Hi, guys. I know we're trying to limit the old WSB talk, but I've been thinking a lot about the GME threads, and this won't fit as a comment, so I hope it's alright that I post this here. I'm shocked by what the community has become, and I'm sure you're seeing it, too: the onslaught of misinformation, delusion, emotional volatility not unlike GME's volatility, and (since Friday) sells at massive losses and debt... Oof. It hurts to see it. (But I still can't look away.) WSB has experienced massive communal losses like this before, but never like this. How did it go from a simple stocks subreddit to an echochamber of GME hype and conspiracy theorists? The threads from even just a month ago were radically different than what they were a week later, and even more different than they are now. It's fascinating. It certainly raises a lot of questions.
Here's my opinion: The GME community has plunged into groupthink faster than their stock price plunged to the ground (if you're not familiar with groupthink, check this out). But how did this happen so quickly?
Let's take a deep dive.

Forming a collective identity

We'll start at the basics. Formation of a collective identity is a necessary first step; you can't develop groupthink without the group part. From where I see it, WSB as its own collective identity certainly helped speed up the process of forming GME's identity. When the sub boomed, most members were, at first, generally welcoming (if not by old sub members, then by the thousands of new ones pouring in), and the lingo was easy to learn. It was easy to feel apart of the community. Not only that, it was exciting for new subs: GME brought a sense of solidarity. Just check out this thread to see what I mean. Whether their goal was to 'stick it to hedge-funds' or get rich quick, all new subs who didn't know much about investing felt an expectation, and maybe even certainty, in their GME investment: an upward spike was coming, it was only a matter of when.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is very important to a collective identity. It's like an inside joke; other people might not get it, but you and your friends do. I was playing a multiplayer video game the other day, and someone came in the lobby with the username GME. Another player in the lobby got excited when he saw it. He said, "WSB?" and the first person answered, "to the MOOOON!" Instant friendship. Rhetoric strengthens camaraderie. It makes you feel like you're part of the "in" crowd.
This is another reason that the existence of the WSB community probably aided in the rapid formation of GME identity: new subs quickly took on WSB rhetoric. Diamond hands vs. paper hands, to the moon... you get the drift. New investors wanted to feel part of WSB, and rhetoric is one of the easiest ways to do it.
I want to talk specifically about the terms "diamond hands" and "paper hands" for a moment. These are very important terms for the GME identity. Prior to the GME explosion, I think WSB members would agree that diamond hands and paper hands didn't really mean that much. I would even say that diamond hands were viewed somewhat negatively.
Regardless, those terms are loaded with some heavy positive and negative correlations, and without the self-deprecation and self-awareness generally present in WSB, the use of those terms could easily slip into the beginnings of discrimination-- which is exactly what happened when GME took over. To newcomers, diamond hands sounded great! If you're investing in GME, you're not only part of the in crowd: you've got diamond hands. The sellers? They've got paper hands. They suck. You don't want to be one of them; they're gonna wish they were one of you. Now, we're subtly digging deeper into that "us vs. them" narrative.

A sense of urgency

Throughout the GME boom I saw a lot of people ask, "is it too late to get in now?" The general response: No. But you need to get in NOW.
There was a real feeling of time sensitivity, and there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding it: who knows if you missed your only chance in? Easily-swayed, brand-new investors wanted to get in. The idea of making easy money was certainly appealing, and there was an undeniable FOMO factor. When the young investor became interested enough to ask if it's too late and became spammed with comments to get in now, it probably felt like an easy decision to make. It probably made GME profits feel like an inevitability. Who were they to know any better?
Even if our brand-new investor had a chance to profit on GME, there were a lot of red flags in their decision to invest at all. They were emotionally investing, and there's lots of signs that point to it. And just like any emotional investor, once they were in, the easy-swayed, brand-new investor felt the actual implication of investing actual money like they'd never expected. They might have been certain of GME's upward movement before, but now, they felt the dips a lot more. I don't need to tell you how volatile GME's dips were-- they were bad. Our brand-new investor probably tried not to panic; the diamond hands vs. paper hands rhetoric probably played a large role in their ability to stick around. Our new investor didn't want to be a paper-handed fool. And they probably tried to convince other people to get in with the very same rhetoric, too. They had to! Their money was on the line now, and the end goal was to get enough people to invest so that the squeeze will happen, right? Right??
Oh, the squeeze. The very reason for our GME adventure. Because of its role, there was a lot of information being touted about short squeezes, a lot of copy-and-paste action, and a lot of outdated sources. People relied on a website called isthesqueezesquoze.com without much consideration into who was running it, or if it was updating in real time, or even how it would determine if the squeeze had been squozed. Eventually, the message seemed to become: if other people sell when they want to, then the stock price and volume will go down, and hedge-funds will cover their shorts, and our brand-new investor will be left with nothing. That's not fair, right? We can't even squeeze if people aren't buying on the dips, right? We're all in this together, right, guys??
Uh oh. You see where this is going?

Group polarization

Group polarization, which is a common red flag for groupthink, is the tendency of a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. You've seen it: that leftist friend you have starts hanging out with other leftist people, and they become even more leftist.
For the GME-community, mid-to-late January was likely the biggest push for polarization. At this time, we had the emergency of more GME-community "enemies:" the mainstream media and big brokers. MSNBC called the GME movement a terrible idea, hedge-funds cried about their losses on air, interviewees suggested that WSB could be considered insider trading, others called WSB's move cheap and illegal. Shortly after the media attacks, Robinhood and other brokers began to shut down trading. The media coverage sucked, but this was a lot worse. Now, it was personal. GME couldn't trust the news, but now, GME couldn't even trust their brokers.
GME was angry. The threads were spammed. The general sentimentality was hurt, betrayal, mistrust, and war cries: how come hedge-funds are allowed to play dirty tricks but we're not? The news is owned by a bunch of rich guys, so of course they would be against the GME movement. The "us vs. them" narrative dug deeper, and now, it had more meaning: we're the underdogs! We'll fight our way up to the top by ourselves! Us vs. them!
The more that the GME-community grew, and the longer that they gathered in their threads, the more they mistrusted the stock market, and the easier it became to blame a lot of things on them. Not only that, but they felt more right. GME will skyrocket. This is getting national attention because we are succeeding. You can literally see the real-time descent into group polarization in the memes they used: "GME $100 is not a joke" became "GME $1,000 is not a joke," and then $5,000, and then $10,000, and then $20,000..... I believe there are some people out there that genuinely thought GME could break 5 digits. A lot of people genuinely thought it would break $1,000.
Stock peaked Thursday morning around $470, but that wasn't enough for GME. Even after it dipped back down to $200 at close, the community was certain it would boom again. GME $1,000 was not a meme. I can't figure out why, but somewhere before or on Friday, a lot of the community began to believe that $320 was the number to hit. The squeeze would happen after they got back up to $320. People went with it.
Friday morning, the stock struggled to go back up. When the market began to close, GME had one goal in mind: close at $320. Minutes before closing, the GME thread exploded, comments rolling in the thousands per minute, filled with the now-familiar GME rhetoric: "hooooold" and "buy guys! we need you to buy!!" and "GME TO THE MOON!" among many, many others. The ticker looked like a tug-of-war.
Market closed at $328. GME won the battle.
This is exactly where it went downhill fast. GME had an entire weekend to fill until the U.S. market would open again, and their win left them glowing all weekend. Here was the proof that they needed; if they could win a battle, they would win the war. Just take a look at the weekend thread to see what I mean. "Be prepared for the fight next week." "The media is going to try to scare me into selling? Nah." Rocket emojis. "Hold the line." Remember, this was an entire two days of celebrating their win: the more they celebrated, the further polarized they became, and the more they mistrusted everyone else. The romanticism might've been strong before, but it was getting stronger. I saw one comment comparing GME-investors to movie superheroes. MOVIE superheroes. Jesus.
In the midst of their celebrating, what did they do when someone said they should sell?

GME-specific rhetoric and the WSB fracture

Now that GME had effectively polarized itself, it needed some new rhetoric. The WSB stuff just wasn't extreme enough for them anymore. Hedge-funds became hedgies. People who doubted GME were spreading FUD. Hedgie-bots were a huge issue. GME needed to "hold the line." Do you notice a lot of the rhetoric became blatantly war-related? Wonder what the benefit of that could be.
But what about the old WSB community?
Towards the end of January and up through now, the ones who sold their stocks and talked about it were downvoted to hell. The polarized hivemind had decided that anyone who sold for any reason at all were weak, paper-handed, they would regret everything. The ones who cautioned others to do the same were even more so. And don't even think about talking about other stocks. What do you think this is? A subreddit for the whole market?
Some studies suggest that online rhetoric is tied to an increase in aggression. When a user feels like they're part of community identity, they'll behave the way they think they're supposed to, and the way that they see others behave. Our new investor sees someone call someone else a paper-handed tard for selling? Well, they'll do the same. Even if they don't feel that strongly about it, they might do it anyway, just to feel like they belong. It's all pretty much subconscious. There's not a lot of critical thought in the beginnings of groupthink.
If you said GME wasn't going back up, you weren't just wrong, you being wrong made them very angry. I commented something about how people should sell GME and one user replied, "you clearly haven't been paying attention at all. That is the most stupid bullshit I've ever seen. You truly are the tippy top tard of all tards." It's the perfect example for this: using the retard rhetoric, full-on aggression, etc.
Old WSB members were a new enemy of sorts. Anyone who said anything against GME were hedgie-planted bots aimed at creating FUD. (See how complicated this rhetoric is getting as polarization gets stronger?) Any other stocks? Distractions. Stupid bot, the hedgies won't fool me into buying anything else. The entire subreddit served only one purpose: GME, and GME alone. Everyone else can get out.
I think it's clear that we've arrived at the end of the line...

The fall of GME

So, the stock market opened up Monday, and GME charged into battle again. But it didn't go as expected: GME went down fast.
People were getting scared. A lot of them had probably invested a lot more than they were willing to lose-- there were stories of loans taken out, inheritances given early, rent and grocery money being spent. Even if they weren't on the brink of financial devastation, the losses were massive for some. That shit hurts. For emotional investors, it might feel like the end of the world. So, here's our brand-new investor staring at some deep red numbers on the screen, maybe more terrified than they'd like to admit being, wondering where to go next.
Well, good thing our brand-new investor had a daily thread to turn to! What would make them feel better than to settle comfortably into their echo-chamber? Here were users calling them brave and intelligent. Diamond hands! Keep up the good work! Tasty dip, get these discounts! There were copy-and-pasted messages. Our brand-new investor was swayed into buying this easily, so wouldn't they feel reassured this easily, too?
Then came the negative brigade. A lot of people came back for their 'i told you so's: get out while you can, stupid bagholders, can't believe you guys are still holding, etc... To the brand-new investor, these negative comments were like a cold slap of doubt-- at this point in the game, with our investor possibly thousands of dollars under on the first stock trade of their life, they can't handle the doubt. They probably can't even process their losses yet; it cannot possibly be real. The echo-chamber was certainly convinced it wasn't... So, these negative comments must be bots. Nobody really has any doubt. If anyone does, they just have paper-hands.
As the stock fell harder, the GME-community got really desperate. They tried to appeal to your pathos. There was a lot of "if you never sell, you'll never actually lose." A lot of "if DFV isn't selling, I'm not selling," ignoring the fact that DFV had sold more than enough to cover his initial investment. It became downright misinformation: Mark Cuban's comment urging GME-holders to keep holding was frequently turned into "if Mark Cuban isn't selling, I'm not selling." The VW squeeze was referenced several times as a comparison. Here's a great list of the misinformation spewed from someone's post earlier.
This was where the delusion really began to set in. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be attributed to the fact that GME was steadily falling. At the end of every day, the narrative changed: the squeeze would happen tomorrow. No, the next day. No, sorry, the day after that. No one can be trusted anymore: the news is fake, the negative subs are bots, and hedgies are cheating! That dip was just a short ladder attack. That dip was just the shitty paper hands selling. That one was the hedgies cheating. Thousands of comments rolled in by the minute. Millions were accrued in losses, many by those who couldn't afford it, and yet, the GME-community lashed out at everyone else for doubting them. Wednesday rolled around and the stock could hardly break $100. But WHO were the idiots? The paper hands. The liars. The cheats. GME will return, they said anyway. The media is wrong. There was misdirected anger. Memes rooted in the thought that GME would rocket.
You guys knew the utter delusion that the threads became. I don't think I could describe it well, even if I wanted to. But here's the most delusional comment I've seen, the one I think perfectly sums up the GME-crowd:
"Stop questioning. You are told to buy and hold. Just follow directions."
Stop questioning. Just follow directions.
That is fucking groupthink.

What now?

