Feb 4, mid-market: Thank you everyone for your support. I really don't know what to say. The company keeps getting pounded because GME is having a sell-off, which doesn't make any sense. But that's the market for you. It doesn't always make sense.
I still believe 2021 will be a big year for Nokia, although it doesn't look like there is any way we'll manage the crazy play anymore. Still, it was nice to see something that was impossible become possible, even if it was for only a few days.
And remember, we can still do it any day. All it takes is for us to work together. If you want. Make up your own mind.
I'm still holding. NOK will recover from this. Fair value is at least 4.81, and way more when 5G really gets going. So if you can, I would buy some more now. You'll thank me later for the tip. It may not be the most exciting play, but it is what investing is all about. Slow and steady growth that compounds to make a big change.
One of these days I'll be able to post again, when the mods lift the restrictions on new posts and things get a little less crazy around here. When I post again about NOK, I'll post the link here too. Thanks everyone!
Feb 4 premarket: Earnings out! They beat expectations a bit, their revenue was a little smaller than expected. Overall, good quarter, good year. Here it is: https://www.nokia.com/system/files/2021-02/nokia_results_2020_q4.pdf
Feb 2, end of day: It's getting pretty crazy out there, but here's what you should know. The NOK chart is following the GME chart. It's got way more shares so the bumps and dips are more stable, but that's the main trend.
What that means: GME has no underlying value at this level. It is a gamble on the short squeeze. It might pay off, or it might not. If people panic sell like yesterday, it won't.
NOK is very different. It has underlying value. So if someone dumps it below its target price, the best thing to do is just to buy and wait for the value to go down. Thursday NOK reveals its earnings, and they are likely to be good based on what Ericsson revealed. Ericsson is one of its main competitors and a very similar company currently trading at twice the NOK price.
Feb 1, end of day: Told you it was a value share! Still trading at target, still low risk.
Either dumping has stopped, or normies are piling in because of the results. Either way good news, hope you made some money today!Vol today 190m, still way above average. Normal average 30m before we changed it lol. That means since Wednesday over 2bn shares have changed hands. Hope you got em!
Ericsson (NOK competitor) results suggest NOK will report good numbers this week, NOK upped to BUY on market watch: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nokia-upped-to-buy-after-ericsson-results-2021-02-01
Unless my math is retarded (which it is cos ahmsodumb), if everyone (7m) on this sub spends $3000 at current price ($4.55) we BUY THE FLOAT. The more they keep dumping, the more shares we get cheap. Think about it.EDIT: buying the ENTIRE float is NOT the point of this play. I know share price goes up when supply is restricted, just read the play. This is just an example of what happens when they dump a value share on millions of retail investors.
BLACKROCK IS IN PEOPLE: https://fintel.io/so/us/nok/blackrock
Robin hood increases NOK allowance to 2000 shares for next week (still any allowance is CRAZY because it's a VALUE SHARE THAT HASN'T BUBBLED) https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/changes-due-to-recent-market-volatility/?fbclid=IwAR2SK9VQOI_eBgBF0SK4-R1eQjBkSAe3sd6KMwSBaCPmz38e5cc8siRdhEY
You dump a VALUE STOCK on me and think I'm in danger?

Added new summary (30 Jan), and Q&A.
FIRST OFF: This post is not financial advice or anything except the rant of some idiot retard who is an idiot. I tell you straight up that there is a normal investment side to the NOK play (STILL MEANS RISK, which YOU will have to decide!) and that there is a CRAZY side that is PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE. If you want to play the crazy play then you’re also a crazy retard idiot just like me.
I don’t know shit, I just look at graphs and go WOW. Do your own due diligence, I am not a financial advisor. Don’t ask me if you should buy, I don’t know, can you afford to? Are you comfortable with the risks? I don’t know these things. You do.
NOK PLAY:
Here’s how it works. YOU DECIDE if you want to take part.
1.It’s not a short squeeze like GME. Get that out of your head.
2.It’s a value/momentum play. The value part is just normal granny&grampa investing. See a good company going cheap, buy and hold. Tell your mom, dad, granny and grampa, cousins, relatives, friends.
3.The momentum part is the crazy part, and if it works the share will SKYROCKET as long as YOU DON’T SELL. GME is the biggest short squeeze in history, the NOK play could be the biggest value buy in history.

The beauty of it is that it works because Wall St is dumping NOK irrationally. That’s why the price is going down (slowly). They think they’re attacking us and slowly winning, but they’re giving us a value share cheap = their money, our pockets. By the time they realize what we did, it will be too late.
Don’t panic, and keep buying the dumps (if you think the company has value), and if we hold the line you could see a miracle.

3310 HANDS

Value Part (crazy part in Q&A):
The company is healthy, has good financials, it’s a market leader in 5G (it’s main competitors are Huawei and Ericsson, they have about the same market share share of 5G) a lot of potential to be the company that builds 5G for a large part of the world. NOK is currently trading at a standard price for the value it holds. It is not a bubble.
Here’s Nokia’s 5G contracts: https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/5g-contracts/
Here’s Bloomberg shitting bricks that we’ve realized that Nokia is a value bet: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-28/gamestop-may-be-a-reddit-wallstreetbets-game-but-nokia-sure-isn-t
Nokia also just unveiled new 1tb tech, the thing AFTER 5G. First on the world. They have it, they’re showing the world it works. Here is their press release from Wednesday: https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nokia-and-elisa-push-network-boundaries-with-worlds-first-1t-deployment-2021-01-27
They are so trusted that NASA got them to build a cell network on the MOON. Literally. If you’re NASA, would you hire your retard uncle Earl to build cell towers on the moon? No, you hire someone who CAN ACTUALLY DO IT. Imagine what it takes to build something really big and complicated on the moon? Now imagine who’s the likely guy who can do it. That’s right, NOKIA. Here they are, going to the moon: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/10/19/nokia-selected-by-nasa-to-build-first-ever-cellular-network-on-the-moon/
If the Huawei 5G war continues, who do you think US and Europe is going to back, especially since NOK already has the next tech, owns a bunch of patents, is from FINLAND that has never tried to take over the world and has a brand that EVERYONE who lived in 2000s remembers?
Here’s a guy who’s been doing the numbers for a while now in case you want to see them: https://www.reddit.com/useJimming/comments/l7f6ua/part_iv_option_chain_analysis_on_nok_and_why_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf I don’t know him, I don’t know the numbers as well, but looks pretty good to me. Amazing due diligence. But what do I know, I’m an idiot. So is he. So are you. We’re all fucking retards, just ask Wall Street. I poked myself in the same eye twice yesterday. We’re “dumb money”. They have other names for us too.
So, worst case, you just bought into a good company at a fair value. If the crazy play doesn’t work, you just hold on to them and let them become the world leader in 5G. Unlike GME (NOT SAYING SELL!), NOK will not fall 99%. Or if it does, I'M BUYING THAT SHIT because if a HEALTHY COMPANY FALLS 99% you make some CRAZY MONEY on that when it bounces back.
Q&A
Q: You retards were tricked by bots to buying NOK, there’s no short
A: This just full on doesn’t get what the play is about. IT IS NOT A SHORT SQUEEZE. THIS IS NOT GME RINSE REPEAT. GME IS A DIFFERENT PLAY. NOK IS A VALUE PLAY. How many more ways can I say it? Not sure. How many more do I have to?
Q: Stop taking attention away from GME you retards
A: Nobody is saying sell your GME. Nobody is saying that. GME is too expensive for a lot of people, and GME is VERY RISKY and NOK has genuine value behind it. If the NOK play works, those people who couldn’t afford GME can still get on & get rich. If it doesn’t, they most likely still make money on a good company.
Q: This play is impossible / crazy / it’ll never work / there are too many shares you retards
A: This is ALMOST true. This play WAS impossible until 1/27/2021. That is why nobody has EVER tried anything like this. But it’s NOT impossible anymore. Look at this graph. Look at it. See that spike? What the fuck is that? I’ll tell you my fellow autistic space boot packin 3310 using NOKSTER.

