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How a short/gamma squeeze on Tilray is causing the ENTIRE cannabis market to moon and how to avoid becoming a bag holder when this all comes crashing down
Obligatory: SIR, THIS IS A CASINO. This isn't financial advice in any way shape or form. TLDR: This run is going to end with the cannabis stocks back down 50-80% or more from the levels they are at. $CRLBF is the real play here for the smart players that want USA exposure to the legislation. We just like the stocks now, not later. Ok, listen up normies. Yeah I'm talking to the newbies specifically because the OGs here already know everything I'm about to share, but your insufferable groupthink and movement mentality shit pissed me off enough to make a post. Don't post DD if you have no clue. Ask someone for help and take your ridicule until someone comes along to help you. I used to post weekly DD on Sunday here a couple of years ago before one of you literally contacted my wife IRL. Not even kidding. So I made a new account. This is my first contribution back and I'm going to try and ensure some of you don't blow your chance at massive gains here by explaining what is actually going on. CNBC and anybody telling you that this is just 'momentum' and 'sentiment' is lying to you. The hedge funds are playing these right along with us. Don't ask me for proof, this isn't Twitter. Reasons why they are playing with us:
When there is money to be made, hedge funds and HFT funds are there before you
The floats are so small on these they can take sizable positions on both sides and stand to have massive gains, all the while handing you guys the bags.
That's all you need to know. So in response to all you posting "real DD" with why these companies are the best and you're going to hold to the moon and never sell: I'm over it -- I can tell instantly how uninformed you are when I read some poorly thought out DD about why CGC or TLRY or APHA is a long term play because they're talking about USA legislation. These are Canadian companies. Get your head back on straight. You're here for the trade and the bet, not for the fundamentals, and if that's it, then fine, ignore the rest of this post and pick an exit, and if not, read on so you don't hold more bags. This place has never been one to care for fundamentals, but let me talk some sense into you so you can post some gain porn and I can tell you to fuck off instead of you guys all yelling "MaNiPuLaTiOn ShOrT LaDdErS" Let's take a look at some of today's gainers: (changed tickers for automod avoidance) $USMJay - Penny stock, worth absolute nothing for a reason $SNDL - Up ridiculous amount, have a billion shares outstanding, just diluted them all the other day $TeeRTeeC - Terra Tech, they grow weed, from all indications, do it poorly $OhGeeEye - lol $HUGE - Probably the only one in the lot worth a YOLO on the chance they get an acquisition like GW Pharma did but they don't have the same product portfolio or prospects GW has. Now, if you're simply playing this to get in and get out, great for you. The people saying (and believing) "$SNDL $10 EOW! HOLD THE LINE" and stuff like this are just absolutely brand new normies and are clueless, do not listen to them. If you yolo'd on cheap calls in Dec/Jan, congrats, take your gains and don't be like the $GME bagholders. If you're investing in any of the names I just posted above, expect any money you put in to at some point in the next 12 months be worth approximately 20% of what it is worth now. Literally. They're far worse than the main bunch (CGC, CRON, ACB, TLRY, APHA) but the main bunch is nothing to write home about either.
THIS IS WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING:
Tilray had 40% short interest. It's not $GME level, but it's pretty high. When the stock crested $40 it really started taking off, why though? Notice this week's FD option chain: https://preview.redd.it/kyqeiwljeug61.png?width=917&format=png&auto=webp&s=0c1b48e12518515f09582289bd7f8a4f47a09629 Tilray has a 95M share float, those 42 calls represent roughly 1.5M shares held as a hedge just by themselves. Previous to this run up, that represents roughly 5% of the average daily volume of the stock, BY ITSELF. Those are shares that until Monday can be considered removed from the float because they're held as a hedge. They may get loaned out to be shorted, but that will only speed up the squeeze here. The important part: Today (2/10/21) the stock fell hard after open down to around 44 and found massive support all the way back to up 66. The most sold front week call? $40/$42 strikes. Premium when I screen shotted this? $22.20. Stocks going to pin above $60 for awhile likely, unless people are stupid enough to buy the OTM calls, in which case, it may squeeze itself higher. Smart hedge funds are going to pile into this, sell you the calls, shove the price up to keep selling you calls, then watch them all evaporate worthless in one of the future weeks in the chain, dump back the shares to help shove the price down, oh and did I mention? They shorted the top. https://preview.redd.it/ivy78woneug61.png?width=392&format=png&auto=webp&s=0604940c09126dc6d5b96a9cc5f17e4013ae5d9d It's just another plain old stock acting as a derivative of the option chain gamma squeeze. That's it, with a bit of short squeeze thrown in there and a WHOLE BUNCH of WSB fomo. The shorts are covering and pushing up the volume, likely re-shorting on the way up, and then you have WSB fomo'ing in to round out the total: a massive volume of 200 million shares today. You've got people that think this thing will skyrocket to 500+ (and it may) but the stakes get higher and higher each ladder up you take and the moves become more violent and more likely it comes all the way back down in short time the quicker it goes up. Might it get there? Sure. But be prepare to take profits when it does because...
ITS CALLED MEAN REVERSION. THIS CANT GO ON FOREVER.
Not to mention, the moves you are seeing are in completely overvalued companies, with horrible fundamentals, and poor prospects. Oh what's that? CGC got some CBD treats for Martha, seems fitting that something ill is going on in this industry considering she went to prison for insider trading. If the dog treats get you excited about the stock, Martha belongs here more than you do. 200M shares today means people who were long term bag holders cashed out and the shares have turned over the float two times in two days. That also means the shorts have turned over and are now short again. It means the HFT firms are feasting on all of you. It means Citadel is making a pile on the spreads. What to take away: An amount of shares equal to the entire float has changed hands, or in other words, fewer reason for people to bag hold. Fewer people that have to hedge. Fewer people that have to cover. Fewer people to help stabilize any of these upper price tiers, and keep the price stable by holding, and more reason it's going to collapse sooner (or later). But, this IS a casino after all...
Let's see what happened with TLRY last time this happened (oh, you're new here? Yeah, this isn't the first time):
https://preview.redd.it/p652mvgreug61.png?width=587&format=png&auto=webp&s=d95f2b0ccf946717859bffb28601dfd29e999e0b Looks eerily familiar to something else recently. Last time this occurred it traded between $100 and $300 in a single week timeframe. For those of you that are new: THIS IS NOT NORMAL. STOCKS DO NOT ALWAYS DO THIS. You are in the infancy of a new age of trading, but people still know, fundamentals matter a whole lot more than everyone is leading on, and these valuations are getting extremely overextended. Eventually, in the first squeeze Tilray bled off until the pandemic hit and it piled down to $2.43 a share. At $2.43/share, I would have bought it. Even at $10/12/14. At these levels? You're just ultimately out of touch but I look forward to the loss porn. So in short, again: Sir, this is a casino. Timeline of events, and how to not become a bagholder:
$APHA earnings are good, stocks pop a bit, and level off
Legislators pull a pump and dump since they probably have calls and say planning on some laws regarding changing the schedule of cannabis (notice: we will likely NOT get outright legalization, just re-scheduling)
$CGC earnings are actually awful, with the caveat they have profitability on the horizon
$TLRY gets a UK deal
$TLRY starts going insane - since $APHA is a reverse merger with a .81 value share to share, it starts pumping, people start buying the lower priced cannabis stuff and entire sector starts moving on "overall strength"
There's no strength, there's a gamma squeeze backed by investor momentum, and a short squeeze on Tilray.
This is going to come back down violently then plateau out like GME and pull a slow bleed the rest of the way back down, just like the second graph I posted. There is no fundamental or even POSSIBILITY of better fundamentals immediately on US legislation. The cost to enter the US market will most definitely cause capex and goodwill capital outflows, and set back their profitability since there are established MSO's in the USA already. The USA opening the market to these companies will only further degrade the actual balance sheets/income statements and slow down profits and you know what institutions and shareholders like? Yep. Profits.
Finally, how to not become a bag holder: The market can stay irrational way, way, way longer than you expect. So this may go on for a bit, but refer back to 7. It's coming back down eventually, set expectations and pick your exit, or start to shave off your position as it goes up and let a portion of it run. Eventually, you have to sell to actually realize a gain, don't forget that. Once you do, close the chart, remove it from your watchlist, check back in on it in a month if you want to get back in when you have a clear head.
The Canadian operators are literally the last companies I'd play off a US legislation play, and one of the only ones worth owning in $APHA for the arbitrage play on the shares. But if Tilray comes crashing back down, $APHA will as well along with all of them, and you have to hope you lose a lot less on $APHA crashing than you'll make on the arbitrage between the share price. THIS IS ALL JUST "SENTIMENT" BASED YOLOING BY THIS SUB. It has probably driven uneducated retail into the trades also - who will also become bag holders. Let me put this in big letters for those of you that can only read big font and use crayons:
NONE OF THESE COMPANIES HAVE REAL USA MARKET EXPOSURE, THEY ARE CANADIAN COMPANIES. THEY DO NOT HAVE MARKET POSITIONING AND ARE NOT POISED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF US LEGALIZATION.
IF ANYTHING: IT WILL HURT THEIR BOTTOM LINE AND SET BACK EARNINGS BECAUSE OF CAPEX AND CASH OUTFLOWS TO GET A POSITION IN THE MARKET AND SOME OF THEM WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS BECAUSE OF IT, WHILE OTHERS WILL FALL OUT OF PROFITIABILITY TO ENTER THE MARKET AND COMPETE WITH THE REAL PLAYERS. Who are the real players? (Cresco $CRLBF and Curaleaf $CURLF- do your own DD or wait for a post next week\***************)* Conclusion: Nobody should plan on holding these long term. Don't let someone else hand you bags like I did this morning at open on the pop unless you plan to hand your bags off and find the next play. You likely will not time the top. Pick a place you're ready to exit the trade, exit the trade or slowly shave your position, close the graphs and don't fomo back in. Just be done with the trade afterwards. You're likely not a cannabis multi millionaire and will not be one, unless you were loaded to the brim with low cost calls from last summefall or unless you literally yolo'd $10M into one of these a few weeks ago, and in that case, you belong here, congrats on your gains and fuck you. THIS IS A SECTOFOMO SQUEEZE. AND IT WILL END. THIS IS NOT SENTIMENT AND CNBC IS TROLLING US WITH IT LIKE WE HAVE THE POWER. And if you think WE are the ones driving the price up, the hedge funds are definitely watching and playing and they can bring these down at will at almost any time they want. You're holding a lit molotov, the only question is: will you throw it before it blows up? The rest of you? Plz fuck off with you 20 shares @ $2 on Sundial, fuck off with the "HOLD THE LINE SNDL $10 EOW", fuck off with your fomo, and fuck off with the "movement" and "lets push this to the sky" stuff and most importantly don't post DD if you have zero clue what is going on. You know what "lets push this to the sky" sounds like? Market manipulation. We're not in this together, I literally handed one of you a bag to hold this morning and even if they go up for another month, eventually, that bags gonna be heavy and I ain't coming back for it. I ain't tipping you either. These prices are insanely high for these companies. The multiples are out of control, and if you buy in at these levels, well, best of luck, I hope it works out for you. I'm fighting the fomo of extended gains, and will continue to put my money elsewhere.
SIR, THIS IS A CASINO.
