Good evening. Once again, this is Ali Hamadi with Ticknell, with the Futures webinar series and introduction to the Futures market. I hope all are doing well, and I have had a profitable last two weeks. It's been two weeks since we have done our last webinar, and I've got some information to conclude mainly what information is needed for how to conduct and use the Futures as securities and how they're used. Then what we're going to do tonight, inshallah, is start to transfer the conversations and future webinars into what's actually taking place in the marketplace, commodity by commodity, sector by sector, or leile banan ballish, if you see it enough with oil, projected forecasts, and some information for you to start, let's say, some of your own due diligence and research within the Futures product. Getting this evening started, I want to say, for the most part, for the recurring visitors and attendees, I want to say, for the most part, for the recurring visitors and attendees, everyone knows that I want to talk about something informal, not make it so formal, the webinar, and let you have a conversational concept. So I'm able to portray a more how it works instead of textbook definitions or hake issue. From that perspective, as I had an army on the other lately, I will my name Ali Hmedi. I'm just a little bit more tick me as a consultant regarding the future products that they have now added to their investment product line on across their platform. That being said, what we're going to be discussing this evening comes to the taxation. And we're going to do the transformation. That is the webinar, which are all on on their YouTube platform and channel. You'll be able to see all of the pre-recorded sessions that we've discussed discussing what futures are, how they're used, what to pay attention to, how to value them from a speculative perspective and come in off from a hedging perspective and what to look out for when you're looking to make, let's say, maybe do a prediction, but once you've done your research, what types of curves can give you some sort of prediction indication of how the market may be moving in order for you to take a position to either speculate and or hedge and protect your portfolio. The taxation concept is coming mainly from the U.S. perspective. So it's Anahadan that is a U.S. citizen and reporting taxes. You know, every year in February from your broker dealer, they call the 1099 form where you end up sending in to do your taxes for profits and losses and you do the taxation accordingly. At the same time, not necessarily for Americans, but non-Americans come in countries that do also have their tax laws. Their tax laws may differ than what the U.S. tax law is for futures, but most taxation laws when it comes to securities, you look at the U.S. market as a standard, not the standard, but a standard, one of the main standards. So is an American Anahadan taxation laws for future securities than other countries where taxes are taxed and charged for securities on profits and losses, you will most probably and most likely also find Kamena a tax law regarding futures, hopefully, and a favorable manner similar to how the U.S. looks at them. Starting with that, from the U.S. perspective, the tax advantage that Halini Kabir al-Shishishway, there we go. So basically the IRC, Internal Revenue in America, basically the IRS, they have what they call a 60-40 rule on taxation for futures securities. That means that 60% of net gains of the futures trading, they're treated like long-term capital gains and the other 40% are treated as short-term capital gains and taxed like ordinary income. Shuman e Tehon, from the standpoint of U.S. taxation, once again, come in, it may not apply to the country that you're living in or your nationality, but from a U.S. perspective, it's important to know because most of the indices that were connected to when it comes to futures are coming out of the U.S. markets, 60% when we say long-term gains, any securities that an investor holds longer than one year, it's one year plus, then the capital gains tax is 20% on your gains. Short-term securities, if they are realized and this is all realized, of course, short-term means anything less than one year. So if you buy something today and you sell it next week for a profit and or a loss, this is considered short-term. If you buy anything today and you sell it further out than a year from today, depending on your capital gains or losses, come in, it's looked at long-term. Now, 20% is the long-term capital gain tax on profitability, when it says ordinary income on the short terms, the 40% manita depending on your current income tax bracket, hasab, yani, ad day, intah ambittallah, be shavlok, on an annual basis, what's considered your taxable income would put you in specific brackets and categories of taxation. So it's not just a flat rate when it comes to ordinary income.  And that's what's considered your ordinary income from a short-term perspective. Now, the futures traders that benefit from a more favorable tax treatment than equity traders and the section that they, it's under the IRC is one, two, five, six of the IRC. And it states that any futures contract traded on the US exchange, which most of these futures contracts that we're connected to with TICML are on the US exchange, foreign currency contracts, dealer options, dealer security futures contracts or other equity options contracts are taxed at 60% of the long-term capital gains rates in short-term rate to 40%. Regardless of how the trade was opened and what the purpose was for. So it averages out, means the short-term and the long-term, you're looking at a taxation rate of plus or minus 27% overall, which when you look at it from an investment perspective, means it's almost 20 years in the market being able to use and manipulate but understanding the taxation rules can help you either save from paying taxes if you have some losses in the portfolio that you can shed positions and get out of positions for taxation to save tax payment and or vice versa. So the section one, two, five, six contracts are also marked to market by the end of the year. And now this is an important note to take into consideration. When we say marked to market, Manusa La Icha de Sine, December 31st because it's a calendar year from January 1, like December 31, it's marked to market at the end of year, December 31st. And when we say marked to market, they're gonna look and say, okay, secretary to Soilion de Saro. And pending on what the price is at the end of that close of business day at the end of the calendar year is what the price will be marked at for your portfolio regarding taxation purposes. Regardless, is a straight to one week before or at the very beginning of the year, map the full, they're gonna look at the price that you purchased to that and then they're gonna look at the price at the end of the year and they're gonna market at that particular price which is marked to market. And then they're gonna say, okay, Fieribih or Fiyah Sara Bidda. And in the next few slides, I'll show you an example. Now, as an example, for anyone trades during the course of the calendar year and buys a contract worth of $20,000 US dollars. And then at the end of the year, December 31st, the fair market value of the contract is at $26,000. The trader will recognize a $6,000 capital gain on their tax return for that year. So the $6,000 US dollar will be taxed at this 60, 40 rate, which means you have 60% is taxed at, if you recall up here, long term, I'm gonna highlight here, which is 20% and then the other 40% is treated at the ordinary income tax bracket. So pending on your tax bracket will depend on how much tax you're gonna pay for the next few years. So depending on your tax bracket, it'll depend on how much tax you're gonna pay on the head of city of the lot. Plus 60% of it is gonna be taxed maximum at the 20% capital gains. And the other 40% will be taxed at your income tax bracket level. Now, we fast forward a year later, when we will, last year, 2020, the trader sells the contract, Manetta Sakara, meaning here at the end of 2021, the contract is open, but the market market price was at 26,000 when the trader bought it at 20,000, but Masakarit al-Pazishan, Bado open and Nishimasu, it comes one year later, the trader sells the contract for $24,000. In the example, because the trader marked their portfolio at the market for the end of 2021 year and recognized a $6,000 gain, the trader will subsequently book a $2,000 loss when they close the position in 2022. And when you book a loss, I realized loss in your portfolio, this also lowers any taxes that you may owe. So this is also looked at as part of the tax advantages when it comes to trading with futures. Now, should a futures trader wish to carry back any losses under the IRC section 1256, they're allowed to do so for up to three years under the condition that the losses being carried back do not exceed the net gains of the previous year, nor can it increase and operating loss from that year. The losses carried back to the earliest year first and any remaining amounts are carried to the next two years. And of course, the 60-40 rule applies. Now, what does this mean? It means that if you have a gain where it says here specifically, losses being carried back do not exceed the net gains of that previous year. So the previous year marked market can be set the left a lot of it. If this current year can suck at the position at a 8,000 loss, well, it can exceed the 8,000 because the mark to market the previous year can it sit the lift? So the limit would be 6,000 if they were to close more than 6,000 for year 2022. That's all that that means in the textbook definition of the IRC or internal revenue code under US taxation. Now, close the middle taxation, very simple to 60-40 rule. This is under US taxation law. I'm not a tax specialist. I would advise anyone that's living outside of the US and pays taxes under any other foreign government or entity that does have taxation laws in place on futures contracts to make sure you understand what the taxation rules are for your particular taxation entity, regardless of where it may be and understand how those would apply. I just gave you an example of how detailed, low bayha and easy to understand from a US perspective, they could be more complicated in other countries and other taxation jurisdictions. So it's good to know where you stand from that perspective before you start building your futures portfolio and start trading. And then at the end of the year, Manak Arfin and Wadah Bil Nisb Al-Taqsation and before you know it, Pijji Fatoula and it hits you