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The Best Casino Stocks Now, Ranked In Order Sure Dividend
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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.
How a short/gamma squeeze on Tilray is causing the ENTIRE cannabis market to moon and how to avoid becoming a bag holder when this all comes crashing down
Obligatory: SIR, THIS IS A CASINO. This isn't financial advice in any way shape or form. TLDR: This run is going to end with the cannabis stocks back down 50-80% or more from the levels they are at. $CRLBF is the real play here for the smart players that want USA exposure to the legislation. We just like the stocks now, not later. Ok, listen up normies. Yeah I'm talking to the newbies specifically because the OGs here already know everything I'm about to share, but your insufferable groupthink and movement mentality shit pissed me off enough to make a post. Don't post DD if you have no clue. Ask someone for help and take your ridicule until someone comes along to help you. I used to post weekly DD on Sunday here a couple of years ago before one of you literally contacted my wife IRL. Not even kidding. So I made a new account. This is my first contribution back and I'm going to try and ensure some of you don't blow your chance at massive gains here by explaining what is actually going on. CNBC and anybody telling you that this is just 'momentum' and 'sentiment' is lying to you. The hedge funds are playing these right along with us. Don't ask me for proof, this isn't Twitter. Reasons why they are playing with us:
When there is money to be made, hedge funds and HFT funds are there before you
The floats are so small on these they can take sizable positions on both sides and stand to have massive gains, all the while handing you guys the bags.
That's all you need to know. So in response to all you posting "real DD" with why these companies are the best and you're going to hold to the moon and never sell: I'm over it -- I can tell instantly how uninformed you are when I read some poorly thought out DD about why CGC or TLRY or APHA is a long term play because they're talking about USA legislation. These are Canadian companies. Get your head back on straight. You're here for the trade and the bet, not for the fundamentals, and if that's it, then fine, ignore the rest of this post and pick an exit, and if not, read on so you don't hold more bags. This place has never been one to care for fundamentals, but let me talk some sense into you so you can post some gain porn and I can tell you to fuck off instead of you guys all yelling "MaNiPuLaTiOn ShOrT LaDdErS" Let's take a look at some of today's gainers: (changed tickers for automod avoidance) $USMJay - Penny stock, worth absolute nothing for a reason $SNDL - Up ridiculous amount, have a billion shares outstanding, just diluted them all the other day $TeeRTeeC - Terra Tech, they grow weed, from all indications, do it poorly $OhGeeEye - lol $HUGE - Probably the only one in the lot worth a YOLO on the chance they get an acquisition like GW Pharma did but they don't have the same product portfolio or prospects GW has. Now, if you're simply playing this to get in and get out, great for you. The people saying (and believing) "$SNDL $10 EOW! HOLD THE LINE" and stuff like this are just absolutely brand new normies and are clueless, do not listen to them. If you yolo'd on cheap calls in Dec/Jan, congrats, take your gains and don't be like the $GME bagholders. If you're investing in any of the names I just posted above, expect any money you put in to at some point in the next 12 months be worth approximately 20% of what it is worth now. Literally. They're far worse than the main bunch (CGC, CRON, ACB, TLRY, APHA) but the main bunch is nothing to write home about either.
THIS IS WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING:
Tilray had 40% short interest. It's not $GME level, but it's pretty high. When the stock crested $40 it really started taking off, why though? Notice this week's FD option chain: https://preview.redd.it/kyqeiwljeug61.png?width=917&format=png&auto=webp&s=0c1b48e12518515f09582289bd7f8a4f47a09629 Tilray has a 95M share float, those 42 calls represent roughly 1.5M shares held as a hedge just by themselves. Previous to this run up, that represents roughly 5% of the average daily volume of the stock, BY ITSELF. Those are shares that until Monday can be considered removed from the float because they're held as a hedge. They may get loaned out to be shorted, but that will only speed up the squeeze here. The important part: Today (2/10/21) the stock fell hard after open down to around 44 and found massive support all the way back to up 66. The most sold front week call? $40/$42 strikes. Premium when I screen shotted this? $22.20. Stocks going to pin above $60 for awhile likely, unless people are stupid enough to buy the OTM calls, in which case, it may squeeze itself higher. Smart hedge funds are going to pile into this, sell you the calls, shove the price up to keep selling you calls, then watch them all evaporate worthless in one of the future weeks in the chain, dump back the shares to help shove the price down, oh and did I mention? They shorted the top. https://preview.redd.it/ivy78woneug61.png?width=392&format=png&auto=webp&s=0604940c09126dc6d5b96a9cc5f17e4013ae5d9d It's just another plain old stock acting as a derivative of the option chain gamma squeeze. That's it, with a bit of short squeeze thrown in there and a WHOLE BUNCH of WSB fomo. The shorts are covering and pushing up the volume, likely re-shorting on the way up, and then you have WSB fomo'ing in to round out the total: a massive volume of 200 million shares today. You've got people that think this thing will skyrocket to 500+ (and it may) but the stakes get higher and higher each ladder up you take and the moves become more violent and more likely it comes all the way back down in short time the quicker it goes up. Might it get there? Sure. But be prepare to take profits when it does because...
ITS CALLED MEAN REVERSION. THIS CANT GO ON FOREVER.
Not to mention, the moves you are seeing are in completely overvalued companies, with horrible fundamentals, and poor prospects. Oh what's that? CGC got some CBD treats for Martha, seems fitting that something ill is going on in this industry considering she went to prison for insider trading. If the dog treats get you excited about the stock, Martha belongs here more than you do. 200M shares today means people who were long term bag holders cashed out and the shares have turned over the float two times in two days. That also means the shorts have turned over and are now short again. It means the HFT firms are feasting on all of you. It means Citadel is making a pile on the spreads. What to take away: An amount of shares equal to the entire float has changed hands, or in other words, fewer reason for people to bag hold. Fewer people that have to hedge. Fewer people that have to cover. Fewer people to help stabilize any of these upper price tiers, and keep the price stable by holding, and more reason it's going to collapse sooner (or later). But, this IS a casino after all...
Let's see what happened with TLRY last time this happened (oh, you're new here? Yeah, this isn't the first time):
https://preview.redd.it/p652mvgreug61.png?width=587&format=png&auto=webp&s=d95f2b0ccf946717859bffb28601dfd29e999e0b Looks eerily familiar to something else recently. Last time this occurred it traded between $100 and $300 in a single week timeframe. For those of you that are new: THIS IS NOT NORMAL. STOCKS DO NOT ALWAYS DO THIS. You are in the infancy of a new age of trading, but people still know, fundamentals matter a whole lot more than everyone is leading on, and these valuations are getting extremely overextended. Eventually, in the first squeeze Tilray bled off until the pandemic hit and it piled down to $2.43 a share. At $2.43/share, I would have bought it. Even at $10/12/14. At these levels? You're just ultimately out of touch but I look forward to the loss porn. So in short, again: Sir, this is a casino. Timeline of events, and how to not become a bagholder:
$APHA earnings are good, stocks pop a bit, and level off
Legislators pull a pump and dump since they probably have calls and say planning on some laws regarding changing the schedule of cannabis (notice: we will likely NOT get outright legalization, just re-scheduling)
$CGC earnings are actually awful, with the caveat they have profitability on the horizon
$TLRY gets a UK deal
$TLRY starts going insane - since $APHA is a reverse merger with a .81 value share to share, it starts pumping, people start buying the lower priced cannabis stuff and entire sector starts moving on "overall strength"
There's no strength, there's a gamma squeeze backed by investor momentum, and a short squeeze on Tilray.
