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We need to talk about NOK
Feb 4, mid-market: Thank you everyone for your support. I really don't know what to say. The company keeps getting pounded because GME is having a sell-off, which doesn't make any sense. But that's the market for you. It doesn't always make sense. I still believe 2021 will be a big year for Nokia, although it doesn't look like there is any way we'll manage the crazy play anymore. Still, it was nice to see something that was impossible become possible, even if it was for only a few days. And remember, we can still do it any day. All it takes is for us to work together. If you want. Make up your own mind. I'm still holding. NOK will recover from this. Fair value is at least 4.81, and way more when 5G really gets going. So if you can, I would buy some more now. You'll thank me later for the tip. It may not be the most exciting play, but it is what investing is all about. Slow and steady growth that compounds to make a big change. One of these days I'll be able to post again, when the mods lift the restrictions on new posts and things get a little less crazy around here. When I post again about NOK, I'll post the link here too. Thanks everyone! Feb 4 premarket: Earnings out! They beat expectations a bit, their revenue was a little smaller than expected. Overall, good quarter, good year. Here it is: https://www.nokia.com/system/files/2021-02/nokia_results_2020_q4.pdf Feb 2, end of day: It's getting pretty crazy out there, but here's what you should know. The NOK chart is following the GME chart. It's got way more shares so the bumps and dips are more stable, but that's the main trend. What that means: GME has no underlying value at this level. It is a gamble on the short squeeze. It might pay off, or it might not. If people panic sell like yesterday, it won't. NOK is very different. It has underlying value. So if someone dumps it below its target price, the best thing to do is just to buy and wait for the value to go down. Thursday NOK reveals its earnings, and they are likely to be good based on what Ericsson revealed. Ericsson is one of its main competitors and a very similar company currently trading at twice the NOK price. Feb 1, end of day: Told you it was a value share! Still trading at target, still low risk. Either dumping has stopped, or normies are piling in because of the results. Either way good news, hope you made some money today!Vol today 190m, still way above average. Normal average 30m before we changed it lol. That means since Wednesday over 2bn shares have changed hands. Hope you got em! Ericsson (NOK competitor) results suggest NOK will report good numbers this week, NOK upped to BUY on market watch: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nokia-upped-to-buy-after-ericsson-results-2021-02-01 Unless my math is retarded (which it is cos ahmsodumb), if everyone (7m) on this sub spends $3000 at current price ($4.55) we BUY THE FLOAT. The more they keep dumping, the more shares we get cheap. Think about it.EDIT: buying the ENTIRE float is NOT the point of this play. I know share price goes up when supply is restricted, just read the play. This is just an example of what happens when they dump a value share on millions of retail investors. BLACKROCK IS IN PEOPLE: https://fintel.io/so/us/nok/blackrock Robin hood increases NOK allowance to 2000 shares for next week (still any allowance is CRAZY because it's a VALUE SHARE THAT HASN'T BUBBLED) https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/changes-due-to-recent-market-volatility/?fbclid=IwAR2SK9VQOI_eBgBF0SK4-R1eQjBkSAe3sd6KMwSBaCPmz38e5cc8siRdhEY You dump a VALUE STOCK on me and think I'm in danger? Added new summary (30 Jan), and Q&A. FIRST OFF: This post is not financial advice or anything except the rant of some idiot retard who is an idiot. I tell you straight up that there is a normal investment side to the NOK play (STILL MEANS RISK, which YOU will have to decide!) and that there is a CRAZY side that is PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE. If you want to play the crazy play then you’re also a crazy retard idiot just like me. I don’t know shit, I just look at graphs and go WOW. Do your own due diligence, I am not a financial advisor. Don’t ask me if you should buy, I don’t know, can you afford to? Are you comfortable with the risks? I don’t know these things. You do. NOK PLAY: Here’s how it works. YOU DECIDE if you want to take part. 1.It’s not a short squeeze like GME. Get that out of your head. 2.It’s a value/momentum play. The value part is just normal granny&grampa investing. See a good company going cheap, buy and hold. Tell your mom, dad, granny and grampa, cousins, relatives, friends. 3.The momentum part is the crazy part, and if it works the share will SKYROCKET as long as YOU DON’T SELL. GME is the biggest short squeeze in history, the NOK play could be the biggest value buy in history.
The beauty of it is that it works because Wall St is dumping NOK irrationally. That’s why the price is going down (slowly). They think they’re attacking us and slowly winning, but they’re giving us a value share cheap = their money, our pockets. By the time they realize what we did, it will be too late.
Don’t panic, and keep buying the dumps (if you think the company has value), and if we hold the line you could see a miracle.
3310 HANDS Value Part (crazy part in Q&A): The company is healthy, has good financials, it’s a market leader in 5G (it’s main competitors are Huawei and Ericsson, they have about the same market share share of 5G) a lot of potential to be the company that builds 5G for a large part of the world. NOK is currently trading at a standard price for the value it holds. It is not a bubble. Here’s Nokia’s 5G contracts: https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/5g-contracts/ Here’s Bloomberg shitting bricks that we’ve realized that Nokia is a value bet: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-28/gamestop-may-be-a-reddit-wallstreetbets-game-but-nokia-sure-isn-t Nokia also just unveiled new 1tb tech, the thing AFTER 5G. First on the world. They have it, they’re showing the world it works. Here is their press release from Wednesday: https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nokia-and-elisa-push-network-boundaries-with-worlds-first-1t-deployment-2021-01-27 They are so trusted that NASA got them to build a cell network on the MOON. Literally. If you’re NASA, would you hire your retard uncle Earl to build cell towers on the moon? No, you hire someone who CAN ACTUALLY DO IT. Imagine what it takes to build something really big and complicated on the moon? Now imagine who’s the likely guy who can do it. That’s right, NOKIA. Here they are, going to the moon: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/10/19/nokia-selected-by-nasa-to-build-first-ever-cellular-network-on-the-moon/ If the Huawei 5G war continues, who do you think US and Europe is going to back, especially since NOK already has the next tech, owns a bunch of patents, is from FINLAND that has never tried to take over the world and has a brand that EVERYONE who lived in 2000s remembers? Here’s a guy who’s been doing the numbers for a while now in case you want to see them: https://www.reddit.com/useJimming/comments/l7f6ua/part_iv_option_chain_analysis_on_nok_and_why_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf I don’t know him, I don’t know the numbers as well, but looks pretty good to me. Amazing due diligence. But what do I know, I’m an idiot. So is he. So are you. We’re all fucking retards, just ask Wall Street. I poked myself in the same eye twice yesterday. We’re “dumb money”. They have other names for us too. So, worst case, you just bought into a good company at a fair value. If the crazy play doesn’t work, you just hold on to them and let them become the world leader in 5G. Unlike GME (NOT SAYING SELL!), NOK will not fall 99%. Or if it does, I'M BUYING THAT SHIT because if a HEALTHY COMPANY FALLS 99% you make some CRAZY MONEY on that when it bounces back. Q&A Q: You retards were tricked by bots to buying NOK, there’s no short A: This just full on doesn’t get what the play is about. IT IS NOT A SHORT SQUEEZE. THIS IS NOT GME RINSE REPEAT. GME IS A DIFFERENT PLAY. NOK IS A VALUE PLAY. How many more ways can I say it? Not sure. How many more do I have to? Q: Stop taking attention away from GME you retards A: Nobody is saying sell your GME. Nobody is saying that. GME is too expensive for a lot of people, and GME is VERY RISKY and NOK has genuine value behind it. If the NOK play works, those people who couldn’t afford GME can still get on & get rich. If it doesn’t, they most likely still make money on a good company. Q: This play is impossible / crazy / it’ll never work / there are too many shares you retards A: This is ALMOST true. This play WAS impossible until 1/27/2021. That is why nobody has EVER tried anything like this. But it’s NOT impossible anymore. Look at this graph. Look at it. See that spike? What the fuck is that? I’ll tell you my fellow autistic space boot packin 3310 using NOKSTER. https://preview.redd.it/v473xl00ghe61.png?width=2182&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf5aac455156dbadb919b80afacb5232af0a05b5 That spike was them running out of shares for half an hour. Trade was stopped until they could find more, to avoid an artificial spike in the price. Proof? Look at the volumes. A small sale (red) causes a small dip. Two small buys cause a MASSIVE SPIKE. They ran out, and had to call their friends to liquidate more shares so the price wouldn’t skyrocket "artificially". But that’s IMPOSSIBLE for NOK. NOK has 5bn shares. Nokia should be much more stable because it has so many shares, having a crazy demand spike is crazy. I saw it, and fell off my chair and since I’m such a retard it took me an hour to get back up. So it was impossible, and that’s why Wall Street won’t see it coming. They think this is their attack and they’re about to break through our ranks, but they’re actually playing right into our hands. Wendnesday, we moved 1bn shares. Thursday, when nobody could buy, we still moved 500m. Yesterday, we still moved 360m. We’ve moved so much NOK in the past three days, the average volume of the share has MORE THAN DOUBLED in THREE DAYS. The play is not impossible anymore, but Wall St thinks it is, which is how we can use their own strength and mass against them. But the value buy still makes sense WHENEVER you see someone dump a valuable share. Someone sells you a 100$ bill for 90$? Buy it. They attack? We absorb. They dump, we buy, they run out of shares, we hold. They’re fucked, and they just handed us a bunch of value shares at an undervalue = they just gave us their money. They are just giving it to you. When they realize they can’t buy them back at a lower value, what do you think is going to happen? Q: We don’t do value plays, we do short squeezes you retards A: Go back to April. Look at u/DeepFuckingValue’s position. GME was a value play. It’s only in April that the Short Squeeze became possible. Look it up yourself. Will a short squeeze also happen with NOK? It’s unlikely. Hedge Fund Assholes have been increasing their shorts in NOK in the last few days, but they won’t go over 100% on 5bn shares because they're not as stupid as me. But it doesn’t have to happen. We just need to buy the dumps. If they short, great. More money for us as long as we don’t let them drive the price down with the dumps. Q: Why is NOK not rocketing? A: Because Wall Street is dumping, just like I said they would after the Wednesday spike. That’s the whole plan. They dump, we hold the line, buy the dumps and keep the price steady. The GME short squeeze guys waited for this for UP TO TWO YEARS. I saw it in April. I thought it was crazy. I didn’t jump in back then. If I did, I’d have about as much money as u/DeepFuckingValue. On a value share, you can afford to wait. GME was originally a value play. That’s what I should have realized in April. SO JUST WAIT AND HOLD (if you believe and idiot like me, which you shouldn't, no need to message me about it). It’s been two days since this play even became possible. Q: How do we know it’s working? A: Look at the volume of shares traded. Nokia has 5bn shares. In the last three days, nearly 2bn have been traded. The price is still up from last week. That’s how. This has already been a giant dumping campaign. How come the price hasn’t floored? What happens if we just buy it all up? What happens if they run out, and then their shorts blow, the price bumps up, CNBC tells the world we broke another short wall, everyone piles on, Wall Street realizes they just gave us their shares at an undervalue and try to buy back, we don’t sell, we have all the shares? The Wednesday spike is what happens, except this time there is no stopping it. If they stop trading again and try to dump some more, you just buy up the dump and keep the spike going. Spike stops being a spike and becomes a floor. Q: Where will this max out and when? A: What do you think I’m from the future? I just saw an impossible thing happen on Wednesday, and we need to make it happen again. Look at the graph. Look at it. Set your targets to $3310, that should do it. Q: When should I buy? What should I buy? Should I buy? A: Be your own person. Buy when you feel like it, if you feel like it. Q: Wall street bots are promoting NOK. A: I don’t give a shit. If they are, and we keep buying, they are promoting giving us money. Part 2: (29 Jan) First off, much as I appreciate the love, I can’t play your hand for you. You have to make your own decisions. Do I know where NOK is going to be tomorrow? Nope. Nobody does. All that I have for you is the news from Wednesday that this play is no longer totally impossible:
I think the assholes are going to try to dump you out of the market
It won’t work if we keep the demand up.
The way we keep demand up is we buy, and others will follow us because the company is good.
When they realize it won’t work, they’ll need to start buying back in.
Then it’ll be too late, cos they dumped their shares on US and we are RETARDS who HOLD. That means that when their shorts start to go bust, the price will jump up (a little bit, not like with GME at first – this is a different play based on the health of the company, not a straight up short squeeze. The short position on NOK is much smaller).
When the price jumps up, and the GME guys start cashing out, they need somewhere to put that cash. Some of them pay off student loans, or buy cars or whatever, but the smart ones will go NOK.
