Betsson: Online Casino, Live Casino & Sportsbetting
Online Casino Play with $5000 Bonus On - SlotsofVegas.com
Casino La Vida $750 Sign Up to Play
Live!, a new South Philly casino, opens in the middle of ...
PlayNow - BCLC's online LOTTERY, SPORTS & CASINO
Play it Safe Live! Casino Hotel Philadelphia
Bitcoin Casino - First Licensed Online Bitcoin Casino ...
PlayNow - Online legal sports betting, casino, poker ...
play now live casino twitter
play now live casino twitter - win
To all GME holders: Shut up and listen
This text was originally posted in Mauerstrassenwetten by u/knutolee. I thought his message was so powerful that I asked him for permission to translate, post (can share chat with Mod if required or check directly with him) and fuck his wife (ok didn’t ask for permission) after and he agreed to all most of this wholeheartedly – like a true Autist. I am trying to catch the message – so don’t expect a word by word translation as you can never catch the greatness of the text in it’s entirety and I got to translate it in a way that even a US degenerate can follow it. As usual no financial advice, I more or less just copied the text because I liked the text and I like the share. In general I have likely lost more than I won and the stock market is a mystery in itself to me. So make your own due dilligence and don’t trust financial advice of others (the argument for that you can read to a certain extent below). Autists, Degenerates, Idiocracy of the World – let me get this straight! In the coming days I don’t wanna see all this whining and bitching on this sub and espescially in the daily GME threads anymore. On every fucking corner of this sub I smell doubt, you read messages the likes of „this is over“, „we missed the squeeze“, „I am going to loose it all“, „entered at 320$ - I am doomed“. What the fuck is wrong with you retards, did you fucking wanker your wifes boyfriend dick all night and lost your mind over the effort to do so? I think I got to get this accross the Buddy Stephens way to get you down to fucking earth and get your attitude right. 1) You come to a sub calledwallstreetbetsand yolo your hard earned money in $GME You realize what you are doing here - you true fuck - dont you? This is a community of full blown first class true tits up degenerates which take pleasure in posting losses accumulating into the millions every fucking month and you are putting your money into a BET – yes my dear it is written out in the name of this very fucking sub Wallstreet-B-E-T-S!!! – and follow DD posted by people with names like „SHOW_ME_YOUR_ANAL_TITS“? You realize this is not a fucking Disney ferry „One-Wish-comes-true“ show and we see all day long gain porn and loss porn is something which doesn’t exist in this world? This is a band of true autists which occupied an absolute niche when it comes down to trading (and we even don’t trade stocks normally!). This is the place where one wants to enjoy the sado-masochistic part of the retarded capitalistic system we are living in. Yes we have some (maybe a lot) DD diamonds in this sub which by the way are now impossible to find because you degenerate fucks spam the entire system to the moon but no sane long-term investor would consider to invest into any of these investments – this is about „get rich or die trying!“. This is not investing! 2) Yeah but I saw Reddit in the news and all that stuff about GME and it was going through the roof becasue there is going to be short squeeze and on top of it the hedge funds fucked up, hihihi If this entire thing was a safe bet why exactly would not the fucking entire world jump on this train? (and even you might get this image from all this „Saudi Arabia calling, China calling, Africa calling posts – but please they invest into BABA, Aramco or I don’t know what’s the hot shit in Lagos stock exchange right now – could be though the next big thing – got to see if I can find a DD on this). So why is this not happening? Because it is a fucking BET – the stock market is a fucking Casino and the major difference between investing and us is that they are always just bet on black or red, while we always go for the magical zero. It is totally unclear whether all of us going to show up at Miami Beach with our Porsche Cayenne or Tesla Model S and hit on the girls (or boys) on the beach! The reasons are layed out to you every fucking day with yet another quality DD that most of us simply dont understand! And yes our chances to already sit on the fucking moon slurping our Pinha Coladas would be certainly higher if everything was going the way we believe the system should be working but even the last person who joined this sub by now should realize – you are potentially fucking with the system itself (by the way something this sub never intentionally wanted and you shouldn’t do if you like the system). 3) Hey but when is the squeeze of the squoze going to happen? 😓 So there is this story going through the media and from Florida to Colorado everybody remotely degenerate is yoloing money into GME. It’s a fucking global movement now (or not – could be also the same 50.000 degenerates cheering up themselves the entire time which would much better fit this place) and according to the DD we just need to have 🙌💎and the shorts a bleeding their panties, their balls feel squozen (and not in a good way) and they are completely in defensive mode. What do you think what people who are responsible for Multi-billion $$$ HF are going to do? How do you think you become a person who is responsible for such an operation? Do you think these guys have served as altar boys or girls in church (no offense if so)? What is wrong with you? Seriously! Do you think if they get some headwind they are going to say: Oh boy – we got defeated and going to realize a multi-fucking-billion-to-the-moon loss? OF COURSE FUCKING NOT!THEY WILL GET EVERY FUCKING BAZOOKA, TANK, ROCKET or INTER-STELLAR DEFENSE SYSTEM IN PLACE TO BRING THIS TO AN END! Influence the market participants (speculation), Short-Laddar attacks (I to this very day haven’t understand the concept or how this works – speculation), demotivational tactics (speculation) and to whomever picks it up – desinformation (well not quite speculation but it could also be that media is just retarded as fuck to get the most simple facts straight). So what would you do with a potential group of 5mn small-size investors – shall we do a collective effort to think about it? Ah fuck it! It is to fucking obvious – you would dry this out through time, divide their interests and drive away their attention. Because let’s be fucking honest – most of you entered this thinking you would hold this wonderful stock for a couple of days (and to be honest in this respect the community how it existed 10 days ago was much more true to itself - no whining just sayin)! Gotcha! Who can tell me who fucked each other two weeks ago in People magazin or on Twitter? Nobody – I even don’t remember shit about this very forum before GME (ok I remember u/variation-separate but that is another story). And all their tactics are completely understandable because there is a fucking huge amount of tendies to be made and they are not that different from us (my fear). 4) That does not give you the fucking right to whine and bitch all the time in the daily threads (and it is not happening already its going to be) and fucking ruin the party Deal with it – we just got to wait how this thing plays out. That’s it. If we are right – this will play out positively in one or another way (huge tendies or SEC investigating). Let them continue shorting the stock or whatever. If you believe you want to buy more stock – do your DD and do it. When this got picked up a long time ago by people they thought – hmmmm makes sense – I am going to get me one of these tickets to the moon. There was if at all a very little interest to squoze the balls of any HF and it was certainly not the main motivation of this sub. I said it above: Get rich or die tryin! Since last Thursday the whole thing became political and it looks like rules were changed in our disfavour and yeah we can not go back in time but we got to deal with it and the circumstances. [Left out this part as it promotes holding and buying which I don’t want to in the sense that everybody needs to make his own fucking decision but I am going to fucking hold] but WE NEED TO REGAIN OUR POSITIVE SPIRIT which was an essential part of this sub and GME for most part in January (and of course in general before) – no matter how fucked up things looked (individually as there is not such a thing as collective alignment to buy options or stocks on this forum). We will see how the numbers are play out and who provided the adequate picture. In our reality GME is going to the moon and the 🚀 is fueled. Period. We are just prevented from starting because of the windy conditions out there. So please – no post without 🙌💎🙌💎🙌💎🚀🚀🚀 and if you want to fukn leave the party – leave – but let us continue this party, because we are going to the fkn moon. This is the way and I fkn love GME and if this means I need to hold onto this beauty for another 25 years I am going to do it. P.S.: One thing dear to my heart - in the past there has been huge donations made by this community to people living with autism. As we use their names every fkn day I would really like to see some of your degenerates not to forget about this cause because we owe them and as much as I like the billboards I’d rather see every $$$ go into charities rather then telling the world about us – I think everybody out there knows by now that we exist and that we have 🙌💎 Edit: Nobody asked for it but 35@231,69 and thanks for the awards which should go to u/knutolee - so you can simply award his original post referenced. More importantly he expressed to me that he is very happy with the translation which is almost as important as the message itself. Edit 2: Please pay attention to AMA Marc Cuban - https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lawubt/hey_everyone_its_mark_cuban_jumping_on_to_do_an/ - there is I think some quite enlighting answers in a very easy to understand language. Edit 3: Bought 5@103 Edit 4: Heading for dinner. Crazy times. Will check later and decide whether to buy more tickets or not. But maybe good advice for some others to make a break. Chillax :) Edit 5: Read that RH has opened up GME again. For whatever it's worth 🚀 Edit 6: Thanks again for all the Awards and stuff. I can only reload in the morning. Was fun and maybe I am going to translate more in the future - if mods would consider to give me a copy cat 😺 flair it would be the icing on the cake. Edit 7: Obligatory salute to the one and only DFV and his 💎 balls. This guy will go all the way to the 🚀 with us.
"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)
I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to. Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547 I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can. I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts. Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T
Intro
"The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
"I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
"For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
"We're spread way too thin."
"If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
Widespread match fixing
The Pandemic
"People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
"People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
"To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
"Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
"People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
"It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.
CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association
"Who does this union really fucking serve?"
RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
"and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
"We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
"They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
"I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
"Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
"Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
"That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
He also says their rankings are a joke
"Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
"Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission
"They have been put in an impossible position."
RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
"ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
"Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
"Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
"They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
"They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
Also says more coaches being banned are coming
He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
"I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
"So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
"Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
Stream Sniping
"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"
RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
"Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
"ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
"All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?
Match Fixing
"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."
RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
"Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
"Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
"I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
"Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
"There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
"It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
"It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
"I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
"That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
"All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
"I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."
North America
"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."
RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
"was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."
Talent
"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."
RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."
Valve
"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"
Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
"It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
"Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
"People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."
Closing Statements
"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."
RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
"We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
"There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
"How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
"Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
"The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
"If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
"They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
"Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
"This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
"You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
"Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
"Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
"You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
"I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
"I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
"I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."
This writing was copied from my bloghttps://nope-its-lily.medium.com/. I write about the NOPE and other options and market things there and on my twitterhttps://twitter.com/nope_its_lily. Cheers! Check out Part 1 first about my thoughts on the short squeeze thesis. To clarify — I do think shorts are being squeezed in Gamestop, although this is auxiliary to the main driver of the stock’s momentum (and not, in my opinion, the primary driver of Friday’s exponential rise). So okay, let’s go to the obvious question — if hedge fund tears didn’t cause Gamestop to rocket, what did cause it? Wew laddy, +71.25% at the peak. Gamestop in many ways is an extraordinary story, and has all the properties of a successful meme stock (salience):
Personal name recognition/Nostalgia-For better or worse, we all know/remember Gamestop (primarily from childhood), which is similarly why Hertez performed so well in the afterlife while Mallinckrodt hasn’t.
A hero and a villain — Much like Tesla, Ryan Cohen represents the hero in the Gamestop narrative, where investors can paint whatever picture of the future they want and justify whatever price tag they pay. Similarly, Melvin and Citron (I mean, even the name Melvin) and the hedge fund industry are (perhaps well-deserved) villains in the arc, helping obfuscate feelings of greed or risk by presenting it as a righteous cause.