This is going to come back down violently then plateau out like GME and pull a slow bleed the rest of the way back down, just like the second graph I posted. There is no fundamental or even POSSIBILITY of better fundamentals immediately on US legislation. The cost to enter the US market will most definitely cause capex and goodwill capital outflows, and set back their profitability since there are established MSO's in the USA already. The USA opening the market to these companies will only further degrade the actual balance sheets/income statements and slow down profits and you know what institutions and shareholders like? Yep. Profits.
Finally, how to not become a bag holder: The market can stay irrational way, way, way longer than you expect. So this may go on for a bit, but refer back to 7. It's coming back down eventually, set expectations and pick your exit, or start to shave off your position as it goes up and let a portion of it run. Eventually, you have to sell to actually realize a gain, don't forget that. Once you do, close the chart, remove it from your watchlist, check back in on it in a month if you want to get back in when you have a clear head.
The Canadian operators are literally the last companies I'd play off a US legislation play, and one of the only ones worth owning in $APHA for the arbitrage play on the shares. But if Tilray comes crashing back down, $APHA will as well along with all of them, and you have to hope you lose a lot less on $APHA crashing than you'll make on the arbitrage between the share price. THIS IS ALL JUST "SENTIMENT" BASED YOLOING BY THIS SUB. It has probably driven uneducated retail into the trades also - who will also become bag holders. Let me put this in big letters for those of you that can only read big font and use crayons:
NONE OF THESE COMPANIES HAVE REAL USA MARKET EXPOSURE, THEY ARE CANADIAN COMPANIES. THEY DO NOT HAVE MARKET POSITIONING AND ARE NOT POISED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF US LEGALIZATION.
IF ANYTHING: IT WILL HURT THEIR BOTTOM LINE AND SET BACK EARNINGS BECAUSE OF CAPEX AND CASH OUTFLOWS TO GET A POSITION IN THE MARKET AND SOME OF THEM WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS BECAUSE OF IT, WHILE OTHERS WILL FALL OUT OF PROFITIABILITY TO ENTER THE MARKET AND COMPETE WITH THE REAL PLAYERS. Who are the real players? (Cresco $CRLBF and Curaleaf $CURLF- do your own DD or wait for a post next week\***************)* Conclusion: Nobody should plan on holding these long term. Don't let someone else hand you bags like I did this morning at open on the pop unless you plan to hand your bags off and find the next play. You likely will not time the top. Pick a place you're ready to exit the trade, exit the trade or slowly shave your position, close the graphs and don't fomo back in. Just be done with the trade afterwards. You're likely not a cannabis multi millionaire and will not be one, unless you were loaded to the brim with low cost calls from last summefall or unless you literally yolo'd $10M into one of these a few weeks ago, and in that case, you belong here, congrats on your gains and fuck you. THIS IS A SECTOFOMO SQUEEZE. AND IT WILL END. THIS IS NOT SENTIMENT AND CNBC IS TROLLING US WITH IT LIKE WE HAVE THE POWER. And if you think WE are the ones driving the price up, the hedge funds are definitely watching and playing and they can bring these down at will at almost any time they want. You're holding a lit molotov, the only question is: will you throw it before it blows up? The rest of you? Plz fuck off with you 20 shares @ $2 on Sundial, fuck off with the "HOLD THE LINE SNDL $10 EOW", fuck off with your fomo, and fuck off with the "movement" and "lets push this to the sky" stuff and most importantly don't post DD if you have zero clue what is going on. You know what "lets push this to the sky" sounds like? Market manipulation. We're not in this together, I literally handed one of you a bag to hold this morning and even if they go up for another month, eventually, that bags gonna be heavy and I ain't coming back for it. I ain't tipping you either. These prices are insanely high for these companies. The multiples are out of control, and if you buy in at these levels, well, best of luck, I hope it works out for you. I'm fighting the fomo of extended gains, and will continue to put my money elsewhere.
SIR, THIS IS A CASINO.
Positions: I had the meme stocks like you literally all of them minus ACB and CGC. I took gains and bought 500 shares of Cresco prob increasing to 1,000 tomorrow, and kept the rest off the table to pay my wife's boyfriend's rent. Disclaimer: I have Tilray puts I'm prepared to average down on and diamond hand like a real boss because this is coming back down. Edit: You know what I forgot to add? Some of the biggest holders, the cannabis ETFs and funds, you know what they did today? They trimmed their positions. And they will continue to do so because of fiduciary responsibility and when you de-concentrate shares into the retail's hands, the moves will get more and more finnicky and more and more violent. Edit 2: Some normie tried calling me out like I never saw this trade coming or am a hedge shill, https://imgur.com/a/asAVkiC - I had thousands of shares, these are just the trades from this month, and I'm not advocating a buy, I sold mostly all of them this morning except for adding Cresco back in. You want the gain numbers? You do the math, I'm not your math tutor, I sold like 6 minutes after open for most of them. I have Tilray puts for next week and will be buying a few months out at various strikes as it continues to climb. Yeah, I think these are coming back down in price sooner rather than later, that isn't extraordinary information for a common sense person. Edit 3: I'm getting piles of messages from people who used to follow my DD back in 2018/2019. Yes, it's the real SoRefreshing, proof:https://imgur.com/a/Pn5LqCe Edit 4: Eh don't request me with "What should I do with XX" be a big adult grown up and decide your own risk tolerance and exits. I responded to the first 10 or so. Now I have 100. I can't. I disabled chat messages. Edit 5: jesus with the awards go buy TSLA calls this is WSB not fb/twtr disclaimer: have TSLA calls Edit 6: Oh look, they're pinning it around the $42 strike. Go figure.
Explanation for noobs who don't quite understand what's going on...
Mods: does DD tag apply? If not change it. I wrote this in response to someone elsewhere who asked simply:
So they're betting against the company? Like, they have no faith in them? Investing like this makes one feel horrible.