I could really get into other contributing factors here. There have been a lot of IRL events that have probably been a catalyst for this; we've been seeing a lot of mistrust of the mainstream media, growing support for the rich vs. poor narrative, and mistrust of the government lately. There's been a lot of conspiracy theories and echo-chambers online.
I don't know the future of GME. I also know that there's some truth to the things that the GME-community has said: I'm sure there were bots in the subreddit. I'm sure there was market manipulation. But, like all truths man-handled by groupthink, it was warped beyond belief. Not everyone disagreeing with GME was a bot. Not all downward dips were market manipulation. But that's exactly what they believed.
So, where do we go from here?
There are many implications this phenomenon will have on an individual investing level and, with WSB, on a group-wide level. I hope that investors burned by the GME movement will learn the implications of emotional investing and FOMO-- we've certainly all been there before. I hope GME doesn't continue to become a massive conspiracy similar to Qanon (the rhetoric has evolved to be something scarily similar).
I'm curious to hear what everyone else's thoughts are. Let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low, and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours.
So.. I mentioned possibly doing a 'post mortem' on my GME trade, and apparently that was in high demand. That being said, I'll call it an 'evolution' instead, as we still don't yet know what will happen next.
Rather than going through a full narrative, I made a crazy annotated chart to chronicle some of the key points in my trade decisions.
Strangely enough, I think it might better convey how the week went from my perspective a little better than a full narrative. If you catch any inconsistencies between the chart, or my writing below, please point it out. It's very easy to ex post facto ascribe to yourself the benefit of 20/20 foresight and overlook mistakes you made at the time.
I'll walk through my thought process for newer traders. Keep in mind I'm trading my hobby account, not a self-directed IRA, so the stakes are a lot lower and tolerance for risk is much higher:

1. I would probably trace the initial origins of this trade for me back to November. I wasn't a genius like DFV finding GME at that point, but once the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine efficacy data came out, I decided to go rummaging through XRT (retail) and other unloved sectors for value that should rebound on the sector rotation to the 'reopening trade' given the nosebleed multiples in QQQ (the NASDAQ/big tech companies that dominated the market in 2020). Figured I'd mostly ride the SMH (semiconductor index) and a few other favorites while digging around. Looking at unloved sectors is the value/long term investor version of 'buy the dip' (typically the dip might last years, but I figured in this case the evolution would be much faster because it would be driven by progress against COVID).
2. ID'd GME for the short list because of an unusually regular pattern on the daily chart RSI. In hindsight I would probably attribute that to one of the hedge funds trying to stealthily unwind its short position veeeeery slowly, but GME being a dead corner of the market, it shows up in the data like a lighthouse beacon, in a channel upward just bouncing off RSI 70. Someone is gradually accumulating a big long position or covering a big short position. TJX's looks better, but valuation too high already (over-loved).
3. Deep dive DD, including DD from WSB just makes me think this is exactly what I've been looking for. Better buy in before it escapes completely.
4. Ok..it made some massive moves already, but with the bonus of the short interest anomaly this is too good.. and it comes with awesome memes--can't say no to the package deal. $38 (my first buy) is pretty good, but I'll write April $40 cash-secured puts to net me a better entry (or additional profit if they go unexercised). This is a common technique investors can use to get either a better entry than they otherwise could get, or some participation in the upside if the price runs away--I find it easier to do this than setting an aggressively low GTC limit buy and keeping my fingers crossed.
5. Digging deeper into the short squeeze thesis tells me it's practically mathematically guaranteed to go off any moment. I take off some cash-secured puts, liquidate a lot of the rest of my portfolio, etc. because if things get as crazy as I think they might, it's better to have almost nothing else in your portfolio to complicate matters. This is especially true as margin requirements start rising.
6. Volatility starts going crazy. You almost can't see it on the daily chart with the scaling of the 500+ peak, but if you focus on the 1/21 to 1/26 timeframe there were a few brutal Eiffel tower moves (parabolic up then down). All kinds of misinformation about what is going on starts flying. People start FOMOing into those moves only to despair out on the other side for a loss. Few if any seem to be willing to talk about the situation in a way that newer traders can understand. I start posting a bit here and there, just getting a feel for reddit.
7. On 1/25 I see a few heated discussions regarding whether the gap up over the weekend, then crash down that day in fact WAS the squeeze, and I try to jump in and correct the record a bit.. people are panicking out on the downside of that move because they're being told the squeeze is over. That motivates me to write my first article in the series. Don't finish it that evening, decide to finish it in the morning. It drops on this sub essentially as what we now know was the squeeze is achieving liftoff.
8. Looking at my posts from 1/25 to 1/29, I'm probably too tuned in to the hype, but tuning in to sentiment is important in sentiment-driven momentum trading. I do try to consistently try to warn new traders from FOMOing in, but that doesn't stop me from trying to help them understand what is going on.
9. One thing I've learned the hard way--don't carry a sentiment-driven momentum trading position through a weekend. That usually does not end well.
10. The weekend gives me time to step back and resume a more analytical approach and you may notice my writing style reflects that at that point. Looking back, I notice a lot of sloppiness and some outright errors in my realtime read of the situation. I try to point some of those out if I feel they might be material to others' trading decisions.
11. At this point I'm thinking the squeeze has been mostly squoze (but for a few 'technically it's still possible' type scenarios). I figure since so many of the regular readers/commentators on my posts are going to ride it, I'll keep a position on to ride it with them too. We'll see where we go from here!

I actually did really well on the trade overall. Could have done much better had I just stuck to my trades rather than reading and writing on Reddit, but the numerous comments I've seen where I or other commentators in this sub were able to provide good, level-headed feedback and advice helped people make better decisions make it worthwhile to me. I guess it just bothered me too much to see the vacuum of real information and willingness of people to push their trade on others. I didn't see that kind of behavior in WSB even just the week prior when I first joined.
Also, while it turned out very well, I have to be completely intellectually honest and admit that I could have lost it all too. This was a crazy volatile trade with more twists and turns and unexpected developments than I could have imagined, and that's even given that I actually believe it when I say that I don't know what will happen next. This is something anyone knowingly walking into this type of situation should realize and plan for.
Each person has a different tolerance for risk, though I will say that while I was and am willing to take significant risks with my hobby trading account, I try to never take entirely irrational risks. I also actively put at risk a relatively small percent of even my hobby trading capital (~20%). It may not seem like it, as you've seen my writing on a high volatility play, but my overall capital disposition is very conservative and low-risk/low-volatility in aggregate. It's because I know that most of it is safe that I can feel comfortable and controlled making very high risk plays.
I've seen people put it all on the line and totally clutch trade big momentum--I wish I could, but I know that's not me.
There are a few sayings that traders have as almost jokes, but with an undercurrent of dark humor in many cases:

1. Rule #1: never lose money. From Warren Buffett, value investing legend. I'm a little more flexible with this for myself, and amend it to "always have a plan that guarantees you can never lose more money than you intended to put at risk." If you are in the red on this trade, realized or unrealized, don't feel bad--I'm very confident that most people are in the same boat. Try to think of it as tuition for one of the most intense, and hopefully intellectually productive seminars ever, held only once every decade or so.
2. No one ever went bankrupt taking profit, or pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. (counterpoint: tons of people have gone essentially bankrupt riding profits right back into the ground--particularly in climactic late bubble market action, like the dotcom bubble). To those of you feeling bad that you could have made more, be glad that you were in the green. It's something to celebrate. You traded a black swan event and came out ahead.
3. Buy low, sell high. MUCH harder to do consistently than it seems. Particularly if you initiate a trade from FOMO. For those of you who did this, try to remember what that was like, and think of ways you can manage those emotions in the future, or ensure you never put yourself in a similar position if you'd rather not have to. Either approach will be healthier for both you and your wallet in the long run.

Alright, this post is long enough as is. We'll see where the rocket takes us tomorrow.
Good luck in the market!

I know, everyone is tired of hearing about Gamestop, but this was something I came across that I thought was actually quite well written and pretty spot on with most of the anger driven rhetoric I've seen on Reddit.
I've copy/pasted because I know most of y'all don't have Bloomberg subscriptions.

Traders putting on the short squeeze aren’t motivated by greed. They’re engaged in an anger-driven uprising against the establishment.
Anger Is an Energy
The saga of GameStop Corp. continues. By the end of another frenetic day of trading Tuesday, the stock had just topped its high from Monday. Between those peaks, it staged a fall of more than 50% on Monday afternoon. Colleagues have followed these extraordinary developments as they happened. I will try for now simply to process the single most important question: Is this just a weird technical situation, of the kind that comes along every few years, that can otherwise be safely ignored? Or does it tell us something important about market conditions as a whole?
GameStop's share price surged back to set a new high Purely qualitatively, based on what I have witnessed, I think it does matter. The signal it sends is disquieting, if not surprising. It also introduces us to a new variant on an ancient market phenomenon.
The cliche is that market capitalism works on the balance between greed and fear. The standard defense is as follows: If the greed to make money by beating the competition is matched by a fear of failure through making too many mistakes or cutting corners, then capitalism works. Nothing else yet discovered gives people such an incentive to work and create growth. Speculative bubbles happen when greed becomes excessive, or when fear diminishes too much. Easy money and easier trading with derivatives oil these emotions and allow them to run riot. The financial crisis of 2008 happened in large part because years of policy had convinced investors that there would be a bailout if they failed; they lost their fear, and greed took over.
This feeds into the debate over whether we have a speculative bubble at present. Markets are pervaded by gloom and worry, so there is no lack of fear — even if confidence that interest rates will never rise is growing excessive. Meanwhile, there is little in the way of greed. Cryptocurrency has generated excitement, as has Tesla Inc., but in the main the frenzy over a historic opportunity to get rich, of the kind that was everywhere in 1999, is lacking. This is a different, worried world. The last two decades have stripped it of its positivity. The mood is nothing like the great bubbles of the past.
Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later, and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded it.
On Monday, I argued that it was misplaced to take pleasure at the pain for the short-sellers who had attacked GameStop stock, and then been subjected to a “short squeeze” for the ages by traders coordinating on Reddit. I received a bumper crop of feedback. Here are some representative samples (leaving out many with unprintable expletives):

“You kind of miss the point of what is going on with GameStop. How much did Melvin pay you to write this garbage? shill. Literally trying to protect an industry trying to fleece jobs from low income workers. Sleep well chump.”
“Watching entitled institutional shorts whine on TV and OP EDs that millennials equipped with margin accounts & zero fees are collaborating on Reddit to target them is my new favorite sport. Looks perfectly healthy from where I'm sitting, which is on bull side :) plus 1 for the little guys.”
“Normal isn't putting the retail trader down for being independent while organized hedge funds force you to take their way or suffer in fear. Normal is the American dream and being able to make your own way. This isn't a casino. This is a riot.”

One respondent warned that the people squeezing the shorts aren’t “a herd of impressionable youngsters with Robinhood accounts. No. They are an experienced & ruthless army of insomniacs followed by a silent legion of rapidly learning new traders. This is a new paradigm that won’t go away.”
Another told me I was a “dumb boomer” amid a screed of unprintable epithets. (Point of information: I’m just too young to be a boomer. I’m in Generation X, but it’s the intergenerational antagonism that’s noteworthy.) Another said that the short squeeze was just a way for millennials to recoup the money they had been forced to pay to bankers during the TARP rescue 12 years ago, and to put coronavirus relief checks to work:

“In other words, poor people have too much money and are now controlling the narrative. Damn those $1200 stimulus checks and $600 unemployment supplements. Too much liquidity, let's get these folks back to living paycheck to paycheck.”
“I know. Democratisation of the market is so damned inconvenient for those of us with money.”
“nobody cares about your hedge fund cronies!”
“Bloomberg defending the suits. Not surprised. They’re just mad the rubes are in on the joke now. Might this force the Fed’s hand? Too many regular people in on the game.”

This is all fascinating. In the space of 12 years, the role of the short-seller has turned on its head. Back in 2008, it was the shorts who upset the status quo, revealed what was rotten in the state of Wall Street, and brought down the big shots. They were even the heroes of a big movie. It was the Wall Streeters who attacked them.
Alienation has deepened since then. Short-selling hedge funds are now seen as part of a corrupt establishment, as is the media. The motives of anyone defending the shorts, or anyone wearing a suit, must be suspect. And there is a deep generational divide; those unable to own their own home and forced to rely on defined contribution pensions have a stunningly unfair deal compared to those a generation older, living in mortgage-free homes with guaranteed pensions. That percolates into anger, and a determination to right the scales by making money at the expense of corrupt short-sellers.
We lack precedents for an angry bubble, so predictions are even harder than usual. But there are enough similarities with past incidents to raise serious cause for concern.
First, the little guys have had their success so far with the aid of margin accounts, and by using derivatives. We know what happens when these things are used to excess; even the Dutch tulipmania relied on margin debt and derivatives. Little guys (and everyone else) deserve safer tools with which to build wealth.
Second, “democratization of finance” isn’t new, and in itself is nothing that anyone can object to. The problem is that investment and financial planning are difficult, and require time. Regulate these things, and you no longer have true democratization. Leave people free to take chances, and you get disasters like the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. That also followed plenty of hype about the success of the “little guy,” and the first great explosion of online discount trading succeeded in sucking an army of new retail investors into the bubble’s final climax. Unregulated “democratization” led to the little guy bearing the brunt of the losses.
“Democratizing” finance also leaves newly enfranchised financial citizens prey to spivs and frauds. I started my career covering the disastrous repercussions of one of Margaret Thatcher’s last reforms in the U.K. — giving people the right to leave their defined-benefit pensions, offered by employers, and take on defined-contribution “personal pensions.” Unscrupulous salesmen persuaded miners, firefighters and police officers to abandon copper-bottomed index-linked pensions for plans that came burdened with excessive charges. It was a repellent spectacle, and the bill for compensation was in the billions.
These points doubtless make me appear to be a complacent shill for the financial industry, talking down to the rubes. For the record, I’m still angry about the way workers were ripped off in Britain more than three decades ago, and about the way the little guy ended up bearing the brunt for the financial implosions of 2000 and 2008. But it looks horribly to me as though the same thing is going to happen again — and I don’t think the answer to today’s many ills is to empower poor people to bankrupt themselves with margin accounts and derivatives.
Anger, even more than greed, has the capacity to make us throw caution to the winds. Many of us have a lot to be angry about. If this carries on, and spreads beyond targets like a video-game retailer, I don’t want to see the consequences when history’s first angry bubble bursts.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-27/gamestop-short-squeeze-is-rage-against-the-financial-machine
Anyway, I'm sure everyone's tired of hearing about Gamestop, but hopefully this is a decent departure from the memes, hype, and completely unfounded bullshit that's been surrounding that conversation so far.

