The following is a presentation of T-F-N-N. Trade what you see. With Larry Pezzavento. Toll free at 1-877-927-6648 or internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Now, Larry Pezzavento. Look at the German DAX folks. As you can see, we've been up here at this top level for a few days. Made a little bit higher high last night, then sold off a tad. And then if you take a look at the FTSE, you'll see that the rumor, I guess, about Boris little Trump Johnson taking over the Irish vote is maybe up to a little suspect. And so the pound is selling off about 100 pips and is selling the FTSE down, whether that means anything or not. I don't know, but I wanted to share something with you that John Jameson brought to my attention. Folks, take a look at this picture that you can see here. What's going on here? I want to show you the global. This is a thing from going back about 40 years. Just get this going and just put this up so you'll be able to see it here. Hold on one second. You have a little trouble. There we go. This basically shows the countries with their average incomes and stuff like that. And what it's related to is what John was trying to show me is the increase in Internet access. Let's just show you what it looks like now. I mean, this is just truly amazing to see this. You can see the world has become a swamp for data. And as you can see here, it's really been quite amazing what's happened over these last few years. So a lot of this is, we're seeing tweets and all the other things and hacking and all the other bad things. So there's a lot of bad things with the Internet and there's a lot of good things with the Internet. So we're going to see what happens. But you see we live in a global market now where the slightest little bit of news is on the air. If you remember back many years ago, I mean, well, I don't want to go into the history part of it, but we have instantaneous news now and a lot of it is not reported the way that it should be. Not just on anyone. A lot of people are responsible for it. And I don't know if that's good or not. I don't know. But we'll see. I'm just surprised that the stock of Twitter isn't a lot higher given the fact that we see it all the time. But Facebook and that stock went up about 40 times or something, 30 times or something, and yet Twitter's done very, very little. So I'm surprised at that. All right. By the way, we have some good news today. We have Bill Meridian as our guest at 930 for Cycles Research in Austria. As you know, Bill alerted to us to the big move coming in gold, which certainly happened. And he's been spot on on stocks. It would be really great to hear what he has to say because he's a really, really nice fellow. Plus he's a really smart fellow. We want to keep an eye on that. Let's take a quick look here. I wanted to show you, someone sent this to me to remind me what happened. Just to show you the relationship to what happened to the NASDAQ in 2000 versus the 1929 crash. That was equivalent to the 1929 crash folks that NASDAQ dropped. It dropped almost 90%. And that was the dot com bubble. If you remember, that was a once in a generation type move that this old cowboy will never see you. Young folks out there will, but I won't see that again. But we'll have to wait and see. Now we've had a big sell-off in bonds. We hit some really strong support Friday in the bonds that went down to the 1.618 area and has rallied about 0.75 this morning. And we're going to be able to see now. We have a short show today because of Bill Meridian. I wanted to bring to your attention folks. Mr. Z is talking about the natural gas. We've had a 12 cent move in natural gas over the last couple of days. We're looking at the February contract and that goes into delivery on January the 15th. So we have several, this is a very strong seasonal folks. If you look at the natural gas chart, you'll be able to see that we're down to an area which is really strong support. I will post the chart as it was just a day or two ago, but we've had a pretty nice run here. Let's get this up here so we can see it. But this little puppy is ready to go. Let's get this up here so we can all take a look at it. But it's got a really good chance here. This happens to be the December contract. I'm looking at the February with selling for a lot more, but that is a strong seasonal. You could trade either December or February. I think it would be too much trouble. You don't want to go into November that comes into delivery too soon. In fact, I think it's in the delivery tomorrow. Okay, let's move on and talk about the gold market. We had a really significant bottom in the gold last Friday. Get this up here so we can see it. In fact, we were on the air when this thing was happening. And we had a pretty good rally. We went right down to the 786 at 1478. And we rallied $23 up to 1501. We're trading around 1494 right now. 1501 happened to be the 78% retracement of the high that we made on Friday. So unless we get about 1501, we have a sort of a negative bias on gold for the rest of the day. Regarding the stock market, we've had a little bit of a sell-off overnight due from a lot of different things. Whatever the news is, they bring it out and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. They finally have agreed that, yes, there's something going on in the tariff world with that China deal, but nobody knows for sure. But again, that's another one that reacts to tweets almost instantaneously when they actually occur. This is one chart that I think is, well, I think it's important. So I'm going to bring it up here and show it to you. This is the, hold on one second here, boys and girls. I think this is the most important chart of the week, but we'll see. All right, this is the cash S&P index. And you'll notice it only trades on the open. It doesn't trade overnight. And you'll notice here that if you can see here closely from October 3rd to October 11th, that we had a beautiful ABCD pattern that was right at the exact 786 of the high we made back on the 13th. You'll see the two red boxes that are there. You'll notice what happened. There was a big gap down. And today, everybody that bought on Friday because of the big sell-off we had in the last 45 minutes is basically setting with a loss. The interesting part about this is the S&P futures had a huge increase in open interest on Friday. I mean, 55,000, that's a lot. And all those people that bought that, unless they bought it early in the morning of the 11th, they're setting with a loss. Anyway, if we gap down today, that would tell us that this is during the same pattern that we had on the other little red box that you see over there. We think these repeat quite a bit, but you have a perfect ABCD at the 78% level. You also, if you want to check these numbers out yourself, is to look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a perfect ABCD at the 78% level. Look at the NASDAQ, a perfect ABCD at the 61% level.  I focused on the relationships between 2000, 2004, 2007, and today showing that 5-point reverse wave, 3-drive to a top pattern that there's a potential that we're seeing here.<PHONE_NUMBER>. The TAS Profile Scanner is a standalone piece of software that instantly filters over 2,500 global financial markets such as stocks, ETFs, commodity futures, and forex. Heated by Steve Dahl, TAS understands that in today's technological world, the use of top-flight software applications and technical analysis expertise is essential to successful trading in today's market. You also gain access to the webinar that Steve Dahl and Tom O'Brien just hosted, the best way to use the TAS Profile Scanner to profit. This webinar archive is available for all subscribers immediately upon signing up. 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TFNN.com educating investors. This is part of the Treasury notes going back over the last two months. If you can see on the far left there, back in September, we were making an ABCD pattern up there at the 132 level. From that level, we broke substantially from 132 all the way down to 128. That's equivalent to seven points in bonds. It's only four points in the notes. Of course, you had another ABCD pattern that extended into October the 7th, which was also anniversary date of the high of the stock market in 2007.  We're having a little bit of a bounce today. The bounds have rallied about a point and three quarters from that low, but they should have at least a three or four day rally here. I don't think it'll be four days because it looks very, very bearish, but to figure three day rally today, tomorrow, Wednesday, and then maybe another leg down. We'll see what the rally is going to give us if in fact it does come. But the reason why I'm bringing this chart up, folks, it's just an hourly chart over the last two months. And this is what I look at, folks. I get emails every day telling me why negative interest rates are a good thing or why they've happened in the past or why they're going to happen. And these guys, I'm sure they're very smart, much smarter than I do. But I'm just an old country boy. When I hear stuff like that, it doesn't make any sense to me. I go back to that book that I read many years ago by Bernard Baruch. My own story, it was his autobiography and in there he talks about, don't be concerned on the return of your money, on your money. Be concerned on the return of your money. You always want to get your capital back. And with this, with this negative interest rate, they're not giving you any guarantees and you have to pay them to do it. That don't make any sense. Anyway, we'll watch what happens over the course of these next few days here. We'll see if it's going to be done. A lot of things going on about Brexit. I'm following it closely with John Jamison, of course. And Mr. Johnson does not have a majority over there in Parliament. I think he has a one-seat lead in prime ministers or something like that. So he's still under the gun, but they are getting closer. They've only got about another two weeks to get the whole thing done, I believe. And then we're going to see what happens over there. But the Pound had a pretty good move. But believe me, if that thing falls out of bed or something happens with these negotiations, it could be right back down at that 120 level without too much trouble. We talked about it on the air the other day at 128 on Friday, and it was making that big 1.27 expansion ABCD pattern, and that's what happened. That was the perfect pattern we were also looking at in the Euro. We were watching this as it was occurring, of course, on Friday. Get up here so we can take a quick look at the Euro. You'll be able to see that we got up to that. 110.66 was the high we got down to, I think, 110 or something last night. We're trading around 110.30 last on the Euro. So it's held up relatively well in here. But the key to that Euro is the U.S. Dollar index, because that's the one. The Euro is 53% of that. And if you look at the Euro versus the U.S. Dollar, we'll get this U.S. Dollar up here, and you'll be able to see. We made that ABCD pattern. We had the double top. You can see that at point D. There was a double top. And what we've done now over the last two and a half months is we've had these ABCD corrections. This is the third one at this 97.84 level. And as long as it stays above that 97.40, it's got a chance to go back up and make a third top and possibly even break out on the upside. So, you know, this market, they're having some really good moves and they're repeatable, folks. You know, look at the Euro. I mean, we talked about that Euro a week