We had an enjoyable session on Saturday at the Online Traders Forum.
I spoke about a Simple Reversal Set-up and Quick Market Overview.
Martin Walker talked about Price Action and Market Structure and how to use the to identify breakouts, fakeouts, reversals and trends.
Ian McFadden talked about how he uses Fibs to trade the Oil/CL Contract on an intra-day basis.
There were plenty of useful ideas and content shared. Since the event I’ve had a few people ask if they can access the recordings. So we decided to offer that here.
Q3 Online Traders Forum Ticket
Ticket for the Q3 Online Traders Forum - which also includes access to the recordings post event.
£20.00
You can access the slides and recordings upon completion of the PayPal request.
The next Traders Forum will be on Saturday 6th October and will be the usual full day event in London – keep your eyes posted for details!
Fellow Trader,
After the success of the Q3 Online Traders Forum it’s now time to focus on our main event of the year! So please put the following date in your diary for the Autumn 2018 London Traders Forum, which will take place on Saturday, 6th October 2018.
For those who’ve never attended one of the Traders Forum events we aim to bring you an enjoyable, relaxed and informative day for meeting market professionals in person and networking with your fellow traders and investors.
There will be sessions during the day that will educate and stimulate and help you generate suitable returns to off-set the day. We want the LTF to be a good risk-to-reward trade for our attendees! The following speakers and sessions are already confirmed for Saturday 6th October: 2018 Market Analysis: It’s been a very interesting 2018 so far! Kevin Barry of the Traders and Investors Club will be providing us with his excellent market round-up. This is a chance to view the dominant themes so far and discuss the remainder of the year. As always Kevin’s insight into the bigger picture is always fascinating and is worth the entry fee alone.
‘A Practical Guide To Elliott Waves – The Alternative View’ – Martin Walker from ForexTradingLondon will introduce Elliott Waves and how they relate to us, then show you how they can be traded, how to take a relatively simple approach, how to manage your trade expectations and where to look for trades within the wave(s). Attendees will also get access to some supporting documentation.
Aggressive Intra-Day Trading – let’s face it, plenty of people are attracted to intra-day trading, but how many can achieve it consistently? It’s a tough gig. Paul Wallace will explain what he looks for during his intra-day trading, and some of the tactics he uses to be aggressive in his trading.
There are more exciting speakers being introduced over the next few weeks.
The London Traders Forum will be an event that will cater for an engaged trader and investor who is eager to learn more and meet like-minded souls. You have asked us for it and here it is. We are aiming to foster a Mastermind-type environment, which will encourage a free exchange of ideas in a stimulating environment with plenty of opportunity for networking.
Our mission is to bring you a memorable day in comfortable surroundings at a reasonable cost. Therefore, we will be holding the price for the day down to just £157.
After the event, we shall continue the debates and discussion at a nearby hostellery where Paul will be buying the first round! This is a great opportunity to spend a whole day in the company of market professionals as well as your fellow traders and investors.
This event will not be recorded so don’t miss this opportunity to be part of something special. This will be the only live event this year.
Admission is by ticket only and there will only be so many places available. After the success of the first event tickets will sell fast so, to avoid disappointment, I strongly recommend that you reserve your place NOW by purchasing your ticket here:
We are looking forward to seeing you on 6th October for a memorable day that is guaranteed to change the way that you see the market.
Well yesterday I was provided the alert below from my Facebook feed (this post isn’t about FB – but wasn’t that a beauty move last night?)
FB was politely reminding me of a post from 10 years ago – 25th July 2008. It made me smile – because I knew exactly what trade it was reminding me of. Fancy that – after 10 years and thousands of trades – I still remembered the exact trade that my post was about. Is that a) weird, or b) superb or c) a sign I need to get a life and a wife? (Maybe it’s all three.)
So what was my post about? It was about a short in the Dow Jones that I had been running for several weeks from back in May – throughout July price was grinding north, and I was getting a little nervous that I had overstayed my welcome and that the trade was about to be profit-stopped out.
So lets take a look at a chart and I will share my successes and failures from that trade.
