 Hello and welcome. This is episode 55. This is not Anthony Chung. This is Piers Carran. Anthony, I don't know, has managed to decide to take the week off work just as the whole world goes into chaos. But instead of Anthony Chung, for all you Anthony Chung fans, unfortunately he's not here but I've got better than that because joining me for the first time on the podcast is a certain Mr William DeLucy, my partner in crime at Amplify. How are you doing Will? Good thanks Piers. Yeah, sorry I'm not Anthony but actually I was just looking back. Every single time a major event has happened from the virus to the vaccines to Trump to Brexit, you name it, it's only ever happened when Anthony's off the desk. Now, you could say that's a coincidence. Well, you know what? I was thinking about that this morning, that very thing. I don't think it is a coincidence. I think he is stabilizing. I think he's responsible. I was thinking more, he might be the stabilizing equilibrium of the planet and once he steps out it all kind of just implodes. I think the opposite. I think he's out there causing trouble. Now look, why haven't you been on the pod? We must be going on. Some people have even been speculating that you don't exist. Wow. I've been working. Actually I know we'll talk about that a bit later in this podcast, you know, just what a journey it's been since we started trading together 20 years ago. But yeah, it's been super busy from the Amplify side and notwithstanding the amount of events, have you seen the team or all the finance accelerators going out this week? Yeah, well I wanted to actually just touch on that because it's been an awesome response from the community. Ever since we kind of made that key announcement, I think it was a couple of weeks back with our Morgan Stanley sponsorship and really wanting to deliver on our mission of democratizing opportunities in finance and Morgan Stanley coming on board being such a powerful endorsement of that. And actually since then we've had just a phenomenal amount of people that have come on to AmplifyMe.com and signed up for our free finance accelerator sim. We've been doing loads of simulations. I wanted to give a few shout outs actually. So just in terms of different university societies that have been getting involved, so here in the UK we have the Durham University Asian Investment Society, we've got Bayes, formerly known as CAS, their finance and banking society, we've got a Durham again, we've got the Fintech Society, we've got Trinity over in Ireland, their Entrepreneurship Society, we've got Wutis which is actually in Austria. They're in their Trading and Investment Society, we've got Queens Belfast, Warwick Coventry and then we've got Penn State Asset Management Group, we've got Duke Rotman up in Canada Commerce Trading Group, Toronto Student Investment Council. So many, it's been fantastic. And then not just universities getting involved, individuals, so just to make it clear, you don't need to be part of a society event to do this and just get on our website, anyone, and come and do it. We've had, I think we've had people from 35 different countries, just in the last week from like Algeria to Indonesia, Chile, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, you name it. So look, I just wanted to say a big thank you to the community and just encourage those that haven't done it yet to get involved, it really is a potential pathway to launching your career and just look, finding out more about the industry and actually what the roles in the industry are all about. It's definitely become the benchmark experience, I think, to have for anyone now looking to apply to a finance role. I was speaking to a number of recruiters this morning and their response is like, why wouldn't someone do it? If they are interested in working for this company or working in this area, then it's going to be quite hard to justify not doing it, which is great. We wanted to become the CFA of practical training rather than theoretical training, and I think that brand is getting out there. So yeah, good work team. Cool. Well look, we'll talk a bit more about Amplify. Now that we've got you on the pod finally, we thought we'd just have a quick chat later on in this episode, we'll talk a bit about Amplify in terms of the business and our journey together, kind of building it in some of the ups and the downs along the way. So just a bit of a sort of entrepreneurial element to this pod from our own experience. So we thought that might be interesting for the listeners. But look, let's kind of get stuck into it. What we're going to focus on today? I mean, obviously there's been one story that's dominated the whole planet. We'll talk obviously about Ukraine, Russia, but I think what we wanted to do was add a slightly different angle. I mean, you're all reading the news, you know, you don't need us to be catching you up on the invasion and the details of it. I mean, this is this is there for everyone you've been reading up on this. What we wanted to just delve into is markets and market reactions and particularly wanted to talk about, you know, what's happened like the NASDAQ right now as I speak, has just broken up above yesterday's