So, hey wastelanders.
It's been a while.
I hope you are all still doing well out there in the Fallout. Been a little extra radioactive of late, and we're all kinda dodging the flames of another project each of us had a lot of hope for.

This isn't meant to be a distraction from the very unfortunate and disappointing situation with The Frontier. We all know what's going on, and it's heartbreaking, infuriating, and sad all around. There were some unconscionably poor leadership choices made that led to the loss of something I think all of us had the highest hopes for. My heart goes out to those coders, voice actors, artists, and friends affected for the loss of dignity and years of hard work, and the betrayal of ethics and trust we placed in those who ultimately turned out to be the antithesis of the standards we should all hold ourselves to, not just as modders or devs, but as people.
Our projects may not have been connected, but I know people who loved us both and feel this tragedy deeply.
To the users, who found themselves burned and bummed out, I can only offer refuge in knowing the community sees the mistakes, and I hope other devs take a long hard look in the mirror at how they treat others and their teams. Years from now, should anyone revisit this post, I hope it's in better days and we don't even remember what this disclaimer is about.

That said, because my feed is blowing up with refugees from the great meme war coming through Vault 18, I'm getting some reminders that New California, released in 2018, has a mixed reputation here and among some Fallout modding communities.
And you know, that hurts me a little. Not in an emotional way, but more just... I hate letting people down.
Obviously a lot of the criticism we received was fair and rational, and I want to respond to that in a positive and constructive way. We have a lot of love and encouragement of course, but this is more a post about addressing some concerns, and hopefully that helps our supporters as much as our detractors too.
I'm not one to just throw in my hat when I make a mistake or fall short of expectations. Usually that puts me into listening and responding mode where I want to figure out what went wrong and how I could fix it.
So back in 2019, after it became abundantly clear FNC just wasn't going to receive the community support we needed to overhaul our oldest and clunkiest dialogue or add side content to build up the anemic wasteland, I sat down for a number of nights over a couple weeks and wrote this post-mortem:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qZGbmXQ1aqZO4RholmyO9dgPxULLJdRYvsTgUPD2jp0/edit
What you'll find in here is first and foremost a breakdown of our successes and failures.
Be forewarned, it is many hundred pages long. That document only serves as a hub linking to this folder of documents: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11pKvUpZDEzaiBOsCigePZ-pGjty5LxHm
I intended this to be essentially a re-write that would be feasible for any modder with the time and dedication to take what is already there in New California, remove the undesired content, and replace it with this content.
We all have a AAA multi million dollar dream game in our heads. This is not that. This is a "what if, knowing what we know now, and having processed all this feedback good and bad, how would we proceed if we could in fixing its shortcomings?"
The Big Points:

1. There are few Side Quests after Vault 18 of note
2. The Story after Vault 18 is a tail-spin of too much combat in an empty space
3. Undesirable bottlenecks where we had to scope control branching paths
4. Crashes from New Vegas Engine being overwhelmed with actors & effects
5. Combat alternatives need to be presented as a main option, not a side option
6. Performance woes
7. Quest Breaks and Sequence Breaks (rare)
8. Confusion in direction in large open spaces that feel too linear, branches aren't obviously branches (see Pinehaven and Wilco's Raiders, people don't thin to shoot on sight, and if they do shoot on sight, don't think to roll back and try talking instead)
9. Balance in Combat and Loot is skewed to the generous early and crunch later
10. Too Many NPCs overall, especially waves of enemies in spawners
11. Bullet sponges even after massive nerfs still bother folks depending on settings (Very Hard is often on in a player's menu and they never look again, combat overhaul mods are inconsistent)
12. Map is Too Big and Too Empty (\Moar Side Quests* *More Urban Ruins*)*
13. No way to not be captured by Raiders? I hate that! (Alternate path to join willingly)
14. Shi being Japanese NOT CHINESE (Nobody cares about the explanations why)
15. Charisma checks “should” be speech checks (really we just needed more speeches up front to sell the reason why we used SPECIALS & Earned Perks, so people don't feel path locked.)
16. Kieva joining the Legion (\maximum jimmy rustler*)*
17. The Father believing the player is a clone of the Vault 13 Vault Dweller is poorly written and not refused in dialogue, only a terminal few read
18. The Father had no lead up and is seen as a twist rather than any kind of culmination of clues
19. The Father isn't seen as a threat and is just pushed aside at the end (would have been a cool 3rd faction if that was even remotely possible, which it wasn't unfortunately)
20. The Star Player being the Courier is HATED, since we all like that blank slate staying blank, but they appreciate starting New Vegas afterwards
21. General disappointment in the Companions falling off a cliff and being inconsistent in personality, and then just vanishing after a while (resource shortage, content cuts)
22. Wasteland Outside Vault 18 is hideous (True)
23. Jokes / rumors about incest are taken as if they are actual endorsement of incest
24. Crude humor in any form, gets 2016+ people very twitchy. Should just expunge all humor around sex jokes or libidinous characters, as if it doesn't exist
25. If 1 character has a bad audio take, 15,000 lines of good dialogue around it become irrelevant
26. The Enclave are given real justice, but most fans wish they just stayed dead with Fallout 2 and never show up again, which is a massive shame as they have so much potential as an exploration of nationalism if given even 5 minutes of rational justification for their actions
27. We didn't set out to invent a better plasma gun gut the new gear is cool, and people seem to want more of that kind of thing from an Enclave playthrough
28. More opportunities for Enclave players to use power armor and weapons, less lonely play through (ignore that they are the last of their kind on the West Coast after F2, add a new companion for Enclave players)
29. Nobody likes teen drama. Cut it and age companions by 10 years of maturity and competence, such as giving them vital jobs and real lives outside their bubble
30. Update characters that are undercooked but have potential (Raider Warlords, Union City Civilians, Super Mutants, and the Trade & Personality ties between them)
31. The Vault explodes, though it is a beloved landmark (no resources to keep it around in the story without it being a throw away due to lack of volunteers to justify all those voiced survivors)

That's a lot to unpack.
If New California were an Indie game of its own, we'd have a bright red Overwhelmingly Negative at the start, and Mixed after 2 years.
Obviously, in my career going forward, I'd like to never repeat these mistakes that led there. And I'd like to see other projects learn from my mistakes as well.
I was 22-24 when the overwhelming majority of dialogue was written in Vault 18 back in 2012-2013, and the second part was written almost entirely in 2015, with voice acting recorded in October-November 2015. VERY compressed and hurried, compared to that span of several years.
2012-2018, only Rick and I were committed to the project. We couldn't capture and retain talent. We didn't have a robust community of modders we were a part of such as Nexus or Gun, and the other large mods were openly hostile and transactional with us, only interested in what benefited them directly, such as talent poaching, rather than cooperation. When we did have contributors it was brief and glorious, but limited to specific things, such as animating a vault door or throwing a vault ball.
So large scale re-writes, even when we were acutely aware they were needed*,* were an impossibility without sacrificing forward momentum or causing fatal burnout. That led to a "race to the end" mentality with as few revisions and as little backtracking as possible, and flaws being baked in. Which succeeded in finishing and releasing instead of failing to deliver anything, but at a painful cost.
The final writing for the mod was in 2018, when I wrote Hrafnkel, Atl Irepani, and Vayger. This content, and the voice acting for it, is a radial departure from the cringe early writing. Had the mod stood up to that level, it would have been a cleaner experience over all.
A character like Dakota Ferron, who is a mature adult with her own complex motives and goals, and keeps up the drum beat of intimate dialogue with the player across the mod, would have been a huge success. As well as if the wasteland had been smaller, so criss crossing was limited.
The companion overhaul would help tremendously with the criticisms of the writing, but is complex surgery. And packing the empty space is a massive team effort, not belonging to 1 or 2 of us original devs, but the voices of other volunteers who understand the vision and don't just fill it with jokes and bullshit.
Unfortunately, the reality is, the New Vegas modding community doesn't have a talent pool of skilled modders willing to take on this content. Not because we soured our good will or respect, but because of the stratification of mod teams that have no desire to work together, and over many years of deep investment in their own projects as a hobby, do not want to work on a new project.
In the meantime I have a family to raise and a business to run, so I can't be of much help either except to provide financial and directorial support.
So at the core of this is a feasibility study, and the results are just simple: there's no need to shutter the project, but let it stand. If someone is wiling to volunteer, we will help get the ball rolling and provide any support required.
Until that hero arises however, we have a new IP that is funded and doing very well. We're happy with the way Project Morningstar is shaping up, it pays the bills, and things are looking up.
So lets hope at the minimum you all enjoy the writing left in the 1.0 documents, and what we released back in April 2020, which is the last official update from the Project Brazil team for the foreseeable future.
I know it's dark putting a project to bed guys. I know 2020 was a hell of year, and 2021 has been painful in new ways for us all.
But there's hope.
There are lessons to learn from.
There are new opportunities to rise to new challenges.
Your life doesn't end with failures. That's where you show who you really are. Do you fold? Or do you learn?
Best of luck, to all of you. Whether you enjoyed FNC or not, your feedback as shaped me in a positive way and I hope to provide more content for you to enjoy in the future.
--Thain

So for reasons I won’t go into, I was kicked out of home at 17 and absolutely could not go back; this post is a bit long but I hope it helps someone. So, without further ado, here are the three life skills I wish I’d learned before that happened.
​
How to manage money:
This one is important and it can be the difference between you eating and not eating. If you find yourself on your own without a plan, an unexpected bill can really mess you up. I was hit by one not long after my 18th birthday when my car blew up and I basically didn’t have food for four days. Don’t be me, learn from my mistakes.
This is the system I came up with after that and it hasn’t failed me since:

1. Write down all your bills (other than rent) such as phone, internet, electricity, car insurance etc. These will all be billed at different intervals so break them down into weeks.

E.g. if your internet is $40 per month, that’s roughly $10 per week.

Once all of your bills are in weeks, add them up to figure out how much money you need to put aside per week to pay them. If you are paid weekly, great! Put that amount aside in a bank account called _BILLS_ as soon as you get paid. If you are paid fortnightly, double it and do the same thing. It’s not rocket science, but it works.

1. Rent! No one wants to be homeless, so this is pretty damn important. Honestly, I should move it to #1 but I’m lazy.

Same as BILLS, put this aside in a bank account called RENT as soon as you are paid. If you are paid weekly, put one week’s worth aside. If you are paid fortnightly, put two weeks worth aside. You get the picture.
Note: there is an added bonus to doing it like this. If your landlord ever tries to say you missed a payment, you have all of your dated transactions in one easily searchable account. One of my landlords once lost a week of my rent and tried to bill me for it a second time. With good records you can tell them to go fuck themselves take a hike.
For both RENT and BILLS use automatic transfers or direct debits where possible. They make life easier, save time, and you’ll never miss a payment.
Money Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
Now that you’ve done that, you have an idea of what’s left over after you get paid. We aren’t done yet though. You don’t have a savings account or an “oh fuck” account. Let’s fix that.

1. Oh, fuck: your crazy housemate pissed in the fridge, slashed your tyres, and what’s worse, drank your milk without replacing it. Jokes on them though, you pissed in the milk first. Still, what an asshole.

However it happens, sometimes shit just goes wrong. That’s when you need an Oh, Fuck^TM account.
Look at any weekly expenses you have left, these will most likely be groceries and petrol/gas plus a few other random things. Total those up and use them as a baseline to give yourself a weekly “wage”. Anything above this, put into your Oh Fuck account until you have enough to last a couple of months if shit really hits the fan.
Now that you’ve done that, never touch this account unless you really bloody well have to. Have it with a different bank if necessary, and definitely do not have a card linked to it. This is your lifeline, don’t waste it on a bloody sofa (or a clean one, for that matter).

1. You thought we were done? Haha, nah fam. Being an adult is long and tedious. Next up is SAVINGS. Once you have gotten your Oh Fuck account to an acceptable level start putting most of your excess here instead. This is the account you will use for new shoes & clothes (you fucking Diva) or luxuries like entertainment and other non essential items.

It’s okay to spend from this account where necessary, but for any bigger purchases wait a week or so and see if you still want it. People have shit judgement when they impulse buy, and statistically you and I are no different. Yay?

1. General Account: this is the account you get paid into, and the account you weep over as you transfer away bills, rent, savings, and Oh Fuck money. The only money you want in here is your weekly wage (mentioned above). If you don’t get paid weekly and tend to eat into next week’s wage, consider keeping next week’s wage in your savings account until the new week. Anything left over at the end of the pay cycle should be moved to Savings or Oh Fuck depending on what you’re trying to build up.
   
2. Bonus: this isn’t a big one, but I like it. Every time you want to order takeaway, cook instead and earmark the money you would have spent as guilt free you money. It adds up surprisingly quickly and you can use it to buy things that you’ll enjoy more in the long term.
   

