Larry hires on to a corporation as a truck driver, with intent to deliver their goods to distributors and to pick up supplies and materials at corporate provider facilities. He thinks that his employment is a contract where he agrees to be an employee and work for an employer who will pay him for his services. Indeed, his purpose for signing the contract is to earn income, and the business purpose for employing him is to have him deliver incoming and outgoing materials. The challenge is the unwritten part of the contract he signs. It is contract obligations set by government instead of by agreement between the parties. Larry is also obligated to pay taxes and to have the business collect them from his earnings. He is to be registered into a social security system that is to be supported by even more taxes, even if there is no mention of this in the contract he signs. For its part, the corporation, again unmentioned in the contract, is obligated to collect taxes from Larry, depositing them in accord with government instructions. It agrees to pass the Internal Revenue Service information on Larry's pay and taxes, information from Larry's employment. It agrees to conditions on some union agreement that would not even be a viable contract under the common law for lack of consideration. There are few areas of law that have greater government interference than employment. It is where government regulation has intruded into the contract, adding conditions and obligations that are not agreed by the parties, and are often not even written into the contract document that they sign. This behavior is patently unconstitutional, interfering with the obligations on private contracts is directly and absolutely banned in Article 1, Section 10 of our Constitution. The very purpose of this section is to set a duty upon Congress. It is a duty to protect we the people from even state laws that would attempt to pass bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, or would impair the obligations of contract. Here we see Congress not simply failing to protect the public, but creating the interference it has a duty to prevent. Larry is not going to be paid what was agreed as the value of his services. Some of his earnings are going to be seized under tax laws. The employer does this as an agent of the government without any legal basis for agency. Larry's earnings, the value he contracted to receive, will not be legally secured from seizures. The government will take it without even a promise of just compensation. The business gets Larry's services as agreed, but finds itself obligated to become a tax collector. This is a new obligation outside any contract, and the time and effort and risks of business operation to complete this task are set upon the employer as a cost of contracting with Larry. There is no just compensation received by the business nor is one offered. How could this be? The answer is that both legislators and judges are ignoring constitutional limits. They legislated a change in the 16th amendment that would authorize them, in the name of the people, to seize on the private income of citizens as a new authority of government. Of course our leaders were not authorized as representatives to redefine their authority to include those that were forbidden to do. Any citizen who puts his hand in his neighbor's pocket to seize upon what he wants or needs would be prosecuted for theft. No representative could, as a representative, put his hand in his citizen's pocket without engaging in criminal behavior in the name of the people. To make sure that this sort of violation was clearly banned, the Constitution wasn't even signed until there was a 4th amendment banned on seizing the property of citizens set into the language where the ban was clear. Instead of normal legislation, those who were in authority, only as representatives, took it upon themselves to ignore the limitations of agency and document their defiance of our Constitutional provisions as an amendment. They violated their trust as agents of the people. Relying on their authority as sovereigns, they applied the new law through legislation to interfere with the obligations of employment contracts. Having ignored the limits of Constitutional government as to their responsibilities, they had little problem in proclaiming the limits written into the original document were no longer appropriate. Despite Congress, federal courts have supported interference in contract obligations and have ignored the duties set upon Congress that might interfere with the sovereignty of government over the common citizen. As far as their oath to support the Constitution is concerned, the illusion from the National Agricultural Foundation is appropriate. In protecting citizens under the Constitution, our courts have been about as useful as a instance on a poll. Our leader's general application has been support of legislative law and support of the Congress. Our courts have almost uniformly supported the actions of Congress, whether representative or not. They have assumed a right to use interpretation of law to rewrite the Constitution when it would not support what Congress would do as a sovereign body. In ignorance or slaw, take your pick. Our courts do not approach the Constitution as a contract by and among we the people. It is only by collusion, a conspiracy to support whatever Congress is willing to put into law, that modern courts can claim even the color of legality. The courts support a constitutional process, even where it accomplishes an illegal result. Our Constitution has its faults, mostly in being dated and limited as to the knowledge and intent of the people who brought it into existence. It is still an incredible and wonderful documented source of legal government. Unlike other national constitutions, those that recognize and set limits upon a sovereign government's authority, our constitutional agreement is the open recognition of sovereignty of citizens. It records an attempt to create a government to meet our sovereign purposes as stated in the preamble. That is what makes the United States politically unique among nations. It is that it is founded on the dream of self-government. It is a dream that is based on a reality that the ultimate freedom of a nation is only found in the freedom of its people. It is based on the reality that prosperity of a nation cannot be greater than the prosperity of its people. It is based on a government where leaders serve the people instead of a government where the citizens are required to work for its leaders. There is no greater violation of the American dream than a government where the people work for the rulers and those who rule determine what the people get for their efforts. This is involuntary servitude for the people of the nation, and nowhere is the violation of the American dream greater than in the open and hostile setting of obligations on those who would enter into employment. This pollutes the lifeblood of our national economy, our personal commitments to the economic welfare of our nation. The result is a government putting its hands into the pockets of its citizens to do what government leaders feel is right. Doing it in the name of the people does not make this any better. It is criminal behavior, and justifying crime by blaming it on someone else does not relieve it any more than claiming it is somehow necessary to be a criminal if you are to serve the public. The rule is a simple one. If the result is criminal, the acts that create that result are also criminal. This is a major element of our commercial environment, and the result of acts in violation of the principles of the common law and specific provisions in our Constitution. The result is real, and it will not become different unless someone makes changes. Before the effective citizen of tomorrow, we again have too many potentials to offer a clear path. Are we to correct what is wrong reversing the changes to our Constitution that are so clearly beyond what authorities we granted to our representatives? Do we demand our courts recognize our personal sovereignty and support our authority as owners of government? Do we raise the owner flag and start cleaning house of the leaders who seem least inclined to serve we the people? Do we mandate changes to the Constitution to initiate our exception management over its questionable uses of our authority? We face the twin challenges of what actions by citizens can be effective and what we can agree to do as we the people. We face the secondary challenge of inertia of the many citizens who are unaware of the serious breaches of authority limits that were set on our government. We face the secondary challenge of a government that has proven quite willing to punish unwanted questioning of its authority. Unless the change is fairly certain, there will be new government obligations applied to those who would challenge. That is the nature of rule. Once established, rule does not lightly tolerate competition. On the other hand, when the people are agreed, there is no longer any competition. There is only the authority of we the people. What we seek in this course is empowering the citizens of tomorrow. Empowerment comes from agreement, from coming together for what people agree upon. Our Constitution, marvelous as it is, is subject to this same agreement. The question is if we can agree that our public officers are to abide by its provisions. Our written constitutional agreement is not a true authority unless we are agreed that it is. And we are in charge whenever we are willing to put our agreement into effect as direction to our public employees. You as citizens are also owners. The United States is your nation. The constitutional agreement proclaims itself to be your self-government agreement. It is to be implemented as a corporate government that can only be authorized to continue through your agreement. The U.S. government that is created under this agreement exists only to serve the purposes that we as sovereign citizens have given to it. It should only have the authorities that we are agreed to revive. We are the citizen owners, and where we are in agreement, everyone is in agreement. Your ownership is also a reality, even though it may be now denied by our public employees. When it comes to interfering with the obligations of employment contracts, we have a criminal violation of the authorities granted to government in our constitution. This leaves us with both the reality of being victims of criminal acts by our own government and the reality of our authority. The reality of being victims of crime is not going to change unless someone changes it. The challenge of change is not in authority or potency. It is whether we, as we the people of the United States, can find sufficient agreement among ourselves so that we will mandate our changes to our leaders for their action.