https://preview.redd.it/v473xl00ghe61.png?width=2182&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf5aac455156dbadb919b80afacb5232af0a05b5
That spike was them running out of shares for half an hour. Trade was stopped until they could find more, to avoid an artificial spike in the price.
Proof? Look at the volumes. A small sale (red) causes a small dip. Two small buys cause a MASSIVE SPIKE. They ran out, and had to call their friends to liquidate more shares so the price wouldn’t skyrocket "artificially".
But that’s IMPOSSIBLE for NOK. NOK has 5bn shares. Nokia should be much more stable because it has so many shares, having a crazy demand spike is crazy. I saw it, and fell off my chair and since I’m such a retard it took me an hour to get back up.
So it was impossible, and that’s why Wall Street won’t see it coming. They think this is their attack and they’re about to break through our ranks, but they’re actually playing right into our hands.
Wendnesday, we moved 1bn shares. Thursday, when nobody could buy, we still moved 500m. Yesterday, we still moved 360m. We’ve moved so much NOK in the past three days, the average volume of the share has MORE THAN DOUBLED in THREE DAYS. The play is not impossible anymore, but Wall St thinks it is, which is how we can use their own strength and mass against them. But the value buy still makes sense WHENEVER you see someone dump a valuable share. Someone sells you a 100$ bill for 90$? Buy it.
They attack? We absorb. They dump, we buy, they run out of shares, we hold. They’re fucked, and they just handed us a bunch of value shares at an undervalue = they just gave us their money. They are just giving it to you. When they realize they can’t buy them back at a lower value, what do you think is going to happen?
Q: We don’t do value plays, we do short squeezes you retards
A: Go back to April. Look at u/DeepFuckingValue’s position. GME was a value play. It’s only in April that the Short Squeeze became possible. Look it up yourself.
Will a short squeeze also happen with NOK? It’s unlikely. Hedge Fund Assholes have been increasing their shorts in NOK in the last few days, but they won’t go over 100% on 5bn shares because they're not as stupid as me. But it doesn’t have to happen. We just need to buy the dumps. If they short, great. More money for us as long as we don’t let them drive the price down with the dumps.
Q: Why is NOK not rocketing?
A: Because Wall Street is dumping, just like I said they would after the Wednesday spike. That’s the whole plan. They dump, we hold the line, buy the dumps and keep the price steady.
The GME short squeeze guys waited for this for UP TO TWO YEARS. I saw it in April. I thought it was crazy. I didn’t jump in back then. If I did, I’d have about as much money as u/DeepFuckingValue. On a value share, you can afford to wait. GME was originally a value play. That’s what I should have realized in April.
SO JUST WAIT AND HOLD (if you believe and idiot like me, which you shouldn't, no need to message me about it). It’s been two days since this play even became possible.
Q: How do we know it’s working?
A: Look at the volume of shares traded. Nokia has 5bn shares. In the last three days, nearly 2bn have been traded. The price is still up from last week. That’s how.
This has already been a giant dumping campaign. How come the price hasn’t floored? What happens if we just buy it all up?
What happens if they run out, and then their shorts blow, the price bumps up, CNBC tells the world we broke another short wall, everyone piles on, Wall Street realizes they just gave us their shares at an undervalue and try to buy back, we don’t sell, we have all the shares? The Wednesday spike is what happens, except this time there is no stopping it. If they stop trading again and try to dump some more, you just buy up the dump and keep the spike going. Spike stops being a spike and becomes a floor.

Q: Where will this max out and when?
A: What do you think I’m from the future? I just saw an impossible thing happen on Wednesday, and we need to make it happen again. Look at the graph. Look at it.
Set your targets to $3310, that should do it.
Q: When should I buy? What should I buy? Should I buy?
A: Be your own person. Buy when you feel like it, if you feel like it.
Q: Wall street bots are promoting NOK.
A: I don’t give a shit. If they are, and we keep buying, they are promoting giving us money.

Part 2: (29 Jan)
First off, much as I appreciate the love, I can’t play your hand for you. You have to make your own decisions. Do I know where NOK is going to be tomorrow? Nope. Nobody does. All that I have for you is the news from Wednesday that this play is no longer totally impossible:

I think the assholes are going to try to dump you out of the market
It won’t work if we keep the demand up.
The way we keep demand up is we buy, and others will follow us because the company is good.
When they realize it won’t work, they’ll need to start buying back in.
Then it’ll be too late, cos they dumped their shares on US and we are RETARDS who HOLD. That means that when their shorts start to go bust, the price will jump up (a little bit, not like with GME at first – this is a different play based on the health of the company, not a straight up short squeeze. The short position on NOK is much smaller).
When the price jumps up, and the GME guys start cashing out, they need somewhere to put that cash. Some of them pay off student loans, or buy cars or whatever, but the smart ones will go NOK.

How you play it is up to you. I can’t tell you if you should buy, what minute to buy, what app to use and so on. All I can say is I buy the dumps. You need to decide for yourself if you want to do it. You can see the dumps on any app, or even yahoo finance. I buy NOK on NYSE, and I buy straight up shares (so they can’t lend out mine for shorts) but you’re free to do what you want. I’m a retard, you’re a retard, we’re all autistic fucks, we make up our own mind and stick with it.
Secondly, what I said yesterday morning would happen, did happen. And it happened exactly like I said it would. So don’t get scared off, just buy the dumps. And they know that they’ll be fucked if we keep buying the dumps. That’s why they stopped us from buying NOK.
NOK hasn’t bubbled, stopping us from buying NOK was because they know we’re on to them. They know the dumps won’t work if we JUST KEEP BUYING and HOLDING. The play works, they’re scared, we caught them with their pants down, they’re trying to get ahead of us.
OK, so about what happened yesterday with RH and others. I’m so fucking angry about this.
What RH and others did is completely insane. Their argument is “you guys are throwing your money away on a bubble, we’re just protecting you”. Bullshit. I won’t comment on GME, I’ll let u/DeepFuckingValue or one of those guys do that. I’ll just say, that short squeezes happen with hedge funds all the fucking time. Why is trading not stopped for them? They have people’s fucking pensions that they’re playing with.
But for NOK, it’s TOTAL BULLSHIT. Here’s why:

NOK HAS NOT BUBBLED. Look at the graph. Look at it. It is still down from 2016. NOK is well within normal variation. Long term, you barely see the spike from a couple of days ago. There is nothing to “protect us” from. They’re protecting themselves.
The NOK play is not a straight up short squeeze. The play is HELPED by the shorts that are there, as long as we can keep the demand up and keep the price up against the dumping, but that’s all.
NOK is a healthy company, with new and important tech, a great brand, a lot of potential. You want to see why, read the original post. ANYONE who sees a company like that being dumped for NO REASON would buy. So should you. They are only dumping it because they’re trying to fuck up our play.

