Welcome to the Anxious Morning, where each weekday morning we take a look at ideas, concepts, and lessons designed to help you understand and overcome your anxiety. For more information, visit us at theanxiousmorning.com. Before you go on reading, take a few seconds and make a short list of things that you can't do because of anxiety. If you're listening instead of reading, hit the pause button. I'll wait. Okay, now that that's done, I need to tell you something. You can actually do everything on that list. You choose not to because you are afraid of how you might feel if you do them. This is such an important concept in recovery because we must accept this truth before we can really grasp why we are doing hard and scary things on the daily. If we continue to insist that we can't, then we get frustrated quickly with this process and run the risk of declaring that it doesn't work for you. When we choose to avoid because we do not want to be afraid or uncomfortable. And when we do this again and again, things get a bit twisted in our minds. We perceive ourselves as unable or incapable, but this is not accurate. Think about it. When you first decided that you did not want to stay home alone for two hours, you were clearly making that decision based on the idea that you might feel anxious or afraid while alone. I don't want to be alone because, well, what if I panic? See how that analysis says nothing about how capable you are? It identifies the obstacle, panic or anxiety or fear, and resolves the conflict with that obstacle by choosing to go around it or run away from it. In those early days of avoidance and escape, you did not say you couldn't. You knew that you were choosing not to for a very clear reason. Over time though, this morphs. We stop seeing the avoidance and the escape strategy and instead we simply say things like I can't work because of my anxiety. This is a slow and quiet process and it is insidious because after enough time you have yourself convinced that you can't do things anymore. You perceive obstacles as limitations.  I choose to avoid situations that make me uncomfortable or I can't do most things. Look at the huge difference in those statements. The first one is accurate, limiting, but accurate. The second is full of defeat and hopelessness for no good reason. If you take anything out of today's edition of The Anxious Morning, let it be the hard truth that you could always do these things but that you chose not to then repeated that choice. That doesn't feel good, I know, but this realization is full of empowerment and hope. Let me be clear in saying that I am not accusing you of choosing to suffer or saying that your situation is somehow your fault. Not at all. Experts are experts at avoiding discomfort so nobody is blaming you. I am only pointing out that when you step back, blow the dust off and really look beyond your assertion that you can't, you give yourself a fighting chance to start moving in a new direction. If you're enjoying The Anxious Morning and you'd like to get a copy of the podcast delivered into your email inbox every morning, visit TheAnxiousMorning.email and subscribe to the newsletter. If you're listening on Apple or iTunes, take a second and leave a five-star rating, maybe write a small review. It really helps me out. And finally, if you find my work useful and you'd like to help keep it free of advertising and sponsorships, you can see all the ways to support the work at TheAnxiousTruth.com slash support. Thanks so much.


I think hacking is about building on top of each other's work and taking an idea, taking a technology, taking a concept and really taking it to a whole new level. It's about that continuous iteration and building upon what existed before but really making it your own into something new. Hacking arts really ignites innovation in the creative arts from virtual reality to performing arts from augmented reality to film, gaming, music. We are bringing artists and technologists, entrepreneurs and innovators together to really build the future of the creative arts. Hacking arts brings this great cross-section of people from all different walks of life and we feel in many ways Vitra does the same thing with its design talent. At the heart of a creative work culture it's a creative workspace. It's made of components that can be personalized and optimized by individual workers. Vitra really gave us that flexibility to allow hackers to make all the space their own to create their own work. HACK presents almost an unfinished aesthetic. Kind of like a snapshot of an experimental project under development. The hackers can use them in so many different kinds of ways. They can use them to huddle. They can use them for heads-down work. They can use them in a lounge environment. They can use them to sleep. We wanted to install a very agile work environment that people could make their own and transform it in any way they wanted to. With HACK what we're able to do is create an infinite number of different layouts using the HACK modules and these layouts actually facilitate creativity among the hackers.


So hello everyone and my name is Nikolay Kondrashov and I will be speaking about user sessions recording Which is basically meant for use on critical systems on sensitive systems To record whatever users do whatever users access whatever users run on those systems So I come from Finland. I'm originally Russian and I moved to Finland five years ago And now I'm working at Red Hat in the identity management group I'm helping SSSD. I Maintain free radios packages and I mostly focus on this topic on user session recording project In my free time I Founded the Digiment project which works on improving Linux support for Generic graphics tables, which are not welcome But still graphics tables and I still maintain it and also I work I'll also try to study electronics and embedded. So Has anybody of you been recorded before let's say you were oh there is one person One person that's interesting. That's the first Has he ever set up recording yourself recording of somebody you did great If you didn't do your great you didn't Any of you are great in it ever Okay, there's one person okay, so We've been doing this identity management thing which is free IP and SSSD For quite a while now and it's gotten pretty good So people started migrating to it and people who previously used commercial solutions Like active directory and some other solutions. They started using it and they noticed that It it works pretty well, but they still have the one of the essential parts missing which is session recording which is my mandated often for medical organizations and financial institutions and Sometimes required by law So people basically need to see and to know what their contractors do on their systems and When something happens they need to do to know who broke the system and how they did it how exactly they did it and what was happening so basically The companies and the government they want to have everything recorded ideally Whatever the user does if they could they could they they would put a camera behind the user's back and See what's what was going on and I guess there are some installations that do that but essentially yes, they want everything recorded they wanted stored some were safe and Nobody except privileged persons could access it and they want to easily find who did what and when and what was going on and How how exactly they did it? They want to see what was actually happening So there are a lot of commercial offerings for this and they they go from Dedicated hardware which you can buy and put in front of your servers and it will intercept secure connections provided you have the keys and record SSH sessions and record as SSL database connections and everything There are jump servers that you can install also On your own hardware or you can install software on your directly on your target servers And it would act as a user space partially user space partial partial a kernel space solution to intercept data and send it somewhere the record keystrokes the record processes executed the record URL success Applications started and these solutions often work They are often offered both for unix linux and windows and pretty often they are also integrated with identity management solutions and They often come with you know third-party identity management solutions not that not not necessarily those that come with your system for example on windows Because some people want to unify that across unix's and linux's and windows's and they also have access controls recordings and Management of central storage for the recordings and searching and analysis and of course the playback So yeah, but there's lots of solutions But they are pretty expensive and sometimes they involve pretty involved and cumbersome licensing Terms like licensing per server licensing per user, etc. Which is People don't like that paying money and a lot of it And then you can fix it yourself and you can't improve it because the source is closed And you are relying often on just one supplier and if if they screw up You can do much so of course the ideal situation would be Having access to the source code and having and being able to look inside and being able to see what's going on and fix it and at least understand what's going on so you can Try to fix the problem while waiting for the for the fix somehow work with their own And of course people want support especially enterprises there are Existing solutions which people use and actually we are threat had build for customers like Using script and building a jump server with SSH access and some area where you put files and Before they get to the target system so that that is recorded and But it is all it is all do it yourself and it takes a lot of time and maintenance so You can do a script the basic tool Which is completely not security oriented. It doesn't have any Any protection for the recordings and you can do it only at your own will You