out of nowhere. And that's what we don't wanna know. We wanna have a full circle understanding of everything from A to Z, how it works, how the futures contracts operate, which we do now, we've been in the previous webinars through how to capitalize and understand what the gains are from a capital gains, whether it's ordinary taxation and or capital gains taxation. Now, moving on, what we're gonna be looking now, starting from this point within this webinar, l'al-mustabal inshallah, we're gonna start looking at the specific sectors within commodities, within metals, within agriculture, within interest rates, within indices, et cetera, et cetera. And we're gonna start taking a more in-depth look at the market outlook, so that it gives you more information to provide you an informed decision-making ability to decide, oh, she had a sector behemak awla, is a sector that you're thinking about getting into or you're already involved in, but you're looking for ways to hedge positions. You will need to be able to use the research specifically based on the curve, whether if you can recall from last webinar, the types of curves that we're looking for is a backwardation or if it's contagan, a contagan. So from this perspective, moving forward, I've started with crude oil, since it is a hot topic. There is a lot of volatility. It does have a lot of moving parts. And at the same time, the war between Russia and Ukraine, after that, no one knows, maybe there's an end to these two weeks, maybe it's a long time after two or three years, no one knows. But all of this is out of your control. And all of this is diplomatic positioning between, you wanna call it East-West, Russia, Europe, et cetera, et cetera. It is political positioning, it's geopolitical tension. And at the end of the day, fietykh la sbsera aw kamena fietetowah. And the outlook from what the market is showing us is irrelevant of whether Ukraine and Russia believe it or not ends today. Now, obviously, it's a hara khol-sit-al-yaw, or mafibah abadan hara bain-yur-si or Ukraine, it will relieve some of the pressure on oil prices. But neither here nor there, inflation has already crept in the largest market in the world, which is the U.S. market. The real inflation rate, you know, CPI, the Consumer Price Index that is reported by the U.S. government, they come out with it on a monthly basis. They are saying it's at 8.3%. But real inflation, when you calculate how the CPI is manipulated, which it is, that's not a secret, but the manipulation part of it is the sense that what types of goods are they putting inside this basket to come up with the CPI index? And the real rate of inflation is not at 8.3%. It's closer to 12% the real inflation rate inside the U.S. market. And from that perspective, you have to understand how expensive things have gotten within that particular market. And depending on most Americans living day-to-day, week-to-week, paycheck-to-paycheck is what they call it, Now, if we get into energy prices in America, mode of transportation is automobile. Most everyone owns an automobile. They have to fuel their cars on a weekly basis, depending on how much they have to travel and use, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not, because America is so big and everyone needs a car to get from point A to point B and the public transportation system is not as efficient as, and it's not, the infrastructure is not as thorough as you would find elsewhere. It is a very big development for the American market. Now, for the most commodities, prices are expected to significantly be higher in 2022 than in 2021 and to remain high in the medium term. Now, it's no secret. Hala, I mean, when all will ascending to Hala, the S&P 500 excluding today is down year-to-date, 13 to 14%, okay? And that's already factored in to interest rate hikes by the Fed and there will be several more throughout the year where the expected rate should be or could theoretically be anywhere between two and a half to two and three quarters, maximum 3% on the year end. Now, where will it be by year end? Commander had his speculation. This is also a futures asset class and security that one could speculate and or hedge with as well, the interest rate sector. Now, if we go back to where we are with oil, this site, this information source is coming from, Relief, expand it for you so you can check it out for yourselves, there it is, Reliefweb.int, okay? Now, from this particular website, which this was taken, this information I got last week, the price of Brent crude oil is projected to average at $100 a barrel in 2022, which is a 42% increase from 2021 and it's highest level since 2013. Non-energy prices. Now we're getting away from oil, but we're gonna focus on the first 70% and the first sentence in the future slides. But, Commander, just to give you an idea of where we're going and where we're headed with these webinars moving forward in the other sectors, non-energy prices are expected to rise about 20% in 2022, with the largest increase in commodities for Russia, Ukraine are key exporters. We prices in particular are forecasted to increase by more than 40% this year, reaching an all-time high in nominal terms. Means basically in numbers. So, I have three specific spotlights, as about as about corn. Let's talk about this particular webinar. This is taken from S&P or spglobal.com from the week of May 16th. And what we're gonna be looking at within these next three slides and next three topics on market outlook for you to have more information in order for you to have a better, let's say outlook and more informed information and research to place your position, make a position, place your bets, depending on your portfolio. Now, the first thing that we're gonna talk about, Hala of the three is the surging US jet fuel prices driving historic rise or rises in airfares. What does that mean? Jet fuel is a commodity, it's linked to crude oil. We're gonna read here what's happening. The most recent United States CPI report showed that there is a rise of 8.2% from a year ago across all items, but airfares were up 33.3%. And increased 18.6% in April alone. Hala, let's look outside of the context of the actual commodity market. What's happening? We didn't finish 100% of Corona, but the world is open, except China. China is still under a severe lockdown. They're going into the fourth week now, but in China, which means you have coming post pandemic because it's not considered a pandemic anymore. So airfares, they're having, airliners are having to pay higher prices for fuel because of the geopolitical situation and the inflation that's taken place because of the commodities market in general is rising in prices, but they're not charging on a relative scale. They're charging a premium. Maybe they're trying to make up for lost time. Maybe they're trying to manipulate earnings per share if they're traded publicly, which most airlines are. There are a number of reasons, but mainly it's based, it goes back to the supply and demand. There's demand now from the world, but they're safe. They're looking now for ways to get out and make up for the lost time for the last two years, which were houses or cities. Now, they're not going to be able to travel. For example, from Lebanon to Ibros or from Lebanon to Turkey or anywhere, people are going to travel and COVID testing and COVID pandemic are becoming more relaxed and I think of the past and people are getting past it and used to that. Now, this was the largest month-to-month increase since the inception of the series in 1963 when we say in the series, when they started calculating this particular data within the air-lining industry. Spot jet fuel prices have risen 157% on year suggesting the upward pressure on airfares will continue to possibly worsen in early summer. So now, what's going to happen now in the context of things? What's going to end now? The schools and universities are ending the year. There's summer. What will the world usually do when they travel? People with families, people with children, if they have a chance, especially if they're studying in the university or if their children are studying, they'll finish their studies. Now, the world is going to start traveling. So the demand is going to pick up more and this is where they are suggesting that the pricing on airfare will continue to increase based on the demand. So I'm not saying advice, but if someone is thinking about the summer, I think it's better to go and study from now instead of waiting for the last minute because each passing day and each passing week, based on this particular data, prices will be increasing. What's next? The sharp rise in airfares with prospects of further pricing pressures could deter summer travel at the margin over the summer. And so, this is what we have to look at as investors and or traders. And it is a demand will supply There's going to come a time where there's still supply, meaning availability to travel, but it's got too expensive for people to make the decision to say, yes, let's do it. They're going to say, I don't know whether it was cheap for like 2500 dollars to travel or from Lebanon to America, since the time 1987 to and. Why, or for like 2000 200. If we have family we can't Andags, so you have to take this. Information, come and into consideration when you're looking at this particular sector within futures trading. The second factor that we're going to be looking at are now we get into the dynamics of what's actually happening when it comes to the crude market itself, when it comes to the trade, VLCC is very large crude carriers. They remain present in increased USGCUKC trade amid mid-sized tanker volatility. So what's happening is you have these very large crude containers. They've taken an untypical market share and the US Gulf Coast, that's what USGC stands for, that's in the south of the United States, in the Gulf of Mexico to the UK continent, basically the continent runs from smaller Suez maxes and Afromaxes. Those are large tankers, oil tankers. What's next? Freight for mid-sized tankers has since fallen from peaks seen in early April, whereas you're seeing VLCCs have also seen sunken rate levels ushering their return to the transatlantic play. So what does this mean? We're going to see possibly, possibly instead of using the mid-sized tankers, we're going to see an increase or supply and demand for the large tankers. Leish, Achan, America has the largest oil reserves in the world and we could start seeing transatlantic from the US to the European continent, a spike or heightened demand for the VLCC tanker market versus the mid-sized tanker market. Future cannibalization