Hello and welcome to episode 57 of the market maker podcast and to quickly give you an overview of what we're going to cover in today's episode really three major things. First one is the incredible move that we've had in nickel, probably something that not many of you I'd imagine listening are actively investing in that as a metal, or trading it, but there's been some insane price movements in that product. The mother of all squeezes, some would call it and we'll explain what is a short squeeze. I'm sure many of you are familiar with probably GameStop is the dictionary definition of that in recent history, but we'll go back into that. So why did that price surge happen, what does it mean, and also the fact that that particular product is traded in the London metal exchange, which is one of the only remaining physical pits that exists from way back in the day when there's just a bunch of people in literally a ring shouting at each other and we'll explain a little bit more about how that actually works in practice so we'll talk about that. Amazon probably caught the news they have announced a 20 for one stock split and a $10 billion buyback since the first split since 1999 and the fourth since Amazon IPO in 1997 so we'll talk a little bit about stock splits. Why would they do that. How does it work. Is it actually important. Their shares actually dig up 6% which I'm quite keen to put peers the theory to work to see if if it doesn't change a stock price in itself or the company's valuation nonetheless shares were rallying on the back of that so we'll look to pick that apart. And then the final one we want to delve into is the fund manager PIMCO apparently has billions of dollars riding on the economic fallout from Putin's invasion of Ukraine after amassing a wager of at least $1 billion in derivative markets that the country will not default. Also holding around one and a half billion US dollars of sovereign debt tied to Russia so brave or tactical well I'm sure we'll find out but peers how's how's your week been how you doing. Hi yeah it's been a rollercoaster of a week from a markets point of view I don't know what the guys listening if you've got any positions on if you've got any trades on but certainly the sort of Well the energy space has been up and down so certainly some some PNL swings let's say but you know outside of that yeah it's been a really busy week we've been getting stuck in on a load of stuff we actually were running out well an FX trading competition for UBS. Yesterday where we got some students that UBS well they want to find some talented students to hire and so we decided that we'd put them through a test of trying to trade live the ECB press conference and the US CPI data simultaneously. So yeah to say it was a bit of a baptism of five of them was was quite interesting but yeah good to work with with UBS out in the Switzerland office actually so that was interesting. Yeah I mean that certainly we should not not mention the fact that US CPI and ECB meeting also happened this week because you'll probably notice I've excluded them they didn't make the top three finish this this week and that's because US CPI. And for the month of February came in at a 40 year high I never thought I'd be sat here talking to you going. Oh yeah CPI just nearly 8% came in at a 40 year high 7.9% now let's not talk about that's pretty boring right. Well and and on the ECB although mainly Dallas as normal it was if anything a slight hawkish surprise. Now I don't know when when was the last time you spoke a sentence that included ECB and hawkish surprise in the same sentence and that's going to be the first time. Well that was when my man Trichet Hike raids. Well yeah 2011 right so probably the most hawkish meeting since 2011 and actually you know what it's not it doesn't even make the top top five talking points for the week yeah it's quite remarkable what's happening out there. And then and just to put this into perspective for anyone kind of now having that question in their head well what was hawkish about it in summary they unexpectedly accelerated its winding down of its monetary policy support that it's had in place so to put it in its most simple terms and actually they had this emergency bomb buying program called the PEP the pandemic emergency purchase program and that's sat on top of their existing QE program called the asset purchase program so not too many acronyms going on here but you've got a PEPP sat on top of your APP. So the PEPP basically has been signalled for a while that's going to end this month which is the emergency one because as we know we're coming out of COVID and X Russia things were improving. So that's already in the in the timetable but the asset purchase program is actually going to bump up temporarily they're going to increase the base QE program to facilitate the smoothing out of ending the emergency one. And then what they're going to do then is then they've outlined a specific timetable yesterday. And they basically said we're going to decrease now to the tune of x and each month will go down incrementally by 10 billion euros essentially.  I mean, these sorts of things are. I mean, the market hasn't really reacted in a sustained fashion at the time yesterday. There was a brief move when all this came out because as you as you said it was a bit of a bit of a surprise. It's a surprise being the fact that they're so definitive in their communication. Normally they're a lot more flexible with the wording says. They increase the inflation forecast up and dramatically so but remember markets are already expecting that and that was really the take home point of why we're kind of dismissing CPI if anyone's going 8% what are you guys talking about it's the fact that markets are expecting the direction of travel is well known and this figure is going to go even higher because inflation was already moving. It's going to go well north, even before this commodity squeeze we're getting now across the board which is going to just pump it up even further so hence we brush that aside but yeah the other thing I wanted to mention was kind of two things one. I actually met up with friend of mine from university last night. One of the one of the chaps that we've had on during our summer analyst training program where we get people in from different companies different industries and he's been a Goldman Goldman Sachs for the past 15 years and he was over from the states he lives out there now Colorado. He came back, something I was him yesterday and met some of his colleagues actually and it was really interesting because I was telling them about what amplify does the Amphibian missions stuff like that. And one guy was saying, he reckons that about 20% of the new people who work at Goldman's are in the wrong role, or not probably the role of which he sees that they probably would flourish in and be the best performing in. 20% that is interesting. And that's because I guess they don't well up until this point banks haven't been able to necessarily measure someone's potential skill set, right, your potential to possibly be able to do a role well in the future. I mean, had you right so that I guess that's what our simulations do is basically measuring someone's potential to do a role that they've never done before. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it was it was just quite quite eye opening it was just like, it's just reinforcement I guess of what we do and it's kind of like. Yeah, this is got to it's got to change so yeah anyone listening if you've not taken part in one of the finance accelerator simulations, we run them weekly, and it's open to anyone and everyone. I'll drop the link, if you want to take part in the show notes so check that out and the second thing is I'll drop a second link, which is yesterday I put out a super comprehensive guide to LinkedIn. But the reason why I did that is because I did a session with Birmingham City University, which is not a target traditional target university, but they're the students I love talking to the most, because in my mind they're the ones who, you know, need the mentoring the assistants to support almost the most and some of them, a lot of them didn't even have a LinkedIn account so if you're a student. Yes, I know a lot of you are very astute you've got it all, you know rocking and rolling on that front for many of you who don't super important, but I guess the best thing is all the next question is, where do you start and so go on my LinkedIn I'll drop the link again in the show notes of this episode. There's a 17 page guide and it's all visually driven it's not text so don't worry it's not 17 pages of boredom. But it will, it will basically guide you through every single step and you know people think about what just stick a photo up and put your job title. Now I'm talking like the secret source that will get you noticed that will make your profile stand out. So check that out I didn't put it together I just sourced it from actually it was a recruitment company. But yeah, even I learned old dog like me learned a few new tricks this week from that guide so definitely check that out. All right, well let's talk about then the first thing, which is this this nickel move. So nickel, which is, I guess when we talk about these metals, because I was doing a little research of okay what metals get traded in the ring which we'll get to the moment and it was like cobalt lithium molybdenum. I can't even say that one. Don't make me repeat that one. But there's lots of metals I guess that people wouldn't encounter in a normal sense like gold like precious basically so so I suppose top level the division of metals being base or precious precious being the ones we're more familiar with, heavily using so gold, silver, platinum, palladium, these types of things, but we're talking more on the base industrial metal side. And I guess where this fits into the equation is stainless steel. When we're talking about nickel, that's the predominant factor but then also electric vehicle batteries and the price of nickel this week searched as much as 250% in two days to trade briefly above 100,000 bucks a tonne. So, yeah, just wanted to get a bit more delve into this about this insane move that happened. Yeah, what are your thoughts and what was really driving that. Well, it's a fascinating. Well, I guess, nickel prices are on the up anyway. Right. So let's start let's say from the fundamentals. I mean the biggest part of this movie has got nothing to do with fundamentals at all. So we'll get to that in a second but nickels on the up anyway for broadly two reasons and that's number one, the whole shift to electric vehicles and nickel being one of the key components in electric vehicle batteries, although