can do what like if you want to record yourself you can use it But if you want to report somebody else you need to go to great lengths to protect the recording There is the sudo i o logging It is security oriented and it works pretty well and you can search it You can play it back On the terminal But you it doesn't have anything to get to support getting the recording off the system and As far as I know While the session is recorded. It's the file with the recording is incomplete and you can't stream it So with sudo you can only record file record the session and then get it off the system was our sync or something then There is the the closest thing that that exists there is the tty audit and it's a Subsystem in the kernel kind of attached to tty Where you can request logging all the user input to audit log And it's pretty good and that it can be you can send these logs somewhere where it can be kept safe and pretty fast But it's only records input So what we're trying to build is well, what the users ask so and they and they need the Data that you enter the screen that you see and what you execute again and what you access and You need to get it off the machine as soon as possible and store securely You also did people also ask to be able to search for a particular Events that happened like you can search for the comments executed or search for particular text that user entered or so on the screen and They want to correlate that with other events that happened I don't know some server crashing or some stack trace some appearing somewhere or Access logs or something And they want to be able to see the recording Not not the recording but directly the session as it's going on in case they in case they want to catch something as it's happening and Most likely it's not going to be a human. It's going to be some some machinery. That's just watches that stream And when something happens, they of course would like to see What happened and they want again the central control where you can Where you can see work really can set like you can be I want to record these servers on this farm I don't want to record those servers. I want to record those user groups And they want to also control the access to the actual recording as well so TTYO did already does it with logs and we thought that perhaps going with logs would give us a lot a lot of Benefits We already have the delivery system We have all the logs which record those accesses those files those processes executed and We have a lot of solutions to analyze They these logs and to correlate them so We were trying to decide what we can use for the analysis and for Relation and we wanted something of course open source as we want everything to be And we wanted something that would scale to the enterprise level and that would have all the features that users are expecting so the current The hippest solution right now is elastic search in Kibana With Kibana possibly replaced with Grafana or some other tools, but basically elastic search is is the king of of open source solutions and The other it had actually are working on the project currently called the IQ which is a working name. I'm just trying to Build a solution for it had products where you would be able to set up Elastic search and logo forward all the logs normalize them and then correlate them and normalization means that You wouldn't that this solution would take the Basic fields that you need to start correlating like host names timestamps User names, etc. And they put and they it would put them into fields that are named consistently which you can Expect to see in the logs There was a previous effort which was called CEE which tried to Completely normalize all the logs and after several years of effort. They basically gave up and this approach that we are trying to take is Is a moderate approach if I can say so and We already got that work in an open shift more or less and it's going to open stack and Possibly some other it had products so Next so we need to From that list remains that the central control we need to to record what users Enter and see and we need to make sense of audit logs because Audit logs are plain text. We need to get them to give to elastic search and we need to make them searchable and And we need to be able to look for exact data that happened in audit logs Then we need to deliver it to elastic search and then we need to play it back So for central control, we would naturally choose free IPA because it's a Full-featured identity management solution coupled with SSSD which allows you to do things like log into your system, even if it's away from the the main controller and And We are currently working on adding session recording support to SSSD And it's getting pretty close So for login input and output we developed a tool called T log Which basically goes between the terminal and the shell and Records everything that passes between converts it to Jason and locks it to syslog And it already saw three releases. It's still not completely Production ready, but it's pretty full-featured and we are doing things with it quite quite a long while Next about the audit logs We built another tool Which allows you to convert the audit logs single shot if you'd like or you can put it under Odyspd, which is a audit D plug-in manager Where it receives the events among other plugins and conversed to Jason again or to XML if you'd like and That sends that to syslog at the moment and we are working closely with the audit team and Trying to make this tool Produce output which is as close as possible to the original logs in structure So that people who want to convert audit logs to their own systems like They can they can have already big XML pipeline for converting those logs and for storing them as required by regulations and So that they can use this tool to simplify conversion so they don't have to parse the logs themselves So this is this already has one release and it's available on GitHub We deliver it to elastic search. We already have our syslog which supports that We have it in rial and fedora and you can of course install fluent D or log stash which also do that pretty well and The common solution which is viq, which I told about earlier Could also be used for that so We have we already have a terminal playback for the data that was sent to elastic search the user input and output But we are working on a web UI which would allow you to Control it better rewind it and look for special strings for example like you can search for a comment That would give you matches So you can click on a match and you would see the logs at this moment and also the playback and the terminal would Rewind to that point So you can see what was exactly happening or you can search what was user entering or what was on the screen And it would also remind the logs and sync everything We are trying to build it as a reusable web UI component so that you can use it in your own management solution and Connected to elastic search So a basic scheme is this Basically we have T log recording input and output all shape converts in Odds events They are joining in the in the logs And you can use any combinations of our c-slot log stage or fluency to forward that data to elastic search From where from there you can view it in Kibana or in the upcoming web UI So we think that this approach is actually better than many commercial offerings and they're in this regard that you Can reuse already existing login infrastructure and you can save resources meaning hardware resources and Existing hardware resources and you don't need to add that much new capacity And you don't need that much maintenance compared to a separate system which has its own delivery Mechanism and its own maintenance protocols This also allows you easy correlation with other logs compared to system Which which lives in on its own where you might go to the effort of finding the recording? Noticing the timestamp and then going to your logs separately and then trying to correlate that and You will be able to easily see what's going on actually at the same time Even though those some of those commercial offerings they offer Some events that happen at the time of recording at a specific time. They are not as flexible as Correlating all the logs together So I'm going to show you a little demo and this demo User which is recorded will log in to a system I will start playback of the user session at the same time and playback will be going The recording will be going to elastic search and playback will be happening directly from elastic search at the same time I'll do some some work in the terminal and Then they'll take a look at the logs of the raw logs in journal and The logs as they can be seen in Kibana so So first thing I'll do when I log in into the system I will note the session ID the audit session ID which is unique for every log into the system and Now we use that session ID to look up the messages in Elastic search So this is session 85 and we are Oops Yes, and of course, of course Try that again. Okay, so we'll leave so on the left is the original session And on the right is the recording that's being played back at the same time So let's try for the start just do it a sudo command And we'll enter some bogus password and fail just some output or interactive editing Just to show that everything is preserved and you can see exactly what was happening or something Fence here and then we end the session so I need to terminate the play back explicitly because it doesn't Record the end of the session for now mostly because sessions can end without warning So let's see now how this looks in journal. So there are some messages here from T log Which represent the user input and output and timing? If I can highlight them better, perhaps so these two top lines Are coming from to log and you can see that it's not very readable But we'll get back to that in Kibana. That will be easier you can also see converted audit messages Already in Jason coming from