40 MONEY MAKING GAMES OF 2021. GET PAID UP TO $3000
40 MONEY MAKING GAMES OF 2021. GET PAID UP TO $3000
How do free apps make money and how you get profit from
10 Apps You Probably Don't Know Can Earn You Extra Money
How Much Money Can You Earn With an App in 2019? | Fueled
8 smartphone apps that make you free money - Which?
7 Real Ways You Can Make Money Playing Video Games
15 Best Money Making Apps That Pay Cash for 2021
How to Make Money from Mobile Apps - BuildFire
How Can You Make Money by Developing a Mobile App?
How to Create an App and Make Money - AppInstitute
apps u can make money off of
apps u can make money off of - win
The real DD on SLV, the worlds biggest short squeeze is possible and we can make history
Update 2/4 - someone went ahead and spelled out the mechanics of the squeeze quite well and I would like to give their post attention https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lc8vgo/slv_is_not_going_to_get_squeezedslv_is_the_trojan/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Update 2/2 - I am able to comment again. I messaged several mods on Reddit and the mod account on Twitter. None of them responded but it appears I am able to comment again so I assume one of them lifted my ban Update 2/1 - I have been banned from posting on WSB. I guess they aren’t yet deleting my post here given the media attention. If this was a rogue mod I’d appreciate being restored the ability to post on WSB. I’m open to talking to any mods Update 1/31 - there have been tons of 'what to buy' questions so I added a clarity post, hope it helps. It's also getting downvoted to hell because its not about GME so that's discouraging. The speed at which the downvotes flew in makes me think someone made bots to crush new posts related to SLV (or maybe anything not GME). It makes no sense for this post to have 93% upvotes and my new one to have 28%. I have not sold my GME to buy SLV. I had a small pre-existing position in leaps I bought months ago. Created an official Twitter handle not sure if I’ll use it, but didn’t want anyone to impersonate me on there Here is the longer DD for the short squeeze case for SLV, a follow-up from my shorter post a few hours ago. Note that I talk in first person as this is something I’m going to do. Everyone is free to do as they individually please and copy my trade if they’d like to. I think it’s absurd that forces at be think this forum is manipulating by posting publicly but that’s where we are at right now. First things first, I'm not doing this until the GME rise is done. I am long GME but am going long SLV immediately after. Update 1/29: due to the manipulation and collusion of citadel, hedge funds, and brokers to change the rules and rig the game in their favor. Who likely knew ahead of time and bought puts right before and calls at the bottom, GME is too important to abandon still. SLV is still my next play but GME needs to go to $1000 and these people need to go to jail. If you just want to know what to buy skip to the end I present 2 investment DDs in this post, the short squeeze and the fundamentals. If you want to see what to buy The short squeeze: Buy SLV shares and SLV call options to force physical delivery of silver to the SLV vaults. Also buy physical silver bullion. The best possible thing would be to take physical delivery in the futures market if you have access to do so. The silver futures market has oscillated between having roughly 100-1 and 500-1 ratio of paper traded silver to physical silver, but lets call it 250-1 for now. This means that for every 250 ounces in open interest in the futures market, only 1 actually gets delivered. Most traders would rather settle with cash rather than take delivery of thousands of ounces of silver and have to figure out to store and transport it in the future. The people naked shorting silver via the futures markets are a couple of large banks and making them pay dearly for their over leveraged naked shorts would be incredible. It's not Melvin capital on the other side of this trade, its JP Morgan. Time to get some payback for the bailouts and manipulation they've done for decades (look up silver manipulation fines that JPM has paid over the years). The way the squeeze could occur is by forcing a much higher percentage of the futures contracts to actually deliver physical silver. There is very little silver in the COMEX vaults or available to actually be use to deliver, and if they have to start buying en masse on the open market they will drive the price massively higher. There is no way to magically create more physical silver in the world that is ready to be delivered. With a stock you can eventually just issue more shares if the price rises too much, but this simply isn't the case here. The futures market is kind of the wild west of the financial world. Real commodities are being traded, and if you are short, you literally have to deliver thousands of ounces of silver per contract if the holder on the other side demands it. If you remember oil going negative back in May, that was possible because futures are allowed to trade to their true value. They aren't halted and that's what will make this so fun when the true squeeze happens. Edit for more detail: let’s say there’s one futures seller who gets unlucky and gets the buyer who actually wants to take delivery. He doesn’t have the silver and realizes it’s all of a sudden damn difficult to find some physical silver. He throws up his hands and just goes long a matching number of futures contracts and will demand actual delivery on those. Problem solved because he has now matched the demanding buyer with a new seller. The issue is that the new seller has the same issue and does the exact same thing. This is how the cascade effect of a meltup occurs. All the naked shorts trying to offload their position to someone who actually has some silver. My goal is to ensure that I have the silver and won’t sell to them until silver is at a far higher price due to the desperation. The silver market is much larger than GME in terms of notional value, but there is very little physical silver actually readily available (think about the difference between total shares and the shares in the active float for a stock), and the paper silver trading hands in the futures market is hundreds of times larger than what is available. Thus when they are forced to actually deliver physical silver it will create a massive short squeeze where an absurd amount of silver will be sought after (to fulfill their contractually obligated delivery) with very little available to actually buy. They are naked shorting silver and will have to cover all at once and the float as a percentage of the total silver stock globally is truly miniscule. The fundamentals: The current gold to silver ratio is 73-1. Meaning the price of gold per ounce is 73 times the price of silver. Naturally occurring silver is only 18.75 times as common as gold, so this ratio of 73-1 is quite high. Until the early 20th century, silver prices were pegged at a 15-1 ratio to gold in the US because this ratio was relatively known even then. In terms of current production, the ratio is even lower at 8-1. Meaning the world is only producing 8 ounces of silver for each newly produced ounce of gold. Global industry has been able to get away with producing so little new silver for so long because governments have dumped silver on the market for 80 years, but now their silver vaults are empty. At the end of WW2 government vaults globally contained 10 billion ounces of silver, but as we moved to fiat currency and away from precious metal backed currencies, the amount held by governments has decreased to only 0.24 billion ounces as they dumped their supply into the market. But this dumping is done now as their remaining supply is basically nil. This 0.24 billion ounces represents only 8% of the total supply of only 3 billion ounces stored as investment globally. This means that 92% of that gold is held privately by institutions and by millions of boomer gold and silver bugs who have been sitting on meager gains for decades. These boomers aren't going to sell no matter what because they see their silver cache as part of their doomsday prepper supplies. It's locked away in bunkers they built 500 miles from their house. Also, with silver at $23 an ounce currently, this means all of the worlds investment grade silver only has a total market cap of $70 billion. For comparison the investment grade gold in the world is worth roughly $6 trillion. This is because most of the silver produced each year actually gets used, as I have mentioned. $70 billion sounds like a lot, but we don’t have to buy all that much for the price to go up a lot. **If the squeeze happens, it would be like 40 years worth of their gains in 4 months ** The reason that only 8 ounces of silver are produced for every 1 ounce of gold in today's world is because there aren't really any good naturally occurring silver deposits left in the world. Silver is more common than gold in the earth's crust, but it is spread very thin. Thus nearly every ounce of silver produces is actually a byproduct of mining for other metals such as gold or copper. This means that even as the silver price skyrockets, it wont be easy to increase the supply of silver being produced. Even if new mines were to be constructed, it could take years to come online. Finally, most of this newly created silver supply each year is used for productive purposes rather than kept for investment. It is used in electronics, solar panels, and jewelry for the most part. This demand wont go away if the silver price rises, so the short sellers will be trying to get their hands on a very small slice of newly minted silver. The solar market is also growing quickly and political pressure to increase solar and electric vehicles could provide more industrial demand. The other part of the story is the faster moving piece and that is the inflation and currency debasement fear portion. The government and the fed are printing money like crazy debasing the value of the dollar, so investors look for real assets like precious metals to hide out in, driving demand for silver. The $1.9 trillion stimulus passing in a month or two could be a good catalyst. All this money combined with the reopening of the economy could cause some solid inflation to occur, and once inflation starts it often feeds on itself. What to buy: Edit 2/24: I now advocate buying PSLV for shares, physical metal if the premiums come back down, and if you want options then SLV is still ok for that. I will be putting 50% directly into SLV shares, and 50% into the $35 strike SLV calls expiring 4/16. This way the SLV purchase creates a groundswell into silver immediately that then rockets through a gamma squeeze as SLV approaches $35. Price target of $75 for SLV by end of April if the short squeeze happens. Edit: for the part of your purchases going into shares, some people recommend PSLV because they think SLV might start lying about having the silver in their vault. Or that the custodian will be double counting, ie claiming that the same silver belongs to multiple people (banking on the fact that people wont all try to get their silver at once). So if you buy SLV shares and calls, that's great. But I think it could be prudent for us to buy options in SLV (no options on PSLV) and shares in PSLV. It all depends on how paranoid you want to be. There is a lot of paranoia in the precious metals world. Alternate options: - buying physical silver; this also works but you pay a premium to buy and sell so its less efficient and you take fewer silver ounces off of the market because of the premium you pay - going long futures for February or March; if you are a rich bastard and can actually take physical delivery of 1000s of ounces of silver by all means do so. But if you simply settle for cash you are actually part of the problem. We need actual physical delivery, which is what SLV demands and is why SLV is the way to go unless you are going to take delivery - miners; I don’t recommend buying miners as part of this trade. Miners will absolutely go up if SLV goes up, but buying them doesn't create the squeeze in the actual silver market. Furthermore, most silver miners only derive 30-50% of their revenue from silver anyways, so eventually SLV will outperform them as it gets high enough (and each marginal SLV dollar only increases miner profits by a smaller and smaller percentage) Details on SLV physical settlement: When SLV issues shares, the custodian is forced to true up their vaults with the proportional amount of silver daily. From the SLV prospectus: "An investment in Shares is: Backed by silver held by the Custodian on behalf of the Trust. The Shares are backed by the assets of the Trust. The Trustee’s arrangements with the Custodian contemplate that at the end of each business day there can be in the Trust account maintained by the Custodian no more than 1,100 ounces of silver in an unallocated form. The bulk of the Trust’s silver holdings is represented by physical silver, identified on the Custodian’s or, if applicable, sub-custodian's, books in allocated and unallocated accounts on behalf of the Trust and is held by the Custodian in London, New York and other locations that may be authorized in the future." Join me brothers. Lets take silver to the moon and take on the biggest and baddest manipulators in the world. Please post rocket emojis in the comments as desired. Disclaimer: do your own research, make your own decisions, everything here is a guess and hypothetical and nothing is guaranteed, not a financial advisor, I have ADHD and maybe other things too. Bear case: silver does tend to sell off if the broader market plunges so it’s not immune to broad market sell off. It’s also the most manipulated market in the world so we are facing some tough competition on the short side
I want you to understand this. Truly. I like GameStop. I like $GME. I believe in the long term plan (or what I/we think is the plan, anyway). I bought a Pro Membership and have put in orders through the app I downloaded. I think they'll kill 4Q earnings in March. I THINK GAMESTOP IS A GOOD COMPANY. I think Cohen and his team bring something to the table that will truly turn around the company. I think CNBC and particularly Melissa Lee can go suck an egg with their dismissiveness of the bull case, which they barely even pretend to have considered. I think the stock was and has been manipulated as fuck. My personal belief, which I require nobody else to share, is that Ryan Cohen and gang also still have more buying to do, and their buying alone will drive the price up. But my belief is that they have no interest in buying at this price, or they'd have done so. I believe they're waiting for the price to fall back toward the fair market value. And I believe they may force the issue by issuing more shares. That's what I believe, and why I'm not holding positions right now. I probably will in the future, but my personal opinion is the time is not right. I wrote these posts: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l6n4lj/on_leverage_supply_demand_how_we_got_here_gme/ https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l6rsol/heres_the_letter_i_wrote_to_my_congressman/ (EDIT: lol I just realized both of those posts aren't visible since they were removed by the mods. They were pro-retail and pro-GME) I want to see people make money on this. Better yet, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE MONEY ON THIS. Further, what Robinhood did, as well as Webull, Interactive Brokers, E*Trade, EToro, and tons of other brokerages did, was fucked up. Everybody here agrees. But you guys are actually fucking insane. We dont have a problem with the stock. We have a problem with YOU. Many of the people who have joined WSB in the past two weeks are brand new to investing. And that's okay! But the new people (7 million new versus 1.5 million old) have done the following:
Spent weeks downvoting every single ticker besides GME, AMC, BB, and NOK
Failed to realize there is no short squeeze on BB or NOK
Failed to realize the NOK spam was purely from bots
While you've realized there were bots that were bought, you missed (probably because you were spamming rocket emojis and gorillas) that the bots were spamming NOK.
