Morning. This is Houseways Names. It's Thursday, March 24th. We are going to spend time this morning talking about financial structure. That's the general title and we have a staff with us who are going to guide us through whatever this discussion actually the person who's going to guide us through is Emily. And plus there are any questions or announcements that turn it over to Emily. But let me just pause and not speak for one second. Because I want to be sure that there's nothing going on today that we need to be concerned about. 703 is on the floor, but we got briefed on what the best workforce bill we got briefed on it yesterday. George is here, but I assume he'll be here in the afternoon. And because he's got this part of that figured out and I don't see any amendments on our other bills. So I think we're, I think we're good. I've heard on S53, I, after consulting with the speaker, I just postponed it for weeks so that we would have time to think about it. And probably this is going to end up in a conference committee, but I just added, there was no rush so I figured it makes sense to have it just sit on the calendar for a little bit while we figure out the best path forward. Is there anything else hanging over from yesterday that people want to ask about or. Emily, it's all yours. Good morning again. So we have the joint session at 1030. So we're going to break ourselves up and break the morning up into two different pieces. One is sort of the last piece of we were running through a checklist of pieces of the task forces report and just making sure everyone was sort of caught up on all the pieces of that. And the last thing is one more sort of go around on the cost equity proposal from Julia and Catherine. And then we are going to shift gears quite significantly. And we're going to hear from Jim and Abby about the recent court decision boy versus state of Vermont, which was the whiting ham residence and whiting ham. And the school sued the state of Vermont on education equity grounds. And it sort of had the potential to be another brigham that was decided in the state's favor. And so we will hear about sort of the implications of that for education finance in the future. So that's a fun like non numbers shift in conversation. Any questions thoughts or jump in. Julia, I think you are first up with Catherine.  Okay, good morning. I'm Julia Richter with the joint fiscal office. There's a presentation put together on cost factor adjustments from Catherine Benham and myself, and it should be posted on the committee's page under my name. Does everyone have it in front of them before we start going through. Okay. So, so we have a presentation that we've put together outlining cost factor adjustments, and it's really put into two parts. So the first part is more of a broad overview and words just as to what cost factor adjustments are. And then we'll go into a specific example and look at some numbers that might help to iron out some of the details. So, so I'm on page three of the presentation. And cost factor adjustments are similar to pupil weights in the sense that they account for potential higher costs to schools with certain demographic characteristics. So, these cost factor adjustments are set payments allocated to each district to account for the portion of students in a certain demographic category. These categories correspond with the same categories that are used for pupil weights in the task force report the, the adjustments came from the same categories as the pupil weights in the task force reports. And the major difference is that cost factor adjustments are offsetting revenues for school districts. So, moving on to page four. These are the cost factor adjustments that were proposed by Professor Colby, and the rest of her research team for FY 2023, and you can see in the left column these are the different categories that I just spoke about. And in the right column, those are the specific cost adjustments for each category. I won't go through all of the specific numbers unless a member of the committee would find that helpful. Okay, great. Then, then moving on to page five. This is really just a reminder as to how the homestead property tax rate and the income tax rate are currently calculated under current law. So as a reminder, the tax rates are adjusted based on the spending, the education spending per pupil in a district. So as you can see, for both the adjusted property tax rate and the adjusted income tax rate, it's really that base figure so the $1 or the 2% multiplied by the per pupil spending, and divided by the yield, which, which the committee just was working on the yield bill as you are all aware. So you can see per pupil spending is currently calculated as the education spending divided by the equalized pupils and the equalized pupils captures those pupil weights and the education spending I've broken it out there. We've broken it out there in terms of total spending and then subtracting all of the other offsetting revenues. So these are things like categorical aid, tuition revenues, prior year surpluses or deficits and reserve funds. So that's really just summarizing how these rates are currently calculated. Moving on to slide six outlines the changes that that would be happening with cost factor adjustments. So there are really two main changes that would occur. The first is that the calculation of education spending would be changed. So this is where cost factor adjustments would be subtracted from total spending. And this is is frequently referred to as being taken off the top of the education fund. The second change is that equalized pupils are no longer used. So because cost factor adjustments would account for districts with certain demographic categories that may be higher costs to those districts. There would be no pupil weights and there'd be no equalized pupils. Instead of equalized pupils the average daily membership would be used to calculate tax rates. And this is also referred to as ADM. So you can see on slide seven how those changes would would be implemented in the calculation of the adjusted tax rates. So you can see that cost factor adjustments would directly affect the per pupil spending in two ways. First, instead of being divided by the per pupil spending, instead of being divided by equalized pupils, it would be divided by average daily membership. The second change is that education spending would now also subtract the cost factor adjustments. So that would be included in the offsetting revenues. So that's that's the broad picture in terms of what cost factor adjustments are. I'll pause now to see if Catherine wants to jump in to add anything, or if there's any questions from the committee. I think we're good. Thank you. Okay. Oh, yes, sorry. If you did cost factor adjustment for one thing, I'll say poverty, and you did a change and waiting for another factor. I don't I never know which is a numerator or the denominator. What do you use ADM or do you use equalized pupils. I'm just trying to understand, can you mix and match and what happens to the formula when you do that. So, so I guess that the, I guess it's sort of two, I guess I see two answers to that question two parts. The first part is that the task force report. I'll let representative cornheiser speak to the task force report with regards to what would happen to the formula if you're looking at this slide seven. This would be a policy decision so it would be really up to the committee in terms of how they wanted to adjust this formula. If you were to have equalized pupils. This would likely take the place of the denominator so the bottom part of that ratio where where you currently see ADM. I guess my question is what, so what, what's logical, what, what makes sense. I mean, why would we choose one over the other. I think Catherine. Okay. Sure, I think they're both trying to achieve the same thing I think mixing and matching would be complicated. I would say you can't do it but I don't think you could actually probably use the way that Tammy Colby and our team calculated the numbers I think you would have to go back and revisit those calculations and trying to be provide clarity to people so they can understand what's happening and why it is it seems like that if you're dealing with demographic issues you might choose to use the same system for all of them but I think, I think mathematically we can probably make any of it work it would just require I'd have to think a little bit more about the math on it. It doesn't matter I was just trying I was the first time I've seen ADM as the divisor, whatever it is. And I was just trying to understand, sort of, is that a, that's a commitment to change how we do that and we would if we made that commitment, it sort of pushes us in a certain direction with all these factors. That's what I was trying to understand. Yeah, I get mathematically could probably do almost anything but some things work better than others. Okay, thank you. I think it'd be profoundly confusing. Yeah, so I'm glad. Thanks Scott did you want to add something. No, I said I agree with you would make her already complicated system or complicated. Well, I don't think complication is, you know, everybody feels this is complicated no matter what we do but anyway, a statement I realized, but what if we, what if on slide five. You didn't include the education spending did not include all the things under total spending like federal state tuition prior your services and reserve funds what if it. What if that's not what that numerator work. So, so, in terms of slide five, and I apologize if this is confusing based on the formatting this blue box that you're seeing here with education spending equals it's actually saying total spending and then subtracting all of these factors below total spending. So when you're calculating the per pupil spending, those, those things that you that you're seeing here are are subtracted from from education is part of it. Okay, it's a subtraction sign on a dash. Yes, I can see it looking like that. I was including it. All right, well that explains that a good idea that we already do it. Thank you. Let's see I guess either. For everyone's answers to this question, just click work on cost factor adjustments is the same as what we were calling cost equity amounts across the payments and the same as what Professor Colby is called the reverse foundation formula. Is that true, or is there any subtle differences. So, so cost factor adjustments like for instance what you're what you're seeing on slide for this is the same as what was referenced in the task force report as, as cost equity in in professors Colby's January memo which is included here. It is, she did, she did and her team references as cost adjustments based on school level cost function models. So it really is referencing the same idea, I will invite Catherine or representative corn hyzer to interject if they had anything else. And that's the same as who use the word reverse foundation formula is that unrelated to this. Or is that what Professor