Hey, everyone, Andrew here again. We are on Episode 3 of How to Interview at Top Tech Companies, and today we'll be going over execution, metric change. Just as another free food cap on myself, if you haven't been listening in in the past, my name is Andrew Oh. I'm a former VP of Products and Chief Design Officer. I previously served at companies such as Grab, which is the Uber of Southeast Asia, TikTok, everyone's favorite social media app, and PuLong, a Series B stocking crypto trading app based in Indonesia. I've also founded several different startups, and I'm also a coach on exponent for product managers. Today, we'll be going over a few things. What is execution? What is metric change specifically? What is the framework that we'll be using to break this down? As mentioned, today we'll be going over execution. So, we'll be going over a few things today. What exactly is execution? What exactly is going to be obsessed in metric change? What is the framework that we'll be using to break this down? And how would we be going about tackling follow-up questions? So, just as a reminder, if you haven't tuned in for the last episode where we've been over metric definition, execution is a categorical interview type which product managers will face, of which they'll be going over metrics. And this particular definition will be going over metrics. And so, there's two broad categories of this, metric definition, which is about how would you go about defining metric or success metrics for a specific product or company. Really, it's about establishing goals and goal setting for your team. Metric change is slightly different. It's going about how do you diagnose a metric that could have changed within the company? And we'll be going over examples of that in the next slide. Why is this being assessed? And what exactly is being assessed here? It's going to be assessing your analytical abilities. And you'll see in the follow-up questions later on, it will also be assessing your stakeholder management abilities as well. This is, of course, crucial for any product manager in the field to be able to quickly diagnose any particular issues or irregularities that you're going to be seeing in your product dashboard. And also, how would you navigate the complexities of your organizational environment to address those issues as well? The people that will be interviewing you for this specific kind of interview would most likely be other product leaders within the organization. Very rarely, although I have seen it, you may also be interviewing a data scientist lead who may also be assessing you on this attribute. So there are some examples of metric change questions that you will be asked. Here are a few of them. Uber rides are down 10% determine what happened. Another example would be TikTok engagement is down 20%. How would you diagnose this problem? And another, a little bit more fun would be McDonald's GMV is down 10%. How would you diagnose this or what happened? So as you see here from these questions, it's pretty straightforward, similar to other questions that we've had in the past. The TRA and tier one companies will tend to give you a very clear yet ambiguous question with not a lot of context and it's up to you to define that context upfront so you can set yourself up for success. And so that's going to be leading into our next segment, which is us breaking down that question and providing context. So let's take the case question here. Uber rides are down 10% determine what have happened. As usual, a key part of strategies for most frameworks here is to first set up that context by asking clarifying questions. So there are a few here that you should be asking. So first clarify the product with Uber. So there's not so much a question, but more so just a walkthrough of describing what that product is. So you can just say, for example, hey, I just want to clarify my understanding of Uber with you and what parts we're covering specifically. So just to recap this, Uber is a ride hailing app of which everyday people can become drivers and get allocated a ride from a rider who is requesting to be taken from point A to point B within the app. And these drivers are incentivized based on a, I think it's a 20 or 30% commission on each ride. And likewise, if they reach a specific target such as like doing 20 rides a week, they may also get a bonus payout at the end of that week as well. So I just want to clarify that understanding with you. Interviewer might say yes or no or make any iterations to that understanding based on that premise that you have presented. So it's always good to just clarify the understanding of the product very clearly. So you guys are on the same page. This is really, really key to do upfront. Don't do it later. When things get messy and you've already kind of synced in 10 to 20 minutes over time. Second piece here will be to define the metric. So how do we define rides internally? This is another key question to ask. So you see here, the question most more specifically, urban rides are down 10%. So let's define rides. How do we define rides? Is it from a time of which that passenger is finished going from point A to point B? Is it actually determined by just the points of which the customer makes the transaction and the processing of that transaction is completed? There could be different interpretations of how rides are determined inside this company. And you want to just double check and make sure that you and the interviewer are on the same page of this definition because that could be crucial later on for you to try to troubleshoot this problem. The third question you want to ask here is when did it start happening? You know, did it start happening two weeks ago, two months ago, last week? You just want to double check and clarify again when did it start happening? Cause that's going to be essential and crucial to the next question, which is was this a spike or gradual drop? Now this is probably the most important question that you're going to ask in the clarifying questions bucket because if this is a spike, you can start to assume that this is likely due to some internal issue. If it's a gradual drop, you might be able to immediately start thinking on whether this is an external issue, something outside of the company, something outside of the product. So more so a market or global force that's causing this drop in rights specifically. And then lastly, where did this start happening? Do we have a rough idea on what kind of users this has been affecting? So, you know, did it start happening in the US or is it like a global problem? Are we seeing this with new users more specifically or all users across the platform? These are again, really central questions to ask as it will help to provide more clarity and depth on your structured way of thinking on where the problem could be starting out. Now, one thing, sorry, I forgot to mention is that you do want to be speaking out loud. You want to talk out loud on where your thought process is going as you're going down each of these questions because that is essentially what's going to be assessed here is your way of thinking and how you're putting these clues together will change your hypotheses of where things could be going amok. So, you know, if I have gotten up to the point where I've determined with the integer that this is more of a internal problem due to a spike. You know, I might say, well, given that it's a spike that started happening just within the last two weeks I would start to imagine that this could be due to a more of an internal issue, whether that's a bug related issue or maybe it has something to do with the UX change. You know, again, just given that it's a spike and not a gradual drop, I would expect that something abrupt had happened of which had started to really affect the metric. So you can just explain it off like that. Again, you're just thinking out loud as you're going about each of these questions on where your hypotheses is started to formulate. So what that thought process, let's first go over the buckets. So there are two main buckets that you're going to be going over to determine and assess where the problems might be facing. So first bucket is internal issues, the second bucket will be external issues. So what cover both? Let's first go over the internal buckets. So mind you, what I'm going to be presenting is just only several of many that you could be brainstorming. Because you want to get this interview down to about 20 to 25 minutes, don't go too crazy. You're not trying to just cover all bases. You're more so really just generally trying to solve this problem with your interviewer.  The first is product. So any kind of product related categories, you could be asking your interviewer such as, you know, did we have a new version release recently? Did we, had we done any AB testing that might have also affected the majority of users? Could the AB testing have actually been accidentally pulled over to like half the user base or more? Or is there a new change in the UX or maybe even some product integration that ended up causing these problems? So that's more on the product side. Technical side, you could be asking questions like, you know, again, do we have any third party integrations that we did that, you know, might have actually gone down? Maybe that's not an iron, that's actually on our third party provider's end. If you've experienced any downtime for a significant period of time that might have also caused this downtime to occur, I mean, the drop in rights to occur. And, you know, you could also be asking, you know, were there any bugs that we had seen through the software or through customers that might have actually been blocking them recently? Then we go on to marketing. So marketing is another bucket you could be talking to here. So another example, this could be, you know, to get a marketing strategy change. Like as we know, Uber's customers are quite part sensitive. It is more like a journal commodity. So, you know, have we dropped anything like new user signup promo codes or referral promo codes or city-based promo codes? All of this could have, of course, been attributed towards the drop that we had seen in rights. Now, this is a little, now for this, I would then also caveat that, you know, if it's a drop in promo codes, I wouldn't expect to see a spike in drop unless there was like a truly massive, like, global campaign. So that would have been how we defined it earlier on, but again, this is maybe not one of those where I would expect to drop, more so a gradual drop, if anything. This one's pretty important, metric. So by the metric itself internally, you could be asking questions like, did we change our metric platform, our analytics platform in the last two weeks? Maybe that was why we ended up having this veiled drop in our metrics. Did we change the way that we define our ride in the last two weeks? You know, that end of itself could, of course, drop it 20% at the spike and being represented as a spike itself. Another thing you could ask is customer service. So, you know, have we, you know, is there anything in terms of a spike that we have been seeing internally among the customer service reports that have indicated? We've been seeing, you know, maybe for example, customers getting blocked or maybe there's some safety issues that have been going on that caused this 20% drop quite suddenly. So these are just, again, just some examples of many different buckets that you could be assessing and using to determine whether