The next item of business is a statement by Fergus Ewing on next steps for the Crofting Commission. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Fergus Ewing. Cabinet secretary, ten minutes please. Crofting occupies a unique place in the cultural heritage of Scotland. It's woven into our history, our story of who we are with a powerful and often poignant resonance. We must not allow crofting simply to be a relic of our past. Crofting must have a purpose and a role in our present and our future. That purpose, in this Government's view, is to support people to remain on the land and to bring people back to the land. The role of government is to enable and support people so to do and also to remain there creating a sustainable, productive environment in which they can both live and work. We must invest in crofting as we traditionally understand it. That means providing it with an effective regulatory and statutory framework. For some communities, and indeed the Crofting Commission itself, this last year has been particularly challenging and time will be required to heal the wounds that these communities feel from recent experiences. I am pleased to advise Parliament that the commission is now moving on from these testing times and is working hard to re-establish its role as an effective regulatory body. We had a very successful set of elections for the Crofting Commission board in March, with 16 candidates coming forward for six commissioner posts. Together with three commissioners appointed by me, the new board has spent the last few months learning about and settling into their new roles. Those are key to enabling the commission to fulfil its statutory functions and to developing a stable, supportive framework for crofting activity. I can also announce today, Presiding Officer, the appointment of Mr Rod MacKenzie, the elected commissioner from East Highlands, as the new chair of the Crofting Commission board. Rod, who is an active crofter, brings with him great experience and knowledge, not just from crofting but also from his business background. Collectively, the commissioners bring a wealth of crofting talent to the Crofting Commission. I wish them well in their new roles and look forward to engaging with them. In January of this year, Bill Barron was appointed as chief executive of the Crofting Commission. Since then, the chief executive has rightly focused on the need to renew trust in the commission, particularly with stakeholders, and on the functionality of the commission itself. Presiding Officer, in February I published the review of governance at the commission. I asked for this review to consider specific weaknesses that had become apparent over the last year. The review provided a welcome and timely approach to take stock, to learn from experiences and examine positives, as well as opportunities for improvement. Presiding Officer, I can advise Parliament that the commission will today publish its action plan to implement the review findings, and that work is already under way to address three key areas for improvement. First, revised Governments arrangements are being developed for the board to build capacity and confidence among commissioners on the extent and limits of their duties. Second, action is being taken internally to improve the systems, procedures and support mechanisms to underpin effective board decision making and collective adherence to those decisions. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the commission has engaged with stakeholders consulting over the procedures for managing common raisings. This engagement is contributing to improving relationships between the commission and crofters. Significant though its role is, the Crofting Commission is not the sole barometer of health in our crofting communities. This Government is committed to investing in and supporting crofting and crofting activities now and in the future. Key to this, Presiding Officer, is enabling more people to live and work on their land. Since 2007, we have approved over £16 million in grants for croft housing, helping to build or improve over 800 homes for crofters and their families. That demonstrates the importance of access to affordable housing in remote areas. It is vital that the Croft House grant continues to fulfil its intended purpose of enabling people to stay and encouraging others to settle in our island and rural communities. I have therefore increased the budget for this scheme by a further £600,000 in 2017-18, taking the total allocation to £2 million in May this year. However, we also provide funding and practical support for crofting. The crofting agricultural grants scheme, known as CAGS, has seen over 3,550 applications since 2010, with a value of £10 million. We are providing support for new and young crofters through the £2 million new entrant start-up grant for farming and crofting, and the £6 million young farmer start-up grant. Crofters can also access a bespoke subscription service provided by the Farm Advisory Service. We have established the crofting cattle improvement scheme, including a £3 million bull stud that offers subsidised rates for crofters. Each year, more than 100 bulls are hired to over 80 townships with approximately 400 beneficiaries. If we are to encourage and enable more people into crofting, we need to offer them a modern statutory framework. We have committed to review crofting law during this Parliament to make the legislation more transparent, understandable and workable in practice. I welcome the Rural Economy and Economy Committee's findings from its crofting inquiry in the debate in May. I have not yet formally responded to that report in full. It provides us with much to consider and to explore further with stakeholders in terms of how to proceed with a new crofting bill. The issues are complex and opinions on them, as the committee's own report demonstrated, are diverse. There are no straightforward answers and there may be no quick solution. Compromise may well be required from us all to reach consensus. I will therefore update the committee on a regular basis as we make progress and reach conclusions on its key findings. I believe that such an iterative process will enable us to get the new bill right. Traditional crofting has a role to play in our ambitions to see more people will be able to live and work in the highlands and islands, to re-people the highlands and islands. However, we must also maximise the opportunity and potential from a modern approach to crofting. That means enabling different ways of working the land and creating sustainable crofting communities. Connectivity, and especially digital connectivity, is crucial. It enables people in the most remote parts of Scotland to do the same as people in towns and cities. Our investment since 2012 has made a huge difference. In 2012, only a quarter of premises had access to fibre broadband in the highlands. Over three quarters have such access. In Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, not a single premise had access. Now it is, respectively, 62 per cent, 65 per cent and 50 per cent. That connectivity enables people to make lives and livelihoods on the land, to diversify to create sustainable livelihoods and to collaborate with neighbours and communities to find common solutions. In conclusion, that approach is as important to supporting crofting more generally, as it is to reforming its statutory frameworks. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we must move on to the next item of business. It will be helpful if members who wish to ask a question are to press the request to speak buttons now. I call on Peter Chapman. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. May I also take this opportunity to join the minister in welcoming the newly elected commission and wishing them and their teams all the best as they take forward a programme to improve legislation and governance around crofting and secure the future of this important part of Scotland's heritage. Like many rural communities, the crofting community is fragile and needs support and help to move forward with confidence. It is important that the new commission has the confidence of the crofting community and that it works to understand and resolve the many issues around in particular common grazings, which were an on-going source of concern during the term of the last commission. The cabinet secretary will be as aware as I am of the issues that have recently affected the commission, in that I believe that it became two hands-on with dealing with disputes. In order to prevent that, would he agree with me that the commission should look now to take a more executive function in shaping and leading policy? I welcome Mr Chapman's remarks and I suspect that they will be echoed across the chamber. That is right and proper that we express our support for the commission in moving away from the difficult times last year. I think that we all recognise, without going into details, that there were a series of unfortunate episodes, not to say, confrontations that existed between the commission and certain townships with regard to common grazing, the regulation and issues therein end. It is up to the commission to take forward those matters. I think that we must, particularly given the review of its governance, which has just been completed and the action plan that it formed today, allow it to do its job. I am pretty sure, I would say to Mr Chapman, that the new chief executive and the new convener will, I am sure, be taking a close interest in what is said today and the messages conveyed. I very much support Mr Chapman's view that we all need to move away from the somewhat confrontational and very unfortunate episodes that caused huge ructions and personal concern amongst many individual crofters and communities. That is the right course ahead. In the newly elected commission and the new convener, we have the right people to take forward that work. I also thank the cabinet secretary for her prior sight of the statement and congratulate Rod MacKenzie and his appointment as chair. I welcome the change in governance arrangements, but I am concerned about the lack of detail in the statement about them. The problems arose from the 2010 act that changed the commission from the crofter's commission to the crofting commission, a move from a culture of assistance to a culture of regulation. Practice on the ground and indeed the statement today show that this has not worked. Will he now reverse those changes and delegate further powers to Grazing's committees to enable them to develop their own townships? First of all, I hope that I made clear that, of three issues that I highlighted in the governance review, one of them is to clarify the scope and extent of the duties of individual commissioners. There was, I think, an element of dubiety about that. That is now being taken forward following the review and the action plan that was published today. Second of all, the member fairly refers to the previous legislation in 2010. She is right to do so, but law is words on a page. My personal view is that the difficulties that arose were not perhaps so much about the law but various personal issues that I really do not want to go into. Now that those are really behind us, I think that we have the opportunity in future to let the commission get on with its job, a job that I think that we all respect and appreciate and want to be supportive of in its chamber. I am sure that that is the approach that Rhoda Grant and our colleagues will take. Thank you. I have 10 members wishing to ask questions. I hope to get them all in, so questions please, not statements. Kate Forbes followed by Edward Mountain, please. To ask the cabinet secretary how the Crofting Commission can better support active crofting and ensure that crofters are used productively so that, in the words of the cabinet secretary, crofting supports people to remain on the land and bring people back to the land. I think that this is one of the missions of the Crofting Commission, that this is