Good morning and happy Thursday, the Ides of October one and all. I'm Kate Byrne and I'm the President of Intentional and Socap Global. I'm really excited to have the opportunity to have a really informative and interesting conversation around resilience, insurance, and democratization of capital. That's a big mouthful, but that is really the passion and the purpose of today's guest in creating and building her company. I'm joined today by Kate Stillman, who's the CEO and founder of Jumpstart, and we are going to learn a lot about everything I just said and a little bit more. So without further ado, what I usually do and many of you who check in, you know the drill, what I'm going to ask is, would you please post your questions in the chat box. We'll pose them up to Kate after Kate and I have a chance to have a conversation over the next 30 minutes or so. And then we'd also love to know where are you joining us from and what would you like to learn. What are some of the stumbling blocks or questions. There's none that are not to go there.  I still think it is one of those topics that so many people are really nervous about so cast that all aside, come on in and join in the conversation. So Kate, welcome welcome. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you Kate really appreciate the opportunity. So, tell us a little bit about how you got here. Like what led you here what's been sort of your journey first is as a human and as an entrepreneur and as a company builder. Thank you so much for asking you know I think that, as you said my name is Kate still well and the point about being a human is really what drives all of us, and what forms the purpose for the careers and the journeys of all of us as as human beings So I'll start on that note because when I was 18, I had experienced this setback in my life, and I had an opportunity to really dig deep and exhibit resilience at a really quite a young age and resilience then ended up becoming the theme of the rest of my career and The specific thing that happened to me is that I was diagnosed with the cancer form of lymphoma, which is cancer of the immune system called Hodgkin's lymphoma. And it was, it was shocking in my personal life it was shocking to my parents it was shocking to know whether or not, you know how I would fare and coming face to face with the sort of the mortality that we all have. It wasn't in danger of dying immediately but there was a lot of uncertainty about the treatment and it was scary. And it was it caused me to have to dig deep into my inner resources. And that led me to really have this simpatico with all these, every single human being is faced with a setback at some point in their life and at some point has to dig deep and tap into those inner resources to be able to be the, the really resilient that they truly are so it was it's really the theme of resilience that has characterized my life and my career as well. What are the other areas where I mean you've really put it to work it sounds I'm sure you know running a business right now. Starting a business, but then coven 19 hits. And Shazam, what is that done for you both as a, again, going to focus a little bit in the beginning about you as a as a person and as a leader, and then the company overall. I mean, has it been, I feel like I'm asking the obvious question but I'm clearly it's it's got to have been exhausting. So how has it impacted you. Yeah. So the, you know, I live in California, Berkeley, California, and here the shelter in place mandate has been in place in different phases ever since March 13. And, you know, the, there was a big, just a huge difference in daily life between before and after. And a lot of us are starved for socialization are craving the old life because life will never be the same. But at the same time it has helped. You know, again, this is on the personal side, cultivate a sense of gratitude. We have food on the table. Our kids are healthy. Our community is, you know, the hospitals are not overwhelmed. The community is doing what it needs to be able to be able to cope. And there's so many good things that the air in California is clear today after having a month of smoke and so there's so many things to be grateful for. And I'm just so grateful that the opportunity that this pandemic that this shock has inspired more reasons for us to be for me individually and for us as a community and and do within the company as well. To see the, the small beauties of life. So, okay. How what brought you to starting this company, particularly, like, yeah, so, yeah, tell us, tell us that now you've overcome. But it just resilience, pulsing through your body and your band. And you say, All right, I know I'm going to start a company. Tell me about that Lee, that's a big one. Yeah, thanks. It wasn't like Athena jumping, you know, popping out of the head of born. There was actually a progression. It's I started my career as a structural engineer. So designing the working with architects to design the skeletons of buildings. And in particular, the most part of structural engineering that had the most appeal to me because of this resilience theme was designing buildings be safe and earthquakes, because earthquakes are dramatic and they're dynamic the forces are dynamic and when they occur, people die not because of the earth shaking people die when their buildings collapsing and how can we bring our talents to bear on building, literally physically building resilience into our infrastructure. And so it's a very gratifying career my heart is still still has strong ties to the structural engineering community. But I was working for about eight years. And now this gives away my age, but that's okay. Can Katrina struck. And I had a professional crisis.  They're, they're necessary but not sufficient. There's all these other elements of disaster resilience. And one of the big missing pieces is making sure there's enough money in the system so that people can stay in their homes. One of the things that happened after Hurricane Katrina, little known fact, 40% of the residents of New Orleans at that time left and never came back. So the New Orleans population has has come back close to pre Katrina levels, but not all of them with people that used to live there and so there was a major dislocation of the original residents some of whom lived there for generations. The next big challenge of building resilience is making sure that there's financial equity in making sure that individuals can have enough money to get over the hump, enough money to make the difference between having to flee and uproot their families or being able to stay tough it out for a couple months, help neighbors rebuild and really get a jumpstart on their recovery process so that the community as a whole can get a jumpstart on its recovery. Now that was one of the questions I was going to ask is, hence the name. Hence the name. So that's literally really what the name is all about right it's all people get that boost and that lift that they need.  So it's got to be extraordinarily helpful, a God send as a were to have some kind of access to capital like that, or support beyond just capital. I mean also, you know, so that's another thing it's with insurance. This is a tricky conversation right I mean I know we talked to my father so life insurance so there you are talking about someone's, you know, pending death. With something like this. How do you gauge in that conversation how do you and, and you find yourself going beyond just a vendor partner, and really more a steward for somebody's future, and their resilience and their commitment and helping be one of the bricks bricks in their future foundation as they rebuild from what's lost. Wow, I, you. Thank you for saying it that way because it is very very clearly one of the bricks in the in the rebuilding of the foundation of our personal livelihoods. I think that just briefly I'll touch on the role of insurance, sort of the macro economy, which is that the purpose of insurance it's a hallmark of a mature economy because the role it plays is to buffer against financial shocks, so that a shock whether it's the shock of a natural disaster, or the shock of pandemic, or, or whatever shock it is doesn't create this economic spiral of debt, or of, you know that that exacerbates the social inequities the financial inequities that exist. You know money isn't everything. We need social connections, desperately we all know we all have a current situation realize how much we need this we need good governance, but money can make the difference and so you know insurance provides that buffer against, you know, against falling into the tipping point. So, and I think I'll just take a moment to explain what jumpstart does and then I'm going to answer your question.  And you use the money for whatever you need. Can you define large just real quick, because for those of us in California I know what I would say is large but in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. So what constitutes large? Is it 5.0, 6.0? Is it referring to damage done? How would you define that? Yeah, thank you for asking. It's based on transparent public data from the US Geological Survey, and it's based on shaking intensity. The US Geological Survey publishes these color coded maps called shake maps of shaking intensity and everything in the red zone, which is never a perfect circle. Sometimes it's blotchy, sometimes it's even multiple circles, even from the same earthquake. Everybody in the red zone qualifies all of our customers in the red zone qualify for their $10,000 payment. And I should be clear, the jumpstart product is available at this point in time in California only. So the purpose of the $10,000 is to get over the hump. You know, it only pays for a couple months worth of expenses. It doesn't, it's not enough, obviously not enough to rebuild a home, especially in California.  And so the purpose getting back to your original question is to reinforce that inner resilience. So for traditional earthquake, or any kind of insurance really, there's this awkward discussion about, okay, they have to be, there's this bad thing that could happen. And here's a buffer against, you know, it provides you finances in case the bad thing happens. But, you know, having this instant payout reverses that conversation to seeing, to tapping into the inner resilience and being able to say, we all know the bad things can happen. But, and we all feel this sense of resourcefulness, we all do have this inner resilience. And here's something that can reinforce and make it, you know, the resources, you know, a resource to then allow you to tap into your inner resourcefulness and reinforce how you can make your own future and start over. And so that's the beauty of this instant payout, what we call parametric insurance, which triggers based on data. Which is terrific, because if ever you needed something to literally help you move forward, it's at that moment. Because the last thing anybody wants in the aftermath situation is to be like going back and forth, calculating up their damage, trying to find an insurance adjuster. There's so many other things that we need to be that we are already going to be focused on. We're going to be sitting there, the earth stops shaking. First thing we do is we look inward. Okay, am I safe. My heart is racing. Now, then I look to my family. Okay, is everybody okay? We're crawling out from under the tables. And then we start looking externally. Okay, lots of things fell off the shelves. The house is not on fire. The apartment building is not getting flooded. Okay, we're all going to walk slowly outside.  