or not there were any internal issues and many points towards the drop in rides. What I would recommend is, of course, any time you go on to the next part of this framework, just ask for a minute to start writing down your thoughts. Write down all the buckets that you think could be leading to this specific drop in rides for this specific product. Let's move on to the next part, which is external. So let's just assume, hey, you know, a lot of the seconds that we're getting from the interview is that we're not really seeing a big problem here that's leading to the spike in terms of a drop in rides. Then let's move over to the external forces that might have been actually covering this. So I have here three listed out that we'll be representing for this problem. First would be competitors. So was there a new startup that might have came out recently with a huge PR release, something truly disruptive that maybe just sucked out 20% of our rides or 10% of our rides, et cetera? Was there maybe just one of our incumbent big competitors that launched a new feature or a new promo campaign and went really hard on that? So these could be some examples of reasons from the competitor side that could have been coming out that you could also just address. A second, one is world events, which is very, very relevant to modern days. I'm actually reading up on your news, but one of those could be COVID. If you were interviewing back a couple of years ago, maybe within that specific country or city that you've identified based on the clarifying questions, when COVID is active, was that the time when maybe the city went into a lockdown or an early curfew? Maybe that's why rides went down 20%. Or in another case, Ukraine war, could there have been some sort of conflict or a strife within that region or that specific country that had also caused this to happen? That's a very specific question that if you're a little bit more up to date with world events, you could ask if you noticed that where the users have been dropping off in terms of rides was in a particular region that's a little bit more sensitive right now. So again, that's why clarifying questions are just so important. And then lastly, it could be political or legal. So for example, were there any new regulations that had been released or amended in the country of which we're operating in that we saw these rides start to drop? Or if it's a global issue that's affecting all the users, maybe this was a new regulation that hit the US, which we can assume is probably the biggest single market for Uber. And maybe that impact was so great that we actually saw the rides drop 10%. So these are just some of the external issues that you could be going over. Again, make them specific to that specific products of which you are assessing that metric drop or metric spike upwards starting to occur to try to determine where this problem is. Now, again, you would have gone through a pretty healthy list of internal external forces. And maybe you're at a point where you still can't figure this out and your interviewer is not really giving you any any good hints on it. What's most important to demonstrate here is that you've is again, your way of thinking that you've covered a lot of the basis here. And as a last resort, if you really can't find this out after 15, 20 minutes, the last resort I would say is just say that you'll go talk to customers straight out. Show that users in Tracy decided of you that you're willing to go in person, do a survey, talk to users through one-on-ones to try to get down to the ground truth of why this might have been happening. And if the interviewer had early on hinted that maybe, hey, yeah, we have been seeing something a little bit more on the technical side. That's at a point where you can just dive in and hone in on that specific issue and just ask more questions and dive a little bit deeper as to where on the technical side of things, that's the drop in the spike might have gone wrong. So again, this whole interview is meant to be a little bit more collaborative. You're fishing for information, trying to put the clues together to try to determine where the problem is. If you can't find the end answer, that's actually okay. I've seen a lot of people pass this interview while not being able to find the end answer. Cause that's not the exercise or the point that's being assessed here. The point again is just assessing your way of thinking and how you're able to collaborate and analyze holistically where things might be going wrong. Now, at the end of that case, you will very likely be asked some follow-up questions with the remaining time left. You'll likely have five or 10 minutes left in your interview to solve for these questions. So very common question types will be both trade-off questions and stakeholder related questions. So let's first talk about the trade-off questions. Here's one. Rides are down 10% for Uber, as mentioned before, but we've actually seen the GMV up 20%. So as the PM for Uber rides, what would you do in this situation? So this is an interesting follow-up question that you could get asked because what this question is essentially saying is that you represent the rides portion of this metric that's down, but the overall business is up. This is likely not hitting your OKR. This is not likely not hitting your KPI. And of course, this could also be a performance hit to you in your performance review cycle. And so what would you do in this situation? So what they're looking for here, and again, this is gonna be more dependent on the company itself, but usually what they're looking for is selflessness. Selflessness and striving towards coming towards a decision or a series of decisions that is ultimately going to benefit the mission and the company itself. So, it's fair to ask some more questions about this upfront to just try to determine, for example, why is the GMV really up and why the rides are down 10%. What you wanna do is just always go back to the mission of the company. Go back to the mission of the company, read up on it, or just make sure you know what it is. If you don't know about it, just ask, you can ask your interviewer what that mission is, or you can also just make an assumption of what that mission could be. And so for me, let me just maybe state that quick assumption of what this mission for Uber or Uber rides team could possibly be. Given that Uber is a ride handling company, I would imagine that its mission could be something akin to enabling anyone in the world to seamlessly and affordably go from point A to point B. That's it. Now, I'm making an assumption here because I actually don't know what Uber's mission statement is, but given that mission statement, the principles of the company follow through with that as well. Because what that mission statement, if you read between the lines, what it's actually saying is, we want to democratize and enable anyone to be able to take a ride to go from point A to point B. And what we're valuing here is more mass consumer level transportation rather than just making that's a premium service that only wealthier people could afford and write on. And so based on that principle, you go back to this initial question and write it down 10%, but the GMB is up 20%. So you could ask more questions or you can make assumptions up to you at this point, but you can make an assumption that if we had done the analysis and we've seen that the GMB is up 20%, but they're rising down by 10% because the growth team decided to did an analysis and realized that they could be charging users more money. But that came at the cost of 23% of riders no longer being able to ride with Uber, that doesn't align with the mission. And because that doesn't align with the mission, this is something that I may want to work with the growth team PM on to try to come to a conclusion on number one, one of the principles that we're standing by based on the mission of the company. Number two, how can we actually make this a win-win? Not, this is irrespective of my department and your department, but how can we actually make this a win for our consumers who are ultimately both trying to serve? That's the kind of response that they're really looking for here. So again, the way I kind of described that was it's selfless, it's mission oriented and irrespective of whatever team you're on and as a product manager, you should be serving ultimately your users in the best way that you can. Yes, business metrics do matter, but hey, we're seeing a 20% GMV uptake, but if that's coming at the cost of 20 or 30% of our riders being able to ride with Uber and afford that ride, I think that could have longer term implications and it also gives a competitive edge to our competitors to potentially overtake us and take our market share later on. So try to make that connection not just towards the mission, the users and the products, but also towards excellent factors like the competitors to try to make that justification. Now, that said, you could have a very simple follow up question to that itself, which is the stakeholder from the growth team doesn't align with what you're saying and your justification is like, how would you handle this? So you're getting pushback. Very fair question to have and I'm sure a lot of you have encountered this before. So you've done the approach where you try to be reasonable with by doing the right thing and you also try to go by the principles of the company which is not working out. That's fine. The growth stakeholder is not aligning with you on this. The next thing you would want to do then is look at data. Look at data to see how you can possibly reposition this to make it a win-win for both of you. So maybe you can do some sort of like analysis to determine what would be a great metal ground or ridership to go up whereas the GMB target could possibly still be hit and try to make that work. But even if that approach doesn't work out but the data that you have for your case checks out. At that point, what have you done so far? Reflect on this. You have tried to do what's right by the customer, by the mission of the company and you've also presented a really good business case for how you could at least try to make this a win-win for both sides. If that doesn't work, you have really, really good case to escalate this to your manager or possibly the scale level to try to align or force a decision. And so that's the other piece that some companies or some interviews will be looking for is at what point would you actually escalate this to your manager because not all problems can and should be solved by you alone. You should still show that you've took initiative and that you've done everything you could within your power to try to swing this into a positive direction but if it's not working out, at some point you will have to escalate and that is the role of your superiors and your leadership team to help out with. And so, yeah, at that point, you have a great case escalated to your head of product or your skip level, your manager and let them work it out with the other counter parties leadership team to try to come to a conclusion. And that's it. So that is execution, episode three of this five-part series on how to interview for top tier companies. I hope you found this really helpful and I am looking forward to seeing you guys next week on episode four when we'll be going over behavioral interviews for the IC track of, interviews that you'll be facing for top tier companies. Thank you so much. I will see you all later.


