some vent holes in the top piece of dough. So I want to do this just so that the apple filling gets an even cooking inside and it's not just steaming out. About a couple tablespoons of filling on each. So you can always put less and then put more if you feel like it can fit it. I'll probably have the opposite where I take it off because I put way too much. So now that I have that down on half of these rectangles I'm going to take that top crust, put it down on top, kind of like press it down a little bit on there and then what we want to do is we want to take a fork and crimp those edges to really seal in and lock in that filling. So they're all shaped. I'm just going to put some egg wash on top and then I love the finish of the turbinado sugar so I'm just going to eyeball sprinkle some on top. The thing with putting sugar as a finisher is it can burn because it's sugar it will cook and caramelize so just like with anything when you're baking, keep an eye on it. There we go. Hand pies going in the oven. I have so many favorite things about apple pie. It reminds me of growing up. My dad and I's favorite dessert is apple pie. I don't it's like the quintessential cold weather dessert but also I'll eat it on a hot summer day so just yeah cozy vibes all around. So all the pies are done. I have my old-fashioned apple pie. I have my salted caramel apple pie as well as my hand pies. Now let's dive in and eat them. All right. All right. She ate bad. The old-fashioned is really all about the apples. That's the star. There aren't too many frills going on here. There's the crust of course so I'm going to try the crust first. It's buttery. It's flaky. It's golden brown delicious. All right going for the apples. The great thing about the old-fashioned pie is because you don't par-bake them you get a little crunch and a bite with the apples themselves. They hold more structure and integrity. It's delicious. It's a classic for a reason. Salted caramel apple pie. I'm jazzed for this one. And we'll see how this turns out. Thank you. She's thick. This pie is great. I feel like it combines all the things that I love about the old-fashioned pie but it brings even more with the caramel notes. I really like the texture of these apples more because I feel like it really all melds together. I would say the biggest difference between these two is the texture of the apples are a bit softer but it's a nice different texture throughout but it all comes together really nicely. Last one, hand pies. Let's bite into these. I feel like there's a great ratio to crust. It feels like I'm honestly eating an apple pie but in my hand kind of less messy. You don't have to worry about slicing here. It's great. So if that's your biggest fear slicing into the apple pie, hand pies are where it's at. It's a great takeaway item for guests to just go home. They don't have to stick around for dessert or it's just kind of like get out of my house. Time to take a nap. I think the really rewarding thing about pastry is that yeah sometimes it does seem like you're doing a whole lot and it seems super complicated but then in the end it's really just butter, flour, sugar, some rolling, some dough. It's super easy but then it's really rewarding when it comes out and it looks beautiful and everyone's like wow that's amazing. You're like yeah. Apple pie. It's elementary. For more videos like this make sure you like and subscribe to The Spruce Eats.


Yes, I'm leaving, leaving. Hey, what's up, YouTube? I'm Zeke, and welcome to The Dream Green Show. Today is week nine of my 52-week challenge while I track one company for the next 52 weeks. I'm going to track that earnings report, all of their news, the good news, the bad news. And I'm also going to do technical analysis on the charts to see if tracking one company and paying attention to this one company and their competitors on if I will be a successful trader by the end of the year. The one company that we're tracking is AMD. So first, we're going to dive into my Robinhood account to see how I did this week. Then we're going to take a look at the news and at the end of this video, make sure you guys stick around so that we can do the technical analysis on AMD. But in the meantime, go ahead and hit the thumbs up button. It really helps out this channel a lot more than you can even imagine. But let's pull up my Robinhood account. All right, here we are on Robinhood. My account is at $24,906. On the week, I had a pretty good week up 2%, up $518.18. Right now I have a free stock, so I'm going to open up that free stock. If you want a free stock, click the link down in the description for Robinhood. You sign up and you'll get a free stock and I'll get a free stock. So let's open up this free stock. I'm going to click the one on the right. And I got COTY, no clue what that is. It's worth $3.79. Okay, so let's dive into AMD. All right, here we are AMD. AMD on the week is up 2.08% at $83.80. So pretty good week, pretty solid week from AMD. It struggled a little bit at the beginning, going down as far as 1.43%. So it went down 1.43% on the week, but it ended up recovering by Friday to be up by 2.08%. My position in AMD is I have 48 shares that's worth around $4,022.40. My average cost is $34.42 and it's around 16% of my portfolio. So AMD do take up a big, large chunk of my portfolio, but that's cool because on the total return, I'm up $2,370.44. I am up 143% on AMD since I've been investing into this company way back a couple of years ago. If you guys checked out my last video on my technical analysis, I told you the place that I was gonna do last week and I actually took one of those plays. I bought one share of AMD at $80.89 on August 19th, 2020. So I got in at a good deal and now AMD is at $83.80, bringing me to a profit so far on that one trade to $2.91. Bringing my total profit overall since I started to $42.53. So yes, that's another week that I have won with AMD. I'm not in the red, so far I'm a successful trader. So it's looking like this challenge is playing out. Let's go ahead and dive into the news on AMD and then we'll get into the technical analysis. Our YouTube and we're back. I've seen this one good news article on AMD. It says AMD climbs on bullish coin notes, price target hikes, so they have a price target. They had a price target at $90 and now they're predicting that the price target is gonna be $100. So went up $10 