not all batteries right when we talk about Tesla in a minute, but so batteries for electric vehicles right and obviously that that that demand side function has been increasing pushing up price but then obviously more recently Russia, Russia has 17% of global nickel. And so clearly like all other come on like all other commodities that Russia produces, you know prices have been surging anyway right so that that's the backdrop to this price rising but then the price just well actually on, it was on two or Monday, just absolutely started to rock it and then Tuesday just went stratospheric and the two steps to that move Mondays massive move up and then the stratospheric move on Tuesday has actually got nothing to do with fundamentals at all and it's kind of this comes down to market functionality more than anything and so what's unusual about these metals and the prices of these metals and what determines the prices is that it's yeah it's kind of taken a spot prices on in the LME the London metals exchange pit. So, or ring as they call it and this is an open outcry trading for us the only one left in Europe, obviously what's happened over the last few decades is that trading has evolved and it's gone to screens right and it's mostly screen based trading and I was actually part of that evolution when I started trading back in 2001 or sorry 2002 actually I started trading I was trading futures. Okay, and I was trading in the aftermath of what was called the life floor closing. So life li double F E was the big open outcry futures trading exchange, just by Canon Street was actually just down the road from our office in the in the city of London that closed down at the end of the 90s and everyone shifted onto screens and I joined the industry in 2002 straight as a screen based trader and the thing about trading in a pit. I don't know if anybody's in a life you go to Chicago you can see the Chicago Board of Trade they still do it there. If you ever if you ever seen movies like trading places, I mean I guess most people listening to this way too young to maybe even know what what that movie is but it's an absolute classic Eddie Murphy Dan acroid classic but anyway there's a lot of open outcry trading in that movie and it's basically. Yeah it's basically a room full of mostly large men and basically shouting and screaming and gesticulating and if you didn't know what was happening you think what it's just insane.  Yeah, it's just chaos but actually out of this chaos comes the pricing of assets globally and has a massive impact on everyone around the world who's producing or buying any of these kind of assets right but I mean from my point of view I'm a trader by profession but if I had been born probably five years earlier if I was five years younger, I wouldn't be sat here talking to you about markets. I don't think I would have been a trader. If I was born five years earlier because I don't anybody's ever met me. You'll know that my stature isn't quite. I would say peers is like Tom Cruise. It's like when you see him on on TV like wow this guy is like a superhero. And then you're like Tom sketches with an extra two inch in the summer. Put it this way I think in a trading pit physical presence is one of the really key attributes of success and let's just say my physical presence is and perhaps large enough to have you know I'd have just been swamped so literally I don't think I'd have been a trader if I was five years but anyway. So that was back but that was in 2002 when I started trading and that's when the futures markets were all screen based. Here we are 20 years later and the London metals exchange is still living and operating in what most would describe as the dark ages of this kind of weird archaic method of trading so the ring is literally they sit in a round circle the traders this is and they they gesticulate at each other and the weird thing I mean what's interesting about the way the LME operate is that each metal has five minutes of trading per day. So if you wanted to trade nickel like on the enemy floor you've literally got a five minute window to do it each day that's it you can't trade it outside of those minutes right and the one and the reason for that is liquidity. So right when markets operate efficiently and they function well and price is the price that it should be based on supply and demand fundamentals. Then you need liquidity for that that means you need lots of buyers and sellers all the time okay so if you want to buy you can buy if you want to sell you can sell and there's always counter parties available and the spread between the buying price and the selling price the bid and off of the spreads quite quite tight. So what they do is they cram all the trading into a five minute period so that there's lots of it relative to time and so the liquidity is better. Right, so that's why they do it like that. Interestingly, so this is a lot of futures so this is a futures exchange right now this exchange actually opened but I think it was 1871. The LME opened and here's an interesting stat I was reading up about that I learned today that I never knew. So when we talk about futures contracts we talk about expiry dates. So basically, I mean most people may be listening to this will know what a futures contract is but just for the benefit of those that don't. It's a derivative contract where essentially you're with a counterparty you're agreeing the details of a future trade. You're agreeing a transaction in the future you're agreeing the details today and you're agreeing price and you're agreeing the date when you're going to do the trade and you're agreeing volume. Okay, now back in the 1871 the two metals traded on the LME is basically copper and tin and that was it and all the copper would come from Chile, which to this day Chile is the biggest copper producer in the world right. But in 1871, it took three months for a shipment of copper to get from Chile to London. Now what all the manufacturers who were wanting to buy this copper what they were doing was they were as soon as the ship left the port in Chile. They wanted to fix the price that they were going to buy at when that copper arrived in three months time. So the expiry date of those copper futures was three months. And that till this very day is the most common futures expiry date on all assets. And that three months period was set because that's the amount of time it took a ship to get from Chile to London. So there you go. Right, back to the story, back to the point here. The thing about this open outcry pit is it still allows for a bit of market manipulation. Let's just say there's plenty of stories you see. So let's say you're sat in a room and let's say you wanted to buy a load of copper or nickel or whatever it is right. Let's just say your client has placed an order for you the broker in the pit to buy a load of this stuff right. Now, if everybody else knew that you wanted to buy a lot. But well then what would happen to price well they if they're the sellers right well they're going to say well I know you want to buy a load so you know what if you want to buy you're going to have to buy right up here and I'm going to raise my offer price. Okay, so if people know what you're going to do or what or what you need to do then obviously that's an advantage for them and price shifts as a result of that information. Okay, and there's plenty of stories in the pit where people have got a massive buy order to fill but what they'll do they'll go into the pit and I'll start selling. And they'll start selling and selling they want everyone to think you're a big seller so that then the price goes down.   It's actual market yeah market manipulation is illegal on exchange but this isn't on exchange. And so that's why it kind of happens so what happened this week with nickel which was going up anyway. There's this guy. Big shot is his nickname. That's a good one. I mean of all the nicknames are back in the day the big shot. I mean the big shot up to the hype though. Well this is it. He hasn't quite lived up to his height this week. Unfortunately this big shot well his name is actually Zhang Guangda. Okay, happens to be a billionaire. He's the founder of China's leading stainless steel producer. Singhsang Holdings Group. Now most of the people who are trading in the LME are the big producers. Okay, and they're trading on LME because they're wanting to hedge off their risk. So this is the metals futures product where they can hedge risk. Okay, so anyway this guy is one of the biggest players and actually China accounts for the high the biggest volume of trading activity through the London metals exchange. One of the reasons why the Hong Kong exchanges and clearing company bought the LME. So the London metals exchange is now owned by the Hong Kong exchange. And they bought it because they resented the fact that most of the world's kind of metals futures trading actually went through London when actually most of the volume was coming from China and anyway they so they wanted to get a little bit of a piece of the action. But anyway, turns out big shot turns out he's got a massive short position. Okay, in nickel futures. And what happened was the nickel price was going up. So if you're short, obviously now you're losing money. Okay, and you're losing money and what happens points you get what's called a margin call. So that's where you are requested by the exchange to post more cash on into your trading account to cover these losses that you're taking on with your short position. Okay, anyway word got out.  So what do you what do you do if you're a trader on the LME knowing that someone else has got a massive short position where you squeeze them.  And actually what you're aiming to do is force price so high by buying that you force big shot to cover his short position I close out that position by buying himself. But because he had apparently had a position up to 100,000 contracts, which is monstrous position, what happened was when he started to buy, well then the price just shot through the roof.  