of mid-sized tanker transatlantic cargoes and covered barrels on previously booked VLCC is making the USGC and UKC run could at least to further, could lead to at least further softening and the supermax freight environment. So when we say softening, we're going to see the cannibalization. What's going to happen now? Are these transporters are going to continue using mid-sized carriers depending on the price of oil, depending on the demand of oil, depending on where it's headed and the need based on the geopolitical tension. If they're able to turn off all of the energy or crude oil coming from Russia to the European continent, because as we've seen in the news lately, they've extended, the EU has extended some of the embargoes or sanctions on Russian oil for a further six weeks or more depending on the country itself. So as long as you see Russia continuing to supply oil to the European continent in some degree or fashion will depend on what size tankers end up being used from a supply demand perspective. Now, if you look at this chart here, the plots here, what you're going to notice, what you're going to notice here is February leading into March. If we go back just on the timeframe, these dots here, this timeframe is when Russia decided to do what they are doing in Ukraine. So this is when you see the traded value spike and since then it's come back down. Now it's at this hovering here in May at this particular level, just at the same level basically right before Russia invaded Ukraine. So now it's going to go back to what I just said and what you're going to see now with Russia coming from Russia to Europe. How much is going to continue to flow?  The third point from the market view that we want to take a look at within oil and energy is the US SPR drawdown begins and will continue until 2022. What is happening? Nearly 7 million barrels of crude left the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the week ended by May 6th. So we're talking three weeks ago now, the largest one-week drawdown in the history of the 40-year-old emergency stockpile. It was a start of deliveries for the 180 million barrel drawdown that will continue through October. So when we say drawdown, you have reserve levels. America is the largest oil reserve country in the world globally, but they're starting to draw down, meaning they are shipping it out. They're using it. So it's coming down. The drawdown means it's coming down further and further, which means the reserves are becoming less and less, which also affects the price stability or volatility is about going in the crude oil market. So when you're looking at 7 million barrels of crude oil were sent out by the end of the first week of May, which is the historic high over the 40-year emergency stockpile where they have this emergency stockpile for specific reasons. They've started tapping into it. We need to start reading it in the lines, Schumannetta. I'm not a political scientist. I'm not a political analyst. I'm an investment manager. And my job is to navigate the markets risk management-wise, manage money over a long-term perspective so that we're able to find good investments at all times, regardless of market cycles, and understand what's happening around us and how to protect ourselves using futures as part of our strategy. Now with that being said, this is going to continue according to spglobal.com through the end of October. We're done with May, then June, then July, then August, then September, then four months where they're going to be drawing down their reserves from the U.S. What's next? The S&P global community insights estimates that an average of 900,000 barrels per day of SPR crude will flow to the market from mid-April through October with additional trial downs by other international energy agency nations raising the global SPR flows to about 1.4 million barrels per day. So it's telling us here that the U.S. is going to increase and end up averaging almost even 1 million barrels per day out of their stockpile in mid-April all the way through October, and you have other international energy agency nations such as OPEC, those nations raising their flows to about 1.4 billion barrels per day. Now if I click here and enlarge this particular graph for you to take a look at as information and research, look at where we are now. How long is the divide? Gray is the future where it's forecasted. This is the blue line represents the drawdown and look where we were at the beginning of the year and look at where it's going to be forecasted by the end of the year. This here, the drawdown begins through October and crude deliveries start on the largest ever SPR drawdown. So if I were to take a look at this graph, does this tell me that if I read between the lines just based on my own intuition and research, does this tell me that the Ukrainian-Russia conflict is going to end anytime soon? Possibly, but looking at this particular graph, I would say no. Why? My answer would be is if they're going to continue the drawdowns in this particular capacity, if you just look at the blue line as the forecast, that means they're going to be sending out more from their reserves and their drawdown levels will be decreasing or increasing, but what they're going to be supplying to the market is more coming from their stockpiles, which means they're going to in theory start shutting out Russian oil completely so that it doesn't supply any nation to where any nation that does accept Russian oil would or could possibly face sanctions, financial sanctions, taxations, etc. You guys know the drill. And I'm neither here to say I am for or against. I'm looking at data and my job is to navigate the markets. So from this perspective, just looking at this particular forecast, as you can see for yourself, it's going to continue. The US is going to ramp up their supply. They're going to lower their stockpiles to make up for what could possibly be a complete shutoff of Russian oil to the global markets. I could be wrong. I'm just giving you the information of how I'm looking at this and reading it myself. Now as we move into the key takeaways, starting off what we discussed, but over the webinar when it comes to taxation or any country that you are in that does have taxation on securities, capital market securities, make sure you do your research and figure out where you stand when it comes to futures securities taxation. You'll find them most likely more friendly than normal equities taxation policy and standards. It's certainly that way in the US markets. In theory, it should be that way in other markets, but other markets make their own policies. Other governments make their own policies. So you need to check into that so that you understand how the tax laws may affect your portfolio as you start building and trading into the futures markets. Second, going back to what we discussed, the market outlook in a very brief context on the outlook coming from specific research sites on what they're seeing based on data. It's been driven by data, real data, not speculation where you have an analyst coming in and saying, well, I think Muslim and Goldman Sachs, I think this or from some other investment firm or hedge fund saying no, I think this where you get conflicting reports. This was all data driven. You've got to do your research. I've mentioned it many times before in previous webinars. You've got to know what you're doing, what you're investing in, and why. And it goes back to research, research, research. You've got to get as much information as you possibly can. And going back here, when I say this week, this was done last week. So we only identified some variables being factored into the crude oil slash fuel commodity sector. Understand that everything that you read from any perspective may not and most likely will not be 100% accurate as the markets play out. So the information provides you with enough data to take an informed position or not. Based on what America is doing with their stockpiles, what the increase in airfares based on the increase in jet fuel has done to the airfare pricing. What could happen? Where is that point of no return to where travelers say, colors started too expensive. I'm not going to pay this price and it starts to drop right now. It's on the up and up on both sides. Cost on the airlines is increasing and they're increasing the airfares at the same time to keep up with obviously operational costs and so forth. So make sure when you read something, if it makes sense to you, I'm going to research, you're completely let's say in the opposite opinion of what you just read or watched or came across, continue searching to find what else is happening on the other side of the spectrum. And I'm not saying that once you find something that you agree with that it's going to be right, but you need to know from one end of the spectrum to the other what the market could possibly throw at what to expect from the market volatility because like I said, the market is the market. It's going to do what it's going to do. You have no control over it. It's not going to move for you in one direction or the other just because it needs or you need it to be profitable in your particular portfolio. So the more information that you have from two minutes, you can take an informed decision. This particular viewpoint makes sense. But this particular viewpoint also makes sense. And then you find out more and you read more and you find out more and you read more then you go back to the curves. You look at not necessarily from a technical standpoint of technical trading, but you use the futures graphs, their curves to give you an indication more than anything else. And lastly, we will continue our webinar series with futures trading, futures within the future sector, diving in with specific information that could be data-driven also from analytical perspectives on other parts of the capital markets. Could be agriculture next week. It could be metals next week. I will be able to give you more details as we get closer or at the beginning of next week's webinar of what we're going to be doing. But now, we're done with the futures from taxation. We started at night, all the way back to the very first webinar. What are futures and how are they used? If you need to touch up, Adnan from ThickMill came on at the beginning of last two weeks ago of the webinar, provided the link that gives you access to their YouTube platform where all of these have been recorded from webinar one all the way through eight. Today's webinar nine, you'll be able to have access to this one. If you can find your main 30 and you can go back and listen to them again