high. And by the way, that puts it back up. It's almost testing the high of the week that was set back on Monday pre-invasion. And look, there's been some quite extraordinary market reversals going into the US close last night. And there are those reversals just being added to again this morning. And I really wanted to delve into you with you, what what the hell is going on in some of these market reactions are crazy. But look, we'll get to that in a second. What I wanted to do was just say, there is other stuff happening. As hard as that may be to believe there is other stuff going on. So just a couple of, I'm just going to run through in Anthony Chung style, a couple of other news headlines that have grabbed my attention. There's a third of a guy called Donald Trump, when he's back, and he's just launched his truth media and tech group. So truth social is the social media element of his new offering. And you're going to be able to post truths. So rather than tweets, there'll be truths, and there'll be a truth feed, not making this up, there'll be a truth feed. So basically it's they've ripped off Twitter in terms of a design and a functionality point of view, obviously Twitter was Trump's main kind of communication channel yet 89 million followers actually before he then got canceled by Twitter but he's launched this new media, but it's a social media, it's a media and tech group, and he launched his kind of investment pack. And they've got some quite extraordinary growth trajectories where we've been kind of working on this kind of stuff with amplify these nice sort of forecasted hockey stick charts with with growth just going to the planet. He's, he's basically, even though the focus will be on this truth social to start with, actually he's launching a streaming service he wants to take on Netflix, Disney, you know, as if that space isn't saturated enough already he thinks he's going to be able to get 50 million paying subscribers by 2026 and apparently his business will be generating 3.7 billion by 2026. So some punchy numbers coming out of Trump's camp we'll see if this is the kind of. I think there was there was something similar being forecast with the new British TV channel right I forget it's the name for it. And that he would do well to look up the reality of what's happened there I think he would, I mean it's the space that, well, I mean, it's incredibly saturated as I said so not quite sure what angle he's going to bring that's going to maybe Well, truth, Trump's truth. Anyway, that's Trump. Another one that was quite interesting Elon Musk haven't heard from him for a while. But did you see this story this morning. Basically there's new sec investigation just opened up on musk. Do you remember that back in. A couple of months back when Tesla was smashing up above $1,000 and becoming one of the biggest companies on the planet and I was talking with that on the pod about, you know, the problem that musk has is he doesn't. He can't liquidate his holding because as soon as he starts selling shares well that'll be a massively negative signal, and the share price will collapse and then that weekend, he tweeted a poll. He said he said right to my Twitter fans, I sell 10% of my state yes or no and I will do whatever the result of this poll says. Yeah, I do very well. The polls in favor of him selling and then he did go ahead and start to sell 10% well that poll when he when he released that poll on Twitter on Monday morning Tesla share price collapsed that dropped like 510%. Okay. The SEC investigation is now looking at his brother. Kimball musk. Do you know what a hell of a name. What's Kim's been up to. He's been up to while he sold $108 million worth of shares Tesla shares the day before musk tweeted that poll. So the SEC have gone. Oh, oh yeah. That looks a bit dodge. We might just have a little look into that. Talk about helping your brother out. Exactly. So that was quite amusing. We'll see what I don't think musk really gives a, gives a shit, but quite an interesting story. On the economic front. And I know it's hard to get past any news on Russia. The neck something happened yesterday the jobless claims numbers out of the US just kind of get back to that whole thing about what's going on economically while their jobless games number came in at a 52 year low. Again indicating that the labor market is continuing to show signs of real strength. We'll talk a bit in a minute actually maybe about inflation obviously pre Russia Ukraine invasion. Obviously the talk on the street was about the fed hiking and about the inflation problem we've got and obviously we've had a correction lower, you know, risk off episode in January as a result of these rate hike fears and we'll talk a bit about commodity pricing and how these commodity prices of spike time because of this Russia invasion and what does that mean for the fed and all the rest of it but certainly the data showed yesterday that labor market conditions continue to tighten and it all plays into that. That whole story around inflation and is it sustainable and how many hikes for the fed have to do this year and all the rest of it but but but look, that's some of the stories that caught my eye although