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Corsair Gaming ($CRSR)
Redefining gaming, eSports, and streaming
Company Overview
Corsair Gaming is an American computer hardware and peripherals company founded in 1994 and headquartered in California.
They acquired Elgato Gaming in 2018 to expand to the streaming gear market, Origin PC and SCUF gaming in 2019 to expand into the custom-built PC systems and console controllers markets, respectively, and during 2020 they acquired Gamer Sensei and EpocCam, and partnered with Pipeline to grow into the gaming and streaming coaching market.
Corsair went public on September 23, 2020, with its IPO priced at $17, valuing the company at about $1.3B.
Understanding the Business
Value Proposition
Corsair provides specialized, high-performance gear for gamers and streamers. Their products are designed to provide speed and reliability for competitive gaming, high quality content for streamers, and powerful PC components that allows gamers to run modern games smoothly.
Revenue Streams
Currently, Corsair groups its product offering into two segments: gamer and creator peripherals and gaming components and systems.
Gamer and Creator Peripherals:
which represents around 25% of net revenue, includes gaming mice, keyboards, and headsets, streaming gear, and high performance console controllers.
Gaming Components Systems:
which represents around 75% of net revenue includes computer cases, power supply units (PSU), high performance memory products (40% of net revenue), and custom-built gaming systems.
Acquisitions and Partnerships:
During 3Q 2020 Corsair acquired Gamer Sensei, a gaming coaching platform, EpocCam, an app that allows iPhones to serve as a webcam, and partnered with Pipeline, a course-based education platform for streamers.
Industry
Market Size
According to Jon Peddie Research, the global gaming and streaming gear markets is expected to reach $40B by the end of 2020. Before the pandemic JPR estimated the market to grow at a modest 1.05% CAGR until 2022. However, during 2020 the market has grown an estimated 10% year-over-year.
Additionally, DFC Intelligence research estimated that the video-game coaching market surpasses $1B.
Industry Fundamentals
Growth in the gaming and streaming gear industries are driven by strong and robust fundamentals.
Popularity of gaming is increasing:
According to Newzoo, there are an estimated 2.7B gamers worldwide, which are expected to spend $159B on games in 2020 and is expected to grow at an 8.3% CAGR to exceed $200B by 2023. PC and console gaming represents 51% of the total market, and mobile gaming 49%. Corsair has stated that currently there is no interest in expanding to the mobile gaming market.
Tech-driven improvements in game quality:
Advances in computer power have enabled gaming platforms to provide increasingly immersive experiences. This in turn, places increased demand on high-performance computing hardware.
Increasing gaming and streaming engagement:
Some interesting facts reported in the Limelight Networks’ State of Online Gaming 2019 research report include:

On average, video gamers spend six hours and 20 minutes each week playing video games
More than 38% of gamers would like to become professionals if it could support themselves
Gamers from novice to aspiring professionals report missing daily activities due to gaming, missed sleep is the most pervasive
Watching gamers play video games online is more popular than watching traditional sports for 18-25 year olds.

The eSports and streaming flywheel
The rise in popularity and viewership of eSports brings more investment from publishers, sponsors, advertisers, team owners, and leagues to the eSports industry. Increased investment brings more players and increased performance focus of gamers who advance from less engaged gaming to high-performance gameplay, which in turn brings more viewers.
Competitive Landscape & Risks
Competition
The gaming and streaming market is characterized by intense competition, constant price pressure and rapid change. Competition across Corsair’s product offering includes:
Gaming keyboards and mice - Logitech and Razer
Headsets and related audio products -Logitech, Razer, and HyperX
Streaming gear - Logitech and AVerMedia
Performance controllers - Microsoft and Logitech
PSUs, cooling solutions, and computer cases - Cooler Master, NZXT, EVGA, Seasonic, and Thermaltake
High performance memory - G.Skill, HyperX, and Micron
Pre-built and custom-built gaming PCs - Alienware (Dell), Omen (HP), Asus, Razer, iBuypower and Cyberpower
Competitive Strategy
The company follows a differentiation leadership strategy by prioritizing high-performance and professional quality and charging a price premium on their products in exchange for superior quality, high value added features, and superior brand recognition.
Market Share
According to NPD Group, by 2020 Corsair had #1 market share position in the US in its gaming components and systems products with 42% of the market share from 26% in 2015. Their gamer and creator peripheral products are not yet market leaders, however, the company increased its market share in that segment from 5% in 2013 to 18% by 2020 in the US.
Growth Strategy
Move into the Asia Pacific region:
The Asia Pacific Region represents a long-term growth opportunity. According to Newzoo, they represent 54% of the global gaming community.
Complimentary acquisitions:
Corsair has carried out this strategy aggressively since 2018 with the acquisitions of Elgato Gaming, Origin PC, SCUF and Gamer Sensei. They plan to continue evaluating and pursuing new acquisitions that may strengthen their competitive position.
New Markets:
Uses of streaming gear has spread into areas including, podcasting, video blogging, interactive fitness, remote learning, and work-from-home, which represent a promising avenue for continued expansion in this product segment.
Threat of New Entrants
Because of the continued convergence between the computing devices and consumer electronics markets, increased competition from well-established consumer electronics companies is expected in the gaming and streaming peripherals segment (e.g. use of Audio-technica microphones by streamers).
Threat of Substitution
A significant medium- to long-term risk for Corsair’s business model is the evolution of cloud computing and augmented/virtual reality entertainment.
Cloud computing refers to a computing environment in which software is run on third-party servers and accessed by end users over the internet, requiring minimal processing power from the end-user’s system. Through cloud computing, gamers will be able to access and play sophisticated games without the need of expensive high-performance PC systems and components.
According to Grand View Research, the global cloud gaming market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 48% from 2020 to reach $7.2B by 2027.
Additionally, Corsair must be able to adapt its product offering to meet the needs of the evolving augmented/virtual reality industry.
Moats
There does not seem to be any relevant, structural moats, that may prohibit competitors from capturing Corsair’s market share across their product offering.
Other Relevant Risks
Due to the concentration of their production facilities in Taiwan and China, Corsair may be adversely by geopolitical tensions and trade disputes.
Financial Summary
Proforma Balance Sheet
https://postimg.cc/QHgY1ZxL
Income Statement
https://postimg.cc/qNkbGDzN
For the 9 months ended September 2020 compared to the same period last year:
The 49% increase in net revenue is mostly attributed to a large number of consumers gaming and working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company’s gross margin is influenced by its product mix for the period, gamer and creator peripherals have a higher gross margin (25-35%) than gaming components and systems (15-25%).
Proforma Cashflow Statement
https://postimg.cc/XXCzNyRY
Cash used in investing activities consists primarily on the acquisitions of Elgato in 2018, and SCUF and Origin PC in 2019.
Peer Comparison
https://postimg.cc/Whcfd1V6
Logitech International (LOGI) and Micron Technologies (MU)
Why am I posting this now?
I believe they are going to have very strong 4th quarter 2020 earning results. 2020 had record pc sales,and pc video games has reported record numbers of players. They are in my opinion the leading pc peripherals brand for gamers. Q4 Earnings Include both Black Friday and Christmas Sales
Record pc sales:
https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/record-pc-sales-in-2020-as-covid-limits-work-education-to-homes/story/427858.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20data,units%20in%20Q4%20of%202020&text=COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20has%20turned,personal%20computer%20(PC)%20industry%20industry).
Google trends:
https://imgur.com/oKPn6R5
My price target for this earnings: $65 EDIT: (EOM)
TLDR: $CRSR will crush Q4 earnings 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀
Position: 60 Contracts 40c exp 2/19
disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH
credit: u/italiansomali and u/erythaean

$CRSR Corsair DD / Earnings play

On average, video gamers spend six hours and 20 minutes each week playing video games
More than 38% of gamers would like to become professionals if it could support themselves
Gamers from novice to aspiring professionals report missing daily activities due to gaming, missed sleep is the most pervasive
Watching gamers play video games online is more popular than watching traditional sports for 18-25 year olds.

The eSports and streaming flywheel
The rise in popularity and viewership of eSports brings more investment from publishers, sponsors, advertisers, team owners, and leagues to the eSports industry. Increased investment brings more players and increased performance focus of gamers who advance from less engaged gaming to high-performance gameplay, which in turn brings more viewers.
Competitive Landscape & Risks
Competition
The gaming and streaming market is characterized by intense competition, constant price pressure and rapid change. Competition across Corsair’s product offering includes:
Gaming keyboards and mice - Logitech and Razer
Headsets and related audio products -Logitech, Razer, and HyperX
Streaming gear - Logitech and AVerMedia
Performance controllers - Microsoft and Logitech
PSUs, cooling solutions, and computer cases - Cooler Master, NZXT, EVGA, Seasonic, and Thermaltake
High performance memory - G.Skill, HyperX, and Micron
Pre-built and custom-built gaming PCs - Alienware (Dell), Omen (HP), Asus, Razer, iBuypower and Cyberpower
Competitive Strategy
The company follows a differentiation leadership strategy by prioritizing high-performance and professional quality and charging a price premium on their products in exchange for superior quality, high value added features, and superior brand recognition.
Market Share
According to NPD Group, by 2020 Corsair had #1 market share position in the US in its gaming components and systems products with 42% of the market share from 26% in 2015. Their gamer and creator peripheral products are not yet market leaders, however, the company increased its market share in that segment from 5% in 2013 to 18% by 2020 in the US.
Growth Strategy
Move into the Asia Pacific region:
The Asia Pacific Region represents a long-term growth opportunity. According to Newzoo, they represent 54% of the global gaming community.
Complimentary acquisitions:
Corsair has carried out this strategy aggressively since 2018 with the acquisitions of Elgato Gaming, Origin PC, SCUF and Gamer Sensei. They plan to continue evaluating and pursuing new acquisitions that may strengthen their competitive position.
New Markets:
Uses of streaming gear has spread into areas including, podcasting, video blogging, interactive fitness, remote learning, and work-from-home, which represent a promising avenue for continued expansion in this product segment.
Threat of New Entrants
Because of the continued convergence between the computing devices and consumer electronics markets, increased competition from well-established consumer electronics companies is expected in the gaming and streaming peripherals segment (e.g. use of Audio-technica microphones by streamers).
Threat of Substitution
A significant medium- to long-term risk for Corsair’s business model is the evolution of cloud computing and augmented/virtual reality entertainment.
Cloud computing refers to a computing environment in which software is run on third-party servers and accessed by end users over the internet, requiring minimal processing power from the end-user’s system. Through cloud computing, gamers will be able to access and play sophisticated games without the need of expensive high-performance PC systems and components.
According to Grand View Research, the global cloud gaming market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 48% from 2020 to reach $7.2B by 2027.
Additionally, Corsair must be able to adapt its product offering to meet the needs of the evolving augmented/virtual reality industry.
Moats
There does not seem to be any relevant, structural moats, that may prohibit competitors from capturing Corsair’s market share across their product offering.
Other Relevant Risks
Due to the concentration of their production facilities in Taiwan and China, Corsair may be adversely by geopolitical tensions and trade disputes.
Financial Summary
Proforma Balance Sheet
https://postimg.cc/QHgY1ZxL
Income Statement
https://postimg.cc/qNkbGDzN
For the 9 months ended September 2020 compared to the same period last year:
The 49% increase in net revenue is mostly attributed to a large number of consumers gaming and working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company’s gross margin is influenced by its product mix for the period, gamer and creator peripherals have a higher gross margin (25-35%) than gaming components and systems (15-25%).
Proforma Cashflow Statement
https://postimg.cc/XXCzNyRY
Cash used in investing activities consists primarily on the acquisitions of Elgato in 2018, and SCUF and Origin PC in 2019.
Peer Comparison
https://postimg.cc/Whcfd1V6
Logitech International (LOGI) and Micron Technologies (MU)
Why am I posting this now?
I believe they are going to have very strong 4th quarter 2020 earning results. 2020 had record pc sales,and pc video games has reported record numbers of players. They are in my opinion the leading pc peripherals brand for gamers. They also have strong support from wallstreetbets.
Record pc sales:
https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/record-pc-sales-in-2020-as-covid-limits-work-education-to-homes/story/427858.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20data,units%20in%20Q4%20of%202020&text=COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20has%20turned,personal%20computer%20(PC)%20industry%20industry).
Google trends:
https://imgur.com/oKPn6R5
My price target for this earnings: $55
disclaimer:I am not a financial advisor. Do not trade based on the information I have posted.
credit: u/italiansomali and u/erythaean

