I'd like to call the order of this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. Colleen, will you call the roll? President Hill. Present. Vice President Ackman is absent. Director Fouls. Here. Director Mayhut. Here. And Director Smalley. Here. Yes, Director Smalley is ill with saving and is participating remotely. And Director Smalley, do you have anyone over the age of 18 in the room with you? No. No. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any changes to the agenda? None from staff. Anyone else any changes to the agenda? Seeing none. We'll move on. Oral communications. This portion of the agenda is reserved for all communication by the public. And any subject that lies within the jurisdiction of the district and is not on the agenda. Any person may address the Board of Directors at this time. Normally presentations must not exceed three minutes in length. And individuals may only speak once. Please state your name and town, city of residence for the record at the beginning of the statement. And please understand that the Brown Act limits what the Board can do regarding issues not on the agenda. No action or discussion may occur on issues outside of those already listed on today's agenda. Any director may request that a matter raised during oral communication be placed on a future agenda. And I'm going to pause us just for one minute here to point out that Director Ackman has arrived. Sorry, I'm late. Mr. Holloway. I'm Bruce Holloway. I want to thank your IT staff for solving the problem with the late Senate packet last meeting. This is a serious problem that continued to happen until you showed me. I guess I wanted to talk about it here. I don't know if this has been talked about in public before. I was a little bit hung up by this word stamp envelope on here. I don't know who typed the stamp envelope. If it had come up in a committee meeting and I've been there, I would have said, skip the envelope, skip the stamps because you can save thousands of dollars and most people aren't getting used to them and some people don't need them. But I guess when people are dealing with a bureaucracy like this, it's hard to tell if it's responsible for anything. I can't tell if this was created by Miller-Maxfield and they invented the word stamp envelope. I don't know where this came from, but it's a mystery to me. The next thing about the notice, I've talked to a few people about it and there's nothing on here about the multi-residential water rates. It's got single family residential and it's got several other categories like commercial, industrial, and so on, but none of them are multi-residential. So I had a question for the district that I emailed last week. I emailed two different people and I haven't gotten any answers. So often we come here and we ask questions and we're told, put your question in writing. Well, I put my question in writing and I get the same answer that I get in person, which is not... I guess another thing I want to bring up is the $19 million. It sounds like it's a done deal, but when I said that the finance committee meeting a few weeks ago that it was a done deal, I saw Director Maynard shaking her head at me like this the whole time. I think by the time you put something in a public notice to email to thousands of people, there ought to be a basis for it. So I don't know where the $19 million comes from. I don't know if that's approved already. I don't know what it's for. I think the public deserves a little bit more information about that. Another thing on here it says, including salmon habitat improvements. So to the best of my knowledge, there are no salmon in the San Lorenzo River watershed. Anyway, and they have not been there for 15 years. They were extirpated by 2009. I know there are salmon in Laguna Creek, which Santa Cruz Water Department is responsible for, so they can truly say that they're doing things to improve salmon habitat. But I don't think there are any in the San Lorenzo River watershed. And I remember discussing this with Betsy Herber when she was the environmental analyst here more than 10 years ago. So I think if that word had been sewn on it, then I would understand, oh, you're talking about steelhead trout. They still exist, but salmon don't. So I feel kind of like I'm being treated like a child when I'm being sold on this, because it's going to improve things for salmon when they really don't exist. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll have to look into those questions you have. Can I have my three minutes?  I'm the John Patrick O'Reilly residing in San Lorenzo LA for about 23 years. And I've never really paid attention to my water building until now for the fact that I felt it's very fair. Even with the CCU imposition of $15 surcharge, I thought it was very democratic.  It isn't very equal spread of the charges coming on. First of all, for the people using the two units of water, which three years ago when we were in the drought, that was a very wise decision, use minimal water. But now, if you're using two units of water, I see for the upcoming year, it will be a 19% increase in charges for using two units of water. Just going up to the 10 units of water, I see a 8% increase. Because I'm using less water, I am paying more. That isn't democratic. And then, with the wording of the pamphlet, oh, in the upcoming year, the water charges will just be a few dollars. Bullshit, pardon from that word. But a few dollars doesn't equal out. So I'm going to go back to that. I'm going to go back to that. When you start breaking down what will be paying for water. And coming back to the water rate schedule. I am part of the 374 people on one inch water. And I'm getting kicked up 33% charge next year for water. Now, the killer is, luckily, the receptionist at San Lorenzo Water District pointed out to me, oh, what's kind of strange? I am only on a five-eats pipe, but I'm multi-residential. I have a small studio that I'm trying to keep the rent extremely fair. And I don't want to force an increase in rent, because I am erroneously charged for a one-inch pipe when I have a five-inch pipe going into my house. I don't use more water. Bingo, that's it. Thank you. And we'll take note of your comments. Yeah, let me see if there's anyone online that has comments. I don't see any hands up. Okay. Moving on. Unfinished business. Pico Canyon emergency