A cataly-ish — For obvious reasons Gamestop is benefiting from the console cycle, but perhaps to a lesser degree than before (its massive real world presence during a pandemic doesn’t help much).
Humor-What could be more funny than investing in a relic of the early 2000s? Except maybe investing billions into 3d renderings of hydrogen powered cars.
So it isn’t a surprise Gamestop captivated the attention of the internet; despite common belief, the legend of Gamestop extended far outside wallstreetbets (although the saga of DeepFuckingValue/RoaringKitty there helped bring substantial energy to the cause). And how does the internet show some love? Well, it buys calls. For better or worse, most new investors have absolutely no concept outside of simple long call/put positions (probably for the best, from experience). In general, most new market positions view long options (and, let’s face it, mostly calls) as a highly leveraged bet on the underlying akin to a lotto ticket, which works beautifully for the following reasons:
Long options have asymmetric risk-reward, assuming risk-loving participants.
While in prior posts I’ve touched on the expected profit of options being zero, this is only true (it’s never actually true, due to seller’s, variance risk premium, and a host of other factors) under risk-neutral measure. In the real world, investors (especially on indices) tend to be risk-averse (weighting losses more heavily than chance of gain)… at least historically. The new class of retail investors, on the other hand, partly engendered by Robinhood’s extremely gamified UI tends to be risk-loving (“yolos”), favoring chance of gain over (higher) chance of loss. For that type of an investor, options are akin to a casino due to convexity, or in layman’s terms, “the potential to go up a lot really fast” in value. This is of course true for stocks too (albeit less so, due to the implied leverage of options), but when an individual purchases a stock they have a rather large downside (the entire stock can become worthless). This isn’t the case for a call option, which only represents a portion of the total cost of the stock, but represents the entire upside. 2. Options have to be hedged… often in the underlying. Before I get 1000 responses telling me this isn’t always true (especially on indices, where you have futures and all sorts of nice things) — it’s more or less true on a meme stock, which basically has no beta or correlation to any other stock (except perhaps other meme stocks). In general, one can anticipate that an option written by a market maker and sold to a retail investor (who owns a long position from that transaction) is hedged in the underlying stock, which obeys the same rules of buying and selling pressure. This is even more apparent in stocks with low float, which tend to move in price substantially with relatively low volume traded. You can imagine how few option contracts it similarly takes (given the implied leverage up to 100 shares worth of delta) to actually move the price (I’ve seen call options move the spot in real time, for instance, on Del Taco stock before earnings). 3. Option buying begets option buying. What happens when a few individuals buy options on a stock? It moves up slightly (usually in proportion to how many options were bought, what time period they were bought in, and how large the underlying’s float is). This triggers the happy centers in peoples’ brains (yay, we’re making money) and triggers more buying of calls. More interestingly, option convexity is largely due to the Greek gamma, which simply refers to the rate delta changes in response to changes in the underlying’s spot price. Delta more formally measures how much we expect the option price to change as the spot price changes, but more usefully for this example can represent how many shares equivalent the option contract controls at the given price. This is why delta represents the hedge ratio — if you, for instance, write a 100 delta (ITM) call option and sell it, you need to equivalently own 100 shares of that stock to neutralize your risk. Delta is interesting (my favorite Greek) because it is heavily non-linear, and changes in response to:
Spot price (gamma)
Time to expiration of the option (charm)
Volatility of the underlying (vanna)
These are all second order derivatives, so you probably are lost by now if you didn’t take calculus at some point. So why is gamma important here? Source: quantik.org Unlike controlling the equivalent delta’s worth of shares, the value of an option contract increases at a faster rate as it gets closer to in-the-money. This is (one of the reasons) why options have convexity — the value of an OTM call option contract goes up faster as it gets closer to ITM, with a potential for (5,10,100,200+)**-**baggers (multiples of how much you paid for the initial) if you play it right. What’s even more interesting though than gamma alone, however, is pairing it with theta, the decay of an option’s value as the time-to-expiration draws closer. This tends to have a strong relationship to the implied volatility — theta represents the time value of the option (extrinsic), and implied volatility is largely the market consensus of the potential for the underlying to move in the time remaining on the option. However, as the days tick down, the time for that move to actually happen diminishes, and therefore the value of the option similarly goes down with it. As IV increases, theta usually does (especially on short term options), and vice versa. (Helpful video by the tastytrade crew —https://www.tastytrade.com/shows/market-measures/episodes/theta-and-iv-05-17-2019) So, given my tendency to ramble, the question is — why is this important? Let’s look at gamma and theta in the context of 0-day-to-expiration (0dte) options, and try to piece together what happened to Gamestop on January 22, 2021.
0 Days to Live
0dte options have long been a mainstay of the dopamine addicted day-trader community (including me, sometimes) given they represent the purest form of lottery ticket:
They expire at the end of the day — You don’t need to go to bed and worry about your position, because it’s either closed or worthless.
They’re cheap, generally-Theta in particular becomes exponential for 0dte options, and you can quickly buy positions on sale just to gamble as the end of the day grows closer.
They still represent implied leverage and have that tasty convexity-Like their more respectable brethren, 0dte options still represent the underlying and have all the neat Greeks (gamma, delta, vanna, pajamas, etc.) which make their payouts non-linear and fun.
In general, the optimal strategy to capitalize on 0dte long options is to buy as late as possible in the day, to allow theta to provide as much leverage to you as cheaply as possible.
Let’s Imagine a Scenario Here
Let’s imagine you have a high implied volatility stock that has been stable/slightly declining in price for multiple days. During that time period, theta is aggressively destroying the value of long options, while IV is similarly dropping (both due to theta and due to relative lack of movement). As we get to the final day (this is a weekly, for example), much of the option’s value has now disappeared. This impacts both put and calls open, though. And let’s say a mean orange decided to start a war on your stock in the days before, causing a flood of short-term puts to hit the market during that week, which had minimal effect (largely due to continual call buying of longer-dated options coupled with actual shares buying pressure due to belief of a short squeeze/Ryan Cohen being the second coming of Christ). What happens when those puts start to expire? As the days and then hours tick down, the hedges of those put positions (shorted shares) start to unwind, and buying pressure picks up. Similarly, this buying pressure is noticed by market participants, who start to capitalize on the momentum by buying 0dte call options. These at first have minimal impact, largely because the inflow and outflow of call delta are roughly equivalent (somewhat of a bias towards inflow, pushing price up alongside share buying). But towards the middle of the day, two interesting things happen:
Theta and charm become more and more prominent in both making new option positions cheaper and unwinding existing put and call positions.
Gamma starts to become more dominant due to the high implied leverage versus cost of 0dtes, leading to the virtuous cycle (option buying begets option buying).
These two effects tend to be complementary — as the hedges unwind (given the weekly puts from Citron/the short seller attack) for existing option positions, new 0dte positions can be bought and bought, each time pushing up the underlying as well as increasing the value and delta of other 0dte positions. This can be neatly observed in the option volume versus open interest for the 1/22 series on GME: This is fine. Although more puts traded, the delta (for obvious reasons) of calls is much higher. As the price of the stock goes higher and higher, this continues to attract more and more speculation, hoping to capitalize on the continued momentum. This continues in a loop:
The price of the underlying continues to increase as put hedges unwind, volatility spikes, and call options are bought (the initial delta hedge).
The increase in price leads to gamma of existing contracts increasing the delta of those contracts.
This leads to more shares being bought to hedge those increasingly higher delta positions.
This leads to more speculation and momentum.
An interesting property of $GME from Friday you can neatly observe is the highest strike in the series is $60, meaning that at Friday’s close, every single call option expiring 1/22 expired ITM. More interestingly is the relationship with gamma, again observable below: Source: quantik.org As a contract moves further and further ITM (at one point, GME hit $76 intraday), the gamma of the contract decreases as delta hits 100 on the position. This implies a cap on the momentum from the virtuous cycle described above — while continued call buying can of course drive up the price further, not only does the cost become prohibitive (given that a deep-ITM position is basically equivalent to buying 100 shares in payout), it becomes linear (and therefore boring). Once 100 delta is reached, there is no more cycle of increasing spot price causing increasing share buying, only normal share buying. And that’s when it drops. It’s hard to say whether the halt caused the drop (given the mental association halts have to pump and dumps for most investors). In this case the drop assuredly coincided with the halt, but more importantly, we can observe where the drop ended: 57.99 is such a pretty number. In this case, we can observe the drop in price stabilized at $58, before rapidly jumping above $60. This is largely due to gamma and continued 0dte call buying buttressing the fall — as the positions fell farther OTM, shares used to hedge those positions are sold off, further driving the price down (in this scenario, the dealers are almost assuredly short gamma). However, similarly those positions-now closeOTM and close to expiry-become cheaper at a fairly exponential rate (due to theta and charm). Speculators again gain conviction, pushing the price up above the highest strike (to the point where gamma provides no real extra push versus the clock ticking down). This is what we call a gamma squeeze, and isn’t a terribly uncommon phenomenon. It largely follows similar patterns:
In general, gamma squeezes tend to happen closer to OPEX, due to both hedge unwinding (in the case of a previous put skew, for instance) and due to the 0dte effects mentioned.
In general, there is both a rapid rise (due to gamma looping and speculators joining) with a similarly steep cliff (especially if the available strikes is exhausted, like what happened to $GME).
Can it be continued forever, though?
In general, the answer unfortunately is yes. Gamma squeezes in generally power meme stocks, and require a few elements to be true:
Continued supply of strikes and promise of convexity — Put gamma squeezes rarely happen because well, the maximum value of a put option occurs when the underlying hits 0. Calls, however, have an infinite potential payoff and strikes similarly can be added indefinitely. This allows continued creation of OTM options, which due to cheap premium and asymmetric risk-reward on longs power the gamma squeeze.
Continued momentum-In general, meme stocks follow the greater fool theory, despite promise of rocket emojis. When they drop, they drop hard.
Oopsies. This is because, as previously mentioned, meme stocks are powered by long calls sold by market makers, who are chronically short gamma. Any selling begets more selling. Even periods of quiescence are dangerous, because without continued inflow of call delta, hedges unwind, and the selling pressure begins.
Continued attention-This is where salience shines. The major reason Tesla (the OG gamma squeeze) continued to rocket throughout 2020 was largely due to Elon Musk’s charisma and Tesla’s promise of a better world. It becomes a lot easier to stomach risk for an investor when following a strong personality with a killer story. This role was largely played in Gamestop’s saga by Ryan Cohen, and fed into (potentially unwittingly) by the battle with Citron and the mystique of DeepFuckingValue. It remains, however, to be seen if this will continue.
The moral of the story here is retail, for better or for worse, finally learned how to weaponize options. We’ll see what happens next.
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1. https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%) NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar. https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866 NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis !!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should. In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase. Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below: https://www.playboy.com/ https://www.playboytv.com/ https://www.playboyplus.com/ https://www.iplayboy.com/ Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success. “Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.” https://www.scientificgames.com/ https://www.microgaming.co.uk/ “This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.” https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/ As per their SEC filing: “Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.” https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1 They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon. https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again: https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea “Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.” “According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently: https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress. Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait. https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/ Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05 Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing: “For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.” “In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.” “In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.” “In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.” They are profitable across all three of their current business segments. “Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.” https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world. "Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.” Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame: “As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn. The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :( He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :) Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw. I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003 Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this: “Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy. “Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.” https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative. https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html Y’all like that China money? “Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.” Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.” https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose. I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing “Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.” “Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.” Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong. Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will. Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way. Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains. TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here: WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf Or here: https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.” STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon. Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.
