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The real DD on SLV, the worlds biggest short squeeze is possible and we can make history
Update 2/4 - someone went ahead and spelled out the mechanics of the squeeze quite well and I would like to give their post attention https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lc8vgo/slv_is_not_going_to_get_squeezedslv_is_the_trojan/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Update 2/2 - I am able to comment again. I messaged several mods on Reddit and the mod account on Twitter. None of them responded but it appears I am able to comment again so I assume one of them lifted my ban Update 2/1 - I have been banned from posting on WSB. I guess they aren’t yet deleting my post here given the media attention. If this was a rogue mod I’d appreciate being restored the ability to post on WSB. I’m open to talking to any mods Update 1/31 - there have been tons of 'what to buy' questions so I added a clarity post, hope it helps. It's also getting downvoted to hell because its not about GME so that's discouraging. The speed at which the downvotes flew in makes me think someone made bots to crush new posts related to SLV (or maybe anything not GME). It makes no sense for this post to have 93% upvotes and my new one to have 28%. I have not sold my GME to buy SLV. I had a small pre-existing position in leaps I bought months ago. Created an official Twitter handle not sure if I’ll use it, but didn’t want anyone to impersonate me on there Here is the longer DD for the short squeeze case for SLV, a follow-up from my shorter post a few hours ago. Note that I talk in first person as this is something I’m going to do. Everyone is free to do as they individually please and copy my trade if they’d like to. I think it’s absurd that forces at be think this forum is manipulating by posting publicly but that’s where we are at right now. First things first, I'm not doing this until the GME rise is done. I am long GME but am going long SLV immediately after. Update 1/29: due to the manipulation and collusion of citadel, hedge funds, and brokers to change the rules and rig the game in their favor. Who likely knew ahead of time and bought puts right before and calls at the bottom, GME is too important to abandon still. SLV is still my next play but GME needs to go to $1000 and these people need to go to jail. If you just want to know what to buy skip to the end I present 2 investment DDs in this post, the short squeeze and the fundamentals. If you want to see what to buy The short squeeze: Buy SLV shares and SLV call options to force physical delivery of silver to the SLV vaults. Also buy physical silver bullion. The best possible thing would be to take physical delivery in the futures market if you have access to do so. The silver futures market has oscillated between having roughly 100-1 and 500-1 ratio of paper traded silver to physical silver, but lets call it 250-1 for now. This means that for every 250 ounces in open interest in the futures market, only 1 actually gets delivered. Most traders would rather settle with cash rather than take delivery of thousands of ounces of silver and have to figure out to store and transport it in the future. The people naked shorting silver via the futures markets are a couple of large banks and making them pay dearly for their over leveraged naked shorts would be incredible. It's not Melvin capital on the other side of this trade, its JP Morgan. Time to get some payback for the bailouts and manipulation they've done for decades (look up silver manipulation fines that JPM has paid over the years). The way the squeeze could occur is by forcing a much higher percentage of the futures contracts to actually deliver physical silver. There is very little silver in the COMEX vaults or available to actually be use to deliver, and if they have to start buying en masse on the open market they will drive the price massively higher. There is no way to magically create more physical silver in the world that is ready to be delivered. With a stock you can eventually just issue more shares if the price rises too much, but this simply isn't the case here. The futures market is kind of the wild west of the financial world. Real commodities are being traded, and if you are short, you literally have to deliver thousands of ounces of silver per contract if the holder on the other side demands it. If you remember oil going negative back in May, that was possible because futures are allowed to trade to their true value. They aren't halted and that's what will make this so fun when the true squeeze happens. Edit for more detail: let’s say there’s one futures seller who gets unlucky and gets the buyer who actually wants to take delivery. He doesn’t have the silver and realizes it’s all of a sudden damn difficult to find some physical silver. He throws up his hands and just goes long a matching number of futures contracts and will demand actual delivery on those. Problem solved because he has now matched the demanding buyer with a new seller. The issue is that the new seller has the same issue and does the exact same thing. This is how the cascade effect of a meltup occurs. All the naked shorts trying to offload their position to someone who actually has some silver. My goal is to ensure that I have the silver and won’t sell to them until silver is at a far higher price due to the desperation. The silver market is much larger than GME in terms of notional value, but there is very little physical silver actually readily available (think about the difference between total shares and the shares in the active float for a stock), and the paper silver trading hands in the futures market is hundreds of times larger than what is available. Thus when they are forced to actually deliver physical silver it will create a massive short squeeze where an absurd amount of silver will be sought after (to fulfill their contractually obligated delivery) with very little available to actually buy. They are naked shorting silver and will have to cover all at once and the float as a percentage of the total silver stock globally is truly miniscule. The fundamentals: The current gold to silver ratio is 73-1. Meaning the price of gold per ounce is 73 times the price of silver. Naturally occurring silver is only 18.75 times as common as gold, so this ratio of 73-1 is quite high. Until the early 20th century, silver prices were pegged at a 15-1 ratio to gold in the US because this ratio was relatively known even then. In terms of current production, the ratio is even lower at 8-1. Meaning the world is only producing 8 ounces of silver for each newly produced ounce of gold. Global industry has been able to get away with producing so little new silver for so long because governments have dumped silver on the market for 80 years, but now their silver vaults are empty. At the end of WW2 government vaults globally contained 10 billion ounces of silver, but as we moved to fiat currency and away from precious metal backed currencies, the amount held by governments has decreased to only 0.24 billion ounces as they dumped their supply into the market. But this dumping is done now as their remaining supply is basically nil. This 0.24 billion ounces represents only 8% of the total supply of only 3 billion ounces stored as investment globally. This means that 92% of that gold is held privately by institutions and by millions of boomer gold and silver bugs who have been sitting on meager gains for decades. These boomers aren't going to sell no matter what because they see their silver cache as part of their doomsday prepper supplies. It's locked away in bunkers they built 500 miles from their house. Also, with silver at $23 an ounce currently, this means all of the worlds investment grade silver only has a total market cap of $70 billion. For comparison the investment grade gold in the world is worth roughly $6 trillion. This is because most of the silver produced each year actually gets used, as I have mentioned. $70 billion sounds like a lot, but we don’t have to buy all that much for the price to go up a lot. **If the squeeze happens, it would be like 40 years worth of their gains in 4 months ** The reason that only 8 ounces of silver are produced for every 1 ounce of gold in today's world is because there aren't really any good naturally occurring silver deposits left in the world. Silver is more common than gold in the earth's crust, but it is spread very thin. Thus nearly every ounce of silver produces is actually a byproduct of mining for other metals such as gold or copper. This means that even as the silver price skyrockets, it wont be easy to increase the supply of silver being produced. Even if new mines were to be constructed, it could take years to come online. Finally, most of this newly created silver supply each year is used for productive purposes rather than kept for investment. It is used in electronics, solar panels, and jewelry for the most part. This demand wont go away if the silver price rises, so the short sellers will be trying to get their hands on a very small slice of newly minted silver. The solar market is also growing quickly and political pressure to increase solar and electric vehicles could provide more industrial demand. The other part of the story is the faster moving piece and that is the inflation and currency debasement fear portion. The government and the fed are printing money like crazy debasing the value of the dollar, so investors look for real assets like precious metals to hide out in, driving demand for silver. The $1.9 trillion stimulus passing in a month or two could be a good catalyst. All this money combined with the reopening of the economy could cause some solid inflation to occur, and once inflation starts it often feeds on itself. What to buy: Edit 2/24: I now advocate buying PSLV for shares, physical metal if the premiums come back down, and if you want options then SLV is still ok for that. I will be putting 50% directly into SLV shares, and 50% into the $35 strike SLV calls expiring 4/16. This way the SLV purchase creates a groundswell into silver immediately that then rockets through a gamma squeeze as SLV approaches $35. Price target of $75 for SLV by end of April if the short squeeze happens. Edit: for the part of your purchases going into shares, some people recommend PSLV because they think SLV might start lying about having the silver in their vault. Or that the custodian will be double counting, ie claiming that the same silver belongs to multiple people (banking on the fact that people wont all try to get their silver at once). So if you buy SLV shares and calls, that's great. But I think it could be prudent for us to buy options in SLV (no options on PSLV) and shares in PSLV. It all depends on how paranoid you want to be. There is a lot of paranoia in the precious metals world. Alternate options: - buying physical silver; this also works but you pay a premium to buy and sell so its less efficient and you take fewer silver ounces off of the market because of the premium you pay - going long futures for February or March; if you are a rich bastard and can actually take physical delivery of 1000s of ounces of silver by all means do so. But if you simply settle for cash you are actually part of the problem. We need actual physical delivery, which is what SLV demands and is why SLV is the way to go unless you are going to take delivery - miners; I don’t recommend buying miners as part of this trade. Miners will absolutely go up if SLV goes up, but buying them doesn't create the squeeze in the actual silver market. Furthermore, most silver miners only derive 30-50% of their revenue from silver anyways, so eventually SLV will outperform them as it gets high enough (and each marginal SLV dollar only increases miner profits by a smaller and smaller percentage) Details on SLV physical settlement: When SLV issues shares, the custodian is forced to true up their vaults with the proportional amount of silver daily. From the SLV prospectus: "An investment in Shares is: Backed by silver held by the Custodian on behalf of the Trust. The Shares are backed by the assets of the Trust. The Trustee’s arrangements with the Custodian contemplate that at the end of each business day there can be in the Trust account maintained by the Custodian no more than 1,100 ounces of silver in an unallocated form. The bulk of the Trust’s silver holdings is represented by physical silver, identified on the Custodian’s or, if applicable, sub-custodian's, books in allocated and unallocated accounts on behalf of the Trust and is held by the Custodian in London, New York and other locations that may be authorized in the future." Join me brothers. Lets take silver to the moon and take on the biggest and baddest manipulators in the world. Please post rocket emojis in the comments as desired. Disclaimer: do your own research, make your own decisions, everything here is a guess and hypothetical and nothing is guaranteed, not a financial advisor, I have ADHD and maybe other things too. Bear case: silver does tend to sell off if the broader market plunges so it’s not immune to broad market sell off. It’s also the most manipulated market in the world so we are facing some tough competition on the short side
(GME DD) One DD to rule them. One DD to find them. One DD to to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Ok retards listen up. Been seeing lots of cucks writing small DD pieces of bullish or bearish shit. You cucks need to read this cos this is the whole fucking thing.
this is also basically my magnum fucking opus so upvote retards. Dont give me awards, legit go buy a powerup membership for a year. Cant tell you to buy shares because we gonna get closed down by SEC somehow. im also not some fininacial advisor or whatever just read this and make your own conclusions degenerates. Im not fucking liable lmao but i am balls deep 125 shares @ 19 average now, its literally all I have on this earth. TLDR: GME DD sumarized, Margin wont affect longs the same way as shorts right now. Dont buy shares on margin though and get ready to supply collateral regardless. Short interest is up and some smart retards are on our side. Read the post to raise your IQ from 8 to 9 though. 🐻 🌈s mega fuk and even posting high level bear shit to scare us. Compulsory 7 rockets so you autists dont start having a seizure or something: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Basically been seeing posts about "blah blah margin this, short interest this, WS to clever blah". Going to split this post into distinct sections but im no english degree cuck so dont expect any bear bloomberg level shit or something
1. GME is a fucking steal regardless of squeeze. Buy now or be left on a dying planet while we head to alpha fucking centauri.