Ok that’s enough for now. I’ll see you all when I’ve got my space boots on, in my house on the FUCKING MOON, next to a NOKIA Comms tower, or I’ll see you in VALHALLA with my broke ass. If this doesn’t work, then at least you TOOK ON THE MOTHERFUCKERS and EARNED A PLACE at the table with FUCKING ODIN.
UNBREAKABLE 3310!
ORIGINAL POST (28 Jan):
I get it, it’s not the play. I’m not saying sell your GME. I’m not a bot or a spy or a wall street asshole. I’m a regular guy who’s got a couple of bucks in his bank account and plays videogames and wants a fucking house to live in like my parents had when they were young. If you don’t agree with me, just say so.
I’m also not a financial advisor, so make up your own minds you autistic fucks.
But, BUT, yesterday we did something they’ve never seen. Yesterday, we made them run out of NOK shares. That’s what that big spike was, and that’s why trading was stopped for 2h. If we keep doing that, it will be the biggest wall street wealth transfer from assholes to retards in history. Because they will keep dumping it until it’s too late.
Impossible, you say. Too many shares, you say. Well listen up. Yesterday, in ONE DAY, we traded, or caused others to trade, 1bn shares of Nokia. That is 1/5 of all the Nokia shares in the world. That’s never happened, EVER. Not even when Nokia was the biggest phone company in the world.
3516.16% of average trading volume.
Do you get it? They’ll keep dumping their stock, we keep buying them cheap, and then they won’t be so cheap anymore when they try to buy back in. We can move 1bn shares IN A DAY. ONE DAY. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Why do they stop trading in NYSE? Cos they ran out of shares temporarily and they don’t want “artificial” spikes in the prices. So they made us retards wait a couple of hours while some assholes called some other assholes to unload their shares into the market, and once they had enough, they started again. That’s why that spike went down right after the freeze.
But then we did it again. And they had to stop again. The price just wouldn’t go down. The assholes who’d just unloaded shares were probably back on the phone with the other assholes who’d convinced them.
Everyone is watching us. What we do, millions of normal folks do with us, and every wallstreet asshole does against us.
What did the asshole brigade do? They started shorting NOK. They will continue to do that, because they think we’re retards (they are correct).
But how come the price didn’t go down? It’s got 5bn shares, and everyone whos ever held it was dumping it. How could we ever keep up the demand when there are so many shares out there? How is this going to work?
Because the retard brigade was buying it. There’s 3m of us and counting. If we each put 600 bucks on NOK, we get 100 shares, and that’s 300m shares.
Now imagine what happens if we put 6000 on it. AND. FUCKING. HOLD. And every dip you see, you buy more. AND. FUCKING. HOLD. They'll keep dumping, we keep buying, until they realize the price isn't going down. Then they start buying, we keep holding, the market runs out of NOK. Price skyrockets.
And normies outside were following us. They can see that the stock is still LOW, lower than 2016. This means they don’t think it’s a bubble that’s going to crash on them.
So why do the normies follow us on this, and not on GME? (I’m not saying sell GME).
Because GME has never, ever been anywhere near where it is now. That scares a normal guy who’s just trying to put in some savings for his family. They think this is some Dutch tulip market shit.
Not so with NOK. Even with the spike from yesterday, NOK is still DOWN from 2016. Remember 2016? Remember that being a really big year for Nokia? No, me neither. And let’s not even get started on where it has been in the past. Yesterday's spike barely shows on the graph.
You know what is going to be a big year? 2021 and 2022. Why?
What else did NOK say yesterday? Well, they revealed that they have a new kind of 1 terabit data transfer networks shit, what do I know, I’m not a techie. But it IS a new kind of technology that’s going to kick 5Gs ass. And my fellow retards of the most honorable retard brigade – Do you think we’re going to need more data this year than last year?
Remember how Netflix had to downgrade its picture quality in March because the networks couldn’t handle the amount people were streaming? What do you think is going to happen with the company that solves that?
But why would NOK be the company? Well, remember the 5G war with China?
US and Europe can’t buy 5G from China, because then China has our networks. But guess who US and Europe aren’t afraid of? Fucking FINLAND. Finland, the land of NOKIA. So tiny that some people think the whole country is a conspiracy theory and doesn’t really exist. Sorry Finnish people, nobody gives a shit about you. Good thing for you, cos you get to build the 5G network on the moon and shit because nobody is scared that Finland will take over the world.
Want proof? They are literally building one on the FUCKING MOON: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/10/19/nokia-selected-by-nasa-to-build-first-ever-cellular-network-on-the-moon/
And we’re going to send them there. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
But hang on, why is NOK so low in the first place if it’s so great?
Answer: because Microsoft fucked them. That’s right, they sent one of their own assholes to infiltrate the NOK, leak a bunch shit to drive the share price down, and then buy the phone part of the company. These assholes wrecked the company, the Finnish economy, and every middle class shareholder who was just trying to put their kids to college. Imagine everyone who’d be fucked if someone did that to Apple now.
Worked like a charm. Firesale. Business restructuring. Lost their phones. NOK never recovered.
The asshole they sent from Microsoft? Went back to work for Microsoft, and was paid a shit ton of money for what he did. His name is Stephen Elop. Look it up.
So they have tech that nobody else has and a brand that everyone recognizes. But what don’t they have? Money. That’s why they’re building this 1tb magic network thing in tiny fucking possibly fake Finland to show everyone it works.
But if we drive the share price up, do you think that’s going to change?
So FUCK IT. I’m in for every penny, and I am HOLDING. I’ll see you in my house ON the MOON next to a NOKIA Comms tower, or I’ll see you in VALHALLA you BEAUTIFUL RETARDED MOTHERFUCKERS.
TL;DR: NOK is literally going to the moon. Go there with them. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

I gotta say, I see some good shit out there. I see new members trying to diversify their positions and learn about other stocks and other ways to make money. This is the path my fellow retards. I'm a nobody here, but I have good returns and some good insight. When I came to WSB, multiple people helped me figure out what the fuck I was doing, because I knew jack shit. I care more about my money than yours, but no retard should be left in the dark alone. So let me pass on a couple things. I can't prove shit to you, so read this or don't.
I mainly trade options (Calls and Puts), so that is what I will discuss