Behold this is the Daily chart of the Dow Jones from the summer of 2008. Lets add some context. The Summer of 2007 was when the credit crunch began. How do I remember? Because I was in Verona to watch the Opera Carmen and L’Arena (yes, you’re right, I am much classier than I look.) It was whilst there that the credit crunch began – there was a couple of weeks of volatility and then the market calmed down. In fact people forget that after the credit crunch began the Dow actually climbed to new all-time-highs reaching its peak in October 2007 just a sliver under 14,200. After that it was all downhill, of a sorts. (Take a look at the weekly chart of that time – it set-up as a nice head and shoulders pattern)
If I’m honest I cant really remember anything major about trading during the early part of 2008. A quick look of my notes shows trading UK Equities, FX, Indices and Commodities (basically Gold). I would intra-day trade FX, but trade all the others off the Daily Chart. I don’t recall any sense of foreboding or imminent doom in the first half of 2008. But I’ve learnt with time that market collapses are a bit like geo-political collapses and Arsenal Premier league challenges. Things happen slowly at first, and then things unravel really, really quickly!
What got me interested was end of April and start of May 2008 the price on the Daily Chart rallied upto the Daily 200 MA and printed a Double Top / M pattern / 123 – call it what you will. This was my short trigger. It was also back up towards the area of the weekly neckline. Nice easy trade. I shorted the second pin bar off the 200 MA and then also an additional trade when it broke point 2.
Price moved down nicely and I was happy when it broke the support area in the region of 11750. When price came back north form the 11000 area in mid July I was worried that the move was over and I was going to give a lot back (my stop was about 25 ticks above 12000 at that time). It was after it came back and touched that line in mid-to-late July that I posted that FB entry. For the remainder of July and August I watched price grind north. For most of August it knocked about a range of 11250 – 11750 but as September took hold the daily ranges started to get larger and the swings wider. We also started to have bad news seeping out. This is when I ended up closing the trade around the 11,250 mark. To be honest – I think I got spooked out – the news through September was getting worse and worse – and the markets reaction were becoming more volatile. At that time I was also trading money for other people and it just seemed a good move to lock in a healthy profit for me and clients.
So I traded down from approx. 12960 (1st trade) to 11250. That was a fine trade. However within 4-5 weeks of my exit the Dow was trading down at 8000! Woulda, coulda, shoulda!!
The blue arrow is pointing to Monday 29th September, an interesting day. However Ive written enough for this piece so will save that for another day.
Hindsight Super Trader
What I did do also was when re-taking a look at the charts I started adding all the add-on trades that I missed. There were plenty…….but then there always are in hindsight! God its so easy to trade in hindsight. 😉
But its no bad exercise to look at past trades and see what can be learnt from the experience. It’s 10 years on since that trade. I believe myself to be a far wiser, smarter trader now than back then (I truly believe that experience counts massively for private traders – its just that most people don’t last long enough to learn that.)
I scribbled on some additional add-ons here.
So was I a good trader for my initial position? ( I think it was a lovely, and very natural, trade set-up for myself.) Or was I a terrible trader for being spooked out of my position and not riding it through the great crash?
I did another piece on Core Finance last week and thought it was interesting enough to enlarge upon here.
Achieving consistent success in trading comes only once we learn to trade in line with our individual personality, character and beliefs. It is garnering this self-knowledge that becomes the real treasure on your trading journey. This series of articles will help you raise your awareness, develop self-knowledge and improve your approach to your trading business as you gain clarity on what type of trader you are.
There are plenty of ways to define what type of trader you are but for this instalment let us look at a simple yet immensely effective exercise regarding our emotions.
Fear & Greed are the dominant emotions expressed in the markets on a day-to day basis. (Whilst some may claim we could go deeper for the sake of this post we’ll keep it simple).
Fear & Greed influence every part of our lives but they are particularly evident when trading financial markets. The author would challenge anyone who told him that they had never experienced such emotions when placing and managing trades. There are many out there who would have you believe that trading can be an emotionless activity. The author would love to believe that, but his experience as a Trader and a coach to traders dispels that idea. We are human beings, a constant bag of emotions and it’s by accepting that and trying to use it to our advantage that we can learn, grow and succeed as both traders and human-beings.