Who's up for a live discussion post for the AEW Games announcement? https://www.youtube.com/aewgames (no premiere link yet) EDIT: Premiere link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I-whVtW50E Show starts at 6pm EST/3pm PST/11pm GMT (???) Omega says "Hope to be live in 30 minutes" EDIT: Premiere at 6:45pm EST/3:45PM PST/ 11:45PM GMT Check out the official subreddit: playAEWgames (thanks u/redhood205 !) ANNOUNCED: Untitled AEW 3D wrestling game, current and next gen consoles, developed by Yukes AEW Elite General Manager mobile game AEW Games video game t-shirt (two sleeves, cotton, head turning logo) Now available! AEW Casino: Double Or Nothing mobile game, coming this winter Hideyuki Iwashita (aka Geta) involved in development
Corrections at bottom I'm a retarded GenXer who YOLO'd junior silver miner OTM call options in 2011 and lost a truckload of cash. But I kept my phyzz until a freak boating accident sunk it all. Oh well, this isn't financial advice, I'm a proven idiot, and nobody should listen to me. I've learned a lot about the silver markets charlatans since then. Mike Maloney is a forever pumper. Peter Schiff is a suit and shill. Doug Casey lives on a ranch in Argentina but has his head far up his ass. Since you retards love to lose it all, go listen to those guys. But there are some very serious voices in the precious metals market that have proven the fraud and manipulation and even come up with ways around it: Ted Butler (commodity analysis), Eric Sprott (creator of $PSLV), James Dines (legendary newsletter writer), and James Turk (creator of goldmoney.com). Silver is the biggest opportunity for profit that the general public could broadly participate in. If the price of silver goes up, the miners will see amplified gains. Juniors would explode into the alpha centuri (13,000% gains or more, easily). The reason we know this is because it's been tried before by people smarter than any of us (Hunt Brothers 1980, Buffet's 1997-2006 silver purchase, and 2010 mini-squeeze-beatdown). Even that lucky commie bastard Max Keiser tried to rally enough retards together to squeeze silver and "crash JPMorgan" before he got rich off bitcoin. {If you can't read, there is a video breakdown: search "youtube Is a WallStreetBets Silver Squeeze Possible" for a pretty good historical overview} The forces at play in the precious metals market are global, historical, and backed by the biggest banks, not some meaningless hedgefund. It's the real deal. American's money used to be backed in bi-metallic standard, all coinage had some precious metals (pre 1964 dimes, silver dollars/half dollars and paper currency all convertible to silver or gold). All real silverbugs ultimate goal is to return to a bi-metalic backed US currency. It's a big part of the precious metals folklore, and the fact that the last straw that sealed President Kennedy's fate was signing Executive Order 11110 which would have returned the US to a silver standard. This would have restored faith in our financial system, eliminate the scourge of inflation, balanced the value of labor versus financial assets, and allow regular workers to save instead of being forced to participate in a ridiculous casino just to have a retirement. Attention CNBC media whores reading this: who is the villain of this story? Blythe Masters. Check her out, she's actually pretty hot. {search: "Blythe Masters wants to upend finance again twitter bloomberg"} And she is a goddamn evil mastermind that created the Credit Default Swap (CDS). Yes, she created the financial weapon of mass destruction that sunk the global economy in 2008, she is first author on the paper. Then she went on to lead the JP Morgan precious metals trading desk to unwind Bear Sterns silver short book by containing any rally (that's how I lost all my money). Now she is working on blockchain technology that can be used by the banking cartels as a weapon to further enslave the entire world. And, yes, you degenerates, she has a sexy British accent and a killer set of legs. {search "egonzehnder blythe masters shares career advice daughters 2019"} Steven Cohen is a fucking worm to Blythe Masters. Any financial instrument like SLV would be manipulated easily by her and the ilk that inherited her positions at JPMorgan and other bullion banks. There is only 1 way to perform a real silver squeeze: physical ownership (not paper ownership like SLV, there is a big difference). The commodity futures markets is called the COMEX. The COMEX has about a 250 contracts trade for every 1 ounce of actual silver available for delivery. That means if a handful of commodity traders stand for delivery and the physical delivery can't be made it will crash the COMEX. Sure, they might be forced to settle for cash like the Hunt brothers, but it will crash the COMEX and the price will soar nonetheless. It's a real thing, people have done it, there is no stopping that it will happen again. And what happens historically is a giant leap for junior miners: Copper Lake in 1980 jumped 13,000%. The average silver junior miner lept over 2,300%). It was soo easy to make money, even an ape could do it. So, how do we avoid the manipulation?
$SLV is a scam! SLV's custodian is JP Morgan, the vampire squid sucking on the face of humanity! Don't fall for it. They can never be trusted. Most silverbugs don't even believe they have any silver or gold in their ETFs of any significant amounts, otherwise there would be outside audits which don't happen. Anybody suggesting to use SLV is a pumper, paid shill, or doesn't know the history. And yes, now that JPMorgan has paid almost a Billion dollar fine for manipulating the silver market, they are long silver or at least are holding it as custodian for other players. So if silver goes up will JPMorgan win...yeah maybe. But that's not the point, you'd win, I'd win, the people of the world win.
2. $PSLV is not an appropriate vehicle. PSLV is a closed end fund. Eric Sprott is not going to buy any more silver and issue any more shares. Premium to NAV went over 20% and he didn't do it. PSLV serves a purpose (tax savings), but they don't acquire on commodity exchanges unless a big player takes delivery. If you actually have enough money to take delivery 10,000 oz - then PSLV works. So what to really do: Buy PSLV or physical For the paranoid, you can create an account on goldmoney.com, put money into silver and it is owned by you, stored in Switzerland and registered in the Island of Jersey (for the most part outside of financial oligarchy control). You have to fill out a form on your taxes each year but buying/selling stonks have the same requirement, just a different form. Again, NOT financial advice - I'm a proven town idiot and hold no credentials no should you listen to me. Goldmoney.com was created by James Turk, exactly for this purpose. So people can own phyzz without having to hide a 1000lb safe in your wife's boyfriend's basement or sink your phyzz into a pond. And also he set it up outside of the US so if the US government seized physical (like 1934!), his customers would have some chance at taking physical delivery in Switzerland. I wholeheartedly believed that the crash of 2008 would lead to this eventual outcome if silver went really high and it almost did at $50, at $100 the champagne corks stop poppin. So then what went happened in 2011? Blythe Masters happened. JP Morgan and the other bullion banks beat down the precious metals market in a coordinated attack of naked short selling. Punishing beat downs, if you're into that kinda thing! The silver spike of 2010/11 happened because some silverbugs bought physical metals and there were shortages at the retail level, just like what has started today. In all honesty, there were probably 10,000 Silverbugs in existence at that time all acting as lone actors on a handful of forums. This time could be much different, if a lot of apes bought silver and the intermediaries held for delivery on the COMEX this could break the back of the silver cartel and Lord Rothschild would roll over in his grave. And silver junior miners would skyrocket! I love silver, what will I buy? 90-100% into some other form of physical ownership (coins/or goldmoney.com). $PSLV is also an acceptable vehicle but doesn't squeeze LBMA/COMEX supplies {search: "sprott physical silver trust December 2020 fact sheet"}. And 0-10% into long-dated calls or shares of junior minors. Some pumper was saying $AG (First Majestic). Sure maybe, or just use $SILJ a basket of silver juniors that would all explode and give you less single company risk to enjoy the rally. Get your popcorn. And those boomers, will they help buy silver? Don't count on it, but that's a different type of rant. TL;DR Buy either physical silver, $PSLV, orgoldmoney.comand also a little bit of silver miners to amplify gainz. Blythe Masters is a demon. Break the COMEX. Restore our heritage of sound money. Corrections: PSLV has registered to issue $1.5billion more shares. That’s a lot of shiny silver. See the link in the comments below. It’s looks like PSLV will be retails best bet to apply pressure on the physical market. And if bullion dealers become stocked out, and PSLV stands for delivery, this strategy would work.