and look at the information provided as to how they're used, how they're calculated, what's the value of each particular contract, how the contracts evaluated, what does it mean at expiry date, et cetera, et cetera. Now we've got what the futures are, which are highly sophisticated. These are not securities for the weak-hearted and definitely not securities for the ill-informed. It's complete opposite. You really need to understand what they are, how they're used, and then at the same time, be able to go in, make the research, start building your futures portfolio, maybe hedge the portfolio that you currently have or speculate or a mixture of the two. But we'll start getting into more information to help give you better insight within each of the sectors that Tickmill offers within their futures platform ranging from, but less than from energy all the way through agriculture and the other commodities to the indices, interest rates, et cetera, et cetera. And I always like to end each conversation and webinar with a famous quote and the four most dangerous words in investing are, it's different this time. This one has come from Sir Thomas Templeton, who was an American-born British investor, banker, fund manager, and philanthropist. Now that being said, it's different this time. Well, we have a lot of things happening in the marketplace and it's uncharted territory. America is at a 40-year all-time inflation rate. They're raising interest rates. The U.S. markets, the market itself from everything that's coming through my network is not stable. It's more down pressure at the moment than there is optimism to lift it back up. If there is any optimism, it would be short-lived for the most part before we see what's really going to take place as they continue to raise interest rates to combat inflation. And then more importantly, we still have a lot of supply chain disruption, supply chain management disruptions, mainly from scene. They've been under complete lockdown. If they open up tomorrow, it's going to go from 0 to 100. At what capacity will they be able to start operating again? And then we still have geopolitical tension between Russia and the EU, NATO and Ukraine. So when we say the foremost dangerous words, it's different this time. You've got to be careful because this time is different. It's uncharted territory from a combination of scenarios, not just one. So once again, I'm going to do as much research as you can. You guys have my email address. You're more than welcome to send me any questions that you may have on particular issues within the market. And now I'm going to open it up to any Q&A. Let me see if anyone has sent any questions now. How accurate are these, how accurate are technical indicators? Mo, I'm going to think is short from Hamad, correct me if I'm wrong. Hamad technical indicators are part of the process. It gives you what's happened in the past, okay? It does not give you any crystal ball skills to say, okay, but if you take what's happening in the real world based on real-life capital controls, capital market management coming from the Fed, meaning interest rate hikes at the same time, inflation at the same time, commodities and raw material increases and supply chain disruption. Well, you don't have all of these crises as a bad duck happening at the same time historically, but you do have interest rates being at a 40-year-old time high from an inflationary perspective. Well, you can go back and see, okay, what's happened since World War II in the U.S. market when inflation got out of control? What happened when interest rates increased? What happened to the indices, the actual markets themselves from the New York Stock Exchange to the Dow to the S&P 500 and see what happened historically? Could it be an indicator as to what's going to happen now? Yes. Is it a guarantee that these indicators are accurate? No, it's not because we have those other variables taking place simultaneously in the marketplace now. So you have to pick and choose. When I say pick and choose your battles, I would say rather pick and choose a specific sector and focus on it and block out all the noise and go back in historically and look at the charts and see where oil was. And for instance, we went to the Petrodollar, the America. What happened to oil prices when inflation was at their 40-year-old time high prior to this all-time high? What happened to oil, for instance, when interest rates were under Volcker were increasing at a very fast clip to combat inflation? You can embassier to the price, not relative to where it is now, but relative to the price at that point in time to oil. Just giving you some examples. So how accurate are technical indicators? Moving forward, zero. But they give us historical data to give us an indication of, okay, take the effect was X. So do your research, look in to see how much of the past is aligned with what's happening today. And if the past three Mesolan episodes provided a same or similar result, whatever that may be, then do your research and see how likely is that outcome likely to happen now. But you cannot just strictly stick to technical indicators. From a risk management perspective and long-term investment perspective, indicators to me provide me only short-term information, historical data with short-term information only, but I don't use that as a long-term investment decision. Any other questions? Anyone else? Perfect. I wish everybody a good evening to Spala Khair, happy trading, and good luck with this upcoming week before I leave you. The markets today are a bit flat. On the US side, we've had a little bit of an uptick this last week. And crude oil right now is at 117, gold is at 1847. The Dow was down 44 points, the S&P 500 is flat. So we had a little bit of a turnaround in the market towards the end of last week. Yesterday was a holiday in America. So today is the first of four trading days. But be careful of what they call the dead cat bounce because there's a lot of traps out there at the moment that you need to be careful and aware of falling into. That being said, good luck. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Tick Mill and we'll respond to you as best as we can. Have a great evening and see everybody next week. Take care.


Welcome to Toffy TV, here is the maths reaction. Everton won, Burnley nil at Gwladyswn Park. Three points feel so good. Carlo Anciolotti's first game as Everton manager today and we've finished with a win. A couple of changes in the Everton lineup. James Coleman at right back and Diobrol Siddiwby at right midfield. Bernard in on the left hand side as well. Obviously lost Alex at Wobby, Michael Keane again on the bench. We went with a back four of Coleman, mewn y Hallgate and Dean and then obviously Siddiwby, Delph, Sigurdd, Bernard, Richard Charleson and Don Muffronson. Played a little bit more football today than we were in as direct. Sometimes that was a good thing and other times where I think we overplayed instead of trying to get and push Burnley further back. They made an all right to that. Had a couple of little half chances from free kicks and stuff, which is what they play for. Very direct, very tough side to break down. But we should have gone in front after five minutes of balling. Yeah, he mean it. Heather did across. Mason Hallgate for me's got to score. Not really seen it again, but from where I was sat it looked like it was harder to miss. It was a good save from Nick Pope. Real good chance for Mason to put us ahead there, but obviously really good save from Nick Pope. So, you know, the first half we huffed and puffed and Burnley didn't have anything of note. We had, you know, headers, that glance wide on a calvert loom, but the best moments really, the best bit of football, really good move. Richard Charleson breaking through, sliding it to Siddiwby. He got it out of his feet. It didn't Nick Pope made a really good save with his feet. Don just couldn't quite force it over the line to give us the lead. Went in, nil nil at the break, come out for a second half.  But just the final ball or just something not, you know, was just missing. Meet and drink for Burnley the way they defend with just putting crosses into the box. Burnley, and Tarkovskill deal with them all day long. We had another couple of headers. We had a Dominic Alvert Loom and Heather, which went straight at Nick Pope. Easy catch for them and one from Yeri Mina, which again was a comfortable catch. He's a big lad pope. So, anything kind of central, he's claiming all day long.  Call of Anciolotti changed it up. Moise Keen come on. Bernard went off. Mixed it up a little bit there. Siddi B went off. Tom Davies come on. We just had a little bit of, a little bit more. But just for the goal, you know, we got the breakthrough. Siddi B, Shigarton wins the ball over on the touch line. Laser into Siddi B and a fantastic cross. And Dominic Alvert Loom, absolutely brilliant diving. Heather hits one post, rolls behind Pope when it's in with Moise Keen poised to just knock it in anyway. But it was in the net. Brilliant Heather from Calvert Loom. And the breakthrough was there.  We just closed the game out. You know, when it was a tough win, you know, grabbed the results out. And that's all that matters today. You know, the performance wasn't brilliant, but everything went by far the better side. And loads of attempts, you know, on goal dominated the possession. It was one of the game, you know, by a goal to nil. And Dominic Alvert Loom will be made up with that. Cos I don't think it was just best game recently, but, you know, to get the winners fantastic for the centre forward. I thought James Coleman got better and better. Thought he had a good game. I thought Bernard had a good, a good game. Best games for a while. Holgate and Meiner, I thought were excellent. Up against two very tricky, big, strong, glad, you know, in wood and rod rigas. And then obviously Ashley Barnes. But we worked hard and we were committed. And that was, that was the most important thing. You know, you do that, your ability will rise to the top. And I never won the game by a goal to nil. Carlo Anciolotti rain off to a great start. Two clean sheets on the run as well. Up to 13th. And we go to Newcastle in a couple of days where it will be another tough game, especially coming right on top of this one. But, you know, it's a good start for Carlo Anciolotti. Three points and that is all that matters. Give Peds a matter of action and watch me so you give the video a thumbs up. Subscribe if you haven't and join us on Patreon if you so wish. Otherwise, have a fantastic Christmas. What's left of it. Enjoy your night. See you later.