With regards to Fear & Greed you as a human-being and trader will be predisposed to favouring one over the other but you will certainly experience both emotions during your trading adventures. So let us take a very brief look at the types of trader:
Greed Based Traders (GBT) tend to be hunting for action. GBT’s love the process of buying and selling and will take a trade on the flimsiest of evidence if they think they can turn a quick profit. GBT’s will trade anything and will always be searching for big profits. GBT’s tend to fail to treat the market with the respect it deserves. GBT’s will be almost addicted to intra day-trading and believe that using high leverage is a good thing!
They are predisposed to overtrading and over- leveraging their accounts.
Whilst they will enter the market in a heartbeat they are less reluctant to leave a trade quickly, even after every indicator tells them to get out as they want to hang on for the last drop of profit.
Fear Based Traders (FBT) occupy the opposite end of the spectrum. FBT’s can take an age to take a trade and quite often need everything to line up before they will take a position in the market. They will often miss opportunities because they’re waiting for the perfect set-up. They struggle to pull the trigger and invariably will use little or no leverage. Their money management is good but definitely on the conservative side. Whereas a GBT gets in fast and gets out slowly a FBT gets in slowly and tends to get out quickly at the first sign of a possible loss or a possible win. They tend to take small losses….but they also cut their winners short which has an overall impact on their equity curve. Remember there’s a good chance that 90% of your profits will come from 10% of your trades but a FBT will often miss out on those 10% trades as they’ll snatch at profits far too quickly.
GBT’s are the ones who make the great fortunes……if they can last long enough as they are also more disposed to blow up their accounts! FBT’s tend to plod along.
As we mentioned earlier you will experience both emotions as a trader but which side of the fence do you predominantly sit on? It shouldn’t be too hard to work out. When coaching traders it’s one of the first questions the author looks to answer. Very often by active listening the trader will display their bias merely by the language they use.
The best traders are able to recognise their strengths and weaknesses and steer a steady course between both the FBT and GBT within them. There are plenty of simple tactics you can use to help support you with your bias. Within the limited confines of this article you could sum up a solution in two words: simplicity & structure. GBTs need a simple Risk Management structure that they can follow. This allows them to operate to their strengths without over-leveraging and over-trading in order to avoid a blow-up.
FBT’s need a simple yet precise trading structure that leaves them certain in their entry & exit points allowing no time for hesitation or doubt when the time comes to place a trade or exit a trade.
To paraphrase a line from a great coach, Robin Sharma, ‘Remember awareness precedes clarity, which precedes choice, which precedes action, which precedes success!’ If you can raise your awareness of what type of trader you are then you can make changes to your trading approach in order to avoid the pitfalls of either type of trader.
Fellow Traders,
I will be starting this years Stage 3 & 4 of the VTP from next week. It’s based on utilising the acknowledged strengths of traders and veterans namely: Process, Discipline and Self-Awareness. I am offering it out to other traders to take one of the last couple of spaces.
Stage 3 and 4 will run in the second half of 2018 will start later next week. As usual I’ll be limiting it to a small group people per group to keep it manageable. There are already several VTP members on the course so I am offering it out to other traders to take one of the last couple of spaces. Stage 3 will be focussed on intra-day trading, in particular of FX & Indices.
It will consist of:
– 2 Full days on 19th & 20th July
– 2 x online sessions
For a total of 15 hours working together
There will be one session on preparation for trading intra-day and what you need to do to be successful and then there will be a session each specifically on trading intra-day FX and one specifically on trading Indices.
The idea will be that it will build on several of the concepts used in Stage 1 & 2 and provide strategies and tactics for intra-day success. As always there will be a major focus on risk, money and trade management. These are crucial for intra-day trading. Stage 4 will be on Managing Self and becoming a Money Manager. Its aimed at helping you evolve in your trading towards professional status, whilst building your own trading business.
It will consist of:
– 2 x full days on 22nd & 23rd November
– 1 x follow-up online session
For a total of 13 hours working together
It’ll will be split into 2 sections namely: Half on managing self and the other half on managing money – namely other peoples. You may or may not have dreams of becoming a money-manager, however acting as if you are a fund manager is never a bad thing in your own trading business. It holds you to a higher standard in your own behaviour. This whole stage will be focused on what you need to do to build your own trading business that will put you in the right space to be able to seek funding (if that is your wish).