Yeah. There are three ways you can short. 1) You buy an option with a predetermined end date with the RIGHT to sell a stock at a certain price (depending on how much you want to pay determines the price.) If a stock is $10 and you expect it to drop to $5 in 6 months, you might buy a $9, 10 month expiry "put" (right to sell at price) option. This might cost you 50c per share. IF you're even slightly right, ie it drops to any price lower than $8.49 before expiry you made 1c per share. You can also change your mind and sell the option (either more (profit) or less (loss) than 50c/share). IF you're properly right, and it does drop to exactly $5 you make $3.5 per share. If it rises, or drops to any number above $8.50, you lose the price of the option (50c/share). 2) You're a big player. You call your buddies at Pension Fund X42 and say "Hey can I borrow those shares you have for x% interest and return them to you later?" A set timeframe may be set. I don't know for sure, but probably. Anyhow, Pension Fund X42 says "ok" because they aren't looking to sell them, so might as well make some interest on lending them. So you borrow them, and immediately sell them. You pay your daily interest to the pension fund, and you wait. When the price drops, and you decide that you've made enough, you buy them back and return them. You keep the difference in prices whatever that may be, minus the interest. If you're wrong... You're still obliged to return the shares to Pension Fund X42. So at some point you have to decide to eat a loss and buy the shares back. 3) You're a big player and you are ok with a bit of lawbreaking, you Naked Short Sell. This is great because it's cheaper! No interest payments! Here, you simply sell shares you don't have, and buy the imaginary shares you just created back later so that the number of shares on issue doesn't get too far out of whack and you don't get investigated. Any gap between your sell price and buy price is profit or loss depending on which way it goes. What's happened right now is mostly a combination of 2 and 3. I'm sure there is a bit of 1, but 1 only causes predictable losses (Like the cost of playing a hand at a casino. You only lose the amount you bet if the cards don't go your way.) So the risk with 2 and 3 is that because you're obliged to buy back the shares at some point, if they go up, when you have to quit, you have to pay the current market price and your actions can make the price go up even more. Now you're in a short squeeze. You are obliged to buy but the price keeps going up every time you do. It's entirely possible that others see the price going up and buy, so you're now competing to buy a limited number of shares with everyone else. So the price goes higher. Your losses are potentially infinite. What's slightly different between this particular short squeeze and all the others is: 1) The dumb fucks naked short sold AT LEAST 40% more shares than ever existed. They're obliged to buy back more shares than is possible. The only way out of that self-made trap is a complicated mess of desperately buying, returning, rebuying from the people you borrowed them from, and returning them with losses at every step. Imagine if I sold you 10 cars, but only delivered 6. You're standing there with your wtf face and I say "Hey! how much would you sell those 4 cars for?" You can name your price at this point. I pay it. Then I "finish" my "10 car delivery." 2) Retail traders are acting as one single semi-coordinated hive, loosely behaving similarly to what would in prior short squeezes, be a competitor hedge fund. They own a lot of the shares the hedge funds (HFs) NEED to buy - but they're not selling. They're actively cheering for the HFs bankruptcy while watching the price of the stock they hold skyrocket. Only other HF billionaires are allowed to do that and get away with it. . 2a) HFs can be negotiated with. If you're really, really getting bent over and fucked, and you grovel enough, you can usually cut a deal where they stop trying to fuck you. If they won't talk to you, they'll often talk to your bank/brokesome other bigger player that can convince them that your bankruptcy will also cause significant losses or bankruptcy of another party they're not trying to fuck and they might like to have as friends one day. "You quit this, and we'll owe you one." It's always good to have favours to call. . 2b) The self proclaimed retards on WSB can't be negotiated with. They don't need favours. They don't care if you go bankrupt or there's collateral damage. They don't give a fuck about any of them. For the most part they only hold a few hundred shares each max - and also for the most part, they're playing with their own money that they can actually afford to lose even if it hurts for a year or two. How do you negotiate with, or swat a million wasps stinging you? You can't. Edit. Thanks for all the awards guys! I'll soon have enough to make a Tiara and become your Яetard Prince for the day! I was actually expecting posts telling my how wrong I am. I only think I know what the fuck is going on most of the time and usually figure out later that it wasn't. I'd like to thank the academy, and my parents who never believed in me, and Scruffy, my first dog, who, like WSB, played chicken with truck, and, and, and... Also. I figure since this is so popular, I might as well nominate my suggestion for the inevitable u/deepfuckingvalue movie. It's fairly likely to be seen as a sequel to the Wolf of Wall St, so.... "The Fox/Foxes of Main Street" ? Yeah, nah? Edit 2 NOTE To all the people trying to PM me for advice: I have no fucking idea what WILL happen next. I just think I cobbled together enough of what HAS happened to explain it somewhat. Ie: I'm more like a journalist. Would you ask a journalist for stock advice? (please don't answer yes...)
Hi, I have been lurking here for a while now. Recently I began reading WSB more, commenting, etc, because it helps numb the pain of my losses and adds some good laughs. My interest in investing in $ROPE has also decreased. I just realized that in my 7 years of "investing", I have never actually realized a profit. If my account had green, I'd always think let's enjoy some gains just for a day or two, and then it would tank as soon as I'd want to cash out a bit. This isn't even a casino at this point, I am simply just making charitable donations which are then gambled by other retards. I have even managed to lose money in real estate in Vancouver, where pretty much everyone and their wifes boyfriend has made money. I came to the realization that this is all a game and it could not possibly be real. The game isn't rigged, its fake! This must be a simulation. As soon as I click buy, the stock tanks, if I invest in a property the market tanks, even when I pick fruits/veggies at the market they expire instantly, when I hop in the shower the water turns freezing cold. Anyone else feel like this??? If 2 retards who are experiencing this did the opposite of eachother, would one of them make money? Or would this possibly end the simulation as both aren't actually allowed to make money? EDIT: Thanking you guys for the advice, I am staying away from the market until I learn more, even it takes years. Enjoy the soon to come record breaking market growth! EDIT: Thank you for the Awards and Karma, I have no idea what it is but hey atleast some numbers went up for once!
A story about the Dot Com bubble, some profit taking, exit strategies and money vs capital
Bot hates me so here is a link In the late 90's we had a similar Tech/Digital stock rally (this is not nearly as bad though, so chill, companies are actually destroying the estimates and profits are strong). Back then it was web page development and internet providers, now it's mainly electric vehicles and some parts of tech. “St0nks” were only going up, up and up. You heard things like - Dude, its a new economy, this is the new normal. This is the future, you can't use old models to define value. Die all boomers and burn traditional stocks (ok I might be exaggerating on this one). Anyway, I was a finance major at a prominent university in London, UK. I was destined for greatness and a trainee spot at Deutsche Bank's analyst desk. My friend - let's call him Eli, because his name was actually Eli - was a stock genius. Everybody is a genious in a bull market, you put some money in to a company in IT and BAM, the new Buffett (or Cathie). Eli was good for about 350kUSD at one point, not bad for a student. Or I should say, 350kUSD nominal value in stocks. Because, its not money until you sell. Eli learned the hard way. The "dip" came. Eli figured "st0nks only go up" - I'm gonna "buy the dip". The dip became a slide, then a vortex and finally evolving in to a capital sucking black hole (not an anus ok). Eli bought and bought, he also had a debt position of about 25% of his portfolio. This increased to 50%. The bank called, Hey Eli - that collateral isn't so hot anymore, pay up dude. Eli paid up. One year later he had -13kUSD on his account for accrued interest rates and trading fees. So what's there to learn. Well, depends on how risk averse you are, but I see a lot of new investors that ask about when and how to take home profits. There is no rule or best practice, but here's at least an strategy that I'm using myself.
I don't let a stock grow beyond 20% of my portolio, if it does I automatically start scaling back profits and weight to other, new opportunities.
Compound that interest, bitch.
I always keep a 10-15% cash position so I can take advantage on dips or other opportunities. This capital has had a ridiculous payback over the years. This is not money, this is capital. I have a savings account with 3 months salary. That’s money.