Why I went MGTOW/Redpill

A little bit of background on me I am a 29-year-old male and father to a beautiful 7-year-old little girl that I love more than life itself. I'm also a veteran in the United States Army for 5 years and deployed to Iraq as an Infantryman, worked and trained with Special Operations and I take several martial arts and teach defensive groundfighting. It was a dream of mine to serve in the military but it all came crashing down as a result of my Narcissistic ex-wife.
My ex-wife and I met while I was still attending military school in 2006 we met via MySpace from an online writing forum. We were friends for many years and were always there for each other through the hardships of our own relationships. We finally started dating in 2010 when we both broke up with our respective exes and while I was still in basic training. We wrote to each other constantly and we finally met face to face in March of 2011. By that point we had been dating 6 months and in April of 2011, 2 weeks before I deployed to Iraq, we got married. During my deployment she stayed with my family where she seamlessly fit in and would do anything for them.
When I returned in December of 2011, we got our own house on Fort Hood and 2 months later she got pregnant with our daughter. During the first few months we lived together I starting to notice things. At first, I thought it was mood swings from her pregnancy but as time went on, I noticed she became increasingly hostile towards me. She also began to neglect the house and would not cook or clean and would frequently take her anger out on me. She made me cut off all ties with female friends accusing me of cheating and having an affair and threatened to leave me and make me pay for child support. I walked on eggshells until our daughter was born in November of 2012 after a hard labor, I nearly lost both my wife and daughter. As a result, they both had to stay in the hospital in the intensive care unit. A few months later in February of 2013 I was reassigned to Fort Campbell and from there things got worse.
At first, I thought it was post-partum depression but as the months went on, she continued to be hostile to me fluctuating between extreme love to extreme anger. While there she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and from there things continued to gradually get worse, it did not help either that I was with an EXTREMELY toxic chain of command and assigned to a unit in the 101st. Anything I did there was constantly ridiculed and I was repeatedly singled out for not being one of the 'boys'. As a result, my unit left me behind on a deployment and I was temporarily assigned to the 551st MP company. There I thrived but my home life continued to deteriorate until in 2014 my wife had an affair with my next-door neighbor. She slept with him several times and went to see him while I was asleep in bed or while I was on duty. When I found out I was absolutely devastated and I tried to leave her but through sobs and cries she convinced me to stay promising to change and like a fool I believed her and stayed.
However, things did not change and all she did was yell at me, withhold affection and love and even scream at me out in public in front of our daughter and in front of my friends. They all noticed the incredible stress and abuse I was under as a result and several times I contemplated suicide. It all again came to a head again when one night when we were having a fight, I attempted to call my chain of command for help while I was on rear-D (Rear Detachment) while my unit was at a training rotation. While I had the phone in my hand, she attacked me and assaulted me beating on my head and jamming her thumb in my eye. She wouldn't let me leave the house and finally only let me go when my chain of command arrived at the house. The MPs were called and she was arrested and charged with beating and wounding of me, we spent several days apart as per a unit policy of 'Cool Down'. When I returned home after the 3 days she cried and begged for me to stay and like a fool again I believed her.
I stayed because I believed in the fact that family stays together no matter what and works together through any problems. Plus, I did not want my daughter to grow up without a father and because I was scared of being forced to pay for child support and alimony and never see my daughter again. In a sense I felt trapped. I felt like no matter what I did I was going to suffer and had to endure this hell that I was stuck in and I lost my faith in god.
My nightmare continued because in the summer of 2015 while I was on leave with my family a neighbor (not the one she slept with) but another neighbor was supposed to care for our house while I was away. Instead they trashed it and did not care for our pets which we had too many of to begin with (a result of my ex-wife). They did not care for them and they made messes all over the house and after we returned home someone anonymously reported us for child endangerment. My ex-wife again refused to clean up the house and MPs were called and as a result I was briefly detained and charged with endangering the welfare of a minor as was my ex-wife. CPS was called but they cleared us both but as a result my chain of command deemed it appropriate to separate me from the Army. This after being cleared by Kentucky CPS and attending parenting classes and never having been to a court-martialed or been in any trouble. I very easily could have thrown my ex-wife under the bus but that point I had been beaten down and worn down to a point of emotional and physical abuse that I did not care anymore. I wanted out and in December of 2015 a few days before Christmas I was let go from the Army and escorted off the base. However as we were packing up and clearing out our house I found a stash of pills she was holding for a neighbor and without my knowledge.
I fell into a deep depression and contemplated ending my life because I could not see myself doing anything else but serve in the military. The abuse from my ex-wife continued and everything I did was never good enough and whatever she did wrong was my fault and I began to question my own sanity. In the years following my discharge from the Army we lived with my parents who did not charge us rent and gave a us a place to stay. I worked wherever I could and tried to go to college but everything I set out to do I failed at. I failed out of college and when I attempted to go to the police academy my car was damaged while on a highway from tractor trailer debris and I was forced to drop out due to failing grades.
I worked where I could often take jobs where I would work long shifts 14 Hour days 7 days a week doing hard labor and other various things, Ive worked as a conductor and engineer on trains and worked until I bled through my boots. Did tree trimming work in 100+ F weather until I collapsed from heat exhaustion. Did work as an insurance inspector driving all over the state until I was laid off, and many other painful and dead-end jobs to support my wife and daughter.
All the while my ex-wife would sit at home and do nothing except be on her computer and watch TV. She would treat my family very poorly threatening and terrorizing my 2 autistic young brothers. She barely worked only having 2 jobs which she was promptly fired from. It was only by our instance that she finally went to college to pursue an EMT degree, I supported and loved her at everything she did. I got her whatever she wanted and she would constantly drain our bank account and complain about us never having enough money. I tried to get us a place of our own but setbacks and one catastrophe after another kept us from moving out. Again, we would fight and argue she would assault me and accuse me of being violent and screamed at me and tell me how everyone thought I was crazy and they hated me.
2018 while her family was out in California visiting family her sister, aunt and brother were involved in a car accident in which her sister and aunt were killed instantly. She fell into a deep depression and basically pushed me away and shut me out and wouldn't open up about her emotions to me. She even went to her sister's funeral and wouldn't allow me to come along to comfort her and be there for her. I continued to do everything I could to take care of her and work back braking hours.
In 2019 I thought our luck was finally turning around when I landed a contracting job at the FBI in West Virginia, I stayed with a very loving Christian family who allowed me to live and rent from them. That was going good until the Government shutdown happened and I was laid off. After that I quickly found a job working as an analyst at the Army Heritage center in Carlisle PA, but then a couple months in my mother started getting sick and having seizures and I was forced to resign to take care of her. By the summer of 2019 I was desperate for anything at that point and once again I landed a dream job working for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington DC. I would have been making excellent money but the only caveat is that I would have been driving an hour plus to work every day and three hours on the way back. However, while I was driving to work one morning it was raining and I was forced off the road and I hydroplaned into a tree going 55MPH.
I don't remember very much about it, I suffered a major concussion, tore my ear off (had it reattached), had my face torn open with the muscles in my face hanging out, cracked my neck, bruised my lungs and my diaphragm badly, and cracked my arm and my knee. According to the doctors I only survived because of how robust my body is because of the amount of contact sports and martial arts I did when I was younger.
This all happened right around the anniversary of her sister's death.
My ex-wife was distraught beyond belief that she almost lost me right around the same time as her sister, one of the things I did to help her cope was I brought her into an online gaming community. This was a community I had helped built from the ground up and full of guys I had been playing military games with for years as a way to help me cope since being out of the military. As I laid in bed though wracked with terrible pain, she would play games with them. She increasingly played them more and more and began to ignore me and our daughter as well as her schoolwork for college. Then she grew increasingly distant with me and eventually stopped showing me any affection or love.
In August while I was working on her computer, I noticed that she had been spending a lot of time in the chatroom in our group. When I looked, I saw to my horror she had been having an online affair with one of my closest and longtime friends. She was having sexual roleplay with him, sending him naked pictures back and forth as well as calling him her husband and telling him how she wanted to have a child with him. I confronted her and him and immediately and despite the evidence she and him tried to deny it until I literally showed it in front of them. I came to find out she talked terribly about me and made me out to be this abusive man when in actuality I have tolerated it all for the sake of our daughter and because I took my marriage vows seriously. The dude she decided to chance after she barely knew for more than a few months and has never done anything with his life, has never left home and has a long list of health problems that would make him a burden to anyone else.
In September things got so much worse, I was letting her borrow my laptop in which I promptly took it away and sold it, so the cheating bitch went out and bought an Ipod so that she could continue to talk to this dude. When I found out about it I confronted her and we fought in which she attacked me when I took the got ahold of the Ipod and saw what was happening. She stormed off into the basement for the night while I was trying not to get sick over the fact that my wife had been cheating on me again and had gotten me banned from my own online gaming community which was my therapy.
The following evening the next day her and her little buddies online (including the loser she was having an affair with) concocted a plan to contact PSP (Pennsylvania State Police) with allegations that I had assaulted her. She stayed in the basement the whole day until that evening when PSP came. She tried to show them 'bruises' but they determined that her allegations had no merit and threatened to charge and arrest her for harassment. They left after explicitly telling us that if they had to return that we were both going to jail. The following day she left to go live in a hotel paid for by both her mom and the guy that she was talking to. She stayed there for a week and I was stuck taking care of our daughter and again I fell into a deep depression.
She returned a week later stating that she wanted to do marriage counseling and wanted to 'fix' things with me for the sake of our daughter and like a fool I believed her. Two months go by and things were actually pretty good, we went on dates together, took our daughter trick or treating, cheerleading etc. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary (though I clearly missed some warning signs). I starting working for the War College as a government security contractor and that was going well until November 1st on my birthday I got fired. 4 days later on November 5th my cheating ex-wife went out and got a Protection order against me for the fight we had back in September when I caught her with the ipod which was over 2 months ago, way out of reasoning for a PFA order. As well as the lawyers office she obtained it from is called 'Women in Need'. Whose attorney is basically no more than a public defender and a well-known anti-male feminazi who convinces her clients to make some outrageous accusations. She took my daughter and left to go live in a women's shelter in town. As a result I missed my daughter's 7th birthday and I couldn't reach out or say happy birthday to her otherwise I would've been arrested for contempt and breaking the protection order.
I sought an attorney and the first one I met with agreed to take my case and thought I had a good one but a day later told me that he couldn't represent me due to a 'conflict of interests' which I never found out what that was about. The second one I sought out is a well-known and well-respected attorney who saw my case and thought I had a pretty good case. Due to the facts and circumstances and because I kept a record of everything going on and I had documented EVERYTHING. I had screenshots of the conversations where she talked about trying to set me up, the naked pictures, the affair etc. Also my attorney managed to get the PSP report of the troopers who came to my house which completely destroyed the whole abuse narrative since that was what she based her abusive allegation off of. In the end the attorney she had representing her talked with the PSP trooper and looked over his report and told her "this does not look good on you". In the end she dropped the PFA in exchange for a no-contact agreement and we separated.
In the weeks and the months following beating the PFA we went to court where I fought and got 50-50 custody of my daughter and I won and even had the no-contact agreement dropped to maintain communications with my daughter. In the following months she has tried reaching out to me to 'talk' but I kept my distance from her and just kept things related to our daughter kept our conversations short. Despite trying to reach out to me she filed for divorce telling me that she wasn't going to get one but by that point I did not care if she did or not.
However every time I have dropped off my daughter to her apartment it has always been a mess, trash everywhere, cluttered and it frankly smelled. Just like it did at Fort Campbell. Since then she has since dropped out of college and works only part time and her mother pays all of her bills.
Since then I've been going to veteran's outreach for counseling and once again have found my faith and religion in god and have been going to Christian counseling to cope with my divorce. Ive landed an awesome job and Ive been working on going back to college, hitting the gym every day and possibly even going back in with the National Guard.
Ontop of it I got 50-50 custody of my daughter and no child support or alimony plus I keep all of my retirement.
Ive been watching redpill/MGTOW videos and healing from Narcissist abuse and I felt stupid that I gave her as many chances as I did but I believed in my marriage vows and that families stayed together no matter what. I can walk away with my head held high and with the knowledge Ive done everything I can and that if someone wants to deal with her bullshit they can have her I don't care anymore.
Im finally getting my life on track again and house-hunting and for once in a long time I'm extremely optimistic about my future. Im focusing on myself and being the best father I can be for my daughter. As well as going my own way

Flatten the Curve. Part 84. Who are the What If Men. What is the People Machine? They Have Been Manipulating Society Using Simulations for a Long Time. The Worst is Yet to Come.

Previous Post Here
Rock the vote! Power to the people! Get out and vote. Every vote counts. And the beat goes on. And on. And on. And on. And we buy it. Hook. Line. And sinker. Don't we? But, we live in a democracy! Yep. Sure do. We vote and then they do whatever they have planned. Seriously. Guantanamo Bay? Still there. Rich getting richer? Still happening. Gain of function testing on viruses? Still happening. Nafta? Who actually voted? No. One. Big bank bailouts? No choice. Get it? The illusion of choice is all it takes to pacify the masses. That's it. Our votes are the placebo effect.
Do some of us notice? Yes. A few. For all the good that does us. So why are they able to get away with it? Surely at some point we would have noticed. Well we did notice, and they adjusted, and we're still living with the consequences. When did we notice?
The Vietnam War.
All the pictures of body bags and all the reports of the horrors of war were too much. We questioned why? The answer wasn't good enough. An economic system. Sure they tried to convince us back then that it was because human rights and liberty. Ok. Then we fast forward to present day and we trade with Vietnam. But nobody says, HEY! AREN'T THEY EVIL COMMUNISTS! No. One. Why? Because those in charge learned. All the images of war changed. Now we only see video game targets on screen. Now we only hear of all the amazing technology making war so advanced! War has become a Walt Disney production. Sanitized for the masses.
How did they do it? How? Simple. They know in advance what stimulus will have the greatest effect on us, and what effect that stimulus will be. How? Simulations. And it's been going on for a very long time.

Simulations and Scenarios

In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party,” read the memo. “Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to: • Ted Cruz. • Donald Trump. • Ben Carson. We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously."

Oh. Ok. So Crooked Hillary's team wanted to pump up Trump. Let me say that again, Pump Up Trump (sounds like a new sex toy, doesn't it? I'll get my people to call your people and lets make this happen. It'll be huge and people will love getting screwed by it!). And then it gets worse.