How you play it is up to you. I can’t tell you if you should buy, what minute to buy, what app to use and so on. All I can say is I buy the dumps. You need to decide for yourself if you want to do it. You can see the dumps on any app, or even yahoo finance. I buy NOK on NYSE, and I buy straight up shares (so they can’t lend out mine for shorts) but you’re free to do what you want. I’m a retard, you’re a retard, we’re all autistic fucks, we make up our own mind and stick with it. Secondly, what I said yesterday morning would happen, did happen. And it happened exactly like I said it would. So don’t get scared off, just buy the dumps. And they know that they’ll be fucked if we keep buying the dumps. That’s why they stopped us from buying NOK. NOK hasn’t bubbled, stopping us from buying NOK was because they know we’re on to them. They know the dumps won’t work if we JUST KEEP BUYING and HOLDING. The play works, they’re scared, we caught them with their pants down, they’re trying to get ahead of us. OK, so about what happened yesterday with RH and others. I’m so fucking angry about this. What RH and others did is completely insane. Their argument is “you guys are throwing your money away on a bubble, we’re just protecting you”. Bullshit. I won’t comment on GME, I’ll let u/DeepFuckingValue or one of those guys do that. I’ll just say, that short squeezes happen with hedge funds all the fucking time. Why is trading not stopped for them? They have people’s fucking pensions that they’re playing with. But for NOK, it’s TOTAL BULLSHIT. Here’s why:
NOK HAS NOT BUBBLED. Look at the graph. Look at it. It is still down from 2016. NOK is well within normal variation. Long term, you barely see the spike from a couple of days ago. There is nothing to “protect us” from. They’re protecting themselves.
The NOK play is not a straight up short squeeze. The play is HELPED by the shorts that are there, as long as we can keep the demand up and keep the price up against the dumping, but that’s all.
NOK is a healthy company, with new and important tech, a great brand, a lot of potential. You want to see why, read the original post. ANYONE who sees a company like that being dumped for NO REASON would buy. So should you. They are only dumping it because they’re trying to fuck up our play.
Ok that’s enough for now. I’ll see you all when I’ve got my space boots on, in my house on the FUCKING MOON, next to a NOKIA Comms tower, or I’ll see you in VALHALLA with my broke ass. If this doesn’t work, then at least you TOOK ON THE MOTHERFUCKERS and EARNED A PLACE at the table with FUCKING ODIN. UNBREAKABLE 3310! ORIGINAL POST (28 Jan): I get it, it’s not the play. I’m not saying sell your GME. I’m not a bot or a spy or a wall street asshole. I’m a regular guy who’s got a couple of bucks in his bank account and plays videogames and wants a fucking house to live in like my parents had when they were young. If you don’t agree with me, just say so. I’m also not a financial advisor, so make up your own minds you autistic fucks. But, BUT, yesterday we did something they’ve never seen. Yesterday, we made them run out of NOK shares. That’s what that big spike was, and that’s why trading was stopped for 2h. If we keep doing that, it will be the biggest wall street wealth transfer from assholes to retards in history. Because they will keep dumping it until it’s too late. Impossible, you say. Too many shares, you say. Well listen up. Yesterday, in ONE DAY, we traded, or caused others to trade, 1bn shares of Nokia. That is 1/5 of all the Nokia shares in the world. That’s never happened, EVER. Not even when Nokia was the biggest phone company in the world. 3516.16% of average trading volume. Do you get it? They’ll keep dumping their stock, we keep buying them cheap, and then they won’t be so cheap anymore when they try to buy back in. We can move 1bn shares IN A DAY. ONE DAY. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Why do they stop trading in NYSE? Cos they ran out of shares temporarily and they don’t want “artificial” spikes in the prices. So they made us retards wait a couple of hours while some assholes called some other assholes to unload their shares into the market, and once they had enough, they started again. That’s why that spike went down right after the freeze. But then we did it again. And they had to stop again. The price just wouldn’t go down. The assholes who’d just unloaded shares were probably back on the phone with the other assholes who’d convinced them. Everyone is watching us. What we do, millions of normal folks do with us, and every wallstreet asshole does against us. What did the asshole brigade do? They started shorting NOK. They will continue to do that, because they think we’re retards (they are correct). But how come the price didn’t go down? It’s got 5bn shares, and everyone whos ever held it was dumping it. How could we ever keep up the demand when there are so many shares out there? How is this going to work? Because the retard brigade was buying it. There’s 3m of us and counting. If we each put 600 bucks on NOK, we get 100 shares, and that’s 300m shares. Now imagine what happens if we put 6000 on it. AND. FUCKING. HOLD. And every dip you see, you buy more. AND. FUCKING. HOLD. They'll keep dumping, we keep buying, until they realize the price isn't going down. Then they start buying, we keep holding, the market runs out of NOK. Price skyrockets. And normies outside were following us. They can see that the stock is still LOW, lower than 2016. This means they don’t think it’s a bubble that’s going to crash on them. So why do the normies follow us on this, and not on GME? (I’m not saying sell GME). Because GME has never, ever been anywhere near where it is now. That scares a normal guy who’s just trying to put in some savings for his family. They think this is some Dutch tulip market shit. Not so with NOK. Even with the spike from yesterday, NOK is still DOWN from 2016. Remember 2016? Remember that being a really big year for Nokia? No, me neither. And let’s not even get started on where it has been in the past. Yesterday's spike barely shows on the graph. You know what is going to be a big year? 2021 and 2022. Why? What else did NOK say yesterday? Well, they revealed that they have a new kind of 1 terabit data transfer networks shit, what do I know, I’m not a techie. But it IS a new kind of technology that’s going to kick 5Gs ass. And my fellow retards of the most honorable retard brigade – Do you think we’re going to need more data this year than last year? Remember how Netflix had to downgrade its picture quality in March because the networks couldn’t handle the amount people were streaming? What do you think is going to happen with the company that solves that? But why would NOK be the company? Well, remember the 5G war with China? US and Europe can’t buy 5G from China, because then China has our networks. But guess who US and Europe aren’t afraid of? Fucking FINLAND. Finland, the land of NOKIA. So tiny that some people think the whole country is a conspiracy theory and doesn’t really exist. Sorry Finnish people, nobody gives a shit about you. Good thing for you, cos you get to build the 5G network on the moon and shit because nobody is scared that Finland will take over the world. Want proof? They are literally building one on the FUCKING MOON: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/10/19/nokia-selected-by-nasa-to-build-first-ever-cellular-network-on-the-moon/ And we’re going to send them there. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 But hang on, why is NOK so low in the first place if it’s so great? Answer: because Microsoft fucked them. That’s right, they sent one of their own assholes to infiltrate the NOK, leak a bunch shit to drive the share price down, and then buy the phone part of the company. These assholes wrecked the company, the Finnish economy, and every middle class shareholder who was just trying to put their kids to college. Imagine everyone who’d be fucked if someone did that to Apple now. Worked like a charm. Firesale. Business restructuring. Lost their phones. NOK never recovered. The asshole they sent from Microsoft? Went back to work for Microsoft, and was paid a shit ton of money for what he did. His name is Stephen Elop. Look it up. So they have tech that nobody else has and a brand that everyone recognizes. But what don’t they have? Money. That’s why they’re building this 1tb magic network thing in tiny fucking possibly fake Finland to show everyone it works. But if we drive the share price up, do you think that’s going to change? So FUCK IT. I’m in for every penny, and I am HOLDING. I’ll see you in my house ON the MOON next to a NOKIA Comms tower, or I’ll see you in VALHALLA you BEAUTIFUL RETARDED MOTHERFUCKERS. TL;DR: NOK is literally going to the moon. Go there with them. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
This whole Gamestop thing is ruining my life, my relationship, my everything.
UPDATE: • Thanks everyone for your comments. We talked about it, he understood the importance of making cautious decisions about money —especially in this time. • Yes, he had the purest of the intentions and no, I'm not going to leave him for a single mistake. • Thank you for your concern, my country has more fairy unicorns around than available jobs, I'm not being picky and I'm taking all the gigs I can find in the meanwhile —our financial issues can't obviously be summarized in two lines of text, so I guess you will simply have to trust me on this. • If you left a mean and rude comment, or if you're interested in doing it: please work on yourself before communicating with others, your behavior is really concerning for an adult human being. . ___________ Original post: I'm not going to talk long about it because I'm tired, I'm frustrated, I'm depressed, and I'm feeling so fucking done with life. So, to keep it short, I'm really struggling right now. I'm currently jobless, I'm really short on money, and if I don't find a job before July then I'll be homeless for good. Since this is the situation, you'd think that my partner would do his best to find a job himself even if he's still a student (we live together in a shared house and I'm the only one paying for food and stuff, but he doesn't have to pay the rent, while I have to). But noooo. He chose to fucking GAMBLE everything we own because of this fucking stupid Reddit-Gamestop fever thing. Is it so difficult to understand that people who can play on this stuff is people who actually own money? They will not miss a couple of thousand dollars. Maybe not even some hundred of thousand dollars. But we? We're FUCKED. I am fucked. I'm literally crying myself to sleep every fucking night because I can't find one single stupid job at minimum wage, and HE FUCKING LOSE EVERYTHING WE HAVE JUST LIKE THAT. And he didn't even had the guts to tell me that. I actually had to go looking on his laptop to understand what the fuck was going on. Our current finances are sixty dollars. SIXTY DOLLARS! That moron gambled EVERYTHING and what's left of our finances is SIXTY DOLLARS! I —I don't even know what to do. I simply want to sit on the floor and cry my eyes out.
A Look at the FDA Approval Process and How it Affects Your Investments
I’ve been wanting to do a post like this for a long time now. Now that healthcare has basically been the hottest thing for the last year (and somehow still getting even hotter), I thought it would be a good time. Many people try to buy into pharmaceutical companies around FDA approval targets without truly understanding what they’re getting into. Full disclosure, I am a doctor, but I will try to write this in layman’s terms as much as possible. If I get anything wrong, I’ll be sure to edit the post. To the best of my knowledge, everything I am about to say is researched (and therefore correct). I’m going to go through the entire FDA approval process as a timeline, and then at the end, talk about other things to consider when investing in pharmaceuticals (i.e., more nuanced stuff that requires/applies healthcare understanding). One caveat here is people use “phases” in multiple ways. The way I will use it is the way I see most often being used in press releases and DD on pennystocks. Preclinical: to begin, you must submit a proposal that basically states why you think a biologic compound will work. Without getting too technical, the preclinical is basically where you demonstrate a proof of concept. Here is a very generic example: Let’s say that HIV binds to GME receptor on cells. I have been doing petri dish experiments on a compound I created that prevents anything from binding to GME (this is in vitro if you ever see that term tossed around). I submit this evidence to the FDA and say that I think my compound will work in theory. TONS of things work in vitro and never progress beyond that. At this point, the FDA says, “okay we think your compound might work too, you can start human trials.”
Investor takeaway: the results of this phase mean absolutely nothing. If a drug failed in this phase, that would truly mean the company is incompetent in both their ability to assess the science, and in their ability to provide meaningful news to generate investor buzz.
Phase 1: Anything that passes preclinical is ready for human trials. We are talking very small trials, like less than 100 people. For smaller companies, this is their chance to get some hype about their pharmaceutical. For anyone who understands the process, this is truly meaningless. Again, working in vitro does not (and likely will not) translate to working in humans. This phase typically lasts several months and is primarily designed to ensure that the drug is safe. Here is a real life example, one that has already garnered a lot of attention: Atossa Therapeutics (ATOS) and their new breast cancer drug. Here is where medical knowledge (or solid research) can really help you. Their new breast cancer drug is called endoxifen. There are already multiple analogues (drugs that work in exactly the same way with minor differences in their chemical structures) on the market. Given the number of safe analogues on the market, it is likely (but not certain) this drug will be safe for human use. It is important to note here that phase 1 trials may be done on healthy participants without any disease, solely to test for safety. Accordingly, passage through phase 1 still may not demonstrate proof of concept on humans who have a particular disease. Let’s say that ATOS had announced its intention to start testing breast cancer treatment and initiate phase 1 trials. Like I said, the likelihood of success is pretty high given the success of previous analogues. On the other hand the downside is huge. Companies can essentially go bankrupt at this stage if their “sure thing” drug or medical device fails. Always be sure to look at risk vs reward. A drug that enters phase 1 only has around a 14% likelihood of making it all the way to FDA approval. Certain categories of drugs like those that treat cancer have even lower success rates (3.4%). While FDA drug approval does appear to be increasing more than 80% of drugs that enter this stage will never see market.
Investor takeaway: the road from here is super long and passing this phase really can’t tell you anything about its success in further stages. Many drugs are analogues and breeze through this phase, it is important not to get too hyped on them for that reason.
Phase 2: Unlike phase 1 that focuses on drug safety, phase 2 tests the efficacy of the drug you are studying. This phase will typically have less than 1,000 participants, but they will all have the disease of interest. In this phase, we are looking to ensure that the drug works (provides statistically significant improvement) and is relatively safe as far as side effects. To limit research bias, sometimes we will divide the participants and give some the drug and keep some as the control group (they may get a placebo or no drug at all). This is a pretty straightforward stage and lasts anywhere from months to years. It really depends on the drug being studied. I would never really expect a mainstream drug to get through this stage in under 6 months. The only conditions in which that would be logically feasible are either:
COVID (solely because of the politicization of the process) or
drugs treating conditions with extremely high mortality (because people won’t survive more than 6 months).
