Gamestonk. Gamestop. GME. My thoughts are on Reddit, under my u/martinshkreli & subreddit martinshkreli. Those are authentic and discuss why GME is one of the most unprecedented events in market history. Here, I'm going to discuss the populist attitude that is creeping into this odd situation and add some thoughts on short-selling in general.
Let's cover my own unique angle on the concept of a 'short squeeze'. Most would define it as an erratic upward change in price driven by short-covering. I believe short-squeezes defined this way are usually a fictitious idee fixe that aggregates a number of discrete market behaviors and dynamics into a convenient and pithy moniker. The image of python-like buyer constricting some hapless speculator into a higher stock price is evocative but misleading. Many knew me as a short-selling specialist on Wall Street, focused on 'binary events' of biotech stocks. I think I've seen it all: I was once short more than 75% of a company's shares outstanding (I do not recommend this). I bought 75% of a company on the open market, etc.
Short-sellers are governed by the same market dynamics as longs. They get nervous when positions go against them and consider exiting. Like longs, they can double down if they wish. The only difference is that, of course, short positions grow when stocks rise. And they can rise infinitely, while long positions fall asymptotically to zero. But both get, theoretically and assuming no fundamental changes have occurred, more attractive as they move against the trader.
Short sellers have to pay borrow fees to longs (typically tiny, but sometimes massive). They have to locate stock to short, again usually easy, but sometimes difficult. Both are perilous when those rare adverse times arise. Why? Despite the possibility of a growing cost of renting stock, the ultimate fear of a short-seller is a "buy-in". It is nightmarish and has only happened to me once or twice, excluding options-related activity. A buy-in occurs when a broker decides to forcibly exit the short position on behalf of the trader because the broker and trader cannot secure the 'locate' which is supposed to underlie the short sale. The buy-in order is typically violently disruptive: a market order for the whole position near the closing hours of the market! The SEC published a list of stocks at risk of buy-in: the fail to deliver list.
My point is that a 'short squeeze' can only practically affect the trader for two reasons. The first is that the trader digs in, doubles down and doesn't exit as his position grows. That's bad trading, and will eventually blow the trader up. But, if the stock is a 'good short', that short will be replaced by more traders with stronger hands/a better entry price/smaller position. What's more is the average investor can't tell if this is happening! The second is the buy-in. I haven't heard GME shorts being bought in, but again, how would you know, other than the grapevine? My point is most of the disruptive, exciting trading here is simply long speculators banging away at the stock.
New longs are sometimes attracted to rising prices, speculating they'll increase further: that's called momentum. Those buyers are typically offset by the existing longs who are excited to exit at higher prices. But, if there is a large short position in the stock, a speculator may feel that those covering (buying to get out) short-sellers will provide additional fuel to the momentum. That's sometimes the case, but higher prices should lead to more supply from both long and short sellers. My feeling is the actions of large long holders probably have more influence on the stock price than shorts who dart in and out, and typically in smaller size. Remember that shorts who capitulate are often just replaced by new shorts who are attracted at the new lunar prices.
In essence, 'short squeezes' become a self-fulfilling prophecy as new long investors pile in trying to 'squeeze' this sometimes phantom of a short seller, and existing long investors may hold off selling for the same reason. With some Popperian skepticism you will easily see that the same dynamic can exist without the short boogeyman, or with a short boogeyman of any size. Speaking of which, where is Chanos and his slavish groupie, Carson Block?
Speculative momentum can occur for any reason. Let's not forget that the 'trapping shorty' strategy is an awkward idea for a few reasons. Short sellers are often sophisticated market participants who are betting on the decline of a stock. You usually don't want these type of traders sniffing around your favorite longs: I recall writing a 'short report' on a stock to watch it fall 50% that day. If you do a study of stock returns of highly shorted stocks, they are pretty awful. The reason there is 'no arbitrage' is the borrow rate.
But even if you got this poor short to capitulate and squeeze, the amount of buyers who are now holding stock at absurdly high prices put way more energy (and money) into the stock than the short seller's white towel ever could. A sledgehammer killed the fly: now what? Alternatively, are you the host or the parasite?
On populism. I don't really think most investors or speculators should go into any investment thinking that there is 'an enemy'. Concentrated (big) investments (bets) give rise to emotional behavior, typically the enemy in trading and investing as it clouds rational thinking. It's a lot better to be Socratic with your 'opponent' and understand what they're thinking. If your position were to be half the size it currently is, would you be as emotionally interested? Try it! You'll lower your risk and feel better.