So basically everyone here knows about Ryan cohen and his horsemen of the apocalypse coming to steal melvins lunch money. This man bought apple stock in 2017. Hes fucking rich. Hes also an eccommerce wizard, taking CHEWY from a measly 100k co-founded company to a $4 Billion company in 2017 at which point he sold it to petsmart or something. Its now valued at $40 Billion, granted anything eccommerce now gets money thrown at it like a stripper in a high flying strip club or some shit idk im a virgin so dont listen to me, so it may well be a bubble. Regardless the thing grows its revenue like bacteria doing binary fission on agar jelly 🚀🚀🚀🚀. THEY SELL FUCKING PET FOOD. the market for that is like what? $1?. Gaming is going to the moon and is basically recession proof because of how cheap game is compared to other things for how much you get out of it. Any bears saying that Gamestop cant compete with digital or with amazon. Ryan cohen already slapped amazons head in with a no name brand. Hell fucking do it again. About digital everyone here already knows, microsoft deal, Ryan cohen also mentioned the possibility of having "Digital game exchanging" or something, image below. Online trade ins. It says online.🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 He also mentions streaming, digital content etc and aside from all the digital stuff wants GME to move to a community centric structure where big stores operate with VR centres, Internet cafe, table games like Dungeons and dragons and 40k (rapidly growing somehow will boom post covid) and as we now might know due to this post: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kypuyb/gme_dd_buildapc_kiosks_coming/ BUILD YOUR OWN PC KIOSKS. This is the literal smell of money. Go to your Gamestop to build your PC with your kid? Gamestop is already the goto place wher your parents go to get you your latest digital fix so now they can go build PC's and it cant go tits up? Now for some pussy boomer talk (aka fundametals or something). The expected Q3 EPS was -0.84$ or something close to that. The actual loss was -0.53$ but boomzoids only talked about the revenue drop. No shit sherlock its closing all its dead weight stores. In the holiday report I will talk about a bit more below, 11% of stores were closed and revenue dropped only 3%. Comparitive store sales increased nearly 5%. They cant get enough consoles to sell so expect the momentum to carry on for the whole year I expect. Eccommerce is up 300% over holidays. In Q3 they reported 800% to date. In 2020 Gamestops eccomerce went up 24x. YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT. Online sales now account for ~33% of Gamestops sales now. This is literally gold dust for ryan cohen. We are still trading at 0.38 P/S at this price. The average P/S for the SP500 is 2.753. Massive upside on these two numbers alone. Burry got in this for the MOASS and the intrinsic value. At the time intrinsic value was like $22 and this will pump up as RC takes it to new heights. GME in Q3 somehow halved the expected loss. Big Bad Boomer sherman somehow didnt fuck it up that bad by saying "omnichannel" at the speed of light. Yes the revenue dropped 30% but thats covid for you. As the PC kiosk post above shows GME now sells small items basically so fast they have to have fake stock lmao. The new console cycle always spikes the share price sky high too, as youll see in a crayon drawing later. The potential revenue that this console cycle brings in could be huge. Biggest ever is potentially a true statement and Gamestop sells every fucker they get. Combine the fact that they share game pass ( a massive hit) revenue from the xboxes they sell, something no other retailer has, revenue could be sky high. Now I know you autists are starting to develop short term dyslexia or something but keep reading. This could be the most important piece of shit you read in your life. How do you think I feel? My brains overheating just trying to write coherent sentences. Holdiay report was a bear trap imo, saw people saying the decrease in revenue was bearish blah blah blah. Lies. Comparitve store sales rose 5% and thats with some towns having like 4 gamestops. When the leases dont get renewed and these stores get liquidated (Also in Ryan cohens letter) they can just get this influx of cash and pay down debt and invest in logistics and marketing and new growth. Gamestop realistically needs like 1/2 the stores they have now and just need to improve efficiency. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/349890 this article the messiah himself wrote. In it he states:
At Chewy, we had maniacal discipline when it came to how we spent money. The company-wide culture of frugality came from his example. Free cash flow was our unwavering governor of growth. We grew Chewy from $200 million in sales in 2013 to $3.5 billion in 2018 while spending only $130 million in capital, all of which went into opening distribution centers across the country and acquiring new customers.
Maniacal. Thats all I need to say. The guy is going to get to mars before papa musk and he wont even break a sweat. When FCF starts to catch up to WS expectations every analyst who donwgraded them is gonna get ditched and upgrades will start to happen. So in the heading i said its a steal. That implies some future higher price target right? Well here is my guess for a conservative price target based on the information above and also some more I probably forgot cos im a retard. The difference is where share price looks to be and where market cap places us is due to difference in outstanding shares (another reason shorts are fuk)
The difference is where share price looks to be and where market cap places us is due to difference in outstanding shares (another reason shorts are fuk)
This alone means if for not inflation adjusted terms we reached 9.8Bn or whatever the crayon chart says we should reach: 9.8/2.48 = ~3.95 3.95 * $35.5 = ~$140. The share price now to reach old mkt cap is $140 fucking dollars. Thats a 4 bagger from now. It gets better. from statista :
Considering the annual inflation rate in the United States in recent years, a 2.24 percent inflation rate is a very moderate projection.
If we take 2.24% inflation, the this share price target in todays money means we should reach $182 because of $140 * 1.0224^12, = $182 in adjusted. Thats more than a 5 bagger. basically we could see $10 GME price from short manipulation and buying more is basically a lottery ticket! I really dont understand the bear thesis. The only bear thesis ( short term this one) was that margin would affect longs more but I looked at it on ortex and its basically bullshit. Buy shares with cash though dont use margin. Own your piece of GME dont borrow it. Bears just spout "DigITaL" or "BlOCKbuSTER" so much Ryan tweeted a shit emoji at them. All the bears think theyre clever. What the fuck makes those cucks special? How are they different now than the ones from $2, or $4, or $10. Bears are betting against: Ryan fucking cohen, buisness legend CHEWY from 100k investment, now 40 billion Michael burry, Investing legend, predicted the housing crisis and is in GME since april u/DeepFuckingValue , the new WSB god chad, now basically a whale Reggie Fils-Aimé, gaming and buisness legend, former COO of nintendo Senvest, a mega fund thats actively managed Norweigan sovereign wealth fund Fidelity, Vanguard and blackrock own this shit and are never selling they literally dont give a shit All of WSB has now formed a shield wall against the bears Microsoft gave GME highly discounted azure deals and free office use for all employees and a revenue sharing agreement. Bears are stupid if they think MSFT didnt vet GME. Some valid bear thesis left now (the only ones left) -- Ryan Cohen dies.
2. Now some analysis on the short squeeze and some technical data on puts and calls and ortex data.
Ok everyone on here and their cat, dog, bedbugs and wifes boyfriend knows about the squeeze. Jimmy chill aka cramer even talking about it. Gamestop is literally the most shorted stock of all time and space. The squeeze makes every autist salivate because its basically free money while cucking big money out of like what 1% of their fund. Although I know all you cucks hate shares, and hate holding, if the squeeze doesnt happen selling is probably the most retarded thing anyone could do. Its literally buy high sell low and you fucking disgust me. STONK ONLY GOES UP. This squeeze is so monumental that its been sucking sharks in like fresh blood. Most of the funds where shorting this from 30-15 dollars before this year so they didnt really care. It all changed with 2 people. u/DeepFuckingValue and Dr. Michael Burry. These guys are as OG as it gets with GME. I think u/DeepFuckingValue may have even sniffed this trade out before the legend himself. Since then funds will have churned this through their rules and started jumping on this train. Ive been in since $13 with 125 shares. If I had more money Id be buying but im just some stupid student ok. Im merely a medium for this money made information. The stats for this stock now short wise are, from ortex: Concrete short interest as of 31 December 2020: 71 Million. Estimated short interest, January 11th data: (This isnt predicted, this is from data in flow, has margin of error) : 77 Million Short shares on loan 7 days ago: 50 Million Short shares on loan now (This breaks the bearish margin calls affect longs more thesis): 54.2 Million % of known float short: 147% as of 31 December 2020 % of know free float on loaned shorts: 108% as of January 11th. Some guy on here took into account extra buying on wednesday, Institutions, Burry, RC's extra 7% and WSB ownership (something so stupendously retarded no serious firm will do it) that float on short could be in the 100s of %. Total short float now I would say could be 200-400% if the numbers are correct. This pisses on all other short squeezes. Some countries ban shorting above 100% cos of how autistic it is. The recent hike in interactive brokers available shares is probably a mix of sell off on friday (remember some guys are now buying lambos with GME money. If they held they could buy 10), calls exercising and puts being covered and brokers ditching the shares. Nakedshort even reported 5 million naked GME shorts on friday. This is bullish as fuck because the best the shorts could do on a red market day was -10%. Gamestop is still on the SECs threshold list for 27 days now. This shows naked short selling and downwards pressure hasnt capitulated Need rockets 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀: Ok so now if WSB owns an estimated 6-8% of the stock and we all know to move over to cash accounts now to avoid margin calls, we should be minimizing longs getting margin called. Every bear on stockwits is a clueless cuck who spouts "blockbuster" and these guys dont even know what margin even is so my bet is the colossal 54 Million shares short on loan are gonna be affected by the margin calls more. Why? Because every long on margin is in the green, and now a true zealot/extremist/autist for ryan cohen so will supply their account with collateral to avoid margin call. Shorts are in the massive red zone. How do I know you ask? Ortex data from Jan 4th 2021: This is the data from ortex for short interest for Gamestop for Jan 4th So this shows for jan 4th the estimated short interest is 66.98 Million shares. From the exchange reported 71 Million on december 31st this makes a lot of sense because the share price fell from ~21 to ~17 so shorts took profits. The shares on loan arent for longs too. This is all purely short data, and 47M shorted at $17 this shows. These shorts are in a circle of hell we cant comprehend and makes satan scared. 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Now for the data for this week: Ortex short data for Jan 14th for Gamestop SHARES ON LOAN HAVE GONE UP. BUT 87% OF LOANED SHORTS WHERE SHORTING AT SUB $20. Cost to borrow is also up, estimated short interest is up to a cataclysmic amount. Longs on margin need to supply collateral, but we are in the massive green zone, shorts are underwater. Margin calls will ravage the shorts and sting the longs. We also have the uptick rule in place until the end of the day, so shorts can only short on the way up. Im not saying itll happen but this shit is skewed in our favour big time. we need to 💎🙌💎🙌💎🙌💎🙌💎🙌💎🙌💎🙌💎🙌. 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Seen a lot of talk about Gamma hedging and delta. You realize that the fucking bankers and brokers dont understand gamma hedging right? That shits up their with the black-scholes equation and feynman-kac solution. Forget about it. The retards claiming to understand it are either payed by hedge funds or lose money. The guy who took out outs thinking options exercising and gamma hedging would lead to a collossal sell off on friday lost money on his puts because no one except some quants in a goldman sachs server room know this shit. The idea is simple about neutral delta on options that people take out, but the simple system interacts with every other thing in the stock market, and wow who couldve guessed it, like nearly any other element of the stock market predicting something by the day is nigh impossible. That guy talking about Gamma , Delta and margin calls is on weeklies. Hes no more autistic and equally retarded as all of us. Hes a chill guy though so dont berate a fellow brother. Now weve established the likelihood of longs getting margin called is far smaller than shorts, on to the options distributions Two images now: Top one is before the end of the 15th, the other one is after market close: This shows the suspected melvin puts (51000 contracts, 5 Million shares, rolled up from july, strike price $24) and lots of big ITM calls. 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 This shows the big put contract didnt get rolled over and the big ITM calls got exercised on friday. Large puts are underwater big timem while calls are in the big tendy zone. These two graphs, show before market close and after. As we can see the massiver 51000 put contracts didnt get rolled over and the chances that those were melvins july puts rolled up is very high. They expired worthless. Lots of calls are printing big time while huge amounts of puts are worthless and bleeding money. Something else we can extrapolate from the charts is that massive options trades are not present on the scale we saw before (tens of thousands). 