Zachary Henningson. I use he, him, seventh grade. My name is Julia Cacerca. I use she, her pronouns, and I am in eighth grade. My name is Sophia Flora. I use Steve as a nickname. I use she, her pronouns, and I'm in seventh grade. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ Plus Youth Edition. Today is January 22, 2018. Welcome to the show. So we're just going to go, I'm gonna ask questions, all of us, and about, more stuff about us, and just so we can get a better knowledge and a better understanding of how it is in our school, what we do. Yeah, so I'm gonna ask you Julia. Yes. What are some things that we work towards in GSA? Well, our GSA is the Gender Sexuality Alliance for Main Street Middle School, and what we mostly just work towards is trying to make the school a more inclusive place for LGBTQ Plus students and people, and just make it a more comforting community for everyone. Yeah. So Steve, what are some things that we are working on right now? Well, we're working on getting all of the bathrooms in our school to all gender bathrooms and getting like stall doors for like the urinals and things, so everyone can feel comfortable no matter what they identify as, or if they identify at all, and we are kind of trying to make our school community a more accepting place for all, and yeah. Yeah, so I'm gonna ask myself this question, because it's important, but yeah, I'm gonna ask all you two both. So sexuality.  It's attraction to masculine identified and gender-neutral people and by gender people like that. And what about you? Um, so I suppose you could call my sexuality pansexual. I for a long time I identified as bisexual, but then that was before I knew about all these different kinds of genders. So what I identify now is just queer, because I've tried to call myself pansexual for a while, and it just didn't feel right if that made sense. It also kind of sounded like I was attracted to pans, so people get confused when I said I was pansexual. So I just stick with queer, but I'm attracted to all genders and every human thing. I kind of have the same thing, I'm not gonna say problem, because it's not a problem, but I find anyone, like all genders can be attractive, and I don't believe you have to have a gender either, so that's not something I look for when I'm looking at people. They're trying to the person, not the gender. Okay, so again, it's another question that we're all gonna go around. Some school-related things that we do, like after school activities that aren't hobbies. What have you answered, Zach? Besides GSA, I don't really do anything school-related. Yeah, I just want to escape. You pick it's like a prison. So I am a part of our school's drama club. That means every Tuesday and Thursday. I also am a tender of open art, which is just run by our teacher who will open it after school for anyone, and I go at regularly, so that's kind of what I do, because I can't go home until five o'clock, because obviously I'm at the mercy of my parents driving me. I mean, yeah, I'm great. I mean, I'm in the GSA, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I do play school sports, which is okay, and I do a lot of things outside of school, so we don't need to get into that right now, but sports do you play? I play soccer, basketball, and others. And then, oh wait, we also have music programs through school, part of that too, so yeah. Where are the instruments? I don't need to share those, but okay. Violin, cello, and piano, and yes, okay. Next question, please. Okay. Just hobbies that aren't school-related. I'm gonna think Steve's gonna start this one. Oh, okay, Steve. Okay. Okay, I am actually going to be directing a movie. I am in the process of that, looking for actors and finger-goods. I am a dancer. I really like to read books.  Okay, so I don't do much outside of school. Most of my things that I do are school-related or GSA-related, which is a school thing, so I don't know why I said that, but I guess I draw and read a lot. I am also currently working on multiple different stories that I like to write, none of them are very good, but I like to write them, so. I have too many hobbies. It's almost a problem. It's probably why I'm broke. Okay, I draw. I like to do makeup and special effects makeup. I do musical theater and hip-hop. I I'm starting a new theater program. It's not musical theater, so that should be fun. I'm directing a movie kind of, too, but it's school-related, so I don't know if it counts.  I attempt singing, and I mean, you're great at singing. I attempt singing, and that's pretty much all I do, because I hear these finger guns, you guys. That's how I hide my anxiety. Okay, so what are other things that we do in the queer community? So I work with outright a little bit. I'm part of the youth leadership council that I think we meet monthly. I'm part of the social committee section of that, where it's just, we have a work, we're social. I don't really know what else to say. That's about it. What about you, Steve? I like to go to a lot of protests and marches and anything regarding something I'm interested in or something I want to fight for or I, you know, that classification of things. I'm actually working on a project right now with Julia and other members. We are hosting a rally to kind of get some awareness out for LGBTQ youth and in general and values and rights that are necessary for well-being. Um, I don't really, I don't know, I don't really do that much just because there's not that many things, I guess, to do here. You're part of youth leadership. I do work with outright. I am part of youth leadership. I'm also in the social committee. I went to the march that was two days ago. Um, that was fun. I do go to like marches and stuff if I find them, and I go to outright's trans group. I don't know, maybe Friday night group, but that's pretty much all I do. Steve. Hi. What is our school like for LGBTQ plus people? I mean, overall it's pretty accepting, but there is incidents and things that have happened and things will not just like LGBTQ problems, but like sexism and like not-okay issues to have. We are trying to end this and I mean, I think we're doing okay. The teachers are, most of them, at least I think they're all allies, which is good, at least and so we're trying to just make sure it's a safe place for everyone and that everyone can feel accepted and Since I'm not good at- Since I'm not good at like remembering events that well, it is there having some incidents that I can't remember just because I'm scarred by them. I think you're gonna have to describe one of those to you. Okay. And it's pretty good, like the allies are, the teachers are allies and some, most of the students are, there's not that many people who are like. Here's one incident though we have. Sorry, I have to. There was one day a bit of a situation, we'll just say, where a person decided to take their shirt off in the middle of the hallway and this person was not aware that it is apparently, that it is not acceptable to do that just anywhere. Like this is a school property. There's places for you to go and change if you need to and you have all the time in the world.  And but another peer was walking by and she was, I mean, like this is not okay. So she felt it was okay to let him know that and he kind of came back with a kind of a crude response. A sexual comment towards that. Yeah. And he just said, he's like, well, it's the same thing. So why don't you take your shirt off?  So we need to kind of, I don't know what we can do right now at this point, but this can't be a thing in our school. This is not okay to have. Our school, it does have dress codes. We do have dress codes in our school. They're pretty lenient dress codes, especially more lenient towards people who identify as male. There aren't as many reinforcements for dress codes.  Because no one wants to see that. Sorry. I'm walking down the hall to my class. I don't want to see you shirtless, anyone shirtless for that matter. I prefer to see you with clothes on. Thank you very much. And then after that, he refused to take any disciplinary actions afterwards. He refused to go talk to anyone. He didn't seem to notice it was wrong. You said how you don't, you prefer to see them with clothes on? Well, I think if they make that comment, I don't prefer to see them at all. Yes, that I can agree on. That's not a socially acceptable term to use or phrase. I have also had incidents more related to gender as not just male or female, like other genders where I was at recess one day and somehow we got on the topic of genders and I was like, well, yeah, you cannot identify as anything, male, female, non-binary, anything. And people did not agree with me for this fact. People who I did not realize felt this way. People who I am friends with and I'm still friends with to this day. But we got into an argument about how many genders there were and then from across the playground, I'm going to use some not nice language right now. From across the playground, a peer of mine yelled to me, it was very loud and everyone heard it.  