Back in the Day...

If you are new to SEO it is hard to appreciate how easy SEO was say 6 to 8 years ago.

Almost everything worked quickly, cheaply, and predictably.

Go back a few years earlier and you could rank a site without even looking at it. :D

Links, links, links.

Meritocracy to Something Different

Back then sharing SEO information acted like a meritocracy. If you had something fantastic to share & it worked great you were rewarded. Sure you gave away some of your competitive advantage by sharing it publicly, but you would get links and mentions and recommendations.

These days most of the best minds in SEO don't blog often. And some of the authors who frequently publish literally everywhere are a series of ghostwriters.

Further, most of the sharing has shifted to channels like Twitter, where the half-life of the share is maybe a couple hours.

Yet if you share something which causes search engineers to change their relevancy algorithms in response the half-life of that algorithm shift can last years or maybe even decades.

Investing Big

These days breaking in can be much harder. I see some sites with over 1,000 high quality links that are 3 or 4 months old which have clearly invested deep into 6 figures which appear to be getting about 80 organic search visitors a month.

From a short enough timeframe it appears nothing works, even if you are using a system which has worked, should work, and is currently working on other existing & trusted projects.

Time delays have an amazing impact on our perceptions and how our reward circuitry is wired.

Most the types of people who have the confidence and knowledge to invest deep into 6 figures on a brand new project aren't creating "how to" SEO information and giving it away free. Doing so would only harm their earnings and lower their competitive advantage.

Derivatives, Amplifications & Omissions

Most of the info created about SEO today is derivative (people who write about SEO but don't practice it) or people overstating the risks and claiming x and y and z don't work, can't work, and will never work.

And then from there you get the derivative amplifications of don't, can't, won't.

And then there are people who read and old blog post about how things were x years ago and write as though everything is still the same.

Measuring the Risks

If you are using lagging knowledge from derivative "experts" to drive strategy you are most likely going to lose money.

• First, if you are investing in conventional wisdom then there is little competitive advantage to that investment.
• Secondly, as techniques become more widespread and widely advocated Google is more likely to step in and punish those who use those strategies.
• It is when the strategy is most widely used and seems safest that both the risk is at its peak while the rewards are de minimus.

With all the misinformation, how do you find out what works?

Testing

You can pay for good advice. But most people don't want to do that, they'd rather lose. ;)

The other option is to do your own testing. Then when you find out somewhere where conventional wisdom is wrong, invest aggressively.

"To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right." - Jeff Bezos

That doesn't mean you should try to go against consensus view everywhere, but wherever you are investing the most it makes sense to invest in something that is either hard for others to do or something others wouldn't consider doing. That is how you stand out & differentiate.

But to do your own testing you need to have a number of sites. If you have one site that means everything to you and you get wildly experimental then the first time one of those tests goes astray you're hosed.

False Positives

And, even if you do nothing wrong, if you don't build up a stash of savings you can still get screwed by a false positive. Even having a connection in Google may not be enough to overcome a false positive.

Cutts said, “Oh yeah, I think you’re ensnared in this update. I see a couple weird things. But sit tight, and in a month or two we’ll re-index you and everything will be fine.” Then like an idiot, I made some changes but just waited and waited. I didn’t want to bother him because he’s kind of a famous person to me and I didn’t want to waste his time. At the time Google paid someone to answer his email. Crazy, right? He just got thousands and thousands of messages a day.

I kept waiting. For a year and a half, I waited. The revenues kept trickling down. It was this long terrible process, losing half overnight but then also roughly 3% a month for a year and a half after. It got to the point where we couldn’t pay our bills. That’s when I reached out again to Matt Cutts, “Things never got better.” He was like, “What, really? I’m sorry.” He looked into it and was like, “Oh yeah, it never reversed. It should have. You were accidentally put in the bad pile.”

“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

True Positives

A lot of SEMrush charts look like the following

What happened there?

Well, obviously that site stopped ranking.

But why?

You can't be certain why without doing some investigation. And even then you can never be 100% certain, because you are dealing with a black box.

That said, there are constant shifts in the algorithms across regions and across time.

Paraphrasing quite a bit here, but in this video Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google Andrey Lipattsev suggested...

He also explained the hole Google has in their Arabic index, with spam being much more effective there due to there being little useful content to index and rank & Google modeling their ranking algorithms largely based on publishing strategies in the western world. Fixing many of these holes is also less of a priority because they view evolving with mobile friendly, AMP, etc. as being a higher priority. They algorithmically ignore many localized issues & try to clean up some aspects of that manually. But even whoever is winning by the spam stuff at the moment might not only lose due to an algorithm update or manual clean up, but once Google has something great to rank there it will eventually win, displacing some of the older spam on a near permanent basis. The new entrant raises the barrier to entry for the lower-quality stuff that was winning via sketchy means.

Over time the relevancy algorithms shift. As new ingredients get added to the algorithms & old ingredients get used in new ways it doesn't mean that a site which once ranked

• deserved to rank
• will keep on ranking

In fact, sites which don't get a constant stream of effort & investment are more likely to slide than have their rankings sustained.

The above SEMrush chart is for a site which uses the following as their header graphic

When there is literally no competition and the algorithms are weak, something like that can rank.

But if Google looks at how well people respond to what is in the result set, a site as ugly as that is going nowhere fast.

Further, a site like that would struggle to get any quality inbound links or shares.

If nobody reads it then nobody will share it.

The content on the page could be Pulitzer prize level writing and few would take it seriously.

With that design, death is certain in many markets.

Many Ways to Become Outmoded

The above ugly header design with no taste and a really dumb condescending image is one way to lose. But there are also many other ways.

Excessive keyword repetition like the footer with the phrase repeated 100 times.

Excessive focus on monetization to where most visitors quickly bounce back to the search results to click on a different listing.

Ignoring the growing impact of mobile.

Blowing out the content footprint with pagination and tons of lower quality backfill content.

Stale content full of outdated information and broken links.

A lack of investment in new content creation AND promotion.

Aggressive link anchor text combined with low quality links.

Investing in Other Channels

The harder & more expensive Google makes it to enter the search channel the greater incentive there is to spend elsewhere.

Why is Facebook doing so well? In part because Google did the search equivalent to what Yahoo! did with their web portal. The rich diversity in the tail was sacrificed to send users down well worn paths. If Google doesn't want to rank smaller sites, their associated algorithmic biases mean Facebook and Amazon.com rank better, thus perhaps it makes more sense to play on those platforms & get Google traffic as a free throw-in.