So there's a good argument there Well, let's get going with one of the two hottest bowlers on the plan man, man, man, and it and it's gonna stay up And Jacob butthrip opens with a bucket And then let's not forget that Dick Allen was a former MVP of the league. He is the Baron of Bayside Yeah, this building doesn't matter which side we bowl on it does makes no difference to that man He bowls Splendidly here and I know that I'm gonna get a ton of hate mail from all the Tom Doherty That's and from Tom and from top, but oh, no That's all right. If you're gonna open make it the first frame. Yeah, that's tune He NYC overcame and open in the second frame to win their first of the two games They needed to win in this race for two games in this Baker format Jacob butthrip coming off of Another win this season Now this guy and this event are a good marriage Yeah, he is an emotional player and this is his environment. Yeah, it doesn't hurt that. He's really good, too Well, everybody knows who this guy is I would think if you follow the PBA tour of the sport in general Yeah, I'm sorry David. Oh, that's all right. You're all-time major champion. Yeah number 11 This season Breaking the record Amazing that looked like somehow there was a magnet under the lane to get that thing to turn like it did But he does leave a 10 on the deck. He's crossing 20 boards So from from at the arrows to the break point. There's a 20 board difference Well, it looked like a good shot. I could do that said me never if you use two bowling balls You put it together and make one giant ball maybe they hit him thin and watch and spin. Yeah That strikes No chance of striking Into the lead-up holder. Yes for Stenson who spared in the first frame to start things for the Adam Splitters Struck there, but it fell Problem is Chris can still bowl with these guys. Yeah It's been soft and really opening up the lane you could see there at 17.3 miles an hour That's a little on the slower side for professionals I just opened up a little bit more like that didn't move my feet With nine spare in the fourth frame. Oh That was such a good-looking shot Carbon copy of his first shot another violent ring in 10 for Jason Del Monte And that's gonna prove costly They could have struck out for 228 you got right back in this and now their max score is only 208 with a spare here Yeah, missed it.  Oh, he wants a little more noise for that shot. I will take no credit for that. He threw the ball Maybe I'll take a little bit Absolute pancake flattening strike by Belmo. What do you think that does to his psyche? When manager Andrew Kane So back to Jason about how big he is. Yeah, but you know what? I'm gonna tease that going to break.  Here's the Baron It's his building. He's just letting his use it Lax looking to get right back into this game Svensson looking to cut the lead by Lax to 13 with a strike here working out a double the ice man can be delivered Cannot same thing I'm in the storm booth working with all of our guys just like all of the other manufacturers with their pro staffers and we That one he gave enough room to the right yeah, so we're there signing autographs for 40 for over 4,000 kids and their parents For 10 hours Wow But here's the kicker we got an hour break for lunch and The wake of the Parkland tragedy you got a strike back Look out of the late nasty crossover and the Adam splitters are in big big trouble We may be headed for that one ball roll-off I don't know how the answer is are going to avoid it They won the first game the right now and that may do it right there that did do it So it really simply it's going to be a one ball roll-off the manager obviously gets to make the choice for his team Let's listen to curve ball trigger sudden death roll-off Lax is the higher seed they will have choice of starting Andrew who's going to start the match Jason Lax will throw the first ball the teams will remain on the same lane if they're tied after this first ball The team managers will elect another player To throw another shot we'll continue like that until the tie is broken. Good luck players We'll go first two ringing two ringing tens on the left lane two strikes on the right lane What does he do here got to be kidding me watch this the ball rolls out it quits right in front of head spin and then He trips the two five.  You heard him telling stew Williams whatever you do don't get behind it too much Remember I talked about that roll out when the hand gets too heavy behind it. Well, Chris Barnes has to just laugh that off telling the Hall of Fame Must strike gonna happen and lax has knocked out the defending champions With the roll-off Wow It'll be a NYC versus lax in the semifinals tomorrow night And we're gonna talk to Jason at just a second


So our outdoor growing season is coming to an end here. We are in the first week of September We haven't had a frost yet at night, which is great But I know there's one coming here pretty soon temperatures are gonna drop down to very close to freezing Coming up in the next few days. So I'm always looking at some of my plants and because I like to do indoor growing using the hydroponic method I'm often trying to bring some of those plants indoors To see if I can keep them going over the winter and one of the things that I have read about that is Successful and easy to grow indoors using hydroponics is strawberries. So I want to try to save a couple of these I have these growing in pots just outside all summer and They produced a little bit of fruit, but I should have actually planted them into the ground and it just never happened So first thing I want to do is to try and clean all the dirt as much as the dirt as I can off of these roots so that I can set it up in a Cracky hydroponic method and also because I'm bringing in plants from the outdoors I do not want to be bringing any type of bugs into my house So we're going to give it a treatment to make sure there's no, you know eggs or aphids or any kind of Insects that we would bring into the home. So to do that. I'm just going to first of all try to Shake as much dirt as I can off of these So I found that these ones that I took from these small pots are so root-bound that they're a little bit hard to Really get clean and get the dirt out of them. So then I Took some from this bigger pot here that I had growing As you can see the it's a little bit easier to get all the dirt out of these Just because they had a little more room for growth all summer. So I'm going to switch switch the plan and use these ones Take indoors and try to set up inside All of my other strawberries such as these ones and I have some more containers of Strawberries. I'm just going to plant into the ground into an area that I would like These to come back. Hopefully in the spring so So as you can see here, I'm able to get these roots a lot more cleaner and I'll just keep rinsing them a little bit more Then we'll take them inside and give them a good bath and some soapy water Just to make sure we don't have any pests coming into the house with us So before taking this indoors, I'm going to do some pruning on this strawberry plant a little bit Take away some of these bigger leaves So you end up similar to what you have initially when you buy these in bear root form in the spring So you can see there's quite a bit of strong roots here So I might just thin it out a little bit Some of these strong roots thinned out. I hope I'm not going to kill the plant hopefully but Just trying to make it look similar to what it did when I purchased these in the spring in the bear root form Some pretty good roots there Hack away these little tiny ones So to mix up my nutrients today, I'm going to be using this three-part Holland secret Blend it's a three-part formula You can also use a two-part formula such as Root Farm, which is something I use a lot of as well. I like it because it is only two parts a little less mixing, but I have quite a good supply of this today That's what we're going to use and following the The application table at the back here. I'm going to just mix it up on a very diluted stage Used for seedlings and cuttings. So that requires only a quarter teaspoon of each of these three to go into this four liter or one gallon size container I like to pre-mix mine in this these vinegar jugs just so I have a good batch to fill my vessels You want to make sure that you have it well mixed before you add the next Part to your jug here So I'm going to be using three-inch net pots here to set up these strawberries And what I have done is I because there's a quite a bit of roots here to work through I Took these and just cut some of it out in the bottom just so it's a little easier to pull these These roots through So these are the containers. I'm going to be using to plant up my strawberries today. I Love using these containers for the crack key method of hydroponics. They just work. Well, they do good at Keeping the light out so you don't have issues with lj the lids are super easy to cut out with just a utility knife to fit your net pot and Say have a nice little handle so you can pull it in and out of your shelves or from under your grow lights and Sometimes, you know, you can spray paint them with a nice color if you want to make the pot look a little nicer So we're going to fill them up about halfway with our nutrient solution Because these strawberries already have, you know, a good root system