Continually asked what stock WE are going to MANIPULATE next
Tried to educate the crowd on terminology you just googled ten minutes earlier.
I saw one person disagreeing with a long-time and well-respected poster here by telling other Apes to ignore that post, and to instead read a copied and pasted two paragraph blurb from investopedia that explained the effect of a stock split on a short position.
Made up securities laws and terminology that doesn't actually exist
Short ladders? Every time a price falls from a peak it's a short ladder? EVERY TIME?
You don't think that there's a natural reversion in the balance of supply & demand after a stock runs up thousands of percent in a matter of days?
With zero understanding of market mechanics, explaining to others why price action is fake
"Look how low volume is on this candle! It's not a real drop!"
Called people who have been involved in this play since Summer 2020 "paperhand pussies" for taking profits when the price of the stock went up 1,500%
Turned WallStreetBets into a political activism forum
Denying Reality
S3 partners is not lying to you. They and Ortex are consistently the best sources of difficult-to-obtain information on short interest. Just because they're reporting that short % of float is reduced FROM THE HIGHEST LEVEL THAT ANY STOCK HAS EVER HAD does not mean that they're lying to you.
Spammed low-effort memes and easily-Googleable questions on the new submissions
When your posts were taken down, you posted AGAIN
Accused anybody with an opposing opinion of being a hedge fund shill/bot
AGGRESSIVELY spamming to find buyers to help you get out of your huge negative position
I want to gag every time I see somebody write "I'm not a financial advisor" following a post that makes that very clear
Moving the goalposts
"YOU ARE HERE on the VW short squeeze graph!"
"We finished above $325! Gamma squeeze!" (Personal confession, I almost fell for this one and I'm glad I sold before the plummet).
"Ok so there was no gamma squeeze Monday but Tuesday is the day!"
"Ok we fell another 50% Tuesday but definitely Wednesday!"
"Fuck it let's just harrass investor relations to help us!"
Accused the mods of being paid off by hedge funds for doing what they've always done, which is remove shit-tier posts from the front page
which you then posted again
and again
Completely ignored the rules of our subreddit
Market Manipulation --
No Pump & Dumps -- pressuring other people to buy low float stocks (such as GME) so that you can drive up buying demand and sell when you've decreased your losses is a scam.
Political Bullshit -- If you think "it's not about the money" then get the fuck out because it is absolutely about the money.
No Bullshitting -- There are so many of you advising others on their trades (followed by "This is not financial advice, am ape") while you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about aside from something you just read on Reddit 5 minutes ago, which was posted by somebody else who had no idea what the fuck they were talking about, which was based on a tweet they read 10 minutes before that from someone who DID know what they were talking about, but OP misinterpreted the meaning.
Believe it or not, that's against the rules. Just say you dont know. Or say nothing. There's actually no need to spam.
Gain & Loss Posts - nobody wants to see your Loss on one-third of a share of AMC. Come on.
YOLO - Your investment in one-third of a share of AMC is not a YOLO. A YOLO is DFV leveraging up his entire $55,000 account with positions in a single ticker and letting it ride or die.
I can't even find the others that I had in mind using the search tool because the entire list of YOLO's and DD's is filled with GME and AMC karma farming.
You have formed a cult. You've now decided, amongst yourselves, that anybody who is not in on your play and wants to discuss other things is just a paid hedge fund shill. Do you think that's a healthy mindset? If this is the investment that you truly want to make, and you feel you have an understanding of the risks, then fucking let it rip. I hope it works out. Seriously, I want you to make money. I like Gain porn a lot more than Loss porn. But stop bullshitting. Stop brigading. Stop spamming. You're driving us nuts. https://preview.redd.it/h7xqt1iw97g61.jpg?width=466&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc87b50bb806d2bedbb5aa0c3fa1ff56d19660b2
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'll definitely post a more thorough summary later, but here's a direct quote from the admins: After reviewing this situation based on input from both current and past moderators, we have decided to remove several moderators at the top of the list that were creating instability in the community. With regards to zjz coming back, that's a question only he can answer!
https://imgur.com/a/6mErVapscreenshots of the discord chat to sell out WSB Thread on wallstreetbets about whats going onThe mod is actively deleting comments which ask for proof or post the screenshot above Its still going on. Over at wallstreetbets everything is getting removed. While the removed Mods created wallstreetbetstest Proof of removed comments and posts: Post from u/zjz in wallstreetbets test about whats going on, WHICH GOT REMOVED What u/Stylus postet before it got REMOVED u/jamsi about whats going on, which also got REMOVED WSB own discord gets in the drama link 1link 2 Even here are posts about it removed link Comment from u/OlyBomaye about the removal from u/zjz: click >For any outsiders reading this, Zjz is the mod who has been around the longest, is most responsible for building the subreddit into what it is, has created all the bot mods that police the content of the sub, etc. He's the dude holding the whole thing together. He should have been the head mod in the first place but previous Subreddit Drama in early 2020 left a close personal friend of the original founder, who was removed by the admins for attempting to monetize the subreddit by selling investment classes run by noted losers of money, as the head mod. The actual head mod is generally inactive and has only recently returned to, apparently, personally profit off the recent growth and notoriety of the subreddit. WSB in scrambles. Additional notes/context from u/fufm Only other points I would add.. • He is really the only true voice that communicates consistently with the people • He has demonstrated again and again that his motivation is to make the sub a better place, with no regard for personal gain • His ideas are actually good. Like for instance, his angle on the Twitter thing was to make it an auto-algo generated thing based on overall trends in the sub. Infinitely better idea than the cringe factory bullshit they were posting there initially. • He actually gets the sub Removed Mods from wsb from u/DeathHopper: >Here's a screen shot of the recent mod changes: CLICK Megathread about the removing from mods in correlation with market pumps from u/brave_potato: click From u/frostfall_: >Zjz statement that was removed by new wsb mods: CLICK New Users made mods with full permission from u/MaiClay: click u/Tentings explaining whats going on for the uninitiated: >To try to explain it rather briefly in case you don't feel like reading other sources, the original foundemod of the sub was forcefully removed by admins last year after he attempted to monetize the sub by creating a real "e-sport like" trading competition, and he began shilling a trading group business that was rather shady (which he was found to have ties with).>>Fast forward to now, one of the top mods who has shouldered most of the responsibility for the sub, maintaining bots, interacting with the community, doing most of the mod duties, etc was stripped of his mod powers by the highest ranking mod of the sub. This higher ranking mod is a personal friend of the original founder, has been extremely inactive for the past year or so, and has only returned once the sub gained mainstream popularity. The mod that was ousted made a post that was hastily deleted stating that the highest rating mod and company have been making deals with outside entities in what is another attempt to monetize the sub in the way of movie deals, something to do with the Winklevoss twins, funneling all outside inquiries to private email addresses, etc. > >All in all, just Reddit drama. But the sub seems to have issues with top mods periodically attempting to monetize on recent attention. > >Edit: To add to this, all this occurred late last night when the majority of users were asleep. As of right now the sub is beginning to pick up in terms of activity due to people waking up. The current mod team (that ousted the mod that was held in high regard) brought on a bunch of new mods who have accounts that are less than a week old. These mods are now doing a rather effective job at deleting and banning anyone that brings up this abrupt change in leadership, and any mention of the mod that was kicked. With that said, most users over there are unaware of this change of leadership and unaware that the “captain of the ship” is “selling out” the subreddit. And of course, half the sub just doesn’t care and wants to talk about GameStop. u/disabledsexrobot (lol) did step down as mod to support u/zjz >Today has been a really bad day. I took notice at work today that u/bawse1 and u/zjz and other mods hand been kicked out by the old mods who once again has decided to try to attempt a take over and monetize the sub.During my time as a mod I have never even really spoken to them except for replying to grebfar in a thread. I've never really see them mod or run the subreddit in any capacity. It was fun while it lasted. u/zjz as a prevoius subscriber and moderator alongside you in wallstreetbets, thank you for all the incredible hard work you put into the bots that made it possible to moderate a sub of that size. I know you have worked your fingers to the bone tapping away at the keyboard to code those.To everyone else, I want you to know that I always loved wallstreetbets as a community and I in no way, shape or form wish to be associated with jartek and the other old mods. This is the second time they attempt to do a hostile take over of our beloved community. They're nothing but dishonest and deceptive. TL;DR: With what´s going on withGamestop Stock,wallstreetbetsgot over 7 million new Users, withNetflix Announcing to make a Movieabout it the inactive Mods (OG) at WSB are trying toProfit of of itand areremoving active Modsand makingNew created accountsMods with Full Permission. Theres evenSpeculation about a Pump & Dump Scheme edited for better Visibility
Boomer Old Money has bled and will get dirty going forward. Don’t be an idiot, Don’t poke the beehive with tweets, phone call harassment or callouts. Keep our head down and nose to the grindstone.
