Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.

Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...

..

BOOM

Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

The Mods of WSB & A Coordinated AMC Pump

Going to be editing this with info as I come across it. Please DM me if you have anything to add. Many of you have reached out and I've complied a lot of evidence. I realize now that these pumps originated in Discord groups, but this is something I am still actively looking into and won't be including here.
Users of wallstreetbets (and also places like Stockwits, amcstock, and Youtube chats) attempted a coordinated pump on AMC (& GME) today, Feb. 3rd. These comments are still avaible. The fact they are still up and that I found them very easily means that the mods are not able to moderate their community well enough to stop coordinated pumps. There is not evidence that shows the mods were in on coordinated pump, but the fact that they were unable to stop it taking place shows that the subreddit has grown far too big to be managed by a team of 35 mods.
There is evidence that some mods owned both AMC and GME, and it is possible they held these shares while the coordinated pump was happening in threads they were supposed to be moderating (proof of GME ownership at the bottom).
Coldcutcombo69 was mod on WSB during the AMC coordinated pump. Here is them claiming that they were a mod on WSB. This image of mods before and after the day of the pump confirms they were a mod during the AMC pump-and-dump.
Coldcutcombo69 posted a picture of them having a sell order on their AMC stock that never hit, making it possible they owned AMC shares during the coordinated pump.
Coldcutcombo69 also posted some kind of DD thread about AMC two days ago, promoting the stock here. The content of this post has been removed. This post promoting AMC was made while Coldcutcombo69 was a moderator.
Coldbutcombo69 was a moderator during the AMC coordinated pump. They are no longer a moderator as of the time of this post, only a few hours later. They confirmed this here. A WSB mod was posting comments and threads promoting AMC while possibly still holding AMC shares, and a pump-and-dump occurred in the daily threads that they (along with others) were supposed to be moderating.
turdled is currently a WSB mod. They said, "We don't comment or promote trades. That's up to the subscribers and their upvotes/downvotes to decide." View it here.
turdled's claim was false. Coldcutcombo69 had been a moderator for 25 days. During that time they posted comments and threads promoting AMC, while providing evidence that they actually owned AMC shares. A moderator (who may command more respect in a community of 8.5 million people) promoting a stock is wrong, and the mods clearly believe that is the case since they said they don't do it. But at least one of them did. It could be that Coldcutcombo69 was removed because they were promoting AMC, but they had been doing this for days and were only removed a few hours ago.
ZJZ (a well known moderator) posted this today and was removed as a mod. The head mods also removed more mods, cutting the number of mods from from 62 mods to 37. Coldbutcombo69 was cut from the mod team at this time. It seems very suspicious to me that the head mods removed a bunch of mods from their positions after the events of today, especially because one of those ex-mods had been promoting AMC so much while being a mod.
Note: there is some kind of extended purge happening within the mod team right now. The mod team started at 62, then was cut with ZJZ to 37, then 36, now it's down to 35. EDIT: Two new mods have been added, bringing the count back up to 37. One of them tried posting something in a WSB thread, but their comment was deleted by the auto-mod because they have never posted in WSB before. Here is some proof of what's going on there.
ZJZ has exposed that there are bad actors on the mod team, using their power on the sub to try and make cash off movie deals and crypto scams. This at least adds weight to the points im raising in this thread.
EDIT: There was a thread on WSB by a moderator trying to explain what happened with the mod team. You can see that thread here. There is a lot of push back in the thread. The mod's claim is that the profit from the movie deal would have been given to charity. This may not be true, as Discord logs show another mod asking what their profit will be from the movie deal, asking "What's our cut.". Infighting with the mods seems to be a continued issue with a mod changing the subreddit description from the classic "like 4chan found a bloomberg terminal" to this. This change was instantly reverted.
MOD UPDATE 2/4: It seems that the moderator team has changed again. 23 mods now remain. OPINION_IS_UNPOPULAR is now listed as the most senior mod, and they have allowed this thread to stay up. The mod reports that the Reddit admins have stepped in.
Statement from Reddit admins, according to OPINION_IS_UNPOPULAR: "After reviewing this situation based on input from both current and past moderators, we have decided to remove several moderators at the top of the list that were creating instability in the community." Source.
NEW INFO: I've also been sent a good amount of evidence from multiple people indicating these types or coordinating buying and selling schemes were happening on places like Youtube, Twitch, and Discord. All of these groups seem to be composed of WSB/WSB spinoffs users. These users would spam hash tags, spam and raid Twitch channels, and coordinate these social media pushes with timed buying and selling of GME/AMC/BB/NOK. It is possible (and looks likely to me) that the timed pumps you see below were organized by a Discord group. I have collected a lot of evidence on this front, but this evidence of the real organizers of the pump is something I might have to pass along to someone who is more experienced at dealing with this stuff.
The AMC Pump
Here is evidence of the coordinated pump by users on WSB. The coordinated pump effort occurred in the daily thread, but also spilled out into some posts. Note: I have yet to see any comments/posts that moderators made showing them participating in the coordinated pump effort. It is not known if they knew about these comments or not.
"AMC 1 pm LET FUCKING GO" - WildPhoenix55 58 upvotes. Posted around 12:00 PM CST. Not removed as of 8:40 PM CST.
"AMC 2 DA MOON @ 1PM EST" - OutlandishnessOk4137 Posted around 12:00 PM CST. Not removed as of 8:40 PM CST.
"watching that 1pm movie"
At 1 PM, we’re going to the Moon! Get ready! 🚀 🚀 🚀Discussion *Note that this thread was 6 days ago. Still strange that it was not taken down
Comments in this thread talking about 1 PM pump
EVIDENCE THE 1 PM PUMP WORKED: 1 PM seems to be the main time that was set. You can actually see the coordinated pump spike the price of AMC up to $9.70 right after 1 PM. You can also see the massive amount of volume increase during that time as well. Volume between 1:00-1:05 shot up to 8,725,700. This was the highest volume for a 5 min period all day. Check it out here.
It was also reported to me that some users received DM's about the pump. If you are reading this and received any kind of DM like this, please message me. After seeing the first pump work successfully, they tried it again 1 hour later. Here are a swarm of comments made coordinating the pump for 2 PM.
"2 shares at 2 pm AMC!!" EDIT: This account has been deleted. You can view a picture of this post here.
"Everyone buy 2 shares of AMC and 2pm let’s rush these heggies 💎💎💎💎🚀🚀🚀" "AMC at 2 !!!!" "2 AMC shares @2pm rush" "AMC at 2. Let’s give them some payback🚀" "do i buy now or at 2" "Buy AMC at 2pm Eastern, 11am Pacific. 2pm is when it’s happening."
The 2PM coordinated pump was not as successful. It could be that some users were confused with the time differences. Either way, there was still a marked increase of volume during the 5 min period of 2:00-2:05 which also resulted in the stock re-testing its daily high. Check it out here.