Positions: I had the meme stocks like you literally all of them minus ACB and CGC. I took gains and bought 500 shares of Cresco prob increasing to 1,000 tomorrow, and kept the rest off the table to pay my wife's boyfriend's rent. Disclaimer: I have Tilray puts I'm prepared to average down on and diamond hand like a real boss because this is coming back down. Edit: You know what I forgot to add? Some of the biggest holders, the cannabis ETFs and funds, you know what they did today? They trimmed their positions. And they will continue to do so because of fiduciary responsibility and when you de-concentrate shares into the retail's hands, the moves will get more and more finnicky and more and more violent. Edit 2: Some normie tried calling me out like I never saw this trade coming or am a hedge shill, https://imgur.com/a/asAVkiC - I had thousands of shares, these are just the trades from this month, and I'm not advocating a buy, I sold mostly all of them this morning except for adding Cresco back in. You want the gain numbers? You do the math, I'm not your math tutor, I sold like 6 minutes after open for most of them. I have Tilray puts for next week and will be buying a few months out at various strikes as it continues to climb. Yeah, I think these are coming back down in price sooner rather than later, that isn't extraordinary information for a common sense person. Edit 3: I'm getting piles of messages from people who used to follow my DD back in 2018/2019. Yes, it's the real SoRefreshing, proof:https://imgur.com/a/Pn5LqCe Edit 4: Eh don't request me with "What should I do with XX" be a big adult grown up and decide your own risk tolerance and exits. I responded to the first 10 or so. Now I have 100. I can't. I disabled chat messages. Edit 5: jesus with the awards go buy TSLA calls this is WSB not fb/twtr disclaimer: have TSLA calls Edit 6: Oh look, they're pinning it around the $42 strike. Go figure.
"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)
I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to. Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547 I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can. I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts. Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T
Intro
"The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
"I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
"For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
"We're spread way too thin."
"If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
Widespread match fixing
The Pandemic
"People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
"People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
"To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
"Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
"People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
"It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.
CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association
"Who does this union really fucking serve?"
RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
"and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
"We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
"They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
"I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
"Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
"Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
"That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
He also says their rankings are a joke
"Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
"Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission
"They have been put in an impossible position."
RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
"ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
"Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
"Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
"They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
"They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
Also says more coaches being banned are coming
He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
"I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
"So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
"Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
Stream Sniping
"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"
RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
"Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
"ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
"All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?
Match Fixing
"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."
RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
"Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
"Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
"I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
"Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
"There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
"It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
"It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
"I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
"That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
"All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
"I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."
North America
"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."
RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
"was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."
Talent
"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."
RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."
Valve
"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"
Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
"It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
"Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
"People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."
Closing Statements
"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."
RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
"We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
"There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
"How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
"Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
"The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
"If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
"They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
"Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
"This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
"You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
"Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
"Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
"You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
"I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
"I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
"I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."
A skeptic’s post: Can WSB win the GME standoff even if we want to?
I have been following WSB as a lurker for almost a year, and this has become my favorite sub on all of reddit. Shout out to I am absolutely rooting for y’all and all your proletarian tendies.
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s money parade. But after reading lots of excited posts about “rockets to the moon”, which seem to be full of excited confirmation bias, riding on this excellent & sober post, I wanted to present a few arguments, as a total ignorant fool, about some strategic disadvantages I perceive in this battle, since I tend towards skepticism, and worry that there is too much buzz, and not enough strategic preparation.
I was also inspired by u/NHNE’s quote from Sun Tzu in his excellent post with a Diamond Hand Strategy Guide: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” - Sun Tzu
My caveat: I know literally nothing about investing.
The advantages Hedge Funds have in the battle for the GME Short Squeeze:
Information advantage
The hedge funds will always have quicker, better access to information than all of WSB.
Coordination advantage
They are one big organized entity, and can move their entire “Army” of bets with infinitesimal speed.
Size advantage
The hedges have more money at stake and in play than all of WSB put together.
Ally advantage
They have powerful collaborators. The media, who doesn’t want a hedge fund to go bust. You can assume, the US government (and every other government), because they don’t want a stock market crash. And everyone who colludes with hedge funds, i.e. all of corporate America.
Propaganda advantage
Whether it be social media posts, bots, articles in mainstream media, they have enough money to blast out as much fake statistics and propaganda as they like. WSB does not.
Mathematical advantage
A lot of trading has become complicated math. You can assume that every single analyst they have/need is working on the math to get them out of the hole they have dug themselves in. We are less good at math.
Speed & Precision advantage
They can make trades and bets much faster, with a much higher precision than WSB.
Strategic advantage
You can assume the hedge funds know your position, but you don’t know theirs. This in my mind is the most powerful of all advantages for them. Imagine you are playing chess against an opponent and have to decide which pieces to move, but aren’t allowed to see where theirs are? But they can ever read your thoughts (i.e. this forum).
Legal advantage
Given the very very light penalties even for something patently illegal in financial manipulations, it is in their very interest to do anything whose cost is “cheaper” than the potential cost of the actual monetary loss, whether it be legal or not. If you were the CEO/Fund manager, you too would decide for illegality.
So, the question then becomes, given this situation, in which for the hedge funds not only billions are at stake, but the narrative of their ability to make the market, and the propaganda of expertise they disseminate, how does WSB win and force the Short Squeeze? What are WSB's advantages? How do you make best use of them? Who are WSB's allies? How can they be activated? How do you deceive the enemy? How do you overwhelm them, tactically?
A few initial thoughts on counter-strategies (Feel free to suggest more, and I'll add them in):
The strongest narrative that might influence public/politics is that the stock market is a casino, and the house is not just taking its fees, but cheating. The stock market is no longer a "free market", but a place where big players make the rules, and use their wealth to make more wealth for themselves.
WSB needs to find and activate allies. These might be the company itself (GME), value investors who believe in the free market and its efficiency, political/investment figures who want investment to actually mean something.
Some disadvantages need to be turned into advantages. For example, it will be difficult to impossible for WSB to move in concert without alerting the "enemy" to its own ovements. So, how does one coordinate a move in which transparency becomes an advantage?
My position: One free GME share I got from RH when I signed up.:)
Artist: Run The Jewels Album: RTJ4 Date Released: June 3rd, 2020 Listen YouTube Spotify Tidal Apple Music Artist Background The duo consisting of Atlanta rapper Killer Mike, and legendary underground produceMC El-P, known together as Run The Jewels, originally came together as a result of Adult Swim executive Jason DeMarco who introduced the two in 2011. After his 2011 album PL3DGE peaked at #115 on the US charts, Killer Mike told Jason that he wanted to make his own AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Jason informed Mike, “If you want AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted modernized, the only producer I know who comes close to the Bomb Squad-level of production is El-P”. The duo’s chemistry was immediate, as El-P went on to produce all of Killer Mike’s 2012 last solo album R.A.P. Music, and Mike featured on El-P’s final solo album Cancer 4 Cure. Mike and El’s respective albums released within a week of each other in May 2012, and the two embarked on a twenty-city US tour in the following months. After returning from tour, the pair had found a friendship growing between themselves, and made the decision to put other projects on hold and focus on the chemistry that had been sparked. Recording at an upstate NY studio beginning in April 2013, the duo re-appropriated the phrase “Run The Jewels” from the LL Cool J track “Cheesy Rat Blues", and released their self-titled collaborative album, for free via digital download, only a mere 2 months later in June 2013. 36” Chain vs. Pistol & Fist Run The Jewels discography currently exists in a distinct pairing. With Run The Jewels as their debut, this record set the group's tone as a light-hearted, braggadocious duo with as much confidence in their abilities as swag in their punchlines. Just over a year later, the sequel Run The Jewels 2 took the foundation set from their freshman effort and dialed the insanity up to 11. RTJ2 pushed the boundaries of their aggression and flows to new heights; with incredible energy in their verses, and absolutely impeccable beats, blending El-P’s signature industrial sound with sharp synth arpeggios, chopped Zach De La Rocha vocals, and absolutely bonkers Travis Barker drums. It was then nearly 3 years before Jamie and Mike followed up their breakout RTJ2, with Run The Jewels 3 being released again ahead of its scheduled release date via free digital download, this time on Christmas Eve 2016. Instead of these two attempting to outdo the pure insanity and in-your-face attitude found in their predecessor, Mike and El decide to evolve themselves as a group. The duo had noticeably pulled back on the swag and dick jokes which made such a splash on RTJ2, instead choosing a more subdued, electronic approach to their beats, as well as a clearly stronger political approach in their lyrics. This change in sound and style is demonstrated in the album cover’s artwork. The first two records featured the distinctive RTJ “Pistol and Fist”, with the fist tightly gripping a chain. The chain, in my opinion, represents the swag and braggadocio that drove the aggressive nature of their first two albums. In RTJ3 the chain is removed, leaving only hands that have transformed from bleeding and bandaged, to a pristine gold. This brings us to early 2020. It’s been nearly 4 years of living in a post-Trump America, and El-P announces that Run The Jewels fourth record has been completed. Mike and El live-stream the first single “yankee and the brave” on Instagram on March 22nd, 2020. Lyrically and sonically, RTJ4 exists as the successor to Run The Jewels 3, with Mike and El again taking the good from their previous effort and launching it into the creative stratosphere. El-P’s beats are again leaning towards the synthetic, electronic side, this time with the intensity dialed all the way up to 11. From a lyrical perspective, RTJ takes the politically-charged lyrics from their predecessor, and again, up the ante, laying down some of the hardest hitting and politically poignant bars either of these two have ever spit. Album Review 2020 was a year that none of us will soon forget. An unprecedented global health crisis kept the majority of us inside for months at a time. RTJ4 was announced on May 12th, 2020, with a release date slated for June 5th, 2020. However, with 2020 as the gift that won’t stop giving, the end of May was highlighted by the unjust killing of George Floyd. The phrase heard around the world, “I can’t breathe” instantly became a rally-cry for the oppressed to finally take to the streets to demand systemic police reform, as Floyd’s death was not the first time this phrase was uttered in an unjust police killing. In fact, a 2020 study by the New York Times showed that at least 70 people have died in police custody after using the same phrase over the past decade. As millions of American’s began organizing protests and demonstrations in the wake of Floyd’s death, Run The Jewels made the decision to release their latest chapter two days ahead of the scheduled release. El-P tweeted, just minutes ahead of the drop, “Fuck it, why wait. The world is infested with bullshit, so here’s something raw to listen to while you deal with it all. We hope it brings you some joy. Stay safe and hopeful out there and thank you for giving 2 friends the chance to be heard and do what they love”. In line with all past Run The Jewels releases, the album was made available for free digital download, two days ahead of its scheduled release date, on June 3rd, 2020. THE RETURN (we don’t mean no harm but we truly mean all the disrespect) RTJ4 opens with the first single, “yankee and the brave (ep. 4)”. Using the team names from their respective hometown baseball teams, Mike and El use the opening track to prove that they’re not just a hip-hop duo, they’re brothers, for better or worse. El-P kicks this installment off with rapid-fire, machine-gun esque snares, matching Killer Mike’s aggressive flow and tightly packed rhymes, before El jumps in to trade some dense rhymes as well. Mike and El depict themselves as outlaws, with Mike surrounded by cops with only one bullet remaining. He contemplates suicide instead of allowing the police to take him alive, until El-P jumps back in, offering Mike a way out, with a getaway car waiting outside. This tense situation is depicted lightheartedly in this song’s music video, which was released via Adult Swim and features the duo animated. The trade-off between Mike and El’s short verses are reminiscent of late-80’s EPMD flows, while the production sounds like boom-bap that’s been sent to us from the future. This distinctive blend of old-school rap roots and forward thinking production is what continues to separate Run The Jewels from absolutely all of their contemporaries. While so many artists are continually playing catch-up with the latest trends, RTJ are side-stepping the trendy and moving forward with the mind-bending. FLEXIN’ (ayo one for mayhem, two for mischief) The second single “ooh la la” samples a Gang Star track "DWYCK (feat. Nice & Smooth)" as the basis for the chorus. I say “samples” as that’s how it is credited in the album’s liner notes, however it’s truly an interpolation of Greg Nice’s bar, slowed down slightly, and sung by El-P and Greg Nice himself. El-P is a true old-head at heart, and it’s abundantly obvious in his work, even going as far as to recruit legendary producer DJ Premiere to handle the scratching on the back end of this banger. Out of key piano chords are looped to quickly create an unsettling aura surrounding the track, before El-P’s voice cuts through the infectious piano like a whip. Pounding, up-tempo drums are introduced after the chorus’ first iteration, creating what is possibly El-P’s first danceable beat. Lyrically, Mike and El-P initially seem scattered on this track, however the music video quickly makes their point very obvious.