🚨🚨🚨Alert add - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-01-23/summers-says-markets-will-survive-reddit-traders-video - Crony Capitalism at its finest. They don’t want the competition on market forces or adapt to new technology for better researching and information sharing so now, they will lobby Congress to change the laws and they will do it quickly because they have the money to do it. Add 1 - please upvote and pin, make sure every retard reads this!!! It’s like a poker game, never show your cards, have poker face, and don’t ever count your money at the table. (Kenny Rogers i fucked up the quote but I’m retarded so whatever) Add 2- No to going “underground” either. We are an OPEN forum. People can come and go as they please just like a SIDEWALK OR STREET CORNER. Underground suggests organization lol. Fellow retards, many of you may not realize it but, the corporate world is fucking brutal and basically animalistic warfare. Don’t believe me? Read “Barbarians at the Gate” or watch the movie if you’re too retarded and you can’t read TV Movie Here. We made Citron and Melvin Bleed this week (Melvin had to get $1billion money loan Citron did it in 2018 on Tesla Loss) and they don’t like that. If you saw the letter they tweeted out you’d see why we gotta watch out Citron getting defensive laying the groundwork for a counter.. They are already setting up the groundwork to get law enforcement and SEC involved. They’ve alleged that some idiots allegedly sent death threats, harassed and spammed there office email and phones, etc. As of now, there is no proof that it happened but even so this is a forum and it’s not responsible for individual being assholes. Boomer old money will get dirty and ethically dubious to maintain power rather than innovate and compete. I promise you, They are already meeting with one another to figure a way to turn this forum off. Corporate espionage, hostile takeovers, and crowd-outs...all’s fair in love and war I guess. We’re a forum, not an organization or a firm, and we need to make that painfully clear to every fucker who says otherwise (boomers looking in and newbies here). Optics and a paper trail to boot will ensure WSB stays a forum for all to come and yell out their yolos, give DD, view loss porn, and brag about gains! This isn’t a firm, we’re basically a bunch of retards yelling on the street corner or at the NY Stock Exchange floor yelling to buy waffles (family guy scene - buy waffles aka this is us ) that’s not illegal, that’s actually how stocks have been in the past, where where one retard says “I hear business x has new shit, buy x!” Then everyone joins in the feeding frenzy to buy (or sell) x. We’re just a digital version. None of this twitter account bs that we thankfully shit them up ( we really need them to shut it down completely). Members here, do not go and poke the beehive. If a new member does this shit they may be an infiltrator from the firm trying to sabotage us from within so be on the lookout for other people’s behavior. Let’s play this smart, keep comments and shut here and let’s all go to infinite and beyond! 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
🚨🚨NOK vent thread. NOKle HEADS GET THE HELL IN HERE. WE NEED TO TALK. 🚨🚨
Ok so, first things first you assholes, I am not a bot. I have been in the fucking game for about seven years now. I don’t typically do posts like this and so this is fucking new to me. Anyways, it seems like a shit ton of you are falling out of favor with NOK. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you if you expected to gain a shit ton of money in a day, but what the fuck I have never seen such 🧻🤲🏻 in my fucking life for the past two days. Are you guys really just going to stand there and let the enemy beat the fuck out of us. And of course some of you are going to mention the total float as if that fucking matters because the stock is still cheap as fuck (for now lol 🚀) and because we managed to trade one fucking fifth of all the NOK stocks in circulation. They literally had to stop our asses from buying a couple of times. Just like you autistic retards I have lost thousands of dollars in this shit. My paychecks, birthday money, dividends, money from the sale of blue chips and Ark ETFs, etc. So where’s the upside? Well let me fucking tell you where the upside is and when you can expect to pull off the biggest fucking heist alongside GME and AMC Wall Street will have ever seen. 🔥🚀💸 NOK is well known to be the bigger beast when it comes to the BANG stocks (BB, AMC, NOK, GME). It has a fuck load of shares to go around and there’s a lot of paperhanded pussies out there, so I understand why it may be daunting to expect a Juggernaut like NOK to moon anytime soon. But it doesn’t have to be. NOK releases its earnings on Thursday and its expected to blow the competition out of the fucking water. I wouldn’t even be surprised at all if it were to get a higher price than ERIC in two weeks (hell, possibly by EOW). NOK even plans to merge with top tier companies in the near future due to their prowess in the 5G tech that they’re developing. The 🏳️🌈🐻 have had their big meaty claws ever since its ATH of $62 all those years ago. Do you really expect a change if you don’t fucking BUY and fucking HOLD. No, with a team of fucking retarded superstars in this sub, NOK is prepping for a fierce comeback in the upcoming weeks. GME is top dog right now, but let’s be honest. GME hype can’t last forever (even tho it can for a long time as long as we remain retarded). However being on team NOK makes me feel like I’m on a loosing, shitty ass baseball team and no one is hitting over .100 What’s the plan, Stan? The fucking plan is that you don’t buy market price. You look at the ask price and you fucking buy it. This is how we destroy walls. The $5 barrier battle today was hard fought and we fucking lost to the hedge funds. This next week is going to be fucking spectacular 🪄🚀🤲🏻💎 and I need to know if my fucking NOKle heads are even in it to win it or just downright frauds. You say NOK was a plan by the bots? Take a look at fucking BlackBerry. That shit took the same swerves NOK did that it’s pretty much identical. If NOK is a sham, then the idea of the BANG stocks is a sham. I know for a fucking fact you don’t believe that. I know that there’s dreamers in this sub. I dream just like you. I am trying to build a life just like you guys are. We are in something way bigger than ourselves so if you can for ONCE IN YOUR LIFE consider that maybe that the process is a trustable process then maybe we can win this shit. If NOK hits $50, I will literally buy new fucking silverware (like expensive handmade shit with sterling silver cutlery) and eat my own shit. I don’t give a fuck whether you’d want to see it or not, because honestly boys I’d eat my shit to go to the moon and I am 200% willing to take one for the team. This year, BANG is for real. So hedgefunds, keep your ears out for the NOK NOK sounds on the door. We’re pissed and we’re armed to the teeth. EDIT: General cheese reporting. Post this shit everywhere. I dont give a fuck. I WILL be producing a flank strategy tomorrow. People have to know goddamn it. Monday/Tuesday will close at $7 just give it time The bell doesn’t fucking ring until WSB says it fucking rings. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🥵🥵 EDIT 2: some of you pussies are asking where you can buy NOK. The easiest way to buy it is with that fucking app all the whores on Tinder beg for food money on: Cashapp. There are literally no fucking limits and if you want an extra 2 fucking shares then use this shit when you sign the fuck up and get $10 extra buckaroos: BKXDNGQ. I also want to make it clear that everyone should share their cash apps so that we can get that $10 extra to put into NOK. I’m only doing this for the small wagecucks so if you have the money to do so, then don’t bother. This is just the only thing on the top of my head that would help out in any way List of reasons to buy:
Most essential 5G patents in the world
Fastest 5G speeds recorded
Controls over 27% of the 4/5G market
First company contracted to set up internet on the moon (NASA)
Will receive MULTI-BILLION dollar settlements from ongoing litigations with Mercedes Benz and Lenovo
Technology provider and main collaborator of the National Security Center of Excellence 5G Cybersecurity Project (Federal 5G project)
Selected to be the main collaborator of the Hexa 6G European Union Project
Has pending Department of Defense contracts yet to awarded
Just sealed a contract with TMOBILE for US 5G roll out.
Has and will take market share from Huawei, already has secured multi-year deals with important Chinese companies
Blackrock increased their position to 333,000,000 shares during 2020, an increase of 21 million shares held from the year before (7% increase)
May also be getting back into the phone business as they are manufacturing phones in India
Vanguard Capital owns 160,000,000 shares and is continuously buying
Google Cloud announced a partnership with $NOK to Accelerate Cloud-Native 5G Readiness for Communications Providers
BB -- Blackberry AWS -- Amazon Web Services IVY -- Intelligent Vehicles Yo. I don't actually know if this stands for anything QNX -- Quick-Unix perhaps? It's a Unix-like embedded microkernel RTOS (real-time operating system) EOY -- end of year PT -- price target SP -- stock price EV -- electric vehicle SoC -- System on a Chip IoT -- Internet of Things TL;DR: Blackberry ($BB) is almost daily announcing new partnerships and new clients for their software, including new deals with companies that are just now or just this year launching autonomous vehicles that run on QNX software. The big kahuna of all these deals is BB's recent partnership with Amazon to go 50/50 into BB's software IVY, a scalable cloud-connected software platform designed for intelligent vehicle data gathering and data sharing. With Amazon's Jeff Bezos stepping down, and Andy Jassy filling his shoes, who was the CEO of AWS, BB will have some very firm support behind Amazon's new CEO. BB and Amazon are having a webinar Feb. 23rd about their partnership and IVY, which should be a strong catalyst moving forward. IVY beta earnings are projected to begin impacting BB's Q3 or Q4 earnings beginning in November this year, with IVY fully being integrated around the 2023 timeframe. Through a lot of reading and analysis, I believe BB has a four-tiered business model dating back as far as 2013 when BB's CEO John Chen was hired to begin the massive BB turnaround process. Tier 1 was development of QNX and IVY, lasting from 2013 to today and onward, however, Tier 2 overlaps Tier 1. Tier 2 was customer acquisition, primarily distributing their secure software in QNX, SecuSuite, Spark, and AtHoc. They secured 37 automakers during this time, including 9 of the top 10 automakers, over 106 governments from around the world, including all of G7 governments and 18 of G20 governments, as well as 77% of Fortune 100 companies, including partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Sony, XPENG, XPEV, NVIDIA, Intel, Qualcomm, Baidu, IBM, LG, Samsung, and others. Well if they have such an incredible market share, why are they so undervalued? The answer is that QNX was not the end-all-be-all product. It was the base that the rest would be built on. Particularly IVY, which is the real money-maker. Tier 3 is IVY beta, and Tier 4 is IVY distribution and subscription revenue streams. So why is IVY the big deal and not QNX? They are both big deals, but QNX was never designed to be the money-maker. They are charging a one-time fee per vehicle use. There is a bigger goal here, to secure their clients as their customers for the bigger product in IVY. They also need QNX is to be a secure system in order for IVY to be trustworthy and reliable. And it certainly is secure. QNX has ISO26262 certification, as well as US government clearance, NSA clearance, and CIA clearance. The US government uses QNX and Blackberry products. Just let that sink in. That should tell you something about its security. Anyways, IVY will be used in autonomous vehicle level 4 and level 5 communication (note that QNX is level 5 certified... it has a business moat just in its security level and clearance), as well as EV and gas vehicle data collecting and AI-powered data synthesis. See below for more details on IVY. Wrapping up this TL;DR, BB is going to do well this year as IVY unfolds, but will do even better in the next 2-5 years. I have a PT of 25 by EOY and a PT of 80 by 2023 EOY, and a PT of 160+ by 2025 EOY TL;DR: TL;DR: BB go up, but go slow for now because IVY revenue not here yet, but big fast later. Make big monies, BB is the future tech that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc will be building upon in the EV and IoT market
FAQs:
1) Why is Blackberry stock price going down? A: A few possible reasons. One, as of today the whole market is down. BB is connected to overall market swings as most companies are. Two, there may be some market manipulation by bearish financial institutions as there are a lot of calls expiring on 2/19. I would expect that BB SP to be volatile between $11 and $14 between now and then, and to move upwards after 2/19 and especially after 2/23 (Amazon + BB webinar). Three, there are bearish investors who still think BB is a phone company and don't understand the underworkings of BB's business strategy, their software, their patents, or their partners. Their revenue has been affected by coronavirus and has not been particularly phenomenal so far this year. 2) Should I invest now or later? A: First off, I'm not a financial advisor, these are just my opinions. Invest at your own risk. In my opinion, BB will see a large SP growth by EOY, anywhere from 50% to 150% growth by EOY. While revenue will likely not increase much this year, the partnership with Amazon and news regarding IVY will likely create new floors for their SP much higher than the current SP right now, at around the $12 SP 3) What's stopping competitors from building a similar product and hurting BB's business? A: There's a lot of reasons why BB has a huge moat right now. One, notice the partners that BB has with QNX. They've got all the big boys working them, aside from Apple and Tesla. Seeing as SpaceX runs on QNX, and seeing that Apple was trying to make a deal with Hyundai that did not go through, I think it is still possible that either Tesla or Apple or both companies could also make a deal with BB to use QNX as their OS system. BB worked to develop their QNX embedded microkernel OS for the last eight years or so. Anyone trying to step into the game now is far too late. Apple has the best chance of all companies, as it has its own OS and Apple knows security very well, but this still requires an entirely new system in order to work in the EV sector. Also, Apple announced recently that they would be developing their own EV, although they did not give much details beyond that statement. The likelihood that they are both working on the hardware and software side of this thing is slim given the large number of difficulties that come with certification as it relates to the cybersecurity software space. Regardless, I would suspect that either Apple or Tesla is the most likely to be competitors in this space, but neither company has successfully completed a certified OS system, particularly for the emerging sector of autonomous EVs. Tesla is currently building a Linux-based system that is having a lot of difficulty in passing certifications such as ISO26262, a struggle that has been ongoing for years now. They may achieve a product that passes these safety regulations and certifications, but the question remains whether this will be in time as the EV and autonomous market picks up speed, and whether competing companies would even be interested in using their product. In fact, any car company is unlikely to develop their own OS software because none of their competitors would be likely to use it. BB is the perfect business to license since it is not competing in the hardware sector for the EV market. This argument can also be used for Apple if they are also building an EV. 4) Why is BB's revenue so low if they have so many customers and partners? A: QNX has been licensed so far as a one-time purchase, per vehicle or IoT using their software. IVY will be a subscription-based software that also includes a one-time purchase. Thus, BB's revenue streams are somewhat unimpressive currently, but they are playing the long game. If my hypothesis is correct, it is John Chen's goal to lay low as software is developed and customer relationships are built. It's the same with the book market. It's the sequel that makes all the money, not the first book. QNX is just the first book of a series looking to hook in its customers with low costs before hitting 'em with the strong follow up in IVY. Additionally, in order to build a competitive business moat, it was to their advantage to not forewarn any competitors of their involvement and plans. Consider John Chen's work as a CEO in his last business Sybase. Chen worked as the CEO of Sybase for 10 years. For the first 7 years, the SP remained at around $10 a share. Three years later, the SP was at $100 a share. I suspect he is implementing a similar model with Blackberry. Chen joined Blackberry in 2013. BB stock actually dropped for most of the last 7 years, resting at a stock price of around $5. Now BB is at $12 a share. I would not be surprised if BB reaches $50 two years from now.