So market manipulation with insider knowledge of how someone else is positioned. And really, this can only happen on there aren't many markets you can do this on still the LME is one of them, and they don't have any kind of checks in place that an electronic on it, you know, exchange would have like circuit breakers we call them. Where if the market price moves by a certain percentage then actually market closes. And then they have they have closed trading and nickel right for the rest of this week at this point. Well, well this is the dodgy thing. If you want to get the conspiracy theory. Basically they closed they halted trading. All right, nickel went through $100,000 a ton. They halted trading and you know what they did they canceled all trades that took place on Tuesday. And what's going to happen is they're going to reopen the market. They haven't said when, and they haven't said how they're going to do that. But and therefore we got no idea what's the price going to be. I think there's back backdoor conversations happening amongst all parties to find the common ground of pricing. Well, the Chinese will prevail. The Hong Kong exchange owns the LME and their biggest customers are Chinese customers. So who do you think is going to win? Because basically big shot. I said, look, I'm not closing out my position. He closed out only a small part of it, which created this spike. What his position is, I'm not, I'm staying put. You can do price can do whatever it wants. I'm not posting more. And just to give this some like a reference point in a monetary value. So he suffered apparently over $2 billion worth of loss at the moment. Yeah. I think it doesn't matter what happens to price. I'm not posting more margin and I'm not closing out my position. What are you going to do about it? So, so it's just for the benefit of people listening then. An exchange makes money through transactions, right? So just to make that clear about the, the rock and a hard place the exchanges in to facilitate Mr Big Shot. Yeah. I mean, they shouldn't have allowed that their mistake was allowing him to have such a large position. Because now basically his position. So the other thing about the LME is it's all physical delivery. I don't want to get into too much technical detail about derivatives here, but it's physical delivery of the metal. So in three months time, that future trade I was talking about where you agree in the details today, well then that trade actually physically takes place. And the physical delivery is based on the supply of metal that's in the LME's metal warehouses across the world, right? But Big Shot's short position is so large that actually, if it had to be physically delivered, there isn't enough nickel. There isn't enough physical nickel in the LME's warehouses to actually deliver on that trade. So they enabled him to take up a position that's way in excess of the actual physical amount available, which they should never have done. And here they are now where they're backed into a nightmare. And it'll be just really interesting to see how they get out of it. And yeah, as you say, they're obviously going to favor themselves and their biggest clients. And so the kind of second order impact of this is EVs. So manufacturers of autos like Volkswagen made a comment this week, there were others who are kind of stopping orders at this point of where we're trying to move, which is more adoption of electric vehicles. With emissions changes and government ruling and so forth. But this is going to be hugely problematic, right? We already have going through that supply chain shock of COVID. Throw in the mix now what's happening here, which is a, you know, there's so many different layers to the soft agricultural impact that that will have on food prices to many different countries, particularly those heavily dependent in Africa. But now you've got this as well for the auto industry. So what your used car and truck component of your CPI report might well get another little bump going forward. Well, that's right. Who would have thought, right? But remember last year, basically when we were talking about inflation being transitory, we were talking. And one of the reasons was well, and one of the biggest components that's going up is used cars, used trucks. Yeah, it's only going to be temporary because it's not, it's not, you know, this whole and also the semiconductor issue and even that can't last, you know, and the supply shortage will recover and it's all going to be fine. And yet here we are with a completely different set of circumstances that that's going to probably yet again, yeah, spike prices higher and keep this inflation situation, you know, you know, very high and concerning and yeah, central banks have got a real problem on their hands. And just to kind of wrap up this this segment on the nickel side so I mean you being an EV owner. I guess one of your purchase decisions when you're when you're picking which car to buy is the range of one charge. And so one of the main points here is the way that it works is that EV batteries are charged and discharged by the flow as lithium ions between graphite containing anode and cathodes. And what happens here is the late back in itself the cathodes contain nickel, and it delivers high energy density, allowing the car to travel further. And so the more you put in the further ago is kind of in a very simplistic way, there is like it gets very complicated like with any commodity about how refined and the purity of it as to its impact and how this performance and so forth. But what I thought was quite interesting was there was that when ESG's had a big move, since all this Russia stuff's been going on and that was kind of like the, the invo topic to talk about over the last couple of years I guess, and it has ESG concerns ESG being environmental social and governance, because most new nickel units suitable for EV batteries will in the future come from high pressure acid leach plants from top producing Indonesia. The problem that has of course is your super high carbon footprint in order to churn these things out, which is slightly contradictory right. The irony of buying an EV in order to lower your carbon footprint, but being completely ignorant to the point that the production of the battery that's in your EV has a monster carbon footprint. I mean, I don't want to be too controversial, but how this will, how this probably plays out is look, us in the West, that's Indonesia's problem. Yeah. See no evil here, no evil. Yeah, where's my, where's my EV but But what about Tesla you were telling me. Yeah, I mean I didn't want to delve too deep in the batteries because it looked like I was opening up a massive can of worms essentially and way beyond my pay grade of technical detail about how these things work. But apparently for Tesla, they have something called a lithium iron phosphate or an LFP battery which uses iron phosphate in their cathodes and no nickel or cobalt is required and the rationale there was that they were going to start using LFP batteries in its entry level standard range models last year. And that was seen as a move for the company to lower the cost of producing those models or to increase the profitability of those entry level vehicles without necessarily increasing prices so it was done as a tactical move for pricing and margin. But in actuality given just the underlying demand and lack of supply of for nickel. Now with this squeeze that's happening. It seems that others might actually have to adopt the Tesla Tesla technology, which is a coup for Tesla. So yeah, who would have thought we'd be talking up by Tesla. Yeah, if anyone who hasn't listened to previous episodes. Yeah, we're big Elon fans. But anyhow, let's move on and talk about the second area which was Amazon. So Amazon, early this week announced the 20 for one stock split they also said they're going to do a $10 billion US dollar buyback. So the first split they've done since 1999 and would be the fourth since the IPO of the company in 1997. In terms of figures then they were trading at the time just short of 2800 bucks. So that would put your Amazon share at about 139 bucks. And then that happens then on a split adjusted basis it's going to be on the 6th of June. There has been other recent big mega cap tech stocks that have done similar alphabet. They had a 24 one split when they released their earnings think back on the first of the fourth of February of this year not that long ago. I guess Apple did one just a few years ago as well. So I guess the main thing here is just say everyone's on on the same page peers. What is the stock split. How does that work. Why is it or is it important. The stock price would suggest it is but is that correct. Yeah so stock split is a kind of a technicality. If you like where a kind of company will alter the amount of shares in issuance and now they'll issue more shares. But the way they do it is that. So here this was a 20 for one. Right. So what what Amazon do is let me make the math simple here let's say there's a million Amazon shares right in issuance that there's obviously way more than that but let's just keep this simple. So there's a million shares right and let's say I own all one million again just to ridiculously simplify it. So let's say there's a million shares and issuance and I own all of them. Then if Amazon do a 20 for one stock split what it means is they issue 20 million new shares. And I get all of those. Okay so I've now got 21 million shares and the price of the share basically gets multiplied by 120th. So all that happens is in terms of the value of my shares in Amazon whilst the number of shares I own changes the total value of all of those shares remains the same. So the valuation of the company doesn't change. It's just so the valuation of a company is the number of shares in issuance multiplied by the share price equals market cap. Okay, so the market cap isn't changing. What is changing is the number of shares is changing but then the share price alters in the same proportions. Okay, now the reason why they do it is because over time if you take Amazon's share price right when it is quite remarkable with these kind of giant tech phones. Let's just say 10 years ago Amazon's shares were trading at $245 give or take right, 245 they peaked in the last year at $3,500 right. Now 10 years ago 245 bucks right if I want to trade Amazon if I want to own some Amazon shares great I can buy one for $245 right. If the share price is $3,500 then obviously the barrier to entry to own those shares is much higher doesn't matter for institutional traders who are wheeling millions if not billions of pounds right and these numbers are nothing like a retail trader and a retail investor if you're the little guy then you're buying one share for $3,500 it's a lot so it actually means that a lot of people can't afford to buy even one share of Amazon. Okay, so these stock split basically just corrects the share price dramatically back lower without altering the market cap or anything like that. And therefore, in theory, opens up the kind of demand for these shares to that little guy it makes it easier for the retail trader to get involved if you like if you think about the, the investor pyramid right and if you've got the giant institutions at the top of the pyramid this has no real impact for them, but the base of the pyramid with your retail traders has a huge impact so basically increases the base of your pyramid of demand, if you like, enabling more people to buy Amazon shares it also improves things like liquidity and so on right but in theory, a stock split shouldn't alter the value of your company in practice. It does, because the demand function ticks up because of the reason I just explained that increase in demand does typically lead to an increase in the share price when a stock split gets announced and that's kind of what happened. Yeah, the Amazon share price went up 6% was it by the way, other tech stocks were on the up that day also but perhaps Amazon more so than the others. Yeah, so, you know, historically a stock split typically does lead to the market cap of the company rising because of that whole demand argument. Amazon as a company, someone who sits in your portfolio. I've always missed the Amazon gravy train, you know what I've never owned Amazon shares, which I regret clearly, because it went up 10x in 10 years but so I've always been one well yeah I've missed it. But then it goes higher and then I've missed it and then it goes I mean, so I've never owned it. I prefer a couple of the other big tech giants to Amazon personally. But yeah, it has come off quite a bit because I'd say for Amazon, like the summer of 2020 we hit $3,500. And it just hasn't been able to get above that price since the summer of 2020. And we're now trading down below 3000.  