And, you know, the we're all in this shocked situation. The last thing we want is to have to worry whether the money is going to come and what is the processing and what is the paperwork that we're going to be able to have to do to get the money. So I have a question for you because something you just said struck a chord. So here I too live in California here in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area live up in an area called San Rafael. And just recently, everyone knows listening that we had these horrific fires. So I found fires to the north, all directions, we literally were surrounded and hello, I live surrounded by eucalyptus trees, which means I'm literally essentially in a fire pit, which is beautiful, as long as it doesn't go light. So a couple of years ago when paradise fires took place, we got a call from our insurance, our home insurance company that said, we're canceling your insurance. And I was like, why? And it was because we were 500 miles away from a fire. This is before any of the fires that happened here. So my question, long winded is, is, is jumps, is, is this a good product to get for those who have yet or is it precaution for those who have yet to experience and kind of are on outskirts of areas that can be hit by, say, in this case, earthquakes. So preemptive. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that what I'll say to that is that you live in California. I live in California, a lot of Californians and especially people first moving into California. They're, they are aware of the earthquake risk.  I believe the big one is coming. But it's like we're 10 months pregnant. That's what they say.  And but there's so many people who don't want to ignore it and don't have the time to do to be a full on prepper and want this sort of easy first step to get prepared in a way that costs only on average $20 a month, and which is, you know, doesn't take too much time and yet provides these this first layer of support system to get you over the hump. Right. It's a terrific piece of mind right there where it then is enables a person to just go about their business just kind of knowing okay whatever happens I'm covered. I don't have to sit there and really think hard about this. Shifting gears a little bit here in terms of being a business owner, because we've got some questions that will touch base in a couple of a couple of minutes but around running a business. What has been the best part of being your own boss and the best part of starting your own business. So many good things about starting business and being the boss but I'd say that two things really rise to the top. One is being able to bring together the best team, the best possible teammates surrounding myself with people who are smarter who are more capable than I am and really playing off of each other to build something that's greater than any one of us individually can do. And that doesn't just include the employees that includes the partners that we work with. That includes the whole ecosystem of what it takes to run a business and just being able to be surrounded by this ecosystem that is creating great purpose in the world and is leaving the world a better place and being the change that we want to see in the world altogether and as a group. And I would say that the second one is really what I just touched on which is being able to live my life's work and to take this theme and make something, make good, make something good in the world. The process of making the fact that it's a thing, a real thing that's going to have a real effect on people's lives and that it's for good and that it's going to improve the state of the world and has a higher purpose in addition to a financial purpose. Is it lonely. I mean you know we all hear about how it's lonely at the top and it's, I mean I know for myself it certainly is.  I mean, well I should stop and just let you answer the first question. I'm just really curious. Also being a woman in that industry isn't that industry. Are there a lot of women at least senior women or individual owners of their businesses because I would think that's a whole other magnitude and other area of disparity and potential loneliness. Yeah, so I'll say that I think every person has some degree of feeling loneliness every person has a unique journey and the founders journey is no different. There are things that a founder and a business leader grapple with that are the majority of other people don't And that part of it is lonely but I wouldn't say that overall it's lonely. I think that, you know, as I said we're surrounded by this, these amazing group of people both internally and externally, I have an extremely supportive family I would not have been able to do this without the support of my spouse my children, my, my parents my siblings. The social support and the social connection is a huge element of being able to have the wherewithal to be able to to buffer against the, the setbacks in in the journey.  It's a very collegial environment, in spite of the, the different proportions. And so I was very used to the being a minority and not, and you know not seeing the, that's not interpreting that as disparity. There's a big part of that that you know once, once I get over once women get over the, the shock of being in the minority, if finding ways of working with their counterparts that are constructive, and that respect the differences of both parties there's so much richness that diversity brings. And, and, and I think that's where, that's where I'll leave it. And so I understand that all too well. And I think that's really true I think it's how one looks at it and approaches it. And in many ways actually suffering as an option. So now speaking of setbacks. What has been the hardest decision you've had to make. What were your options. And why did you choose to go the way you did. So what was, what, take us through that process and what the thinking that you that you that framework that decision process and or even prioritization process that you put yourself through. Because that I think is so core for so many entrepreneurs and business owners it's it's learning best practices and getting inspired by those who are in different sectors. And I think this is particularly a great opportunity for folks to learn. Sure. So I have two different forms of answering that questions one, the first is more cerebral, a more of an academic answer. And that I'll keep that one short, which is my decision process and facing facing setbacks is two part one is, you know, combination of analytical and intuitive and not Ignoring either one of those making sure that I'm paying attention to the sensations the feelings the intuition and at the same time not putting all of my weight in that basket also doing running the numbers using the metrics using the data to inform to have the best possible piece of information to reduce the most uncertainty. So that's that that's the cerebral answers the real answer, but now I'll tell the talent in a storytelling way. And I'll just describe one example. This is pretty much the worst thing so far that has happened to the company, which was, you know, the first the shock value, I had to lay off the whole team in one day and save the company through a publicity stunt. And the backstory is, we were set to launch our insurance product in August of 2017 August 24 of 2017 the date makes a difference. And, you know, the payouts for the $10,000 per customer doesn't come from a fledgling startup. We are partnered with a reinsurance company, which is reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies. And so the money after the earthquake comes directly from this very large bucket pool of money directly to the customers without jumpstart jumpstart is only the facilitating technology in that portion of it. So we had to have this partnership with this reinsure on August 17. So this is seven days before our launch we had been working. We've been working together 18 months shoulder to shoulder to bring this product to life to integrate the technology to make sure that we're both agreed from our legal perspective and a regulatory perspective. August 17 they called me said, we changed our mind for whatever reason, you can't do that. Well, you know, we had, we had an agreement but we didn't have the next phase will be they changed their mind. It was what it was. And we so we weren't able to launch because we wouldn't have been able to make good on the promise of delivering $10,000 after the earthquake. And so I realized, oh my gosh, it took us more than two years to be able to get to this point. How long will it take to get a different partner. Because we have to go into straight cash conservation mode. I was had very eight very difficult conversations all in the same day. As a surprise, not having prepared okay how do you how do you lay somebody off in a way that preserves their dignity and tells them you appreciate how much you've done. And, and we two of them agreed to stay on on a essentially volunteer basis. For the next two months so that we could execute our last ditch effort. So we have an earthquake simulator. This is a trailer that you tow behind to pick up a truck, and it's on hydraulic actuators actually the same technology used for low riding cars, and it's built by the person who his name is um I will tell you his name in just a second but he has the world record in hopping cars so these are full size cars without a driver in them the remote control but full size cars and the wheels have the hydraulic actuator and you get them going and you hop and they hop and they hop and they bounce, and the world record is 13 foot one inch from the ground to the underside of the wheel. That's like taller than a house. That's a couple of stories. I mean that. Wow. Okay, so he built this this earthquake simulator for us. And he, we.  