Generally the most insane gains will come from being in a specific stock and not an ETF or Index. While riskier, this is where you can hit the homeruns. So decide if you want to go for conservative gains or if you want those huge swings. While what I said is true, I am usually against putting everything into a single bet. Anything can go wrong at any time and no play is 100% guaranteed. The goal of this game is to stay alive. You will lose money on a play at some point, because it is inevitable. So never let yourself get wiped out, because you can always build yourself back up. This goes along with one of my other recommendations: always have SOME cash ready to go. You never know when there might be an incredible opportunity and you do not want to get caught with your ass hanging out.
Paper hands and diamond hands are just words. You ultimately decide when you want to sell or hold and how much profit you want to take. One of my favorite strategies is to say, buy an even number of options on a play, sell half at a modest level of gains (like enough to break even or gain a little bit) and then let the rest ride longer. Look guys, on many plays, you either paper hands at some point or diamond hands long enough to see your positions go red. Some people will bail at 40% gains and others might not take anything less than 500%. Just know that chasing endless profits ups the risk factor, so YOU decide when it's time. Having a target share price for the stock is also a good strategy.
Here's a couple psychological principles in investing. Studies have found that people tend to hold onto losing positions too long and sell winning positions too early. They let their losers lose and cut off their winners short. Apparently most people hate losing more than they like winning. Think about this before you sell. Stocks can often get hot and run multiple days in a row. Sometimes a stock will have one red day and then keep up going. This is why it's important to know WHY you got into a position. Trust your DD and stick to the plan. I had ideas for plays where they went red right away and I bailed... only to see them moon. "Diamond Hands" means that you don't dump your position instantly if it goes down. The hardest thing is knowing if you should cut losses or diamond hands. I'm a retard and we're in a bull market.. so often times the stock will eventually go up. Your call though.
The market makers and big boys want you to lose. They want your money. I'm not going to dive into the realm of possible illegal activities that they may use, but just point out some simpler tactics they will use. Big money often sees retail as "weak hands" aka Buy High and Sell Low. They know FOMO is strong when a stock is going up big and that fear takes over when a stock divebombs. We're in a bull market, which means stonks only go up. However, we still have negative days. Stocks sell off sometimes and things can look bad. Generally, the dip is not time to sell, but instead, time to buy. Case and point, we had a pretty big drilling 2 weeks ago. Do you know what the big money did? They bought the fuckin dip and snatched up everything for cheap. We've been mooning ever since.
Sometimes shit makes no sense. A company can have blowout earnings, exceed expectations, and the stock will tank. I was holding one stock a little while ago that reported a fantastic earnings and proceeded to drill to the core of the Earth that day. It was total bullshit and I knew it, I trusted my DD. So instead of panic selling, I added to my position. Sure enough, the stock began swinging upwards and hit an all-time high just 2 weeks later. This is why simply gambling can bite you in the ass. It's easy to get scared and sell when you doubt yourself because you picked a random thing to buy.
Option Expiration Dates matter. Buying a 1 week option is the cheapest and gives the biggest percentage of profits if it goes your way. However, it can often be a noob trap. One bad day or one piece of bad news can kill your entire position. Stocks trade sideways sometimes. Sometimes they don't do what you think they should do. And sometimes the whole fucking market shits itself for seemingly no reason. So give yourself TIME to work with. Time costs money and hurts profit margins. But it is better to consistently make 50% profit than to hit one play for 300% followed by 10 losers. Look, playing weekly stupidly OTM calls is fun as hell and is a huge rush when it hits. I do at least one or more every week. The key is not loading your entire portfolio into this shit. Remember, no tendies = no more fun.
Along the same lines, Strike Price matters. An OTM (Out of the Money) option means that the Strike Price is a bit of a ways from where the stock's price currently is. OTM options give huge profit margins the further you go out. I personally enjoy using them.. some people don't. But my advice is to balance risk with profit potential. If your call relies on a stock gaining 50% in 2 weeks.. then well, it's probably not gonna happen. ITM (In The Money) options means that your stock is already within the strike price. ITM is a more conservative play and sacrifices massive gains for lower risk.
https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/calculatolong-call.html - Use this to get an estimate of potential profits and how much of a move you need
Leaps are fuckin dope. A Leap is a call, but for a much longer period of time. I'm using the term loosely because we're degenerates and some people might consider anything more than 1 month a leap. Given that the market trends up over time, you might even make some money on a mediocre stock this way. A lot of people buy ITM leaps, but again, I'm a degenerate and go OTM a lot.
Implied Volatility (IV) - Extremely fucking important. IV is basically an estimation of how much a stock is predicted to move in either direction. High IV = Expensive Options. It's fucking weird to think, but you can make similar profits from a 2% move on a low IV stock as you can from a 5% move on a more volatile stock. Low IV is fantastic when buying an option on a stock that you think is about to moon. High IV is riskier, so you damn well better think the stock can make some big moves. Buying an option on a stock right before Earnings Report (ER) will be more expensive due to IV. Trying to play ER is usually for suckers, unless you have some really good DD about why a company might deliver a huge surprise. One of the textbook big boy moves is to pump a stock going into ER. The company will deliver great news and then dump hard. You may see people bitching about this very soon. Basically, big money knew ahead of time it would be good, so the stock got pumped and then they took profits.
Buy the rumor and sell the news. Events, press releases, and important dates that everyone knows about are another trap. You will get shit on. Ask someone about TESLA Battery Day. Positive rumors will send a stock soaring though.
Finally, get busy learning. Read about Options on Investopedia and any other things you do not understand. The big boys rely on us to not know what the fuck we're doing to take our money. Learn about the general market. Stocks are grouped into "Sectors" or categories. Start figuring out what they are and pay attention to where the money is going. I didn't even mention half of the shit that goes on in options, so that's on you. The first thing you need to do is to learn what the "Greeks" are. That will teach you how options function.
https://www.investopedia.com/trading/using-the-greeks-to-understand-options/
If anyone wants to talk or discuss, send me a message. I'm a degenerate with no life.
Oh and, if you follow someone's DD and lose money that's on you. I've come up with some genius shit, but I've also lost on some retarded calls. Nobody can pick you a guaranteed winner and hindsight is 20/20.
May the gains be with you