evacuation route project. Thank you, President. So Garrett, we're just going to present that. Garrett has a microphone right in front of him. Thank you. So the district has worked with the County of Santa Cruz to reach an agreement for an easement that'll benefit the community of Long Pico for a emergency evacuation route if something should happen to Long Pico Road. We brought this before the Engineering Environmental Committee meeting, and it was brought to our attention that the district has a ban on the use of glyphosate. And so we've added the prohibition of using that on the with the easement and a remedy if it is discovered. We got a small payment to the district. And it's a benefit for the people of Long Pico. So with that, I'd like to take any questions you have. So, Bob, Dr. Fultz. A couple of comments. And I think that's really great that you went back and worked on. I brought up the glyphosate issue. And the reason I did is that the county has been attempting to use glyphosate down in the easement that they have and felt that they got from the water district. And I wanted to make sure that at least going forward, they understood that as a district policy, we don't want that. I'm also very glad to see the indemnification that's a really important piece. I was curious, how did we come up with $2,100? Did we get an appraisal done or something? Or did we just sort of decide? There was not an appraisal done. Okay. Well, I mean, I understand you have to have consideration, but I was just curious, you know, why that number versus any other. Anyway, I think this is great. And I don't know if people, I heard that actually half of the road into Long Pico was blocked. I think this morning. So this can't be any more timely for us to get this done. Right, right. Any comments? Nope. I think it's a very reasonable cost and, you know, an important thing to do. We have similar kinds of, you know, emergency access issues in the neighborhood that I live in and Ben Lomond up on the mountain. So I think this is great. Okay. I would comment that for those people who are not aware, but there is only one road in and out of Long Pico. And it's a narrow two lane road and it's easily blocked by trees, mudslides, what have you. And so this is really essential. Bill. Yeah. Okay. Can we get a motion to approve this? Yeah. Mark. Yes. As the county reviewed and approved this draft. They have. Okay. Great. Thank you. All my questions. And do we have any comments from the public? Seeing none online. Gentlemen. Thank you. I heard the director and said that it was a reasonable cost. But the cost is to the county. Yes. Yes. The county is paying us for the easement rights. So it really doesn't cost us anything. So whatever time it took to draft. Okay. So we've had all the board members have spoken. I have no public comments from. Online and. I have one more question. Yes. In the motion here, the recommended motion says authorize the interim general manager. Excuse me to execute non substantive modifications. The agreement is necessary. Is that. Is that sort of future proofing that is going forward or does it mean with this agreement right now? It doesn't mean it's a minor change. I think it's a minor change. I'm not going to pass it early. The intent is. I'll take that one. I put that language in there. That's. It's typical. If there was a minor change, for instance, Anything can happen. Somebody's title changes as a signatory or we want to. Extend the agreement or anything like that. Without it coming back to the board. I don't think it's a minor change. I don't think it's a minor change. I don't think it's a minor change. Basically. Yeah. I mean, non substantive. So, you know, that would be. Understand. I get it. I just want to make sure that answering the question. Non substantive would be something that's discussed with. Legal advice. So. Legal says, yeah, that's non substantive. I could sign for it. Otherwise we bring it down. I got that. Great. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Do we have a motion here? I will. Read the motion. I move that the board directs the interim general manager to execute the long people emergency access easement agreement. The county of Santa Cruz. To authorizes the interim general manager to execute non substantive modifications to the agreement as necessary. Second. We have a second. Okay. How long will you take? President Hill. Yes. Okay. Vice president. Yes. Yes. Director falls. Yes. Director may have. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay. No business. We have no new business on the agenda. And that takes us to the consent agenda. Which contains items which are considered to be routine in the city. We have a new agenda. We have a new agenda that has been deemed adopted by unanimous consent. If no director states an objection. Any item on the consent agenda will be moved to the regular agenda upon request from an individual director. Are there any requests to move items? Director falls. Yes. So I wanted to better understand this particular. Change order number nine. and you can assign to you. Do I understand correctly that there is pipe on top of the ground as part of this construction project on Altevia? Because I know that there was pipe on Altevia before the fire that was burned. Is there a remaining pipe on top of the ground now? So, Jared, you wanna take that?  So there's not pipe above ground with the new insulation. The cross-country portion of the mainline is below grade, but it's not in the road. It's across a undeveloped track. And we have an easement for that. Correct. Perfect. Great, just wanted to make sure there wasn't above ground. That's great. Obvious reasons. And at least 18 inches of cover, right? Yeah, three feet of cover. Perfect, thank you very much. You're welcome. I will move that the board authorized the interim general manager to approve contract change orders six and nine for payment to Anderson Pacific Engineering Construction, Inc. for the Altevia pipeline replacement in the sum of $34,915, increasing the not to exceed contract amount from $2,535,064, $2,569,979. Can we come back? I'll second that. Yeah, we can go back. Okay. So I'll second it. Any discussion for the discussion? No. Holly? Public. President Hale? Well, I'm sorry. We do need to officially ask the public. I'm sorry, what? We do need to officially ask the public. Yes. Do we have any comments from the public? Seeing none, now we can proceed to a vote. President Hale? Yes. Vice President Ackman? Yes. Director Falls? Yes. Director Mayhai? Yes. Director Smalley? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay, back to the agenda here. Next item on the agenda is district reports. General Manager's Special Report. Thank you, President. So I just wanted to give an update on the outreach efforts. We had a public outreach efforts for the rate study. So we had a community meeting, January 20th at Highlands Park from 10 to noon on Saturday. I thought that we did our best to keep it as an informal, structured it informally so that there wouldn't be a central meeting, but rather it would be constructed more like a workshop so that people could ask their questions to staff one-on-one or however in groups. And so we had maybe 12 different poster boards that around the room and different staff members were strategically stationed so to be able to take comments and questions about maybe those topics on the poster boards or whatever people brought in. We also had a table to where someone had a laptop set up that could actually calculate the rates or someone who was a potential customer that had a rate bill go up, they could calculate exactly based on their last 12 months of usage. So overall, I thought we had a really good turnout, particularly because it was a rainy day. We had maybe 115 people there, we think. It looks like there was a lot of engagement based on activity in the room. And also I think there were clearly people that had concerns and raised those with different staff members, including myself. And I think overall that went well, the discussions. I don't think we assuaged all concerns, but at least we felt that we could address them and answer questions. And I also wanted to just make a shout out to all the staff that helped. Holly, thank you, Jamie. Excuse me, currently Garrett, James, and also Heather, our contract of finance manager drew all the way down from, I don't know, past Sacramento. So she came in to do it. So good deal all around. So, and since Carly's been leading the whole outreach effort, if she wants to add anything. Yeah, I think Brian, you've covered a good amount of it. We did have about 115 people show up to the event, which I think is pretty successful, especially with the weather conditions. Outside of that, we did have three comment cards submitted to us. Otherwise, I would say it was pretty successful. Okay. Communication, excuse me, yes, we did have a comment. Yeah, I think I would characterize it sort of maybe two camps of people. There were people that were expecting a real meeting where there could be questions in public, answers in public, back and forth, et cetera. And as I was going in, actually somebody was very upset heading out, again, small sample, obviously, but I think the messaging around this, I think confused some people as to what kind of meeting it was going to be. I think people may not have understood it was gonna be more of a workshop and not a real meeting where everybody could be heard in public. Now, I understand that it was deliberately set up as the workshop kind of thing, but I did go back and look at the messaging around it. I could see on a couple of the messages that people might have gotten confused that way. I think it's something for us to consider for the future. I do think it was very positive to have that kind of meeting which we'd have not done in the past around rating increases. I wouldn't actually advocate for more of them, but I do think we need to be very consistent in how we communicate the kind of meeting that people could expect to have. Colleen? May I just add that I had the opposite said to me that they really appreciated being able to ask questions one-on-one about their specifics, that they had questions about rather than being in a big room and having to listen to everyone else, it was, they liked the informality of the meeting. So I did hear both sides, but I heard more of that. Both are valid. Jeremy? Thanks. So first of all, I just wanted to thank staff for putting this together because I know there was a lot of like, oh, you know, is this the right method? Is this the right path to take? So I really appreciate the time and energy that it took to put it together. And I think that 115 people is a really great turnout. So congratulations for that effort. I think it's understandable that there's always people who are in different camps. Some people like engaging like this and listening to all of the conversation. And some people don't. They're just like, I don't get it. I wanna ask some questions. So, you know, you've got to have both. And I'm just wondering, I did see online the reporter for the press banner, Christina Weiss was confused about whether this was the public hearing on the 20th or whether it was a outreach meeting. She didn't acknowledge that she didn't read the flyer very carefully. And so she assumed that it was the actual public hearing. And it did say on the flyer that this was a public meeting, but anyhow. So I wonder when people had that confusion expressed to staff during the January 20th meeting. Did you clarify that they could still come on February 15th to the public hearing and, you know, have their view heard and participate in that conversation as well? Yes, that was definitely made clear that this is the informal meeting and there is a formal public hearing and this is a community meeting. And the intention is to be able to educate and mix and match and mingle and get questions answered. Thanks. Thank you. That's awesome. One more board, two more board people then. We'll get to you. No, I don't have any comments. Mark, do you have any comments? No comments. Mr. Hollad. I did not attend the meeting, but if I had attended it and I asked what are the multi-residential rates would what I've gotten any more of an answer than I did ask 10 minutes ago. The notice does not refer to multi-residential at all. It refers to single family residential and it refers to commercial and industrial and so on. Is there an answer? No, there are the multi-residential rates. Can I answer him? Go ahead and answer him. Right, we'll have an answer on that. It's just the commercial rates and it's there as a footnote. No. I don't see the footnote. It's in the other doc. If it's not there, it's