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 We are seeing a discrepancy in the number of puts/calls opening up at the higher prices with calls gaining fast. This could show that some funds are now becoming optimistic on the long or short term prospects of gamestop. There are also more puts than options and if we assume this for shorts vs longs on margin (without even taking into account that all shorts are borrowed shares and pay interest further bleeding cash) then shorts are likely on more margin than longs. Regardless fellow autists my main point is two show that the bears are underwater and the bulls are flying high with regards to options. Now lets compare this possible squeeze with others. Bear in mind this is the most shorted stock of all time, but differences in free float change the share price differently. Kodak went from $2.16 to $33.2 Volkswagen went from ~200 euro to nearly 1000. Overstock went from ~$21 to $123 Blue apron went from $2.31 to $18 Ive been seeing some estimated that 1 million shares is roughly a dollars move in share price. This maths is about to be pretty autistic so bear with me degnerates. $1 now is 2.81% of the share price. Everything in the markets is exponential and based on percentages. So if we assume a full squeeze of ortexs estimated short interest (This assumes no sell off and no new shorts, new shorts can be positive or negative depedning on when in the squeeze they happen) $35.5 * 1.0281^77 = $299. GME to moon. 🌑 . This shit can happen. Hold on. GME has squeezed and been manipulated before and it always happens around the console cycles. Shorts never win and they wont win now. This post right here I found months ago and got me in the squeeze from the honourable and valiant u/Uberkikz aka Rod Alzman Basically the crayon chart shows green (outstanding shares) orange ( short shares) purple (Market cap) and cyan (Share price). In 2006-2008 the share price rose in tandem with short interest ( Like now ) Until console releases when you can see an abrupt squeeze happend mooning the share price. This happend to a degree in 2013 with the xbox one but worse conditions for the company and a worse console launch lead to slow short covering but the share price still mooned. Now we get to the best part. History is repeating itself for the third time and the shares sold short are literally higher than the outstanding shares, which have been decreasing since 2010. Short shares are also at the highest point ever and GME hasnt had a brighter future, well ever. Ps5 and Xbox Series X. are the two most hyped consoles since the Ps2. This is setting up the foundations for massive price movements weve never seen before. This shit has literally never happend, ever. Uncharted waters and we are the captain. For the insurmountably retarded autists who think that the squeeze has happend look upon this and despair: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kwpf6k/gme_gang_there_hasnt_been_a_short_squeeze_yet/ IHOR IS A MEGA WIZARD Ihor I quote:
A long-buying tsunami ... is the primary factor for the price move
Ihor Dusaniwsky is managing director of predictive analytics at S3 a firm similar to ortex. He told bloomberg that the squeeze hasnt happend yet and that this was long buying. If someone knows this shit its him. He was talking about the tesla squeeze in january 2020. He has access to resources we can only imagine. Barrons cut his comment that the squeeze hasnt happend yet out it was that fucking bullish. All the media ramming down "Short squeeze has happend" down peoples throats because bears are fucking scared. The bots on stocktwits spamming bearish sentiment should show how rattled they are. Edit: You fucking degens just enlightened me that cramer pump is real, funds are ruminating over the long weekend, and stmmy bills pumps stonks and that stimmy bill buys many an xbox. See you at andromeda! Also more rockets. Edit**: Some autists thought lottery ticket was misleading so instead, gauranteed lottery numbers!** Edit 3: RYAN FUCKING COHEN TWEETED THE HOMIE JUST TWEETED. PEANUT EMOJI. HES 1) NUTTING 2) SAYING 35 IS PEANUTS 3) GIF SAYS THERES A CHANCE, SHORT SQUEEZE IMMENINT HOMIES Edit 4: Amazing post here showing that unlucky prize guy was wrong like I said. Ihor also talked about the hypothecation agreement. Edit 5: This is true and I forgot to add
from u/luncheonmeat79 via /wallstreetbets sent 2 minutes ago There’s also the chance of a ratings upgrade. Moody’s and S&P have GME at B3 and B-, which is rated “highly speculative”. Ratings are reviewed every quarter, and a review might be due this month (i.e. this coming week or next). Good chance that the agencies might upgrade GME to a B2/B, or even better to the next higher band (Ba/BB).
Edit 6: We are scraping 42 in frankfurt. Granted its low volumes but pre market should open at these prices I think? Conclusion: Buy shares with cash not margin. Hold shares forever unless RC dies (Shame hes a cybernetic demigod), Melvin bad, Shorts fuk, 🐻 🌈 posting bearish shit are doing weeklies for the second time after they expired red on friday, GME to $200 without squeeze, Ryan cohen a god, GME is still a value play, Good luck have fun.
The community doesn’t understand game development - A very long post from a game designer
I’ve been playing Destiny for quite some time and I’ve enjoyed the community around it a lot, but the one thing that frustrates me the most about Destiny is how little the community actually knows about game development. It’s driving me crazy, so I wrote this whole thing down. I’m a game designeproducer myself, I’ve never worked on a project as massive as Destiny (not many people ever do), but I have worked on several gaming projects, some of them big in large companies, some of them small gaming apps. I know enough to explain the basics here, but I’m definitely not the ultimate authority on videogames and I’m not representing Bungie whatsoever, everything here is only from my experience. My goal here is to give you some useful info and calm my mind about this. The Destiny community is incredibly vocal, especially this sub, which is generally a good thing, but the lack of understanding really damages not only the enjoyment of the community members but also the game itself IMO. I’ll explain some of the basics I think any hardcore fan should know here with an example and then I’ll outline some specific problems. How Games Are Made A videogame pipeline can be simplified into this flow: Demand from the top/the market -> top management decision -> design and prototyping -> development and feedbacks -> in house testing -> public testing -> marketing and publishing -> data collecting and analysis -> feedback implementation. It’s a circle that applies to everything from the big picture like the main campaign, to the smallest details like colors of shaders or proofreading of even the smallest posts. Every decision made in this system, even the tiniest ones, has to be debated, supported by data and expertise, approved in multiple places based on the priority, and checked multiple times after it’s implemented. Game developers, especially in a powerhouse like Bungie, are very skilled, talented, experienced, and passionate people who always do their best to navigate that flow to satisfy the demands with a quality product delivered on time. I can’t stress this enough, developers (including QA testers, designers, artists, marketing, publishing, the whole team) are pretty much always incredibly hard-working people with a love for video games, because otherwise, they would never stay in this scummy business. They’re underpaid, overworked, and most likely overqualified for what they have to do. Some of them know almost everything there is to know about their field and they’re always improving as well. Because video games, especially gargantuan living games with real-time action combat like Destiny, are insanely complicated, you need sometimes hundreds of experts to put them together. The pipeline needs to be perfectly planned, flexible so you can adapt to problems, and also easy enough to implement so you can deliver the product on time. All of these factors result in a tight-rope walk that never ends. Now it’s time for an example. Let’s say during Season of the Worthy you get an assignment to create a catalyst for Thorn that would make it more popular in PVE, but doesn’t make it overpowered in PVP. Seems simple enough, right? There are dozens of posts about this topic on this subreddit, how hard can it be. The answer is, very, very hard. You start working on your designs. You analyze all other exotic catalysts and hand cannon perks in the game - how they were made, their philosophy, psychological effects, and how they influence gameplay, you discuss everything in your team. When you create your first version, your design lead tells your whole team that hand cannons are getting a range buff and Thorn is now a 140 RPM and you have to adjust your design. After that, your priorities get shifted to helping with Beyond Light and the DSC weapons so it’s finished on time, so you put Thorn on hold. You don’t want to waste time though, so you give the art team an assignment to create the catalyst icon. After two months of work on Beyond Light, you come back to Thorn, but now you basically have to start over because the future meta has changed so much. You create new designs and this time they’re approved by management, so you move onto prototyping. Developers are way too busy debugging and QA testing Beyond Light, so they have no time for Thorn and that task gets put into their To-Do list. You have no choice but to move onto your other tasks and start working on weapons for seasons 13 and 14. When development starts finally working on Thorn, they find an exploit in your design that would allow it to two tap in PVP, you have to rework it again and hope they’ll have time to implement it this time. They don’t and the Thorn catalyst now officially misses its deadline and is pushed from Beyond Light. The marketing team doesn’t hear about it though, so they publish the icon you had made four months ago, leaking the catalyst coming out. This is of course your fault, but these things happen during all the chaos and there was almost nothing you could have done. When you finally push this task through and it’s checked and approved dozens of times in different places (weapon design team, design lead, writing, sandbox team, development, QA, studio director, etc.) you have to make sure it’s published correctly in the right build, it has all necessary descriptions and marketing texts done and translated into all languages and the community managers know about it so they can get ready to collect data. This single task took you a year to complete even when you did your best to do it fast and well and I left out about 90% of problems you would normally encounter. THIS is game development. Community Attitude and Feedback Now we get to why the uninformed community hurts the game so much. This sub would only see Thorn getting a catalyst and it would immediately be flooded with posts like “The catalyst sucks in PVE, buff pls”, “Bungo doesn’t care, the catalyst sucks for Warlocks” and a few “Why catalyst for Thorn, but not for Skyburner’s Oath”, completely missing the point of the catalyst and adding nothing to the discussion. Bungie devs are way more informed, skilled, and experienced than us, the community. The only feedback they are interested in from us is quantitative - basically what we like and what we don’t like about the game. Any posts giving them ideas, elaborate reworks, or straight up negative outrage will accomplish nothing, because they already know everything about the game and discuss it daily in way more detail than we could ever imagine. The only qualitative feedback they should collect and measure is from content creators and the top 1% of the player base because those people actually know some aspects of the game Bungie doesn’t. I know it may sound like the hated “Bungo only listens to sweats and Youtubers”, but that’s kinda the point, they should be listening. It doesn’t mean that our voices are ignored or not listened to. I would bet all of my money that all forums are constantly monitored and analyzed. The truth is, however, that the only valid opinion we can give that Bungie should consider is what aspects of the game we like, and what aspects we don’t. Anything beyond that we already tell them through data they collect from our play sessions. As I wrote above, any change within this massive game is complicated and could take months or years to be implemented, so being upset we don’t have everything now is just useless. Bungie is hard at work to make good stuff, we should respect them more and not bring out the pitchforks every time a season slows down a bit and we can’t play for four hours a day every day for the whole year. There will always be problems in a live game and they are doing a fantastic job, I can’t even imagine how much work must go into it. So before you post about something in the future, take a moment to think about the process and figure out what exactly you can provide to the devs with your feedback, because otherwise, you’re fanning the flames on something that probably isn’t actually burning. It’s just taking its time as it should. With all of the above said, it isn't the community's fault that we're not informed. The fault lies entirely with Bungie not educating people enough and this problem could be avoided. Reasons Why Things Suck I’ll close by giving my two cents on why the game isn’t perfect and never will be, just so you know where the community's frustrations should go.
The biggest reason that influences everything - Bungie is a company owned by a group of shareholders that will always force the studio to grow and provide more profit. With every extra dollar, the value of the company grows and the board of directors gets richer and because of the super predatory capitalism we live in now, Bungie has to justify every single decision with a monetary value. It's not the fault of the devs, they don't make much money themselves.