Blackberry Clients and Partners Automakers: Honda, Audi, Jeep, Mitsubishi, Ford, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Bentley, Lamboghini, Byton, Mini (cooper), Toyota, Subaru, Fiat Chrysler, Mazda, Nio, BMW, Porsche, Lexus, Kia, Land-Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Buick, Jaguar, Visteon, Skoda, Chevrolet, Nissan, Acura, Continental, General Motors, Baidu, Motional Other: Denso, Aptiv, Bosch, Panasonic, Harman, Bugatti, LG, Vodafone, Bell, Carahsoft, CACI, Telus, iSec, KPMG, Tableau, Qlik Major: Amazon, Google, Sony, XPENG, XPEV, Li Auto, NVIDIA, Canoo, Microsoft, Intel, Verizon, Qualcomm, IBM, LG, Samsung Major Investors: PRIMECAP, Hamblin Watsa, Ontario Teachers’ Pension, Vanguard, Harris Associates, ETF Managers Group, Wells Capital, Arrowstreet Capital, Kahn Brothers Advisors, Norges Bank Investment Governments: Albania, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Congo, Croatia, Czech Republic, DR Congo, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marthinique, Mauritania, Mauritus, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Réunion, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Turkey, USA, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vatican City, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Blackberry Current Revenues:
BlackBerry Revenues: How Does BlackBerry Make Money? -- Trefis This display the biggest bearish argument to BB. Until IVY begins producing new revenue streams, BB is likely to not exponentially increase revenue streams, but only sustain moderate YoY growth
Blackberry Analysis Regarding Infotainment and Google and Ford Deal:
see "Blackberry (BB) Stock News Analysis | What I need to say..." by Financial Live by LEYA on the forbidden video website The media recently picked out a story that left out a lot of pertinent information, making it seems that BB lost Ford as a client. This is not true. QNX is designed to be a SoC. This means that other operating systems, such as Linux or Android, can be easily added to QNX. It is in fact encouraged. The Ford and Google deal was simply announcing the Ford would be using Android as their infotainment system. I believe that BB was never intended to try and be the predominant entity for all software systems in EVs or IoTs, but the backbone that connects all together, and to protect all components in a secure system. Autonomous EVs and even regular EVs in general would not be possible without a secure system protecting the product, as is true with IoTs. This is also why things like US Fighter Jets run on... you guess it, QNX. Ford is still using QNX. It is simply also now using Android that is running on top of QNX more commentary on this: Analyzing Blackberry Bear Argument - Case No. 1: Ford Deal
Image This is an interesting one to be sure. Facebook was being evil, like the do, and were caught using a number of BB patents. They settled in February, and the day that the settlement was finalized, John Chen (BB CEO) tweeted reminding everyone that BB is used on the ISS https://twitter.com/JohnChen/status/1358853064153784321?s=20 Well, the connection and speculation here is that Blackberry is going to the moon, and that the settlement is rather significant. Someone else also dug out some information in Facebook's most recent 10-K, specifically a portion for a 'non-cancelable contractual commitment' of an amount of $7500 million dollars. That's 7.5 billion btw. We don't know how big the settlement is, but it is worth noting that BB's entire market cap is 7.5B. I highly doubt that a settlement would reach such lofty numbers, but it could be possible that FB settled for some initial amount of $1B or so, as well as $1B in reoccurring payments over several years. We won't know until March 15th actually, so stay tuned.
Blackberry New Partnerships
Within the last few weeks, Blackberry has announced a stronger partnership with Baidu (China's Google), as well as their involvement with Baidu choosing to use QNX for their autonomous vehicles that will be hitting the road, as early as this year and next. BB has also announced their involvement with Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, which will use QNX for their autonomous vehicles. Motional will be partnering with Lyft to use autonomous vehicles to begin serving customers and will be deploying their vehicles in 2023. It was also announced that QNX will be working with AOSP (Android Open Source Project), as well as announcing yesterday that QNX Hypervisor 2.2 is now released, which is what allows Android and Linux to run on top of QNX. A sum-up of all the recent news on $BB
Rumor: Blackberry Buyout? Here's why that's not happening:
Just read this post. It's quite revealing: Great Day for BB despite stick dipping. TL;DR: Amazon could have easily bought BB. Why didn't they? Well, all the big players are interested in this EV and IoT emerging sector. This is the new wave of technology that will dominate the market. First we had the dot.com boom, then the cell-phone and smart-phone market, and now we have the autonomous EV and IoT market. If Amazon were to buy BB, they would have to submit a tender offer. This would be a red flag to all the big players that Amazon were trying to buy up the best security out there. It would be a bidding war that could result in a double-digit multi-billion dollar buyout. It was much more to their advantage to create a secret alliance with BB and establish a 50/50 partnership, whose contract includes exclusivity for their use of IVY. Ouch! That's gotta hurt. This is where the importance of QNX lies. BB will be able to pull the rug out from any company that chooses to use something other than IVY. No IVY, no QNX, no EV. It will be a package deal where IVY is the big money maker. All other companies will have to build from the ground up or be forced to license QNX and make their money off of other sectors, such as the infotainment sector, as Google has already begun to do with the Ford deal. When this deal happened, the other big boys wet their pants realizing they needed to get into this space, and fast. Microsoft partnered with Cruise/GM. Apple tried to partner with Hyundai, who was so flattered, they may have initially said yes or indicated so, before realizing that they were already partnered with BB, so it was a no-go. Not sure if that is fact or fiction, but it is an interesting proposal.
Blackberry IVY + AWS Partnership:
Alright, so what's the deal with IVY? Why is it going to be so profitable? Why is IVY the real money-maker, while QNX has been used as the customer-acquisition software tool? Check out this picture: Image For one, IVY is designed for real-time communication between EVs or other IoTs. Autonomous driving level 5 requires vehicles to communicate with one another. This is where IVY comes in. IVY connects the different software components of an EV (which presumably are running on QNX), as well as harvesting data on those systems. The data used can be distributed for a wide-variety of uses, including, but not limited to, automakers and suppliers, app developers, consumer services, smart cities, EV charging providers, insurance companies, and vehicle maintenance providers. All of these different sectors will be willing to pay subscriptions for these data services, as well as the automakers and IoT makers who will also be willing to pay subscriptions for IVY. For instance, IVY can help share information between vehicles that will allow for a car detecting ice roads in one area so that other cars using IVY can take a different route. This results in less crashes, which helps the automakers. Insurance companies can use data from all these different data points as well, allowing them an inside-view of their clients. The list of what is possible here is inexhaustible. As for price points, the subscription models for multiple outside companies wanting to use the data will be create huge revenue streams for BB. With Amazon as a 50/50 partner, and with their resources and strategic management, BB will be poised to be the foundation in security and data sharing for the entire EV, and somewhat of the IoT market (the IoT market has more competitors for sure) see "Is BlackBerry Stock Undervalued?" by Wealthy Mindset on the forbidden video website see "Roadmap to $180 a share (BlackBerry Stock)" by Wealthy Mindset on the forbidden video website
Revenue, revenue, revenue...
Blackberry is poised to be an industry leader in EV, government, and IoT security and data sharing with products such as QNX, IVY, Spark, and their other software products. Stock price will likely stay somewhat stunted until IVY revenue begins picking up. It is possible that more announcements and marketing related to IVY will make this growth more rapid. In my opinion, either way BB over the next 5 years will 10x. The question is whether you want to get in now at $12 / share or two years from now at $40 a share or something similar, assuming that either way this stock is going to push for that 100B market cap (it's currently at 7B). There will be bearish analysts that will continue to say that Blackberry is a worthless company until those IVY revenue streams begin to come in. It is also possible that a realistic competitor may emerge within the next three years, such as Tesla or Apple. But if Apple is seeking to create its own EV product, then both companies will have a hard time finding any way to license their software to any other company. It remains possible that Apple and/or Tesla may strikes deals with BB as well in order to be able to produce autonomous vehicles and get a bite of that market share
Really, no competitors?
Well it's called a business moat for a reason. As we have recently seen, QNX is working with AOSP, and so clearly, they are not to be worried about. Tesla is not a true competitor as their OS product is not certified yet, and has demonstrated difficulty in doing so, and additionally, other automakers will not want to benefit their competitors by using their product. A third-party non-auto-maker will be much more desirable. Other companies such as VxWorks, have a lot of to prove both in security and certifications, as well as producing an OS product that is compatible with an emerging autonomous level 5 EV market. QNX's embedded microkernel RTOS is very much unique in this regard. This type of system allows for real-time processing and power distribution, while protecting the system from attacks. In an embedded microkernel system, if one part of the system is attacked, the whole system will not shut down, in layman's terms. This is essential for the security of any high-risk product that is built upon an underlying software that controls that different components of the system.