Lots of companies like to start releasing press releases close to FDA review of phase 2 results. Always be wary of those results. If my breast cancer drug was successful in 600 people and failed in 300, then while the numbers look good, the data may not be there. There is a lot that goes into statistical analysis and it isn’t quite as simple as more people did well than did poorly. It’s also important to realize that side effect profile is really important. Let’s say the aforementioned breast cancer agent ends up prolonging life in 80% of the study participants that received the drug. However, there’s also this nasty little side effect of developing a pulmonary embolism in 15-20% of people. That’s not insignificant and it is up to the FDA to decide whether or not the risk outweighs the benefit. Sometimes the FDA will order companies to redo this phase if the data are inconclusive. With cancer agents, this is common because the drugs are so toxic to so many parts of the body, so it really is about risk/benefit analysis. The important thing to look at in this phase when comparing the results of the treatment group to the control group is what is called the p-value. For those of you who took stats, you should know what this is. For those that didn’t, just know that in healthcare, results with a p-value >0.05 are considered insignificant. It’s also important to note that clinical and statistical significance are also key things to remember. Sometimes the benefit of the drug is so minimal that the side effect profile outweighs the benefits and the FDA will prevent the drug from moving forward. It’s also important to remember that if this is a drug entering a market where there are competitors, the FDA will look and see if this drug provides enough benefit over existing drugs before making a decision. One more nuance that pharmaceutical companies love to do is change the primary target. In the statistics world, that’s a pretty big no-no. If my initial proposal was that the breast cancer agent would prolong the life of my patients, and then suddenly I start talking about how it actually increases their pain-free time, this is a huge red flag. You can deduce that they likely didn’t meet their primary target and pivoted to something else they could meet. In any study you can find specific characteristic that makes you look good.
Investor takeaway: this is the first phase that companies can really release “meaningful” information. Because of this, many companies try to raise funds at this time to capitalize on the hype, be wary of the words used in their press releases and marketing.
Phase 3: Phase 3 is basically a repeat of phase 2, but bigger. It’s used to determine real efficacy of a drug. In raw numbers, we are looking at about 300-3,000 participants and up to 4 years of data. Phase 3 looks at the exact same things as phase 2: efficacy and side effects observed among a treated group (and sometimes compared to a control group). Statistical significance, that is, the thing that tells you whether the drug worked, is based heavily upon power. If you want to increase power, you can increase the sample size. In phase 3, the FDA is giving the drug a chance to sink or swim. They are once again looking to make sure you don’t discover any new, obscure side effects and to ensure that the phase 2 results were not a statistical anomaly/the drug really does work. Beyond sample size, the biggest difference between phases 2 and 3 is that we are observing a longer period of time for adverse events. Note the maximum time differences: up to 2 years for phase 2, and up to 4 years for phase 3. There are side effects that don’t manifest within the first 2 years. A very simple example is, actually cancer agents that cause cardiac fibrosis or pulmonary fibrosis after years of use. These are things that may have been masked in the phase 2 study because the duration. The other thing is that we may discover rarer, more deadly side effects in this phase. Let’s say in phase 2, we found that 2 of our 1,000 participants developed brain cancer. The phase 2 data may show that this was statistically insignificant and cannot be attributed to the drug (remember, sample size is very important). Maybe the phase 3 study will suddenly show that another 8 people developed brain cancer and it was due to the drug.
Investor takeaway: many drugs fail here, and not because they don’t work. They fail because they aren’t significantly better than what is available or the benefit is not enough to outweigh the risks. FDA approval isn’t simply contingent upon a drug working, there are many, many factors that come into play.
Phase 4: this is the big phase, thousands of participants, possibly multiple hospitals around the country/world. This phase further increases the power of the data and shows that the drug really, really does work and is actually safe. Getting to phase 4 is actually a pretty big deal. At this point, the company will apply for FDA approval including all of the information they have gathered at this point. In this stage, we are considering not only efficacy and safety, but also simplicity of use, and drug abuse potential. Drug abuse potential is a pretty hot topic right now because, well, opioid epidemic. Many opioids in the last few years have not received FDA approval solely because they are too easily abused. This entire application process takes 6-10 months for the FDA to review all the evidence and decide what happens. It is not uncommon for the FDA to request more data before approving a drug or further review. Many times they will request the company conduct a new study of x to determine y. This is normal but can seriously impede the approval timeline of a drug. This is where you have to remember opportunity cost. After approval it goes to market, yay!
Investor takeaway: you may think once the drug receives FDA approval that you are out of the woods in terms of your investment. You would be wrong.
Making it to market: When a drug finally hits market, there are two major things for investors to consider. Let’s start with the scary one, removal from the market. Remember how many times I’ve mentioned power, and sample size above? That becomes super relevant here. Depending on the drug, when it finally reaches market we may have many-fold more “participants” with which we can study the side effects of the drug. Sometimes drugs are pulled from the market because certain side effects emerge that flew under the radar during clinical trial phases. Sometimes the FDA sticks a black box warning on the drug (which really makes doctors stop prescribing it unless they have to). In either care, share prices tend to drop. They will plummet, though, if the FDA removes it from market. Market earnings: The last “opportunity” for investors in the approval process is the sales data after the first quarter of marketing. This is where the company shows their revenue from the sale of the drug. If you have medical knowledge, you can really thrive here. If you don’t, you are likely to get screwed because you probably won’t understand the nuances in what drives physicians to prescribe drugs and avoid others. Just because a drug works super well doesn’t mean it will ever be used. Examples of that are ACRX’s new sufentanil agents. Those will likely see poor sales data because from a clinical perspective, even though they are approved, and work, they will almost never be used. You would not know that without understanding the specifics of post-operative pain management. And finally, a disclaimer. Anything I said here, I can be totally wrong. Sufentanil could become the most popular agent on the market for reasons I don’t understand or couldn’t fathom. Maybe ACRX will have an insanely good marketing team. I am simply talking about making the best decision based on the available knowledge. Stock prices are fickle beasts and they don’t always respond the way we expect. A message to those who tend to hold on to their bags to gamble on FDA approval:
Yes, this really is gambling. Look at the statistics of how often drugs make it past each stage. You lost 40% on ATOS, you know what would be worse? Somehow their drug fails and now you have lost 80%. You see a drug running before FDA decision deadline, don’t buy it. No one knows how the FDA is going to respond and you are just as likely to lose your money than you are to make it. Honestly, you are more likely to lose money because there are three outcomes, and two cause you to lose money, one of which will potentially bankrupt your position. The FDA could either approve the drug (yay!), outright reject the drug (oof), or ask for more information. That last one is kind of misleading because it may not mean the drug has failed, but it definitely will destroy the hype built up and tank the share price. The extra information requested could take forever to get and you would, once again, have to consider opportunity cost.
If there is anything else you think I should have discussed, just let me know and I will try to add it. If this was helpful, please let me know. If so, I can start posting regular medical-based DD on the trending healthcare tickers from this sub!
A Look at the FDA Approval Process and How it Affects Your Investments
I’ve been wanting to do a post like this for a long time now. Now that healthcare has basically been the hottest thing for the last year (and somehow still getting even hotter), I thought it would be a good time. Many people try to buy into pharmaceutical companies around FDA approval targets without truly understanding what they’re getting into. Full disclosure, I am a doctor, but I will try to write this in layman’s terms as much as possible. If I get anything wrong, I’ll be sure to edit the post. To the best of my knowledge, everything I am about to say is researched (and therefore correct). I’m going to go through the entire FDA approval process as a timeline, and then at the end, talk about other things to consider when investing in pharmaceuticals (i.e., more nuanced stuff that requires/applies healthcare understanding). One caveat here is people use “phases” in multiple ways. The way I will use it is the way I see most often being used in press releases and DD on reddit. Preclinical: to begin, you must submit a proposal that basically states why you think a biologic compound will work. Without getting too technical, the preclinical is basically where you demonstrate a proof of concept. Here is a very generic example: Let’s say that HIV binds to GME receptor on cells. I have been doing petri dish experiments on a compound I created that prevents anything from binding to GME (this is in vitro if you ever see that term tossed around). I submit this evidence to the FDA and say that I think my compound will work in theory. TONS of things work in vitro and never progress beyond that. At this point, the FDA says, “okay we think your compound might work too, you can start human trials.”
Investor takeaway: the results of this phase mean absolutely nothing. If a drug failed in this phase, that would truly mean the company is incompetent in both their ability to assess the science, and in their ability to provide meaningful news to generate investor buzz.
Phase 1: Anything that passes preclinical is ready for human trials. We are talking very small trials, like less than 100 people. For smaller companies, this is their chance to get some hype about their pharmaceutical. For anyone who understands the process, this is truly meaningless. Again, working in vitro does not (and likely will not) translate to working in humans. This phase typically lasts several months and is primarily designed to ensure that the drug is safe. Here is a real life example, one that has already garnered a lot of attention: Atossa Therapeutics (ATOS) and their new breast cancer drug. Here is where medical knowledge (or solid research) can really help you. Their new breast cancer drug is called endoxifen. There are already multiple analogues (drugs that work in exactly the same way with minor differences in their chemical structures) on the market. Given the number of safe analogues on the market, it is likely (but not certain) this drug will be safe for human use. It is important to note here that phase 1 trials may be done on healthy participants without any disease, solely to test for safety. Accordingly, passage through phase 1 still may not demonstrate proof of concept on humans who have a particular disease. Let’s say that ATOS had announced its intention to start testing breast cancer treatment and initiate phase 1 trials. Like I said, the likelihood of success is pretty high given the success of previous analogues. On the other hand the downside is huge. Companies can essentially go bankrupt at this stage if their “sure thing” drug or medical device fails. Always be sure to look at risk vs reward. A drug that enters phase 1 only has around a 14% likelihood of making it all the way to FDA approval. Certain categories of drugs like those that treat cancer have even lower success rates (3.4%). While FDA drug approval does appear to be increasing more than 80% of drugs that enter this stage will never see market.
Investor takeaway: the road from here is super long and passing this phase really can’t tell you anything about its success in further stages. Many drugs are analogues and breeze through this phase, it is important not to get too hyped on them for that reason.
Phase 2: Unlike phase 1 that focuses on drug safety, phase 2 tests the efficacy of the drug you are studying. This phase will typically have less than 1,000 participants, but they will all have the disease of interest. In this phase, we are looking to ensure that the drug works (provides statistically significant improvement) and is relatively safe as far as side effects. To limit research bias, sometimes we will divide the participants and give some the drug and keep some as the control group (they may get a placebo or no drug at all). This is a pretty straightforward stage and lasts anywhere from months to years. It really depends on the drug being studied. I would never really expect a mainstream drug to get through this stage in under 6 months. The only conditions in which that would be logically feasible are either:
COVID (solely because of the politicization of the process) or
drugs treating conditions with extremely high mortality (because people won’t survive more than 6 months).
Lots of companies like to start releasing press releases close to FDA review of phase 2 results. Always be wary of those results. If my breast cancer drug was successful in 600 people and failed in 300, then while the numbers look good, the data may not be there. There is a lot that goes into statistical analysis and it isn’t quite as simple as more people did well than did poorly. It’s also important to realize that side effect profile is really important. Let’s say the aforementioned breast cancer agent ends up prolonging life in 80% of the study participants that received the drug. However, there’s also this nasty little side effect of developing a pulmonary embolism in 15-20% of people. That’s not insignificant and it is up to the FDA to decide whether or not the risk outweighs the benefit. Sometimes the FDA will order companies to redo this phase if the data are inconclusive. With cancer agents, this is common because the drugs are so toxic to so many parts of the body, so it really is about risk/benefit analysis. The important thing to look at in this phase when comparing the results of the treatment group to the control group is what is called the p-value. For those of you who took stats, you should know what this is. For those that didn’t, just know that in healthcare, results with a p-value >0.05 are considered insignificant. It’s also important to note that clinical and statistical significance are also key things to remember. Sometimes the benefit of the drug is so minimal that the side effect profile outweighs the benefits and the FDA will prevent the drug from moving forward. It’s also important to remember that if this is a drug entering a market where there are competitors, the FDA will look and see if this drug provides enough benefit over existing drugs before making a decision. One more nuance that pharmaceutical companies love to do is change the primary target. In the statistics world, that’s a pretty big no-no. If my initial proposal was that the breast cancer agent would prolong the life of my patients, and then suddenly I start talking about how it actually increases their pain-free time, this is a huge red flag. You can deduce that they likely didn’t meet their primary target and pivoted to something else they could meet. In any study you can find specific characteristic that makes you look good.
Investor takeaway: this is the first phase that companies can really release “meaningful” information. Because of this, many companies try to raise funds at this time to capitalize on the hype, be wary of the words used in their press releases and marketing.