“Just like everybody, I thought this was a Bush against a Clinton, that’s all it was going to be,” said former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. “When I saw the first set of debates, I would turn them on in an entertainment mode to see what Donald’s going to say today. It was funny." Source Here

Trump is funny. Ha. Ha. Ha. Let's get in some of that new Reality TV show called The Political Apprentice. Right.
So is Trump a part of something nefarious? Or is he fighting the Deep State? But what if the answer is more complicated than that? What if all the peices are moved, including President's, on purpose, and with a plan?
Crazy? Surely that's just plain nonsense and there's no way that could happen, right?
Well, let me show you some additional things before the Internet of Things is in everything and we can't do anything.

They Pick, You Vote, Don't Matter. They Already Know.

What? Preposterous you say? Let's travel back to JFK and the People Machine.

Consider the strange trajectory of the Simulmatics Corporation, founded in New York City in 1959. (Simulmatics, a mash-up of ‘simulation’ and ‘automatic’, meant then what ‘artificial intelligence (AI)’ means now.) Its controversial work included simulating elections — just like that allegedly ‘pioneered’ by the now-defunct UK firm Cambridge Analytica on behalf of UK Brexit campaigners in 2015 and during Donald Trump’s US presidential election campaign in 2016. Journalists accused Trump’s fixers of using a “weaponized AI propaganda machine” capable of “nearly impenetrable voter manipulation”. New? Hardly. Simulmatics invented that in 1959. They called it the People Machine. As an American historian with an interest in politics, law and technology, I came across the story of the Simulmatics Corporation five years ago when researching an article about the polling industry. Polling was, and remains, in disarray. Now, it’s being supplanted by data science: why bother telephoning someone to ask her opinion when you can find out by tracking her online? Wondering where this began took me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, to the unpublished papers of political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool. Simulmatics, hired first by the US Democratic Party’s National Committee in 1959 and then by the John F. Kennedy campaign in 1960, pioneered the use of computer simulation, pattern detection and prediction in American political campaigning. The company gathered opinion-poll data from the archives of pollsters George Gallup and Elmo Roper to create a model of the US electorate.

Lasswell, whose research on communication purported to explain how ideas get into people’s heads: in short, who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect? During the Second World War, Lasswell studied the Nazis’ use of propaganda and psychological warfare. When those terms became unpalatable after the war ended, the field got a new name — mass-communications research. Same wine, new bottle. Like Silicon Valley itself, Simulmatics was an artefact of the cold war. It was an age obsessed with prediction, as historian Jenny Andersson showed in her brilliant 2018 book, The Future of the World. At MIT, Pool also proposed and headed Project ComCom (short for Communist Communications), funded by the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Its aim, in modern terms, was to try to detect Russian hacking — “to know how leaks, rumors, and intentional disclosures spread” as Pool described it.

Isn't that odd? Computers making predictions back in 1960. Computers analyzing human behavior in order to predict human behaviours and control the election outcome. And the scientist who it all started with came from MIT. And we wonder how all that Jeffrey Epstein money was spent.

The press called Simulmatics scientists the “What-If Men”, because their work — programming an IBM 704 — was based on endless what-if simulations. The IBM 704 was billed as the first mass-produced computer capable of doing complex mathematics. Today, this kind of work is much vaunted and lavishly funded. The 2018 Encyclopedia of Database Systems describes ‘what-if analysis’ as “a data-intensive simulation”. It refers to it as “a relatively recent discipline”. Not so. Buoyed by the buzz of Kennedy’s election, Simulmatics began an advertising blitz. Its 1961 initial stock offering set out how the company would turn prediction into profit — by gathering massive data, constructing mathematical models of behavioural processes, and using them to simulate “probable group behaviour”.

Do you really think these What-If Men are done and gone, set out to pasture like the cattle they manipulate? Really? Seriously. No. Obviously not. Or there wouldn't be such a fuss about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Same Crap. Different Flies. Only know there are more flies and the crap pile is bigger.

In 1963, on behalf of the Kennedy administration, Simulmatics simulated the entire economy of Venezuela, with an eye to halting the advance of socialism and communism. A larger project to undertake such work throughout Latin America, mostly designed by Pool and known as Project Camelot (Project Camelot, where have I heard that before?), became so controversial that the next president, Lyndon B. Johnson, dismantled it (sure he did). After 1965, Simulmatics conducted psychological research in Vietnam as part of a bigger project to use computers to predict revolutions. Much of this work built on earlier research by Lasswell and Pool, identifying and counting keywords, such as ‘nationalism’, in foreign-language newspapers that might indicate the likelihood of coups. Such topic-spotting is the precursor to Google Trends. Before his early death in 1984, Pool was also a key force behind the founding of the most direct descendant of Simulmatics, the MIT Media Lab. Pool’s work underlies the rules — or lack of them — that prevail on the Internet. Pool also founded the study of “social networks” (a term he coined); without it, there would be no Facebook. Pool’s experiences with student unrest at MIT — and especially with the protests against Simulmatics — informed his views on technological change and ethics. Look forward. Never look back. Source Here

Unrest and protest at MIT against Simulmatics. I guess you could call it Rage Against the Machine. Maybe we should ask Jeffery Epstein if that's a good name? He did invest a lot of money into the MIT Media lab, after all. Surely he has an opinion on it. Too bad he killed himself. Snicker.
Look forward. Never back. That sounds suspiciously like a No Regrets policy, doesn't it? The ends justify the means. Let's hurry up and get those vaccines out. We can test for them along the way. It's all good.

Decades before Facebook and Google and Cambridge Analytica and every app on your phone, Simulmatics’ founders thought of it all: they had the idea that, if they could collect enough data about enough people and write enough good code, everything, one day, might be predicted—every human mind simulated and then directed by targeted messages as unerring as missiles. For its first mission, Simulmatics aimed to win the White House back for the Democratic Party. The University of California political theorist Eugene Burdick had worked for Greenfield in 1956, but decided not to join Simulmatics. Instead, he wrote a novel about it. In “The 480,” a political thriller published in 1964, a barely disguised “Simulations Enterprises” meddles with a U.S. Presidential election. “This may or may not result in evil,” Burdick warned. “Certainly it will result in the end of politics as Americans have known it.” That same year, in “Simulacron-3,” a science-fiction novel set in the year 2034, specialists in the field of “simulectronics” build a People Machine—“a total environment simulator”—only to discover that they themselves don’t exist and are, instead, merely the ethereal, Escherian inventions of yet another People Machine. After that, Simulmatics lived on in fiction and film, an anonymous avatar. In 1973, the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder adapted “Simulacron-3” into “World on a Wire,” a forerunner of the 1999 film “The Matrix,” in which all of humanity lives in a simulation, trapped, deluded, and dehumanized.

The Matrix? A people machine. A Total Environment Simulator. Yikes. That sounds extremely far fetched, doesn't it. Trapped. Deluded. And. Drumroll please. Dehumanized.

In 1967 and 1968, at home, Simulmatics attempted to build a race-riot-prediction machine. In 1969, after antiwar demonstrators called Pool a war criminal, the People Machine crashed; in 1970, the company filed for bankruptcy. (Most of its records were destroyed; I stumbled across what remains, in Pool’s papers, at M.I.T.) Source Here

A race riot machine that apparently failed? And look what happened nine months ago? Coincidence? Foreign power information warfare? AI training wheels? Kinda scary, ain't it? And guess what? We're not done yet.

Ithiel de Sola Pool

So the Simulmatics Corporation was responsible for this;

Sept 17, 2020 • In 1960, media reports of dark forces behind John F Kennedy’s winning presidential campaign caused what Jill Lepore calls a “national hullabaloo”. America’s new leader, it was widely reported, had clinched the victory with the help of a “secret weapon”: a super computer that crunched troves of data to profile voters, allowing Kennedy to better target his political messaging before the polls opened.

And now let's look deeper at somebody who worked at the Simulmatics Corporation, Ithiel de Sola Pool.

For all of Simulmatics’ efforts at automating prediction, it is company executive Ithiel de Sola Pool, an MIT academic with a focus on social networks, who in Lepore’s telling proves to be the most accurate prediction machine — foreseeing the “data-mad and near-totalitarian twenty-first century” that he was instrumental in helping to create. “In the coming atomised society, the information the citizen gets will arise from his own specific concerns,” he wrote in 1968, predicting a communications revolution, “customised news feeds” and the dismantling of party politics for a “politics of self, every citizen a party of one”. Source Here

That's extremely prescient. Did he predict the future or make it? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Don't matter. Don't care. Not at all. Because the end result is the same,
So what more can we find out about de Sola Pool? How about the fact that he studied Nazis and Communists? Heck, he studied totalitarianist speeches to figure out how words could carry power and influence. Over us. Overload us.
But how unethical was Pool? Well, the guy who risked everything to bring us the Pentagon Papers (the papers that proved the Gulf of Tomkins incident was a false flag) thought this: Daniel Ellsberg would later say of Pool, “I thought of him as the most corrupt social scientist I had ever met, without question.”
Not cool. Definitely. Not. Cool. Because if you naively believe that Pool’s research isn't being used by the Technocrats today, then more power to you. Believe what you want. Or should I say, believe what they want.
And who are "they"? They are the Rockefeller's and Rothschilds, the Technocrats, the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group, CIA, NSA, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Speaking of which.

At that point in his (Pool’s) career, he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, advising several countries around the world. Pool felt that the world was underestimating the importance of communications and technical change. Source Here

Oops. Pool was a member of the CFR advising several countries around the world. Ok. Next step.

2004 • The transformation of the United States into a power able and willing to take a leading role in world affairs was not achieved solely through policy changes in Washington, DC, let alone simply by changes in the structure of world power. This chapter examines the vital role of the CFR in transforming American public opinion from ‘isolationist’ to ‘globalist’ as an important aspect of America’s rise to globalism. In this regard, the Council focused its energies to undermine and marginalise isolationism while promoting its own internationalist views as the best means to achieve the American national interest. Source Here

So if a bunch of unelected officials are officially changing policy, why do you vote? Rock the vote? Don't make me laugh. More like Don't Rock the Boat.
They started running simulations back in the sixties. Remember, Nixon was the odds on favorite to win. Kennedy was a long shot. And then, Kennedy was the President. Nixon probably wasn't happy. After all, he was part of the power structure. He went to Bohemian Grove. And then he had the rug pulled out from underneath him. And what did he end of calling Bohemian Grove attendees? A bunch of fags. Oops. Who pissed in his cornflakes?
They run simulations. Then they have different scenarios that dictate policy. Then they use the CFR, the WEF, the Rockefeller Group, and other NGO'S to adapt and shape future policy decisions to steer society. Heck. They probably even use the Mickey Mouse Club at this point.

November 21, 1971 • Of the first 82 names on a list prepared to help President Kennedy staff his State Department, 63 were Council members. Kennedy once com plained, “I'd like to have some new faces here, but all I get is the same old names.” Source Here

So a "People Machine" helped get JFK "elected" and his State Department list was mostly comprised of Council members. It's starting to look more and more like our heads of state are manipulated just like us, doesn't it? Let's jump back into the Pool one more time.

In 1965, he wrote "The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Computer," an essay about a computer-simulated international crisis. Later, his interest in quantitative analysis and communications would contribute to computer models to study human behavior.

Computer Models aren't Playboy Centerfolds

It doesn't matter who gets voted in. They may think they're in charge. They may go along. Or they may think they're making changes. But, I guarantee you the changes they make are the changes those behind the scenes want. Even if our leaders know it or not.
No way! Thats crazy! Insane! Ok. Sure. But remember this, in a world of insanity, a sane man is always perceived as being insane. So let's dive into the DEEP END OF THE POOL and see what we can find.

October 2, 2019 • With AI, the models suddenly become more realistic. “One of the things that has changed is an acceptance that you really can model humans,” says F. LeRon Shults, director of the Center for Modeling Social Systems at the University of Agder in Norway. “Our agents are cognitively complex. They are simulated people with genders, ages and personalities. They can get married, have children, get divorced. They can get a job or get fired, they can join groups, they can die. They can have religious beliefs. They’re social in the way humans are. They interact with each other in social networks. They learn from each other, react to each other and to the environment as a whole.”

Hold on. Agent's are cognitively complex? That's scary, isn't it? And this is a very strange situation we find ourselves in, isn't it? Agents. Simulations. Viruses. Sentinels. Didn't they try and block out the sun? Ahem. Bill Gates. And I've read that originally the script didn't have humanity as batteries, but instead used humans as their RAM. In other words, we we're used for our brains ability to think. More on this in an upcoming post. Just think about it for now.

Final Thoughts

The what if men and the people machine. They model society and we see what they want us to see. Kind of like the model in the Matrix wearing the red dress. We're too busy looking for danger everywhere but where we should look. And that's a mistake. This is why we can't dismiss anything. We have to question everything.
In the previous post I said that it was called the Sentinel World Simulation. I found the article. I made a mistake. It's called the Sentient World Simulation. Words matter. Always. But I still don't think my mistake alters what's going on. We are being steered by an unseen group. And this is why China + Russia + USA are heading towards a cliff. He who controls AI controls humanity. But who controls who?
More soon.