Some of the behavior going on at WSB sounds more jihadist than speculative. The idea that there are some investors who are 'good' and others who are 'bad', or that there is an 'establishment' is BS. Everyone has the same goal: I have a pile of money, I'm trying to make it bigger, fuck your pile--I don't care about it. Anything other goal is contrived, foolish and won't help you win. You can't 'fight the rich' by trying to become one of them. Don't you see the irony? A related thought experiment: what if this trade continued to work really well? And another, and another? Then some WSBers are billionaires. Aren't they the new 'enemy/establishment?'
Who do you think hedge fund managers are? They're typically the anti-establishment. Things have changed a bit, but the most successful HFMs are actually the WSBers of the past. These are guys who didn't fit in well at i-banks, often got kicked out for having big mouths or not wearing the right ties, or just wanting to wear jeans at work and not fill out TPS reports. When they started their firms, people like Soros, Icahn, Steinhardt, Robertson, Cohen, Griffin, Loeb (who has posted anonymously on boards), Samberg, even Cramer were fish out of water and had very tiny amounts of capital, often begging for investors.
The need for an enemy. To sustain increasingly insane behavior, it isn't uncommon to use a straw man or a scapegoat. Oppressive regimes used this technique in the past, and the media uses it today. Retail investors don't have much power individually. With your $5k RH account, you can't day trade or even qualify for margin. It's pitiful. So, it's understandably quite exciting to finally feel like a 'player' that you read about. To be a part of 'something'. The problem is the media is goading you to be somewhere between a lemming and a life-agnostic but impotent jihadist. Blowing yourself up won't impress anyone, and there is no afterlife here, other than a minimum wage career and mom's sofa. GME and shorting in general is small potatos in the scheme of the Wall St. machine. Don't worry about getting 'even' with the rich. That's jousting at a windmill that will waste your energy.
No one here, hopefully, wants to be a lemming. Those willing to 'die on this hill' have to realize something: Wall Street doesn't care about its speculators. The new traders who vanquish the old simply replace them. Nothing changes. When LTCM blew up, or Amaranth, Visium, Galleon, or anyone else, it is 'out with the old and in with the new'. So, perhaps WSB can blow up 1 hedge fund or maybe 5, but so what? Eventually, the tables will turn and it will blow up. The leveraged, fast-money trading markets are a violent place and the only people who care one whit are the brokers charging fees (directly or indirectly). They only care to make sure the sorry carcasses can pay their bills. They know there will always be another speculator lined up, ready to shove his money into the lotto machine. There is no pride here. There is no credit for being a good solider. You either survive or you don't. Your job is to survive and thrive. Becoming a lemming will guarantee failure as per the statistical truism of gambler's ruin (enjoy the proof in measure theory). With enough time, anyone playing a game with <50% success rate (equal payouts), will lose all their money. Get that number above 50%. Add the Kelly Criterion to your trading strategy.
You might ask, "(that's all well and good OR we'll agree to disagree) but, Mr. Shrek, isn't this a good trading strategy? (ganging up on shorted stocks)?" As long as you're not a lemming/jihadist (willing to walk over the cliff, whether or not you have a "cause"), and you ignore a somewhat slimy ethical/market manipulation question, I don't see anything wrong with it. There are better ways to make money, since you're asking. Stoking (or worse, participating in) a buying frenzy that is akin to a forced musical chairs game is a little crazy. Once a stock is absurdly valued, you're just hoping the sell-off doesn't happen while you're holding it. If you have enough lemmings or jihadists 'helping you', that's a good thing. They will hold your bag--someone needs to.
Of course, if you've found the "next" Microsoft or Apple, no one needs to hold any bags. But, no company can increase its objective (aka fair) value quickly enough for this... phenomenon? situation? absurdity?... to make it reasonable. Those things take years, go slow and steady, and this frenzied buying/"short squeeze" phenomenon won't let value play a factor. That's why WSB GME longs have shifted theses from "well, Gamestop was/is cheap" to "the gaming cycle" to "Ryan Cohen will save us" to "...jihad?!"
Each member of the herd has its own financial parameters, too. Some may have $500, some $50,000,000 or more. Some may be willing to lose their entire stake (and even more) on an out-of-the-money or levered trade. Some are not. Some were in the latter and somehow end up in the former. Some are in one column at one price and another column at another--some are switched from column to column by force. Today's lemmings/jihadists are tomorrow's sellers. When you're hanging off the mountain, pay attention to the guy holding the rope.