For every 20% growth I take home for example 20% of the profit. So in G-ME for example I started buying early and by $90 I only had profits invested. By 300 I had sold about 2/3 and on the way down I dropped the last stocks at 115.
So let’s say a stock grows from 100 to 120. I take back 4. Then it goes to 140, I take back another 8 so now I have taken 12 total. Obviously there is some flexibility here, but use it for inspiration. For more secure stocks you may wanna hold on more and longer, but for me it’s a lot about maintaining that cash position. So what do I do with my profits? Well, I do a few things.
I reinvest them in to other stocks, so I make sure I have a short list of alternatives at all times. For example, my G-ME winnings (yes it was a casino) paid for 300 PayPal stocks at $231. They’re now up 15%.
Compound that interest, bitch.
I put them in the cash position so I can be opportunistic (but still max 15%). Life saver in March, pure rocket fuel baby.
I buy my wife or kids presents, I get a nice Rolex or refurbish the house. I turn it in to money. I have money so I can spend it, use it.
Moral of the story or TLDR; Make money, you probably won't see another opportunity like the one of the past 6-10 months. Its not coming back for a while. Don't step out of the market, pick your stocks wisely, keep some cash to pounce on some disappointing earning calls or dips and remember: IT IS NOT MONEY UNTIL YOU SELL. Disclaimer 2: I was a licensed financial advisor as in a securities analyst, but do your own research. This is not advice, it’s inspiration. PS Eli went on to be a very successful entrepreneur and has started a few companies. I believe one of them is going to IPO soon DS Edit: clarified advisor part Edit 2: this completely blew up, thanks for all the awards and upvotes but spend the money on stocks instead!
AMC realistic goal for Monday $30. $100 by EOW. Only if you hold and stop freaking out. Upvote if you agree! Spread the word!
Hedge fucks are doing everything they can with disinformation, propaganda, msm lies, fake accounts, and all manner of ass magic to try and scare everyone into selling. Don’t fall for it. Just hold! Realize they are losing billions on this and they will use every trick in the book to try and recover even a fraction of their losses. Do not look at your phone every 5 minutes and freak out. This dip is normal. Apps are crashing, brokerage accounts are limiting, buy orders are being cancelled. Hedge fund minions are flooding Reddit with disinformation/demotivating posts about AMC tanking. This is all what you can expect from the evil snakes on Wall Street. This is them fighting back. Hold steady! Edit: here is some emotional support—“patience is a virtue” “nothing good ever comes easy” “you have to go through the storm to reach the shore” “no risk no reward” “Diamonds beat paper” 🍌🚀🌙💕 Edit Edit: I said $30 was a GOAL not a guarantee. We need to keep everyone motivated without promising the stars right out the gate. Rest assured many non-retards who specialize in bananas agree there is profit to be made if we HOLD. Edit Edit Edit: I know we didn’t reach 30, but we have to have a goal in mind to stay motivated. 30 is achievable! If you have money that you can’t lose then you shouldn’t be at a casino! This is all a risk so please understand that before commenting bs. Edit Edit Edit Edit: fuck people trying to demoralize you. They either don’t have shit invested anywhere and just want to spread their misfortune and misery, or are shills wanting to scare you. Pay adversary no mind! These kind of people ain’t about shit! Remember that
FOR EVERYONE NEW TO INVESTING: A COMPREHENSIVE BREAKDOWN OF TRADING AND MANIPULATION STRATEGIES!
Current Conditions of the Market: Let me be clear: this is not the typical conditions of the market where stocks fluctuate double and triple digit percentages per day. There’s a place for that - the casino. In recent weeks, herds of new traders are pouring into the trading scene hoping to get a piece of the volatile market that has turned the rags to riches, or the other way around. The stock market as a whole, under normal conditions, moves gradually in both directions, guided by trends, innovation, speculation, earnings report, and financial changes. What we are in right now is a hysteria-filled environment that is risky for both veteran traders and novices. Any uninformed, reckless decision can produce different results - by chance. Be wise and do not let chance underlie your success or bankruptcy stories. Please do your research first before investing into anything and whatever you do, do not make the mistake of over-extending yourself with margin (brokerage-provided capital) that you cannot repay should things go south. People have and continue to make this fundamental mistake that will ruin them financially for years. Stock investments should be about long-term growth, stability, and supplemental to your income. Investments should give you access to the opportunity of financial freedom, but should not be your primary source for income. Do not listen to stock gurus and paid-only discord groups - they don’t make money from stocks, they make money from you. Lastly, this atypical market condition is the perfect storm for spontaneous “pump and dumps” where stocks become inflated, and based on fool’s theory or musical chairs (whichever you prefer), the last one that gets out gets burned. Be smart, be patient, do the research. Basic Stock Jargons & Short/Long Positions: Long - you’re buying and holding a stock with the intention for it to increase in value. Short - you’re borrowing shares from a lender (brokerage, investment firm, individual investors), selling it to someone, and hoping to buy it back at a lower price. Your profit is the difference in the sell and buy back price. I’ll provide a real world example because this concept it a bit more complex:
Person A is a share lender. They want to lend the share and get paid a small interest rate as compensation.
Person B asks Person A to lend him that share temporarily. Person B does not pay anything upfront, but he promises to pay Person A in the form of interest over time.
Person B finds a buyer Person C. Person C wants to buy a stock so it can go up. Person C is “long” on this stock. Person B, however, is short on this stock because he wants the value of the stock to go down.
Person C pays Person B $10 for the stock. Now, Person C has spent $10, and Person B has gained $10.
Two hypothetical situation happens now:
Scenario 1: Stock value increases to $15. Person C is now up $5 and he sells because he’s making nice gains. Person B needs to buy back that share at $15, but he only gained $10 profit initially. Now he needs to fork up $5 to buy back the share, and then return the share back to the lender + any interest accrued. In this scenario, the “short” lost money, the “long” gained money, and the “lender” made interest money.
Scenario 2: Stock value decreases to $5. Person C is now down $5 and he sells to cut losses. Person B needs to buy back that share at $5, but he already has $10 in profit initially. Now he pays $5 for the share, leaving him still with $5 profit, and returns the share back to the lender + any interested accrued. In this scenario, the “short” made money, the “long” lost money, and the “lender” made interest money.
The above scenarios help to show why “shorts” (typically hedge funds or experienced traders) might want to manipulate the stock price to go down. Hedge funds have an incredible amount of power in the market, which I will explain in a bit, and can often create serious price movements to invoke price action that benefits themselves. Shorts, therefore, have the opposite intention of longs. They want share prices to go down, and in the process, can bankrupt certain companies that rely on the stock market liquidity to stay afloat. In other words, when investors leave a stock because it is dropping in value, the company loses that money that they could have used to pay off debt, grow the business, develop new products, pay for expenses, etc.