exactly what they want to do working in collaboration with the Scottish Government, but also working with the local authorities in the islands and the mainland and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. I absolutely agree that helping people to work actively to have access to crofters and to have access to housing crofters are key objectives that we all share. As I mentioned, our aim is to re-peopel the Highlands and Islands, and crofting has a key role to play in that regard. Edward Mountain followed by Stuart Stevenson, Mr Mountain. I would like to welcome the cabinet secretary's commitment to a review of crofting law and a new bill. The rec committee was clear that a legislative platform that fits the reality of modern crofting practices is needed. Will the cabinet secretary undertake to ensure time to allow new legislation to be proposed, scrutinised and enacted before the end of this Parliament? We are committed to legislating within the lifetime of this Parliament, so I am happy to provide him with the assurance that he seeks. It is a commitment to which we are bound. Having said that, I am certainly of the view, as I mentioned in the statement that we need to get this right. That takes a lot of time and discussion. There is lots of valuable information that we have. The report from the committee recently, the Shucksmith report, what is called the Sump, which is an aggregate collection of the wisdom of some of our expert crofting lawyers about changes that need to be made. However, we also need to consider which option we wish to go down—a fundamental reform, the Sump and the implementation of that, a consolidation act or a variety of different approaches. It is right that we take time to listen to views that Mr Mountain has advocated and, if so, he is correct to take time to sound out those views. I will also personally seek to maintain the broad consensual approach in this Parliament that we have brought to the issue, which will certainly help us to get on the right track to do that task before the end of this Parliament. Stuart Stevenson, followed by David Stewart. Can I welcome the news that 4,000 crofts are now registered? Can the cabinet secretary tell us how we are going to help communities to ensure that the remaining 14,000 crofts are appropriately registered? Yes, indeed. There is a lot of work that has been done and a lot more that needs to be done. Since the crofting register commenced, the Government has been working with Registers of Scotland and the Commission to help crofting communities to complete registration of their crofts. Registers of Scotland have engaged with 346 townships in the past year and continues to promote the benefits of registering. To date, ROS has held meetings with 18 townships and supported a further 38 communities. In crofting terms, Registers of Scotland is an activist, although it may not term itself thus. From my own work in overseeing Registers of Scotland for the previous five years, I know that they bring huge professionalism and enormous commitment to that task. There is a lot of work to be done, but Registers of Scotland are the right people to be in charge of leading it. Can the cabinet secretary provide more detail on the proposed support mechanisms being put in place to underpin effective board decision making and collective adherence to those decisions? The primary way in which we sought to provide assistance was by collaboratively agreeing that there should be a review of governance. That review was carried out independently of the Scottish Government and the Crofting Commission. It is reported and it is recognised ways in which the decision making mechanism needs to be improved. I outlined that in general terms and highlighted three particular areas that I think have been recognised as causative of concern. Just today, the commission has published an action plan and I am sure that Mr Stewart will want to study it. I am very happy to engage with him and other members about how we take that forward. However, it is, of course, the prime responsibility of the commission to do its job under the new leadership. I believe that we can have great confidence that that is exactly what it will do. John Mason, to be followed by John Finnie, Mr Mason. Thank you. It is very encouraging to hear that the cabinet secretary expressed his confidence about the commission going forward. What does he feel are the main challenges that crofting faces in the coming year? How does he feel that we, as a chamber committee, can help them? Crofters and those who actively work and live in crofts are fairly resilient people and they are used to making their own way, making their own lives and taking responsibility for their own actions, but they need some support. In particular, the key area that I would highlight in response to Mr Mason's question is the less favoured areas scheme. As we know, the ELFAS scheme has seen changes in the EU that we did not support but would see the reduction of the overall payment by 20 per cent unless the European Parliament postpones that, which I hope it does. However, we also need to ensure that that support is maintained over the years to come. That is because I am absolutely certain of this that hill farming in Scotland provides enormous benefit and farming and crofting counties are recipients of ELFAS support. Continuance of that support, by one means or other, and in the event of a Brexit, post-Brexit, is absolutely essential to the continuance of active crofting and looking after livestock. To answer Mr Mason's question, the key challenge that active crofters are facing at the current time. Homelessness and fuel poverty are two issues that blight communities, including the crofting communities. Can you encourage the crofting commission to maximise opportunities to work with local authorities, register social landlords and high to improve the number of houses and the energy efficiency of houses, please? Cabinet Secretary. Yes, I think that that is something that I would urge them to do, although I know that already a lot of work is done on those matters. I am quite proud of the fact that that this Government, my successors and now myself, have been able to see 800 cases where young people and their families have received a grant, a relatively modest grant, in the scheme of things from the Scottish Government. That is 800 people in the crofting counties. That is re-peopling the Highlands and Islands. I think that that resonates with the kind of message that Mr Finnie and I support and, I suspect, have always supported land for the people, I think, was the cry. We have, for 800 people, turned that cry into a reality. That is why I have added to the funding of £2 million this year, thanks to the generosity and support of my colleague Mr Mackay, who is present in the chamber, given the close interest that he takes in crofting. On the policy that the Cabinet Secretary discussed earlier on, would he look at two areas? First, the need to change the one-size-fits-all crofting regulation to an approach that is based on the needs of individual crofting counties. Secondly, would he accept the need for whole-croft de-crofting? He will understand the importance of that issue across the Highlands and Islands. Finally, on his point about connections, would he accept that community broadband Scotland has failed after three years to make a broadband scheme happen in Feral? Would he undertake to look into that matter, as it is a deep concern to the crofter's concern? On the last point, I would be happy to get more information from Mr Scott, and, certainly, I will look into it, of course, and undertake to do so. On the first two points, I am absolutely aware that, in Shetland, there is a different approach from the rest of the communities that are covered by the Crofting Commission. Therefore, the commission should respect that in the work that it does and, in respect of de-crofting, I am acutely aware of the importance of that process, the importance that is carried out speedily efficiently in order to prevent delays in respect of transactions and to speed up the process of what I have termed today as re-peopling the Highlands and Islands. Gail Ross, we fall by Finlay Carson. Ms Ross, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I also welcome Mr Rod MacKenzie to his new post. Can the cabinet secretary tell me if the Crofting Commission are accepting applications to de-croft from owner-occupiers and what its position will be on this issue going forward? Well, this is one of the hot topics that I hope to engage fairly directly with the Crofting Commission in due course. Gail Ross, of course, takes a very close interest in that for constituents and it is a very important topic. I do not want to prejudge the approach that the commission will take, but I think that we all want to achieve the same objectives here of bringing people back on to the land. Therefore, I am very happy to continue to engage with Gail Ross and to pursue that particular issue, which I know is an important issue with the commission. Finlay Carson, we follow Mary Todd. We welcome the cabinet secretary's aim to enable different ways of working the land and to create sustainable crofting. Can the cabinet secretary shed any light to provide an example of how he intends to achieve those aims? Well, a variety of methods, plainly the CAGs grants provides very practical support for crofters. In fact, some non-crofters are quite envious of elements of it, as I'm sure Mr Carson is aware. That's one example. Secondly, I have alluded to the investment in connectivity that has been made, in the first case, in the contract with BT, with the Highlands and Islands. That has provided access to many people in island communities where that access hitherto did not exist, and therefore is a good thing. Thirdly, I have alluded to the croft grants scheme, in which we revise to increase the level of the grants quite significantly and is providing direct benefit to individual couples' families to establish a home. I visited some of them. I think that it is a very cost-effective way of helping to sustain the crofting communities in general. Those are three examples. Finally, we aim to bring forward a crofting development plan. The point that Mr Carson makes is quite right that the sustainability of crofting, which, of course, as far my activity is, is very marginal. There are very few of any crofters whose sole livelihood was derived from crofting, in terms of their overall earnings. For most people, it is something that they do as a way of life, not as a means of ensuring a livelihood of financial income each year. However, the crofting development plan will take forward all of those matters. I agree with the cabinet secretary that it is essential for the future of crofting in Scotland that any new bill reforming crofting is a success. Therefore, we provide an assurance that we take our time to consider what is best for crofting and work closely with the stakeholders, crofters and communities that are affected as openly as possible throughout this whole process. I could observe, having been a minister for 10 years, that it is never particularly difficult for a Government to take some time to do things. However, that aberrant reflection aside, in that case, I think that it is the right approach precisely because some of the previous legislation in this Parliament on crofting has been subject to the criticism that we have not spent enough time thinking, we have not spent enough time listening and discussing in an area where there are diverse views, in many cases extremely strongly held. Therefore, I hope that it is a view across this chamber that the fact that we take our time is not out of any desire to delay things but a desire to get it right and bring about a piece of legislation that takes crofting forward for many decades to come in this century. Thank you cabinet secretary. That concludes questions on that issue. I will allow a few minutes for front benches to take their places before we move on to the next item of business.