to reach the water. I'm not going to fill it too full So with the crack key method is it is a passive method that requires no pumps no air stones In the way the crack key method works is as long as you keep some air for the roots to breathe In between this nutrient solution and the top of the plant. It should thrive and grow. Okay So once I have the lid in place, I'm just going to slap this in here and just make sure that the Roots are reaching that nutrient water I'm going to make sure those stronger roots are going to get to the nutrients So the water right now is just reaching the bottom of the net cup. So I think that's good You can usually have a good look down in the bottom and see that the water level is Right where you want it. Then from there just to block out the light Fill up the space around here with these clay balls these hydrogen clay balls and I expect that a lot of this greenery at the top will maybe die off and It'll look like the plant is not living But really it's going to be in the root system that I will be keeping an eye on over the next month or so to see if those Roots are still alive and then from there. You should see some new growth come up Here from the crowns of the strawberries So that is how they get set up using the crack key method and I'm just going to set them under the grow lights And we will keep an eye on them now to see how they make out Okay, so here they are set up under the grow lights now I kind of expected a lot of this greenery is going to die off here over the next couple of weeks And I'll be just watching the roots and looking for some new Growth coming here down at the base of the crown. Okay, so now I have got my watermelon plant here all washed Debugged ready to go in I just have it sitting in some water here. Well, I got my container ready in Here I have put three gallons of water and now I have calculated out How much of the nutrients I need to put in here based on the three gallons? So I'm just going to mix it up now get it good and stirred and then we'll be ready to put the The melon plant into the solution here So I use the table at the back here mixing it up at an early vegetative stage So based on that I have calculated out my measurements So depending on which nutrients you're using you should always check the table at the back and follow those So this is a much bigger container of Nutrient water then compared to the strawberries that we just did And as always you want to give it a good stir let it sit a little bit between each different nutrient that you put in So the container that I'm using here is actually from a hard ice cream store that is not too far away from here and Once she uses these she just Sells them for a couple bucks and I purchased this and brought it home Spray painted it with the black Spray paint because the light would probably get through it. I'm just leaving it as is I just thought some black spray paint will help keep the light out and prevent LJ growing And then I just took my net cup. I think this is a four inch size and Traced it out cut a hole with a exacto knife and then that fits in there really good So now it's just going to be how to get the plant in through the net cup and work some of the roots through it So we have a pretty big chunk of roots here So working it through the net cup might be a little bit tricky. So we'll see how it goes here I would like to try and work as much of it as I can through the bottom without having to cut any Extra holes through my net cup Just going to try to gently work through what looked to be some of the bigger roots and pull these ones through So here I've got a boat. I've got four good-sized roots pulled through and the rest can kind of sit within the net cup And when I place it in here, I can still see that there is a good amount of air For some of these roots So there's going to be air here for the roots so we won't drown them and now it's just a matter of Filling up the spaces around the roots here with some clay pebbles So besides just blocking out light these clay pebbles help, you know, give the plant some stability as well so we can Standing up nice and straight Okay, so there is the watermelon planted up in a craft key hydroponic system So now this plant is going to go into my grow tent under the lights and we will see how it progresses over the next few weeks So another way you can bring your garden vegetables indoors for the winter is to take cuttings And this is what I like to do with my tomatoes. So I have a couple of my favorites here This is the Roadster tomato, which is a determinant and I'm just having it Rooted here in the water So it's pretty much ready to put into a vessel now and I also took cuttings from the Sun Gold Cherry, which has got a good bunch of roots here going as well So this one's an indeterminate which is a little harder to control indoors, but I'm going to Set it up in my grow tent and see how it goes Okay, so that is how you get some of your garden plants from your garden soil set up indoors in the hydroponic method So if you have any plants that you've tried to do using this method, I would love to hear about it in the comments So don't forget to hit that subscribe button and click that notification bell so that you don't miss out on future videos coming to my channel Thank you for watching


My mission specifically was to act as an advice and assist team to the Ministry of Peshmerga in Erbil. So I was working with the Kurds, also working with our coalition partners and how they trained and resourced the Peshmerga. The mission initially was to go over and partner with the Iraqis and continue to train them for their follow-on missions against ISIL and then we transitioned a little bit to the advice and assist mission to help them in the combat operations. And one of the concerns that we had was how our Iraqi partners going to perceive us after having, you know, left in at the end of Operation New Dawn and what themes are they carrying, good or bad, that will inform our initial relationship. And I was pleased to learn and experience that we were welcomed back with open arms. They were really happy that that we were there. And so I was happy to, you know, see the same level of commitment and trust and partnership that I had recalled from previous deployments. When the Brigade first arrived, the Nino Operations Command really didn't exist. They had a few officers. However, over the course of time, they went from having just a few officers to having a complete staff, having two battalions that worked directly for them. Shortly before we left, they moved out to a camp near near the eastern border of Iraq. And then shortly thereafter, they've moved up to Camp Makhmore up in the Kurdistan region in preparation for follow-on operations in the future to be able to liberate Ninoa and Mosul. We set the build, partner and capacity sites located at Besma'a and Etaji. And our guys were responsible for training the Iraqi Army units to prepare them to go out into the fight. The Iraqi units, they show up to us having a basic understanding of how to do soldier task with a little bit of an understanding of how to do fire maneuver at a small unit level. And we put them through six-week and three-week POIs, periods of instruction. So six-week instruction is really just a lot of basic buddy team movements, teaching them marksmanship, making sure they understand how to actually fire maneuver as a small team and move all of it to squad live fires. After that, they go into a three-week short period of instruction, and that is more collective tasks moving up to closer to a platoon to a company live fire with them fighting as a larger element. The biggest thing that we were trying to do, especially as we were advising the Iraqis, is to teach them the value of predictive intelligence. So taking the information they had and turning it into, analyzing it and turning it into something where they could see what the enemy was doing and be able to predict the enemy's next few moves. I'd go out and visit training and see our guys, you know, do an individual training with the Iraqis on the ground, for instance, utilizing the NATO weapons that were provided. And you see the confidence that is instilled. You know, they have the will to fight. You know, they want us to be there. We are kind of like their security blanket. We don't really have to do anything, but just the fact that we're there to provide them, you know, what they need. It makes a big difference. And I think the brigade was very successful in the mission. We took Iraqi forces who had very little ability to do collective even buddy level fire maneuver. And by the time that we would push them out to begin fighting against or the regions of the country, they were very well equipped. So they had new weapons equipment, and they had the basic understanding of how to fight together as a team. It resonates that this is a commitment and that we are part of that commitment and we're there to help. There are relationships that we built in the first eight years that we were there that we were able to capitalize on. The relationship that I had with my counterpart, and I know I speak for the rest of our team, that we had with our staff counterparts in the BAK, you know, those bonds were greater than anything we have experienced in similar roles and in similar capacities in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.