From across the playground, because I believed in more than two genders. And that's your opinion, doesn't have to be theirs. Yeah, you do not have to agree with me in any way about this. You can believe in as many genders as you want to. But I don't feel as though I should be attacked for believing in more genders than just two. And the fact that he, who was not a part of my conversation, yelled it across the playground. And teachers, I guarantee you heard it. We have people on the playground who were meant to intervene when it comes to these kind of things. They heard him call me, brood insults, and they did nothing about it. And then I went back the next day, and I was still talking to these people because I am still friends with them. And students and peers of mine kept making jabs about my beliefs in multiple genders. More than two, let's do it multiple, but they kept making jabs. And first off, they weren't good jabs. They were not good comebacks. They were just, if I had as many eyes as there were genders, I would look the same. Which is not a good comeback. If you're gonna fight with me, do it better. I'll fight with you, but you gotta at least come on. I had someone tell me, if I had as many pennies as there were genders, I would still have to, or I'd still be broke. And it's like, okay, got it. I don't care. And people are allowed to believe whatever they want. And people don't have to agree. People do not have to agree. But do not call me names.   And they were screamed, and nothing happened. No one intervened, and we can't swear in our school. Nothing happened. I just walked away because I was done. So there are a lot of people who are very accepting of LGBTQ, the LGBTQ community and the GSA. But there are people who are completely against it, and there are people who are for it. And then there's like this middle ground. Was it just kind of uneducated? And my personal goal, and I think the GSA's goal, is to educate those people and help them understand what it's like. I've had similar experiences, and I don't want to talk about most of them. But one that I think to myself is at least funny, and I think all of us were there. So in the hallway, it was GSA, and one of our members was passing three or four people. And they were just kind of talking. One of them wanted to go to GSA or something.  Yeah, a group of people I also started running down the hallway chasing the person who tried to make that joke.  It's not okay, and people should know that. It's not, again, they don't have to agree with us, but they have to at least respect us and what we do. And there's some nasty stuff out there that we can't necessarily hide from, but it can't be at our school. It's not a good place for that anywhere, but especially on a school ground. Like, it just needs to come. So yeah, we did end up chasing that group of kids. I'm so confused. Like, why are you chasing people? I will chase people. Would you rather them be in our GSA making crew jokes? I won't. We can lock them out. Or we can chase them. Okay, anyways. Kind of relating to that, how is, what is it like for you to be LGBTQ+, like as a youth? Not specifically in school, but just in the community, like people community, or just like in the public. Can I say something that you think Steve suffered? What? Okay. I don't think I've experienced any direct homophobia or transphobia or anything, but I definitely have experienced panic. I don't really, like, okay, so I have this jacket with all these pins on it. I like to wear it a lot, and it's cold. It's winter. I like to wear it. And a lot of them are gay. One of them is giant, and it's just clear on it. And so I had to go to Walmart to get the stuff, and as I entered the store, I realized that I was wearing that jacket, and I don't know why, it just really stressed me out, because there's a lot of people that, yeah, Walmart. And I mean, we do, in Vermont, it is a pretty accepting place to live. Very quickly moving, Steve. It's okay. Yeah, but there are a lot of accepting people, and a lot of really good organizations. But as a youth who's a part of this community, I have dealt with multiple incidents where I felt instances, instances, instances. Yes, you know what I'm talking about. Where I felt as a younger human, I didn't have a voice, and I didn't have the ability to change the community, or how I didn't have the ability to speak out for what I believed in. And this can relate to just a few people who have silenced my voice, where they just overpower me when I'm trying to talk, because they believe that I'm just a child, and what do I know? As a youth, it's so hard to feel like you have the power to change anything, when it should be the exact opposite. Because when the adults right now are done learning this world, we're left to take care of it. So we should have a say in how they run it, and we should have a say in our community and how we want to live our lives in the future. But as a kid, you don't really have a say in anything. It's just the adults run your life for you. And this is why we're doing what we do. People are saying, this is the generation that's going to change things and make things right. Or make them worse. Yeah, but that's the goal. That's what I'm striving to do.  I want to make the world a better place. Even though I'm probably not going to make the world a better place, I want to help people out. And I think it was good that we went to the Women's March and the Youth March as kind of a combined effort there. And it was really inspiring to listen to some people and some youth that are doing some of the same things, or similar things, and it's really a really great experience that we had. They were like six-year-olds up in the podium and eleven-year-olds talking about their experience, and they were smarter than people running the world right now. And I was like, crap, we're screwed right now. We need to fix this. Well, yeah, but I think that just doing what we're doing every day, like standing up for people who are needing to be stood up for, or ending sexism and homophobia and racism and everything in our community, it's important and it's always going to be there, but we can shorten it a little bit, if that makes sense. But I'm just personally glad that this is what we're doing, and that we're the ones doing it, because we're a good group of people. I'm just going to say that. And we have been, like I was talking about how you can feel silenced. We also feel heard in a lot of places, which is great. We have been giving platforms to talk through our social media. We're able to share our views through this. We're able to share our views through the GSA. So there are outlets, but it's pretty hard to find those outlets, especially when you're still closeted to say, like, mm-hmm. You're not out, too. Yeah, so it's kind of hard to join those outlets and talk when you're still kind of uncomfortable with yourself. I don't, you are very inspirational, and I don't know. Yeah, so another question kind of relates, I don't know, I think, what are our families are like? Does anyone want to start? Why don't you take that one? My family is very accepting. They are really nice. They're uneducated in some places, but I try to educate them, and I'm out to them in every way, I think. You think? I think, I don't know. So it's easier for me to find outlets or ask to join them. Even then, I ask to join the GSA when I wasn't out, and I don't know how they thought about that, but I think it should be fine. Yeah, so anyone, yeah? Okay, mm-hmm. My family is very open to the topic of LGBTQ plus things. I've only told one person in my family that I identify or what my situation is, so hi. Yeah, a surprise. Yeah, but they seem to be interested when I talk about these things that I'm doing in GSA or what I'm like, marches and protests and things I'm doing and participating in, and it's really nice to be supported by that, even though they did not know that it's because I'm part of that community. So my family, my immediate family, they are very, very accepting of it. They don't know a lot of things, and I'm totally open to teaching them, even though I don't know a lot of things either about this community, because I'm fairly new to being a part of it. They're very accepting of it, but my less immediate family, like my grandparents, my grandparents identify as Catholic. And I went to a private Catholic school in kindergarten, and I think if I didn't, and I went to a public school and I was taught more about LGBTQ stuff, even though you didn't really talk about that in public school, I think I would have had an easier time through that questioning phase, but also coming out to my Catholic part of the family. It was interesting, because not even having anything to do with the fact that we are Catholic and they don't know a lot about LGBTQ, my family is very overwhelming at times. We are very loud and very aggressive at times. So when I tried to come out to my grandparents, I was at a family dinner with my mom, my dad, my grandparents, and my sister and me. And they asked me what I've been doing in school, and I was talking about the GSA, and then my mother decided to take over and explain what the GSA does. And then she got it wrong, because she doesn't know a lot about it because I don't share a lot. And then she decided to take it upon herself to explain my sexuality. She also got that wrong, because she said, and I quote, Julia is boy crazy. And in general, I'm not always seeking romance. I'm only 13, but I'm definitely not boy crazy. That's not the term I would use. And it's very hard to get a word in that family dinner. So I just kind of sat there and just like internally screamed because I could not speak out for myself, which also kind of goes back to having your voice taken away as a younger person. So I just sat there and like cringed so much because I was like, mom, no, no, that's not right. And then afterwards when we left, I just sat in the back of the car.  