You can actually watch a Youtuber Trey's Trades see the pump at 2 PM in action. He is reading comments on a WSB spin-off subreddit amcstock. You can see people spamming chat for people to buy at 2 PM. Here is the video. The fact that this guy's stream chat is filled with a pump-and-dump scheme and he did nothing about it is pretty telling.
I've backed up the comments and info here. If you find anything else suspicious about this, please DM me. I want to make it clear that there isn't evidence that the mods participated in the pump. But the pump-and-dump (which is illegal) happened under the watch of the mod team. They may have tried to stop it, but 8.5 million people is a lot. If they didn't think they could keep the place running without illegal things happening in the comment sections, they should have set the sub to private and put in proper pre-cautions first.
EDIT: This pump also occurred for GME and users in the GME thread were able to comment about it. None of these comments are removed and they exist in very large numbers. They are mostly heavily downvoted, but the fact they are able to stay up means the mods failed at their job.
Comment 1 Comment 2 Comment 3 Comment 4 Comment 5 Comment 6 Comment 7 Comment 8 Comment 9 Comment 10 Comment 11
The volume spikes do show an uptick in volume around 1PM and around 2PM, but they are not as strong as the AMC boost in volume. The volume during these times were high, but they weren't the highest points in the day for GME.
EDIT: I want to make it clear to people who are saying "those are just bot accounts." Bots are still controlled by humans. If bot spam cannot be caught and deleted, that means 8.5 million people are exposed to pump-and-dump schemes run by bots. It does not reflect any better on the mods if the comments are made by humans or made by bots controlled by humans. It is now a day later, and still none of the comments have been removed by a moderator or moderator bot.
UPDATE: Wall Street Bets has completely removed any post talking about ZJZ and his post about the head mods trying to engage in crypto scams and strange movie deals. (EDIT: This has changed, see above.) The rising sections is now completely filled low-effort, small text posts that are only pushing $GME. Here are those threads. Low-effort threads like these are explicitly against WSB rules. Why are mods letting rule-breaking, ticker spamming posts stay up?
Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5 Example 6
WSB mods are banning users for mentioning ZJZ and his post. (EDIT: This has changed, see above.)
Mods Removing Negative GME Posts
I started digging into this when I posted to Wall Street Bets with a post containing some information about GME. The post pushed back against some of the "GME revolutiuon" talking points. It was a pretty tame post, meet all the guidelines for posting, and contained enough content to warrant staying up. The post was removed by the mods, but you can still see it up here. The content of the post was a combo of these two comments I made. This comment here and this comment here. Somebody in the comments recommended I make the contents of the comment into a separate post- which I did until it was removed.
The moderators removed this post, the removal states: "Moderators remove posts from feeds for a variety of reasons, including keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose."
I sent a DM to the mods asking why exactly the post was removed. I have not been given a reply. Does the content of the post I made (pt.1 / pt.2) break any of their rules? Why would the mods remove a post containing that info?
Even worse, the exact contents of the post I made exist in comment form and are still up. If the info somehow breaks their rules, why leave it up in the comment section? Why haven't they removed the comments that contain the EXACT wording I used in my post?
It seems very strange to me that a post I made that contained some research to counter act the "GME Revolution" narrative would be singled out removal for "keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose."
The front-page of Wall Street Bets is FILLED will positive memes and DD that supports GME. There is not a single negative post about GME on the entire front page that I can find. Why not leave up some negative DD and let the community downvote/upvote it?
The mods will let the comment section of threads get filled up with misinformation (GME SI being 226% is a common one that is easily debunked, yet is posted every 5 min in daily threads). People are gambling their life savings on outdated information yet when I make a post to push back against some of the common GME arguments, it gets removed.
Mods removing negative GME posts is unethical because WSB mods own GME shares.
jamsi is a mod on WSB. They left this comment: "I just received this e-mail from Robinhood. I am no longer using Robinhood for any of my purchases. Only keeping my $GME - not selling." Here is the comment.
Swedish_Chef_Bork_x3 is a mod on WSB. They left this comment: "Another $2k locked and loaded to buy in tomorrow. Feels like fucking Helm’s Deep in here. I have tomorrow off work, gonna get drunk and hope I don’t sleep through my alarm.". Here is the comment.
rawbdor is listed as a mod under the Moderators section of Wall Street Bets. rawbdor posted a comment saying: "The price is going to plummet hard no matter what we do. The real question is, will they be able to steal our shares in the process. They can drop the price all they want on low volume. But they'll never be able to buy it back unless you sell it to them."
A link to that comment is here.
This comment makes it pretty obvious that rawbdor owns some shares in GME, right? Saying things like our shares implies they own some.
ITradeBaconFutures is also listed as a mod. They made it clear that "Mods did not trade GME". You can find that comment here.
turdled is listed as a mod. They said, "We don't comment or promote trades. That's up to the subscribers and their upvotes/downvotes to decide." View it here.
One mod claims that mods don't trade GME, when its obvious from the three examples above that they did. Another says they don't comment or promote trades, which is also a lie. Other mods have been doing that. They also "promote" trades when they remove content that argues the other side of GME. If the only content they allow on the front-page is GME Positive content, they are promoting that content.
WSB has a mod team of 35 accounts moderating 8.5 million people. CNBC gets about 200k viewers at peak hours, while WSB has almost a million viewing it at a time when the market is open.
The mods could simply send me a DM and explain why my post was removed. They haven't. Market manipulation is bad. It's bad when investment firms do it and its bad when retail investors do it. The mods could DM me right now and say "Hey, here is the reason the post was removed." They haven't. If they do send me a DM, I will post an update here.
TL;DR
Now-former WSB mod ZJZ, in a removed & locked post, accused dormant top mods of coming back to siphon media coverage, potential movie rights, and springboard a cryptocurrency, while suppressing other mods
Coldcutcombo69, a moderator on WSB, was posting comments and threads promoting AMC. A coordinated AMC pump happened in the daily threads and comments that this moderator (and others) were tasked with moderating. This mod was removed as a moderator after this thread was posted. Coldcutcombo69 held AMC stock before the pump, but it is unclear if they held or sold that stock around or after the time of the coordinated pump.
Today, several users, but no mods, in a discussion thread attempted to push buys of AMC at 1 & 2 PM EST. Those times would later coincide with high volumes of stock trades for the day. Similar coordination was attempted by users (no mods) for GME.
WSB's front page is filled with only positive coverage of GME (here's a snapshot), while they removed my post containing negative GME DD with no legitimate reason given.
Mods are holding GME contradicting another high level mod's comment that "mods did not trade $GME". Mods made a false statement that they don't promote stocks, as one of them clearly did. You can also see the other mods comments about GME as also promoting stock.
Tervia's comment here has good info on Reddit moderation.