you'll be very much forgiven if you didn't see any of that because the media is just dominated by this one is it shows though what what unique times we are living in there are so many major and I mean major market themes. All happening at the same time. Yeah, and one of the things I'm most interested in and hopefully we'll talk about it is. How can this, if you like centrifuge of activity. What's going to spin out of it what what type of random events will spin out of it and I actually think the biggest event will be an unknown. Normally are the biggest events something you don't even know that you don't know but I'm finding it hard to keep on top of everything we do know. Now, I mean the Fed today hike five times or nine times I mean that's major, but it's even that is a backdrop at the moment. I like your centrifuge analogy. And I see you're you're so right though, you know history tells us that when big when a big event when a big known event happens I mean the least surprising thing is Russia have invaded Ukraine right in the. There's been a build up of troops on the border for weeks months right so anyway the invasions happen but it's almost like well it's like the knock on effects of these known events then trigger. Unintended consequences unintended reactions reprisals and events that you cannot predict and no model can and and I think what's interesting about this if you like chaos type theory or theory of randomness is an event like Ukraine to me just turns up the dial of randomization, where the possibility for more random unknown events is now much much higher than it was two months ago. So, I mean challenging times for traders, I'm going to reel off now some of the market reactions in the last 24 hours, and I want you to explain it to me. Oh, cheers. So here's here goes right because, obviously if you're really if all you do is read the press, then they clear this like oh my god it's World War three. Okay, and so you automatically would assume if you're not looking at any charts, or you're not looking at markets, particularly closely you're automatically showing what markets are just it's just going to be absolute blood bath. And it was for a few hours, but actually the market rebounds been extraordinary so here goes I'm going to talk, talk you through some of them okay. So let's start with crude oil. So crude on I'm just looking at my charts to get this right because I read the numbers and I'm like, what is that, what is that actually possible. So going if I start obviously yesterday was when the invasion kicked off so oil is trading around about $93 I'm talking WTI crude here $93 it rallied and topped out at $100 and 50 cents. Okay, that was by mid morning that midday UK time. So it went from 93 to over 100. By the time you get to 730pm, it's trading below 92. So make new lows for the day, having spiked above 100 that's oil. Gold, saying on the commodity theme, gold started off and I know you were trading some gold so I'm going to get your, your, your insights into what that felt like. But gold was trading around less, I'm going to round these numbers up and let's say $1,910. Then the invasion kicked off and it traded up and hit a high at $1,976. But then by the time you got to 730 was trading new lives for the day down at 1,878. That's gold NASDAQ this is perhaps one of my favorites the NASDAQ from the open on Wednesday in, in, in the US, the market open it was trading at 14,000. It then bottomed out 1000 points lower at 7am on Thursday. Okay, that's a 7% drop. After the US session yesterday it rally and recovered the entire remain and we're trading back on the levels we were trading. That's a 1000 point sell off, and then a 1000 point rally. That's in one day that's the biggest intraday swing since March 2020 when COVID hit. Other stuff, the Moex, well you know Moex that's the Russian index that dropped 45%. The ruble hit an all time ever low, and I'm watching it right now on my screen and it's rallying back and it's recovered a good 75% of yesterday. And how much is the Moex recovered? I'm just trying to get that's a good question. It is recovering but not as not quite like the others. Well, no, it's about 50%. It covers about 50% of yesterday's sell off. So, and I can go on here, there's so many examples of this, but what all I want to ask, what the hell, how do you explain this? Yeah, I mean this is this is this is fantastically interesting. What a roller coaster. And I think it's important to any sort of new investors out there or people who haven't been involved in markets for long. Asset prices are impacted by a confluence of factors so many, many things can impact the price of an asset many different things. Let's look at oil and gold as an example and you're right, I was trading gold and in fact I am I had some decent positions in on gold earlier on in the week and so on Thursday morning. Yeah, it was looking amazing obviously didn't actually know that that would be the date of the actual invasion but I believed that, you know, this wasn't a coincidence about the troops I thought more would happen so I positioned myself accordingly so I was right. And then you know on Thursday morning the position was great. I mean, fantastic