Of course aggregate stats are useless and what really matters is what works for your business. Some may find Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest or even long forgotten StumbleUpon as solid traffic drivers. Other sites might do well with an email newsletter and exposure on Twitter.

Each bit of exposure (anywhere) leads to further awareness. Which can in turn bleed into aggregate search performance.

People can't explicitly look for you in a differentiated way unless they are already aware you exist.

Some amount of remarketing can make sense because it helps elevate the perceived status of the site, so long as it is not overdone. However if you are selling a product the customer already bought or you are marketing to marketers there is a good chance such investments will be money wasted while you alienate pas

Years ago people complained about an SEO site being far too aggressive with ad retargeting. And while surfing today I saw that same site running retargeting ads to where you can't scroll down the page enough to have their ad disappear before seeing their ad once again.

If you don't have awareness in channels other than search it is easy to get hit by an algorithm update if you rank in competitive markets, particularly if you managed to do so via some means which is the equivalent of, erm, stuffing the ballot box.

And if you get hit and then immediately run off to do disavows and link removals, and then only market your business in ways that are passively driven & tied to SEO you'll likely stay penalized in a long, long time.

While waiting for an update, you may find you are Waiting for Godot.

The Daily Obituary

As far as being an investable business goes, news is horrible.

And it is getting worse by the day.

Look at these top performers.

The above chart looks ugly, but in reality it puts an optimistic spin on things...

• it has survivorship bias
• the Tribune Company has already went through bankruptcy
• the broader stock market is up huge over the past decade after many rounds of quantitative easing and zero (or even negative) interest rate policy
• the debt carrying costs of the news companies are also artificially low due to the central banking bond market manipulation
• the Tribune Company recently got a pop on a buy out offer

Selling The Story

Almost all the solutions to the problems faced by the mainstream media are incomplete and ultimately will fail.

That doesn't stop the market from selling magic push button solutions. The worse the fundamentals get, the more incentive (need) there is to sell the dream.

Video

Video will save us.

No it won't.

Video is expensive to do well and almost nobody at any sort of scale on YouTube has an enviable profit margin. Even the successful individuals who are held up as the examples of success are being squeezed out and Google is trying to push to make the site more like TV. As they get buy in from big players they'll further squeeze out the indy players - just like general web search.

Even if TV shifts to the web, along with chunks of the associated ad budget, most of the profits will be kept by Google & ad tech management rather than flowing to publishers.

Some of the recent acquisitions are more about having more scale on an alternative platform or driving offline commerce rather than hoping for online ad revenue growth.

Expand Internationally

The New York times is cutting back on their operations in Paris.

Spread Across Topics

What impact does it have on Marketwatch's brand if you go there for stocks information and they advise you on weight loss tips?

And, once again, when everyone starts doing that it is no longer a competitive advantage.

There have also been cases where newspapers like The New York Times acquired About.com only to later sell it for a loss. And now even About.com is unbundling itself.

@glenngabe They're doing good work over there. Worth noting that they 301'd all the https://t.co/sF2JMe8lU5 health content to verywell.— Jesse Semchuck (@jessesem) April 26, 2016

Native Ads

The more companies who do them & the more places they are seen, the lower the rates go, the less novel they will seem, and the greater the likelihood a high-spending advertiser decides to publish it on their own site & then drive the audience directly to their site.

When it is rare or unique it stands out and is special, justifying the extra incremental cost. But when it is a scaled process it is no longer unique enough to justify the vastly higher cost.

Further, as it gets more pervasive it will lead to questions of editorial integrity.

Get Into Affiliate Marketing

It won't scale across all the big publishers. It only works well at scale in select verticals and as more entities test it they'll fill up the search results and end up competing for a smaller slice of attention. Further, each new affiliate means every other affiliate's cookie lasts for a shorter duration.

It is unlikely news companies will be able to create commercially oriented review content at scale while having the depth of Wirecutter.

“We move as much product as a place 10 times bigger than us in terms of audience,” Lam said in an interview. “That’s because people trust us. We earn that trust by having such deeply-researched articles.”

Further, as it gets more pervasive it will lead to questions of editorial integrity.

Charging People to Comment

It won't work, as it undermines the social proof of value the site would otherwise have from having many comments on it.

Meal Delivery Kits

Absurd. And a sign of extreme desperation.

Trust Tech Monopolies

Here is Doug Edwards on Larry Page:

He wondered how Google could become like a better version of the RIAA - not just a mediator of digital music licensing - but a marketplace for fair distribution of all forms of digitized content. I left that meeting with a sense that Larry was thinking far more deeply about the future than I was, and I was convinced he would play a large role in shaping it.

If we just give Google or Facebook greater control, they will save us.

No they won't.

You are probably better off selling meal kits.

As time passes, Google and Facebook keep getting a larger share of the pie, growing their rake faster than the pie is growing.

Here is the RIAA's Cary Sherman on Google & Facebook:

Just look at Silicon Valley. They’ve done an extraordinary job, and their market cap is worth gazillions of dollars. Look at the creative industries — not just the music industry, but all of them. All of them have suffered.

Over time media sites are becoming more reliant on platforms for distribution, with visitors having fleeting interest: "bounce rates on media sites having gone from 20% of visitors in the early 2000s to well over 70% of visitors today."

Accelerated Mobile Pages and Instant Articles?

These are not solutions. They are only a further acceleration of the problem.

How will giving greater control to monopolies that are displacing you (while investing in AI) lead to a more sustainable future for copyright holders? If they host your content and you are no longer even a destination, what is your point of differentiation?

If someone else hosts your content & you are depended on them for distribution you are competing against yourself with an entity that can arbitrarily shift the terms on you whenever they feel like it.

“The cracks are beginning to show, the dependence on platforms has meant they are losing their core identity,” said Rafat Ali “If you are just a brand in the feed, as opposed to a brand that users come to, that will catch up to you sometime.”

Do you think you gain leverage over time as they become more dominant in your vertical? Not likely. Look at how Google's redesigned image search shunted traffic away from the photographers. Google's remote rater guidelines even mentioned giving lower ratings to images with watermaks on them. So if you protect your works you are punished & if you don't, good luck negotiating with a monopoly. You'll probably need the EU to see any remedy there.