Phase 3: Phase 3 is basically a repeat of phase 2, but bigger. It’s used to determine real efficacy of a drug. In raw numbers, we are looking at about 300-3,000 participants and up to 4 years of data. Phase 3 looks at the exact same things as phase 2: efficacy and side effects observed among a treated group (and sometimes compared to a control group). Statistical significance, that is, the thing that tells you whether the drug worked, is based heavily upon power. If you want to increase power, you can increase the sample size. In phase 3, the FDA is giving the drug a chance to sink or swim. They are once again looking to make sure you don’t discover any new, obscure side effects and to ensure that the phase 2 results were not a statistical anomaly/the drug really does work. Beyond sample size, the biggest difference between phases 2 and 3 is that we are observing a longer period of time for adverse events. Note the maximum time differences: up to 2 years for phase 2, and up to 4 years for phase 3. There are side effects that don’t manifest within the first 2 years. A very simple example is, actually cancer agents that cause cardiac fibrosis or pulmonary fibrosis after years of use. These are things that may have been masked in the phase 2 study because the duration. The other thing is that we may discover rarer, more deadly side effects in this phase. Let’s say in phase 2, we found that 2 of our 1,000 participants developed brain cancer. The phase 2 data may show that this was statistically insignificant and cannot be attributed to the drug (remember, sample size is very important). Maybe the phase 3 study will suddenly show that another 8 people developed brain cancer and it was due to the drug.
Investor takeaway: many drugs fail here, and not because they don’t work. They fail because they aren’t significantly better than what is available or the benefit is not enough to outweigh the risks. FDA approval isn’t simply contingent upon a drug working, there are many, many factors that come into play.
Phase 4: this is the big phase, thousands of participants, possibly multiple hospitals around the country/world. This phase further increases the power of the data and shows that the drug really, really does work and is actually safe. Getting to phase 4 is actually a pretty big deal. At this point, the company will apply for FDA approval including all of the information they have gathered at this point. In this stage, we are considering not only efficacy and safety, but also simplicity of use, and drug abuse potential. Drug abuse potential is a pretty hot topic right now because, well, opioid epidemic. Many opioids in the last few years have not received FDA approval solely because they are too easily abused. This entire application process takes 6-10 months for the FDA to review all the evidence and decide what happens. It is not uncommon for the FDA to request more data before approving a drug or further review. Many times they will request the company conduct a new study of x to determine y. This is normal but can seriously impede the approval timeline of a drug. This is where you have to remember opportunity cost. After approval it goes to market, yay!
Investor takeaway: you may think once the drug receives FDA approval that you are out of the woods in terms of your investment. You would be wrong.
Making it to market: When a drug finally hits market, there are two major things for investors to consider. Let’s start with the scary one, removal from the market. Remember how many times I’ve mentioned power, and sample size above? That becomes super relevant here. Depending on the drug, when it finally reaches market we may have many-fold more “participants” with which we can study the side effects of the drug. Sometimes drugs are pulled from the market because certain side effects emerge that flew under the radar during clinical trial phases. Sometimes the FDA sticks a black box warning on the drug (which really makes doctors stop prescribing it unless they have to). In either care, share prices tend to drop. They will plummet, though, if the FDA removes it from market. Market earnings: The last “opportunity” for investors in the approval process is the sales data after the first quarter of marketing. This is where the company shows their revenue from the sale of the drug. If you have medical knowledge, you can really thrive here. If you don’t, you are likely to get screwed because you probably won’t understand the nuances in what drives physicians to prescribe drugs and avoid others. Just because a drug works super well doesn’t mean it will ever be used. Examples of that are ACRX’s new sufentanil agents. Those will likely see poor sales data because from a clinical perspective, even though they are approved, and work, they will almost never be used. You would not know that without understanding the specifics of post-operative pain management. And finally, a disclaimer. Anything I said here, I can be totally wrong. Sufentanil could become the most popular agent on the market for reasons I don’t understand or couldn’t fathom. Maybe ACRX will have an insanely good marketing team. I am simply talking about making the best decision based on the available knowledge. Stock prices are fickle beasts and they don’t always respond the way we expect. A message to those who tend to hold on to their bags to gamble on FDA approval:
Yes, this really is gambling. Look at the statistics of how often drugs make it past each stage. You lost 40% on ATOS, you know what would be worse? Somehow their drug fails and now you have lost 80%. You see a drug running before FDA decision deadline, don’t buy it. No one knows how the FDA is going to respond and you are just as likely to lose your money than you are to make it. Honestly, you are more likely to lose money because there are three outcomes, and two cause you to lose money, one of which will potentially bankrupt your position. The FDA could either approve the drug (yay!), outright reject the drug (oof), or ask for more information. That last one is kind of misleading because it may not mean the drug has failed, but it definitely will destroy the hype built up and tank the share price. The extra information requested could take forever to get and you would, once again, have to consider opportunity cost.
If there is anything else you think I should have discussed, just let me know and I will try to add it.
Too ashamed to admit that I'm being abused as a guy and too scared to do anything about it.
Hi everyone. Just a disclaimer, I'm not posting this to gain some pity. I simply want to lay out my story before I break down. It's your prerogative to judge whether you will believe if any of this is true. My story started about more than a year ago. I was an OFW and flew back to the Philippines for a quick Christmas and New Year's break (2019 - before covid). It was a surprise visit for my parents which I haven't seen in almost 2 years. Please take note that I've never been back to the Philippines for more than 10 years. I usually go on a trip with my folks every 2-3 years outside the Phils. Being it as a surprise, I didn't went back to my hometown for a few days as I wanted to surprise them on Christmas eve. I booked a hotel in Manila near the casino and MOA for a few days. Knowing that I'll probably spend some days by myself, boredom got to me and I tried out Tinder - just for fun (I was single then, fyi). Got a few good matches - weeding out some catfish, fakes, and "service providers" - and tried out meeting with some of them. Then, I got matched with this one girl. We decided to meet just for a drink. When we met, she brought her own car to drive us around. Since I'm not really familiar about the watering holes in Manila, I let her decide where to go. I told her to "surprise" me. We actually had a great night. We bonded, laughed, got a few drinks, and ended up back to my hotel. Needless to say, I had a great time and for someone who I just met on a dating to turn out to be such a catch - and so I thought. We kept in touch after that. Went out for dinner a couple of times after that and everything was great. Got to know her a bit more. She's a recruitment manager at one of the top call centres here in the Philippines. That info alone got me really excited. She has already achieved so much, independent, and acted very sophisticated around that time. I thought, on a very rare case, that I found the one by sheer luck - on a dating app of all places. Call me naive now. I'm thinking the same, too. Christmas eve came. The time had come for me to check out and surprise my family. We both decided to meet again after NYE. I was over the moon during the holidays. After spending NYE in Boracay with my folks, I checked in to a hotel in Manila a few days before my flight. We met a couple of times during that time. I'm aware that LDR does not work - at all. Still, on my last night, we decided to give it a go. Back abroad (I will not provide the actual country. Since she or her family might recognize that this is me), we kept in touch and everything was going well. I actually planned to surprise her by going back to the Philippines after a few months. Really looked forward to it. Then, covid happened. So, plans changed and I have to wait for a flight to be available back to the Phils. As I waited, I kept hope alive. I already have an apartment in Eastwood waiting for us. I've been working at home pre-covid and doing well for myself so I thought giving us a chance back in the Phils should be just fine. Besides, of she's actually the one then the gamble will pay off. I was ecstatic. July 2020. Finally got a flight back home. Can't even sleep on my way back. Got quarantined for a few days. Once that's all done, I was counting the minutes while in a cab to meet her again. Our reunion was great and exceeded all of my expectations. We spent being on lockdown in our new place. Everything was perfect. When they eased the lockdown, I met some of her relatives. I immediately felt that I belonged. We shared drinks, got invited to their family gatherings, and even hosted their Christmas party last year. I really thought back then that everything was going as great as they can be. I wish I could've known what will happen next. A few months after that, we found a better place in our neighborhood. It was amazing. We immediately got it and moved in. So, the usual routine. Weekdays, we work at home and got our dinner outside. Weekends, we meet her parents or some of their relatives for a casual drink. Everything went like this until a few days ago.. Don't get me wrong, we've been in a few fights during this. Nothing really serious but I should've seen some signs and ran away as fast as I can. There was an instance where the fight got really bad and she threatened me that she'll hurt herself if I will not stay. I tried stopping her and got my finger clipped by a kitchen scissor in the process. She was in shock (due to the blood all over our floor) and got back to her senses immediately. She apologized and I thought it was just ok as long as she understands that this type of accident wouldn't happen if she'll act more rationally. I initially thought that her emotional blackmails would stop. They didn't. Only got worse. I tried calming her every single time. The end of our fights is usually the same: We fight, she'll blackmail me, hurt me physically in the process, then we'd make up. I know, I'm an idiot. This went on. Then just a few days ago, the worst thing happened. We were in her parents house to grab a couple of drinks and chat. They have some guests which I've already met a couple of times before. Out of nowhere, she went to a corner. I asked everyone where she was and I approached her. Asked her what was the problem then she suddenly started a fight. Asking me why I haven't introduced her to my parents yet. So, I answered that we're still new and I want to make sure that we're both sure before that happens. I cared so much about my mum and would like to introduce her only if we're sure where we are going with this. She immediately yelled: "Well, fuck your mum!". I whispered and gave her a chance to revert whatever she just said. She might have seen how furious I was and then she yelled: "Dad, he's gonna hurt me!". I was stunned. It felt like being wrongly accused of rape. I'm not perfect but I've never hit a girl before. She knew that. How? Because I told her that I'd rather break up with a girl than get violent. I meant that no matter how much they would hit me. I have no qualms with you if you think that this is BS. I'd doubt myself, too. Considering the things I just told you. Her dad immediately went to us. He asked what's wrong and she said that I was planning to hurt her. Being confused, stunned, and probably in shock - I kept quiet and just lowered my head. Clenching my hands, I was thinking nothing else. I just want to go. I just want to leave her. Then they ganged up on me, her dad, mum, and her. They actually made me feel that I was the bad guy. I can't even remember what they were telling me. I thought I got deaf for a while. All I can hear is white noise and my heartbeat. A few minutes after that, she insisted we go home. Her dad said that she should stay. When I heard that, I got a glimpse of hope to escape. I was thinking of packing my stuff immediately once I get back to our place and go somewhere else. Then, she shouted at her dad that she'd rather drive me home and get back. For some reason, they let her. I'm just done by then. On our drive back, she kept talking to me but I never understood or heard anything. I was in a daze. All I remembered was that we were already in the underground parking lot. I told her that I want to break up - I'm done. I even begged her if we can deal with this as adults. She went ballistic. Not thinking, I ran out of the car. She got back in the car and chased me in the parking lot. I hid behind some of the parked cars. She kept on shouting like an unhinged person. A few minutes later, the security guy came out of the elevator. Must have seen us in the cameras. As I don't want to create a scandal, I approached him and told him that she was just drunk. He radioed in that the person with her is there. I got confused. Was I the one they were after? A few seconds later, her dad got out of the elevator with another security guy. I just slumped there realizing what the actual fuck happened. They thought I was gonna hurt her. Her dad even came to her rescue and told me not to hurt her. I can only take so much for a night. Helpless, I complied to get back to our condo. Her dad left. I never talked. I never moved once we got back. I know that I'm fucked. When they left, she immediately shouted at me. Forcing me to get back with her. Threatening me that she'll kill herself if I don't. A few slaps here and there. More crying. I guess I don't even know what's going on anymore. At that point, I knew I was done. I gave up. But I'm not giving myself up to her whims. She told me again to watch her hang herself. I replied: "I don't care anymore. Go. My life is over anyway. Nobody would believe me.". She pretended to do it but didn't go ahead with it. After I saw that, I told myself that whatever happens next that I wouldn't care anymore. She's still here at my place. I refuse to talk to her. I can't leave. Even if there's a small indication that I'm about to leave, she panics. Believe it or not, she actually slept in our door last night just to make sure that I can't leave. I haven't eaten or taken a shower for a few days now. This is my form of protest. Not sure how long I'll last. Don't pity me, I beg you. I took a gamble. I held unto hope that things will get better. I thought that I can be with someone that I will grow to be with. I have no regrets either way Despite this, I would like to thank you for reading my long post. I'm not asking you for anything. Reading this is more than enough.
The cannabis market right now is so similar to the start of the green energy market.. its nowhere near done being bullish. Save for some small dips, there will very likely be a huge bullish trend for 2021. EVEN NASDAQ AGREES. I’ve posted my positions a few times, and I’ll continue to do so. But this is my reasoning for investing in cannabis stocks in general for 2021.
I've been a bull on cannabis since the democrats had a strong pro-cannabis platform. But what made me go balls deep into the market was that the UN changed its classification of cannabis. Countries follow the UN closely for guidance on their own classification of controlled substances. Congress has repeatedly cited the UN’s classification as one of the reasons for not changing it. Several countries immediately changed their stance on cannabis in response to this, including Israel, which In November 2020, announced that it was moving forward with a plan to legalize recreational cannabis nationally. “The country is aiming to implement recreational legalization within nine months, and even if there are delays, that means mid-to-late 2021.” (This is my reason for investing in Canadian cannabis companies, because they are already poised to expand internationally since its legal there nationwide)
THE SENATE IS NOW BLUE! The Georgia runoffs were won by Democrats, and they can now swing the vote left with VP Harris. She promised it as part of her platform, so we know it will be prioritized. CHUCK SHUMER SPONSORED THE MORE ACT. HE WILL BE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER. IT WILL 100% BE PRIORITIZED BETWEEN HIM AND VP HARRIS.