You can choose to do both Stages or just the one that is suitable for your needs. So as always there’s a cost implication: the cost for Stage 3 will be £447 and for Stage 4 will be £347. In total that would be £794. However for viewers of this blog or members of the London or Dublin Traders Network I will be offering a super reduced price of £694 for the both.
As always it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. If you’re interested or want to know more then drop me a line.
Trade well,
Paul @FXTraderPaul
Ticket for the Q3 Online Traders Forum - which also includes access to the recordings post event.
£20.00
Traders,
For several years now I’ve run the London and Dublin Traders Forum – a once-a-year all-day event for Traders to come together, learn and socialise with each other.
This years London Traders Forum will be on Saturday 6th October 2018 in Central London. Put the date in your diary and keep your eyes peeled for details and early-bird opportunities.
This is a new initiative from traders, for traders. The idea is for it to be a short, intensive 3 hour online seminar that covers various aspects of the 4M’s of Trading: Markets, Method, Money and Myself. The idea is for you to be able to learn some new trading ideas, whilst in the comfort of your own home, and without sacrificing your entire weekend.
The plan is for there to be one Online Traders Forum the first Saturday of Q1, Q2 & Q3 with the London Traders Forum at the start of Q4 the main all day event.
For the Q3 Event we’ll have the following speakers:
Paul Wallace from FXTraderPaul.com and the London Traders Network will deliver the market analysis section focusing on FX, Indices, Commodities (and perhaps some Crypto) and look at where to focus for possible Q3 Trading Opportunities.
Martin Walker of ForexTradingLondon.com will take a deeper look at Price Action, what are its constituent parts, and how to identify and read it on your charts. He will show you how to use this knowledge in your trading. Understanding and being able to read Price Action is key to identifying Trends, Breakouts and False Breakouts, Market Turns and much more.
From Dublin, Ian McFadden from the Symmetry Trading FB page will talk about his way of intra-day trading Oil using the CL Futures contract. Ian has traded using Fibs for over 10 years and he will explain how he uses them to analyse Oil and find intra-day trade set-ups.
There is a charge for £20 to attend. Why? Because we’re not selling anything. Its proper educational content rather than a slick pitch in the hope to up-sell you something. Furthermore the sessions will be recorded, and as an attendee you’ll have access to them afterwards.
You can get your ticket here: Q3 Online Traders Forum
It promises to be an enjoyable session that will help you grasp the opportunities that Q3 2018 will present.
Trade well!
Nice to get an independent write-up of the London Traders Network Drinks events.
I have always been very clear- the LTN is just a social beer call to come along and have a beer and a chat with other traders. Trading is a lonesome endeavour and no-one else understands your journey quite like another trader.
What has given me great pleasure over the years is to see the strength of friendships that have been formed by people who regularly attend. There have developed some buddy-buddy coaching partnerships from meeting at the event. There have also been numerous opportunities created for others.
As with all of these events – you get out of it what you put in. You’ll find everyone is very friendly and happy to chat about their experiences – the good ones and the challenging ones. You soon realise that your circumstances are not unique and that there’s a whole community of likeminded souls out there.
Just returned home from another evening of the London Traders Network drinks. A few dozen trading folks get together in a pub in the City of London (specifically at the New Moon pub), grab a drink and talk about trading amongst each other. This takes place on a Wednesday evening once every two months.
It’s amazing how much ground can be covered in terms of content – here’s the things I talked about in conversations with various traders tonight – just to give you an idea:
As people with an interest in markets and FX you may have seen this morning article on BBC regarding currency: The hidden cost of currency fees.
If you’ve ever traded FX then, like me, you’ve probably spat the dummy out when you see what Travel Shops try and offer you for currency conversion. Furthermore along with a crappy exchange rate they may charge you a commission on top for the pleasure of doing business!
It’s rare that I recommend any product or service – and I only do so if I love it and use it myself. With regards to Foreign Exchange payments I use Transferwise and heartily recommend them. Cheap, fast, and at a rate v close to the wholesale.
Furthermore they have recently released a Transferwise borderless debit account that allows you to hold bank accounts in the UK, Europe, US & Australia – along with approx. 60 currencies all on one card. I use it myself, I think it’s wonderful. It has enabled me to hold my money in USD these last 2 months during this period of Dollar strength (more on how to do that in the future!)
As I said I very rarely recommend anything unless I use it and like it myself – and Transferwise meets that criteria.