When something is an embarrassment to Google & can harm their PR fixing it becomes a priority, otherwise most the costs of rights management fall on the creative industry & Google will go out of their way to add cost to that process. Facebook is, of course, playing the same game with video freebooting.

Algorithms are not neutral and platforms change what they promote to suit their own needs.

As the platforms aim to expand into new verticals they create new opportunities, but those opportunities are temporal.

Whatever happened to Zynga?

Even Buzzfeed, the current example of success on Facebook, missed their revenue target badly, even as they become more dependent on the Facebook feed.

"One more implication of aggregation-based monopolies is that once competitors die the aggregators become monopsonies — i.e. the only buyer for modularized suppliers. And this, by extension, turns the virtuous cycle on its head: instead of more consumers leading to more suppliers, a dominant hold over suppliers means that consumers can never leave, rendering a superior user experience less important than a monopoly that looks an awful lot like the ones our antitrust laws were designed to eliminate." - Ben Thompson

Long after benefit stops passing to the creative person the platform still gets to re-use the work. The Supreme Court only recentlyrefused to hear the ebook scanning case & Google is already running stories about using romance novels to train their AI. How long until Google places their own AI driven news rewrites in front of users?

Who then will fund journalism?

Dumb it Down

Remember how Panda was going to fix crap content for the web? eHow has removed literally millions of articles from their site & still has not recovered in Google. Demand Media's bolt-on articles published on newspaper sites still rank great in Google, but that will at some point get saturated and stop being a growth opportunity, shifting from growth to zero sum to a negative sum market, particularly as Google keeps growing their knowledge scraper graph.

.@mattcutts I think I have spotted one, Matt. Note the similarities in the content text: pic.twitter.com/uHux3rK57f— dan barker (@danbarker) February 27, 2014

Now maybe if you dumb it down with celebrity garbage you get quick clicks from other channels and longterm SEO traffic doesn't matter as much.

But if everyone is pumping the same crap into the feed it is hard to stand out. When everyone starts doing it the strategy is no longer a competitive advantage. Further, if you build a business that is algorithmically optimized for short-term clicks is also optimizing for its own longterm irrelevancy.

Yahoo’s journalists used to joke amongst themselves about the extensive variety of Kind bars provided, but now the snacks aren’t being replenished. Instead, employees frequently remind each other that there is little reason to bother creating quality work within Yahoo’s vast eco-system of middle-brow content. “You are competing against Kim Kardashian’s ass,” goes a common refrain.
...
Yahoo’s billion-person-a-month home page is run by an algorithm, with a spare editorial staff, that pulls in the best-performing content from across the site. Yahoo engineers generally believed that these big names should have been able to support themselves, garner their own large audiences, and shouldn’t have relied on placement on the home page to achieve large audiences. As a result, they were expected to sink or swim on their own.
...
“Yahoo is reverting to its natural form,” a former staffer told me, “a crap home page for the Midwest.”

That is why Yahoo! ultimately had to shut down almost all their verticals. They were optimized algorithmically for short term wins rather than building things with longterm resonance.

Death by bean counter.

The above also has an incredibly damaging knock on effect on society.

People miss the key news. "what articles got the most views, and thus "clicks." Put bluntly, it was never the articles on my catching Bernanke pulling system liquidity into the maw of the collapse in 2008, while he maintained to Congress he had done the opposite." - Karl Denninger

The other issue is PR is outright displacing journalism. As bad as that is at creating general disinformation, it gets worse when people presume diversity of coverage means a diversity of thought process, a diversity of work, and a diversity of sources. Even people inside the current presidential administration state how horrible this trend is on society:

“All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” ... “We created an echo chamber,” he told the magazine. “They [the seemingly independent experts] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

That is basically the government complaining to the press about it being "too easy" to manipulate the press.

Adding Echo to the Echo

Much of what "seems" like an algorithm on the tech platforms is actually a bunch of lowly paid humans pretending to be an algorithm.

When I worked curating Facebook Paper's tech section (remember that?) they told me to just rip off Techmeme https://t.co/LJ6O3coFMy— (@kifleswing) May 3, 2016

This goes back to the problem of the limited diversity in original sources and rise of thin "take" pieces. Stories with an inconvenient truth can get suppressed, but "newsworthy" stories with multiple sources covering them may all use the same biased source.

After doing a tour in Facebook’s news trenches, almost all of them came to believe that they were there not to work, but to serve as training modules for Facebook’s algorithm. ... A topic was often blacklisted if it didn’t have at least three traditional news sources covering it

As algorithms take over more aspects of our lives and eat more of the media ecosystem, the sources they feed upon will consistently lose quality until some sort of major reset happens.

The strategy to keep sacrificing the long term to hit the short term numbers can seem popular. And then, suddenly, death.

You can say the soul is gone
And the feeling is just not there
Not like it was so long ago.
- Neil Young, Stringman

Micropayments & Paywalls

It is getting cheap enough that just about anyone can run a paid membership site, but it is quite hard to create something worth paying for on a recurring basis.

There are a few big issues with paywalls:

• If you have something unique and don't market it aggressively then nobody will know about it. And, in fact, in some businesses your paying customers may have no interest in sharing your content because they view it as one of their competitive advantages. This was one of the big reasons I ultimately had to shut down our membership site.
• If you do market something well enough to create demand then some other free sites will make free derivatives, and it is hard to keep having new things to write worth paying for in many markets. Eventually you exhaust the market or get burned out or stop resonating with it. Even free websites have churn. Paid websites have to bring in new members to offset old members leaving.
• In most markets worth being in there is going to be plenty of free sites in the vertical which dominate the broader conversation. Thus you likely need to publish a significant amount of information for free which leads into an eventual sale. But knowing where to put the free line & how to move it over time isn't easy. Over the past year or two I blogged far less than I should have if I was going to keep running our site as a paid membership site.
• And the last big issue is that a paywall is basically counter to all the other sort of above business models the mainstream media is trying. You need deeper content, better content, content that is not off topic, etc. Many of the easy wins for ad funded media become easy losses for paid membership sites. And just like it is hard for newspapers to ween themselves off of print ad revenues, it can be hard to undo many of the quick win ad revenue boosters if one wants to change their business model drastically. Regaining you sou takes time, and often, death.