​
How to cook (properly):
This one should be obvious, but eating out is really expensive long term. If your parents are any good at cooking, ask them to teach you before you move out. The earlier the better, trust me. I was half decent, but I wish I’d learned a lot more.
If they aren’t, the internet is an amazing resource. I recommend buying one GOOD knife rather than a set of knives and some stainless steel pots. Treat them well and they will last you forever. Non stick are convenient, but you can say goodbye if a metal utensil even looks at them funny. Hot oil in a hot stainless steel pan = non stick anyway.
General cooking tips:-Onions and garlic are you friends, they are cheap but make things taste less poor.

• Frozen vegetables are just as nutritious as fresh ones and don’t turn into a pile of slush at the back of your fridge if you forget about them.
• Fuck instant noodles, they aren’t as cheap as you think they are. Memes aside, they aren’t worth it.
• Rice is cheap in 5kg sacks and lasts you ages. Use two cups of water for every one cup of rice. Bring it to the boil, then turn the stove off and forget about it for 20 minutes with a lid on. Bam, perfect fucking rice every fucking time.
• Eggs are a godsend. Cheap, filling, and really damn good for you. Eat when possible.
• Canned beans are also a godsend. Cheap as hell, and you can add them to things like curries or pasta sauce to add protean and bulk them out.
• Spices are literally the spice of life. Get a whole bunch and never look back.
• You can buy big cheap bottles of pasta sauce for less than $2 and make them nice by frying some onion and garlic first and cooking some veggies and beans in them for a while.
• Make big meals and freeze the extras if you have space. It really helps on the days you’re exhausted by life.

​
No one cares about you (and that’s a good thing)
Hear me out here. I was so self conscious when I first moved out of home that I was terrified of looking like an idiot. I never had a dad so I put off buying fucking shaving cream and a razor in case I got the “wrong(?)” ones and the clerk thought I was stupid or something. Speaking to my female friends, they detailed similar stories about buying feminine hygiene essentials. Plot twist: outside of a few friends and family members no one gives a shit about you. The Clerk will forget you exist after about five minutes, and if your friends give you crap you can just get better friends.
I know this one is easier said than done, but try and keep things in perspective. What’s the worst that could happen? Usually it’s actually nothing. They don’t care if you buy shaving cream or pads, and if someone thinks you look weird crawling around for a good photo, fuck em. Your photos are probably better than theirs anyway.
​
So uh, yeah, that’s it. Those are the three things I wish I’d known before getting kicked out of home: no one cares about you, cooking is good (and might even land you a girlfriend/boyfriend), and managing money is important. Who’da thunk it.
​
Edits:
I'm really glad this seems to be reaching the people who need it, or will need it. I just came back to 300+ comments so do forgive me for answering some common questions here:

Where are you from?

Here I was thinking that all the swearing would have given me away. Maybe I should have said brah or cunt, but I tend to avoid the latter since it is an absolute cunt of a word. Anyway, If you ask that I'll have to hand you a Vegemite sandwich. Don't tempt me, its a national sport for us.

Are you doing better now?

Yes, thanks for asking! I completed my university studies mid this year whereupon I graduated into a global pandemic. Or didn't, since we weren't allowed to have graduations... Still, I'm proud of myself.

How will cooking get me a girlfriend/boyfriend?

Worked for me. I had a housemate going through hard times so I always "accidentally" cooked extra so she could have some. She knew I was full of it of course, and she still does. Worst comes to worst, you can have a nice meal to cry alone over just like old times. Basically, no warranties, guarantees or batteries included with this one.

Can I share this?

By all means, I wrote this to help people so feel free to spread my profanity far and wide.

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

• "The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
  • "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
• "For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
  • "We're spread way too thin."
• "If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
• RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
  • Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
  • ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
  • Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
  • Widespread match fixing
  • The Pandemic
    • "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
    • "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
      • "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
      • "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
      • "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
• "It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
  • RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
    • He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

• RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
  
  • He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
    • He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
      • He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
    • Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
    • RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
    • Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
      • "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
• He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
  
  • "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
  • He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
  • "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
• He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
  
  • He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
    • He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
  • He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
    • RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
  • "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
  • "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
    • "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
    • "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
• He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
  
• He also says their rankings are a joke
  
  • "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
• He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
  
• "Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
  

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

• RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
• "ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
  • "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
  • "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
    • Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
      • Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
  • "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
    • "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
• ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
  • He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
    • Also says more coaches being banned are coming
    • He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
• ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
  
  • "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
  • "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
    • "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
• RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
  

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

• RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
  • On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
    • "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
      • He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
        • He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
        • The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
        • "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
• He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
• "All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
  • He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

• RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
  • "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
• "Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
• Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
  • Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
    • They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
      • "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
        • "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
• RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
• "There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
  • "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
• "It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
  • "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
• He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
• "That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
  • "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
• "I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

• RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
• There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
• He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
  • RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
  • He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
• He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
  • He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
    • They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
    • When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
    • "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
    • He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
• He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
  • He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
• He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
  • He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
• He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
• He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
  • Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
• RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
• RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

• RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
• He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
• Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
• He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
  • He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
• He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
• He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
• New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
• He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
• He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
• He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

• Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
  • Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
• In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
• RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
• He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
• RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
  • A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
  • RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
  • RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
• RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
• Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
  • They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
• RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
  • Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
• He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
• Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
  • RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
• "It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
  • Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
• "Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
• "People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

• RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
• "We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
• "There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
• "How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
• "Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
• "The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
  • He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
• He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
  • "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
    • "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
• He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
• "Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
• "This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
• "You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
  • "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
• "Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
  • "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
• "I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
  • "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
• "I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."

So I've worked in customer service for years and have a few fun stories about entitled people as well as people that remind you of the brainless jellyfish meme.
​
So back in 2019 (miss that pre covid life) myself, my wife and my younger sister all go out to my favorite pizza joint because I'd had a rough couple of days dealing with the Karen's in the world and food I like is usually a great pick me up. Now I am a very professional person at work, so much so that when my coworkers see me out of the office they are a little surprised because I am quite different, I cuss like a sailor, and I have zero problems telling people that bother me to get bent.
​
So here we are local pizza joint on a Friday evening, place is a zoo, you cant hear your friends talk to you from across the table its so loud, the three of us just got our zzas built and they were going in the oven (this place does the build your own personal pizza thing), we are sitting at a table with a couple of beers (ages range from the late 20s to early 30s).
​
As adults do, a few jokes are swapped, most of them in bad taste because we have terrible senses of humor, honestly I don't even remember what the joke was, I just remember both my wife and sister making a comment that they didn't know me, to which I responded, "Whatever, you know you bitches love me." Loud enough that the people at my table could hear me but not so loud that you'd hear it anything more than a few feet from me because of the chaos of a busy pizza place.
​
In comes the Old man, apparently he had been refilling his soda right behind me, heard me and decided that the hill he wanted to (and almost did) die on that day was setting me straight in public about my language.
​
Old man who had moved to the front edge of our table: You know you shouldn't say that.
Me: Excuse me?
Old man: Cursing, you shouldn't curse in public where children might here you. (there were no children on that half of the shop)
Me: Not my fucking problem.
Old man: Oh so now you're going to be immature about it? Are you even old enough to be drinking those beers?
Me: Ah well I at least am mature enough to mind my own fucking business.
Old man: And what kind of example are you setting for this young lady here. (he gestured to my sister at which point she barked out a laugh)
Me: Oh I'm setting a shining fucking example of how to mind my fucking business and not harassing other people in a restaurant.
Old man: You need to stop, what if you teach some kids this.
Me: Again, not my fucking problem, they are going to hear this at some point and any parent worth their fucking spit knows this and has already started teaching their kids when it is and isn't appropriate to use some words.
Old man: Which I see your parents didn't do, you must be some kind of jobless leach taking money from these to ladies, because you couldn't get a job with the way you speak.
Me: No sir, I am very much so gainfully employed, deal with enough bullshit at work, and like to fucking relax when I'm not dealing with people such as yourself who's heads are so far up their own ass that they feel they see daylight. Now if you'll excuse me I have this lovely beer to drink so you can fuck off, and have a nice day.
​
Seeing that he was getting nowhere with his holier than thou speech with me, he turned red in the face and commented to my sister that if she wasn't careful around me I'd turn her into a garish whore. At which point my wife stabbed me in the leg (literally) with a plastic spork (no damage taken), to keep my attention so I would not stand up and beat this man with his own cane.
​
Her ability to keep me somewhat level headed was rewarded because a few minutes later the owner of the place stopped by our table, apologized that we had to deal with that, apparently this guy had been coming in over the last few weeks and creating problems with other people. He got banned and we got a free pitcher of beer. Never saw the old guy again.
​
​
Edit: because some people are missing this, this wasnt a kids pizza place.

What up fart quaffers! I've got some truly mas puro retard shit for you guys to snort like a line of coarsely ground Adderall. So scooch your beanbags up and gather 'round my little dick strokers and bean flickers (see? I can be gender inclusive). Let's discuss why your uncle is more retarded than you and how you're gonna make money while he sends his social security checks to buy more tin foil.
First, let me say, if your illiterate ass isn't here for story time, just skip to the bottom. TL;DR and my positions are that'a'way.
So, by now many of you probably know that the 5G spectrums are up for auction. Verizon and T-Mobile (and to a lesser extent, AT&T -- because they is over-leveraged bitches) are gonna be throwing 90's money at it. Gonna make it rain like Jenna Jameson feature dancing at some vaporwave strip club in Tampa circa '97. Now, before you start jizzing all over your JNCO jeans, that's not the money we're after here. There's a bigger pot about to be busted out, and that, goons and goblins, is what we're aiming for.
You see, your Kool-aide drinking uncle is right about something: 5G is gonna be massive, and who the fuck cares if Bill gates is gonna use it to give us microchip suppositories while infecting us with the Rona. You'll live, and you'll make money while your uncle keeps shouting at clouds and chemtrails, poor and destitute. If only the bastard weren't as cruel as he is retarded, you might use those tendies to put him in a nice home for retards, somewhere warm, like Florida. He'd fit right in.
What's the difference between 4G and 5G? Fuck if I know, do I look like an electronics nerd? But I do know this: rather than building one big ass tower that covers a large area, 5G is gonna use a bunch of Christmas-tree sized towers and spread them over several city blocks. You hear that? What once was one tower, is now many. Is your retarded brain starting to piece this shit together? You know what you need to get all those towers and all that data talking to each other? Muthafucking switches. Yes, basically a shittier version of the router that's collecting dust while half-dangling off your desk. So, picture this, I'm sitting at the table in my crayon room, trying to force the square peg into the round hole, when I ask myself, "which cunt makes 5G switches?" Well, I put my big boy pants on and started looking at Chinese shit...emphasis on "shit".
You see, as a younger autist, I once lived in China. I even have a degree in their retarded ass laws (omfg, their constitution is such hot garbage, it's like someone put Trump tweets through a Communist formal language translator, seriously, if you're at all interested in law, go read it and laugh/weep) from one of their retarded universities. There are three facts that made me realize that China is not the answer to this.
1.) Chinese quality is fucking shit. I don't need no wumao apologists coming in here and telling me I'm wrong, because I'm not. Chinese craftsmanship is is like what you'd produce if I asked you personally to bake a 3-tiered cake, and then allowed you to frost it with Play-doh. Everything is about cutting corners and covering it up with plastic, it sucks. Look at Ze Germans, they're over there salting their pretzels with tears "because ze machine do not look sexy enough. Mutti whas rite, I am failure!" Meanwhile, in China, they're wiping their tears with fermented tofu because they can't put poison into powdered milk (you think I'm joking?!).

1. Not only is Chinese quality fucking shit, it's riddled with goddamn spyware. You know who is not gonna be cool with putting up a bunch-of Christmas tree-sized Chinese spies on every rooftop? Hopefully fucking everybody (well, except Saudi Arabia, we all know they'll just pay China to have a seat at the peepshow.). But for real, President Xi has dramatically failed to engage in the world in good faith. His predecessors were able to build good will and investment opportunities with the West, but ever since Xi took over, he's been pissing in Cheerios. Indiscretions won't be waved away as "aww, look at that little shithole trying to pull itself up by the bootstraps" anymore. Nah, we saw what happened with Huawei, and we saw China nationalize Jack Ma's shit. It's gonna go more in this direction under Xi, and Chinese supply, especially as it relates to data and information tech is only gonna be favored by jackboot cum guzzlers.
   
2. IT'S ALL FAKE GOVERNEMNT MANIPULATION. Let me tell you a story about my time in Poohland. You see, if you want to open your Retards'R'Us store in China, you gotta do the same bureaucratic bullshit like you do everywhere, file your paperwork and wait. But if you don't fucking offer a bribe, your ass is gonna go broke waiting. It's a goddamn institution. They got these stores, all they got inside is expensive whiskey and cartons of Marlboros that were made in 1987. No one ever buys from these stores because their prices are straight up ridiculous and who the fuck wants to smoke ciggies from back then, but yet, there they are. What purpose do they serve? Well, when you go turn in your business application, you swing by one of these stores, pick up a carton of Marlboros that Ronald Regan farted on and make your way to either a.) some dingy ass Soviet dystopia looking ass building or b.) some super fancy and slick building that's got welds so shitty it look's like they tried to do them with chopsticks. Either way, when you slide your application across the desk, slide that carton of Marlboros and whiskey too. You know what fuckface on the other side does with it? He goes right back to the goddamn store you were in 20 minutes ago and trades that shit for cash. You know what else happens? That store, and the thousands, if not millions, like it pump those numbers into the economic reports. Lord knows how much of their GDP is straight up due to corruption. I'm not even gonna begin to get into how the CCP manipulates markets and businesses, all you need to know is you can make a quick buck off Chinese shit, but ultimately, you're holding fake ass doo doo that "fell of the back of the truck".
   