Trade well,
Paul
It’s been an interesting 2018 so far. There are many themes emerging, all of them fascinating.
Last week I was on Core Finance London giving my views on the world. As always it’s tough to get across in 8 minutes your entire view so I figured that I’d expand on it here.
It was titled “Now is the winter of our discontent…” which many of my readers, far better educated than I, will know is a phrase from Shakespeare’s play ‘Richard III’.
I started with it because a) we have had a long winter this year (which we’ve all been fed-up of) but also on another level there has been a winter-of-discontent over the last 16-18 months since Trump got elected. I’m no real fan of the man, but as a Trader I like to look at trends and track-record, and his has been pretty eventful over the last 12 months or so. Lets take a look:
Saudi Arabian soft coup – the new Crown Prince MBS has come in and cleaned house, in effectively a soft coup. Whilst Trump cant really take any shine for that – I am sure MBS will have not acted without clearance from Trump. Trump and the Saudis go way back.
North Korea – we have seen the beginnings of reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, and a de-escalation of the nuclear threat. Who would have guessed that 18 months ago?
Iraq – in recent parliamentary elections we have seen Moqtada Sadr’s party win. Now he is anti-US, but more importantly (for this piece) he’s also anti-Iranian. For years the Iranian influence has destabilised Iraq – this is another example of Iranian influence being rolled back in the ME.
Trump walks away from Iran Nuclear Deal – in the last two weeks Trump declared that he was pulling the plug on Obama’s Nuclear deal with Iran.
Israel – after the Trump announcement, along with Israel’s Netayahu’s public disclosure of Iran’s continuation of their secret nuclear weapons progress in Iran and Syria we saw the IDF attacking targets in Syria. (And probably trialling their new F-35 Lightning jets)
So it has been an extraordinary 12 months or so. Personally I think Trump was right to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Furthermore I believe that when the truth emerges about what went down as part of that deal we will see a domestic backlash in the US & Europe (and perhaps around the world) towards certain people, administrations and organisations that were complicit in it. There we may see a summer of discontent as well….
There has already been an MSM/Usual Suspects backlash against Trump for pulling out on the deal. But you have to wonder why they’re agonising about it so much. The one who shouts the loudest normally has the most to hide?
Which bring me onto what got me interested in this line of inquiry.. It was a tweet from one of the mullah’s senior advisors, in the top left of the slide below.
To me that was fascinating – and just confirms my earlier belief that the Iran deal was a dirty deal and that there’s clearly been more going on there than meets the eye. If the Iranians are planning to release the names of people and organisations that received money from the deal then that starts to make the actions of some other people a bit dubious. Who was it that benefitted financially from the Iran deal – as always, follow the money.
I found it interesting that in the week before Trump announced his decision he had visits from President Macron, Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson all apparently to pressure Trump to stick with the deal. When he did not bow to their pressure their immediate response was to rally together and make statements about how they would continue to underpin the deal. Why? In a word: money. As part of the Iran deal certain sanctions were lifted. German now does $4bn of business with Iran. France & the UK also have business interests. In total the EU now does approx. $25bn of business with Iran. They don’t want to (or are unable to) give that up should Trump re-impose sanctions on Iran, and organisations doing business in Iran.
However will they really jeopardise the $755bn of business that they do with the US for $25bn of business with Iran? I cant see it happening. The EU will huff and puff, and as usual, do nothing.
So lets bring this back to trading – it happens ever-so rarely but occasionally I experience a moment of clarity about a trade. a situation or a possible outcome. I had one such recently after the Trump deal. Namely that if there was going to be revelations of impropriety from western politicians and organisation regarding the Iran deal then perhaps we’ll see it start to taint Deutsche Bank. DO i have some wonderful insight or fantastic fundamental knowledge that would allow me to make such a call. No, I cant say I have. It would just appear to me that DB. have had a great run of being on the wrong side of the market, the theme, or the law – so why would this be any different?
I had a nice dose of confirmation bias when a few days later Steve Eisman of The Big Short fame came out and said to short DB. (He also said to short Crypto currencies but that’s a different theme for a different day.) I think his view was more fundamental based rather than geo-political fall-out however I’m happy to be on the same side as him.