EVERYONE predicted beforehand that the republicans would win Georgia... everyone talked down decriminalization passing the house because of they believed it would NEVER pass the republican majority senate. But the left spent more than any senate race in history to encourage voters to go out and vote. Only once the race started did it become clear that the left had a chance. Then some gains from the surprise that they won. However the gains from 1/5 onwards definitely hasn’t been priced in for all the future legislation, because some of it will be completely new legislation that wasn’t possible to consider before without a blue senate. THIS HASN'T BEEN PRICED INTO THE MARKET YET.
The government is broke post-COVID. There is a terrible image of the police. They don’t want to waste more resources on cannabis related crimes that would be fixed under decriminalization. And the tax revenue from decriminalization would be significant. Decriminalization (THE MORE ACT) opens up the borders to interstate-commerce and international import/export. This would all trickle down into Uncle Sam’s empty pockets.
New York Governor Cuomo announced on Jan 6 his plan to legalize marijuana for adult use (right after New Jersey vote, as I anticipated in my last post) as part of his State of the State agenda. The next step is a ripple out on the North East. NY didn’t want to miss out on tax revenue, neither will any of the other states in the northeast within driving distance of NJ and NY. This is Cuomo’s third attempt in three years to legalize adult-use cannabis in the state; last year, Cuomo included a legalization proposal in his state budget, but the plan was ultimately cut in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other ongoing state legislature:
Rhode Island: Regulators have received 45 applications for six new medical cannabis dispensary licenses in the state. If all applicants meet the requirements for a license, six will randomly be selected in a lottery to operate retail locations in different regions across the state. Read more
Missouri: Rep. Shamed Dogan has filed legislation that would place an adult-use cannabis legalization measure on the state’s 2022 ballot. Meanwhile, Missourians for a New Approach has announced plans for a separate 2022 ballot initiative after an unsuccessful signature campaign to get the issue before voters in 2020. Read more
Alabama: Sen. Tim Melson plans to reintroduce a medical cannabis legalization bill this year. Medical cannabis legislation passed the Alabama Senate during the 2020 session, but failed to clear the House. Read more
Illinois: Illinois lawmakers have proposed the creation of 75 new cannabis retail licenses to give disadvantaged and minority applicants a second chance at licensing following the controversial licensing lottery to issue an initial 75 dispensary licenses. A work group made up of lawmakers and members of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration met this week to finalize details of the bill, which will be introduced in a lame-duck session that starts Jan. 8, before new lawmakers are sworn in Jan. 13. Read more
Minnesota: House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler is again renewing his push to legalize adult-use cannabis in the state, announcing plans to reintroduce a legalization bill this year. Winkler told WCCO that he sees “Senate leadership as being the number one obstacle,” but said that if lawmakers agreed to place an adult-use legalization initiative on Minnesota’s 2022 ballot, “it would pass overwhelmingly.” Read more
Virginia: Del. Steve Heretick has reintroduced a bill to legalize adult-use cannabis. Heretick has proposed legislation related to decriminalization and legalization in the past, and this year’s bill would legalize the cultivation, sale and consumption of cannabis in the state. Read more
Connecticut: Gov. Ned Lamont renewed his push for adult-use legalization during his State of the State address Jan. 6, announcing that it is a priority for the new legislative session. Connecticut’s 2021 legislative session opened Jan. 6, and Lamont, a Democrat, kicks off the session with increased majorities in the House and Senate, which could increase his chances of passing an adult-use legalization bill. Read more
Now that you understand why I’m going green, here’s my reasoning for my positions. TLRY (Tilray)
largest cannabis company in the world by revenue post merger. Will run out of Seattle and New York City. New York Legalization on top of senate turning blue is a big catalyst for TLRY.
Merger hasn’t completed yet, and the merger happened before the senate went blue.. that was the gamble APHA was making, and they won. The sky is the limit now. When they merge, they will reduce expenses and be much more likely to post profitable quarters. (This is why mergers have so much hype; the sum is > than their parts because they can reduce operating expenses while maintaining revenue from the two companies)
Tilray CEO Brendan Kennedy: “I think medical cannabis will be legal at the federal level, which means medical cannabis can cross state lines and be imported into the U.S., like we export cannabis from Canada and Portugal to about 15 countries now,” Kennedy said. “Anyone who thinks there’s a state-specific medical market is wrong.” As for the recreational market, Kennedy says the state-specific markets, with interstate trade banned, “are not going to last long.” Kennedy believes that cannabis will be distributed like alcohol and tobacco within two years’ time. That would require significant overhaul of US federal drug laws—and would significantly disrupt all US cannabis companies’ existing business models. Brendan Kennedy, the cannabis billionaire will step down as Tilray's chairman and CEO. Irwin D. Simon, Aphria's current chairman and CEO will take Kennedy's place.
[On December 18, 2020, just three days after the U.S. Senate adopted the Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion Act (CMREA or the Act) (more on this below), the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA or the Administration) published in the Federal Register a final rule, “Controls To Enhance the Cultivation of Marihuana for Research in the United States” (Rule), which finally paves the way for DEA to issue additional licenses to grow “marihuana” (i.e., cannabis) for research purposes.](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/on-heels-of-senate-s-adoption-of-36129/)
GNLN (Greenlane Holdings)
One of the largest global sellers of premium cannabis accessories. Pax/JUUL/Volcano products. I’ve had Pax products, and although I prefer Arizer because of the affordability, I can’t deny Pax has quality products and is like the “iPhone” of vaporizers. I like their products, I like their branding. There’s lots of hype and loyalty, especially with their Volcano desktop vaporizer.
Strong US brands.
The main reason they did poorly was bad timing. They IPO’d during the year that JUULs started being banned. They’re actually at all those levels again. Theres a ton of upside potential.
Market cap is ridiculously low for some really renown brands all because of the JUUL flavor pod ban. Everyone knows Pax, Volcano, and JUUL. But no one knows Greenlane because of the bad timing of their IPO and the subsequent JUUL flavor ban. It’s crazy. They’ve already broke all time high for the year. But I’m holding until they break 1B market cap.
Overall i think too many people count it out just because of their IPO and subsequent decline in JUUL sales from the JUUL flavored pods ban. They definitely have the potential because of their strong branding and quality products. I’m betting on them having more high quality products in the future with equally loyal customers.
SNDL (Sundial Growers)
SNDL must close above $1 per share for 10 consecutive sessions by June 26, 2021 or it will bedelisted from NASDAQ. People see this as a fear factor, I see this as “they will do anything necessary to reach $1 for a week so they won’t be delisted”.. IMHO reverse splitter probably isn’t on the table since they could have done that in 2020, but instead applied for a 6 month extension after announcing “alternative strategic investments”. We can already see this by their predatory loan SPAC spinoff.
Rumors of a merger with CGC; SNDL also purchased a SPAC recently and entered an agreement with Zenabis, immediately claiming they defaulted. Turning that SPAC into predatory loan/debt repurchasing company. Imo if they want to complete a merger, it would be easy to sell ownership through that SPAC to the buyer.
THEY RECENTLY WENTDEBT FREE by selling off unprofitable assets in the business. This means we are much more likely to see earnings in future quarters, and they are much more attractive for mergers.
Because they are indoor growers, they are more likely to be bought up by a company in the consolidating Canadian cannabis market than fail all together. The amount of space licensed to grow cannabis in Canada is now heavily skewed toward outdoor cultivation instead of indoor for the first time, according to new data from Health Canada. A growing population of licenses for outdoor growers means that there aren’t as many indoor licenses being given out... If a company ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD wants to quickly expand into indoor growing OR into the west, they would have to purchase an existing company that has the license to quickly do so. This is WAY faster, and a guaranteed way to obtain a license rather than applying for one and waiting x amount of months and be rejected for some requirement that wasn’t met.
From my own experience, outdoor cannabis is subpar quality to indoor grown cannabis. So a growing market for outdoor cannabis doesn’t necessarily mean its better... it is likely just cheaper. I would imagine a high quality “craft cannabis” company would want to purchase SNDL, or an existing outdoor growing company that wants to quickly expand to indoor grown cannabis. With this being a Canadian company, there’s a chance a company in another country like Israel would be interested in purchasing it in the near future.
PLNHF (Planet 13 Holdings)
Biggest tourist trap in Las Vegas if you’re a stoner, casual smoker, or just wanting to try it. From my own experience, I think they will continue to be successful. If I went around the US trying other brands I’d probably be more confident in putting 5-10% of my portfolio into those picks or choosing to not include them lol. Like for example, I used to have Curaleaf. But there's tons of bad feedback on Curaleaf, a friend has tried it said the nug is really subpar quality and if I tried their nug I’d probably confirm that I wouldn’t want to invest in them. With PLNHF, i’ve seen the ambience and tried the product myself. It’s definitely a lot of hype price wise, but still quality. This is my own bias showing, but I still think they’ve got solid fundamentals and excellent location/strong US branding.
I’m well aware of other good stocks like GTBIF, CRLBF, SSPK, TCNNF, GRWG.. but these stocks haven’t been swinging as hard in response to pro-cannabis news. E.g. TLRY, SNDL, GNLN swung more than 20% some days from pro-cannabis news...I will likely reduce my current positions shortly after inauguration, after some news about the timeline for cannabis legislation, and diversify my positions more between these other good picks. 2021 is the year of cannabis boys
Dear Reddit. I have started writing a book of short stories about my life as a hobo. True to my nature of blowing money faster than it came, or blowing the opportunity of even making it, I love you assholes and will let you read the book for free as I write it from the beginning. Enjoy
Chapter One: Bozeman or Bust (lots of bust) I had done it once again, like so many other years before, by traveling north to one of the harshest and coldest states that a hobo could possibly go to during the dead of winter, late-January 2021: Mon-fucking-tana. Or as the locals jokingly say, "Montucky". (edit: Shout-out to Montucky Cold Snacks, the cheap horse-piss watered down beer that is Montana's equivalent of Washington's "Rainier Ale" or Oregon's "Session Lager"). I digress. If I was a goose, I'd surely be the Jonathan Livingston Seagull of the flock…the black sheep shitshow of a goose flying in the completely wrong direction at the worst time of the year. As forementioned, this was not the first time, nor second time, that I've done this. In fact, it's become a habit, if not straight-up routine. Laramie, Wyoming circa November 2016. Glendive, Montana circa January 2015 Minot, North Dakota circa January 2014. Yukon, Canada circa November 2013. Bellingham, Washington circa January 2006. The list goes on, and on, and on… And here I am. Bozeman Fucking Montana, circa January-February 2021. The locals say it's an unusually warm winter, which by Montana's standards might include 5 inches of snow in the afternoon and temperatures dropping below 10F degrees at night. However, according to the high standards of a low-class hobo born and raised on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, this weather is colder than a witches tit. Now, that's not to say that I ain't prepared though. I assure you that I am. Sixteen years of living on the road and rails has made this black goose a well-seasoned bird, with all the trimmings. I have a military sleeping bag that can keep me alive down to negative 30 temperatures. My military backpack is waterproof, and so are the snowboarding pants that I wear under my insulated Carharrt overalls. I have alpaca wool thermal pants, merino wool socks, thermolite waterproof boots, thinsulated gloves, and several wool and polyster beanie hats. My dual-layer mountaineering tent can withstand hurricane-force winds and all the snow that a blizzard can muster. Winter? Montana? Bring it bitch. Hit me with your best shot. You know I like it. wink Sigh. However, DESPITE the freezing temperatures and shit tons of snow, there's a lil secret that I've learned during my many years of traveling, and that secret is certainly DUE to these wintery conditions: Jobs! Lots and lots and lots and lots of jobs! Jobs here, jobs there, jobs every-fucking-where. Hotel jobs, restaurant jobs, retail jobs, construction jobs, maintenance jobs, driving jobs, even jobs just to help other people get more damn jobs! You want a job during winter? Well they got jobs out northern Californie way, Oregonie way, Montanie way, Washingtonie way, North and South Dakotie way, and every which way can go above above the Mason-Dixon line! If you can't find a damn job in the Northwestern United States of America during winter, you ain't fucking looking, and that's a fact. If you got one arm and you can swing a hammer, or punch a number on a cash register, then consider yourself hired on the spot and you can start today. Before this chapter turns into an entire damn book of its own (A Hobo's Guide to Finding Jobs) let's get back to the story here: Bozeman or Bust. As I begin this chapter, I have a red-wine hangover that is enough to drive me to a bullet in the head. I made a pot of coffee only to puke it back up on my hands and knees in front the porcelain thrown. I think it was good ole Earnest Hemingway that once said "Write Drunk, Edit Sober". Experienced words of wisdom from a fine man that knew everything a man could possibly know about drinking shit tons of wine and writing shit tons of stories. I wouldn't be lying if I was to confess that Mr. Hemingway, along with Mr. Steinbeck and Mr. Twain, are drunken heroes of mine that I could only hope someday to sit alongside in the bookstores of Hell and Hades with a gallon of cheap Merlot. Salut, gentleman. After puking, rolling cigarettes, drinking coffee, and puking several times more, I was finally able to sit down to try and remember what-the-fuck happened yesterday; a solemn meditation technique that involves tons of coffee and contemplation; a time to worship the asinine achievements that are accompanied in both rejoice and regret. Yesterday started off sober as a saint. I had a job interview at this place I had found on craigslist, some place looking for fresh warm bodies to fill up their production-assembly line. I took a bus to the address they had given me, which ended up being the adress to the Bozeman City Bank. "A bank?", I thought, as I wondered around the parking lot dumbfounded and confused for a solid 5 minutes, checking the address several times on my phone, wondering why on earth I've been sent