April update & progress! 1) Gun pulled on me 2) I received an FBI prank 3) I lost $5000 in gambling with bitcoin. I am a muslim who survived a civil war but half his family didn't. But i said it's time to change areas in my life! NOFAP helped!

Old fart advice for young investors

There seems to be a lot of interest in stocks from young investors. I imagine that many will make their way from WSB to this sub because WSB is a bunch of monkeys flinging poo. You may have lost some money and now you want to explore stocks from less of a Meme and emotional perspective.
There is nothing wrong with Meme stocks. Meme stocks can be fun. I have had fun with it. I am also a 42-year-old man with rental properties, commercial properties, and a few small businesses. BB, NOK, AMC, and even GME are all fine. The DD is fine behind all of them. The issue is that if I lose $1,000 then I can write myself a check from one of my businesses for $10,000 to make myself feel better. That is not a brag...it is simply sharing that people come from different places in life.
You are just starting off life and probably have far fewer resources and every dollar matters more.
I challenge anyone to CMV but I am not a big proponent of stocks as a core investment strategy. Here are my reasons why.

Information has a time-decay of value. Meaning that information becomes less valuable over time. Data is what is mined to often produce new Information. You are at a disadvantage when it comes to both data and information. The information that you get on a retail level has already lost much of its value. This is where the saying "if you read it in the news you are already too late"
You have no power. You simply cannot compete with whales and whales don't become whales by letting people glean the crumbs that are leftover. They have the power to move markets, you don't.
You have no control over outcomes. You have no control over the success of a company. You have no control over other investors. You have no control over anything.
The odds on options are not that great. Even compared to blackjack our betting the outside of a roulette table they are just not that good.
Many people that are far more intelligent than you are, lose money at stock investing.
Your emotions and FOMO will be a hindrance and problematic.
Most stock investors are too young to understand the market cycles

I like stocks as a small part of an overall investment strategy for young people for the following reasons.

Time is valuable and you have the most time
Compound interest is the "force" behind all investing and compound interest compliments the stock market very well
Certain strategies can complement long-term wealth building

Building wealth through stocks is like trying to build a house one brick at a time...just you, and you are gathering the straw, digging the mud, and pressing each brick by hand. When it rains many of your bricks will wash away. If the sun shines for enough days then you will make good progress.
The problem is that all markets cycle. The housing market cycles. Petroleum and natural gas cycles. The stock market cycles. I believe that a full market cycle is around 18 years with around 7-12 years in an up cycle and 6-11 in a down cycle. In the stock market, they call these bull and bear markets. We are currently in one of the longest bull markets on record due to interest rates and the feds printing money. No one has a crystal ball but sooner or later the market will peak. When this happens Boomers will be the first to pull money out and put it into bonds or CDs. Boomers are as big of a whale as retail can get. Anyone and I mean anyone could have made money in the current market. If ten years ago you had asked a five-year-old to pick five of their favorite things and invested in their choices you would have made money. That could be Barbies, YouTube, Pizza, Sprite, and their Dog. They would have made money on any stocks you picked around those five things.
There will come a day sooner or later when Boomers and GenX will see trends in the market that they don't like. Boomers own multiple houses and are deep into retirement. GenX is a small but powerful generation that is now on the back Nine Holes of life. Gen X will largely inherit the wealth of the Boomers. There will come a shift towards mitigating losses and that shift is not far away. When they move their money from markets so goes the market.
Is it fair to say that one of the longest bull cycles on record could transition to one of the longest bear cycles?
Let's look at Millenials...a generation that is struggling to just buy a home. Boomers own a few. GenX may own a couple and Millenials that are now entering into their forties struggle with one. Millenials are a massively sized generation that I believe is now bigger than both GenX and Boomers combined because Boomers are dying at a rapid pace. Millenials are the generation that were adults starting life and careers in 2008 and full-blown families with Covid-19. Maybe one of the unluckiest generations.
GenZ is this very talented and intelligent generation. Y'all are creating disruptions in culture, in politics, and in Wall Street. You are savvy and demanding. Giving billionaires the finger while pissing on the front door of their mansions.
But you need to be careful.
Stocks are not the key to your success. They are just a single tool in your toolbox. A better tool may be early homeownership or owning a small business. Life is about options...and I am not talking about the gambling options of Wall Street. I am talking about the options of having equity in a home to adapt to economic swings. I am, talking about the options of owning a small business where your day to day decisions make you smarter and more valuable. Where you own assets that make you money. Most importantly you have control over your own destiny.
I am not telling you not to invest in stocks. I am just telling you that it should be a limited part of your overall strategy in life. Unless someone has been through two complete cycles of the stock markets then I would take their advice with a grain of salt.
General advice:

Don't sell stocks that you have taken a loss on
Buy when everyone is selling and sell when everyone is buying
Invest in stocks with a strategy based on your knowledge and experience
Invest only what you can afford to lose
Stocks work best with time. Leave them alone
Be a value investor
Invest with a purpose