So we took the earthquake trailer to a conference called insure tech connect. It's an annual conference every year in Las Vegas although this year it was online and virtual. We were in Caesar's Palace with this big trailer and hundreds of people came in and experienced an earthquake they were all taking a social media videos selfies of themselves and posting it. One of the posts was the best thing about this conference is the jumpstart shaker. And who was the innovation lead at the Lloyd syndicate that we are now working with. And so a partnership was born to this, but it was effectively a publicity stunt. So this, this sad story it does happen happy ending but it was really excruciating to actually go through the experience of it. Oh my gosh so were you able to hire some of the folks back or have you done that over time. Yes, so a couple of the same folks and mostly a new set of teammates and the name I just want to give them a high five in a virtual high five john Markowitz john Markowitz and he's based in Bakersfield so if you have any needs for a low riding car or similar related technology you give I've got it said that is a good name to have in your back pocket. I will say on when it won't be probably for a few years but the next time we have so cap it live, I would love to have that simulator there. I think that would be terrific. Not for everybody I mean there's plenty of folks who have PTSD after earthquakes because they're scary. But for those of us for whom it's not as traumatic. It's, it's certainly an experience. Oh my goodness. So I'm Interesting that you're talking about the format and the way that the business was set up and such we I wanted to turn and ask you a question that Nikita per sod and Nikita hope I got your name right was asking how was your product received by the insurance sector, the regulators and the incumbents. Great question. So I'll start with the sort of two part question regulators and incumbents I'll start with the regulators. So the Nine out of 10 Californians for go earthquake insurance that is So earthquake insurance is non mandatory. And what that means is that there's this huge majority of the population that is either going to have to rely on their savings or public aid, but savings. A lot of people don't have savings and public aid FEMA is the first to admit that that their resources could be too little too late. And so that means that there's a huge opportunity to for from the insurance perspective but there's also a huge need and huge opportunity to do good and help fill that gap. There's a big gap. And the regulator knows about this and in the 2014 inaugural speech of the then insurance commissioner Dave Jones is number one priority out of three priorities is number one was get more Californians protected for earthquakes. So when we went, we have a strategy of engage early engage often with the regulator we started our regulatory or we started we started jumpstart we found a jumpstart on March 1 2015. We started selling policies in 2018 but on June 1 2015. The very first thing we did is meet with the regulator and Dave Jones himself was not there at the meeting but two of his deputy commissioners were there. And the, the most important thing we got out of the meeting is do we have an alignment of values. Do we have an alignment of mission do we have an alignment of purpose. And the main purpose, which Dave had already said in his speech was get more California is protected for earthquake was absolutely right there because that's our purpose as a benefit corporation are specific public benefit is increased economic stimulus after a natural disaster. And the way we do so is through this private market product, the more people who are protected, the more people the more stimulus there is the more people who are protected, the more the regulator is doing their job for consumer protection. So that's how the California regulator perceived it. The notion of a parametric product more generally is perceived by generally perceived by regulators as on the fence on one hand. On one hand. Yes, absolutely. It has the potential this awesome potential to bring technology to bear on filling insurance gaps and getting more money flowing into the system. But the caveat is we have to make sure that customers understand what it is and what it's not the fact that it's only this lump sum of money that it's not a substitute or a replacement for your typical make me whole insurance policy. So that's from the regulatory point of view from the incoming point of view. I mean, again, there's sort of, there's two sides of it. One side is seeing the great market opportunity and the financial opportunity to cover these these gaps and sell more insurance quite frankly. But the other side of it is, almost pretty much the same as the regulatory side, what if consumers misunderstand, and will that get us into trouble. And should we be willing to take a risk on this new product category of parametric versus just sort of doubling down on our cash cow of the existing local business. So the incumbents are taking a wait and see approach and letting the startups like jumpstart take the risk of introducing this new product category. And so for them it's more of a build versus buy question. So I hope that answers your question. Nikita, please let us know if you just give a sign in the chat that would be terrific about whether that is a satisfactory answer. So I'm going to have done based on that since you just sort of brought that up the parametric. And yes, thank you well done. Brent Barnett has a question. Financially speaking, is your product an insurance product, or is it a derivative product. Very advanced question. Thank you for that. So a parametric product could in theory be structured as either one. We have structured it as insurance and there's a reason for that. We specifically are targeting we want, we want a lot of people we want this to build equity across a widespread swath of society we want it to be accessible to many, many consumers at many levels of economic socioeconomic status. So that's why we chose a product that was a $10,000 payout because it can be bought for $20 per month, which is affordable for many people. But the flip side of that is as we want the payout not to be taxable, because to get this money in the aftermath of a disaster and then have to pay 20% tax on it or maybe more doesn't feel good. It doesn't seem right. And so it was very critical to us to have it be classified as an insurance product for not only the tax reason but also because insurance has so many consumer protections. So in theory one could structure a parametric product as a financial derivative but in this case it didn't make sense. And you're right that point of entry is really important, especially for the folks who are probably most likely to be hit hard, based on where their houses are just, I'm thinking of for instance in Oakland and Berkeley and Hayward where the San Andreas fault is local locally, it's through some of the, you know, harder neighborhoods. And so that's really terrific in terms of making it a much more accessible. Before we move on to the next question and tell the story from one of our customers. Please. And I think this will really shine a light on it. So, one of our customers is Molly. She lives in Napa, although she grew up in, in North Oakland. She is, well, she's now, she's now 31 years old, and she works in the service industry. And she was in Napa at the time of there was a magnitude six earthquake in 2014 so this is now six years ago. And it was, you know, in the middle of the night on a between on a Saturday night three in the morning on a Sunday morning. And so it was enough that those of us in Oakland and Berkeley could like, you know, we felt a little jolt, and we woke up and rolled over and was like, Okay, that was no big deal. But the central Napa had some level of economic disruption. It wasn't total mass destruction but there were an old brick buildings where the bricks fell off there was, you know, buildings that got flooded because the sprinklers came on because they were shaking and then it was three in the morning so by the time the maintenance person got there there was you know hours and hours of, of water. But Molly at the time was working for a local pizzeria that was in one of these old brick buildings that you see in a lot of downtown areas. And that pizzeria had done the right thing break buildings are notoriously dangerous in earthquakes because the bricks can sort of shake loose and then fall if you get a brick on your head, you're going to be hurting. And so the pizzeria had done the right thing they had done a seismic retrofit. It's a structural engineering task, and you they put in these steel braces, diagonal braces on the inside so that the bricks would stay intact and not hurt their customers. And then when the earthquake happened, the initial their their building initially got a green tag that means safe to occupy, but very shortly afterward they got a yellow tag, which means restricted access and then a red tag. Shortly thereafter which means do not enter. Nobody not even the owner can go in or nearby. Why at no fault of their own. It was because the building next door, which was also brick had not been retrofitted the owner had not done the right thing. The parapet which is the part of the wall that sticks up above the roof was had some bricks loose and those bricks were in danger in an aftershock of falling through the pizzeria's roof and and hurting the customer. And so the, instead of the building next door the owner of the building next door then going up to the parapet just taking down the parapet, they didn't. And so the pizzeria had to build a whole catchment structure on top of their roof which took them months to build before they could reopen. And finally, didn't have a job for several months. And, you know, she got a few things going on with her with a couple of gigs, but nevertheless, she was a. The aftermath of this economic so this macroeconomic disruption, which she had was no fault of her own was not related to her personal belongings, and for which $10,000 really would have made a difference to meet her expenses for a few months to to to proceed forward and start the recovery process. Wow, that's amazing. I just, I go back I think back to the 1989 earthquake. And I know, in the media business at least, there were a couple of folks, we lost some colleagues, because the unreinforced building collapsed completely. And also all the glass blowing out. I mean there's just so many different aspects that you can't even imagine, especially when you're not used to experiencing something at that, at that level. So, yeah, wow, thank God for you and, and Molly that you have each other. Thank you. So, shifting into, you know, getting a business started. What refuels you. And then how do you put that to work to refuel your business. Like how do you take care of yourself and how do you source your own resilience.  