in other documents that have been presented to the board, but I am answering. We didn't address the questions to me but I'm just answering you now that the commercial includes the multi-family residential. Okay, I do not see any hands up from the public. There is one now. Pardon? There is a hand up now. There is, I don't see it where. Oh, there we is, yes. Cynthia. Yes, I did attend the meeting and I was very impressed by the staff's efforts and I saw director Foltz there as well. And so I appreciate the time everyone took to attend the meeting. And I felt that the people I listened to were very engaged. They engaged with staff, but also with other ratepayers trying to understand the possibilities and how the new structure would affect them. What my question is, will those concerns be addressed in any way or is the public hearing just to approve or not approve the rate increase? Is there a chance to have any effect on the rate structure? And other than the rate structure, the concerns I had were that I heard were with how to use the Lyra program and how the penalties and discount affect people at the lowest tier. Also, I was impressed that some directors from other or employees of other water districts attended that meeting because they are going to face rate increase processes themselves and they wanted to learn from what SLB Water District is doing. And I think that's very healthy that we learn from other districts. Thank you. Okay, I would like to make one comment and that is that seem to have a need to upscale our game when it comes to accuracy on some of the communications. Part of this was we didn't see those fires until the last minute ourselves. So we really need to make sure that we're all, you know, that multiple people have run through them and have had a chance to edit, make sure everything is clear. It's clear that some people have not run them and did not feel it was clear. So I think that's something thinking ahead the next time we have this sort of activity, we need to build in a little more review time or things like that so that we can avoid any miscommunications. I'll just second that. I think that some of the questions that we've had, if those of us that had been on the budget and finance committee had seen that before it was sent out, which I did not see it before it was sent out, we might have been able to forestall some of the questions and some of the questions that I had actually at the meeting. I just would add that Bob was there the whole time and Jeff went for the first hour and then I went for the second hour so that we didn't have more than two board members in the room or any potentials for product issues. So I realized that we're operating under a staff crunch. It was a hard time, but, and I guess what I would say is I know I put a fair amount of effort into doing a close edit of the final report for the rate study for that exact reason, for the executive summary, trying to rewrite some of it was a little bit cryptic even to me and I've been involved in the process the whole time in hopes that we can make this fully intelligible to your sort of educated layman types. Director Walts, well, it would have been good to have the final report available at the start of the 45 day period. I find that the fact that that wasn't available to be an egregious breach of community trust, there's no excuse for that. In addition, it's not like the rate increase was a surprise, there was ample time to plan out at least the framework, if not the specifics around how the communication was to be done, but for some reason we decided to wait until the last minute, which is what we do typically. So yes, I agree that it's a good thing to consider going forward, but we did the same thing in 2017, not this board, but the previous board. Yeah, and so it's like, well, okay, it's just standard operating procedure, let's wait till the last minute and so we don't catch things like that. So if I was a community, I would not be happy with the fact that the final rate report, there's a lot of things not to be happy about in that, which we'll get to on the 15th, but the fact that that final rate report is now at December 20, whatever it was, is just absolutely not acceptable. I do feel obliged to point out that we had a lot of changes happening in the staff at that time, that there was a changeover in the general manager and that Kendra resigned and she was the lead person on the rate study. And so that's why I added my comment that I appreciated that it was a difficult time. And so Bob, I think you're being a little bit overly dramatic given that we all know that that whole interval of November, December, and that frankly, I think that Carly and Brian were putting in yeoman work, trying to catch up and make up for the fact that we were kind of behind the eight ball on this. I could not imagine it was the worst time to be doing this when you have the general manager retiring and the finance director leaving, so. This is not about staff. This is about the board. I advocated very strongly that the board delay that process specifically for that reason, that we not send out the notices in the middle of the holiday season and to do it in a gotta get it done quickly fashion. This board decided that it was gonna go ahead and proceed, come hill or high water. We didn't have to do that. We could have very easily delayed it until that report was completed. We, the board chose that. That's on us, not on staff. Staff did what they were asked to do by the board. I think it was very unfair for the board to ask them to do that in that fashion, in that timeframe. And it didn't serve our community either by not having that report available. Okay. Moving on in communications, we have a letter to the board from Ms. Wensel. And I don't know that we have any action to take on that at the moment. Other than to acknowledge we have received it and refer to staff for the response if they have not already. And I believe at that point, we have completed everything on the agenda. Mr. Holloway. I just have to say that there's not an item to comment on right now. This isn't a two-way conversations or anything on the agenda. We're done with the agenda. We're adjourning the meeting now. You've had your opportunity to comment on things that have already happened. Thanks. I have the microphone. I was going to kill talking about the written communication from Mr. Wensel. And I forgot what my comment was going to be because I've been interrupting that. I have the microphone. The letter was addressed to the board. So I don't think it's appropriate for the president of the board to say, let's have staff decide to respond, whether or not to respond. If someone addresses a letter to the board, they deserve a response from the board or not. But I don't think passing that off holds water for me. So I'll hand it over. The board will respond. But it is standard practice to ask the staff to provide details and to provide information that needs to be added to make the response. Thank you. We are done with the live air motion to adjourn. I need to mention just a minute. We are adjourned. So I have seven, seven oh eight, is our adjournment time. Thank you.