Okay, testing one two Just putting on the feed live. Hope everyone is doing well Getting ready for the non-farm payroll preview Excited to be back on and deliver this live after last month. Obviously was really Super interesting a big disappointment of course as you'll remember So very keen to get back on and discuss what we can expect from later on today So I'm going to get a couple of screens up myself So just going to have about One or two minutes just to get yourself bedded in and then I'll begin a preview Obviously, I'm going to cover the entire thing live Do my best to analyze it with you guys online as it happens I'll talk through all the different charts that I have in front of me and I'll be shifting them into this same screen Here to talk about them in a bit more detail as we go through each one So just gonna pull up a few screens myself. So just give me one moment and then yeah, we'll kick it off in about a minute's time But good to be online with you guys Hope everyone's had a good Friday so far and a good week Hope everyone is still COVID safe and vaccinated. So leave it surely Getting mine on Wednesday. Okay. Hello. Hello. Those just joining We're just getting set up and we'll commence the broadcast in one minute's time. Just bringing up the chat though Eddie Wong I'm all the demo trader Pratek. Hope everyone is doing well It's gonna get it visible so I could keep an eye on you guys as well. So great stuff. Good to have you with us All right, just so you know, it's obviously me on the live feed. However, I do have my colleagues So I'm just gonna change the audio there. Yeah, I've got my colleagues on board Obviously guys like Will and peers are gonna be trading this event. So they're gonna be helping As and when they'll be available in the chat room on the YouTube feed. So look out for those guys Eddie Don Mez. He might have seen on various videos with me and on this one of this week's podcasts He's gonna be online as well as well as some of the other members. So Although it's me broadcasting those other guys are all there beavering away in the background So, yeah, let's get to it then. Let's talk about what can we expect from non farm perils today? And in fact, I would say this is a quite a meaningful release and the main rationale behind that in summary is because Two things really last month was a real surprise You'll remember we got a real low ball number two six six and if you remember the rundown I was delivering at that time There's a lot of conversation about Expectations of a number well in excess of a million because we were looking at a lot of the data points prior to They kind of build up to the BLS report and they were all kind of erring on the side of an upside surprise and people were even talking about one and a half million Type to be quite quite a normal number to see and real downside surprise and that did kind of alter in Some sense then the timing around what's a very much a focal point across asset classes, which is this idea of The discussion on tapering as we know inflation Pressures are becoming evident and we're seeing that in various different economic indicators in terms of emerging price pressures And there's a few other things around that conversation. However, the market seems to have acclimatized to this kind of transitory idea to a certain respect But the the weakness of that jobs report we had before Was if anything a real surprise and actually validated the feds Understanding that probably it's prudent to not react to market expectations about tightening too quickly And to be more Passive be more conservative more gradual the typical Fed stance and actually post that we saw equities momentarily hit fresh record highs Of course and under those scenarios typically we see we could dollar We see then positive gold moves tier bond yields declines the teen notes rally and so on so kind of a buy everything situation Whereas heading into this month's it kind of feels a little bit similar in a way Perhaps expectations aren't so bullish because once bitten twice shy and markets don't want to get wrong footed again But one of the things that I'll show you and I'll quickly show you on the charts is that yesterday we had three major things happen And what you can see to the side of me here I would explain in a bit more detail But these are effectively And that's a bit small to see I'll try to make a bit bigger, but I'll talk you through it These things are basically employment indicators that come out prior to the release of the labor report And it gives us as market participants a bit of an insight as to Underlying labor market conditions on various different scales So if we were looking at the services PMI or the manufacturing PMI It'll look at that sector and then from the constituents we can derive the underlying employment situation One of the things we had yesterday was ADP So ADP is is a figure that comes out typically if there's no bank holiday the Wednesday before the jobs report on the Friday and What that really looks like is a precursor given It's a wide level national jobs report as to what potentially the national employment report from the BLS could look like on on today And that number was pretty Spectacular I say that it wasn't spectacular. It was very strong. It came in at 978,000 That was way stronger than expected and above the top end of the most bullish estimate on the street of 900k In context, obviously, it's the longest highest number we've had since around June of 2020 Of which when we saw big gyrations in employment given the initial lockdown that we went through through that period and that summer But the point being is we had that I'm not going to look at jobless Initial jobless claims the one we had yesterday which came in below 400k and the reason for that is it's not part of the reference week That's used to calculate today's numbers But initial jobless claims at the time of the corresponding week for this report Were continuing to print fresh pandemic loads. So initial jobless claims have gone progressively in the right direction one of the things of course, which was a Bit of a point of contention last time was about because the stimulus checks in January and March and because of how low minimum wages in the US a lot of people weren't Going in, you know putting themselves forward for jobs and that was creating a bit of a squeeze if you like on tightness in the labor market and that in itself creating a degree of inflation pressures But since that point we have had a number of the US federal states now Ending those programs trying to then get people back into the workforce as the underlying kind of objective And he's also those price pressures. So this number was very strong, which would lend its hand to then potentially a Stronger report coming out momentarily So jobless claims also heading in the right way You've then also we had the ISM services number yesterday and that was a record high the thing that people tend to look at in those reports are the Employment constituents. So this is where it gets a little bit mixed because on the ISM PMIs the service number The actual employment constituent dropped to fifty five point three after hitting a three-year peak and on the manufacturing side It saw a bit of a pullback to fifty spot nine after peaking at fifty nine point six So a couple things to note there However, one of the things I wanted to show you was was this and this is the share of people in America who have received a Vaccination at least one shot At the moment that numbers just ticked over 50% and as you can see the trajectory is slightly shallowed But we've been heading in the good direction. I Leading to as a tangible result further reopening Across different states and so what that led to was when you actually look at ADP and you break down that 978,000 figure of that the service providing sector added about 850,000 jobs led by leisure and Hospitality those key areas that really got impacted through the depths of the pandemic. So Yeah, that that's the overall summary of things It's a little bit mixed picture overall ADP jolts initial jobless claims all Pointing in a fairly positive fashion The constituents of the PMI numbers maybe not so much In terms of the expectations for the figures and then we'll talk about market reaction Payrolls is obviously a multifaceted release. There's a lot of information that comes out But it's almost like if you think of almost like an algorithm of inputs and outputs The first input so knee-jerk reaction you typically see in a day-training environment First input is the change in headline non-pump non-compair rolls So the first output is a reaction then effect of that figure So the one that people will look out first and we'll see the initial duration in market is Against 650,000. How does it perform? So the first figure you hear and the range there to be aware of is 400k to 1 million and the range obviously is really important as to determine the deviation away from the media consensus to Almost express then the type of magnitude of impact you're likely to see on that initial knee-jerk reaction This is all very much land of the algos So not for the human trader the human trader element comes in when it's trying to then decipher The multifaceted nature of the payroll report because other than the headline figure So how does it come out compared to 650? How does it come out in terms of a tomb as a revision a two-month net revision? What does the unemployment rate look like and so it's taking all of these parts of the puzzle to then get an overall Assessment of this is a really good really bad It's a mixed report and subsequently that will dictate then whether it's a linear quite clean reaction or much more complicated A mix which is inevitably a much more difficult to trade If we were then going to flip over to the charts and I'm going to drag each one of these over to my other screen one by one by one and so Gonna start off with the way that some of these charts were moving in a kind of uniform way Yesterday, so I'm gonna bring up here gold first So this was the gold chart yesterday and you'll probably remember if you were trading We saw a good breakdown in price where we dropped from around 1910 all the way down and Through to levels. We've not seen in terms of the overnight Asia pack session Down at around 1854 now this move did also correspond with this move which is this is the US 10 year and as you can see here We saw a move down in the 10 year yesterday and remember the three