Greetings everyone and welcome to another Rotation meta report for Shadowverse! As always i'll be relying on a variety of sources to stitch together a decent picture of the Rotation Meta. Using Gamewith, Shadowverse-wins.com, tournament results along with my own experiences. Forestcraft Deep in the great woods of Forestcraft, in an ancient oaken hall that has stood there since before anyone can ever remember. We find all the leaders assembled trying to figure out what is up with Xeno Sagittarius. Doesn't help that no one can understand it's strange language, in the end the issue gets pawned off on Selwyn as everyone else suddenly has more important matters to attend to. For Forestcraft Accelerate Forest continues to rule the forests followed by Loxis Forest which has overtaken Aggro Forest. Forestcraft continues to be a strong class with several strong decks and remains one of the dominant tournament classes atm. Accelerate Forest A whirlwind of activity, swift and ruthless as the wind! A flurry of arrows and blows strikes down any foe, allowing for a mighty warrior to finish the job A midrange-combo deck. A strong deck with a higher skill requirement. This week has seen Accelerate forest pull up a bit and start to include Xeno Sagittarius, likely in response to an increase in Rally Haven and board heavy shadow decks, but in other matchups can also serve as card draw and cycle. Loxis Forest An outrider of the forests, patrolling its borders and keeping it's safe from all those who would seek to harm its denizens A midrange-combo deck built around amulets. Loxis Forest has been steadily climbing in popularity, both on ladder and in tournaments as the deck continues to be refined and understood better. While skill intensive, in the right hands it can be potent. Aggro Forest The wrath of the forests made manifest, a horde of raging beasts and outcasts ready to strike down all before it! An aggro deck built around a variety of strong threats and disruption. Seeing a slight drop off in the current meta as Loxis Forest and accelerate forests gains better understanding and refinement, while Aggro Forest just sits about. Still good and a far more straightforward deck than the other two. Swordcraft In the eternal Castle of Swordcraft. Past countless banners and standards, tapestries depicting glorious battle. We find Albert being gently taken aside by Seofon after asking Arthur why he's shrunk since last. Seofon requests that Albert avoids questions like that since apparently there's a million Arthur's about out there in the Multiverse. Keeps producing them, that and Jeanne d'Arcs. For Swordcraft Evolve Sword continues to rest its flaccid buttocks on the throne, followed by Walfrid Sword, Rally Sword and Aggro Sword. Overall Sword remains in an awkward spot, since while it has a decent variety of decks, most are struggling in power level and consistency and generally good tempo plays. Evolve Sword Paragons of their art. These heroes stand ready to strike down those without honour! A control deck built around Evolve Synergies. Evolve Sword continues to be a good deck but one struggling to close out matches at times and there continues to be a lot of experimentation with the deck, but so far, no great results . Walfrid Sword An army of men and women devoted to one man's cause. This fleet of the blue skies will follow him to the end of the multiverse A midrange deck built around Walfrid. A decent deck that suffers from being very linear and a bit slow. Continues to see play here and there, but has consistency and tempo issues. Rally Sword A Legion on the march. It's numbers will result in victory, either by breakthrough or by sheer attrition! A Tempo deck built around the Rally mechanic. A decent deck that continues to see fringe play. This version was recently posted on Twitter and personally i've used it to climb to Grandmaster. So it's fairly decent at least. That said, can struggle with consistency. But it's fun. Aggro Sword A wild band of outcasts and outlaws. Their mission to ruin the day of anyone who gets in their way An aggro deck built around Vehicles. Continues to see fringe play, some versions may experiment with Naht's Henchman and Oluon continues to see some usage as well. Runecraft In the mystical Academies of Runecraft, where knowledge rules above all. We find Erasmus supervising the expansion of the Runecraft council chambers, since the recent massive influx of leaders has made it way too cramped. Caglisotro really wanted to do it, but after having seen her plans. All the other leaders left the job to Erasmus. Runecraft sees Control Karyl rule from the ivory tower, followed by Spellboost Rune, Vincent rune and finally Earth Rite Rune. Rune's in a decent position, but does have it's issues in the current meta. Control Karyl Destruction and annihilation is all that follows in the wake of this Girl, as she has concluded that it is the only way for her to get some peace and quiet A control combo deck built around Karyl. Continues to be the top Runecraft deck, but is a more skill intensive one. Additionally with Karyl rotating out at the end of March, it is tough to recommend. Spellboost Rune Magical Servants for every purpose ! As long as that purpose is destroying your foes A midrange deck built around Spellboost Synergies. A solid yet slightly tricky deck that continues to see a good amount of play. Do keep in mind that Kuon will rotate out at the end of the expansion and we don't know what Kuon will be replaced with. Vincent Rune A man who forges the law on his own, and he enforces it as well, ruthlessly! A tempo deck built around Vincent and Vehicle Amulets. A decent aggressive deck that continues to see play, though does lack some strong threats. Earth Rite Rune The peak of Alchemy ! Mighty golems and wonderous magicks that will sear the very flesh of your enemies bones! A midrange deck built around Earth Rites. A decent deck existing on the fringe. Continues to see play with a small group. Keep in mind that both Karyl and Forbidden Darkmage will rotate out at the end of the expansion, making it slightly tough to recommend. Dragoncraft In the great caverns of Dragoncraft, where all manner of behemoths can be found sleeping, waiting for the right time to awaken and bring doom upon the world. We find Hiro on cleanup duty as punishment for his little power trip a few weeks ago. Turns out Forte is quite the slob and he ends up spending days cleaning up her room alone. For Dragoncraft Face Dragon remains high in the skies, followed by OTK Dragon, Ramp Dragon and Discard Dragon. Dragoncraft remains in a strong position with a good variety of strong decks and no real threats to the class short of any nerfs. Face Dragon An incendiary storm unleashed upon its enemies. This deck is full of pyrotechnics and death! A tempo deck built around a variety of strong threats and answers. Easily the strongest dragon deck and still fairly popular even as Haven has risen up to keep it in check. A part of its strength though is that it can highroll to a degree where it becomes difficult for other decks to stop it. Additionally Jerva has become a staple in the deck with most decks running a copy or two now for extra burn that also happens to work well with Bahamut. OTk Dragon A terror from the deepest seas, swallowing up the entire world in its abyssal maw! A combo deck built around Disrestan. A strong deck though vulnerable to more aggressive and tempo based decks that can run it down. But great vs slower decks as they can find themselves crushed by its OTK. Ramp Dragon Soaring high in the skies, ever higher until it unleashes its payload of fire and doom upon those beneath it A ramp deck built around Resplendent phoenix. Continuing to see some play, there's overall been no real changes to the deck this week either. Solid, but not as fast as Face Dragon or as consistent as OTK dragon. Discard Dragon Tossing all to the winds in the hopes of gaining everymore. For this deck, no sacrifice is to steep in the quest to destroy its foes! A midrange deck built around Discard cards. A bit of a fringe deck at the moment as it isn't as fast as the other decks nor as splashy. So it is mostly played by a small dedicated group of players at this point. Shadowcraft In the great Catacomb of Shadowcraft. Where death rules eternal. We find the leaders assembled for a small concert headed by Niyon. A soothing affair deep in the sepulchral depths and Luna ends up gently falling asleep to it. Shadowcraft Finds Gremory as always at the peak of the Pyramid, followed by Aggro Shadow, Reanimate Shadow with Evolve Shadow arriving to push out Vaseraga Shadow. That deck is still about, but is on a lower power level and so doesn't get a writeup this week. But it does mean Shadowcraft now has 5 decks. Overall Shadow is in a great spot, good variety and good strength. Gremory Shadow A vortex of death and souls, all centered around a little girl. Her wicked grin dispelling any notion of innoence A midrange deck built around Gremory and Necromancy. A strong deck with multiple ways of winning the game, either by Necroimpulse or simply building a board the opponent can't clear. Combined with lots of card draw and a decent amount of healing. The deck is quite potent. Aggro Shadow A shambling horde of the dead, their mortal coils motivated only by anger and hatred of the living. An aggro deck built around very potent threats and Necroimpulse. A strong deck and one of the best Aggro decks in the meta, but is weak to certain control decks and so finds itself surpassed by Gremory Shadow. There has been some experimentation as of late with Winged Zombie for extra burst damage. Reanimate Shadow Death is not the end with this deck. it is only the beginning of eternal service for its undying master A midrange deck built around reanimate and burial rites. Less popular than Gremory but with more control tools built into it, so while slower, it can deal with certain threats better. Evolve Shadow Something stirs in these corpses, a new form of unlife! Whatever twisted shreds of their souls remains, formed into something new and terrifying A midrange deck built around Evolve Synergies. Something that's been brewed on for quite some time but now seems to be catching on. A bit slower in some ways but much heavier on board and can set up for some big bursts of its own. Bloodcraft In the great decadent manor of Bloodcraft, where every manner of sin can be found. We find Medusa and Vania grumbling about the lack of remakes and vengeance support. Also Volteo keeps conning Medusa out of her allowance, although Mono is always quick to get it back for Medusa. For Bloodcraft Wrath Blood continues to rule from its throne of Opulence followed by Volteo Blood and Control Blood. Overall the class is in a decent spot but largely carried by Wrath Blood and really could do with some help to form other archetypes. Wrath Blood Pain and Strength are the same thing in the mind of this deck. The greater the pain, the greater the glory! A midrange deck built around the Wrath mechanic. Continues to be a good deck that does fairly well, even in tournaments. Beyond that, no real changes this week. Volteo Blood Everything can be found in Volteo's magnificent Casino, even victory. Just be careful not to get bamboozled A highlander deck built around Volteo. A fringe deck that continues to have a dedicated following. Fairly skill intensive, it is not for everyone. Control Blood A terrible demon propels this deck forward, promising death and sweet destruction, if only its requirements are met A control deck built around Xeno Diablo. A fringe deck that does continue to see play, but not one i'd generally recommend. Havencraft In the mighty summit Temple, where the light shines eternal! We find Eris in her personal quarters, going through her investment Portfolio and really being upset that she didn't invest in Skullfanes in time. She could have made a killing.. All for the greater good of course and not at all for her retirement fund. Ruling from the holiest of holies we find Sanctuary haven followed by Rally Haven, Control Haven and finally Ward Haven. Amulet and Summit also exist, but out of the 6, those are the weaker ones and so won't get a writeup this week. Sanctuary Haven An ancient sanctuary, providing its boons to those who seek to sooth and bring comfort so they will not have to fight, doing so in their stead A control deck built around the Sanctuary. A strong control deck that continues to see good play as it performs well against Face Dragon. But does struggle against more board heavy decks as it doesn't have a lot of AoE. Rally Haven A holy army seeking to bring down those who would stand against the righteousness of Havencraft! Their numbers and their faith are their weapons A midrange deck built around Rally and Goddess of the West Wind. A strong deck that can overwhelm a lot of slower decks and decks tha don't generate enough tempo. Goddess of the West Wind, Set and Noah being the core of the deck. Control Haven The righteous Judgement of one god shines burning light down on the enemies of the Divine as everything else is banished away A control deck built around Ra and a lot of removal. A less played deck and more skill intensive. But in the right hands can perform well, but does see less play than both Sanctuary and Rally as it does end up lacking a more offensive gameplan. Ward Haven A host of Shielded warriors, these holy knights will stop at nothing to protect the weak and innocent! A midrange deck built around wards. A solid deck but one that does rely a bit on highrolling and in the current meta does have issues with the top decks. Also Wilbert will be rotating out at the end of the expansion. Portalcraft In the Vertex Colony, high in orbit over a long dead world. Many of its passages unexplored and abandonded for centuries. Yet strangely, dust never accumulates. Today we find that Lishenna decided to show off and so assembled everyone for a great dance contest to determine who is the best dancer (obviously thinking she'd win it easily).. Turns out her dance skills are nothing compared to Yuwans. Apparently working for Nerva gives you some real smooth moves. For Portalcraft Rally Portal continues rule from beyond the outer stars, followed by Evolve Portal and Artifact Portal. Portal continues to struggle a bit, lacking stronger plays for the class in general. Though still has some diversity at least. Rally Portal A shambling horde of puppets, mastered by some unknown puppeteer. What sinister purpose do they work towards ? A midrange deck built around Rally and Destruction. A decent deck that continues to perform alright in capable hands. There is some light experimentation with the deck, but so far nothing solid. Evolve Portal Wonderous warriors, their movements refined beyond belief, their skills beyond peer. What sort of bargains must they have made to attain them ? A control combo deck built around Evolve synergies. A decent yet skill intensive deck that mostly exists on the fringes of the meta. Artifact Portal Mysterious machines and artifacts, their origin unknown, their method of propulsion.. alien. What secrets do they hide ? A midrange deck built around Artifacts. A fringe deck at the moment, lacking more payoffs for its artifacts currently. The deck being more skill intensive as well finds itself played by a small dedicated cadre. So there you have it. Meta continues to very slowly evolve, with decks responding and changing. And we even see a new one here and there. A bit impressive for sure and certainly one suspects there might be a few surprises to go. That said with an update coming soon we could see a balance update as well. Dragon, Shadow and Forest would be the likely candidates for a nerf. But there's also a chance we may just see some buffs instead, as Cygames does seem to prefer doing that if it can get away with it. That said, nothing may also happen. As there is a fair amount of deck diversity going about at the moment and no deck is showing really dangerous patterns from what i can tell. So we'll have to see tomorrow what is posted if anything is. Since Cygames does seem to be getting more cagey about things like that as of late. But until next week, have fun playing Shadowverse!