”we imagined the world on the day that the age old struggle of class was finally over. a day that humanity, empathy and community were victorious over the forces that would separate us based on arbitrary systems created by man. this video is a fantasy of waking up on a day that there is no monetary system, no dividing line, no false construct to tell our fellow man that they are less or more than anyone else. not that people are without but that the whole meaning of money has vanished. that we have somehow solved our self created caste system and can now start fresh with love, hope and celebration. its a dream of humanity’s V-DAY… and the party we know would pop off.”
The video envisions a society celebrating the fact that the class system we currently exist within has finally imploded. Money is worthless, and we have rejected the desire to bind ourselves to the constraints of capitalism. All creeds and colors unite to burn the system that has so effectively controlled us for over a century. It’s a party, and if there was a song to celebrate the end of the world as it is currently known, “ooh la la” is that song. Mike’s last verse features a few metaphors and comparisons celebrating the destruction of capitalism, saving the most poignant for last:
I used to love Bruce, but livin' my vida loca Helped me understand I'm probably more of a Joker When we usher in chaos, just know that we did it smiling Cannibals on this island, inmates run the asylum
Premo’s expertly cut scratches lead us into the equally hard hitting sample flip of “Misdemeanor”, by Foster Stevens as the basis for the beat to “out of sight”. Lending yet another nod to the old-school greats that laid the foundation for RTJ, “out of sight” samples the same track as The D.O.C.’s “It’s Funky Enough”, only adding a bouncy, electronic synth atop the inverted chord hits, and uptempo, industrial drums, to create an absolutely infectious groove for Mike and El’s dynamic chemistry to shine, rapidly jumping between each other’s two line flows in the first verse. “out of sight” shows each MC providing insight into how each of them earned a living and achieved their current status. Mike and El’s opening verse each details themselves robbing people in order to eat. El alludes to the fact that he crossed his accomplices in crime for the whole bag, while Mike details the fact his assailant tells him it’s an “honor” to be robbed by his mother’s only son. While El-P’s production is the obvious stand out on first listen, Killer Mike comes through with one of the most sonically pleasing and technically proficient verses of 2020.
We the motivating, devastating, captivating Ghost and Rae relating product of the fuckin' '80s Coke dealin' babies, never regulating, bag accumulating It would not be overstating to say they are underrating The pride of Brooklyn and the Grady, baby We don't need no compliments or confidence Our attitude and latitude is "fuck you, pay me"
The dense, intricate rhyme schemes smack you in the face, almost distracting you from Mike’s delivery and blistering flow on the verse; flexing his legendary status while paying homage to his drug-dealing past. This absolutely stunning display of technical skill, story telling, and complex rhyming illustrates how RTJ seamlessly integrates the best of both old school and new school hip-hop. “out of sight” also features a guest verse from 2 Chainz, and he continues to lay the braggadocio on thick. Considering Tity Boi’s dedication to trap stylings, his verse feels right at home on the flex track, despite it’s late 80’s tribute sample, a considerable departure from his usual sound palette. Up until this point, I haven’t mentioned any of the El-P’s lyrics specifically. El-P is a great rapper, but Killer Mike… Well, Killer Mike is an incredible rapper. He’s the guy who draws you in. El-P is the one who lays the foundation for greatness and Mike is the show stopper, and that’s generally the case for most RTJ tracks. But on “holy calamafuck”, El-P seems determined to make people stop and ask, “Who the fuck is this?!”. A sharp, yet nearly minimalistic drum kit backing a heavily distorted synthesizer melody lays beneath rhymically knocking cow-bells. This aggressively set stage allows Mike and El to flex as the dynamic duo they are, until the beat suddenly takes a turn for the chaotic. A gnarled, ultra-menacing synth overtakes everything while Mike screams into the abyss, until a distorted snare, enormous 808s, and skeletal hi-hats cut through and launch the beat switch into another dimension. The minimal, yet incredibly dark soundscape allows El-P to snap in a way I have never heard from him previously. His rhymes schemes are reminiscent of an old MF DOOM lyric notebook, while his topics flawlessly combine flexing, psychedelic use, and his well-cemented legacy in the hip-hop community. Cutting and pasting a few of his bars into this review could not convey a fraction of how stunning El-P’s performance on “holy calamafuck” is. Slightly later in the track list, making liberal use of the Ether song “Gang of Four”, “the ground below” samples and loops the sharp guitar riff and adds aggressive, pounding drums as the basis for the beat; this is finally reminiscent of the forward-thinking, stridulous production El-P has built his reputation on. Capitalising on the classic RTJ moment, Mike and El both flex in their own unique ways. Mike compares himself to Godzilla taking on Tokyo, and El-P demands respect for his name as the legend he is, threatening to smack dying children for mispronouncing his name with his middle finger to the world; his complete disregard for human life and confidence in his abilities are summed up at the end of his verse.
You see a future where Run the Jewels ain’t the shit Cancel my Hitler-killing trip Turn the time machine back around a century
SO¢IAL JU$T-ICE (until my voice go from a shriek to whisper...) While the first few tracks aren’t without their social and political themes, the back-end of RTJ4 is where Mike and El start to bust out the heavy topics. “goonies vs. E.T.”. starts off light, with El-P pointing to the irony of how once he finally started to make it “big” in the industry, the world began to descend into chaos due to climate changes, increasingly obvious social injustice, and political madness. He culminates his frustration with our disregard for the Earth with a fantastic quotable.
Fuck y’all got, another planet on stash? Far from the fact of the flames and our trash That is not snow, it is ash, and you gotta know The past got a wrath, it’s a lover gone mad
Mike’s verse takes the light-hearted frustration expressed by El-P, and turns the aggression to the next level. Aiming his sights against the ruling class and their society that’s been designed to oppress people for profit, who have very meticulously painted themselves as celebrities and idols to the American public. Mike accepts that he will be villainized by these people for speaking against them, but he welcomes the nefarious role, knowing that the working class will eventually eat the rich, no matter how much they are stomped into the dirt. And this is just the warmup. If it’s possible for a song to represent a moment in time that captures the absolute shit storm that has been 2020, “walking in the snow” is that song. It’s release coincided perfectly with the protests for George Floyd which were sweeping the nation. Killer Mike’s verse directly references the phrase “I can’t breathe”, the last words of Eric Garner, which also happened to be the last words of Floyd as well. The fact that this verse was reportedly written in November 2019 perpetually underscores the importance of the content and perfectly represents how persistent this problem is. “walking in the snow” is a true encapsulation of both a defining moment in time and an ever-persisting issue. But he doesn’t just stop at the racial injustice. Mike goes on an absolute rant about the American education system; how it’s not designed to teach people, but to discriminate against poor populations, limiting their legitimate opportunities, and therefore disproportionately leading them into a criminal lifestyle. He calls out the media as fear-mongers, and the apathy of the American public in the face of indecency. Fortunately for Mike, by the time we finally had the chance to hear this masterpiece, we were already on our feet, using this album as a war cry to mobilize against a tyrannical government that militarized against its own citizens simply for asking that we recognize systemic racism and demanding change. Killer Mike has the best verse of the year, no doubt in my mind. The only drawback is that Mike’s verse is so fucking good that it completely overshadows El-P’s, which is also amazing. A menacing guitar riff and haunting synths kick the track off into a bouncy groove, where El-P unleashes a flurry of internal rhymes that does not relent for about half his verse. Even adding layers of social commentary within the densely packed bars, El refuses to quit and continues on his political tirade; criticizing ICE’s detainment center practices and the “pseudo-Christians” who support them, with a bar that now lives in my head:
Pseudo-Christians, y’all indifferent, kids in prison ain’t a sin? Shit if even one scrap of what Jesus taught connected you’d feel different what a disingenuous way to piss away existence, I don’t get it I’d say you lost your goddamn minds if y’all possessed one to begin with
The combination of two of the best verses spit by any rapper(s) this year and production help from El-P and long time RTJ collaborator Little Shalimar, create a bouncy, aggressive, deeply truthful banger. “walking in the snow” not only encapsulates the crux of 2020 with lyrics that will become more powerful as they age, but will also forever be associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and the determination to expose continuing racial and societal injustices. The sonic palette of RTJ4 holds an extremely unique place in El-P’s discography. Jamie is the definition of a self-made 90’s hip-hop legend. This is the dude who put New York underground hip-hop on the map with Company Flow, and he did it with his unique flavor of dark, noisy, dense, boom-bap. Whether he was doing it with the help of Rawkus, or completely independently during his Definitive Jux run, El-P has never made music with the intention of becoming famous. Funcrusher Plus, Fantastic Damage,I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, and Cancer 4 Cure are all highly revered as industrial, technical, abrasive, and completely unsuitable for the radio or a party. The fact that three songs on RTJ4 could easily be heard on the radio, at a party, or in a TV series credits scene is frankly, astounding. In a 2002 interview/documentary on El-P’s budding record label Def Jux, he stated that his friend bet him $500 that he could not make a beat that was “happy”. At the time of the interview, El-P said that he had not won that bet yet. While I might not qualify the beats on RTJ4 as “happy”, if you showed El-P the beat for “JU$T” in 2002, I believe he might have won that bet. Pharell opens “JU$T” with the pre-chorus, spitting varied examples of how we’re all slaves to our current system throughout the track, over echoing snares and bouncy 808s before bright synth chords and up-tempo hi-hats burst in while Killer Mike delivers the chorus, pointing to the fact that the majority of the people featured on American currency owned slaves at one point in their lives. Mike’s verse touches on the fact that he has committed crimes to get where they are today. Mike is publicly open about his past as a drug dealer. So why is he a criminal, but Benjamin Franklin isn’t? These are the people who built our country, and they built it on the backs of slaves. He illustrates this theme with a more recent examples:
You believe corporations runnin marijuana? Ooh (how that happen?) and your country gettin ran by a casino owner (ooh) pedophiles sponsor all these fuckin’ racist bastards (they do)