representing a 20% upside from where they closed on Friday. Now this news is coming from Cohen because he's recently hosted a virtual investor meeting called with AMD CMO, Dr. Lisa Su. And he left the meeting very impressed about where this company is going in the future and their strengths inside of the PC, the computer market. They're really riding on the accelerated news from the seven nanometer chips that I've been talking about in my past videos. If you wanna catch up on everything I've been talking about, make sure that you go back and watch all of those videos. So AMD has been killing it so far and what's really been setting them apart is Intel's delay on the seven nanometer chips that's still on the 10 nanometers. And they believe that consistent product execution across the PC and GPU and server road masks could deliver an upside to the much higher gross margin target to 40 to 44% versus 37% that they has. So that is some good news that they got from the meeting that they have with the CEO of AMD. So that is very bullish for AMD. If someone wants to go in on a call option with a price target of $100, it might be very expensive and very risky, but that is what investors are predicting that the price go up to in the near future. Now one news article that I picked up on Intel, which is Intel's AMD biggest competitor Intel and Nvidia. So one thing that's saying about Intel is that Intel claims that its new processor crushes AMD when it comes to power and price. Now, since I've been tracking AMD, this is where it's just paying off. Since I've been tracking AMD for about the last nine weeks, I'm gonna break down some of this and give it to you for real. All right, so that new, their next gen CPUs is gonna be the 10700K and they're comparing it to the Ryzen 9 3900XT. Okay, so everyone knows AMD is on the 4,000 series, they're not on the 3,900 series anymore, so that's that. But what they're saying is that their i7 10700K blows away Ryzen 9 3900 in terms of price in as well as performance in gaming. The i7 10700K is an eight core 16 thread processor and the Ryzen 93900K is a 12 core 24 thread processor base clock with the same 3.8 gigahertz, boost clock to 4.7. Now, they're saying for the price, now I give it to Intel, their gaming CPUs is amazing. They made some great gaming CPUs, but they're saying even by price that they beat AMD, they're saying that they're gonna have a lunch price of $387 when compared to the asking price of $499 for the Ryzen chip. That's not true, you could get a 3900 for $400 even. In fact, if you go over to Micro Center, you could get a 3900 Ryzen for just $400. So that price is not even close, that's $100 off. So they do beat them in price when they compare it to $387, but that's around just a $12 difference. But when you are comparing gaming to AMD and Intel, Intel is gonna win. They say that they were 23% faster in total war, Warhammer 17% faster in this game, 15% faster in that game, 14% faster in Rocket League.  So I don't even know what they're comparing right now, but Intel is going for a reach right now. Is it a fair comparison? I don't think so. But when it comes to just overall performance with AMD's threads and cores, they're gonna win most of them in any case when it comes to performance. But when it comes to gaming, I think Intel next gen is gonna beat out AMD last gen and might beat out AMD current gen because Intel's that much more advanced than AMD when it comes to gaming. All right, so that was the new sweet of week. Let's go ahead and pull up the charts. This is what you guys been waiting for, so let me go ahead and pull them up. All right, so here we are on Thinkorswim. We're on the four hour 180 day chart. It's gonna be very simple this week. As you guys know, I haven't erased any lines that I drew if I drew it out on week one. They're still there compared to week nine. So if you guys look at the price action, I've been pretty accurate. So far, let's zoom in right quick on the four hour. So I said it was gonna trade in between this channel right here over the next couple of days and it stayed true until the 180 day simple moving average catches up. So it's been trading sideways. I expected to trade sideways into this green line, catches up, let's zoom in on the one hour 20 day chart. Here it goes, right again, right here I drew that arrow right here last week. You probably can't see it. I said that was gonna trade sideways and true and behold, it traded sideways right in between this channel. Now, if you're looking for a place for next week, I still think that it's gonna trade sideways but if you wanna look for some price action while it's trading in between the channels, take a look right here on the one hour chart. It is a little bit overbought and it might have a pullback right here on the MACD. It's coming back down a little bit but let's zoom out on the four hour chart to get a little bit more stability. All right, so it's not really oversold on the four hour chart but if you wanted to draw a line, you could draw one right here and play this channel because it touches right there and it touches right there and then we're gonna draw a downward one. Okay, so you can look for some price action right here to break above or bounce right here and come back below and wait for a breakout for it to come back down or for it to go back up. So, but I do believe it's gonna trade in between this channel. I'm just gonna hold on to my stocks for the meantime but if you wanted to play any kind of trades in between these two channels marks right here, play this trade right here if you wanted to. So, but that's all for the chart this week over on Thinkorswim. So yeah guys, I am enjoying making these AMD weekly updates. If you guys are enjoying it as well, make sure you hit the thumbs up button to let me know that I need to keep making these videos. Also, while you're down there hitting the thumbs up button, make sure that you subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out on any future videos. The platforms I use in this video was Robin Hood. If you want a free stock, click the link down in the description, sign up and you'll get a free stock just for signing up. And if you wanna learn how to do technical analysis, let me know in the comment sections and I'll probably make a tutorial video. But other than that, I'm Zeke, bringing you to Dream Green Show and I'm out. Peace.