From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. Welcome to theCUBE Studios for another CUBE Conversation where we go in depth with thought leaders driving business outcomes with technology. I'm Peter Burris, and today we're going to be talking about some of the challenges that enterprises face as they try to do a better job of gaining visibility into their user-oriented digital experience. Now what do we mean by that? We mean basically as a company moves to a digital business, digital engagement model, they increasingly are mediating their conversations with their customers through digital means. And if you don't have visibility into how that's going, you're going to end up with unhappy customers. Now to have that conversation, we've got Alex Henthord-Awani, VP of product marketing from ThousandEyes. Alex, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for having me, Peter. Well let's start by saying a little bit about ThousandEyes. What is ThousandEyes? So ThousandEyes is a company that delivers visibility into digital experiences that are running over the internet as well as your own networks of course. And the whole point of that is that when you move to the cloud and to these sort of cloud-based ecosystems that everybody's using to deliver digital, you are losing a lot of control. You no longer own the software and the infrastructure and the networks that you're connecting over, the users are connecting over. When you lose that control, you really, really need the visibility so that you can optimize and then you can also fix issues when they happen because they do happen. So that's really what we deliver. We deliver that visibility. So that's a big promise. But let's focus in on kind of the more proximate thing. You guys have just delivered a report that looks specifically at digital experience. What is a problem that the report's addressing? Right, so the problem that we are trying to address with this report, this is digital experience performance benchmark report that we've released, is one of trying to take away the subjectivity around performance management because when you're dealing with the internet, it's kind of a black box. What constitutes the minimum bar of good? Where should you be at minimally? And then how are you doing competitively? How do you compare with the top folks in your peer group as an industry? That's the thing that we wanted to address with this particular report. So if I think about then the challenges the company's facing, there are so many moving parts. You think you're getting a single service, but there are so many moving parts even within that service or even within that application that you want to be able to compartmentalize it and break it down and start to isolate some of the issues whether that be a technology or a service supply issue. So what are some of the key considerations that are contributing to, say, better or worse digital experience? Well, the way we looked at this, just to kind of give a little context and to answer your question is, we thought, well, let's look at top 20 websites, consumer websites across retail, media and entertainment and travel and hospitality. So 60 and all. And then let's measure them as to how users will experience them. And to the point of providers, pretty much all of them rely on a content delivery network, a CDM provider. There's a variety of them, obviously, in the market. And so what we're doing is we're saying, let's measure when we go from about 36 cities with a browser, this is automated obviously using our monitoring agents. You're simulating users. Simulating users. Let's go and measure what that experience is and let's tease out some of the performance factors and look at those things. Because those are the kind of things that the web operations teams and digital operations teams are really concerned with. That stuff is the foundation that you have to build from a performance point of view, so that all the other subjective kind of things that you build into your website experience really have a time budget to work in. So those performance factors are kind of those foundational elements that have higher level impacts on a variety of other application characteristics. What are some of the key performance factors that you identified as being important? So we looked at a few different metrics that you can measure. One of the most foundational ones, and people forget about it a lot, is DNS. That's the process where when you type in your URL, something has to convert that into a numeric kind of address that the internet can actually get to. So that's the DNS lookup. So that's one piece. A second piece is what's the network speed or latency from a user where a user sits to that server that's caching your content, that CDN provider server. So we looked at that on a round trip basis. The reason we looked at that just by the way is that when you first interact with a website, before you get the first byte of content delivered, you have to take 11 one-way trips across the wire, which means the internet. So that network time is important. So a DNS network. Then what we did is look beyond that to the point the time it takes to deliver that first byte that's also called HTTP response time. And then to get somewhat of an experiential lens, we took one more measurement, which is the page load time. Page load time is essentially the time it takes to load the content into the browser and it's starting to render. So that's something a little bit more experiential. But it's kind of like there's that stack of performance metrics. So set up the conversation or find who you're conversing with, set up the conversation and then get that first bit of information back. But the page load is going to be significantly subjective because different pages of different sizes. But that's kind of what you set up these benchmarks to do. Find the site, set up the session and then get that first bit back. So what kinds of numbers are you suggesting that people start to benchmark themselves against? So one of the things that we found when we talked with customers is the sense of we don't know what minimum bar of good is. So what we decided to do is define what we're calling an internet performance bar. And what we did is said, let's look at the averages, the median sort of numbers. And we took 300 plus million unique measurements in this study. And we looked at things like, well, what correlates to delivering well in terms of the top end, that page load and HTTP response time? So we said, all right, based on that, we decided that for three of these metrics we could define what we thought is a minimum bar of good in the US market. Because go outside of the US to other geographies, things could differ a lot and they do. And basically what we said is, all right, for DNS you should be at 25 milliseconds response time. What do you write these down? 25 milliseconds for DNS. 25 milliseconds for DNS. 15 milliseconds round trip latency. For the network. For, from your user to the CDN edge server. And then 350 milliseconds to deliver that first byte. That's HTTP response time. So 25, 15 and 350 milliseconds. And what we found is that if you're delivering at that level in the US market, you're in pretty good shape, generally speaking, when you compare to those top 60 websites. And that would correlate pretty well to being able to deliver a good page load time. So if the page load time was equal, or the amount of data being loaded in the page was equal, those would be the things that would ultimately determine how fast or what the digital experience of the user was. Right, exactly. They build the foundation, a strong foundation. Now, on top of that, we also of course looked at 20 websites for each of these sort of vertical industries. And what we did is then charted out scatter plots and things like that. So you could see, all right, well, where are the, are there any patterns there that are helpful for me as a retailer, e-commerce provider, for example, to say, well, you know, for example, we found that there were two major clusters of performance in retail in terms of HTTP response time. One cluster was 300 milliseconds or better. And one cluster was sort of four to 500 milliseconds. And when we share this with retailers, of course they say, I know which one I want to be in. I want to be in the faster one, right? But just knowing that is helpful to say, because let's say 350 milliseconds is minimum bar of good internet performance bar. But if you said, hey, I'm looking at the cohort that I'm competing against and a bunch of them are doing better than that, maybe even significantly better than that. That helps me between those two things make good investment decisions. But to go back to that notion of budget, what that basically means is that if I am at a disadvantage on these foundational metrics, my budget for the complexity and experience value that I can put into my digital assets is reduced. Right, because digital experience runs on a clock, right? Human visual sort of recognition is in the, kind of like 13, 14 milliseconds, but human response time to visual stimulus is about 250 milliseconds roughly, right? So that's what happens in that sort of customer experience of all the content and digital assets. So what you're doing is building a strong time budget to deliver and all the rest of it. Right, so now let's talk a little bit about then what would people do with this information? Because the report articulates very nicely the nature of the problem, provides the benchmarks that people can actually use, provides insight into how they can benchmark themselves against generalities, but also specific industries and as you said cohorts. But one of the other things that you guys do is you guys use this basic tool for generating visibility to capture data that looks at other things as well, cloud, DNS lookups, et cetera. And I've noticed that you actually can start mapping out topologies regarding how traffic is moving in this end to end world. How does a customer use that information to get themselves inside the good cohort group or improve their performance relative to a competitor? So there's a couple of things that you can do with that kind of data. One is to look at it and decide based on the benchmarks and your performance and the kind of topology insights we provide, which is exactly how all this stuff connects over the internet. There's two things. One is you can say, look if I'm not meeting a bar in a market that I care about, I'm going to go to my provider and hold them accountable to do better because I know that this is achievable. So that's one thing. I may make some network architecture decisions. Well, maybe there's a broadband provider that runs a little slower. Maybe I'll get a private connection to them so my user experience runs well. But the third thing is operationally, it's the internet. Things go wrong sometimes. Providers make mistakes. No. And the thing is, the problem is in the cloud there's so many factors. It's really hard without good visibility, without that topology view to know even who to call. So with the data that we provide you operationally, you can now and go hold the provider, the right provider accountable to fix a problem or optimize a performance when things go wrong. And they will. But because of your visibility, it's not just the right provider, it's actually then saying, and this is what I would like you to do. Right, exactly. Because you can share very rich information with them so they can take action. I mean, if you had to put yourself in the shoes of the provider, they probably get blamed a lot of times for things that really aren't their fault. So what do they do? They provide the sort of, they create a defensive mechanism of 12 layers of support and there's a lot of plausible deniability there, right? Because they don't want to be chasing things that aren't actually their problem. If you give them the kind of visibility that we provide with all this rich data, deep views into the internet, well, one, you're going to lower the defenses because they've got something to work with. Two, they're actually going to have enough information to do something about it.  You manage it through your providers, but you have to have good information for them. So I think it was Sai Sims, the old, the guy who sold clothing to men for many years who said that an informed customer is or a knowledgeable customer is the best customer. And so what you're really trying to do is to, with this report, establish what the problem is, establish these benchmarks that people should be pointing to, give them the opportunity, give your customers the opportunity to compare themselves where comparisons are meaningful, but then very importantly, use that knowledge of their operations to become a more informed purchaser of services or architect of their own assets. Have I got that right? Yeah, exactly. Because if you are able to partner effectively with all those providers, and I mean, in an e-commerce setting, I think you're probably dealing with tens, dozens of different third-party service providers, just all the API content you're sucking in, plus all the ISPs, CDNs, everything else. It's a lot. It's a big ecosystem. If you can partner effectively, you're just going to do a better job. You're going to get a better service, you're going to get better outcomes, and ultimately deliver better experience, which is great for the top and the bottom line. Absolutely, and so it's really a way of tying the business outcomes of the improved service, the ability to increase or the value of the service by altering the way you use your time budget, and then using that as a basis for establishing very high quality operations, both inside your own shop, but also in the connections that you have with these third-party providers. Absolutely, yeah. So the whole point of our research generally, and we have multiple of these reports, is provide that context so that when you use the kind of data we provide for you, you have the bigger picture in mind. You know what's normal, what's not, and so that you know that you're making a really reasonable request to hold a provider accountable to a certain level of performance, for example. All right, so what's next? So we have a few different reports that we've done in the past. We did a public cloud network performance report. We did a global DNS report. By the way, I looked at that one and it was really interesting. There's some fascinating findings in all of these things. We've got some other research planned for this year. We're looking at things like, maybe looking to China, for example, performance in China, but also we'll be refreshing these reports we did last year. We're going to at least go on an annual refresh for them. So we're trying to build out a body of research over time that complements obviously all the product and solution things that we do. That, you know, and we know that from talking to customers, they really appreciate that they can look at something a little bit bigger lens. But it all starts with this premise of, look, this is a really important problem. Let's segment this into different classes of domains. So you have the benchmarks, so you know what constitutes good versus bad. And then use the data from tools and whatnot, visibility tools and whatnot to then improve your set of operational capabilities. Absolutely. Excellent. Alex Hawthorne, Awani, Vice President of Product Marketing, a thousand eyes. Thanks very much for being on theCUBE. Thanks very much for having me. And once again, I'm Peter Burris. Until next time.