in advance of what it was going to do. And it didn't. I didn't always do that, but that one worked, you know, absolutely perfectly. So sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And you're looking for the ones that don't work. Hopefully this week, I'm going to have a very special guest. I mean, all my guests are special. But this one is going to be what we call super special. Tom Hougard, my good friend who did the seminar over in London. He lives in the UK. He's from Denmark. I met him 16 years ago at a Bryce Gilmore seminar in Las Vegas. He has become one of the super traders, folks. He does really well. He does a lot of day trading. And he does it in a way that is just unbelievable. David Paul, who's a psychologist from Johannesburg, South Africa, was also on the program. And I'm going to have David on the program, too, because he's going to explain what Tom does. Tom only is right about 30% of the time. But the amount of money that he makes is just beyond belief. Because what he does, he presses his winners. I mean, really presses. In other words, if it starts to work, he just keeps adding contracts. Using stops, of course. But it's not uncommon to have him do six figures a day. Last week, he had a seven-figure week. And this is really amazing what he does. We're going to try to have him on to let you folks listen to what he really does. And I think you'll enjoy it. I was mesmerized for two days, actually, when I was in London. Had a wonderful seminar. And we're going to have that. Tom's having it all recorded. He's going to be made available the whole 16 hours. So we'll see where that comes out. I'll let you folks know what happened. OK, let's go on. Any questions you have, folks? It's<PHONE_NUMBER>. Six minutes. We'll have Bill Meridian from Cycles Research to talk to us. Someone's asked me the question, has gold made a major bottom? I don't know if it's a major bottom or not, but I do believe it's a very, very important bottom, folks. Let's get it up here so we can take a look at it here. We'll just get it here because it was right on the money. Now, this is a, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just get it here. Don't want to get this. OK, there's your gold. You can see here we made a beautiful ABCD down at the 78% level, 1480. And we rallied all the way up to 1501. 1501 was nothing more than three lower tops in there. You can see them at 1520, 1514, and now 1501. If we get above that 1505, then we've got a shot to see this would go to 1540. But any move below 1475 now, folks, is not good. That sets up a move substantially lower, probably around 1410, if we do that. And I'm not, sorry, though, Tucker's asking about the upside target on natural gas. Tucker, I'm not even sure it's going to go up from here. All I know is it's got a chance. The way I'm doing the natural gas, Tucker, is I'm not worried about where it's going to go. I'm worried about how much I have to risk to see what's going to happen. At 1030 this morning in one hour, I'd like to see the natural gas be making a low, inter-day low here. It'll be down to three, four or five cents, hopefully in a nice 12-cent rally. So a little pullback there around 1030. I'll look at it. So I'm not in it, but I'm certainly interested in buying it today. So we'll see if that's the case. We did have a beautiful full moon out here in the desert yesterday, folks. Just absolutely spectacular. And we're going to have Bill Meridian on very, very close to the four minutes from now. And he'll be able to share with us some of the things that made him so very, very famous. And I want to thank Marshall and Lynn for visiting us while they were down here. And we look forward to seeing you here on your 40th anniversary, buddy. We're going to do something really special for you. All right, folks. Stay tuned for Bill Meridian of Cycles Research, Vienna, Austria. Bill is going to be talking to us about gold, stocks, and treasury bonds. So stay tuned. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you next time. Log on to TFNN.com now. We'll see you next time. This segment is brought to you by Think or Swim. For more information, just click the Think or Swim banner on the front page of TFNN.com. Back, folks. We're talking with Bill Meridian, Cycles Research, Vienna, Austria. Bill, are you there? Yes, except I'm in my home outside of Princeton, New Jersey. Ah, see, you never know where you are. You devil make care type traveling guy. Hey, listen, you've been so spot on in these markets. Do you mind sharing us what you're looking at here for the month of October? Oh, yeah, sure. Are you on slide two at the moment? Yes, I'm on slide two at the moment, yes. Yeah, well, the summary is stocks are likely to rally. Bonds are, well, let me say that in the next few days, I expect it to be like last week. The first few days are going to be down, then you're going to have a strong close to the week, except the magnitude will not be as great as last week. So I see we're down here in the pre-market and just open. And I expect it to be moderately down the next couple of days in reverse and close the last half of the week, close in the upside, but not with the magnitude that we had last week. Bonds are likely to rise over the very short term. Gold is likely to rise over the next couple of days. But I think gold may be a bit lower, but we'll go into some detail here. The next slide is October. We know that October is the most volatile month of the year, has seen some of the largest one-day price declines, has usually finished on the upside, and the likelihood of a higher October is enhanced if the month opens up on the downside. If there's been a daily drop of 1% or more in the first days of the month, the odds of a higher month reach about 70%. So that's where we are. So I would buy any weakness here. And my number one stock pick here, which I own a lot of, is Apple, because Apple, actually, October is the strongest month for Apple. And the weekly cycle points up. So you've got both cycles pointing up, and you've got the month up. So that's my number one holding. And down one more slide, of course, this is the monthly S&P cycle. This is the most basic tool. That's just using spectral analysis to extract out cycles. We test them for profitability and project them out again. So this is, I'm not showing the weekly or the daily. This is just the monthly. And this goes up into the end of the year, and then down in January. So this is one of the reasons. And, of course, next year is 2020. It's a year ending and a zero. So now you've got it's year ending and a zero, which has the most bearish returns of any year based upon the last digit of the year and this cycle turning down, which is why I'm bullish up through the end of the year, but then bearish in Q1. So if we go to the next slide, and when I was brought up on Wall Street, they always told me the real market is the advanced decline line. And there it is. It's short of hitting a new high. And there's a lot of talk about the advanced decline line without all the funds that are on the exchange, the industrial stocks only advanced decline line. And somebody tested them out and found out that the regular advanced decline line works better than that one. So simple stuff that keeps working. But the way to look at it over the short term is the next slide. That is the 10-day moving average. Now you'll notice there's two higher lows. And if you go back to September, you can say there were three higher lows. I've got the last three marked here. This is one of the key short term indicators that I use. And so, frankly, it's the horror scopes. The next couple of days set for the opening don't look bearish, but how much can the market fall if this is the technical condition of the market? The AD line is oversold. So you have to combine the two. And so this, the NASDAQ, looks about the same. So I am cautious in the next few days, but would use that weakness to add on. And if we go, if we want to shift over to bonds, one of the first things, the most basic cycle is the cycle for the year. Here we're seeing the expected return. In other words, the percentage that the percentage, let's say the market, the bond market was up 60% of the time for 1%. So the expected return would be 0.6%, which is what you see on the left axis. So October is not such a bad month for bonds, so they have this supporting them. So let's go down one more slide. And weekly bond cycle. That is the weekly cycle, which points, right now is it a low, so we should get bonds popping up the next few days and topping around the 18th. And then it gets a little tricky. It drops from the 18th to the end of the month. But as we've seen, this is a strong month, and the monthly bond cycle is still rising. So the bulk of the cycle is still point up. So I would not be short bonds here except for very short trades. I have it marked here. This is also a PTP, which is a projected turning point, which means I simply took day counts, which I learned a long time ago from George Lindsey. It's been attributed to W.D. Gann, the best book in the subject, Dynamic Trading by my old friend Bob Miner. Now, that's the best explanation, is you simply take day counts and Fibonacci ratios from past highs and lows and project them out. And what I find when the cycle matches the projected turning point, that's high reliability pivot point or turning point. So let's look at the next, let's look at the advanced, this is the bond advance decline line. And look what that is on a 10-day moving average, very oversold. Okay. So you're set up for, I think, for a good bond rally, which that is supported by the notion of higher stocks over the next few days. So I think you have at least a good three to five-day rally here in Bonds. And so let's go down one more to gold.  That is some sort of a triangle, a rising triangle or just a triangle and a breakout. And it projects up to around 1650. And so let's go down one more and look at the gold seasonality. Now you see we had the months of the run from June through September is the strongest period, one of the strongest periods of the year. September is the single strongest month of the year. October is sort of flat. And usually gold is weak in the second half of the month and we just entered the second half of the month. And then November and December is November and December, as you can see here up, but December is peculiar. There have been more major gold highs in the month of December than any other month of the year. And you see January, February. Then we hit the weak seasonal part of the year, February through June. So let's go down one more. Now here I put the weekly and the monthly gold cycles both on the same page. So during a period of the month when it turns weak, that's the static cycle. The dynamic cycles are both turning up. So how far can it fall? So the best I can say here is there will be a mild rally in gold in the second half of October. And then November, well, we'll do November in the future, but November shouldn't be too bad either. So I would not short gold here. Let's put it that way. Wow, that's a really incredible cycles, Bill. I'll tell you I can see why you're always in that time or digest stuff. Does anybody even come close to doing the type of cycle work that you do, Bill? I'm sure there are people out there, but... I don't know. Are they keeping it secret? But this is the same idea. I got way back in schools in the early 70s. And I designed this in the late 70s as people came out with cycle. Foundation for the Study of Cycles came out with cycle projections. I said, that's great. I said, there's no one problem. I said, if you're trying to make money trading these cycles, you're not going to do it. If you're trying to eat soup with a fork, you need to test the cycles for profitability. You need a plain ordinary capitalist greedy buy-and-sell signal which shows you how much money you make or lose. Let's take a little break and we'll be back with Bill Verrini and Cycles Research. Thanks, Bill. We'll be right back. If you are in the CD market and looking for a secure investment, the Tiger First Mortgage Program may work for you. The security for these first mortgages are building lots in the tax opportunity zone in St. Petersburg, Florida. 