Loosely 'coordinated' buying can certainly affect stocks. Heavily shorted stocks and small cap stocks are the kind that require less capital than typical to 'move' a stock. The irony here is when putting on a position, the trader's goal is typically NOT to move the stock with his actions!
I still think GME is wildly overvalued, but that doesn't exactly mean I'm 'bearish'. One funny idea here is reflexivity: GME stockholders may become serious GME customers and the company's fundamentals improve that way! Excluding some such miracle, eventually GME stock will trade at <50 again. I still think it will trade at 1,000 or more BEFORE that happens, and that the decline process will take a long, long time (several years). Keep in mind, anything can change. GME can do serial secondaries that destroy its stock. Management's job is to create value for their shareholders--but perhaps they will avoid pissing them off. There's a strange loop! Finally, the stock could be halted by the SEC or completely banned by brokers. Don't overdo it. Watch the borrow rate. Keep your positions at less than 25% of your capital--live to play another day.
Disclosure: I've never traded GME stock and do not intend to.
(From martin, posted by mo)

Hi fellow summoners,here is a guide that I wrote a few years ago and kept updating from time to time. It is not perfect and only basic (might be I forgot to add a champ or 2 to be honest but I tried to include every champ, also some stuff might be a bit outdated, I´ll try to fix it up if I find something):
Edit: Before you read any further and be like "Eh but this and that combination isn´t really good because this champ favors this and that blablabla...This guide is meant to show Concepts of how it is supposed to be in general.You always have to adapt depending the match up, player skill, etc.
Types of Botlanes
Everyone knows it: Botlane is a case of its own. With more than 40 different champions played on Botlane, there is a huge amount of possible match ups and types of lanes.
This article is meant to categorize the usual Marksmen played on Botlane to give you an easy to find weaknesses and strengths of each Marksman.Please be aware that a champion can fit into several classes at the same time.
For that we will divide the marksmen into 5 classes:
“Lane Bully”, “Spellcaster”, “Tank Shreds aka On-Hit User” “Hypercarry aka Crit User” and “Utility”
​
Lane Bullies
What is a “Lane Bully?”A “Lane Bully” is a marksman who has strong laning capabilities and can dominate a lane if he does his job correctly. Most common examples are: Caitlyn, Draven, Lucian, Miss Fortune (most common in Low Elo) Senna, and Varus (Lethality Build). Each of them has strong laning power due to their kit:Caitlyn has the biggest auto attack range of all Marksmen LvL 1, Dravens attack damage is higher than anyone´s else, Lucian can burst down people in a few seconds due his double shot passive, Miss Fortune can zone people with her Q and deal monstrous damage, Senna has good range and built in sustain + her Q applies Glacial Augment and Varus with a Lethality Build can kill people with 3 Q´s.
At the same time these Marksmen usually fall off in the late game (please be aware of Senna here due to her in build infinite scaling) due to their early power (to make them balanced) so they tend to lose more often if they can´t end the same fast.If you play a “Lane Bully”: Try to be aggressive early game and make use of your power to snowball the game into a fast win. If you play against them: Try to play safe and go for farm instead of risky plays.
​
Spellcasters
What is a “Spellcaster”?A “Spellcaster” is a marksman who relies mostly on his spells to deal damage/ effective.The most common examples are: Ezreal, Aphelios, Jhin, Lucian, Miss Fortune, Samira, Sivir, Varus (Lethality Build) and Xayah.“Spellcaster” put a lot of focus onto their mana management but on the same time they are able to put out a lot of damage/ control on the game if they have the mana they need for their spells. Not every “Spellcaster” is strong in the early game, but every “Spellcaster” can dominate a certain state of game with their kits (Aphelios is special here because he relies less on his mana and “spells” and more about his ammunition and what guns he has and how he uses them but it is still the same idea in my opinion).The downside of playing a “Spellcaster” is pretty similar to the downsides of a mage: If their spells are on cooldown or if they are out of mana, the damage they can deal is way lower than at their best.If you play a “Spellcaster”: Play around your cooldowns and mana. Use your spells to deal as much damage as possible, back off and then go back in when your cooldowns are back up.
If you play against a “Spellcaster”: Make use of cooldowns and the enemy being out of mana. If you see them waste their spells, go in and blow them up.