Conclusion:
All eyes are turned towards Blackberry right now. People want to know what this deal with Amazon will look like, how it will work, what they will focus on, (will Amazon also use this system for a fleet of delivery drones? hmmm), what the revenue streams will look like, what are their projections, what markets and sectors are they targeting, what are their future goals, what will Amazon be doing on their end, etc, etc. The Amazon + BB webinar may answer some of those questions, or maybe they won't. Time will tell (Feb. 23rd, specifically -- here's a link to sign up and watch: Next-Gen Vehicle Architectures Unlock Unprecedented Opportunities for Automakers). Also look out for that FB settlement numbers on March 15th, and Q4 earnings March 31st. I don't expect Q4 earnings to be particularly interesting unless they include the FB settlement numbers. Could those numbers instead be put into Q1 earnings for 2021? Possibly. Initially IVY beta is expected to begin being released late this year. I will also be looking forward to see how Apple and Tesla respond in the coming months. Ultimately, BB is a long-term play, but is poised to dominate this emerging industry with the partnerships and security focused software they have secretly been building. Now if only the could do something about their logo, some rebranding would be nice... This is not financial advice, just my own opinions. I am not a financial advisor nor a professional. I own 14k shares in Blackberry, as well as options (10x 8/17/21 20c BB). Do your own DD and fact check me as well
We all know ETH fees are high. Here's why it's happening, how to save money, and what is being done about it going forward.
Full disclaimer: I own some ETH. I've seen a lot of posts here and in /ethereum talking about high fees. I've also seen a lot of extremely misleading statements here and there about how high fees are right now and will try and simplify things a bit. I'll do my best to remain impartial, and feel free to correct me and I'll edit my post. All plans are subject to change, the following is based on my current understanding and recollection of developer statements.
What is happening?
ETH fees are high right now. The best place to see gas costs (how much you'll need to pay for a transaction vs how quickly you want it) is here: https://ethgasstation.info/
Smart contracts and ERC-20 tokens consume much more gas than a basic transfer. While a typical transfer might be $3 a poorly written smart contract could consume $100 in gas. This variation leads to lots of confusion on various forums. An absolute metric crap ton of tokens run on ETH, so ETH being congested causes lots of downstream effects, tokens that consume lots of gas are disproportionately effected.
Why is this happening?
Utilization is through the roof right now. At post time ETH is achieving 16.14 TPS vs BTC's 4.00. Despite being 4 times faster the demand for on-chain (L1) transactions is overwhelming. At the bottom of this page, make sure to scroll down you can see that blocks are at 100% right now. That means people are constantly outbidding each other to make it in.
At post time Uniswap is the biggest gas guzzler. People are using Decentralized Exchanges (dex'es) a ton and its consuming a huge chunk of block space and people are paying a premium for it.
How can I save money?
ETH demand fluctuates heavily throughout the day, it's not uncommon for fees to drop 10x in an hour. If you are not in a hurry waiting a bit for a slow period and broadcasting a median gas transaction can save you a TON of money
Some wallets/apps are designed to be super user friendly, and unfortunately they hardcode the fastest possible gas costs for a good user experience (UX). Unfortunately that's a very bad idea when gas is high and only causes rates to climb even more. EIP-1559 will fix this, more on that later
Don't interact with smart contracts if you don't have to. It sucks, I know. But the fact is that using a smart contract is way more expensive than normal transactions. When gas is a fraction of a penny nobody cares, but its not right now and this is where we are. Last I checked, L1 ETH transfers are still cheaper than BTC. Not much of a consolation, but it's not a total disaster yet. EDIT: It appears the last 2 days ETH has flipped BTC on transaction costs. $17 USD still seems really really high, as of post-time a $5 transaction would go through within a few minutes)
What is being done about this? (sorted by est delivery date)
Berlin upgrade: Est 1-2 months, will adjust gas costs of various transactions for certain core operations. Should help fees overall on many contracts.
EIP-1559: Est "this summer, but maybe Q3": A huge overhaul to the fee system. Block sizes are FLEXIBLE, targeting 50% full. When a block exceeds 50% full the base fee increases. When it drops below 50% the base fee decreases. Fees are burned (nice deflationary side effect). This means a few things: A) Spikes in transactions can make the next block instead of clogging the mem pool B) costs are MUCH more easy to calculate, and block include time estimation is much easier. C) The improved predictability/include time means shitty apps won't have a reason to set absurd fees for a good UX, driving "gas inflation" like we see now. There's a lot more to EIP-1559, but that's the gist of how it should impact transactions
2.0 Phase 0: Already live, but the beacon chain won't impact 1.0 until "the merge". Baseline TPS should be higher than 1.0, and its also environmentally friendly :)
2.0 Phase 1: Est end of 2021, Sharding will first scale to 64 shards (eventually 1024) for a 64x scaling effect on the beacon chain.
The Merge: Some call this Phase 1.5, but it is planned for 2022. This will move ETH 1.0 as a shard on to 2.0, and all finality will occur on the beacon chain. At this point ETH's core TPS should be 64-100x faster than what we have today
2.0 Phase 2: Est end of 2022/2023, Execution Environments aka sharded smart contracts allow for smart contracts to share data across shards so that DeFi/Dex'es etc benefit from 2.0's massive scalability
What other out-of-order improvements are coming?
Various L2 technologies are already live, and several smart contracts are upgrading to them now. This will let you pay on L1 to "get in", then perform a lot of cheap transactions on L2. Right now every trade on uniswap clogs L1. When it runs on L2 all those trades are off-chain and gas fees are only driven up by deposits/withdrawals. This should have a massive impact on overall gas costs. The good news is the insane fees on some contracts act as an INCENTIVE to get L2 up and running faster.
I know a lot of people are unhappy with the current situation, but a lot of progress has been made and a lot of exciting progress is on the horizon! I hope this post helps :)
What is Citadel and where do I go to get away from them?
So, right now, you might be asking yourself "Fuck Robinhood. Where should I, Timmy from Charlotte, move my account? Fuck Robinhood. How do I get away from Citadel? Fuck Robinhood. What is going on? Fuck Robinhood." I'm not 100% sure where this post is going so I can't promise I'll answer any of those questions but my goal here is still coherent conversation so maybe someone else might have those answers in the comments. Idk.
What is Citadel and what do they do?
A hedge fund wrapped up with an advisory service, an execution venue, a market maker, an IPO partner, a sandwich shop, etc.. Such megacorps pay firms fractions of a cent to pass each order through them for execution. The more orders the brokerage passes along, the more they're paid. Money is involved because the more orders that pass through a particular execution venue first, the faster they can make decisions about the direction of the market on both the micro and macro scale. This is the current nature of the market. Order data for 'new' and 'small' traders using self-directed firms has been especially valuable the last 20 years because you do things institutions cannot. You can open a new position based on a tweet while the major advisory services need to whip out the scales and weigh the cost of moving assets for countless customers at once and that's even further complicated if they're designated fiduciaries because, in their book, reacting quickly implies that there's unknown risks involved. For example, they did the numbers on a particular company six months ago and decided it wouldn't be profitable in another six months. Even in 2021, they just can't move as fast as you but knowing what you're doing is a step closer to them being able to respond sooner with smaller changes rather than react with major changes when shit hits the fan. (BTW, the fatal flaw on $GME is that they tried to play the old 'cull the weak' game that worked for them for decades and absolutely chose to ignore the direction the market was moving until it was too late. If they'd used the order flow and other data they're paying so much cash to access and were as bright as they imagine they are, it would have been rough but even hardcore shorts could have lived through this week. Retail investors can pat themselves on the back for exploiting it but Melvin Capital got fucked by hubris and lack of awareness.) Not to get all RZA between songs on it but that's why the title of this sub has been 'Welcome to the machine!' for a long time now. The major players know you dream of making it big, buying a car, having a steak, and all the other things Roger wrote about, just by doing something you enjoy (playing guitar but it could be your art, you talents in math or science, taps in a mobile game, or in this instance investing) and they'll welcome you in with open arms, convince you that they'll be a guide and there to help, knowing they'll get a cut just by letting you do what you do and finding a way to package it. People over simplify it with "if the service is free, you are the product" because they don't notice that the machine will also make you pay if it can. Money for order flow has made it easier for others to provide the space for you to do what you do without noticing they're cashing in even if you don't but don't forget that the machine can be other investors. The machine can be the large firms. The machine can be investment advice columnists. Hedge funds and brokerages aren't the only 'machine operators' in the financial industry.
Which firms use Citadel and which ones don't?
They all use Citadel. I'm not joking, I've kept up to date on execution venues (people probably thought I was just lecturing them about understanding order flow here but I dislike Virtu as a venue and Apex as a clearing firm which I've talked about here for years) and the concentration of orders being fed to the short list of venues has not changed in a positive way because that's where the money is. The idea for this post came to me this morning because no news article, no TV interview, and not a single hot take on Twitter I've read so far has managed to mention just how embedded Citadel individually is in the modern market. I had AOC's live stream on in the background last night and even the guests seemed to imply that Citadel is a little firm propping up Robinhood and that nobody could have seen this blowing up one day. These relationships (even down to how much money is paid) are public by law. Every quarter, both sides are required to release data on order flow in 605 (raw), and 606/607 reports. Here's a quick rundown of places I could come up with off the top of my head that use Citadel as their primary or secondary execution venue and what percentage of orders for S&P 500 listed securities they recently sent through Citadel:
* Marketable limit orders are those that immediately have a chance of executing against the current spread # Firsttrade is predominantly a dark pool only sending orders away when they require liquidity $ Alpaca is an API-first firm which I like and talk about on Discord sometimes because I wish RH would open their API but they're still backed by Apex which I dissuade everyone from getting involved with because Penson Financial Services. % IEX is a closed loop exchange that internally clears orders among customers (great source for free order data to test algos) @ Apex is the clearing agent for many smaller firms including Public.com, Betterment, Acorns, M1, Rize, Stockpile, Stash, Now, when you look at that list, remember three things:
that 99.9% of the remaining orders are going to Wolverine, Virtu, 2 Sigma, and other hedge fund adjacent venues for execution
brokerages were doing the same back when they were also charging commissions. I don't feel firms being paid for order flow is inherently wrong but whatever agreement Citadel has in place to force firms to act in Citadel's best interest over customers and even over the brokerage's own best interest is difficult to wrap my mind around right now. Which brings me to my next point...
Citadel's most loyal sources for order flow (Robinhood, TDA, Webull, and IB) all fell in line and limited trading at least part of the day. The agreements between these companies and Citadel are obviously not public but I'm sure Citadel has them bent over a contractual barrel that left them with no choice but to comply. As a customer of half of those firms, I say they should have done whatever they could to explain the actual situation to the public (spoilers: it wasn't risk on the retail side), taken whatever penalties Citadel could impose for ignoring them (all the way up to breach of contract, etc), and fight that out in court rather than act in ways that seems to have only punished and confused customers. Corporate level decision making is so fucking stupid.
Where to go?
Fino. If IEX was larger, that would be a decent alternative for equities but they don't have a silly app that looks good in screenshots but tells you nothing useful. I can't think of a self-directed firm that can currently exist without Citadel and the rest. If you do, post about it, I guess.
More things I for sure do not know...
...but hope someone wants to talk about.
I don't know shit about the legality of anything that has gone on this week with Robinhood and no, I will not be a part of any lawsuit because I was not effected by what happened because I don't have any options or equity holdings in Robinhood and cannot claim damages. Stop asking me.
I'm not even sure if splitting corporations up anti-trust style would work for this. For sure, it was Citadel's vested interest that cascaded down to firms and then users but I don't know of any cases that forced divestiture on that scale. Hedge funds with cases in a friendly district could make a valid claim that they cannot function without access to both order data and current assets. It'll be interesting to see if anything changes over the next few years and how.