Where is Alicia Navarro? Autistic teenager missing from Arizona since 2019 may have been lured away by an internet predator

Who Is Alicia?
At 14, Alicia Christina Navarro was a shy, quiet girl who enjoyed playing online games and reading. She achieved good grades at Bourgade Catholic School but struggled with developmental delays and had been diagnosed with high-functioning autism at age 12. The teen also suffered from severe anxiety, for which she was receiving therapy, and also apparently had a weakened immune system. Like many young people with autism, Alicia preferred to keep to a strict routine and didn’t like crowded public spaces. She often bit her shirt or knuckles when she experienced sensory overload. Alicia also frequently wore the same clothing and shoes over and over, including her favorite white sweatshirt that she was wearing the night she vanished, which her mother attributed to her autism. The teenager preferred to eat a limited number of foods, including chicken nuggets and unsalted french fries from McDonald's. Despite her mental health and developmental challenges, Alicia was happy at home and close to her mother, stepfather, and two siblings.
When not at school, Alicia enjoyed playing games and chatting with her friends on Discord, a chat app for gamers. She often stayed up late using her computer. Her mother, Jessica Nunez, stated that she’d once noticed a stranger that Alicia had met online asking for her daughter’s personal information. Nunez quickly corrected the behavior, blocking the man and warning Alicia to never share personal details with people she didn’t know online lest she fall prey to an internet predator. Nunez had also caught Alicia engaged in a text conversation with someone who Nunez believed was older than Alicia “based on the mature content” of their chat. She filed a police report, but nothing came of it and authorities were unable to identify the responsible parties in either situation. Nunez believes that Alicia’s autism made her more trusting than other teens, and thinks that Alicia may not have heeded her warnings. At 14, photos of Alicia depict a girl who appears much younger; she stood 4’5” and weighed only 95 pounds. Her childlike appearance, shy demeanor, and mental health diagnoses may have made her more vulnerable, Nunez believes.
Nunez has noted that Alicia had undergone personality changes in the months leading up to her disappearance, including a sudden and intense interest in the comic book series Ironman and its ‘Demon in a Bottle’ arc; her mother purchased one of the books for her prior to her disappearance and the comic vanished along with Alicia. She had also begun wearing heavily perfumed body spray, despite her usual aversion to strong smells, and had begged her mother to purchase concealer and an open-backed shirt (unusually risque for the shy teen) for her. After she and her friends met up with an unnamed boy at the mall one day, Alicia gushed to her mother that he was “quite fit” and became interested in fitness workouts and dietary supplements.
Before she vanished, Alicia’s parents discovered a hole in her bedroom window screen that she claimed had been created by a bird. It was apparent to them, however, that the hole had been created from the inside. Nunez suspects that Alicia may have used the hole to pass notes to someone on the outside, and in a photograph of Alicia’s bedroom window, a ladder is visible on the ground below her window. Less than two weeks before she disappeared, Alicia messaged her 20-year-old friend on Oregon on Discord and informed him that she’d sold her beloved Xbox gaming console and that she had a new boyfriend. She also brought up learning how to play electric guitar and suggested that she might join the friend’s band. However, Alicia's friends reported that Alicia seemed to lead two lives: one in the real world, where she was reserved and shy, and another on the internet, where she was more gregarious. They indicated that Alicia frequently exaggerated stories or made statements that were untrue. While this is not uncommon for teenagers, it has made determining the veracity of some of Alicia's statements to her friends difficult.
The Day of Alicia’s Disappearance
On September 14th, 2019, Alicia spent most of the evening in her upstairs bedroom, ostensibly gaming and chatting with friends online as she often did on the weekends. It was only five days before her 15th birthday. Despite her anxiety about the new school year, she and Nunez had spent the day running errands together and Alicia was reportedly in good spirits, “smiling and laughing” with her mother.
Around 1 am, Alicia came downstairs for a glass of water. Nunez was downstairs, waiting for her husband to come home from work. Alicia reportedly asked her mother why she was still awake and then returned to her bedroom. That night, Nunez and Alicia's two siblings fell asleep while Alicia's stepfather dozed off on the couch in front of the TV. No one noticed Alicia leaving the house.
The next morning, September 15th, Nunez awoke at 7:00 am to find the back door slightly ajar. She assumed that her husband had accidentally left it open, but he told her that he had not been in the backyard the previous evening. Nunez became concerned and rushed upstairs to find Alicia’s bedroom empty. Her laptop, a silver Apple Macbook, and her silver iPhone 6 were missing, but the chargers for both devices had been left behind. She had left behind the laptop she used for school as well as a desktop computer that she used to play online games. Also missing were a bottle of perfume and an expensive Ironman comic book that she’d apparently begged her mother for prior to disappearing. She had left a note behind, penned in her signature scrawl: “I ran away. I will be back. I swear. I’m sorry.” In the backyard, Nunez discovered chairs had been dragged outside and stacked against the brick wall. In the vicinity and on the chairs were footprints that matched Alicia’s sneakers. It appeared that Alicia had packed her items into a small black backpack and used the chairs to climb over two walls in the backyard. Her mother noted that doing so would have helped Alicia avoid being captured on their neighbor’s security cameras. That’s where the trail went cold. For all that Glendale PD and her parents could determine, it seemed as though Alicia had climbed out of her backyard and then simply vanished into the night.
Glendale Police Department interviewed all registered sex offenders within a one-mile radius of Alicia’s home but to no avail. They also stated that they were unable to trace either her laptop or cell phone as both devices were turned off. Authorities have been unclear as to exactly why they’re unable to trace Alicia’s phone and laptop. Two weeks after her disappearance, police took her gaming desktop as evidence; Nunez has indicated that authorities have searched chat logs from that computer and may have also accessed her social media profiles (such as her Discord and Facebook pages) for clues. Alicia’s mother has also stated that “these people were smart not to talk on the computer”, meaning that whoever Alicia was contacting may have done so using less-traceable means. It’s not clear whether or not authorities have gained access to her social media pages and online gaming profiles, but Alicia’s social media hasn’t been active since she vanished in 2019. PrincessandPenguin (spelling unclear) is one of the usernames that she’s used in the past, but other screennames are being withheld by law enforcement due to the ongoing investigation.
What Happened to Alicia?
There has been little headway in the investigation since Alicia vanished in September of 2019. Nunez believes that her daughter was the victim of an internet predator who groomed the teen online, perhaps via some of the games that she frequently played. She thinks that someone may have convinced Alicia to meet up with them in real life and then abducted her. Alicia’s autism and her related lowered inhibition could have made her more vulnerable to online predators. The items that Alicia brought with her may lend credence to this theory. Alicia left home with only the clothing on her back (her favorite white sweatshirt, a bleached denim skirt, and high-top Vans sneakers) and with minimal personal effects. She brought both her iPhone and Macbook when she left home but didn’t bring the chargers for either item, indicating that she might have not planned to be gone for long or perhaps had been told that whoever she was meeting up with had chargers for her cell phone and laptop that she could borrow. Interestingly, as another Redditor noted in a comment on another Alicia-related post in this sub, the Ironman comic that she brought (worth over 200 dollars) contains a plotline that features the protagonist scaling a wall to break out of prison. Could this have possibly inspired Alicia’s early-morning escape from her family’s home? Is it possible that she was planning to meet up with someone who convinced her to bring the comic along? Nunez has stated that she never saw Alicia actually reading the comic book which lends credence to the theory that she may have purchased it for someone else. Alicia also brought with her the new perfume and makeup, which may suggest that she’d been groomed into an online romance with whoever she was potentially planning to meet the night of the 14th. Was it someone who posed as a same-age peer? Or was Alicia, like so many other young girls groomed by sexual predators, convinced that an older man displaying an interest in her was flattering, a sign of ‘coolness’ and maturity?
Alicia’s friends at school have stated that she was carrying around a ‘burner phone’, likely a cheap cell phone that can be purchased at gas stations or chain stores like Walmart, in the weeks prior to her disappearance. It seems plausible that the burner phone may have been given to her by whoever Alicia planned to meet up with the night she went missing. However, Alicia did not tell her friends what the phone was for or how she’d obtained it. Cheap burner phones are often used by children who are groomed and exploited by adults as they allow the victim’s usual phone to remain free of evidence like text messages and photos that may otherwise raise red flags for caregivers. Another one of Alicia’s friends has stated that Alicia had mentioned running away to California only days before her disappearance and even invited the friend to join her. The friend didn't think that Alicia was serious and didn't tell any adults about the comment until after Alicia had vanished. The aforementioned burner phone (if it indeed existed) was not recovered amongst Alicia’s belongings, meaning that she likely took it with her when she left the house.
Now, a year and five months since Alicia vanished without a trace, Nunez continues to press law enforcement to investigate the teenager’s disappearance as an abduction. She believes that Alicia was lured from the house that night in 2019 by a predator and is possibly being held against her will. She also feels that Alicia’s disappearance should not have been initially dismissed as a simple runaway case, especially given her small stature, younger appearance, and autism. Nunez has also made it clear that Alicia’s disappearance likely would have been treated differently, and with more urgency, if she had been a middle-class white teenager.
Prevailing theory amongst internet sleuths and Alicia’s own family still holds that she was lured away from home by someone she met online. Law enforcement’s actions, such as confiscating her desktop computer and combing Discord chat logs, may indicate that they too suspect the tech-savvy teen was convinced to leave home by an internet predator. It wouldn’t be the first time that a vulnerable autistic teenager was lured into danger by an online predator. In 2017, a 16-year-old autistic Baltimore high schooler was found in a local apartment complex after she used a web-based chat app to communicate with an older man. And in 2018, an 18-year-old woman with autism was kidnapped from her Arkansas home and taken to rural Washington state by a 50-year-old man she’d met online. The perpetrator had attempted to befriend over 8,000 other children via social media prior to kidnapping the 18-year-old. Given how well-versed in technology Alicia was, and how comfortable she was using social media to communicate with people she’d never met in real life, it seems plausible that the teenager could have been coerced into leaving home by someone like the aforementioned predators: pedophiles who prey on vulnerable youth with few real-world friends, who they know can be easily manipulated into doing their bidding.
Since Alicia’s disappearance in the fall of 2019, there have been several non-credible sightings of the teenager, including one at a gas station and another in which Alicia was supposedly wandering a homeless encampment. One supposed sighting at a park a mile from Alicia’s home brought Nunez rushing to the scene; witnesses claimed that a girl matching Alicia’s description had been sighted holding hands with a dark-skinned man with neck tattoos. A 25-year-old man matching that description would later be caught in a police sting designed to catch internet predators. He was indicted for “luring of a minor” and “attempted sex conduct with a minor”, but it’s unknown if he was ever seriously investigated in Alicia’s disappearance. Other witnesses have cropped up occasionally with leads but disappeared after offering little to no information, perhaps fearing for their own safety. The case was turned over to the FBI in 2020, but it’s unknown if federal involvement has continued.
Alicia is now 16 years old. She was last seen wearing a white sweatshirt with multi-colored writing on it, a bleached denim overall skirt, and high-top Vans sneakers. She is a Hispanic female with brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance, Alicia wore braces. She has a scar on her left knuckle. At the time of her disappearance, she stood 4’5” and weighed approximately 95 pounds. She enjoys online gaming and reading and dislikes large crowds. Her favorite food is McDonald's chicken nuggets and unsalted french fries. Alicia needs medication that she does not have with her. Due to the circumstances involved, she is considered an endangered missing person.
https://charleyproject.org/case/alicia-christian-navarro
https://coppercourier.com/story/alicicia-navarro-missing-glendale/
https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/mother-missing-teenager-autism-alicia-navarro-fears-she-was-lured-n1167191
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/glendale-police-family-held-news-conference-one-year-after-alicia-navarro-disappeared

$CRSR Corsair DD

On average, video gamers spend six hours and 20 minutes each week playing video games
More than 38% of gamers would like to become professionals if it could support themselves
Gamers from novice to aspiring professionals report missing daily activities due to gaming, missed sleep is the most pervasive
Watching gamers play video games online is more popular than watching traditional sports for 18-25 year olds.