The game is massive and always online. I’m pretty confident that no other studio would be able to support Destiny for so long without the game completely crashing down. Technology always evolves and it’s almost impossible to keep a living game up to date, so some parts of the front end of the game will always suck because Bungie has to upkeep the back end we will never get to see.
The project has been going on for a decade, which leads to people wanting to naturally move on. Replacing team members on a living game is very difficult, which leads to problems and delays.
The community is not educated about the game enough, which is why I ended up writing this. The continuous cycle of negative outrage that comes from a lack of understanding damages the game because the devs are forced to deal with it without disclosing information. If people knew more, they could help Bungie, but no company that wants to make big profits will ever open up its communication because it would show just how many decisions are influenced by the search for profit.
That’s it, sorry for the length of this essay. I hope you learned something and let me know if you’d be interested in more stuff like this (takes on sunsetting, sandbox, etc.). I would like to give people more info so they don’t waste their precious time on stuff completely outside of their control and maybe educate people about the industry. I love the game and I hope you’ll appreciate it a bit more now. Edit 1: This post is not meant as a defense for the faults of the game or an excuse for bad decisions, it's meant as a resource to give you perspective and information. If you believe the game is not as good as it was promised to be or disagree with some design choices made, you are of course entitled to your own opinion, and there are quite a few things I myself absolutely hate in Destiny. I can't answer questions related to design on Destiny with confidence, because I don't work for Bungie and I won't speculate much on why certain decisions were made. I can give you my opinion on stuff like sunsetting based on my experience in another post, but ultimately it's only speculation with little benefit. All I will say is that there is always more stuff we don't know about the game than we do know and design should be judged in context. When it comes to questions related to Bungie's scummy tactics when it comes to monetization and bad communication, I agree with you, as I said above. Money is the biggest factor of why Destiny suffers and the best way for us to do anything about that is to stop buying it. I know it's a cliche statement, but it's true. And lastly, for the comments saying stuff like "shut up, Bungie sucks and you know it", please read what I said again and think about it. The devs most likely love the game just as much as you once did, if not much more. Edit 2: I'll add one thing that keeps popping up. It's clear that Destiny is a product developed for profit, so if your outlook is "I don't want to know about development, I'm just an unhappy consumer that didn't like this product", I agree as would most likely everybody that it's absolutely a valid stance, but that's not what my post was about. If that's how you see any product, you should tell the producer why you didn't like it if you care enough to do so and move on. The post is meant to inform people who don't want to move on from Destiny, especially those who continuously engage with the product from a place of understanding even if they don't have it, which wastes their time and does nothing for the product. If you don't like this game or any other game, it's absolutely OK and you should move on from playing it, complaining about things you don't want to understand won't help you achieve what you want and only makes the game worse. As I said above, the best way to show your disagreements is not to support the company and if you don't like Destiny, please stop playing it and take care of yourself. Your time is valuable, don't give it away to someone you don't agree with. Edit 3 This will be the last edit on this post. I appreciate all the awards and great discussions happening below, but holy cow did this get a lot of vitriol. I expected a lot of negativity, but it still surprised me. It's partially my fault for trying to talk about so much with not enough room so I'm sure I made a few mistakes. I'll reply to a few things that I want to make clear and then leave this alone, it's way too long anyway. If you see any malicious intent, attacks, arrogance, or "Bungie shilling" between the lines, I put none there, at least not on purpose. My goal was to inform, as I said right at the start, so if you see any other agenda, it's not there and my writing either wasn't clear enough, or you're looking for something that I didn't write. Take the post for what it is, a stranger on the internet telling you something you may not know from their experience. If you disagree with me, downvote the post and explain why, no need to insult anyone, you're once again wasting your precious time. I didn't mention management as a problem on Destiny, because I don't know enough about it. Leadership is very often a problem on any collaborative projects but calling someone out without the necessary data is exactly what I warned about in my post, so I won't comment on it, but feel free to disagree with me. Maybe you know more about the subject than I do and I'll be happy to read your reply. I never put myself up as an ultimate authority on the subject, all of this is just basics I thought hardcore fans should know and I communicated that. This post was already very long and I didn't have time, nor did I want to describe theory in detail, so insulting me over not explaining how scrum works in a post meant for people with no experience is not necessary. If you want to argue about production methodologies, my reasoning on examples given, and how healthy management looks like with me please feel free to message me and I'm sure we'll have a cool conversation, I'd love to hear about your experience from working in gaming. And that's it, I hope you got something out of this. Have a great day and see you around.
Help! Mom gave her SS# and bank info to "verify her identity" for her military beau
I am honestly beside myself... I will try to keep this as short as possible. My mom is in her 60's and is very lonely due to isolation (pandemic). She's been chatting with guys on Tinder for about 6 months. She has a "type" - "bad boy" military men. They are always on "assignment" somewhere, in the special forces, and love bomb her. I've told her countless times they are scammers. I don't know a lick about the military, but I can clearly tell they are scams. After awhile they would ask for money - she laughs cause she has none and blocks them... Recently, she's been talking to one guy in the "special forces" who "lives" on a base in DFW area. Supposedly she cannot call him directly, she needs to call "base" and then he calls her. I've told her it's most likely a scam. Last week she told me he's coming to her city (Houston), but the military will need to verify her identity (why?). I told her DO NOT GIVE OUT ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION. She just called me and told me he's coming, and that money for his trip will be deposited into her account. RED FLAGS are flying in front of me. Why tf would military personnel not have a bank? I ask her what info did she give them. She told me she gave her social and bank info - like her login details. Her credit dropped because they made a hard inquiry!!!!! How can she not realize by now it's a scam?! I admit, I was livid and screamed at her to freeze her credit and call her bank ASAP. I just can't believe my mom could fall for something like this - even after I was right with the other scammers... Anyway... I need help on finding resources to protect her. She doesn't have much money (only SSDI). I told her to call her bank and tell them EVERYTHING and to freeze her credit via the 3 reporting agencies. What happens if they opened a card or loan under her name? What else can she do? What else can they access with her social and bank info? Edit: She was able to close her bank account (thank goodness). I am driving down tomorrow to help her set up a new account with her bank and go to the Social Security office to give them the new bank info and report the scam. I don't know if the scammer charged anything to her debit, but he did get notified her account was closed (and is attempting to call/text her). I told her to call at least one of the credit reporting agencies tonight to freeze her account and request details on the hard inquiry/claim it as fraudulent. She finally realized it is a scam. The really sad part about this is the "military" emails she received that were requesting her personal information are clearly not from the military and it pains me she didn't realize it at the time. I will also request account access to her credit cards, bank account, and any other important accounts to help her monitor activity. I plan to call my company's legal department (it part of benefits) to see about setting up a financial and medical PoA (not executable until absolutely necessary). I'm just so sad, she's had a really difficult life and this just makes it worse... Edit #2: So the good news is that they did not withdraw/deposit anything in her bank account. She called all three credit reporting agencies and froze her account. I told her to pack her bags and she'll be staying at my place for a few days so we can change her account passwords/user names, call SS, and get her annual credit report. I told her that it would be best for me to have access to all of her accounts - and she agreed. Right now she feels so stupid for falling for this scam, and I tried my best to reassure her that everything will be okay. We will get through this - just block the scammer's number and do NOT respond to him at all. I will also report this scam to the ic3 and FBI. Thank you all for the resources you provided. I just hope this can be a lesson for some of you who have aging parents or a parent, especially during these times when many are cut off from so many resources. I did not realize how lonely my mom was. I feel like I could have done more... I was always a bit dismissive of these encounters when we spoke... I will try my best to make up for it now. Thank you again. Edit #3: We went to her bank to open up a new account. Turns out her old account wasn't totally "closed," so we got that shut down and all money withdrawn. We had to schedule an appointment for tomorrow to create a new account, so I will be with her tomorrow too. Although it looks like she will have to unfreeze her accounts in order to open a new account. Then call SS to add her new account for direct deposit. So there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. I changed her passwords to all possibly compromised accounts, including SSA and closed her my.id (it wasn't set up and he actually asked for that info). I now have access to all email addresses, Credit Karma, and loan company. Set her up with TrueId and some other credit reporting agency free monitoring accounts. No cards/loans were added to her reports, but that makes sense since it can take over a month to show up. The drop in her score was her doing (yes, she also is terrible with money, like really bad although had good credit until now - and we've gone over this before numerous times). I will assist her with monitoring all reports. I may sign her up for Lifelock, but the cheap plan doesn't really do much..so we shall see. I've read some of the emails from this guy, a few imessages (for some reason her messages disappear on her phone, so I was only able to see recent stuff). The sad part about it is that she was questioning why he needed all this personal info. The one issue my mom has is this extreme fear of abandonment, as she told me that she was afraid he'd leave if she didn't give him her info (no kidding). It just reminds me of the cycle of abuse. 9/10 times she picks these POS guys and she is very aware of this (my father was one). She's just way too trusting. Like any victim of abuse, you can guide them, tell them they are worth more, tell them what's happening isn't normal - but it is up to the victim to act. The ball is in her court and I will be there for her (but I will never bail her out financially). As for the people saying it may be Alzheimer's/dementia - I told her she should get checked by a neurologist just in case, even though she's had memory problems for quite some time (due to illness and medications). It was really hard finding out what accounts were compromised and explaining several times that a credit freeze does not freeze your credit cards. I'll also see about signing her up for Reddit and subreddits she'd be interested in. Perhaps also get her involved in local senior activities. Maybe see if she'd be interested in borrowing my Switch for games. Anyway, that's about all I can really do right now. I stayed calm and was there for her and she's super grateful for that. Thank you everyone for your advice, kind words, etc. I can now sleep easy knowing I've done all that I can and hopefully she learned her lesson. Edit 4: Well now things are getting weird.. I didn’t know this since I don’t use Credit Karma, but she has a CK savings account. It has 2 pending large transfers totaling $16,000. I asked her if the visible last digits of the account number where the deposits are coming from are hers. She said no (has her old account routing/account number written down but I will confirm tomorrow). I filed a complaint with CK online (I honestly can’t believe they don’t have a CS number). Not sure if I should keep the CK account open or not, but I’ll wait to hear back from CK and her bank. This makes absolutely no sense to me.