I see that since I was on TV that DB has dropped another Euro and is presently trading around E12.71. If you look at the latest chart – its makes for sobering viewing.
The other company I named was French Petroleum company Total – after the initial sanctions were lifted by Obama Total were the company that raced into help with Iranian oil & gas production. They have enjoyed this success the last few years. However with the change in landscape what do it hold in store for them?
So the weekly chart there doesn’t look too bad does it? Price has rallied back up to recent resistance around the E54 price. However is that because all Oil& Gas companies are riding the back of the resurgent Oil price? Interestingly a few hours after my TV piece Total made this declaration:
So what do I think will happen?
Iran – in the same way that North Korea has been offered a route back into polite global society I suspect the same will happen for Iran – especially if, as we are seeing the demonstrations and strike by the ordinary people of Iran will continue to increase. (You can follow @HeshmatAlavi on twitter for fascinating insight into Iran.) I think the mullahs must be worried. If there is change of leadership in Iran then we may see that have a knock on effect to all the countries/organisations that Iran currently supports (Hizbollah, Hamas, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestinian state, Yemen, and probably others)
Israel – will Trump leave Israel for last, and then help make changes there that allow a broader peace to be achieved in that region? Discuss.
Russia, Turkey & Syria – what will happen here? I believe that an accommodation will happen with Russia in Syria. The war will end and Assad will be either protected (by Russia) or pushed out the door. I suspect that Erdogan will be seen for what he is – namely a blowhard, and that Turkey will be given an opportunity to right itself, or face pressure from US & Russia.
Oil Price – Oil has been a great trade this year as price from down in the mid-50’s towards 70-80 USD. I believe a good part of that has been down to resurgent demand from emerging markets. However part of that is also because of the threat of war in the Middle East due to recent tensions in Syria, Palestine & Iran. Also the threat of renewed sanctions against Iran What if there was a change of sentiment in the Middle-East? What if Iran did change it’s tack and came in from the cold. What if we had peace (of a sort)rather than the threat of war. What impact would that have on the Oil price. Personally I think it would depress it on a longer term basis. Peace is not good for Oil Prices (generally.)
Blowback – I think the blowback from the details of the Iran Deal will have repercussions in the West – which you are yet to truly understand or see. That may have huge implications on foreign and domestic policy in the US & Europe. Furthermore may lead to domestic unrest in parts of the West.
China – There has been tensions about a trade war with China (which I have worried myself about in the past.) However the latest comments from US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin at the weekend was that the Trade War/ Sanctions were “on hold” – what if Trump managed to negotiate a good trade deal that allowed peace on the Korean peninsula, whilst tempering China’s anxieties about it, and helping improve trade between the two countries? Is that possible?
US Indices – based on the comments above we saw a little positive bump in US Indices this week as possibilities of a trade war lessened. Its of interest to me that the Russell has been hitting all tie new highs whilst the Dow, S&P and NASDAQ all lag. What can we make of that?
So sorry I have rambled on here, as per normal I hear my regular reader say, but the end-point is that whilst I may not be a real of Trump the reality is that he’s helping to shift and re-shape parts of the world that would have been inconceivable less that 18months ago. I feel that if he can bring Iran in from the cold with a change of leadership then he will have earned that Peace prize. Whatever you may think of him as a person, his track-record is starting to be built. And as a trader we know that track-record is king. And if we have a peace in Middle-East & Korea, what opportunities will that open up for people, capital and markets? It could be the start of a truly fascinating period in the world. Or am I just deluding myself with sappy, wishful thinking? I’m more than happy to hear my readers alternate view on the world.
Trade well,
Paul
***UPDATES***
As mentioned above its been confirmed that the Israeli AF have been using their brand-new F-35’s for recent strikes. (I’ll bet that the US and other F-35 allies have been keen to see how their new toy worked.)
#Israel: The IAF Commander has said that the F-35 has been used in 2 seperate combat operations. This means that Israel is the first country to use the F-35 for combat.
— Global: MilitaryInfo (@Global_Mil_Info) May 22, 2018
Some interesting insights/comparisons into Iran & North Korea
RT @GreekAnalyst: What a thread. Absolutely engrossing to the end. Do yourself a favor - drop everything you’re doing and read this, right… 3 hours ago
Just returned home from another evening of the 
July 9, 2018
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