The following is a presentation of TFNN. The Traders Edge with Steve Rhodes. All toll free at 1-877-927-6648 or internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. The Traders Edge. Now, Steve Rhodes. Good morning, folks. Welcome to the January 29th. The magnificent Monday edition of today's Traders Edge show. I'm your host, Steve, Perseverance Rhodes, who absolutely knows that each of us should always be pioneers of our future versus prisoners of our past. Hope everyone out there's having a great day and let's make sure we have an extraordinary one. Now, the easiest way to do that is to always remember that life is happening for us, not to us. That's right. When you and I make that one little two-by-four shift, it means we can find the gift and every set of circumstance that life is going to toss at us. Now, today you and I, we're going to go check on the circumstance of these markets. We'll go figure out what those bulls and bears, what those buyers and sellers are communicating to you and I at just past 11 o'clock in the morning. I want you to know I am absolutely grateful for your presence here, but even more important than that. And that's this. During this next 53 minutes, I'm here to serve you. So feel free to pick up that phone. We'd love to hear from you at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Now, if you've got a question but you can't call in, you can always send me an email. Send that off to Steve at TF9.com inside that subject, getting police put radio show question. Of course, if you're inside our Tigers, then well, then any in every ping will do. So let's go ahead and get this show started on Magnificent Marvelous Monday. Of course, this is Tiger, Financial News Network. I'm Steve Rhodes. Welcome to the show. Right now we've got a mixed bag out there. That mix is going like this. You've got the Dow off 27 points, and SP's down two. The Nasdaq's up one. The Saad, the Russell's up six. The Semi-Zerof 10. You've got gold trading out of 2044. That's up eight bucks. Silver's trading at 2310. That's up 23 cents. Light's recouped 75-19. That's up a buck 78. Natural gas is off 23 pennies in the 30th Treasury. For now 120-06. Now our leaders in the clubhouse to the upside Chipotle up 44 bucks, nearly 2 percent. MicroStrategy 21 bucks, 4 percent. Equinix 13 bucks. One at 6-10 percent. Adobe 12 bucks, 2 percent. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals up over 1 percent. That's an $11 move. The Shakers to the downside. It is Mercado Libre off 30 bucks. One at 7-10 percent. PDD Holdings down 13 bucks, 9 percent. Williams and Sonoma off 10 bucks. Shockwave Medical down seven. Corpus Pharmaceuticals off five. That's an 18 percent move to the downside. So we got Movers and we got Shakers. Of course I want to look at what you want to look at. Let's begin the day by looking at, let's look at the four bearish charts that exist in the marketplace right now. And when I say four bearish, I'm referring to cash indices, the ETFs, the index ETFs out there, as well as the equity future contracts. So let's go switch over to my white background charts. Let's get to that actual set of charts that are the four that we should keep an eye on. Why? Because they've got topping patterns out there. So now we've got those four. You've got the Dow. Well, I take this back. So the Dow Jones did have a arrangement communicator top, and that was negated on Friday. So that was set up by this little bear sash candle. And so the resistance level would be the high of the prior candle out there. In this case there was a 38-109. And Friday's close was at 38-109-43. And the high on that prior candle was 38-109-20. So by 23 pennies, that top was negated. That's just simply how it rolls out there. But another bearish reversal candle, well, that would go ahead and trigger a rosement communicator top. So that one is gone. But when we do have tops out here, we've got it in the socks. You've also got it really in the SMH.  But let's just change it so that we can have some profile levels in there. If you give me a moment, we'll do that. We'll put in the proper template here. Get all that going all daily. There we go. So now we at least have some profile levels. So you can see in the case of the SMHs, which is a different set of holdings than what's inside the actual semiconductor index, which we have next. So you can see in the case of the SMHs, they're holding that green oscillator and change line, which is a bowler signal. It actually gives you a neutral signal at this stage here because we have that top. What is that top going to do if it finds support where it should find support? Then it gives us a neutral signal. However, close below that level. This is the SMHs out here. That level being 187, 87. Don't hold me right to the penny, but a close below that line would then suggest they move down to the bottom of its new profile. That's at 18370. In the case of the semiconductor index, we don't have profiles there to assist us, but we can see that it's lost its momentum with price being below that green oscillator and change line. And that suggests lower prices. You can see we've taken out, we're not trading below it right now at the moment, but we have taken out yesterday or Friday's low. We're not even anywhere near Friday's high out there. If we take a look at the XLF, the XLF generated a, it has a wave number seven. So very, very, very, very small portion of the Chapman wave out there. That is letter G that was confirmed on Friday. Now what price is likely doing in the case of the XLK is targeting its oscillator and change line. That's at 20112. A close below that because there also was a new profile that formed on Friday. It's bullish in structure. In the case of the XLK, it'd be between 19792 and 19757 where price should find support. That's if it closes below that green oscillator and change line. And finally, we've got the NQ. And the NQ formed a Rosemont Dominicator top a few days ago when it generated that bearish shooting star candle. Only a close above that high negates that signal. There is a new profile that formed last week. Resistance is up at 17683 support at 17351. So to summarize these charts, watch 17351 for the NQ. Watch 20112 for the XLK. For the semis, John continue watching the lows of those prior candles out there as well as the highs just to give you a feel for the momentum. A piece of it inside the SMHs. You want to watch that oscillator and change line. And again, that's printed out at 18786. So those are four charts to take a look at and to monitor and pay attention to. If we take a look at the actual equity future contracts out here, what we'll see is that today is going to likely become bar number seven of a TD9 count pattern out there. So the ES could this week form a TD9 count top. A bearish reversal candle before that pattern might form would generate a Rosemont Dominicator top. And there, if price could close below that green oscillator and change line, then we'd be looking to move probably back to about the 4827, 4841 level, at least that would be its first stop. That oscillator and change line currently printed at 4912. We'll take a look at the end queue. We've really already covered that, I believe. We don't need to do that. The Dow equity future contract going to form bar number seven today. So you could get a TD9 count top between Tuesday and Thursday, just like in the ES mini out there. Short of that, a bearish reversal candle would confirm a Rosemont Dominicator top. You've got support, real key support at 37386. That's in the Dow equity future contract. Russell 2000 is beginning to trade just slightly above the top of its daily profile, but in order for it to generate some type of breakout signal, meaning that it wants to move higher, we need to see it close above that oscillator and change line. That is acted as resistance for what now appears to be six sessions out there, at least five. Today's session is not over. So the last five sessions, that is held as a key resistance level. So that's what's going on on the daily timeframe for the equity future contracts out there. What else can we take a look at? As long as we're talking about equity future contracts, let's go switch back to our other screen. Let's try to understand what's going on across the globe. How is it that traders in Europe, in the UK and in Japan are thinking about the ES, the NQ and the Dow out there? And the answer to that question, new all-time highs in the ES in terms of euros, pounds and yen today. The same is true with the Dow. We have made a new all-time high in terms of dollars, but that is likely to follow. That's the signal of that message of global capital flows into the U.S. Steve Roach with TFNN. We'll be right back. If you're looking for potential trading setups in the stock market, then Rocket Equities & Options Report is a newsletter you should try. Tommy O'Brien delivers options and equity trades when the markets present them using a combination of fundamentals and technicals. Sign up for Rocket Equities & Options Report today with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. For all the details and to start your subscription today, visit the front page of TFNN.com. TFNN Educating Investors. You might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market, you're going to need a crystal ball. After all, it's impossible to predict the future, right? Like any endeavor in life, before you decide it's impossible, get some advice from the experts. You might find that it's not so impossible after all. For daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices, selective stocks, and commodities, subscribe to the Opening Call newsletter at TFNN.com. The Opening Call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman, creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman Wave. The Chapman Wave up-down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns, finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices. Get the Opening Call newsletter by Basil Chapman in your inbox every day. First-time subscribers also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. TFNN.com Educating Investors. Steve Rhodes started his trading career as a student almost 20 years ago and the student has now become the master. Steve won the prestigious Timer of the Year award in 2018 and barely missed that mark again in 2019, finishing at number two for the year, an amazing accomplishment. Steve Rhodes is committed to sharing his techniques and knowledge with anyone who wants to learn and he shares his vast amount of trading knowledge every day in his Mastering Probability newsletter. Steve's award-winning newsletter, Mastering Probability, is delivered every trading day with updates throughout the afternoon. Sign up for Steve's Market newsletter, Mastering Probability, and you'll receive access to seven of Steve's educational webinars absolutely free. At TFNN, all our newsletters