So if you think about relatively looking at other tech stocks, you know it's relatively underperformed over the last 12 months but it did have a much bigger. Let's call it COVID boost in the first half of 2020 because obviously lockdowns and buying stuff online and obviously that's perfect for Amazon's model but but yeah, possibly maybe a little bit more interested than I've been for a while. And just to caveat that this is not investment advice. This is just our shooting the hoops to discuss these things so take it at your own risk but yeah definitely will be interesting when that when that actually comes through and happens. I think the split adjusted basis I said it's going to happen in June the sixth and I think the alphabet one happens shortly after that as well so during the summer. But look, let's move on to the third and final section then which was which was PIMCO. I guess, perhaps a little bit of introduction about who is someone like a PIMCO, because people I think a lot of students are kind of always very focused on the sell side and they kind of think of investment banks. PIMCO, which is a huge company in terms of the assets under management, perhaps unless you're looking at the buy side you might not really be that familiar with them as a firm so maybe we could start with talking a little bit about who PIMCO are and what role they facilitate in an really wide sense, because to give it a career element, I think would be would be beneficial and then also just talk about PIMCO because they're in the news and they're taking a bit of a bold bet on Russia. Yeah, through CDS and derivatives and you know perhaps we can unpick that as well so to PIMCO first. Excuse me, they've got, well they're an asset management firm. So sit on the buy side what's kind of a, not unique but unusual is that they're a fixed income specialist. So actually right there, it's just not a sexy as stocks. So you know you often don't hear about PIMCO because they're more that it's fixed income. They've got a pretty sexy office location that HQ is near Santa Barbara or something like that. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, they're doing all right for themselves because they do have north of 2.25 trillion dollars under management. That's a trillion that was the trillion with a T. So look, they're doing fine right now. There's a guy you might have heard of guy called Bill Gross, who's a kind of very famous investor. He was the founder, founded this thing in 1971 back in Newport Beach. Obviously, not obviously, he's nicknamed the Bond King, or at least used to be, it's kind of lost his crown a bit in recent years I would say, but anyway, so this is PIMCO and they're an asset management firm and they specialize in fixed income. Now, it's not quite as simple as you think this story in that, oh, they're massively exposed to Russian debt. Well, why is that? Well, maybe they bought Russian debt because they like the yield that Russian debt gives you. And they, whilst they appreciate there's risk, because obviously when you're buying bonds, the risk to a bond holder is that they borrow a defaults, right? So this is what we call default risk. So they're obviously, you might think straightforwardly, well, they're buying Russian debt because yes, they understand the default risk, but they don't think Russia will default. And so therefore they're happy to take this quite high yield, despite the risk. Okay. And that may be true on the one and a half billion, so they hold one and a half billion dollars worth of Russian government bonds. Okay. And so fine, that is an investment and there is a high yield. They own that debt for a long time, by the way. It's not like all the Russian Ukraine crisis has kicked off. Oh, let's buy Russian bonds. It's, you know, they've been holding this for a long time, but it's the other side of this risk that's a bit more complicated. Only do they own 1.5 billion of Russian bonds. They also have exposure of over $1 billion worth of credit default swaps on Russian debt. So this is slightly different. So this is where let's say I'm an investor, not PIMCO now. Let's say I'm an investor and I own Russian bonds. Okay. And now this crisis kicked off and I'm like, oh, wow, my risk has gone through the roof here because the default risk, Russia default risk has dramatically increased with all these sanctions being placed on Russia. You know, their ability to pay interest payments on time is now really a threat, right? Now, if I'm a Russian bondholder, what I could do is, well, I'm just going to sell my bonds then. My problem is the bond prices have dropped sharply. So if I was to sell out of my position now, I'd be taking a huge loss. So often some people don't want to do that. Instead, you can buy insurance against default. So this is what a credit default swap is. Okay. I, the Russian bondholder, I can buy insurance to hedge my risk. But buying insurance, you obviously need an insurance company to be on the opposite side of that trade, right? They're the ones that are writing these credit default swaps. They're the ones that are selling these credit default swaps. Well, in this case, the insurer, well, actually that's PIMCO. Yeah, I read this in the in the EFT, that the extract being should Russia default on its bonds, it would not automatically trigger a payout. Right. And therefore it goes to a determination committee. Yeah. And I couldn't believe it when I mean I didn't know about the composition of this committee. Yeah, basically made up of representatives of different financial institutions as big banks asset managers. And of course it includes, you have to include the biggest asset managers of course, of which PIMCO is. So they can just make a decision on themselves. It's like, how does that work in practice? Yeah, again, this is where the system, the systems been exposed as being flawed. I guess it's a quite, so basically, for a credit default swap, just think about it as insurance for the insurer to pay out, then you need a default. Now a default technically is if the borrower either fails to make a coupon payment, or fails to make the redemption payment, which is when the bond reaches maturity and they got to pay back the loan, right. Now Russia paid an interest payment last week on its rubble denominated local bonds, but they Russia did say the money would not reach any foreign investors. They'd pay their coupon, but only to domestic holders right now they've got another coupon payment due next week I think it's the 16th of March is it. And we're all like are they going to pay this or they not know the problem is is it a default Russia do have the money. But they can't access it because the West have sanctioned them and basically blocked their kind of foreign reserves right so what are you doing this case because they could pay if you let them pay, but you're not letting them pay. So, so is that a default or not now the problem in the end surely the sanctions are broken then because that all the people tied up in this are in the West. Yeah, well and this is such as the complexity of financial markets and their global nature that yes sanctioning Russia penalizes Russia but the secondary impacts are then global. Now with PIMCO. Yeah, if it's decided by the committee that there has been a default event, or then PIMCO are on the line for yeah a billion plus payout. But PIMCO are on the committee that decides whether there's a default event. Maybe PIMCO should hook up with the Hong Kong exchange and have a little have a little night out on on big shot. But it's quite reminiscent all this CDS tour is very reminiscent of like 2008 2009. And then while also 2010 2011 Eurozone debt crisis you remember like 2010 it was the Greek credit default swap was the number one financial asset in the on the planet in terms of what people were watching to gauge how this crisis was going. It was the Greek credit default swap. So this kind of Greek default swaps credit default swaps for kind of gone under the radar I mean they went completely off the radar after the Eurozone debt crisis and trading in that kind of stuff just was a more recent one wasn't it. Yeah, political instability. That's driving that but yeah cool well we'll wrap it there. I think we've been going on for a while so hopefully there's some good insights there just more broadly. I think Pierce does a always an awesome job of just deconstructing these into a nice digestible format of course any questions at all just feel free to feel free to just jump on any of our social channels. And if you just search for like amplify me on LinkedIn, you know you can follow us on there shoot as a message absolutely happy to to engage and help as best we can. I'm going to drop a couple of links, as I said into the show notes of the episode so that will include the finance accelerator if you want to get involved in one of those simulations is one happening next week. There's also the daily newsletter that I put out every end of European trading day and yeah and the LinkedIn post. Definitely check that out. Even if you you think you've got a pretty tight game on the LinkedIn front, you can always always be better worth worth a look at. I've had some good feedback from that and it's helped quite a few people so hopefully can do the same for you but yeah peers always a pleasure. Enjoy your weekend and yeah thanks everyone. Yeah, cheers and see you later.