[Video Games/Rollercoaster Tycoon] Theme Park Studio: How a developer set exceedingly high expectations and failed to meet them
Tl;dr: fans of a video game are excited about the release of what could be the spiritual successor of their video game. Said developer makes very bold promises and obviously fails to deliver, finally releasing a very disappointing game and alienating most of the community. I recently stumbled upon this subreddit; I've enjoyed reading most of the posts here and figured I had a few stories to share as well. From 2012 to about 2018, I was active (though with intermittent breaks) in a community of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 players. This was a small community, with no more than a few hundred active members at its heyday and only a few people active now. Despite its small size, there were definitely a few memorable instances of drama. This is one of those stories; it actually involved another game called Theme Park Studio, which – as you may expect from the title – was not what it promised to be. Background Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 was released in October 2004, developed by Frontier and published by Atari. It was primarily a theme park management game, where players have to earn money and keep guests happy in a theme park by constructing and maintaining rides, shops, paths, scenery and more. There was also a sandbox mode that allowed players to build without any monetary restrictions. A small but active community set out to build roller coasters and theme parks (and occasionally completely different projects) in this sandbox mode and share their results online. While the game was good for its time and viewed positively by many, it did have some downsides. Firstly, the game used a grid: when placing rides and scenery, you were confined to this grid and had little freedom to place things where you want. Secondly, the roller coaster construction system was limited compared to similar games, and as a result most roller coasters were hardly very smooth. Thirdly, the game was poorly optimized. As an example: the game had a day-night cycle, but the game was basically unplayable at night, so people set the game to only daytime. Over time, people became more and more ambitious in their projects, and these problems became more apparent. As a solution, lots of custom content (akin to mods in other games) was made by members of the community: custom scenery objects, custom rides and even custom roller coaster tracks. These objects were much more versatile and looked much better than most in-game content. As a result, people almost exclusively used custom content to build their projects. Combined with some smart picture and video editing, almost nothing was still recognizable from the original game. While custom content brought a whole new level of versatility and arguably kept the community running for a long time, the aforementioned problems still persisted. Because the game was being pushed to its limits, people were wondering when a sequel was coming. By 2012, there was no word yet by Atari on a potential sequel, and many similar games from other video game publishers had failed to offer any meaningful improvement to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. However, this was soon to change. The spiritual successor Enter Pantera Entertainment, a small, unknown video game publisher and developer. In November 2012, they posted a trailer to Theme Park Studio, which presented itself as a theme park building tool. Unlike Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, which had a focus on park management, the focus was on building attractive theme parks and rides. Many of the aforementioned issues were solved in this game: there was no grid-based system that dictated where you had to build, roller coasters could be constructed with much more freedom, and the graphics looked more modern. One major feature was the ability to import custom content. Obviously this was also possible in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, but only using third-party software. That the developers were now anticipating for this was a good sign. The community was generally excited about Theme Park Studio: it looked to be the spiritual successor to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. The staff from Pantera would even visit the forums (at the time, most of the community was active through online messaging boards) and would happily provide updates, answer questions and take suggestions. This left a good impression with most of the community. Over the coming months, more and more promises were being made on new features and huge amounts of content. The game was looking to become a very ambitious project. Now, it would later be discovered that little development had actually been done on the game: the trailer had really only showed footage from Pantera’s earlier title, Hyper Rails. Nevertheless, the release date was set for summer 2013, and the community was still optimistic for a long time. In April 2013, a Kickstarter campaign was set up. For the uninitiated, Kickstarter allows for developers to source crowdfunding for a project. Developers set a goal and have a set time to achieve that goal. People can ‘back’ a project by donate towards that goal, and in return receive rewards based on the amount they donated. Money only goes towards the project if that goal is actually reached; otherwise the ‘backers’ receive their money back. Well, Pantera set a goal of $80.000 for Theme Park Studio, to be fulfilled within a month. Backer rewards were ambitious: lower amounts would get you the game for free, both a physical and digital copy, and perhaps some merchandise, while those who backed larger amounts were allowed to suggest or design certain rides for the game, and the highest-tier backers (think $500 or more, which only a few people donated) would get you an invitation to a big release party. Now, keep these rewards in mind, as they’ll become important later on. It took a while and people feared the goal wouldn’t be met, but thanks to enough promotion and a few generous donations, about $100.000 was raised, and the goal was met. Despite Pantera’s ambitious promises, the community was optimistic. Some high-standing members of the community were even assisting in the development of the game and were offering their custom content – made for Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 – to be used in Theme Park Studio. Unfortunately, as we would later discover, this hard work would never really pay off. Early access The Kickstarter campaign offered a release date of September 2013. As time went on, it became very apparent that this was unachievable. The game was delayed several times; first to later in 2013, then to April 2014. Finally, they announced that instead of waiting for the complete game, Theme Park Studio would enter Early Access on Steam in February 2014. Early Access allows people to play a game before its full release. People can play the game and offer feedback to the developers, who can use this feedback to improve the game and add new content in free updates to the players. In this case, that would mean that Theme Park Studio would first release as a basic theme park builder, and that other features, such as new rides and the custom content importer would be added later. Early Access is an example of something that works well on paper, but is often butchered in practice. When done well, Early Access is a win-win situation: players don’t have to wait to play the game but can get involved in its development, and developers will receive money which they can use to fund the rest of the development. Unfortunately, it is rarely done well, and there are many games released through Early Access that are flat-out unplayable or clearly unfinished. Similarly, many games never leave Early Access or only leave many years later, because developers have little incentive to improve and complete a game they’ve already received money for. Well, Theme Park Studio would turn out to fit the latter category. Upon release, the game was... disappointing. Most notable was the lack of ability to build roller coasters: players could only build flat rides (simple rides such as a merry-go-round or a Ferris wheel). The game was also poorly optimized and didn’t look particularly great. Still, many people called for the community to be patient and wait for new updates to come: Pantera had provided a route map for the implementation of further updates to provide some perspective. This implementation was generally very slow. For example, the ability to build roller coasters – a rather essential part of a theme park construction tool - didn’t come until August that year; even then, people weren’t happy about it, as it was unintuitive and difficult to use, and many considered it hardly an improvement from Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. The community slowly grew divided. A sizeable group defended Theme Park Studio and called for people to be patient, but a growing group had become very critical of the game and its developers. However, besides lacking updates and producing a game of low quality, there were other glaring issues as well. Pantera loses approval Now, remember the aforementioned Kickstarter rewards? As time went on, it became increasingly clear that many of these rewards would never be released. Many people complained about not receiving digital access to the game once it was released through Early Access, despite promises from Pantera – and that was the easiest reward for them to fulfil. Even to this day, some people are yet to receive digital access. People were also losing hope about higher-tier rewards, such as physical copies of the game, merchandise and the release party. Probably the most controversial reward tiers were those that allowed backers to design rides, however. More than 100 people had pledged enough money to have a ride suggestion implemented into the game. It turned out, however, that many of these suggestions would never see the light of day. On the forums, people complained about their suggestions being rejected, while some received no response from Pantera. When eventually an update was released that was supposed to contain rides suggested by backers, people noted that way fewer rides were added than that there were backers. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I think no more than 10% saw their rides actually published in-game. Now, resentment grew towards Pantera for failing to uphold their end of the bargain and releasing an unfinished, low-quality game. By this time, there was also not much left of the actively involved, feedback-taking staff that represented the game when it was first announced: the developer became notorious for failing to take and accept constructive criticism. Many people had their posts removed and accounts banned from the official Theme Park Studio forum for speaking out against the developer. Another absurd rule on their forums was their stance on ‘dark rides’, mainly indoor rides based around creating an atmosphere above being thrilling, such as a haunted house. As the name suggests, many dark rides are dark: the atmosphere is creepy or scary, and many horror themes are used. Well, the forum banned the posting of rides containing demonic themes or otherwise being ‘sacrilegious’, effectively meaning most dark rides. This pissed off the community, as quite a few people made dark rides and this was seen as infringement on their creativity. It also spawned a series of memes on rides that were “too dark and sinister for Theme Park Studio”. Another questionable decision by the development team was to add VR support; while becoming the only theme park building or management game to have it, it was generally criticised because it would add very little to the game and so many other aspects of the game needed much more working on. I’m sure there were other decisions made by Pantera that received significant backlash from the community, but these I remember best. The aftermath Over time, interest in Theme Park Studio faded away and people generally gave up hope that they would ever receive their Kickstarter rewards. There were still a few avid supporters of the game, but the broken promises, slow progress, disappointing results and bad PR meant most people in the community had changed their stance over the years. The game was forgotten and slowly faded into irrelevance. There was no real way for backers to get their money back or otherwise hold Pantera accountable for the unfulfilled promises, an issue that other failed Kickstarter campaigns unfortunately also have. Amazingly, some of the backers reported actually receiving a physical copy of the game, albeit five or six years after the initial Kickstarter campaign, but similarly there are still people waiting for their rewards to this date. Theme Park Studio was finally released in December 2016, after many years in development. It released without much fanfare and definitely without a release party that backers had paid hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars for; many people didn’t even notice it had left Early Access. The game never took off and its reviews on Steam are mostly negative. The entire fiasco made people much more sceptical of other new games: from 2014 onwards, many other theme park simulation games were announced and released, but people were much more cautiously optimistic about these games (and rightfully so; many of them failed, but those are stories for another time). Eventually, the true spiritual successor to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 was released: Planet Coaster, developed by Frontier (the original developers of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3). It was released in November 2016, prompting some to think that the definitive release of Theme Park Studio only weeks later was a hasty attempt to piggyback off of that success. It did almost everything Theme Park Studio promised and offered the possibility to build much more detailed and complex rides. Over time, many people who played Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 switched over to Planet Coaster because of the vast improvements. People generally forgot about Theme Park Studio, and many people wanted to leave it in the past. It’s hard to find many of the original forum posts on the topic. RCTLounge, one of the major forums on the topic, was closed in 2016 due to inactivity. In 2018, Shyguy’s World, another forum on the topic, actually removed the Theme Park Studios board and deleted all posts to forget about the ‘dark and sinister’ affair. As the forum’s owner said: “The first rule of Theme Park Studio... you do not talk about Theme Park Studio”. The official Theme Park Studios forums are also down and the website is vastly outdated. Most of this post was sourced by memories, the Wayback machine and the few threads I could still find. Many people agreed that Pantera was probably a well-intentioned company that had simply bitten off more than they could chew. Clearly they had vastly underestimated the difficulty of this project and lost any drive to complete the project as it went on and support disappeared. Nevertheless, all the drama resulted in a bitter aftertaste for many people and changed people’s outlooks on the future releases of similar games.
Almost 75% of all retail $GME orders were to buy (Fidelity). DONT BUY INTO THE FUD 🚀
FINAL EDIT: There are critical support levels of retail buying points. Those are 143 (which was unbroken at the tie of writing), 68, and 38. 68 (8:10 - 8:25 AM today, Feb. 4 '21) has clearly broken as people closed off positions at breakeven and the flood gates down burst open. Another sell off between 10:00 & 10:15 AM coincided with another sell wall at 64-62. I think we'll make it all the way to 30-40 before it'll make sense to start buying long again (you saw what happened at 64-68; the same will likely happen at 34-38 but I don't know where the exact floor is). The data has been showing, since the 140s, that retail isn't holding. The data presented as the cornerstone and namesake of this DD is no longer relevant. The ratio of volume of shares per sell order relative to buy order appears to be higher than the ratio of buy orders to sell orders. In other words, there may be a 3:1 distribution of raw orders, but the sells are so much more packed that it breaks the ratio anyway. The situation changed and as more data came to light, I now know I was wrong. I used to be a HODLeruntil the situation changed. I lost out on a lot of profit by holding through waning evidence at the 300s, 200s, and 150s, and only pulled at 111—I was able to secure a little bit of profit to make this obsession a bit more worthwhile. At time of writing, the price is 52.60. Even with bullish conviction, this was still a directionally correct move as I can now buy double as much as I had before. That being said, I think we're in for more downside, and I will not be buying back until we hit the bottom, wherever that may be. I'm still long-term bullish on the company transformation and will re-enter a moderately sized position after the volatility settles down. Here's the original DD so you can see how I had brought up good data, but was directionally incorrect in my sprinkled analysis of it. Learn from this like I did, and you'll be more successful in the future. Furthermore, I will not stop writing DDs because I think the data here is sound and makes sense. What was wrong was the analysis, which can happen to anyone with this many unknown variables. Future DD will take confirmation bias into account and will have higher probability of being on the money. ____________________________________________ Today's most traded retail assets on Fidelity were $AMC & $GME. And you know what people did? They bought a metric fuckton of shares. Contrary to what some of the Reddit Daily thread sentiment (which may or may not be bot-infested hell at this point) & news outlets claim, retail has seemingly not lost any interest in the stock and possibly prevented it from diving further. Obligatory disclaimer: Mods, for the love of god please let this through it took a lot to write and I know for a fact it hasn't been discussed sufficiently / didn't get a dedicated post yet. Also, I'm a 🦍 and am not financial advisor and this isn't financial advice. This is a synthesis of public available information with autistic analysis like sprinkles on a birthday cupcake. Disclaimer 2: I am extremely long $GME 🚀🌙 UPDATE: my stop loss got triggered and I am no longer long $GME until data changes. The information here has not changed, but the impact and its magnitude may have. With that out of the way, I present to you,
Exhibit A: Order Distribution
~75% of all $GME orders on Fidelity today, on 2/1 were to buy the asset, rather than sell it. Each order can have however many shares. https://eresearch.fidelity.com/eresearch/gotoBL/fidelityTopOrders.jhtml That's just Fidelity. If you're able to check the order distribution on other brokers (like Vanguard or Schwab) please post it below and I'll update this post with your info. Usually this information is displayed on Top Traded Stocks or on the stock page itself under some tab. There's more: WeBull is showing a 45/55 distribution on the entire order book. Total Outflow (sells) was quoted at 1099, and total inflow at 996. While this may seem useless at first, consider this: the share price lost 30% today, but the order book is split 45/55, not 35/65. Just 10% of the outflow accounted for the 30% collapse in share price.