I Was Duped By Trump & Spread Pro-MAGA Conspiracies
[Full Disclosure: I posted this in /Confessions but it was immediately taken down. Probably due to a few keywords used below] Let me start off by saying that I was never really into Politics before Trump vs Clinton. I voted in the election before it but it wasn't something that consumed more than a few day's thoughts. I guess you could say I was mostly apathetic about US Politics, thinking there was little anyone could do to influence the people in power that were power-hungry sociopaths lying and swindling their way into gaining more power. Then Trump came along in 2015 and when the GOP candidates used every trick in their Republican handbook to take him down, he didn't play by their rules. He said what every person was screaming at their tv. Jeb was weak, Cruz was a liar, and the real billionaires were all crooks. It felt good to hear politicians be put in their places on live television in front of millions. They laughed at him as he moved past them in every debate. Then Hillary stole the primary from Bernie because it was "her turn", which again fueled the flames. Hillary was one of the most hated politicians in recent history, and for Trump to nail his "yeah, cause you'd be in jail" line, it again felt good. Leading up to the election, every poll showed Trump losing by a landslide. Some projected he had a less than 10% chance of winning. When I sat in the voting booth, I didn't give it a second thought. I immediately marked by vote for Trump as a F*$K You to the system. "These are the two options you give us to lead one of the most successful empires the world has ever seen?" I thought. Later that night, I tuned in as the results starting coming in expecting Hillary to win by a decent lead. Before I knew it, Trump started closing in on battleground states, making it almost a close race. My friends and co-workers started texting me, asking if I was seeing this. "Can you imagine if Donald Trump actually won?" And then it happened. Donald Trump was declared the 45th President of the United States. I was in shock. A failed casino and real estate mogul turned reality show host, actually convinced enough people to stick it to the man, and throw away your vote on him. He will now be the most powerful person in the world. It was both an extremely unnerving feeling, but it also felt like the underdog did it. Hillary dedicated her whole life to swindling her way to the Super Bowl, and fell on the one yard line with no time left. A few weeks later, Trump's cabinet members were being appointed and the mainstream news starting blasting him for his selections. He was supposed to drain the swamp, and instead of filling it with the people that worked their whole lives to even be considered for that position, he filled them with people within his network. People that would be loyal to him no matter what. This should have been the first sign to me that he was headed down a very dangerous path. A path that our forefathers tried to warn us about. But I didn't see it that way. Again, I thought "well, I guess it's better than the people Hillary would have chosen." As the years went by, I started ignoring all the negative things Trump said and did and following news sources that aligned with my views. "Yeah, he's not the best President we've ever had but the MSM is out to get him. Obama built the cages that Trump was accused of putting immigrant kids into. Trump's economy is the strongest we've ever seen. The stock market is up and black unemployment is at the lowest we've ever seen. Trump is making peace deals left and right, and no one will cover it." Inch by inch, I started taking shelter in my echo chamber. To the point where I started to believe that there is a deep state that is trying to take him down because he's not going along with the elitist plans. No one could tell him what to do, he has always played by his own rules. Therefore the majority of politicians were trying to take him down with the help of social media censorship left wing narratives. This last November, I stepped into the voting booth one more time with my mask covering my face, making sure I was at least 6 feet from everyone else, making sure not to touch anything around me. I once again, marked my vote for Donald Trump to fight against a system that Biden would proactively try to reverse. The election results started flooding in and it looked like he was on his way to win his second term. Then the voting paused for the night and I woke up to Trump slowly losing every battleground state he had a strong lead in when I went to sleep. These last few weeks were some of my darkest days diving into conspiracy theories. "Dominion machines were being altered by outside influences, Republican poll watchers were not allowed to observe, secret tubs of ballots were being trucked in, dead people were all voting for Biden and not one court would listen to the thousands of affidavits saying they saw illegal activity." Every day members of my friends and family would send me texts and dm's with more "proof" that the dem's stole the election and I just bought it. At first I questioned it, but my echo chamber sent me an overwhelming amount of articles and posts from patriotic websites and social media accounts that I have never heard of before, and I just chose to believe it. They kept telling me that it was going to get to the supreme court and his justices would side with him, or Congress was going to deny the electors, or Pence was going to decide for Congress. Every day it seemed like he had another out to catch them in their lies. January 6th came and I couldn't wait to see if Congress would deny the states needed to certify this election. The members of the House and Senate went into their chambers to plead their case for the integrity of Arizona. I looked at my phone and saw a notification "Protestors have just broke through the barriers of the Capitol and are now inside the building." It seemed dangerous, but maybe it was enough to show members of Congress that they had a very important decision to make in order to uphold the integrity of our election. I turned on a live feed of protestors inside and outside the capitol to see what they were up to. I couldn't believe it, protestors actually made it into the chambers and were sitting in Pelosi's desk. It felt like a movie. The next thing I see on the live feed is a guy with blood on his hands and the lady filming asked him what happened and he seemed to be in shock. He said that a lady right next to him was shot in the neck and she looked to be in bad condition. It was at that point I realized that this wasn't a group of pro-Trump protestors but actual domestic terrorists. They sieged the building that represents the backbone of our democracy. These weren't patriots fighting red coats. They were vikings, pot-bellied hillbillies and toothless savages. There was even a guy that was wearing a sweatshirt that said "Camp Auschwitz". I mean, where did you even buy Aushwitz merch from?? It suddenly dawned on me that these weren't freedom fighters, these were uneducated idiots that actually believed that COVID doesn't exist, and that the Supreme Court Justices all have black mail video evidence being held against them. Then I got really scared. If these lunatics actually belief the most outrageous conspiracy theories, they might actually believe they are fighting to save this country. Which means that they could have weapons and explosives to take down everyone with them. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was later reported that the woman shot in the neck had passed. I kept thinking about her and feeling bad. I assumed she was caught in the line of fire while trying to protest the electors. I woke up the next day and there was enough time for the internet detectives to find everything out about her. She uploaded videos where she was outraged at the deep state for taking over our country and that she was fighting for QANON. Then I saw another angle of the video where she was shot. She wasn't caught in the line of fire, she was actively trying to break into the chamber after officers had warned multiple times that they would shoot. I'm ashamed to say that it took me way too long to realize that I had been bamboozled. I was siding with the lowest of lows and through the manipulation of social media and alt-right news networks, I fell for it all. If you would have asked me on January 5th, would you be in favor of Pence or Congress doing anything they can to keep Trump in power, I would have said Yes. On January 7th, it felt like a veil had been lifted. I no longer supported Trump or any of his counterparts. I used to be completely against the censoring of any social media in order to protect freedom of speech. Now, I fully favor Facebook and Instagram banning Trump and I hope Twitter follows suit. Donald Trump literally summoned his supporters to DC, riled them all up with lies and demanded they take back the Capitol. And of course they did it, because the most powerful man in the world told them to. He brought reason to their low lives and they would have done anything for him. Later that night a family member was sending me posts that "proved" the rioters were antifa, disguised as Trump Supporters. It didn't take me more than 2 minutes to research that that was a lie. I was done. I no longer have the time or desire to research every piece of "proof" that someone sends, trying to convince me that we live in a deep state world. If these elites were actually stronger and wiser than all of us, how did a shirtless Viking break into one of the most guarded buildings, in one of the most heavily policed districts, and casually take selfies in the seat of the 3rd most powerful person in the United States government I would fully favor impeaching Trump tonight, and banning him from all communication outlets if I didn't think the crazies would attempt another attack. Now, I wish that he just fades away and is never seen of again. The damage is done, we cannot go back. I don't expect anyone to read all of this, I just thought it would be therapeutic to write down my experience. If you did somehow read all of this, I'd like to offer an apology, although Im sure most would think it's too late for apologies. I never sent donations or purchased merch, or attended any rallies but I also never questioned any of the conspiracies that my friends and family sent (and ones that I would send to them). I can't take back my votes for the worst President in my lifetime, but I can assure you that at least one member of MAGA has left the party and will from this point on proactively try to unite this nation however possible that may be.
Canada is now a strange country, and most Canadians seem to be socialists. As in all socialist regimes, Canadians love collective repression and are generally against any form of individual freedom. They believe that for quality service government must spend their money, so it costs 10 times the regular price… when at the end of the day the service they receive is always of very poor quality. And even though the most of their schools and hospitals are poorly managed, they believe they are very lucky that their government is providing this service for them while they are just getting robbed. Mass media justice Canadians are against justice; they prefer to keep all legal procedures secret so that their system looks good even when it is wrong. Instead of listening to both sides and forming an opinion in a dispute, Canadians prefer to rely on the story the medias tell them, which often has as their sole source official press releases from the justice system or the police. Canadian medias are funded by the government and only exist in metropolitan areas. The events that occur in the suburban areas are non-existent in media coverage. They do not do any investigative work since a journalist’s duty is limited to writing 750-word texts on a subject given by the publisher. The topics of the day are oriented by the government which dictates the news with its new policies, while the media only serve to relay its message. Most of the time, journalists who share the socialist ideology becomes columnists and their main mission is to influence people to perceive things in the way the government have perceived them. The medias deliberately put forward liberal columnists to push their good relationship with the government. The end of Canadian capitalism among political corruption Canadians dream of a great social reset to bring down the capitalist system. Canada is in the process of voluntarily destroy its economy by closing every business and location with audiences, including basic needs like getting a haircut or go to a gym. The only shops that do not close are grocery stores, there citizen's control is tightened to the point of having to be told where to walk or not. In more remote areas, small grocery stores are running out of food because they do not have enough money to adequately fill the shelves. As Canadian commercial laws are very strict, stores must throw away their food after a date decided by the government even when it is still good. Several other parameters are controlled like the number of employees required to operate. Canadian taxes are also very high, making it is impossible for a local store to make a profit that is worth it. Local entrepreneurs manage to live off their debts, until the revenue agency eventually finds minor irregularities and initiates proceedings that typically shut down businesses. Canadian revenue officers have an interest in destroying businesses, because the government gives them bonuses based on the number of cases they initialize. The Canadian government monopolizes all criminal sectors of the economy such as alcohol, casinos, lottery and even weed. Because Canada has an anti-monopoly law, the government is breaking its own law to indirectly monopolize other sectors of the economy such as the internet, telephony, communications, factories, real estate, electricity, public transports and so on. In the manner of a communist country, the Canadian government is a shareholder in most companies that offer these essential services. The government is therefore passing several laws that unfairly favor its competition against small Canadian businesses, for example by setting fixed prices, which makes these American companies even richer in a trade of political favors. Canadian politicians have a lot of power and are deeply corrupt. The country is basically ruled by two parties that are exactly alike, except one seems dumber and less dishonest than the other (you choose which one). Most of the Canadians' money is wasted to give all kinds of contracts to these big companies which, in return, use their resources to win elections and support the government in its measures. Obviously, the prize for the worst service and Canadian monopoly goes to health care. Health care is by far the biggest budget in Canada. Ever since we are into pandemic, they are the worst G7 country in the race for vaccination by far last in terms of quality of care. Health Canada voluntarily chooses not to follow the manufacturer's protocols to inflate the statistics on the number of people vaccinated and Canadians think this is a great idea. In their strategy, they also waste the little amount of vaccine they have on the elderly who are going to die soon anyway and on the indigenous communities. Canadian sociology Canadians are deeply racist and politically believe that testing vaccine on indigenous people is in fact a humanitarian act. The first line of this country's charter of rights and freedoms says that religion is a fundamental right, yet the government has no problem sending police into mass arrest for people who practice in churches. If the church is Jewish or Muslim, Canadians (especially Quebecers) applaud the politicians for shutting down communities within their right of religious practice. Like good socialists, Canadians support all the politically correct causes borrowed from the United States, like the radical fight against climate change, movements like Antifa, Black Life Matters, #MeToo, lgbtqia2 + and so on. Canadians believe that they are much more virtuous and smarter than Americans. In their racism