Number seven is important. For example, I like Robotics, AI, and Automation. I like these is two specific areas....transportation and mining. I operate in the Transportation industry. I know that very soon human drivers will be eliminated and self-driving trucks will take over. Trucks will be loaded, driven, and unloaded without a single human being doing any of that work. With that will come an entire supporting industry. Tow trucks will need to be automatically dispatched when trucks break down or in accidents. AI will need to be involved in decision making. I will see these changes before I am dead and I am 42.
I like underwater mining. Our oceans are the next frontier and the next gold rush. We have areas of sea bottom that has very little life but is rich in gasses, minerals, and thermal energy. Automation, AI, and robotics will play a huge role in underwater mining. I will see this transition start in my lifetime and I am 42.
Beyond that, once we have machines that are capable of underwater mining then we have the basics for machines that can mine inner-system planetary objects. From nearby asteroids to the moon, to thermal energy collection closer to the sun, to Mars and beyond. The wealthiest person in existence will be the person that is able to start the first off-planet mining operation. Where there is no EPA, no taxes on land, where we are not building sub-divisions next to mines. Where we don't have to worry about the ecosystem. Where gasses and pollutants are not pollutants because there is nothing of consequence to pollute. The largest land-owners in existence will be the owner of off-world mining operations. That may not happen in my lifetime...but it may in yours.
I like investing in Meme stocks because they are fun. But I also invest in Robotics, AI, and automation with one-single question....is this company taking humanity one-step close to automated transportation or underwater mining? I invest with a purpose.
Sure I will grab up some value stocks every now and then. People are going to be flying more than ever in a few years. People are going to be more social than ever in a few years. Shoot Condom manufacturers are a buy right now because people will be..........you get the idea.
The whole reason that I wrote this excessively long post is to maybe get you into thinking about your strategy....what is it? And to caution you on being "all-in" on stocks.
Stonks don't always go up.

I heard you guys like reading patch notes... So how about a fake one?

General / QoL

Dark Mode is now available as a setting and on by default. We also tied down the guy (who wrote the flashingly bright note about seizures) in a opthalmic speculum, in a dark room while opening and closing the said bright note for 3 hours.
Light Mode uses grayish / genshin-impact-blue color scheme.
~~Users can now map keys in settings.~~
New user center setting : Allow Teyvat Times to publish my in-game alias (not username) and last 4 digits of my UID (When you set a world record of hunting fowl and etc.)
Added setting for persistent aiming mode. If turned on, your character will try to get back to aiming mode even when you dash or you are knocked back.
Going in and out of aiming mode is now much smoother. You can still dash, cast skills and still keep the cursor on. Inspired by Tombraider? Idk why I wrote this.
When crafting an item and you run out of materials for it, the item selected stays in place and will not scroll all the way down.
When choosing characters for the abyss, the preview button to see which enemies you will face is also there.
When finishing an abyss floor, you can return to the abyss menu without ending the "run" to collect rewards or browse around.
Fixed a bug with sucrose/xinqiu bonus materials when crafting.
Fixed a bug with razor's c1 constellation not increasing his damage and not displaying a buff indicator.
All buffs are now grouped/stacked by icon category, attack/defense/regen etc. Hovering the cursor in the grouped icon will display verbose info. (e.g. thrilling dragon tales, character talent, gouba pepper etc).
Daily Login Bonus is permanent.
Claim All and Repeat Buttons are now available in Blacksmith, Battlepass, Expeditions and the Like.
VA/CV list is displayed instead of current selected voice language in character details. (e.g. if you go to a character screen, and have english voice language, you will only see english voice actor and you have to change language just to find out who the cn and jp voice actor is)
Hide ui/hud setting and dedicated hotkey is added for creating fan-made cinematics.
Unless it is an artifact or a weapon, an item previously recorded and consumed will no longer display as "new"
Added shield bar on top of health bar
Added party icon on the top right ui and a dedicated hotkey to switch parties
Added hotkey to switch to your saved Comps 1 to 4
Resin is now always visible at the top of UI (without needing to open up the map)
Moved UID a bit further down by 2px so it doesn't overlap with the buttons
Changed UID Opacity by 75% and has grayish text color, inspired by "windows is not activated"
Added a space character on the launcher download text (e.g. "Downloading75%" into "Downloading 75%")
Bonus damage from element-affected status (e.g. "deal 15% increased damage against cryo affected enemies" are enclosed in parentheses
Expedition Slot Remembers Last Character Used
Expedition Slot Remembers Last Hour Used
All map objects are navigatable for consistent experience. and are not overridden by quests. You will always be directed towards the one you choose.
Navigated Map Object Always Display Their Distance and Light Beacon (e.g. Leylines not having those)
Added enemy weakspot zones with varying degrees (green,orange,red) in the adventurer's handbook, if you kill 150 of a certain enemy type. Humanoid types generally have the head as a weakspot.
Fraction of Fraction of a bullet time effect and a red particle glows when you hit the weakest spot of an enemy.
Reading and Clearing Story/Voice Lines syncs across all devices you own.
Statues' Remaning Healing Energy now Visible on the Tower Itself. Dat Glowy thingies deplete when you use them.
Statue's First Healing Tick Revives Fallen Characters by 10hp%. Second Healing Tick is Full Restoration or until Remaining Healing Energy Allows it.
Critical strike Indicator
Enemies in the handbook are dynamically arranged by type , then alphabetically. All hypostasis are lined up.
All enemies are displayed in the handbook regardless of what region you currently are.
Journal (J) is now binded to (F1), since this is where you look commissions for rather than the Adventurer Handbook (F1)
Journal , Handbook and Archive are compressed and combined.
We bought a time machine and went back to the time when we did the hypostasis event. The last challenge in the event is now a new hypostasis after the three old hypostasis.
Andrius's Boss Fight is now properly a Trounce Domain, For consistency with other weekly boss.
Changing a Team Member in your active roster won't override that slot in your saved team comp
Active Roster and Saved Team Comps are now a seperate thing
Selecting a Saved Team Comp will replace the Active Roster (so you can replace one member before "deploying")
Clicking Deploy in a Saved Team Comps will immediately send you back to the game
Switching Party Members is smoother than an oiled tits smooth, regardless of network latency. Especially in Single Player Mode.
Resource and Player Position in the map has better visual clarity. (Imagine klee collecting wolf berries or philly mushrooms)
Option to adjust map size , and resource/player icons.
PC , map pin size collision reduced. If I clicked Taishan Mansion, I meant Taishan Mansion.
Mora , Artifact Limits and etc always visible in inventory screen regardless of which tab you are on
Blacksmith remembers the quantity of ores you refine
Adventurer's Handbook remembers the last filter you used when browsing enemies (all, elite ,boss)
Adventurer's Handbook points you the next enemy you are hunting (when you kill 1 ruin guard, you dont have to open handbook again to see the next one in the map)
Adventure's Handbook knows ALL of the elite enemy locations. The list seem to be manually added instead of dynamic, possibly due to chest concealment similar mechanic. If you hunt ruin guards, I think the book only lists 4 of them in the whole map.