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Do you want to talk a little bit about the signs of the bear? Yeah, well, next year, I think we're having a difficult year of bear market. And I've been accumulating these. And the gist is, as my old friend Ian Notle used to say, if there is too much money made available then any Tom Dick and Harry can buy anything. And all asset classes rise together. And if they all rise together, they all fall together, which means you cannot diversify by jumping into something else unless you go to cash. So what's one of the signs? You follow the smart money. I remember when I left New York in 8990, the Rockefeller sold Rockefeller Center. That was the top of the real estate market. The bottom was when they bought it back. So what's happening right now? Venture capital and private equity funds have been selling out of the more than $40 billion raised via private offerings that include at least one venture of private equity investor. $29 billion of the 40 was for firms that were unprofitable. That's 69% of the total proceeds. That's the second highest ratio in 25 years. The last one was 86% in the year 2000. So that means they're looking forward. They're anticipating weakness. But why would you want to hold an unprofitable company going into a weak period to sell it to somebody else? Then Banksy, which I think it must be an auction house, set an auction racket with his painting of chimpanzees, or I guess that's the artist. Devalve Parliament is the name of the painting, sold for 9.9 million pounds, $12.2 million to an anonymous buyer shattering previous auction high and the 2 million pound pre-sale estimate. Bidding went on for 13 minutes. So there's too much credit enabling anybody to buy anything. And I got a call from my friend the other day. He says, hey, Bill, I got an unusual request. The woman wants me to pick a day for her, astrologically, to sell a guitar. And he said, well, how much do you want to sell it for? $3.2 million. He said, well, what kind of a guitar is it? He said, well, it was played at Woodstock. Well, who played it? She said, my husband, Alvin Lee. It was 10 years after. $3.2 million for a guitar. And that's what happens when you get to the peaks, get to the peak. The other thing that tends to happen is, well, gold, I've got a whole list of them. Gold and the dollar are supposed to move inversely, except they're not. And why would that be? Because people want safety. And I lived overseas for 30 years now. And whenever things get dodgy overseas, everyone moves their money to the US. So the dollar is strong and gold is strong. And I think that'll continue through the end of the year and probably get even stronger next year. So let me, I've got to clear up all here. So that's another sign. And some professor did a study. And he said, when the number of asset classes rallying starts to diverge, like stocks, Larry. In other words, if some asset classes start going sideways to down and other asset classes keep going up, that is a sign of a divergence between the different asset classes and the signs of a top. So this is where we are. Too much money for anybody to buy anything. OK. You want to move over to the China now and tell us what you're seeing? It's very easy to, I mentioned the horoscope of China in 1949, the current regime, which the chart is 1949. The Pluto is hitting the Jupiter in the chart five times it's already hit it twice. The first two coincided within days of bad economic news. I lived in New York City when Pluto went over Jupiter in the horoscope of New York City during the beam administration in the 70s. And that was a fiscal crisis. And the planets are the timing. In other words, the situation is already not sound. It's just when the planets hit, that's when everybody realizes it and the crisis manifests. So they have three more hits of Pluto going over Jupiter. So what has really happened? Now here's where the fundamentals come in. There's a book, Red Flags, why she's China is in jeopardy. It sets out a well researched and tightly argued challenge to the notion that China's destiny is world dominance by the simple arithmetic of extrapolation. Here's why we need cycles. I went to school and they teach you it's a lesson in extrapolation. Nobody knows where cycles are going to occur. International credit ratings are downgrading the long-term debt rating of Chinese government debt. Too much debt and much of it is uncollectible. It's of bad quality. And Chinese banks are suspected of using the same deceptive banking methods. I have a subscriber to my newsletter who has a PhD in international accounting and she has assured me that all Chinese and Russian financial statements are fake. They're worthless. And so if we go down one more, the Chinese have made this worse by allowing economic data reported to be adjusted. In other words, if local officials aren't meeting quotas or whatever, they can adjust those numbers to make them look better. Debt in China keeps rising from 254 percent of GDP, nearly three times of what it was before 2018, in 2015 to 277 in 2016. GDP growth is slowing and it's believed that $600 billion of these loans are uncollectible. Now, there is a guy who says that they have billions in undeclared assets somewhere. But if you think of this, let's go down one more and finish this. China, here's how they've been investing the money. If this was a company, they'd be broke. China built $9 billion of infrastructure in the Congo in return for access to mineral resources in 2008. But Congo cannot provide the electricity. They started buying it from Zambia. And then that wound up, they had to build their own electricity plant there, which is an unexpected expense. The copper reserves turned out to be a third less than what the Congolese told them it was. Then the price of copper dropped 20 percent since 2008. And the corrupt politicians who helped China get into power are now out of power. So this is an example, there's numerous examples around the world of very bad investments. And so the key is Donald Trump is essentially putting the screws on them at a time when financially they're very weak. This is why they're squawking so much. And if this were a company and revenue started to go down, what would happen? So Trump has really got them in a very difficult position because the financial, the structure, nobody really knows what it is, but it's got to be very weak. And so if we go down just one more, this is the timetable. This is Pluto hitting the Jupiter in the Chinese horoscope. The next one is January 6, 2020. But notice September and October of 2020, well, September and October are the two months in which we've had the most crazies. They're known as bearish months. And this is when these hits occur. And as Charles Jane used to teach, the most telling blow was struck by the last chance which is in October or September, which again are two of the most bearish months. And of course, when all the news is out is when the market is usually at a low. And we've had more lows in the month of October than any other month. So this is only one of the fundamentals that will be cited next year. I'm not saying they're causing the downturn, but the media has to latch on to something bearish when the market goes down and something bullish when the market goes up so that you think you need their news and therefore you tune into them every day, even though you really don't need it. So that's how the news on Wall Street works. Well, listen, we've got to take a break here. Sure, take a break. Could you stay with us and tell us about your YouTube channels and we'll be right back. And also your new book, that would be great. We've got a second here, Bill. How the folks, if they want to... We'll be back with you in two minutes. Stay with us, please. We'll be back with you next week. News and extraordinary set of tools as well as provide great market calls too. Sign up today. Get to test drive our newsletters risk-free for 30 days. From all aspects of the markets, including stocks, bonds, metals, commodities and tech, there's a newsletter to fit your needs exclusively from TFNN. Stay informed each day you trade and get the competitive edge that will help you stay ahead of the game. Visit our newsletters page by going to TFNN.com and click the newsletters button near the top of the page. TFNN.com, educating investors. Since 1984, Basil Chapman has been using the Chapman Wade methodology to advise traders of his expert market opinion. While originally hand-drawing charts from the late 1970s into the 1980s, Basil noticed that prices under most circumstances virtually always had a certain number of legs to the upside before declining sharply. Later, Basil found that computer software, which included the standard market technical indicators enhanced the degree of accuracy in calling price turns as well as market trend calls. Thus was born the Chapman Wade sequence. Using the Chapman Wade methodology along with other indicators, Basil Chapman advises his subscribers of his expert market opinion each market day with his opening call newsletter. Right now you can get a two-week free trial to the opening call, Basil's Daily Trading Newsletter, by visiting the front page of TFNN.com. Cancel at any time during that trial and pay absolutely nothing. Get your two-week free trial to Basil's newsletter of the opening call today by visiting TFNN.com. This segment is brought to you by Think or Swim. For more information, just click the Think or Swim banner on the front page of TFNN.com. Okay, folks, we're back with Bill Meridian, Cycles Research. Bill, do you want to tell the folks about your YouTube channel and your book and how they can reach you? I've posted the details, but give them a little heads up. Well, you can email us at bill at cyclesresearch.com. I have a monthly newsletter and a weekly institutional service. And a number of books, which you can see at billmeridian.com, of which the most recent one is Mastering Geopolitical Prediction, which is about political astrology, which is called mundane astrology. Wow. Is this very much fitting on with all the stuff that's going on with the impeachment? Is he going to be impeached or not, Bill? Well, I've said all along, no, because I compared the horoscopes of the three prior presidents who have been impeached, which are Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton, and in no way does his chart look as bad as theirs did. And this process they're going through right now is phony anyway, so... All right, that's good enough. We'll have to wait and see. Bill, we have a question on the downside. Do you have a downside projection for October where we might reach here in the Dow Jones in the next week or two? No, I don't really. I just don't have the charts in front of me. Okay, that's fair enough. Listen, I want to thank you for joining us because you're always entertaining, have some great information, and your success is unchallenged. So, God bless you, my friend. You've done a fabulous job. Bill, how old are you, 70 yet? I am 70. I was 70 in April. Yeah, I figured you were close to that. Every one thinks I'm 50 because I took very good care of myself over in my life. I went to a number of these quant groups. I belong to these. I go and I mostly listen, but I went to a one-day conference.  I say, what's the predictive value? What do you do with this? I can tell you in the next call, but none. Have you ever heard of Art Merrill? No, Joe Granville. No, Frankie Joe. No, they haven't heard of any of the great traders, any of the great market names from the past. They're brilliant with technology. They present stuff as beautiful. And one very, the largest head show in the world, and somebody I know on the inside tells me they spent millions. They have brought in all these quants. They didn't come up with anything. And if you talk to them, you have to have a basic principle. You know, they don't have that, which we have. Hey, Bill, thank you very much, my friend. Bill Meridian, Cycles Research, Vienna Rostow. See you on the flip side tomorrow, folks. May God bless.


Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup with People's Dispatch where we bring some of the top stories from across the globe. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Several Communist Party activists arrested during police raid in Kenya. ILO reports loss of 26 million jobs in LAC region during the pandemic. Undocumented workers launched second-hunger strike for pandemic aid in the US. Israel announces that it will not cooperate with ICC war crimes probe. Many charges against three anti-racist organizers dismissed in the US. Several activists were arrested during the raid on the offices of Kenya's Communist Party on April 7. As per a statement released, online police surrounded and then entered the party's headquarters in Nairobi. The raid was conducted without entry or search warrant. Police also tried breaking into a secure room which held official records and documents. Following the arrest on Wednesday morning, the party reported that all activists had been released unborn due to appear at the Kibera law courts on April 9. However, their hearings have now been postponed due to April 12. The party's vice president has stated that the arrested activists do not know what charges have been imposed against them. Wednesday's arrest followed recent mobilizations by the party against the impact of the pandemic on the working classes, little from the similar package released by the government and funded by the World Bank has reached the workers. According to the Communist Party of Kenya or CPK, the money has been transferred to employers on the assumption that it will trickle down to the workers. Vaccinations and testing have not been accessible to the working classes. Hundreds had also taken to the streets in protest on March 31. People demanded the suspension of rents, compensation for pandemic-related job losses and food subsidies. A central demand was also that the government halt its negotiations for the IMF and release all related documents. The next administration had been scheduled for April 7, which was then broken up by the police. Six party members were arrested on the spot and charged with violating COVID guidelines and fines. 26 million jobs were lost across Latin America and the Caribbean in the past year due to the COVID pandemic. By the end of 2020, the region's average employment rate fell from 57.4% to 51.7% out of this 80% of workers or over 20 million people left the workforce. These findings are part of a technical note released by the International Labour Organization on April 8. ILO Regional Director Vinicius Kinero highlighted a number of issues facing the region. These include high informality, poor coverage of social protection and problems of child and forced labour. The region also experienced a sharp contraction of working hours and a reduction in labour incomes. These contractions were more pronounced in the informal employment sector. The Canadian Cousin International Group has also noted the rising precariousness of employment for young people. A report by the organization stated that one in six people between the ages of 18-29 have left work. Young people are facing difficulties related to specializations, low wages and poverty. Unemployment for people between the ages of 15 and 24 grew by 3.4%. According to the report, these factors also forced many to abandon their studies. In a next story, we go to the US where undocumented workers in the state of New Jersey have launched a hunger strike. They are protesting against the lack of federal and state assistance during the pandemic, as reported by nj.com around 20 people are on strike in front of the state house annexed in Trenton. Advocacy groups make the road estimated that undocumented immigrants contributed over $600 million in state and local taxes. They have also contributed over $1 billion to the state's unemployment fund. However, they have been ineligible for unemployment and stimulus assistance. The strike in New Jersey began the same day as the hunger strike in New York secured a significant victory over 70 people had participated in the fast for the forgotten strike, led by the fund-excluded workers' campaign for 23 days. They were protesting against the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from government aid for pandemic-induced job losses. The state government finally announced on April 7 that it would allocate $2.1 billion in aid. It will establish a tiered system of assistance. Workers who are able to prove that they lost their jobs due to the pandemic will receive one-time payment of $15,600, however those who are unable to provide such proof will only receive up to $3,200. The system of verification requires documents such as letters from past employers and individual tax identification numbers. While the allocation has been welcomed, campaigners have stated that the amount will not be enough. They had asked for $3.5 billion, which would have been at par with the assistance otherwise given to unemployed people in the state. Israel has formally announced that it will not cooperate with the ICC investigation into war crimes in the occupied territories. An official statement was released by the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 8. The state will now notify the court in response to notification letters sent on March 9. The ICC's Chief Prosecutor Fatou Ben Souda had announced the investigation last month. A court examined war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory starting from June 13, 2014. This would include Israeli aggression during the war in Gaza, otherwise known as Operation Protective Edge. Over 2,250 Palestinians, a majority of whom were civilians, were killed during the war. As for Palestinian annual estimates, another 11,000 were left injured. The investigation will also include illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the confiscation of Palestinian land. The violent attacks against the Great March of Return protest of 2018 will also be included. Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, have also been named in the investigation. Israel has repeatedly stated that it is not under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, since it is not a signatory to the rule statute, however the ICC has ruled, that it can conduct investigations in Palestine because it has been a state part to the to the statute since 2015. The court's jurisdiction will extend the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority government has announced that it will operate with the investigation. And in the finance way, we go to the U.S., where felony charges against three activists have been withdrawn. There were among six activists who arrested following a protest against police brutality last year. Protesters had gathered to demand justice for Elijah McLean who was killed in police custody in 2019. The arrested activists were members of the local chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. They were faced with multiple felony and misdemeanor charges, including kidnapping, theft and tampering. While a district attorney has now dismissed the felony charges, the misdemeanor charges continue to be in place. Here is Eugene Perrier talking to us about this issue in September 2020. The night before and yesterday morning, there was a concerted effort by police in the area of Denver, Colorado to single out a number of activists, four members of the PSL, leading members of the PSL. And it appears that perhaps some of our allies as well were also targeted and we're still trying to get the full force of who may have been caught in this dragnet. But they were stopping people at work. One of the individuals, Joel Northam, actually had a SWAT team with an armored vehicle show up to his house to arrest him. Lillian House, another one of the activists who was arrested, was surrounded on the road by five police cars and taken in. So they were taken in in a manner that made it seem like they were multi-state criminals or something that had committed a string of armed robberies or whatever it may be, despite the fact that the charges that have been leveled against them are for peaceful protest. And so the context for this really is that over the past two months, there have been a range of protests around the murder of Elijah McClain by Denver, Aurora police, which is just outside of Denver. And the police have been massively embarrassed by this. There have been huge demonstrations, thousands of people, the taking over of a city council meeting at one point in hours of a very poignant testimony being given by the families of many police brutality victims in Denver and in the surrounding area. And so this seems to come really as a, it seems as retaliation for those protests and for that exposure of the police. And it was done in such a way. And the charges are such, you know, inciting a riot, kidnapping. I mean, these are completely bogus charges when we could talk more about it. But it seems entirely designed to create the maximum sense of fear, the maximum amount of demonization. And to really try to criminalize the protest movement, because these people are really the most identifiable, at least some of the most identifiable leaders of this protest movement in the area. And to see them charged like this with these kinds of charges and this kind of police response, it seems to us to be really 100% aimed at scaring people from coming out and continuing to protest and continuing to challenge the police. So far we have not been able to, we've only had limited contact with a few people. They're being held, you know, for people to just understand a little bit more. So there's the city of Denver, which people have heard about, and then there's some surrounding counties. And the charges come from one of the, at least one of the surrounding counties. We're still trying to figure it out because they're, you know, not giving all the information out. And so the Denver police arrested people and said, well, we're holding them for another county, and then they have to come get them and they have to do something. So they're using a bureaucratic process to try to keep people certainly in jail and not able to get out on bond and try to keep them in communicado from us, their comrades, from their families and from the broader public. And that's all we have for this episode of the International Day. And for more videos, visit our website, people.sci.org, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching.


