CITES is the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species. It's one of a large family of what are called multilateral environmental agreements. And in fact it's one of the earliest that was established in 1973, ratified in 1975, and now has I think over 180 countries of the world who are signatures to this convention. One of the interesting things about CITES is it's one of the few, and certainly one of the earliest multilateral environmental agreements, which actually combines an instrument which can lead to sanctions in terms of trade in particular species. Its other distinguishing feature is it has three different appendices within which different types of species, both animal and plant, are included in relation to the degree to which they are endangered. Only 3% of all species are included within Appendix I, which is where most species are really in danger and threatened with extinction. And the vast majority of the species are listed in the Appendix II, which represents something like 96% of all the other species that are listed in CITES appendices. Now one of the reasons why it is I think of particular interest now to see for when CITES was ratified, there were only 18 tree species that were included in the appendices. And since the COP that was held, I think if I recall in February 2013 in Bangkok, this is now grown according to the CITES secretariat at the conference here in Cambridge, almost 600 species now. These are not necessarily timber species that are threatened or close to extinction, but they are timber species which are involved in regional and global trade. Well, it's very important partly because to be able to implement many of these conventions, you actually require legal teeth. If the laws themselves are weak or weakly enforced, these are clearly areas where there are scope for improvement. And I think it's also important in terms of a new stream of research at CIFOR that we actually focus more on the legal aspects. This was something of a surprise to me when I discovered that in CIFOR's 20 years history, we actually hadn't done a great deal of work on CITES specifically. That may reflect, as I said earlier, the fact that there were a relatively small number of timber species that were included in the appendices, but that has changed. What I think is now really exciting is that we're starting to see the interest across CIFOR, amongst other scientists, to look at probably two different streams of research in the future that relate to CITES, one vis-a-vis the timber species, but equally important also the wildlife trade. And some of the early work that we're doing, led by our Deputy Director General, Robert Nassie, is focusing particularly on the latter and the bushmeat trade and some early work we're doing in, I think, in DRC as well as in Columbia, which hopefully will lead to a much stronger relationship between our research and the CITES secretariat. Another theme that's come through in this conference is that many of these conventions really exist and function within their own silos, and although some of them have started, so for example, we have the Biodiversity Liaison Group, which has been set up across five conventions, as an early mechanism to try and ensure there's much greater horizontal coordination and integration and information sharing, I think there's still a long way to go to ensure we get the maximum value added from all of these different conventions. CITES, as I said right at the beginning, has the distinguishing feature of having this ability to use both carrots and sticks. And this is something that perhaps needs to be looked at, and I think this is of interest to C4 vis-a-vis our flagship program five on globalized trade and investment and adding a new dimension to our existing portfolio of research on global trade and investment and global value chain analysis and building on much of the work that's been done by Paolo Ciaruti and Gio Mleschiae in the Congo Basin countries vis-a-vis the domestic timber trade. So this I think represents an exciting new development. I think this is absolutely music to the ears of those who support the landscape approach because it does provide another way to actually take a much more synthetic systems approach to look at many of the different actors who are interacting, intervening within a landscape. And I think again with some new funding prospects in DRC we'll be able to try and translate this into something more practicable and also of relevance for future research.