Hello and how are you all today? My name is Priyanka and I shall be helping you with the following question. See, integrate the following rational functions. Now, the function which we need to integrate is x upon x minus 1 the whole square multiplied by x plus 2. Now here, we can see that the integrant is a proper rational function.  Now on taking the LCM, we have x upon x minus 1 the whole square into x plus 2 in the left hand side is equal to a into x minus 1 the whole square. Sorry, x minus 1 into x plus 2 plus b into x plus 2 and plus c into x minus 1 the whole square. Hold upon x minus 1 into x minus 2 the whole square into x in the whole divided by x minus 1 the whole square into x plus 2 that is the LCM. Now, putting the value of x equal to 1 in the above equation numerator we get 1 is equal to a 1 minus 1 multiplied by 1 plus 2 plus p into 1 plus 2 plus c 1 minus 1 the whole square that is giving us the value of p as 1 by 3.  So, we have the value of c as minus 2 by 9 and lastly on comparing the coefficients of x square in both sides we get 0 is equal to a plus c that is the value of a is minus c that implies the value of a is minus of minus 2 by 9 that gives us the value as 2 by 9. So, we can write the function x upon x minus 1 the whole square into x plus 2 is equal to a that is 2 by 9 into x plus x minus 1 plus 1 upon 3 into x minus 1 the whole square minus 2 by 9 into x plus 2. Now, integrating both the sides we have x upon x minus 1 the whole square into x plus x plus 2 the whole square into dx that is not in whole square is equal to integral of 2 upon 9 x minus 1 into dx plus dx upon 3 into x minus 1 the whole square minus 2 upon 9 x plus 2 dx.  So, we can write the answer as 2 by 9 log x minus 1 upon x plus 2 minus 1 upon 3 into x minus 1 plus c and this is the answer to the question. Hope you enjoyed and understood it too. Have a nice day.


Hello friends! How are we all doing? I'm acting as if I'm happy, but I'm not. I'm actually really not happy because today it is time for our January Wrap Up, which was undoubtedly my worst reading month ever in my entire life. It is an experience for me to go through how I want to. That might seem dramatic, but it's not. I had a terrible, terrible start to my reading year. I don't even want to talk about it. I don't want to do a wrap up. It's probably going to be quite quick because I don't like dwelling in the negativity, but we're going to talk about it today and then we're going to expunge it from a memory because this just makes me sad. Generally, I want, like, I want to love everything I read. As we know, that's like my whole goal of this year and it started off an absolutely diabolical, crazy, inhumane start. I shouldn't have to go through this! As we're getting to, I barely read this month in terms of, for me, how much I usually read. I barely read. I actually didn't read anything for the first 11 days of the year, I don't think, because I was so ill at the start of the year. So I barely read anything and my average rating was the worst on record. It was the worst since records began. How humiliating and degrading. It's so bad, guys. Why has, why? I'm a nice person. I shouldn't have to go through this. Anyways, if you've watched my raps before, you'll know we go through this reading stats first, then we go through all the books and I tell you what their individual ratings were and then we go through just disappointment, surprises and hits. This month, there are no hits. As we'll get into, I will tell you now, I did have two 4.5s this month, but one was a reread that I'm on my third reread of and usually I give it a five star and I gave it a 4.5 this time, which, you know, it's still a five star overall but this reread was a 4.5. And then the last book I read in January was a 4.5 but it's coming up for this weekend's vlog and I don't want to tell you. You guys, I've spoken to you about this on Instagram before. Like, do you want me to tell you these books where I've read to them in the previous month but the reading vlog isn't out yet? You said no. Keep the suspense and I think that's the right decision. I don't think we should talk about it. So I think it's quite a momentous occasion that happens in the vlog and I don't want to ruin its moment that it has. So I did have two 4.5s so I technically do have one hit because I wouldn't class a rereader as a hit. So I do have one hit but we can't talk about it. So there's no hits. Overwhelmingly negative. Shall we get into it and start with the reading stats? Okay, so in terms of number of books read, I read eight books in January which for me, it's very low. I'm so sad. It's very low. For me, I usually average I'd say between 12, let's say 11 and 15 books a month. I can't remember the last time I read eight books in a month. Yeah, let's wrap up here for me. I have not felt really because my reading has been so bad. I have not really felt a motivation to read. Even now, right now, speaking now, like eight days in February, I'm still not feeling that. I'm hoping that will come later into the month but like I'm behind on my reading because I'm not feeling it and I don't know what's wrong. I need to like, I haven't really read properly since like the Goodreads video. Maybe that Goodreads video just burns me out. No, it's my favorite version of it. I'm never stopping doing that. But yeah, since like the end of like mid, mid kind of mid December, I haven't really been in my reading game. So I'm just craving, I was thinking about this last night as I was falling asleep, like I was picturing the type of book I wish I could read and it's like a feel like I'd love a mystery that I'd love or I'd love like some kind of gothic like really atmospheric book that I'd like. I just want something that really ignites me. I need to be like given a bit of a restart, you know what I mean? I need a book that comes along and jolts me awake and I haven't had that yet this year. In terms of pages read, I read 2297 pages which is low for me that averages out to a 74 pages per day, which we like to be over 100 at the very least. 