O shape and they're a slightly more readable Just it's basically text structured text so all this O shape and T log gets sent to elastic search to separate indexes and In Kibana, they look something like this right now. We are looking at audit logs and we'll try to see the processes that the user executed so these are all Exactly these calls that the user executed here. We can find our PS command It has lots of data about what happened Or our Vim command and you can search for Specific comments. Yeah, here is the emcee that we ran at the end Now if you take a look at the The actual user input and output can also search it for Let's say sudo and we can see let's start with the first one. We can see where the sudo prompt appeared Then the next message was another sudo prompt And another sudo prompt and then the message about incorrect passwords Any questions about the demo? Yes, actually the question was can you see the short caster user used? Well, you can find that in the in the text in the logged messages It will be exactly as the terminal received them So you have to search for specific control characters that the terminal received but you can find that and In the Perhaps in the web UI we can add an option to display these shortcuts somehow I'm not sure that will be very reliable Because you get the messages to get the characters from the kernel Which converts them can which are converted from keystrokes and you can only extrapolate that But you can kind kind of try to find that anymore Let's use a mic I can't quite hear you well, so I'm not familiar with audit D So can you just briefly explain what an auditable event is? Is it any commands that you enter into the terminal? So the question was how does audit work or the D works and What kind of data it logs is that right? so audit subsystem is basically Big number of hooks in the kernel Where it is intercepts in syscalls and events that were happening Like the particular actions that happened in the kernel and then logs that through netlink interface to user space process and the data available can be Can be basically those syscalls and events like Somebody is logging in logging out and Not not only kernel can write to those loads, but also user space like PAM or sudo And there is plenty of data about what's happening mostly related to security Like there can be events for example like renaming a disk volume Whatever you can expect that it would be necessary for tracking events in the system security wise That will be there okay, so I Will leave some time for questions at the end for now Next is I'm going to tell you how this works. So the basic basic process how to log is started and how it records is The user will take an example of logging at the local console, which is handled by program called logging and and What login does is it verifies user credentials using PAM and then it Retrieves the shell that it should start if the credentials were correct from NSS and this is where We configure NSS by putting for example By changing for example past WD file We say that this user will not use bash or other shell will tell it that User is going to be using T log as the shell so login receives that information from NSS and starts T log Which Retrieves the actual shell to start from its environment or from its configuration and Then starts that shell under a PTY which is a pseudo terminal and It intercepts what is going between that pseudo terminal and and the actual terminal and log start and That was the most basic case, but this is what we are planning for SSSD Since SSSD has modules and PAM and NSS and can control what goes in and out of there We can do this dynamically and for the start. We are doing local configuration We're in local configuration of SSSD. You can write. I want to record these users. I want to record these groups And when login accesses NSS to receive the shell SSSD will check if the user matches that shell matches that list of users or that list of groups and then it will say The user shell is T log not the actual shell and when Logging sets up this this session for the user to login in particular the environment for the user SSSD can again check if that user is to be recorded by matching user names and group names and it can put The actual shell to start in the environment as an environment variable Which will then be picked by T log when it started and T log will start the actual shell and Then it's proceeded again Pty actual shell Passing the data over between them and login that That's the plan for SSSD integration The further plan with for pre IPA integration for identity management integration is to have Something that to have something like what we already have We have a CL Linux configuration where you can sign host-based access control rules HPEC rules to a CL Linux maps and then SSSD would download applicable maps locally and Match them for specific users and implement them, but in this case In the case of T log configuration, we would practically store T log configuration Jason and directory and also do matching on the local side and provide the T log with configuration or environment, so T log can Can be configured to record input and output and window resizes Which actually the last part is not whatever like not not everyone does that Usually window size resizes are not logged and you are restricted to that We are not yet supporting that on playback, but in the web UI will be Observing the window resizes and resizing the UI appropriately There is a configuration for the notice that you're supposed to display before starting recording and if you really want to you can remove it all together and Then yeah, you can choose to try to see slog or file and you can also choose to if you want the recording delivered with low latency very fast or if you want to save on overhead of all this is log headers and the Common fields that you log logs and Tell it to log big messages and Yeah, there is already a tool to playback from elastic search as you saw from file, which is useful for debugging It's a couple words about the schema that is used For encoding the session So we have to chop that chop the stream in the messages Into discrete messages because it's log you can just write there indefinitely as opposed to log in chunks And we store input and output in separate fields so that you can actually search it because if you store The stream as it comes from the terminal just as it goes You will have them mixed all together For example when you you type a comment on your shell in this case you would receive Two characters for each character you typed for the input and for the output So to be able to search them maybe sort them separately similarly how so do my recording does Of course you can output anything on the terminal but Jason has to be valid and being valid means having valid utf-8 in Jason So we have to handle somehow binary data and which is invalid utf-8 in Jason and we encode that separately as a byte array and Perhaps we'll change that later But we will preserve Binary data always Then we store also millisecond precision timing when you type Everything is preserved how fast you type and what you did And then oh yes, they even the reciders as well They are preserved as timing and the schema actually is done in a way where if you want to You can after logging already after you stored everything elastic search You can go over those messages and combine them into bigger messages or even combine the whole session in a single message You're in a single elastic search document Our shape it works simpler than to log basically it with you streaming it runs as odyspd plugin and The chain goes from kernel where it's feeding the log messages through netlink to audit d which feeds binary binary data to odyspd and which formats actual audit log messages which is then fed to all shape and Converted to Jason and passed over to elastic search through fluent DRC's local lockstash, whichever you prefer So as I already said, we try to keep the structure as close as possible to the audit structure and Both Jason and XML kept similar So it's easier to reason about them and we preserve both the role audit fields like user IDs and we add also the interpretation so-called interpretation Like converting user ID to username locally because It might be late If it's already on the on the elastic search to convert anything because you don't have access to use a databases and things like that Apart from actual parsed audit data. We also preserve the raw text As we received it because some regulations might require it and it's useful for debugging and The next step we are planning to add so-called audit normalizations. It's a new feature which audit works on where Semantic information is extracted from audit messages and represented as a triplet of Subject action and object where it would record This subject is particularly user try to Try to write as an action to this particular file as an object and with this result success or failure And that data allows for very interesting visualizations of what was happening which actors existed on the system and what they did and or vice versa Who acted on this specific object and when and this also allows Formatting human readable messages compared to raw audit data Where you would see an actual Event easily and we plan to use that in the view I So there is an example This is heavily dreamed as you saw there's much more data But this is easier to grasp Okay, so what you log we still have to deal with recording passwords because even though by default the input Recording is turned off if you turn it on it will record everything and there is a bit of a difficulty in Excluding passwords and PAM TTY uses this approach of Detection when they echo is turned off and it stops recording But that is of course, you know Not not secure But on the other hand There are many many more ways to avoid being recorded for example You can upload a script and then name it as a common comment, which doesn't Doesn't raise