Thank you for asking. And it's essentially, it doesn't necessarily sound like a personal question, but it's a, it's a deeply personal question. I'm not afraid to go personal as you could. Yes, you could tell. Yeah, and if it is to by all means, just, it's so helpful, because it's one of the biggest things as leaders, we hold so much and we want to do we want to do it but then there comes a time. In order for us, we've got to put our own mask on first before we put it on for others. I was talking to I will answer the question but I just want to do a quick diversion. I was talking to my daughter who's nine. One of my daughters is nine. And I was talking to her about empathy, and she said, Mama, do you think I have good empathy because you know they talk about social emotional learning in in in school, even though it's distance thing. And I said, sweetie, you have beautiful empathy, so much empathy. I'm really admire one of the things I admire most about you is your empathy. And, and then she kind of had this little feel sense of smile of pride on her face and, and then I don't know if this was a mistake or not but then I said, and you know the thing about empathy is sometimes you know things about what other people are feeling you know what they need before they do. And so it comes with a lot of responsibility. And she immediately started crying. Yeah, I feel so much responsibility. But I totally relate yet because there's this feeling of this responsibility. There's so much weight on my shoulder. And it's you know all I can do sometimes occasionally is all I can do not to feel this sense of despondency. This is why this is a personal question. And being able to sort of breathe, find my keel, recognize that the responsibility is a gift. I don't need to be despondent.  You know, for me, I, I love being out there I love creating change in the world, but I'm intrinsically I'm an introvert, and I recharge by with time to myself. Breathing meditation prayer. Reading. And, you know, I don't. It's hard to get enough of that, even in the shelter in place mode because the as much as I love my family, we're all in this small house together, all the time and I love them but it's run top of each other. So, and the second thing about the team and inspiring the team and the stakeholders, the customers. You know, coming back to being authentic and tapping into who I who I truly am and what's truly motivating me instead of trying to sort of gloss over with the everything is great everything is awesome. Exactly. I think degree lens a degree of credibility and authenticity to what we're doing and how we're reaching out to our two and partnering with our stakeholders. I, I think one of the things that we all, and perhaps this is if there are one of the gifts of coven can learn is with regards to responsibility and accountability. I think our, our an empath is recognizing which part is yours is actually somebody else's. And then at least what I've taught my daughters I've got to hyper empaths and believe me years are nine minor now 21 and 25 and anyone on listening, you know what I speak, there's peaks and there's very deep palace and getting to that other side but also really Okay, this is where my little, there's a boundary and I can help and I can do what I can do. And then I need to pass it on over to to the to the other person and you can kind of only do what you can, what you can really do to help them. Absolutely, absolutely, and not taking it all upon oneself because not only is that impossible, but it just sets up expectations that are unrealistic, not just for yourself but among the other people on your team. I agree the entire the entire ecosystem. Um, so, Eric Salvat, Salvatiera love that name is joining from Seattle, and he wanted to hear some frameworks that professionals follow throughout their practices. So are there, are there key. You know, are there key processes that you use to kind of either decide I'm going to move forward and go down this path with with this partner, or what is some of the telltale signs that you turn to to say like what are your red flags, or your I can think one would be values alignment right out the gate. Right. So that probably takes a lot of folks out but but when you're looking at future partners or potential partners for collaboration, what are you looking for. So for instance, what if folks wanted to help or join in and jump in. Aside from, you know, guess obviously purchasing perhaps policies and things like that but what what are other ways that folks can work with you and support you and help you. Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks Eric for asking it, and thanks Kate for adding the context. Jumpstart is available direct to consumers so you can go on the internet search for jumpstart insurance and you'll find us. If you're in California you can buy a policy but also one of the things this this this first comment is really a response to Eric. One of the things we learned from our customers is their journeys, like Molly, and one of the, one of the parts of the journey that we're most interested in is when are people most interested in buying jumpstart or and getting about protection. And that is data that is informing our strategy. So we're not just shooting from the hip in terms of processes and decision criteria. As a business person, we use that that information that we gain from the stories from the data to then focus and make most effective are our strategies going forward. And so specifically the strategy. To answer your question Kate is in terms of partners. So I'm glad you brought that up because not only are we is jumpstart available directly, but we are also making jumpstart available through partnerships. And so one ideal partnership is employee benefits. One of the things that we learned from our customers is that we have a company who's really committed to building resilience, and who has a complete resilience plan not just disaster recovery but the elements of resilience which are financial wellness and tapping into those inner resources making sure that you have recharged like going back to the previous question methods of recharging. And also to the resilience of the organization. It only makes sense to have a parametric employee benefit that pays in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Another example of potential partners is people moving. When people are moving, they're thinking about. What are the risks, and I'm moving closer to the Hayward fall to farther and I'm moving into a wildfire zone, and they ask these questions they're attuned their sensitive they're open to these questions of how what are the best way to prepare my finances given this big shift, literally a shift in my lifestyle. And so partners who are tuned into the customer journey of relocation and moving our ideal partners to work with jumpstart so we can improve the customer journey on your side. That's actually a really interesting point you just brought up because obviously there's a ton of relocation taking place. So what methods are you using to get the words out to. Well, I was going to say other states and other places where people are coming into California, I don't know now that might be might be different. But what was your thinking prior to all the fires and all of that going on like how were you how are you getting the word out. Honestly, it's about being found. So from the directed consumer point of view. We are a big believer in providing educational credible content so that when people are thinking about earthquake so that when people ask the question, what's the safest place to be an earthquake, or what are the three considerations for seismic disclosures of buying a house, they find us they find our information, and they, they read it it's valuable it's helpful, and then they see what we're offering. So being a credible source of just of content that is helpful, and that is credible builds that sense of trust and transparency that really underlies our values. And really being that resource receptacle where people can turn to the kind of, you know, that provides them with the tools that can equip them when they're making some of these decisions. So, what's on the horizon, will you wear, what disaster will you will you counter next will it be fire will it be. And what you're thinking about that like what's your, what do you see out there in your. I think I said, if I didn't say it earlier I should have that this notion of an if then payout for insurance is really, you know, as a complete mind shift in, in how people think about insurance and by virtue of that, it's really a new product category, and it could become as commonplace of a consumer product as your hsa, or as your 401k. Oh yeah I have my jumpstart I have my parametric policy, in addition to whatever other earthquake, whatever, excuse me whatever other insurance there is. So, that is the grand vision is parametric is a new product category but the steps to get there. We started with earthquake, because we're in California. And because it's my domain expertise it was the way I was able to get the foot in the door with the regulator. I was able to get the door opened at the Lloyd syndicate who is our reinsurer, but the really big opportunity is floods and climate change in general. So building resilience to climate change is a huge potential for parametric for data driven technology driven financial resilience. And so, you know, when the time is right, we will work with partners to introduce parametric coverage for their stakeholders for flooding for for sea level rise. Wildfire when the time is right. It's not quite right just yet, because there's a lot of uncertainty in the regulations. So that's really the grand vision of parametric as a solution for climate change related risks. So, would you ever start offering some of these products and potentials outside of California. Oh yeah thanks for asking yeah our earthquake product will be available in Washington and Oregon, starting December 1. So we're very excited that is really like very close. We've been working for about eight months with the regulators as well as our, the Lloyd syndicate and to create the, the most, the most accurate pricing that we can and you know the, the, the price of the, of the insurance in watching is going to be less than in California because the probability of an earthquake is, but nevertheless there is the chance of a really big one in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, I was thinking that what made me think about that was when you mentioned floods. And I'm thinking about Louisiana. And I'm thinking about so many, let me even Florida, because I will say I often thought as a lifetime for generation Bay Area California and people say how can you live there the earthquakes and I thought okay once in a blue moon, but every year there have been like bread basket land floods and decimation I thought I think that to me is much. I mean, how can you live there, but now sadly, that's all shifting and we've got a whole other set of whoa with fires and such. And my brother lives in Iowa. And there's been floods. There's a