Exhibit B: Volume
https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/GME/ Today's volume was half of the daily average. Half of the daily average. And while the price 30% movement may seem scary at first, trending down on low volume is actually a bullish sign. Courtesy of u/weedcomet: "https://finance.zacks.com/importance-price-changes-previous-day-stock-market-2906.html 'After a strong-volume upward move, if the market moves sideways in conjunction with lower volume for several days in a row, it is a bullish sign indicating that all overhanging selling pressure has been relieved and any buying could spark a strong price rise.'" In other words, flat or even declining on low volume often precedes 🚀 🚀 🌝. Literally any form of significant buying can move the price by a very high magnitude. There's also been studies done on this phenomena, and correlation was established between sideways or negative movement on low volume and a subsequent increase in price. Feel free to research this on your own accord and post your findings below for all of us autists to read.
Exhibit C: Why Retail Buying May Return Soon
I'm not a financial advisor, and even less so Nostradamus. I don't know when we'll be able to take advantage of this sideways movement to our benefit. What I do know is that that time is approaching. Considering two major events:
Transition from Robinhood & other affected brokers to mainstream solutions• This was likely started en masse on Thursday, before RH transfer restrictions kicked in. It takes 2-5 market days to transfer an account to another broker, and about the same for just slushing cash around. That means, a solid chunk of trades will be able to buy into the market beginning tomorrow and throughout the remaining week.• Many are also in the process of opening up new accounts. These were probably started en masse on Friday, when transfer restrictions prevented people from taking the plunge. A solid chunk of brokers need settlement time for instant deposits.- The instant deposits are capped, meaning whale accounts aren't able to kick in yet. Regular deposits takes 1-2 business days to clear. Beginning tomorrow, we'll start seeing larger retail accounts com online and regain their impact on price delta.
Robinhood bottleneck may or may not disappear this week. Robinhood just raised another $2.4 billion on top of their previous round, which is more than enough to clear DTC's collateral requirements. According to their own statements as of late, this was the primary reason why Robinhood restricted asset purchases in the first place. If you're willing to trust them on that, it means that we shall see a resurgence in volume from remaining Robinhood users in the coming days.
Conclusions
Putting 1+2+3 together we get a potential recipe for another green EoW. Retail sentiment being positive can translate into higher volume once logistical bottlenecks are cleared and resume ass-ripping activities. HOWEVER, it is by NO MEANS guaranteed, and only the tippy top of the world know exactly what these mfs might pull off in the coming days. Get yourselves ready for either a positive or negative scenario this week / beginning of next. GME to moon. ANOTHER EDIT: Welcome to the end of the post. I’m proud of you for making it this far in literacy class. I want to respond to all of your comments and questions but automod deletes all but a couple of them. I’ll answer them as soon as they show up. UPDATE: Ok automod deleted a bunch of negative feedback which is WRONG. Also some FAQs that got blocked. The questions were valid so here’s the best I could do: 1–Retail made no dent so what to expect now?
I don’t know what to expect. What I do know is that retail made no dent because of the bottlenecks mentioned in Exhibit C above.
2–Should I buy now or what?
I want you to make your own conclusion based on available evidence, not seek confirmation bias. I don’t want to be liable for your money and neither does anyone else.
3–Smart money is leaving and you’ll be left holding the bag
I have yet to see credible evidence in either the trading volume, SEC reports, or formal announcements from any major institutional shareholder of GameStop that indicates they’re leaving. If you have this information please relay it to me (don’t use comments, you’ll get blocked by bot). BlackRock had to adjust due to internal requirements AFAIK correct me if I’m wrong
I have no data on AMC. You should do your own research and make a thread like this.
5–When selling then?
I have an emergency exit plan like everyone else should. I don’t have the financial capability to let GME go to 0. I’ll keep a small position post-exit just in case. Make an exit plan that aligns with what loss or gain you can stomach. Don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose. Nothing on this sub is financial advice. You don’t have to sell if you can lose everything. I’m probably liquidating my options and doing shares only until further trend confirmation.
[Streetwear] The brick that broke the speculator's back: How a single gag accessory may have permanently altered all perception of New York's premier street fashion brand.
Friends, the story I bring to you today is not a fallout, but a crescendo. How years of grassroots promotion and online influencer endorsements led to a once underground fashion brand's rise to power and entry into the hallowed halls of internet ridicule. Or, the time Supreme sold a brick for thirty dollars. (this post contains a lot of context for what Supreme is and how it works, so if you only wanna know how and why they sold a brick, skip to the brick section) What is Supreme? Supreme is a skateboard and lifestyle brand founded by British-American fashion mogul James Jebbia. In an era where skate fashion was known for its eccentricity and garish presentation, Supreme stood out. It's iconic logo is made with stock typeface over a red box, which pushed the brand to the 2-billion dollar empire it is today. While the Box Logo (or the Bogo, as it's known among fans) has seen its share of ridicule (a lawsuit involving the logo could be its own entry) the brand's diehard fanbase, as well as myself, would argue the stripped-back, downright esoteric nature of Supremes' branding is exactly what pushed it to its heights. But it's taken a long time getting here. Unless you lived in New York, you probably only heard of Supreme in the last couple of years. All in all, there are four stores in the continental United States, two on each coast. Two releases happen per year, spring/summer and fall/winter. Rather than release all merchandise at once, Supreme releases (Drops) happen one week at a time, slowly working through its seasonal inventory. This release model not only maintains interest in new releases all throughout it's season, it perpetuates interest in what will drop next, since not everything coming out is revealed at once, either. It's common to hear about cross-brand and artist collaborations mere days before they release. All in all, everything Supreme does as a brand is on a need-to-know basis, meaning they've effectively mastered the art of FOMO. This means a diehard fanbase of skaters and fashion collectors. Half the reason a piece of Supreme clothing so cool to own is because only you and a couple hundred people (maybe a couple thousand, Supreme doesn't disclose inventory metrics either) have one. Naturally, a fandom would form. How Supreme makes a fan. On drop day, items generally cost what any other brand would charge, maybe a little more. Pieces are only available in store or online, both opening at 11am EST. What follows is a mad dash only Nike can claim to share. The online store operates on a first-come, first-serve basis, and the physical stores do the same, ala lining up for a game console. On a good day, you have maybe three minutes to cart your item and check out. The site does not save your cart so if you take too long, the piece you just added to your shopping cart might already be sold out by the time your payment is processed. If you've spent the past three months trying to buy a PS5, welcome to our world. We do this forty weeks a year. You lose a lot (take an L). Seventy-percent of the things you want you will fail to get. But when you do finally check out and get your purchase at your door (take a W, a dub, recklessly spend money) the feeling is euphoric. You are now a part of a secret club because, guess what, that was the initiation process. Some people buy one item and never try again. They're few and far between. The majority of Supreme customers have been buying (copping) for years, amassing massive collections. Sooner or later, Supreme would release an item specifically for fans and nobody else. The problem is when they did. Okay, that's cool, but why the **** did Supreme sell a thirty-dollar brick. Good question. The best part is that there's several answers. Along with clothing and skateboard decks, Supreme sells a wide, constantly-circulating pools of accessories. These have been a mini bike, a Super Soaker, a pinball machine, a crowbar that at least one guy really wanted, and coming soon, apparently, a bob...sled? Supremes' accessory choice is as baffling as everything else they do. A common riff on the brand is that they could "put their logo on literally anything and it would sell out." These people are not wrong, but I'd argue their accessory choice is more nuanced than this. Their logo alone could sell all kinds of things, but its the things they do sell that begin to send a message. For example, a Supreme baseball bat is nothing profound, but next to a Supreme ski mask, a Supreme crowbar, a Supreme money gun, and a Supreme... brick, the street-smart, underground roots of the brand begin to take root. There's always been an underlying, illicit message to Supremes' aesthetics, coated in a minimalist exterior. This subtext what splits the speculators and the mega-fans. Those mega-fans bring to life a second answer for why, in Fall 2016, supreme released a thirty-dollar clay brick with their logo etched in: one piece of Hypebeast lingo I've omitted until now is when an item Bricks. This is when any particular item either in-store or online sits in stock, with nobody buying it. No true-blue Supreme diehard would ever wear something anyone else could feasibly get for retail price or, god willing, below retail price. Bricks are poison to many an avid fan, which is why the brand might have thought it funny to sell to them an actual, literal brick. For thirty dollars. You get one brick. it sold out in seconds. But where's the drama? At the exact same time the brick was released to fans, two separate parties were growing aware of this once niche fashion label. Online influencers, and everyone else. Supreme was a mainstay among outsider artists, mainly underground New York hip-hop. The start of the 2010s saw the rise of Odd Future, whose alumni such as Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, The Creator were outspoken fans of the brand. While endorsements like these got the word out somewhat, the boom began in late 2016. Online influencers, mainly YouTubers and Instagram stars whose follower counts ballooned as lifestyle vlogs took over online content, were growing quite interested in this exclusive and expensive brand so deeply tied to underground Hip-hop, skateboarding, and having something expensive that everyone else will be totally jealous of. Notably, YouTuber RiceGum, a man with a tendency to flaunt his spending, took an acute interest to the brand around this time, making videos between 2016-2018 where he went on massive Hypebeast spending sprees. Such content includes buying a Supreme hoodie that just dropped and wearing it while walking past people currently in line to buy their own, buying mystery boxes online that just happened to have Supreme in them every time, and giving bootleg Supreme merchandise to his friends. You'll have to forgive the lack of hyperlinks here. I do not have the stomach to watch his videos. This behavior of course spawned similar in his contemporaries. This is why you started hearing the word Flex in regards to flaunting clothes and accessories around second-graders. Influencers from all spheres, who happened to all start taking off in late 2016, were wearing Supreme. this in turn led hundreds of thousands to trying their luck at the raffle. what followed was season upon season of the online stores crashing on drop day and lines outside the store snaking for miles taking an entire day to clear (this led to a new in-store ticketing system where you pre-register and are given a random slot in line, to mixed results). Who was mad here? Speculators who couldn't get in on the clothes their favorite LA influencer-person wears, longtime fans who now had to grapple with this unmanageable influx of new customers, and the people who had no interest in these expensive hoodies and shirts or whatever who were free to clown on this stupid, stupid brand. ThEy SolD a BrICk??? Once the unimpressed got wind of this stupid hype brand selling their customers a thirty-dollar brick, there was no going back. The image of a fashion titan so confident in their ability to sell their mindless followers a clay slab with no utility or value was irreversible for some. One Reddit user calculated the cost of building an entire house out of these bricks, othersmadememes, and while a lot of these were tongue-and-cheek jokes among fans, the derision online and in-person was inescapable. The image of a Supreme wearer being an in-the-know fashion trailblazer became one of a bandwagon-following consumerist idiot. After all, they bought a brick. Suckers, right? So what's it like now? Well, the site still sucks. Crashes are common, especially on days a bogo drops. Lines in-person are still a sweaty, multi-hour nightmare (though, morbidly, Covid restrictions made lines this season a little more manageable) and wearing Supreme isn't impressive to anyone anymore. Maybe a sign you'd spend two-hundred dollars on a hoodie, but nothing interesting to talk about. On my first day of college, my first roommate saw my Supreme tee and the first words he spoke to me were "did you buy the f\**ing brick?"* Is the brick solely responsible for the attitude shift towards Supreme as a brand? Well, more of a framer for a larger shift in the zeitgeist. Is it a major symptom? Major might be a strong word. Is it funny? It's hilarious. Even the fandom of today laughs about the episode in hindsight. They may be crazy, they may thoughtlessly spend thousands of dollars a month on clothes, they may consider their own worth adjacent to the net worth of their closet, but they are the ones who bought a brick for thirty dollars. This sort of power is something to be commended. Ridiculed, scorned, and commended.