and I, and I do that I mean obviously the training people for well over a decade in doing this I scaled out some of my risk, even though I was sure that the price of gold would move higher it's just like a natural habit that I always force myself to do just by learning the hard way when we're not doing it during market volatility like it's a given right you take off some of your risk, some of your risk when things are going well. So, fortunately, I did because then the position ended up yeah way below the 1900 handle. And had I'm not taken off some of that risk it would have been very very frustrating indeed. Why did gold move higher and then lower so aggressively and the same same with oil well a few things so obviously oil and gold were moving higher based on the invasion goal for different reasons gold as a flight to quality. To safe haven people moving out of risk assets and into safe haven assets assets like gold or us bonds oil is normally a risk asset so actually if this wasn't Russia. You might find oil moved lower if if this was a different part of the world but it is Russia, very oil and energy dependent so oil moved higher because the future fears of supply constraints which Europe hasn't actually acted on at the moment. And so then we get to the second move. So the reversal of those moves again many many so many things going on for gold. Actually if you look at the US dollar yesterday, the way that the US dollar moved was rampant it reminded me actually peers I don't know if you remember trading currencies during the global financial crisis in 2009. And just before the global financial crisis was it the pound it was like $2.1 to the pound wasn't it something like that. It was basically free to go to New York going to New York you're staying that hotel. And then the global financial crisis that the biggest flight to quality move was actually people selling currency selling any type of assets they're holding that weren't in dollars and buying dollar denominated assets and particularly US Treasury so the demand to the US dollar going higher, and that dollar strength then weighing on commodity markets so gold specifically has an inverse relationship to the US dollar. Then obviously in oil you get the news that actually the Europeans are putting on these huge huge sanctions on Russia, but not including oil and gas because that's just a wait a minute. But then further explains move lower in oil. It is absolutely fascinating but I think what these type of market conditions show is you never know, you just never know what's going on, and what could happen. And so you should always trade and invest in the way that you don't know, and you don't know what you don't know. So, it's easy for me now to explain why gold move lower because you can look at what what happened but I'm certainly at the time I can imagine a lot of people saying, Why is gold selling off when there are rockets being fired in Kiev right now. So that can get if you let that lack of appreciation of the randomness of markets and and and the fluidity of factors that can impact things. The most interesting is to then keep on trading and carry on trading of you then you see more negative news about Russia and so you get by more gold futures without understanding. It's actually the dollar strength that that's negating the flight to quality move. The equities. Again, big sell off because of the lead up to what sanctions will be announced actually because it wasn't too dissimilar to about a week ago, right, when then when the sanctions are announced market goes on. Yeah. Okay, so the world really is going to leave Ukraine to this and we might be okay so I think I think they're the reactions here really difficult to trade and this is why we need Anthony Chung, never to take a holiday ever again only so these market events don't happen because I'm fully convinced is responsible for all of them. But also, you know, during these type of market activity you need an on the desk and live streaming the whole time, because that I mean that's what he's so good at. There's so much going on at all times it's almost impossible for people to trade this if they don't have access to everything that they need to know the second they need to know it. I think there's two timeframes here. There's either the ultra short timeframe where you're I'm talking minutes that you're in a trade for because then the world's going to change again and then again so yeah just trade that view for ultra short, or you've got a long, long, long time frame of years. What this type of market doesn't allow is I'm going to hold this position for two or three days. Because guess what, it changes on a six points and then it changes again and then it changes again and you can get topped and tailed so yeah that that would be my explanation and then advice on the result of that I mean I love it I love volatility. As you know peers my trading styles always been kind of like keeping a glass container and then break when stuff happens. So so I like it. But but yeah if you try and get attached to a view. Good luck, because it's going to change and if you don't change with it then. I check that that that that reversal point. Yesterday, I think