lot of recent memory of flooding in Iowa, and now also they had the big derecho. Oh, and you know, he, he's very lucky but his neighbors not so much the big tree that came down in their yard, literally felt within inches of their roof. So they all they had to do was, you know, harvest some firewood, as opposed to rebuild their house. Yeah, the derecho and also, I guess what happened to us in California where there was that 50,000 huge inner column of whole new weather system created by all the fires is terrifying, because now there's, there's new weather. Right. And not everybody. It's really hard to tell everyone sort of taking a look saying oh my gosh, we've never seen this before. I feel like 2020. Yes, it was supposed to be the year of clarity. It's clear that there is so much on the horizon some futures that we don't know and can't see coming. I mean, it's really, it's really quite something I've got to say. So, I'm going to interrupt you and say that yes, there is more uncertainty now and or maybe we're more aware of the uncertainty but then certainly doesn't have to be terrifying. Uncertainty can be an opportunity to get prepared and to build, build your, your wellness whether that's your inner wellness or whether it's your financial wellness. I agree and I think you and I philosophically definitely believe in this is there's a super thin line between fear and excitement. It's not necessarily I know what's going on yeah you can sit there and come from a scarce scarcity mentality and be afraid, but that's going to be more likely you're going to then be stuck in that place and be hit by the terror of which you are afraid of as opposed to saying hey this will be cool what's going to how can I learn, because I do think that that is something we are all being called upon is in these days moving forward is to enter into life and just coming from a place with beginner's mind and master's heart. Where there's great compassion but then also just deep deep curiosity. Well said, well said. So that the inner resourcefulness comes out. And you share it. Exactly because then if we do that. It all starts to it's it's if nothing else it's less scary, for sure. So, if you will close now but I would love to hear. What are your pearls for people who are thinking about starting their own business and what are three things you'd encourage them to do. This wasn't on the script Kate. I think you have great wisdom in you. So, no, no, for the purpose for the audience and the listeners out there there were we this was one of the few words there really was no script because Kate and I get along so well there's this very organic very natural very authentic. So, so three three words of wisdom support system, you know your social connectedness now now more than ever, which becomes so apparent to us how critical it is to have this social connectedness in fact there's some recent research by an academic at Professor at Purdue, no, Northeastern University, excuse me, named Daniel Aldrich, who goes very with a lot of a lot of data that shows that the one of the most important keys to disaster recovery is social connectedness and he has made a very compelling study show after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and a whole suite of other natural disasters showing that social connectedness is so critical to reinforcing that inner inner resilience and being able to get through the setback so, and that's true of the little things too, like all of the difficulties of being a leader and forming a business as the social, the social connectedness whether it's your family your friends other founders, you know your customers, your teammates. And you asked for three and I would say that, you know the another really important one is purpose. Why do we get up every day, why do we, why do we keep doing what we're doing if we're not living a legacy if we're not living consistently with our values. That's the fundamental reason that we are so excited to be participating in socap, because it's this alignment of purpose and alignment of values, and it's what will allow each of us individually and collectively to leave a legacy and leave this world, you know, a place where we want our children and our future generations to grow up. Beautifully put and I was, I was going to say the fact that you're a B court. There are not many insurance companies that are so I to me to me that speaks volumes across many, many different hills and valleys and horizons. So, with that I'm going to say, thank you so much Kate, it has been a delight. I look so forward to seeing you make this parametric insurance movement ignited. Next thing we know we'll have you back for a follow up conversation about how you've expanded, and it'll be really terrific to see what you've been able to do. I want to thank everyone for joining us today and asking terrific questions. I think, to me, you know, one of the key values that we have at socap really is the wisdom of the crowd. And we are nothing without our extraordinary crowd. Speaking of socap. If you have not purchased a ticket yet. It is, we start on Monday, really a little bit on Sunday, and we're doing so cap very different differently this year. One of the things I came in as a leader, a couple of years, it will be two years in December, January, was I wanted to reimagine the impact space. I thought it was very siloed I thought I saw a lot of the same people giving the same conversations and there's extraordinary individuals just like anyone on this call in the UK doing amazing work. How can we lift more voices. So to that end, we are actually opening up and have opened up our platform for many of our other fellow conveners who would normally not be able to run their programs and frankly perhaps shut down. So please join us for a week of impact. It is an extraordinary adventure because you will hear from folks like jumpstart and Kate, you'll hear from, I think this year we've got about 100 different countries can are going to be represented. We have everything. Our themes are chosen by our community so we'll be discussing climate will be discussing arts and culture, future of work next generation of leadership, of course impact investing, education, mental health. It's, it'll be a really wonderful experience and it's all going to be also videoed much of it will be so you'll be able to, you know, hit the pieces that you won't be able to go to it at the gate. So I really encourage you to do that. And lastly, I'm going to ask everyone, please make sure that everyone in your orbit votes. Vote vote. This is the best way we can, you know we vote with our feet with where we work, we vote with our wallet, what we consume and who what companies we support. We vote with our heart, what we decide to support with our financial resources when we're building our portfolios. But really, now more than ever, oh my gosh, we've got to vote so that this world has a chance to really heal itself and I think, now more than ever, we're calling on on everyone. So please have your voice heard, and make your vote in all those of the three areas. And with that, I want to say thank you, we know you have a choice to spend your time, many different places, and we're just really grateful that you chose to spend it with us this morning. So with that, take care, have a great rest of your week, and hopefully see you at Socap. Bye bye.


Good morning, everybody. Lee Lowell here, smartopsincell.com. Today is Saturday, February 19th, 2022. Yes, we're here for another edition of our Saturday synopsis. We look at the charts. That's what we do. We look at the indexes. We look at individual stocks. We look at moving averages, technical support and resistance, indicators to try to help you gauge what's happening in the market. I'm here to give you some of the 30 years of experience that I have trading in the market. Stocks, options, commodities, futures, all that good stuff. I've been doing it a long time and I've used technical analysis slash chart reading to help me gauge when it's time to get in and out of trades. And I'm here to give you a little free information to try to help you up your game as well and teach you a little bit about technical analysis. So let's jump right in as we typically do every Saturday. What we do is we look at the charts. We always look at the SPY, which is the exchange-traded fund for the S&P 500. We look at stocks only here. I'm not a commodities trader anymore. That's not what I do anymore. Stocks give you so many more opportunities. There's, you know, thousands and thousands of stocks that you can trade options on and just trade the stocks themselves versus the futures slash commodities market, which I believe there's only maybe a dozen commodity markets that are even worth trading today. So you stick with the market that gives you more opportunities and that's just the stock market. So in the smart options seller, which is our company, we run newsletters and we sell options. We sell put options and put options spreads. Why? Because those are bullish trades, bullish to neutral directional trades. And when the market spends most of its time in an upwards trajectory, it just makes more sense playing with positions that are bullishly oriented. Now, yes, there are times when the market's in a downtrend and we have bear markets and pullbacks and we look for that and we notice that and we use that price action to tell us, hey, it's time to pull back on positions or lighten up positions or just stay out of the market. And that's where we are right now. So let's take a look at what's happening. Like I said, we always start with the SPY for the S&P 500. It gives us the broadest measure of the market as a whole. So what's been happening? Well, if you've been following the markets and you trade in the markets, you know that we're sort of in a pullback now. Since January 1st, 2022, and we see right here in the chart, now what you're seeing here is a daily chart. I always do my daily charts. I have the open, high, low, closed bars. So each vertical line is one day's worth of trading. I have three moving averages, a 50-day, a 20-day, and a 200-day moving average. And down here is the RSI indicator. Those are the only things that I use. Very simple. Keep it simple. Stupid. The KISS method as it's called.  