74 pages per day and an average pages per book of 287. Now let's talk about the average rating. My average rating this month is a three on the dot three, three stars, three stars. No. What? No. I want us to remember my average rating forever is a 3.7. The average rating I'm aiming to get above this year is a 3.8. We are off to a diabolical start. My worst ever reading month I've had before this I think was like May last year and that was a 3.11. Three. Average rating of three. Doesn't that sound to shiver down your spine? Like what? Horrible, horrible, horrible. And then the average time a book has spent on my TBR was six months. That is like completely skewed at either end of the spectrum. I had one book that had been on my TBR 10 months. I had a one book that had been on my TBR for 41 months, which was one of the, which was the book I read for Wrapped Up this month because they're all the oldest books my TBR and everything else had only been on my TBR for like a day and been on my TBR for a month. Oh and I have started tracking my spending, which I told you guys I was going to do. In January I spent, this isn't great, I spent 86 pounds on books, which is a lot higher than average for me because most of the books I had to read in January and I'm reading at the start of February I had to buy for those vlogs, whereas I don't have to for a lot of my videos coming up. So yeah 86 pounds is kind of diabolical. That's how much I spent on books in January. Okay let's get into the charts quickly because this is the only fun thing we've got to talk about let's be honest. In terms of genre, I read five fantasy, one mystery, one romance and one sci-fi. In terms of the formatting of the books I read six novels and two novellas. In terms of writings I had one one star, one two star, one 2.5 star, two three stars, one 3.5 and two 4.5 for the average rating three, dear god. In terms of all the status I read two debuts, five authors that were new to me and one author that I'd read from before. So that might be part of the issue. Maybe in the next few months I need to prioritize reading from authors that I've read from before and know I enjoy because usually that's 50-50 for me between authors I read from before and authors that are debut and new to me. So that being like an obvious statistic that is different from the usual might be might give us a pointer. In terms of the source type, the way I read the book, one was an audiobook and seven were mixtures meaning I had the audiobook and the physical book. I need the audiobooks at the moment. Usually that is not the case. Usually I have quite a few books I read a month where I just read the physical. I'm in need of audiobooks right now to get to get through life. We need this. This is essential. This is a crisis. In terms of how I acquired the books, five of the books I bought for myself, one was from Everand and two were gifted to me. In terms of audience, seven were adult and one was YA. Sorry I'm just not reading YA anymore. It's a problem I know. And then in terms of series stats, three were first in a series but I'm not continuing any of those series so I have not started any series this year. One was a series that I'm part way through, one was a companion and six were stand-alones. Okay I think that is all of our stats. Let's get into the books that I read this month and their ratings. So the first book I read this month was Emily Wilds and Cyclopedia of Ferries by Heather Fawcett which I gave three stars. Then I read Godkiller by Hannah Canair which I gave two stars. Uprooted by Naomi Novick which I gave one star. Then me and Tom listened together to Every Heart of Dora by Sean McGuire. This was my reread which I gave 4.5 stars on this reread. We're going to be listening to the way we're trying to do together in the car. We've decided because our audio book choices. And I read River Woman, River Demon by Jennifer Given which I gave 2.5 stars. The Team Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard which I gave three stars. The Book Eaters by Sunny Dean which I gave 3.5 stars. And then a secret book that I gave 4.5 but I can't tell you about. Okay let's get into the disappointments which is the bulk of the rest of this Okay my number one disappointment was uprooted by Naomi Novick. I won't spend too long on this because there is an entire reading vlog just for this book but I gave this one star. Oh my god this was so diabolically boring. I keep saying diabolical for everything but genuinely feels how it is how it feels. I feel like there's a scooby-doo villain like plaguing my life at the moment and like controlling me in my reading. That is so mean. This is about a girl who lives in this village where there's this magician they all call the dragon. He's not a dragon. This is me off. Don't call him a dragon if he's not a dragon. Who takes a girl every 10 years from the village to work for him and she gets chosen and she maybe can do magic. That's it. This was so boring. This was so wrong and nothing happened. Nothing happened. For a stand-in fantasy I don't understand the point of this. I don't understand the point of it. So many people told me I was going to love this. This is like one of I looked back on it. I got this in September 2020. September 2020. That's been on my TBR for a long time. So many people told me I didn't join this because I loved Bare the Nightingale series by Katherine Arden. They're kind of similar in terms of their this like slow enchanting supposedly fantasy with kind of Russian. I think this is more like other European like other Eastern European country inspired but like that kind of you know part of the world inspired fantasy. Oh I didn't vibe with the writing and here's the thing. I've heard from so many people that this isn't as good as Spinning Silver but I wanted to read this before I was Spinning Silver because this came out first and also it used to be on Goodreads marked as a series but it's not. But I remember getting this because I went and looked on Goodreads and they were marked as a series but they're not. It's a conspiracy theory that I'm actually interested in. And yet I really thought me and Naomi Novick would get along but the writing cut the cameras. I just was so bored. I was so bored. I did not think it was pace well. I did not think any of the characters had any kind of characterization. I thought the romance was godawful. I thought it's all terrible. I don't have a single nice thing to say about this book. And my mom always said...  