Colby, I just want to see there's like a third Professor Colby called it that in testimony, but in her like official memo she refers to the most cost factors. But yes it's all the same idea. Does she refer to we as a cost factor to or is she only the math that leads to the weights she described the team describes as cost factors when they're describing their methodology. Okay. Yeah, I think this language cost factor adjustment is more straightforward and easier to understand. I mean it is what it is without going through some other language to try to get to the same thing. That's my opinion. It's helpful. I have to think this use of the word foundation is kind of a loaded word because we actually had a something we called the foundation formula in Vermont I think. So I think that word is always confusing. I mean, I would look at our existing system. I would almost could call that a foundation formula because the foundation right now is federal and state categorically to I mean those are found those are foundations that districts use to build their budgets I mean so kind of by definition I would call our existing foundation formula of sorts, but that's not what we call it. The foundation was pretty big and it's kind of right. Julia I know we um, the, the fact that tax rates can't go below one. Can you explain a little bit more about sort of what that means for the minimum amount of districts going to spend. Sure. So, there is currently in statute, as you just mentioned that that the tax rates can't go below one so that that's essentially sets a floor in terms of what would make sense for a district to spend, even if they were to spend a lower amount than the even if they were to spend a lower amount than would be the minimum level that they would need to to spend to reach that $1 tax rate they still need to spend at least $1 for their tax rate. So, for that, for that reason, there there's there's a floor in terms of what makes sense for a district to spend. Does that make sense. For me, but I see where it's based on the yield for that year, essentially right. Yes, thank you. I don't think it actually tells the district you have to spend more. You just send more money to the education. Correct. Thank you. Yes, you don't get anything. Yeah, you may know the answer to this question, but I wonder whether there are any districts currently spending close to the yield, or or even less, you know, have been examples of districts that were on the cusp and decided they would spend a little more money, because why not. Great question. I would have to go back and consult our model to see exactly how much districts are spending per pupil but I do know that there's quite, quite a range in terms of what districts decide to spend. I'm happy to go back and look at the model and get back to you with a more firm answer about that. It's possible that Brad, who is there, there, I think, I don't know if you will magically. Yes, magic. Hello. Good morning. Yes, yes, there are normally one or two districts that are under current law, they're spending in a dollar, their tax rate is a dollar, which means they're spending is right around the yield right at or slightly below the yield. I think you said, if you go too far below you're just you're kind of, you could have free money for all practical purposes, because your rates not going to change to get up to $1. And my memory of looking at some of the various models of implementation of cost factor adjustments with various methodologies is that a few more districts were close to that one. Sorry, it was your question. Well, yeah, I just sorry, Scott, but it just seems to me like going forward from a policy standpoint, we want to think about this a little bit more. If it's incentivizing districts in theory to spend more than they otherwise would be happy to spend, just because it doesn't cost them any more at the tax rate. And then there's also an interesting dynamic that's starting to crop up in my district caught up in it. Not caught up in it. It's fine but we have, I don't know if it's a $2 or $3,000 split between the income yield and the property yield right now. So my district are pupils for people sending fell between those two numbers. We're actually leaving money on the table for our income household income payers, but we're not for our property payers. And I suspect, so that's a range of between about 133 and 163 I suspect we actually have quite a few districts that are in that, in that window. Julia, can you be mindful of that window for sort of future models that we're looking at and flag. Thank you. Anyone else on the this slide or Okay. Back to you Julia. Thanks for popping up red. All right, so, so now moving on to an example. We've got that slide eight just saying that we're moving on to an example and then slide nine. This is the groundwork for what we're looking into. And I really before going into it I do want to state that these districts that will be talking about our fictional and have been created solely for exemplary purposes. So, so here we're going to be looking at two districts district a and district B. Both districts have the same total education spending. They have the same level of categorical aid and offsetting revenues as under current law and the same ADM. The main difference between these two districts is that they have different numbers of pupils within the cost factor categories that we were just talking about. So, so we see that the average daily membership in both districts is 500, both have total education spending of 8 million and both have offsetting revenues of 2 million. And the big difference is those cost factor adjustments. So, Julia one second. So, I think I've had this trouble before you use the phrase total education spending, but what you're talking about is the voted budget right. Correct. So, by using the term total education spending in line two and then again in line five. I'm afraid it's going to confuse people, because we've always used the word education spending as a term of art, it means budget, minus all this other stuff. So, anyway, I think you have pointed that out before because I think it's anyway. Thank you for that for that clarification. Yes, so the total education spending that's referring to the budgets or voted for budget. Yeah. I will I will use that going forward. It does say total education spending in the slides but I'll try to be mindful of that throughout the rest of the presentation and then the local education spending. That's those budgets subtracting the offsetting revenues and then in this example also subtracting the cost factor adjustments. So, so, moving on to, sorry, was there another question or comment about that. Okay, thank you. Okay, then moving on to slide 10. This shows the the breakdown of both districts, their number of pupils within the different cost factors so you can see the left most column titled cost factor. The second column titled FY 2023 cost adjustment. That's what we looked at earlier those are the numbers and the cost factors as proposed by Colby, Professor Colby and her team. The next two columns under district a that's saying the number of pupils in each of those cost factors, and then the cost factor adjustment in each of those cost factors. For instance, in line three, where you see poverty. Each pupil that would be each pupil in the district that that's falling into that category as defined is going to the district will will receive $10,480 and that's that's trying to capture the average cost. And so, so in district a in this example they have 15 pupils in that category. So 15 multiplied by 10,480 brings us to 157,200. So that's the cost factor for cost factor adjustment for that that poverty for district a. You can see district B has 55 pupils in that category. So their cost factor adjustment is going to be higher than district a because there's more pupils that fall into that category. And the same logic applies to to the rest of the rows in the table. I won't go through all of the numbers unless that would be helpful. The only other thing that I wanted to show was in in rows six and seven you can see that both district a and district B have the same number of pupils in those categories and because they have the same number of pupils they're going to be receiving the same cost factor adjustment for those different categories. So I'll pause there and and let you all digest this I know it's a lot of numbers on this slide, and I'm happy to answer any questions about it. I just say, as I said earlier, Julia is much more straightforward I think for the average person to sort through it. So yeah I get it. Yeah, I was thinking earlier this is a really very helpful presentation, the content but also the way you've laid it out so thank you for putting that thought into it. I'm just wondering now though looking at row nine. The small school line. Yeah, so district B has 200 people's schools, but I mean there's three of them, right. Julia did you pass that? I'm sorry I wasn't able to hear the question. So, so line, line, row nine. Yes, fewer than 100 people to so a school if you were than 100, but in the illustration, you're showing there are 200. Great. That's a, that's a great, great question. I appreciate it. I'll have, I have two responses. One is that it is an example district and we've put in these numbers really just to show you the way that the cost factor adjustments would sort out. If we're, if we're talking hypotheticals how could this happen. We are looking at two districts. So in theory there could be. We believe under, under the way that all of the assumptions behind the memo, there could be two small schools within the district. So, so say there are three. So maybe you would have, you know, one small school with 50 students once small school with 50 students and once small school with 100 students. And then maybe even one school that's not a small school of 150 students that wouldn't be content that would still be in the district. Exactly. Okay, so this is, this is a good example. I mean it's a plausible illustration. And for me anyway, it confuses things a little bit so thank you for including it I'll want to think about a little bit more. Sure. So, and maybe you all had this discussion with Professor Kobe was here and I was in a meeting I think I missed a good part of that but. And through it, I can catch up with Julia later but the question I have is the interplay between the small school line and understand that it's an unlikely but possible scenario, and the population density line and what's happening there. That ends up with 732,000 basically taken off the, but you know, we move before we get to education spending. So, so what's, what's going on. Yeah, thank you for that question. We didn't you it was your question you weren't always I think she sent me an email about it later that I, yes, but we didn't actually cover it. I can't visualize what's actually happening that we need that that, that requires that money, that kind of that level of adjustment, I don't know. So, I think that's if it was