When corporations are able to sell cannabis legally, but the government continually incarcerates people who trap, our president is a notoriously fraudulent businessman, and the people who helped put him in power run a pedophile ring, yet none of them face consequences and are allowed to continue to profit and remain in power while people suffer; well, we might be closer to slaves than previously imagined. Rage Against The Machine frontman Zach de la Rocha also makes his mandatory feature appearance at the end of “JU$T”. As the only artist to feature on three Run The Jewels albums, Zach is essentially an unofficial member of the group at this point. His fiery verse is spit with the same “Rage” energy that set him apart in the mid-90’s, ending the track questioning his place in a capitalist society as a recipe for his inevitable demise, since his “breath”, or art, as his weapon to express himself is still being exploited for other’s profit. Continuing with RTJ4’s heavily synthetic sonic palette, “never look back” features wavering synth leads resting above the slow-jams snappy snares and thumping bass, while a haunting voice echoes in the background. This unsettling aura provides additional gravity for Jamie and Mike to continue self-reflecting on defining moments in their childhood, and as well as how far they’ve come from those moments. Mike and El are both self-made men, and while they have a certain fondness for those gritty moments that defined them, moving forward in life is undoubtedly more important. Skeletal drums reminiscent of a slowly pounding heart opens “pulling the pin”, before rhythmic hi-hats and textured, watery synths fluttering in the upper register resting above a bouncy synth lead, and punchy 808s, burst in. The track digs itself into a slower, marching groove and shows the duo figuratively doing exactly what the title implies. Painting a portrait of a society that has turned on itself, Mike and El are ready to pull the pin and start over. The duo both detail their despise for the ruling class, pointing out multiple examples of how the elite have designed our society to keep poor people in their class. Simultaneously recognizing their own hypocrisy for profiting in a system that inherently discriminates; Mike reflects on his own success, knowing that living the lifestyle he enjoys is one built on oppression, and expresses the guilt that has caused him. El-P opens with a brutal metaphor for police, implying that they’re the root cause of the “wretched state of danger” our society exists within, and that the only effective corrective action is to numb yourself with drugs. Despite his advice, Jamie knows this is not a permanent solution, but one that causes more self-inflicted wounds. The final piece of the puzzle that is RTJ4, “a few words for the firing squad” begins to close the album with ever crescending strings, and loud, thunderous drums which never seem to resolve, continuing throughout their verses. While the drums that lead to nowhere can be sonically unpleasant, the unresolved melodies are intentionally representative of their current mindsets. Their verses are reflective and grim, but simultaneously optimistic and envisions a world where tragedy is a less common occurrence. El is grateful for what he has now but recognizes his entire life has been skewed by traumas, so out of place feels normal for him. He reflects on his current success, noting that the worst people tend to end up with the most, which makes becoming “rich” something not as desirable as it once was. Mike opens up about the death of his mother who died while he was on an airplane, admitting his struggles to not cope with his trauma with opioids. However, his wife provides him the most important reason to stay clean “but my queen/say she need a king/not another junkie rapper fiend” while a heartbreaking saxophone solo highlights the gravity of his lyrics. The track ends with what sounds the like wrap-up voiceover to a TV show, a conceptually satisfying ending, as the opening track “yankee and brave (ep.4)” began with El-P stating:
”This week, on Yankee and The Brave”
This voiceover paints the duo as brothers on the run from the law and crooked cops, and while this does close this “episode” out as intended, the critic in me is bothered by the slightly kitschy outro to such a spectacular album. The voices singing over and over, “Brave, brave, braaaaaave, Yankee and the Brave” would be, simply put, better left on the cutting room floor. The ending of this track alone is what knocks my score of this album down a few points. Despite its stellar lyrical content, with drums that never seem to reach that “holy shit!” moment, and the easily skippable outro, it’s upsetting to me that an album this great ends on such a low note. Overview RTJ4 is by far my favorite album of the year. El-P’s cutting edge approach to their sound, blended with lyrical content that continues to be more relevant by the day, the duo have come together with what is objectively their most accessible album to date. RTJ4 is the natural evolution of sound and subject matter for the duo; taking the foundation set by Run The Jewels 3 and evolving it into a more concise, more accessible, and more conceptual album. While I still personally prefer the “fuck the world” intensity and experimental nature of Run The Jewels 2, RTJ4 opens themselves up to a whole new world of exposure, and when you’re as talented as these two, you know they’re going to capitalize on it. RTJ is currently at their apex, and they’ve created an album that will make many new life-long fans going forward. 9.2/10 Discussion Points
How does this compare to other RTJ releases? How about in comparison to the member’s solo works?
Does the overwhelmingly positive critical reception of this album surprise you?
What's up dingleberry danglers! It's ya boy, Agent00Funk, here to welcome you back to another edition of the TendieDome! That's right, its time for another wall of text for your literary entertainment, definitely not for your financial advice. By popular request, I even figured out how to add pictures. Keanu help us. If you're as illiterate as a Mississippi high school drop-out, go ahead and skip to the bottom for the TL;DR and my positions. I don't wanna hear no bitching about your lack of attention span, alright, because I will call you a slack-jawed cousin-fucker. Bet. So staple your eye shades open, Clockwork Orange style, and get ready to be blown away by how one of America's worst companies is gonna make you tendies. Those of you that have been following my DDs know that I'm not about rocket ships, I'm not gonna send you to the moon or Mars (but Uranus is in the cards). No, no, no, my sweet little summer autists, my plays are are all about steady accumulation of tendies. The goal? Acquire enough tendies so you can buy a first class ticket on whatever rocket a superior autist says is launching. Most of my plays are LONG term HOLDs, today's is a slight exception as we're looking for a Q3 or Q4 pay out. Maybe one day I'll grace you with my casino plays, but before I do that, we gotta make sure you're bringing enough dough to the paste-eating competition. And I sure as shit don't want y'all dick whistlers to blame me when the casino play doesn't pan out, so we're sticking with safe territory for now. Alright, now that I've masturbated enough and have that post-nut clarity to tell you why you should be putting money in CMCSA. That's right you little chode yodlers, muthafucking Comcast. Lots of you are probably already their customer, and have evolved to instantly wanna shit on Comcast. I don't blame you, they seriously suck, bunch of fucking assholes. But you know what sucky fucky assholes do? Make stacks on stacks on stacks. They're fucking you, AND taking your money. These guys have prostitution really figured out....you don't even know that you their ho. So, let's channel our inner Charlie, and do some Pepe Silivia deep dive due diligence. That's right, it's not just a DD like your wife's bra, we're going for the DDDD! This is us rn. Would you take financial advice from this guy? So, CMCSA....where do even start? The highway-robbery pricing (tendies)? The understaffed and overworked employees (tendies)? The geographical monopolies they hold? (tendies). The reliance on dumbfuck Boomers as a customer base (I wanna hear the choir sing it with me now:...tendies)? No, no, no....you may be retarded, but you know when you're getting fucked, and you know you pay for getting fucked anyway, just like everyone else (tendies). fr fr CMCSA basically makes money in two ways: 1.) fucking you. 2.) fucking others. But wait! There's more! They have even more ways of taking money from you and everybody else, and if your goldfish attention span can handle it, you'll see what I'm talking about. Oh and charts. I do have charts. Fuck, me and Billie Eyelash have been spending so much time in the Crayon Room together, those charts have so many colors, most of them green. Before I bust out these fucking rainbow crayons, let's cover some ground facts. For the Europoors among us, you may be shocked to find out that most Americans have NO CHOICE in who their ISP is. I know, cue the Sarah McLachlan and charity pitch, it's fucking pathetic. Free markets, my ass. But you know what that means? Tendies. That's right, Comcast has the most little fiefdoms of all the ISPs in the land. Only $T can compete, but here's the kicker: people have been ditching $T for CMCSA. Why? Because $T offers DSL in a gigabit world, that's locked inside because of a pandemic, re-discovering what made cyber sex so awkward over AIM, but now with cameras! (All the real Gs were around for that A/S/L/ convo, shit was Catfish City). So, while all you fuckwads are going to work in your Superman pajamas on Zoom, more people signed up for that sweet, sweet broadband., so they too could go to work in their Cookie Monster pajamas. (Mine are camouflaged, my co-workers don't even know I'm there, they just see square burger patties getting flipped on the griddle and are like "woooooooooooooaaah") I know you bell-end ringers don't read, but you can read a little more about subscriber increases here: (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/comcast-cmcsa-q4-2020-earnings.html) Did you notice that link? CNBC? Reputable shit, right? I know some of you motherfuckers pay CMCSA like $200/month just to watch that shit, along with 400 other channels of garbage. That's right Europoors, CMCSA isn't just an ISP with a monopoly, it's a cable TV provider with a monopoly (tendies). And you know what else? They own CNBC. Fuck, they own ALL of NBC. Now, I know, some of you more erudite ballsack gargglers already know this, but let's let the retards catch up. Because, guess what you molasses racers, CMCSA also owns Universal Studios. For the nerds in the front row, shut the fuck up, we already know you're smart. Are you seeing this shit? Like, seriously, are you piecing this shit together? CMCSA owns the pipes, CMCSA owns the shit in them, large swatches of America have no choice except CMCSA, and more people need those shitty ass pipes, because it's way fucking better than the old ass copper $T is selling. "Alright," you say, "CMCSA would've been a good pandemic play, what's the bull case looking forward?" Well tug my dick and call me Rick, that's why we're here. I can already tell this is going become a damn book of retardation, so I'm going to add some chapters. TV Subscriptions. We've got the finest stock art, just for you This is the weakest part of CMCSA, everyone is cutting the cord, they're sticking to streaming, but if you check that link above, you'll see that they actually managed to add over 400k new subscribers. Sure, some of that can be attributed to people being bored as fuck at home during the pandemic and figuring they'll get 400 channels of dog vomit to help ease their soul-crushing ennui. There aren't a lot of reasons to expect these growth figures to continue, except one, which I will get to in a bit, but I do think they'll be a bit sticky. Why? Fucking Boomers man. Boomers have this very strange addiction to channel surfing. I don't get it. They just sit there and flip through 400 channels at 10 channels/second for hours on hours on hours. They aren't even watching anything, just surfing. Don't believe me? Go ask a Boomer near you how much time they spend channel surfing and why they won't give it up. They love complaining about it too: "all these fucking channels, and nothing to watch." If you point out that they could just STREAM something they want to watch, they just go right back to surfing, because they don't actually know what they want to watch. TV may be going the way of the dinosaur, but there are still lots of dinosaurs surfing channels for now, hell, they even picked up more. How? Is it all just bored people signing up for TV during the pandemic? Maybe, but I've got another theory about geography! Internet Subscriptions Yup. So, even though people may be cutting the cord, they can't do that without internet, and...well....yeah, CMCSA may see declines from TV subscriptions, but definitely not internet subscriptions, not this year anyway. Again, I refer to the earnings report to show you jello heads the subscription numbers. I'm not going to belabor this point much, surely you know people need broadband, and CMCSA is the only game in town in many places. Geographic Monopolies in Growth Markets Awwww yiiissss gimme Park Place If you've been reading along thus far, congratulations, you'll remember that we talked about the little fiefdom monopolies these guys have across the country. So, where are those fiefdoms located? Right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communities_served_by_Comcast Now, I won't bust out the charts for population growth in all of these, because there is a fuck ton, but even just looking at Alabama (Roll Tide), you see that 80% of their markets in that state are growth markets, and only 1 is showing population decline.... and they're only in 6 markets there! Now, they don't hold 80% of growth markets in every state, but they hold a lot. This means that as these cities attract more people and grow, those poor saps will have no choice but to sign up for CMCSA if they want TV and/or internet. Yes, goons and goblins, CMCSA doesn't just have a captive audience, it has a captive audience in places where the audience is growing. Do I really need to spell out how these equates to tendies? Want to know something even better? Biden's infrastructure plan includes heaps of money for increasing broadband access to underserved and rural communities, communities that will then become part of CMCSA's growing fiefdoms. Streaming Trying to catch my shows fresh from the stream with my bare hands CMCSA has also launched its own streaming service, Peacock, and if you look at the CNBC link, you can see subscriber numbers for that as well. Seeing the writing on the wall, CMCSA has gotten in on making money from cord-cutters. Again, CMCSA owns the entire NBC and Universal Studios catalog, but it really doesn't matter because just like a bunch of people signed up for Disney+ just to watch The Mandalorian, a bunch of people have and will sign up for Peacock just to watch The Office. And yeah, it fucking sucks that before you could have Hulu and Netflix and not need any more streaming services, that they are Balkanizing the streaming space just like they did with cable, and now you need like 20 different apps, but go look at the Universal/NBC catalog and tell me that you wouldn't pay $5/month for access to it if you couldn't get it anywhere else. I mean shit. WWE is exclusive to Peacock...do I need to say more? Do you smell-l-l-l-l-l what The Funk is cooking? Theme Parks and the Recovery Who else re-installing RCT2? Here's a kick in the pants that you didn't expect. Universal studios. That's right, these motherfuckers got their own janky-ass wannabe Disney World. Hell, if anyone ever does open a Jurassic Park, it'll be CMCSA because they've got the rights to it and know how to run a theme park. How much do they add? About $6 billion/year (pre 2020). How much did they make in 2020? $1.8 billion. There's $4 billion set to come back into the pot. But wait, there's more! They're going to open their largest park ever this year, been building it since 2016, and the opening has been confirmed despite the Rona. Where? In Beijing, so you know the place is gonna be huge and full. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Studios_Beijing So as the vaccine gets out there, the world returns to "normal" and people go spend absurd amounts of money to slide across bits of metal, not only will missing revenue return, but CMCSA is ready to make the pot bigger. When is it opening? May. This is important because we're not looking for a pay-out until after the park has opened. If you feel more retarded after having read this far, imagine how retarded I am for having written all that linguistic linguini. So, now that we know what the bull case for CMCSA is, let's bust out those crayons and look at some charts to get the full confirmation-bias effect and look at possible entry and exit points. CRAYON ROOM TIME! I don't know if this will be mo bigga when you fumble fucks look at it, I'm too retarded to figure out formatting. I really don't know fuck about shit when it comes to numbers, but I do know the lines look pretty. So, let's run this down real fast. This is a weekly chart going back to 2018. I wanted to go that far back to show you two things. 1.) CMCSA recovered from a dip in 2018 much like it has from the COVID dip, and is on pace to match or exceed it's growth average since 2018. 2.) Annual dividend increases of around 10%. Looking at the chart, there is no reason not to expect the same announcement towards the end of the year, and in fact the next quarterly dividend has already received the increase. I've got a few other lines in there, but what I want to point out is how much the price rises above the moving price average, weather measured as a simple moving price average or within Bollinger Bands. Dips below the average tend to recover and be above the average again within 2-3 weeks. Crayons are awesome. I should invest in Crayola. Now let's look a little at demand. Again, this is a weekly chart, but this time we're mostly going to be focusing on the right side of the chart. The top chart is a Stochastic Full measurement, the two horizontal blue lines represent oversold (top) and overbought (bottom). Generally speaking, if a stock is oversold, the price goes down, people buy, and the price goes up, leading to a position of it being overbought where people sell for profit, price goes down, and rinse and repeat. The squiggly lines are the two measurements of where the stock is in relation to being oversold or overbought. So what is it showing us? That the stock was recently oversold, and is heading towards being overbought. Best time to get in would've been 2 weeks ago, but try posting a DD on WSB back then that wasn't about the holy trinity cult. So what does this mean? Well, buying now could lead to a little rise followed by a little dip as it fluctuates between oversold and overbought. The second graphs is the MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence) this chart essentially measures sentiment, if it's up, it's bullish, if it's down, its bearish. I know some of you eggheads will correct me with finer points, but I don't have time to write a textbook that I'm incapable of understanding. As you can see, it has leveled off, which makes me believe it will dip, this also corresponds to it's movements in the Stochastic measurements. So don't buy at open, watch it for a bit, it might dip. The third graph...I have no fucking clue y'all. It had the word "projection" in it, and the line is pointing up, and that was good enough for me. Timing and Prices If you can get in for under $50, do it. I'm not sure if it will dip that low again soon, but it's within possibility. Calls aren't terribly priced, they're not the value they were 2 weeks ago when I first wanted to write this, but they're still a good value, especially for July and beyond, which is the timeframe we're looking at for an exit. Or not. I mean, you could sit on this shit forever and not really have to worry, which is another thing I like about it. But I have calls for July and October and may even pick up the 2022 LEAPs. We're looking for two events to provide a nice pop for our exits; the new park opening and Q3 earnings report that should include initial earnings from the parks, both new and re-opened. We want to see if the customers are going back to the parks, and returning that missing money into the pot, and we want to see how growth of broadband customers has increased. But again, don't sweat too much about timing and prices, this thing just keeps marching upwards. Positions CMCSA Shares CMCSA 16 July $50c CMCSA 15 Oct $52.5c Tl;dr CMCSA. No rockets, but good value. 7/10 Would buy again. DISCLAIMER: I don't know what I'm doing, you listen to me at your own peril, please leave me alone SEC.
This writing was copied from my bloghttps://nope-its-lily.medium.com/. I write about the NOPE and other options and market things there and on my twitterhttps://twitter.com/nope_its_lily. Cheers! Check out Part 1 first about my thoughts on the short squeeze thesis. To clarify — I do think shorts are being squeezed in Gamestop, although this is auxiliary to the main driver of the stock’s momentum (and not, in my opinion, the primary driver of Friday’s exponential rise). So okay, let’s go to the obvious question — if hedge fund tears didn’t cause Gamestop to rocket, what did cause it? Wew laddy, +71.25% at the peak. Gamestop in many ways is an extraordinary story, and has all the properties of a successful meme stock (salience):
Personal name recognition/Nostalgia-For better or worse, we all know/remember Gamestop (primarily from childhood), which is similarly why Hertez performed so well in the afterlife while Mallinckrodt hasn’t.
A hero and a villain — Much like Tesla, Ryan Cohen represents the hero in the Gamestop narrative, where investors can paint whatever picture of the future they want and justify whatever price tag they pay. Similarly, Melvin and Citron (I mean, even the name Melvin) and the hedge fund industry are (perhaps well-deserved) villains in the arc, helping obfuscate feelings of greed or risk by presenting it as a righteous cause.
A cataly-ish — For obvious reasons Gamestop is benefiting from the console cycle, but perhaps to a lesser degree than before (its massive real world presence during a pandemic doesn’t help much).
Humor-What could be more funny than investing in a relic of the early 2000s? Except maybe investing billions into 3d renderings of hydrogen powered cars.
So it isn’t a surprise Gamestop captivated the attention of the internet; despite common belief, the legend of Gamestop extended far outside wallstreetbets (although the saga of DeepFuckingValue/RoaringKitty there helped bring substantial energy to the cause). And how does the internet show some love? Well, it buys calls. For better or worse, most new investors have absolutely no concept outside of simple long call/put positions (probably for the best, from experience). In general, most new market positions view long options (and, let’s face it, mostly calls) as a highly leveraged bet on the underlying akin to a lotto ticket, which works beautifully for the following reasons:
Long options have asymmetric risk-reward, assuming risk-loving participants.
While in prior posts I’ve touched on the expected profit of options being zero, this is only true (it’s never actually true, due to seller’s, variance risk premium, and a host of other factors) under risk-neutral measure. In the real world, investors (especially on indices) tend to be risk-averse (weighting losses more heavily than chance of gain)… at least historically. The new class of retail investors, on the other hand, partly engendered by Robinhood’s extremely gamified UI tends to be risk-loving (“yolos”), favoring chance of gain over (higher) chance of loss. For that type of an investor, options are akin to a casino due to convexity, or in layman’s terms, “the potential to go up a lot really fast” in value. This is of course true for stocks too (albeit less so, due to the implied leverage of options), but when an individual purchases a stock they have a rather large downside (the entire stock can become worthless). This isn’t the case for a call option, which only represents a portion of the total cost of the stock, but represents the entire upside. 2. Options have to be hedged… often in the underlying. Before I get 1000 responses telling me this isn’t always true (especially on indices, where you have futures and all sorts of nice things) — it’s more or less true on a meme stock, which basically has no beta or correlation to any other stock (except perhaps other meme stocks). In general, one can anticipate that an option written by a market maker and sold to a retail investor (who owns a long position from that transaction) is hedged in the underlying stock, which obeys the same rules of buying and selling pressure. This is even more apparent in stocks with low float, which tend to move in price substantially with relatively low volume traded. You can imagine how few option contracts it similarly takes (given the implied leverage up to 100 shares worth of delta) to actually move the price (I’ve seen call options move the spot in real time, for instance, on Del Taco stock before earnings). 3. Option buying begets option buying. What happens when a few individuals buy options on a stock? It moves up slightly (usually in proportion to how many options were bought, what time period they were bought in, and how large the underlying’s float is). This triggers the happy centers in peoples’ brains (yay, we’re making money) and triggers more buying of calls. More interestingly, option convexity is largely due to the Greek gamma, which simply refers to the rate delta changes in response to changes in the underlying’s spot price. Delta more formally measures how much we expect the option price to change as the spot price changes, but more usefully for this example can represent how many shares equivalent the option contract controls at the given price. This is why delta represents the hedge ratio — if you, for instance, write a 100 delta (ITM) call option and sell it, you need to equivalently own 100 shares of that stock to neutralize your risk. Delta is interesting (my favorite Greek) because it is heavily non-linear, and changes in response to:
Spot price (gamma)
Time to expiration of the option (charm)
Volatility of the underlying (vanna)
These are all second order derivatives, so you probably are lost by now if you didn’t take calculus at some point. So why is gamma important here? Source: quantik.org Unlike controlling the equivalent delta’s worth of shares, the value of an option contract increases at a faster rate as it gets closer to in-the-money. This is (one of the reasons) why options have convexity — the value of an OTM call option contract goes up faster as it gets closer to ITM, with a potential for (5,10,100,200+)**-**baggers (multiples of how much you paid for the initial) if you play it right. What’s even more interesting though than gamma alone, however, is pairing it with theta, the decay of an option’s value as the time-to-expiration draws closer. This tends to have a strong relationship to the implied volatility — theta represents the time value of the option (extrinsic), and implied volatility is largely the market consensus of the potential for the underlying to move in the time remaining on the option. However, as the days tick down, the time for that move to actually happen diminishes, and therefore the value of the option similarly goes down with it. As IV increases, theta usually does (especially on short term options), and vice versa. (Helpful video by the tastytrade crew —https://www.tastytrade.com/shows/market-measures/episodes/theta-and-iv-05-17-2019) So, given my tendency to ramble, the question is — why is this important? Let’s look at gamma and theta in the context of 0-day-to-expiration (0dte) options, and try to piece together what happened to Gamestop on January 22, 2021.
0 Days to Live
0dte options have long been a mainstay of the dopamine addicted day-trader community (including me, sometimes) given they represent the purest form of lottery ticket:
They expire at the end of the day — You don’t need to go to bed and worry about your position, because it’s either closed or worthless.
They’re cheap, generally-Theta in particular becomes exponential for 0dte options, and you can quickly buy positions on sale just to gamble as the end of the day grows closer.
They still represent implied leverage and have that tasty convexity-Like their more respectable brethren, 0dte options still represent the underlying and have all the neat Greeks (gamma, delta, vanna, pajamas, etc.) which make their payouts non-linear and fun.
In general, the optimal strategy to capitalize on 0dte long options is to buy as late as possible in the day, to allow theta to provide as much leverage to you as cheaply as possible.