So I'm with one of the greats of the Melbourne cycling scene and more importantly the hell ride We've just done a little piece on this magnificent kit that he's wearing today Leah also wanted to know about this bang bang thing. What's this? What's the bang bang? Can you tell us about that? I was on the Noosa Bunch ride today thought I'd give him a couple bit It was like fireworks everyone was just going bang bang bang bang bang, it was bangs, everyone was like sugar so And it was a tough ride such a good loop out here in Noosa and such a great bunch of guys Can you show us what a bang looks like? I will in a sec, but I'll mate here, he'll be in the, we're going up this climb He'll be in the 5511. 5511 the whole bunchy today. What's the theory behind that? Oh look the consensus has been to go to compacts. I thought I'd just try the other way Besides that the SRAM TT ring looks magic on the bike. We'll just relive the Noosa the World Chance Day Final Toby was Directed me where to go because I had no idea what was going on And we're coming up. What road was it tope? Sunrise road Sunrise road Noz is worried. I was gonna get dropped and he says The sprints of the letter box and he yells go so I'm thinking he wants me to Leave him out. I don't want to come a visitor. I'm a guest. I've got to you know do what he says so I did but he A couple went away, and then I just went BAM Chase got across to one guy dropped off. There's one more at the line.  How many of you got now over 250 mate They're growing 250 the goals 365 won for every day to you, but they're 250 It slowed down a bit because I've saw that there's nothing really I'm chasing or hunting at the moment a few little bits and pieces, but I've sort of got most of what I want Yeah, and tell us about this kid here. This is your rarest. Yeah, we had this this is probably the rarest This is good. This was one of the hardest to get it took me years to get because this is a Mario Chippolini Chippolini muscle skin suit that he wore in the giro Here's was a long long sleeve long leg one But this is the one I wanted for years and years and years and I just could not get I had it saved on an eBay search for years And it's funny how I ended up coming coming to get it was it was I just put a tweet on Twitter one day This is a missing piece in the collection of picture of it and thought nothing nothing of it And then like two months later someone sent me a direct message and said I used to laugh to that kid And I wrote back and said oh, yeah, I am he goes. I've I've got it. I'd be willing to sell it and I'm thinking oh, okay Send me a picture and he sends me a picture with the tags on it brand new and I'm thinking oh great What size it was like a medium large which is my size.  This is all via message because he was from overseas And I think he wanted a thousand bucks and then I thought oh, that's a lot So I said 500 then we ended up negotiating to I think about 800 plus delivery And then um, I was a bit nervous and he about you know, could this be I'll be ripped off of it I'll take the chance. He seemed pretty legit. So I sent across the 800 plus Delivery money and he said he'll send it and two weeks later it turned up in the mail and Look at it. Yeah, rest is history the rare Cipollini skin soup So what sort of reaction do you get in the bunch when you're wearing this? Uh, well, I only sort of wear it the odd race because it's a skin suit. I don't really wear it in bunch rides Except this morning in six degrees In noose this morning. I wore it the noose the guys are great They didn't think twice about look give me any grief about it. They're really good really good bunch up here in Noosa. Lovely guys. You won the kicker here.  Absolutely Like middle of winter. I was by the pool all day yesterday and had a swim like it is so good here in Noosa It really is paradise But um, yeah, so this when I wore it like out at the critter one's old wall Because I don't know where to look because it looks even at the cafe then the girl said I don't Don't know about that kid.  Oh, yeah I've also got the cipollini tiger skin suit, which is really rare as well. Yeah, and that one was um I got that for dude. I would have paid a thousand bucks to that Obviously whoever had it had no idea it was just on ebay and I got it for like 30 bucks Like that's the thing with ebay you can pay You know 800 or whatever for something or you can get something so cheap because the person doesn't know the value of it So yeah, and tell us about this bike is what we got next year. Are we getting a new one? Yeah, a new one. This is my uh, doomalyn one the pink one But I've got a new gva gold one being built as we speak very nice gold srm for it and the One piece bars with gold decals. So I can't wait to get that New giant tcr next week. Yeah, all right, mate. I'll let you get back out in the sun. All right, beautiful Thanks camp and see you boys which kid this kid. Yeah, they keep behind you here From the back. It's a little bit frightening I've never seen more ladies look in our direction When this guy's being mirrors with that kid on which is a good thing I look really good. We went out for a ride this morning and he he he did it justice He he he took it to the line. Yeah. Yeah, I saw I saw every muscle fire the flexing tearing So we go for a ride


Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the webinar. My name is Hari Swaminathan. Today, we're going to talk about the proprietary options systems. We can see the title slide here. All of these systems gives options traders an edge on every trade. It's very important that we have an edge on every trade. There's a very big, very important reason for that. And so the systems that we're going to talk about today is something that will give you an edge. No system can be 100% perfect. However, we're talking about methods. How do you approach certain trades, certain strategies, especially with options? As we know, in the options market, we are dealing with a market maker. So this is very different from the stock market. We'll cover that. And this is the reason that we need an edge. Whenever you place trades, you want to make sure that you have some kind of an edge in the trade. If you just place a trade arbitrarily, it doesn't matter if it's a calendar or an iron condor or a debit spread or a credit spread. If you simply place a trade and then don't think about how you can get an edge from that trade, most likely or at least statistically over 10 trades, you'll find yourself losing more times than winning. So that's what we're going to talk about. This edge is very important and how do we get this edge? Alright, so let's get right into it. My name is Harish Swaminathan. I'm the founder of optiontiger.com. I've been an options trader for about 8-9 years now and I have a bachelor's degree in engineering from India and I have an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York. I mentioned I have about 8-9 years of options trading experience and anybody that has gone through options will find the first couple of years fairly challenging, fairly frustrating and it was no different with me. Many things I've learned by making mistakes. Many things I've learned by trying to really get deep into the market structure itself which reveals a lot of things about options and so a lot of this it's all coming from personal experience and when you say personal experience, when you learn by mistakes, it goes without saying that you learn by losing money and so you know that's very critical to not lose too much money when you're learning, when you're in the learning curve and unfortunately we are going to lose money in the beginning but the trick is to keep those losses as low as possible because you want to learn the game and options trading is a game. It is a game of skill it is a game of skill that is no different from chess. It is a game of skill much higher level of skill is required than poker. Poker is also a game of skill however it has an element of chance to it also whereas the options are entirely a game of skill so it is no different from chess so we'll get into some of this also. So let's get started and in general let's talk about the options market. Now many of you may have quite a bit of experience in the options market and so some of the stuff you may already be aware of maybe you have not realized a couple of things even if you're experienced traders and if you're a beginner or fairly new to options trading then this is very important information for you. You know when you look at the options market there is one very significant difference between the options market and the stock market. In the stock market most of the time 90%, 95% of the time you're dealing in a peer-to-peer network so meaning you have stock trading platforms whether it's E-Trade or Charles Schwab or whoever it might be if you put in a buy order the broker tries to match your buy order with the sell order from another customer another trader so it's a peer-to-peer system whereas in the options market that is not the case in the options market we always deal with the market maker so every one of our trades is not against another trader it is against a market maker so this makes the options market no different from a casino. So when we walk into a casino we play against the house. There are very few games where you play against each other I think poker may be one of them but most of the games in a casino like blackjack or roulette or perhaps or whatever it might be most games are designed where you play against the casino. So the casino is legally allowed to have an edge and you know that's not some earth shattering news we know that we know that the casino operators have an edge because if they don't have an edge why would they be in that business why would they spend so much money creating this fantasy land and having all these entertainment options and all of that if they have an edge so the fact is they have an edge and it's no different with the market maker the market maker is a market maker in the options market for a reason and that reason is obviously because the regulators have allowed them to have some kind of an edge obviously the edge has to be within reason otherwise the regulators won't allow it and the same goes for a casino as well however they are allowed to have an edge and in the options market the market makers have two ways of having that edge one is we know very clearly they set bid ask prices so whenever we make a trade we will face slippage on the bid ask spread. The second way they have an edge is they have considerable flexibility in setting option prices you know the way they calculate volatility the way they set option prices they have considerable flexibility and then obviously the market will have a supply demand dynamic and then it will go from there however they do have considerable flexibility in setting option prices. By these two methods the market makers have a statistical edge in the long run so in the long run we are talking hundreds thousands tens of thousands of trades the market makers are there they are there every day and they have deep pockets so even if they have bad days you know they can come back and make that up no different from a casino when we go to a casino we can have a great day sometimes yeah I mean you know you might win a lot of money however what you really have to look at is the long run statistical edge and that unfortunately is on the other side whether we are talking about casino operators or the options market market makers the statistical edge is on the other side and that's why whenever we take trades we think we are making good trades and so by definition that means that the market maker is taking a crappy trade so but they still take crappy trades all day and they still win you can know if you if anybody is following all these big wall street banks and trading companies trading profits are just skyrocketing for all of these companies and so you know they all have proprietary trading desks which then creates markets for all of these products all of these stocks and trading has become a very profitable venture for all of these companies so net net bottom line is we traders face a problem of consistency and if you've traded options for any length of time you know that this is true when we say consistency meaning we can have two great trades three great trades a day four great