to a state bank. After circling the parking lot, I noticed a door on the side of the bank that said "Job Choices Employment Services: Second Floor". Godammit. I had been fucking conned. Fucking craigslist. I know what's going on here…this a goddamn employment agency that wants to take 10-15 percent of my paycheck, take away my rights to healthcare and benefits, in the so-called promise of finding me a "great career path of opportunity". Employment agencies. Just like rats. The only "opportunity" here was them: Creatures of opportunity, parasites hellbent on scavaging peoples money and benefits. "A not-even-close-to-great career path of 9-5 slave-labor bullshit involving years of suckling away your mind, body, and spirit", the sign on the door should have read. This was definitely a mistake. And anyone that has ever had the unfortunate pleasure of being with me can you tell one thing about me: I fucking love mistakes. I love making them, and I love learning from them. I am a walking-talking connoisseur of mistakes. In fact, I just made a mistake trying to spell connoisseur, so I asked Google "Hey Google, spell connoisseur", and due to lack of interpreting my Alabama accent, Google made the mistake of showing me the word Coitus. I have now learned that the word "coitus" is another word for sex. As a writer and the son of an English teacher, I love learning new words. As a human male, I love sex. So learning a new word for "sex" is a fantastic trade-off for that fortunate mistake! I digress. I decided to walk into the bank, up the stairs to the second floor, and down the hall to the employment agency. A well-dressed and very sexy debutant by the name of Tracy stood up and greeted me with a smile that was formal, professional, and admittedly very sexy. While my dirty mind started playing cheap porn music, along with vivid images of me and Tracy wrecking that office like wild alleycats, I was suddenly snapped back into reality with Tracy's sexy voice, saying: "Hey, you must be Mr. Huck! Are you here for the 3:00 o'clock interview? Could you please start by filling out this application? You can have a seat over at the desk here"… Godammit. This employment agency was GOOD. I was Tracy's submissive little slut. I walked right where Tracy told me to walk, sat right in the chair Tracy pulled out for me to sit in, and I started filling out the application with the ballpoint pen that Tracy had somehow put in my hand without me even realizing it. Tracy could have stolen my wallet and the 11 dollars inside of it as well, had she wanted to, and I wouldn't have even noticed. And even if I had noticed, I would have let her do it anyway. Godammit! As I started to fill out the application, I got to the section I dreaded most: job references. Oh boy…allow me to tell you a little about Huck's references, or lacktherof: At my last job, I was fired because of a fight that broke-out between my ex-girlfriend and myself, which began with lots of shouting and shoving, and ended with me getting a black-eye from being punched in the face twice. Fun fact: Italian women are fiery as they are fierce, and bold as they are beautiful. And just like their male Italian counterparts, such as Sylvester Stalone or Al Capone, they know how to land a solid right jab. This fight erupted in the worker's dormitory for all employees to hear and see. And although I was the one with the swollen black eye, I was the one they decided to fire. C'est la vie, such is life. Que sera sera, it be what it fucking be. We can scratch that job off as a reference, without a doubt. The job before that, I was at a marijuana farm called "Great American Cannabis", in which my managers and co-workers tried to recruit me into a far-right group of sexist and racist baboons called "The Proud Boys". There was a pre-determining factor in why that farm had hired me, and assumed I would be interested in their idealogical gang. That pre-determing factor was the very same factor that led Google to teaching me the wrong word and definition: my Alabama accent. Great American Cannabis had hired me based on a phone interview, in which they assumed my southern accent indicated two things, in which case one of their assumptions was right, and one was wrong: Assumption Numero Uno: Huck has an Alabama accent, which therefore indicates that he has years of experience working on farms, growing plants, and being an honest and hard-worker. Assumption Numero Dos: Huck has an Alabama accent, therefore he must be idealogically aligned with far-right beliefs including sexism and racism. Welp, I am proud to say that even that although a 50% winning percentage may be fine and dandy with gambling in Vegas, and can be seen as half full or half empty based on however optimisitic or pessimistic you might be, in the case of Great American Cannabis and The Proud Boys, those odds ended pretty badly. As it turns out, despite being raised by a racist father and surrounded by bigotry in the not-so-sweet home of Alabama, those very dispositions made this black sheep child rebel from such ass-backward beliefs, and I am staunchly pro-civil rights, which means I am pro-immigration, and a proud supporter of the sufferage movement for womens right. Obviously, that did not go very well with my co-workers at the farm, and I was fired within the first month. But wait, theres more tragic humor to the story of this farm, which I'll organize in two keypoints: Keypoint Numero Uno: The farm was owned by Iranian immigrants. I…shit…you…not. That's right. YOU DID READ THAT CORRECTLY. Not only was the farm owned and managed by a minority group of immigrants, those very immigrants came directly from the very country is at the VERY TOP of White-America's shitlist: Iran. Keypoint Numeros Dos: After I was fired based almost entirely according to my leftist and progressive views on race and gender equality, within just a couple of weeks nearly everybody on the farm was fired and replaced by cheaper immigrant labor in the form of Laotian women. That's right…a white-blooded American-born legal-working male, was replaced by brown-blooded, foreign-born, mostly-illegal-working females, on a farm owned and managed by right-wing racists and sexists that were anti-immigration. Once again, I…shit…you…fucking…not...let THAT shit sink in. I literally cannot make this shit up, and let it be forever proof that reality, however tragic or ironic it may be, is far greater than fiction. You can write that last sentence in a letter, shove that puppy in an envelope, slap that bitch with a stamp, and mail it to the fucking MOON. Or you can mail it to Iran, or Laos, whichever you prefer. However, I digress. So, being that I was fired from Great American Cannabis by a bunch of Iranian Proud Boys, you can scratch that job off of the "reference" list as well. Sigh. So, how about the job before that? Well, that's a hell of a story too, but I'll make it quick and cut shorter to the chase: I worked on a fishing boat for a Mormon captain. Although I loved him like a Dad, and he often treated me like a son, my job ended in these words: "Huck, I really like you. You're one of the hardest working deckhands I've ever had, despite it being a very terrible year for fishing. However, as a man that is a Latter Day Saint of God, as a Mormon, I'm going to have to ask you to leave because of three reasons: 1) You smoke cigarettes, marijuana, and drink alcohol and coffee. 2) You curse worse than a sailor. 3) You are an atheist/agnostic." And in case you, the reader did not know: Mormons HATE cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, AND coffee. They are forbidden to curse, and they are not even allowed to tolerate the company of anyone that isn't a believer in God. Well Godammit. How in the hell am I so goddamn misfortunate and unlucky, to be the must FIRST FUCKING PERSON in the entire HISTORY OF FISHING, that has gotten fired for using curse words and drinking whiskey. I couldn't even absorb the fact that my boss was firing me because I couldn't get over the fact that I was possibly the first sailor or fisherman in all of ocean-faring humanity that had gotten fired for doing what sailors and fisherman are guaranteed and known to do best: drinkin' and cursin' We can also scratch THAT job off the possible reference list as well. It was at this point in the office of Job Choices Bozeman that the porn music had long since stopped playing in my head, and that I suddenly and swiftly fell deeply into a full blown existential crisis right there in Tracy's office while simply trying to think of a single reference from my last 3 jobs. The unbelievable amount of misfortune, tragedy, irony, and utter insanity of my last 3 job experiences had truly started to sink in, and I was beginning to legitimately lose my temporary grasp on sanity along with my faith in humanity altogether in one great, big, sloppy sandwich of existential fucking crisis. Allow me to self-diagnose this existential crisis sandwich by peeling off some of the layers of this enormous stinking onion that is in the middle of it all: Either that curse that was put on me a few years ago by a Mexican trainhopping gypsy from New Orleans is proof that curses are indeed fucking real, or either I am the unluckiest son of a bitch on this entire planet that is so very unlucky that I am slowly (or quickly) coming to the conclusion that this entire life is a simulation that is programmed by some sick comedic asshole that specializes in the tragedies of both irony AND misfortune. And though some people in this world call that programmer God or Allah or Jehovah, I call him Jeff. I call him "Jeff in Programming", with same amount of disdain and hatred that Michael Scott refers to "Toby in Human Resources" in the American version of the show "The Office". (Sidenote: If you do not understand my last reference because you have not watched The Office, then you need to stop reading this book right now, go sign up for one month of Netflix, and spend that entire month binge-watching one of the greatest sitcoms ever made in the history of television: The Office (US Version). Go. Now!) I digress. As I collapsed into a full-blown existential crisis while thinking of job references on the second floor employment services office above Montana State Bank, my fantasy-based relationship with Tracy was also about to crumble into an existential crisis as well, based on two very important qualities: Quality Numero Uno: Tracy and I had no relationship that actually existed outside of my head and a stupid job application form. We had never knocked over all of the filing cabinets, water-cooler, or broken the copying machine with tantric sex. That scenario never existed period. Quality Numeros Dos: I was about to not only lie, but also commit non-existent adultery to Tracy, thus putting a very real end to a not-very-real relationship. I stood up from the desk that me and Tracy had never fucked on, and I told Tracy that I had to use the bathroom. And though I did really have to use the bathroom, it wasn't for the purpose of pissing or taking a shit, it was for the purpose of throwing the application in the toilet and sneaking my way down the hallway and out of the employment agency. In which case, that is precisely what I did. Upon stepping out of the door and back into the parking lot of Bozeman City Bank, I noticed another hot little woman across the street: A dazzling red-headed freckle-faced damsel by the name of Wendy, who promised in her fertile bosom the birth of two-dollar cheeseburgers and loaded baked potatoes. I went inside Wendy's house, and began to have an oral relationship by penetrating my mouth with nearly everything that was offered on Wendy's dollar-value menu. Stop here, acquire coffee, booze, and cigarettes until I feel like writing again, which may be later tonight, tomorrow morning, or possibly fucking never
A daytraders guide to currency trading in PoE (long post)
Good day, Exiles! Long time reader, few times poster here. With so much interest in the stock market this past week I thought I’d share some real life currency trading strategies - translated to PoE - to help you get rich! This guide is mostly meant as fun and educational, but if you wanna try your hand at this, feel free. This guide is very long (sorry!), and also contains a little math and a few financial terms (I have tried to keep both at a minimum). So let’s get started with a few mechanics and market fundamentals of the PoE market:
First, most of these strategies are based on Fx-trading (foreign exchange) and centered around making arbitrage profits. What is arbitrage? It’s being able to exploit the differences in price of the same asset in different forms (or markets, but since PoE only has a single market this is not relevant). On top of that, arbitrage profits are guaranteed, there is no gambling involved or making predictions. When you execute the arbitrage trade you are in profit.
Second, arbitrage does in theory not exist on perfect markets. But is the poe market perfect? Nope, far from.
Third, I’m sure you are all familiar with the theory around supply and demand so we’ll not go deep into that however this also applies to PoE. But what’s interesting about PoE is that we have an endless supply (of most things) and unlimited demand (of some things). We use this to our advantage.
Fourth, a difference from real life markets is that buying and selling larger amounts of an asset in PoE raises the price. You could in theory argue that the same applies to the stock market for example but then we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of shares while in PoE these larger numbers are in the 10s and 100s and can be acquired by anyone.
1. Exploiting the bid/ask spread
Theory: In foreign exchange, market makers buy and sell currencies at what is called the bid and the ask price. They bid one price to take the currency off your hands, and they ask another price to give it to you (you’ll see this in airports for example). The actual price of the currency is somewhere in between. This spread is how foreign exchange firms make all their profit. Description: Ever tired selling and buying exalted orbs? We can all agree that the price of an exalted orb is 80 chaos, however when buying one we seem to sometimes be paying 81 chaos. And when selling for chaos perhaps we only receive 79 chaos. This gives a bid/ask spread of 2 chaos. To benefit from this price difference we have to act as the market maker by SELLING our currency instead of exchanging (buying) it. This plays directly on to the fact that there is an unlimited demand in the market. Execution: Instead of visiting the trade site and proceeding to whisper sellers you act as the seller by listing your currency at a slightly higher price than it’s worth. Never be the buyer! Profitability: Low (but rises with high volume, see section 5). Works for: Mainly chaos/exalt
2. Pure arbitrage trades
Theory: In real life you find pure arbitrage trades by noticing price differences on currencies or assets on different markets. For example, you could buy Mexican peso in the US market and instantly sell it in the London market should there be a price difference. Description: Arbitrage trades in poe can be done with any currency that has either a divination card or a vendor recipe. It’s quite simple, take the chaos-exalt currency pair as an example. What you do is simply buy divination cards like The Saint’s Treasure or Abandoned Wealth for chaos orbs. The cards are essentially exactly the same thing as parts of exalted orbs. The Saint’s Treasure currently trades around 14-17c (minimum stack size 3). So by buying 10 of these at the lower price levels (let’s say 15c), we get two exalted orbs for the price of 150 chaos. Proceed to instantly sell the two exalted orbs for 80 chaos each, and by doing so make a 10 chaos arbitrage profit. Execution: Buy divination cards that give exalts, fusings, alterations, regrets, scourings (at a lower price than the actual value of the card) - turn in the cards, sell the currency from the cards on the market for chaos. Alternatively, using the vendor system, you buy Orb of Augmentation, Jeweller's orb or Chance orbs in the market at a price that is lower than ¼ (the vendor price) of an Alteration, Fusing or Scouring respectively, then exchange these with the vendor and sell the refined currency in the market for chaos orbs. Profitability: Medium, requires some math and some time. Works for: Anything that has a divination card or vendor recipe and a price discrepancy.