against the US, they are convinced that Americans are all fat and poorly educated to the point of not knowing where to pin Canada on a world map. Since Canadians are better than anyone else, they think they should behave in a politically correct and exemplary manner in public. A Canadian could very well go to Tim Hortons and buy a coffee, get spit in his face, and say thank you at the end if that gives $1 to a subsidized foundation that pays themselves big salaries. Canadians believe that society is collective and that everyone should be responsible for participating in the way they see fit. For example, in the health care system nurses are slaves to the government. They are not allowed to take vacations and even if they are sick the police will pick them up from home to force them to work and they might be judged as having endangered the lives of patients for not showing up at work. In all spheres of public employment in Canadian society omerta reigns since most leaders are dishonest and rob Canadians, but these people are protected by political power or unions’ leverage. In private employment, omerta is also present, but rather to protect the employer because if the company works it often means that it has succeeded in somehow abusing public money with the complicity of the government. Young Canadians have absolutely no ambition because there are no prestigious jobs in Canada. Some dream of becoming internationally known artists on the internet, while some others think of suicide as the aspect taken by this repressive regime is ruining their lives. The lives of young people in Canada are already mapped out so that they will go all the way to university to study socialist theories and get a worthless degree that does not give access to any job. For most of them, their life will be mainly reduced at the level of working forever in a business for minimum wage. Even while working, it is not enough to afford an apartment and to eat adequately. The price of real estate in Canada is inflated by the Mafia like other sectors of the economy, and the lack of competition between businesses also means that food is more expensive than it should be. Young Canadian men are ready to hang out with anyone, anyhow, while young women have no idea about sexuality and are very unpleasant as both genders are deeply uneducated. This social factor, combined with the lack of education among Canadians, means that most couples in Canada live together for financial reasons. Even the conception of a child for the poorest becomes a monetary consideration since the government grants tax advantages based on the amount of children you have got. Even for the poorest, the Canadian tax rate is close to 50% of the annual salary. Often living in debt, the average Canadian has no leisure. Simple activities like fishing or riding a motorcycle require expensive permits and are highly regulated. Taking advantage of the Canadian winter to ski or snowboard is seen as something very luxurious. Even a night at the movies is off budget, but that was back in the days when leisure was legal. In its mission to destroy capitalism, Canada has banned all forms of leisure except those that are well regarded by intellectuals. It is illegal to play hockey, but it is legal to visit a museum or library. Still in the same vein, Canadian police have suddenly become very aggressive and have the power to instantly issue fines of $5000 for no good reason at all. For instance, it is normal in Canada to see a police officer guarding a stairway and fining someone who climbs it too quickly by claiming it was jogging since sport is illegal. It is also normal to walk on the street and suddenly a police car starts following you just to intimidate. If you react badly you will have big problems. In addition to having your life ruined financially, you will lose your job and the people around you will be socially encouraged to judge you negatively. Canada's “ new normal ” To further divide Canadians, the Socialists rely on very cruel coercion reminiscent of humanity's worst war crimes. They sequester elderly people in long-term care facilities by depriving them of food while preventing their families from visiting them as the survival rate on average is of 2 years within these facilities. They also forbid humans to socialize, currently government decrees do not allow you to meet with people not living your house. If you choose to invite a friend over, your neighbors are encouraged by the government to call the police and you will then be arrested. The few Canadians who are fortunate enough to be professionals and to have a real job have an alleged duty of reserve which compels them not to express opinions that are contrary to those of the government. Canadian professionals are often governed themselves by paragovernmental instances that have the power to prevent someone from practicing their job if they see a lack of loyalty to the regime. According to polls, Canadians strongly support the way their government currently runs the country. The pressure on the government is ever greater to continue to abolish even more fundamental freedoms. For over a year now, the Government of Canada has stopped manufacturing and renewing passports. Recently, Canada also added several additional barriers to prevent those with still valid passports from fleeing the country. Currently, Canada is in the process of constructing detention facilities or “quarantine facilities” to sequester those who will return to the country because their visas have expired. It is claimed that the detention in quarantine is voluntary, but refusal results in criminal imprisonment and a penalty of $750,000. The facilities are provided with airtight cells supervised by armed guards and the quarantine is for 15 days… if the results are negative. Even people who have tested negative upon return or been vaccinated will face this jail sentence upon their return to Canada. Under Canadian law, internet service providers are responsible for reporting criminal behavior to the police. Since the new legislation, Canada considers criminal to post information on the internet that would be deemed fake or provoking hatred. It has therefore become normal and common for people expressing opinions against the government on the internet to be arrested, tried, and then jailed for making comments on social media. When this happens, the state medias are conducting the People's Court, and your reputation is ruined forever. If what you put on the internet is too sweet to be accused of anything, political employees will notice you and find a roundabout way to make you lose your right to speak. For instance, they will call directly Facebook or Twitter to suspend your account and they will also complain to your bank. Your assets will thus be easily suspended under the simple vague pretext that you have violated the terms of use. For that reason I now use a VPN and I no longer feel safe at home.
My 1 Year Anniversary of Full Time Day Trading. 3 Years In The Business. What I Wish I Could Tell Myself Years Ago.
This industry has a lack of transparency so I'm more than happy to say I will provide lots of that throughout this post with screenshots. There are LOTS of imgur links to back what I say so it's not just words on a post expecting you to just believe what I'm typing. This post I suppose is "Part 2" my post back in April, "After 2 years of Daytrading. 7 months full time. Here's my advice". I'm doing this to update everyone who came/comes across this in the future. Yes, it is possible. No, it won't be easy. You will pay homage to the rite of passage into this career. I'll also provide some examples of styles of trading so for the newer aspiring traders, there will be some things I rarely see discussed on forums. So here's to 1 year of Full Time Day Trading TL;DR - You'll become desensitized to trading. Stubborn to other strategies (There are biggebaddemore lucrative strategies. Don't chase them. Why fix what's not broken? I know what works for me and I'm content with it. No strategy is better than another. It's a personal choice. ). Losing individual trades won't faze you, they're inevitable. Profiting certainly feels better. After a while, you won't be as enthralled to trade every morning, it'll become just another part of your day). Trading is just managing your money through a statistic and the medium to execute it is trading on your platform. Think: "If. Then. Because". Your trading plan should be that black and white. Ask "Why" for everything you do and use. If you can't answer it with documented results, drop it. I get a bunch of messages all the time from people asking - . Out of those who follow me and chat me seeking further tips through my previous posts. I'll be answering the FAQ's and addressing things I see frequently in this sub as far as trading axioms Disclaimer: I won't sugarcoat anything. I'll share my experiences and add pieces of advice I'd give to those who are currently experiencing the same thing becoming a full time day trader and what day to day life is like, the occasional distress, (DRAWDOWNS). Some of you follow my Twitter for the past few months where I post my daily watchlists with a snippet that reveals my DayTradingBuyingPower. I do this not to brag but to demonstrate that the account does yield growth, I pay myself, and there are days where the balance does not move because there was no edge. I also do this since nobody else shows their account performance. (Yes. You, Mr. YouTube gurus and wannabe gurus). We do this for income, the numbers on our accounts are real. Treat it as such. Get your initial capital out of your account THEN try to "Scale your account" with your profits AKA The Market's Money. I'll go over: •FAQ's that I get in my inbox (I'm still welcome to further questions if I don't answer here) •Decision Fatigue (You will experience this) •The previous year (2019-2020) of ups and downs •How to use my watchlists that I post on Twitter in the morning to your advantage •The pivotal moment that changed my trading career (NFLX 10-17-19) •The road to becoming a full time trader. (It won't be fun unless you're handed the money) •You'll have a better grasp of my strategy (Between ProTip 4 and 5. ProTip 8.) There are 10 "ProTips" throughout the post that I wish I could tell myself years back and I'll periodically throw them in here as the post goes on. I make posts long in order to segregate those serious about this business and those who will just become another statistic in the failure rate of this business. At the end of this post, I'll go over the frequent questions I receive such as: (Answers to FAQ at bottom of post.)
"How do you prepare for a trading day?"
"What would you go back to tell yourself?"
"Books?" (The most abused question, but I get it. I could start a public library with just trading books I bought over the years)
"What is your background?"
"What is a normal day for you?"
"How did you discover your strategy?"
"What did you do/How did you get started?"
"What is your % return?" (Not a fun question since a trading account is not an index or investment account. Intraday traders do not measure performance in %. Most are measured in "R".)
"Is enough to start trading?"
"Why do you need so many monitors"? (This one is rarely asked but I do see it discussed on platforms and people trading on mobile phones love giving flack to anybody who trades on multiple monitors. Hint: Everyone's different. Whatever works for the individual. There are no rules in trading. The only rule is that it works.)
My story:
Background: I heard about daytrading during the 2008 crash while in high school. We all want to make more while working less. I entertained day trading from time to time but always realized I never had enough money. Horrible mindset because I could have still researched WHILE saving money to put into my trading business. 2015 -I opened my first trading account with Scottrade while in the Marines. Apparently if you have a net worth of over $1,000,000 you can get out early (Biggest rumor ever). I frivolously bought crap penny stocks. In short - I was a hair away from gambling. What made it NOT gambling was the fact that at least I owned something tangible (Securities of a company) and anything can happen. Buy low sell high was my strategy. Didn't work obviously. No idea what I was doing. I'd buy and hold hoping to wake up to the stock price being way higher and it never happened. •ProTip #1 : If you hold a trade overnight... It is not daytrading. Stop turning into an investor because you can't admit a minor defeat. 2017 - I started taking this business seriously while working in the oilfield as a Logistics Planner (If you're wondering what company since I am asked this from time to time, Google: "World's largest oilfield services company"). No kids, girlfriend/wife or financial obligations. I worked 10AM - 7PM CST and would trade the open from home for roughly 1 hour. Later I was offered to be a Data Analyst... Only downside was... I couldn't trade since I had to be at work now at 8AM CST during the market open. In the moment of signing the offer letter, I was bummed thinking, "No more trading," That wasn't the case though. You can still build your trading business with a 9-5 and while never making one trade. The data is there. •ProTip #2 :We all see the same data. It's there forever. Many strategies show their edge both live and in hindsight the same. (Especially if you trade patterns). You CAN build your business as a trader without even taking a trade. You CAN build your strategy while working a 9-5. Just because you're not trading, does not mean you can't build your business through research. You won't know how you'll react to the losses but at least you can diagnose the raw data with a large enough sample size for assurance and confidence. If you have a 9-5 and want to go fulltime into this business. Stay for a bit, save, live so far beneath your means that it is almost miserable, (depending on your expenses, area you live, family etc) and get a few hundred sample sizes of your strategy! And for your PTO/days off... trade the open. I sacrificed my vacation days to trade. After 2 years in corporate America, eating cheap food, never going out, saving relentlessly, I made the decision to just do it and resigned. I went straight into the ring of fire known as trading. That was on: September 23rd, 2019 ""(Sound familiar?) When you hear these types of comments.. your response should be: "Nobody put the time I put into this. The 90%+ who fail, don't have it all written out, computerized backtests, manual backtests, statistics, SOP manuals, JUST like the job I have which is a business, I'm just another cog in their wheel. I'll just be wearing all the hats in my trading business. Instead of Oil&Gas, it's just for trading". One thing I see here a lot is people saying to trade X amount of months/years or make X. •ProTip #3 -Think in man hours, not calendar. Example: Trader A puts in 1 hour of study/work/research everyday for 1 year. (365 Hours) Trader B puts in 12 hours of work every day for 4 months. (~1,450 Hours) Trader A lives in a major city while Trader B lives in the middle of nowhere. (Think cost of living) 2 totally different living expenses and 2 different calibers of dedication. I'd put my money on Trader B because he put in more man hours. (~1,000 more hours on the clock to be more exact). ProTip #4 - Have a cushion in your account AND your personal bank account. Having a strategy is great but you won't know entirely if you can fulfill and execute your plan until you experience the ups and downs both short and long term. A strategy is constant over long periods of time... there will be days, weeks, and perhaps a month here and there where you aren't making much money. We hear all the time, "Trade like a casino". Casinos don't make money day after day but the odds are in there favor over the long haul. Month 1 of full time trading was great: Immediately after going full time, the first month (September 2019 to October 2019), I did super well. Business as usual. No stress. Everything going as planned. No turbulence. At least not like I had ever experienced... The 2 prerequisites I had before resigning was:
Show consistency in returns. Consistent Sharpe Ratio.