Market Manipulation: Market manipulation is not new to the scene. Investors have long known of the existence of stock market manipulation tactics, and every day, we may observe some levels of manipulation in specific stocks, specific categories or industries of stocks, or the entire market. Market manipulation is defined as any actions performed with the intention of moving a certain stock price in favor of the manipulator. In this case, these are the wealthy “whales” or hedge funds, both of which have enormous capital capable of shifting stock prices at alarming speeds. Keep in mind, not all hedge funds do this and not all hedge funds are “shorts”. Some are “neutral” and act as lenders to make money, some are “growth-based” and invest just like everyday traders with the intention of raising share prices, and others are “short” which are probably perceived to be the sadistic groups of the bunch. Below, I will be discussing how manipulation occurs and on different scales. Manipulation Tactics on a Spectrum: Market manipulation can happen in certain stock, sectors, or the entire market. There are probably far more types of manipulative tactics than we know, but I will describe the most basic types and the strategies behind it. Scenario 1: Let’s say a hedge fund just opened a short position on stock X. Stock X is rising in value because general investors see it as a potential growth stock. Hedge funds are not too excited about this increased share value, so they can “hedge” or protect themselves, by selling put options. When they sell puts, they are anticipating that the stock will continue to surge, which causes the puts to become worthless at expiration, but on the contrary, they will be collecting the “premium” or money paid upfront by traders that bought the put. At the same time, this hedge fund will slowly “cover”, or buy shares of Stock X, so that the increased value of the shares will offset the short position which is losing money. The manipulation here is by using the sheer amount of capital in hand to bolster the stock, both creating favorable conditions for the puts that they sold and the share that they purchased as cover. If they want to add another level of manipulation to this, they can also purchase call options, which will result in profit if the stock price goes up. In this scenario, hedge funds make money at the expense of put option buyers and other shorts that do not have manipulative power or capital to recreate this same strategy. Scenario 2: Let’s say a hedge fund just opened a short position on Stock X. Stock X is rising in value because general investors see it as a potential growth stock. This hedge fund does not want to risk extra capital to cover their short position (by buying shares, selling put options, or buying call options), so they try a different route. Keep in mind that hedge funds are typically heavily invested in many stocks and assets, meaning they have a lot of power in deciding the direction of many stocks that have potential to instill widespread fear across the entire market if it drops. Take for example, if Apple and Google began to hurl downwards, this can create panic in the market where everyday traders might sell their shares at a loss. This in turn might ripple through the market as other investors in other stocks are predicting a downward trajectory across the market since these big name stocks are losing value so rapidly. Conveniently enough, hedge funds own a lot of these big name “FANG” stocks. If I am a moderately sadistic hedge fund, I can sell off a large holding of shares (in the scale of multi millions or billions) that are in the same sector as Stock X, which would incite fear across the sector, creating panic sell offs. The price will drop sharply across the board, including Stock X, and the short position will produce big profits. Because this hedge fund sold off a large chunk of their shares at a good price, they can now cover their short position (essentially getting rid of it), and then buy up these same stocks that were let go earlier, only this time at a much cheaper price. The hedge fund has now made money not only on the short position, but now they got into the stock at a cheap price in which they can explore other manipulative tactics to bolster the price again. This can be done by encouraging analyst upgrades, publicizing “newly” purchased positions without disclosing the fact that they previously owned it, etc. Scenario 3: This one involves technology: algorithm trading (commonly referred to as algo trading). This one is a really intricately designed manipulative tactic that investors really have no way of getting around. Algorithm trading is the process of using high-speed super-computers and a team of traders to constantly monitor market activity and trade when opportunities arise. In this case, the hedge funds do not have to do any direct manipulation of the market, which makes this 100% legal. How this works is by taking advantage of how trading works and the time it takes for a trade to be made. For you general investors, we have mobile apps and web-based trading platforms to trade. When we like a stock, we have to go through the motion of inputting the stock ticker symbol, the amount of shares, the price we are willing to pay, hit submit, and confirm the trade. For hedge funds using algorithm trading, all this is done autonomously, which makes submission of an order several magnitudes quicker. When an order is submitted, it goes through a brokerage (Fidelity, Webull, ETrade, TDA, RH, etc.) and the data is rerouted to a clearing house (intermediate party that verifies and processes the trade). Clearing houses are responsible for making sure your orders are filled, but they take it on a first come first serve basis. So if a stock is moving quickly, hedge funds have a serious edge in getting in cheaper and faster as well as getting out higher and faster. Algorithm trading is integratable as part of the buying and selling strategies mentioned in the two previous scenarios, which is why they can almost guarantee profit. Algorithm trading also uses a lot of data in their backbone to determine the trades that have a high chance of profitability, and it acts on various factors such as volatility, volume, interest activity, news, etc. In some cases, these algorithms can be set to do some extremely sadistic things. I’ll start by talking about “market orders” vs “limit orders”. Before you make a trade on your brokerage, you will notice an option that says “market order” or “limit order”. Market orders are an agreement that you will purchase the stock or option contract at the best price in the market in the momentary space in time. There is of course a huge risk to that because in that short moment in time, there may not be anyone selling at a good price, and instead, some people might set sell limits at ridiculous prices. For example, some people set a sell limit at $1000 for GME. If you did a market order, and you get really unlucky, you might end up snagging a share for $1000 each, when the actual share value might be $300. However, when you set a “limit order”, you are agreeing to buy a share at a maximum price that you designated. In the event that a hedge fund siphons a ton of shares of a company, the algorithm can be set to sell these shares at a ridiculous sell limit. Remember, when they buy or sell, it’s processed significantly faster at the clearing houses, so if you’re that one unlucky trader that went for a market order on a stock, you might end up purchasing it at a huge premium set by the hedge funds themselves. Moral of the story: DO NOT PURCHASE AS MARKET ORDER - ALWAYS PURCHASE AT LIMIT ORDER. I’m am not a financial advisor, so take everything I said as gibberish.
Illegal Tactics and DTCC/Prime Broker Complicity In Naked Shorting & Retail Shutdown of GME (DTCC/Prime Brokers decision makers need to be questioned at the 2/18 GameStop Congress hearing)
TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using) Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28. In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well. A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.) Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548). The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720) On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day. With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC. It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME. An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened. If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember: A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together. With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt. Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used: Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling. Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying. Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective. Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen) One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them. If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made. As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine: The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are. 🚀🚀🚀 Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock. Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders: - If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope. - Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude. - Only invest what you can afford to lose. - Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience. If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html
How is it going my homies I made this post on investing a few days ago explaining all of the QAnon fantasies and why the top could already be behind us. Some people listened, processed information and asked questions. Some called me a person working for Melvin and hedge funds. It’s all in the past, but if you got burned on GME or other meme stocks, here are few things you should learn about the markets and trading these bubbles.
Set a price at which you will exit and take profit. Don’t look at what happens next, and never rebuy if the price continues growing. Likewise, set a stop loss at which you will exit no matter what.
Never, and I mean never put in more than you can afford to lose, or even lose sleep over. I have a pretty decent portfolio, and I only put in 0.5% of it in the play. I don’t give a shit about that money, but I still took profit and got a 250% ROI. Easiest cash I’ve ever made, easier than blowing a fat dude in the back alley behind a strip bar. Anyway.
If you hear about shit on the news. It’s probably not a good time to enter. There is a reason why some early people made money on the play. They understood mechanics of what was driving the increase in price. Many of them didn’t even expect a short squeeze, they just like the fundamentals. Likewise, if your 80 year old grannie (say hi to her from me) calls you and asks you about this magical company called GameStonk, sell that shit right away.