3. Exploiting cross-rates
Theory: Cross-rates are a triangulation method used in order to make an arbitrage profit on Fx-trading. By taking a currency pair like USD/GBP and involving a third currency, a “middle hand” like the Euro, you can make an arbitrage profit by exchanging USD into GBP, GBP into Euro and Euro back into USD. In the real world discrepancies occur occasionally but are very small and adjusted quickly. Description: How do we calculate cross-rates in PoE? Well, exactly how we do it in the real world market ofcourse. With math and the following formula: A/B * B/C = A/C. The answer in this calculation is what the price of an asset should be. So let’s do some math with Chaos orbs, Exalted orbs and Alterations as the middle hand. A = Chaos, B = Exalt, C = Alteration A/B = 80/1 B/C = 1/320 Which gives us a theoretical price of A/C (Chaos per Alteration): 80/1 * 1/320 = 0.25. Buying alterations for chaos currently costs about 0.22-0.24c per alt. So we have a discrepancy from what the price should be. Execution: We sell 1 exalt for 80 chaos, we buy alterations at the price of 0.24c per alt which yields us 333 alterations. We then proceed to sell 320 alterations in the market for 1 exalted orb. Our profit is 13 alterations = ~4 chaos. Profitability: Medium-High (but complicated and time consuming). Works for: Chaos orbs and exalted orbs along with a third currency.
4. Carry-trades
Theory: A carry trade is a trading strategy that utilizes the difference between interest rates in different countries. Let’s say the USA has low interest rates and Britain has high interest rates. You borrow USD, exchange for GBP which you deposit in the UK and let the money grow with the british interest rates while you pay the low interest on the USD you borrowed. You then sell back the GDP to USD in the future using a forward contract today (this is called hedging your position). Your profit is the difference between interest rates minus the fees from the short forward contract. Description: This exact method does not really translate to PoE as we don’t have any interest. However with some game knowledge you can still utilize carry trades early in the leagues by investing in various things like Orb of Alteration. In the first week of any league chaos orbs are scarce and everyone wants them. So you sell yours for Alterations (which was trading at 7:1 the first week of the new league). Deposit the alterations in your currency tab and sell them back to the market one week later to the current 4:1 price. Execution: Invest early in currencies that will become more expensive the longer the league goes on. Let time (our interest) do the work for you. Profitability: Very high (but these kinds of trades are limited to early league) Works for: Alterations, expensive div cards, expensive prophecies.
5. Volume trading (aka “flipping”)
Theory: Volume trading basically revolves around using high volume to make small gains (in percent) become substantial in nominal value. Description: Remember the bid/ask spread-exploit? What if you sell your exalted orb for 81 chaos and then again proceed to sell 79 of your chaos orbs for 1 exalt. You’ll end up where you began with 1 exalt but also an extra 2 chaos orbs. Now imagine following this pattern 100 times and you have made 200c. The secret to get rich from this is using more than 1 exalt. If you start with 20. You’ll make 40c profit, at least, as you are now a bulk seller you can increase your spread to 3c, so you’ll make 60 chaos, from flipping your exalts one time. Do it with 100 exalts, and you’ll make 300 chaos, or 5 exalts. Execution: Sell chaos for exalts and then exalts for chaos and then chaos for exalt. Use a slightly highelower price for the conversion. Use high volume and print chaos orbs. Profitability: High (if you got the volume). Works for: Chaos/Exalt mainly.
6. Value creation
Theory: This is quite different from the rest of the strategies but creating value by refining a product or raw material is essentially the business model for many, many, companies. So why wouldn’t it work in PoE right? Description: The idea is buying raw material, enhancing products, and selling the finished product at a higher price. But remember; we don’t gamble. So for example, Shavronne’s Wrappings is selling uncorrupted for 38 chaos right now. However a 6-socket version of the chest is selling at around 70 chaos. So we could theoretically buy 350 jewellers orb for the current market price of 21 chaos. Use the crafting table to 6-socket our Shavs with our 350 Jewellers orb and voíla; we made a profit of 70-38-21=11 chaos orbs. Execution: There are a large number of things you can buy, improve and sell. 6-socket chests as in our example. Prophecy items (require base unique, prophecy and a map) usually make a fine profit as well. I won’t go into more detail but value creation is something you can just always keep in mind. Profitability: Medium Works for: Gear, prophecy uniques, jewels affected by divine orbs, alternative quality gems and more! Edit 1; Some typos. And I wanna mention once again that these strategies work best if you trade in bulk (high volume). An average player would probably make more currency from just mapping. However, it can be very usefull know some of these mechanics, even if you don't utilize them.
How To Value A Stock (From Someone Who Has Beaten The S&P Almost Every Year Since 2008)
I recently wrote this up for my friends who asked me how I do what I do. I figured I'd share it here. This is freely available to anyone who wants it, though please credit me if you simply copy/paste. Nothing here is novel, and can be done by anyone. I am not a financial professional, and the example given below is only Abbvie because I forgot that Abbott Labs was alphabetically the first in the S&P 500 when picking an example. First, let’s come right out and say that if you do not have the time to do this, or do not find it enjoyable, just buy low-cost index funds that track either the total market or the S&P 500. Second, let’s make an important distinction: Investing – This is the act of purchasing assets for less than their intrinsic value. This PDF will focus on how to determine the intrinsic value of an asset that produces income. Note that for most assets, this is simply how much money you can extract from the asset over the period of time that you hold it for. There’s no other value than money in investing. Causes and emotions are what philanthropy is for. Speculating – This is, at its core, the act of taking supply of an asset from the present to the future (by hoarding it). If there is more demand, lower supply, or both, this pays the speculator to take the asset from a period of low value to one of high value. It is not gambling, but is very difficult to do, since it entails taking on timing risk. It is not illegal, immoral, or impossible, but I have no special insight into it. I’ll leave it there. Gambling – This looks a lot like speculation, but without any particular reason to believe the asset will be more valuable in the future. Speculators at least estimate the value of an asset to investors, as they are ultimately the end market for an asset. Do not gamble. Full stop. Determining the intrinsic value of an asset The value of an asset is simply the present value of all future income that asset can provide you. Since a dollar in five years is naturally less valuable than a dollar today, you have to discount future income against the opportunity cost of forgoing the dollars you invest today. When we get to the Present Value equation, this is represented by interest. It can also be thought of as the opportunity cost of investing in the asset instead of some other asset or simply consuming the dollars instead. Here’s the actual math. Note that it’s not super hard, and while I will explain it, there are dozens of free websites that will quickly let you calculate this. The key phrase to Google would be “present value of a growing annuity calculator.” PV = (C / i - G) * {1 – [(1 + G)/(1 + i)]^n} PV = present value C = cash flow per period n = number of payments i = interest rate G = growth rate The value for PV is your estimation of what the asset is worth today. If this ends up far higher than the market price, you are probably purchasing dollars for quarters. Avoid edge cases, as you are guessing about both the interest and growth rate. C is the cash flow per period. If you have a high degree of confidence in the culture of the company and it has a long history of being good stewards of retained earnings, you can use the earnings per share (EPS). I usually use the dividend. It is impossible to fake or financially engineer a dividend, and requires less looking through financial documents to make sure it’s what it appears to be. But for, say, Apple or Microsoft or Chevron, feel free to use the EPS. The number of payments is how many payments you expect while holding the asset. Dividends in American companies are typically quarterly (though some pay monthly or every six months, so check on that), so every multiple of four would represent one year if you choose to do it that way. If n = 16, then you’re expecting to hold the asset for 4 years. You can also put in a year’s worth of dividends and keep n = years rather than quarters. I typically do n = 30, since 30 years is both a long time horizon that is realistic, and coincides when I will hit “retirement age.” You will have to decide how far ahead you’re planning. For most people, they are net purchasers of investments while working and net sellers while retired, so keep that in mind. Note that using years instead of quarters will lessen the amount of compounding, and will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong. Interest is one of the two variables you have to guess at. Typically, one would put what you expect the actual long-run interest rate to average for this investment. Unfortunately, this is really difficult. Instead, I use a rate that represents my opportunity cost. There are any number of relatively safe ways to get a 5% yield on money invested, so I generally use i = 5% to represent that this asset has to perform better than a utility or telecom or real estate investment trust. Feel free to use what you feel is most appropriate for you. A higher interest rate will lower the value of the asset, so high-balling this number will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong. The second variable you have to guess at is the growth rate. If you’re looking at the dividend, you want to know how fast to expect it to grow over time. If you’re using the EPS for C, then you want to see how quickly the total earnings are growing per share. This is extremely difficult to predict. I recommend taking the 5-year growth rate and halving it. Dividends will also be more predictable here, as most companies pay out far less than they make, which means even if EPS grows slowly, the dividend can still grow quickly for many years after a boom is over for the company. Note that lowering your estimate for G will lower the value of the asset, so low-balling this number will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong. OK, so let’s walk through an example. I’ll use Abbvie, a biotech/pharmaceutical company. It has a quarterly dividend for the coming year of $1.30/share. Its dividend has an 18.5% growth rate over the last 5 years, and has grown it for the last 7 (it’s only been around for 8 years). I assumed a growth rate (G) of 7%. I used $5.20 as the starting dividend this coming year and used years for my n = 30. As always, I used i = 5%. This gave me an estimated present value of 1 share of Abbvie at $197.94. As of writing this, Abbvie shares are trading on the market at $103.43. This looks like a screaming buy, but first let’s look at why I have a high degree of confidence. Note how the interest was higher than the going rate – I used my “low-risk alternative” as an opportunity cost. Abbvie has an extremely high rate of growth for its dividend, so I took less than half of its current rate. I also calculated annually rather than quarterly, which reduces the impact of high rates of growth. That’s three places in the equation where I consciously lowered the estimated value of a share of Abbvie, and it still came out as a strong buy – spending less about 50c for a dollar! I do this because even if I’m wrong in some or all of my predictions, I now have quite a bit of room to be wrong and still make money. It’s like how you don’t walk next to a steep cliff, right? You should know how to walk where you want to, but there’s always the small chance something could cause you to slip or put a foot wrong. But if your plan is always to be 5 feet away from the edge of the cliff, the odds are that you’ll not go over the edge even if you fall down. Many people feel this is over cautious. But let my portfolio speak for itself. I’ve beaten the S&P 500 index fund every year except one since 2008. My brokerage only keeps digital records back to Dec 2015, but the S&P 500 returned 101% since then – with dividends reinvested. My own portfolio has returned 256%. So caution is still very high reward. In fact, if you just don’t lose, you’ll do better than the vast majority of professional money managers (about 85% of whom cannot even match the index funds). Due diligence still has to occur Now, we can’t just go straight out and buy Abbvie – though it’s a high profile company that receives lots of investor and regulator scrutiny so it’s less likely to have a landmine than most. Just to make sure, you’ll want to do the following before buying shares in this company: -Check the debt load. If the debt is very high, has very high interest rates, or has a lot of it maturing very soon, then this is a yellow flag. It doesn’t mean don’t buy, but make sure you understand the structure of the company’s debt and make sure it won’t impair the company’s earnings going forward. This information is found on the balance sheet. Abbvie has $97.287 billion in long-term liabilities such as debt, pension liability, and deferred taxes. That’s a lot compared to their assets, but they also are owed some money, so it nets out about $90 billion. -What’s the book value? Book value is fairly low at $8.65/share. This is pretty much the assets minus the liabilities. Abbvie is in a knowledge industry, however, so you shouldn’t expect their main assets to be physical capital that can be sold. It’s mostly organizational or human capital from their workforce, so this isn’t worrying. If Abbvie was, say, a retailer with stores and land and inventory, you’d want this to be much, much higher for the share price. There’s no easy way to judge this one, unfortunately, but it’s good to look it up and you’ll eventually get a feel for it. No red flags here. -What are the catastrophic risks that even you or I could think of? For a company in the pharmaceutical space, the obvious answer is regulatory and political risk. Regulatory risk is just want it sounds like – more regulation which can be either costly to comply with or lower profits. This does have an upside, which is that it makes it harder for new competitors to enter a market, so I tend to be rather sanguine about regulatory risk. Political risk is much more severe. This is when politicians decide to either confiscate a company, target it specifically rather than the industry it’s in, or other ways in which the government is involved with taking rather than regulating. In Anglo countries (US/UK/Canada/Australia), the rule of law is typically strong enough that this doesn’t happen much, as there is usually some kind of due process. Places like China, Argentina, Russia, and the EU are much more likely to nationalize or otherwise capriciously penalize a company due to the prevailing political winds. Abbvie has a global footprint, but that also means it’s diversified against such risk. It’s headquartered in the US, so it’s unlikely someone will simply take the entire company. -Payout ratio? Abbvie has a fairly high payout ratio (80% for the last completed fiscal year of 2019), as they have been aggressively growing the dividend. That’s another good reason to input a much lower G than the last few years. That being said, Abbvie has been around for 8 years (it was spun off of Abbott Labs) and has grown its dividend for the last 7 years and has