The eSports and streaming flywheel
The rise in popularity and viewership of eSports brings more investment from publishers, sponsors, advertisers, team owners, and leagues to the eSports industry. Increased investment brings more players and increased performance focus of gamers who advance from less engaged gaming to high-performance gameplay, which in turn brings more viewers.
Competitive Landscape & Risks
Competition
The gaming and streaming market is characterized by intense competition, constant price pressure and rapid change. Competition across Corsair’s product offering includes:
Gaming keyboards and mice - Logitech and Razer
Headsets and related audio products -Logitech, Razer, and HyperX
Streaming gear - Logitech and AVerMedia
Performance controllers - Microsoft and Logitech
PSUs, cooling solutions, and computer cases - Cooler Master, NZXT, EVGA, Seasonic, and Thermaltake
High performance memory - G.Skill, HyperX, and Micron
Pre-built and custom-built gaming PCs - Alienware (Dell), Omen (HP), Asus, Razer, iBuypower and Cyberpower
Competitive Strategy
The company follows a differentiation leadership strategy by prioritizing high-performance and professional quality and charging a price premium on their products in exchange for superior quality, high value added features, and superior brand recognition.
Market Share
According to NPD Group, by 2020 Corsair had #1 market share position in the US in its gaming components and systems products with 42% of the market share from 26% in 2015. Their gamer and creator peripheral products are not yet market leaders, however, the company increased its market share in that segment from 5% in 2013 to 18% by 2020 in the US.
Growth Strategy
Move into the Asia Pacific region:
The Asia Pacific Region represents a long-term growth opportunity. According to Newzoo, they represent 54% of the global gaming community.
Complimentary acquisitions:
Corsair has carried out this strategy aggressively since 2018 with the acquisitions of Elgato Gaming, Origin PC, SCUF and Gamer Sensei. They plan to continue evaluating and pursuing new acquisitions that may strengthen their competitive position.
New Markets:
Uses of streaming gear has spread into areas including, podcasting, video blogging, interactive fitness, remote learning, and work-from-home, which represent a promising avenue for continued expansion in this product segment.
Threat of New Entrants
Because of the continued convergence between the computing devices and consumer electronics markets, increased competition from well-established consumer electronics companies is expected in the gaming and streaming peripherals segment (e.g. use of Audio-technica microphones by streamers).
Threat of Substitution
A significant medium- to long-term risk for Corsair’s business model is the evolution of cloud computing and augmented/virtual reality entertainment.
Cloud computing refers to a computing environment in which software is run on third-party servers and accessed by end users over the internet, requiring minimal processing power from the end-user’s system. Through cloud computing, gamers will be able to access and play sophisticated games without the need of expensive high-performance PC systems and components.
According to Grand View Research, the global cloud gaming market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 48% from 2020 to reach $7.2B by 2027.
Additionally, Corsair must be able to adapt its product offering to meet the needs of the evolving augmented/virtual reality industry.
Moats
There does not seem to be any relevant, structural moats, that may prohibit competitors from capturing Corsair’s market share across their product offering.
Other Relevant Risks
Due to the concentration of their production facilities in Taiwan and China, Corsair may be adversely by geopolitical tensions and trade disputes.
Financial Summary
Proforma Balance Sheet
https://postimg.cc/QHgY1ZxL
Income Statement
https://postimg.cc/qNkbGDzN
For the 9 months ended September 2020 compared to the same period last year:
The 49% increase in net revenue is mostly attributed to a large number of consumers gaming and working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company’s gross margin is influenced by its product mix for the period, gamer and creator peripherals have a higher gross margin (25-35%) than gaming components and systems (15-25%).
Proforma Cashflow Statement
https://postimg.cc/XXCzNyRY
Cash used in investing activities consists primarily on the acquisitions of Elgato in 2018, and SCUF and Origin PC in 2019.
Peer Comparison
https://postimg.cc/Whcfd1V6
Logitech International (LOGI) and Micron Technologies (MU)
Why am I posting this now?
I believe they are going to have very strong 4th quarter 2020 earning results. 2020 had record pc sales,and pc video games has reported record numbers of players. They are in my opinion the leading pc peripherals brand for gamers. They also have strong support from wallstreetbets.
Record pc sales:
https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/record-pc-sales-in-2020-as-covid-limits-work-education-to-homes/story/427858.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20data,units%20in%20Q4%20of%202020&text=COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20has%20turned,personal%20computer%20(PC)%20industry%20industry).
Google trends:
https://imgur.com/oKPn6R5
My price target for this earnings: $55
disclaimer:I am not a financial advisor. Do not trade based on the information I have posted.
credit: u/italiansomali and u/erythaean

[Reality Television] How A Sexual Predator And A Global Pandemic Indirectly Led To A Fanbase Divided By An Average Looking White Boy Who Was Canceled For Not Being Able To Breathe: The Story of GiGi Goode