Welcome Navigation Traders! Today is Friday, April 14th. Welcome to this week's video update. Happy Good Friday! Hope everybody had a great week of trading. Don't forget Monday morning 8.25 central before the markets open. We do our live broadcast from Facebook and YouTube. So just go to our Facebook channel, Facebook page, or YouTube channel, and we stream live where we do our trade of the week. A lot of a lot of exciting stuff happening right now. I've got a new course coming out probably here in the next week or two, and then with just with high implied volatility creeping up. We've got a lot of opportunities, a lot of stuff to talk about. So exciting stuff. So make sure you join us then. Let's jump into the trades that we made from this from this past week. First one being a strangle that we sold, an opening trade in FXE. So we had already we already had a strangle on. We we put that on it when Ivy percentile was just above 50. We put another one on when Ivy percentile jumped up to 94 at the point where we put our second one on. So let's go to the platform and take a look. So we've got we've got two strangles on one for four contracts, one for three, and so I like to I like to I like to change up a number of contracts. Keep them close, but it just helps for for monitoring them a little bit easy. So you can see the one with four contracts here down a few bucks on the trade. Still very centered, but as you can see that spike in implied volatility that's what that'll do to your position, right?  And really what that means to you is that you're gonna have to probably be in the trade a little bit longer potentially unless we get a huge collapse in implied volatility. So that's the that's the four contract strangle. And then let's take a look at the three which is moved down a little bit on us here. So so that's where we are on that. If we take a look at the charts, I mean look at look at what implied volatility is doing in FXC. I mean it's just it's just skyrocketing. You know there's a lot of talk about some additional quantitative easing. There's a lot of geopolitical issues with with different currencies going on. So that's what's causing this the spike in high implied volatility. And so all that means to us is opportunity, right? So the the one thing to keep in mind because I had I had a few questions about this for members is okay implied volatility rank and implied volatility percentile is at 100, right? So that's maxed out, right? And the answer is no, absolutely not. These can be pegged at 100 for extended periods of time and the options can continue to get more and more expensive, okay? So don't think of that as being maxed out. You want to remember what this measures what this indicator measures is the average or the comparison to itself over the last 12 months, okay? So it's just comparing basically comparing the price of the options over the last 12 months. That doesn't mean this can't stay pegged at 100 for an extended period of time and those in those options can continue to expand in price if things get really crazy. So it's really really critical that you keep your position size small and continue to layer on positions as price moves around to widen out those break evens and kind of diversify your time and price in the trade. But don't don't load the boat. Don't think oh my gosh, it's at 100. Can't go any higher. Let's let's load up. You can't think that way. That's not the way it works. So I've made I made that mistake mistake as an early young trader and I don't want you guys to do the same thing. So keep your keep your position size small. And if implied volatility continues to go up in not only FXC but a lot of these other stock indices and other markets, we're going to have a lot to do. So you want to be able to have capital to spread around and diversify between symbols. So keep your position size small. I know I keep saying that over and over, but very, very important. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in EWW. So we had a 5051 strangle on that we had adjusted previously. And we needed to roll that one to we needed to roll our puts up. And we also needed to roll out from April to May. So we just rolled it all to the 52 strike. So essentially that gave us a 52 straddle in EWW. So if we take a look at that, we've got two different positions in EWW. And as you can see, the implied volatility has continued to go up since we put this on. So we're down a little bit on this one as well. But but still very centered. No, no issues there. And then the other one that we still have on is a 4750, which so we're looking for a little bit of a down move to to make enough profit on that one before we take that one off. So stay tuned on EWW. But if we look at the charts, you can see what's happened to implied volatility. Again, we're seeing a lot of implied volatility. I think these markets are getting nervous. As you can see, the S&P was down over 13. And the S&P has continued to just kind of trend a little bit lower the last couple last two three weeks. So implied volatility has gone up. And every time there's a little bit of a move down in the market, you see a spike in implied volatility. Okay, that means that there's there's something going on. There's there's nervousness in the market. The market feels heavy. So I would be really, really careful about being long here. Not to say that it can't turn around and rip higher and go to new highs again. But but just just be careful. Next trade was in closing trade in DIA. We had a double calendar on there. We were only 11 days away from