Gameplay

Training dummy added near favonius hq. You have to do a story quest and spend resource to have it constructed.
Enemies now have a difficulty rating. The higher the difficulty rating is, the higher character xp/gold they will provide. XP scales off your adventure rank level. Extra Large enemies have a guaranteed chance to drop 1-4* artifacts. They will respawn longer as a consequence. It doesn't make sense that a huge lawachurl and smol hilichurl both give 20xp.
First and Second Dash now have different color indicators.
If you used 2 dashes consecutively, a subtle glow/indicator pops around your character for when you are able to dash again. Inspired by Deadcells.
Added Treasure Compass for Dragonspire.
All excess anemoculus/geoculus/dendroculus and crimson agate can now be traded in the antiques shop.
Treasure Compass will automatically change depending on what region you are on. If you don't have a treasure compass for that region, it will remain unchanged from what is the last equipped.
Treasure Compass search radius is increased region wide. It will point the "nearest" treasure chest's direction. The color of the direction changes the farther you are.
Treasure Compass will now consider puzzles as treasure, and display a different indicator. It won't tell you what steps to take to open it, though.
Added a domain for gladiator and wanderer's troupe artifact sets. Artifact drop rate from world bosses are FURTHER reduced. Weekly boss artifact drops are unaffected.
Prototypes will now drop at least once in the last weekly boss you face, if you are unlucky. The chance to acquire multiple prototypes within a week is unchanged. Drop rate is reduced consequently.
World Boss Artifact Drop Rates are now visible in the adventurer's handbook.
Prototype Drop Rates are now visible.
Domain Artifact Drop Rates are now visible.
1-3* Weapons are now craftable. They will require a shit ton of ores and materials. Cold Steel for instance will require 200 pieces of mint.
Added 6 new craftable weapons. Of course it will require prototypes you f2p piece of shit.
Craftables, Shops and Loot have higher priority versus signboards and npc.
Monsters and Enemies have higher priority (when attacking or casting skills) versus ores and flaming/freezing flowers and other resource objects.
You can now equip up to 3 gadgets.
New Action : long pressing a gadget opens up Gadget Wheel to switch gadgets without opening the inventory. Gadget goes into long cooldown.
Domains now consider your condensed resin before saying you are out of resin.
After completing a domain challenge, The start challenge object will respawn in the center of the arena. Game will no longer go into a loading screen. This is for the console peasants.
When claiming domain challenge rewards, it also displays how much condensed resin you have (so you know you can still do 1 more, or gtfo) when it asks if you want to continue or leave
Anemo Hypostasis will die if you manage to collect all the orbs, for a more consistent experience with other hypostasis.
Weekly boss timers are now consistent. (Some have none , some at top, some at bottom)
Dvalin's Mini Cutscene will hold your altitude (if you are gliding) when it triggers
Childe's Mini Cutscene is now automatically skippable (named "skip when already viewed once" found in settings).
Food is now sortable by type.
When choosing a revival food, the icon sizes are reduced and displayed in a grid rather than a long line. When in single player mode it slows down time. Like witcher 3 or tomb raider.
MRE can now hold all types of food, up to 3 slots.
You can long click/hold the MRE button and switch the food it holds. Goes into long cooldown.
Charged Longsword and Bow Attacks (for claymoreless comps) will now allow you to mine ores more effectively. This affects rock shield wall hilichurls as well.
No one uses claymore charged attacks, even with stunned enemies. Claymore charged attacks now deal increasing damage the longer it was charged uninterrupted. You will get staggered and take more damage as a consequence. The last attack of a charged attack deals more damage and wipes half of the planet's population.
Constellation can now be toggled on/off

Gacha / Shop

The first cheapest crystal top up (60+60) has been buffed to (80+80) crystals. We realized it wasn't even enough for a single pull and we laughed until our sides hurt. As a tiny token of goodwill this will retroactively affect everyone who purchased this item for n amount of times the person has purchased this item.
All in-game currencies (primo/fate/genesis/future except mora) are always displayed in the topright corner when wishing and shopping.
Pity Counter. When it reaches 75 it glows like christmas.
Gifting of purchase is now possible. In the case of chargebacks , the gifter gets banned. Gifts can only be sent after 60 days of purchase, and usable by the recipient after a week. Maximum of 1 gift per month.
Gifter must have a track record of >= $20 of purchase within the last 3 months.
Gifting is a sensitive topic. Chargeback scams fucks up game companies, banks and third party payment platforms.
Purchase history and total is added to track expenses.
Gambling addicition reminders when you rage spend. Also alerts a mhy employee when huge purchases are being made in error. It displays a huge red alert on the employees screen.

In Consideration

Reworked Elemantal Mastery to also increase Elemental Skill Damage by 25% (base, some current/future characters might interact with less or more) of your total Elem Mastery. Consequently, Skill Damage from Attack Ratios are lowered. Think of ad/ap ratios in League of Legends.
Character skills to deal compound damage of physical+element when using a weapon (e.g. diluc smash bouncing off pyro slimes, despite his big sword being sharp and shiny)

Items

Wind Catcher Gadget now refills with anemo energy particles.
Prototype Aminus/Archaic's proc cooldown refinement is restored. (Used to be 15/14/13/12/10)
Boar Traps are now craftable and equippable as a gadget. You can leave it up to 48 hours to check if you caught something.
Cast net are now craftable and equippable as a gadget. Can be used to catch multiple fish and crystal flies.
Crab Traps , can be left in the wild for 48 hours and catches 3 crabs per trap.
Inflatable balloon for safe swimming. Requires anemo slime materials.
Portable towers no longer expire.
Portable towers max deployed count is increased up to 5.
Condensed Resin can now be used on World Boss
Condensed Resin cap increased to 5.
Artifact Inventory Limit increased to 5000.
Weapon Cooldown Indicator displayed as status icon (sacrificial sword, archaic, etc)
Seelie Companions give 1% passive bonus CharXP(Blue), CompanionXP(Purple), Mora(Gold)
Crafting Table no longer consumable
Portable Cooker no longer consumable (requires fuel , 1 fire stamen = 3 uses)
Portable Warmer no longer consumable (requires fuel , 1 fire stamen = 3 uses)
Items mined are ores
Refined ores are ingots
Option to refine Magical Crystal Chunk without resin, but with immensely increased cost and time