It was so cringy. Other than that, though, my other, my, they have, the grandparents haven't really accepted it, and I think they're just kind of ignoring it until it goes away, because it's a phase, obviously. But other than that, my other family is very accepting of it, including like my cousins. I don't know, because I haven't come out yet, but I can talk to them about LGBTQ+, and they won't look at me like they're crazy, which is nice. Yes, that look.   Um, okay. So I kind of talked about my family, but you said some things that made me want to think, yeah, so my like immediate family, extended family is, um, like, they're nice, and I had a similar experience with my mother. I love you, mother, and I know you're going to be watching this, and I'm sorry in advance. Um, there was a time where I identified as non-binary just because, what is my identity? That phase, we know that phase. We know that phase. And, um, I did and still have a lot of anxiety on, like, talking to people just because I can't really be serious about the topic because I try to cover my anxiety with puns and finger guns and jazz hands, and I do this a lot. So I asked her to explain it. I probably should have given her some guidelines, so it's probably my fault. I don't know exactly what she said, but she probably actually explained it well. I have no idea because I was upstairs kind of just screaming. Um, so the next day, my aunt, I love her, and she's just confused, and I can relate, but, um, she was like, if you're doing anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, you should stop. And that is, that is very true. I think the way that my mother explained it was, um, well, they're just, they're not feeling, like, they're feeling uncomfortable or whatever. Like, they identify as this and they feel uncomfortable identifying as this. And I mean, I don't know how my aunt understood that, and again, I don't know what my mother said, word for word. But, um, thanks aunt for giving me a reason to be gay. Um, I want to quickly add to that really quick. My grandmother at the family dinner, she looked over at me and she was like, I don't want you to feel like you're forced to be queer. What? Like, I don't want you to pigeonhole yourself into being queer. Or I don't want to be queer. You don't want to feel like you have to be straight either. Yeah, but I was like, Grandma, this is literally the most accepting community you can be a part of. You're forcing me to be straight. Do you not realize this? I was like, not being uncomfortable. I was like, you're making me so uncomfortable by saying that. That, oh my God. Steve. Yeah. Oh, sorry. So, again, grandparents, I haven't come out to them. I haven't come out to my aunt about name change or pronouns or anything like that. I think I'm going to do it during the summer right before I see them. Oh, okay. I'm going to send them a letter. Oh, yeah. Because an email is not formal enough. Like, a business letter about your sexuality? Yes. Oh my God. It's a proposal. I have something to say about that. So, in my... Don't laugh at me. In my opinion, to me, I never feel, I never felt pressured to come out about my sexuality just because that's not a thing they need to know about me. I think I saw a Tumblr post that was funny and I want to do it now. So, basically what happened is it was like a double wedding. They were... So, it was... The people who were getting married were two... I saw those two girls. And they were at the very... Like, they were standing as if it was a straight wedding and at the very last minute, the people were like, wait, something's wrong and then they switched them. Yes. Is that how you're going to come out on your wedding and just switch around? Zachary. Yes, this is my plan. No. I'll be the other person in your wedding. So, yeah, I feel like... Someone help us. We're not qualified to do any of this. No, we are. I feel like gender is more of a pressing topic for me to come out to them. I'm probably not even going to say... There's weird Zachary. Go away.  They'll be like...  You can be both?  Oh, my God. You can be both? Both what? You can be gay and trans. What? Wouldn't it just be easier for you to be a straight woman? No. Yes. I feel like gender is a more pressing topic just with name and pronouns because those wrong of those can be painful. Yeah. We're basically just rambling at this point. Yep. Well, it's important to do this sometimes, especially for TV. What was that? And why? I'm cool. Okay, okay, stop. I'm really cool. We're just... I think we're going to stop it here because we're all... Losing our minds? No, I have... No, Steve has something to say. Oh, okay. Okay. One last thing we're going to discuss. We are going to discuss where we want to be as people and as people striving to do things in, say... Korea, I want to be in my home. Like where we want to be in terms of, like, progress with LGBTQ issues and racism, sex, all that great stuff. Not great. So goals then? Goals. Yes. In, like, say, five or ten years, somewhere around it. Okay. Why don't you start? Because you seem like you have a lot to say. I do. I could go on for hours. Don't go on for hours. I won't. We only have one hour. Go on for, like, a minute. We... Or not we... I... I, like I said before, I like to see people happy. And I also want people to feel accepted. I want people to always just feel comfortable going out in public. Being themselves.  Being trans. Being whatever they may be. Being female. Being male. All of that wonderful, yes. I just want... I think we need... I think it just has to happen that our world needs to just be accepting. And I'm going to help that happen. So, yeah. Julia or Zach, go. Okay. So, my goal for, like, five years, hopefully I'll be in high school. Probably be in high school. I don't know. My goal is kind of similar to Steve's. It's just to make... I know I'm not going to probably be able to do much as an adult or as a teenager on a worldwide scale, but I want to work with just Vermont. And I want to start working with other organizations as I get older to help LGBTQ kids and just kids in general who are part of minorities who aren't part of minority, just to make kids happy. That's always what I wanted to do. I want to be a teacher when I'm older. I want to work with kids because kids are hilarious. They're so fun to be around. Most of the time. Most of the time. The kids are so fun to be around. And my goal is... One other goal is just to be out to everyone and be able to be freely gay. And excited.  And excited. Yes. In the community specifically, in five to ten years, I want to erase transphobia within the queer community or stuff like that. It upsets me. Yeah, it's a lot of that in the queer community. Okay. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists, TERFs. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Basically people who are like, trans women aren't women. You can't be in this women's space. Like that. Yeah. That's an example. It's a thing, Julia. I'm not denying it's a thing. I'm just saying it's a dumb thing. I just kind of want to erase stuff like that where people who claim to be activists are actually putting other people down. And not doing their job. Yeah. I noticed that too when I identified as bisexual. I saw a lot of things where it was like, are you half gay? And I was like, no. Well, are you half straight? Which one do you like better, men or women? And I'm like, bisexual is literally I like both. What do you mean? It doesn't have to be a percentage. And if you think of it as colors, purple is seeing its own color. It's not half blue, half red. It's just its own thing. We gotta wrap it up now. Okay. Thank you for watching All Things LGBTQ Youth Edition. And we'll see you next month. Hopefully. Hopefully.