announced it will this coming year as well. The payout ratio is pretty high, but not worrisome. It suggests a fairly mature company that’s now returning cash to shareholders. I’d say this is not nothing, but less than a yellow flag for me. Any company with 95%+ payout ratio is much more vulnerable to a dividend cut. -Credit rating? S&P gives Abbvie a BBB+ grade for its unsecured debt. This is a slight downgrade because their balance sheet is currently digesting a big acquisition from early 2020 (Allergan). Moody’s gives it a Baa2 rating for unsecured debt. These are both good, solid, investment-grade credit ratings (if you were buying the bonds of Abbvie). This looks great. -Does it need a genius? Some companies run on all cylinders because they have a genius at the helm – often a founder. But what you want is a company any dummy can run, because sooner or later any dummy will. Don’t plan to invest long-term in companies that require skilled management. Abbvie is fairly diversified and has an OK pipeline of research. They also can buy little biotech companies that invent something but can’t navigate the regulations to bring it to market. So pondering giants are actually a good thing. Means they’re hard to break. So, given that there was nothing obviously treacherous in our basic due diligence, and the extreme discount at which our example is selling for, this would be one you might want to buy! This is what I do for all the companies I invest in. Notice that there is no story, no excitement, no narrative, no counting on good or bad management. Emotion has no place in investing. You also will notice that we took every opportunity to reduce the risk of losing your capital by always sandbagging the estimated value of the company. You never want to pick up nickels in front of a steamroller. You want the investment to be so obvious it hits you in the face like a baseball bat. If you’re ever on the fence, don’t do it. You don’t have to hit home runs – just don’t strike out. You can be even more conservative in your estimates than I am. If, for instance, you used 5% growth rate for Abbvie’s dividend, you’d still get a present value of $148.57/share vs the current market price of $103.43. Similarly, you could use a higher interest rate, which would also lower the estimated present value. You may have to do this calculation with more companies to find one to buy, but even in a very expensive market like today’s, there is always an opportunity. You don’t even have to look at little companies. There’s around 500 companies in the S&P – just start with “A” and work your way through all of them. A quick note about further reading: I very strongly urge most people to actually read as little as possible on this subject once they get the basics. That’s not because there’s not more to learn, but because I would sadly say the majority of what I see and hear is actively bad advice. But if you do want to keep up with financial news and books and chat boards, the best thing to do is find out what the historical returns of the person giving advice are. Since WWII, the long-run return on the S&P 500 has generally been just a bit shy of 10% per year. If someone can’t beat that, year-in-and-year-out, then their advice is worthless. As in, you don’t want to accidentally absorb it. This is, unfortunately, true for most professionals. Over the last 15 years, 92.2% of actively managed funds have underperformed a simple S&P 500 index fund (and they charge you fees for the privilege). Beware anyone selling something. The advice here is given freely That’s why I made a point of mentioning that I have and regularly outperform the standard fund almost every year. Granted, I don’t have many of the regulatory restrictions a public fund would have, but it shows how useful the advice I’m giving here is. You don’t need anything fancy. You don’t need anything high risk. I’ve done this through two deep recessions and the longest bull market in history. If you want to learn more about investing in general and where I learned how to do this, you can read Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor. It was written in the 1930s, so much of the technical information is out of date. Skip over that and just read it for the concepts. Even easier reading is to go online to Berkshire Hathaway’s website and pull Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s annual letter to shareholders. Almost all of them have something useful in them and don’t make you do equations. I am available for questions in the comments
First mover advantage and network effect. The big lies in crypto. Don't fall for it.
I figured I would write this up because I keep seeing people making these unfair and misleading first movenetwork effect arguments over and over again, they are just lies. Being first mover or having network effect are not magic things that make everything oke and removes all competition.
First mover advantage
There are more disadvantages to being first mover in this space and tech in general than advantages, the first mover advantage is arguably even a myth. Most of today’s behemoths – from Google and Facebook to Instagram and TikTok – were not first-movers. Moreover, the last 20 years have seen a flood of first-movers failing, with companies like Nokia, Yahoo and G.M. all facing dire straits or going under completely. These are not outliers. First mover disadvantages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage#Disadvantages_of_being_a_first_mover
Network effect
Network effect matters, it matters a lot. But there is no such thing as an insurmountable network effect, especially in the current crypto space. There are plenty of examples of disruption of very dominant actors in different industries. Microsoft was a monopoly and Apple managed to take a huge chunk of market share. Yahoo was the dominant search engine and Google took over. Nokia had a 50% market share in the mobile phone industry... Nobody uses MySpace anymore... Why network effects in crypto are not that significant. The size of the crypto industry is tiny compared to many other industries and seeing the potential it has. There is so much room to grow. The crypto industry is now at a $1 trillion marketcap. That's a whole industry of a revolutionary new technology that's not even worth half of Apple, one company, alone (https://companiesmarketcap.com/). And there are so many use cases not realized yet. I would argue there hasn't even been real adoption yet, the top applications are DeFi which is for the vast majority used by speculators and yield farmers and not real users, gambling and scams. And there are 22.6M developers in the world while there are only 80k Solidity developers on Ethereum. There are also NEGATIVE network effects. Instead of 'more users = better experience = more users joining' you get 'more users = worse experience = users leaving'. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect#Negative_network_externalities) We have already seen negative network effects happen and they come to light the best when we are in a bull run (more users join). In 2017 Bitcoin was congested and transaction times and fees skyrocketed (worse experience). The narrative changed from 'p2p cash' used by merchants etc. (usage of Bitcoin in daily transactions was shilled heavily before the network got congested) to 'SoV' only. And people moved over to other solutions and Bitcoin dominance dropped (users leave). Ethereum had similar issues around that time, Cryptokitties alone pretty much stopped Ethereum from working. And currently Ethereum has major issues with congestion and high gas fees as a result. These negative network effects are only going to become worse the more users try to join unless the issues are fixed. Bitcoin was promised Lightning Network to solve it's scalability issues but as far as I know it is not being adopted after 3-4 years of development and pushing for adoption. So Bitcoin is currently going to stay a SoV only and/or there will be heavy network congestion this bull run. Ethereum is moving to PoS to solve this but ETH 2.0 is at the very least still a year away, this is way too late for the mass of new users that are coming in. Layer 2 scaling solutions are promised to keep Ethereum running properly until ETH 2.0 but we have yet to see this really happen.
How Cardano plays into this
Cardano was inspired by Bitcoin and learned from the mistakes of both Bitcoin and Ethereum. They took all the good things, got rid of all the bad things and improved. They took Bitcoins monetary policy and security properties for example and improved on e.g. scalability, energy consumption and decentralization. Cardano has the same if not better properties as Bitcoin to be a SoV, let that sink in. They learned from Ethereums problems that arose over the years like the DAO hack and used a rigorous principles first approach using academic peer review, formal methods and a functional programming language to prevent these problems from occuring, this is going to be the industry standard for development (to understand why peer review and formal methods matters see In Defense of Peer Review and what formal methods are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_methods). And created Plutus and Marlowe to minimize bugs/mistakes which were often made using Solidity. They learned from UTxO and account based models and created Extended UTxO which has more benefits. They learned from the terrible fee structure Ethereum has and improved to prevent high fee issues. They learned from the problems Ethereum governance has and made it more decentralized and efficient. They learned that non-profit development running on donations is not sustainable and created an on-chain treasury to fund Cardano development in a decentralized way. The list goes on and on. Also don't forget that IOG is years ahead in research and there is tons of improvements yet to come. The first mover disadvantage here is huge. There are 22.6M developers in the world and Ethereum has only 80k Solidity developers. Cardano is going to tap into the remaining 22.5M developers and make it easy for Solidity developers to move over to Cardano with IELE, KEVM and the ERC20 converter, see: The Island, The Ocean and the Pond (Soon). You tell me if having 80k developers in a group of 22.6M developers is a network effect anyone should be fearing. Cardano has an on-chain treasury that is replenished by transaction fees and the reserves. It's worth almost $200M at current ADA price, imagine when ADA is $1 or much much higher. This is a forever sustainable source to fund development. Cardano does not have to rely on unsustainable donations or centralized entities deciding on funding. It will fund projects every 6 weeks and will just keep on chugging along forever. This will attract developers continuously. See Catalyst (link provided by bot in the comments). You tell me if this will bring network effect faster than some enthousiasts building on Ethereum. IOG's other strategy for adoption is to bring economic identity to billions of people in developing countries. The idea behind this is that there will be less resistance than in developed countries to adopt the technology because these countries need it the most (most are unbanked and don't have financial services or good solutions for other problems like identification, land registry, etc. unlike people in the US or EU), don't have incumbents who will resist, have a young population who can adopt new technology more easily and it makes them able to compete in the global market. They also have the fastest growing economies and there is a lot more value to create. And when these countries adopt crypto and show the value it creates for them then developed countries will follow more easily. This will bring millions of users who will use Cardano for real problems they have not to gamble or be a "yield farmer", this is lasting real adoption. IOG has been working in Africa for 3-4 years and is really close to closing a multi million users deal in Ethiopia. See this latest interview with IOG's African Operations Director: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUPKtfTLvAk. And when Fortune 500 companies can easily reach all those millions of people in Africa with their products and services and can play in those markets then they have incentive to use Cardano. Again, you tell me if this is a better way to get adoption and network effect than whatever Ethereum is doing. You tell me if millions of real users is not going to create network effect. Anyone who is not utterly biased will come to the conclusion that Cardano can challenge and pass Ethereum and Bitcoin. Keep using critical thinking. Think for yourself. Do your own research.
It is widely played in a lot of European countries such as Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, and Norway but its popularity has spread further to countries including Australia, Canada, Japan,... As you can see, these countries gamble the most, but each one has its specifics and cultural preferences. The main trend that can be seen in most countries is online gambling rapidly gaining popularity. No wonder that the global online gambling and betting market is projected to be worth almost $100 billion by 2024. However, land-based casinos with luxury designs and a variety of table games Ireland is the best country to gamble in 2021 because English is a local language here. With high tax rates (about 40%), but the minimum wage is 1500 euros, the average is 3000 euros. Besides, in Ireland, the government has set limits on bets in slot machines – no more than $ 0.001784. There are countries that are completely open to gambling. The UK, Germany, and Spain are the biggest markets in Europe and it’s legal for players to gamble online and in traditional casinos too. The same goes for the majority of European countries, including the likes of Ireland, Serbia, and Croatia. Countries That Gamble The Most. Gambling is hugely popular in some parts of the world while in others, it is completely banned. Whenever gambling is mentioned, the glitzy images of Les Vegas come to mind. America has been considered as a gaming nation for a very long time. However, America is not the world’s biggest gambler as many would think. In fact, the biggest gamblers in the world Up first, you’ll find a section where you can view all of the available country pages that we’ve developed. After that, we’ll give you some color on how we selected these websites and why you can trust them. Then, you’ll find some other helpful information including sections on the legality and benefits of online gambling and FAQs. Countries or jurisdictions where online casinos operate legally are many. However, not every location is favorable or business-friendly. Some gambling laws are so strict that you will give up midway before creating a gaming account or setting up a business in some locations. Still, such information as gambling laws is necessary to help you make the right decisions from the onset. Straightway You can find gambling facilities in 13 cities throughout Austria. While Linz is the most popular city for gambling, Casino Baden is the largest casino in the country. Other cities where you can find official casinos include Bregenz, Salzburg, Graz, Vienna, Seefeld and Innsbruck. Some of the most beautiful casinos are located in Velden, which is a lakeside town with a spa, Kitzhuhel, which includes an exclusive ski resort, and in Kleinwalsertal in the Vorarlberg Valley. While laws have changed over the years, there are still many countries that punish those who gamble illegally or those who set up online casinos without permission. Here, we are going to look at some of the countries where gambling is illegal. Keep reading if you would like to find out more. Cambodia. In the past, the citizens of Cambodia have been known for their gambling addictions and so The Best Countries to go to if you Want to Gamble – 2021. By. Angela P. Muller - January 21, 2021. Have you ever seen “Rounders”? One of the main heroes, Mike McDermott, dreams is to play poker with the best in the world in The Mirage casino. It’s only a movie, but millions of gamblers all over the world dream of visiting specific countries where the most luxurious casinos are located
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