any flags or anything and then two weeks later you can execute it But that's why we need audit logs as well where the actual executed comments and actual executed processes are recorded We also need to know detect when we are running on the graphical session because the graphical sessions also get one session ID and That means that all the terminals terminal emulators that you open will get the same session ID And there is basically no way to distinguish them So we need to detect that and stop recording and leave recording graphical sessions to other software which records graphics Which is work for future And we need to support converting terminal Encoder character encodings because some people still use other Encodings except UTF-8 and that involves its own difficulties like Involved characters, etc So for our shape there is a problem In that audit log is a big mess. Nobody knows what can appear there exactly in audit developers They have they have long history and even the developers are not able to reproduce some events That are supposed to happen And we somehow need to make it They make a schema that it will be reliable and so people can parse it and can actually use it And again the character encoding conversion So the latest plans is to try to get the first web UI working in cockpit project, which is a server management UI Mostly for Fedora and well also for L We are planning to basically just record local sessions stored and local in let you play back in the in the cockpit UI in the terminal Later. So it's it's easy to try both the log and O shape You can download release release our peers, which are very fresh. I just did them two days ago Or you can build it yourself. The dependencies are very short the list of dependencies is very short and You can log and play back to far to and from file and to elastic search And there are the instructions for setting all of that up. They are indeed me All shape is even easier. There's just one dependency Instructions are also indeed me and You can just take your own audit log, which you have on the system was probably converted and See how it looks. Okay. We have five minutes Any questions It wasn't very clear to me How you did the replaying of the sessions it seemed to me that you were sending some of the inputs When a certain buffer was full but not delineated on Commands, is that correct? Which which gave a really smooth experience when you were doing the replay the instantaneous replay But I I'm wondering whether that Doesn't compromise search ability Yes, the searching The question was does the recording actual input and output? Is it really searchable that much? Is that the question? because there is Yeah, it's a I would say that recording actual input and output is more of an illustration of What actually happened and the more the main logs are audit logs If you want to search for something exactly you should search the audit logs, which will be Both of these sessions both of the input and output and audit logs will be searchable through the same interface so The session the recording of the screen and the input is needed to make it easier to understand what's happening But it's not the not the authoritative data It's very easy to to to spoof Things in there, but it helps a lot if you have so as this is more Thought about the corporations. Is there any ETA for Red Hat Enterprise Linux support? Well, the question was is it is this going to be supported and rail and Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Is there some kind of roadmap or timeline when it's going to be? Integrated there. Yeah, the question was is there any timeline for inclusion into Red Hat Enterprise Linux? So far, I can't promise anything We are working on Fedora right now, so T log is in Fedora, but an old version. I'm going to be updating it there and those shape Actually, there is a question of how shape will continue whether it will be a part of audit D or whether it will be a separate package That will depend on actually what Customers on users want what they how they perceive the usefulness of it but eventually it will make its way into Fedora and I Expect it is likely that it will be a part of cockpit in a way as I said and that means Fedora but the ultimate target is of course getting this to rail and Making it usable not only as part of a huge for example that Via key project where you are supposed to have open shift All the login set up and everything but also usable In smaller setups and not necessarily in rail or Fedora. It can be tab and or anything so Yes, the ultimate target is real, but I can't tell you the exact dates At the end of your presentation you In the section try it you told about two tools till work and the you shape. Yes, and Is it included in the right hard distribution or it maybe will be The question was is till log in the shape are to log in the shape included into redhead distributions not yet You can download RPM packages and try that they have packages for rail and they have packages for Fedora several versions You can easily try it or you can build it yourself, but ultimately yes, it will be in rail and in Fedora any more questions I Have finished candy here When we are over I know that first them is almost over come and take some candy Thank you very much very interesting. Thank you


to oscillate is to swing to and fro or vary from maximum to minimum. This pendulum then is a mechanical oscillator and its purpose is to help the clock keep accurate time. We have arranged a mechanical oscillator to explain a few basic principles and to demonstrate its relationship to the electronic oscillator. With this device, we can graphically illustrate the action of an oscillator. This felt pin is suspended by two rubber bands, one on the top and one on the bottom, and will act as our oscillator. We'll supply the initial energy by stretching one of the rubber bands and when it is released, it bounces back to normal. However, the velocity given the weight, the felt pin in its holder, causes the bottom rubber band to stretch a little bit, which will pull the pin back down past center, causing the upper rubber band to stretch again. Or energy is passed back and forth from one rubber band to the other. And this action continues until it finally comes to rest. We've arranged this device on a track so that it will bounce or oscillate up and down. And we have a motor that will cause the paper to move past the pin as it marks the path of the bouncing. In short, this device will record the action of the mechanical oscillator. Now with the oscillator at rest and we start the motor, the marker draws a straight line, our zero reference line. We add energy and our oscillator will bounce up and down. The felt pin, marking on the paper, drawing a waveform as it plots the action of the graph. Now notice the similarity to an AC sine wave. We can also see that the amplitude of the oscillations steadily decreases from the point where energy was initially supplied. What causes this damping action? What causes the decrease in amplitude? Well, in this case, the action of the oscillator is gradually diminished by the friction of the slide, the friction of the pin on the paper, the force of gravity acting on the weight, and the resistance of the rubber bands themselves. In short, the diminished amplitude on the graph is caused by inherent resistance in the oscillator. Now only if we overcome this resistance can we make the device oscillate continuously. And since this is a rather crude device, it has a large amount of resistance. We must add large amounts of energy to overcome the built-in opposition. Let me add a little more ink to the felt pin and we'll see if we can demonstrate this. Start the paper going past the marker. We continually add energy, and if we could add it in the proper amount, we would have a waveform of constant amplitude and constant frequency. Our graph shows us that this method produces a waveform of almost continuous amplitude and stable frequency. This is essentially the wave shape we want out of the LC oscillator. Constant amplitude and constant frequency. Of course, this graph does not show that by any means, but it does illustrate the point. All right, let's compare the two. The rubber bands and the weight determine the frequency of the bounce. Resistance causes the amplitude of the bounce to gradually decrease. But if we feed energy to the device, it will bounce continuously. In the LC circuit, L and C compare to the rubber bands and the weight, the frequency determining device. As you recall, the resonant frequency of the tank can be determined by the formula f sub o is equal to 0.159 over the square root of LC. Or very simply, the frequency is determined by the size of L and C. Now, to be sure you understand how this circuit will oscillate, let's follow the action step by step. First, we'll need a power supply to provide the initial energy. In this case, a battery. This switch will allow the capacitor to be connected to the battery or to the coil. If we flip the switch to A, the capacitor charges to the battery voltage. Move the switch to B, and the capacitor is disconnected from the power supply, though it is still fully charged. When the switch is moved to C, the capacitor will start to discharge through the coil, causing current to flow in this direction. Now, as you know, when current flows through a coil, the field about the coil expands as current increases. So as long as current increases, the field continues to expand. At the point when the charge on the capacitor is almost depleted, the amount of current begins to decrease. At the instant current begins to decrease, the coil will oppose this change. That is, the field will begin to collapse, reversing direction, thus reversing the polarity of the induced voltage, causing current to flow in the same direction. Or the coil becomes the source, as the energy stored in the magnetic field is put back into the circuit, causing the capacitor to charge in the opposite