duplicative. Well, that's part of the question that I guess the. Yes. But the, but I just need to understand what it, what is what is going on that's a lot. I'm adding the small school line for 27 in this example and the population density line of 305 and I'm coming up with 732,000 and some change as a as a total figure that needs to be adjusted and I'm trying to understand why you know sort of just understanding how do you explain to what's going on that would make sense to them. Julia, do you want Brad to jump in or do you want to. Sure. Okay, Brad explain this one. I don't explain it well but I think I think it's because what what they what Professor Colby's team found was there were two different things going on there was there was the sparsity issue which costs more money and that that does the in this case the 305,000 online 12. And then there are there's the small school issue separate from sparsity, which also they recognize as costing more money and then when, when they were doing their statistical model what they were finding was that small schools in sparse areas also had that same that had an issue. What they're doing here ever said an answer is looking at the fact that it's a small school which has its own costs, additional costs in a sparse area which also has its own additional costs and that's why they tied the two together and get a small school but it has to be in a sparse area. I'm not sure I can explain any better than that that's my understanding from what Professor Colby said. And I'm I remembering right that in this hypothetical model hypothetical could work if line 12 had 400 students, so you could have 400 students in a sparse area but only 200 of those students would be counted in the small school. Yes, that that is that is correct. The population counted for the small school way is the actual enrollment of the school not the not the total population of the school district like in line. I have to say, I've never believed. And it's that much more expensive to do in a sparse area of the population but I thought the construct was that that was done at the district level. So that how could you have 200 students out of your 500 students getting the sparsity when it's done at the district level. It should be all of them. Yes. That's my understanding. I believe I believe with just an oversight when Julie was doing this. I believe that she actually meant that line to be 500. In which case that's a huge huge figure. And somehow, unless everybody is world, which means it becomes sort of meaningless. There needs to be a logical explanation for people about why it would cost that much more. If you're, if you have a small school in an oral area, then if you have 55 kids who are in poverty, I just, I'm not. I'm not sort of buying a logic of it, but maybe it's there. So one thing that's been interesting to me when I looked at this is that the actual cost adjustment for poverty is much, much higher. But because in the for the rural weight for the sparse weight and for the small schools weight you're counting all of the kids in the school and not just the kids in that. So it winds up having this very outsized impact because you're counting more people in that sort of category. And that's our clothing back into explain sort of the math that went to it to a hard time. Yeah, ever that that makes sense. Just, just so far on line with the reality. Yeah, I guess it doesn't necessarily not make sense to me just when we when we refer people talking about scale and the overhead cost of small schools, small districts. But that's not my question. My question is back to the 200 on line nine. And I just want to be sure that I'm hearing is correctly that so we have a district with 500 students. How did we enjoy the police and jump in here if I maybe maybe maybe I misunderstood or maybe you had more time to think about it too but is this a plausible scenario that 200 could be in line nine. I'll jump in if you don't mind Julia. Yes, it is because because it's fast with all the mergers that have taken place. We have a number of school districts that have quite a few people but they still have more than one small school, because the schools didn't necessarily close but the school district merge but not schools themselves. So, so having 200 out of 500 kids going to small schools and school districts not implausible. Three small schools adding up to 200 kids three four to get to 100. Yeah, okay. But lined follow up should be 500. Yes. Thank you. Could there be, I can't, I don't know what a bigger square mile his weekend that could there be 500 kids. When you have fewer than 36 per square mile, but what's happening with that district. You could you could have you could have 100 kids in there. So you could have you could have more students online 10. In that district that would be a possibility because you tell a larger school so we get that small or small school rent. Sorry. The other thing, I mean, Middlebury is a great example. You've got all these schools that around Littleberry which would have qualified to this. But they don't, because the group doing with Middlebury, and it's the whole district, right. So you're saying those schools don't have the extra costs.  Because the district is a whole is a district as a whole. Yeah, and one other thought is that one of the extra costs versus transportation and we're, and we will continue to do that separately. Right. Nobody's talking about building that and so that is accounted for somewhere else. And it's actually controlled for in the study. The cost of transportation. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  I don't remember what the language access says, but, but I know in Middlebury's case that current, those small schools that merged. And I don't recall off the top of my head, Representative cornheiser, please jump in here. If, if there's, they still get the merger support grant, or if they get this instead, it's, it's one or the other, they won't get both. If I recall correctly. My memory isn't that example, they get the merger support grant, but I could be remembering wrong. So maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Scott, did you? Yeah. I certainly don't want to speak for Professor Colby, nor do I know whether any of these numbers are the correct numbers necessarily. But I think it's, I think the logic basically is, is that, you know, the 85% of our school budgets are to pay for people body salary. We have a four to one staff staffing ratio in Vermont. And I think most of the research indicates is that a lot of our rural areas are really struggling to keep high quality educators and they tend to go to the more urban areas that can give them the bigger salary. I think most of this, this adjustment speaks to what would rural areas need for resources to retain these high quality educators. So I don't know if any of these numbers are the right numbers, but I think that's the logic. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Jim. Yeah, that makes sense. I was looking at this page. The first to easy one, which is purple pupils versus people for a square mile. And that's just read the language, figure that out. Yeah, it's George and we're just talking the differences between figuring this out on a school district versus supervisor union construct does add a little bit of confusion to what otherwise is I think a fairly straightforward reason. And back in care about that. What's potentially an anomaly would be helpful. The piece that I think came up in testimony from someone of education other than Brad. I don't remember who was the idea that there was so much debate over what a geographically necessary small school was. And this was sort of a mathematical calculation of that idea, which is I think sort of an interesting on it. I'm not sure. Again, I don't speak for Professor Colby. I thought that was an interesting way to think about it. Discuss. But there's nothing that says these districts would use this money for salaries. You know, rather than just lower tax rates, there's no guarantees they would. And it might be more than just salaries. And so we're called late for teachers is right now. The numbers of use. Brass. So, Julia, let's go back to finish. Sure. So, moving on to slide 11. I will just apologize upfront to the committee, we re-ran the numbers and I forgot to change. total education spending. So I will adjust this and send it back to the committee, but that line one, it should be 12,000, excuse me, 12 million for district A and B for total education spending, which respects their budget. Should be total budget. Total budget. So I'll change that just so everyone is aware we're all on the same page. That total budget in line one is 12 million. So that correction aside, the logic still holds true as to what we've spoken about. So we've got that total budget in line one and then subtracting all offsetting revenues. Line three outlines the cost factor adjustments. I've pulled that out of the offsetting revenues just so we can all see exactly what's happening with the cost factor adjustments, but there's no real difference in terms of the cost factor adjustments and the offsetting revenues in terms of the calculations are just being subtracted from the total budgets. Then we can see in line four, after subtracting the offsetting revenues from the budgets, what that local education spending would be. And we can see that while they have the same total budgets and the same offsetting revenues aside from cost factor adjustments that their local education spending differs because their cost factor adjustments differ. And that corresponds with the different demographics in these two example districts. We see in line five, they have the same average daily membership. We see in line six, that the local education spending per pupil also differs in correspondence with those differences in line four. And before moving on to calculating tax rates, I just wanna say we're gonna assume there's a property yield of 11,000 and an income yield of 13,500. Those have been chosen just because they're nice round numbers to make things a bit easier to follow. So are there any questions on the slide before moving on? Yes, just a comment, it's a good slide. Thank you, Julia, but this assumes that district B uses none of that tax capacity to improve its school. Yes, thank you. So this assumes there's the same, they have the same budget. Same spending decision, yeah. Same spending decision, same everything so to speak with the exception of those demographics that are affecting the cost factor adjustments. Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, and could you add that clarification to the slide when you fix it? Because I may, if you're... I'm happy to do that, yeah. I'm keeping a list of the clarifications I'll add, so. People who outside the building can follow along and get it right, thank you. Definitely. Okay, back to you. Okay, great. So those clarifications, keeping them all in mind, we'll move on to slide 12. And this is an example of calculating the tax rates. So that first box that we're seeing here, that's what we were speaking about earlier when we were going through the overview. And then the lower two boxes are just plugging in the numbers we were just looking at in slide 11 into their respective places, into those formulas. So we can see that assuming the budgets are the same, there's the same education spending decisions by both districts, that they would have different tax rates, spending adjusted tax rates because of those different cost factor adjustment payments, assuming all other things within the districts remain the same. Yeah, so these charts are really good. And the comment that Scott made just sort of makes me understand what the question is here, is the goal here then to have district B spend, I know that's supposed to be 12 million, but 12 million plus the 1.6 is that because we want that district to provide that level of educational opportunity to all its kids and we think they can't unless they spend it. And is that really what we're, is that what's driving this discussion? And we think they can't provide that level of educational opportunity at the 12 million. Is that what we're talking about? What I think of it is that we want to make sure that every school district has the tax capacity to offer their kids an excellent education. I mean, as policymakers, aren't we wanting those kids to get that level of educational opportunity? And aren't we saying if once we've done all this that the only way they can get it is that if they spend 12 million plus. This is what we think they need to provide that. And I think you have to believe that or you don't want to do all of this. If we want district B to offer the same quality education. As district A, but we want them to do it. We don't want them just to be able to do it. And so a scenario that was sort of demonstrating that more clearly would start with having the same tax rate and working backwards to a higher budget for the district for more adjustment. Right, and that's sort of what I did. That's why these slides are great because they kind of take you to, yes, I think that has to be what we're talking about. And education is working on the EQS and enforcement. Yeah, I know you've talked about that a lot. Caleb? I don't have a question and so I'm happy to wait. I just know we have another topic. And I'd love to be able to make a comment generally but I don't want to do that too soon. I think this is, yes, this is quite done. So I think this is a really interesting presentation. They're well done presentation. Thank you Julia. I wanted to say we've been talking about a lot of these things throughout the year. It's been great to kind of have these education Thursdays. While that's been happening though, the Senate's been working on this and we haven't had a lot of change stuff but it sounds like reading today, S287. The Senate has rejected this concept, you know? And I think that that's, I'm not saying anything about that other than that if S287 passes, it contains none of this. And we're past crossover. And so if we were to go with this instead of what the Senate's done to me as just someone looking at it, that feels like something would be pretty hard to reconcile on the committee of conference. And so while I find this a very interesting thought exercise at this point in the session, I do find myself a little confused over where we would seek to deploy this. And I'm interested and I'm listening. I just wanted to say that because S287 is coming to us and it is a bill that contains none of this concept despite that they talked about it extensively. And so I just wanted to kind of put that out there that this is a good conversation. I'm glad we're having it at some point. I think we're going to have to move from divergent thinking to convergent thinking and that will involve what the Senate's done. So thank you for letting me say that. I think George's going to jump in a second. I just want to say I had high hopes that the Senate would have passed it by now and we would be talking about that bill today. But it's been moved on their calendar a few times. And so I think it'll be fun to look at the details of it very soon. Because there's a lot in their details, George. There is? It's got a lot in it. Yes. I'd say, Kayla, have faith in your conferees. Well, I do think that diametrically opposed in some sense as concepts of committees of conference can lead to no bill. And this is so weighty, it's so important that it concerns me to think of a committee of conference deadlocked over this critical, critical issue of remote students. Trust your conferees. Well, I have seen committees of conference that have not come up with much. Jim, and then we're going to go back to Julia for the last slide. Briefly, Kayla, good question. Good point. It would be a bummer to end up with that. But as we work through this, committee of conference of some sort on something and it would be, this work would be far more useful, completed, corrected, you know, the adjustments that have been discussed this morning in a presentation to the senators so that they see the merits of this approach. And so I would say it's simplistic, but let's keep going and see where we end up because it's more useful to all of us, I think. And I think we regularly, I think each body passes the policies that they think are best and then find their way towards each other. And there's a lot of commonalities between both strategies. They're both adjusting for cost factors and findings are the best way to do it. Julia, you have one slide left. I do have one slide left. So that's slide 13. And this is really just summarizing what we've been through today. So what are cost factor adjustments? They are set payments allocated to each district to account for the portion of students in a certain demographic category. And how would the calculation of tax rates change with cost factor adjustments? As we just went through, many aspects would not change. Districts would still have the voter approved school budgets. They would still subtract the offsetting revenues from these budgets. And the remaining education spending per pupil would still be funded through the spending adjusted tax rates, which we just spoke about. The two main changes that we've been over today to current law would be that these cost factor adjustments would be included in the offsetting revenues when they're subtracted from the budgets. And that education spending per pupil would be calculated with the average daily membership and not with equalized pupils. So that's the summary slide. We're happy to answer any other questions that you all may have. Thank you, Julie. Thank you both. Really appreciate it. And I would love to see the slide as the chair outlined where we start with the same tax rate. The same tax rate. And then we're backwards to why the spending is a spending, how the spending can differ in the two scenarios. Yeah, we can definitely work on that and get back to the committee with that additional information. It's a great suggestion. And it would kind of show the flip side of this construct. Thank you. Thank you both. Really appreciate it. We're going to take a 10-minute break and then talk about court cases.


All right, today's question comes from my man, Kevin. And Kevin's question says, I have a floral business. Do you think government contracts I could benefit from? And where do I begin? Great question out there for Kevin and the other people out here who may have businesses and industries that are non-traditional.  Pop up on the screen. Yep, that one. So again, there's a video of what does a government buy what I sell? You can click on that video and watch it. But I'll be more than happy to answer Kevin's question because I think that an actual verbal response might be more beneficial than watching a video. If you have a floral business, for example, like Kevin does, the first thing that you wanna do is not go to beta SAM and look up opportunities. As we've discussed in some of our videos, the government only posts about 55% of all contracts. So simply going on beta.sam and looking for floral bids, it's not an effective market research strategy. There are a couple of resources out there that you can use tools that I suggest in previous videos. USA Spending is number one and FPDS and G is the second. Free, by the way, free market research tools. So if anyone out there is questioning, right, how do I determine whether or not the government buys what I sell, the tools that I would use are usaspending.gov and fpdsng.gov.  Make sure it does have a .gov at the end just because there are some kind of shady people out here in this world and they do tend to put up content that does not match. They use the same names, they change the endings, they put .com, they put .tar, whatever. They just do really funny things and sometimes it takes us to places that we don't wanna go and I hate to see you get a virus on your computer trying to follow my video. But what I suggest is, again, there are some content on or surrounding USA Spending and how to use that tool. I do also have content surrounding FPDS and how to use that tool. I will describe them in this video. FPDS has a list of the past contract activities, right? So the past contract activities that the government awarded. So everything that the government buys, and again, we're talking about federal specifically, doesn't apply to state and this does not apply to local. But on the federal arena, all of the contract actions, they are posted in FPDS, that is a requirement. So you will find all, 100% of all of the actions are posted in FPDS. I'm sure there's probably some exceptions like things that involve national defense and security of that nature, but all of the contract activities are go in FPDS. And the reason why you would like to search FPDS as opposed to beta SAM. And if all this stuff sounds crazy, like what are these words and names you're just talking about? We have, again, there's videos I already have discussing these items for clarification, but beta.sam is the place where you find the, it's called the GPO or the government's point of entry, GPE, sorry, government point of entry, meaning that all of the contract actions above $25,000 are supposed to go in beta.sam, which was formerly FBO. However, there are some exceptions to that rule and that's the reason why only about 55% of the opportunities go inside of beta.sam. So if you wanna see all of the possibilities for contracts for your industry or your space, you have to research past awards because the only way to see all of the contracts and all of the activities that happen is looking at historical data. Because unfortunately, they do not have to put in there all of the actual task orders and solicitations that fall outside of the criteria for publicly posting it. So that exempts, again, 40 plus percent of all activities and maybe floral is one of the ones that fall into that 40 percentile that's never gonna be posted on beta.sam. So you've gotta go in and do the research and historical research to find out, okay, did they ever buy floral services? So what it tells me and what I use this information for is first is I look at my PSC code, product service code or NAX code, right? North American Industry Classification Code because that helps me to determine what's floral services, right? More than likely because floral sounds like a product, then I would use a PSC code and then I would take that PSC code, type it in USA spending or type it in FPDS and then see what data populates. I would then sort it by the most recent year like 2019 or 2018 depending upon when they input their data in and then I would see how many opportunities did they yield on the results. Now that you have the number of opportunities that it yields in terms of results, you can make your own determination whether or not this is lucrative marketplace to be in or it's not lucrative. And the same thing applies for anyone else out there who has a product or service that they're interested in selling to government. You wanna go back and look at the historical data and what the government is actually spending their money on in the past and that will help you determine what they're gonna spend their money on in the future. Now, the only exceptions to that would be something that's computer related because we know that computers and IT changes constantly. So yeah, I'm sure if you were selling floppy disks and you said, oh, the government bought floppy disks a long time ago, no, that doesn't mean they're gonna be floppy disks in the future.  