I'd like to welcome Dr. Julian King. Dr. King is an expert, and many of you, I'm sure, will already know this, but an expert in economic evaluation and value for money is the director of Julian King and Associates Limited, a member of the Connect Group, and associate of Oxford Policy Management, as well as an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne at the Assessment and Evaluation Research Center, as well as at Charles Darwin University. So, lots of affiliations there. And Julian has completed his PhD in the Value for Investment approach, which included a model for combining evaluative reasoning with economic evaluation. And as many of you know, his approach is used globally to evaluate complex and hard to measure programs and policy reforms. So thrilled to have you this evening, Dr. King. And I'd also like to welcome Andrew Gorkins, who's a partner at ARTD Consultants, a board member of the Australian Evaluation Society as well. Andrew works as a trust advisor across the public and nonprofit sectors. He's focused on understanding client needs and developing really innovative methods to generate credible evidence and useful insights. Here's a strong foundation and grounding of his approach in systems thinking, causal analysis and logic, which I'm sure he's gonna draw on tonight. And he has many decades of experience as well, conducting evaluations in public policy and is deeply passionate about the practical utility of evaluation and evaluative thinking for public policy in our complex and uncertain world. So I'm gonna stop talking and allow our great speakers to take us on a ride this evening. So just a reminder, if you do have questions or comments during their presentation, please feel free to use the chat box, but there will be time after the presentation for our speakers to take questions from you and to also hear comments as well. So over to you. Start whenever you're ready, Andrew and Julian. I think I'm off first. Oh, we've got the first face on the video screen. Always nice to see some humans there. Look, yeah, thank you very much for the kind words, Ruth. As Ruth said, my name is Andrew Hawkins. The focus I'm bringing today to our presentation is what I'm calling propositional evaluation, which is an approach that seeks to shift attention away from primarily research questions about what works to more evaluative questions about what makes doing that a good idea. And the process essentially is to make logic models more logical and useful by treating a programme as a proposition that a certain course of action will likely lead to a certain set of outcomes. Hi all, I'm Julian King. My focus is value for investment. So that's an approach to getting better answers to value for money questions using rubrics, mixed methods, stakeholder participation and a little bit of economics. And Andrew is going to be changing the slides tonight and it feels a bit mean, but I've got all sorts of animations and transitions and things in there. So he's going to be pushing the button a lot. So let's see how we go. Trying to read those non-verbal cues. Yeah, yeah. We think there's an idea that might be worth unpacking at the intersection of Andrew's interest, propositional evaluation and my interest, value for investment. So let's explore that. Next slide. We're both using theories of change, of course, in our work and we appreciate the value they can add and we can see some ways that we'd like to improve them. Andrew, do you want to kick this one off? Yeah, okay. All right. So theory of change in program theory, broad terms that define differently by different people, but generally I think refers to a description of the causal mechanisms within the program or the reasons and assumptions that justify a program. Theory of change of program theories, you know, I believe we're in advance on the experimental approach to evaluation that dominated the early years in the 50s and 60s and before that focused on where the programs worked or not. Towards now thinking about what makes them work. So theories of change and the leveraging of causal mechanisms in social policy and programs, I think was a great advance, but I think there's still work to be done. Of course, this idea about causal mechanisms in programs I think was most fully developed in principle at least by the realist evaluation group. But Julie and I both feel that there's some work to be done about theories of change. So as I sort of said to Ruth before and oh my God, I could talk about this all day and I'm really gonna try and keep it to under 60 seconds. So I'm gonna Julie and helpfully summarize my verbose stuff into these dot points and I'm trying to stick to those. So I think the first point is I think sometimes the theory of change and they're written by the narrative box in a different ways of writing them. I don't think there's an established canonical definition, but you know, you guys are all experienced so you'll have seen the variation. But I have a general feeling that some of them are a bit overly optimistic in what they set out in terms of what might be reasonable to expect or what a reasonable person might interpret from reading them that you think you're gonna achieve and may not adequately set out the actual key risks of program failure that really need to be monitored and evaluated to manage during delivery. So in that sense, I think they can often lack a bit of specificity about what it is that we're actually doing and why that might work. So I guess the general critique is I feel like theory's been somewhat overextended and by a corollary the logic rather underdeveloped in our approaches. So I think, you know, I'm a big fan of theory and the use of theory in program design and evaluation. I think a grasp of theory is crucial for a good design. I mean, if you violate scientific theories about the way things work in the world, your programs probably won't work. So it's really important that you have some grounding in substantive social science theories. But I don't think there is a very good at justifying a whole set of activities within the whole lot of program activities. Now, I think programs leverage theories but they're not themselves a type of theory or best understood in that way. I think the theory of change tends to discount or overshadow the crucial role of setting out the logic of a particular invention in a particular time and place. The reasons and assumptions to think it will work. And of course, any logic model could easily be wrong. No one's perfect. And we may well still see positive results from an experimental program. But in my view, if the proposition doesn't make sense on paper at the beginning, I don't think we should proceed. And finally, I think I just worth noting that critiques of program logic, obviously I'm focusing more on the logic side. I think there's a common critique of program logic that it's too linear. And I just wanted to say, I think the real mistake here is to consider program logic as displaying a chain of cause and effect which is often the way that they're described. I think if we change our paradigm and think of them more as a reason proposition for action that we don't need to fall into that trap of thinking it's an overly linear model of cause and effect as opposed to an argument structure. If we'd all been taught logic and reasoning which I don't think is part of the education in the 21st or 20th century anymore, we would probably maybe not make that mistake. So finally, I think the final thing I have a concern with is this overuse of the word theory and implication that what we're doing is scientific research tends to reinforce the idea that programs should be treated like hypotheses or tested with experimental design and would then tend to privilege the scientific methods of experimental design over other methods that may well be more valuable in different situations. So Julian, I hand to you. Okay, from my side, I'd like to improve theories of change by getting more explicit about value. Theories of change focus on how an intervention brings about change, but evaluations about more than just change, more than just about what changes and how it changes, it's about value. And when we're looking to answer a value question, I'm finding it helps to add some things to a theory of change to get explicit about what's being invested and what's the value it creates. So Andrew's work on propositional evaluation, my work on value for investment seems to converge on this idea of value propositions. And that's what we're gonna explore with you now. So the glib line that you can see on the bottom left there is this idea that maybe we should consider evaluators as more like engineers than physicists. We're helping people build interventions of value rather than acting to try to understand the fundamental nature of reality. As interesting as it may be, I would argue that's not our primary job. Our job is determining the value of things that we've built in the world. So let's get to making this a bit more concrete. Over to you, Julian. Very good. So here's an example. It's not a real program. It's just something I've made up at my desk one day, but I think it's pretty close to some real programs that are out there in the world. And the basic idea is a subsidy for people to buy e-bikes. So the subsidy makes it cheaper to buy an e-bike, so people buy more e-bikes. So we have ourselves the beginning of a theory of change, right? Let's build it up a little bit. So we've got an input, the subsidy, we've got an output, people are buying more e-bikes and we can add some outcomes. So for example, one thing I'd hope to see is that bike usage increases and we get more people engaging in physical activity. And once people really start to love their e-bikes, we might even find car usage decreases. That might sound far-fetched, but I know it's true for at least one person, me. And so perhaps we'll see some reduction out of that and traffic congestion, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions. We could theorise that more people, that we could theorise that we can measure and attribute the difference we're making, but I'm not gonna let that stop me putting in the programme. And we can add some impacts. So for example, New Zealand and Australia both have wellbeing frameworks. We can imagine achieving some population level impacts, maybe that contribute to a happier, healthier population. Again, I'm not sure we can measure and attribute those, but let's put them in our theory, let's acknowledge that that's the why that's where we're heading. Let's have a look down at the inputs level. We've talked about a subsidy, of course, but we also need a team to administer the subsidy and the team needs office space and computers and so on. And then we're gonna need fuel for those office space and for those inputs, so we're gonna need resources like money. So in New Zealand Treasury Speak, we call the subsidy non-departmental expenditure and we call the staff officers and computers and so on the admin. We call that departmental expenditure. I'm not sure whether Australian public finance uses the same terms, but at the end of the day, it's all just different buckets of taxpayers' money, right? But we're not talking about