Always double and triple check information posted on forums and don’t take it for a truth even if it has a lot of upvotes. The amount of misinformation I saw on WSB over the past week with 100 thousand upvotes makes me want to vomit.
Stock trading is not a team activity. It’s not us vs them. It’s a fucking free for all, and people will drop their bags on you if they see their unrealized gain turn into an unrealized loss. You want to make money? Do your research, and be the first one on the train. Don’t jump on the train when it is speeding and going off the rails.
If you don’t understand how something works, learn about it. Again, the amount of conspiracy theories that I read about ladder attacks and this grand illuminati conspiracy is driving me nuts. Always use the Occam’s razor, meaning if there is a simple explanation to the situation, it is probably right. There is no need to build out this conspiracy theory for something you don’t understand, it does not help anyone.
You will get FOMO and you will get confirmation bias. Everybody does, but learning how to battle it is crucial. Look, my dad was a fucking casino gambler in his 30s playing blackjack and losing money, and I have the same traits. Does it mean I need to be the same? No, and I always remember my genes when trading. It is not an excuse to use when you lose money.
Realize that situations like this are extremely rare, and if you expect to make 300% gain in 3 days, I have some bad fucking news for you, markets don’t work like this.
Finance gets complicated real fast. Yes, on the surface it’s just buying and selling. I have been studying this shit for 5 years, and I still don’t know a lot of things. There are reasons why even some of the smartest people still lose money. Shit, Newton was burned on a South Sea bubble. Yes, that guy who discovered gravity lost money just any of us.
One bad trade does not define you. As long as you learn, and don’t repeat the same shit again, you are golden. There are plenty of ways to make money on the markets, be it value investing, selling options or setting up butterfly spreads.
Edit 1: More ARKQ buying today (~50k shares). Thank you everyone for the positive feedback and discussion! Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) or TL;DR for the non-military types: LMT is a good target if you want to literally go to the moon, and my PT is $690.26 in two years (more than 2x from current levels). Justification and some possible trade ideas are listed below, just CTRL-F “Trade Ideas”. I hope you guys enjoy this work and would appreciate any discussion or feedback. I hope to catch you in the comments. Team, We interrupt today’s regularly scheduled short squeeze coverage to discuss a traditionally boring stock, LMT (Lockheed Martin), with significant upside potential. To be clear, this is NOT a short squeeze target like many reddit posts are keying on. I hope that this piece sparks discussion, but if you are just looking for short squeeze content, all I have to say is BUY, HOLD, and GODSPEED. The source of inspiration for me writing this piece is threefold; first, retail investors are winning, and I believe that we will continue to win if we continue to identify opportunities in the market. In my view, the stock market has always been a place for the public to shine a light on areas of innovation that real Americans are excited about and proud to be a part of. Online communities have stolen the loudspeaker from hedge fund managers and returned it to decentralized online democracies that quickly and proudly shift their weight behind ideas they believe in. In GME’s case, it was a blatant smear campaign to destroy a struggling business. I think that we should continue this campaign by identifying opportunities in the market and running with them. It may sound overly idealistic, but if reddit can take on the hedge funds, I non-ironically believe that we can quite literally take good companies researching space technology to the moon. I think LMT may be one of several stocks to help get us there. Second, a video where the Secretary of State of Massachusetts argues that internet boards are full of a bunch of unsophisticated, thoughtless traders really ticked me off. This piece is designed to show that ‘the little guy’ is ready to get into the weeds, understand business plans, and outpace analysts that think companies like Tesla are overvalued by comparing them to Toyota. That is a big reason that I settled on an old, large, slow growth company to do a deep-dive on, and try my best to show some of the abysmal predictive analysis major ‘research firms’ do on even some of the most heavily covered stocks. LMT is making moves, and the suits on wall street are 10 steps behind. At the time of writing this piece, Analyst Estimates range from 330-460 (what an insane range). Third, and most importantly, I am in the US military, and I think that it is fun to go deep into the financials of the defense sector. I think that it helps me understand the long-term growth plans of the DoD, and I think that I attack these deep-dives with a perspective that a lot of these finance-from-day-one cats do not understand. Even if no one ever looks at this work, I think that taking the time to write pieces like this makes me a better Soldier, and I will continue to do it in my spare time when I am feeling inspired. I wrote a piece on Raytheon Technologies (Ticker: RTX) 6 months ago, and I think it was well-received. I was most convicted about RTX in the defense sector, but I have since shifted to believing LMT is the leader in the defense space. I am long both, though. If this inspires anyone else to do similar research on other companies, or sparks discussion in the community, that is just a bonus. Special shout-out to the folks that read more than just the TL;DR, but if you do just read the TL;DR, I love you too! Now let us get into it: Leadership I generally like to invest in companies that are led by people that seem to have integrity. Jim Taiclet took the reins at LMT in June of last year. While on active duty, he served as a C-141B Starlifter pilot (a retired LMT Aircraft). After getting out he went to work for the American Tower Corporation (Ticker: AMT). His first day at American Tower was September 10, 2001. The following day, AMT lost 13 employees in the World Trade Center attack. He stayed with the company, despite it being decimated by market uncertainty in the wake of 9/11. He was appointed CEO of the very same company in 2004. Over a 16 year tenure as CEO of AMT the company market cap 20x’d. He left his position as CEO of AMT in March of last year, and the stock stagnated since his departure, currently trading at roughly the same market cap as to when he left. Jim Taiclet was also appointed to be the chairman of the board this week, replacing the previous CEO. Why is it relevant that the CEO came from a massive telecommunications company? Rightfully, Taiclet’s focus for LMT is bringing military technology into the modern era. He wants LMT to be a first mover in the military 5G space, military application of AI space, the… space space, and the hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) space. These areas are revolutionary for the boomer defense sector. We will discuss this in more detail later when we cover the company’s P/E multiple and why it is absolute nonsense. It is not a surprise to me that they brought Taiclet on during the pandemic. He led AMT through adversity before, and LMT’s positioning during the pandemic is tremendous relative to the rest of the sector, thanks in large part to some strong strategic moves and good investments by current and past leadership. I think that Taiclet is the right CEO for the job. In addition to the new CEO, the new Secretary of Defense, Secretary Lloyd Austin, has strong ties to the defense sector. He was formerly a board member for RTX. He is absolutely above reproach, and a true leader of character, but I bring this up not to suggest that he will inappropriately serve in the best interest of defense contractors, but to suggest that he speaks the language of these companies effectively. I do not anticipate that the current administration poses as significant of a risk to the defense sector as many analysts seem to believe. This will be expanded in the headwinds section below. SPACE Cathie Wood and the ARK Invest team brought a lot of attention to the space sector when the ARKX, The ARK Space Exploration ETF, Form N-1A was officially filed through the SEC. More recently, ARK Invest published their Big Ideas 2021 Annual Report and dedicated an entire 7-page chapter to Orbital Aerospace, a new disruptive innovation platform that the ARK Team is investigating. This may have helped energize wall street to re-look their portfolios and their investments in space technology, but it was certainly not the first catalyst that pushed the defense industry in the direction of winning the new space race. In June 2018, then President Trump announced at the annual National Space Council that “it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space. So important. Therefore, I am hereby directing the Department