I think certainly came, I would say out of the US and I think it was traders there just and once the, I guess the fresh set of sanctions that were announced were like oh okay well they could have been harsher but they're not and as you said perhaps that was the signal But maybe it's going to be a full blown, you know, where. Yeah, I agree but don't you find it interesting about markets now so they have held back on one or two sanctions but it doesn't mean that they're not going to be deployed. So I love the emotions of these markets now what you're seeing now is hope and optimism, again, that everything's going to be fine and it might be in such words, things don't escalate but really things aren't going to carry on from here. So if you look at the economist today's husband produce talks about Putin's ambitions, you know Ukraine is the start of actually reimposing influence over the block. And then all of the factors we've talked about blacks one so how China going to respond to this what's going to happen, you know, one mistake I think the markets when things like this are happening. And you've got to go with, I disagree with this recent rally I think it's more likely than not that actually there'll be a further progression here at least in the medium term is my view. But I can't deploy that view on the markets now I can't, you can't step in in the way of the behavioral swing. I think people are thinking right medium to like right now after the banks, I think that the reason for the banks perhaps is that idea that medium to there might be some medium term disruption to a few sectors that are specifically exposed, but that this won't become a broader disaster. And so, and actually some of the moves yesterday in the NASDAQ particularly being reported from some of the desks on Wall Street that a lot of the rebound volume was actually people who had short positions who have had short positions since the start of the year, especially on the like the spec tech stuff. Yeah, because into inflation and interest rates and so a lot of these stocks have been absolutely hammered. And if you think about things like the arc investment sort of flagship innovation ETF with Kathy Wood it's just been destroyed her fund right. And apparently a lot of its people have now they're booking profit on their shorts they're using this crisis as that final leg to the downside to say you know what I'm going to book profit and I'm going to buy. And their idea is that actually this Ukraine Russia situation will be a medium term disruption to certain sectors and won't become the broader disaster. So that's the, but as you say, obviously, whilst that might be of you right now this moment this second, obviously you need to monitor the situation incredibly closely and if, if it escalates and like it escalates it's hard to know. But it looks like Russia's plan that they're apparently in the northern part of Kiev now and that they're going for the capital and it looks like they're looking to probably go after the Ukrainian president specifically, then kind of take him out, as it were, capture him or whatever and just kind of take over the control of the country without necessarily it being a full blown war across the entire country. They've obviously disabled the airports and and fine but obviously monitor this can I think I think just before you move on I think your point though is really interesting for other people to look at it from other market players point of view. I think it's so yeah, we're saying, oh this interesting look at this bounce but actually it would make sense if I was short a ton of spec tech. Yesterday would have been a great opportunity to take some off and prudent to do so. And look what moves markets, what created the bounce more buyers than sellers. And so if you've got a lot of funds involved in that then then it makes sense but I think what can be interesting for more novice investors is all of these people who are short since the start of 2022 sounds great sounds easy. Don't get me wrong, some of them might have been short from the start of 2021. And then yesterday they might be like, thank God for that. Okay, finally get out of this also also making stressful short position. Some of these spec techs they were up 1520% yesterday up 1520% quite extraordinary but I wanted to just before we move away from the whole rush of it I do want to talk about swift, just about what, what our future site. If, if, if the West want to ratchet the pressure up, and if they want to force more sanctions what are they and want to talk about swift specifically because if you're sat there thinking right well fine we bounced. It's the banks sustainable or not, but you know what's going to, what is going to result in the NASDAQ collapsing and making new loads for the year what's going to result, what would push gold above 2000. So I think they're two different answers to that question what would cause the NASDAQ to really drop don't forget the Fed is still out there. So, to me, I think if there is a prevention of imports of oil and gas from Russia, the price of oil and gas will go through the roof, adding to already four decade record inflation numbers. How a central bank reacts to