direction. Now, when the field about the coil is completely collapsed, current is zero, and the capacitor is charged in the opposite direction, and it will again discharge through the coil. As current begins to increase, the field about the coil expands. Now, notice that current is flowing in the opposite direction. So we'll show this on our graph. At some point, current will begin to decrease. And when it does, the magnetic field will start to collapse, reversing direction, and returning energy to the circuit, which will cause the capacitor to recharge in the original direction. Now, when the coil's field is completely collapsed, current is zero, and the capacitor is charged. Notice that the current on this alternation was not quite as great as the original alternation due to the circuit resistance, which we have not shown in this simplified drawing. Thus, as this oscillating action continues, the output waveform will continually decrease until the energy in the circuit is completely absorbed. And the current waveform generated by the LC circuit looks very much like the graph of our mechanical oscillator. Why did the amplitude of the oscillations decrease in the mechanical oscillator, inherent resistance, or friction? Now, if we apply this reasoning to the LC circuit, it's obvious that the decrease in amplitude is caused by internal circuit resistance. That is, the resistance of the wire finally dissipates all of the energy. Now, we'll represent this resistance here. The amount of internal resistance will determine the quality of the circuit. And you should recall that the Q of a coil is equal to X of L over R. Thus, the higher the Q, the longer the circuit will oscillate because there's less energy dissipated in the circuit. But even the highest quality components offer some resistance. So to generate a waveform of constant amplitude, energy must be added to the circuit at the same rate that it's being lost. In much the same way that we fed energy to the mechanical oscillator. The ringing action of the LC circuit is often referred to as the flywheel effect. Because like a flywheel, once it started, a small amount of energy added at the right time and in the right direction will keep it going. And also like the flywheel, if energy is added in the wrong direction, the flywheel will stop. So energy must be added at the right time in the LC circuit. For example, if a positive voltage were applied at time 2, the energy lost in the first cycle would be replaced. And the amplitude brought up to the desired value. If energy were added every cycle, we could maintain constant amplitude. However, if this positive voltage were added at time 1, it would cancel the energy in the circuit and the circuit would stop oscillating. Thus, like the flywheel, the energy fed to the LC circuit must be of the proper amount to overcome the resistive losses in the circuit. And it must be delivered at the right time or in phase with the oscillating signal. Now the way this is usually accomplished is through an amplifier. The frequency-determining device provides an input to the amplifier. The amplifier must provide enough gain so that part of the output can be fed back to the input LC circuit to sustain oscillations and, of course, provide enough signal for an output. Now the energy must be fed back in phase or regenerative. Now because many amplifiers shift the phase of the signal by 180 degrees, there may be phase-shifting networks required in the feedback path. Various methods are used, RC, LC, RCL, or transformer, between the output and the input. Now which system is used will be determined by the type of oscillator circuit and its application. The important thing is that the energy fed back be in phase with the signal generated by the frequency-determining device. This demonstration will convince you that feedback does occur and will cause a circuit to oscillate. The microphone here is connected to the input of the audio amplifier. The speaker is connected to the output. Between the two, I have a piece of acoustical tile. If I remove the tile and allow the microphone to pick up some of the output sounds, the amplifier will go into oscillation. Now even though this circuit is not designed as an oscillator, if we feed the output to the input or develop feedback, it will oscillate. And if you've ever tried to listen to a PA system that has been plagued with feedback, you'll agree that in this case it is undesired. But before we go into what is happening in the amplifier, let's be sure we understand why it oscillates. Any sound picked up by the microphone is fed through the amplifier and out the speaker as sound. If the microphone picks up the sound coming out of the speaker, the output is feeding the input and the stage oscillates. Now since there is no way to control the amount of feedback, the strength of the oscillator signal continues to increase. You can hear this increase when we remove the tile slowly and allow the microphone to pick up the speaker's output. The squeal builds from a relatively low level to a very high level. And if allowed to continue, very high oscillating currents are built up that may damage circuit components. For this reason, the amount of feedback must be controlled in an oscillator. The correct amount is just enough to overcome the losses in the circuit. Any amplifier will oscillate if feedback occurs. But what is the frequency of oscillation? In the LC circuit, we found that frequency is determined by L and C in the tank. Now the same thing is true in the amplifier that oscillates. But since there is no frequency determining device, the frequency of oscillations is determined by distributed L and C. That is, the input capacitance of the amplifier, the inductance of the leads, or any inductors and capacitors in the circuit. It's very difficult to predict the frequency. And thus we see the need for a frequency determining device. In this case, the LC combination. These component values are carefully calculated to oscillate at exactly the right frequency, then the exact amount of feedback. And we have an LC oscillator that provides a signal of constant frequency and amplitude. One other factor should be considered, and that is loading the oscillator circuit. We can see this effect clearly by looking again at our basic circuit. We've already pointed out that the feedback overcomes the loss caused by the internal resistance of the circuit, which is small when a high-Q tank is used. However, there is another quality factor that concerns external circuit resistance. And in this case, the resistance should be high. In other words, the amplifier connected to the frequency determining device should offer maximum impedance to the tank. Even then, there'll be some energy loss to the external load, which must be regained by increasing the feedback. Now because loading and power surges can cause shifts in amplitude and frequency, the oscillator stage is usually isolated from the rest of the equipment by special amplifiers or other circuits. Now the exact kind of isolation depends on the particular application or use of the oscillator. However, there are several basic oscillator characteristics that are always true, whatever the type or application. First, any oscillator should develop a stable frequency and a signal of constant amplitude. And be sure you understand that this statement applies to all oscillators. The LC or any sine wave oscillator, as well as the sawtooth, square, rectangular, or trapezoidal oscillators. All of them should generate constant amplitude and frequency. Now here's a list of the basic requirements that also applies to all oscillators. First, of course, a DC power supply. It may be a simple battery or a very complex, carefully regulated circuit. Next, a frequency determining device. We have seen that an amplifier will oscillate without a frequency determining device. But the frequency is determined by distributed L and C, which makes frequency difficult to calculate and erratic. This kind of oscillation is usually undesirable. A frequency determining device, in this case, the LC tank, provides a stable, easily calculated frequency. Feedback is required to sustain oscillations in the frequency determining device and is usually accomplished with an amplifier. The frequency determining device provides an input to the amplifier. And the amplifier must provide enough gain so that part of the output signal can be fed back to overcome resistance in the tank and replace any energy lost through loading. Of course, the feedback must be regenerative or in phase. Thus, a phase shifting network between the output and the input may be required. There may be other requirements, depending on the application of the oscillator, which you'll discover when you study a particular piece of equipment. But the main idea is that all oscillators are basically the same. So whatever the type or the name of the circuit, all oscillators will require a power supply, a frequency determining device, feedback, usually from an amplifier. Now, if you apply these basic principles, oscillators will be much easier to understand. Just like this clock, the spring drives the gears that feed energy to the pendulum, which is the frequency determining device. And thus, the pendulum moves at a constant frequency and amplitude, which, of course, is the purpose of any oscillator.


This study examined the perceptions of adults living with HIV aged greater than or equal to 50 years, known as older adults living with HIV OLWH, in a low literacy setting on the coast of Kenya. The study found that participants experienced a range of physical, mental, and psychosocial health challenges, such as common mental disorders, comorbidities, somatic symptoms, financial difficulties, stigma, and discrimination. Additionally, there was an overlap of perceived risk factors across all three domains, including family conflicts and poverty. This article was authored by Patrick N. Wangala, Patrick N. Wangala, Patrick N. Wangala, and others.