Timeline of Trump's Russia Connections from KGB Cultivation to United State President

#WEWANTCHANGE - GUIDE - UPVOTE THIS!! SO THE DEVS/YOUTUBERS CAN SEE IT /ANSWER TO RAIYUDEN FEEDBACK VIDEO

"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.

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

Intro

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

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

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

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

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

Stream Sniping

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

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

Match Fixing

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

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

North America

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

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

Talent

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

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

Valve

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

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

Closing Statements

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

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

SoFi (IPOE) - Jack of All Trades, Master of None? A Sorely Needed Bearish DD

Reposting because last post didn’t seem to go through due to network errors. Disclosure: I have no position in IPOE, nor will I ever initiate one. Disclaimer: Not a financial advisor. Do your own DD.
Note: I did this write-up for a friend; it’s obscenely long. If nobody here reads it, I won’t be particularly upset. But I’m posting it on the off-chance someone will find it interesting. I have seen a significant number of comments, in the daily threads and elsewhere, in which people call SoFi their “long-term fintech hold” or otherwise declare their intention to hold IPOE/SoFi significantly longer than a trader playing SPACs typically would - in some cases, all the way through merger and into the great unknown. Heck, I’ve even seen some commenters describe it as a “forever hold.” If that describes you, I would strongly suggest you think twice about that decision.
For months, the #1 piece of advice on this sub, beyond all else, has been to buy pre-rumor, post-Bloomberg rumor, or on an LOI - as close to NAV as possible - and sell shortly after the DA bump. Additionally, SPACs that have seen significant declines in their share prices in the days/weeks/months following a DA, as most do, could often be ripe for buying in anticipation of a run-up to the merger date. Buying after a huge run-up, with intentions of holding for the “long-term,” is hardly a strategy that can reasonably be expected to generate good risk-adjusted rates of return, especially in such a wildly speculative corner of the market.
In other words, it seems the players are becoming consumed by the game, and forgetting the rules in the process. Fascinatingly, this is an almost universal characteristic of frothy, speculative market bubbles. During the initial phase of the dot-com bubble, most retail investors were buying into pre-revenue, cash-incinerating companies at IPO, believing - often correctly - that hype would build for the company (it just has so much potential!!!) and that, as a result, they could subsequently flip those shares to another buyer at a significantly higher price. For a while, they were right. So what went wrong? Retail traders started to truly believe. It was no longer a case of playing the “greater-fool” game. They no longer bought shares and held them until other people started to believe in the potential of those companies; they started to genuinely believe in the narratives those companies were crafting and the vision of the future they were presenting to their investors. Instead of selling the sales pitches, they began falling for them. Eventually, the pool of capital sitting idle waiting to be deployed into the next “game-changing” company dried up…and the rest, I suppose, is history.
Which brings me to SoFi. Specifically, why their nosebleed valuation is not particularly attractive and the downside risks are, at least on this sub, massively under-appreciated.
To begin, let’s take a brief look at the history of the company, something that most posters on this sub seem to have surprisingly little knowledge of. In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, the big banks massively de-leveraged their consumer lending portfolios. Student loan debt was one of the primary targets during this de-leveraging campaign, because, despite being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy proceedings (at least for now), it is, like most non-collateralized loans, quite risky for lenders. As such, the big banks became quite hesitant to issue new student loan debt - or refinance existing debt - at reasonable interest rates.
Enter SoFi.
SoFi, founded in 2011, attempted to capitalize on this opportunity. By offering to consolidate and refinance student loans, especially for high-earning recent college graduates, at reasonable interest rates, SoFi began putting together a large customer base that it believed it could easily cross-sell other financial products to - home loans, banking services, wealth management services, and the like. Backed by some of the most prestigious VC firms and investors, it looked like a sure winner. And, briefly, it was. Even as their marketing budget exploded, in early 2017 SoFi, believe it or not, actually expected to turn a profit of $200 million on $650 million in revenue. The same year, SoFi entered M&A talks with Charles Schwab, but ultimately talks fell apart when Schwab balked at the $8-10B valuation SoFi was seeking. Nonetheless, things were looking very good for the company.
And then everything went very, very wrong. SoFi, which had made a name for itself by offering student loan refinancing to prime borrowers from elite schools with very high incomes, saw its loans start to massively underperform expectations. Nonetheless, despite a massive $200M write-down in Q2 on underperforming loans, it still managed to book a $126 million profit on $547 million in revenue, though company guidance indicated that they expected further deterioration in the performance of their loan portfolio in the coming year. Those dire expectations seem to have been borne out; by 2018, the company was deep in the red, with EBITDA of -$227 million for the year. Their cross-selling model, which they are still describing as a key part of their business strategy, seems to have failed catastrophically - by early 2018, SoFi’s home loans were losing the company an astounding $10,000 apiece, on average.
And thus began the company’s long and hard dive into the red, from which it has not yet recovered. The decline was - to put it bluntly - catastrophic. Revenues collapsed, with 2018 revenues declining over 50% YoY to $241M. Desperate to save their rapidly-failing business, investors determined that they would need to start buying growth - at almost any cost. The company’s marketing and advertising spending shot through the roof, culminating in a deal to buy the naming rights to the LA Rams/Chargers stadium for an eye-popping $400 million. So how much growth has the >$500M in spending since then actually bought them? Let’s see.
To take a look at where things currently stand, let’s take a look at their shockingly amateurish investor presentation. (As a brief aside - for anyone still doubtful that the company is selling hype, just take a quick glance through their investor presentation. It’s littered with the logos and names of the most egregiously overvalued tech companies currently on the market (why on Earth should the name “Tesla” appear anywhere in their pitch deck, other than under an executive’s name??). And ”AWS of fintech?” Seriously?). Interestingly, their presentation claims that the company is targeting “high earners not well served (HENWS) ages 22+ predominantly earning $100,000+.” Sound familiar? It’s precisely the strategy that monumentally failed the company, beginning in Q2 2017. And, perhaps most intriguingly, it’s a strategy the CEO disavowed just last year, when he promised SoFi’s investors he would allow trading in fractional shares to target individuals who “can’t afford to buy their first stock”, and therefore, as the WSJ reporter notes, would be “unlikely to have expensive degrees from fancy schools.” In other words, SoFi was going to additionally target a completely different - and much less valuable - client base for their brokerage platform. But what’s the issue, you say? After all, shouldn’t companies be nimble, and rapidly adjust their strategy to reflect changing conditions in their target markets? And maximize market share at almost any cost? Perhaps.
Or perhaps not. In my opinion, SoFi, in their investor presentation, is now attempting to massively oversell the value of their current client base. Their user growth does, admittedly, seem somewhat impressive. But it appears to come at an incredibly high cost. Their financial services segment, where presumably most recent user growth has been generated, is obscenely unprofitable. Last year, it reported a $133M loss on $11M in revenue. It’s also quite clear that the growth there is decidedly inorganic, and therefore the staying power of those gains is questionable at best. That said, the biggest problem here is the shockingly low revenue figures, which I believe indicate that SoFi is acquiring massive numbers of “low-value” customers, and paying out the nose to do so. I know everyone here (myself included) loves to hate on Robinhood, but...in the 2Q 2020, their trading platform generated $180M in revenue, just from selling order flow. IN A SINGLE QUARTER. I really hate to admit it, but that’s incredibly impressive. On an annualized basis, RH is generating an incredible $55 ARPU by selling order flow. And it’s important to remember that SoFi’s user base is incredibly small, in comparison. In 2020, their “SoFi Invest” platform had a paltry 334k users. RH had over 13 million. SoFi, however, projects 150% YoY growth for their brokerage platform. To be completely honest? I think that’s bullshit. The massive influx of retail traders into the market due to COVID has already happened. And, to put it bluntly, Robinhood won. Sure, there may be something of a minor exodus from the platform due to their incredibly poor handling of the whole meme stock fiasco. But, seriously...you think those disgruntled traders will be going to SoFi? A platform with very limited capabilities (they still don’t have options trading?!) and a clunky UI that doesn’t even offer margin trading?!
“But not everybody trades options! Surely at least some of the Robinhood exiles will land at SoFi!!” Yes, this is probably true. But, unfortunately, options traders are the real cash cows for these discount brokerages. Of the $180M in revenue RH generated in Q2 last year, $111M was from selling order flow on options. That’s an absolutely massive 62%. And those traders now only have 2 choices: they are either going to forgive RH and stick with them, or move to a big-boy broker like TDA, Vanguard, Fidelity, or IBKR.The reality is this: only the least valuable Robinhood customers are likely to land at SoFi. Acquiring the more valuable customers further down the line will be incredibly expensive, if not outright impossible.
But SoFi is more than a brokerage firm, so let’s stick a valuation on that portion of their business and move on. Robinhood is planning a $20B IPO; let’s say the market triples that and gives it a 60B valuation. Robinhood, as of EoY 2020, has roughly 40x as many users, and their users are MUCH more valuable based on ARPU figures. But let’s be incredibly generous and value SoFi Invest at $2B.
Let’s see what else SoFi has to offer. The vast majority (83%, to be exact) of their revenue comes from their lending platform, which offers primarily student loan consolidation and refinancing and personal loans. Because both types of loans are non-collateralized, let’s treat them as identical. So how much are other student loan providers worth? Turns out, not a whole lot. Navient, for example, trades at just 6x earnings. At that multiple, SoFi’s lending operations would be worth just $500 million. But they’re a tech company, right!! So let’s multiply that by a factor of 10 for no reason whatsoever and agree that SoFi’s lending operations are worth $5B.
Finally, we have Galileo, their “technology platform.” What is Galileo? It’s primarily a payments processor, but it also provides bank account infrastructure services. Last year, it generated $103M in revenue; that same year, it was acquired by SoFi for $1.2B. Let’s assume, for no good reason, that SoFi underpaid by a factor of 3, and value Galileo at $3.6B. (Note that this is 36x revenue; another payment processor, Payoneer, just announced a DA with FTOC. At the current trading price, the market is valuing Payoneer at roughly 10x revenue.)
At Friday’s closing price, the implied valuation of SoFi is roughly $20B. Even with the silliest assumptions I could stomach, that’s at least double what I came up with. Yes, there have been a number of very positive changes at the company over the last 2 years. Their home loan business appears to at least generate them a small profit, and their unsecured debt portfolio appears to be much less risky that it was when things turned south in mid-2017. But rectifying some of their previous failures can hardly justify their massively bloated current valuation; even with ridiculous, completely unjustified multiples like the ones I arbitrarily chose above, there’s simply no way that kind of valuation can be justified.
Which brings us full circle. I don’t have a clue what the short-term price action of IPOE stock will look like. If I did, I would have opened a position in it last Friday. But I can assure you that the current implied valuation is completely nonsensical. Maybe you will buy the stock, and find a “greater fool” to sell it to at a much higher price sometime in the near future. Perhaps you will double your money overnight. Maybe you will hold it for 10 years, and by then SoFi will have eclipsed even JP Morgan. Despite the decidedly unexceptional nature of all of their offerings, maybe the “one-stop-shop” approach to personal finance will make them an unstoppable juggernaut. But understand that you’re making a gamble. A huge gamble. On a company that is attempting to execute a solid turnaround strategy, but has not yet succeeded. My advice? Stick to the tried and true strategy of this sub. As difficult as it may be sometimes, do not forget the rules of the game. In almost all cases, once you stop playing the game, the game plays you.
GLTA.

Never Blindly Follow All "Stock Market" YouTubers | Possible Exposed Fraud [Tom Nash] & The 5 Reasons Why I Believe Tom Nash Is Lying