So I only have the RSI down here. I have three moving averages. And then I draw trend lines, channels, and patterns, these triangle patterns, and these channels. Just to let you know where price action is. Follow the price action. That's the smartest thing to do is follow the price action. What does that mean? You just take a look and see which way a market or stock is trending. If it's going upwards, then you know it's in an uptrend and you can typically use pullbacks to enter the next bullish trade. If it's in a downtrending market, if the price action is moving downwards, then you know that stock or index is in a downtrend and you can use pops to resell your next leg. So you want to follow the price action. And drawing channels helps you follow the price action. Looking at these triangle patterns, which are called congestion patterns, tells you that a stock is coiling, getting ready for a big move in either direction. You just have to wait until you see which way it goes. So what are we seeing here? Well, obviously, the S&P 500, since the pandemic struck in February, March, 2020, hit the bottom, and we've been going up ever since. Pullbacks along the way just had a nice slow move higher over the last two years or so. But as some of you are very short-term traders, our time frame is typically one to three months out in time. We're not day traders. We're not swing traders. We're one to three months.  So what are we seeing here? We're seeing that the general market, the S&P 500, right around the beginning of January in 2022, has been in this pullback, had a nice, pretty large quick pullback the first couple weeks of January, had the pop, and now we're starting on this new leg of a downtrend, it seems. So we had the channel here, we had this channel, price action broke down and below the channel. So we made a low here, and then we've had this action up and down, up and down. Volatility has increased greatly over the last couple weeks, and we'll pull up a chart of the VIX, which shows us volatility. So you can see we're sort of in this congestion pattern here, and yesterday, which was Friday, February 18, solidly moved below and closed below the congestion pattern here. What does that mean? Well, we could be starting more of another leg downwards. Okay, you can see right here, the price action has fallen below this congestion pattern. Does that mean we're going to get to sustain, move down, and how much farther down can it go yet to be seen? Okay, you have to let the pattern play out. Now, typically, I like to see a couple days of a pattern play out before I'm convinced that that's the direction it's going in. But there's a lot of news out there that's causing a lot of fear and anxiety in the markets. We have the Russia-Ukraine situation happening that's leading to a lot of uncertainty. Is Russia going to invade or not? We just don't know. Let's put a lot of people on edge. There's serious inflation happening, and I'm talking mostly, I'm giving U.S. United States information here. Inflation, the Federal Reserve in the U.S. is about to raise interest rates, which is typically good for bond markets and bad for stock markets. If interest rates rise, you can get maybe a better return on your fixed income security so people pull money out of the stock market. Interest rates are not high enough yet to really have everyone pull their money out of the stock market, because interest rates are just, even though they're going to raise interest rates, interest rates are still so small, you can't get any kind of return from bank accounts or even to your 10-year securities. It's still very small compared to the returns you can get in the stock market. The stock market really still is and will always be the place to get the best long-term return on your money. No one's going to pull all their money out of the stock market and start investing in bonds because it still doesn't give you that good return, especially with inflation, so the real return is probably still in the negative numbers. So stick with the stock market. But yes, in the short term, these news-driven headlines is what scares people, forces them to sell out of their positions. So we're sort of in that period right now where you can see we may be in for another down leg, another leg lower. How much lower can it go? Nobody knows where the bottom's going to be. All you can do is look at the past history of where the market has been to try to give you some other areas of support to look for. And I've been bullish and each week in these recordings I tell you I've been bullish because I know in the long run where the market goes. Yes, we have to contend with pullbacks all the time, but in the long run we'll even pull back to the monthly. In the long run the market will go up regardless of what the news items are out there. The stock market moves on the long-term fundamentals of the companies within the stock market. So if a company is making good products and their profits are increasing, of course the stock price has to go up in the long run. But in the short run we have to contend with the news items that are out there so we get these pullbacks. Eventually the market finds a bottom because the news stories are all played out and they're all factored into the stock prices. So eventually stock prices will go back up. When that happens it could be anybody's guess. We don't know where the bottom's going to be. We don't know when the large players which tend to move the markets will start buying again. Eventually there will be great opportunity, you know, a place where the stock is just so cheap you have to buy it. Are we there yet? We don't know. But all we can do is look for clues from the market action. Okay, so right now the R side is not really oversold. It's not overbought, it's kind of still in the middle here. So there can be opportunity for the market itself to keep selling off. What am I doing personally? I say I buy, I nibble on the way down here and there when I think we're hitting a support area. Now this is the 200 day moving average and you know that's typically a line in the sand. It's a very, very healthy support area for most stocks. And when it does fall below the 200 day moving line for a period of time it won't stay there forever and it bounces back. You can see we had about a week's worth of trading below the 200 day moving average right here this week's worth of trading and it bounced back. But now it's coming off again and it's falling outside of this triangle. So we may have another pullback. Where's the next spot to look for? Right here, the low on this bar, this day right here. Low is right around 420, maybe 421 on the SPY. So that's the next area that the market can shoot for or at least look for the next possible support slash bounce. I'm more leaning towards, we may have some more downside to go here. The market fell through the congestion, it fell through the 200 day moving average. I was nibbling right around the 200 day moving average to see if it was going to bounce and it didn't bounce. So now I'm waiting for the next support to show itself before I start nibbling anymore. And nibbling is a couple shares here and there, you don't have to go full force. It's always better to wait for the market to tell you it's time to get in meaning the market has shown us that it's ready to move back up. Right now it has fallen below the 200 day moving average, fallen out of this congestion pattern. I'm not nibbling anymore right now, I did all my nibbling here and now I wait. And I'm on a long-term hold, I'm talking years. This is just me, not investment advice here, this is just my opinions, this is what I do. I'm not telling you what to do, but that's what I've done. I've nibbled the way down a little bit and now I'm going to wait until I see the next support show up. Where that may be, when that may be, I don't even know yet. All I can do is make higher probability trades and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. But for me, S&P 500 is where I keep a lot of my retirement money, my long-term funds. So that's what I do. And now I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait because the market is showing me it may have some more downside to go. Okay, so that's the S&P 500. Keep an eye on it, we may see some more selling here. It's falling down through the congestion pattern, so there may be some more selling next week. Let's take a look at the NASDAQ using the QQQ, triple Q's we call it. Same thing, been coming down since the beginning of January. And also the triangle congestion pattern fell through it yesterday, Friday, February 18th. You can see this bar right here. So we know that the market still wants to sell. A lot of stocks, individual stocks have come off quite a bit. We'll look at a few. I get emails from people saying they bought calls or they bought stock on these growth stocks, these MOMO stocks, those momentum stocks. And a lot of these stocks have been getting hit real hard.  And I feel for you and I feel for them because trying to get on momentum stocks and trying to figure out, well, when's the time to get out or should I keep holding and it keeps dropping on you and gets more frustrating, it's hard. Trying to make money, trying to make trading as a living is a hard gig. It's a hard gig, especially if you're trading very short term, call options or even put options. One or two days before expiration, those things decay really quickly and if the market moves against you, those things will evaporate and there will be no value left in those things. So just be careful if you're playing that game. But anyway, same thing with the QQQ, looks a little weak here, came down through here. The next bottom would be this spot right here. So that's the number that the market probably will be shooting for. If I had to make a guess, when would a bottom show up or what does that look like when we know the bottom is here? The only thing that I've seen over my years and it actually happened, you know, let's go back to the March of 2020 here. That doesn't even show up. But when you get that one day, that one day of just immense selling that you just see this one huge long vertical down move bar where this goes into an oversold, the R side goes into an oversold and it just looks like everyone's just giving up and they're puking out everything and that'll show up in a long one day big, big bar where everyone's just given up and the volume just flies through the roof.  