Let’s Imagine a Scenario Here
Let’s imagine you have a high implied volatility stock that has been stable/slightly declining in price for multiple days. During that time period, theta is aggressively destroying the value of long options, while IV is similarly dropping (both due to theta and due to relative lack of movement). As we get to the final day (this is a weekly, for example), much of the option’s value has now disappeared. This impacts both put and calls open, though. And let’s say a mean orange decided to start a war on your stock in the days before, causing a flood of short-term puts to hit the market during that week, which had minimal effect (largely due to continual call buying of longer-dated options coupled with actual shares buying pressure due to belief of a short squeeze/Ryan Cohen being the second coming of Christ). What happens when those puts start to expire? As the days and then hours tick down, the hedges of those put positions (shorted shares) start to unwind, and buying pressure picks up. Similarly, this buying pressure is noticed by market participants, who start to capitalize on the momentum by buying 0dte call options. These at first have minimal impact, largely because the inflow and outflow of call delta are roughly equivalent (somewhat of a bias towards inflow, pushing price up alongside share buying). But towards the middle of the day, two interesting things happen:
Theta and charm become more and more prominent in both making new option positions cheaper and unwinding existing put and call positions.
Gamma starts to become more dominant due to the high implied leverage versus cost of 0dtes, leading to the virtuous cycle (option buying begets option buying).
These two effects tend to be complementary — as the hedges unwind (given the weekly puts from Citron/the short seller attack) for existing option positions, new 0dte positions can be bought and bought, each time pushing up the underlying as well as increasing the value and delta of other 0dte positions. This can be neatly observed in the option volume versus open interest for the 1/22 series on GME: This is fine. Although more puts traded, the delta (for obvious reasons) of calls is much higher. As the price of the stock goes higher and higher, this continues to attract more and more speculation, hoping to capitalize on the continued momentum. This continues in a loop:
The price of the underlying continues to increase as put hedges unwind, volatility spikes, and call options are bought (the initial delta hedge).
The increase in price leads to gamma of existing contracts increasing the delta of those contracts.
This leads to more shares being bought to hedge those increasingly higher delta positions.
This leads to more speculation and momentum.
An interesting property of $GME from Friday you can neatly observe is the highest strike in the series is $60, meaning that at Friday’s close, every single call option expiring 1/22 expired ITM. More interestingly is the relationship with gamma, again observable below: Source: quantik.org As a contract moves further and further ITM (at one point, GME hit $76 intraday), the gamma of the contract decreases as delta hits 100 on the position. This implies a cap on the momentum from the virtuous cycle described above — while continued call buying can of course drive up the price further, not only does the cost become prohibitive (given that a deep-ITM position is basically equivalent to buying 100 shares in payout), it becomes linear (and therefore boring). Once 100 delta is reached, there is no more cycle of increasing spot price causing increasing share buying, only normal share buying. And that’s when it drops. It’s hard to say whether the halt caused the drop (given the mental association halts have to pump and dumps for most investors). In this case the drop assuredly coincided with the halt, but more importantly, we can observe where the drop ended: 57.99 is such a pretty number. In this case, we can observe the drop in price stabilized at $58, before rapidly jumping above $60. This is largely due to gamma and continued 0dte call buying buttressing the fall — as the positions fell farther OTM, shares used to hedge those positions are sold off, further driving the price down (in this scenario, the dealers are almost assuredly short gamma). However, similarly those positions-now closeOTM and close to expiry-become cheaper at a fairly exponential rate (due to theta and charm). Speculators again gain conviction, pushing the price up above the highest strike (to the point where gamma provides no real extra push versus the clock ticking down). This is what we call a gamma squeeze, and isn’t a terribly uncommon phenomenon. It largely follows similar patterns:
In general, gamma squeezes tend to happen closer to OPEX, due to both hedge unwinding (in the case of a previous put skew, for instance) and due to the 0dte effects mentioned.
In general, there is both a rapid rise (due to gamma looping and speculators joining) with a similarly steep cliff (especially if the available strikes is exhausted, like what happened to $GME).
Can it be continued forever, though?
In general, the answer unfortunately is yes. Gamma squeezes in generally power meme stocks, and require a few elements to be true:
Continued supply of strikes and promise of convexity — Put gamma squeezes rarely happen because well, the maximum value of a put option occurs when the underlying hits 0. Calls, however, have an infinite potential payoff and strikes similarly can be added indefinitely. This allows continued creation of OTM options, which due to cheap premium and asymmetric risk-reward on longs power the gamma squeeze.
Continued momentum-In general, meme stocks follow the greater fool theory, despite promise of rocket emojis. When they drop, they drop hard.
Oopsies. This is because, as previously mentioned, meme stocks are powered by long calls sold by market makers, who are chronically short gamma. Any selling begets more selling. Even periods of quiescence are dangerous, because without continued inflow of call delta, hedges unwind, and the selling pressure begins.
Continued attention-This is where salience shines. The major reason Tesla (the OG gamma squeeze) continued to rocket throughout 2020 was largely due to Elon Musk’s charisma and Tesla’s promise of a better world. It becomes a lot easier to stomach risk for an investor when following a strong personality with a killer story. This role was largely played in Gamestop’s saga by Ryan Cohen, and fed into (potentially unwittingly) by the battle with Citron and the mystique of DeepFuckingValue. It remains, however, to be seen if this will continue.
The moral of the story here is retail, for better or for worse, finally learned how to weaponize options. We’ll see what happens next.
Prosper, a crosschain prediction app with working platform and ridiculously low cap
Back in december I came across a small project called Prosper. #Prosper is a prediction market project, just like augur, only much, much better. First of all i'll precise that I am not a member of the project. I'm just smone who does his homeworks and likes to help :) I looked into it superficially and it seemed there was potential so I kept an eye on it until public sale. That is until they canceled public sale to replace it with a mining event, essentially putting their prediction platform to live testing. I decided to participate and mine $PROS. That's when I got convinced this had tremendous potential. I’ll let you hop onto their platform at beta.prosper.so to check by yourself how predictions work, it’s pretty straightforward. You choose a pool amongst the proposed (currently BNB and ETH, many more to come) and predict whether the price will be above or below the ticker displayed. There you go, 2 clicks and you’re in. The predictions are currently closed until next event, which should happen soon. So what makes me think it’s just a wonder in the making? here is what:
1. The team:
- The team is composed of some of the guys from Prometeus labs (which is a backer of the project btw). Their LinkedIn and twitters are public, they make AMAs etc. We’re dealing with some serious guys, settled in the crypto industry for years. - More importantly, their mindset is what convinced me. They’re very focused on delivering their roadmap and more, seem to have a clear picture of where they want their product to go, and how to get there. They also have a good understanding of the tokenomics mechanisms of 2021 cryptos and understand the interest of creation and retention of value in the $PROS token.
2. The investors and backers:
You’ll find a list on the website, but the project seems to have very strong backing, from Prom labs ofc, but also from all the other projects they are working with such as chainlink, Polkadot, Matic etc. And then there is Binance, which is not officially listed, but it is clear to me that they are supporting as a part of the BSC ecosystem. I mean, what project gets listed on Binance when it’s like 3 weeks old ? because yeah , Prosper is listed on Binance already. Also the team is connected through Prometeus labs that has had its own token $PROM listed for years. I would also highlight that their TG (https://t.me/prosperfi) has already 5k+ people and a growing engaged community. That just does not happen with shitcoin projects.
3. The project:
- The project is at the exact spot I’m seeing this bullrun hit: - Crosschain on many altchains, and mainly BSC which is rocketing atm, but also Polygon (matic) and Polkadot. - DEFI: although prediction markets are still a niche in the DEFI, someone you may know thinks they're deemed to take their share of this run (hint: he created Ethereum). - Non Custodial: You make your predictions and claim your gains straight from / to you own metamask wallet (walletconnect will be implemented). Your keys, your money. Best thing? BSC will let you do that for a few pennies of fees. - The DAO: team will let holders and community participate in the project governance. Will become pretty standard in the future of crypto projects, but we have here a DAO that took a huge decision in the very first week of its existence (see tokenomics section), and that is telling a lot about the strength of the project. - It is alive and kicking: the platform has been launched and ran for several days as a beta. It saw tremendous volume (over 18.5 M USD) and generated over 355k USD in fees in less than 10 days. This is absolutely huge, espetially considering those fees are going back to the treasury, feeding the whole project as well as holders pockets. -The UI is miles ahead of the competition. Let’s you literally place a prediction in two clicks. - It has an open road to capture a good chunck of the Prediciton market: competition is either old news and outdated in technology (augur etc.), or just announced and very far from hitting the market (polkamarket etc.). - It has many features on the roadmap, with the main being a mobile app (coming out soon), and sports bets. The team already leaked in an AMA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IB8s6GtVww) that they have secured a partnership with a huge sports betting site. Its is also developing a unique system of bet insurance, and the possibility for holders to open their own custom pools (i.e. be the casino). - The platform is already ported in Chinese. The fact that china is a gambling addict and bet lover country is news to no one. - Last but not least, they just announced that they will keep making mining events every time the project is ported to a new Blockchain, giving the opportunity to users to get the BC’s native token + to pro holders to pocket even more Pros. When does this stop getting better ??
4. The $PROS tokenomics:
- The Max supply is 100M $PROS. The circulating supply is currently about 4.5M. Here is the repartition and unvesting schedule of the supply: Investors: 4.57M Strategic + 3.4M Seed + 0.25M Presale + 2.01M Private : ½ released on UNI listing in Jan.2021 Seed round: 9 months of linear vesting (0,35% / day), starting from April 14th;Strategic round: 6 months of linear vesting, starting from April 14th;Private round: 8 months of linear vesting, starting from April 14th;Presale round: 3 months of linear vesting, starting from April 14th. Marketing: 10M - 3 months lock-up, after — 10% per month. Community funds: 5M - 6 months lock-up, after — 10% per month. Reserves: 15M - Locked for urgent situations, the community will be notified in advance before unlock; Ecosystem: 12M - 6 months lock-up, after — 25% every 3rd month. Team: 13.38M - 1 year lock-up, 1 year linear vesting period; Staking Rewards: 30M - Remain locked until the binary liquidity program an on-chain aggregation launch. As you can see, we’re not having a cliff release, the team actually changed their initial plans to adopt linear unvesting and help protect the price of the token, and avoid dumps. Equally, DAO voted in the very first week to delay the start of unvesting by 2 full months in order to give time for product and features roll out. With a total of 99% yeses on the vote, it means that even investors probably voted to vest their own tokens longer, which means they’re in to support the project on the long term.
5. Use of the Token:
This is a very important part. As already said, team has taken good measures to increase the value and rewards of holding $PROS. Amongst them are mainly the staking (team leaked: very very soon) and Liquidity providing. We don’t have announcement on that yet so I can’t tell more, but I’m feeling it will be huge as part of the fees collected by the platform will be redistributed to the stakers. Another very interesting use is the DAO vote of course, and the future possibility for the holders to create their own prediction pools and earn fees from them. This is just one of the best use case I’ve ever seen for a token. These are just the first and announced reasons to hold PROS, and with such low circulating tokens I’m expecting the demand to ramp up pretty fast. So these were all the infos on Prosper and $Pros I have, feel free to DYOR : Website : https://prosper.so/ Prediciton platform : https://beta.prosper.so/ Medium : https://medium.com/pooler Main telegram channel: https://t.me/prosperfi Buy $PROS on Binance https://www.binance.com/en/trade/PROS_ETH And UNISWAP https://info.uniswap.org/token/0x8642a849d0dcb7a15a974794668adcfbe4794b56 Before you go I’ll try and help you with one last thing: lets say you saw the value in the project, here is an interesting last info : #Prosper is currently below 10M market cap. Which is ridiculously low for such project. Main competitor is at 160M, and is way behind on pretty much all topics. It is currently one of the very lowest cap listed on Binance. As for the price ? Although it keeps going up at a reasonable pace, i would say that it has a lot of room to grow upward from the consolidation phase it has had for 2 weeks now. The team announced some staking news for as soon as this week-end, and i'm expecting it to move the price considerably.