Make a 4 figure trade (I achieved this while short 100 shares on ROKU September 20th, 2019 and even made a victory post if you scroll down my profile's posts.)
First life-changing trading lesson learned as a full time trader: That money printing spree ended on NFLX October 17th, 2019. Less than 1 month of being a full time trader. Deviating and going against my plan I actually made $500 in a matter of 4 minutes. If you follow my watchlists on Twitter, I always trade with the direction of the gap. If I notate, "Long Watches" that means I will only trade it IF (and only IF) I see a long biased pattern. Likewise I will only be looking to short my "Short Watches". Plenty of times I'll call out a ticker and it immediately goes the other way. No harm no foul because there was no long biased pattern to confirm my thesis. On 10-17-2019, I went against my plan and it worked.. NFLX gapped up to resistance and I went short when it tanked off of a short pattern.(This is known as fading). The market gave me a free lunch and then some. So now I'm walking on air in my mind: "I'm an absolute unit" "I'll do it again and clear another $500 to make it a 4 figure day before 9:30AM Central" "Should have quit my job way earlier being this good." Within 30 minutes of the open. I gave all $500 back. Yes I wanted to trade it back. Never have I had the desire to smash anything but I do understand those who do! Yes I stood there and felt like each passing second was wasted opportunity. The next 24 hours were long! ProTip #5:It's circumstances like that that help you in the long run. FunFact: I never once deviated from my plan since. Not ever again. "I could have paid for my groceries and electric for the month after 4 minutes of trading if I just took the free pass the market gave me" I felt dumb but in hindsight, I'm glad at what happened. It was this exact instance that married me to my strategy/business plan. The next day and the 7 trading days following. I didn't make 1 profiting trade. My longest ever drawdown - 11 straight trades. While researching I found out this was Decision Fatigue (I'll go over this shortly below) Put yourself in that situation... You have bills and your income is strictly trading. I don't care how much a robot you think you are or how strongly you believe in probabilities, when you were in an office less than a month ago making almost 6 figures sitting in an air conditioned office knowing direct deposit is on its way every other Friday no matter how well or poorly you performed at work.. Now you're in the hot seat. Its a bottomless feeling. Now all of your friends and families words are ringing in your head. But just like a boxing match.. you gotta take a hit to get a hit. Win some, lose some, shake hands and get back to normal life. Water under the bridge. Mind you: •No guaranteed direct deposit every 2 weeks. •No more medical/dental insurance. •401K retirement is no longer being matched. 11 trades is nothing. You only require ~5.5 trades at 2:1RRR to make it back OR 3.5 trades at 3:1RRR. It's nothing especially in your research because you can easily just scroll a little more and see, "Oh that's just a drawdown. No big deal". How will you react in real time? Will you buckle or choke? But the thing is, I was skipping trades out of fear and JUST so happened to be picking all of the unsuccessful ones. (Decision Fatigue) Think about those 2 weeks of being in a drawdown. Half of the month. You're not just stagnant, your account is bleeding slowly but surely. Next time you're looking at your spreadsheet/backtest/predictive model/research.. try to put yourself in those days of drawdown. It's not just 11 boxes of red with "-1R" or "Loss" in them. The screenshot above on Imgur is just a recent example. Think about your daily routine, going to the gym, hanging with friends, grocery shopping, cooking, going to bed, waking up, doing a routine, then losing again.. and again.. and again. Try to think of life during those 300+ hours (Weekends too) of, "I haven't made money. I've lost money. And I still have bills. After paying them, I'll be closer to my set Risk of Ruin". Here's a lesson you won't learn before going fulltime but I'll do my best to emphasize it here: Pick a strategy. And stick with it. It can literally be anything. Don't spread yourself thin watching 20+ tickers and be a jack of all patterns/tickers. Be a master of 1 pattern and master of 1 circumstance. There's this real thing called "Decision Fatigue" which explains exactly why what happened.. happened. The article explains that the 2 outcomes of this mental strain known as "Decision Fatigue" is:
Risky Decision-Making
Decision Avoidance
Sound familiar? Does it kind of make sense now? As a new trader you have YouTube, Facebook, StockTwits, Twitter, "gurus", books recommended on Amazon, all throwing their ideas/strategies around, the market has opportunities littered all over.. Decision Fatigue is inevitable for the unprepared. Decision Fatigue happens in every profession. If you mess up at your 9-5, its just a blunder, your paycheck will remain the same. Just a slap on the wrist and move on. With trading, you make a mistake.. it's less food on your table, lights don't stay on, and/or water isn't running. That pressure adds up. No wonder so many fail... The signs of Decision Fatigue: •Procrastination. •Impulsivity. •Avoidance. •Indecision. When you find what clicks with you AND its either statistically or performance proven, have the courage to risk a healthy sum of your capital into it. There are strategies/patterns/styles of trading littered all over the internet: Very broad example: "IFcircumstance happensTHEN"Execution". Stoploss is XYZ. Target is XYZ.BECAUSEover a series of Y trades, I will make $X,XXX.xx". ProTip #6 :Strategies are all over the internet. It's your account/money, backtest it. People share their strategies here all the time and although I don't agree with them because I know what works for me, it's something to chew off of for you newer traders. YouTube is a harbor with people who give just enough info to figure their style out.You will lose trades. Sit for some screen-time and pay homage to the edge that you discover. All in due time. Insert key metrics and find correlations. This is how you create checks and balances to create/formulate a black and white trading plan. When I first started doing this, my spreadsheet(s) had so many columns it was annoying and would kill my desire to continue working. You'll find things that are imperative and some that are unimportant. For a lack of more colorful terms: "Throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks"Trim the fat. Rinse and repeat.
Here's some things I used to remind myself of and perhaps it'll ring some bells for you:
•Surrender your capital to your edge. If you truly accept the risk and trust your proven edge, losses don't feel like anything nor do profits. Although we're not here to put on losing trades and yes it does feel nice to profit. I still from time to time will excited when I hit target after a series of multiple profiting trades depending on my mood. •If you're nervous or your heart starts beating quicker when you hear the sound effect of a trade getting entered/filled. Be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you're truly accepting the risk. •Things you can't take to the bank:
RRR.
Win-Rate
Number of trades.
"This one great trade that I hit target in less than 30 seconds and I got filled better than expected"
All of these are integral metrics. But you're trading to make money. It's up or down, green or red, profit or loss, TRUE or FALSE. So with that said, find what works flawlessly and is easy to follow. Checks and Balances. Then allocate a good sum of risk into it. I read it here all the time, "Don't risk too much" and that's great and true for new traders. But don't sell yourself short. Push yourself over the edge and admit that you know your stuff. Think of Trader A and Trader B. If you've put the time in.. don't sell yourself short. You've built enough courage to learn a business so many fail at. This business has such a negative connotation. But remember that not everybody can handle meritocracies and that's exactly what the market is. Don't try to be the best, just work harder than everyone else and the output of your input will be relative. ProTip #7:YouTube trading ads from gurus... they're subconsciously making you think you're a novice trader.It's in their marketing. They study marketing psychology. The EASIEST things to sell:
Health
Wealth
Happiness
People that are desperate for those things are the most vulnerable and these "Traders" marketers are fantastic at portraying all 3 of those things at once. •ProTip #8 (Broken record alert) :Write a business plan. Your strategy shouldn't take longer than 4 sentences to explain to another trader. When you have a plan that's proven through a statistic and WAIT for it to happen, you feel100Xbetter taking the trade. You don't even care too much when it results in a loss. Because that was your plan, you accept it much better, and you know it was just an expense for a winning trade. Want my strategy? "I scan for stocks with a market cap of over 250M, 10k shares premarket, gapping to support or resistance, priced over $10, and I look for a pattern biased to the direction of the overnight gap. It isn't rocket science. Check my Twitter, look at the dates I posted, and you'll notice the gist. Yes this is an edge but not the entire edge. How fast can you sift through 15 time frames? How long does it take you to fill out your order ticket? Your Fibonacci time extensions with 5 EMA's and Bollinger Bands aren't helping you. They're lagging. If they work for you, great. In my experience, they hindered my visibility. Pro Tip #9: Yes statistics are highly applicable to trading. Patternsdowork. All patterns do is tell you WHEN to enteexit, and how many shares. Humans will never think differently of money. Be the frontrunner of the market's emotions. Nobody remembers the indecisive leader. Risk taking is a commonality amongst leaders. Trading requires courage and it's O.K. to show a bit of confidence as long as you also have the humility to admit when you're in a bad trade.(Notice how I didn't put, "wrong". You're only "wrong" when you deviate from a proven strategy.) ProTip #10:Risk management is 24/7. I've never heard anyone mention this but think about it a little bit. Having financial obligations can become stressful regardless of how you earn your income but its far more stressful while running a business. Not just any business, but a business where you can go to work on your A-game, do every single last thing right, trade without emotion etc... and still walk away with less money than what you came to work with. Meanwhile somebody who JUST started trading made a 4 figure profit not knowing what the heck the difference betweenETB, HTB, or NTB. Think of it like this, a JV high school baseball player can hit a homerun off of an MLB pitcher once.. but how will he fare at the end of the season? Traders don't predict stock prices, traders predict the outcome over hundreds of trades. People chat me asking what TO do rather than what NOT to do. You don't learn labor intensive jobs or how to fly a plane by what to do.. you learn what NOT to do to stay alive. That's all I have. Once you have a trading plan underway and you're executing it, you don't have much time when your hobbies are cheap but I still do respond to chats/messages. I do get asked from a previous post when I'll build a website and to answer that: I'm learning how to build a site on rainy days. Can't put a definitive date on it. I will say that its coming, if you don't give up on this business in the next year or so, you'll see it. What I plan on putting on there:
RiskReward Calculators
Position size Calculators
EV Calculator
Dictionary with examples
I just don't want some generic WordPress site. I want my website to be stellar and a great resource for aspiring traders. Something I didn't have learning this business. I want it to be something I'd consider a staple in a trader's resources. Perhaps one day it will be referenced on this sub frequently. FAQ:
"How do you prepare for a trading day?" I get behind the computer about 20 minutes before the bell. Reason being: "If you study long. You'll study wrong". If the chart isn't grabbing my attention and gets me excited, then I flick to the next ticker. I don't even know the companies I trade half the time nor do I care about a news report some journalist wrote. Also there is no magic news outlet that lets you know about "Major events that affect stock prices". If there was, I wouldn't be here because we're all subscribed to the same edge nor would I be trading my style.