expiration. IV percentile had jumped up to 40. And so we went ahead and price was very centered in our double calendar. So we got out of this for a small profit. I think we made a little over 10% on the whole position. So not as much as we wanted to. But you know, I didn't want to take the risk of holding it closer to expiration. And the fact that price was very centered in our double calendar made sense just to take that off and take some profits. Next trade was an opening trade in EFA. IV percentile got up to 87 at the point where we put this on. And so we sold some premium in EFA, which is the it's an international index, kind of like the Dow of international. You can see it. We got an 87 and it's up to 89 as far as the implied volatility percentile. Still very centered. Nothing nothing else to do there. Now keep in mind, you know, I know not all of our most of our members can trade strangles and things. But if you have an IRA or you have a very small account and you can't trade or you're not permission to trade naked options, you can always buy the wings, you know, so you can you could buy the buy a put and buy a call to essentially create a synthetic strangle or basically an iron condor. So keep that in mind. Anytime I do a naked strangle, feel free to add those defined risk wings if needed. And it really depends on your account. So I don't I don't put the I don't put the alternative strikes out to buy for that defined risk. Because, you know, there's there's so many different options to choose, whether you're in an IRA and you're trying to just do a synthetic strangle or if you're an emergent account, but you're not permission for naked options and you just want to do a traditional iron condor. There's so many different variations. So I'm just giving you trade ideas.  And that's just and that's how I trade. It's another way of kind of diversifying your portfolios between strategies. So so but but feel free to take a little bit very, you know, take variations of my trade alert. You don't have to follow everything exact. Next trade was a closing trade in natural gas. So we got a nice contraction implied implied volatility, as well as well as a down move in price gave us the opportunity to bank that trade for a nice profit. Another closing trade in GLD. And this was a double calendar that we had on and kind of the same situation as DIA where we're getting close to expiration only had 10 days to expiration. Gold moved up on us. You know, you don't have enough time left till expiration to adjust. And so I didn't want gold to kind of rip higher on us and really give us a severe loss. So we took a small loss on this trade and and closed it out. And with implied volatility going up in gold, I did not want to reposition that. So we'll probably look to actually sell premium do some strangles or iron condors in gold next week. So stay tuned for that. Next trade was an opening trade in TLT IV percentile got up to 62 at this point. So we put on a strangle in TLT. Again, this is another one that you could have done an iron condor on. But I chose to do a strangle get strangle, get your break evens wider, a little bit easier to manage a little bit less transaction costs, which is why I prefer them. You can see TLT spiked up and then the implied volatility on Thursday yesterday actually went down a little bit. So anyway, that's where we're at here. It's continuing. It's March higher a little bit still still fairly within this range, though, that it's been trading in for the last few months. So stay tuned for more in TLT if implied volatility continues to escalate to the upside. Next trade was in QQQ. So we didn't have a position on in QQQ. So we put on an iron condor. Take a look at the QQs. Same thing across the board. We're getting a lot of these spikes in implied volatility, which is great. You know, after this just piddling around down here, it just feels good to actually finally get some opportunities like this. So we had a position, we already have a position on in spy, have a position on in IWM, did not have one on in QQQ. Keep in mind, these are all very highly correlated, meaning they move together. These are all stock indices. And so they're going to move in tandem for the most part. So, you know, if you have a position on in spy and IWM and QQs, the reason I spread this out over time is I want price to be able to move around and so I can kind of reposition and recenter my trades at different points. And they're going to move move around a little bit differently than each other. So you're getting a little bit of diversification there. But keep in mind, if you have a position on an iron condor on an IWM and one on spy, one on in QQs, you can almost look at that as like you have three different ones on on the same underlying. Okay, so don't think you're extremely diversified just because you have, you know, positions on in, you know, those three, because they're going to move around very, very similar. But it does make sense to spread those out. And as price moves around, put one on here price moves over here put one on here, and then spread those out between the different stock indices. So that's what we're doing here. And then lastly, the last trade we made yesterday on Thursday was we bought back and closed out our iron condor in soybeans for 40% of max profit, which is our mechanical exit point for iron condors. So that was a nice trade. So that's all for today. Hope everybody has a great weekend. Enjoy some time with your family with Easter. And don't forget to join us for the trade of the week Monday morning. And hopefully this implied volatility stays high continues with the opportunity because this is when trading really gets exciting. So look forward to seeing you guys then talk to you soon. Bye