​
Tank Shreds
What is a “Tank Shred”?A “Tank Shred” is a marksman who´s main damage comes from effects which get applied with every auto attack. The most common examples are: Kai´Sa, Kalista, Kog Maw, Varus and Vayne.“Tank Shreds” usually have spells in their kit which allow them to deal bonus damage with every attack/ every specific attack numbers. For example: Vayne does bonus damage with her W every three hits, Kai´Sa applies bonus damage after stacking 5 hits of plasma.Almost every time “On-Hit User” go for the same to items: “Krakenslayer” and “Phantom Dancer”. The reason for that is that “Krakenslayer” deals bonus damage every third Auto Attack and “Phantom Dancer" buffs your attack speed by 30% after attacking 4 times.
Their Itembuilds rely mostly on attack speed and their effects per attack so the damage per attack is low compared to other marksmen. The longer a fight goes, the stronger a “Tank Shred” gets.
If you play a “Tank Shred”: Play around your stacks. Depending on how much stacks you need, try to fight as long as you need. As Vayne play around your three hits, as Kalista try to stack as many spears as possible and then execute the enemy with your E “Rend”.
If you play against a “Tank Shred”: Be careful of long trades. Since “On-Hit User” get stronger with longer trades, limit yourself to do short trades to deny their strength and reduce their hp before you all in them when they can´t make use of long trades anymore.
​
Hypercarry:
What is a “Hypercarry”? A “Hypercarry” is a marksman who builds items with “critical strike chance”, the exception here is Kog Maw. The most common examples are: Aphelios, Ashe, Caitlyn, Draven, Jinx, Jhin, Sivir, Tristana, Twitch and Xayah.
“Hypercarries” rely on their “critical chance strike” to deal high amounts of damage with every attack. Critical attacks deal 175% damage instead of the usual 100%. By building “Infinity Edge” the damage gets further increased to 210%. These Marksmen usually buy at least 3 items with “critical strike chance”, with “Infinity Edge” being the “Core” of the build.“Hypercarries” usually get to their strongest point quite late in a game. They need time to farm gold to get their items but when they got them, they outscale most other Marksmen classes.If you play a “Hypercarry”: Try to play safe early on (Only exceptions are Draven and Cailyn depending on match up) and try to farm as much gold as possible to get to your items fast and then crush the game by killing non tanks with 2 or 3 hits.If you play against a “Hypercarry”: Overpower them early on before they can stack up their critical strike chance since their high damage output is based on “luck”. The item parts for “infinity Edge” are quite expensive so try to punish that by forcing them into bad recalls.
​
Utiliity:
What is a “Utility” marksman? Utility marksmen are marksmen who´s kit revolves around their team for the biggest effect. The most common examples are: Ashe, Kalista, Sivir, Senna and Varus.
They all have an ultimate which needs the team to be useable/ for the best use. They got spells for “the greater good” than just using all of their spells for winning a 1v1. Ashe can catch out a target with her ultimate, Sivir boosts the whole team with movement speed which allows them to either gap close fast to get a good engage or disengage without getting caught that easily. Kalista even need her Oathsworn to activate her ultimate and the W passive (bonus damage if she and her sworn hit the same target in a short amount of time) so she depends even more on her team/ oathsworn to be nearby. To be fair, Varus Ultimate isn´t as “good” as Ashe ultimate due to its range, but on the other hand it provides a possible bind onto all 5 targets and can disrupt the enemy formation pretty well.
If you play a “Utility” marksman: Play around your team. Use the fact that your champion is best when having back up or when trying to make a play/ making the engage. Don´t hesitate to use your ultimate to get a catch on an enemy in the mid- to lategame since this can lead to a free baron, turret or maybe even nashor. Stick with our team and create openings to decide the game in your favor.
If you play against a “Utility” marksman: Be aware of the possible sudden engage by the enemy team using their marksman ultimate. As a tank try to stand in front of your team to “eat up” the ultimate if needed so your carries are still able to respond in a fight and don´t die in the first 2 seconds. Try to catch the marksman off guard and alone (the best would be a pincer attack), so he as to blow his ultimate to escape from one side just to die to the other side and create a 4v5 scenario for your team with the marksman being dead or back to base.
​
The Triangle of Support:
There are quite a few Supports in the game so there are a lot of different match ups and how a lane can play out depending on who you play against who, etc.
This is a rough outline to group supports in a class, what they are good at and what they struggle with if played correct and how it should play out in theory.
This “Triangle” shows the idea of who beats who
Poke -> All in -> Sustain/ Peel -> Poke ( -> = Beats)
​
All in
“All in” supports like Alistar, Thresh, Leona, Nautilus, Pyke, Rell etc. excel at going in till either one side is dead or has to back off. This kind of support beats “Sustain” supports since the “Sustain” supports don´t get the time/ chance to really make use of their shields and heals. Your heal won´t help your ADC if he´s going to die anyways.