Hello everyone! This isn’t my usual kind of post, but man, I can’t stand to see how people just follow every freaking YouTuber out there blindly! In this post, we are going to talk about why I believe Tom Nash may be a fraud, so please do have some patience and read the full post, as I will go through an in-depth research of his past and his claims.
~Very Long Post~
Let’s start by talking about who Tom Nash is & says he is. He is a new & trendy “finance & stock market” YouTuber which has recently passed 150K subscribers after exploding during this retail investor boom, but here is a short video from his YouTube describing himself.
In the video he is claiming he is a former “senior financial analyst” which is very hard to believe in my opinion after doing a lot of research about him.
So let’s go through the 5 reasons I believe he is lying about his past & why you should never take anything any YouTuber out there says for granted and you should do your own research as well:
1) Let’s start with the biggest one, his valuation methods are flawed
Even though he has posted some videos that have panned out, it’s very hard to differentiate good analysis from pure luck in this recent bull market, even monkeys could throw darts at stocks in the past 11 months and be right after the March sell-off.
I was pretty curious of his valuation methods so I joined his channel membership and asked him a direct question, about his DCF valuation, to which he responded bluntly that I am doing things wrong. I also sent him a direct link to a well-known financial institute, where we can see that the most common cash flow used for financial modeling, which is the unlevered free cash flow, implies that you subtract any capital expenditures of the company, which contradicts the way he sees it and is plain wrong, it’s like he uses 2nd grade math, if you subtract a negative number then your cash flow actually increases, which doesn’t even make sense. How can something that costs you money be a positive on the free cash flow?
I’ll let you digest this as I will next show you some of his DCF valuations & how he uses absurd numbers and changes the formulas as he pleases just to reach some insane valuations for companies just to be catchy.
Here are a couple of short extracts from his Salesforce DCF calculations,
Exibit A - everything seems legit until here, now he starts with the biggest mistake in this DCF
Exibit B - I’ll be blunt you can never, ever add the Capex number to a DCF valuation, that literally throws the hole calculations off, but let’s continue…
Exibit C - So, using a discount rate of 6% is also insane, even with the current low interest rates, you should at least discount the average SP500 return, or use the WACC or any other type of metric, which is much safer than picking out a single company, as the SP500 has proven over long-stretches to be a great performer.
But yeah guys, this isn’t the first time he has done these kind of errors, you can see he is using most of these methods in many stock picks which are then spread out to thousands of new investors, who don’t really have the knowledge to test what he is saying. I’m just showing you here a couple of stocks like Dynatrace, Opendoor, Alibaba, Peloton, Salesforce as I showed in the previous video and even Apple that have been analyzed and spread to the public this way.
The other big issue with his valuations is that he is using insane long-term growth rates, as he used a 5% growth rate for Peloton to reach a higher valuation, so can you imagine? If Peloton grows at a 5% rate in perpetuity it means they should more than double the inflation rate every year and is way higher than any GDP growth the US has seen since 1984.
He is also implying that Peloton has no debt on it’s balance sheet, which is 100% false, as you can see HERE, he used the cash, cash equivalents & marketable securities to calculate the short term assets while completely ignoring the over $700M in accounts payable no to mention the other current liabilities which would add up to almost exactly the $1.4B in assets he added to his calculations.
But who knows guys? Maybe he is the real deal, as he has made some correct DCF implications for some stocks like Fortinet and FuboTV, by actually subtracting the Capex finally, though he doesn’t do this in every analysis, not even in the most recent ones while also keeping that big long-term growth rate at 5%, when I myself never use a bigger one than 4%.
Just for an example I took his CRM numbers and popped them up in my spreadsheets, and even given his methods I couldn’t quite get to the same results without manually editing numbers, as those implications resulted in a 7% undervaluation for the stock, while only adjusting the Capex to be a negative on the cashflows and not touching anything else that might be wrong in this DCF, resulted in a 10% overvaluation for the stock.
So, I think if he really was a 10+ years wall street analyst I don’t think he could have made these obvious mistakes.
2) So, Is Tom Nash whom he says he is or is he lying about his past?
HERE is the channel intro for his YouTube (Which I can't even see anymore, but i was lucky to download it a couple of days ago)
As you Can see, I don’t doubt that he actually went to Michigan or that he got and MBA, but I do doubt that all of his Successful “Senior” Financial analyst & consulting Career can be described with only a couple of weak-ass photos of him at an NBA game, or him casually at some kind of a course program as that is exactly what it looks like with the other guys in the back-left of the photo.
Also, are we to believe all of this great financial career ended with him just taking out his fake plant from his office, while also smiling as he threw away at least a decent salary for a gamble on YouTube, which is very hard to do, especially when you are starting, as YouTube doesn’t really help the small guys.
His YouTube journey seemed to have started on the path of exposing guru’s and not financial advice, as he also says in the video, so how did he turn to do financial analysis on YouTube? Seems pretty convenient that he just became an expert in stock analysis as YouTube videos on such things were booming.
You can see HERE, he didn’t make a single stock analysis for the most part of 2020, which seems pretty off, as now most of his videos are on stock analysis, and while his channel was created in 2017, he conveniently deleted all the previous videos, which is another weird move to do.
I also went on a deep internet dive and did a lot of searching about him and I found this video podcast of him.
His main intro in this podcast is that he works as a consultant indeed, from Israel, and also the consultancy job isn’t for a financial company, it’s rather to help people on YouTube grow, so let's look at some extracts from the video:
Exibit I - We can see the main part of the talk is nothing about anything related to his financial past, let’s continue
Exibit II - It seems he started with a gaming channel, not even a fake guru channel, and I also found something about that FB GROUP which isn’t active anymore and all of the videos he made for that have also been deleted as you can see in this post from way back in 2018 as he was teaching how to make money on YouTube well through 2019, and was even giving out free workshop experiences as he was pumping out creator content which is miles apart from financial analysis (BTW, he is using the same freaking photo in his old banner & logo as his current one, just changing the green screen background), just look at his old YouTube banner (YouTube tips & tutorials)
Exibit III - Yeah, it seems he also did some video on how to promote on Reddit, and what comes next guys is literally mind blowing, how much more can this dude lie & hide?
Exibit IV - Well… Nothing to hide then… He even had a Fiverr account which was called tomernash you can see clearly HERE, that is his username, and when I went out to check it out right now, he is using a fake picture & and still might live in Israel, not the US, and on top of this he might not actually even be from Russia, which he has been saying over & over again on his channel. You can SEE he reiterates he is a certified YouTube consultant with no mention of his financial skills or certifications.
And even more, you see what picture he uses as a logo yeah? Well, I did a reverse google search and found the other guy also has a YouTube channel about kinetic cycling.
Maybe he was one of his clients that he reached a deal to use his picture, wtf, the more I dig in the more I am amazed of the lengths this man has gone to reach fame on YouTube.
Exibit V - So… A financial analyst with no sheets, no paper, no nothing, great stuff for a senior financial analyst, I literally can’t take more of this so let’s move to the next reasons
3) Getting in front of the lie?
I believe that’s what he was trying to do to, by making a VIDEO on this very subject in mid-2020 and popping up higher in the search rankings before his channel boomed.
In the video he clarifies that Tom Nash isn’t his real name, but he also restated that he was working for a big consultancy firm as recent as this summer, and that he does shit tons of stuff which is very hard to believe, as usually this big consultancy firms have different departments for different things that he mentioned in the video. You can still find that video on his channel if you are interested
But, by the way, how was he working on that job while also doing hundreds of Fiverr jobs as a YouTube consultant?
He also claims to not offering any courses, e-books or other stuff like this, which is false as i showed in the previous reasons with his past YouTube courses & other stuff, and as you will see in the next reasons, something smells really bad out here.
4) Claims about his past
I also took a deeper dive into more of his past, as you can see in his previous channel cover and info, he had only about 4K subscribers as he was doing guru video reviews on YouTube, but all of a sudden, he became a senior financial analyst from wall street that was living in Israel & doing Fiverr gigs, I don’t know what to say but it seems pretty fishy to me.
I also checked his LinkedIn page, and all of his skills & endorsements seem to be related to his YouTube skills and nothing about finance or the stock market.
But I also found his profile on Quora, where he wasn’t that active but still, well back in 2017 he was posting things about gaming & YouTube while supposedly still working on Wall Street as a financial analyst, and it’s interesting that there is no mention of him following anything related to stocks, finance, economy, accounting, statistics or anything other related to the stock market.
So yeah guys, I guess when you make a new type of video and it boosts your channel from just 10K subscribers all the way up to 150K subscribers, you are willing to push the limits and lie about your past just to keep everything going, as YouTube is a really good way to make money right now.
5) The Transformation
He has had even more channels in the past not only this one, which he has transformed overnight from a YouTube Channel Reviewer to a Guru Reviewer and finally to a financial analyst , as He created a second & third YouTube account called GearlyReviews where he reviews electronics and EuroBall where he only posted 2 videos.
I also searched him through his Reddit posts and only could find things related to marketing & social media, nothing about finance yet again.

So, my personal opinion which I doubt to be wrong guys, if there is a case of a dubious & fishy person out there, he is one of them.