trades or you know over a period of a week we'll have five or six or seven great trades but one trade will come and it'll hit you and when it hits you you realize that you give up a lot of the profit if not all of the profit that you made on the previous trades and that's the problem there's a couple of reasons for this and all of this is coming from my personal experience my personal studying of what is happening in the options market what are the mistakes we make and believe me we make a lot of mistakes we take off trades at the wrong time we adjust at the wrong time or we make the wrong kind of adjustment then we have transaction costs that work against us so there's a lot of things that are going against us traders when we enter the markets and all of this over the long run over a period of a few months or a year or two it creates a problem of consistency and consistency fishing also you know today we try some trades tomorrow we try different adjustments so we have what I call in constantly in a fishing mode and so all of this actually works in the favor of the market maker the market makers are never fishing they know exactly they don't even think they are pretty much acting like robots when an order comes in because you know they look at the Greeks they look at their risk numbers and they only go with that so you know they are actually acting pretty robotically and that's really the way to win in the markets we traders need to act just like the market maker you know so we have a method you follow a method and that is what will put the edge on our side they say in a casino the casino has maybe a 52-48 edge maybe 53-47 in the options market if you look at all of these factors I think although it's not some scientific study but I think the options market have the market makers have a much larger edge than even the casino operators now the only difference is we know how well the casinos do because their assets is very visible to us and in the case of market makers we really can't see how much money they are making but they aren't making money all of these like I said these wall street companies are all every quarter they are producing 100 million 200 million 300 million more than that in trading profits I'm only talking about proprietary trading so there's a lot of money they are making which we can't see it's behind a firewall we cannot see it but they are making a lot of money so bottom line we traders need to find a way to be consistent with our trades and so the only way we can put consistency on our side is we have to have an edge on our trades and that's what the max systems are all about


Happy Mother's Day, Radiant Mom! Hello, we wanted to share with you one thing that we love to do together as a family, and that is to go on nature walks. We love to go out and explore creation together, look at God's creation, His nature, listen, observe, and see what we can see outside. So a verse that speaks to us all is in Psalm 19 about the heavens declaring the glory of God. It's so beautiful. And then also in Romans 1 verse 20 it says, For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. So we love to observe God in all that He has created. And so I have a question for you, Kayla. What? Where did we go yesterday? Ah, to the park! To the park! And what did we do, Sophia? We played. We played. And Brie, what else did we do? We saw birds. We saw birds in the sky. Yeah. And Lucas, what else did we do? We picked dandelions. We picked dandelions. So I really encourage our kids that when we go on nature walks to definitely observe what they're seeing and to listen to the birds, to look around, to feel, maybe reach down and feel things, collect things. So three things that I wanted to share with you is sometimes we go out and we take our journals. So Lucas, do you want to hold this up a little bit? Yeah. So on some of our nature walks, we take our journals and the children draw what they see and hear and they even write about it sometimes a bit. And then Brie, do you want to show something? And then the other thing that we do is we bring our, sometimes we bring our collections home. So Brie has found some special rocks. I really like this bag. Okay. Because this is the smooth rock. Your smooth rock? Very nice. And then Sophia has one too. And go ahead and can you show this to them? What is this here?  Just a collection. We've taken an egg carton and we've taken different things that we collected in nature and just put it there for them to observe up in their room or wherever. And then later, you know, they can keep it there. They can take something out and draw it. They've even used it to make another craft. So it's really fun to just have those with them in their room.  We've even taken little jars and put seashells and jars or they find egg horns or whatever. And they just, they've become special little treasures for them, what God has made. And also this was yesterday's pick, but here on the ends of our table, you can see big bouquets of D and the lions. And for me as a mom, I love just to, you know, allow the children to bring into the home what they see, what they observe and to celebrate what they are seeing God has made. So just want to encourage you. I also have a bunch of books on nature. And so I want to encourage you to read the Bible, go through books, you know, take a walk and also just allow them to journal, bring it home to draw it or make art out of it. And then also a collection where they can collect it and observe it and keep it for later. So, Kayla, you're going to show your drawing, right? You had drawn a leaf. Hey, you want to turn this around? She was actually making, this was like a palm branch, wasn't it? Yeah. Do you remember what that was for when we were celebrating what? When we were celebrating the resurrection of God. Jesus. Yeah, Easter. Very good. So just wanted to encourage you today and I hope you're blessed by these little tidbits of going out into creation and seeing all of the wonderful things that God has made and, you know, reading from the Bible and some major books and then bringing things home to journal about them, to draw them or to make a collection. And so have a wonderful Mother's Day. Bye, guys.