While many people are probably surprised over the fame and subsequent fall of semi attractive skinny white boys on TikTok this past summer, I unfortunately was not. In fact, I had just spent the first few months of a global pandemic watching a normally peaceful fanbase for a reality tv show become divided over one. This is the story of how a young upstart drag queen named GiGi Goode nearly turned a fan community upside down, and basically caused it to split amongst 2 apps. Since season 13 is on its way, and GiGi’s drag sisteHaus mate Symone is a contestant, I thought y’all would enjoy the sordid tale of miss Goode.
It was hard to find direct sources, as a lot of Reddit threads on the drama sub were locked, and I couldn’t link to them, but I did the best I could.
Setting the Scene In January 2020, RuPaul’s Drag Race announced its 12th season would be premiering February 28th, 2020. This season promised 13 new drag queens, who would compete in sewing, acting, overall performance, and a very infamous celebrity impersonation version of Match Game called Snatch Game.
For this story, we need to focus on 3 queens up and coming to the race.
First, there was plus sized queen Sherry Pie who many considered to be a wholesome theater kid, as well as super annoying.
Second, there was the essence of beauty, Jaida Essence Hall. At the time, she seemed to the fans to be just another pageant queen, nothing spectacular.
Finally, there was the reason this post is being written up on Hobbydrama, the beautiful miss GiGi Goode . She was 21, the minimum age to compete, but certainly seemed to be powerful and beautiful. Young queens don’t, on average, have a harder time winning, as someone unacquainted with the franchise might suspect.
No one could’ve suspected she’d garner the cult following she did, or that they’d be so... young .
Burnt Pie, And The Fastest Rise To Reddit’s Fan Favorite The series took the split premiere route, half of the queens being introduved on the premiere, and the other half being introduced a week later. Of the 3 queens worth mentioning, GiGi Goode competed in the first half, and Sherry Pie and Jaida were introduced in the second.
In the first premiere, fellow fashion queen, the French Nicky Doll overshadowed GiGi. GiGi’s only real star moment in the spotlight came during the challenge, a rap battle, in which she proclaimed that she was “Ggggggggggggigi goode”.
Meanwhile, in between the promos, shocking allegations came to light about Sherry Pie, which have already been discussed on this subreddit. In summary, Multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE men began reporting that Sherry had hooked them with a casting director named “Alison Mossey” who worked for HBO/Broadway, and was casting a project called Bulk. The men would be asked to read weird monologues for the camera, and one man was even asked to start taking steroids! Eventually, they had all learned that Alison Mossey didn’t exist, and that when they brought that up to Sherry, she ghosted them.
The fandom was outraged. In 12 years, this was the WORST thing a contestant had ever done before/during their season airing. Buzzfeed even picked up the story, practically calling for the season to be cancelled.
Production acted quickly, deciding to disqualify Sherry, and to edit her out of all future episodes. Unfortunately for them, it was too late to edit her out of that night’s episode, and it was clear she was supposed to be a well liked queen. The spoiler sub even revealed that she would’ve been a finalist, and potentially even had a rivalry story arc with GiGi Goode!
But fortunately for Jaida Essence Hall, in the dual premieres’ special version of the traditional lip sync battle elimination method where the top two queens instead performed for the win that night, she and Sherry Pie were set to face off. The Reddit live postings nervously held their breathes. Would Scammy Pie, as she was newly crowned, win the faceoff, or would it go to Jaida, who was automatically being adored just for opposing her.
Jaida beat her, and the fans rejoiced. They gave her nicknames such as Jaida Essence Christ, Savior of Season 12. She seemed to be unanimously loved...
And Then The Plague Hit When Coronavirus quarantine hit, fans were uniquely devastated. These new girls wouldn’t get to take advantage of the slew of gigs usually provided to new Ru girls! But one queen certainly did. And perhaps the pandemic emphasized what would’ve happened anyways, or perhaps it just created the perfect storm after Sherry’s disqualification.
See, if the Spoiler Subreddit’s rumors are to be believed, GiGi Goode and Sherry Pie were to be rivals originally, before the disqualification and re editing, and their feud was supposed to play a major part in the season.
For those who don’t watch the show, Rivalries can be VERY beneficial for those involved in them, practically guaranteeing you the crown, especially if the fandom despises your rival.
Season 4 winner Sharon Needles was infamously quarreling with fellow finalist Phi Phi O’Hara. Season 5 winner Jinkx dealt with a whole triad of mean girls who ended up in the top 4 with her, and their competition allegedly helped her take the last spot in the finale from one of the trio, Detox. Many fans speculated after season 11 that part of why its winner, Yvie Oddly, got so much more screen time in later episodes and later won the show despite having an ok run stats wise (I believe she has the worst track record of any winner, ever, despite the fact that she’s a gifted artist) was because fans loved her more than her frenemy, Silky. And the fans clearly adored Jaida after she beat Sherry, even if the pair weren’t proper rivals.
But with Sherry Pie needing to be edited out, the editors had to do something. And if the rumors are true, that would explain why they instead focused SO MUCH, and I mean, SO MUCH AIR TIMEon her alleged rival, GiGi Goode.
The Perfect Storm Before we continue, I need to say that GiGi Goode is a fabulous drag queen. She may be lacking in an interesting personality, but she can dance, sew, and capitalize on her lack of personality by impersonating a robot, as she did in Snatch Game to mercifully take the win from Sherry Pie’s offensive imitation of Katherine Hepburn’s Parkinson’s. She deserved almost all of her 4 wins (the Madonna Rusical win is unanimously believed to have belonged to fellow competitor Jan Sport), and I hold no animosity to her any longer, nor does most of the fan community. I also do not think her fans deserve to be bullied, considering most of them are literal middle schoolers who just don’t understand that reality tv shows are edited or that you can’t say dumb shit on the internet while you’re on a tv show without consequences.
Of course, she seemed like the front runner. But that wasn’t what really made her popular amongst the fandom’s younger members, who might not have been able to grasp how edited reality tv shows are.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I used the word boy in the title, since with drag queens, it’s polite to use she/her and girl or woman when referring to them in drag. But there’s a great reason for that.
See, with everyone on lockdown due to COVID, many young girls and gays, but especially middle school aged girls, were boy crazy. And it didn’t take long for the young teens of the fandom to realize that out of drag, GiGi was hot as hell . That, combined with her success in the competition, particularly during the middle of the season, which would’ve aired in April, when stay at home orders were strictest, seemingly made newer younger fans go crazy, especially on IG. For many who were newer fans of the show, either starting with this season or the disaster that was season 11, GiGi had attained godlike status.
Her young age also helped. She was 21, the youngest competitor on her season. She made funny faces in interviews, and referenced material popular with teenagers, such as her runway referencing the musical Heathers . She even “dated” costar Crystal Methyd, forming Crygi , a relationship that is still debated today as to whether it ever was real, is still real, or was made up for fun and extra attention by two best friends who’s big break was ruined by unforeseen circumstances.
Meanwhile, older fans, particularly here on Reddit, especially in the satellite subs, kept chugging along and rooting for Jaida.
After all, Jaida was a bad ass, as fans quickly learned. She was sharp, and possessed a wittiness not seen in the stereotypical pageant girl. Unlike GiGi, behind her pretty face was personality and sass. She even won the makeover challenge despite being paired with someone of another race, which can normally lead to disaster. But while Jaida was perfect and sweet, not causing drama with anyone, her fans were not often the same. In fact, they had an unusual disdain for GiGi.
Was it because she had attracted younger, annoying fans to the fanbase? Was it because GiGi’s mom is supportive, and GiGi was very proud of that, leading to fans in the cringe sub snickering and calling her “mama’s boy”.
Obviously, looking back on it, those are silly reasons to not like someone, but once again, it was quarantine. People needed somewhere for their emotions to go.
As the season continued, it became obvious the crown was really between Jaida and GiGi. Inevitably, this led to fan base tension. GiGi fans, regardless of age, were called immature, and chased off of the Drag Race satellite subreddits, preventing newer fans from joining the wider community. The main Reddit tried to stay neutral, but 85% of anything posted by a GiGi fan on any platform would end up on the cringe subreddit. The Drama subreddit would chronicle every time GiGi even breathed wrong, looking for more excuses to villanize her than they’d ever done with a queen before.
What makes this MORE infuriating looking back on it was that queens were getting death threats and being called racist slurs, badly this season. Brita had to leave social media, and widow nearly quit drag, but instead of calling out racist and rude fans, the critical Drag Race fans elected to pick on GiGi’s child fandom.
Meanwhile, Drag Race fan pages on Instagram, where fans tend to be on the younger side, had already practically declared GiGi the winner themselves, and had no patience for those who reminded them Jaida was just as talented, although they were by far not as vicious to Jaida fans as Reddit fans were to them. The community had gone from being unified in opinion on all platforms to essentially breaking up, with Jaida fans ruling Reddit and GiGi fans ruling Instagram.
As the finale approached, fans were split. Who deserved the crown more, Jaida, who had done the drag race equivalent of Beowulf slaying Grendel in her first episode, or GiGi, with her 4 wins, beauty in and out of drag, and iconic looks?
Not So Goode After All
The first signs that GiGi would be sort of problematic arose when she proclaimed on an Instagram story in late April or early May that “being queer is a privilege”. While her young, mainly straight or bisexual and female devotees saw it as inspirational, older fans found it offensive and mocked her for it, sharing their own experiences with homophobia and pointing out that no, being queer is not a privilege. The fact that she had, from day one, practically bragged about her amazing relationship with her mother, who makes many of her outfits and does a fantastic job, had already made fans with rougher coming out experiences see her as privileged and clueless about the real world. Her tone deaf remark sealed any doubts in her dissenters minds that she was more than a spoiled brat. GiGi quickly apologized for her remark, claiming it was “Just a saying we say in my drag Haus, you guys”.
She also caught flack for saying while prepping for a political debate challenge that she “didn’t read the news and wasn’t interested in politics”. Her young fans defended her as “having anxiety”, but older fans already pissed at her pointed out that the winners of the show are often considered by mainstream media to be sort of “ambassadors” for the drag community, and that their behavior (or lack thereof) could make drag performers look bad, or add to a trend of turning a blind eye to political issues within drag fans and performers. Some even went as far as to say that she definitely didn’t deserve the crown after her remarks.
Going into the finale, it really looked like she would win. She was even able to land a collab with popular but controversial YouTuber, Jeffree Star, to go up the day after the finale aired, raising Redditors eyebrows that perhaps she really knew that she would win (often the winner just gets a feeling that it’ll be her, as do her competitors), and her and her Haus were able to talk their way into booking her a major collab for the very next day. It didn’t help that Jeffree is inherently a controversial figure, even when the pendulum of public opinion towards him is swinging in his favor, as it was at the time, or that she’d gotten to filming as soon as social distancing orders allowed it.
Then, GiGi fucked up.
”I Can’t Breathe”
See, the finale aired May 31st, 2020, right after George Floyd was murdered.
GiGi Goode, apolitical queen, was beyond excited for her big week. It’s been lost to time what the original context was. Was it her upcoming collab with Jeffree, one of the biggest names in the makeup and YouTube industry? Was it the upcoming finale? Either way, GiGi decided the only way to express her excitement for the week were in 3 simple words, 3 simple words also trending on Twitter.
“I can’t breathe.”
Fans were HORRIFIED. Was GiGi Goode making a joke about George Floyd? Many of her older fans quietly changed their Reddit flairs to one of the two other finalists. Some fans pointed out that I can’t breathe was a trending hashtag on Twitter when she tweeted, and, given her previous track record of cluelessness, she had likely just used the phrase in hopes of getting more engagement on her post.
6 months later and of living with the insanity that is GiGi Goode and her young teenaged fans, I can totally see that the latter is probably true. GiGi is an airhead who can barely answer questions when asked on Twitch livestreams. She was busy that week, obviously, and might not have been on social media enough to have heard about what happened yet. She likely assumed the phrase was a new meme or something, and used it without looking into it. What she did was wrong, but it wasn’t the worst thing a queen has ever done or said on Twitter, or even the most racially insensitive (the natural born red head erasure meltdown of summer 2019 takes the cake for that, but that’s another story).
But at the time, with the tension between mainly newer fans who didn’t realize the show was editing GiGi positively and that she wasn’t actually the world’s most amazing drag queen as well as some older fans who just liked GiGi, and Jaida’s fierce supporters nearly reaching a boiling point, GiGi had made a critical error. One that would need a major apology.
Quickly, GiGi put out a statement. In her statement she legit referenced the Wizard of Oz, which later turned out to be related to her finale lipsync look Fans were PISSED, and rightfully so.
Another issue was quickly leaked. Due to it being early in the pandemic, before how to shoot a tv show safely by quarantining performers and minimizing those on set was widely known as an option, the finale was filmed remotely. The queens were ordered to film at home, to keep things fair. After all, while GiGi lived in LA, competitors Crystal and Jaida lived in middle of nowhere Missouri and Milwaukee, respectively. GiGi and even Jaida were clearly at an advantage.
As usual, GiGi decided rules didn’t apply to her. The head of her drag Haus, Marko Monroe, has done work with Lizzo, and although no one knows if Lizzo’s the one who actually gave them the keys, his connections to the music industry meant she was able to get LA studio space.
When production found out, they were understandably PISSED. Whether it was because they were truly concerned about fairness, or worried that GiGi’s decision would be seen as an unfair advantage by fans unhappy with her win, they made her reshoot at home. The fans were even more pissed that she had essentially tried to cheat, especially after her “I can’t breathe” incident earlier in the week.
When the big night came, GiGi did... ok. She certainly wasn’t remarkable or groundbreaking, but she was decent. It was clear from IG she expected to win. Her Haus definitely violated California rules about gatherings, complete with a cake with GiGi’s face on it. She was ready for her big night.
However, When it was time for the winner to be crowned, Jaida, who had filmed her lipsync in her living room with no backdrop whatsoever, took the crown. Fans rejoiced. Peace was restored to the world of the Drag Race fandom. GiGi Goode tucked her tail between her legs and barely even promoted her collab with Jeffree.
Although we’ll never know for sure if GiGi’s faux pas cost her the crown, we do know that the fanbase holds some sway in who ultimately wins. After all, despite having only 1 win, the worst track record of a winner in Drag Race history, Yvie Oddly took the crown from competitor Brooke the year before, and while her epic finale reveal of a metallic version of her face on the back of her headpiece definitely was the primary reason, her popularity with fans while the season was airing, especially after fighting with Silky, certainly helped.
We also know the winner isn’t decided at the finale taping, or whatever you could call this year’s finale, and all queens who make it to the final lipsync are filmed winning, even if there are rumors that production knows who they’ll have win by that point from people who’ve attended live (one rumor states that Yvie, for example, originally made a joke about eating babies when her crowning was filmed, but production allegedly on the spot made her refilm it, telling her to cut that out). So it is entirely possible that, had GiGi not fucked up on Twitter, she could’ve won.
With the negative feelings towards her still fresh, instead of being known as a “robbed queen”, as many runner ups popular during their seasons are, GiGi became just another pretty faced fashion queen amongst the fan community. The hype around her had died. No one over the age of 14 was demanding she return for an All Stars, as they had with other finalists who had better track records than their season’s winner. In fact, the general consensus by both Reddit and Instagram fans became that she’d been pushed down their throats, and that Jaida had always been prettiefunniewearing better outfits anyways. The fandom returned to a harmonious place.
Where Are They Now?
With All Stars 5, the next season, mainly featuring queens from older seasons, and after the belittling and icing out for acting like, you know, CHILDREN, the younger fans who gave GiGi her cult following were not as interested in the show. They turned to worshipping her and her drag Haus, Avalon.
The Haus of Avalon started throwing Zoom “Haus parties” for 5 bucks a ticket, mainly attended by teenagers, in which their members performed. GiGi has, at both parties, performed scantily clad numbers for her middle school adorers, including one number that was basically her stripping in a car.
They also opened a Twitch channel and shoved GiGi in front of the camera, in or out of drag, as much as possible, allowing her teen fans to ask her exciting questions such as “Do you have Tiktok?” (No, she thinks she’s too good for it), and, “What’s your favorite American Horror Story season” (Coven or Asylum, depending on her mood that stream).
However, it’s benefited all of GiGi’s friends, as her pal who actually has a personality that isn’t “smol awkward 2014 Tumblr bean” Symone already has a strong fanbase going into season 13 .
GiGi Goode got to do a drive in tour with Voss, the premier drag race alum touring company, before they realized that teenagers so young they needed parents to drive them to the show mostly didn’t know how to behave at a drag show, much less one during a global pandemic. Needless to say, she was not invited on the Halloween tour, and the queens were no longer allowed to run around the VIP section for that tour. She’s doing quite well though, advertising for makeup brands and even walking in Rihanna’s SavagexFenty fashion show alongside All Stars 5 winner Shea Coulee. Arguably, she’s the most famous girl from her season outside of the drag community. Although All Stars 6 has already filmed and she’s definitely not on it, the fandom 6 months post her fiasco has stopped actively hating her, even the avid Jaida supporters, and seems to support the idea of her potentially being cast on All Stars someday, once she’s matured a bit more.
Jaida Essence Hall became known as one of the most deserving winners amongst the fanbase, and, it seemed, the drag community as a whole. Unlike past winners, she had no minor “bratty” incidents during her first few months reigning (and not because no clubs were open, as the two most recent former winners had their incidents occur on social media). The drag world loved her, and she was booked for so many virtual shows. She also got to walk in Rihanna’s show, in her own section and not with the other two drag queens. She might not have become a minor Instagram celebrity with constant interviews the way GiGi had, but within the fandom, she was universally loved.
And Sherry Pie has disappeared, as she should have.
TL;DR After a queen was exposed as being a sexual predator, RuPaul’s Drag Race decided to quickly edit her out, focusing more on the queen who allegedly was supposed to be her rival, GiGi. Unfortunately, many fans had already gotten attached to another queen, Jaida, who beat the predator in a lipsync on the one episode show runners couldn’t edit in time. Mainly young fans who didn’t know the full extent of what happened or weren’t old enough to comprehend that reality tv is edited to tell a story and focus on certain people adored GiGi, especially because she’s young and handsome out of drag, and they were in quarantine at the time. GiGi’s dipshit remarks, apparent flaunting of her positive parental relationship, and seemingly being pushed by producers soured older fans to her, and they mocked the shit out of newer fans, MAINLY YOUNGER TEENAGERS, who adored her. Eventually, GiGi tweeted something insensitive and gave a bullshit apology, pissing everyone off, Jaida won the crown, and the fandom eventually calmed down and stopped actively bullying children who hadn’t even entered high school yet.
EDIT: Wow, THANK YOU GUYS for 140 upvotes!
I know this isn’t the juiciest drama, but surprisingly, my former Catholic school kid complex needed to just write this all out in a bubble bath one night to feel less guilty about being part of it, and to the people who encouraged me to publish this, thanks!
Also, although the Drag Race fanbase has other, MUCH more serious problems, I also wanted to call us out preemptively before season 13 to make sure what happened during season 12 doesn’t happen again, because we are so much better than that. Especially to my fellow female fans: We are not the people who made fun of us back in middle school for being Tumblr kids or the adults who mocked us online, and we should not be becoming those people, in any internet space, not just the bowels of Drag Race Reddit.
To the literal children I was a part of bullying: I’m sorry. We went way too far in bullying you all off Reddit just because y’all were middle schoolers with a celebrity crush and a poor understanding of how reality tv works. Especially because most of these kids were girls (strangely young gay male fans weren’t really on the GiGi hype train), and I know damn well I probably would’ve been among them if I was 12-14 right now.
Edit 2: Considering I just landed on the Cringe subreddit, I will no longer be actively checking this post. Not that any of them would read far enough and realize I was basically calling them out for picking on kids and not “disrespecting Jaida in the name of worshipping GiGi”, and get really mad, lmao. I just don’t have time for messy people who are grown enough to know better.
Edit 3: and here they come, this post will be downvoted to 1.1K by the end of the day, guaranteed. Thanks for the love, y’all. Also, y’all coming here to read this from the Cringe subreddit know DAMN WELL I’m not defending that airhead GiGi Goode, but that I’m defending the literal children y’all found on the internet to harass. I even held the bitch accountable for her wrong doings.
I just hope when the kids come back for Symone this season, as they all went to being just Haus of Avalon fans after you kept picking on them after the season ended and everyone else moved on, you can treat the 13 year olds making shitty memes and using tumblr language so bad it gives anyone who grew up in that area nausea to read a bit more decency, and focus on mocking the racists, because lord knows for every one post calling out those bullying Brita and Widow, there were 5-10 more making fun of children for basic ass and unfunny memes or for basically being 12-14 year old girls.