I don't like being mean. I avoid confrontation. I'm actually very bad at confrontation. In my personal life I like I would do anything to keep everyone happy. I do not like confrontation but at last Naomi Novick you have pushed me to the brink because I hated this. I hated it. I hated it. I think it's really bad. Moving on. Let's talk about a big disappointment because the first 100 pages of this had the potential to be five-star with a woman with a demon. We have a woman whose husband is accused of murdering their close friend and she is photographic if he's innocent. I was gonna say she's trying to like help defend him but she's not. Girl I loved the first 100 pages of this. I thought the mischievous set up in a really interesting way. Our girly practices like magic informs and I thought that was really interesting. She was very interesting in the first 100 pages. Very interesting characters from the perspective of dear god did it go downhill. She... well they're speechless. The last 100 pages of this is probably a one-star. We've averaged out to a 2.5 because I got whiplash reading this book. I don't know how to deal with that. She makes the worst decisions and she has these kids right. She's a kind of an age layer. I think they're like seven and ten or something. They're young. She... can I spoil it? No I don't want to spoil it because this is like a new book. I usually only spoil like older books or like books I don't think anyone's gonna read. I just need to talk to someone who's read this about how awful the decision she makes half everything this book is and what it puts her kids through. It's actually psychotic. Let's just say she does something really bad like she should not be doing in this situation. Yes she's a complex character I understand why she's doing it but her daughter walks in on this and is visibly so upset. Remember her dad has just been arrested for murder. Her dad has just been arrested for murder and she this woman is like she just goes and runs up to her daughter and holds her face in her hands and says like darling or something. That's it. No explanation and when the kids are not happy with this current situation and what their mother is doing she's like they're just avoiding me. I don't know what's going on. Her son has stopped speaking. It's absolutely crazy and it's not written in a way where I really feel like the author is really condemning what she's doing. It's just supposed to be a fun time. This isn't a fun time in my opinion. Not a fun time and let me just say this is a mild spoiler but there are no repercussions for actions. This terrible thing that I view it as it's not so much what the action necessarily is. It's her role as a mother and what it is doing to her kids and how selfless she's being that I object to most. Yet there's no repercussions for it at the end. It was so disappointing because I really thought there was going to be a success here and there wasn't. Then I read Godkiller by Hannah Kinnear for my Patreon book club. This is a fantasy about... That's quite dramatic. I give it to self because God knows what's going on in this book. There's like gods but I think they're like human made and we're following three characters. One's a young girl who has a little god that like is attached to her.  We're following these characters and they end up like merging together on a journey. Nothing happens in this. Nothing happens. The writing felt very debuied. The pacing was bad. I think this is going to be a trilogy. I think it could have been a geology because they failed spoiler alert. Mild spoilers. Nothing is achieved in this book. The quests they go on, nothing is achieved right? Nothing. You don't come out of this book feeling any kind of satisfaction and it really just felt like to me a book that really thought it was clever and really thought it was doing something and it wasn't. You're so clever.  You know this fantasy where it's like oh this is so like intelligent you know and it's not. The world building feels so incomplete because it kind of like keeps having inside jokes for itself. Like it keeps referring to that war or things that happened but the world building at the same time this happens a lot.  I can't understand the dynamics between people and gods. We love them but we want to kill them. I don't get it. No get it, don't get it. And then our last disappointment. I won't spend too long on them again because there is a whole reading vlog and I know it's traumatic. I don't want to speak about it but it's not as big a disappointment because it was a three star but Emilia Wiles and Psychopathia for Fairies is a disappointment because I thought it was going to be a five star. I picked it as my first book of the year. Everything is maybe all leads back to Emilia Wiles. It's all it's for. Maybe. My superstition is coming true. I don't get a five star as my first book of the year. Everything is ruined. We're following Emilia Wiles who is making an Encyclopedia of Fairies. She's studying the fairies and it's like a romance also between her and this guy. I did not like this guy. I did not like his guy. I didn't like the romance. Everything else, the footnotes in it, I really enjoyed the setting. It felt like Norway inspired. I love having visited Norway. It felt so vivid and I could really imagine the fairies and that setting. I thought it was so cool but the romance, uh-uh-uh, and when it really is a romanticy, I think this could be class as a romanticy. We're in trouble. I'm not fiving with the romance. Am I yet to read a book that could be class as a romanticy that I have enjoyed? If anyone can think of one, please let me know. Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, is that her name? It's probably the closest. I think I gave that like a 3.5. That's probably the best we've had and I am going to continue on that series. So that's where my hope is because Regency, that's like another plus point for me, but every other romanticy I've read, I think they're cringe. Yeah, I'm going to say it. I've never read a romanticy that isn't cringe.  Oh, and so I just, you know, we need some positivity here. Let's have, let's talk about one surprise that I've got and it's not even really a surprise but I just, you know, I can't speak to you about my 4.5, which I did really enjoy. This one is the next best we've had. And it was The Book Eaters by Sun Yudin. I gave this a 3.5. There were a lot of elements of this I really enjoyed. It just didn't quite do it for me. We're following Devin, who is a book eater. So she like eats books, right? And she's trying to defend and help her son who is like a, like an offshoot they have.  It was fine. See what I mean? We've gone too into the negativity. I can't, I know I can't break myself out of it. No, there was a lot I knew about this. I thought the writing was very interesting. I thought the book was paced very well. I thought I had a lot of very interesting and unique ideas. I liked how unique it was. You know, I haven't read something with this idea and the kind of world building felt very unique. It was a dual timeline, which I didn't hate. Yes, it was a timeline I preferred. You know, this is like Taylor Soda's time, but I guess we could say the dual timelines surprised me because I didn't hate it. That's all I've got. I've been so negative for the whole video. I can't break out. I can't say nice things. Just know I did quite enjoy this. That's enough. Hopefully February's will be more positive. So there we have everyone. That was my January wrap up. Absolutely horrible, horrible. I can't believe I've got put through this. But let me know how your January went. Was your January reading any better? Please say it was because I need some positive vibes for my life. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you soon in another video. Bye!


Welcome to Access to Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, happy Monday everybody. Welcome to another edition of the AccessToTrader.com nightly wrap up show. So after the worst performing month in the last 20 years on the S&P, at the end of the third quarter with a lot of frowns going into the weekend, the Dow Jones Industrial Average today was definitely, you know, definitely the leader, right? Definitely the leader, big rally, 700 plus points, everything was great, right? There's two problems, right? The two problems are, we've seen this before, okay? We've seen this before, you know, rising above its ashes to, you know, to reclaim the throne, all that good stuff, right? We've seen this before. We saw this two days ago, well, three days ago, after we had a really, really big rally, they reclaimed the five day moving average only to give back the whole day and then Friday completely implode taking out the whole channel in itself. And today we kind of did the same thing, right?  The Nasdaq, I guess you could call it a rally, right? We were up 200 points on the Nasdaq. Okay, cool, cool, cool. How is it our point, right? From our point of view, if you're a trader on a day-to-day basis, how are we supposed to get excited about today's session, right? We had the opportunity three days ago. If you guys remember, if you guys remember the video from three days ago, I said was everything's literally on watch and I may actually made a joke about it. I go, there's 765 stocks on watch going to tomorrow's session. I narrowed it down to 765 stocks because I don't want to get distracted by the noise. I was joking, right? Obviously it was joking. This was three days ago and the next day the market failed. So we rallied again today, right? We rallied again today after just a massive sell-off. We hit the 10-day moving average on the Dow Jones, right? If you look at the S&P 500, I'll use the spy as a proxy. We got rejected off the 10-day moving the average off the spies. And if you look at the Qs, the Qs just didn't even take out Friday's highs. So again, I'm not a bull. I'm not a bear. I'm a realist. I'm an opportunist, right? In fact, and we'll get to the pivots in a second. In fact, the most basic rule of trading and technical analysis, and again, if you've been watching these videos, for a while, this isn't the first time you hear me say this. But for an order of stock to go higher, not to be up on the day, but for a stock to go higher, it has to take out and build above its previous days high. If a stock to go lower, it needs to get below the previous day low and build below their prices. And if you look at a lot of names, they didn't do that, right? You look at the leaders. For example, Apple, right? Apple didn't take out the previous days high. If you look at the Qs, look where the Qs stopped. The Qs stopped at Friday's highs. When you look at names, for example, like Amazon, right? If you look at Amazon, again, I'm just going through the leaders, right? Amazon stopped right. Look at Friday's high, right? Friday's high was $1692. Today's high was $1691. Tell me technical analysis is not cool, right? But my point is, you know, if this was three, four days ago, at least, you know, I went into the next day. I'm like, okay, we're going to give the bulls every opportunity to succeed. I'm excited for the bull side.  