Alright, so we veered a little off course there, but I say all that because I'm gonna make the case for my boy, ERIC. You see, ERIC is Swedish. Sweden isn't pissing in anyone's Cheerios, they're like the Canada of Europe. When you think Sweden, you think about a strange fascination with fermented fish, kinda creepy avant-garde movies, and fucking STACKED blonde bikini models. Take me to Valhalla, you Swedish valkyries...and sit on my face while you do it. Sweden is the guy at the rave dressed in khakis asking how your family is doing and making sure everyone gets home safely. Cool dude, skål! You know what you would trust this motherfucker to do? That's right you degenerates, you'd trust him to handle your fucking n00die pics. He won't judge, and he won't share. So let's go hang out with ERIC for a moment, he's got some meatballs and needs our help assembling flat-pack furniture.
You see, ERIC's been a busy lad. You old Millennials and young Gen-Xers might have even had a Sony-Ericcsson phone back when nobody knew what the fuck a Yu-Gi-Oh is. Sonny and ERIC dipped outta that scene when smartphones arrived and their bromance came to an end. But ERIC is a nerd for this shit. ERIC kept making comm tech when he wasn't too buys causing air traffic incidents with Surströmming. You know what his hard work got him? Fucking becoming a pioneer in 5G tech. As far as I'm aware, ERIC is the only muthafucka to have his shit on 4 continents (so far). ERIC got in this door early, and unlike that Chinese shit, it's good fucking quality and not trying to exploit you. Furthermore, EU is gonna love supporting one of their own, especially after Xi been pissing in Mama Merkel's Cheerios. America too is gonna start being more suspicious of China, we've seen it happen, but fucking ERIC? ERIC's cool man, he ain't pissing in our Cheerios, we ain't got beef with him handling data. Our drunk girlfriend tried to hook up with him, but he just took her to get some Mickey D's. Class fucking act, real stand-up dude.
But alright, we know ERIC is cool, and that he isn't gonna threaten to send our dick pic collection to our mamas. We know that ERIC has been making something that is about to be in high-demand, and that he is quite good at it. We also know he has been busy getting his product out across the world ahead of his competitors, and that his biggest competitors produce snitch-ass dogshit.
Yeah, just swiping through WSB Tinder, ERIC looking kinda juicy. Let's see what his bio says. Oh shit dawgs, are you seeing these charts? That steady growth. Look at how that sonuvabitch just shrugged off COVID and kept going all viking on his shit. Not only did ERIC shrug off COVID, he fucking feasted on it. Look at that jävel make his money. And what's this? The motherfucker is integrating automated drone corridors with his tech? He's raising his long-term EBITDA margins? He's out here acquiring businesses? Shit, that muthafucking Swede been a busy ass bee.
Now, you may be wondering, if ERIC is so great, what about NOK? And yeah, NOK isn't a terrible idea either, they also have some good news on their side and are a bit undervalued as well. If you wanted to take a bite of NOK, you probably won't get diarrhea, might even shit some gold. I dunno, I'm still looking into it, but I like ERIC better. [UPDATE: NOK did shit gold with the whole short squeeze fiasco, but has since fallen back to normal ranges and I stand by my evaluation of ERIC being the better long-term bet]
But here is the part I want you to really look at: the fucking call prices. Cheddar Cheesus of Wisconsin! That's some muthafucking value on a goddamn motherfucker leading the game! Goddamn Buddha going down on Shakira in the Alps! If you don't make money on this, you're fucking hopeless. [Update: call prices are still good for a long position, but getting pricier]
So yeah, there you have it, ERIC is the fucking man. He's got a good product, is ahead of the game in rolling it out, has geo-political tailwinds, solid and steady growth, and his only opposition is your retarded uncle and his looney-toons conspiracies. So this is the part where you tell him to go whistle on a dick because you're making money off the switches that ensure that the camgirl you've been simping for sees your little dick 150 miliseconds faster. 5G is coming, and someone's gotta make the hardware for it, why not ERIC?
*TL;DR Chinese shit is shit. ERIC is cool. You should give your money to ERIC*
*ERIC shares*
*ERIC Jan 2023 $12c*
P.S. I'm putting this at the bottom because I already know my inbox will be full of: "Is Jan 15 a good call date?" No motherfucker! The telecomms are still bidding on the spectrums. I have no fucking clue when they'll actually start putting up more goddamn towers, if I did, I sure as shit wouldn't be giving that info out for free. But I do know it won't happen over night. If you wanna be retarded, go play a meme stock, this shit is for autists. No rocket emojis here. So when is a good date for calls? Fuck if I know. Noticed I bought fucking leaps? Yeah, you might wanna do the same (they're dirt cheap), but I tend to think anything expiring in June-Sept and beyond is a safe bet. Totally your call based on your own risk tolerance.
Anyway, if you see my boy ERIC, just ignore the pungent smell of fermented fish.
​
*Fucking obvious disclaimer:* THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD NEVER INVEST MORE THAN YOU CAN SPARE TO LOSE. I AM NOT A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL ADVISER BUT I DO WEAR A HELMET WITH RAINBOW AND STAR STICKER. IT'S FUCKING SWEET.