But No....I'm the Narcissist

Was just introduced to this sub by my very supportive stepmom, and figured this would be a good place to vent this.
For context and pre rant...rant:
I have always had issues with my biological mother (NMom going forward) basically as long I can remember. My Nmom and Dad separated when I was 2, Nmom maintained custody of me until I was 9, when she decided to chase an already failing relationship from Northern Ontario, Canada to Los Angeles California. I was expected to be an adult by my Nmom from the time I was 5, and once I was in my dad's custody, I was more friend and therapist than I was her kid. All of my happy childhood memories are from visitations with my dad and stepmom or from the time period in which my dad had custody. I have no positive childhood memories involving Nmom.
I have had depression, anxiety and self harm issues since I was 12. My dad got me into therapy, but I eventually stopped going I think mostly because I didn't click very well with that therapist.
Shortly after I turned 18 due to issues with an ex who had not been paying rent for several months, I was notified that I was being evicted from the apartment I was living in at the time. My Nmom and Estepdad had moved to Alberta Canada by this point and due to circumstances I don't particularly want to discuss at the moment, I felt the best option was to join my Nmom in Alberta. Due to already existing anxiety issues and an intense aversion to conflict, I made the idiotic decision to mail my dad a letter informing him I had moved, instead of just talking to him about it. This caused a rather large rift between us and we didn't actually speak to each other until 8 years later, when we reestablished contact in 2018.
My first round of living with Nmom again was between 2010 and 2014. Prior to this, just after her move to Alberta in 2009, she had started drinking heavily. I haven't had a lengthy sober interaction with her since 2010. From March 2011 to April 2012, we worked for the same company, but in different departments and on different shifts. She got off work at 2pm, I got off work at 4pm, so by the time I got home from work, she was already wasted. This led to many, many, many awful rants from her about how awful my dad was, how she wished she'd aborted me, how everyone was basically awful to her....You get the point.
In June 2012, the area we lived in experienced a "once in 100 years" flood. We spent over a month living in a hockey arena, then a camper, then one of her coworkers homes waiting to find out how bad the damage was. Estepdad had to go back to work after a week or 2, leaving me with Nmom who despite the rules of the evac center was still getting black out drunk. I had called my stepmom a couple of times in that period, and upon finding that out Nmom freaked out at me. Once we were allowed to go back into our rental home, I was unable to go with Nmom and Estepdad because I am severely allergic to mold, which was abundant because our area of town had been under sewage water for 2 - 3 weeks in the middle of summer. I was renting the basement from Nmom, unable to get renters insurance because she refused to provide me with proof that I was renting from her, and I was not on the lease for the house itself.
I lost everything, except a small container of stuffed animals that had been given to me as a child, 2 containers of stuff I had put aside to donate, the 72 hours of clothing we had been told to bring when we were evacuated, my laptop and a ring that I only just found out 2 days ago, belonged to my dad, which was found outside in a bulldozer track in the front lawn. Everything else was gone, most of my stuffed animals, clothes, pictures, university textbooks, books, you name it. Gone. It's been 8 years and I still can move my entire existence in a couple of suitcases.
Nmom swore to me while we were stuck at the evac center that her insurance policy was for $100,000 so it would be fine. Obviously that's not going to replace sentimental things, but it was better than nothing. Well that wasn't the case. She had dropped it down to $ 50,000 just months prior. Now she did lose things, but all of her sentimental stuff was either upstairs and untouched or in the case of her wedding photos, the people who took the originals, still had them and have offered to send them several times since. She lost more expensive things though (gaming computers and big furniture) so she lost more than I did, so my stuff didn't matter. Of the $50,000 she got from insurance, she used 3000$ to pay off my laptop and the rest of the stuff I'd gotten from Dell but lost in the flood, and gave me $2000. Upon hearing that I was still depressed about losing my most sentimental possessions, she repeatedly ranted at me for being ungrateful. The whole situation caused me to lapse back into self harm again.
I moved to Calgary with some friends in 2014, and after that fell apart I moved to Prince George, BC in with a boyfriend I had met online, who turned out to be an awful guy with a history of rape, which I was not exempt from. I first tried to leave in December of 2015, but ended up going back after he threatened to kill himself, until I finally shook the relationship in May 2016.
I lived with Nmom and Estepdad again from May 2016 to April 2018 at which point I was given the choice of being homeless or moving to the states, because the immigration process for my current partner would have been expensive and despite the fact that we could have kept renewing his visa, Nmom came up with some story about it potentially costing her her job. That's another story for a different day.
However the important part here is that in April of 2017, I began having what I now know are Psychogenic Non Epileptic Seizures. After an MRI in August of that year and a couple meetings with a social worker, I was officially diagnosed with PTSD and was told that my seizures were likely stress related, though if I could figure out if there was a specific trigger and avoid it, in theory, the seizures would stop. My next session was supposed to be October 31st that year, however Nmom did not want to drive to the city for the appointment so I never went.
When I left in April 2018, I left on not good terms with Nmom, though Estepdad said I didn't have to go and we could figure it out - my stuff had already been shipped to the states and he said this as we were getting into the car to drive to the airport, so too late. Because of this Nmom did not contact me for almost 4 months, until a coworker asked how I was and then gave her shit for not knowing. In that 4 month period, no seizures. Contact started again, so did the seizures. In all of the probably 20 phone calls we have had since August 2018, she was only sober for 15 minutes of 1 call. Keep that in mind.
Now on to the actual rant - sorry I know this is long.
My last phone call with her was October 14th. It was a 20 minute drunken rant were she told me she'd been reporting my uncle's ( her brother) posts on Facebook (she does not like that his political beliefs are different from hers) leading to his account being suspended at least twice and the rest of the rant was about how my cousin (same uncle's daughter) had gained so much weight and 2020 had obviously not been kind to her when talking to me about this cousin's wedding photos.
My uncle is also originally from Canada, now living in the states, so his Facebook account is how he keeps in touch with old friends and family back in Canada. I also felt really bad about what my Nmom had said about my cousin, so in a rare act of defiance, I called my uncle and let him know. Neither have been on good speaking terms with Nmom due to her drinking, so both ended up cutting contact completely.
On October 15th, I had my worse set of seizures to date. Resulting in a broken nose, 2 black eyes, a concussion, a broken tooth and a destroyed pair of glasses. I had already come to the conclusion that Nmom and her drunken behavior were my seizure trigger, but this additionaly confirmed it. I decided to go NC completely.
After finding out about my seizure, my uncle decided that maybe he should attempt an intervention. However the first step of this was for him and I to have a conference call with my maternal Egrandmother. Coming out of that conference call I had some hope that I could rebuild my relationship with Egrandmother that had soured due to her defense of my Nmom. My cousin also had a conference call with Egrandmother and her dad. She too was hopeful.
It was agreed my uncle would start the process when he got back from Vacation. However we never got that far.
On December 5th I received an email from Nmom. It started as a life update before devolving into a rant about me not talking to her, telling me I was immature and ungrateful for everything she and Estepdad had done for me. That she couldn't believe I was siding with my cousin (she did not remember the October 14th phone call, assuming my cousin had taken something she said on Facebook out of context and was just being a drama queen). I did not respond right away.
I sent the email to Egrandmother, and she asked to call me about it the next day. My uncle agreed to listen into the call, basically so I knew I wasn't crazy.
During that phone call, Egrandmother first blamed my uncle for not having done the intervention already, claim she didn't know he was going on vacation (she did). Then started blaming Nmom's drinking on me moving in with my dad when I was 9 and an incident that occurred between me and Estepdad when I was 12. We ended the call not long after that. I was livid, not only was she not going to back my uncle up if he proceeded with the intervention, she was also now blaming me for Nmom's drinking. My uncle decided to then leave the intervention in Egrandmother's hands. So nothing is going to happen.
On December 9th, I was informed that my step-grandmother (stepmom's mom) had passed away. I still haven't completely come to grips with that because of all the drama surrounding my Nmom right now.
I decided on December 13th to contact Estepdad. Estepdad's suggestion was to only have phone calls right when Nmom was done work and keep them short, or just email her. Which wasn't going to happen, because I don't want to keep playing seizure roulette.
December 16th I decided to write a calm, well measured email, stating that I had told my uncle what she had said, and it had nothing to do with anything she said on Facebook. Again in another show of defiance I told her I was putting my physical, mental and emotional health first, and was cutting off contact. I also told her that if she decided to chose her drinking over a relationship with me, that was on her.
I didn't hear from her for 3 days. I was fully bracing myself for a raging email about what a horrible child I was. Even bracing myself for it, I was still absolutely stunned by the response I received.
She lambasted me about "the horrors I have caused by telling other family members MY version of her" she claims that she is now in therapy (I doubt it considering the lock down and the lack of therapists in her area) and that her therapist has diagnosed ME as being a narcissist based on their first conversation. Told me I trigger her drinking, telling me I need therapy (no shit, I have for years) as well as telling me I was just an angry person looking to place blame.
Cool. She deleted me off Facebook so I scrubbed my Facebook of anyone she would use to keep tabs on me, ultimately losing Egrandmother, an aunt, a different uncle, 7 cousins and several family friends. Part of my brain wants to do what I usually do when I attempt to stand up to Nmom, which is to cave, grovel and accept blame while begging for forgiveness. I'm not doing that this time. It feels weird, and anxiety wise I've been all over the place, but I'm trying to work though it.
Thank you to anyone who makes it through this whole mess, and sorry for rambling.

Disney and AMC Will Happen - Ban Redemption DD

How about a Ban Redemption DD for you autists. Disney REQUIRES movie theaters and there is 0% chance they allow AMC to go under. Disney revenues could see a decline of nearly $300 million per tentpole if they plan on going PVOD (paid-video-on-demand) only with Disney+ subscribers versus movie theater release.
Disney Tentpole Releases
In 2019, Disney released eight major tentpoles with an average of $1.4 billion in revenue ($1.2 billion median revenue). If you take into consideration production and marketing costs, along with revenue share with distributors such as AMC and Cinemark, you’re looking at a net revenue of around $250-300 million. How does the math work? (rounded to nearest $100MM):
AVG tentpole revenue: $1.4 billion
AVG revenue share (@ 50%): -$700MM
AVG production cost: -$200MM
AVG marketing cost: -$200MM
AVG net revenue: $300MM
With an acquisition of the theater itself, you have embedded advertising within the theater for upcoming releases and more importantly, the revenue sharing would be wiped for AMC (which holds approximately 50% of attendees). The reduction of costs (cinema advertising, TV advertising, online advertising, etc.) would be dramatically reduced, likely around 20-25% given free media inventory, including email and elsewhere, could be used to supplement. The big savings comes from the revenue share reduction. Here is the breakdown of the savings if acquired:
Revenue share savings (@50% share): $350MM
Marketing cost savings: $50-75MM
Disney is expected to expand releases at a level of 10+ tentpoles per year across the entire seasonal cycle, with summer and holiday season being the predominant timeline. This level will likely not be reduced as Disney is in content creation mode which allows movie production to coincide with series production in order to consolidate production budgets (think Wandavision with Marvel and Mandalorian with Star Wars). These synergies will greatly reduce production costs going forward, but only if revenues will support. Disney+ content will likely not be net positive until some point in 2023-24. The net return moving positive will be realized due to pricing expansion as they are giving things away to further build their subscription moat.
Here's Disney's full movie release schedule through 2027 - Insider
Why are theaters imperative? Mulan will likely show a revenue total across Disney+ in the $55-60 million range. Assuming we see the same revenue curve of traditional theater revenue, their first weekend of $35 million will likely net to be 60% of total revenue (revenue data for movies). With barely breaking $65 million in the box office, Disney likely left $600-800 million on the table had the pandemic not hit.
How important is the opening week to a movie's total box office? (stephenfollows.com)
Additional Revenue Sources
Now here is where the other big element comes in that will have some speculative math. I wanted to add this in order to convey the possible revenue streams to come from this. We can take a look at 2019 levels to work against. Here are the numbers:
2019 AMC attendee levels: 356MM (taken from the 2019 annual report)
Unique visitors: 71MM (assuming a five movies-per-year)
Movie theater attendance statistics in U.S. | Statista
One thing to note about people who visit theaters is their propensity for entertainment consumption and travel are higher than other individuals. What this means is that these people are more likely to be ones who go to Orlando or California to visit Disney parks versus other people. They are more likely to go to a restaurant and spend their discretionary money on experience. Cross-promotion of this audience with loyalty, Disney+ subscription, Disney annual passholder and other discount potential would allow further capitalization opportunities. Additionally, the creation of a brick-and-mortar Disney store within theater itself would allow for product purchase to an audience already showing demand for the IP they are going to see (think of Gamestop toys in an AMC “GME Gang 4 Life!”). Queue speculative math:
New Disney+ subscribers annual revenue: $100MM (@2% unique visitors joining annually)
Disney store (in theater) revenue: ??
Lease renegotiation/additional synergy savings: ??
Disney park/passholder revenue: $50-75MM (@2% of unique visitors with average visitor spend at parks)
Annual Disney Park Attendance Statistics and Charts | Disney Resources (disneynews.us)
Advertising reduction: $25-50MM (based on a 10-20% reduction of current ad spending around $280MM for parks)
Total additional revenue and savings: $175-250MM
Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
This MFer is important. The corporate overlords have to find ways to spend their money the best way possible. They decide if content creation, capital expense with parks, etc will net the most in returns given opportunity cost. Within my own company and friends’ companies across the CPG/Media/Technology sectors, I am seeing anywhere between 8-15% IRRs. In other words, Disney needs to make that back with any capital expense, be it an acquisition or within their current assets. The return timeframe is anywhere from 2-3 years, especially in this environment since the concern of inflation in the next 3-5 years may push that IRR number up. Simple math, lets look at a 10% IRR in these calculations:
Current AMC market cap: ~$385MM
Current AMC debt obligations annually: ~2-2.5 billion
Why AMC Entertainment's Debt Refinancing Is a Big Deal (fool.com)
Market Cap high (October 2018: $2.1 billion
While looking at a market cap high with a production company purchasing the assets is likely not truly a like-for-like view, understanding what potential savings that Disney would see if they purchased the AMC assets and capitalized on the savings noted above, we can assume this conservative savings level:
Tentpole savings (@ 10 per year): $4.5 billion
Additional revenue/savings: $175-250MM
Minus debt obligations: $2-2.5 billion
Net revenue gains: $2.675-2.75 billion
Finally, if we look at a 3-year window for the IRR assumption, we take the net revenue and minus the initial acquisition cost. We would not want to go down to the bottom of the IRR, but have the float be considerably higher versus the IRR minimum assumption of 10%:
2-year revenue gains: $5.35-5.5 billion + acquisition cost
Acquisition assumption: $2-2.5 billion, but likely even as high as $3 billion
Market cap range stock price: $12.50-15.50
Headwinds and Entry Point
Wow, stock price gains from $2.40 to $12.50 sounds wonderful, but I would preface to say that the next three months are going to be a rollercoaster. There are two major events that could be a catalyst lower:
1) share dilution due to an offering of 100MM shares (as about 55MM have been added of the 150MM that was noted in previous disclosures)
2) bankruptcy due to cash burn. If AMC does dilute further, we could see a 40% reduction from these levels. If bankruptcy happens, then it’s game over.
What does this mean? Entry point for me is some point in late winter, in and around the last week in February or early March. I would definitely wait until January is over to see what happens. It may be as late as April, but you may miss the bottom at that point. This isn’t financial advice, but no one ever picks the absolute bottom.
Do I buy shares or options? I would expect the stock price to creep below $2 over the coming months and think to enter between $1.50-2.00. There may be some crazy options available in the $3-5 range that look to be FD level, but may as well take on the stock side at those levels. If you do get into the options side, expect cheap leaps depending on bankruptcy news (as they are cheap right now anyways). Just understand it is a risky bet. After reading the archived u/Deepfuckingvalue post, I would think this may be one of those stories. The reason I don’t think this will be a Hertz-level bankruptcy is due to the dependency of the media companies.
As mentioned with a possible dilution, the market cap range for the stock gets reduced 40% ($7.50-9.25 give-or-take).
Additional Notes
While this is speculation, the two additional drivers for this event would be as follows:
1) Cinemark is eyeing AMC assets and Disney would not want Cinemark to have more control which could pressure revenue sharing
2) Regulatory concern over monopoly power would likely fall to the wayside due to the level of financial distress AMC is under and concerns over job loss and recovery concerns
The AMC assets are strong given the revenue they do currently generate. With a cost-cutter like Bob Chapek in charge of reversing AMCs course to sustained profitability being a win-win for AMC and Disney, this would fit in well with the Disney properties.
I welcome your brutal thoughts as I put on my helmet (the one with my name on it).
TLDR: If AMC isn't delisted by April, Disney will likely buy them. Look for an entry point under $2 in late winter if they haven't filed for bankruptcy (not financial advice)!
Positions: GME, PLTR (to the moon!!!!!! 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 ) AMC in March if they're still around.