Coop

You can see the general direction and how far an ally is like in pubg.
In-game voice chat for random players in matchmaking

Battlepass / 12 Episode Anime

Battlepass can now have excess points up to 3000xp , for the times when you do your reputation bounty and missions earlier before the next battlepass comes out.
When a new Battlepass starts, it starts on mondays , so no mission gets left out. All excess days until the next new-battlepass-monday are dynamic and flexible.
When using a condensed resin in a domain, it counts as 2 domains cleared in the Battlepass
Cooking ingredients (sugar, bacon, cheese, etc) counts as cooking in the Battlepass
You don't need to switch tabs in the battlepass when using claim all. Clicking claim all, claims all.
New battlepass campaign for 12 episode anime. Milestones are displayed on website and forum. Sales earned are transparent in game and website. Inspired by dota 2 international.
Percentage of battlepass campaign sales will go to anime funding.
Having at least 1 season of anime puts mihoyo in the "mainstream" status in the leagues of Fate, Princess Connect, Grand Blue etc. It solidifies the IP.

Quests

Option to abandon story quests (restart from scratch) to prevent blocking of coop
Repeatable Quests Ideas below. Coop and matchmaking is enabled. 15~30 minutes long, walking pace. Not mandatory for daily activity/event/battlepass for people with little time to play. Gives worthwile rewards (3 pieces of adventurer's wit, 5k mora etc)
Long escort caravan mission, from Mondstadt all the way to Liyue. From Springvale to Liyue. People and Caravan must survive. Enjoy the beautiful world of Teyvat, optional pit stops, coop chat/discord, region guard checkpoints and enemy ambush. Multiple client routes available. Go through dragonspire for a shorter, but more dangerous path. Get harassed by Fatui at borders. Board a ship and load the caravan. Get checked by Border Patrol for smuggled goods and diseases.
Repeatable Town defense without towers. Defend the Town from hordes of invaders. Something fun with coop.
Fatui and Friends Battle Royale. All npcs and doors disabled. You and the fatui bots duke it out. Healing only comes from special food that you pick up. Matchmaking enabled.
Beach Defense. Prevent the Fatui from invading the coastline. Your friends rain arrows from starsnatch cliff.
Beach to Mondstadt/Springvale goods escort services.

Elemental Reactions

Vaporize's Steam deals aoe damage
Overloads damage (electro->pyro) now deals x1.5 (pyro) damage
Overloads damage (pyro->electro) now deals x2 (pyro) damage.
Overload's knockback decreased significantly
Superconduct's damage (electro->cryo) now deals 2x (cryo) damage
Superconduct's damage (cryo->electro) now deals 1.5x (cryo) damage
Superconduct's negative armor debuff is moved to Melt
Melt gains the negative armor debuff due to the sudden temperature change, making surfaces brittle.
Melt damage consequently reduced. (pyro->hydro) at x1.4% , (hydro->pyro) at x1.8%
Geo New Reaction : Smoldering Rock or something (pyro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.3 (pyro damage) on top of crystallize
Geo New Reaction : Mud or something (hydro->geo)(geo->hydro) deals x0.1 (geo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy movement
Geo New Reaction : Snow or something (hydro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.2 (cryo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy attack speed
Geo New Reaction : Seeds or something (dendro->geo) deals x0.1 (dendro damage) on top of crystallize, restores 3% of your hp. Or entangle. Prevents enemy movement (can still attacc and cast spells)

Enemies

Enemies inside domains and abyss have their return-to-spawn-point-then-regenerate-to-full-health disabled.
Enemy AI a bit smarter. Those with mobility skills (whopper, smol geovishap, cycin mages) won't follow you to drown in the water. The game will not check if you are wet , but if you are in a swimming state.
Enemies attack cycle improve. Fixed bug when enemies stop attacking. Baedou Problems.
Hydro Abyss Mage's and Hydro Fatui Gunner's Hydro Barrier now takes the same damage rate/ratio from opposing elements (cryo,electro) for consistency.
Hydro barrier new opposing element : Geo. It makes it harder to maintain the water shield due to the mud soaking up the water and adding weight.
Boss Childe's Spirit Whale Attack generates water in the sides of the arena, pushing you towards the center. You must have enough stamina to keep dashing to the sides before he does this, or you will have to perfectly dodge the spirit whale attack.
Hydro SamaChurl now heals at a rate of +300/HoT per AR Milestone instead of percentage. This is for when you are hunting a LawaChurl Bounty that is near dead and healed to full health in 3 seconds. Having a fixed amount of healing ensures that it is big enough for the intended smaller enemies and portionally good enough for large enemies. The other option is to use different healing ratios for small and large enemies.
Queen of Pain , I mean Cycin Mages have a stagger window when they are about to cast their almost-undispellable shield
Zed , I mean Shadow Fatui Agent makes use of his shadows to dodge your attack sometimes.
Smol Geo Vishap now drops less geo shields
Smol Geo Vishap now uses his rolling attack near you, not 150m away from you.
Smol Geo Vishap now burrows a bit less frequently
Ruin Hunter doesn't stay in the air up and raining artillery forever , in consideration of bowless comps
Fatui Cryo and Hydro Gunner Turn Rate Reduced by 10% when on Spray Mode.
Primo GeoVishap now has a tired/exhausted animation, instead of standing still and looking at you and what life could have been for 10 seconds.
Primo GeoVishap spin attack now has a 0.2 dodge window (previously none) and Spin Radius Decreased by 100m.

Characters

Dvalin's Cutscene when you dispel his barrier is removed and much smoother. He just falls in place and no clipping.
Character's "Main Stat" is now visible in attributes. Previously you can only know it when ascending or when using google, or if you really have a big brain.
All characters passive talents are now combat related.
All characters now have their own cooking/exploration/crafting/smithing talents. It is possible not to have OR have multiple talents in each category. We get it , everyone can taste what a good gravy is, but not everyone can make a good gravy.

Ayaka

Alternate sprint binded to a different hotkey.
Yes I came from the future.