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General No'Drak stared at the holotank that showed the disposition of all of his forces on planet. Precursors were recalling their machines, performing a fighting retreat, trying to get off planet with as many resources as they could while exposing themselves to as little fire as possible. In three places as soon as Third Armor started moving in on them the Precursors abandoned their resources and ancillary machines and just lifted off, running hard for orbit.
General No'Drak changed the orders to let Space Force handle any vessel that lifted off, sparing the planet from debris falls that were registering in the megatons in some places.
A meme popped up on the holotank window showing Third Armor morale and he shook his head. It was an old one, but put together by one of the logistics personnel that were finally coming off shift after refitting and reloading Great Herd armored units.
It showed a burning Balor with another Precursor staring at it thinking "On one hand, it represented fifteen years of resource gathering, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure there was a human dancing on the hull."
A spin on the spider in the cockpit or house meme, the big Treana'ad thought to himself.
His conscious gaze went to the icon for the burrowing mining machine, now four miles down and making a beeline for the junction of the mountain ranges in the middle of the supercontinent.
If, somehow, you blow that mountain up, my determined little Telkan officer, you'll start a chain reaction that eventually separate the continental plates into different continents rather than the super continent that has been there for billions of years, he thought to himself. However, having witnessed what your people are capable of, how determined your people can be, I'm sure the planet will break before First Telkan.
He lit a cigarette, watching the busy command center, only Ge'ermo'o keeping him company as the Terran Confederate military fought through the night.
To what are you heading toward with my men, you metal monster? No'Drak wondered silently. What horrors are they being subjected to?
The icon didn't answer, just kept moving at a steady 100 miles per hour on its five thousand mile journey.
"...so the kid, right, he gets top grades all the way through 3rd grade. We're talking top marks across the board, blows away testing scores, everything," Casey said, sitting on the edge of a scaffolding and chewing a piece of stimgum. "The end of the school year comes and the Dad says: 'son of mine, first of my line, what shall I bequeath upon thee for such outstanding marks in regards to your schooling?'" Casey idly pulled a small device out of the creation engine attached to his heavy gun and attached it to his frame as he kept talking.
Sergeant Addox looked up and shook his head, then went back to watching the device Casey had pulled off his loading frame. Vuxten made sure his Marines were comfortable, making sure that the platoon was relaxing, not letting the stress of their trip dull their edge. Half of them were sleeping, some were playing cards, and about a dozen of the greenies were playing a complex turn based multiplayer 4X game that looked like it had been going on for at least years.
"The kid looks at his dad and says: 'I wish for thee to gift unto me a pink golfball, patron of my familial line. One, not more, not less, of the shade of pink. I wish for this simple thing, mine pater, for I do not desire to view the House Mouse Planet, nor do I wish to gaze upon vast worlds you offer me through virtual reality. Nay, father mine, gift unto me just a simple pink golfball," Casey said, waving his hands around, the loading frame whining as he did so. "The father, knowing his son has indomitable will, concedes to his beloved offspring's demands and gifts the lad with a single pink golfball."
"Did the kid's language change?" Second Lieutenant Plunex asked, frowning. "My Confederate Standard is not the best, but I feel his language changed."
"Shh, you'll mess up the joke," Casey said, grinning.
"Your communication thingy is blinking, Casey," Addox said.
"Boojums never fail ya," Casey said. He moved up and knelt down next to it. "It's slow, but reliable."
"Why don't we use it for our standard communication?" Plenux asked. "I've heard there's problems with some of the quantum devices out in the Hesstla Theater."
"Because it's spooky particles," Casey said. "Boojums can suddenly decide they don't want to work, or might decide they're going to pretend to be a different particle, or ignore the flux of the other boojums they're mated to. They're the strange matter of normal particles and like a purrboi or a Treana'ad clan matron do what they want."
"How do you know this, Sergeant?" Plunex asked. "I thought you were Ordnance."
Casey looked up, grinning behind his clear face mask. The eye patch made it look decidedly villainous, Vuxten thought. "Wasn't born old, kid."
"Seriously?" Addox said. "Tell the kid."
Casey laughed. "All right. Boojums are the only thing that can reliably send communications out of a Nivenring or Doom Tube," he said. "Damn, long message. Not a template, though. Looks like text."
"Doom tube?" Vuxten asked, sitting down on a blank console. He'd queried his datalink, but all he had gotten back was an human in gray metal armor with a green cape standing next to water park slide staring at a small child saying "You find yourself in the Doom Tube, child."
It didn't make sense to him.
Addox looked up. "Imagine a tube, walls a hundred miles thick, five thousand miles wide, two hundred thousand miles long. Imagine it's full of mountains, lakes, rivers, the like. The atmosphere is prevented from spilling out by walls a thousand miles high. A fusion reactor travels down the length over a period of twelve hours before it exits the tube, moves to the outside, and travels the length back charging the solar panels."
Plunex gave a slow whistle. "What's the point of it?"
"Well, it's a non-planetary habitat. Usually they move at about point two C between stars on a careful path to avoid being captured by stellar systems," he said.
"Humans make them?" Plunex asked. "Why, aren't there enough planets."
Addox shrugged. "Nobody knows who makes them, kid."
The lights stopped blinking, only three green ones burning.
"Welp, better check my text messages," Casey said, squatting down. The frame hissed and thumped and Addox had to turn his head when a piston released steam.
"Really, dude, you're gonna do me in the face?" Addox said, mock coughing.
"I'm demanding on a first date," Casey said, touching the box with a finger. Vuxten saw the lights come on on Casey's datalink. Casey stood there for a moment, closed his one eye for a moment, then opened it.
"All right, my buddy in 108th MI let me know that this thing is heading for the junction of the mountain ranges," Casey said. He turned his palm over, projecting a map up with the holo-emitter in his palm that was Confederate Military standard. "We've got another fifty hours at current speeds to reach the junction range. Precursors are withdrawing, looks like we broke their morale."
"They're machines," Private First Class Shutruk said. "How can you break a machine's will?"
Casey gave a snort. "Pretty easy, actually. Their coding is obvious once you think about it."
"Bullshit," Shutruk said. Casey looked at him and he flushed. "Bullshit, Sergeant," he said in a much more even tone.
Casey chuckled. "OK, the Precursors are all: there's only enough ice cream for one, right?" He asked. Shutruk nodded. "So, it's all about resources, all about resource consumption and resource allocation. They view the universe as a zero sum game, like most races who never get too deep into spooky particles. So, if Trucker's out there gutting Precursors like Christmas turkeys
--turkey is delicious-- 471i said.
"then the Precursors have to decide if the amount of resources it takes to take a planet away from us is more or less than what they will reap once they own the planet," Casey said. "Since we're shredding the Precursors out there, ripping them apart probably faster than they can produce them, it mechanically and logically breaks their will."
Shutruk nodded and stayed silent except for a small embarrassed sounding 'oh'.
"Never be afraid to ask me a question, kid. All privates are stupid, a private is made up of being young, dumb, and full of cum, it's up to men like me and Addox to educate you, train you up right, so you don't fuck up and blow the Lieutenant here's leg off," Casey said, grinning. "He might find that a bit disconcerting."
Shutruk nodded.
"Oh, and you're more than five steps from your weapon. You're dead," Casey said, and closed his eye again. "You were my troop, you'd be beating your face."
Vuxten checked Shutruk's anxiety metrics, noticing that he'd relaxed despite the Terran NCO pointing out he'd walked too far away from his weapon.
After a few more minutes Casey straightened up, picking up the device and slapping it into an empty spot on the loading frame.
Vuxten had noted that the closer he looked at that loading frame, the further out of spec it seemed to be. He'd compared it to the other loading frames he'd seen around and noted it was a different model and its serial number indicated it had been run off by one of the big creation engines. Created piece by piece and assembled by hand. He had watched Casey attach over a dozen pieces of equipment he'd fabbed up from the nanoforge attached to the gun, never mentioning what the pieces did or what they were for.
"What's the plan?" Addox asked Vuxten.
Vuxten had known that question was going to get asked so he was ready.
"It's confirmed at least fifty hours till we get there. There will probably be maneuvering and wait list checking, then it'll dock with a facility," Vuxten said. "We use the nanoforge to keep our atmosphere tanks topped off, run up something besides Space Force standard nutripaste, let everyone get some sleep. Weapons check, ordnance check, officers and NCO's do WAG planning."
Addox nodded, his face shield transparent. "Sounds good, sir. I'll draw up a guard shift, assign quick reaction force, make sure that it's all smooth till we get there in two and a half days."
Vuxten pinged Plunex, telling him to pay attention as he spoke. "Make it happen, Sergeant."
"Hooah," Addox said, then moved away.
-------------
Vuxten watched as Casey came in through the airlock, followed by three Telkan Marines. He was off shift finally, having eaten nutripaste, taken a drink, and sat down. Plunex was taking over on shift and Vuxten felt tired even though he hadn't done anything for almost twelve hours but sit in the command center for the vehicle.
The three Telkan Marines moved over and sat down, keeping close together, as Casey moved up and sat down next to Vuxten. The Terran troop looked as fresh as ever in his loading frame. The black armor plates he'd put on over his adaptive camouflage were unmarred, his armored boots were shined, and he took off his face mask, exposing that he wasn't even sweaty.
"How is she?" Vuxten asked.
"Ready to come to our rescue if things go south of a hooker's backside," Casey said.
"You know, you don't talk like a religious person," Vuxten said. He held up his hand, even though Casey just snorted in amusement. "I've met a few of the guys from the Crusade, seen the Sisters in action, they talk a lot different than you."
"Fifth Reformation," Casey shrugged. He grinned. "I've been in the military for over nine hundred years, sir, joined the Planetary Guard at sixteen as a big dumb farm boy from the Black Range Plains. Transferred to Space Force and saw combat by the time I was seventeen," his grin got wider, and again Vuxten found himself wondering just how many teeth a Terran had in their mouth. "The war didn't end until I was almost forty," the grin somehow got wider. "The Elders, they had... well... they had changed my life path for me, in accordance to what they saw my destiny to be. Informed me that I was to stay in Space Force."
Vuxten frowned. "Why?"
Casey closed his eye and was silent for a moment. He opened it, sat down slowly, and waved his hand to encompass the sleeping Telkan Marines.
"They decided that this was where I belonged. Right here. Leading others," he said.
"I don't know much about Terrans, much less your people," Vuxten said. He reached out and laid his hand on the heavy gun he'd set down beside him. "The first time I saw your people, I was woken up after a shift of hosing out the interrogation cells. I'd been informed I was now Corporate Security and was going to have to fight the Precursors."
"Yeah, I get that, sir," Casey said. "Kind of how I ended up in Space Force," he made a buzzing sound. "Citizen Casey, you are now Space Force and fined fifteen credits for unauthorized wear of Planetary Guard uniform."
There was silence for a long moment.
--be careful-- 471 transmitted, taking a quick break from arranging his manufacturing queue in one of his city states. --touchy touchy--
"I once got fined a half day's pay because an Overseer got blood on his uniform leaving a cell that he had shot a Telkan female in the head only moments before," Vuxten said quietly. "I hadn't cleaned the cell yet, I was waiting outside. He fined me as he walked out."
"Oof, that's rough," Casey said. "Now the Marine Corps gave you a gun and told you not to let that happen to any other being."
Vuxten nodded.
"Why do you stay in?" Vuxten asked. "Nine hundred years? Aren't you tired?"
"You feel tired sometimes, sir?" Casey asked. He was running one finger up and down one of the barrels of his rotary minigun.
"Sometimes. Like now. I feel tired and wonder if I've gotten in over my head," Vuxten admitted. "Can't let any doubt show," he gave a wry chuckle and nodded at where Shutruk was sprawled out, his foot twitching as he dreamed. "Could you imagine how Privates like him would react if I showed doubt in the middle of everything?"
Casey gave another chuckle, this one with an ugly edge. "Nothing lets you know everything's gone sideways when the Lieutenant starts screaming about how we're all going to die."
"That happen?" Vuxten asked.
Casey nodded. "Sixth drop. My seventeenth birthday. Left the cake in the mess hall. Dropship took heavy bioplasma hits, one of the engines exploded and we starting spinning in. The Looey blew chunks into his helmet and started screaming we were all going to die."
"At least he was wrong," Vuxten said.
"He was SUDS'd, like everyone but me," Casey said. His voice got hard. "I was fighting from the wreckage of the dropship, using it as a fighting position, while him and everyone else were gettting SUDS'd out and decanted."
Vuxten shifted slightly, not sure if he preferred that long ass pink golf ball joke to what they were talking about now. "How long were you there?"
"Two months," Casey said. "Stripping rations from dead men till I got the dropship's nanoforge working," Casey gave a chuckle, reached up and touched his datalink.
Vuxten saw the incoming data request from Casey and allowed it. It was creation engine templates, all cracked and jailborked.
"What's this?" Vuxten asked.
"Telkan and battle buddy rations. Loaded it while we were on top of Gobbler here," he said. "Main nutripaste, standard Space Force troop transport flavor array, basic medicine kits including multivitamin, water additives. Basically everything you need to keep your men in fighting condition if you're sitting in the wreckage of a dropship with only a Class I Nanoforge you hotwired," he patted the nanoforge mounted on his gun's smartframe. "Have your greenie doublecheck it."
471 sighed and passed on his turn, eyeing 442's icon and wishing he'd been able to launch the amphibious attack to take 442's turkey farms away from him. He ran a quick check on the templates and saw that they were standard space force, just the serial numbers filed off and able to be run off of any creation engine. 471's antenna twitched when he saw that there were jailbork codes to break open any nanoforge and print out whatever was needed rather than what the nanoforge was designated as.
471 checked the nanoforge attached to his Telkan Marine's armor and saw that they'd load in just fine.
--checks out-- he said, then went back to nervously nibbling on the tip of his bladearm as one of 442's ocean units passed close to his hidden fleet during the other's turn.
"Think we'll need it?" Vuxten asked. He watched as Casey checked the status of some complex device the nanoforge on his weapon was slow-printing.
"I did," Casey shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe, maybe not. Hopefully you'll never need it and it'll just sit there in your implant's long term archive storage, compressed and cold, for your whole career."
"Proper preperation prevents piss poor performance," Vuxten quoted.
"Exactly, sir," Casey said. "If you don't need it, you're that paranoid officer who stresses over everything and tries to micromanage everything. If you do need it, you're lucky and probably stole the idea from a superior officer."
Vuxten smiled at that.
"Get some rest, sir," Casey said. He tapped one armored fingertip against the barrel of his minigun. "It's another forty hours till we get there."
-------------------
"...so then the kid, the kid, right, the kid gets like mondo great grades and junk, and like totally rocks all of like fourth grade, becoming, like, the top grade person and junk," Casey said, his voice slightly high pitched and he waved his hands around. "So, like, his like dad says: 'male child, you are allocated one desire unit' and junk. The kid, he goes like totally: 'I respond with gratitude of your acknowledgement, parental unit. I would like to requisition one pink golf ball for my desire unit.' and the dad like totally gets it for him and junk, totally like wondering what his kid could want a pink golf ball for because it's like totally weird and junk that his kid like totally wants like a pink golf ball and..."
One of the attachments on Casey's loading frame started beeping and he cut off, touching his datalink. Vuxten noticed, again, that it looked like Casey had added more armor to the loading frame. Now a lot of the pistons, gears, and chains were covered by armor.
"We changed direction," the Terran said.
Addox nodded.
"Are you sure, Sergeant?" Plunex asked.
Casey shrugged. "Unless the magnetic field of the planet decided to shift by thirty degrees over a five minute period, then we changed direction, sir. Who knows, sir, might have happened."
"At ease that shit, Casey," Addox said.
The same device beeped again and Casey tapped his datalink. "Huh, we're shifting back onto course. Wonder what we moved around?"
"Something stupid, I'm sure," Addox said, then leaned back and closed his eyes. "And shut up about that damn pink golf ball. I'm pretty sure the kid's just shoving them up his ass."
Vuxten barked out a laugh.
-------------------
"Sergeant Addox?" Vuxten asked over the private command channel, making sure that Plunex wasn't paying attention and was asleep.
"Go ahead, sir," Addox said, not bothering to make his face shield transparent.
"I think I figured out why Casey keeps going back to check on Glory," Vuxten said.
"Let's hear it, sir," Addox said.
"He got left behind a lot during his career. Kept getting dropped and left behind," Vuxten said. "He doesn't want Glory to be left behind."
"Notice what else he's doing, sir?" Addox asked.
"Mapping and reconing the machine," Vuxten said. "That way he's covered and everyone doesn't notice him checking on Glory because he's reconing around us."
"Know why he's checking on Glory?" Addox asked. Vuxten noted the intensity of the human's voice.
"Because Glory isn't a machine, she's a person. A digital sentience, not a machine without feelings."
"Exactly, sir," Addox said.
"That's why I keep giving him permission," Vuxten said. "I don't want her left alone in the dark in that ore gathering bay."
"Good man, sir," Addox said.
Vuxten sat quietly in the darkness of the Precursor machine's automated command center.
---------------
"The last of the Precursor machines are down, General," the voice said from the operations bay below. "Space Force is reporting all enemy destroyed. Ground side is just mopup of machines that didn't get away."
"Thank you, Major," General No'Drak said. He shifted his attention. "Status of the Great Gobbler?"
"It's moved under the edge of the junction of the mountain ranges, sir," the Major said. He tossed it up on the holotank. "The fighting has eased up enough we can get seismic on it now. It's slowed down as it's come closer to the surface and no longer moving in a straight line."
"Does 108th MI still have a line to Sergeant Casey?" General No'Drak asked.
"Specialist Grade Five Peak has reported for duty. Her commander said she's examining the messages right now. Apparently it's some kind of back channel system Casey keeps in operation," the Major said.
"Why?" Ge'ermo'o interrupted.
"Do you want the real reason or the excuse she gave to her commander?" the Major said.
"Both?" Ge'ermo'o suggested, wondering why she would lie.
"Officially, it's because Casey works Ordnance and needs to feed 108th MI ammunition consumption levels in his sector," the Major said. "That's the official reason."
Ge'ermo'o shook his jowls in slight confusion. "That sounds like a likely reason. Althought I do not understand why he would need a discrete channel and hardware devoted solely between the two of them. What is the real reason?"
"Tit pics," No'Drak guessed.
Ge'ermo'o queried his implant on the nature of a 'tit' and was flooded with lewd pictures of Terran female mammary glands as well as a bunch of pictures of small birds as well as a handful of explicitly drawn Rigellian females sporting impossible bare mammalian mammary glands.
"Well, I wasn't going to put it so crudely. I was going to call it 'inter-personal video, text, and image correspondence'," the Major said. "She's known Casey about sixty years, they've got some history."
"Why send pictures of mammary glands?" Ge'ermo'o asked, frowning. "That seems like a lot of effort, to create and conceal a private message device in order to just send images of mammary glands."
"It's a Terran thing," No'Drak said.
Ge'emo'o suddenly put it together as all the pieces suddenly matched together. "Oh! I suddenly understand!"
No'Drak raised an antenna, his specie's version of cocking an eyebrow. "Go on, Most High."
"They are involved in a sexual relationship and they send pictures of body parts to one another as a method of sexual enticement and amusement!" Ge'ermo'o felt proud of himself for putting it together."They cobbled together their communications device in secret so their commanders did not know they intended to carry out a long distance quasi-sexual relationship based on text, pictures, and videos in order to ensure sexual delight despite distance."
The Major, to his credit, didn't snicker.
No'Drak carefully took out a cigarette to avoid busting up with laughter.
"Right you are, Most High," No'Drak said.
"I am a most observant commander. It is why my men trust me so highly," Ge'ermo'o stated, folding all four arms. "If I were their commander, I would look the other way, as improved morale results in improved performance."
It took everything General No'Drak had not to spit out his cigarette in surprise.
"It's slowed to the point we can't detect it," someone called out.
"They've arrived," No'Drak mused.
-----------------
"Ready?" Vuxten asked.
Everyone signalled with their icons they were ready, standing at the single double door that was an approximation of an air lock that would lead out of the vehicle.
Casey triggered the door and it slid open, the tracks already lubricated.
Beyond was an endosteel hallway, big enough for a suited warrior caste Mantid to move around comfortably in, with runners up by the ceiling for green mantids to move down the hallway without getting underfoot.
The passageway ran for about a hundred meters and ended in another door.
"If anyone sees a hobbit with a ring in here, don't steal the ring," Casey said.
"At ease that shit, Casey," Addox said almost absently.
"Platoon, move out," Vuxten ordered.
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Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls,
I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps.
​
I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders.
While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months.
Any feedback or additions are appreciated
Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer.
Here's what I tell options beginners:
I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot.
I like this beginner book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7
Helpful websites:

• Tasty Trade (TT) and Ally Invest have helpful articles and videos.
  • https://www.tastytrade.com/tt
  • https://www.youtube.com/c/tastytrade1/featured
• Ally training:
  • What is options trading? https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/trading-options-for-beginners/?CP=EM2012111
  • Top 10 options mistakes: https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/top-10-option-trading-mistakes/?CP=EM2012111
• 3 common option mistakes: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/library/options/common-mistakes-options-traders-make
• Common options strategies: https://www.optionsbro.com/basic-options-strategies/
• Investopedia has tons of great investing info for stocks and options: https://www.investopedia.com/
• Kamikaze Cash Theta Gang Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOweupE79XXiBaeH_xBpkUcYUsrAaKQen
• 20 rules of professional traders: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/022715/20-rules-followed-professional-traders.asp

Don't trade until you understand:

• You can lose your entire contract value when buying.
• You can lose a lot of money when selling "naked", theoretically unlimited.
• How option expiration works.
• Theta (decay) and how it works. This is imperative since it's attrition when buying and a payout when selling. https://www.optionseducation.org/advancedconcepts/theta
• DTE: Days till expiration/expiry
• Options positions with respect to price:
  • ITM: In the money; strike is below stock value. Signif
  • ATM: At the money; strike is just at or above the stock value, often very highly traded. Can be very effective with moderate - long term expiry.
  • NTM: Near the money; strike is above the stock value, but fairly close. Slightly unofficial term.
  • OTM: Out of the money; price is at least a few strikes from the current stock price. I would say 10-30% over stock price.
  • Very OTM: Not a real definition, this is essentially a lottery ticket. Cheap, but almost certain to expire worthless unless there is explosive movement.
• Understand delta in general and how delta changes with ITM and OTM options.
• Understand all the greeks at a high level, as you get better understand them well. The greeks: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/options-introduction/option-greeks/
• IV, IV crush, and how IV affects pricing. In general, you want to sell when IV is high and buy when the IV is low. Increasing IV is good for held calls/puts. IV drop or crush is generally good for sellers.
• Selling options can be quite beneficial. Once you have a good general understanding, lookup thetagang . Kamikaze Cash has good youtube videos on most theta strategies (linked above). I personally believe selling options (especially cash secured) is much safer and can consistently make you profits. Θ Gang 4 life.
• FOMO and how to avoid chasing a dangerous trend. DO NOT CHASE FROM FOMO!
• What intrinsic and extrinsic value are. Know how they are affected by being exercised/assigned and how theta affects them.
• Understand that some of WSB recommendations are straight up high-risk gambling and factor in the information accordingly. Be careful with Meme stocks and the survivorship bias on YOLO plays. However, I love the sub and think it’s hilarious. It has a lot of valuable information / DD if you are comfortable with the “colorful” language. It’s also great if you like rocket ship emojis.