2/9/21 Update: Additional info posted here Funko is a good company with solid performance that is still trading at a reasonable price. Check out my DD below: Funko (FNKO) Share Price (1/28/21) : $11.97 Share Price (09/16/19) : $27.86 Short Interest (1/26/21) : 14% Next Earnings Release: March 2021 Funko Inc. is an American company that manufactures licensed pop culture collectibles, best known for its licensed vinyl figurines and bobbleheads. They have over 1,000 licenses across music, video games, film, TV, sports and many other pop culture properties. Some of their most popular licensed brands include Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, Pokemon, Fortnite, NBA, NFL, MLB, DC Comics, and a variety of anime properties. Several points below support the belief that Funko’s revenue grew during the 2020 holiday season and could continue well into 2021: · Increasing search traffic for Funko products · Direct sales growth is driving increased revenue and profitability · Parents are buying more gifts for their kids due to COVID · People have more disposable income from staying at home and not going out · Expansion of new products and licensees continuing through 2021 · Collectible investments like Funko POP! figures are exploding in value and popularity · Recent analyst commentary, valuation, and financials are positive FUNKO’S SEARCH TRAFFIC REACHES AN ALL-TIME HIGH IN Q4 2020 “Funko” google trends search traffic was up 20-30% in Q4 2020 (vs. Q4 2019) Searches for “Funko” were up 2x in December vs the beginning of November 2020 After falling in December, “Funko” searches are trending back up to all-time-high levels FUNKO’S DIRECT SALES INITIATIVES DRIVING HIGHER REVENUE & MARGIN Funko Direct Sales (B2C) grew significantly in Q3 and likely to continue into Q4 · B2C business as a percentage of sales increased to 8% in Q3 2020 from 4% during the prior year. · Funko’s e-commerce site grew over 150% vs. the prior year in Q3 2020 · The number of SKU’s on Funko’s e-commerce site rose tenfold since June 2020 “We went from only 200 of our own products [on our website] as late as June this year, to now well over 2,000 products available on our website.” – Funko CEO, Brian Mariotti Funko’s first ever Selena Pop! sold out online in just 40 minutes. Funko’s Q3 2020 Gross Profit % and Operating Margin % were near all-time-highs for the company · Funko’s Q3 Gross Profit Percentage of 38.6% was its second highest ever (behind only Q1 2020) · Funko’s Q3 Operating Profit Percentage of 10.8% was its second highest ever (behind only Q4 2018) · As Funko continues to grow it’s B2C e-commerce sales in Q4 and beyond, it is possible that gross profit and operating profit percentages could rise as well Retail customers were able to shift their Brick & Mortar inventory to their e-commerce channels to Funko unit sales · Funko resellers who didn’t sell online were severely impacted by Brick & Mortar closures during COVID stay-at-home orders. As 2020 progressed, some of these retailers were able to create online stores (e.g.- Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc.) through which they could sell their Funko inventory. · Larger retailers that already had an omni-channel presence were able to shift their sales inventory from their Brick & Mortar stores to online fulfilment. Funko has also created a mini-Pop! factory at its headquarters where customers can make their own custom Funko at a price of $25 each · According to Funko, you can customize your Pop! using thousands of combinations. It’s “Think Build-A-Bear meets Funko Pop!” according to CEO Brian Mariotti. · With a $25 price point, the margins are likely higher than the average Pop! figure that retails for between $10 to $15 PARENTS BUYING MORE GIFTS FOR THEIR KIDS DUE TO COVID Parents likely splurged on their kids out of guilt of having shelter at home because of restrictions and to keep them occupied while they had to work at home. · “Faced with rising transmission of the virus, state restrictions on retailers and heightened political and economic uncertainty, consumers chose to spend on gifts that lifted the spirits of their families and friends and provided a sense of normalcy given the challenging year. We believe President-elect Biden’s stimulus proposal, with direct payments to families and individuals, and further aid for small businesses and tools to keep businesses open, will keep the economy growing.” NRF President Matthew Shay · “2020 was an unprecedented year for the U.S. toy industry. The growth we’ve seen in the toy industry speaks to the fact that parents are willing to put their children’s happiness above all else. The industry’s resiliency is very much underpinned by the reality that, in times of hardship, families look to toys to help keep their children engaged, active, and delighted. Put simply, toys are a big part of the happiness equation.” Juli Lennett - VP, U.S. Toys at NPD Toy sales were strong in 2020 as US retail sales of toys was up 16% vs 2019; driven by pandemic spending · According to NPD, “Much of the growth in 2020 was directly correlated to the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing consumer behavior associated with widespread lockdowns and school closures, the disposable income diverted from other types of entertainment to toys, as well as the onset of federal stimulus checks.” Consumer spending on toys increased measurably due to lockdowns; with strong performance continuing through the holidays · Per NPD, “While toy sales through mid-March 2020 were flat vs. 2019, widespread lockdown measures led to an abrupt increase in sales. This was further amplified by the distribution of stimulus checks beginning in April, resulting in the strongest month of growth for the year in May (+38%). Toy industry growth peaked again in October with an increase of 33% when the holiday season kicked off with Amazon Prime Day along with other retailer deals the same week.” Key retail sources reporting significant sales growth during Q4 2020 suggest Funko sales performance was strong · Target Q4 sales were fantastic showing signs of retail strength with a consumer that overlaps well with the Funko > Overall comparable sales were up 17.2% > Comparable digital sales were up over 100% > Store-originated comparable sales were up 4.2% > Store traffic was up 4.3% > Average ticket size was up 12.3% · GameStop Q4 sales were solid; showing additional potential for Funko sales > Same store sales were up 4.8% in Q4 2020 > Online sales increased 309% in Q4 2020 · According to the NRF, 2020 Holiday Retail Sales were up 8.3% compared to the prior year despite the pandemic > A surge in online shopping drove the increase (rising 32% vs. 2019) > The increase of 8.3% was over double the average increase of 3.5% that the industry had seen over the last five years. MORE DISPOSABLE INCOME TO SPEND AT HOME BY NOT GOING OUT The National Retail Federation (NRF) says that strong retail performance has been driven by consumers with stimulus checks and extra savings from not going out or traveling · “There was a massive boost to consumer wallets this season. Consumers were able to splurge on holiday gifts because of increased money in their bank accounts from the stimulus payments they received earlier in the year and the money they saved by not traveling, dining out, or attending entertainment events” – NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz. Spending on “experiences” fell significantly in 2020 · The US Travel Association forecasts that spending on travel fell $500 billion in 2020 from $1.1 trillion in 2019 > The industry has lost about 40% of its direct travel jobs (about 3.5 million jobs) in 2020; driven by a reduction in business travel > Foreign visitors to the US fell about 75% in 2020; driving a $119 billion reduction in travel spending · Concert spending is down dramatically > Live Nation reported a 98% decline in concert revenue in Q2 2020 and a 95% decline in concert revenue in Q3 2020 > About 5.2 million tickets were refunded in Q3 2020 and 23.3 million tickets had been refunded so far in 2020 (as of the end of Q3) · Movie theater attendance is down substantially > AMC theaters saw a 97% decline in attendance and a 91% decline in revenue in Q3 2020 > Cinemark saw a 96% decline in revenue > Marcus Corporation (which also owns hotels and restaurants) saw a 84% decline in revenue > Studio Movie Grill filed for bankruptcy · Other anecdotal information points to more stay-at-home activity decreasing recreational spending > Chuck E Cheese’s declared bankruptcy > Dave & Busters is considering bankruptcy and plans layoffs of +1,000 > CiCi’s Pizza declares bankruptcy > Starbucks saw fewer customers, reduced store hours, increased store closures, and a 5% decline in revenues in Q4 2020. This has led them to plan a shift to more “to-go” formats > Many Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos have decided to close “part-time” during the week due to lower attendance and travel. These include Encore, Rio, Linq, Planet Hollywood, Mandalay Bay, Park MGM, and Mirage The majority of food buffets at the major hotels and casinos have been shuttered for the time being Stimulus checks and other government programs to support consumer spending provide tailwinds for retail activity · The US government authorized more than $10,000 per person in stimulus spending in 2020 over the course of five relief bills totaling $3.5 trillion · More stimulus spending is expected; including a potential $1.9 trillion package that could include an additional $1,400 in stimulus checks MORE SKUS / LICENSES ARE GROWING AND EXPECTED TO CONINUE STRONG Active properties continue to rise and are expected to grow well into the future · The number of active properties in Q3 2020 grew 15% over 2019 · Active properties grew from 644 in Q2 to 715 in Q3 2020 · The potential universe for Funko Pops! is limitless as new films, tv shows, musicians, anime characters, sports stars, and other media properties are created every year. Some of the hot properties for this year and beyond · Star Wars: Baby Yoda, Mandalorian, Rey, Valentine’s Day, etc. · Marvel: WandaVision, Deadpool, Lucha Libre, Spiderman, Venom · Anime: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bakugan, My Hero Academia · Films: Harry Potter, The Goonies, The Mummy, Fast & Furious · TV: The Office, Umbrella Academy, The Queen’s Gambit, The Simpsons · Sports: NFL, NBA, MLB, WWE · Others: Disney, Pokemon, etc. Retail exclusives can grow the potential universe of licenses and increase retailer buy-in · For example: A retailer like GameStop could lobby Funko to make a GameStop exclusive of the WallStreetBets Kid like this person suggested here. (The exclusive Pop! would be made into a limited edition and sold only to GameStop to sell at their stores) COLLECTIBLE INVESTMENTS ARE GROWING IN VALUE & POPULARITY · Funko: The average Pops! Figure has a retail price from between $10 and $15 which allows most people an affordable entry point into collecting. Over time some Pops! Figures increase substantially in price; from $50 to $100 to even several thousand dollars. While some collectors buy Pops! as primarily an investment, many more buy them as a way to show their fandom. Whether they are avid Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Sports, or Anime fans; collectors build large collections and show them off to friends. · Sports Cards: To those paying attention, sports cards have been on a massive run with some cards worth more than your parent’s house and your sister’s car. Since the pandemic started, the demand for sports collectibles from basketball to football to soccer (and many others) has skyrocketed. Countless videos of box-breaks and pack openings have become the norm on social media. Some of these boxes are being purchased for tens of thousands with “hits” ranging from several hundred to hundreds of thousands. · Collector’s Universe: This company that grades sports cards and other collectibles has tripled in value since June 2020. The number of sports collectors grading cards has exploded as demand rises. The popularity of grading sports cards is expected to maintain as prices continue to rise and the hobby becomes more mainstream. ANALYST COMMENTARY AND FINANCIALS ARE A POSTIVE FOR THE STOCK Piper Sandler: Upgraded Funko from “Neutral” to “Overweight” (raising their price target from $6 to $12). · Analyst Erin Murphy sees evidence of “subsequent revenue pillars” with their recent launch of Snapsies at 800 Target stores; along with an expansion into board games and its digital efforts, which include a newly launched website in six European countries. Valuation Comparison: Market Cap / Revenue (TTM) · Funko: MC - $604 million / Rev - $640 million (0.9x sales) · Mattel: MC - $6.27 billion / Rev - $4.43 billion (1.4x sales) · Hasbro: MC - $13.13 billion / Rev - $5.17 billion (2.5x sales) Key Financial Trends For Funko · Q3 2020 EPS (Adjusted) = $0.31 > Third highest ever (only Q4 2018 & Q3 2019 were higher) · Q3 2020 Revenue = $191 million > Fourth highest ever (only Q4 2018, Q3 2019, and Q4 2019 were higher) · Q3 2020 Revenue increase vs prior quarter of 94% > Q1 and Q2 2020 saw significant declines due to COVID > Q3 2020 only down 14% vs Q3 2019 despite Q2 2020 being down 49% > Q3 2020 strength driven by Funko adapting quickly to online in the US market. (Q4 2020 revenue growth could be aided substantially by Funko’s development of their e-commerce shop in Europe.) · Q3 2020 SG&A was reduced 20% vs. the prior year as Funko rationalizes costs and adjusts to focus more on D2C e-commerce TL;DR After a tough summer, Funko sales have rocketed back in Q3 to near where they were pre-pandemic; setting up a potentially historic earnings for Q4 2020. Google search activity suggests that Funko is as popular as ever and is set up well for a strong year in 2021. People are spending less on “going out;” instead buying things to use at home and presents for their kids. As time passes, Funko’s status as a popular collectible only continues to gain momentum. Their direct sales initiative allows Funko to capture additional margin by sidestepping traditional brick and mortar retail to reach their customers. Investments in collectible products like Pops! and sports cards continue to increase in popularity and price. And the company continues to release even more products beyond Pops!; including games and apparel. While some Wall Street Analysts have already begun to take notice, a strong Q4 earnings announcement can drive even more attention to the stock. Positions: Long Shares & Calls Disclosure: I am long FNKO. This is not investment advice. I reserve the right to buy or sell FNKO without updating this thread. Do your own research and share (or not share) with the community in this thread. Thank you to the others on Reddit that shared this idea earlier. Feedback: If you have any additional information, ideas, or critiques please make sure to comment. It is great to get the perspective of others when making an investment. Also that information can be incorporated into future posts and updates. Previous DD:Herman Miller
Who killed notorious 1940s gangster Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, the father of modern Las Vegas? Was it another mob boss? The lover of his best friend's wife? One of the men he was embezzling money from? His Mafia spy girlfriend? His own bosses? The possibilities are endless—and puzzling.