of Defense (DoD) and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces". Historically, Department of Defense space assets were under the control of the Air Force. By creating a separate branch of service for the United States Space Force (USSF), the DoD would allocate a Chairman of Space Operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and clearly define the budget for space operations dedicated directly to the USSF. At present, this budget is funneled from the USAF’s budget. The process was formalized in December of 2019, and the DoD has appropriated ~$15B to the USSF in their first full year of existence according to the FY21 budget. Among the 77 spacecraft that are controlled by the USSF, 29 of them are Lockheed Martin GPS satellites, 6 of them are Lockheed Martin Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS), and LMT had a hand in creating and/or manufacturing for several of the other USSF efforts. The Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Missile Warning Satellites (also known as Next-Gen OPIR) were contracted out to both Northrup Grumman (Ticker: NOC) and LMT. LMT’s contract is currently set at $4.9B, NOC’s contract is set at $2.37B. Tangentially related to the discussion of space is the discussion of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs). HGVs have exoatmospheric and atmospheric implications, but I think that their technology is extremely important to driving margins down for both space exploration and terrestrial point-to-point travel. LMT is leading the charge for military HGV research. They hold contracts with the Navy, Air Force, and Army to develop HGVs and hypersonic precision fires. The priority for HGV technology accelerated significantly when Russia launched their Avangard HGV in December of 2019. Improving the technology for HGVs is a critical next-step in maintaining US hegemony, but also maintaining leadership in both terrestrial and exoatmospheric travel. LARGE SCALE COMBAT OPERATIONS (LSCO) The DoD transitioning to Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) as the military’s strategic focus. This is a move away from an emphasis on Counter-Insurgency operations. LSCO requires effective multi-domain operations (MDO), which means effective and integrated strategies regarding land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. To have effective MDO, the DoD is seeking systems that both expand capabilities against peer threats and increase the ability to track enemy units and communicate internally. This requires a modernizing military strategy that relies heavily on air, missile, and sensor modernization. Put simply, the DoD has decided to start preparing for peer or near-peer adversaries (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) rather than insurgencies. For this reason, I believe that increased Chinese and Russian tensions are, unfortunate as it may be, a boon to the defense industry. This is particularly true in the missiles/fires and space industry, as peer-to-peer conflicts are won by leveraging technological advantages. There are too many projects to cover in detail, but some important military technologies that LMT is focusing on to support LSCO include directed energy weapons (lasers) to address enemy drone technology, machine learning / artificial intelligence (most applications fall under LMT’s classified budget, but it is easy to imagine the applications of AI in a military context), and 5G to increase battlefield connectivity. These projects are all nested within the DoD’s LSCO strategy, and position LMT as the leader in emergent military tech. NOC is the other major contractor making a heavy push in the modernization direction, but winners win, and I think a better CEO, balance sheet, and larger market cap make LMT the clear winner for aiding the DoD in a transition toward LSCO. SECTOR COMPARISON (BACKLOG) The discussion of LSCO transitions well into the discussion of defense contractor backlogs. Massive defense contracts are not filled overnight, so examining order backlogs is a relatively reliable way to gauge the interest of the DoD in a defense contractor’s existing or emerging products. For my sector comparison, I am using the top 6 holdings of the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (Ticker: ITA). I hate this ETF, and ETFs like it (DFEN) because of their massively outsized exposure to aerospace, and undersized allocation to companies like LMT. LMT is only 18% smaller than Boeing (Ticker: BA) but is only 30.4% of the exposure of BA (18.46% of the fund is BA, only 5.62% of the fund is LMT). Funds of this category are just BA / RTX hacks. I suggest building your own pie on a site like M1 Finance (although they are implicated in the trade restriction BS… please be advised of that… hoping other brokerages that are above board will offer similar UIs like the pie design… just wanted to be clear there) if you are interested in the defense sector. The top 6 holdings of ITA are: Boeing Company (Ticker: BA, MKT CAP $110B) at 18.46% Raytheon Technologies (Ticker: RTX, MKT CAP $101B) at 17.84% Lockheed Martin (Ticker: LMT, MKT CAP $90B) at 5.62% General Dynamics Corporation (Ticker: GD, MKT CAP $42B) 4.78% Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (Ticker: TDY, MKT CAP $13B) at 4.74% Northrop Grumman Corporation (Ticker: NOC, MKT CAP $48B) at 4.64% As a brief aside, please look at the breakdowns of ETFs before buying them. The fact that ITA has more exposure to TDY than NOC and L3Harris is wild. Make sector ETFs balanced how you want them to be balanced and it will be more engaging, and you will likely outperform. I digress. Backlogs for defense companies can easily be pulled from their quarterly reports. Here are the current backlogs in the same order as before, followed by a percentage of their backlog to their current market cap. All numbers are pulled from January earning reports unless otherwise noted with an * because they are still pending. Boeing Company backlog (Commercial: $282B, Defense: $61B, Foreign Military Sales (FMS, categorized by BA as ‘Global’): 21B, Total Backlog 364B): BA’s backlog to market cap is a ratio of 3.32, which is strong, but most of that backlog comes from the commercial, not the defense side. Airlines have been getting decimated, I am personally not interested in having much of my backlog exposed to commercial pressures when trying to invest in a defense play. Without commercial exposure, their defense only backlog ratio is .748. This is extremely low. I understand that this does not do BA justice, but I am keying in on defense exposure, and I am left thoroughly unsatisfied by that ratio. Also, we have seen several canceled contracts already on the commercial side. Raytheon Technologies backlog (Defense backlog for all 4 subdivisions: 67.3B): Raytheon only published a defense backlog in this quarter’s report. That is further evidence to me that the commercial aerospace side of the house is getting hammered. They have a relatively week backlog to market cap as well, putting them at a ratio of .664, worse off than the BA defense backlog. Lockheed Martin backlog (Total Backlog: $147B): This backlog blows our first two defense backlogs out of the water with a current market cap to backlog ratio of 1.63. General Dynamics Corporation backlog (Total Backlog: $89.5B, $11.6B is primarily business jets, but it is difficult to determine how much of their aerospace business is commercial): Solid 2.13 ratio, still great 1.85 if you do not consider their aerospace business. The curveball here for me is that GD published a consolidated operating profit of $4.1B including commercial aerospace, whereas LMT published a consolidated operating profit of $9.1B. This makes the LMT ratio of profit/market cap slightly in favor of LMT without accounting for the GD commercial aerospace exposure. This research surprised me; I may like GD more than I originally assumed I would. Still prefer LMT. Teledyne Technologies Incorporated backlog (Found in the earnings transcript, $1.7B): This stock is not quite in the same league as the other major contractors. This is an odd curveball that a lot of the defense ETFs seem to have too much exposure to. They have a weak backlog, but they are a smaller growing company. I am not interested in this at all. It has a backlog ratio of .129. Northrop Grumman Corporation backlog ($81B): Strong numbers here. I see NOC and LMT as the two front-runners in the defense sector. I like LMT more because I like their exposure to AI, 5G, and HGVs more than NOC, but I think this is a great alternative to LMT if you like the defense sector. Has a ratio of 1.69, slightly edging out LMT on this metric. LMT edges out NOC on margins by ~.9%, though, which has significant implications when considering the depth of the LMT backlog. The winners here are LMT, GD, and NOC. BA is attractive if you think anyone will have enough money to buy new planes. BA and RTX are both getting hammered by commercial aerospace exposure right now and are much more positioned as recovery plays. That said, LMT and NOC both make money now, and will regardless of the impact of the pandemic. LMT is