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Watch on YouTube

Video Background

UK investment scheme fraudster Christopher Angus is kicking off a confidence series, providing free video tutorials on how to defraud investors. This tenth video is 4:49 & was shared on April 28, 2016. The criminal who shot these videos delivered over a 99% investment loss, as he simply stole the money and integrated it into other investment scams abroad.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18693916.conman-christopher-angus-pay-back-just-1-2m-scam/
UK's Crown Police never followed the money trail.

Christopher Angus is associated with Stella Huh and Timothy Barton, who stand trial in the United States on November 2, 2026.
http://www.seobook.com/stella-huh/criminal-case-docket-sheet%204-22-2026-(22-cr-00352).pdf

Video Highlights

• 0 minutes 0 seconds: shows another screenshot of IG platform which is grainy BUT shows account balance which appears to be something like 1,548,478 GBP
• 1 minute 35 seconds: made just over 2% with the rebate
• 2 minutes 15 seconds: shows 2 arbitrage trade ideas

A version of this video is available for download at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ylubjig6som9ffu/video%209%202016%20apr%2028.mp4?dl=0

Video Transcript

00:00 Christopher Angus: Good evening A. Just a quick video. I'm doing the video on the sheet the night before instead of the next day because I've got some shit to do tomorrow morning and I'm gonna miss the first part of the session. Probably only be back for the last 2-3 hours because I've got some stuff to take care of. Anyway, today went well, did a couple of trades. As I said this morning, eight o'clock this morning, I called Bon Trade with 1.5 times the risk on that I normally take. So we made a full... Nearly a full point this morning, 0.8, there or there abouts. And that was from here eight o'clock right to here just before 10 o'clock, that was nearly a perfect move for me. I was very, very happy with my performance there.

00:49 Christopher Angus: This afternoon you heard me bitching, as it ground lower and then went flat and then I said, "Actually, it looks like it's about to pop," and lo and behold I got in here. Look at your Skype time. I think it was just around six o'clock, which is here, and I bought at around 15:28. So here. And I rode it right up 'til about 8:30 here and I got out at... Just before a full point. So it was very good. Overall today... I think I've just done the sheets. I just need to do some screenshots, I'll do that now. We made just over 2% with the rebate, so it was like 2.1%, something like that. I can just do a screenshot... Screenshot of the sheet. Right, so that's that for now.

02:00 Christopher Angus: Tomorrow, as I said, I've got stuff to take care of so it's only gonna be the last few hours of the session. I'm just quickly gonna run through a couple of other things I've found. First of all, this is the S&P Wall Street capturing the spread. I probably will implement this at some point in the next like three months. It is a very slow trade, but it's very safe. The correlation is 0.99 between the two. They just walk in lockstep with each other. This took three days to come right though, and it's not that margin intensive. So I may add that to the little string of arrows at some point.

02:40 Christopher Angus: Number two is the VIX Verse, the VIX. Again, this is the second one, this took two days to come good, the rebate on here is about $4,500 which is massive, massive, massive and plus the profit. Now it's not the profit on the trade that excites me, it's actually the rebate, because I could probably do one of these once a day, once every two days and make very good money. So this is one future against the other. In this case, I'm selling a May and buying the June VIX, they walk obviously in lockstep and you're exploiting those micro-pricing inefficiencies between the two. It's a very safe trade. Even if one market goes up or down, these move together. So it's a highly controllable trade. The only downside is they take a long time so I'll be running trades for two or three days. Possibly... I'm gonna try and get them over one or two days, and maybe just go for rebate play all the time; rebate play, rebate play. But this if... If this was for real, this would have been like a full 1% eventually with the rebate. So it's very good.

04:03 Christopher Angus: And there was one other one that I wanted to show you, but there's not enough time. That was just a fun one. But yes, so overall, pretty good today. Two good trades, put on some decent risk this morning, May, that paid off well. This afternoon, I just had normal amounts of risk, but that also got... We caught such a big move. It was decent. So yeah, very, very good. Just to recap just did over 2%, and that's it for today. I'll be around for the last few hours tomorrow so I may catch you, I may not. Other than that, thanks for everything and great day, we will speak to you soon. Cheers, A. Bye.

Watch on YouTube

Video Background

Oxfordshire criminal fraud Christopher Angus is kicking off a confidence series, providing free video tutorials on how to defraud investors. This eighth video is 17:35 & was shared on April 24, 2016. The criminal who shot these videos delivered over a 99% investment loss, as he simply stole the money and integrated it into other investment scams abroad.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18693916.conman-christopher-angus-pay-back-just-1-2m-scam/
UK Crown Police never followed the money trail.

Christopher Angus is associated with Stella Huh and Timothy Barton, who stand trial in the United States on November 2, 2026.
http://www.seobook.com/stella-huh/criminal-case-docket-sheet%204-22-2026-(22-cr-00352).pdf

Video Highlights

• 1 minute 0 seconds: was trained about 5 years prior by a guy who scalps a few ticks per day from the treasury market. states that guy made like 1000% per year. also said you can't be taught to trade and sort of have to learn what markets fit you and your own way of doing things.
• 3 minutes 40 seconds: smart money vs dumb money
• 4 minutes 5 seconds: when you sell a market sell on an uptick & when you are buying a market buy on a down tick
• 9 minutes 15 seconds: for him trading is not about the money it is about playing the game against the smartest people and beating them. well you are not really beating them but you ride on their coat tails. you dont have enough money to move the markets but they do so you ride along and join them.
• 10 minutes 0 seconds: sees trading like the game of life & sees it as a free lunch. when you are taking money out of the markets all the time it is a free lunch. it is winning the game of life in a way that challenges convention and is extremely satisfying.
• 11 minutes 10 seconds: if you always think about dollar signs you will struggle because you are thinking about the money and not winning the game.
• 11 minutes 30 seconds: trade often. trade small. low volatility and more consistent returns.
• 13 minutes 30 seconds: what the markets do is exaturate people's personalities. the way you behave in life is usually the way you behave in markets.
• 14 minutes 30 seconds: if you take someone who is a wild gambler and they take bets that are much too big because they are greedy or whatever a gambler's mentality is - wants to make millions of dollars that month - well that doesn't work either. trading is risk management. it is managing the amounts of risk you have. managing your risks vs opportunities. if you take very small risks you can get out of almost anything because you have so much dry power. if you are not a degenerate lunatic it is a mathematical certainty you can come out of just about any situation.