Albedo

Elevator can be activated to go up and down by using the F key.
C2 stack counter / indicator via particles (think of razor geo sigils)
C4 plunged attack covers albedo's sword in geo energy (like noelle, but smol)
C6 crystallize shield has a different shape (leaf)

Amber

Increased ultimate radius by a tiny bit.
Allow targeting of ulimate by holding the ultimate button.
If baron bunny is present in the ultimate radius, it will absorb all pyro damage and deal it as bonus damage when it blows up.
If baron bunny was "charged" with pyro rain and hit with a C2 charged shot, it will trigger a micheal bay explosion animation.

Barbara

Restored Barbara's Energetic Voice Lines
New Lines sold seperately as Dark Barbara™ , comes with a Dark Dress
C6 Revive indicator is now visible as a buff.
C4 now generates flying energy particles instead of instantly regaining energy. Mind you that this is a fucking nerf to this piece of shit healer that freezes you. It's just that there's no flying particles when you use this hero.

Beidou

Casting the elemental skill applies a strong taunt and re-initializes enemies attack loop.
Bullet Time effect added when triggering a perfect counter, when playing in single player mode.
The ultimate's chain lightning deals tiny spark damage if it didn't jump.
C2 chain lightning has a different color.
C4 buff is triggered when you do a perfect counter (Taking damage to activate a skill promotes bad gameplay)
C4 perfect counter grants the maximum damage bonus
C4 shield has a different color.
C6 has aura on the ground (inspired by Dota 2's Necrophos , but purple)

Bennet

C6 Ultimate pyro infusion just adds pyro damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into pyro.
C6 Ultimate restores up to 100% hp.

Childe

Improved manly posture when in aiming mode
C4 Riptide slash and flash uses different coloparticles/animation
C6 has an indicator when it works and when it is available

Chongyun

Cryo Field's Cryo infusion just adds cryo damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into cryo.

Diluc

What seriously? You really want more?
Fuck this guy in particular
Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
C6 his flames has some bluish tint

Diona

Fixed shield duration bug and increased by additional 1.1 seconds per claw.
Shield ratio based off max hp increased by 10%
C2 reduces skill cooldown by -2 seonds (press) and -4 (hold). The coop shield is added by default out of the box. Anything coop should not be locked behind a paywall because it will hurt the game and fanbase.
C4 has been reworked to grant normal and aimed uncharged shots 25% chance to deal charged attack shots.
C6 radius is increased and uses a different color.

Fischl

Ultimate now deals tiny bit of damage per 0.2 seconds tick when making contact with enemies (aside from getting hit by lightning once)
Ultimate can fly/pass through thorn walls. I'm looking at you Dendro Samachurl.
Shadow Raven Let Night F---!!!
C4 Ultimate hp restored now scales off damage dealt by the ult.

Ganyu

holding the elemental skill allows you to aim and won't make you backdash
C4 Freezing Field changes color intensity per damage increase
C6 free frost charged arrow now works with normal unaimed attacks.
C6 uses a different particle color. Sometime it turns into a bazooka.

Jean

~~Reduced~~ Increased swaying of boobs by a tiny amount while holding the skill. You can kinda feel them slapping against your face. You can almost describe their softness and warmth in a minimum of 10 pages apart from you going sommelier describing how deep her sweat tastes like.
Jean's Charged Attack Launch Height is too damn high that you cant even hit the enemy, so - Reworked Jean's Charged Attack : Holding the attack button launches the enemy in the air. If you keep holding it down you will perform 3 slashes in the air. If you let go early you will stay on the ground.
Base Attack Increased by +5
Jean can now pick up the slimes dropped by enemies and use it against them for a bighead move
Ultimate radius is increased
Ultimate Wall Mechanic Reversed. Enemies are now trapped inside. When you use your skill (usually to regain energy) you can air-wall slam them. Block Projectiles from outside.
If any of you actually played jean support, a normal person would use ult to heal, cast skill to regain energy, then switch back to other characters. It doesn't make fucking sense to push them outside your wind arena because you want to fight inside the swirl/healing zone.
Ultimate swirls every 0.2 seconds , depending on what elements are inside. Field Changes Color Each Time Like a Disco Ball
Ultimate now slowly succs enemies to the center(without lifting them up)
Ultimate Damage is consequently reduced.
C1 Uses a different colored windblast
C2 Buff Indicator
C4 uses a different color wind field
C6 Ultimate is now an aura and moves with you. To break away from "buffed area" convention.
C6 Ultimate will get you to keep the windsaber for the ult's duration
C6 Shield Buff Indicator via Particle and Status Icon

Kaeya

Base attack incresed by 5
Elemental Skill (Hold) Sprays Ice , think of Igni but Ice in Witcher 3 or DND's Burning Hands
C2 Icicles light up when you defeat an enemy indicating that it really works
C4 Barrier is of different shape
C6 uses a different icicle particle for bling purposes

Keqing

Aiming mode feels a lot smoother. You can aim while moving and cursor immediately shows and the kungfu pose is only done when throwing the stilleto.
When in single player mode, casting your ultimate produces a bullet time effect.
C4 Buff Indicator
C6 Description is confusing as fuck.
C6 Buff indicator
C6 Makes your sword light up like a lightsaber.

Klee

Imroved Torch/Bonfire/Campfire and the likes Lockon (if there's any to begin with)
Throwing Jumpty Dumpty provides 0.1s iframe during her spin
Ult is now no longer greedy. Pyro satellites remain when you switch characters, making our lovable klee open up for support options. Child support.
C4 is now manually triggered, Pressing q again will make her explode, bigger damage based off remaining duration. less duration left, less damage.
C6 klee uses different bombs

Lisa

A lingerie shop is opened in Mondstadt to change her pantsu, socks and garter belt style and colors. Black Leather Tight Suit™ Sold Seperately.
Option to wear glasses as a Librarian added.
Climbing voice volume is re-mastered in asmr microphone, in all languages.
Requires "i am of legal age" consent in the user center
Elemental skill (press) aoe slightly increased.
Base attack increased by 15.

Mona

Alternate dash is now binded to alt key.
Hydro Puppet now deals half damage upon cast and half damage upon explosion.
C6 normal attacks use a different attack animation.

MC (Anemo)

Palm vortex can be casted in midair to break your fall (but not propel you up)

MC (Geo)

When you overlap geo boulders (aimed mode) it will trigger the geo explosion of the older rock, then replace it with a new one

Ningguang

Holding the skill button surrounds her in mini jade screens , unable to perform any action until it is released or ends. Useful for cinematic stuff. Imagine tanking childe's whale attack. Or someone wants to recreate triple rashomon scene.
C6 has a chance to use different attack animation.
C6 star jade now resembles a primo gem.