Good afternoon and welcome to CMC markets on Monday the 24th of April and this week's weekly Look at the markets for the week ahead. My name is Michael Houston first and foremost. I'll be taking you through the oh the obligatory risk warning Basically outlining that anything that you hear in this video should not be construed as trading advice But ultimately is my personal view of where I think the key levels Are on the charts, but also what are likely to be the key factors that will drive Equity markets currency markets bomb markets commodity markets over the course Over the course of the next week or so so once once we've got the risk warnings out of the way I can get started and Not surprisingly in the wake of the weekend Election or weekend presidential vote In France we've seen a nice little pop hire in equity markets as investors pile in on the On the on the probable outcome that Emmanuel Macron who is a outsider is an independent outside the mainstream of French politics Will likely or in all probability become French president in two weeks time just under two weeks time on the 7th of May and An awful lot of this optimism is predicated on the fact that he will be facing Marine Le Pen Who tends to be what I would call a rather polarizing candidate? What if this what this pop doesn't disguise though is The fact that the French economy still has a myriad of problems that it needs to Navigate around but what you know what the vote has done is it's given investors a perfect excuse to pile back in to European banks and French and German banks in particular because it's taking the very outside risk the Marine Le Pen and Melon Kong the extreme left-wing candidate could have got into a runoff For the vote in two weeks time That's now not going to happen and the opinion polls those those great opinion polls that were so right on Brexit and Trump It makes it quite likely that Emmanuel Macron will become French president in two weeks time So what does that mean for the French economy? Well, if I'm honest with you not much I certainly don't think he's going to be able to move the dial significantly in terms of economic reforms over the course of His tenure assuming that he does become French president But what it what it has done is it's it's this pushed share prices of various banks Quite significantly higher certainly seeing it this morning in the share price of society general You can see that here Significant move higher. I think what is quite interesting with respect to this move these moves higher is while that is taken as above some previous peaks in Terms of European Bank King share prices What did what this what this rise hasn't done is taken us above the previous highs that we saw? 2009 and 2010 2011 Which would appear to suggest that there was an awful lot of I think Lazy money on the sidelines But ultimately it hasn't been significant enough to change the overall direction or the overall dynamics With respect to the French economy going forward Let's certainly look at society general as a case in point with respect to Where I'm the share price of French banks could go but also I think if we look at BNP Paribas, for example It's a similar sort of story with respect to the overall long-term direction of French banks ultimately they may be out of the woods But there's certainly still well short of the peaks or the levels that we saw in 2008 2009 2010 And that's reflected. I think in the cat car on we've seen it this morning here With this move back to the levels that we saw All the peaks that we saw in 2015 What we what I really would like to see with respect to this particular chart here on the cat car on is a move through 5300 now I've drawn drawn a horizontal line through the 2015 peak that we saw When the euro-dollar was down around about one one or three one or two one or three and The Dax was up at his previous record highs if we scroll it all the way back here We can see that while the Dax has made new record highs Well, we haven't done on the cat car on is really significantly get above this 5300 level and I think that's significant particularly if you go all the way back to 2006 and 2007 because we can see the peaks here in Early 2006 and then we can see the support here in early 2007 through here and here So this 5300 level that we've been looking at over the course of say for example the past week Oh, but the past the past few months is a very significant historical level and ultimately what we would I would like to see for further Progress with respect to the cat car on is for us to really sustain the move that we've seen this month so far to push through that 5300 level and Obviously the flip side of this particular story is the fact the euro's also taken a significant move higher as well now Generally the euro tends to move inversely to European stocks and by definition a higher euro Actually might act as a significant a little bit of a headwind to Further European stock market gains, but then then that sort of ignores the fact that we have seen Some significant positive economic data coming out of the euro area over the course of the past few months Which then leads us on to the event risks that we've got out later this week the European Central Bank rate meeting Now a few weeks ago There was an awful lot of optimism about the fact that mr.. Draghi might be tempted to talk about or at least set the ground for or laying Lay the groundwork for a potential taper of The ECB's asset purchase program Now he was quite keen to dial back that rhetoric in the lead up to the French presidential election Not really surprisingly and the latest inflation numbers would appear to suggest The inflationary pressure within the EU has Tempered somewhat over the course of the past few weeks. We saw the CPI measure to slide back from 2% to 1.5 But we do have a flash Euro CPI number out later this week on Friday and the likely outcome of those particular numbers is that inflationary pressure could well tick back up again, so Inflation is still the dogs that won't bark In the European Union at this point in time There is still an awful lot of what I would call uncertainty about where prices might go to next It's been an awful lot of chatter about the reflation trade and whether or not We'll get a significant infrastructure boom out of the US some of that has been tempered somewhat over the course of the past few weeks as Investors have cast doubt on the ability of Donald Trump to actually implement the type of program That he's been talking about over the course of the past few months and ultimately it is really about a gap between Rhetoric and substance with respect to President Trump at the moment He talks a good game But the big question is does he play a good game and at the moment There doesn't appear to be any evidence that he'll be able to deliver Anywhere close to what he's been promising now later this week He has he tweeted over the weekend that he would be outlining details of a tax reform plan Details are all well and good, but I would caution you that ultimately details are just that the details They don't outline the problems that he will face in trying to get those details Through the Congress and through the Senate and there's enough fiscal conservatives within the Congress to suggest that he will find It very difficult indeed to implement a significant and I say this is significant tax reform plan That being said we've seen a significant rebound in equity markets this morning Not only in Europe, but also in the US So you have to take that into consideration When you actually look at what the price action is doing and certainly if we look at this DAX chart here We can see that the oscillator starting to point upwards The the two lines are starting to tick higher and that does appear to suggest that we could see a significant move higher But what we need to see is a significant move above 12400 so I think there's a combination of factors here. There's an improving economic story going on We saw that in the PMIs last week the flash PMIs from France and Germany But there's also the prospect that the ECB Might have to look at tapering its bond buying program And if that happens then you could potentially see the yield curve in European bonds start to widen now It could start to move back into positive territory the gap between twos tens and thirties could start to widen out That's likely to be positive for European banks Irrespective of what the euro does because ultimately while wider wider yield Differentials are positive of banks. We've seen it here in the UK We've seen it in the US with respect to the latest earnings announcements from US banks, but also UK banks wider yield Differentials improve profitability Therefore we could see further gains in European banks so certainly keep an eye on those particular factors. They are certainly going to drive risk sentiment going forward. I Think a key barometer of that will be the tone of mr. Draghi's press conference on Thursday, so not expecting any surprises from that meeting But what we will be looking for is whether or not the ECB Decide to upgrade their inflation forecast and more importantly upgrade their growth forecast So the tone of the press conference will be key in terms of the overall direction For European markets going forward and stock markets and banks in particular. So Looking at the the DAX at the moment. We're looking to consolidate this move higher We've gapped higher then that would appear to suggest that any pullbacks are likely to find support around about 12,100 12,200 I would expect that gap at some point to be filled over the course of the next few weeks I would be very surprised if it remains unfilled over the course of the next few weeks Let's face it. There's still quite a long way to go between now and the 7th of May I mean while an awful lot of people would say a Macron win is a done deal It could well be but for me I think the margin of the win will be just as important as the win itself and there's also the fact Will mr. Macron be able to deliver anywhere near to what he was being able to promise in The lead-up to his campaign. He's talked about Tax reform he's talked about Making changes to the 35 hour working week. He's talked about getting unemployment down to 7% This is all against the fact that he won't have any representation or very little representation in the French Parliament Nicholas Sarkozy tried to implement tax reform. He tried to implement Significant reforms and they subs and he ran into the unions and we all know that generally French generally love a good old a good old strike when they don't like any particular reforms that the government Likes to bring