A version of this video is available for download at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1zx5mw88rcs64ih/video%207%202016%20apr%2024.flv?dl=0

Video Transcript

00:00 Christopher Angus: Hello A, how was your weekend? Finally getting around to doing my thing for you. Bit of a heavy weekend with my daughter and a bunch of other not very useful things but extremely time consuming. So I was out for a lot of the day on Friday, and seeing my lawyer and then having to go pick my daughter up from school and so I lost a large portion of the day, but I didn't really miss a lot because there wasn't really a general direction as you can see from this. And basically, the whole morning, I think, looking at this, looking back at this, it was just like choppy, like there was no direction.

00:53 Christopher Angus: So, what am I gonna tell you today? I'm gonna give you a very big secret. It's not that big, but people don't really notice if you are a scalper, which is really how I started five years ago. I was trained by a guy that scalps the Treasury market, two, three ticks a day maybe. And he makes a lot. He makes... He was the guy that said to me, he does like 1000% return a year. And I have adapted to my own way. And one thing I wanted to say is, no one could really teach you to trade. You have to get all the information and make your own way. He liked the Treasury markets. I've hated them. They're so thick and liquid, that like it just never went anywhere. And at the time, it didn't really suit me. But you know, as time goes on, you change. So that's what it is.

02:02 Christopher Angus: So, I'll just talk through the trade here. I didn't really get settled down until later on, and I think I shouted out saying, around 7:00 or 7:32 or something, "I'm looking for a trade." Now, the market, obviously, had been falling off, and had fallen off really hard, so it was pretty clear which direction it was going in and looking at all the other stuff that you know. I decided to look for a spot. Now here comes the secret. When you are trading, and this really is hardcore stuff, right. When I say it's hardcore, it's not mentally hardcore, but it is... It takes a lot of precision and that's the hardcore part I'm talking about. And not just precision, it goes against what one would think. So, it's really counterintuitive until you know how the game works, which is the opposite way to the dumb money. So the smart money flows one way and the dumb money flows the other, and the smart money just keeps eating breakfast from the dumb money.

03:17 Christopher Angus: I don't really like that term, but it's true. I don't think dumb money is dumb. I think it's just uninformed money, and people that don't know how to play the game, and basically, they lose their money, which is sad. It genuinely is. But, it is what it is and you can't go against the smart money. I can't take a stand and say, "Fuck you, smart money. I'm gonna not go your way," because you're not gonna win ever. You're just gonna give them your money, fundamentally.

03:52 Christopher Angus: So, if you can't beat 'em, well, join 'em. That's it. So here comes the tip, beating around the bush. When you are selling the market, you sell on an up tick, and when you are buying a market, you buy on a down tick. Now, that's the secret. It's not a secret but it's like 99.99% of traders don't know that. Everyone's looking for movement, and so they wanna try and go with the flow. But when you're pretty sure what direction this is gonna go in, and by this time, it was like, blindingly obvious, you look for an up tick. And so, once it ticks up, you sell it, which I did.

04:44 Christopher Angus: And once you sell it, why do we do that? Well, it means because if the markets going... If you're very sure the direction, which by that time I was, 'cause looking at... I mean it's clear to anyone. I mean, a blind grandmother could see this. Why would I sell it when it starts to look like it's going the other way? Because it's not, basically. And it just continued down, you know. And that's why I just held it. I held through until a couple minutes past nine, I think, because I thought maybe we get two ticks. I was getting kinda excited. I thought, "Wow, this is kind of... I thought I'd get nothing today. Maybe I'll pick up two ticks." So whatever. And so, why do we do this? It's because you have to beat the spread and commissions and a bunch of other bullshit stuff they layer on top to make money off you.

05:37 Christopher Angus: So if you sell on the up tick, once it ticks down, you've basically beaten the spread, and you can scratch the trade. And that's the secret to trading, is not losing money. The pros don't lose or they lose so little it doesn't matter. And if they do lose, it's like one tick. So, if you sell on the up tick, and it immediately ticks down, you're even Steven, and you're collecting the rebate. So like I said, it's pretty hardcore stuff because A, you're going against the flow. It doesn't seem logical when your learning at the time, but when you actually understand how the game works, it's like you'll be... Because if I bought on the down tick thinking, "Okay, this is going down, man. This is going down." Immediately, it ticks up, then I'm two ticks out instead of being even by there.

06:31 Christopher Angus: So this was my entry, and then immediately ticked down, and so now I'm even. And that's my entry point. Never went worse than my entry point in nearly... In over two hours. Well, an hour and a half. That was a tick and a half, and then it started breaking down. It was going 1.5, 1 point, and 1.5. Remember that bit on Skype. And that was me thinking, "I'm gonna get two ticks here. I'm gonna get two ticks." I thought it was really good. So at the end, I ended up giving half a tick back because it was getting too close to the end and the weekend and all that stuff. It's just, you don't... And also, you're selling it. Don't forget. Can't risk getting caught. And if I did, I'd have to hedge it off straight away and it gets a little messy so...

07:33 Christopher Angus: Anyway, so I took the tick. I was hardly around Friday and I still just scalped one tick. I mean, it's the absolutely little, smallest amount you can take, plus a little rebate, so whatever. Saying that, I didn't miss an awful lot on Friday. As I said like it was choppy as fuck, looking back at this. And it's an easy way to make mistakes, I think. So I think I would have just been sitting on the sidelines anyway because it just wasn't going anywhere until it actually just fucked up around six o'clock and then it just broke down hard and then you got the direction that you need.

08:10 Christopher Angus: I mean, you can scalp one and two ticks going here, but you're just jumping in the ocean, not really knowing which way it's gonna go, so... And then, you're two or three ticks out, and you're starting to get a little nervous on a Friday. So I don't know, it just worked out really well. What can I say, thank you to the marketing gods, market gods. Thanks. but.

08:35 Christopher Angus: Anyway, so like I said on... I've got to... Moving on from this trade, I wanna just fly through some other topics. I think I might have said this, but... Or I'm pretty sure I did, but the volatility index, the VIX, is known for taking the stairs down, and the elevator back up. So that's why you can see I'm always a little anxious when you're selling it, because it doesn't take its time if there's a sharp move, so you usually wanna be on the other side. But as I said, if you're sitting here, it's not really a problem.