just the money. Money can't be the only resource here. Like what about natural resources? So if the subsidy has any effect, it's going to bring about some changes in natural resource use, like more lithium, more cobalt to make batteries, maybe less burning of fossil fuels. So there'll be some changes, some ups and downs in different resources. So here, look, we just have the beginnings of something we could call a theory of change, a little bit cartoonish, perhaps, a little bit glib, but a good setup to illustrate some ideas from propositional evaluations. So Andrew, back to you. Okay. So, all right. So I'm going to take Julian's super simple version of the program theory or theory of change or program logic. I could be any of those three. And I'm going to try and see how I can make it fit together into something that I would call a valid proposition, at least a program that I think makes sense on paper. So in my view, a valid program is one where the assumptions that we make about the world, because we have to, and there's an existing world for any intervention going into it, that the outputs of our activities that we directly control and do, in addition to those assumptions, will equal some outcomes. Then there's a bunch of external factors that are way outside our control that contribute to the extent to which will moderate the impacts that we ultimately have to the world. My sort of first sort of idea is that this is our sphere of interest. This is about these things outside of control, but it's why we're doing the program. This is our sphere of influence. And for all of those who have happy with self-help books and Warren Buffett and Stephen Covey and others, we'll see the language of the difference between your sphere of interest and your sphere of influence and not confusing the two. So let's put some skin on this. Now, of course, I'm not an expert in e-bikes I have had some work with subsidies and evaluations of subsidies and rebates and transfers and whatnot, but so see this as indicative rather than certain, but I'd go, okay, if I was going to run an e-bike subsidy program, I would need to, I think I'd be assuming that e-bike retailers and manufacturers or importers have actually a sufficient supply of bikes in the country to meet this newly created demand and prevent a spike in prices that might come from a low supply relative demand. We're gonna have a problem with our subsidy if there isn't any bikes to buy or not enough that the price shoots up. Also, we're gonna have to assume that there are actually enough people who will ride an e-bike not just buy one and put it in their shed, but people who will ride an e-bike for whom the cost of the e-bike is the only obstacle to them. That's what the subsidies meant to do is overcome the cost barrier not any other ability to ride a bicycle barrier, for example, that might lead to necessary for car usage. Okay, so then we get to more like the conditions and these will all be conditioned statements that I'll be talking about the conditions that we hope to directly achieve from our activities. So, you know, people who have not bought an e-bike due to cost are gonna have to know about this subsidy assuming it's a consumer directed subsidy. They're gonna have to perceive that the subsidy is easy to apply for and obtain. History of subsidy shows that there's a number of government subsidies out there people can't be bothered to apply for because it's too much paperwork relative to the money. So you'd wanna make sure that that was the case as Julian said, you'd wanna make sure that the people who administer the subsidy have sufficient resources to publicize it and administer the process such that these people know about it and have an intention to apply for it. I've put here in dotted box what I think is also probably a condition you'd love to be able to make was in place which is this are about the amount of the subsidy. Different people in different local economies may or may not need different subsidies to motivate them to buy an e-bike a subsidy and now I'm gonna show my New South Wales where it's here we go. Let me try one in Central Melbourne might need to be different to a subsidy in who wants to nominate a town that's somewhat less socioeconomic. I don't wanna name anyone. I'm gonna say I don't wanna name anyone. You might have been. And there you go. Different people in different parts might need a different subsidy but look it's probably unrealistic to think this program's gonna be so well specified that it's an individually tailored subsidy but who knows what's possible in the world of AI. So that's sort of what I'm saying and I'm going well if we did that let's just say well then target riders access the subsidy and purchase an e-bike that they otherwise would not purchase. And so I'm saying here's a proposition if these assumptions are true if we achieve these outcomes I think we can achieve this outcome. Then there's all the rest of the things that happen in the world that affect actual bike usage at the top of the weather people how much they use them they're outside of our control but will ultimately affect these higher order outcome or impacts that we're often trained to look at measure the impact on contributor we all know the history of contribution analysis we all know the history of the difficulty of attributing things. And I think we sort of still paying too much attention to that stuff above the dotted line when really our sphere of influence is look this is a program about getting to people to buy e-bikes how do we do that? Well if e-bikes is a bad idea well that should have been sorted out in the design phase us measuring the outcome in some non repeating way in a complex system is of arguable utility for me for decision making in the future it's certainly not science because it's not a high specific hypothesis I would argue to be tested. So I think the point is these stuff at the top of the program logic is our why this is why we are doing the e-bike program for all the reasons Julian mentioned this is what we are trying to achieve is that people who would ride them but won't buy them because of the cost do and it's quite a specific outcome and this is our how this is how we're going to do it another way of looking at saying these are conditions in the world that are contingent on a range of other things outside our control these are a range of this is a condition one or more outcomes that should be our activities need to be sufficient for this condition and then this is our how these are the conditions that we think are necessary in order for our particular intervention to be sufficient for this outcome it's not saying a subsidy is necessary to get people to ride e-bikes it's not a theory about how to get e-bikes it's one particular way of doing it and in order for our plan to make sense these we think these things are necessary and it will be sufficient for this other thing. So another way of putting this into more logical stuff and I'm not going to go into inductive and deductive logic and if you had a whole day on it and you were interested we might but you can sort of think of some of these as the minor premise the outcomes of the major premise and the outcome is the conclusion of an argument about why we should have an e-bike but remembering of course the premises and conclusions are probable not certain they're written in absolute terms but for whom and what under conditions and how and to what extent will vary in reality. Also there are many other assumptions that we can't make that we don't change to a different currency tomorrow and make the subsidy useless but you can't list every single assumption behind anything we do in life where you'd never go anywhere. So it's about the assumptions that we're not doing anything about what we're relying on but we're not 100% certain are actually the case and we might need to check a bit more. I've listed not mentioned anything about the particular reasons as to why activities will lead to these outputs or the theories that underpin that about subsidy use or the inputs or resources because it couldn't fit them on the screen and frankly it was already too much information. So yes. So in summary, what I tried to explain with that approach in that example that Julian came up with is an idea propositional valuation which tries to change the orientation from measuring outcomes and testing theories to whether a proposition is sound. And sound is a technical phrase in this world meaning ballad and well-grounded i.e. the argument makes sense on paper that if these premises were all true that this conclusion would follow with near certainty and you can use this at any point in its life cycle. I would argue particularly in the design phase as a form of perspective evaluation which is somewhat underdone in the valuation literature there is a literature on perspective evaluation but not a large one. I think it could be used for that. I also think it's a means of advancing a more deliberative democracy and empowering citizens to ask why certain programs are being done and why they make sense to spend money on them because it takes it out of the hands of experts or so-called experts who can say yes, this program will lead to a 6.73% increase based on some calculation or model that they purport to have and it helps people that argue but does it actually make sense? What are the actual risks that this thing would fail? Let's focus monitoring and evaluation on the risks of failure and like many other forms of evaluation, yes, also holding to people to account for what they were sufficient for or should have been sufficient for. What it does not do and this is why I was really interested in talking with Julian about this is I realized I didn't really address any different values and priorities that people might have. The only values that come in propositional evaluation are the ones implicit in the design of the program, i.e. the value that more eBike usage would be a good idea. But how much and to what extent each of the under conditions that underpin this program need to be in place haven't been specified and what would actually be good, bad or indifferent from different perspectives is not addressed. So I thought that's why there's this intersection with some Julian's ideas I was interested in extending. And of course this approach is a little risky in the sense that it tends to be outside the paradigm of social science research and therefore outside what a lot of people want to fund, which is science or measuring impact because I'm prefacing propositional reasoning over these concepts. So I appreciate that's maybe not going to work for everyone. Julian. Thanks, Andrew. So I'm going to talk about incorporating value in a theory of change. And as you might see, Andrew's ideas have started to influence the way I'm thinking about this. So a theory of change, of course, is a well-established evaluation tool. And its focus is on how a set of resources fuels a set of organizational actions that then result in various outcomes and impacts just at the button once, thanks, Andrew. Yeah, so that's the simplest I could make a representation of a theory of change, right? And it includes the causal mechanisms. It includes