I'd love to buy some stocks, but I'd like to buy some stocks technically. And when you look at today's session, it felt like there were, even the stocks were moving high. And you could see there's a lot of strength in the market. But even when you look at technology today and you saw how the stocks were moving, it really did look like kind of pushing a piano up a hill. Okay? It's like almost sitting in the corner and your mom always tells you, watch out for that weird uncle of yours. You're like this kind of, you know, looking at sideways to make sure that, you know, the guy's not doing anything crazy. And that's at least what it felt like to me. Okay? I took some, I took some scalps to the downside. Again, we'll talk about the pivots in a second. But what I did take about today's session was it was very, very, it felt very forced. I don't know if a lot of guys will feel that way, but it felt very, very forced. Again, if you look at a lot of names, they did very, very well. But when you look at a lot of names where they stopped, right? Think about it, you need space for the market to run. It stopped at the top of the range. You look at Apple, it stopped at the top of the range. Right? Again, granted, it's close to busting out. Q stopped at the top of the range. So I want to, again, let's kind of, let's kind of just take what we were three days ago and fast forward it into tonight's session. I want to give the bulls the benefit of the outfit tomorrow. I do. I actually have some longs that I'm watching tomorrow, but I also have some shorts that I'm watching tomorrow. Because again, how many times can we get disappointed by more than a one day wonder, right? More than a one minute man. Pretty obvious. Alley up to myself. That's what she said. Right? But my point is we've seen this movie before. We've seen what happens the next day. And a lot of people that are walking into the next day's surprise that the market fails, they're kind of like, you know, looking at the market like, you know, the market has 12 heads. The only way you could really capitalize on the full move today in the market, you would have had to be long overnight, like literally get long on Friday's close. But after the market closes, after the numbers that they put up on the scoreboard, I mean, you would have had to be on some tremendous pills to do so. So it was a very, very, it felt like to me, like I said before, it felt like a very forced day. We got a rally, right? We got a rally. They posted a very, very impressive number on the board, right? 765 on the Dow Jones, 200 on the NASDAQ. Okay. All right, let's see what happens. Again, we've been here before. It's like being in a relationship that your significant other, they just cheated on you, right? They cheated on you here. They're all the next day to disappoint you. And now the significant other is telling you, I promise I'll never do it again. I'll never do it again. I swear I'll never do it again. And you forgive them again. Okay, we'll see, right? So going into tomorrow, okay, I'm going to give the bulls the benefit of the Dow for the first 30, 40 minutes, maybe an hour, right? But hell, I am ready for what happens if we do fail today's channel and start moving downwards. And that's kind of where we are right now. If you look at the overall thesis of this bear market, bear market cycle, since the day we lost that big, big move down on the CPI, that's what it's been. It's been down, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up to be determined for tomorrow's session. So the one thing that I did see today that I didn't see today, as long as a number of stocks, a number of leaders didn't take out the previous day's channel, which is super duper important for rally. But what I didn't see today, what you usually do see when you have a multi-day situation that you potentially could have a couple of days in a row of rallying, we really didn't see any option, you know, we really didn't see any option exploration short-term contracts to expire. We didn't really see anything. We really didn't see any deep out of the money calls that expired on Friday, right? Like I saw today, you know, they came for the 16th or the 17th on Amazon. Okay, that's where we are right now, right? 16th, 17th, they came for the 40 ones on Microsoft. Okay, that's where we are now. So it's very, very tough for me to get excited. But again, this is why we take the necessary preparation to make sure the next day, right? We're thinking logically. We're not disappointed. We don't have any expectations, right? I did have some strong expectations right here on September the 28th, which we didn't follow through. But again, I've learned my lesson from the cheating spouse. Maybe they'll do it again. Maybe I could forgive them. We could take this relationship to the next level. But my point is, again, we already have a history of disappointment. We have a history of failure. So why put yourself in a situation going into tomorrow saying to yourself, well, here's what I expect. No expectations equals no disappointments. Be level-headed. Have a game plan from both sides of the market. And let the market dictate to the next level where we're going to go next. So again, for me, it's pretty simple here. Look, you see the high from Friday, right? The high from Friday is $275.19, right? Everybody see that? You see the high from today, $275.16, right? You think that's a random number stop? Again, technical analysis is freaking cool. Just the same way Amazon stopped, right? Amazon stopped at Friday's high, right? Friday's high was $1,692. Today's high was $1,691. So it's pretty basic stuff, man. You know, look, if the market's going to rally, if the queue's going to rally, we're going to need to get above this $275.20 and start building for a push to $277. And again, it's not the bottom of the market. Nobody's calling for a bottom. But if the market is going to rally, don't we at least need to take out Friday's highs and today's highs and start building? So if it does build, we could get a move in the queues to $277. If Amazon, for example, you know, if Amazon starts getting above this channel here, why can't we get a move to $18.70 and ultimately $21 if there's going to be a multi-day rally? But there is a flip side to that as well. And that flip side, for example, is Tesla. For all you guys who've been watching this broadcast for the last couple of weeks, there's two things we kept on talking about over and over and over again. How the institutional money flow was betting, right? Was absolutely betting against the AI day and against the delivery day, right? Over and over and over. It didn't make a difference what the market was. They were coming for the $265 puts. They were coming for the $260 puts. And notably, we talked about the November expiration. They came for the $244 puts because nobody believed in, or at least nobody believed in the directional bias that Tesla was even moving, even when it attempted to bounce. And they started even buying those contracts into strength. And it was very, very important. And over the weekend, if you saw the AI event on Friday, you know, I chuckled a little bit. You know, again, I love Tesla. I traded long. I traded short. I love Tesla. I have no ill will feel about it. But when you saw that demonstration about AI, I guess it was cool. You know, it also was kind of cool when like three grown men trying to hold up the robot. So it didn't fall over. So I chuckled to that. And then on, you know, I knew right away, you know, it was going to be, there was a shot. This thing could be a really, really good setup. And then later on Sunday, they came out with the deliveries, right? And they had some good numbers. The problem is they missed it by X amount of cars.  The question for me today was how much was it going to be down? How much room were we going to have? Congratulations. I know a good handful of you guys had Tesla puts over the weekend. Unfortunately, I did not have a position over the weekend on the short side of Tesla, which sucked and basically left me with scalp mode into the day. And, you know, fortunately, we got a couple of scalps on it, but nothing, if it would have opened up in the day. And I've been talking about this for like two, three days. I even talked about it on the weekend video. I go, man, this thing could have just opened a green. This one had been such a great trade below this 261 channel. But again, it's disappointment, right? Sometimes you get disappointments such as life again and get used to it. So we were left with basically scalps, right? And, you know, my whole pre-market prep was literally to the downside. I don't think we had one pivot to the upside, but that's okay, right? That's okay because that's where the value was. The most ironic part today, all the value was to the downside. If you look at Amazon, I still like this thing got down to this level here. It didn't just kind of stalled out. NVIDIA never got here. Abbey never got here. ADM never got here. Pepsi stopped exactly at 163. 165 was a nice move on Friday. Clock never got below 302. So I'm just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, Kellogg. And here came Tesla, right? So Tesla, again, and I say this all the time. When you're a brand new trader, you think every trade is then in the world. Every trade needs to be huge. Every trade needs to be huge. You like every trade to be huge, but it doesn't need to be huge. And that's the whole point of it's called manufacturer run. So here's the game plan, right? 250, a gap down like 12, 13 points pre-market. 1250, 60 minute support. If it builds below, can test the pre-market lows, which were 248. And if measure potential could be to 238, blah, blah, blah, blah. If there's an upside, we'll watch the 10 o'clock. There was no upside. So Tesla cracks. Tesla took out this 250 level. You know, let me show you really quickly. Tesla took out this 250 level, you know, went to like 46 and changed, and then rallied, and then came back a little bit and didn't rally a lot. But the point is it rallied a little bit, ultimately set, you know, set lows of the day of 241. Big move. But again, I had two separate scalps on this thing, one on a sneaky, sneaky pivot off this 40, 44 level. The first one was off this 48 and change level to the 46, but it wasn't even close. Again, it could have been below the daily channel versus the reality of what it was off a couple of scalps off different pivots throughout the day, not even close, but again, it is what it is. Sometimes you just don't get what you want. Doc, you never got down to 51. Snow was actually pretty good, right? Snow was actually, again, it's so ironic. But again, all the value was to the downside just because at least in the beginning of the day, nothing was taking out the highs. Nothing was taking out the previous day's highs. Again, we have no choice. You can't buy stock in anticipation of taking out the previous day high. It doesn't work that way. So, snow was actually pretty good. There was a couple of bucks on this thing really quickly. 64 and a quarter for builds below can flush. Here was snow and obviously reversed like everything else, but this was a nice little move here. Here was the, look at the move here, right? It took out the 64, excuse me, right here. It took out the 64 and a quarter. I'm sorry, right here. It took out the 64 and a quarter. That was also the daily low, right? It took out the 61 and change very, very quickly, very, very fast that you could see here. That was the daily chart. That's where it got the 64 and a quarter. And that's it. So, going into tomorrow, again, cues got rejected, excuse me, got rejected on Friday's highs. Obviously, they need to reclaim. Spies and the diamonds got rejected off the 10-day moving average. They obviously have to reclaim. So, going into tomorrow, my thinking is, all right, look, you cheated on us once. We forgive you, right? See, can we continue to forgive you and prolong this relationship or are you going to disappoint us again? Guys, God bless everybody. Have a great, wonderful Monday. Have a great, wonderful Tuesday. And I'll see you tomorrow night for another episode. Take care.