For the first time in four years, we are going back to China on the ATP. Haven't been there since 2019, of course, before the pandemic. Of course, COVID stopped everybody from going to China. Stopped everyone from going everywhere for a while. But we're going back finally to the Shanghai Masters. But Novak Djokovic has said that he's not going to play. Let's go see who else has pulled out as well as Novak. This is what Djokovic had to say over on Twitter. Over the years, some of the best support I receive anywhere in the world is in China. Shanghai has always been one of my favorite tournaments in the season. I'll be missing my Nolay fam in China. I hope that I can come back to China in the future and play in front of all of you again. Some of the other players that are not going to be playing this event, Baratini, of course, pulled out due to that ankle injury that he got at the U.S. Open, also Coppa, pulling out as well. So not as big a names as Djokovic, but no Djokovic, Shanghai's most winningest champion, not going to be there. So there you have it, Novak Djokovic not playing in Shanghai, along with Baratini as well and Coppa at this stage. There are other players that have a little bit of injury concerns, Runa being one of those, but we'll talk about that closer to the date. Closer to the tournament, of course, the tournament starts at the start of October in a couple of weeks' time. And Djokovic, when's he coming back? We have no idea. He might be coming back in Paris. Maybe he plays in Vienna. He has played there before. Maybe he goes back to Israel where he played last year, but he won't be going to the Shanghai Masters, which means Elcaraz might be able to close the gap a little bit on the rankings. Of course, Elcaraz is going to be playing he'll be the number one seed going into that tournament in a couple of weeks' time. When do you think Djokovic will come back? Do you think he will be back before the end of the year?  And we're only going to see him twice more and then maybe Davis Cup as a bonus prize. But no, no, back to Djokovic in Shanghai. It's most winningest champion will not be there after the first time we're having this tournament in four years.


systems often precludes just simply pulling them all down and pulling all the ciphertext down and decrypting them. So in this paper, our main contribution is a generic algorithm which we call, with apologies to Omar Reingold and the people who built the zigzag product, we call this zigzag. This is a generic algorithm that solves the problem of backwards compatible FPE. And the tokenization upgrade example that I gave before, we're going to refer to as domain completion in the rest of the talk. And we prove that the zigzag meets the natural security notion for the setting. And we also do a couple of analyses of the runtime of the zigzag and prove that it's pretty fast with all but negligible probability. For a domain extension, which is the expanding, you know, the format expansion example we saw before, we prove that unfortunately, like the natural strongest security you would want in this setting is actually impossible. And we give a new, slightly weaker security goal and we analyze the zigzag with respect to that. So a little more formally, a domain completion, which, sorry, let me start that again. A domain completion setting involves FPE, and an FPE from a set D to itself with key K is a permutation of that set for every key. So in domain completion, we're going to call the old FPE, and we're going to consider this partial permutation, which is to say it's a permutation that's only defined on a subset of its possible inputs. We're going to call this F sub K star, and we're going to call the domain of this partial permutation T. So these are, concretely, you can think of these as kind of the plain text that were present in the system before this domain completion occurs. So the goal of the setting is to build a new FPE ZZ sub K prime over the same set so that for all the points in T, the image under ZZ agrees with the image under F of the point. So basically the zigzag or the ZZ domain completed cipher has the same image for all those points in T. The security goal in this setting is kind of the traditional one for FPE, which is strong pseudo random permutation security. And this basically says that the cipher is indistinguishable from a random permutation, but the slight twist for domain completion is that we're going to give the adversary knowledge of T. So in the next few slides, rather than referring to the function F sub K star abstractly, we're just going to think of it as a token table, which is basically just a big attribute volume map, as I described before. So there's an obvious approach to this problem, which is basically to use a tokenization scheme and a new FPE scheme in parallel. So when you want to encrypt a point that was in the token table already, you just return its value. And if you want to return a point that's not in the token table, you just encrypt it with FPE. Unfortunately, it's not that hard to see that you're going to get collisions in the output. So this actually doesn't even preserve the permutivity of the set that we're trying to encrypt. So we have to kind of discard this basic construction. But fortunately, a slight tweak of this basic idea gives us what we need. So the idea here, this is the zigzag construction. So the idea here is to use kind of a modified form of cycle walking to repair the permutation on the points that collide. So there are two easy cases here and one a little more difficult. So the first easy case is if the point is in set T, then we're just going to return its value in the token table. The next easy case is if the point is not in the set T and its image under the new cipher E doesn't collide with any of the images of the points in T. In that case, we're just going to return it because there's no problem and no permutivity is violated. The third case and the one that's a little more complicated is when you encrypt a point not in T whose image collides with the image of some point in T. And here what we're going to do is basically decrypt to find the point in T that caused this collision and then we're going to re-encrypt with E. We're going to re-encrypt that point with E. So this is a slightly reminiscent of cuckoo hashing if you're familiar with that data structure. Just some analysis of this basic algorithm. So if the set T is at most half the size of the domain D, the zigzag algorithm runs in amortized constant time over a sequence of encryption and decryption queries except with negligible probability. The intuition here is that this sampling experiment that we're doing can be modeled as a kind of sampling without replacement experiment from common atorics and once you view the problem that way you can use a standard tail bound on the hyper geometric distribution to bound the probability of having to go through this loop a lot of times. And the last thing I'll say about the domain completion in the zigzag setting is that the zigzag in this setting meets the strong pseudo random permutation security goal that we want and we prove this via reduction to the underlying permutations E and F and this reduction is actually tight. There's no loss in security. So now we will discuss the domain extension setting in a little more detail. Again the point of this domain extension setting is that we want to be able to encrypt points in the old set that existed before the extension and the points in the new set in the extension set. And we want to be able to do this while maintaining the ability to decrypt the points that existed in D before the update and we want to do this all while preserving permutivity over the whole set M. So again as before we're going to call our old permutation F sub k star and the new domain we're going to call M which I've conveniently put in blue and just remember that D is a subset of M. So M contains D. So in this setting we need to build an FPE over the whole set M with the same kind of preservation property that we had before in particular that the image of the points in T is the same under ZZ and under the old Cypher F. So here we're not going to refer to a token table. We're just going to be a little bit more abstract. So we have the old Cypher F sub k star over the set D. And we have the new Cypher E sub k over the whole set M. And it's not that hard to see that ZIGZag actually works perfectly fine for domain extension. So the two easy cases stay the same and the hard case where there's a collision works the exact same way as well, which is not all that surprising because we never actually needed that