trigger points jobless claims the PMI data the ADP move This the point I'm trying to make here is this has led to quite a distinct Position or move ahead of today's release which is important to understand in order to Understand the type of reaction that we might see so yields are higher is what we're seeing on T notes Whereas in gold gold prices lower and a lot of the function of that lower gold price In fact has come from dollar strength so it's a uniform move where generally asset classes reacting in a positive fashion to strong data I High yields firm a dollar that weighs on gold in that situation and feeds through into the precious metals Moving lower in that in that sense. So euro dollar is lower. So relative dollar Strengths going into this release yields are higher Stocks momentarily sold off, but that's that's where it gets complicated The stocks picture is much more convoluted on that balance between is good data Good for stocks is too good a data bad for stocks because it brings Accelerates tapering discussions and therefore it's a net negative Yesterday's moves. I would say in the equity market just goes to show Really how equities is not really what I'd be focused on to give you that clarity This was that move that we had here in stocks We sold off and we bounced quite aggressively back whereas in the 10 year in gold in other Markets the move has been held So I wouldn't look to equities for too much clarity when this number comes out I'd probably be looking at the other products. So yield reaction gold so on and so forth So just going back to the multi asset look then in general summary You've you've probably have got to see a pretty big number come out Shortly in the next two minutes and what I mean by that is remember the top-ended range is around 900k or as a million in fact and so anything like a 750 800 print actually might have the opposite reaction to what you might normally see To that of a strong number by what I mean by that is actually the dollar might weaken because it's Set the bar up through then its expectation and how markets have positioned themselves accordingly For that upside number to materialize so anything less than that is now going to be a disappointment and could well Invoke a kind of negative type reaction In that sense. So really I think if you're going to see you're a dollar cable come under pressure If you're going to see gold come under significant pressure I think you've got to see up there or one million type figure or plus beyond that point would be my kind of view But I'm going to put the scorecon So we use a company called new squawk. They're the best in the business. They're going to break the news and then I Will come on and clarify thereafter any immediate analysis. It's gonna get my scorecon It should be just about 30 seconds. There might be a slight delay on some of the live streaming. I Will re-emphasize anything important initially stands out 227 8 Earnings month-on-month zero spot 5 Expected zero spot to your new two cents for expected one spot six will be out 34 spot 9 Plurals met in 35 As a bedroom rate that falls to a 61 spot 6 and the point change for Canada that's minus 68 But it's meant to minus 20 full time minus 13 spots a part-time minus 54 spot 2 Unemployment rate has a 9 8 spot 2 percent Participation rate now 64 spots 6% down from private 64 spot line Sort of the way this components which come out to the US in terms of breakdown private was a 4-9 2 I'll expect it 600 manufacturing 23 below expected 24 going to the 67 in terms of revisions private Respond to 2 2 1 9 when factoring to my 32 and going to 59 Elsewhere anything to your year was my size zero spot 4 from 0 spot 3 work with our advisor to 34 spot 9 It's going to go to the bottom of that report. There was a slight mis-expectations of the headline. I'm going to write that this year take it lower On the side of decline in the labor force participation rate and to do things components They were generally stronger There was up the market reaction seems as far as in there some dollar softness Okay, I'm just going to turn the turn the mic off there. So look, let me just transition my screen so S&P initial move higher We've just had a brief breach then of those highs that we were printing that were a Restricting price action into yesterday afternoon And then if we look elsewhere on gold prices rocketing higher and T note prices also initially spiked higher as well As you can see here on the right-hand side They faded that move a little bit But the point being is you've got what would classify as like a Disappointment in the sense that yeah, the headline figure has missed But remember markets are kind of erring on the balance of an upside surprise And actually we've got the complete opposite and the upside surprise comes as a function of how markets had repositioned themselves Yesterday we've had a degree of dollar strength Which is what gives the the gold market remember the gold market got hammered yesterday And so the gold market's got a nice Progressive room to retrace a large portion of that move or look the gold futures just coming up now to have a test on that Previous low here as you can see so I'm just going to mark this up So you can see this test is just having a bit of a Tussle at around that level in the futures was the previous low on last Thursday any further move on the upside I'll probably be keeping an eye here Which is the previous high and low so around 1890, but you can see there Traders intraday on the fast money move are looking for the first point of exit in any of these fast money trades So that's a good technical point. You can see that quite clearly on these basic lines in terms of the Gold this is the gold move on the SMP move you can see some further strength coming in again These types of figures then just kind of lend its hand to the fact that for equities Likely to remain Consolidated at record high territory, you know as me and the rest of the team continue to say is that we personally see inflation as transitory We see the Fed taking its time and that's a positive cocktail for them for equities to not so much push on up But to remain relatively close to consolidate at these highs and their equities have had a bit of a tough time in Recent sessions, so we're just coming back up here in the SMP And we'll be keeping an eye on the high that we printed going back to yesterday's session before the general move lower that we saw And so that comes in at 13 and a quarter just above where we're trading at the moment If anything be good to look at the NASDAQ because the NASDAQ does tend to Be a little bit more sensitive because Tech stocks are particularly sensitivity yield movement the NASDAQ underperformed yesterday And so by definition then if anything it should get quite a bit of reprieve from today's figure and So in the NASDAQ space, we're just coming up to close to a test back up to the high Yesterday anything above that just be keeping an eye on yeah, probably this kind of rain relative range in around 13 6 22 but a pretty decent decent bid already being observed The 10 years a little bit less convincing at this point The 10 year has had a bit of a spike and a pullback Hasn't really been able to sustain that move if I look at it on a Slightly shorter time frame all we've done is just taken back some of that decline that we had yesterday Okay, just gonna move some of my charts back into the broader picture And I'm gonna turn the squawk back on for a moment in case there's any other observations. They've made The other guys hopefully are fielding the chat. I'm trying to manage about 20 different things at the minute So you have to bear with me if I'm not responding to any of you in Comment by comment for the time being but I will do I'll get round to it Let's just slot the NASDAQ back into position and then we'll have a bit of a broader View and I can blow up some of the other charts So at the moment FX markets Yeah, quite interesting that the squawk was just pointing out the latest our number the reproductive number of the COVID-19 virus in the UK has gone up and it's above one which is obviously Not a good direction at this point in time in terms of further spreading transmission of the virus Had a really fantastic chat actually just about two hours ago It was one of the guys in the community about exactly where we're at Will the government open or not on June 21st and also the Nepalese By variant which is going to be super important in the weeks to come and it's only very small at the moment I will look to share that with our YouTube community on Saturday. So remember to subscribe and You'll be able to watch that Yeah, just having a look across the board now t-notes I'm going to blow them up bigger here. So you can see t-notes here have reversed a large portion of that move We're back to pretty much where we started Just to be clear if you didn't hear it thoroughly to repeat on all of the numbers the headline was 559 Against expectations of 650 the two months net revision was marginal up plus 27 The actual revision was also marginal From 266 to 278 the unemployment rate was 5.8 point one learned expected all in all I would say it's kind of the sweet spot for the Fed where This week you might have noticed they've been a little bit more conversational the non-voters at least about this idea of the discussion of tapering and given on the basis of The way the economy is performing as we go through the reopening Whereas the voting members like New York's Fed Williams last night was talking more about this idea of look We should go as we are slowly and gradually in fact, he said that They're discussing the options for adjusting policy is still far from this point And I think that today's number only ratifies that which is why I think you're not getting too much in a way of Sustained kind of reaction in some of these markets. I think the reaction effect is more a function of the movement that we saw Yesterday specifically so the FX markets had a bit of a recovery I mean the Dixie's taken a bit of a hit from 1950 down to 90 20 on the back of this so far Just having a quick look at gold Just make that bit bigger here So gold's Initially ran up to pivot and you can see that pivot level You can just see that pivot level on that low on the trend line is just a really nice level that a lot of short-term Day traders would have been looking at so as the market came back up here It's just hit that dual obstacle of that horizontal Resistance at that previous