We can all pull a wild hair out of our, you know what. But for the most part, this applies for 99.999% of us out there looking at the historical data is gonna teach us about what they're gonna buy in the, what they're buying in the present and also what they're gonna buy in the future. And that's how we determine whether or not the government buys floral services. So I hope this, I was able to help you somewhat and also look who had a similar question. Moving on, Eliado, question about O'Connor's contracts. Where do I find this information? And do you have to be a US citizen to have A-day work in or out of the US? So this is a two-part question. The second part is very easy to answer. You do not have to have A-day certification to get contracts. You do not have to have A-day certification to get contracts. You do not have to have any certification whatsoever to win contracts. The large companies do not have certifications. Small businesses, you don't have to have a certification. The majority of all of the set-asides are small business when it comes to what you're referencing. The majority of the smaller contracts are set-aside for small business. Simplified acquisition is a small business program. So let's just get this out of your head. I don't know where you're getting the information from, but let's go ahead and bury that myth. You do not need a certification to win contracts. It's not true. You don't need a certification.  It's not a certification.  There's no certification involved. So again, let's just take the myth out of it. And even at the local levels and the state levels, you still don't need to be certified. CBE, DBE to win contracts.  Zoom has contracts. They're not CBE, DBE. Oh, but they're a monster company. It's just a point, it's an example. I'm just giving examples, because the question prompts me to give a, again, you may say my example is ridiculous, but I think the question is a little bit absurd. And so an absurd question warrants an absurd answer, response. So again, if General Electric or Microsoft or SpaceX or Amazon or, what is the name, Oracle, if all of these people have contracts with the government, they don't have certifications. We have to, I encourage everyone to be a little bit smarter and to think for themselves. Don't go around listening to people who are giving you false information. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out here who have maybe won a contract or two, and now all of a sudden they claim to be profits. They're not profits. Because they won one contract, doesn't make them a profit. I don't care if the contract was $2 million or $50,000, it doesn't make them an all-knowing, right? Talk to people who've won hundreds of contracts. Talk to people who've even won dozens of contracts. I've got students who've won more contracts than those people that are teaching you guys this. I'm gonna say again, I have students that have won more contracts than the people that you're paying out there for your coaching and your training and your teachings. In fact, for the people who are actually standing on some of these stages, some of these people are standing on stage who've been invited to speak at these conferences, have never done this before in their life. So I'm encouraging everyone out there, please, please, right? Okay, make sure that the people have won the contracts. Make sure they were able to do the contracts, that they kept the contracts because a lot of people who are teaching and training, who claim to be trainers and teachers, have contracts that they've won and lost or been taken away from them. Or they've won contracts that are not what you're looking for. They're not the size, the scale, the magnitude, right? That you wanna be at. Again, you wanna learn from people who are doing at the level that you wanna do it. And you can't build a business off of $5,000 contracts. It's not a business, it's not sustainable. I'm just telling the reality whether you wanna hear it or not, I'm just being honest with you. You can't build a business, you can't pay your bills. I can't, remember this, a $5,000 contract doesn't net you $5,000. A $5,000 contract might net you 20% of $1,000. And again, I'm not above $1,000. I take 1,000 bucks right now. If you offer me $1,000, I take it in a heartbeat. But I wouldn't build a business model around making $1,000. Unless I was making $1,000 10 times a week, 10 times a month, right? Unless I was making $1,000 humanively over a period of time. But to make $1,000 here, $1,000 there, it's not gonna sustain you. It's not even gonna replace your job for the most of us, right? So again, a minimum wage person was at $7 an hour. So if you go out and work minimum wage a couple weeks, you can make $1,000. I don't see, to me, I don't see the incentive for going out there and spending and investing your time and learning and all your energy to learn how to make $1,000. Just don't see it. So again, I just encourage people to think out there.  And so for me, I think the most important part is, sounds like me, this is a foreign person who's asking the question because they're asking about citizenship status. In order to win contracts outside of the United States, you do not have to be a citizen. Again, think, folks, think. We have people, right? Anywhere in a nation that you see our military, we have people that are working there. We're getting our fuel from local people. We're getting our supplies from local people. We're getting all the things to arm our ships, to arm our tanks, to arm our troops. We're getting all that from local people who are not US citizens. So if you sit back and you say, well, how are we doing? We're working in Africa. How are we doing it, right? How are we getting good goods and supplies? So if you think about it that way, you do not have to be a US citizen to work. In fact, a lot of the contracts that I've seen, they want to encourage, help and work from local people. So people like yourself that are asking these questions, they are looking for you out there. And a lot of times that folks that are in these positions don't know how to do US federal contracts. So if you are studying and learning how to do US federal contracts, and you're in another country, you have an advantage over the people who are in your country who may know how to do the work, but not know how to get a contract. And that's what Vicky, Vicky's last name is really hard to pronounce, but Vicky M, who's from Italy, she actually talks about that. And we have a video on there with Vicky where she's over in Italy because we have one of our largest naval ports out there. And she's talking about doing contracts. And I know for a fact, we're looking at strategic partnerships with Morocco. So if you're in or around that area of Morocco, the government is gonna be looking for a contract that's really soon because we're gonna be doing large deployments out there because it's a strategic location. So again, the government's in Australia, we're in Guam, we're in Mexico, we're everywhere. And everywhere we're at, we're looking for local people. So now, how do you find opportunities for that kind of work? What I would say is start off with knowing the bases and the facilities and then reaching out to them to find out where they post those jobs because I don't think there's a single source or place where you can find that. I know in Vicky's case, the Navy has a separate website for O'Connor's work, but then USAD posts on Beta SAM. But then the Army Corp of Aeneirs has a different division that handles O'Connor's, which is outside the Continental United States type project. So if you are in that situation, you're a non-citizen and you're looking at how do you do work in your local country, I would encourage you to look at wherever the agency is, whether it's a military base or a facility, reach out to them and find out where those opportunities are being posted and then that's the best way to do it because there's not a single source like there are areas for work that's in the United States. There's not a single place or website to go to where you're gonna find all of the projects outside of the Continental United States. Hey, I hope this video helped some people out there. If it did, please leave it in the comments and let me know. Also, we have Vicky, so if you're outside of the Continental United States and you want to learn how to get your business registered in SAM to do business as a foreign company, send us an email at service.govconjines.com and I will pass your email along to Vicky, who's been helping register companies in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to business with the US government. Thanks so much as always, it's been a pleasure. Love talking to you guys.