I believe that he has never worked as a senior financial analyst and especially not a stock market, asset or any other type of equity analyst.
Most of his stock picks are small-caps that are highly volatile or a couple of recent high flyers which are very catchy to any YouTube audience.
There are many things wrong about the picture he has painted about himself even though he has gone through a lot to try and erase his past. The fact that there are no mentions of things from the wall street or consulting firm, bad stock analysis and methods, fishy and dubious moves of his YouTube channels and especially fishy things about him being a consultant & analyst in early 2020 while he was already doing YouTube and other stuff back in 2017-2018 really makes me not want to buy his story.
Folks, be careful out there, you can find a lot of YouTubers out there who make more money from their advice giving on YouTube, Patreon or other kind of subscriptions and courses, compared to the actual money they are making or have ever made in the stock market.
So yeah guys, I don’t want to make a final judgment on this guy, but you should consider everything I have showed about him and all the problems with his past & his financial methods & just remember as always in a bull market everyone is an expert & genius, while in a bear market you can’t find any of these people as they all flee.
Later edit: He has currently disabled his Fiverr gigs, learned Russian and deleted the profile image LOL
SEARCH / PROFILE / RUSSIAN
Thank you everyone for reading🙏 Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion! Have a great day and see you next time❗

FAQ and a Welcome from the Moderators

Welcome to weedstocks. Before you read this post, please take a few seconds to read the rules in the sidebar. We've had an influx of new users recently and the mods have been working overtime trying to keep the usual quality you expect to find here. As such, we're being strict with the rules.
If you post low-effort content (including pumping/bashing), if you go off-topic, or if you're disrespectful to another weedstocks member, you will hear from the mods.
Finally, please know that we have tools that keep new users from posting. This is to combat bots and spam. New accounts will need to wait 30 days before creating a post or 7 days before being able to leave a comment within a post. We have also implemented a temporary karma requirement, so if you're a new account, please try to engage elsewhere on reddit to learn how to use reddit before posting here.
1. What stocks should I buy?
If this is your first question, in my opinion, you're going about investing incorrectly. No one can tell you what stock to buy. It depends on a lot of factors that are personal to you. What is your risk level? How long are you holding? Why do you want to invest in cannabis companies? Every investor is different and has their own reasons for investing.
Instead, you should be asking: What companies should I look into?
You'll likely get many replies. Some replied might be good. Others might be terrible. You cannot trust random people on the internet to give you investing advice. You can listen to their opinion, but you need to do your own research (we call this research "Due Diligence" or DD for short).
2. How do I research a company?
Start with Google. Type in the company name followed by "investor relations." This should bring you to the companies website specifically for investors like yourself. It should have financial information, information about the company, and maybe even a FAQ.
I know not everyone likes reading, but if you want to make money, you need to read. If you're not reading, you're gambling. Read about the companies products, read their financial statements, read their MD&A.
When you're done that, go on YouTube or check out our past AMA threads for interviews with the company and it's CEO (found in the sidebar). Google the company more. Search their name in weedstocks. What products do they sell? Are those products well reviewed? Etc.
This will take time. You can't rush proper due diligence. If you're worried you'll miss out by spending so might time researching, then you're going to run into issues in the future. Buying based on hype is not a solid investment strategy.
3. How do I buy stocks?
Most banks have some sort of trading platform. If you have a savings account, you might want to check to see if they offer the ability to buy/sell shares. Just like with stocks, you should do some research one which platform is best for you. Not all are created equal. Some offer free trading (you don't have to pay a fee to buy/sell stock), but in those cases, there are certain limitations and catches. Others will have a small fee for each stock you buy/sell, but will generally be more stable.
4. What are derivatives (options, forwards, swaps, futures)?
If you have to ask this question, you should not be considering them.
5. What is an ETF? Are there cannabis ETFs?
To put it simply, an ETF is a collection of stocks managed by someone else. You can buy an ETF exactly like buying a stock. This is a way to diversify your investment over multiple companies without having to buy all those companies yourself. This could means it's less risky, but it could also be more risky depending on the stocks within the ETF.
Yes, there are cannabis ETFs. You should research them exactly like you would another company.
6. What is the TSX, NASDAQ, CSE, OTC, NYSE?
These are what are known as "Stock Exchanges." They are the market places where stocks are bought and sold. Your trading platform should have access to most of these markets by default, but this is something to look at when deciding on the platform you use.
US cannabis companies can't list themselves on US stock exchanges as cannabis isn't federally legal, so most of them are found on the TSX, OTC, or CSE instead.
7. Should I invest on margin? Should I take out a loan to invest?
If you have to ask this question, you should not be considering it. This is a highly personal decision and depends entirely on your financial situation. Remember, there is not such thing as a sure thing.
8. When will Cannabis be legalized in the US?
No one knows. There is no specific date and no guarantee it will actually happen. It's more likely, now that democrats control all 3 branches of the US government, but just because it's likely does not mean it's guaranteed.
9. When is the Tilray/Aphria merger and how will it affect me? Is their an arbitrage opportunity?
We don't know the exact merger date, but it is likely to close in the second quarter of 2021.
Under the terms of the deal, Aphria shareholders are expected to receive 0.8381 shares of Tilray stock for each share they own of Aphria. Tilray shareholders will simply keep their shares.
As for an arbitrage opportunity, there are always risks with merger arbitrage. Right now, the biggest is that the merger might not go through.
10. A company is being shorted X%. I should invest, right?
This is another one of those "If you have to ask, then the answer is no" questions.
To put it simply, to "short" a stock means that you expect the share price to go down.
If a company is being shorted, it's usually because other investors (who, if you're asking this question, likely know more than you) believe the company is not worth the current share price. If the short % is high, that means they REALLY think the company is not worth the current share price. Short positions usually indicate that a share price is too high.
This could be because their management is bad, the company is losing money, their products have terrible reviews, or their product/service is becoming more irrelevant with new technology. If you've done your due diligence, you should be able to tell why a stock is being shorted. If you disagree, then you can buy long.
Gamestop (GME) was a rare situation where investors shorted so much that other investors were able to take advantage in a unique way. This is not common and should not be attempted without first realizing the risk or understanding what you're doing.
11. Are all pot stocks the same? (courtesy of u/xtr_trek)
Definitely not! There are Canadian companies (called Licensed Producers - LP's) operating in Canada's legal market. There are American companies (called multi-state operators - MSO's) operating on a state by state basis. There are ancillary companies, providing things like lights, nutrients, banking services. And there are sector ETF's that encompass various pieces of the above.
Within each of those groups, there are also major differences between the companies themselves, with wildly varying revenues, valuations, footprints, and growth strategies. It's more important than ever to understand these differences before you invest!
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask them below and I'll include them above.
A special thanks to u/lookitsian who posted a FAQ previously for us. You can click here to view theirs. It has some additional information not included here.

Holding ALL TLRY and APHA stock and currently down $1.7 million and I'm still NOT SELLING! Buying MORE tomorrow! The sky is the limit.

AMC GOOD LONG TERM? (Buy/Hold)

$FTOC: a Fintech unicorn that awaits mooning

COI disclosure: own 8,147 shares of FTOC commons and plan to add more.
In my opinion, FTOC (Ftac Olympus Acquisition Corp) can be one of the best SPAC plays in 2021 if you enter it at the right place. Here is why:
Market Capitalization
One of the key parameters of a SPAC is its market cap, it will determine how big the target can be. This is the reason when we look at PSTH, CCIV, and IPOF, we know they can have targets like Stripe, Lucid, etc. Here is a quick summary of active SPACs with at least $1.9 Billion market cap (pulled from Spacktrack as of 10:40 PM 1/26/2021, sorted by Market Cap)

SPAC	Market Cap	Status
CCIV	$6,323,850,138	Rumor with Lucid
PSTH	$5,502,002,796	No target
BFT	$3,058,765,111	DA with Paysafe
IPOF	$1,998,124,945	No target
IPOE	$1,969,231,219	DA with SoFi
FTOC	$1,911,697,949	Rumor with Payoneer