Basics / Mechanics

• Understand the 4 "main" option types. Buying or selling a call and buying or selling a put. Spreads and more complex multi-legged option strategies are based off these in some way (see below)
• You can sell calls with 100 shares of stock or if you own an underlying longer term option; see LEAPS and PMCCs later. Selling calls naked is incredibly risky and often requires Level 4 (very advanced) permissions and usually a lot of capital. I will literally never sell calls naked since I don't want to ruin my life and end up living in a dumpster eating saltine crackers.
• Puts can be sold/written cash covered (cash secured), which means you have the cash in your account to buy 100 shares. Your broker will put this money on hold until the trade is closed. Puts can be sold "naked" using Margin and Level 3 (with most brokers). Your broker will hold a percentage of cost of 100 shares (often 30-40%, 100% on meme stocks) allowing you to sell more puts. This increases your available capital/power as well as increasing risk.

General Tips and Ideas:

• Don't EVER leave (short) spreads open on expiration day, close them. (more details below)
• Start off trading very small. Slowly build up over weeks / months. You need to get accustomed to a fifty dollar swing a day, then a few hundred, then a few thousand. You need to ensure you don't get emotional (see below). I started trading options with 5k, then 25k, 50k, and later over 100k. I added my own funds over time and used my gains to build my account. Don’t go all in immediately, that’s dangerous and unwise.
• Especially as you build up the amount of money you have invested, keep it diversified among several stocks.
  • Don't go all in on one thing, ever. Be able to take a hit from one stock and not mortally wound your portfolio.
  • A company may be doing great, then there's a major product issue out of nowhere. If you are overexposed in one stock this can really hurt you.
  • I had to roll options I sold that were about to expire completely worthless because FDX's CEO changed and the stock took a hard dip.
• Don't trade emotionally. If you realize you are emotionally trading for vengeance, you should probably exit the trade and cool off for several days with that stock. Same if you get caught up in a wave of hysteria.
• Have a plan for every trade, ideally with entries / exits that are specific values, ranges, or a set condition. This helps remove emotions. This is super important for strong movements and high volatility (see later).
• Use an options profit calculator from your broker or an online one before entering a "new" trade, especially a complex multi legged trade: https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
• “Rolling” an option: Closing your existing option and opening a similar one at different strike and/or expiration.
  • Rolling a call “Up” would be selling a call you own and buying a cheaper call at a higher strike.
  • Rolling a put “Down and out” closes your original one and buying or selling one at a lower strike at a longer expiry.
  • Better broker interfaces have a literal “Roll” button. I know E-trade does. You can manually do it by selecting relevant contract legs.
• If you have a losing trade, re-evaluate it. If your initial assumption is definitely incorrect, close it. Don't stay in losing trades forever and lose the entire value of the option over stubbornness. If you re-evaluate and you think your assumption was right, hold, potentially consider adding another cheaper option (or buy another call / put). Rolling out sold options can help here.
• Don't try to day trade, especially with options. It's statistically unlikely to be profitable. Day-trading with options introduces extra liquidity risks and is dangerous, especially with spreads.
• Try not to over-trade, you'll likely mis-time the market over time. When I get emotional I over trade, then lose additional money on wash sales. If you scale your entries into positions it should help alleviate your desire to exit positions when they turn badly against you. Whenever I buy calls I do it at larger increments after W almost made me loss my hair; luckily it eventually came back.
• NEVER enter a position on a stock you have no idea about, especially when you read about it online or heard about it from some rando.
• At market open options contracts are often volatile and inflated. Buying during this time can be more expensive. Options are usually cheaper mid-day, I read somewhere 2-3PM is cheapest. I’ve had success around 12-1PM EST after prices settle.
• Try wheeling on cheaper stocks once you get all fundamentals down.
• When selling puts if you are very bullish consider "doubling down"; note this is higher risk. Use the credit from your put sale to buy shares or a cheap call. This can be roughly inversed with puts, except I wouldn't ever recommend shorting shares.
• Learn from your mistakes. You can’t go back in time and beating yourself up (to a point) is useless. Make a physical &/or mental note of it so you don’t do it again. If you don’t learn from it, then beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.
• If you have friends that like to trade, I find it helpful to discuss strategies and planned plays. I talk openly with my close friends about my current holdings and planned trades, it helps keep me accountable. If I get a wide-eyed look, I might be doing something excessively risky or stupid. I’ve over-leveraged myself in calls twice and I knew I shouldn’t have done it both times. When I tell my friends what I did and I’m embarrassed, it exemplifies the face that I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You will also get ideas for new strategies or plays from them. It’s good to stay versatile and use multiple strategies when appropriate. Beware of group think/echo chambers.
• I recommend NEVER telling someone what to buy/sell and when. I’ll tell people MY plays or what I like and why, but I will not encourage them to emulate what I do. Depending on the audience, I’ll tell them my exact positions along with my exit and entrance strategy. With closer friends I’ll offer my thoughts on their trades (if asked). If my friend is doing something really risky (one of my friends does some scary stuff) I may ask them if they want my advice, and provide it, especially if they overlooked a risk/event. I will not encourage someone to execute/enter a trade since it has a high potential for hurt feelings or animosity all around.
• Don’t fall in love with a stock. Just because something made you money before and you have high confidence in it doesn’t mean it will keep performing. I joke that FDX betrayed me when it started dipping and losing me money. I was over-confident of its bounce-back and sold too many puts too quickly. I’m in several losing trades because of it. However, I will keep good stocks in my rostetracking list or try different strategies or re-enter trades when they change their behavior.
• As you start to both buy and sell options and get more experience in general, you'll start seeing the two sides to every trade. You will likely start adjusting your strategies or trying new trades out because of this. Things will likely click one day. Most/all the greeks and options concepts will become almost second nature. For me this was when I could build an Iron Condor from scratch, which was a watershed moment involving a good understanding of many strategies.
• Understand Liquidity and volume.
  • Trading in low volume, low open interest contracts results in wide bid/ask spreads and difficulty having your contracts filled. Look at all the data for a contract, not just the strike and price.
  • Monthly Expiration dates typically have better liquidity.
  • Multi-legged trades (Common examples are 2-legged vertical spreads or 4-legged iron condors) have more difficulty being filled, especially on bad brokers like Robin Hood. Having very liquid options for all legs is extremely helpful in obtaining timely and well-priced fills, which maximize your potential profits.
• Time in market vs timing the market:
  • It is extremely difficult to time the market perfectly. If you wait for the perfect opportunity forever, history has proven you will miss out on gains. Keeping all your money out of the market has proven to be ineffective. Now if there is something serious happening with a stock/the market (like say a new pandemic), don’t go all in. I recommend entering incrementally at dips. If the stock has huge upside potential it may never go down, so it might make sense to partially enter at the current price.
  • IMIO selling puts is a great strategy to get into a stock you like, or at least make money off it. I think buying stock in lots of 100 is usually for suckers. Selling an ATM or ITM put (assuming the math works out) on a stock you were going to buy and hold is ALMOST free money.
  • I recommend keeping some cash available regardless. If you have a very large account or expect a downturn, hedging with indexes like QQQ, SPY, or VIX or calls/puts may be wise.
• Every trade can't be a winner. You will take some losses, you must get used to it. I don’t like having a realized loss of 1K or more on any trade. However, this will happen, especially with larger accounts.
  • As long as you win more often and beat the S&P that year I consider it okay. I’m kind of aggressive, so I consider 20%+ annually good. 30%+ annually is great. 40%+ and I’m dancing. After trading options I am almost baffled by my old belief that 5% annual returns (mostly from dividend ETFs) was “good”. That’s nothing to me now since I’m willing to take risks. Note: While lots of people danced in 2020, realize that’s an insane Bull Run year and is atypical.
  • Adhere to your own risk tolerance and never over-extend yourself, especially with margin use. Don’t make huge gambles leaving you uncomfortable. Only gamble with money you are willing to lose.
  • My personal strategy is to make safer gains for the year and then enter slightly riskier strategies using those gains. I can be slightly-moderately more aggressive and compound my gains. For me I often sell puts to make money, then when I see a big opportunity I’ll sell a put and buy an OTM or moderately ITM call.
• Understand it’s not safe to try and get rich overnight. However, once you hit big “steps” things may start to snowball. You can enter more positions and take more risks if you choose to.
  • For me this when I hit 50k, then 100k. I was able to balance low and moderate risk positions to more significantly grow my account. I’ll even do a high risk thing now and again because my gains can absorb it (assuming I have them).
  • I can’t wait to get to 250K, then 500K. I know it’ll take quite a long time, but I am confident I’ll eventually be able to have 500K and (hopefully) 1M in my non-401k trading account with gains and additions from my job. I can only imagine how “dangerous” I will be with that kind of capital.
• If you missed "the next big thing" like AAPL, TSLA, or the time machine I’m building in my basement. Don't get upset, learn from it. Adapt and become a better trader for next time.
  • Figure out why a company was so promising, before they mooned. Determine how you would have traded differently in hindsight. Apply those lessons to the next company you believe has long term growth prospects.
  • For me that's putting in 1-2.5k towards shares and/or buying LEAPS on it. Depending on my bullishness I may buy “cheap”, fairly far OTM calls. The far OTM options are sort of lottery tickets. If I'm right the (relatively) low cost will have explosive profits; if I'm wrong, they didn't cost that much so it's a calculated loss I’m willing to accept. For more serious bets I’ll buy ITM LEAPS to run PMCCs on. I also like to buy 1-2K in my 401k for very long-term plays.
• The stock market hates uncertainty, it seems to crave the status quo. A shakeup can potential tank a stock, even if it's nothing. With shares you can wait it out, but this can be problematic for options. If you see volatile/uncertain times ahead (politics, disease, manufacturing, earnings, etc.), you might want to reduce your overall portfolio risks or hedge.

Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation

• If selling options, it is a viable strategy to close early after a large gain with many DTE left until expiry. See TT videos / strategies on this.
• Don't hold options through earnings unless you literally want to gamble. I like playing on earnings run ups, but that can be risky.
• If you hold options through earnings, IV crush will happen immediately afterwards, devaluing the option. However, if the option is profitable enough, IV crush won’t matter, which will still make money for a call buyer. A sold put sufficiently far OTM will benefit from IV crush, even if the stock dips after slightly bad or lukewarm earnings.
• Don't throw good money after bad. Don't gamble on a recovery if your assumption appears to be wrong or the market is flat out tanking. If you are wrong and still believe in the company, wait twice as long as your original plan (wait for your 2nd entry point vs 1st) before adding to your position.
• Consider using stop losses to lock-in profits on rides up or sometimes use them to prevent losses. Note, stops can be easily triggered in volatile options. Now when I'm up a lot on calls (especially around earnings or large momentum run-ups) I always set stop losses. I have been burned too many times. In December 2020 I didn't set a SL on several thousand dollars of FDX calls I was already up on and I "lost" ~$5K of unrealized gains. If you're up big, don't get too greedy.
• A possible strategy if a stock is on a tear and you have multiple options open: Close some positions (I prefer to do this incrementally if the stock has momentum), but leave 1+ open in case the stock goes into outer space/the floor. Next, set a stop loss with a little buffer below its current movement / range so it doesn't get hit unless the stock falls hard. Finally, watch the stock closely and if it keeps rising, keep moving the stop loss up in little bits incrementally. This will let you keep more profits on a hot streak, but give some protection and secure more gains. It will also help eliminate FOMO if a stock exceeds your expectations.
• Have rules when to roll out, down & out, or up & out. I like TT’s roll at break even or at 1x loss and to always roll for a credit (or for me a very minor cost). Obviously these rules need some monitoring. Know your stocks, the news, and technicals so you don’t jump the gun.
  • If you roll early for a credit and you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll just need to hold longer, which will obviously tie up capital. Sometimes it’s better to tie up some money (especially if you aren’t paying interest) than eating a huge loss.
  • Rolling too late can be worse though. I currently have a very underwater FDX put I sold that is over 2x loss, rolling it does almost nothing unless you want to pay a debit or extend it extremely far out.
• On huge options gains, I strongly you recommend taking profits by rolling up/down or incrementally sell your contracts at several different prices (this is why having multiple contracts is nice).
  • Rolling up involves selling your initial call, then using a fraction of your proceeds to buy a cheaper, further OTM call with the same expiry; puts are inverse this. When rolling up I like to ensure the new option’s cost is 15-40% of my realized gains. I’ll buy a more or less expensive new optoin based on my convication to the stock and predicted movements. You can also roll up and out to get a further expiry and strike.
  • This is monumentally important if you are playing with incredibly high rising stocks or during a short squeeze.
  • Sad story time: I completely screwed up when I forgot to roll up, twice, during the GME gamma/short squeeze. I didn’t take my own advice; I didn’t have a real exit or transition plan and I got emotional. It all happened so fast and I was at work; the insanity of the run up and subsequent gamma squeeze caught me off guard. I should’ve clocked out and thought through the situation for 15-30 minutes to form an impromptu plan, then executed trade(s). My moderate risk tolerance coupled with my desire to take profits took over. When the stock partially cratered after a run up, I sold to retain gains. In the heat of the moment I thought the squeeze was squoze and it was going to plummet into the ground and I wasn’t being rational.
    • On 1x 4K call I would’ve made an additional 15-25K if I rolled up to a cheaper contract with some of my profits.
    • I know I missed out on significantly more with a 2nd call I had. Depending when I rolled it, it would likely have been an additional 25-50k in profits.
  • I talked about learning from your mistakes above. This mistake is branded into my brain due to the massive gains I missed out on by not rolling up. I’m furious with myself as I write this 1 week after the GME gamma squeeze, I’m a planner and I didn’t plan. If anything I own is significantly up ever again, I’m rolling up (or at least setting a stop loss). If necessary, I’ll roll up a trade multiple times to keep extracting profits.
  • Learn from my mistake so you don’t miss out on gains too. I strongly recommend rolling up when you are up big on a call / roll down when you are up big on a put. This enables you to take profits, stay in the game, and keep extracting more gains.
• If you trade a lot of options, talk to your broker about a discount. I was getting the standard $.50/contract with E-Trade, but I traded over 300 contracts a quarter and was able to get the fee reduced by over $.10 by just asking. I am now doing more spreads and condors, so once my volume gets very high, I’ll ask again.
• If you have a broker that isn’t great and you want to switch, leverage your current trading fees to the new broker. Tell them you’ll move over $### thousand if they beat your current options trading fee per contract.

Trade Planning & Position Management Tips

• As you gain experience, start monitoring what kind of Delta, OTM, DTE, etc. you are most profitable with. Use it in your future trades. You'll often see the tasty trade 30-45DTE .3 Delta strategy for selling.
• Before entering a trade, look at rough technicals like resistances and supports to consider your relevant strikes as well as entry/exit points. Look at upcoming earnings & dividend dates as well as stock/market news.
• Consider staggering strikes and expirations for safety and diversity; it’s nice to avoid assignment on 3 puts at once because you used the same strike for all 3.
• Incrementally enter positions on large rises/falls. One of my favor strategies is to buy dips after over reactions. By doing this slowly in large price "steps" it helps combat FOMO and helps you avoid getting slaughtered.
  • This will also help you avoid "chasing a falling knife". It also ties into having a plan.
  • I set alerts at several predetermined prices and I REALLY try not to enter new trades unless I hit my preset points. It makes me less emotional and usually more effective.
• Don't buy far expiration options with poor liquidity for shorter term plays. I bought 1x GME 1-year+ LEAPS call before the 2021 short squeeze. That was stupid, I should've bought 2-3x 60-120 day calls to have better liquidity. I also paper-handed it and missed out on my lambo.
• If selling options, consider rolling (for a credit) to avoid assignment when it makes sense / meets your plan. Rolling closer to expiration can be a valid strategy to get theta on your side. On the flip side, if the stock moons or plummets it could've been better to roll before it got crazy deep ITM. See rolling “rules” above.
• Covered Calls:
  • If a stock has a large movement range, I think it can be worthwhile to wait to open a CC after the last one is closed/expires. I have been more successful waiting for another opportunity vs. opening one immediately on the Monday after the second the last one expires.
  • Consider selling covered calls at all time highs/peaks. If you sell a CC and the stock dips significantly, and you think it’s temporary, you can buy to close your CC for a quick profit, then reopen it later.
  • If you own Meme stocks, selling covered calls runs the risk of missing out on large gains. On these stocks I typically only sell them further OTM than I normally would or not at all. If I do sell CC on a Meme stock I try to ensure I have 25-100 other shares that won’t be called away.

-Advanced Beginner-
Spreads

• Spreads (with 2 legs) are neat because they manipulate how delta and theta act. It caps your gains and losses, but you can profit with less stock movement. Try several spreads on a P/L calculator to see for yourself.
• Spreads usually require margin trading.
• Spreads allow you to define max losses (assuming you close before expiration day) and use less capital.
  • Experienced traders will open many spreads at identical/similar strikes to heavily profit off movement. Spreads can make you/lose you a lot of money if you are right.
  • For example. I could make a $200 premium off a $500 risk trade, max loss would be $300. This is much more effective capital utilization than a naked or cash secured put, however it does not have the same downside protection or “wheel” potential as a sold put. Higher risk, higher reward.
• Vertical Debit spreads: I think of these like mini calls/puts. I personally don’t use them unless calls are outrageously expensive or the break even is absurdly high, but there’s nothing wrong with them. A call debit spread will lower your breakeven and overall cost vs just a call. You can do clever things like making a positive theta call spread if you’re creative. I like doing this since I hate losing money to theta.
• Vertical Credit spreads:
  • Very good theta strategy to define downside/upside risks.
  • A put credit spread is bullish and allows you to bet on upward movement with less capital and defined losses.
  • A call credit spread is a bearish strategy that allows you to bet on downward movement. These are very cool since they allow you to sell calls without selling naked calls, which can ruin you financially. I see selling these as better than buying puts since it’s so much easier to be profitable; to be redundant, Θ rocks.
  • https://www.schwab.com/resource-centeinsights/content/reducing-risk-with-credit-spread-options-strategy-0
• I repeat this on purpose: Don't EVER leave short spreads open on expiration day, close them. If you don't close, they better be VERY far from the strike on a non-volatile stock. In after hours a stock can jump/dip below your strike and be exercised without the other leg to protect you. This can lead to massive, life ruining losses. This is not an exaggeration, google this and be scared. It happened to a fair number of people with TSLA. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVFj9nRRDo&t=315s
• Short Straddle:

Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation

• Learn about wash sale rules. They suck and are very easy to activate with options. This will eliminate your ability to write off losses. Over trading can easily cause wash sales. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp
• Short attacks:
  • Learn to recognize these sketchy attacks by hedges/firms. They manipulate the market, it’s been documented countless times. A common one is rapid short selling, which pushes the price down.
  • Short Ladder attacks:
    • https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/3096735-anatomy-of-a-short-attack
    • Some people say short ladder attacks don't exist. I've seen some very strange stock nosedives off low volume, so I tend to think they do.
  • If you plan well enough and the market doesn’t give up on the stock you may be able to use it as a great opportunity to buy the dip.
• Cramer explains how he intentionally manipulated the market when he ran a hedge fund years ago. Multiple links to the video are below since this video gets pulled often, Cramer / The street never wanted this to go public.
  • Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/cramer-interview-idUKN2036292620070320
  • httpss://youtu.be/r07Gg92YjOI
  • https://youtu.be/VMuEis3byY4
  • https://youtu.be/JEzsfPmh894
  • https://youtu.be/QFfjX8dW-QQ
  • Due to this video I don’t fully trust Cramer. His show can give you stock ideas to buy (or inverse), but you never know where his true loyalties lie.
• Plan for taxes if you are up big. You may need to over withhold or contribute to taxes quarterly depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306

-Intermediate / Advanced Strategies (work in progress)-
You’ll notice many of these strategies inverse one another.
Options Strategy Finder
This website is great for learning about new strategies, you’ll see many links to it below.
https://www.theoptionsguide.com/option-trading-strategies.aspx
Short Strangle / Straddle

• Both of these strategies profit from little price movement. I recommend using a P/L calculator to determine BE, profit, etc.
• A straddle sells (or buys) two options at the same expiry and strike.
• A strangle sells (or buys) two options at same expiry with different strikes.
• Both these strategies involved selling a Call and a Put for a credit. Straddle uses ATM legs, strangle uses OTM legs.
• Limited max profits and unlimited risk. Due to the unlimited risk, I am not a fan. However, many people like these a lot.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-strangle.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-straddle.aspx

Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies

• These strategies profit from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. They receive a credit to open and benefit from theta decay. If your stock is range bound, these may be a good choice.
• These are both 4 "legged" trades, so you will have 4 trading fees to enter or exit the trade. A lower cost or zero cost broker shines here. However, “bad” free brokers will give you poor fills, which may not be worth the discount.
• Condors and butterflies have "wings" which are your purchased puts and calls. The wider the wing the higher the max profit/risk. The condor body can be riskier and skinny with a narrow high profit range or wider for a much greater chance of success with lower payout.
• An iron condor is built by combining a put credit spread and a call credit spread with the same expiry.
• An iron condor can be thought of as a modified short strangle with limited risk, and therefore a bit less profit. I prefer defined limited risk.
• The butterfly is similar except instead of a plateau it has a sharp peak. My personal mental note is that a condor looks more like a strangle with wings, while a butterfly looks like a straddle with wings.
• Pay attention to earnings dates when you open these, I have forgotten to check before and it led to bad trades.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-condor.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-butterfly.aspx

Long Condor (Debit Call Condor)

• The debit version of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to stay inside your defined range. This strategy profits from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. I’ve never tried this, Iron Condors make more sense to me.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/condor.aspx

Short Condor (Credit Call Condor)

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Credit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• Can be harder to set up. I want to try these, haven’t yet.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-condor.aspx

Reverse Iron Condor

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Debit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/reverse-iron-condor.aspx

LEAPs

• LEAP Options are options that are long term with many DTE, often over a year until expiration. LEAP calls are great for long term growth plays (downtrends with LEAP puts) or simply when you really like a company and can't afford 100 shares. LEAPs (or any "longer term" option) enables you to sell a PMCC or PMCP (below)

PMCC / PMCP

• PMCC or PMCP are poor man's covered call (or poor man's covered puts). They are diagonal options often used with purchased LEAPs. You sell a shorter DTE call/put with a further OTM strike than your purchased call/put. For PMCC/PMCPs it is often recommended to recoup your extrinsic value as soon as possible, some recommend with your first call CC or put sale, to ensure you are positive if the option is assigned early. These have a lot of moving parts and strategies. If you buy a barely ITM call/put and sell a nearby strike call/put you run the risk of the purchased option getting "blown by" on large stock movement and ending up with a very negative losing trade. Keeping your purchased LEAP deeper ITM should protect you. Check your initial PMCC using an options calculation to make sure you don't screw up.
• I'm currently tinkering with these myself. So far I like .7-.9 delta call LEAPS with 30-45 DTE calls on my CC. The goal is to hold the LEAP long term, potentially until expiration, and constantly sell calls/puts on it that expire worthless. Typically the call/put is rolled up and out or down and out if it's going to be assigned, unless you don't want your LEAP anymore.
• Some people look at these many sold CC or puts as profits, I look at them as lowering my cost basis until it's zero (or even negative). I have a page in my notebook I write each CC on my NIO LEAP (I Meme stock sometimes). I find it satisfying to slowly see the cost of the original option disappear. When I originally wrote this I had ~2 years left on it and it's 9-10% paid for; that doesn't even count the actual gains the LEAP has.
• TT states this is considered an IV play, which I partially agree with. You want to buy these during low IV times since an IV drop will hurt your LEAP value. I look at them more as a way to sell calls/puts on a high IV company with a lot of price movement and potential upside/downside.

Advanced Orders

• Guide to several order types: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/events/webinars/order-types-from-basic-to-advanced-07162019
• One Triggers Other (OTO):
  • Good brokers will allow you to set these up, some will require a desktop to do it. This lets you link one action to another. In programming think of it like an if-then. You’ll tie a buy/sell to another buy/sell
  • Setting trailing stops on options is very chaotic since their price movement can be drastic due to volatility. I prefer to set my trailing stop to a stock.
  • What I like to do is set a trailing stop on a stock (or just link it to a stock price drop) and have it sell 1 share I own. Then it immediately executes a market order to sell my call. I’ve had good luck doing this with incredibly volatile plays were stop losses aren’t effective. I’ll often have an order saved and ready saved for when a strong run up starts. When my price alerts start blowing up my phone, I’ll immediately hit execute to turn it on.

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Disclaimer:
I’m not a financial adviser, I'm actually an engineer. I’m not telling you to invest in a specific stock/option or even use a specific strategy. I’ve outlined and more extensively elaborated on what I personally like. You should test several strategies and find what works best for you.
I'm just a guy who trades (mainly options) part-time for financial gain and fun. I don't claim to be some investing savant.