That's typically what we call the capitulation day, the capitulation stage where everyone just throws their hands up and says, I'm done, I'm out of the stock market forever. And that's typically when the bottom, that's typically when you see that bottom, that one day bottom. But when you get this sort of, you know, this is a measured sort of easy moving downtrend that just keeps chipping away every single day that, you know, it's not, it's not huge. It's not rushed. It's not just that one day thing. It's just this continual drip lower, lower, lower, which is very measured, which is that's the worst. We don't, I don't like that kind of sell off, which is every day, it's just more and more and more. We need that one day crash where we know that's when the bottom occurs. But for now, we haven't seen that. It's just this sort of slow dripping lower, which that's what's a really frustrating type of market. But for now, this thing could keep going. You know, in our, in our newsletter and our smart options seller newsletter, which is when we sell naked put options on quality stocks that we like, typically $50 and under stocks. The first time this is the first time that's happened for us since I started the service in 2017. We completely have no positions on at all right now. And selling put options is more of a neutral to a bullish directional position. And we have no positions because the market is not telling me it's time to get in. The market was telling me it's time to stay out or unwind the positions we have. So we just closed yesterday or on Thursday. We closed out of our last position because it was time to get out. And right now we have no positions because the market's telling me it's not time to get in. In our vertical spread trader newsletter where we sell put option credit spreads. We have two positions on and they're in the indexes. And so we give ourselves a decent amount of cushion below the current price of the stock. I'm hoping that, you know, I want to be bullish. Our positions are more bullish. Of course, I want to see a bottom show up. And this yesterday, this does not make me happy. I wanted to see a bounce through the upside of the congestion pattern, but we're not there yet. So we're still playing light. We're actually in playing no positions because the market's not telling. We don't get short. We don't play bearish positions. That's just not what we do. You can certainly make money playing bearish positions. Usually you can make a lot more money a lot quickly on the down moves because they happen so fast. But you have to be quick and you have to be nimble and you have to know when to take your profits. For me, I've learned over the long run. I'd rather just stay long with bullish positions because I know in the long run the market goes up over time. It's really hard to be profitable for long periods of time, shorting the market. Because you have to know when it's time to get in and you have to know when it's time to take profits. Right? So if you got short up here and it came down, you're making money. And if you didn't take profits here, you probably gave a lot of it back up here, depending on how many days until expiration you were playing. So we don't play the short side. We wait for the bullish end of the market to show up. So we're light in both of our newsletters just because the market's telling me it's not time to get back in on bullish trades. So this is the Nasdaq. Looks a little weak just like the S&P 500. We can look at the Dow. The Dow Jones represented by the DIA. These are the diamonds. DIA is the symbol. The Dow has been much more flat than the S&P or the QQQ. You can see how flat it's been basically since last summer. Really flat here. We can even draw some support and resistance levels. You know, you can connect some of the bottoms here, here, and we go along the top here. So this kind of gives us a gauge of, you know, where the Dow has sort of been trading in. And if you have mostly Dow stocks in your portfolio, you know, you're not really even thinking much either way because not much has really happened. So you're sitting a little bit prettier than the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq because those have been showing a little bit more of a down move. All right. So the Dow is a little more stable. The Nasdaq, of course, has more of those growth Momo stocks. That's why it's been getting hit a little bit harder. Let's take a look at some of these stocks because people right into me telling me about some of these stocks that they've been trying to trade. They've been trying to get along with call options stocks like Palantir, PLTR, Palantir. I mean, it's just, you know, back here, it was $45 stock just been moving down. So here's this down like the last few months. It's now getting down towards $10 a share. Let's see, you know, Palantir came into existence not that long ago towards the end of 2020 gone all the way up and it's come all the way back down to its IPO price. Palantir, Shopify even, you know, Shopify is a great company, you know, online website creator, online business store has been doing real well. Let's look at the monthly, you know, Shopify has been around since 2015 or so. And just it's a great story. Look how it just, I mean, almost $1800 a share from practically zero in 2015. That's a massive move up. But look where it's come in just a couple months. It's given back more than half of its value. We can, we can look on the, the daily chart.  And just in the last few months has created all the way down to $656 a share. That's just a massive, massive move, right? And the RSI still isn't even into the oversold tariff got oversold. It was telling you is a little oversold here, but it kept dropping a dropped another $400 a share. It's a big move. You're playing those kind of high price stocks. You have to be aware of the, of the amount of price that it can give up. So Shopify, even though I think it's a great company is a very expensive stock. And, you know, if you'd gotten in long ago, you know, did you take profits? Did you have a sell stop? Did you have a stop loss? Right. If you bought in, let's say even at $200, it went all the $600. That's a, you know, a $1400 game. Did you take some money off the table?  Or if you're buying calls, were you taking profits along the way? Some, you know, you have to understand when you're, when you're playing options contracts, they have an end date. They have an expiration date. You need to get out of these things when you have profits build up. People just think they'll just hold forever and the stocks will just keep going up and they'll just keep making money. It's not how it works. You know, stocks pull back, as you can see, and you can give up a lot of those hard-earned gains. You don't want to do that. You have to take profits at some point. So that's Shopify. What other, you know, there's stocks like Dock U, you know, $300 stock now down to close to $100 stock. That's Dock U, TDock.  Another $300 stock down to $65. You can just see the price action. These, these, these high growth, you know, high Momo, the momentum stocks that everybody seemed to pile in and now everyone's getting hurt. So that's TDock. We had Dock U, even Zoom, which everybody loves.  You know, $580 a share back here last October and now it's all the way moving its way down towards $100. So all these stocks, skills, you know, people tell me about these stocks. They, they've been in $45 stock all the way down to under $4 now. So, you know, you may be in some of these, you may have bought some of these. Trading is hard, right? You get on these websites and you get on these chat rooms and everyone's pumping up these, these stocks that, you know, some, some of these companies have no business being in business. You know, unless they're really offering a good service or product, which some of them are, I'll admit that, but do they have profits? How are their earnings? How long have they been in business? This company, which is skills, has been in business since, let me look at the date here, since May 1st, 2020. That's not a long time to be in business, right? I don't typically like to look at stocks that have less than five years worth of trading information on them.  But anyway, so, so these are some of the, you know, the emails I get about these momentum growth stocks that are all getting hit right now. It's hard. And so if you want to be in for the long haul, you have to understand over time, long term, you have to pick stocks that have been in business a while, have earnings that are growing quarter after quarter, you know, showing profits that keep going up, you know, even dividend stocks. If they raised their dividends each year, those are quality stocks. I'm in for the long haul. Long haul, I've learned long ago, it's too hard to trade intraday or, you know, daily like that. It's just too hard. You know, there's too much volatility in the market. But over the long run, if you're invested for the long haul, you can make it work. But in our newsletter, we're more short term, we're one or three months out is our time frame. So we have to be pretty precise with our, with our entries and exits. So that's why knowing technical analysis is really important. Just trying to figure out where the support lies, where the resistance lies, when it's time to get in and out. So let's take a look at some individual stocks, as we typically do. Let's take a look at Apple. We look at the more popular stocks here, because that's what a lot of people like to trade. And that's what people like to hear about. Something on my screen here, get this little thing out of here. Not sure what that is. Anyway, Apple, you know, been holding up pretty decent, kind of in this range here between, you know, 165 to 180 or so, holding up pretty good. Obviously, it's pulled back the last couple of days, not a lot. I mean, that's not a huge move. Kind of stuck in this channel here. We even, we can draw some more. You know, it's got some, got some support here along here, depending on where, where you want to draw the line. So it has still sort of still in this uptrend here. That's good. We have this support right here around, you know, 167 or so. It's kind of falling through it here. So we want to see if this support can hold. But we know in the long run, Apple is a great company. Can you hold until then? Are you playing short term? Or are you in for the long haul? It depends what type of investor slash trader you are. Apple holding up pretty well. I know once the market, the general market gets off its button starts to move higher, you know, Apple's going to power up and make more all time new highs. What else do we like to look at? Let's look at Amazon.  It, you know, was coming down, coming down, had the earnings pop here, had the air pocket here, went from here all the way up to here, rallied like $500 a share. And now the last two weeks has sort of been in this little downtrend, this activity right here. You could almost see it as a bull flag. Now a bull flag is when you get a long one day action here. Okay. And then you have the pennant, which is this activity here. And then we'll typically will blast to the upside. So let me make this a little bit bigger so you can see what I'm seeing. And we'll color it up. We'll make it a little bit wider. And then we'll work on the flag here. Okay, sometimes I say you have to do a little manual labor, darken it up, widen it up. Okay, so now we'll be able to see the flag. Okay, you got the long pole, the flag pole, and the little bit of a downtrending flag part, the pennant part. Typically a bull flag, this is a bullish pattern, and the price action will pop out and go above and start moving higher again. If you want to search it out, do a Google search on bull flag or bull pennant patterns, and you'll see it looks exactly like this. Now will it pan out? If the indexes, you have to have the general market going up. And then Amazon will go up as well and it'll pop out of the flag and start to move higher. But for now, Amazon's still caught in this very deep, long, look how long this channel's been. Right, so it's still in that range. Nothing for me up or down with Amazon. It's just still caught in that range.  