Just read this table, and you can see where my impression of "hidden gem" FTOC came from. There is only 1 SPAC with rumor AND has a larger market cap than FTOC, which is...read after me...see see ivy...
But what does it really mean: the large market cap guarantees FTOC can find a solid target even their talk with Payoneer stalls. There are quite a few fintech companies with valuation above 5 billions are waiting on the sideline: Plaid, BlockFi, etc...
The large market cap also defines the true floor of FTOC, in a day and age of IPOF with no target but trading at $15 premium, it is reasonable to speculate FTOC will not fall far below $11 in the worst case.
FTOC Team
FTOC is led by chairman (or chairwoman if we are using the right term) Mrs. Betsy Cohen. Betsy is a name tied with fintech for decades. She is the founder of Jefferson Bank, and the second female law professor after RBG on the east coast, and she owned a law firm. She has experiences all over the globe in Hong Kong, in Brazil, in Spain...Unlike many SPAC heads (looking at you Gary Cohn), she has no baggage whatsoever and just a clean trail of fabulous career.
She and her Bancorp are serial fintech SPAC sponsors, with the last merged one being FTIV (FinTech Acquisition Corp), and the next one about to IPO in several days: FTAC (Athena Acquisition). FTAC will be her seventh fintech SPACs, and you can see she is starting a Greek Mythology name convention, Olympus, Athena...The imminent IPO of FTAC also signals that FTOC is making progress...
CEO of FTOC is Ryan Gilbert, a guy with 20 years specialized in payment processing, which we will mention later why it is critical to have Ryan on board.
Rumor Target: Payoneer
We always hear about unicorn companies, but Payoneer is truly a unicorn with infinite growth potential. It is a global payment processing company focusing on B2C and C2C. Founded in New York City in 2005, it now operates in roughly 200 countries with a total of 1,500 employees spread across 21 countries. Private investors of Payoneer include CBC, Viola Ventures, Pingan (owns the tallest skyscraper in Shenzhen), Wellington Management, and others. They had 300M revenue in 2019 alone.
What makes Payoneer so special compared to other payment processors such as Paypal, Western Union, Square or even the most recent SPAC Paysafe (BFT). Well Payoneer is pretty good at establishing themselves in emerging markets such as SE Asia, India, Brazil, Africa. They have a long list of partners with big names like Airbnb, eBay, JD.ID, Shopee...
Here is the bombshell: on Jan 25th, eBay announced to all the Chinese sellers, that it will move away from Paypal and mitigate all sale payouts to Chinese sellers to Payoneer. All Chinese sellers will be required to register a Payoneer account starting in March. This news is so new it has not yet been picked up by major Western news outlets, but most biggest Chinese news outlets like Finance Sina have reported it on 1/26. Expect this to be a major catalyst once it is circulated here.
But honestly most people will look at Payoneer on their similarity to Paysafe, because of SPAC. The answer to this question is Payoneer and Paysafe are actually not quite alike. Paysafe has an emphasis on gaming and gambling. Even though they had 1 billion revenue in 2016, Paysafe was cutting employees during 2020, when you have to question how can a fintech be affected by pandemic that much? While Payoneer is hiring left and right and expanding their operation, and just had their China Summit in December. This comparison does set up the floor for FTOC if the rumor is indeed confirmed, which I expect it will not be lower than $17 (Paysafe/BFT as of 1/26).
Risk
FTOC has been trading between $12 and $13 since the rumor broke on Bloomberg in 1/20/2021. With all the short squeezes happening today, it touched lower $12 with an aboslute low day volume, while most SPACs are red and probably equally affected by GME. At the price of $12, you have absolutely minimal risk to lose, and so much to gain. As I mentioned above, FTOC will not fall below $11 even the deal does not strike, it will surely find another good or even better target. Fintech and EV are the buzz words in SPAC right now. But honestly with 97% of Bloomberg rumor confirmed, and Betsy Cohen, I would bet my left testicle this deal will go through.
The upside of FTOC depends on several factors, timing is one of them. Betsy Cohen has a very consistent history of delivering DA on time, just look at FTIV timeline:

Nov 20th. 2020: Bloomberg rumor of Perella Weinberg look for SPAC to go public
Nov 30th, 2020: Bloomberg rumor of talk with FTIV
Dec 30th, 2020: DA signed

If we expect a similar timeline for FTOC:

Jan 20th, 2021: Bloomberg rumor of talk with FTOC
Feb 20th, 2021: DA signed?

The opportunity cost is really low given you just need to hold it for less than a month, with catalysts are on the way (eBay news).
TLDR: FTOC is a large cap SPAC led by fintech old hands, with rumor target being a unicorn, and trading at a price with minimal risk.

biggest gambling companies in the us video

In this article we are going to list the 15 largest gambling companies in the world. Click to skip ahead and jump to the 10 largest gambling companies in the world. Gambling is addictive, just Flutter Entertainment is one of the biggest gambling companies. According to available data, the net revenue of this company during 2019 was recorded at US $2,897.17 million. This company operates under various names like Paddy Power, Sky Bet, Sportsbet.com.au, Tilt Poker and Timeform. Of course, the largest gambling companies in the world thrive on this addiction and make their billions counting on the very intrinsic nature of people and their addiction to the rush, power and These are just a few of the main reasons why more and more people are getting hooked to online gaming and gambling companies. Let us now spend some time getting to know about some of the biggest brands of online companies. It will help our readers to have better information and knowledge which they can use for getting hooked toa certain brand or name. The Big Brands. 888 Holdings. 888 Holdings Thus, to keep up with the gambling industry, here are the 5 Biggest Gambling Companies in the World. The gambling market is made up of the American, European, Asian and African Market with the Asia being the largest. However, 6 of the largest companies in the world are from the UK and 4 from the US. On the other hand, Asia only has a few large It is hardly surprising then that some of the biggest gambling firms in the world are located in the US. Of the 12 biggest casino gaming companies in existence, more than six are based in the US. Among these are the Las Vegas Sands and MGM Resorts. Other big gambling firms in the country are Wynn Resorts and Penn National Gaming. Exchange-traded funds with exposure to US gambling companies have performed strongly recently on the back of vaccine optimism. DraftKings and Wynn Resorts Limited were both up 20% last week and MGM Resorts International was up 10% and this has helped the the VanEck Vectors Gaming ETF and the Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF to catch a bid. Consumer-related stocks such as gaming are GVC Holdings is one of the largest sports betting companies and gaming groups. With its unique proprietary technology platform, GVC offers casino, poker, bingo, and sports betting under some of the industry’s most popular online betting brands including partypoker, CasinoClub, Betboo, Bwin, Foxy Bingo, and Sportingbet. Based on the overall revenue of the top 10 online gambling companies in the world are: International Game Technology PLC : USD 4.83 billion GVC Holdings PLC (Ladbrokes Coral Group) : USD 4.14 billion bet365 : USD 4.03 billion Scientific Games : USD 3.36 billion Paddy Power Betfair : USD 2.64 billion William Hill PLC : USD 2.28 billion The Stars Group : USD 2.02 billion Playtech : USD 1.75 billion Kindred Group PLC : USD 1.28 billion 888 Holdings PLC : USD 0.54 billion After the Ladbrokes didn't feature in our 2015 list of top 10 biggest online gambling companies. This spot was held by Bwin.party. #8 - Amaya Gaming Group (Worth: $1.90 Billion) - Down 5 Spots. The Amaya Gaming Group is the largest Canadian online gambling company but this year sees it fall five places in our list. Last year Amaya Gaming Group came in at

biggest gambling companies in the us top

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The Five Biggest Gambling Companies In The USA

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We need to talk about NOK

Stuff for new traders (No GME Discussion)

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#WEWANTCHANGE - GUIDE - UPVOTE THIS!! SO THE DEVS/YOUTUBERS CAN SEE IT /ANSWER TO RAIYUDEN FEEDBACK VIDEO

Here is your step by step guide!!

EDIT: UPDATE 02/05 2021!

(YOUTUBERS THAT MADE A FEEDBACK VIDEO)

(1. Preparation) WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

(2. ACTION) Copy/PASTE the following:

(3 Spread the message)

A Hint to this this thread

B Post your feedback here

(WHAT WHALES/Japanese citizens CAN DO)

WHY DO YOU EVEN PLAY THE GAME?

My opinion:

WHAT I WISH LEGENDS WAS:

WHAT THEY NEED TO DO (in my opinion)

1. Introduce long term gamemodes

2. REBALANCE

3. INTRODUCE MORE SKILL/SKILL BASED Characters

4. COSMETICS

5. The "little" Stuff

CONCLUSION:What would we get after all these changes?

THE Dragonball Legends YOU DESERVE

A game you want to play the entire time, without ever getting finished.

A game you want to spend a lot of money on, since you know you always can use your characters

A game that stays exciting the entire time.

YOUR Dragonball Legends Community