in so the obstacles for mr. Macron to be a successful president are very high indeed and That could well take some of the luster off the euphoria that we've seen over the course of the past few hours So let's let's look at the footsie 100. We've seen a significant move higher in that But what's quite interesting is we haven't been back through this 72 45 72 50 area here We're running into a little bit of resistance through these series of highs Sorry, these series of lows through March and April. So if I draw a horizontal line through that Here just going to drop that in there between 72 45 and 72 60 There's certainly significant resistance as born out by this series of lows Through here, so I'll be keeping a close eye on this this this corridor of resistance through here as obviously as well as the 50-day moving average and The resistance that we saw between 7400 around about seven that the 7400 level that we saw at the beginning of the month But certainly we've seen record highs again today in the footsie 250 So once again, that's a fairly positive sign And that's despite the fact that the pound has continued to remain fairly robust despite the fact that It's it has weakened a little bit again against the euro So footsie 100 still looks fairly positive But it's running into a little bit of interim intraday resistance around about 72 50 72 60 So I'll be overly cautious about getting overly enthusiastic about that We've looked at the the DAX we need to sustain a move through 12400 I really think to really think that we're potentially going to go an awful lot higher there But certainly momentum does appear to be in its favor and ultimately I think if you if we're looking for an opportunity to buy dips on the DAX then really you've got to look at this sort of trend line support through this series of lows through here as well as this This area of resistance through around about 12100 so look for any pullbacks there as well It's a little bit expensive to buy German equities at these sorts of levels and it's something I'll be very very cautious about at this point in time Any questions that you might have please reply to the to the message That I'm about to send out here to this message for any questions But I'm now going to move on To Currencies because we've seen significant We've seen some significant break breakouts in Currencies against the dollar over the course of the past week or so last week We saw a big breakout in the pound against the dollar or come to that in a minute But I'm going to focus at the moment on the breakout that we've seen this morning in the euro We've broken above the trend line resistance from the highs that we saw last May At around about 116 I have drawn it through those highs that we saw in mid-November that was down to the Trump That was that that was the Trump electoral win which saw the euro spike briefly higher Before closing pretty much on the lows of the day and that's really why that I've I've drawn the line through that peak there because it was such a short-lived move that ultimately For me, I'm prepared to look through it so Looking looking at the cat. I've already talked about the cat So I won't go over that again talking about the euro dollar right now We are likely to find a little bit of support around about 108. Why because we've got a series of highs all the way through here The 200-day moving average is likely to be a key support as well We've had a little bit of a move down below it and that can be signified by this particular This particular line through here So around about 108 20 108 if we fall back below that then we're likely probably going to drift back down towards Around about 107 20 Bob while we're a while above the 200-day moving average and this trend line resistance Or above that then there is potential for us to move higher But ultimately we're still in the uptrend that we've been in since the beginning of the year So it's quite conceivable that we could drift all the way back down here again given the fact that We're probably going to get some more details out of the US later this week Which could be dollar positive and could push the euro lower And also we've got a whole host of economic data from the US We've got the first iteration of Q1 GDP out of the US on Friday That's likely to come in a little bit softer from Q4 but we've also got durable goods as well and and Some and some significant Fed speakers as well and federal reserve officials are still talking about the Possibility of another three rate rises this year. So that again could be dollar positive But ultimately at the moment while we're above 108 Then the prospect is that we could push up towards 110 111 but ultimately we're unlikely to move out of the range That we've been in over the course of the past few weeks So that's the outlook for the euro dollar at the moment while we're above 108 Then the prospect is we'll probably go and revisit the highs around about 109 Similar sort of story euro sterling we have broken higher But again here what what is quite significant with respect to this is We're running in to a significant resistance levels again on on the euro sterling between the 50 100 and 200 day moving average So between 85 45 and 85 80 the significant barrier resistance Where these three moving averages converge and that's before you even start talking about this series of highs Through here as well, which is likely to Which is what which is likely to act as a significant Selling area there's certainly significant selling interest going to be going through that particular area as well as Trendline resistance through these peaks through here. So euro sterling We've seen a significant rally in that, but I still don't buy into a particularly strong euro going forward I'm much more of a sterling bull than I am a euro bull and that's borne out by this chart here I talked about it in a couple of my posts last week and I stand by it. We've seen a significant We've seen a significant rebound in the pound over the course of the past week or so and What's driven that is the breakout of this triangular consolidation that we've been in Since the beginning of December last year if we draw a line through these peaks here We draw a line through these lows here. We've got a classic Triangular Collidation and a classic triangular breakout now this pattern has taken place over the course of about three or four months We've broken above the 200-day moving average the 50 and the 100-day moving averages are starting to Point upwards which would suggest to me that the next move in the pound is likely to be Significantly higher towards 130 and potentially 133 now how have I arrived at these targets? It's fairly simple We basically take the apex We project the apex of this particular move from the distance between This high and this low here So I've taken the this high and this low here measured the point move up and projected it from the breakout point now My initial target for the pound against the dollar is around about 130 40 on this particular break out But overall you would expect over the course of the next two to three months For that to move to around 133 now you'll you'll you'll read a host of commentators talk about the fact that the pound Could well actually this could be a false breakout and we could move back lower and that is a significant possibility I will not deny that and That that that is a worry that is a worry But this is what this is this is a training plan and ultimately you have to have a training plan With that you have to have effective risk management. So My concern that this plan or this particular move might run out of steam would be is if we go back below 127 and a half. So this could be a potential flag formation here from the initial move higher That would become that would unwind if we drop below 127 50 and I'll bring us all the way back to 125 The market is looking a little bit overboard at the moment But overall on the basis of this technical analysis break out Then ultimately for me based on the price action at the moment The line of least resistance at the moment favours a move towards 130 and 133 While above 127 and a half And that also coincides with my view that ultimately the dollar could about the US dollar could be I'm about to embark on a little bit of weakening over the course of the next few sessions So my bias for sterling at the moment is more positive than negative I would revisit that if we broke below If we broke below 127 and a half But certainly for me the balance of risks still remains Towards the upside as opposed to the downside is that I think an awful lot of the bad news is already priced into the pound And as such we could potentially move higher also I think people are much more 50 50 with respect to the pound at the moment because of the The short squeeze that caught an awful lot of people out On this move up here. They're looking to reinstate short position somewhere up here We could come back down here But overall I would still expect the pound to move higher over the course of the next few weeks and months I would only rip up that scenario if we drop below 127 and a half and even if we do Then I think the the downside will come in around about 125 80 126 and that's what's important about being Being a trader you have to learn to be flexible and not be wedded to a particular plan if you're wrong You're wrong get out and then look to get back in and change your view Depending on the change changing circumstances of the charts So I've been asked if sterling Kiwi is tracking sterling dollar. I think it's a little bit dangerous to sort of look at Comparing the two because the Kiwi is certainly in no way comparable to Sterling dollar but If you if you want clues as to with respect to what the the pound might do with respect To the dollar then looking at euro sterling or playing it playing euro sterling will probably be a safer option of being longer sterling Against against the dollar than it is against the Kiwi. I have a quick look at sterling dollar though for you Just to get a fair idea of where we are with respect to that To see if that can give us some clues on the next direction or the next move in the pound Certainly the break above the 200-day moving average is Positive and certainly looking at the price action on this. It is fairly similar in terms of the move higher so I Was probably look the clues What I wouldn't want to see on sterling Kiwi is a move below 181 40 that would worry me a little bit because that would suggest that we could get a move back down Towards the 178 level and potentially even a retest of this series of highs through here around about 179 80 So keep an eye on 181 