that, and any misstep by a central bank here. I think that's a big factor that you know it's not just Ukraine it's actually the response to this event remember the unintended consequences and responses. So I think that type of activity might impact equities but equally hiking rates too fast but also way on gold, for example so you know you've got to be aware of this what's the driving factor to understand each asset class. I think it's a good move for me. And I, you know don't want to be too pessimistic here. But if I was China, and I had in the back of my head that Taiwan actually was a bit similar to Ukraine and Russia. And the world is focused on Europe at the moment, then would it be a good time to make moves on the Taiwanese Peninsula. And the papers that you know Taiwan is definitely in a precarious position here and if Putin gets away with this by the way, and NATO shows that really. Okay let's just contain it to Ukraine. You know, why not why not Taiwan and then I think the big moves, then you got to look at semiconductors right Taiwan is the world's majority of semiconductors and then you got to look at those companies producing semiconductors and then also the companies relying on the import of semiconductors car companies now I mean it's it's it's essential anything to do with semiconductors which is pretty much most electronics. And just another stat to put it in perspective, because if you think the so from the US's point of view, the Ukraine is not an important sort of trade partner, they're actually the 67th biggest trade partner of the US, Ukraine. Okay, Taiwan is the ninth biggest and obviously you say a semiconductor superpower. And so that would be globally would certainly have a much larger economic impact but. But more than that, sorry, more than that is the fact that the US has said to Taiwan and it's not right in the US has said to Taiwan don't worry we've got your back. Yeah. So, again, what does that lead to then if you have a Russia, China, and others and then you know then it becomes a little bit. World War II, I think that certainly changed the value of assets that we're looking at. In terms of inflation, because you're right. I mean just a quick reminder for people about commodities and and just where Russia sits on the kind of global commodity production scale because they're a very important player so a few stats, and all these commodities I'm going to mention, how did initially they go through the roof yesterday, they've reversed back most of them but wheat, for example, 29% of global exports comes from Russia and Ukraine. Sunflower oil here's one for you sunflower oil, 80% of global exports are from Russia and Ukraine. But your cooking may well get more expensive, I'm afraid that the top four Ukraine's the top in the top four corn producers natural gas we know about so Russia supplies 40% of Europe's natural gas. In the medium, Russia produces 40% of global production diamonds I didn't actually realize global produces, sorry Russia produces 30% of the global diamond production titanium sits at 15% of global mining comes out of Russia fertilizers are really big 18% of global production from Russia, gold 10% coming out of Russia and so on that the list is massive right but, as you say, that whole, the economic impact globally and the tightening of monetary policy. Obviously, if this leads if this is a sustained thing that leads to commodity prices staying higher for longer than clearly that's going to just exacerbate that particular issue but I wanted to talk about swift I know I keep saying I want to come back to just very briefly touch on it because it is my opinion that if the West use the swift card on the sanctions if they slap the swift card on to the sanction table. I do think that changes things and that's just because, well, what is swift just for those who aren't sure. It's a financial messaging service. The Ukraine want us to kind of use the swift card now but the West are just in here. We're not quite sure we want to go there yet but basically allows quick transactions financial transactions that is, it's used by 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries. The banning Russia from the use of swift would delay the payments of payments that Russia get for exports of oil and gas. Now, the swift card was used on Iran in 2012. After that, immediately around lost almost half of its oil export revenue and 30% of its foreign trade just vanished overnight because they weren't able to process the transactions anymore. So because Russia play on this global commodity exporting plane, and that's how they get paid, then banning them from swift would have a very quick and immediate and a very large impact. So when you play out the what ifs, you know, what is how does Putin react to that. Obviously the Russians have been saying that if you go anywhere near swift, then you can forget any gas coming to Europe, by the way. So that's why obviously the West are very at the moment, reluctant to play that card and I think that explains some of the market react the rebounds yesterday it's like okay, few. I haven't used the swift card. So actually fine. Maybe this isn't going to be quite the, the, the, you know, global event