09:14 Christopher Angus: And then, I kind of touched on this a couple of times in Skype, but I didn't really clarify it beautifully. Like I said, for me, trading's not absolutely about the money. It's about winning the game. It's about playing against the smartest people and beating them. And like I said earlier in the conversation, you're not necessarily beating them, but you are winning the game because you ride along their coattails. We don't have enough money to move the markets like they do. So they move the markets and we join them, basically. So basically, we are part of who they are. I know this must be like, sound really evil to you, but it is what it is. And I'm proud of that. Not proud of... I don't wanna be part of a whole bent system, but I'm proud that I actually manage to beat the game because I see it as a game of life. I do.

10:14 Christopher Angus: I see it as a game of life. Why? Because I think it's a free lunch. I think I might have said this to you. My father always said to me, "No such thing as a free lunch, son. No such thing." Well, when you're taking money out the markets all the time, it's like, "Well, fuck you, Dad. This is a free lunch and I'm fucking eating it." So, funny how he wants to join me though. People are so fucking hypocritical. But still, to me, this is winning the game of life. And it's winning it in a way which is really not... It's challenging the status quo and I love that. I do. It's extremely fulfilling. It's more than 50% of the satisfaction that I get, is winning the game. It's not if... If you're driven by dollars, dollar signs, dollar notes, I think you're always gonna struggle. I do. Because you don't think straight, you think about the money, and not winning the game. And this just a big fucking game at the end of the day.

11:31 Christopher Angus: So, a little mantra for you, well, for me, I'll say it out loud. Trade small, trade often, low-volatility, and more consistent returns. If you hold big losers, you have incredible profit and loss volatility on your bankroll, and it's not good for your health or your wealth, for that matter. And I think I might have said this as well on Friday. You correctly identified that mental toughness is a very, very important aspect of trading. And I say this almost being embarrassed because it's almost like I'm taking away from some of my personality. I do see myself as someone that has almost coaxed out some of my emotional side.

12:30 Christopher Angus: Because when things are tough, when you're looking for an entry and nothing's coming for days and days and days, it's easy to try and force through trades, and you have to be able to have that resilience mentally, to sit and be calm and everything has to be clear in terms of decision-making. As soon as you feel pressure, you're gonna have a tough time. So my whole life is geared around trading. It's like trading is the center of my universe, and like every decision I make, that has nothing to do with trading, but I still, in some way, manage to connect it to trading, and see how my personality plays out outside of the trading world and how that loops back into my behavior and interactions with the market in the real world.

13:30 Christopher Angus: I'll end with just saying that, the way people behave... This is not my phrase by the way, but what the markets do is they exaggerate one's personalities. So, whatever you are and the way you behave in life are usually the way you behave in the markets. And that will magnify your personality quirks. I don't wanna say shortcomings 'cause I don't really believe in right and wrong. Fundamentally, I just think things are what they are and they just exist. But, if you have certain personality quirks, like you're too afraid to trade and you never take trades because you're afraid to make... You're afraid of loss, you'll fail as a trader because you're afraid to take any kind of risk. And that will be, as you can imagine, and I'm sure I'm speaking... Teaching you to suck eggs here but... That's an English saying, teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Look that up if you don't know what that means. I'm sure you do, but whatever. But if you take that as an example, if you take someone who is just a wild, wild gambler, and they take bets that are much too big because they are greedy, whatever a gambler's mentality is, wants to make millions of dollars that month, well, that doesn't work either.

14:56 Christopher Angus: Because, as I'm always harping on about, trading is risk management. It's managing the amount of risk you have, managing your risks versus your opportunities. And if you manage your risks correctly, you can almost do random things in the market. Don't forget that. If you take very, very small amounts of risk, you can get out of any kind of trouble because you have so much dry powder. So if you're doing one, two, maximum of 3% of your bankroll on the line at any one time, you'd like... Mathematically, it is an impossibility, depending on where you are, with a certain security, that if you are not a total degenerate lunatic, that you can come out of any kind of situation profitably. So though it's kind of... It's a very extreme thing to say and it doesn't really pertain to real life, like as such, but if you manage your risk correctly, and you have that mental toughness...

16:09 Christopher Angus: Oh, fuck you startup disc is almost full. Go fuck yourself. This says my videos are too long. Okay, I'm listening. Right.

16:17 Christopher Angus: If you manage risk correctly and you have that mental toughness, and can think clearly under pressure and make good decisions, then you can be a trader. If you lose the plot when your bankroll swings, and you put too much on, or you cut your losses too early, then you can't be. And if you're not comfortable with taking $5,000 and just going to your garden and just pouring fuel on it and setting it on fire and then standing there, thinking, "Wow, that was a lot of money that I just blew up." And watching your own personal feeling about that, well, then you've gotta consider how you're gonna feel at the time. I read that somewhere else. Take 5,000 bucks, go set it on fire, and see how you feel. See if you can take it 'cause that's basically exactly what you do if you lose your mind.

17:06 Christopher Angus: Anyway, kind of a weird video today. It was the weekend and I'm a bit more relaxed and a bit more kind of in a different mindset so... Yeah, sorry about the lateness. I'll do the sheet now and markets are not yet open. I have no forecast for tomorrow 'cause the markets are not yet open, but I will catch you on Skype in a number of hours, no doubt. Catch you later. Bye bye.

Watch on YouTube

Video Background

Convicted fraud and self-confessed criminal Christopher Angus is kicking off a confidence series, providing free video tutorials on how to defraud investors. This sixth video is 20:02 & was shared on April 21, 2016. The criminal who shot these videos delivered over a 99% investment loss, as he simply stole the money and integrated it into other investment scams abroad.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18693916.conman-christopher-angus-pay-back-just-1-2m-scam/
Crown Police never followed the money trail.