the sets were the same in the ZIGZag for domain completion. The question here though is what security this achieves. And unfortunately in the paper we proved that SPRP security is actually impossible for any domain extended Cypher, the Cypher that meets this functionality goal. And we proved this with a distinguisher that's actually pretty simple. All it really has to do is take the points of T and pick some arbitrarily and just query them over and over again. And it sees whether any of the images of the points that it's querying fall outside of D. And if they do, then the distinguisher returns that it's in the ideal world. Otherwise it guesses that it's in the real world. So the key intuition here is that for a random permutation, it's very unlikely for all of the images of all the points that it queried to fall in D. But for a domain extended Cypher, this has to happen. This happens basically with probability one because of the functionality of the Cypher. And the probability that it gets fooled is this nasty kind of like quotient of factorials on the upper right. So this is a pretty fast growing function. Especially if the set M is much larger than D. So the question here becomes then whether we can prove kind of any meaningful security about this setting. And we're gonna do this by weakening the security goal a little bit. And we're gonna target indistinguishability from a slightly different ideal object. We call this definition strong extended pseudo random permutation security. So intuitively a permutation is an SEPRP if it's indistinguishable from a permutation sampled uniformly but subject to our functionality requirement. So the first theorem that we proved and it's a pretty simple one is basically that zigzag meets SEPRP security in the domain extension setting. The next one, which was a little bit tougher to prove was that any SEPRP Cypher basically gives any adversary at most a factor of two advantage in kind of message recovery games. So we proved this by taking a message recovery notion from Bellarie et al's prior work on FPE. And we basically generalized it to accommodate the domain extension setting. And once we did this, in the experiment where the challenger picks a hidden message and gives the Cypher text to the adversary. And the adversary has to kind of guess the message by making encryption queries. The only thing that's really hidden from the adversary here is membership in T. So this is like one hidden bit of information you have to make twice as many queries to make this up basically. So in this paper, we did a few other analyses of the problem that we were considering. The first is that rather than weakening your security goal, if you weaken the amount of knowledge the adversary has about the setting, you can modify the zigzag construction in a way that actually achieves SPRP security. And unfortunately, I won't have time to go into that in this talk, but you can see the paper for more details. Another thing that's kind of worrisome about the zigzag is that it has variable timing for different inputs, which in general is a pretty bad property for a cryptographic algorithm to have variable timing for different inputs. But we prove in the paper that the timing side channel here basically only leaks whether the point is in T or not. So since in the strongest setting we assume that the adversary has this anyway, this is pretty inconsequential. An anonymous reviewer gave us a kind of an alternate construction of achieving domain completion and extension via a construction that we analyzed in the paper and we call rank and cipher unrank. So the advantage of this alternate construction is that unlike the zigzag, it actually has fast worst case performance, but the zigzag only runs in the only head, that is to say, the zigzag only has bad run time with negligible probability, so I don't see this as a huge advantage. And the disadvantage is that you have to do a lot of pre-processing and build a kind of a data structure that's specially made for this setting. So the storage overhead is a little high, it's on the order of the size of the set T. And because this data structure is accessed in kind of like a point dependent way that's more granular than the side channel you get from timing, we don't have like a proof of this, but we conjecture that this would lead to like memory access pattern side channels in practice. So in summary, in this paper we introduced kind of the idea of backwards compatible crypto, which I think is important because the inflexibility of cryptographic primitives has been pointed out as kind of a serious practical problem before. If any of you were at crypto, Brian Sniffen gave a really nice talk where he pointed out that like the models that cryptographers use are very inflexible and don't always line up with practical considerations like key rotation, for example, is one that he specifically highlighted as a huge problem in practice that's not really modeled in academic work. And I think this paper is cool because we kind of like make progress towards building more flexible cryptographic primitives that can kind of be changed after they're deployed. And we give a generic algorithm that solves the problem of backwards compatible FPE, and we show how it solves the problem of domain completion and domain extension. So the techniques that we develop in this paper are efficient, they're provably secure, and they solve real problems for practitioners. Thanks for listening. Any questions? So you say that the construction is efficient, but as far as I understand, with a non-zero probability, your Y loop never terminates, so the average complexity is infinite. So can you have a construction with a good average complexity? It does terminate. If the old scheme, the tokenization scheme has a fixed point, then if you decrypt, you continue to obtain this fixed point and the Y loop never terminates, right? I don't think about it. Maybe we can take it offline. That's possible.


with the thanks and the praises of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala saying to him alhamdulillah. And every week we are reminded of the bounties that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala floods us with. Every week we are reminded that we are to respond to these bounties and to these favors from Allah and that we are to respond with gratitude and that we are to respond with statements of praise. And so today insha'Allah I wanted to look at what does it mean when we say alhamdulillah. What does it truly mean for us to make this statement alhamdulillah? A statement that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has chosen to begin his book with alhamdulillahirabbilalameen. A statement that which Allah has chosen to put before the praise that he gives to his Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam that is considered the highest praise that he sallallahu alaihi wasallam receives alhamdulillahirabbilalameen. A praise that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam teaches us that after you finish praying you should recite it and say alhamdulillah.  A praise that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam teaches us that when you sneeze you should respond with alhamdulillah as was done by Adam alaihi sallam. The first thing that Adam alaihi sallam did once he was created he sneezed and the first statement that he that was said from him was alhamdulillah. A statement that is repeated over and over and over and over. What is the meaning of alhamdulillah? Now it's easy to understand that alhamdulillah means that all praise belong to Allah. But what is the intensity of that praise and what does it mean for the praise to belong to Allah? Praise can be done to many things. I can praise someone because they're a good student. I can praise someone because they dress well. I can praise someone because they have a beautiful voice. Praise can be for anything. But why does Allah choose hamd for himself as opposed to another word? Why does the Qur'an for example not start with al-madhu lillah, madhah which also translates to praise. When madhah is used it is applicable to things that are receiving praise but for equality that is either voluntary or involuntary within that thing. So if I praise how beautiful is this rose. The rose did not decide to be beautiful but the rose was created beautiful. If I decide to praise someone's looks the person did not design their own looks but Allah created them that way versus hamd. Hamd comes out of a quality that is volitional. Hamd comes because it has been willed by that person that someone practices their speech and so they are praised for