come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Visit TFNN.com and try Mastering Probability 30 days risk-free today. TFNN Educating Investors. Available to all Tigers and Tigresses for just $1 for the year. There's no catch or added costs when you join our community of traders. Sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders. Just visit the front page of TFNN.com. Folks, let's get to a couple questions that have come in and would love more, so if you are listening live,<PHONE_NUMBER> or Steve at TFNN.com. The first request coming in is about XPEV out there. XPEV is a Chinese something or other out there. I believe it's an ETF. And what we've got here, it is in wave number seven to the bottom. On the daily timeframe, that needs a higher load to confirm that bottom pattern. It's got a roadsman to indicator signal that's been triggered. That needs a bullish reversal candle to confirm a bottom, and there's an A to B equal C to the downside. That suggests maybe the bottom isn't in just yet. On a weekly timeframe, this week will become a TD9 account bottom. So the cool thing for you, the individual that continues to look for XPEV, I'd watch this week's low because whatever this week's low is, if price closes below that next week, that tells you about that this thing's going to continue to move lower out there. On a monthly timeframe chart, price right now is testing, it's trading just below, profile support out there. So on a daily timeframe, you can watch for a bullish reversal candle to confirm a bottom. That'll go along with the weekly timeframe. That's got that nice TD9 account bottom. Again, this week completes that pattern. So pay attention to the low of this week out there because if price closes below that, that says get out of dodge, which is XPEV. The next request coming in from John inside the Tigers then was to take a look at Apple. So let's pull up the charts for Apple. On a daily timeframe right now, price is pulling back, trading down by $1.45 at $190.97. It is trading just below its green oscillator and change line. A close below that today, John, would tell us that Apple's lost its momentum to the upside, that level being $191.28. And that would then suggest they move back to further support. And that's at $187.42, or price were to close below $187.42, $181.62 would be up next out there. If, on the other hand, at day's end, John price is able to hold that green oscillator and change line out there, that says be careful because it could be setting up the C point of an A to B equal CD to the upside. I say could because finding the C point is very hard to do. Really the easiest way is to go down to intraday charts as price on a daily timeframe is testing a potential supporter. Again, $191.27. So let's do that, Steve. So if we take a look at a 30-minute timeframe chart out here, do we have any kind of a bottom inside of Apple? The answer is, depends on the close of this candle here in the next nine minutes out there. Why? Because this could be a bullish engulfing candle. And if so, that would confirm a buy the D point pattern. In the case of Apple, John, that would suggest to move up to $191.87-ish, and at price we're able to get above that, you'd be looking at $192.50 or $192.96 out there. So that's what I see on a 30-minute timeframe when it comes to Apple. So I hope that helps you out, and thanks so much for your request. Let's go to our first caller. It is John Infili. Thanks for calling. Thanks for holding. How are you this morning? Steve, I'm doing very well. Hope you're doing the same. I am. I am. And since we've got a rematch about four years ago and your Sunday's time, we're counting on you giving us a run down the day after. Okay, that sounds great. Sounds great. Good football, certainly over the weekend. Good tennis. A couple of blown leads out there. What did you think? Detroit blew their lead. Medvedev blew his two-set lead. Second time he's done that, in the finals at the Australian Open, Nellie Corda, she blew a four-stroke lead out there, ended up coming through and winning out there. But it seemed like a lot of leads were blown over the weekend out there. How about for yourself? Did you play any golf or do any... No, you can't play golf up there this time of year. Maybe go skiing? Yeah, but you know what? We try. You do? Yeah. I wanted to ask you about VIX. Yes. VIX. Yes. Specifically, Steve, of course, the VIX bottomed back in mid-to-late December and is now just fluctuating around at a low level. As options volatility, implied volatility is going new, whereas people are not eager to buy puts or calls with reckless abandon yet. But you and I have discussed and you've described to your audience how the VIX and its 50-day exponential moving average, and when VIX closes above or below that moving average, then be the early signs of a change of intermediate term trend. So my question is, could you please pull up the daily VIX chart and with the 50-day exponential moving average, comment upon that and describe for us what your view is of this particular indicator and whether or not it is or just about to signal a change in intermediate term trend. So that's the question. Perfect. And Steve, if you don't mind, I take it off air. No problem. No problem at all. Thanks so much for the request out there. Much appreciated. And so let's take it. So we've got that chart that John was referring to up on our screen right now. And so at the very bottom panel is the actual spot volatility index. There is a red line on that. That red line represents the 50-day exponential moving average. So each of you should be on your charting applications. Each of you should be able to put that on your screen out there. So the tool that I'm sharing with you, each of you should be able to monitor this as well. And this is over the long term. Really, I'm showing a chart here that goes back to right now 2022, I think. Let's see here. Yeah, 2022. And we can go back further, but we really don't need to. There's a plenty of data. So what John was referring to is when the spot volatility index is trading below, closing below the 50-day exponential moving average, that gives the buyers an edge out there. And that is represented here. If we just start over on the left, you'll see a green square rectangle shape out there. And that shows the time period of when the spot volatility index was below its 50-day exponential moving average. So the way I like to say it is when the spot volatility index is below the 50-day exponential moving average, the S&P 500 is likely to move sideways to higher. Of course, the only caveat to that is when you've got an actual top that is formed inside the S&P 500. So the spot volatility index is not necessarily going to be that pattern that identifies the actual top or bottom. But John was asking about really a change in trend type signal out there. And so we want to, what I'm going to do is I'll focus next minute and a half or so, and then when we come back from the break, I'll spend perhaps a little bit more time trying to pull that together for us. But the red rectangles or squares that you see out here are periods where that spot volatility is above the 50-day. Sometimes we get just a quick move below or above that. I typically don't, you know, looking for the larger trend out there. And that's what these rectangular shapes are showing us out here. So at this stage, the red areas show when the spot volatility is above the 50-day and what price action is. Again, here, typically the S&P 500 moves sideways to lower out there. And so right now we're in a time period. So John's asking the question, where are we now? If we take a look at this chart right here and I just simply expand this out, this might be a little bit easier for you to take a look at. And that is now on this chart here, I also have a Bollinger band. And those are the red lines out there. And that setting is 50 to 1. That's not the normal 20 to 2 setting that is a typical default. But what we can see is that blue line, that's at 1361. That's the 50-day exponential moving average. So when I woke up this morning or maybe after my workout, I came back and you had the S&P 500 where the S-mini was trading higher and the spot volatility was above the 50 and of course I was saying, what's up with that? So I don't know what's up with that. But John's asking, what's the first signal that you could be seeing a change in trend? And the answer to that would be a close today above 1361. Especially because we are also in the time period where we've been seeing a rising bottoms pattern inside the spot volatility. Steve Rhodes with TFN, we come back from this. We got to go take a look at the S-mini just to put all this together for you. Be right back. Sharpening your skills as an investor is like getting better at playing a musical instrument. You have to practice, show your skills, and you can do the best you can. It's the best way to do it. And you can do it. And it's not going to be like the other ones that you've seen, but you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. It's the best. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. It's the best. You can do it. It's the best. You have to practice, sure, but you also need excellent instruction from experts. At TFNN, you'll get advice and guidance from THE authority in technical market analysis, and it's not just dry, tedious text either. TFNN airs live financial content streamed live on TFNN.com and TFNN's YouTube channel with Tiger TV, live every market day from 8.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. Eastern. Each host is an experienced trader and gives their take on the market while taking calls and questions live from around the world. 