Christopher Angus is associated with Stella Huh and Timothy Barton, who stand trial in the United States on November 2, 2026.

http://www.seobook.com/stella-huh/criminal-case-docket-sheet%204-22-2026-(22-cr-00352).pdf

Video Highlights

• 2 minutes 20 seconds: highlighted an example trade which was allegedly made on april 20th
• 2 minutes 45 seconds: mentions how his VIX trades have so much less risk than trading the S&P 500 directly
• 3 minutes 50 seconds: shows a chart to explain why he likes VIX so much
• 5 minutes 0 seconds: talks about hoping bankroll is higher by the time VIX spikes up at some point
• 6 minutes 0 seconds: mentions might have to trade more aggressively and scalp smaller gains in the face of tigher trading ranges
• 6 minutes 15 seconds: have to take a low risk low reward making tiny fractions of a percent per day playing small ball
• 8 minutes 0 seconds: got rid of his girlfriend so he could focus on trading full time
• 9 minutes 30 seconds: market has a rhythem and you have to focus. views self as strataverious which has to be in tune. needs calm and absense of stress or surprise to focus on market.
• 14 minutes 28 seconds: again says dislikes the term trading and it is risk management, risk management, risk management that he does. you could do an almost random strategy and still make money so long as it is tied to strong risk management.
• 19 minutes 20 seconds: does not like to set performance targets because if you set them then you start to take on unneeded risk to try to meet those targets

A version of this video is available for download at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6j6z6x60lyxkew/video%205%202016%20apr%2021.flv?dl=0

Video Transcript

00:01 Christopher Angus: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening Aaron and Geo. How are we today? I'm doing well. It's pretty early in the morning, it's just before nine o'clock. I just wanna talk through what happened yesterday, what might happen today and some other little anecdotal stories, which may be fun. So yesterday was a bit of a boring day; low risk, low return. I've done some arrows. If you're not looking at the screen, you can just look at it now quickly. Basically, the arrows show where we got into a trade, I said, on Skype, "Okay, I'm taking a trade." And you said, "Nice." It was like 18.24, I think 6:24 PM, and I did this because I saw the dollar shooting up and also there was no risk really, because it had been bouncing along the bottom. Of course, there's actual risk but it's very, very, very small. A risk of a blow up is zero. The risk of substantial loss is zero. In terms of what's the worst that could have happened yesterday, I could have taken a one tick, two tick loss or held overnight.

01:20 Christopher Angus: So yesterday, I small balled it because the market had have been fucking around all day, as you'd seen, like a false start, false start, false start. So we took 0.3 points out of the VIX, although we didn't make that much because... I need to do numbers, but I did come in a lot smaller, maybe two-thirds of the size, something like that. So, you can see, we come in here. It ran against me two ticks, but I was pretty comfortable with that, because during the whole day it just wasn't going any lower. And this is yesterday the future rolled over, so this was gonna get a lot more stable. So we got in here; this chart looks extreme doesn't it? But there's only half a point between [chuckle] here and there; it's nothing. And then I said, "Are you there? Are you there? Are you there?" Somewhere around here. And then we just ran it right up to the close. I think, kind of there, whatever. And it was just like that, buy low, sell high.

02:38 Christopher Angus: I don't know why everyone doesn't do that. I once said that to another trader. "Well, hey man, why don't you buy the VIX?" And he's like, "Why?" I was like, "'Cause there's no risk." He's like, "Yeah, but, you know, just trade the S&P like I do." I was like, "Well, isn't there like lots of risks?" He's like, "Well, yeah, but just trade it." I was like, "What? Just trade something with no downside risk. All upside." He was like, "No. Why would you? Buy some penny stocks then." I'm like, "You know it doesn't work like that." People just don't like challenging the status quo. I think if you are... Went to college, and you did some finance degree and you decided to become some kind of bonds trader or something, not that a lot of traders go to college and do that shit, but usually people who are good traders don't go to college, I think, from what I've seen, they are street fighters. Not as in fight in the street, but their business acumen is learnt on the streets.

03:34 Christopher Angus: Anyway. I'm showing you this next chart here, if you're not looking, please look, as to why I like the VIX. I'm hating this chart, it's so long. Here you can see, the hard right edge here, that's where we are; very, very low volatility. But what follows low volatility is high volatility. As sure as night follows day, and day follows night, low volatility is met by high volatility and vice versa. Now, I actually saw this coming. This went up to like 60, I think, on the futures. And I was in it, thankfully, but I got out like mega early 'cause I didn't realize how sharp that move was gonna be, and at some point, we are going to be in another move like that, and I will be there. And this moved like 40 points in a day. Now, if we have 5% of the bankroll on because I see this coming or 10% of the bankroll, 10 times 40, that's kind of a lot, or even five times 40. It's gonna be a good day.

05:03 Christopher Angus: So hopefully we'll have built the bankroll up a bit more by the time that comes. And you can also, on the converse side, see why selling the VIX from a low level if you aren't here and to pay attention to what's going on is kind of dodgy, 'cause this could really fucking hurt you. So when you're selling, you're always very, very conservative, especially at a low level. Like once it got down here, you could've sold it and done extremely well. So there's gonna be some geopolitical event or some exogenous shock to some fucking economy and that will pick things up. I reckon I'm gonna have to change a trading strategy and just trade more aggressively and scalp 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 at the market for the next few months, every day. It's not really what I've been doing. I don't know if I've said this already, but if we keep waiting to make... Just wanting to make the nice big clean moves, I think we're not gonna make a lot. So I have to take a lower risk, lower reward approach. Not that there's a lot of risk in what I do anyway, but this is very low risk, very low reward and making like, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 instead of making a 1% a day, you've gotta take into account maybe make like 1.5, 2% a week.

06:40 Christopher Angus: So a little bit of a change I decided to make last week, because the system was stalling, stalling, stalling, so we have to small ball it, unfortunately. I have to put on smaller bets, if you wanna put it that way, and yeah, just take little, small chunks out the market rather than looking for the big chunks. They come, and I'm here, but at the moment when there's extremely low volatility and there's no pick-up, we'll just make a little bit everyday, hopefully. You can see yesterday how hard I had to work to make that 0.3 on the thing, and because I small balled it, we didn't even make 0.3. As I said, I think maybe made like 0.2, plus the rebate. So something similar to the day before. I'll have to have a look in a bit.

07:49 Christopher Angus: So, some other things. I got rid of that new girlfriend of mine. I don't like people that drink a lot of alcohol; they piss me off. And also, I don't really have anything to give anyone at the moment. You can see how much time this takes out of my life and I really enjoy it, but I just don't have anything to give anyone else. So I don't wanna be a dickhead and take someone on or be with someone and then kind of ignore them because I'm working really hard. I don't even call it work. I'm doing my hobby really hard and I just don't have the time. Maybe in a couple of years, three years, when I'm... When we've got to where we wanna be, I'll have more time. But I don't really wanna be with anyone either. I just don't feel like I want the irritation to be honest. I have no patience. So I just maybe think I'm not that ready anyway, but you can see how intense this is.