Why Altria ($MO) LEAPs may have HUGE asymmetric upside 🚀🚀🚀
TL;DR: vaping, marijuana, Michael Burry, low as fuck IV, hugely under-valued company 🚀🚀🚀 \Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This is not investment advice. All information stated in this post is my own opinion, and some information may be unknowingly inaccurate or outdated. Please do your own due diligence before investing your money. I currently hold a long position on various Altria LEAPs.** Nicotine products have been in continuous use in North America for thousands of years [1]. Upon the arrival of the Spanish to the New World, tobacco use spread rapidly throughout the globe, becoming hugely popular not only across Europe, but also in far-flung Asia and the Ottoman Empire. The only comparable product to conquer the world so thoroughly is the ubiquitous, similarly addictive, mighty coffee bean. By the 1900's, smoking had become a huge commercial enterprise. Glitz and glam surrounded the tobacco industry. All of your Grandmother's favorite actors smoked [2]. Many high schools had smoking lounges for the students (of course, your Nana still regularly snuck out behind the bleachers to have a private puff with the quarterback). Nicotine use was a normal and accepted part of life. We are all, of course, familiar with the rest of the story. Studies came out showing just how damaging cigarette usage was on the human body. Campaigns were begun, laws were enacted, and Big Tobacco became Public Enemy #1 [3] Fast forward to today. For the past few decades, despite decreasing cigarette volumes, the tobacco industry has remained immensely profitable. Big players in the cigarette industry have been able to compensate for declining cigarette volumes by raising prices. Cash flows from cigarette smoking have never been higher. Yet looking at the stock market performance of the tobacco industry over the past 5 years, you would think that the industry was on life support. No company has lately fared worse than Altria ($MO). Despite growing income at a 5.9% CAGR since 2017 amid a backdrop of stabilizing declines in cigarette consumption [4], the company's stock remains 45% off its 2017 high. Much of the underperformance can be attributed to investors losing confidence in the company's management after a series of questionable investment decisions, including taking a 35% stake in JUUL, a 45% stake in Chronos (a Canadian marijuana company), and a 10% stake in Anheuser-Busch. These investments have performed poorly over the past few years. High-profile teen deaths from illicit THC vaping products were widely linked to JUUL usage by our sensationalist media [5], causing Altria to write-down its initial $12B investment in JUUL to a value of only ~$2B today. The bubble in the marijuana stock market popped in 2018, causing a 30% reduction in the value of Altria's Chronos stake. And the rise of the craft beer industry has continued to weigh on the profitability of Anheuser-Busch. Despite the short-term pitfalls, I will argue that it is reasonable to believe that Altria has positioned itself very well for the future. And with all of these factors weighing down the stock over the past few years, I believe $MO is ripe for a turnaround. I have a 2023 price target for $MO of $90 which, given the low IV Altria enjoys, implies a 30x (3,000%) return on MO Jan 2023 65c LEAPs. My thesis relies on four key beliefs: ​
The company's core business is under-valued
Vaping will see a resurgence as a less-harmful alternative to cigarettes
Altria is poised to win big if marijuana is federally legalized
Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management is heavily invested in $MO
1) The Company's core business is under-valued Altria enjoys a stunningly low forward P/E of 8.7 and a stunningly high dividend yield of 8.1% [6]. Various online discounted cash flow analyses of Altria give it an intrinsic value between $62-$72 [7][8]. These analyses are very conservative in that they only take into account Altria's current business, which is predominantly smokeable tobacco products. There are also bright spots in Altria's miscellaneous businesses that these DCF models don't account for, such as the fast-growing "on!" line of nicotine pouches, or the likely reinstatement of Anheuser-Busch's dividend after it was paused last year due to Covid. We'll ignore these bright spots for now and give Altria's core business a conservative price target of $65. 2) Vaping will see a resurgence as a less-harmful alternative to cigarettes \Please note: I am not a doctor. All health claims made in this post reflect only my own opinions.** Nicotine has gotten a bad rap in the past 50 years, but on its own there isn't much research I've seen to suggest it's any more dangerous than caffeine. The big problem with nicotine is simply the delivery mechanism. Smoking large amounts of anything is bad for your lungs. Vaping exposes your lungs to far fewer ancillary chemicals in much smaller doses than traditional smoking. For instance, Michael Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., director of clinical research at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, says about vaping “there’s almost no doubt that they expose you to fewer toxic chemicals than traditional cigarettes.” [9] Altria surveyed the landscape in 2017 and determined that acquiring a stake in JUUL was its best way to position itself for the future. Since then, JUUL's name has been dragged through the mud and associated with many teen deaths. However, these deaths were later determined to be caused by unauthorized THC products unlinked to JUUL [10]. JUUL's case for harm reduction in the nicotine space is still intact. The FTC filed an anti-trust case recently attempting to block Altria's stake in JUUL [11]. This case is due to be heard this spring. The uncertainty around JUUL's future has weighed on $MO, but in my opinion all outcomes of this case are positive: 1) Altria is forced to divest its stake in JUUL This is not ideal, but as part of the JUUL acquisition, Altria agreed to not compete in the vaping space against JUUL. If Altria is forced to divest, it can capitalize on the recent decline in the quality and brand value of JUUL (just check out juul to see the declining sentiment around the brand) to bring its own high-quality product onto the market. 2) Altria is allowed to keep its stake in JUUL In this case, Altria can capitalize on JUUL's troubles by acquiring a larger stake in the company at a discount. Altria can then flood JUUL with the cash it needs to help rebuild its quality and brand. This is the ideal case in my opinion, for both JUUL and Altria. Setting aside JUUL for the moment, Altria has the exclusive rights to distribute in the USA Phillip Morris's FDA-approved IQoS product [12]. This is a "heat not burn" product that is more similar to existing cigarettes than vaping, but still reduces the number of harmful chemicals inhaled. This product is already popular in Europe and Japan, and is just beginning to be marketed in the USA. One major advantage of this product is that it produces no smoke, and so may potentially end up being allowed in restaurants, bars, and offices. 3) Altria is poised to win big if marijuana is federally legalized Altria is the one company with the regulatory experience and distribution networks necessary to gain substantial market share in the nascent marijuana industry. Altria has been quietly filing patent after patent for THC and CBD vaping devices [13]. In fact, people in the fledgling marijuana industry are so worried about Altria's entry into the market that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, when speaking about his upcoming federal legalization bill, recently said "I don’t want to see these big tobacco companies coming in and shoving everyone out" [14]. (Note however that, while this position may play well with Senator Schumer's base for now, having a marijuana industry that is run by well-established and responsible companies is ultimately the best outcome for public health, and so it is unlikely that any steps will be taken to bar Altria from competing in the free market of marijuana products). 4) Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management is heavily invested in $MO Would this really be WallStreetBets if I didn't mention Michael Burry? Burry's fund Scion Asset Management had 5% of its portfolio in $MO as of Q3 2020, making Altria its 13th largest holding [[15](https://dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=SAM). For context, this is about half the weight that Michael Burry's fund had in GameStop during the same quarter. If nothing else, this is a good sanity check on the analysis here. Summary In summary, it's likely that the true value of Altria's core business is closer to $65 than the current price of $43. Add on top of that the potential for success in the vaping category, and the potential for growth into the marijuana market, and it is easy to see $MO adding an additional 20-30B in market cap to reach a price of $90 by 2023. IV for 2023 LEAPs sits at ~20%. MO Jan 2023 65c's are currently priced at $0.77. If Altria reaches $90 by 2023, these options will be worth at least $25. This would represent a >3,100% return. For this reason, I believe that Altria LEAPs represent a unique opportunity for asymmetric upside. Please let me know your thoughts below, I'd appreciate counter-arguments that highlight any flaws in the reasoning outlined above.
My name is Jared A. Brock. Having just turned 35, I sat down to reflect on everything I’ve learned so far and made a list of the things I wish I learned far sooner. None of these are rules or commands for you to follow, just personal reflections from a decade of journaling. I hope they save you a lot of time, energy, and struggle:
1. “Save the best for last” is terrible advice.
A French monk taught me this one. Every morning, I put on the newest pair of socks in my drawer. Why wear the rattiest pair? When I sit down to eat, I eat the tastiest bits first. Why let them get cold? After every shower, I put on my favorite clean t-shirt. I have a great bottle of 10-year-old Laphroaig scotch in my cupboard, but I probably won’t drink it for months because I received two bottles of reactor-aged Lost Spirits single malt for Christmas. Why? Because life is hard enough and we aren’t promised tomorrow. This doesn’t mean we should throw caution to the wind and “live in the moment” at all times, but it does mean we should try to find the golden middle and glean a little bit of pleasure from every day we’re blessed to live. “Save the best for last” is poverty-mentality thinking. It expects worse in the future. Enjoy the best right now — in your marriage, parenting, work, travel, faith, friendship, contribution. Keep all the chips on the table. Be ready at all times to leave without regret.
2. Tools use us.
A hammer literally cannot hit a nail without using a human. A saw cannot cut through a board without using a human. A phone cannot deliver ads without using a human.
3. Avoid false dichotomies.
When given two great options, choose both. When given two horrible options, choose neither.
4. Failure is overcome by one word.
“Next.”
5. Ambition is ruinous for your happiness.
Most goal-setters (myself included) live much of life in anticipation of tomorrow, and when that day arrives, they’re either disappointed by their failures or underwhelmed by their successes. Instead: trust the process. Whiskey, pasta, bread, beer, and cereal all require just two ingredients — wheat and water — but the outcome is completely different based on the process. Identity precedes action. Determine what you want to be, then find the process that will get you there every single time.
6. Forget what the market wants.
Listen to your gut. Your body knows the difference between good and great. Someone said you should never record a song or code an app or write an article unless it makes you laugh, cry, or orgasm. If an idea doesn’t move you, it won’t move an audience, no matter how “commercial” you think it is.