their speech. They practice their poetry and so they are praised for this poetry and they are done through with hamd. And so the praise that Allah deserves is a praise that he has is a praise that is volitional within himself that it's not that just because Allah is but because Allah is the way that he is and he chooses to interact with us in a certain way that we say alhamdulillah. But then what is this al? Why do not we why don't we say ahmadullah? Why don't we say I praise Allah? The al at alhamdulillah our scholars mention it is for al istighraq. For drowning out all different types of hamd that exist that all of the different types of hamd that exist belong to Allah. So whether Allah praises himself whether Allah praises creation whether creation praises Allah or whether creation praises each other all of that belongs to Allah. For when I praise such and such or so and so it's because Allah has made them in that way and when Allah praises his creation it's because Allah has made them in that way and that when we praise Allah is because Allah is as he is and then when Allah praises himself that's a praise that we don't understand. So all praise belongs to Allah. And then what does it mean? Lillah belonging to Allah. The Lam here is used both for milkyah and istighqaq that it belongs to this person and that this person is deserving of that thing. So when we say that alhamdulillah is that Allah possesses praise. So if I say who does this hat belong to? Lee so and so it belongs to so and so. So praise itself is possessed by Allah but also for istighqaq that this person is deserving of this praise that so and so scores 100 on their test and so they are deserving of an A. Allah is deserving of that praise. So what is it about Allah that he deserves all praise and that he possesses all praise? What is it about him? Imam Razi says about this that we praise Allah because of the reason that he is the one who gives. He is the one who bestows. He is the one who provides. He is the one who does all of these things and that praise belongs to him even before he does these things. That if Allah were to not have created us, if Allah were to not have blessed us, if Allah were to not have done anything, he still deserves it. He still deserves it. And so we take the example of a sincere worshipper who has been worshipping his entire life and Allah tells the angels go and tell the slave of mine that everything that he has done for me, I reject it all and I throw it back into his face. So the angels go and they tell him, nothing you have done in your entire life of 60 plus years is going to be accepted by Allah. This servant continues to say Alhamdulillah. So the angels are confused. Why do you continue? He said, I don't praise Allah because he's going to reward me. I praise Allah because he is deserving of praise. That is the sincere worshipper. And so this is a mindset and a mentality that we need to train ourselves to enter into. The mentality of worshipping Allah because he is Allah. Because when we say Alhamdulillah, when we say Alhamdulillah for whatever bounty that we have been given, if we have been given a righteous child and for that we say Alhamdulillah, your saying of Alhamdulillah is more worth the righteous child. If you are able to eat a morsel of food and you say Alhamdulillah, your saying of Alhamdulillah is more worth, has more worth than your ability to eat. For every act that you do that deserves the praising of Allah, your praising him is more worth it than the actual bounty itself. And so we are in a constant cycle of praising Allah for the ability to praise Allah, for the ability to praise Allah, for the ability to praise Allah. And for that we say Alhamdulillah and because we said Alhamdulillah, for that we say, Al Hamdulillah. And because we said Alhamdulillah, for that we say Alhamdulillah. And so we are constantly praising Allah because He is constantly deserving of that praise. And so we need to enter into this mindset of gratitude, of acknowledgement that Allah is sustaining me in every moment and He is providing for me in every moment. And so every moment of my being needs to be dedicated to His praise. And so this praise is impossible. This praise cannot be done because every time you praise Him, you owe another praise. So it is impossible for us to do. And that's why we say Alhamdulillah because you're saying Alhamdulillah once Allah takes, you're saying it once as gratitude for all of it. Your ability to say it just in one single statement suffices all of the praise that you owe Him. Saying it with sincerity, that is the meaning of Alhamdulillah. That is the mercy of our Allah. That's the generosity of our Allah that He has allowed us to praise Him. And He has accepted that praise from us. Alhamdulillah. But Alhamdulillah extends. Alhamdulillah continues to spread throughout all of creation. It continues to reach us in different ways that we don't think about. What is the Hamd of Allah? What is it? That when we say there's this Hamd that exists, what is that Hamd? That Hamd, if you know Arabic morphology, go through the process. What is the Hamd that is the greatest Hamd? What is the Hamd that is the supreme Hamd? We say Ahmed, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. What is the Hamd that is mustamiran marra ba'da marra? What is the Hamd, the Hamd that continues to happen in a moment after a moment after a moment, who deserves that Hamd? That is Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. What is the object that receives the Hamd? What is the being? Who is that one that receives the Hamd? That is Mahmood sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Ahmed, Muhammad, Mahmood, that is our messenger, Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. What is the Hamd of Allah? Once we have entered into that mindset, that we need to praise Allah, what is that Hamd? Who is that Hamd is the question? Does the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam not stand in the night until his feet swell? And then Aisha sallallahu alayhi wa sallam asks him, we all know this narration. All of your sins are forgiven. Oh messenger of Allah, why do you stand? And his response is what? Should I not be an Abdan Shakura? Should I not be a grateful slave? What is Hamd other than Thanat and Shukr? What is Hamd other than praise and gratitude? The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is our example of what it means to manifest Alhamdulillah. What it means to embody Alhamdulillah. And so within Alhamdulillah, there is a mindset and a state that we must accept within ourselves. Within Alhamdulillah, we have the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Within Alhamdulillah, we recognize that none deserve Hamd except for Allah. And so within these few letters, these eight letters that began the Quran within these letters, you have the meaning of La ilaha illa Allah Muhammadur Rasulullah. Within these eight letters, what do our Mufasirin say? They say each letter opens up one of the eight gates of Jannah for you. Within these eight letters is the mindset that allows you to be an Abd.  Within these eight letters, you become the one who praises Allah. You become like Ahmed. You become like Muhammad.  So we recite these letters of praise for Allah. We recite these letters on a daily basis. We say them over and over and over again, yet we don't understand the impact that these words have. And so we ask Allah SWT to allow us to understand the intensity of these words and the weight of these words. Such weight that none of our prayers can be completed because the Fatiha is wajib without the words of Alhamdulillah. So we ask Allah to accept us saying these words and we ask Allah to allow us to be constant people who recite Alhamdulillah over and over and over again such that the words that we say right when we wake up are Alhamdulillah and the words that we end with, the words that the last people of Jannah are going to say وآخير دعواهم أن الحمد لله رب العالمين


perovskite CH3NH3PBI3 light absorber is deposited on the mesoporous TiO2 layer via 1-step and 2-step coding methods and their photovoltaic performances are compared. 1-step coding using a solution containing CH3NH3I and PBI2 shows average power conversion efficiency, PCE, of 7.5%, while higher average PCE of 13.9% is obtained from 2-step coding method, mainly due to higher voltage and fill factor. The coverage, poor filling, and morphology of the deposited perovskite are found to be critical in photovoltaic performance of the mesoporous TiO2 based perovskite solar cells. This article was authored by Jong Hyak Kim, Hwee Siang Kim, and Nombu Park.