Amazon Stock Price Target Prediction & Analysis [Fundamental & Tehnical]

Should you buy Amazon stock or has it run out of growth opportunities? What is my price prediction for Amazon? Read until the end of the post as I reveal my price target for Amazon and why I believe it can deliver insane returns!
~Warning! Very Very Long Post~
[Disclosure: I made this DD 2 weeks ago & I wasn't part of this Subreddit until the last few days]
[Wanted to post this before the next Amazon earnings later tonight!]
Hello everyone and welcome to another stock price prediction! Today we are going to talk about Amazon and what’s the upside for the company! So, let’s go over the company a little before moving on to some fundamental, technical analysis, predictions and my price target for the stock in the next years & months.
So, let’s start by talking a little about Amazon, yeah, I know it’s one of the biggest companies in the world, but I believe Amazon is still undervalued & underappreciated compared to some of the highflyers that have generate insane returns in the past months, though most of them are still far from profitability and don’t have the growth across all the board like Amazon.
Maybe the market doesn't put as much attention in the numbers as I do but I would rather invest in a business which I consider to be healthy and growing rather than a what if stock like many of the recent inflated IPOs. Amazon is a trillion-dollar company growing at a double-digit pace as many companies that are a fraction of their size would kill for this numbers, but this hasn’t helped Amazon since September.
On a global scale e-commerce is expected to increase from 16% to 22% of retail sales by 2023. With the U.S. expected to increase its retail e-commerce sales from $374 billion to $476 billion by 2024.This is another thing that supports the growth that e-commerce has in front of it, both as total and as a % of the total retail sales. With the latest report showing a 24% increase in holiday e-commerce transactions and a 19% increase for the 2020 fiscal year.
E-commerce is showing signs that it will continue to gain share of the total market as a recent report projects that digital sales during the Black Friday-to-Cyber Monday period will grow by about 35% YOY, reaching penetration of around 32% and growing by more 10B, as this continues to eat up market share from more traditional B&M retailers.
I think one of the biggest problems the company has, it’s the actual share price of the company, not the value. We have seen that a stock split can and will attract more buyers and the share price would probably see an accelerated rate of growth, just look at what happened with Tesla and Apple recently. By splitting the stock just like Apple has done a number of times, this allows more individual investors to invest in the company, as they will be attracted by the cheaper share price. Amazon hasn’t done a share split since the dot com era, and it might be time for the company to take advantage of this hot bull market to actually go ahead with something like at least a 5-10:1 split.
So, let’s go a little through the latest quarter results and guidance. The company increased the operating cash flow by more than 55% to over $55B for the latest twelve months, with free cash flow also increasing by $6B, while they managed to avoid significant dilution of the company, with only 7M additional shares being outstanding.
The net sales also increased 37% in the last quarter to just over $96B, an increase of more than $26B over 2019, which is an insane 36% increase y/y yet again.
This year Amazon has also pushed their Prime Day ahead of schedule, which resulted in the two biggest days ever for third-party small & medium sellers, which saw an increase in sales of over 60% over 2019, even bigger than Amazon own retail business.
Amazon continues to expand into multiple revenue streams, with the first Amazon Fresh grocery store opened in California, which is offering both in-store and online products.
We also saw Amazon’s more profitable revenue streams meaning the services revenues increasing, with Amazon Studios continuing to produce original movies and TV-series while also expanding their offering to live sport games.
The company is also seeking to expand into the red-hot Video Gaming market, as they launched a new service Prime Gaming, available for free for Prime Members and also announced Luna which will be a cloud gaming service that will allow customers to play high-quality games on previously owned devices, thus not requiring bigger investments for many customers. They also continued to improve their devices like the Echo, Alexa, Ring and FireTV line of products, which feature more & more AI Improvements.
Amazon has also announced an expansion into the pharmacy business which put a lot of pressure on traditional pharmacy companies like CVS & Walgreens, while also announcing a new Halo service, aimed at helping customers improve their lifestyle.
I like companies that make me a lot of money, but I also like that they are involved in projects aimed at helping poorer communities around the world, with their latest Project Kuiper, being a low-earth orbit satellite constellation that is aiming to provide reliable & cheap internet access around the world.
And last but not least, let’s not forget about the biggest income provider as margin goes, the Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon continued to see significant customer demand for this product with multiple big companies like Global Payments & Moderna using their services. Alongside these 2 companies we also saw AWS providing even more data services for the NFL and many more other companies. AWS has been a terrific revenue stream for Amazon, with AWS having 1/3 of the market share for cloud infrastructure in the first half of 2020, as the compound annual growth of AWS has been 40% in the recent years, just below the other profitable services they offer on subscriptions services, advertising & payments, with the only revenue stream seeing a negative growth being the physical stores.
Overall, the company has seen a 28% compound annual growth in revenues since 2016 and an even bigger 68% growth in earnings/share, which is incredible to say the least.
So, before even starting, you should now that I am bull on Amazon but I am willing to hear other opinions so don’t be afraid to leave a comment down below!
I have made some predictions based on the growth rate of the company, the latest plans announced by them and used some estimates. So, keep in mind this are only projections and are calculated by myself, this is not an investment advice and you should do your own research and so on…
Firstly, let’s start with the Guidance that Amazon gave us for the 4th quarter, as they are expecting net sales between $112B and $121B implying a growth of between 28-38% over 2019. They also provided guidance for the operating income but this is heavily impacted by the problems we had in 2020 and that still continue to be around.
The company also is aiming to optimize the free cash flow which was up 26% y/y for Q3, as they are trying to dilute the shares as little as possible. The total net SALES for the last twelve months is nearing $348B which even adjusted for forex is still up 31%. Amazon has only 12% of their revenues coming the AWS right now, but this is by far the most profitable revenue for the company, as the increases in AWS sales have led to an over 90% increase in operating income from the previous year.
Let’s take a look at the last quarter’s results. We saw a big INCREASE in all 3 big revenue streams for Amazon, with the first 9 months of 2020 brining over $160B in sales in North America, $67B from International sales and almost $33B from AWS. For my projections I actually just added another quarter like this one to the end results, which actually is a conservative estimate of $96B compared to the guidance of $112B, and the growth rate that Amazon’s net sales has seen in the past year, with North America Sales rising by 37%, International by 31% and AWS by 30%.
For the cost of sales, I did pretty much the same, and with cost margin standing at 75% of net sales for the last quarters I think this is pretty safe to say it will remain mostly the same if not even improve due to bigger revenues from the AWS. I also estimated the full yearly costs by adding another identical quarter, just like for the revenues, so that things stay even.
For the other operating expenses, I also took this from their financials as I expect both SG&A and R&D expenses to start to normalize a little after the huge spending to ramp up capacity this year due to the increase in demand, while I also did the same thing for the Capex spending of Amazon, as they have invested massively in the last 12 months to ramp up things.
Meanwhile for the interest income and expenses I also just averaged things out for the full year while maintaining the other sources of income, but these have such a small impact that they don’t even matter.
Amazon has had a pretty wild effective TAX RATE in the past decade, but I decided to see what the avg was for the last 4years, and that was 16%, but for safety and due to the change in administration in the US I decided to bump this up a little to 18%.
And one last number that is important is THE earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which has seen a 36% increase y/y for since 2016.
I like to value companies based on multiples of future price earnings. So, let’s take a look at what Amazon earnings/share will be by 2025.
I implied for the 3 main streams of revenues which are North American Sales, International Sales and AWS sales a rate of growth similar to the one we had this year but with gradual declines each subsequent year. I also used pretty much the same average cost of sales which includes the actual cost of sales and the fulfillment costs. This has stood at about 75% of the net revenues for the past years and might actually improve, but I do want to stay on the safe side. So, by 2025 the gross REVENUES should reach around $244B, assuming margins stay pretty much in line, though it’s likely they will improve margins, with International sales becoming a little more profitable and AWS brining more & more money.
We also have to estimated what the Capex & Operating expenses would be by 2025. I think Amazon should see somewhat of a slowdown of Capex, R&D & SG&A spending, as they have seen a huge boost in the past year, and I think it should normalize, so I will imply an 8% annual growth for these, which is still very high.
Next, we look at the interest income, expense and other losses or incomes for the company. This numbers are small compared to the vast cash flows of the company that they can even be ignored, but let’s assume they see a 10% decrease both in income and expenses related to interest while also not suffering losses but having a smaller other income by 10%/year. This would results in an almost $114B income pre-tax for 2025.
As I showed you earlier, the effective tax rate for Amazon has been around 16% in the past 4 years, despite the nominal US tax rate. For safety reasons I will use an 18% tax rate, though this should stay closers to 16% on the back of the International taxes. So, with an 18% tax rate, the FINAL income for the company after everything has been taken into consideration should be $93.25B.
For the outstanding shares, I will be conservative and imply a .5% increase in outstanding shares, as the company has been very careful in avoiding the dilution of the stock. So, with that increase by 2025, we should have around 531M shares.
So, BASED on Price to Future Earnings/share we can see Amazon is currently trading at almost 18 times 2025 earnings/share, which compared to the 90 multiple it’s trading right now would be insanely low. I can see Amazon continuing to trade at very high P/E for the foreseeable future. So, with a 25 PE price the company should trade at 4400$, while with a 50 PE ratio, the stock should be close to 9000$/share, which is insane when you think about that number, but maybe Bezos will listen and split the shares finally.
So, after all these estimates what are my price targets? HERE are my actual price targets… I think the bear case 2025 price we can see Amazon trade at is $4828 which would imply a return of over 54%, while my base case and my pretty safe assumption is that Amazon will trade at 6145$/share by the end of 2025, implying a 96.5% return on the current price. My most bullish case though is $7900, which would imply a return of 152%, with that number being mind-blowing given the current valuation of the company… but I guess we do have to start getting used with such high numbers… I guess decades ago when we saw the first millionaire or billionaire, people would have also thought that it was crazy… but crazy is for the limited minds only I believe.
So yeah guys, here is my OVERALL price targets for 2025, my bear case is an average of the 25 & 30 PE ratio, while the normal case is the average between the 30 and 40 PE’s with the most bullish case valuing the company between a PE of 40-50.
So HERE is the full spreadsheet that I have projected for Amazon by 2025, if you do have another opinion or a suggestion please leave a comment down below, I think I have been conservative in most of my projections, but feel free to give your opinion.
Keep in mind, these targets might sound ridiculous, but just look at the growth Amazon has in the past. The company has increased in value by more 450% in just the past 5 years and is over 160.000% up since it started trading. So yes, the valuation is mad right now for the company. So, are you willing to bet against one of the biggest and fastest growing companies in the world?
The company also has pristine FINANCIALS, with more than $112B in current assets vs only $102B in current liabilities, with over $282B in total assets. So, the company is way more than solvable at any point in the near future.
And let’s also take a look at what the estimates are from the analysts. We can see that the analysts expect a similar EPS by 2025, of around $166 compared to $171/shares that my Growth Valuations are projecting. So, it seems that this could be a very reasonable upside for the company.
So, what do I expect in the next couple of days, weeks and months for Amazon?
Let’s look at this CHART, so starting with the high the stock made before the September sell-off. The stock has been trading in this wedge formation for the last couple of months with increasingly higher lows. The stock isn’t overbought and hasn’t been since it saw an RSI of 73 when it reached the all-time highs. I think with this wedge formation building up, with increasing higher lows and with the pattern of trading likely being an Elliot Theory 5 WAVE formation, I think it’s very likely we see a breakout in the near future, maybe just before earnings, and I expect this breakout to mimic the last run the stock had of about 23% up. So, with that 23% increase mirrored that would result the stock should peak around $3900, which I expect to see by the end of the year.
And let’s take a quick look at what 47 analysts on wall street are saying. They are mostly very bullish on the company with an average price target of $3800 and a high price target of $4600 which is insane for a return in the next 12 months, as 46 of the 47 analysts are either bullish or very bullish on Amazon. So yet again, the $3900 isn’t that out of possibilities even as Wall Street’s analysts expect
So, what would I do? Well, I own Amazon stock and I believe it still has tremendous room to grow, so I would start building a position as I expect the company to resume its uptrend sooner rather than later and the next catalyst may be just a couple of weeks away with the last quarter earnings expected to be announced early in February.
And I shouldn’t forget to mention that I believe Amazon is one of the most stable stocks out with very good leadership, and with large institutional holders like Vanguard, BlackRock and Morgan Stanley owning huge amounts of the company.
So, THIS are my projections and my expectations for the company, and if you do want to check out the spreadsheets you can find the link HERE
Thank you everyone for reading🙏 Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion on the stock market! Have a great day and see you next time❗

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