assumptions underpinning it and so on. But essentially, it's about change. And a theory of value creation is a new thing. It's part of my current efforts to add something new to evaluation. And its focus is on how value might be created. So let's take a little look at that. Next slide, thanks. Just to define some terms, so when I say value, I'm talking about the merit, worth, or significance that people and groups place on something. So people and groups, right? So the value doesn't reside within the impact. It actually resides within the people. We have to engage with people to understand value. Next one, values different from impact. We can have a small impact that turns out to have a high value, or we could have a large impact that nobody cares about. So they could still be correlated. If the impact has any value at all, then we probably expect that the greater the impact gets, the greater its value. But they're still separate and distinct things. Next one. Okay, what's a value proposition? Now, I've kind of moved from thinking of theories of value creation to thinking about value propositions, and that's really been influenced by what Andrew's been writing and talking about. And when I talk about a value proposition, I'm talking about a declaration of intent that communicates the benefit of something to its customers. So if you imagine going to Silicon Valley and ask some founders at developers about their startups, they can explain their value proposition to you in a matter of seconds. And I think social programs should have clear value propositions too. It might take a little bit longer to explain the value proposition of a social program because there's a bit more complexity, like perhaps customers paying for the program and the customers who are supposed to benefit from it are two different groups. So the question of value to whom and who decides is gonna be really important in our space. But I think nevertheless we can and should be defining value propositions. And that idea of a value proposition really resonates for me because when people start talking about value for money it has this way of making us perceive a program as a cost, like a cost that needs to be justified, a cost that needs to be minimized. And it's not that that's wrong, it's possibly those could be valid things to look at, but it's too narrow and it's the wrong focus. I think if we reframe a program as an investment and a value proposition, I think we can do something useful with that. You know, someone somewhere, a decision maker decided to allocate resources to a program based on a set of value propositions and a sort of promise or a potential about how the world's gonna be a better place if we have this program. And so that's why I prefer the term value for investment. But ultimately a value proposition is gonna be useful because it's a construct that we can define. And if we can define a program's value proposition then we can evaluate how well that value proposition is being met. And that's our space, right, as evaluators. We already have the methods and tools to define a value proposition and evaluate how well it's being met. So defining a value proposition is useful because it turns value for investment into a question that we evaluators already know how to answer. So let's take that abstract idea and have a crack at making a little bit concrete. So there's a set of questions that I can just work through if you wanna define a value proposition for anything really, you can say what resources are invested in it by whom, what values created and to whom is it valuable. How is that value created? Like through what mechanisms? And to think about a little bit like barriers and success factors, what factors influence whether a program creates a lot of value or only a little, what needs to go just right so we can create enough value to be worthwhile. So let's illustrate that by adding a few examples to this cartoonish theory of change. So what value, well, financial value to bike producers is a gimmie, right? They're gonna be selling more e-bikes so that's gonna make their day. There's social value to people who are purchasing bikes in the form of health and happiness. There's value to road users if they find it's easy to move about town and there's impact value that we can maybe express in terms of wellbeing domains like environmental value and social value. And we can think about what resources are going into it. So there's the opportunity cost of alternative uses of public funds to encourage cycling. This is an idea we're borrowing from economics. Opportunity cost is the foregone value of the next best thing, right? That we could have done with the resources. So for example, we're thinking what other ways could we have spent these public funds to encourage cycling? Is this the best way to do that? And similarly, there's an opportunity cost to consumers as well because they're still putting some of their own money towards purchasing these e-bikes. And then there's natural resources that get used to produce additional bikes and there's fossil fuel resources that may be saved if people are using their cars less and so on. So we're just putting up some obvious examples. And then on the next slide, we can start to think about how is the value created? We can start to think about some of the mechanisms that sit between the boxes and a bit of economic thinking can help there too. Like for example, we need enough of the subsidy to reach consumers. If you Google incidents of a subsidy or Google incidents of a tax, which is kind of the opposite, you're gonna find some diagrams that have supply and demand curves crossing each other and they show how a subsidy gets shared between producers and consumers. So the subsidy makes e-bikes cheaper for consumers. So consumers want more e-bikes. So the bike producers are gonna respond to that extra demand by putting up their prices. And so you end up somewhere in the middle where the bike ends up being cheaper for consumers, but it's also more profitable for producers. And exactly how that subsidy gets shared depends how eager the buyer's out to buy and how eager the seller's out to sell and it kind of meets in this middle somewhere. And that kind of eagerness to buy and sell economists call that elasticity of supply and demand. So it's just a way of illustrating how a little bit of economic thinking can help work through how a program creates value and what needs to work out just right for the value creation to happen. We need the subsidy to be set at the right level. So if it's too low, it won't incentivize enough people to buy e-bikes. And if it's too high, we're throwing money away. So we need to get that right. We need enough people to buy bikes who otherwise wouldn't have. So some people would have bought a bike anyway. And that's called a deadweight cost to the program. We really want to know how many extra people buy them who otherwise wouldn't have done that. What else do we care about? We care about having enough behavior change. If more people buy e-bikes and throw them at the back of the garages, right, then this has all been a waste of resources. So we need people using them and sustaining the use. What else? We need resources allocated to this. So we need enough resources to do the job. If we try and do this too cheaply, we're going to end up with long waiting lists, slow response times, and it'll all be too inefficient to own work. So value for money isn't just about being as cheap as possible, it's about allocating the right level of resources. We also need, what have we got next, Andrew? Is it efficient costs to administers? We need the admin side of things to be efficient. We want to minimize wastage, having the right size team, good workflows and that kind of thing. And we need the right checks and balances to prevent fraud. So let's just pause and take this picture in for a moment. There's a lot of things here, kind of all highlighted green that need to go just right for our subsidy program to create value. And now if someone asks us to evaluate whether this program is providing value for money, whether it's good use of resources, now we've identified some critical factors that we can observe and make judgments about so that we can answer that value for money question. It's those things between the boxes. All right, nearly there, one more slide, I think. Just a little bit more so what. So like Andrew and I think have both said it might be a bit of an overreach for the evaluation to try and measure the outcomes and impacts in the top half of this. But what we can do is a future facing what's called an ex-ante cost benefit analysis. And that's the way CBAs often get used to look at future scenarios and say under what conditions will the subsidy create more value than it consumes? We can model that and we don't have a crystal ball so we can't predict exactly how much value we're going to see but the model can help us explore how effective and in what ways the subsidy has to be effective in order to be effective enough to identify some performance thresholds if you like. So doing that sort of future facing CBA can help to answer that propositional evaluation question of is this a good idea? And that gives us something useful we can use later on when we're evaluating how well the subsidy's actually performing in reality. We can compare the actual performance of the program with the assumptions that we used and the results we got out of the future facing CBA so we can check whether we're getting enough subsidy reaching enough consumers, enough people buying bikes enough people using their bikes on a regular basis for the subsidy to be still a good idea still good use of resources. So in effect that the CBA helps us judge in advance how good is good enough so that when we develop rubrics or assessing performance in the bottom half of the theory of change, we know what level of performance is likely to give us a reasonable fair value so that's been a useful modeling exercise. Next. Okay, so in a nutshell, we're suggesting that if we can define a program's value proposition we'll be better placed to evaluate it and the value proposition has to be logical and it has to be explicit about value. Anything you'd add, Andrew? No, I think you've covered it. I think we're over to the group now to you've got some time for my favorite bit which is the question and answer. So Ruth, I don't know if you had any if you wanted to take over from here in terms of- Yeah, sure. And I was about to say no one's posted but Madeleine you just have. So I can see a question from Madeleine who's asking for good books on economic principles for evaluation. That's a really good question. There's a couple of books that I always recommend for economic methods of evaluation and I'm not sure if that's quite what you're asking but if it was somebody wanted to get a handle on how to conduct a cost-benefit analysis there's a couple of books that I recommend and one is by Levin and McEwen. That's, I think, 2011. They actually call it cost-effectiveness analysis as the title of the book but it covers lots of different economic methods of evaluation including cost-benefit as well. It's written by evaluators for evaluators which makes it