Disclosure
Doxxing myself more and more but I worked for a market analytics/quantitative research firm in the city that was eventually gobbled up by Virtu. I'd moved abroad months earlier anyway but we loved that job and they only wanted the algos we'd designed so fuck Virtu. My current day job makes trading public companies complex (which is why I only talk about algotrading ETH on Discord). Most of my self-directed play money is still with TDA (haven't made a trade there or on RH in almost three years) but the majority of my family's assets, my retirement, my kid's inheritances and college funds, and on and on have been handled by GS for nearly two decades and likely will continue to be even after I return to the private sector. Now, what would be sweet is if Goldman Sachs would extend their investment arm (which sends orders directly to exchanges) to the general public like they have with their Marcus savings accounts. If they could devise a way to legally pass a good percentage of all (would be dependent on volume of the security, etc.) orders directly to the floor as a bundle, they'd break even at best on it but that would actually 'democratize the market.'
I know a lot of folks are getting frustrated in their learning process, and in their life, so I wanted to talk a bit about what your life will be like once you've landed your career. edit: This is a pretty American-centric viewpoint and experience, and one born out of having experienced a decade of struggling financially in stressful jobs working 50-60 hours per week. For reference, I'm self-taught, and before programming I was a line cook for 6 years, and IT help desk for 4. I went to school for English, History, and Music. I got my first actual programming job at 29 and have been writing web apps for the state government in America for just under 5 years, but am now moving to Norway in two weeks to start a programming gig there. My Entry-Level Pay and Situation I started off in a very, very low-end pay structure. About 43k USD per year. But I did get full health benefits and some retirement contributions, which was great. I was able to afford my own apartment at 1350 USD per month. The Big Shockers First, I didn't have to budget food anymore. Somebody else mentioned this, but woah, this was amazing. I went from strict meal planning around the cheapest meals I knew to basically having whatever I felt like. Granted it's not steaks and lobster for every meal, but I could make whatever meals I wanted without worrying about how much they'd be. I could also eat out at restaurants way more often too. The amount of stress that was removed from not having to worry about how much food costs was enormous. Second, I didn't have to worry about where I was at work at all times. Or hardly ever, for that matter. No more "hey can you cover the phones while I go to the bathroom?" Saying "hey can I get the Monday two weeks from now off for a doctor's appointment" instead became "oh I've got an appointment tomorrow at 2 so I'll be out for the rest of the day after that." Oh yeah, I got health insurance, finally. More on that later. I mean I could literally just say "hey I'm going for a walk around the block" and nobody would bat an eye. We would gather groups of folks up for a walk to the coffee shop just to take a breather. Multiple times a day. Your work becomes project-based and you become the person who decides if you've done contributed a good enough amount of work at any moment in order to take a break. And lunch is whenever the hell you want it to be. Meetings throw a wrench in the gears of your break plans but that's about it. Third, and pretty closely related to the one above, paid time off is no longer something you have to fight others over. I didn't have to worry about if I was the first one to request Christmas week off or not, because it doesn't fucking matter. Everyone takes it off. I also often took a week or two off in the middle of Spring just 'cause. Same with sick days. For one boss I kinda had to worry 'cause she would set ridiculous deadlines, but once she moved on my guilt over taking a sick day was gone. With all of these things combined, life became just fucking easy. I really didn't realize how goddamn caught up I was in survival mode until I was able to leave that lifestyle behind. When I stepped outside of the building after a work day work just totally left my mind, and it was replaced with total excitement for the rest of my day. Removing so much of that stress and end-of-day exhaustion left room for actual, real-life peace and excitement. Holy fuck this was so, so, SO fucking amazing. Unexpected Side-effects One of the biggest side effects that I didn't really foresee was how much healthier I got. Both physically and mentally. Having struggled with anxiety my whole life, I had always been grossly underweight. 125lbs at 6 feet tall. Couple that with worrying about how much it would cost to feed myself, and suddenly there's a recipe for awful health. But now I could feed myself, which gave me more energy, which meant I could spend that energy on getting healthier. Regarding my mental health, when I started my programming job I was 2 months fresh out of a divorce, so needless to say I wasn't doing super great mentally. Luckily, I could now afford therapy! Holy fucking shitballs, therapy was awesome, but I guarantee it would've sucked if I didn't have the extra mental energy I had from having a 40 hour week job that didn't beat my ass with tons of stress. My free mental energy allowed me to confront all kinds of shit from my childhood that I realized had been contributing to making me miserable. And since I was living alone I could work through the crazy physical and mental rollercoaster that comes with dealing with your shit. I didn't have to worry about not crying in front of anybody, because it was just me. I didn't have to worry about rage-punching pillows and screaming into them, 'cause it was just me. My apartment became healing grounds for family shit that had been passed down to me from my parents by their parents and their parents' parents. So, my life started to become amazing. I gained 40 pounds, finally settling into a healthy weight. I started making better friends. I started getting back into the dating world. Life became pretty goddamn good. And the OPPORTUNITIES. I mentioned I'm moving to Norway. After you've got a good 3-5 years of programming experience under your belt, you can go pretty much wherever you want. Literally wherever. And your new job will be super grateful to have you. And with the options you have, you really get to decide what you want in life. I thought maybe I wanted lots of money so I applied for a job at 140k USD per year, but I ended up turning it down, showing the offer to my boss, who then raised my salary up to around 80k per year. I took the 80k per year. When I was struggling, I would've slapped future-me in the face for turning away 60k per year, but once you're out of the struggle, you get to choose the lifestyle you want. I like a slow-paced gig, not tons of pressure, and I would've had to give up a couple of work-from-home days, which I didn't wanna do. It's really hard to explain this decision to somebody struggling, but I hope that everyone here gets the opportunity to choose between the two. The Only Problem Soap box time. After living the good life for 3 or 4 years I started to reflect on my life beforehand. I had a lot, a LOT of gratitude for my situation having come from shit, shit jobs and a shit, shit life. I became my own superhero for getting myself out of all of that. I had these awesome connections with co-workers who had done the same. People who got their families out of dangerous neighborhoods. People who moved from secretary work at 45 and into programming, finally being able to exercise their creative, problem-solving minds. The problem comes from realizing how goddamn hard we all had to work to get here. Like, these are all people who were dealt a shit hand, and the only hope they had was to spend 1-4 years ruining their relationships and friendships and shirking all other aspects of their lives in order to get out of it? How the fuck is that fair? These brilliant, amazing people had to forgo meals so their kids could have a babysitter for 2 hours a day while they studied programming. You realize after a little while that these were just the people who made it. Who were luckily enough to find the time, the money, or the mental effort. We are all so grateful for where we are at, far more than anybody else could be, and you do have that to look forward to. But we look around at our close friends and family members who will never escape the rut they're in, and it's pretty soul-crushing. A job should not be the thing you need to escape the Catch-22 of I-can't-get-better-because-my-life-sucks-because-I-can't-get-better. But, if you're like me and it's the only option you have, for the love of GOD do it. Put your own airbag on before you help the others around you.
Walking in the woods near London last weekend, I discovered three homeless camps hidden within the trees. That night, temperatures dropped to -6°C, next morning there was 3 inches of snow on the ground. This is the reality of life for many vulnerable people in Britain today. https://preview.redd.it/2yi6a3sia9e61.png?width=643&format=png&auto=webp&s=74a5bebf7cb12a502cc246f8fdd75139873895e2 Over the last 18 months, I've discovered 8 similar camps in woods near my home, within 25 miles of London. Many of these makeshift camps (including these two), though well-hidden, are situated within 200m of a row of massive mansions, many of which lie empty. https://preview.redd.it/7dmwrosja9e61.png?width=943&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd7b172325ec8ff46f77a903e6c7b8f21f91f04b The average price of a mansion on this one road is more than £2 million. Their huge gardens back onto the extensive woods & commons in which these desperate people have chosen to build their shelters because they offer thick tree cover & the best chance of going undetected. https://preview.redd.it/t48qftoka9e61.png?width=943&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf97528ad4c671f9d549170d96221baa77cfeb27 I was shocked to discover these camps, and evidence of more that have been abandoned. Shocked and shamed by the juxtaposition of such enormous wealth alongside such devastating poverty. But should I have been surprised? More than 4m children are living below the poverty line in Britain today. In the 6th largest economy on earth. Since April 2020, 350,000 children in England are living in a household where someone has had to “skip a meal in the last week”. Inequality is greater in modern day Britain than it was in ancient Rome. In ancient Rome, the richest 1% controlled around 16% of society's wealth; today in Britain, the richest 1% control around 21%. Imagine living in a country where every third child you saw was growing up in poverty. Now open your eyes. Because that’s us. Anne Longfield, children’s commissioner for England, released a report last week. https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/cco-child-poverty.pdf How did it come to this? The fact 14.3 million people live in poverty (22% of all people, 34% of all children) in the world's 6th largest economy is a direct result of more than a decade of Tory policies. https://fullfact.org/economy/poverty-uk-guide-facts-and-figures/ It’s entirely deliberate. A homeless 17-year-old with mental health issues given a tent to live in by the council = Tory Britain: demonising the very idea of society, started by Thatcher, completed by Tories with MSM, Lib Dem & working-class support. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55246562 Police recently charged a homeless man for breaking coronavirus regulations for being outside. He was charged with "being outside of the place where you were living, namely no fixed address”. I’d say “you couldn’t make it up”, but the Tories did. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/coronavirus-homeless-man-sultan-monsour-lockdown-law-charge-liverpool-street-a9510186.html Tories don't care about homelessness - they are not homeless. Tories don't care about food banks - they don't use them. Tories don't care about the NHS - they go private. Tories don't care about you - they care about their bank balance. Boris Johnson assures us he didn't burn a £50 note in front of a homeless man, and I for one see no reason not to believe the self-satisfied, dishonest narcissist. But if you look at their record, you have to understand that there will be no respite while they are in power. With homelessness up by 50% since 2010, with rough sleeping doubled, with 120,000 children homeless, and a 22% rise in the deaths of homeless people in the last year, we have a right to be shocked. And how Tories use our money is shocking too… You and I are paying this lot £300 each every day for the rest of their lives. Every one of them is already a millionaire, and all they have to do for that money is sign their name in a book. Imagine the effect of giving every homeless person a fraction of that a day. https://preview.redd.it/sgrrqdffa9e61.png?width=641&format=png&auto=webp&s=1719a819adcca1bc5cf09490c789eca87ff18a68 This is how Tories spend OUR money. It's not spending, it's stealing. You could feed 2,000 homeless people for one day for the same money just one consultant is paid for one day creating an app which doesn't work. http://web.archive.org/web/20201015065412/https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/consultants-fees-up-to-6250-a-day-for-work-on-covid-test-system Tory government has no compassion, because Tories have no imagination. They simply cannot believe that they could ever be in this position themselves. To a Tory, the homeless person is a slacker, a lazy good-for-nothing who gets exactly what they deserve. As such, the theory goes (it’s not something they hide, they’ll tell you – just ask), there is no duty to help, that just encourages idleness. If people want to starve & freeze: let them. No matter that those homeless people may have fallen on hard times because their employer went out of business off the back of Tory policies. No matter that many ex-services ended up on the streets due to ptsd, suffered as a result of government sanctioned conflicts. Because we should remember, it is not just millions of ‘our own’ who are impoverished by the actions of ‘our’ government. Tories just sank £16.5 billion into the Ministry of Defence (‘offence’ really), making bombs to drop on poor people around the world. That’s what we do. No matter that 50% of homeless people have suffered traumatic head injury prior to becoming homeless, it’s still their fault. No matter that many victims of child abuse end up on the streets, again, to a Tory, it’s their own fault. Tories always point to just one part of the pathway leading to despair. Hence, drug-taking may be foregrounded as the excuse which allows government ministers to sleep at night, rather than the abuse & suffering which led to the drug-taking in the first place. It’s a catch-all conscience clearer: “they brought it upon themselves; feckless layabouts, we’re doing them a favour leaving them to suffer, maybe they’ll pull their finger out now…” But homeless people are not worthless. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55559382 And it’s also not just the fault of the government, or the traditional Tory voter; many more are to blame for the state of modern Britain. In recent history, we had two great opportunities to put this kind of suffering where it belongs: in the past. The choice in 2017 and 2019 was basically: Boris Johnson gets rid of the NHS, or; Jeremy Corbyn gets rid of food banks, homelessness, child poverty, zero-hour contracts, austerity, tax breaks for the rich etc. That should have been an easy choice… But people decided the last election was the Brexit election. They forgot it was also the climate election, the investment election, the NHS election, the living standards election, the education election, the poverty election, the fair taxes election: the change election. How did they forget? Why were voters so obsessed with one issue? Why didn’t voters care about other things? The answer is at least partly due to mainstream media. The MSM wasn’t just busy bashing Jeremy Corbyn, it was also busy avoiding any issue which might harm Boris. Thus, in the first 3 weeks of the last election campaign, the subject of 'housing' registered 0.2%, 0.6% & 2.4% prominence in the MSM despite more than 300,000 homeless people in the UK as we moved into winter. Shows how much the MSM cares... https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/general-election/report-3/ In the first 3 weeks of the last election campaign, the subject of 'social security' registered 1.2%, 1.2% & 3.0% prominence in the MSM despite 4 million children in the UK living in poverty. This proves that the MSM avoided the shameful record of the Tories... Any news hack, politician or voter (who didn't back Corbyn) that mentions poverty, homelessness, NHS sell-off or climate change in the next 5 years had better be reporting good news, because I won't be able to stand the vomit-inducing hypocrisy if they say things are bad. Jeremy Corbyn was slated as a ‘bloody commie’ for threatening to give up a massive country house to help the homeless… He is the leader we could have had were it not for the power of elites protecting their pile. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-chequers-labour-general-election-itv-interview-queens-speech-a9232506.html Priti Patel could gut a homeless person, Dominic Raab could shoot an immigrant, Matt Hancock could wave his little willy around in public & Boris Johnson could take a shit in the Serpentine before the MSM expressed anything more emotive than mild distaste. Be under no illusions, the MSM is the enemy of change. Without the MSM’s dereliction of duty in terms of reporting the realities of modern Britain, the working-class traitors who signed up for Tory madness would never have done it. But they did! It's almost 100 years since the 1920's General Strike. Working-class voters, fighting for their rights, voted in the 1st ever Labour government. They'd be spinning in their graves if they knew that 100 years later, working class voters would crown Boris & his Tory goons. https://preview.redd.it/pooawv7ub9e61.png?width=641&format=png&auto=webp&s=17dd9a00e2ca330f6da8af66977d966348243d86 This was a dereliction of duty every bit as dreadful as the MSM Tory free pass, and the betrayal of Iain McNicol & Tom Watson et al. We now have to live with it. Including those people desperately hanging on in the woods near where I live. When we move on, there must be accountability - not just for the Covid car crash, but for it all: capitalism, climate catastrophe, war, poverty. We need something new, & accountability starts at home. So if you know a Tory voter, you need to start educating them now. We mustn’t only imagine a society where psychos and sociopaths are locked up rather than allowed to be in charge: we must make it happen. Because when we elevate the obscene to positions of power, everyone suffers. People deluding themselves that politicians like Keir Starmer offer anything substantially different to the Tories is dangerous - it is what allows neo-liberals to continue driving us off the climate and poverty cliffs. Starmer's response to a £16.5 billion increase to 'defence' spending was: “We welcome this additional funding for our defence & security forces & we agree that it is vital..." "Vital" - during an economic emergency, despite no actual enemy and while people are starving! Only obscenely wealthy privileged elites could imagine anything is 'irrespective of political differences.' How could the poor, homeless or bereaved have a Happy Christmas? Starmer literally helped steal a socialist Christmas last year. https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmestatus/1342193647543062533 If something is broken, you fix it, recycle it or chuck it. You don’t replace it with another broken part. We have to do better than Starmer… we have to do better than ‘centrist’ Labour. So, what positive steps can be taken now? Four things, 3 of which are immediately actionable, are vital: 1. Dumping Starmer’s Labour Party – Labour had it’s day, but is dead, we must bury it. 2. Finding a new party to get behind: there are lots of options, but no consensus (this may need more time to coalesce); 3. Friends & relatives who betrayed their roots have to be enlightened; 4. We must destroy the MSM. We can’t wait for legislation to remove the monopoly of the media barons, so we need to act ourselves. Never buy a newspaper, never register with an MSM provider, never link or quote media without ensuring you avoid funding their propaganda, instead celebrate & support the rise in alt media. The first step in liberating our democracy lies in destroying the hold MSM has over the political system. It’s time we supported media which reports on the real stories rather than protects the wider disease. It starts with a story, this new modern Britain. The current story is old, and it won’t change unless we choose a new story-teller. So that’s what we must do. We need to support the true free press with subscriptions & disseminate their message. novaramedia.comhttps://thecanary.cohttps://skwawkbox.orghttps://evolvepolitics.comhttps://www.doubledown.news Please consider signing up for one or more of the fantastic media providers listed above (there are loads more), and boycott the MSM. Thanks for reading - more from me here: https://twitter.com/Calumets/status/1352231138610343936 Home
Ok, everybody needs to take a few deep breaths and cool it.
We need to set one thing straight. Do we have the power to move the stock market or not? Just 2 weeks ago the overwhelming sentiment was "this is the hedge funds game, we're just trying to catch a ride. Individual retail investors can't do shit to move markets. We're hyennas picking at Zebra carcasses, but sooner or later the Lions are going to come back and reclaim their feast." Now it's a complete 180. I'm seeing tons of outrage from people who got burnt today on their weed calls. Acting like this lot of new degenerates came in and pumped the price before bailing, thus crushing the overall market. 20% gains for them cost you tens of thousands on your call options. Well, how much blame does the media get? 8 million people in this sub is a lot, but how many people does CNBC, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, Market Watch, The New York Times, etc. Reach? When they all band together and spend 2-3 full trading days only talking about "the new Wall Street Bets move", how many day traders come running? Just Google "Wall Street Bets weed" to see what I'm talking about. We're either being played, or it's actually us having this big of an impact on the market. I don't know the answer. So let's look at both scenarios. We control the market This is dope! We can work with this, and grow into it, but first I want to get something off my chest. FUCK YOU! Talkin bout "degenerates ruining my weed plays". Bitch, what have you been chortling about with GME this whole time? "💎🖐🦍 Gang got greedy and forgot to hedge profits." "I took my gains at 300 like a pro." "It's so funny how the smooth brains got left holding the bag." Preaching about holding the line in January while you turned 100 @ $5 into 15 @ $50, then switched to pissing on "bag holders" for "getting played" in February. If we truly have the power to move markets, then the $10's of millions in profits everyone took is what brought down the rising market caps. It also bailed out the shorts who were/are less than halfway done covering (TLRY has high SI too). Then we went and did the exact same thing with weed stocks. Don't hate the player, hate the game right? Ultimately, something tells me stocks don't move up when everyone is trying to play with house money. Definitely can't "hold any lines" with house money either. We should invest in stocks we care about for their long term potential; any squeezes or pumps that potentially come out of that are just an added benefit. We don't have the power to move markets That's cool. We're still getting blamed for it, though. Not just from salty weed "bag holders" in here, but from all of the media. We got blamed for this meteoric rise, and within 20 minutes of the tank in pre-market CNBC was already pointing the finger at us. Weed Stocks have been on the rise for 3 months, if you guys were just riding a wave none of us "retail traders" have any control over, then what crashed it? I won't speculate on that because it falls under "conspiracy bullshit" but we should discuss it. I posted this thread this morning claiming it was a diversion attempt away from GME, and urged people to "cash out their gains before it crashes." I wrote it before the price tanked. The mods deleted it, and rightfully so. I don't have any evidence to back up that theory. What I'm trying to say now isn't about GME either. However, if we don't actually have any control over the stock market we should be using the media manipulation to make fat gains before we get fucked by big time day traders and algorithm options trading. As soon as they dump a trend on us, we should dump that trend. If the price follows immediately, we'll know we actually have control of these markets, if it doesn't we'll know we're getting played and figure out why. What do you guys think? Quit "REEEEE"-ing all over the place and let's figure this shit out!! P.S. RIP to all the people who bought both TLRY and GME at their peaks and still have no idea what happened. Edit: I'm not a financial advisor. Everything above is pure speculation. I'm just a dude bored during a Pandemic who apparently likes losing money. (also changed some wording in OP)
ILPT: if you're a hedgefund manager and a bunch of redditors found out about how you stack the deck, extort the app they use to trade.
This is easy peasy, if you're worried about a collective group of people interfering with your money making scheme just cut them off at the source. Threaten the trading app and make it so nobody can buy anything so it leads to a crash. They lose and you make out like a bandit.