40 on sterling Kiwi 127 and a half on sterling dollar Moving on to dolly end Had a nice little risk-on move higher in Dolly end which has taken above which has taken this above This cloud support on the four hour chart So we can see that there's decent support around one oh one one oh nine fought one oh nine eighty on the cloud On the cloud on the cloud cloud support here But what's also quite interesting is this one oh nine forty area here, which I talked about In my chart forum update earlier this morning Last week's peaks one oh nine forty fifty are likely to act as a support in the short to medium term and Given the fact that we have the Bank of Japan rate meeting Tomorrow morning That's going to be a kid. I think that's going to be a key driver as to where dolly end goes to next So what at the moment? We're above around about one oh nine eighty don't rule out a move down to one oh nine forty fifty In the short to medium term with respect to dolly end But it does appear to have found a little bit of a base around one oh eight Which would appear to suggest that any move down is likely to find a little bit of support in this cloud area here between one oh nine forty fifty and one oh nine eighty But that doesn't mean that the upside That doesn't mean it now opens up the upside because we still have significant resistance all the way through here At around about one eleven sixty one eleven fifty so For dolly end what I would suggest is that you're probably going to find the dips are going to be bought into around about one oh nine forty Fifty and we could get a move back to around about one eleven sixty But ultimately it would be a surprise to me if we moved much beyond one eleven sixty And we continue to trade sideways as we have been doing over the course of the past few trading sessions With resistance around about one eleven and a half support around about one oh nine forty fifty So that's what I would expect the range for Dolly end to be Given the fact that we've got us GDP numbers out later this week that are likely to be On the low side of expectations. They're certainly expected to be weaker than q4 Which was around about two point one annualized Probably expecting a number in the region of around about one point three for us GDP We've also got UK Q1 GDP first iteration of that that's due out on Friday as well That again is likely to be Significantly weaker than the Q4 number of naught point seven But it's still expected to come in and in the region of around about naught point four percent Which when you consider the Armageddon was being predicted in the lead up to last year's referendum vote isn't too shabby and The fact is that the retail sales growth that we were we were seeing towards the end of Q4 Was unlikely to ever have been repeatable as we head into Q1 and the triggering of article 50 Triggering of article 50 has now happened Ultimately now we have an election coming up in in the next four to six weeks It would be a significant surprise indeed if the Conservatives didn't win that election Given the calibre of the opposition at this point in time. Certainly the markets aren't pricing in the prospect of Any surprises there in the same way they're not factoring any significant surprises in the French presidential election, so I Think it's unlikely that we will see a Significant amount of sterling weakness unless the polls shift markedly towards say for example anything other than a significant Conservative majority, but I've learned From the experience of 12 months ago that you can never take anything for granted where markets are concerned and neither should you as a trader You should always trade with an effective stop loss and never put all your eggs in one basket So let's move on to US markets We've looked at European markets. We've looked at UK markets. We've also looking at US markets And the likelihood is we're going to see a significant move higher on the US open today with the US 30 breaking above that trend line That I drew in last week from the peaks that we saw in February We really need to see a significant move above the 20,800 level we have really struggled in and around that area apart from that spike that we saw in early April We've really struggled to really sustain a move significantly above 20,800 so I would want to see a significant Move beyond that to suggest that we're going to head back to the highs that we saw In the middle of March around the 21,000 area for me. This is all about momentum But it's also also about confirmation You can see the move higher, but it needs to be confirmed as well and certainly in the context of the S&P We have moved a little bit higher But again, we're below those levels that we saw in the middle of March Even though we have managed to sustain a move higher through 2380 or that those peaks that we saw at the beginning of the month around just below 2380 If we can sustain that move higher, then the likelihood is we're probably going to retest March But the S&P is probably going to be the leading indicator rather than the Dow It's probably the more reliable indicator and as for the NASDAQ well that continues to lead with new record highs Over the course of the past week or so and we can see that From this particular chart through here That seems to be the gift that keeps on giving 50-day moving averages. I think the key support there. So Look look for a move through 5,500 Hopefully that will drag the rest of us markets up with it But I think once again it will be the strength of the dollar that could dictate whether or not us markets go higher and I'm certainly not convinced that the The US dollar will be able to revisit the peaks that we've seen in previous Rebounds over the course of the past over the course of the next few training sessions We can see that here. It's clear to me From this chart here that the dollar index has the potential to roll over that's likely to be supportive overall of The euro it's likely to be supportive of the pound So the key the key level that I'm really looking for on the dollar index if we can just draw this in With a horizontal line through here is likely to be around this 98 1999 area What I want to see is a sustained move through here Which would appear to suggest that there's a potential top-in for the US dollar and we could well start to track Lower over the course of the next few training sessions And I think that's important as well What we need to see is a sustained move lower in the dollar index that will be that will be predominantly supportive of euro dollar But overall it's probably going to be a fairly gradual process and we'll head back towards 98 Which would probably probably mean that we're probably going to head back towards 109 110 euro dollar But I don't think we're going to go surging significantly higher Don't forget also that the dollar index 57% of it is euro dollar so they do tend to act as a decent proxy for each other Let's finish up with gold Because ultimately the gold gold has probably taken one of the biggest hits on the back of this presidential vote But what it hasn't done is hasn't hasn't dropped significantly, you know, and I think this is the key thing with gold despite the fact that Economic conditions have been improving over the course of the past few months gold has still been trending higher and The reason for that I think is that there is some doubt as to whether or not we have completely removed political risk from the equation French elections may well go according to plan and Macron may win German elections may well go according to plan and Angela Merkel may win But even if she doesn't Martin shorts will win which ultimately you'll have a pro-eu candidate No matter the outcome but ultimately the problems in Europe haven't gone away the banking system still remains vulnerable the Italian banking system still remains vulnerable and You've also got the problems the geopolitical concerns with respect to North Korea, so Factoring all of that in gold still remains a fairly decent hedge We could see a little bit of a decline back towards 1240-1250 but overall the uptrend that's been in place since December still remains Significantly intact and I expect that to remain the case over the course of the next few sessions crude oil same old story it's in a trend it's in a trend will continue to be in a trend and Ultimately, I would expect that we're going to continue to play the range on that over the course as we have been for the last six months Bottom end of that range is round about where the 200 day moving average is between 50 and $51 a barrel Top end of the range around about 55 60 I'm really not expecting any significant fireworks on crude oil prices Over the course of the next few trading sessions or the next few weeks And I'll probably be saying giving you the same old spiel In a couple of weeks time next week is a bank holiday. So there won't be any webinar next Monday So the next one will be Monday week, but ultimately if we look at copper It's a similar sort of story with with respect to commodity prices here as well Decent support around the lows are around about 243 250 and decent resistance of around 273 I think we've seen the commodity price move higher and now really it's a question of what happens with Growth prospects going forward China does appear to be showing signs of stabilizing at fairly higher levels and US markets or US the US economy is likely to pick up in the second quarter It usually tends to go through a little bit of a first-quarter slump in the Q2 and Q3 It does tend to pick up as US driving season gets underway So the slowdown that we're seeing in Q1 is unlikely to be sustained in Q2 But at the same point, I don't expect it to take off either It'll do what it'll do what it normally does it picks up on a seasonal basis going forward Okay, so that's it for This week unless anyone has any questions on anything that I've covered anything that I've discussed Then Ultimately the key things that I will be looking out for later this week will obviously be the Bank of Japan rate meeting Any further details on us tax reform European Central Bank? Press conference from mr. Draghi on Thursday and obviously the Q1 GDP numbers from the US and the UK on Friday as well as Eurozone flash CPI numbers for April if that's all there is then I'd like to thank everyone for Thanks everyone for listening in and I will talk to you all again in a couple of weeks But I think before then we have non-farm payrolls Next Friday Friday after next post Bank holiday weekend Where you're more than welcome to join me in Collins is in ski talk about the payrolls data, and that's the Friday That's that's that's that's next Friday week