that people were panicking about and maybe the media will portray this doesn't bite the little at all what's happening in Ukraine I want to act. Obviously, what's going on there from a humanitarian point of view is, is desperately bad. And, but from a I guess from a global media point of view. The front pages and the back pages and all the pages in between have been plastered full of incredibly shocking scenes. But yeah, so keep an eye on say for those in markets and trading and so on just keep an eye out for the swift sanction. And should that get deployed at any point then I think we may well have another change in direction on markets but for now, as I speak, now's that futures, smashing up through new highs for the day. I mean, lows for the day right now as I'm talking oil is trading down the back to test yesterday's low just below the $92 handle on on WTI. Quite extraordinary scenes. Let's move on. I know, I know it's hard to but let's move away from the Russia thing and I thought maybe we'd finish the kind of last part of the pod by talking a bit about, well, ourselves. That's a good idea but yeah I thought people might be interested. There's lots of students out there I think in this day and age, perhaps more so when we were graduating I think the pathway of starting your own company, or, you know, trying to scratch that entrepreneurial itch. I think maybe these days that's there, there's, that's more common, maybe, it's probably fair to say that when we were graduating where I think we were in that era where, you know, you tread the conventional career path route, and you know you're applying for banks and all the rest of it, but I thought it might be interesting for us to discuss our experiences with starting Amphibuy and, you know, trying to build a company from zero, and the kind of trials and tribulations along the way we've had some great issues with Morgan Stanley I guess we announced the highlights, but what you don't, what you don't often hear about in the media is, there might be some incredibly successful businesses. There's some desperate setbacks along the way and some incredibly difficult sort of periods and decisions and events happen so I don't know where we want to start with this because it's obviously such a big topic but what have you felt about Amphibuy? I wish I chose a different business partner, other than that, no. I just think it's been amazing yes to all of the challenges and the uncertainties, sometimes the, you know, the sick feeling in the stomach when you're taking risk and you know setting up your own endeavor is always risky I think there's definitely a positive feedback loop, the longer you're around, the more people that you know, the more connections that you make so I think much like someone starting out in their career actually, it's relatively similar in terms of the trajectory whereby the first few years, you know, you're getting known, who are you, why do you do this, what you do, and you have to really prove yourself and then do a good job whatever your business, whatever service it is, you need to and hopefully continue to blow away expectations to get people going, wow, about whatever it is that you're delivering. And now it's actually much easier, I mean our biggest clients Citadel, you know, and for our quant training simulations and they're obviously known as the world leader in quantitative trading so now if I wanted to talk to any business school, any firm, any hedge fund, any hedge fund out there, then you start with oh well Citadel do this, and then it's immediate justification of where you are so there becomes a snowball effect over time but you know it's 13 years now. It's been a long time and so the snowball effect is one thing that I'd encourage any entrepreneurs to try and create as soon as possible to start working even if it means you're giving clients something for free. If it means that they can talk about it and then you get to make relationships and that that's a really important place to start. But if you do to stubborn about about it you know just just do do what they want. If you can, then then the next thing really is about adaptability. So I mean we've changed so many times peers are focus our area are pitch I mean one of the reasons for going into the whole quantum and working more on the programming and the coding side of everything that we're doing is you know that's where the goals and finance are going so so we need to be there. One of the reasons why we do, you know we moved our simulations online immediately, well actually just just before covert we're always trying to be trending in the right place now, you know leveling the playing field to our finance accelerate simulation. That's because the industry is now interested in that obviously it's our mission but it's finally coming through that now the industry is interested they genuinely want to actually level the playing field. I think being able to be flexible and not get married to review. And I think that wasn't shown ever more clearly than when we actually stopped the trading side of our business, you know that was gut wrenching, I think, for us given it was you know it's our passion in terms of originally how we