Hello, hello, welcome beautiful people My name is Wilhelm do ha and I will Have a talk about Rattopology and if we really have all the tools we need for that First thing I wanted to say it's like so beautiful to be here like it's always surprises me that you can feel so much Kindness and love on a software conference. No, that's that's amazing and I just have to say it Okay, so before I start with Rattopology. I want to tell you something about me My name is Wilhelm do ha and I've been with blender for more than 20 years Like actually the application to the art school that I applied to back then was done in blender game engine and Since then I did like a lot of stuff with blender. I did Movies I developed a lot of add-ons about 20 I did art I did sculptures and I did a lot of work for the science community like science visualizations animations, etc Here you can for example see a screenshot of my sculpture relief and for that Back in the days like many years ago. I developed also an add-on called blender cam Bender computed it is machining. So the spread was quite wide and while I was kind of working on All these works throughout the years. I had also this problem that I was always creating my materials From scratch my assets from scratch. So I was missing a library and that ended up with something called Blender kit, which is a company that I helped to run now with some beautiful people that are also here And you can meet them here and nowadays my job is mainly to Care for the people who use this service because we have over 700,000 registered users and there are hundreds of thousands people downloading stuff from us every month, so It's a lot of work, but still Sometimes I managed to steal some time for myself to do some coding and this talk will be about that It will be a bit of a developer talk, but Artists don't run away. I hope you will enjoy it too Okay, so a retopology Now I need to ask you a question Because you can make this Lesson a bit short. Please raise your hand if you don't know exactly what this retopology and how to do it in blend Good. There are people I can explain stuff too.  It's beautiful in all aspects But then it kind of sucks and you need to do it again That's what's retopology about it's the technical part of the work you need to do to Make your for example if you sculpt the dynamic topology Or if you are you scanning or some wild process to create your assets then sometimes you need to create a new topology that lies beautifully on your original work and It helps you to animate stuff better, especially for characters You need good deformations for the muscles for face for everything you need to follow the anatomy Yeah, and for static assets also It's very good because you can get better UV maps UV layout like triangles don't like UV maps you might know that and Also, like you can get better texture baking like better usage of texture space better displacements, etc Right and in blender to do retopology There are a few basic things that you can switch on right you can switch on tweak mode in selection you can switch on Selection of edges and vertices at once you can switch on face projection. There is a new lay Overlay in blender 3.6 It's called retopology that kind of shows the much better and you can also switch on merging of vertices automatic And then what's fun? You only use the most basic blender tools to do your retopology here in this video I do just extrusion and snapping happens automatically because it's already on and I also use Tweaking like grabbing the vertices and moving them around and I create new faces with the F key, right? So that's the basic retopology process that you can do in blender and you can start with it in five minutes Literally, if you know these settings then you can use some amazing add-ons that might make your work faster Right mainly the F2 add-on that is directly in blender kind of creates faces in a better way You can check out the tutorial for that and then there is for example be surfaces add-on and there is there are many Other good add-ons like retopo floor or other tools and these kind of help you to add more topology at once to your mesh I kind of to be more a Bit faster, but here for example in this video. I try to raise myself With using be surfaces add-on that is directly in blender You can just switch it on and it helps you create new topology just by drawing strokes with annotation tool And it it's at the surfaces The thing is like I kind of never was faster with this add-ons because I Believe there is one principle if you do retopology and that's quite important And it's also important if you do any modeling if you need to literally grab every vertex and place it Exactly in the position where it's supposed to be now. We're talking about organic models, right and With that like you can also place the vertex while you are extruding or while you are making it So creating a mesh vertex by vertex or creating like big patches of faces like the speed of that might be kind of similar in the end and What would I say as a recommendation for a topology is that? Basically you can just learn the most basic blender tools and You will be super powerful. I also teach blender and Sometimes also experienced users when they actually know all the features of this Extrusion and face making like this very basic tools They are kind of surprised sometimes, okay, so but now let's come to the topic of this call talk And I'm a bit excited about it to show it to you because I think I found maybe something new so Can some of you tell me what is wrong with the retopology like not only in blender, but generally No one wants to do it. Okay Yeah Yeah, it can be time-consuming and you can use like quadri-flow for example in blender or like summary measure Eddons, but these are good for static assets, right? But I think like If you get fast enough, it can be like one to two hours for a complex character Maybe a bit more speaking if you are doing the process with rigging and back and forth, you know Yeah, but It's time-consuming and maybe I can help with that, right and now I Will tell you what I think that is wrong with retopology and that is That everyone is snapping the vertices to the surface of the mesh, right? that's This kind of old school and I I will try to explain you why So let's say you have a beautiful Surface is the original surface you sculpt it. Yeah, and you snap vertices to it That's the blue line and then there's the yellow line because you have a character you want to animate There's also a subdivision surface modifier and you can see there is like Distance between the yellow line and the green line, right? There is an error in it and that's what you get if you subdivide surfaces and So how to fix it like if I ask some artists like some would recommend to fix it with the shrink wrap modifier and basically like just to take the vertices and pull them a bit up, yeah, and Let's wait Yeah, no, it happens and you can see it fix it can fix actually the