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In the Tiger's Den, you can look over the shoulders of Tom O'Brien and the other TFNN hosts while they analyze charts during their live Tiger TV programs and join an interactive trading community with hundreds of members exchanging ideas, interact with other Tigers and Tigris' as they share trading ideas, news analysis and discuss the market action all trading day, even at night and on the weekends. The Tiger's Den at Discord is accessible on mobile or tablets as well, so it's always at your reach. To sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders, just visit the front page of TFNN.com. Don't forget, you can listen to TFNN live on your mobile device 24 hours per day. Go to TFNN.com and hit watch Tiger TV. That's TFNN.com and hit watch Tiger TV. Back up folks, so John would appreciate this last night, that was my wife's birthday yesterday and so I had to tape some of the football games because we already had ticket concerts to go see Al Dimeola. John's a real aficionado, especially guitarist. He's one of the greatest guitarists really out there. I mean there's a whole group of them but he's certainly right up there. For those of you that aren't familiar with him, I mean at a young age, I think he was 18, 19 years old, he, Chick Korea, heard a, I heard one of his tapes, one of his recordings somewhere and called him up and invited him to join the band. He was 19 years old and literally five days later, he was playing in Carnegie Hall at 19 years old. I mean he is, he is that good. Now last night was the end of their U.S. tour and he was in an amazing mood. He brought out that guitar, that he hasn't played that, he said he hadn't played that guitar for at least 30 years out there, so it was the original guitar that he brought out. I mean they were really having a hoot which was really cool to watch. You know and he's a great storyteller which is also another great thing. Now a lot of folks might not be able to necessarily handle his music, sometimes to get a little avant-garde so it's not your typical type jazz but if you just simply watch and really the musicians that he travels with, the piano player, French guys, been with him for you know 20, 30 years as well out there. So unfortunately I know he, I think he played through, I think came through the Clearwater area out there. I know he's traveling so it was very cool to be on that last show. Normally like they're done and they just want to get the heck out of there but the sound in this place, and I've been to this theater a number of times, the sound was just simply horrible. It was disgusting, the kind of sound that actually we left at intermission. So let's go back and I want to, and thankfully we did because others have been told so late I would never have seen the football games. So back to John's question about there, with regard to the spot ballotenex and maybe how each of us should go ahead and put this together, at least consider doing this. So I'm going to switch over to my set of charts out here for the ES mini and we're going to take a look at the daily timeframe. I mentioned this earlier. So the spot ballotenex trained them up it's 50 day that would be one signal of a potential change in trend. Another signal or the additional signal you'd like to see with that and it could be the S&P, it could be the spy, it could be the ES mini, it could be all three together which you'd prefer to see some type of unanimous vote out there is some type of topping pattern. Well, it turns out when we take a look at the ES mini out here, John, there is a possibility. So one of the things that I do with regard to my Chapman wave counts is once I get to letter D, that fourth wave out there, I then immediately start another wave count. Those are the letters here that are in the black digits and Friday was a wave number seven count that was out there. If you go the more traditional route, which would be you wait until you get to that seventh wave, G and then restart that count out there, you'd only be in that third wave. But we do have a road meant to mitigate our signal as well. And if we could get or if we did get a bearish reversal candle or anything that confirmed that top out there and close below its green oscillator and change line, which is currently printed at 4913, I would say that that would be a sign of a top out there. Peter, I saw Al Dimiola, D-I-M-E-O-L-A I think is how you pronounce it. He is really just a, he is a superstar when it comes to watch his fingers move on those guitar strings. It's extraordinary. It really is an extraordinary thing to do. I just have an, you know what, maybe most of us, speaking for myself, I really have an appreciation for those individuals can absolutely do things that I could never even dream of. I could dream of wanting to do it, but I just no skill set at all to to do that. So on the ES Mini, watch for a bearish reversal candle. Again, today's going to be day number seven. We're in window dressing. It would make sense that maybe we get that TD9 count top towards the middle of the week, maybe by Thursday out there. So that's what I would be looking for. That's the daily timeframe charts. Now, John, if we take a look at the intraday signals here, five hour, four hour, doesn't matter, two hour, 60 minute, 30 minute, 15 minute, maybe not the 10 minutes so far. We've got tops on all of those intraday charts. So I know what the signal is that the ES Mini is trying to send to us, but it still hasn't really broken, you know, hasn't broken any real key levels of support out there. So I would say, just stay tuned. So I hope that answered your question. I know it was long winded, but it really required that long winded. Well, I didn't need the Altimaola story out there, but it did require that long winded understanding. And again, the other issue, which we'd really like to see take place at that same time, is let's say we're just taking a look at the S and P by the ES Mini, you know, or we could take a look at the index charts out there. But if I switch over here, and we already take a look at this, but I want to do it again, because what you really also need to see, John, is you need to see the ES Mini not making another new Altimaola high and other currencies out there, like the Euro or the Yen to the pound. So we can move lower in the dollar. We are trading slightly lower in the dollar. We're certainly trading below the Fridays all time high. That's not the case in terms of Euros, Yen and pounds out there. So we could see sellers in the US, but buyers overseas out there. And that would then say that whatever move we get to the downside would be relatively minimal, muted, so to speak. Of course, another area that John is watching, I'm sure, is he's paying attention to Apigee, which came in about 3.14 this morning. That Apigee pivot point at 49.16.75 out there. And, you know, right now we've had price kind of going back and forth. So Apigee pivot points not really giving us the clearest of signals just yet out there. The NQ that numbers at 17.552.75 out there. So those are some levels and areas to watch. So I do hope that helps you out. And as always, thanks so much for the request out there. Let's take a look at, oh, we've got a request out here. Take a K-Web. So let me go switch over to those charts out there. K-Web out here. Another China, I believe this is the internet stock here inside of China. You know, it makes it difficult. I've shared this with everybody before. Then take a look at that daily timeframe because you have currency conversions out there between the one and the US dollar. It makes the daily chart really hard to rely upon its signals. Now, you can't rely upon the signals for where buyers and sellers are at with regard to those profiles. But what I would say with regard to K-Web, very similar to XPEV, is that now in the case of XPEV, it's going to complete this weekly TD9 account bottom on Friday. In the case of K-Web, it's going to confirm or should confirm a TD9 account bottom, but that pattern won't really complete until next week out there. So you could be seeing some type of bottom. I guess I'd pay more attention to the weekly chart than the daily chart out there. So that's what I see when we take a look at K-Web. I do hope that that helps you out. Now, I don't have any other requests that I see inside the Tiger's Den. Let's see if anything is coming by email. And certainly I'm getting emails. There's no doubt about that. Nicholas writes in great. So Nicholas writes in, he would like to take a look at shops. So let's go ahead and put the, oh, do I have something else? Hold on a second here. We do have, we do have a caller. So Nicholas, I'll get back to your chart, but let's go out to Brent in Martinez, California. Hey Brent, thanks for calling. Thanks for holding. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing quite well, Steven, yourself. Excellent. Thanks much for asking. So your San Francisco 49ers came through another great game out there. It's been a little hard on the ticker watching those games, but hey, it's worked out pretty good in the end. That's great. Hey Brent, I just realized we're about to go to break out here. So hold your thoughts. We come back. We're going to take a look at SQM. And so folks go ahead and fire up those charts and prepare for Brent's question. Steve Rhodes with TFNN. We'll be right back. 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Distributor for side fund services, LLC. I don't have a position. I've just again been watching like I often do with whatever stock it happens to be. But in this case, it seems like it's getting back to you. There's definitely a level on the yearly chart that it's really close to around 44 and change. And then on the three-year chart, I saw there's something going back to May of 2021, I believe it is around 39. So I just, I didn't know if he had some levels and you're charting that would make sense. That's what I'm trying to find like worth potentially a bottom in this thing. Yeah. So I would say that the answer to that question, the first level to be watching is a swing point that it's trading into on a daily base from back on November the 13th. And that swing point generated big volume or 6.8 million shares or for this instrument, that was big volume. Today's trade as an example is done 568,000 shares, even if we multiply that times three, we're only about 1.7, 1.8 million, something like that versus the 6.8 million that it's going into on Friday, the volume to the downside. It did close below and it's been below the bottom of its daily profile for a couple of sessions, 912,000 shares. So prices point back in that swing point with lighter volume. Because we're trading inside there, that first test, it would be at the 44.86 level. And now I don't have any kind of bottom signal or anything else on the daily time frame. So that would just be your typical test and rejection of a swing point. I know that oftentimes or sometimes you trade that pattern. Brent, if you do trade that pattern, do you wait for a sign of strength or do you just wait for the test and rejection or is there some some other elements that you consider? Yeah, I would say more of the test and rejection is what I normally do. Okay. It's actually worked pretty well for the most part, not always, but sure. And then you want to see a continuation of that. You can't, I don't want to say one day deal. Yes. You want to see that kind of continue on. And then maybe even it might pull back a lot of volume and have another sign of strength and then just, you know, yes, yes, in a routine. Yes. So in the daily time frame, which is what we're looking at folks to help us try to identify a potential bottom out there, you'll see prices also below profile supports. We don't have any support other than that swing point to the downside. You're below red-acid and chains line. That's a bearish signal out here, but yet I'd still be paying attention to 44.86. And that would be your first area to look at on a weekly chart out here. Price is also trading to that same basic swing point time period for the weekly time frame, which the swing point that ended the week of November the 17th. And that had 