It's Chris, Tammy's husband. We'll call her Reli to Cooks. This Napoli casserole thumbs up. Y'all pay attention when she makes this one. This is good. And don't make fun of the way I just pronounced it like. In the future. A Southern or Wood. In the future of this video. If you hear my wife say Nepoli, she meant Napoli. If you hear that later on in the video. Which you might. I just want to absolutely love this. It is absolutely so delicious and so good. And it's even a little different than what you're used to. It's cheesy. It's spice. All that Italian spice and the sausage. Your egg noodles are going to need to be pretty good. So that's one of the first things I'm doing today. For this recipe you're going to be making a roux. So I've got out a quarter cup of flour and I've got out my butter.  And they say to remove the casings. And I've already done all of these. I was just going to show you how I do it. I just opened it up at the bottom. You can pull the casing back like so. And I slide a knife up in there. And then I just cut it. And these have been out at room temperature for about an hour. So they're a little bit softer. I like for them not to be real cold when I go to try to cook them. All right now we're going to cut up a quarter cup of onion. If you'll take your onion and make sure you got a flat side. It's a lot easier to slice it because it sits on the counter good. So we're just going to slice this about a quarter cup worth to use in our casserole. And I'm slicing it really thin. You're going to need about a cup of zucchini. If you have zucchini and if you're using squash like I'm doing today. Use what you got. Don't run to the store just to make a recipe. I think for the biggest pieces I'll have. We're going to be using a half a cup of chopped tomatoes. And I don't have fresh tomatoes. So I'm going to use these petite diced and just drain them. And I just happen to have petite dice. You don't have to buy petite dice. But that's what I had in my pantry. So we have those ready. All right we're going to brown our sausage before we make our roux. And that way we'll have those drippings in there to put in the gravy. I think that would taste better than making the gravy first. All right we're going to add our sausage. And instead of cutting this into pieces I'm just going to mash it with my hamburger separator. So a great thing to do is while you're preheating the water for your noodles go ahead and remove your casings off your sausage so they'll be ready. Heat up a skillet so it's already nice and hot. Of course you need to get out your ingredients. And then while your noodles are boiling it takes about eight minutes.  You can prep those. And now we're just chopping this up. I'm going to go ahead and add the onion and some Italian seasoning to this. Just use whatever you got, whatever brand you want to use. I'm using Spiced Gourmet Collection Blends. I like them. This is a pizza peluzza. And I just put in a pasta herb. Now you can get, it's pasta herb. You can get these on my website if you want to go into my Spiced Gourmet. And you can also buy them at Bell's and Marshall's and Home Goods. They have that brand lots of times marked down for you. So have at it. I love them. I think they're delicious. They got all kinds of blends and I like using them. Now we're going to add our squash and let it cook in here too. And remember the Italians would be using zucchini, I guess, or the versions of this. You're going to find that most cookbooks will have zucchini in it. So we're going to use it. So just keep simmering it until that squash gets tender. All right, here's a casserole dish. I'm going to spray it with some oil. So we've sprayed it with oil and we're going to pour our sausage and onion and vegetable into the casserole dish. So those drippings are in there. We're going to use about a butter. And once that melts, we'll add our flour. Just go ahead and salt and pepper it. You're going to cook the flour until it's nice and brown. So we've got our drippings in here. You can see that sausage went real greasy. So there was no need to take the grease out of the pan. All that flavor is going to be in our mule. All right, this is brown. I'm going to start adding two cups of milk. It's a gravy whisk and I'm going to whisk this good and it's going to get thick. And once it starts to thicken, we're going to add some cheese. You can see some of those spices in there that we add into the sausage. It's going to be really good. I hope y'all are all having a great day today. And if you're new to Card Valley Cooks, this is a cooking show. I am from Georgia and I'm teaching you how to cook like mama did. If you want to know what size the skillet is, it's a cast iron 10 inch. So I like, I use 10 inch skillets. I use a deep one and then I use this standard depth as well. All right, we're going to turn this off and we're going to add about a half cup of cheese. I'm going to take the whisk out of it at this point. I'm going to mix that in there. We're also going to put in our tomatoes. So you're going to need about a half cup of them is all you're going to really want to use. I'll shake them in there by half can. So I'll be able to use those for something else this week. We're going to mix those in. I'm going to go ahead and coat my noodles good. Get them in here. We're going to mix all this up good and then we're going to pour it over our sausage, onion, and squash. You can see that it's already cheesy. We're going to, I'm going to spread my sausage out over the pan. And the good thing about me leaving the sausage in the bottom and not mixing it all the way up is it'll help me, it'll help that from being such a mess in the bottom of my casserole to clean up too. So you're still going to get all the goodies that this has to offer. Now this is a large 11 inch casserole, which is about equivalent to 13 by 9 if you have a square casserole. So that would work. And you're not going to bake this long really just enough time to melt the cheese. Good because everything's already cooked. We're going to add the rest of our cheese. They called for a total of one cup and I had a little extra. And I also have some parm cheese shredded parmesan. I'm going to put that on there as well because I think it'd be delicious. I do not like to reach in a cheese bag for any reason because if you do lots of times it causes your cheese to go bad quicker if you just really don't need to reach into them. You need to pour your cheese out of them. Here's the parmesan. Let's get this out of the oven. Okay we're going to see how this looks. I'm going to pull y'all up close so you can see the cheese. Okay I made me a delicious piece of garlic bread to go with it. Let's get this up on my plate. Chris is out fishing. He don't know what he's missing. I'm going to have a nice cold Coca-Cola with my lunch. I make some tea but I don't have it cold yet. We're going to give this a try. I want to taste it all at one time with the onion and the squash and everything. Chris is going to absolutely love this. It is absolutely so delicious and so good and it's even a little different than what you're used to. It is cheesy, it is spice, all that Italian spice and the sausage. There's nobody that will complain about this recipe. You have got to make it and make some crunchy toast in your fissure air fryer too. Well Chris came in from fishing before I finished uploading the video so I thought I'd let him taste it for you guys. He's still dirty from fishing but he said he was game. That's good when you don't do any good fishing you get to come home and try a new dish. Tell him what I called it. She said she called it Napoli. It's Napoli I'm assuming. Before you start everybody telling her it's Napoli just remember I got it right. I told him you were really going to love it. Yeah I like sausage. I like Italian sausage. Isn't it delicious? I mean that's one of the best dishes I've made in a long time. It should be definitely on the menu right Chris?  He was like can you make cookies too? I'm on a roll today. Yes it's supposed to have zucchini in it you know but I didn't have any zucchini but I had squash so I used it. You like it? You've enjoyed watching Colored Valley Cooks today where we cook like mama did. Y'all come back and see us. Bye. Love ya.


Do you wanna see one of the craziest spins you've ever seen put on macaroni and cheese? You're gonna wanna make sure you follow.


My name is Nickie Armacost, I'm the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Arc Finance, which is an organisation that links microfinance, entities and energy enterprises for the benefit of poor people. In my view, the social capital movement is sort of born out of the idea of doing well by doing good. And we ran a conference at the organisation that I was part of before Fy haf, credu archfincGG, nad yna john an我在fwyr y wenn ond te Byz Hubble for Microfinesc. Ac that was really the underlying premise that you could bring together investors and you could bring together philanthropists and you could bring together a set of practitioners from around the world who together, using their different sets of expertise could find ways to do well by doing good. So ArchfincGG is an organisation that's focused on linking micro enterprise o'ch gwaith i gyd rai'r cyntaf. Rwy'n ddweud o'r pethon microfinance sy'n ddweud yw o'ch gwaith microfinance yn ei ddechrau gael ddweud o'r cystafol i gael wneud eich cyflugiau. Ieithio i'r bwysig, i'r gwasu, i'r gwasu, i'n i ddweud i'ch gwneud gyda'r gwaith i'r gwasu a'i gael. Ieithio i'r gwasu, i'r gwasu, i'r gwasu, i'r gwasu, i'r gwasu, a'r fwyllt o'r fachos maen nhw. So, rydyn ni'n ddweud o ddweud o gael. Yn ymgyrch yn ddweud y ffordd ymgyrch o ddweudol yn ymgyrch ymgyrch, a'r ddweud o ymgyrch yn ymgyrch. Wyddi'r ddweud o'r ddweud o ddweud o ddweud yn ei wneud ymgyrch eich cynnig a'u cyfnodol iawn ymgyrch ar amser hynny, mae hwn ymgyrch yn ddweud. A yng nghymru, y meddwl yn ymgyrch say we want your biogastigestor, we want your solar panels, or we want your micro-hydro system, but we need money for that, and so they want to link with viable micro finance or financing entities that will help their client's access funding to purchase those goods and services. So, where a marriage broker between these two sets of actors who don't really lle sydd y ddechrau yma, yw bod y maen nhw'n dwylo hwnnw, a byddwn ni'n fyddio'n gafodd sy'n dweud a ddodd iawn o bach gyda niol amser i gael unrhyw ymwneud. Y cilynodd yn gweithio'r cyfryffredd mewn cyfrifio ar y ddweud o'r ddymaru cyfeirio of different people in this spectrum because I think there are actually quite different views that are captured in this social capital space from people who are really interested in profit maximisation to people who are really interested in development and there needs to be generosity of spirit and there needs to be dialogue and there needs to be a willingness to understand and listen to one another's positions in order to move together effectively and that means reducing suspicion, reducing silos, reducing all of that kind of competitiveness that one sees in building partnerships and building collaboration. I think for me what made me get involved in this movement, in the microfinance movement in the beginning was because I realised that I actually could make a difference in other people's lives. I could actually play a role in changing the world and that was hugely, hugely exciting for me and to meet, to be in a situation where I'm meeting on a daily basis people who feel that way and who not only feel that way are actually doing it every day in their work that's incredibly inspiring to me. Meeting young people from universities where they are in very privileged positions wanting to go after they've had an MBA and changed the world, that makes me so excited, it makes me thrilled to see that people want to do that so that I think is what inspires me.