Good afternoon to everyone there. I'm, my understanding is I've got about 10 minutes here. So I'm going to, this is a large, very large project that could consume far more than 10 minutes. So I'm just going to touch on some, some key points here of the research and then very, very happy to discuss it further later with anyone interested. So this is a project that sort of takes a step back and says, and sort of asks, are there particular barriers to innovation innovations and peacekeeping in studying political violence more generally, and ask the question, in what ways, how do we understand patterns of violent unrest around the world. And one way that we do that is through the compilation of news reports and so that's really what this project seeks to understand the effects of particular news reporting patterns on how we then understand global unrest, whether that's political violence, protest right and so on and so forth. This is a large project with a number of co-authors, including Michael Weintraub who may be in the audience or at least is there with you all in Helsinki for the conference. So, right, the starting point of the research is the same reason we're all assembled, right, which is we care and we're concerned about political violence, understanding its causes and its consequences and how to mitigate it. And one way we've done that as I mentioned is to take news reports, we sort of the broader academic and sort of NGO community to take incidents of violence reported in the often in the news, not exclusively, but often in the news. And then to compile those into very, very large data sets that we can then use as quantitative scholars to then try to understand patterns of again of political violence whether comparing across countries or within countries. So, a variety of efforts to do this. The GED data set, the geo-referenced event data set out of the Solar Conflict Data Program, PREO, has one such data set, the Global Terrorism data set out of the University of Maryland, the ACLID, the Armed Conflict Location Event Data Project, the Social Conflict Analysis data set which previously was known as the Social Conflict in Africa data sets, IQs, the Integrated Crisis Early Warning System, just to name a few. And again, these don't rely entirely on news reports, but the preponderance of the material at least for many country cases does come from news reports. And these, these, these type of data, these news report based data are used to study a wide variety of political violence. So I don't need to rattle these off but everything from terrorist activity to how we understand electoral violence to violence against peacekeeping forces, often it's news media that is sort of the source, the primary source of our understanding of political violence, and who uses these data, many of us in academia use these data, and have used them to publish a number of leading economic political science and other journals. But it doesn't stop there, right? Government organizations, a variety of US and other government organizations use these and not only use them but indeed fund them. So a lot of funding for some of these organizations comes from different government partners, and a number of think tanks NGOs, international organizations use them as well. And there are implications beyond the academic inferences that we derive from these data but I think implications for government and other users of them as well as, as, as members of the policy community attempt to craft and programming community attempt to craft solutions, again to to political violence. And so it raises this really fundamental question which is, do media reports in conflict or other forms of unrest when aggregated. Do they provide a generally accurate picture of political violence, what do we mean by accuracy what we could mean the place is the place generally accurately depicted the timing the motivation the target the weaponry employed the group of implicated or affected the outcome right we can think about this across a wide variety of dimensions. And I'm going to just start with this quote from a current staff writer at the New York Times who interviewed for the project. And it's a great who who basically said to us like, there's a lot of violence that happens, and it can't all be written about nor nor should have all be written about. I'm paraphrasing. We are not just a chronicle of all violent events that take place over the course of a day right so the starting point here is that if you talk to the news media. There's sort of general responses like no we were not a chronicle of all events and so if you if you aggregate them then that might raise some questions about like whether certain types of events are being systematically missed. So what are the findings of our project in brief, we're going to estimate that the media based data sets, at least those that we study this project significantly and systematically under report particular type types of violent events. So when we use them and what we call a reverse replication exercise, basically asking whether a number of existing academic studies can be can be recovered in terms of the results they find using media based data we find that in the majority of cases they cannot. Clearly there are, I think a number of reasons to be concerned about cross country comparisons using media based data. And this quote from one of our interviewees I think really kind of really kind of brings this home. Right. So this is an individual working for one of the leading wire services in the world, talking about working on Yemen for 18 months and during that period never being able to get a visa to even go to the country in the first place. And this was during the Saudi intervention when a lot of important when a lot of violence was taking place. And he then contrast that with Ukraine, right, where he says there are probably 3000 foreign journalists there now, I could go tomorrow get on the flight to Poland crossover the border relatively easily. So you can, you right away we can see that just like the restrictive nature of government policies leads to situations in which some countries are going to get a lot of reporting some or not. But what about within country comparisons right if we say well let's let's hold the country fixed let's only look at violence and in an error trade let's only look at violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo let's only look at violence in Afghanistan. Do these do do these data sets do better. And here another this one former New York Times reporter, I think gave a quote that really kind of illustrates the concern here. And he basically said to us if one Iraqi work he worked in Baghdad, and he talked about how if one Iraqi were killed, it wasn't a story.  If 20 or more were killed that was a story. In contrast, if a single American soldier was killed that was a story right so right away we see what my coauthors and I described as an editorial bias the, the tendency for news media to simply decide that certain stories are just more covered than others. Right. And so if certain stories are being systematically omitted then then that would be the source of bias right. So that's what we call in the class of editorial biases we come up with a number of these, which I'm happy to go through later. The other way we think about this as a capability bias, simply not all violence can be covered because journalists face a number of restrictions on the reporting. So for example talked about certain places in Columbia where their teams simply can't go because it was too unsafe to cover violence and other issues to go back to the previous interviewee who talked about Mosul in particular really being unreachable during the rock war and so you could imagine a limit or a lack of coverage on on that part of the country for lack of safety so on and so forth. And so how are we going to carry out our study. What we're going to do is we're going to take the media based data sets we're going to compare them to different administrative data collected by different government forces in different campaigns. We're going to use data supplied by the US Defense Department for the year basically 2016 and early 2017 on its air strikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. We're going to get violence recorded by US and partner forces in Afghanistan, during the US invasion of Afghanistan, similar for Iraq, and then we're going to use data from the Philippines released by the Philippines military and police forces, roughly 25,000 observations of data, and then finally we're going to use some data released on protest and riot activity from the South African police service. Basically, the reason we're going to do this is we're going to, we first note that there are many ongoing collection efforts that really that are incredibly detailed. And so here we can see, for example, just from Sygax data from Afghanistan how detailed the data are from the Helmand region, a very violent area of Afghanistan during the war, so violent. And so detailed, you can actually see the, the outline of the road network here even though there's no roadmap superimposed in the background here. So these are incredibly detailed data, but why trust them right why trust the records. And, and, and, and the trust comes from a couple sources first in the case of the data from Iraq Afghanistan the Philippines is, and then Iraq and Syria for for the campaigning of sizes. These were detail, these were data constructed by military following very specific military protocol using advanced technologies that allowed them to basically get a high degree of spatial and temporal accuracy. Second, right there collected with standard operating procedures that raise the confidence that they were reported, sort of regardless of when and where they took place. The big part of this is that they were released that these data were generated for internal consumption. So the data was released by the US Defense Department for example was previously classified data, meaning that it was, it was it was constructed in such a way that it was it was purposely not released to the public. And then it was only through the declassification process that we're able to get these data. And one last point I'll make is with respect to the campaign and sizes. Each of these bombings right that we see in the data, you know, cost anywhere between 10s to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so a sort of final assumption that we make at least in comparing that data is that these are, these are incredibly expensive attacks that I think raise the raise the likelihood that the decrease the likelihood that things are being either filled or fabricated right because you'd have to kind of figure out a way to do so internally for internal documents in a way where you're kind of omitting these attacks that are costing the government hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases. Andrew, can you hear me okay. Can I ask you to wrap up. Yep, totally. So what we're going to do is we're going to, as I mentioned, carry out a series of reverse replication exercises where basically we're going to take studies published in the American political. American political science review and other other studies. And we're basically going to, we're basically going to then look at the extent to which they were able to recover the results using these media based data sets. We find in roughly 70% of cases you can't. And so, and then we're going to look for a series of specific sources of missing this. I'm going to get into those in the question and answer session if you're interested, but I'll leave it there for the sake of time and and for the next presentation. Thank you so much.


Oh! Wayne! Coach is grabbing him, he goes to the line, and he's like, hey, what are you doing? That's a face, hey, get off me, coach! Swim move pushes the coach away.  Ah, there. Fuckin' off of me! Goddamn it! Let's fuckin' go of me!