growing at a slightly faster rate than NOC. Both are profit machines, but I like LMT’s product portfolio and leadership a lot more. FREE CASH FLOW Despite the pandemic, LMT had the free cash flow to be able to pay a $2.60 per share dividend. This maintains their ~3% yearly dividend rate. They had a free cash flow of $6.4B. They spent $3.9 of that in share repurchases and dividend payouts. That leaves 40% of that cash to continue to strengthen one of the most stalwart balance sheets outside of big tech on the street. Having this free cash flow allowed them to purchase Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.4B in December. They seem flexible and willing to expand and take advantage of their relative position during the pandemic. This is a stock that has little downside risk and significant upside potential. It is always reassuring to me to know that at the end of the day, a company is using its profit to continue to grow. HEADWINDS New Administration – This is more of an unknown than a headwind. The Obama Administration was not light on military spending, and the newly appointed SecDef is unlikely to shy away from modernizing the force. Military defense budgets may get lost in the political shuffle, but nothing right now suggests that defense budgets are on the chopping block. Macroeconomic pressure – The markets are tumultuous in the wake of GME. Hedgies are shaking in their boots, and scared money weighed on markets the past week. If scared money continues to exert pressure on the broader equity markets, all boomer stocks are likely weighed down by slumping markets. Non-meme Status – The stocks that are impervious to macroeconomic pressures in the above paragraph are the stonks that we, the people, have decided to support. From GME to IPOE, there is a slew of stonks that are watching and laughing from the green zone as the broader markets slip deeper into the red zone. Unless sentiment about LMT changes, I see no evidence that LMT will remain unaffected by a broader economic downturn (despite showing growth YoY during a pandemic). TAILWINDS Aerojet Rocketdyne to the Moon – Cathie Wood opened up a $39mil position in LMT a few weeks ago, and this was near the announcement of ARKX. The big ideas 2021 article focuses heavily on satellite technology, deep learning, and HGVs. I think that the AR acquisition suggests that vertical integration is a priority for LMT. They even fielded a question in their earnings call about whether they were concerned about being perceived as a monopoly. Their answer was spot on—the USFG and DoD have a vested interest in the success of defense companies. Why would they discourage a defense contractor from vertical integration to optimize margins? International Tensions – SolarWinds has escalated US-Russia tensions. President Biden wants to look tough on China. LSCO is a DoD-wide priority. 5G.Mil – We still do not have a lot of fidelity on what this looks like, but the military would benefit in a lot of ways if we had world-wide access to the rapid transfer of encrypted data. Many units still rely on Vietnam-era technology signal technology with abysmal data rates. There are a lot of implications if the code can be cracked to win a DoD 5G contract. TRADE IDEAS Price Target: LMT is currently at a P/E of ~14. Verizon has roughly the same. LMT’s 5-year P/E ratio average is ~17. NOC is currently at a P/E of ~20. TSLA has a P/E Ratio of 1339 (disappointingly not 1337). P/E is a useless metric because no one seems to care about it. My point is that LMT makes a lot of money, and other companies that are valued at much higher multiples do not make any money at all. LMT’s P/E ratio is that of a boomer stock that has no growth potential. LMT’s P/E is exactly in line with the Aerospace and Defense Industry P/E ratio standard. LMT’s new CEO is pushing the industry in a new direction. I will arbitrarily choose a P/E ratio of 30, because it is half of the software industry average, and it is a nice round number. Plus, stock values are speculative and nonsense anyway. Share price today: $321.82 Share price based on LMT average 5-year P/E: $384.08 (I see this as a short term PT, reversion to the mean) Share price with a P/E of 30: $690.26 Buy and Hold: Simple. Doesn’t take much thought. Come back in a year or two and be happy with your tendies (and a few dividends to boot). LEAPS Call Debit Spread (Based on last trade prices): Buy $375 C 20 JAN 23 for $26.5, Sell $450 C 20 JAN 23 for $12. Total Cost $14.5 for a spread width of $75. Max gain 517% per spread. Higher risk strategy. LEAPS: Buy $500 C 20 JAN 23 for $7.20. Very high-risk strat. If the price target is hit within two years, these would be in the money $183 per contract for a gain of 2500%. This is the casino strat. SOURCES https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2020/james-taiclet-from-military-pilot-to-successful-ceo.html https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/in-response-to-senator-warrens-questions-secretary-of-defense-nominee-general-lloyd-austin-commits-to-recusing-himself-from-raytheon-decisions-for-four-years https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-08-30-Lockheed-Martins-Expertise-in-Hypersonic-Flight-Wins-New-Army-Work https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/hypersonics.html https://research.ark-invest.com/hubfs/1_Download_Files_ARK-Invest/White_Papers/ARK%E2%80%93Invest_BigIdeas_2021.pdf?hsCtaTracking=4e1a031b-7ed7-4fb2-929c-072267eda5fc%7Cee55057a-bc7b-441e-8b96-452ec1efe34c https://www.deseret.com/2018/6/19/20647309/twitter-reacts-to-trump-s-call-for-a-space-force https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf https://www.airforcemag.com/lockheed-receives-up-to-4-9-billion-for-next-gen-opir-satellites/ https://spacenews.com/northrop-grumman-gets-2-3-billion-space-force-contract-to-develop-missile-warning-satellites/ https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/directed-energy/laser-weapon-systems.html https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/lockheed-martins-ai-applications-for-the-military/ https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/07/new-ceo-wants-lockheed-become-5g-playe167072/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/defense-firms-expect-higher-spending-11548783988 https://www.etf.com/ITA#efficiency https://s2.q4cdn.com/661678649/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/4Q20-Presentation.pdf https://investors.rtx.com/static-files/dfd94ff7-4cca-4540-bc4b-4e3ba92fc646 https://investors.lockheedmartin.com/static-files/64e5aa03-9023-423a-8908-2aae8c7015ac https://s22.q4cdn.com/891946778/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/GD_4Q20_Earnings_Highlights-Outlook-Final.pdf https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/27/teledyne-technologies-inc-tdy-q4-2020-earnings-cal/ https://investor.northropgrumman.com/static-files/6e6e117f-f656-4c68-ba7f-3dc53c2dd13a
Illegal Tactics and DTCC/Prime Broker Complicity In Naked Shorting & Retail Shutdown of GME (DTCC/Prime Brokers decision makers need to be questioned at the 2/18 GameStop Congress hearing)
TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using) Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28. In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well. A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.) Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548). The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720) On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day. With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC. It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME. An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened. If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember: A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together. With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm If there's one thing I took away from this its that we can't wait for other people to do the right thing, we each need to individually step up to ensure it happens What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt. Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used: Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling. Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying. Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective. Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen) One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them. If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made. As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine: The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are. 🚀🚀🚀 Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock. Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders: - If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope. - Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude. - Only invest what you can afford to lose. - Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience. If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html
"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."
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