It's gotten down below the 200-day moving average, finished on the low yesterday. You can see right here the dash mark on the right side of the bar. That shows where it closed for the day. So Google's coming off just with all the other stocks. AMD, we like to talk about each week. I'm long personally AMD as well. I had mentioned when it had been coming down here, this harsh move right here. I had bought in between 100 to 110. I bought some shares. I was waiting for it to come down to the 200-day moving average. Came down to it, fell down through it. So here is my buy range right in here. Went all the way back up to 130. Thought I had myself some good buys here and it's coming back. Now finished around 113, fell back down again this week. But sitting right around support, right on the 200-day moving average. Here we are. So we'd like to see the general market. We want to see things start to move up again because I want to be bullish for the long run. I don't like these pullbacks more than just like anybody else. I don't like these pullbacks. But you have to endure these things. That's just what the market does. You have to pick quality stocks.  You don't want to give it all away, right? You know, unless you're really in for the long haul, five years, ten years. All right, you ride it out. Now, stocks like PayPal and Square, which I'm big on that industry. I'm big on the online payments industry. But this is just ridiculous. Look at, this is PayPal. PayPal's just been getting crushed, okay? Now, I bought into some PayPal. I will admit, got into some here, okay? Around here. Trying to, even me. I tried to do a little nibbling, a little bottom picking. Not a lot. You know, just to, just to, because I was getting very oversold, bought some and just this past week, two weeks just been getting hit really hard. Now, it is getting down to some oversold area on the RSI. So that's the warning sign. Hey, you know, it's starting to get really oversold here. I'm hoping that we see a bounce pretty quickly. Square, same thing. Same payment sector. Just look at this, just a rough down trending channel. Now it hasn't even hit, it hit some oversold here. Had a little bounce, but now continues on the down move. So Square looks like it's definitely got some more down action to go. PayPal looks a little bit more oversold than Square does. Square looks like it wants to keep going. PayPal, on the other hand, looks like we've, it has that really deep, quick, sharp move to the downside. Could see a bounce more in PayPal than Square at this point. But you know, this is what's happening in the market.  Justified or not, everything gets sold because that's just how it works. Even stocks that shouldn't be sold. Tesla, let's take a look at Tesla. Tesla still kind of holding up here. Let me pull back a little bit in this longer term down trend. Here was a support line. I don't even know if this is supporting anymore. I'm going to take this off. It's still just kind of in this, you can see the channel that I've drawn. Here's the 200 day moving. So it is finding some support near the 200 day moving average. Will it fall down below and hit the bottom leg here? Or will it bounce off the 200 day and start to move up again? It seems to want to just be stuck around the, you know, the 850 $900 range. So, so Tesla for now is in this longer term downtrend, but could have it pops during the day or pops for a couple of days. Tesla's a hard one. I've always said this test is hard for me to read on a technical analysis basis. What else do we have Disney? We like to look at Disney. We've talked about Disney. Disney had the bottom here. Well, it got really oversold here. Popped a little and then had this big cascade move down. I bought some down here at the bottom and it's holding up pretty decent Disney. So, you know, Disney, great company.  It's just whether you have the nerves to hold out. You know, if you need the money to pay your rent, to pay your bills, whatever, you really shouldn't be speculating like this. Short-term speculation trades, short-term call option buying, whatever. Because it may not work out for you. In the long run, I know Disney's going higher. So, I nibble, you know, I nibble on the lows here and hold for the long run. Let's see what other stocks we have. Oracle pulling back. I love Oracle, but not now. I'm not in yet because it's pulling back. It's not showing me it's time to move up yet. Cisco had decent earnings the other day. Cisco's holding up pretty good. Let's take a look at a few other stocks. The healthcare, a Walmart. Okay, I always talk about Walmart. Once again, I bought a little more when it got down to the 135 range. That's what I've been talking about. Here's that support line right around 135. Walmart had earnings this past week, did real well too. This is where the pop came right here. On Thursday, had the pop up to close to 140. So, I'm hoping Walmart's going to hold up around the 135 level. That's where I'm in at. Come on, don't do this to me today. Let's move this back over here. Okay, so what other stocks? The healthcare stocks. Netflix, of course, still kind of hanging around the lows there. Facebook still kind of hanging around making newer lows this week. Where's my healthcare stocks? Eli Lilly seems to be holding up, hanging right on the 200-day moving average. Bristol Myers. Bristol Myers has been a nice one since it made that low here. Been doing good. Pfizer heading down towards the 200-day moving average. Merck just kind of hanging around. So, healthcare, a little bit of a mixed bag, but we know in the long run, everyone needs healthcare. So, these healthcare pharmaceutical stock companies should do well. Verizon, I talk about, had the bull flag here, did go up, came back down again. It's kind of moving sideways. Eventually, I'm going to get into Verizon at some point. Need to see it get above the just down trending 200-day moving average. Kellogg doing okay, hanging around. Lulu Lemon has that nice day move as well. Peloton. I'm just pointing out a lot of these stocks that just got hammered. We all know the story of Peloton, not doing so well right now. Still moving down. There was some word that a couple companies may have some interest in possibly buying them. So, we had that little pop here, but starting on the downtrend, starting to move down again. So, be careful out there, people. Be careful. Pepsi doing okay. Still, I want to bring up Coca-Cola because that Coca-Cola is just the stalwart of all stalwarts, right? Just all-time new highs again. Let me just make sure that is an all-time new high. Yep, all-time new highs for Coca-Cola the other day. Actually, yesterday, Friday, February 18th, right here, all-time new highs. You can't go wrong with Coca-Cola either, right? Got high dividend paying stock, a stalwart. Doesn't make a lot of price improvement, a price appreciation I should say, but it's just nice and stable, right? Just gives you that good feeling that you know the company's doing well. The stock's going to keep going up over time, get that good dividend. Coca-Cola, don't poo-poo it. It's a great company, great stock to hold long-term. IBM had a nice little down move the last two weeks as well. It's going through my stocks here and Bitcoin stocks, not AMC Riot and Marathon still kind of hanging around. You know, Bitcoin's trying to find its footing here. What else we have? Alibaba also a long-term and long-term downtrend. All right, Clorox, I had mentioned I had gotten into Clorox up here and I got out around here because in the aftermarket, you know, they're seeing no trading here. That's during the day session, but in the aftermarket and the pre-market, it trades. So there was some trading activity here that I got out, got down to lows, but seems to be popping up a little. But anyway, that's the story of my journey with Clorox. All right, that's it. Once again, let's take a look at the SPY. Try to get a game plan for next week. Keep an eye on the down move here. Like I said, we could have some more downside action. Look for this area to be the next area where it may hold temporarily, don't know, could bounce from there, or it could just bounce. Maybe we'll get some good news this week. Russia, Ukraine has settled their differences. That'll really make the market go. Just remember, a lot of these news stories have nothing to do with the actual companies in the stock indexes, right? What's happening in Ukraine and Russia really shouldn't affect these U.S. companies. Unless they have some kind of, you know, they have business in those countries. They have exposure, whether they have exposure or not. Most of these U.S. companies probably don't have a lot of exposure in Russia, Ukraine. So the long-term determinant of those stock prices really shouldn't have anything to do with what's happening in Russia and Ukraine. But that's just the general consensus of the market. People get scared. Oh, let's look at the VIX real quick. Wanted to bring that up. The VIX, like I said, always has these short-term spikes, quick couple days spikes. We had this one here recently, came back down, and now we're sort of undergoing another little spike. And when the market drops, the VIX spikes. That's what happens. People get scared. So these spikes don't last very long. I'm hoping we'll see the end of it and the VIX will come off, which means the stock market will go back up. So we'll see what happens this week. All right, getting a little long here in the synopsis. Let's move on. I hope that's been helpful for you. I'm keeping an eye. We're light. We're light on our positions just because the market's telling me it's not time to get in in these bullish trades. All right, let's go to our website. SmartOptionsSeller.com. Please go to our website. Download our free or put your name in for our free put-selling basics guide. It tells you all about how to sell put options, why we sell put options, why we love selling put options. That's what we do. Get a free copy. Also, if you want to know a little bit more about the services that we offer right here, however your mouse here, we have two newsletters and our coaching sessions. All right, I want to try to keep this under 40 minutes, talking real fast. That's it for me today. Hope this video has been helpful. Give me a thumbs up. Leave me a comment. Send me an email. And I love hearing from you. All right, I think that's about all for me today. Have a good weekend, everyone, and a good trading week ahead. I don't think I'll be around next Saturday. Next Saturday, next week I'm involved in a seminar, Options Trading Seminar. I'll be teaching, so no video for next week. I'll catch you in two weeks. All right, be good, everyone. This is Lee Lowell signing off.