09:03 Christopher Angus: And when I look back, with a lot more self-awareness, I sort of laugh to myself and I think, "No wonder my girlfriend left me." Because I think women need a lot more emotional interaction than men do. I'm generally speaking. And when I'm here and doing this, I'm not here. I'm doing this and this is where I'm living; like in my computer. It's like I become part of the market in a way. I get like... It's almost like the market has a rhythm and you have to really be there to get into the rhythm and that's why I get really irritable and funky, like people come visit me and the phone rings or something, because it breaks my rhythm. And I think I said in one of the videos, I'm like a Stradivarius, I play very nicely until something happens and then I'm a little off key, and it takes me a while to get back depending on the size of the shock.

10:07 Christopher Angus: And I'll tell you a little anecdote, because I'm reading this trading book and this guy was like a superstar trader for this firm. Made money every single day and didn't lose money for years. And then all of a sudden... He was trading stocks, right? All of a sudden, he lost money every day for two weeks. His boss came to him and said, "What the fuck's going on?" He's like, "I don't know. So, I can't make any money." And so he said to him, "What's going on in your life? Any weddings, funerals, birthdays?" He's like, "Oh, yeah, my daughter was born a couple of weeks ago." And that's pretty typical of traders. They really can't be disturbed mentally, not like mentally disturbed, but to have funky things going on in their life, especially me. I hate funky things. And I wear seven... Well, I've got seven shirts and they're all the same color, the same... The same four pairs of jeans, all the same color, same style. I hate change, and I just like things to be calm. I don't like any kind of stress in my life. And I think unexpected things cause stress.

11:22 Christopher Angus: So, I know I went off on a little bit of a tangent there. Oh yeah, I said I was... I feel the market. Sometimes... This is, I guess, when I know I can feel something coming, and it really it's like... It literally is a feeling. You're taking in a lot of data, and it is a gut feel. And what's a gut feel? It's all the things you know and you see to create a sort of decision or a feeling. And, I guess, have you ever seen one of those pictures that are made up of like millions of little other pictures? That's sometimes how I see trades developing, is like it's a picture. Imagine those tiny little pictures, kind of in a sci-fi way, coming together and there's so many different little parts to it, and then some of them are leaving, so until you can actually see the picture performing with these tiny little pieces are the picture starting to come together, at a rate that's faster than they are leaving, 'cause of course, certain signals are improving and certain ones are getting worse all the time and you have to know like, with Google's secret sauce, which one... How much weighting to put on things and the weightings change depending on what's going on.

12:55 Christopher Angus: It's very hard to articulate how decisions are made. It's not really that binary, because there's so many variables, and the decision points are constantly moving. But once they start to develop, they work. And I think talking to you has actually helped me realize that it's not that straightforward. And also, my buddies all losing money. They seem to be able to make the perfect decisions, just the opposite sides, so they should fade themselves, maybe.

13:38 Christopher Angus: Anyway, talking of Google, I once sat next to a business executive, ex-Googler, on the plane, and he started his own pay-per-click agency. He used to work for... Not Party... Poker Stars, and he was running their pay-per-click campaign as a consultant, and he said... The one thing I remember talking to him about was, "What does Google look for in running good accounts?" And he said, "Google care about three things. Click-through rate, click-through rate and click-through rate." And that brings me on, or links into, what I wanna say. I don't really like the word, trading, there's, lack of better descriptive, non-claim and sure ways of describing things, I think. So, I just have to call it trading. But in fact it's actually risk management. So my... It's risk management, risk management, risk management.

14:33 Christopher Angus: That's what you are. And if you actually take the time and study risk management, which I have done, you realize that you can do almost random things in the market and make money; that's a little secret there. And if you can find a good strategy, and actually know what you're doing, tie that up with strong risk management, and you're not a fucking lunatic, you can make money. Where most people go wrong is they go too big. And then the people are very highly geared and they lose their money. But if you have strong risk management, and you understand how the game works, I don't see how you can't make money, genuinely. And I say this to people, "You're not making money in the market, right? Why the fuck are you asking me anyway?" But let me ask you this question.

15:34 Christopher Angus: If I gave you $10,000, and your job was to lose that money because everytime you lost a dollar, I gave you a dollar. So that 10 grand's not yours, it's mine, but I want you to lose it. But everytime you lose it... For every dollar you lose, I will give you a dollar. Do you think you could lose money to make money? Does that make sense? So could you lose money as effectively as you do now? Or would you start to make money? People are like, "Oh, I don't think I could. I don't... I think yes. I definitely think I could lose it." I'm like, "Okay, go try it on a demo account somewhere." And it's the same. It's just a fucking mindset. It's just a mindset, and that's the secret. Buy low, sell high. Sell high, buy low. Don't go too big. You'll be good. You might not make a lot, but you're not gonna fucking lose your house. Anyway, I don't know anyone that's lost their house, but I'm sure people have.

16:56 Christopher Angus: So, I have some other things I wanted to say. So yesterday I said, I think, I could feel strength at the time and I like to use the word, feel, but today I see weakness. Yesterday it was at 2097, when I made the video it went to 2005 pretty like within two hours and then got kinda stuck around the 2100 area, which is normal, because um bit whole numbers there's a lot of buying and selling going on there. So it's very hard to break away from those areas.

17:49 Christopher Angus: So what do I see today? Based upon the little information I have, no Bloomberg to know if there's anything going on. Haven't looked at the earnings calendar. Haven't looked at the economic announcements calendar. Just pure price action and looking at the correlating instruments, I see a weak market. Treasury is actually down and the dollar basket is flat. But again, just the way things move, I will say that at some point we will be below 2100 today, and at the moment, we're at 2105, and I think we're gonna struggle today. Not us, but the market in general, is going to struggle today a little bit. Maybe some big buyer will come in which run it up again, but I think there's a lot of exhaustion from what I can see. Yesterday I was fucking exhausted and I'm sure the markets are exhausted, but not for the same reason. They just made such a tremendous move. Today might be good, might not be. As I said, we'll make a little, or make a lot. Worst case we'll make nothing. That's the way of the game.

19:22 Christopher Angus: I don't like to set myself targets because I think as soon as you set targets for yourself, you start to take on risks because you wanna meet those targets, so whatever comes comes. Whatever doesn't come, doesn't come. It's just the way it is. Over time, this makes money. So I am looking forward to today, as I do everyday, and I guess I need to do the sheet now and I'll catch you on Skype a bit later Mr A. See you later. Bye for now.