7. Give yourself a shove.
The best way to eat more candy, drink more vodka, and smoke more cigarettes is to leave them in the middle of the kitchen counter. You get it. Willpower is useless. Instead, line up a series of little nudges to automatically get you through your day. If you want to work out, leave your shorts by the door or your cleats in your fridge. My blue diode glasses rest on top of my laptop so I have to protect my eyes before logging online. I can’t not see my vitamins when I brush my teeth, or chia seeds when I reach for the Brita. There’s a book beside my bed, toilet, desk, and car’s gear shifter. Line up enough nudges and you can shove yourself in the right direction.
8. Grandma didn’t use toilet paper.
She used pages from the Sears catalog. Splinter-free wasn’t available until 1935. The Romans used sponges. The Greeks used clay. Francois Rabelais recommended using “the neck of a goose.” Arabians used their left hand. Never assume our extremely unique cultural moment is “normal.”
9. Ninety-nine isn’t enough.
Water boils at 100 degrees Celcius. The difference between 99 and 100 is the difference between zero and one. Not-boiling, boiling. Corollary: 101 doesn’t make it any more boiling.
10. Old people know better.
Honoring our elders is one of the most underrated practices in our newness-obsessed society. Sure, there are a ton of old crazy far-right conspiracy theorists, but there are also good people who have survived four wars, six recessions, and twelve presidents and are somehow still smiling. Get to know them. Also: meet your old-person self. I try to invent a new word every week — one of them is preflection. To ponder the present through the eyes of your future self. Take an hour in silence to listen to your eighty-year-old self. They might know something you don’t.
11. Fire all your employees.
The employer-employee relationship creates an unhealthy power dynamic between humans that simply didn’t exist when we worked cooperatively to feed our clan or village. I love my work life so much more now that I only work with independent entrepreneurs who are my equals. For me, it’s either a one-man show (my writing business), an equal partnership (my film company), or a co-operative endeavor. Life’s too short to be a boss or be bossed around.
12. Accept that you are a voracious locust of doom.
Nail a roll of paper to the wall and write down everything you consume for a year — food, toilet paper, electricity, car fuel, movies, music, social media content, other people’s time, everything. See what I mean? Saint Augustine said that the human heart can only fully be satisfied by one thing aside from God himself: everything. All the sex, all the money, all the power, all the possessions, all the glory. All of it. Nothing short of everything could ever fully satiate the human heart. We are wired for more. Understanding this truth is the first step toward real contentment.
13. Awkward is awesome.
My best friend says that The Office gave society a beautiful gift: the ability to embrace cringe. When you meet someone new and it’s slightly weird, pretend you’re Michael Scott. Just glory and bask in the discomfort. You can awkward-proof your life by being bold: Ask for discounts. Ask for refunds. Ask for phone numbers. Ask for pay raises. Ask inappropriate questions at inappropriate times. Lather yourself in awkward and pretty soon nothing sticks.
14. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life.
Hitler really was following his bliss by offing millions of Jews. I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer genuinely enjoyed the taste of human flesh. Bernie Madoff seemed content to bilk charities for decades. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life. It’s not even in the top ten. Happiness is a seasonal fruit, not a foundational root. Find firm and fertile ground.
15. There is no ugly.
My grandpa re-proposed to my grandma on their fiftieth wedding anniversary and called her the most beautiful woman he’s ever known. Old wrinkly grandma? Yes. Because we choose our definition of beauty through our thoughts, disciplines, habits, and patterns, be they conscious or otherwise.
16. We are what we consume.
The statistical average American is a walking bodybag of sugar, alcohol, caffeine, porn, pills, and digital stimulus. Imagine how different life would be if our only inputs were nature, sleep, sunlight, organic food, and embodied human interaction? Guard your inputs carefully.
17. We’re going to die quite soon.
Make sure you live first. Practicing memento mori will help.
18. Fame is poison.
One in four Gen Zers thinks they’ll be famous by age 25. One in 3.9999999 Gen Zers are going to have a miserably disappointing life. Why do people desire the attention of strangers? Because we all need to love and be loved, to know and be known, but are too afraid to risk personal heartbreak to seek it out. Attention is not affection. Influence is not intimacy.
19. Boomers are to blame for half our troubles.
The Me Generation took a free ride at the planet’s expense and are hellbent on taking the rest of it with them. They’re statistically low on empathy — blame the lead, asbestos, and hairspray if you must — but at least acknowledge the reality that life is hard for everyone, and no one has it easier.
20. Children are dope.
Kids are the blood transfusion in our sick system. We need to stop manipulating, brainwashing, colonizing, and propagandizing them, and learn from them instead.
21. It doesn’t have to hurt.
Joy is a choice.
22. Watch comedy before calls and meetings.
Five minutes of gut-busting laughter will prime you for even the most tedious conference call. Your co-workers and customers all have tough lives like everybody else, so brighten their day by pre-brightening your own.
23. No ragrets.
Tattoo it on your neck. Most people play it far too safe. Instead: optimize your life for the least number of regrets and the most amount of selfless contribution.
24. There are better ways to vote.
I’ve manned several local voting stations, and I’ve also hob-nobbed with politicians in Canada, America, and the UK. The reality is that they don’t work for us. They work for their corporate sponsors and private interests. Democracy isn’t dead. It just hasn’t happened yet, with all attempts to date being stillborn or aborted. Democracy = one voice one vote. Athens wasn’t a democracy — women, slaves, and tenants had zero say. America isn’t a democracy either — no representative system is, because it’s far too easy for private interests to buy politicians. The charade of voting is illusory. All elections are sham elections. So what to do? Vote with your money and time and attention. One sham vote every four years versus tens of thousands of dollar-votes each year? It’s a no-brainer. My wife and I haven’t stepped foot in a Walmart in more than a decade because thousands of its suppliers are based in China, the billionaire heirs are anti-democratic tax-avoiders, and they treat their employees like indentured servants. Vote for pro-democracy third-party candidates if you must — just understand the game, and vote in the ways that actually matter.
25. Everything easy has already been done.
So run a little further. And if it hasn’t been done, it won’t be as easy as it appears. The question to ask is: what’s been standing in the way this whole time? Achievement is all about knocking down obstacles. Just make sure what’s on the other side is rightly worth the effort.
26. Broccoli still tastes terrible.
But you’re not a child anymore. Adults do hard things.
Discipline is great, but it’s also subject to the law of diminishing returns. Life is just too dynamic to schedule with military precision. Free yourself from the tyranny of “only people who wake up at 5 AM are successful.” All hours are not created equal. It depends on your sleep drive and chronotype. Know yourself. Unapologetically get more sleep, then do your best work at your best time in your best state.
28. “Freedom” isn’t freedom.
America wasn’t founded on freedom. America was founded on violent autonomy. The ancient Greeks had an entirely different definition of freedom: it was the ability to choose the right regardless of circumstance.
“We talk about freedom all the time, but we’ve stopped talking about freedom a long time ago. Now we’re talking about autonomy. Freedom is different than autonomy. Freedom has boundaries. Truth is one of those boundaries. And morality is one of those boundaries. Autonomy is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want in whatever way you want. The problem is this: If I’m autonomous and another person is autonomous, and I have preferences and those matter more than the truth, and that person has preferences and their preferences matter more than the truth, when two autonomous preference-seeking beings come together and their preferences don’t match, who is going to win? If truth is on the bottom shelf, truth won’t decide. What will decide will be power. And isn’t it ironic that in our quest for “freedom”, someone gets enslaved?” — Abdu Murray
29. The Marines were right: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
As teenagers, my friend Tyler and I were in a hurry to get somewhere quickly so we drove 120+ miles per hour for forty-five straight minutes before nearly crashing when the speed burned a footlong gash through the tire. By the time we replaced it with a spare, we were late to our destination by more than an hour. But nevermind driving. Pump the life-brakes sometimes, or at least, let off the gas. You might get there faster, with less wear-and-tear on the engine.
30. The quest for wealth is destroying life.
We’ve commodified land, water, shelter, clothing, art, time, and nearly everything else. Very little remains, and it’s amassing into fewer hands. We need a shared global vision. My invented word for it is benevitae: the sustainable flourishing of all creation. Our collective goal should be socioenviroeconomic sustainability. Where to start? We’d do well to let biology determine ecological sustainability and real democracy to determine economic fairness. Our current trajectory is worse than the Space Shuttle Challenger.
31. Most “leaders” aren’t leaders.
Celebrities, politicians, and book-hocking business gurus all call themselves leaders. They’re not. Real leadership is influence that serves. True leaders are selfless and servant-hearted. They put the best interests of others ahead of their own. Politics and media, by comparison, attracts sociopaths like flies to firelight. Never give power to those who seek it. Nearly everyone worth following is dead.
32. Divide-and-conquer is a business model.
Near the end of high school, dozen friends and I binge-watched multiple seasons of LOST in our friend Mike’s basement. It was one of the most hilarious, riotous, enjoyable experiences we had as a group. And it was the last show we ever watched together. People used to go to restaurants in large numbers, to the movies by the dozen, climbing over each other for one of the limited video game controllers, packing out our churches, cheering on our sports teams by the busload. We were almost never alone, and we were far happier. Now we order in, watch Netflix, stream Minecraft, catch the highlights, watch porn, and go to bed. It’s killing us. Resist the urge to be alone. It’s too easy, and it’s the exact opposite of what we really need. The #1 thing that’s correlated to human happiness is human togetherness.
33. Self-improvement won’t save us.
The great lie of individualist-consumerist culture is that we can improve our way to personal perfection and communal utopia. But it’s incrementalism at best. It’s just chasing infinity.
34. We know nothing +/-.
On the scale of all that is known, and all that is knowable, our individual understanding is essentially mathematically zero. The entirety of human knowledge is a rounding error. This is the beginning of humility.
35. The sun is not on fire
I was at an observatory in the Davis Mountains in Texas, and it was the first time I’d paid attention to astronomy since grade school. For three decades, I’d wrongly assumed the sun was a giant ball of flames. But there’s no fire in space because there’s no oxygen in space. (It just looks like fire because of how our eyes perceive light through the atmosphere and prism.) As I stared at the real-time image of the sun on the observatory wall, I nearly wept. The sun actually looks like a giant, boiling, grey brain. And then it hit me: I have so many assumptions to set aside and so much left to learn. So pay attention. Don’t worship the “question everything” mantra, but instead spend your life seeking truth, and wisdom, and understanding. You know what you need to do to get where you want to be.
DisclaimerI want to thank everyone for the gilds, replies and suggestions. I just do not have time to reply to everyone, but I am reading everything. I am not sure how much bigger the thread can be, I already typed this but it vanished so I think I'm at the limit. I will try to keep updating, but I don't expect the thread to be up top for much longer and will likely vanish soon, so if you need anything save it. Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it. Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions: For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month! For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k. I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device. Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers
Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system. Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section. Completely free TV
If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox. Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like. Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird. Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device. For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV. Anime If you are into Anime there is
The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two. PC Centric software If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design
Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12. Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development. The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals. Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap. Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam. **BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however. IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff. Game Store Fronts
Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with GoldBleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
Gaming Subscriptions Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months
Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that. Audiobooks & Ebooks
Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Sign LanguageBSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesizehere is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
If you need some spare change Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change
If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the detailsAccording to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment. Hope it helps someone at least PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75! tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books Learning Language Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments: TogtogtogGives a lot of links for Spanish
Board & Tabletop games Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games ilyemco suggested these HEALTH I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix. Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7. If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery. HELP & ADVICE The lockdown Rules. Reasons to leave home include:
Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)
FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THEROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though) _riotingpacifist wanted these links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:
Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen. Office suit software A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
LibreOfficeThis has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
Music Making I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software. Games development D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here
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