(Note: be warned, kind of long background info here, but I think it’s needed) As far as interesting lives, few can beat Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel. Born February 28, 1906 in Brooklyn, New York, Siegel came from a poor Jewish family. Before he was even twenty, he’d established a profitable protection racket and a lengthy rap sheet, including armed robbery, rape, and murder. Siegel had connections—he was childhood friends with Al Capone and familiar with many of the well known New York City mobsters of the day—and he also had a taste for violence. Soon, he’d established a small mob specializing in hits for the numerous bootleg gangs of the time with Meyer Lansky, a fellow mobster. His violence and short temper led some to say he was “crazy as a bedbug,” giving him his famous nickname ‘Bugsy,’ which he even more famously despised. Siegel was making money, which he was happy to flaunt, but he wanted more. He carried out several hits for Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and eventually formed Murder Inc. with his associates, establishing himself as a skilled hitman for the National Crime Syndicate, an organization of mob families. But Siegel was already making enemies, and several assassination attempts were made on his life, some of which came very close to being successful. So, it was time to move out west. In California, Siegel helped establish gambling rackets, drug trade routes, and prostitution rings. His star was rising outside of the Underworld too, and in addition to the numerous politicians and police on his payroll, he befriended stars like Cary Grant and Clark Gable. Incredibly, while in Italy with a socialite in 1938, he met Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels, whom he immediately disliked and offered to kill. The offer was declined by his lady friend. Yet Siegel was not always looked upon fondly by the upper echelons of Hollywood; he borrowed exorbitantly from celebrities, knowing he would never be asked to pay it back, and began to develop extensive plans to extort movie studios. After several trials and acquittals for failed and successful hits, it was time to leave California. Siegel’s next stop was Las Vegas where, in 1945, he purchased and developed the Flamingo Hotel & Casino, the first luxury hotel on the Vegas strip. As you might imagine, that was expensive, and over the course of its construction, costs were equivalent to over $61 million in today’s money each year. Siegel’s checks were bouncing, and many of the locals felt threatened by him. Mob bosses were beginning to lose patience with Siegel too, and he was refusing to report on business, claiming he was running the California Syndicate himself. For now, they left him alone—he'd been valuable in the past, after all. The Flamingo Hotel was a dismal failure, and people—very powerful people—were starting to get tired of waiting for the promised money to materialize. By 1947, it was gradually turning around—with the help of Meyer Lansky, now in Vegas—but for most, it was too little too late. Death: On June 20, 1947, Siegel was gunned down in the Beverly Hills home of his sometimes-girlfriend Virginia Hill. He was 41. Somewhat suspiciously, Hill had taken an unscheduled flight to Paris the day (or by some sources, week) before. As Siegel sat reading the newspaper with associate Allen Smiley, an unknown assailant fired with a .30 caliber military M1 carbine through the window, striking Siegel many times (NSFW). Two shots hit his head, with one passing through his right cheek and the other his nose. Though he was not hit directly through the eye (NSFW), a bullet-in-the-eye death became a popular trope in Mafia media, including in the Godfather, where a character based on Siegel is murdered in the same manner. The death was covered extensively in the media, which portrayed Vegas as a bastion of sin and mafia activity. As early as the day after Siegel’s death (or, as some sources have it, during Siegel’s death), however, more personal things were changing: Lansky walked into the Flamingo and took over operations. Theories: The mob is famously tight-lipped, and Siegel’s death was no exception. Despite the extensive speculation, no precise motive has ever been confirmed. There was a massive police investigation, but in a case like this, that doesn’t mean much, nor does the media coverage. The media in particular salivated over the potential for splashy crime stories, and the circumstances of this case have been complicated by contemporary coverage. Several days after Siegel’s death, for example, one newspaper ran the headline “BUGSY'S BLONDE EX-WIFE GIVES CLUES TO HIS KILLERS,” while another read “BUGSY'S EX NO AID IN HUNT.” As far as the most popular theories: A Mob hit: A mob hit seems like the most obvious cause, and it's a theory that’s been popularized by several novels and the 1991 movie Bugsy. It would certainly make sense; it was the mob’s money Siegel had been spending wildly on his unsuccessful hotel after all, and he’d been growing uncooperative. Of the proposed hitmen, the most often mentioned are Frankie Carbo (Ralph Natale, former Philadelphia boss and Mob squealer, claimed Carbo as the true killer) and Eddie Cannizarro, both Syndicate hitmen. But even here, there are several proposed reasons for the hit. As some have it, mob money from the Flamingo’s funding was going missing and Siegel was skimming off the already meager profits. Skimming could have been forgiven, if the Flamingo was a success. It was not. After a meeting of the Syndicate’s “Board of Directors,” it was allegedly decided that Siegel would die, with Lansky reluctantly agreeing. Others believe that a hit might have been ordered whether Siegel was skimming or not; the Flamingo was simply too expensive. As one historian put it, “Bugsy was a dreamer. And he was dreaming with other people’s money.” Yet many have also argued against this theory. According to one of Siegel’s emissaries in Vegas, for example, no one would have dared to order a hit on Siegel. He and Lansky were close until the end of their lives, and Lansky would never have agreed to it. And if Lansky would not agree, then Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who was “the head of everything,” would never have agreed either. And as others have argued, the method of execution (NSFW) didn’t match with typical mob methods; firing a weapon from outside a house increased the risk of missing as well as the risk of being seen. The preferred method was a clean shot to the back of the head. According to some, the oft-referenced money problems of the Flamingo also wasn’t an issue. At the time, Lansky was paying back any investor who wanted out, and the gradual uptick in its profits was quickening by the day. Personally, I don’t think the financial uptick invalidates the theory. If the hotel was starting to make more money, then that might be all the more reason to get rid of the difficult-to-manage Siegel and take over. Wire Business: At the time of his death, Siegel was embroiled in a dispute with Jack Dragna, dubbed the Capone of Los Angeles. Siegel and Dragna had had an uneasy partnership in previous years, but Dragna, far less powerful than Siegel and the New York gangs, resented the income and respect Siegel commanded. This came to a head when a racing wire service (a way of cheating on bets) between the two of them soured. Siegel wanted control for himself, and ordered Dragna to turn it over or be killed, to which Dragna agreed. After Siegel’s death, control was returned to Dragna. He had a motive, but his story would only have been one among many for a man as ruthless as Siegel, which, in a way, complicates things further—there’s a real possibility that the culprit in Siegel’s murder was someone never even considered. His list of enemies was long, varied, and probably mostly unknown. Yet another man who had reason to want Siegel dead, for example, was his bodyguard and muscle Mickey Cohen. A Cleveland gangster, Cohen was given control of the Syndicate’s West Coast gambling operations. If Siegel still lived, he would never have gotten it. Interestingly, he, like Al Capone before him, was eventually felled by tax evasion. Virginia and/or brother: The same emissary of Siegel who shot down the mob hit theory believed that Virginia Hill’s brother had carried out the murder. The brother, a marine stationed at Camp Pendleton named Bob or Bill, had seen Siegel and Virginia fighting outside the Flamingo as well as the bruises Siegel had left on her and threatened to kill him. Another of Virginia’s brothers, Chuck, was also at the Beverly Hills house when Siegel was murdered. Virginia herself has also been the subject of suspicion. Nicknamed the “Queen of the Mob,” Hill worked, among other powerful jobs, as a cash courier, laundering money and stolen goods as well as blackmailing high-ranking men through sexual liaisons. Her relationship with Siegel was tempestuous at best, and she may have been embezzling from the Flamingo. She’s also been accused of two-timing with rival mob operations, though this is unconfirmed. Eventually fleeing to Europe permanently, Hill died of an overdose in 1966, though some have alleged that she was actually murdered after she, completely broke, attempted to leverage her intimate knowledge of the Mob. Rival Mobs: Unfortunately, I can’t find much concrete information about this theory (note: story of my life researching these posts haha), but some believe that rival mob operatives wanted Siegel gone. He was a powerful—and very public—figure, which made him something of an obvious target in the cut-throat world of Mafia politics. Moe Sedway: This is a relatively new theory, emerging after Robbie Sedway was interviewed for LA Magazine after his mother’s death. Here, he alleged that Siegel’s murder was ordered by his mother Bee, the wife of powerful mobster—and childhood friend of Siegel’s—Moe Sedway. According to Bee, who wrote and scrapped a book proposal called Bugsy's Little Lunatic (Siegel’s nickname for her), Siegel had threatened her husband, who was the Flamingo’s numbers man, and therefore watching Siegel—who, remember, had been accused of skimming—closely. So Bee contacted Mathew “Moose” Pandza, a truck driver whom Bee married after Moe’s death. Moose, the perfect killer, since he had no connection to the Mob, then shot Siegel to death. The problem with this theory, however, is that Bee is the only source; as she herself said, anyone who could contradict her was dead. She also squandered most of the fortune left to her by Moe over the course of her life, and died almost penniless. All of the above: Some believe that almost all the suspects were involved. Usually, it goes something like this: “Virginia supplied the location and received some reward. Cohen knew Bugsy's schedule for the evening, but happened to not be watching him that night…Dragna ordered the hit, with the approval of Lansky and Luciano.” It’s unlikely, but it certainly has its believers, if only for the convenience of it. Final Thoughts & Questions: This case is interesting to me because of the sheer number of suspects. In the end, a mob hit seems the simplest and most likely explanation. But there were so many people with means, motive, and opportunity. So:
Why was Siegel killed and who killed him? The Syndicate, rival mobs, Virginia Hall, her brother, Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna, Mathew Pandza (as ordered by Moe and/or Bee Sedway), several of the suspects, or someone else entirely?
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