Okay, welcome to this week's charting analysis webinar with myself, Jasper Lawler. Quite an interesting start to the week because we've just had China's GDP report. We've got the ECB later on this week. We'll soon dig into that. For the time being, we're just going to dig through these risk warning screens. Any questions at all? Please feel free to send them through the chat or Q&A dialogue boxes. And I'm happy to oblige. Even if it's just a slightly more obscure market you want to comment on, or some specific event or particular pattern maybe that you were looking at within some of the more prominent assets that we trade, feel free to just let me know. So not that much in the way of economic data this week. I mentioned the interest rate decision from the European Central Bank could be an interesting one. My take is that most likely they're not going to announce extra QE per month. And they're also fairly unlikely, I would say, to extend the duration of the policy. We're not that far into the policy at the moment. And we're only a few months in. And I don't think that the current state of markets, although a bit cautious, is not the outright state of panic that preceded the previous meeting. And no action was taken then. The only reason to believe that there could be some action taken and why we're looking on this euro chart and yet another false break of this long-term triangle pattern is because inflation has dropped into the negative again in the euro zone. And so really officially speaking, as some of the ECB members have alluded to, the European Central Bank as of the moment is not actually meeting its target and not even getting close, in fact. Its target is inflation just below 2%, inflation's declining. Now the problem is that most of the reasons for that decline in inflation is oil prices. Core inflation is actually holding pretty steady. And that's the inflation that strips out oil prices. So if they were to use policy, it would be a very dovish signal because really it's fighting a force that they can't really in themselves combat. It's a commodity-related decline in prices. But just looking at this chart, I've been focusing a lot on the weekly chart on the euro dollar at the moment just because we keep getting these false breakouts of this triangle pattern. It's not so easy to see on the daily price chart. Nonetheless, I've highlighted this weekly reversal here, the dip and the close below this triangle as I see it. Then if we do drop down to that daily candlestick chart, you can see that we had what is fairly close to a bearish engulfing candlestick. Pretty much covers it. The body is slightly, the ears about the same. But it's quite a big reversal that we saw on the Thursday and that's followed through on Friday and today. And to my mind, when you see a false break, a failure at the 115 level again and a false break of this triangle pattern to me suggests that the psychology is that we're probably going to have to go and retest the 111 and see if we can get through there before we make another run higher. It's really range-bound conditions and so we could find support in and around what is something akin to the previous resistance in that 113 area and then make a surge out of the triangle again. My suspicion is that we drop a bit further back into the range because it's not quite certain where we're going. Obviously, the ECB is a big factor here. If, as I say, the ECB actually doesn't really do much, then that would be a positive for Eurodollar. And the only other factor at play here is what's said and done by the Federal Reserve. We don't have a Fed meeting coming just yet. We've got non-farm payrolls, but the Fed meeting is next week. So that's still a fair bit away. So my feeling is that probably we can't get out of this range until we hear more from the Fed. But at the moment, risk is skewed to the downside in the Euro because of that ECB meeting coming up. Now the other factor that's kind of in play today while we're seeing, according to our charts, a slight drop in these European pairs, but actually most of the European markets themselves, like Germany, the German DAX and the French CAC, as the cash prices were suggest slightly higher. But it's just the FTSE 100, or as we trade it, the UK 100, that's a bit lower today. And that's kind of because of this Chinese GDP report. As you can see here over on the right of my screen, it's these heavily weighted commodity stocks that are kind of dragging down the rest of the index. So without wishing to jump around too much, just while I'm talking about that, let's pull up the UK 100. I've been seeing it for a few of these past webinars. A lot of these global indices are looking kind of similar because it's concerns over Chinese growth and the Chinese currency devaluation that pushed them lower and they're all kind of dealing with the same global factors. Some showing more strength than others, but generally moving kind of in tandem. And so this chart looks a little bit busy, but let me just focus your attention on the main bits, which is if we're looking at weekly chart, it's made a higher low and then a higher high. So that's characteristic of an uptrend. We've dropped back down from that higher high, down to the breakout area in around this 6,260, rebounded strongly, but then stalled a bit at this 6,400. So obviously where we are now is do we continue up towards a bit of resistance from this broken trend line on the long-term chart. And indeed to the 61.8% fibrous placement. And indeed to these highs up here, this is the kind of barriers that we have to cross if prices are to move higher through this big decline that we had. Or is it here or maybe at one of these high resistance levels that this correction ends and we roll over. There's a possibility that we can't even get through this high from Friday and that we roll down into a lower price and try and pick up more buyers interested at lower prices and around the 6,000 round number again. You know, I haven't torn it in yet. It's only two prices, but if we do get a drop down here, I'll be keeping an eye on a rising trend line connecting these two lows. At the moment, this is kind of the resistance area, just beneath the 6,500. Now I'll pull up the US 30 chart because that's probably the strongest of the bunch. Obviously in the midst of US earnings season at the moment, it just had some bad results from Morgan Stanley. The results from the banks have been a bit mixed, but most of the investment banks have been kind of disappointing and that's kind of the thought process around earnings at the moment is a bit of a focus around the banks and hasn't been all that great. A lot of the kind of market volatility from August actually has played into it. Normally volatility is a good thing for trading, but the volatility was in and around the stock markets mostly and people have been frightened out a bit of the bond markets which tends to generate this profit to some of these banks. So US 30 can see similar kind of deal where we've broken through this, what was the 50% Fibonacci. I think stores there were now up into the 61.8. We did come back a bit from there. We're up and above the previous peak right on that Fib level now. Same deal where we're making higher highs and higher lows. Appear to have broken out of this bearish RSI zone. So we made an oversold level. And typically once you break back through the kind of 60, then we're more into the vicinity of looking at a buying market. We haven't moved into that overbought area yet to characterize more bullish trend in the market. That would be a stronger signal, but obviously that would typically involve us being at higher prices for the time being we're still below the 70 overbought and we're still below the 200-day moving average. So there's going to be reticence about buying as we approach the underside of that 200-day moving average. A lot of people have a rule that they won't buy below the 200. And they won't sell above it. So while that's the case, we're sort of limiting the possibility upside. And there's been a good run higher. Then we're certainly, the higher we get, the more worried there is going to be that we roll over. And so I've highlighted this level here, which I think was first marked out by that low, sort of false-braked and challenged here, chopped around here and then finally broke through in August. So I think that could be an area to watch out for and obviously just beneath that 200-day, which at the moment sits quite well with that peak on August 18th. We've also got some lows back here, which I had a trend line drawn in at the moment. So that's this in the nature of beast when we're pushing up into an uptrend, but at the moment we're not into clear skies. We're going up against these previous areas, all of which can cause either smaller, large corrections. You've just got to make a decision which way the trend is going. The moment the trend is up, that's where your bias should be, but you've just got to be cautious because we are below that 200-day moving average. Now, European markets are actually looking a bit softer, which goes slightly counter to the idea that there could be some more QE in the line. Now, this is the Germany 30 proxy for the DAX. And as you can see here, we've not even got close to these September peaks that we've pushed through in the U.K. and the U.S. I think part of that is that part of these gains in U.S. and U.K. indices have been born on a bit of return to strength in commodities, and there are some prominent oil and gas and mining companies in the U.S. and U.K., particularly the U.K., but not so much in Europe. We've got Total, who I think are actually reporting earnings this week in France, but nonetheless the bounce in commodities has not helped European markets as much as it has the U.K. and the U.S. and they're still the sort of German exporters. The car makers, obviously Volkswagen is prominent at the moment, are all not looking quite so good with the slowdown in China, because that's been a big market for them. So I think those exporters are a sort of drag on the European markets, whereas the commodity shares have been a bit of a boon for the U.K. and U.S. So if we do get a push through this resistance area in the Germany 30, I think that'll be a little trigger for another run higher in the other U.K. and U.S. indices as well. That's a bit of a barrier, I think, to global markets pushing higher as this area in the Germany 30 and the equivalent-looking ones in the French CAG and Euro 50. French 30, Euro 50. French 40, so. Now, I touched on the euro. Maybe just jump over to the pound. We've got Carney speaking tomorrow after markets close, around 6 p.m., I believe. We could have some things to say. But overall, not too much to push the pound around until we get to Thursday, which is a busy day anyway with ECB, but we have U.K. retail sales on Thursday. Technically, as I see it at the moment, we already highlighted this last week, and we're starting to see signs of this working now. What today is that we've got a pullback from this potential declining trend line here for a couple of days, but it was a pretty indiscriminate drop, not exactly heavy selling going on there, and what was notable is that we had an equivalent RSI trend line, and that had actually broken. So what I think we could be looking at here is the RSI gave us an early warning signal that price was going to break this trend line and maybe push up to this peak in September. This is one of the more valuable setups in the RSI. Sometimes it just looks a bit similar to price and doesn't tell you much, but I think this is potentially a good example of its usage. Obviously, we're above the 200-day moving average in the pound, but on a sort of weekly chart basis, we did make a lower low and make lower highs, but it was only just about a lower low, and I think it didn't actually close below. No, it didn't close as a lower low, so if you're looking at this weekly candlestick chart, which I'd always recommend doing, that was essentially a false break, because it broke below, and yes, on a daily chart we closed below, but on a weekly chart we didn't, and that's the big swings that we're dealing with. So that false break there has triggered this move up here and maybe the initial trigger for us to get a test right back up to this high, and this little false break that is down the trend line that we're talking about on the daily chart could just be the next little minor trigger to get us finally there. But overall, we've had this break of this defining trend line. It was looking pretty bearish at this point in the 20th of September, but we couldn't do the break, so as much as you wanted that to be a push, a nice sell up the broken trend line down to the low, you did first have to get through there with the previous low first, and we weren't able to, specifically on a closing basis, and hence we're pushing up again. So once we get up here, that's going to be this previous