low on Friday last week with the pivot on that quick shoot up And then it's just started to fatigue a little bit I'm just going to check though with the team if there's any questions or anything so For the team. I'm just having a scan through now just just let me know in the The private chat Team amplify if there's anything you want me to comment on or speak of and I can no problem And I'm gonna put the squawk on for a second Any questions at all for me though? Wherever you're listening from And whatever you're trading, let me know don't have to talk about payrolls happy to talk about anything I do have some of the others Peers will they're all on the chat as well. I can even see the main man Sam North How's it going Sam good to have you on the live stream? Okay, let me see if I can bring up the actual BLS report and let's have a look at the actual granular level detail of where these 559,000 jobs have come from so let's bring that up and so some of you might never have seen this before so There's some good graphics that you can pull up So just to talk you through it Particularly if there's any more, you know anyone who's into analysis side of things. This is what the actual employment situation summary report looks like and If you scroll down, it's got all the facts and figures So the news agencies are basically just plucked out the numbers that are necessary to form the main top-level information But if you scroll down, you do get quite a bit of detail on the breakdown and actually There is a section here Where you've got news release charts, which are quite useful for I always find data In a vision presented in a visual way. It's quite good to just get a general context of things and so if we look at Yeah employment by industry hit the go button. I'm gonna go by Monty change So here here's a look at employment change by industry for May 2021 and as per Very similar to what we had in ADP. You can see here It's leisure and hospitality that's really picked up and this is one of the key things as well with this idea about Inflationary pressures from a tight labor market not being able to Actually fulfill a lot of orders due to a lack of people actually coming back into work Well, this would suggest that that's now starting to Loosen up a little bit and probably it's only that figure going to get more potent going forward because we're going to get further reopenings and People are going to deplete their stimulus savings or check if there's any left over that period of time They're gonna have to go out and get work again. You know if we add the 559,000 jobs turns a slack in the economy. We're still several million I mean, I don't know the precise figure but 7.5 million 8 million jobs away from getting back to where we were Prior to the pandemic. So this jobless figure or this payrolls report so far I think the reaction effect that's happened here pretty much says it all Which is not a great deal I mean the market was kind of jeeing this up as quite important for the Fed and the reason why it's important for the Fed is Because this is the last opportunity before the blackout period that starts today And so this was the last Important piece of information that we were going to get before the June 16th meeting which obviously they're going to release their new economic projections And with that being said then for me, I don't see any type of necessity to really move the needle too much getting aggressive To make the market believe that you're going to start the tapered discussion Anytime kind of soon in that respect. Don't forget. You got things like Jackson Hole happening in August Another substantial platform that could be used for that opportunity Just just making the chart on oil a little bit bigger Little bit of softness in the dollar but a more gradual Fed With demand picking up as the US economy reopens and so due to large majority of the global market These are all bullish catalysts for oil. I'm not saying Payrolls right now, but it just helps this trend. I mean you've actually look at oil I'll turn that off for a second if actually look at oil here on the trend This is quite a definitive upward trend that we've been in in WTI crude oil I'm looking at on a 30 minute chart here and as you can see if we put on a daily chart We are right up there Some of the best levels that we've traded right here on the left top-round corner in the highest level since 2018 and We're trading at 69 27 in futures 70 bucks psychologically definitely the next stop from a target perspective on on the long so Yeah, this number of anything I'd say is supportive of this trend channel Remaining in play for the time being as we've had this week from the IAEA talking about You know undeclared uranium enrichment from Iran Admit then a delay in a concrete solution for the Iranian sanctions Situation and the the 2015 nuclear deal with OPEC holding Pat Oil I think still looks quite good for the moment if anything to consolidate up and around these higher levels But it'd be interesting to see if we can get a test in the coming days of All sessions at that $70 handle got close to it earlier in the week Yesterday we got up to as high as 69 39 for a bit of a pullback in here with just having a test up at around the highs that was seen Early in the European Open this morning Someone's asked what is the blackout period good question so Yeah, for those not familiar with the kind of procedure very brief overview the Fed have eight meetings a year And there's a there's a certain protocol to this which is what we call the blackout period So in the week prior to the week of the event IE the 16th of June They're not allowed to talk to the media. So there is no Fed member who's allowed to communicate publicly about the economy and monetary policy Now why is that important? Well central banks are in the business of reducing uncertainty and subsequent volatility in markets So they use what we call Tactical communication about the intentions they have for future policy otherwise known as forward guidance and What forward guidance is dependent on is credibility Because what they're suggesting is how then we will position today's market prices on their What we think and the timing of their future actions And so the blackout period then marks basically if the Fed want to tell us something Then they have a limited amount of time up to then when they can say it Which is the last day before the blackout because when it comes blackout, I can't say any more This data to me would not warrant them changing direction Dropping the seed of we should be thinking of tapering without Committing to it above board from a voting member. I think is prudent To start to build in the idea of tapering so that people don't freak out when the inevitable discussion does commence in The weeks months to come So that's what the blackout period is largely to avert in excessive market volatility or rumors things of this nature That that have been seen before so hopefully that makes a bit more sense Yeah, there are some questions about transitory inflation and while we're on that point of transitory inflation Let me just show you something So some of you might have already might already listened to this some of you might not be aware of it But there are Well, there is a podcast that myself and the head of trading peers current put out every Friday In fact, we had the latest episode where I had a really great discussion about key themes in markets this week We talked about meme stocks and AMC talked about their Announcement from Russia to diversify out of the US dollar really good view and insights from peers about his idea of The end of potentially globalization, which is obviously dominated the last two decades and then we talked about OPEC plus meeting every week basically we talk about these themes and give you a bit of a flavor for what our insights are But on the transitory inflation from There's a couple of episodes. So for the person I think it was max who asked that question we've talked about transitory inflation in depth on episode 15 and also in episode 16. So I Would definitely go and check those out basically To give you the long story short But the point being is that there's a debate that's happening upon What types of inflation are actually leading to? Something that's going to be more temporary of nature like the fact of a chip Shortage it's shortage which in most motor vehicles manufactured in 2021 They require more chip power than ever and if there's a chip supply shortage There's a lack of manufactured new cars to be built and therefore use car sales Go up by an unusually high amount If you remember the prior stat was that they had gone up 10% in a month Which is phenomenally large, but the idea being that the chip shortage reduces and Consequently, they're manufacturing resumes and when people come back to work as COVID is more suppressed vaccinations take hold production rates pick up and subsequently those price pressures will ease but It's a debate. I mean you can see it on either side, but I guess Try to eliminate your view too much do the assessment both side But listen to the Fed because ultimately they're the ones making the decision that will derive market direction in that sense On the point of inflation actually there was a super interesting article in the FT If you don't follow me on Twitter There's the handle But I did reshare an FT article this morning And they made a really good point as well about inflation and this also addresses that transitory point And if I scroll down, I will show you Definitely at the moment inflation is very hard to pin down first what this graphic shows you here is Changing credit and debit card spending and so at the moment trying to get a feel of forecasting Definitive medium long-term trends in inflation is incredibly difficult because there's different phases of Reopening happening on a more granular level. So grocery spending is up 17% whereas if you were to look at something like transport spending Obviously a lot of people are still working from home. So there's a big disconnect there, which would not really be that Comparable certainly on a year-on-year basis. And there's those base effects. We've talked about before which has Temporarily made the numbers look very elevated right now But also as we go through this readjustment on the slightly dislocated reopening across different geographic Regions the point about Europe was really interesting though that the FT made and just to quickly give you a summary