[Warhammer 40k] Gaming Company Makes Money, but Demoralizes Fanbase
I’m a semi-avid Warhammer 40k player and the game has been hit by a number of small, cumulating drama bits over the last few years, so I thought I’d write them out here in case anyone was interested in learning about them. Disclaimer: I do have some strong opinions on the drama and I have done my best to keep things neutral in this post. Please do feel free to call me out if I let my thoughts about the Stupidface McSpaceymarines show too much. Background information: Warhammer 40k is a tabletop miniature game distributed by Games Workshop (GW). The poster children of 40k have long been Space Marines: the elite, genetically augmented human super-soldiers and it is around them that this story revolves. Warhammer 40k is currently in its 9th edition, with rules for each army distributed in its codex. The factions in Warhammer can be broken down into 3 broad categories. Remember this for later. As listed on GW’s website, they are: the Imperium (all flavors of “good guy” humans, including the aforementioned Space Marines), Chaos (daemons and fallen humans), and Xenos (myriad alien races, including Egyptian robot zombies, communist fish weebs shogunate cow weebs , clown elves, and British soccer hooligan orks). In 2017, GW’s general manager stepped down and new company leadership took over. This is where our story begins. For a while it was good: GW was making record profits, fans were fairly happy, and the hobby seemed in a good place. Then players started realizing that something didn’t smell quite right. 8th Edition and the coming of the Primaris: 8e was released in June 2017, with the new rulebook alongside a Space Marine codex and “Index” books with units for all other armies, so nobody had to wait to play their respective faction. The indices were bare-bones and contained few of the abilities, relics, and special rules that each faction would receive when their full codex was released. 8th edition was also heralded with an entirely new line of Space Marine models, the “Primaris.” These are the tacticool bigger brothers of the “oldmarines” and a massive refresh of the aging Space Marine model line. They are bigger, badder, and shootier. Primaris marines were a hit and sold extremely well and GW profits reach new heights. Over the next year and a half, a new faction’s Codex would release every 3-6 weeks. In a game with 20+ factions, this meant - if you were lucky - you’d get full access to your army’s abilities/relics/units in 6 months. Most armies were covered by the time the edition had been out a year. Depending on whom you ask, this is either an unacceptably long time to wait or surprisingly quick compared to previous editions. At this point, fan morale was fairly high: we saw lots of quality new content, a more-responsive and friendly community face, and promises of hotly-demanded future releases (whooo Sisters!). GW released a steady stream of new Primaris models throughout this edition, flushing out the new line. Capitalizing on the popularity of Primaris, GW took the previously-unheard-of step and released new, turned-up-to-11 Marine codices in 2019, as well as 6 extra Space Marine sub-faction supplements and a new Chaos Space Marine codex. The meta had been fairly healthy and consistently evolving, but these supplements resulted in massive imbalance, buffing a specific Space Marine chapter so much that it near-exclusively dominated tournaments until it was patched. In retrospect, this was a sign of things to come. The long-awaited Sisters of Battle also came out in fall 2019 (whose preorder sold out within minutes) and an expansion called “Psychic Awakening” was released from Oct 2019-July 2020. It was neat lore-wise and contained a few new rules/units, but not otherwise noteworthy. The Gathering Storm: 9th edition was released in July 2020, but was touted as an “8.5e” where your old books and rules would still be valid, with some modifications as to the game itself. This was met with general good will from the players, as the books they bought a month earlier wouldn’t be instantly outdated. As is tradition, it was released with a new, now third Space Marine codex and one for the Necrons (the aforementioned Egyptian zombie robots), as well as a box set containing new units for each army. Unfortunately, this is also where the crux of our drama kicks in. The release box set contained incredibly powerful and divisive Primaris units, Eradicators, which could only be obtained from this $200 USD box. Eradicators are an anti-tank unit new to 9th edition whose mere existence single handedly pushed tanks/armoured units and the factions that relied on them out of the meta. Additional criticism came because the design of the Eradicators came across as “stealing” a specialist xenos unit - Eldar Fire Dragons. For perspective, Fire Dragons and Eradicators cost about the same in-game and have the same role, but Eradicators output far more damage at a longer range and are significantly harder to kill. Fire Dragon models are also 30 years old and look it; the Eldar range is one of the oldest still sold and in desperate need of updating. Understandably, Eldar players were upset. The box also contained the extremely powerful Bladeguard, but they went largely ignored due to the fecal storm Eradicators kicked up. GW then doubled down. Unlike in the previous editions, where the supplement books were saved until the vast majority of codices were released, GW chose to near-exclusively prioritize releasing the Marine supplements, resulting in months of only new Marine books. By now, the strategy was clear: the Primaris money printer was in full BRRR mode. At the time of this writing, seven months into 9th edition, the following rule books are available: 1 xenos faction, 1 chaos faction, 0 Imperium, and 5 Space Marine. Oh...wait. Did I separate Space Marines from Imperium, despite saying above that they’re all one happy family? Apparently not so much. During all of this, GW’s website broke Space Marines out into their own, separate 4th listing that is categorized on top of all other Imperium, chaos, and xenos factions. Players began to notice the trend in model releases more and more, as if the Eradicators were the watershed moment. Since 8e, Marines alone have received the vast plurality/majority of new model releases over the last 3+ years. Remember, they’re still just one faction of about 20 who are now receiving the support of the other 19 combined. While the new Primaris line was positively received initially, the constant drumbeat of new Space Marines with only token attention to other factions began to drive a wedge between players and blowing up grimdank with memes. Even factions that got large rework releases paled in comparison. Other players questioned why so many new Marines were being released when armies were stuck with aged resin models that date back to the Clinton administration (and much older than the pre-Primaris Marines). For example, older armies were stuck with models like this. Worse, GW’s brand of resin (FineCast) is commonly referred to as “FailCast” in the community due to its poor quality and difficulty to work with. This feeling of neglect hit xenos players in particular, though some Imperial factions also had good reason to be upset at the quality of their old old models. Rumbles in the Warp: In retrospect, there were a number of warning signs from GW that issues were brewing. A Hobby Drama post could probably be written about any of these individual events, but here is a TL;DR of each:
The app - GW recently released a long-awaited mobile app that has been plagued with rules errors, intense attempted monetization, and was missing key features like army builders. In GW’s defense, they have been improving it regularly and providing many features for free in the meantime.
Hiding price hikes as “localization” - in response to Brexit and the weakening GBP, GW adopted a locally-based pricing model that came with hidden and significant price hikes in other countries. Fun story: it was cheaper for me to buy models off of their UK website, pay to have them shipped to a reshipping company, and pay for the reshipping and any import taxes to the US rather than to purchase them directly. A lot cheaper.
The Primaris Lieutenant - a meme that emerged after GW released model after model for the same in-game unit (one that most armies would never need more than a couple of), each with slightly different poses. Criticism centered around the idea that the resources to constantly remake this same unit could have been better-allocated.
Death of the Phoenix - a rare xenos vs xenos box set that starred 1 updated hero and 1 updated infantry unit each. Hurray! Except the box was also chock full of less-popular and very old models that there was little demand for. Many still sit unsold on store shelves.
Hobby fatigue and the Bore-us Heresy - with so many rapid-fire Marine releases, some players complained of difficulty keeping pace with both money to buy them and time devoted to modeling. Worse, Marines have been pushed so hard for so long, they have come to dominate the meta such that Marine vs. Marine games are commonplace, which can become repetitive or dull.
Forgotten weapon updates - Several Imperial/Chaos weapons were significantly buffed at the start of 9e, with GW promising to do the same for identical xenos gear...except, when the update came, they hadn’t. The changes appeared haphazard and were missing many weapons that players had reasonably expected to be included. (Sidenote: my personal theory is that they paid an intern to ctrl+f weapon names for updating, but said intern didn’t realize that the names can change based on the faction. For example, this is why the update to flamers was correctly mapped to the Eldar “Dragon’s breath flamer” but the “melta gun” update didn’t apply to the identical-in-all-but-name “fusion gun.” Oops.)
In Defense of Marines: Players on the pro-Marine side frequently point out that a good cause for their preferential treatment exists: money. Undoubtedly, Marines are the most successful single product line, and can you blame GW for milking it? The equally-common counterargument is that it’s a chicken-and-egg issue: that Marines are only the top seller because they get the majority of the new kits, updates, and advertising. Defenders of GW point to a number of other factors on their side: promises of future updates to other factions, that very real possibility Covid may be affecting production, and that older editions have been far more sluggish with content. They also point out that the Necron and Sisters of Battle factions each have received much-needed new model refreshes in the last few years, albeit nowhere near as expansive as their own. Marines were certainly in need of updating when the Primaris line was introduced and it went a long way in helping the supersoldiers fit their lore on the tabletop. While some Marine players were initially concerned that the pre-Primaris armies that they dumped thousands of dollars and at least 3 hours into painting would be suddenly outdated or unusable, GW has continued to support them and point to this as a sign of goodwill. Finale: Unfortunately, there has been no real happy ending to this drama. For some players, the lack of resolution has caused them to hit a stage of burnout: a place of feeling that non-Marine factions deserve attention, but that the complaints are so commonplace that people are just whining now. On the other side of the spectrum, xenos players can feel a learned helplessness, as there’s not much they can but accept their fate and make snarky comments on WarhammerCompetitive. Some people try to hold optimism that the new and improved GW will pull through, burning themselves out on the Primaris line while others put their head down and play as they always have. But the issue barrels forward as the Primaris money printer hums its “brrr” in the background. TL;DR - Gaming company builds bridges of goodwill with fans, then torches them due to impressions of favoritism and greed.
With the 8-ball and 9-ball pool, you can make money playing games. You can also participate in paid games and tournaments and earn cash rewards. You have to deposit an initial fee for paid games. If you win the watch, you earn cash. If you somehow lose, all the deposited amount will be lost. 27. Ozone play Source: Google Images How do apps make money? Mobile app development can make you rich if you go about it correctly. And if you still worry whether you can make money with a free app, get our experienced “yes-reply” straight away! Top 25% of iOS developers and Top 16% of Android developers make over $5,000 per month with their free apps. Hope this blog helps you to understand how to make money from apps and how beneficial are these mobile apps. To know more details on app development, you can get in touch with our expert App development team at TechAhead , Google’s preferred android partner and creator of 1500 + mobile apps for iOS, Android, and windows. 3. Swagbucks – $10 Bonus. One of the best money-making apps out there, Swagbucks offers a $10 bonus for new users. Swagbucks allows users to earn money by searching the web, watching videos, taking paid surveys, playing games, or shopping online. We tested eight of these apps over a four-week period, using each of them equally, so it's easy to spot which of them require the biggest time investment in order to make serious money. Some of these apps can be used whenever you have a few minutes spare, regardless of where you are. You can stream videos daily and make ton of money if you got a huge fan following. Just to give you an idea Twitch’s top streamers make over $500,000 per month doing this. I’m not saying everyone can make this much amount of money but if you’re able to garner thousands of views daily then you can earn hundreds of dollars per month. As you can see from this screenshot, most paid apps are cheap. On the current list of top paid apps in the U.K., must are under £5 with only two in the top 21 costing over £10. Those are Site Audit Pro and FL Studio Mobile. Things to Consider. While paid apps can be a good way to earn money from your app, it can be limiting. This is an app that allows you to make money by taking photos. You can charge as much as you like per photo, which means that your money-making opportunities through Foap are virtually limitless. People are always looking for a huge variety of photos, and you may be surprised at how much money you can make with a photo of your cat. 2. Bookscouter Free apps can still make money. The technology involved in creating a mobile app might be overwhelming. You don’t want to waste time or money if you’re unsure of how to efficiently spend and use your resources. If you need some help along the way, How Much Money Can an App Earn? There's a lot of money in apps. Billions of dollars. But most of it is earned by a certain type of app; many others make no money at all. It is extremely hard to put a single figure at around how much revenue an app can generate because of the wide range of apps and the disparity of money they produce.
My #1 Recommendation To Make a Full-Time Income Online.CLICK HERE https://bigmarktv.com/Start/Make Money Searching Google: Up To $35 Per Hour SUBSCR... Top 5 Apps That Can Make You Money Subscribe: http://goo.gl/Q2kKrD // Have a Top 10 idea? Submit it to us here! http://watchmojo.com/my/suggest.php Why not e... Here are some awesome websites to make money online in 2019All of these websites are way to earn an income online.My #1 Recommendation To Make A Full-Time In... 💰 My #1 Recommendation For Making Money Online Click Here Now ️ ️ ️ http://LifeWithoutLimits.co_____Hey guys... From $0 To $5000+ In 30 Days:👉 https://bit.ly/ImportantMessage-YTThis App Will Pay You $600.00 For FREE! (Make Money Online) 🔔 Support us -... An honest discussion about whether making money with apps on the App Store is possible for beginners.SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL http://bit.ly/2re4GH0 _____... 💰 My #1 Recommendation For Making Money Online Click Here Now ️ ️ ️ http://LifeWithoutLimits.co_____5 Apps T... Want some free money? Go here: http://bit.ly/38pcXxI and get 2 free stocks valued up to $250 when you open up an brokerage cash account with WeBull. (You mus... My #1 Recommendation To Make a Full-Time Income Online.CLICK HERE https://bigmarktv.com/Start/Make Money Downloading 5 Apps - YOU DO NOTHING SUBSCRI...