started the organization, but looking at it quite coldly you've got two or three areas the technology training and recruitment for students is making a global impact and growing by hundreds of percent a year, and the trade training side wasn't just wasn't growing as fast so you know being quite brutal with with strategy, I think is important. But yeah it's been it's been been been a whirlwind really but I feel like I know we're old now. I do feel like we've just started at this new, if you like, level, a global level rather than a more sort of a small medium science organization. Yeah, and I guess it that that's a good point. It's like, never sit still never be content with where you are. It's always like, I think for us it's always been okay well we're here and it's like okay right well how do we now get to the next level. And that sometimes means changing direction and incredibly difficult decisions but yeah I think the moment you're the moment you think you've cracked it is probably the moment you'll start to fail. Well that that we've got a great story about that haven't we when we were we were on the trading floor this is going back to 2005 when canary wolf trading floor and by then, I mean peers you would, especially I think one of the largest traders in the world so you know good at what you do trading wise but still humble enough to know that this isn't easy. And there was a new grad who joined the trading floor. And I was doing okay it was a bit of a annoying character but you know he was actually doing okay for for a brand new person. He was walking down the walking down the middle between all of the desks and he just goes, you know what guys. This is easy. I've cracked this I have cracked it. And then we're all like this. And anyway, I don't know how long he lasted but trading isn't easy. The job isn't easy, and he didn't crack it and he wasn't around he wasn't trading for that much longer but he definitely got the nickname of cracked it. I was going to say his nickname became cracked it from that point on, the rest of the two months he lasted it before they only got axed for not delivery. You're right in terms of business I think if you're if you've got that type of personality I mean I, I'm very emotional. It appears anyway but you know I really really want to win a client or I really want to win a piece of business let's say I want to win a new pipeline for us hedge funds to use our kit and I'll work really hard on it. Strangely enough, as soon as I've won it, and it's confirmed. It's a weird reaction because it's kind of okay that's good. Right what next, like almost within a minute now the negative side of that is, I think it means I'll never be happy. It's not that it's never enough I'm not greedy. It's just that you know as soon as you've achieved that I then want to feel like I then want the fight again I want the chase and the challenge. That's what I enjoy. But I think we wouldn't be where we are, and you're the same, you know that that that's what what what is needed and I think we try to take decisions, aggressive decisions to push it to the next level each time. And I guess it's also trying to have us, making sure you have a scalable product, where, or whatever that is, a physical product or a service or whatever it being scalable means that, you know there's always once you've done the us h funds great well then, is there anyone else who wants this and yes, great, I'm going to go after them I think just trying to make sure that the product offering has proper scale. But yeah, okay well listen I just I just want to say to anyone listening to this by the way, if you are thinking about starting out your own venture. You know it's brave it's a big decision, whatever it might be just please do ping me a message on LinkedIn. I'm happy to advise provide any guidance. We've personally been through it. We've got a long, long way to go still learning but definitely happy to share some advice. If anyone wants to ping me a message. Well, there is an offer for you right there so your LinkedIn is going to blow up. Good. Hopefully. Yeah, absolutely. Well look, thanks for a look. It's been, it's been, I can't even remember what episode we're on now. I said at the start is it 55. It's been 55 episodes. And can we make sure that it's not another 55 before you come on the pod. We should do this more often. We've got some good, we've got some plenty of trading store for war stories. Some absolute classics in fact. Yeah, let's share all of those. Cool. Well look, thanks. Well, thanks for your time and thanks a lot guys. Obviously, keep an eye out for news flow over the weekend. We've got stuff like an OPEC meeting next week which could be interesting on the oil supply front and the response from OPEC. Following the Ukraine Russia situation. So plenty of interesting stuff and look just be careful. I know that markets have bounced and rebunded doesn't mean that they're going to stay bounced. These markets can be incredibly violent and above all, you've got to be super on it when it comes to keeping your risk under control. I'm going to finish on one point. Volatility up leverage down. Nice. Which is the size of your trades. Like it. All right. Thank you.