Hey, what's up YouTube it's Zeke and Robin Hood is not out of the fight yet It's just strikes back with his new update as my account just written above $12,000. Let's get into the video All right, YouTube. We're back. Welcome to the dream green show If you haven't already hit the subscribe button and the thumbs up button It really helps out this channel a lot before I tell you what the new update was for Robin Hood Let's go over my account because I just went over $12,000 and as you can tell I'm very excited because not too long ago I just had $10,000 in my account and I'm already at $12,000 so if we look at it the last week I'm up point five one percent that's $60 and 41 cents of the last month I'm up $93 that's 4.29% in the last month alone the last three months has been very very very great to me treating me very well I am a dividend investor and I do buy growth stocks in there. I'm up 7.84% with the gain of $873 and 10 cents and over the year I'm beating the market. I'm up 11.79% $1,265 and 84 cents and for all time. I'm up $1,700 Around 16.89% so it's not too bad. It's actually pretty good for me as a new investor Up 16.89% all time is money that I didn't have and my money is actually making money for me Okay, so I'm going to show you the quick update right quick before I show you what stocks I actually buy and hold and which stocks I actually Reinvest to every single month for dividends. I'm going to go over the new update that Robin Hood just Updated on their platform to kind of fight back over all these new app Investing apps that are now coming to the app stores China still Robin Hood user base All right, so if you click on your profile and go into free stocks, so they now have invite three friends and get a fourth Bonus stock so you're not only would you get a stock for each friend that you invite? But for every three that you invite you would get an extra four So there so their incentives are for you to invite your friends to come join and not only would you get a free stock for Every person that join but for every third person that joins you get an extra stock So you guys can really stock stack up on these free stocks and it espires January 1st 2020 okay, so you guys can get into it now, but not only for that They're actually looking out for youtubers that that support Robin Hood because if you click on the information button and Scroll down that go over and get more with less You are ready to get a free stock for every friend you refer, but now you'll get an extra bonus stock on your third referral All right out of these free stocks You have a 1 in 250 chance of getting a break and shared halfway Apple Facebook For your fourth stock bonus as well But here's the kicker right here on the last point Invite as many friends as you want and receive up to five hundred dollars in free stocks per year If you didn't catch it on it says per year at first youtubers will only get five hundred dollars worth of free stock for them on Robin Hood just for inviting all of their friends No matter if they invited a thousand friends last year and a thousand friends this year You can only get five hundred dollars worth of free stock, but now they're saying per year So now every single youtuber that uh are Anybody that that promotes Robin Hood can now get five hundred dollars this year get five hundred dollars next year and $500 the year following after that. So this is a very big information that Robin Hood implemented into their application and I think it's very good for the App itself because the more users they have the more money they make and they'll be able to have more and better Updates for the app in the future. So be on the lookout for a lot of youtubers actually posting more Ribal hood videos now trying to collect their five hundred dollars worth of free stock But if you do use my link the link is down in the description I will get a free stock and you get a free stock just comment down on what free stock did you receive from me? And then invite a couple of your friends out so you could get that for free stock. All right So what you guys been waiting for let's go over my account on how do I have twelve thousand dollars in my account? Well right now my buying power is two hundred and two dollars and 49 cents when the stock market opens tomorrow If I see some good deals, I'm probably gonna buy some good dividend stocks with my two hundred dollars just Reinvesting back into my dividend stocks every single month. It's actually helping me grow my account very very fast All right, so the first one that I own is AMD AMD has been killing it for me I am up one hundred and seventeen percent All right in AMD up eight hundred and seventy six dollars The last month along from Andy has put this company up twenty four percent So AMD has had a fantastic year of Going up eighty nine percent in one year. I keep telling you guys AMD is my favorite company right now They have been killing it. It's a little bit overvalued. So once I see a pull back a little bit I will buy some more AMD stock, but yes the last year alone AMD is up eighty nine percent That's because of they have been crushing that competition with Intel with their new processors Crushing that competition with NVIDIA with their graphics card So AMD has been doing an amazing job at their company and I'm loving and I'm loving what they are doing The next one I have is Google. I shouldn't have to explain exactly what Google is to you But I'm up eleven percent one hundred dollars and thirty one hundred and thirty three dollars and seventy seven cents I have one share of Google Netflix I have three shares and Netflix. I'm actually down seventy one dollars, but I'm a supporter of Netflix. I use the company I use their app all the time I see Netflix doing big things in the future, especially with their original Disney Disney I am up twenty six dollars and seventy seven cents up four point eight six percent Over the last month Disney just announced their earnings in Disney Plus. So the last month along Disney went up nine percent I own four shares of Disney Facebook I am up fifty three cents with Facebook Facebook Instagram Facebook and Facebook runs the world. Okay, so I'm always gonna have at least one share of Facebook Wm waste management. I'm up 13 dollars and 99 cents This company pays out one point seventy nine percent in dividends and I have been collecting dividends from this company My history I got paid twice one dollar and fifty four cents And in September I got paid a dollar and fifty four cents and this company has been growing over the last year consistently Up twenty one percent over the last year of the second one I own that is a utility company is Aqua America, which is water. It's just like waste management It's up twenty nine percent over the last year. I own four shares and I'm actually down one point One dollar and seventy cents, but it pays a dividend yield of two point zero six percent I own four shares of water for Ford is a high-paying dividend company is a market cap is over thirty five billion dollars And it has a dividend yield of seven point eight four percent Over the last year for it has been a little rocky is down point five percent over the last five years for this down Thirty nine percent and living in Texas everyone knows for it. The best-selling truck in the world is the Ford F 150 I see it all the time in Texas. I see this company actually bouncing back in the future So if you could get for it now for eight dollars and ninety seven cents You could begin it for a steal especially with the dividends of seven point eight four percent right now I own four shares of Ford with the equity of thirty five dollars and eighty eight cents The next one I have is AT&T tickle simmer tea. I own 18 shares Seven hundred and ten dollars. I am up fifty one dollars and thirteen cents and this company pays a dividend of seven point zero four percent and I've been collecting dividends on this one for But I said they pay me out a couple times. I got paid two dollars in August and five dollars and This month of November Okay, the next one I own is Coca-Cola I really shouldn't have to explain what Coca-Cola is is it's a nation global wide type company And they usually do good around Christmas times with their commercials. The company is up four point six nine percent over the last year I'm actually down two dollars and sixty two cents But this company pays a dividend of three point two nine percent with a market cap of two hundred and twenty five Billion dollars. Okay, so we're going to my monthly dividend paying stocks. The first one I own is SPHD This one pays me out monthly The prices at forty three dollars and twenty-eight cents of the last year is up five point five four percent I own thirty two shares with an equity of one thousand three hundred and eighty four dollars and ninety six cents I'm up forty four dollars and two cents, but it's been paying me dividends every single month In October I got paid four dollars and seventy two cents worth of dividends The next one I have is a high yield dividend company agency This company is actually down 1.48 percent But if you got in right there around in September you actually would have got it for a good price Because this company had a major rebound over the last three months up six point three eight percent The equity I have in this company is one thousand one hundred and seventy nine dollars and eighty cents I own sixty eight shares, and I'm up seventy one dollars and twenty six cents six point four percent The dividend yield on this company is twelve point three one percent. So this one has been paying me Every single month In November, I'm going to get paid ten dollars and fifty six cents just from owning agency The next one I own it is SPYD. It's pretty much just like SPHD I'm thinking about just combining the two. I own five hundred and nine dollars and ninety nine cents worth of SPYD Fourteen dollars. I'm up fourteen dollars and forty one cents and this company pays a dividend year of four point seven three Percent. Okay, the next one I own is Intel took a sum by INTC The price is at fifty seven dollars and ninety four cents I own one share just because it's a competitor with AMD and it actually pays a dividend of two point five seven percent I'm up nineteen percent with Intel nine dollars and fifty cents The next one I have is another high-paying dividend stock. The last three months is up six point eight percent It's NRZ. This one has a dividend yield of fourteen point Zero seven percent. I'm actually down sixty three dollars on my total return, but that doesn't really shows my real returns because We scroll down to my dividend payouts I got paid thirty five dollars out in October and twenty seven dollars out in July and When I get my next payment, I will actually be in profit from NRZ So that is a high-paying dividend stock and I was actually up not too long ago. Let's go back and look at it Yeah, I just had a little dip right here down one point six one percent But when I was up four percent, I was actually up a lot on my profit, but this is a long-term hold for me I see NRZ Pay me big dividend yields out in the future as long as I make my money back on this year I will continue to invest into this company. The next one I have is VOO Vanguard SP 500 ETF This one is a slow grower of the last year's up fourteen percent So that's not so slow, but um, it's the Vanguard SP 500 You pretty much invest in holding it to this one forever. It has a dividend yield of one point nine three percent I have two shares for the equity of five hundred seventy two dollars and fifty four Twenty one and a half is CTRE. The price is at twenty dollars and eleven cents. I am actually down I'm actually down twelve dollars and fifteen cents I'm on three shares with the equity of sixty dollars and thirty three cents And this one plays a dividend yield of four point four four percent And the last three I'm not even gonna talk about on YouTube because when I talked about them YouTube actually did monetize my video just by talking about those three stocks Or if it was the pictures that I showed so if you want to know what those stock was You can go back to my last video and take a look exactly what I was talking about But I'm not gonna talk about it in this video specifically But yeah guys my account just reached twelve thousand dollars YouTubers can now get an extra five hundred dollars worth of income by inviting Three or more friends to to sign up for Robin Hood So if you guys want to help out this channel hit the thumbs up button subscribe Comment down below what free stock That you receive from me by clicking the link down in the description or what stocks do you own that? We have in coming with my portfolio for you guys. I'm at twelve thousand dollars on my way to thirteen thousand dollars I'm thinking about doing another giveaway soon. So go ahead subscribe so you don't miss my giveaway But other than that, this is Zeke bringing you the dream green show and I'm out peace