15 million shares. As an example, last week, the pullback was with 6.5 million shares. So now there's also Roadsmen Dominicator signal that just triggered this morning for the weekly time frame. So to put that together, if that were to generate a bullish reversal candle, that would give you the confirming bottom pattern for the weekly time frame chart. The monthly already has a TD9 count bottom and that price is trading into it. Now the swing point that is trading into us from November also of 2023, 39 million shares on the monthly time frame again for then. Right now we're 28 million shares. So we're pulling into that swing point with light volume as well out there. But if price closes below that low, and that low is the lower looking at at that swing point test at 44.86, that's going to suggest that we could see lower price out there. But you'd still go back to, you'd still default back to the weekly and daily time frame looking for some type of bottom signal. Now what, how did I confuse you? Oh, no, not at all. See, that was very helpful as always. And just, yeah, I think that's the level of the watching that that's, you know, breached in it, you know, does that for more than a day or two, then I would just allow it to go lower. And if it has some kind of reversal there, then yeah, maybe that's it. And I did notice like you mentioned that there was good volume that day, but at that swing point. So yes, that's in there. I'll definitely be watching. I appreciate that. I like that you included the weekly and the monthly as well. So thank you so much for that, Steve. I hope you have a great day and a great week. Oh, well, thanks so much. Always I have a, I already have a great day. You called. I doesn't get, but I got a call from, got a call from you and a call from Zee on the same day. It does not get better than that here at TFNN. Although another call from somebody else, maybe Garo, that would certainly add to it. That would be, that would be your triple. That would affect there. Exactly. Exactly. So, hey, Brett, thanks for the call. I look forward to speaking to you again. All right. Take care, Steve. You bet. That was Brent in Martinez, California. Now, Nicholas had written in and he wanted to take a look at Shopify. SHOP is the ticker symbol there. So if we take a look at, I was showing charts. Oh, wow, wow, wow. Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve. Hey, let me pull those charts up here since I wasn't showing them. Obviously, you know, let me, so here's, here's that daily timeframe. Thanks, Mr. Bill, for making me aware. We were taking a look at the chart that showed that swing point, but here on the weekly, on the monthly timeframe, you can see that TD9 count bottom and you can see that Rosemont Dominicator signal and that wave C back in November out there. So, sorry for not actually showing that chart there right away, but now we're back to square. And let's go take a look at SHOP for Nicholas out there, SHOP. And his question is, hold or sell? So, when we take a look at Shopify, if we open up the daily timeframe chart, what we see out here is what? Let me pull this back, clean it up just a tad. So, he had a Rosemont Dominicator top that formed on January the 12th. And what that has led to is a consolidation with inside its profile. So, in that instance there, that would tell you that this is really on a hold signal out there or a neutral signal. Now, there's a new profile that price is trading within. That's got support at $78.43 and resistance is up at where it's trading right now at the $81.95 level. So, there's even with the new profile, you'd have to close below $78.43 to give you a profile change in trend signal, you know, two consecutive close below that level. If you get two consecutive close above this $81.90 area where we're trading, the exact profile level again for Shopify, $81.95, you close above that, you actually get a daily change in trend bullish signal to the upside out there. So, right now the daily chart says hold. The weekly chart says buy or hold as well. You were asking hold or sell, those are my only two options. Why? Its TD9 count pattern was negated a couple of weeks ago. We're trading them up profile. We're trading above the greenhouse certain change line. Those are bullish conditions. So, the weekly chart says hold onto that trade. The monthly chart says hold on as well. We're trading above last month's high. We never got down to last month's low. So, this suggests that it wants higher price. So, Nicholas, that was a pretty easy one to answer for you because the daily says you're in a consolidation with the top. So, you're basically neutral out here and a weekly and the monthly say they want higher price out there. So, my answer to that question is definitely hold. I hope that helps you out and as always, thanks so much for writing in. We'll check real quickly here. See if there's any other requests that have come in. I don't see anything. Is there anything inside the Tiger's Den? Give me a second here. See if somebody get over to that page. Oil. John wants to take a look at oil. So, we can do that right here. Let's take CL. We are in the March contract. So, let's put the March contract up on our screen right now. And so, what you've got out here, John, is a TD9 count top that completed last Friday. And as long as a price remains below, closes below the high of last Friday. The high of last Friday was 78.26. As long as price remains below that, that pattern is in place out there. And that suggests a further pullback because right now we're trading below the top of that daily profile, 77.52. So, John C., the target to the downside, the next target inside of Lightspeed Crude, we'd have to save me 75.48. That's the center of that barest structured daily profile. I'll see if there's anything else during the break. Otherwise, we'll go ahead and take a look at something else we get back here. Steve Rhodes with Tia Pineda. You might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market, you're going to need a crystal ball. After all, it's impossible to predict the future, right? Like any endeavor in life, before you decide it's impossible, get some advice from the experts. You might find that it's not so impossible after all. For daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices, selective stocks, and commodities, subscribe to the opening call newsletter at TFNN.com. The opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman, creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman Wave. The Chapman Wave up-down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns, finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices.  First time subscribers also get a 30-day money back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. TFNN.com. Educating investors. Everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence. This mathematical principle is responsible for everything from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market. To stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of, sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at TFNN.com. When you subscribe, you'll get a weekly report from veteran day trader Larry Pezzavento on stocks you need to pay attention to, and you can trust Larry's analysis. After all, he's got 45 years experience as a day trader. Larry will also provide daily charts, videos, and data on the key markets that he's tracking. Expect notifications from Larry on market movement you need to act on at any time. First time subscribers also get a 30-day money back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. Subscribe to the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter today. TFNN.com. Educating investors. Educating traders for more than 20 years with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours. And now they are expanding their reach with the Tiger's Den, available to all tigers and tigeresses for just $1 for the year. There's no catch or added costs when you join our community of traders. In the Tiger's Den, you can look over the shoulders of Tom O'Brien and the other TFNN hosts while they analyze charts during their live Tiger TV programs and join an interactive trading community with hundreds of members exchanging ideas, interact with other tigers and tigeresses as they share trading ideas, news analysis, and discuss the market action all trading day, even at night and on the weekends. The Tiger's Den at Discord is accessible on mobile or tablets as well, so it's always at your reach.  Can you join the band? He didn't even go for an audition. We want you to join the band, and oh, by the way, you're playing at Carnegie Hall in four days, so brush up on our songs. So what I was able to find out here, John C., is if we take a look at a 60-minute time frame chart for Lightspeed Crude, again, we're looking at the March contract, it did complete a TD9 count bottom at 11 a.m. out there. So watch that low. We're suggesting the daily time frame charts are suggesting that we have lower. If that's the case, what I'd say is you'd see the confirmation of that, even if I close it below the TD9 count bottom, that hammer candle out there, that low, which is a 76.54. I'd say the real proof in the pudding would be a close below 75.95. That's a TD9 count breakout level on a 60-minute time frame with 76.06, 75.95 level out there. Price closed below that. That adds the idea on the daily time frame chart that we had down to at least the 75.48 level out there. So I hope that helps you out. There was some conversation earlier about Bitcoin. We don't really usually take a look at Bitcoin, not for any reason specific, but let's actually go ahead and do that to close out the show with this next minute out here. So I've got those charts fired up out there, and this is Bitcoin. I believe we're trading the February contract out here. So if we take a look at the daily time frame, we don't have any kind of bottom pattern. That doesn't mean it hasn't bottom. What we do have is that we've got a change in trend signal out there, a profile change in trend signal, and that came across last Friday when price closed above the profile level. Now price trade above the screen outside and change line. If you get it closed today above 43.11, odds favorite, Bitcoin's going to make a move to 46.850, no topping signal on a 30-minute chart, nor on a 60-minute chart, nor on 820-minute. You're negating the TD-9 count top on the 240. So I would have to say Bitcoin is headed higher with that price objective at least at 46.850 out there. So hopefully that helps anybody who confirms whatever you might have been looking at out there. So folks, stay tuned for all the great programming. I'll be back with you at about 315 with Tom. Have a marvelous Monday. And if I don't see you or, you know, you don't hear from me this afternoon, we'll see you tomorrow bright and early 11 a.m. Take care. Have a magnificent Monday. Be safe out there, folks.