"What would you go back to tell yourself?" Get more data. Save a little more, your hairline and sleep schedule will thank you. Take only perfect trades and don't feel forced to trade. There will be days you don't touch an order ticket. And days where you are busy and have tunnel vision. Next thing you know its time to shut it down for the day.
"Books?" - I try to humble myself when answering this but off the cuff, they're all mediocre. Andrew Aziz's was ok, definitely get it, it's only a few bucks on Kindle. Just don't expect it to give you strategies BUT it will give you ideas. If you're brand new, it is good as it will teach you the common vernacular of a day trader. Mark Douglas was interesting but his YouTube seminar recordings are much better. No book, Facebook group, YouTube channel is going to be the end all be all perfect strategy. Expect losses. Don't be a one hitter quitter after suffering a few tiny losses/paper cuts. Stick to it. Most books will help you familiarize yourself with the common vocabulary amongst traders and will hint ideas. It's your job to formulate the strategy and template for research.
"What is your background?" I was a logistics planner for a major oilfield services company. Later I then became a data/buyer analyst so yes, data analytics/research was a 2nd language for me entering trading. I did have that upper hand and did shave off months if not years for me.
"What is a normal day for you?" I'm always done trading after 10:30AM Central. I will hold onto a trade until right before the bell if it hasn't hit either target or StopLoss by the time I leave the house but it is absolutely closed in entirety by 2:55PM Central. After I trade, I enjoy the day. No I'm not riding around in my Lambos posting IG/Snapchat (I have neither) stories of my profits with my private jet waiting on a runway trying to sell an $7 eBook or a $100 membership (HINT HINT). I grill/cook, read, workout, ride my motorcycle, attack my other sources of income (small businesses I'm building), hit the driving range, shoot guns, etc. I live in Texas. Life is cheap and fun here.
"How did you discover your strategy?" I bought TradeIdeas premium, went through all of their computerized backtesting patterns, tested them. Then did what I mentioned earlier... Tried to find correlations in metrics. It distilled the trades to a strict criteria and here I am. I post on average 4-5 tickers on my watchlist. 7 max. I do not like spreading my attention thin across multiple tickers. I do not recommend buying TradeIdeas, it does have lots of bugs.
"What did you do/How did you get started?" Was a data analyst, was good at research and applied it to trading. My incentive was, "I could have made more money trading rather than sitting in 2+ hours of roundtrip traffic and 9 hours in an office. The data is there. Everybody sees the same charts all over the world. There are ways to make this possible"
"What is your % return?"(Not a fun question since a trading account is not an index or investment account. Intraday traders do not measure performance in %) I trade to make money AND pay myself, so my equity curve will look like a small loss or small gain after I pay myself. % return? I measure my account's performance in Sharpe Ratio and Risk Units. My Sharpe Ratio is ~1.85. While I yield roughly .8 - 1 R per trading day. Some weeks I make 10R. Some weeks I lose 2R. Yeah one week I might make $2,500. But the next week I might lose $300. The following week my strategy will yield $0 and the last week I might make $1,000. Some weeks suck. Some weeks are great. But overall. Just shy of 1R per trading day. Some days I'm super busy taking trade after trade. Some days I'll shut it down after 5 minutes without even filling out an order ticket. Some days I won't even see the open because there is no edge for me.. Keywords... "For me".
"Is enough to start trading?" Depends on where you live. Are you restricted to PDT? If not then how much are you obligated to expenses? I live in Texas. Things are cheap here. If you live in NYC or The Bay Area your expenses will be astronomical compared to mine. A $30,000 account is totally doable for a single Texan with low monthly expenses. Now if you're in California or New York? I'm sure you'll fall below 25k if you have 1 bad month. Also depends on if you have other sources of income or a full/part time job. I encourage every trader and aspiring trader to have multiple sources of income, don't rely solely on trading. Not just for the sake of mitigating pressure but also for sanity. If you have a family to provide for, I don't know what that's like, you never know when Little Johnny is going to randomly pick up Trombone lessons for a school program/play while little Suzie needs transmission work in her car because a simple solenoid went out. $1,700 later.
"Why do you need so many monitors?"I use 3 for trading. The 4th is for music. The other 2 are useless while trading. That's for trading though. When I made the decision to go full time, I knew I was about to go off the chain with research. And sifting between spreadsheets, a platform to see multiple timeframes for a pattern to backtest. My attention span is short, I'll lose my train of thought before I open the other tab to input data. But the main reason was for research. It's such a time saver and is a headache repellant when doing research while everything is laid out in front of you. Now that I have a system. I'll most likely be treating myself to 2 ultrawides for Christmas.
As always, thank you to everybody who takes time out to message me and letting me know some people read these and show appreciation. I would say, "Good luck" but there is no luck in trading. Just statistics. Remember that! In conclusion: Yes. Full time trading is possible, depending where you live/monthly expenses and obligations. You're more likely to become a profitable trader than a professional athlete. There is a level of uncertainty each day, perhaps each week, doubtful each month, and definitely not each year. If I ever want a raise, I just consult my business plan and financials, then decide if I can handle it mentally. If you have medical issues, get a part time job for the benefits. If you're healthy, just be careful. All the best! -CJT2013
Bonanza Play Now Play Demo More Info ... $ 60,000,020. 00 $ 250,000. 00 $ 500,000. 00. Live Casino Live Casino . Visit Live Casino. Play and chat with live dealers! 164 Playing Now. 164. Playing Now. Happening Now. Learn More . Learn More . Learn More . Personalize Your Play. Play it smart by using our tools and playing within your limit ... The Live! Rewards ® Players Club is recognized by the readers of USA TODAY as one of the nation’s top casino loyalty programs. Live! Rewards ® placed in the Top 5 among all competitors in USA Today’s annual 10Best Readers’ Choice travel award contest.. Additional Live! Rewards ® benefits will be announced before Live! Casino & Hotel Philadelphia opens. Welcome to Casino La Vida! Now that you’ve found the best online casino, the good life is within your reach! With over 600 incredible games available to you and numerous rewarding promotions, you’ll soon be raising your drink in celebration of incredible entertainment. To grab a seat on the rollercoaster of casino fun, simply register an ... Our Live! Casino Clean Commitment . This Enhanced Health and Sanitation Program was designed to enhance safety and minimize risk for our guests and Team Members. It ensures the hygiene and sanitation practices of our Casino, and its amenities, exceeding regulatory requirements and the recommendations of the CDC. Bonanza Play Now Play Demo More Info ... $ 500,000. 00 $ 1,000,000. 00 $ 126,500. 00. Live Casino Live Casino . Visit Live Casino. Play and chat with live dealers! 109 Playing Now. 109. Playing Now. Happening Now. Learn More . Learn More . Learn More . Personalize Your Play. Play it smart by using our tools and playing within your limit ... Players have access to online casino slots and games on the free Slots of Vegas PC app, Mac site, and mobile casino, which has been formatted for incredible gameplay on your tablet, Android mobile or iPhone.Fancy playing French roulette while lounging on a yacht on the Riviera? Be our guest! Wanna play Texas Hold ‘Em on your way to work in Austin? Best Casinoplaysafe Twitter Casino Bonus and Online Casino Reviews of 2019!. We’ve listed the Biggest, Best Casinoplaysafe Twitter Casino Bonuses and Free Spins bonuses 2019 for you to choose from. Get in the online Casinoplaysafe Twitter casino action today and play some of the best video slots in the world. Join us now for the fun, fast, and fair casino experience! At our bitcoin casino, you can use several popular cryptocurrencies to deposit, wager, and withdraw your winnings: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethreum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), TRON (TRX), Ripple (XRP) and Tether (USDT). Live! Hotel and Casino on Packer Avenue in South Philadelphia’s Stadium District. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY) Built for thousands, casino pivots to solo experience. The casino’s vast floor is stocked with more than 2,100 slot machines, 121 table games, and a dedicated poker room. Televisions the size of movie theater screens play live sports. With more than 50 years in the business, we know what you want – entertainment. That’s why you have over a thousand slot games to choose from in our Casino, and we are always adding new slots to the collection. You can also bring the casino experience to your home, as our dealers are ready and waiting for you in our Live Casino.
LIVE - Slots Progressive Challenge 🎰 Sycuan Casino in San ...
🔴 The Jackpots Just Keep On Coming! 🎰 LIVE from the Monarch Slot PlayDownload The Big Jackpot app for more content and our very own Slot Machine game! http... SUBSCRIBE: http://Subscribe.BCSlots.com NEWSLETTER: http://Newsletter.BCSlots.comI promote educational and responsibly fun gambling as I travel the globe ... We’re in Oregon!! Super thanks to our sponsors Seven Feathers Casino! Join a Group Pull: http://bcslots.com/events How Group Pulls Work: http://bcslots.com... JOIN the Rudies at http://Rudies4Life.com Get a FREE Month when you sign up for a yearly membership at http://bcslots.com/shop SUBSCRIBE: http://Subscribe.B... Live . Casino . Las Vegas . Max bet live slot Play. I played Buffalo Gold Wonder 4 Jackpot, 5 Kings Slot Machine, KRONOS Slot, Airplane Slot, Ultimate Fire... Thanks for Watching HUGE WINS! I PLAY EVERY QUICK HIT SLOT MACHINE IN THE CASINO! Winning W/ SDGuy1234! Like the video? Thumbs it up! Love the video? Leave a... Thanks to Rocky Gap Casino for hosting us this trip! Join a Group Pull: http://bcslots.com/events How Group Pulls Work: http://bcslots.com/blog/slotpulls ... YouTube Live - Watch great live streams, such as live gaming, live music, live sports, and live news. SUBSCRIBE: http://Subscribe.BCSlots.com NEWSLETTER: http://Newsletter.BCSlots.com2020 live slot machine play from Sycuan Casino in San Diego, California.I... SUBSCRIBE: http://Subscribe.BCSlots.com NEWSLETTER: http://Newsletter.BCSlots.comI promote educational and responsibly fun gambling as I travel the globe ...