a nice introductory text and it covers lots of examples from different sectors. And then there's also one by Michael Drummond Prof Drummond who spoke at our conference a few weeks ago has his little blue book that he and colleagues wrote for health economists called Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Healthcare Programs. It's an absolute seminal text and one I highly recommend. But I think Leanne very kind in saying Julian's blog as well. I can certainly pop up a link to my stuff, yeah. I didn't know, Ruth, how you do this normally but do you break people into small groups for discussion? Yeah, I'm very happy to do that. It's really depending on what you would like. We do have a decent number of people so that could work quite well if you'd like to do that. I find a way that often works is put people into small groups for however long you think, five to 10 minutes, they have a discussion and somebody from that group might want to come back with something that they discussed in that group or as Julian, you know, something that resonates, something that like clarified, something that like pondering and maybe that's a good way to get people warmed up. Talked about outcomes and value and where they overlap and I think at least in my own work and I think more broadly people often assume that an outcome is a value and Andrew raised the interesting point that it is a value but for who and then it may be valued to different amounts by different people considering who is going to value that outcome could be useful to determine if it's the right outcome or if it's the right program to achieve that outcome. Absolutely agree with that. Yeah, yeah. The only way we'll understand the value of something is to reach out to the relevant people and find out. I think the other thing that sort of came up was like obviously it's almost a bit of a straw man. Nobody lives in a vacuum. Nobody lives in an apolitical environment. Nobody is purely logical. We're all emotional. We all have bounded rationality. So, you know, it's not trying to say if this thing is not perfectly logical, push back and tell them that, you know, there's give and take but I think there's scope for us to be helpful with people to do more cost-effective evaluations in finding out which of the bits here that we need most attention. Because I know a lot of people are like sometimes I've got a colleague in turn and he goes, your orientation is very, what you call holistic, like, does the program work or not? Is it good or bad? And I go, I guess I have a different, my attitude is there's value in everything. And maybe this is just different human nature. It's about finding the value in it. And, you know, almost any program, probably almost anyone these days would have some value and it's about for whom and for how and for why and how can we maximize that? And then sometimes the question is, is this the best program?  Propositional evaluation will be totally mute on the idea of which is, if this is the best way of doing it or not, an ex ante CBA can compare a range of different things and go look which the propositional approaches is going, well, this thing that you've come up with, let's just, let's make sure it could actually work on its own merits and what would it actually achieve and where should we spend our evaluative resources to make this the best version of itself? But it's not time to answer ultimate questions. Hmm, great. I might just ask room two, which I think was David, Joe, Leanne and Madeleine. Did you, any of you have any comments you wanted to share or reflections from your group discussion?  So, sorry. Oh, Leanne, you're on mute. My roommates were very active in the conversation, but they've gone quiet now. I was just acknowledging that she works in family violence and I don't want to talk on your behalf, Joe, but because you got your camera off, I will. And was just saying that, you know, there's a whole notion of talking about value for money and so forth is a little bit outside the experience, perhaps comfort zone of some people. Yeah, so I was just noting that we're really talking about, you know, you've moved away from value for money for value investment, which is much more holistic, but it's just what is the program value really? And then you've got to define for whom and all that sort of stuff, but it really is because all programs are invested in in some way. So we're really just talking about program value in general, which might be an easier entry point for some people who are not used to having to actually be explicit about that. Yeah, I think that's right. I also think there's the separate value in asking that question, is this a good use of resources? Because, and it almost feels for something like family violence, it feels offensive to ask a question about value for money, this is just got to do. But at the same time, if we're going to allocate some resources to addressing family violence, we do need to say, we've got one shot at using these resources in the best way possible. Is this a good resource use or are there other alternatives we should be thinking about? And it's framing it the way an economist would, but it's thinking more broadly than an economist would. Hopefully it's bringing in all our value of thinking to think about that question. Is this the best way to use this one shot bucket of money that we've got here to address a really important problem? That's a different way to address it. That's right, the same issue. And I think it's, yeah, the truth is we're operating in an environment where resource allocation decisions are made and we need to respond to that context. It's just how, it's just how the world works. There's also also a big opportunity here though, in climate, yes, it can feel offensive around value for money for really sensitive topics. But on the other hand, if I was looking, let's look at the proposition, what are you actually funding in, let's say it's a domestic and family violence space and not going to come up with something, what are you actually funding? Okay, what's that actually going to be sufficient for? Like it's way down here on this list of outcomes. And what I'm worried about is people that ask for funding to address domestic and family violence and it's got like world peace type sounding outcomes at the top, which may give the funder the false impression that we're really going to make a big impact on this. Look, and that might be necessary from a funding perspective. But another way of looking at it is going, see all this money you give us, it can achieve, it can really only achieve this. We're down here. Really want to deal with family violence. The investment is going to need to be a lot larger than what you'll actually get asked to do. Help build a business case. I'm just picking up on scenes question and I know that seeing you're in room three, so I was going to come to you next, but I don't know if you've seen this question, Julian, in the chat. Do you want to respond to that? So last year I gave a presentation and at the EES conference in Copenhagen with John Gaugani and many of you all know John because he's spoken at our conferences in Australia before. And so I'm going to be quoting John, which is why I'm mentioning that. He says there's a couple of inconvenient truths about valuing and one of those is that things don't have value, people place value on things. The second one is that different people value things differently and we need to understand that variation is information and we need to understand it. So yeah, in other words, values uncertain, it changes over time. One of the challenges for us, we're evaluators, we have to understand value, but we have to see it as this mercurial moving picture that it is. And all I'd add to that is there's a reason why we should embrace the fact that we aren't scientists. We're trying to study a world that is value-free and if you can make a claim about Adam's quarks, quasars, it's because they have stability and they don't change. Well, we're talking about things that constantly are changed. And I always said when I got into this field, why do I love doing a variation? Well, partly I think it's the most difficult thing a human could ever try and do is understand the value of uncertainty interventions into uncertain worlds and it's ultimately really important. But sometimes we fall under the shadow of, oh, we're not a proper science. But I think actually what we do is super-ordinates to science. We're gonna solve all the problems of the world, which I don't think any of us have the knowledge ability to do, but if we're gonna try, I think it's not through more science, but more of better evaluative judgments about what we should do with our resources. Michael Scribina is looking down so proudly on both of us, Andrew, with little Scribonites, the pair of us, so science needs us.


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Fair, housing and health insurance are usually covered by the employer and teachers earn a tax-free salary. This allows you to save a substantial amount of your salary every month and makes Saudi Arabia one of the best locations for teachers who are looking to save a lot of money. However, be prepared for a very conservative lifestyle and Saudi Arabia with strict laws on religion and freedom of expression. Qatar, the land of the sheiks. Its own education city located in Doha, the country's capital, Qatar has created a thriving English education job market for qualified teachers. With a large amount of American, British and international schools and universities, you will always find a suitable teaching position when qualified. Also note that the cost of living in Qatar is lower than in the UAE, for example. Qatar is also hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which is another great reason to move there to take part in the festivities. Jordan, the land of hospitality. Teachers on a budget love Jordan, the cost of living is low and the salaries are decent, plus Jordan isn't as extravagant as Qatar the UAE, offering a more traditional Middle Eastern experience. The country's fascinating historic sites, like the ancient Raqqat city of Petra or the Wadi Rum desert, make Jordan the premier travel destination. Jordan is quite conservative with regards to women, so living in Jordan as a single woman can be quite challenging. Turkey, the land of the crescent moon. Due to its unique geographic location between Europe and Asia Turkey has a high demand for qualified English language teachers. Turkey in Istanbul, the largest city in Europe, which offers the highest salaries in the country and a lot of vacant teaching positions throughout the year. Are you ready to teach English in the Middle East? The Middle East is a popular region for teaching English as a foreign language due to its fascinating cultures and high salaries. Living and working in the Middle East will not only allow you to experience life like a local, but also give you the opportunity to easily travel the region while based there. Apply now for your TEFL Tezal certification course and start teaching in a matter of months. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll-free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.