peak, and it's going to be another test of this trend line, and that's going to be some pretty hefty resistance, but just the fact that it didn't work the first time to me suggests we're still just in a range-bound environment and could even get back up to the peaks around 158 again. I'll just notice the chat here when there's been a bit of a chat about timeframe of charts. So I think in terms of, so I've been discussing this from a sort of weekly and daily perspective. Obviously those would typically not be the timeframe charts that you use for day trading, and I know a lot of you out there will be day trading. The way I would characterize the usage of this, the material that I present is, it's really best to be aware of these longer-term patterns and trigger points and not to be on the wrong side of them. So if you're looking at a little, maybe you'd trade some particular indicator set up on a one-hour or four-hour chart. Don't take a return from an oversold level on the stochastic indicator on a four-hour chart. If, as a buying opportunity, if we're right at the resistance level, as suggested on a daily or weekly chart, you're buying right into a resistance level. So even though you've got that trigger there, it's just less likely to work. So the traders that I speak to, the ones that have the best success are the ones that consider the daily timeframes, the weekly and daily timeframes, and the more significant longer-term levels that everyone's watching. And then they dig down to those lower timeframes if they have the time to do so and more specifically take those little short-term opportunities in line with that longer-term picture. Now obviously, not a lot of us do have time to go to those lower timeframes if you're working all day. It's pretty tricky to sort of split your mind across your day-to-day work and those short timeframe trades that require a bit more attention. Now, they're certainly worthwhile using those shorter timeframes, but not if you don't have the time to do so. You'll end up sort of taking trades without enough analysis. You'll see something without having really studied it properly, take the trade, and then it could or could not work out, but over a longer stretch of time you'll start to notice that you're missing things because you're sort of jumping in and analyzing the market but not with enough time to do so. That's certainly been my experience anyway. But more power to you if you do have the time, because obviously what you can do is when I'm talking about this trend line here and perhaps it's going to break and to me it looks like it will, you can dip down to the four-hour chart and look for some short-term patterns to verify that it is in fact breaking or give some specific buy triggers to justify that longer-term outlook.  I hope it works out. You've got a bit of extra... a little extra confluence, a little extra confidence if you have a short-term buy signal to justify that longer-term pattern. RSI, you can really use it just the same in the one-hour and four-hour charts you do the day. It's just the same with all indicators. They're just less reliable on the short-term. You get more false breaks on the short-term, more false indicator signals, but obviously you get more of them. So that's the choice. Can you handle all these false breaks and the associated extra-losing trades in order to get that higher number of trades? Bit of a dive edge there, but I hope that was useful. While we're on the currency, we've got a little request for sterling yen. You can certainly have a look at that. You ask for that a lot, Gordon. I should just add that to my watch list here because I always say just have your a yen. I don't have... It's just a good point in general, I think, that obviously a lot of currency markets out there and unless you're trading on a very long-term basis, it's hard to cover all of them and you just have to make cuts somewhere. For some reason, the pound yen just hasn't quite made my cut even though it is a nice volatile pair to trade. So I'm sure you have this line on there. So this will be my first starting point. We're getting some kind of breaks here, but still it's holding quite well this trend line. You can probably draw it in different ways. So far there hasn't been a particularly categoric break lower. There's been a couple of false breaks and we're kind of holding in around this 50-day moving average and this rising trend line at the moment. I guess if you'd change the trend line over to here, we're looking good. So I think that's what we're, you know, we've had a bit of a break of that other long-term one, which is something to be cautious of, but we're holding this more interim trend line and, you know, it's kind of just a sideways market and it's slightly long by a sideways market. So even though I think there's a risk of a breakdown, as we fell short of that 200 level, there's a big psychological level. Obviously there are a lot of people paying attention to it. I think that that finally did us in. Still, you know, it's not that this has to always hold weight, but on a macro basis, UK looks a lot more likely to be raising interest rates in Japan, you know, and there's speculation that Japan may actually increase the size of their QE program, which, you know, if they were to announce that, that would be a massive surge and break of 200, I would imagine, in Sterling Yen. So with that risk on the table, I think there's only so far that people short the market would be willing to take Sterling Yen and I would always be slightly biased to being on the long side, but it's obviously a bit of a choppy market. Now, near the lower end of the scale, coming off a slightly oversold kind of level. So, you know, move through 50, break through some, you know, the short-term resistances as you look on the daily chart, you know, as we're approaching it here, entering a sort of breakout at this level. You know, there's only, I wouldn't really buy a base too much of this broken trend line, but so it's a factor. Had a bit of a break, trend line. It's kind of, this was a nice confluence of trend line retouches down here and we're moving off it and it looks like we could get a break through this peak. You know, a break through this RSI. So a few factors to me suggesting we've got a bit more, a bit more room to the upside, but just the MAs are pointing down. So it's, you know, kind of going against the trend in the short-term, if you like, just in the belief that kind of longer-term rise is going to play out. Hope that helps. So since I covered Pound Yen, I don't think, I think similar, similar factors at play with the Dolly Yen. Let's skip over to commodities. Now, Gold, we're entering our third day of declines here and actually explains why Rangold and Fresnillo, some of the biggest mining companies for Gold, are top-decliners on the FTSE 100 today, is because of this slight step back that Gold has had in and what has otherwise been a pretty great run. I highlighted this channel a bit late just after the pullback here. Thought, well, actually, that looks sort of, you know, you see that, if you follow the markers, and if you see that bottom-rising trend line and you see a pullback from a sort of slightly indiscriminate area, and you think, well, hold on, actually, that looks about equidistant. Wacking that channel pattern down here, just one of the draw tools.  And it's playing out from the time being. So at the moment, we're dealing with this previous peak. Could get a rally off here. Certainly an opportunity in this area, but for me, maybe a slightly lower risk opportunity down at these two peaks here, which is in the sort of, I think I made a note in the chart forum. There is about 152 to 157, yeah. That sort of vicinity. And then if we get a drop that down through the trend line or through that low on October 8th, there, you know, certainly not looking too good for the old at that point. You know, still the rising trend line could help, but the fact that we weren't able to get through the 200-day moving average for several days would be a pretty negative sign and see a lot of people capitulate, I think. So, you know, this is the overall picture. Just always keep this trend in mind. We've sort of got a big, you know, trying to draw too much unnecessarily on the job. We've got a bit of a kind of sloping channel down there. Hasn't massively accelerated to the downside from that channel. And so still certainly scope to push up towards, you know, where that... Let me just draw it in for argument's sake. It's basically that. There's a good chance we could push up here, which would be in sort of two, you know, one to 50 kind of area at a stretch. Depending on how quickly we get there. One to 40, maybe more conservatively. And these people's peaks here that I had drawn in had more like one to 30.  You know, if we could push back through that 200-day, I think, you know, wouldn't be too difficult to get back up to this kind of region. Yeah, it's distorted it slightly on the daily basis of the weekly drawing. So, you know, the big ones as always with gold is really just the prospects of a U.S. rate hike and, you know, any kind of turbulence in the stock markets. It hadn't been working for a while as a safe haven. But in the last bouts of sell-off, you know, it actually did work quite well. And obviously, we're getting a bit of a recovery in stocks at the moment, and gold is moving higher. So a bit of an on-off relationship in terms of a safe haven, not all that reliable. But it's a fact. Obviously, Mark, it's a bit nervous at the moment, but I'll tell you probably the most significant factor is that we've scaled back when we think the U.S. Fed is likely to raise rates, and that's been weak, you know, hitting the dollar and helping in gold and silver. So talking of silver, let's have a little jump across to that. Not much to say on this other than that we've got a little potential setup with bearish RSI divergence in compliments with a declining, do I need a weekly? No, yep. So a few ways you can draw this trend line, but a very basic way would be connecting these two larger peaks. And that's kind of where we are at the moment, that sort of vicinity. If you connect these two later larger peaks, that would put us higher. So there's a risk to the upside that we push up to that again, given the fact that we had so many attempts to push below 14 failed, but, you know, it's still a generally negative bias on the long term, and so slightly over the medium term, high probability to sell them to buy, I would say. But at the moment, we've got this little specific trigger where the price has attempted a new high, failed to follow through in and around that declining trend line, and a lower high on the RSI. So it could take us back down to that rising trend line. Having been also at the overboard level, so it could take us back down to this spike low around 1540, perhaps down to, what I think is probably the significant level within this mess of a few peaks here. It's about the 1520, and over to Crudall. So obviously looking pretty positive when we broke out of this consolidation that took forever during September. It looked good at the start of October. We just failed at that previous peak, and I've dropped right back down. Closed below this area, which to me is a pretty negative sign, but managed to hold up with a little weekly daily engulfing bullish pattern of the lower level of internal resistance there. Not much to go by. I think that was maybe the 61.8-ish as well of that rise. But now we're starting to roll over again. So there's two levels for me on this. It's not too certain at the moment if we close below 50 and close below 50 on the RSI, turns the bias negative for a retest at the bottom of the range. Likewise, if we manage to close above 50 again and hold the RSI 50, that to me suggests the top of the range. But it's rain fading conditions. Obviously harder to call the market. We're right in the middle of the range at the moment. And I would characterize the middle of the range as 50 on both price and RSI. So I think that's about it for this week's testing analysis webinar head that was useful. Certainly feel free to get in touch with the company if you wanted any extra, if you had any extra questions. I'm happy to field any extra questions outside of time on the webinar now, but I'm going to end the recording. I'm certainly happy to chat after the webinar or obviously if you need to digest this first, just get in touch with our customer service department and they'll be able to go into anything in more detail or can certainly pass any comments from you to me. So again, I hope that was useful. Good luck with trading this week. Definitely be interesting with the ECB and the Euro to see which way that eventually goes. And it could be a bit of a turning point for the stock market were they to suggest any extra policy. I don't think they probably will, but it's certainly worth watching. Alright guys, thanks a lot.