Unlike the US the Eurozone weightings. So how they calculate inflation is updated annually in January and Changes in consumption patterns during the pandemic this year's calculation will give little weight to the items such as petrol hotels and restaurants Those that were hit by the lockdown So as a result if European consumers return to pre-pandemic spending patterns as the economy normalizes Official statistics will underestimate their spending in these areas. So all in all then interpreting the inflation data There's going to be pandemic era or era spending distortions Not only during lockdowns, but also later this year as we return to these consumption patterns So that's why I think the main rule of thumb here is just ask the question and apply the context instead of just thinking buying into these sensational headlines Inflation surged the most it has since 2008 or on record It's like yeah, that's because we've just had a pandemic. So That's what a lot of that transitory Argument comes from Okay, just while I wait if there's any other questions that the guys want to fire in To me via the private chat then a couple of other Things to be aware of if you haven't already done so live streaming like this my colleague Tim Does it every day and I join jump on to go over big macro stuff and data releases like this when it happens every day We have whole community with a platform behind it Which has got those are cool stuff Everything for macro commodity even crypto We have a designated crypto room. So just jump on amplify live comm This is what it looks like and the best thing about that is there is an absolutely free option So if you want to be part of the community if you want to get early priority access to my macro morning briefing If you want to get access to a private chart or technical analysis charts Just literally goes and fire live comm and subscribe for free You don't need to put any car details nothing like that So don't need to worry on that side of things and then yeah to get stuck in and get Conversing with the rest of the guys in the community. There are lots of other things within the trader hub portal And there's two different levels of access the live streaming stuff is more towards the pro-end Check it out the other thing then is anyone who's a student and I know there's going to be a couple that are listening Don't forget to check out amplify me comm so we work with lots of Financial institutions in fact will is flying out touch wood if he can travel To I think it's Miami to work with Citadel who's a key client of ours We also work with Bank of America city credit suites lots of other banks as we're part of their Our technology is used for their recruitment selection process their graduate training programs And we on the students side of what amplify do and do a great deal of work helping young people find their future in finance by practically Fulfilling different roles in finance, you know really getting stuck in and doing a sales trader market maker Roll or running an IPO doing an M&A case study in real in a real sense So check it out if your student amplify me our summer analysts program starts actually on Monday So really super excited to have those guys join us But there's some other groups as well throughout the summer All right Just gonna have a look if there's any more questions and then we'll look to wrap things up At the top of the hour. Let's have a look at our things are residing at the moment So yeah equities still you know looking favorable on the back of this and And looks like we're getting a bit of another flush on that move. So you're a dollar just making the chart bigger here Euro dollar just moving up to highs now So continuation of dollar weakness just becoming more more prevalent. So let's just cycle through the charts The dollar index is now trading down about four tenths of 1% Upside now in the euro Yeah, you've got the R1 that previous area of consolidation there coming in around 21 87 and a half cable obviously following suit. Let's have a look at cable Here I'm just gonna make it bigger. It looks like we might have already gone through that trend line from that previous weekly high But the beginning of the week Yeah, the market quite a nice level that where You can see you've had a brief false break at that level But that level was the previous peak of the price activity we had midweek on Wednesday Provided a bit of a flaw for that push-up that we had before then the downward move on the back of the dollar strength on the US Data on Thursday. So yeah, just have me look at the cable market here further dollar weakness Next target would be those previous highs that were seen yesterday and you've got the 142 handle Which has obviously been significant here as you can you can see otherwise quick flip over to Gold and Yeah, we're through that level that we were looking at just a short while ago So I'm just gonna squeeze my chart a bit so you can see everything Yeah, so here we were looking at That previous pivot with that low on Friday. We're now through that. So could well see Not next resistance coming in till we get a little bit higher up. I'll be looking around 1890 about three dollars away from current price that starts to encapsulate these previous highs here in mid-May and Also the support points on 27 28th any further bid there So if anything what you're getting as I would kind of summarize it is an unwind of The pre-built movement that we saw yesterday after those good numbers and to ratify that Here's T notes and T notes are almost exactly back to where we started xing out the yield move from yesterday So I don't think it shifts the Fed, but it definitely Constitutes a good reversal and equally. So just puts us back in neutral gear from from yesterday It's kind of my summary of how I'd see it Okay, amplify a team. Let me know there's any final questions and If not, I'll look to wrap it up But again, feel free to if you're watching this on YouTube Remember to hit the subscribe button as I said, I'm going to share video tomorrow Really great conversation about COVID-19 stuff that perhaps you've not really thought about a great deal but Anticipating what a reopening of the UK economy on the 21st might mean for the autumn and It's a pretty Scary assumptions being made from some of the statistics that are being run by some of the scientists and the mathematicians So definitely worth checking out and I'll publish that tomorrow But yeah, otherwise Thank you very much guys The demo trader. What do I mean by unwind? When I say unwind typically what I'm referring to is the notion of People build into a next so people have an expectation for today's report to be good So they pre-position it almost into that release So they're already trading The rumor if you like and they're selling the fact in a sense So they're expecting a good report So yields dollar firm up into the release expecting something good and then that move gets reversed or unwound In the sense that this data really hasn't lived up to that expectation Hopefully that makes a bit more sense Yeah, so I've not been able to see every single chat there's quite a few firing off Gonna need to get myself a little homeless home junior. I think to join me on the desk going forward but Sam North always a pleasure to have you with us I hope you're doing well And everyone else. Thank you very much Okay, guys take care and I'll see you back in the amplifier live room shortly Okay, just final question. Someone's just asked what what platform are you using? So this platform here is called CQG I use CQG integrated client I Can access all the different charts products that I look at because I look at macro generally speaking I look at everything from major effects pairs crosses commodities Precious base fixed income products typically the 10 year And so and I have been looking at a few individual Single stocks and let's just have a quick look. Let's have a quick look at crypto then and I'm only gonna talk about Bitcoin Obviously, this was the This was that area of which Elon Musk made the Bitcoin heartbreak emoji tweet last night and the subsequent selloff in Bitcoin overnight Was keeping an eye on the trend line here from the 19th tested back on the first It was holding up quite nicely as providing a bit of a floor actually for The Musk selloff overnight Momentarily broke below there, but as you can see on the horizontal basis There was some fairly decent technical support that's seen in Bitcoin at around Some of the earlier week price action From Monday Tuesday and the market's kind of responded to that at this point in time The one thing I'm quite interested to see and we've still got Half an hour or so until the open is how the Tesla shares fair at the open This is a quick look at Tesla Quite an interesting close yesterday in fact because we closed at 571 And that puts us back down at that technical point of where we initially saw the low back on the 20th After that gap up on the 19th to the 20th There's a couple of fundamental triggers But one thing is is that there is a degree of color correlated excuse me reaction or movement between Bitcoin and Tesla shares And obviously Bitcoin trading lower Can be problematic for Tesla and particularly when And we are at quite a key technical point of support of which broken could lead to some further selling pressure for Tesla Now the good things for Tesla is this report has come out This payrolls report and equities are seeing a bit of a relief and a rallying Secondary Bitcoin has stabilized and is coming off its lows. So if anything Tesla shares will probably benefit from from that situation. Otherwise, what would have been some some downside risks? Just going to have a quick look actually at Tesla pre-market See what they're trading at Pre-market Tesla is set to open at around 581 So kind of around here So, yeah, it would be a bit of a bounce on that But that's a key technical level to keep an eye on 571 in their shares Going forward All right Cool. Thanks guys. I appreciate you sticking around and joining me live Again, check out the podcast Just search for market watch on apple podcast or Spotify You better find it and check out the last discussion. Just had the peers a few hours ago Subscribe to youtube channel And then yeah, check out amphilive.com and amphimee.com if you're a student. Otherwise Have a great weekend I'm told the sun is going to come back out because it's raining right now where I am And yeah, stay safe and catch you guys on Monday. Take care