Noelle

Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
C1 heals have a special effect and voice line when conditions are met.
C2 upgrade uses a different charged attack animation.
C4 uses a different barrier color
C6 upgrade uses different ult (possibly red with the same hue as her skirt) color.

Qiqi

C2 reworked as -15% attack debuff
C4 reworked as -20% elemental resistance debuff
C6 cooldown/availability indicator.
C6 has a different bling/color

Razor

Transformation Duration Indicator added
C1 increased damage now really works
C1 now has a buff indicator that it really works
C2 now has a special crit indicator
C4 armor shred now has a (claw mark) armor shred indicator that it really works
C4 (hold) has increased damage so it doesn't feel left out. It also has electro explosions similar to when you mine an electric ore as a special effect to indicate that you are C4 and have a big PP.
C6 covers your sword with electricity (like diluc) when it is charged and ready
Yes I play razor a lot.

Sucrose

Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
Improved lock on when blowing off dandelion flowers. Idk how she keeps missing them even at point blank range, Hell , at any given range.
C1 if you overlap the wind nukes the second one will be a 0.1s delay then it will go off with a slightly bigger radius
C2 ult has a different color
C4 has an indicator that it works
C6 buff indicator

Venti

Wind current generated by skill (hold) allows him to fall slower without gliding, and allows him to shoot wind lasers. Ehe
C2 Charged Shot produces a bullet time effect when shot at point blank or if all 3 arrows hit a single enemy. Sometimes he draws the holy lyre and it transforms into a primitive shotgun.
C4 buff indicator.
C6 uses different vacuum color

Xiangling

Ultimate deals additional damage when cast at point blank because you get stab and bonk while she is twirling her spear.
C2 last attack leaves a flaming trail special effect (inspired by kyo or iori from king of fighters)
C6 upon cast, Xianling automatically does a speed-up full normal attack combo and then releases the pyronado normally (while covered in flames or some shit). If you are in single player mode and there are no other enemies within 150 radius the ult will cause the screen to black out, like in legend of legaia.
C6 during the ultimate if it contacts with gouba's flames it produces micheal bay effects while raining carpet bombs and shit.
Yes flat is justice.

Xingqiu

Floating Swords Duration added
Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
C4 Allows you to hold the elemental skill for double backflips (inspired by law from tekken) cooldown is 1 month.
C4 Elem Skill leaves a faint rainbow (when ulted)
C6 Swords emit faint rainbow color. Rainbow power motherf-

Xinyan

Hitting large enemies counts as 2 enemies.
C1 buff indicator
C2's level 3 shield has some bluish flames
C6 charged attack uses a diffent attack animation or has an indicator that it works

Xiao

Transformation Duration Indicator added
C2 now leaves a trail of anemo energy that deals tiny bit of damage , trail lasts for 1 second and deals at 0.2s intervals.
C6 plunge attack counts large enemies as 2.
C6 plunge-attack-no-cooldown-empowered-dashes uses a different particle color and produces a bullet time effect when used for the 3rd time onwards. useful for cinematic purposes
C6 during the bullet time you can sneak in a normal attack once per dash
Bullet time is always disabled in multiplayer

Zhongli

Increased pillar aoe by a tiny bit
Generates energy particles per pulse, maximum of 1 enemy per pillar
Base attack increased by 5
Travelers can redeem promo code "WHOSYOURDADDY" for additional +5 damage, regardless if they have the hero or not.
Attack ratios increased by 3% per attack category.
C1 has a slightly bigger ~~dong~~ eherm statue
C4 Chaos Meteor errrr I mean Order Meteor has a different rock color
C6 shield uses a different color , come on you get the drift already.
C6 Meteor is affected by the element of the barrier you are wearing. The element is dealt as secondary damage, primary damage is still geo. (flaming space rock?)

Why different coloparticles/animation when you have C1-C6 upgrade?

It makes whales feels special, and it gives F2P players something to aspire for. It makes you want to spend with all the bling. Particle recolor is easy peasy and can be deployed within minutes. Attack animations on the other hand are time consuming. It almost always put smile in people's faces when a whale shows up in a ferrari. "Dude check this out a C6 GeoDaddy joined my domain run. Look at the size of his statue. Oh my what a BIG meteor."

Why are you doing this?

It's just for my amusement. I'm still adding random thoughts now that 1.3 has launched. I don't care if nothing gets implemented. I would nut hard in my shorts with QoL and alleged bug/bugfixes mentioned in this post more than anything.

Afterword

Leave your thoughts below. Sorry and not sorry for the broken engrish , feel free to copy and paste whatever, use it wherever idc as long as it doesn't annoy or harm someone. Translate it in your language etc. No credits needed etc. Let your mind flow

After-Afterword

Thanks for the awards and all kinds of reception
You guys are awesome and insane that's a shit load of awards thank you.

My Options Overview / Guide (V2)

Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls,
I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps.

I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders.
While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months.
Any feedback or additions are appreciated
Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer.
Here's what I tell options beginners:
I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot.
I like this beginner book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7
Helpful websites:

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

Don't trade until you understand:

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

Basics / Mechanics

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

General Tips and Ideas:

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

Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation

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

Trade Planning & Position Management Tips

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

-Advanced Beginner-
Spreads

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

Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation

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

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

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

Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies

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

Long Condor (Debit Call Condor)

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

Short Condor (Credit Call Condor)

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

Reverse Iron Condor

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

LEAPs

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

PMCC / PMCP

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

Advanced Orders

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

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

Some observations on WSB and the future of trading

I'm probably less than 5 years to FIRE - is it worth it to look for a higher paying job now?

A relatable RuneScape explanation for the GME situation

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AITA for stopping my friend from gambling away a life changing sum of money?

I Will Live A Life Of Hedonism And Gambling Only To Look Back At My Weeping Mother But I Will Not Change No I Will Not Change

I am a 25 year old who recently took and gambled away $5000 of my girlfriends money, paid her back a few days later and have now changed my ways. I no longer gamble and understand her breaking up with me, I was wondering if anybody has any advice to help me get back the love of my life? Thankyou!

Gamestop Big Picture: The Short Singularity Pt 3 - WTF edition