problem from the outside You don't see the problem from the outside of the mesh that well But actually in the cavities the problem gets worse because the subdivision surface gets further from from your surface, right? so what if we could just find another solution and that is like kind of take the vertices so that they go into such positions that the subdivision surface fits your original sculpt and so I was thinking like oh could this be done and For example also for low pulley Let's say we try to think about a case where we don't need subdivision surface We just want a nice low pulley object Then it also makes sense to offset the vertices a bit and kind of better get a better pronounced shape silhouette I don't know how about you but for me that this makes sense and I was thinking if if there is such tool that does this right and Sincerely like I didn't find it I think I checked like many at the apology tutorials also different Other tools that people use like topo gun or other other tools and I didn't find this kind of feature for offsetting vertices in this way So And I also thought like maybe it's in blender, right? Maybe after this talk somebody from the crowd comes to me and tells me Hey, this is in blender since blender 2.6 and it's in this menu That is in upper right left corner And if you click the button twice then you get this menu and then you that you can switch it on I didn't find it so I Set on to try to develop a tool that would actually do this and I also teach in a car company like they are designing cars in blender And they are doing quite a lot of retopology and they need like a nice curvature So that's how also I came back to this idea because it has been in my head for many years And I found out it is doable. So here we can see like this new tool that I'm developing and You can see that actually like it's possible to match the surfaces quite precisely and It's basically like inverting the subdivision right checking the offsets and there is an interesting tool Like now you can see it like for example on a character where I just do extrusions That if you move one vertex in the subdivision surface Modifier right and move it up for example the surface on the next neighbor vertex moves to right So if you kind of fix it on one vertex and you screw up the other ones, so The error or the fix you make on it propagate So that what is interesting on it then you're running basically something like a simulation like a closed simulation because Always one nerve text vertex next is influenced right? So this new tool actually can also influence neighboring vertices Depending on your setting and it can also run in real time like a simulation while you are modeling So while you are modeling you can kind of use this snapping to To get immediately the results you want and then you can kind of save on topology Or like see if you really need to add more topology for the subdivision surface. I will give you the second Here you can see trying me on a Basically just a random downloaded asset from the internet. So sorry. This is not my artwork It's from one of the artists who upload to blender kit and you can see it's kind of correcting all the time with the green arrows It's showing it and I was waiting for this slide because this shows clearly like the difference between the classical system Where this is with shrink wrap modifier on right? so and if I switch it off and you can see like the Difference in the error between these two approaches and it's kind of in millimeters or something It's this color coding. That's just a geometry notes setup that does this okay, and so This just works and I also thought about like what This algorithm would could do of other stuff because it kind of influences also other Tools or other processes you need to do with 3d For example blender has unsubdivide feature in the cement modifier You might know it and you might also know it Reconstructs the original topology of the middle So it kind of shows you how the friend who sent you the file or your friend yourself from the path who applied the modifiers and Kind of throws the possible changes You know and now you can see the topology, but you don't get the original shape Right, so I tried again with the two if I could for example make a new better unsubdivide tool and turns out it's possible and This example Shows me actually trying like how precise the algorithm is because I thought like okay It's kind of a bit iterative algorithm So I didn't expect it to be precise, but I realized that the precision can be up to the decimal Numbers that blender can show me so it's actually like in blender numbers. It's precise these tools that's what something I was surprised with and Yeah, that's about it and last thing to show you is that I Was thinking also about another thing that while modeling You know and when you are creating a new model with subdivision surface like every loop you add is changing the shape That's logical and most of the time. It's something you want to do, right? But sometimes you just want to in organic modeling or whatever you want to add geometry and loops and You need them on one side of the mesh and on the other side of the mesh You just want to keep your curvature. You want to keep the same shape, right? so It turns out like if you just make a shadow copy of the mesh You are just doing and switch this on for a while Then you can actually add new geometry and as you can see like the curvature then kind of compensates and doesn't change I mean if you add the Geometry, yeah, I will give it a while because this example shows it nice Yeah, now it's nicely visible what it does and that's about it. It's quite simple This talk was quite short because we are at the finish But I was excited about it and maybe like if you know that this this two in blender exists already Like come to me like ten minutes after the talk, please like so that I can have like ten minutes of joy and Also Yeah, and I'm sorry for that. It's not that released. It will be soon like in weeks and You will find it on github and also probably on blender kids site or wherever and that's about it If you want to contact me, I will be here of course with this t-shirt and If I go to interested like in in this and Yeah, we have also a blender kid community meetup that is tomorrow at 2 o'clock in sigrum, so we're invited to come there Okay. Thank you very much