While they do have an advantage over sustain, they lose out against “Poke Supports”, because they don´t get the chance to all in due to the damage the lane already took by the poke of the enemies. The only chance for you to score kills in such a lane is by going in after coming of a recall so they didn´t have the time to poke you down.
“All in” supports are usually picked with strong early game ADC to force kills and resources from the enemy and get your ADC as much gold advantage as you can early on in the game.
​
Sustain/ Peel
“Sustain/ Peel” Supports are champions who are able to negate damage due to their kits via shields and heals. Common examples are Janna, Lulu, Nami, Sona, Soraka.
Their strong point is to keep their ad carry alive so he stays able to fight and farm in lane despite taking damage.
They beat out the “Poke” supports because they can block the incoming poke via their shields (which can´t be dodged) and are able to deny the high aggression of the enemy botlane. In case of having a heal instead of a shield they can even restore health that got lost by poke if they were not in range or their spells on cooldown to deny the poke.
A “Sustain” support is usually picked with a strong scaling ADC to make sure he survives the lane and get him to his items as safe as possible.
For the "butthurt" people :D :
As a subclass of "Peel" Supports we got the, let´s call them, "Warden" Class:"Warden" Supports are champions who protect their ADC by "thowing themselves between their ADC and the enemy". They wait for the enemy to engage and then counter after the enemy blew their shots to get back at them when they try to retreat. Common examples are: Braum, Taric and Tahm Kench.
Their strong point is that they are able to take a punch while offering safety for their allies from enemy champions that try to "dive onto them".They beat the "All in" Supports at their own game because they abuse the fact that the enemy is trying to use their strength and then "swap" their strength into a weakness when they failed.
They usually play rather reactive than proactive since they rely on the enemy to step up first.At the same time they struggle against ranged match ups since they are easy to abuse for the enemy via poke. "Warden" don´t have a good way to deal with that kind of playstyle.
​
Poke
Poke supports are often times mages who went down from midlane to botlane, like Annie, Brand, Fiddlesticks (a jungler tho), Lux, Morgana, Senna, Seraphine, Vel´Koz, Xerath and Zyra.
Each of them offers quite a bit amount of damage and range with their spells what makes them able to harass the enemy botlane from far away without fearing taking damage in return. Their goal is to harass people do death or to force them back/ to the point where they can´t fight and have to “forfeit” the lane in their favor.Keep an eye on your mana pool and cooldowns since “Poke” supports rely heavily on their mana to deal damage just like “Spellcasters”. If you play Senna out of this bunch of supports, since she has a sustain spell, you can be more aggressive and trade harder since you can heal back up ( take notice on how you use your Q, try to heal up your ADC and yourself and hit the enemy champions for best usage).
For the same reason on one hand this kind of support beats “All in” supports since they deny the possibility of an all-in by the enemy because they are too low on hp to win the fight.
You have to be careful regardless after an “All in” support comes back to lane because that is the best point in time for him to turn onto you.On the other hand they have a hard time against “Sustain” supports due to getting their poke denied or healed back up by “Sustain” supports.
Try to bait out their shield or heal and then dump damage onto them so they can´t block the damage coming in and try to kill them before there cooldowns are coming back up.
“Poke” supports can be picked with early game strong and weak ADC to either enhance the killpressure and the possible lead or to cover the weakness of a weak ADC so they get some breathing room. But if things turn bad they tend to be worse than the other support classes due to them being less “supportive” due to their kit.
​
Synergies between ADC and Support classes
Overall there are 3 ways to “build” a bot lane. Each way differs in their strengths and purposes and I will just call them “Comfort picks”, “Synergy” and “Compensation” to make it easier to understand.
Comfort picks:
“Comfort picks” is literally what you think, you just play whatever you are best at. This has the chance building a mismatch on bot lane if people don´t communicate a lot with each other because every player plays to his own tune. I bet you all already saw something like a Thresh + Vayne lane where Thresh engaged and Vayne just stood in the back, chilling her life and continues to farm while Thresh fights for his life. What went wrong? The bot lane probably didn´t talk with each other, picked whatever they wanted and now are playing for two different goals. Thresh wants to play aggressive and score a lead in lane while Vayne just wants to sit back and scale up. If they don´t “group” up and play together they are likely to lose bot lane hard. On the same time, because they picked their mains, they are more likely to perform well compared to playing other champions to “fit” something because they know their champion (damage, tankyness, kit, spikes, etc.).
Synergy:
Synergy is when you pick a champion that fits the playstyle of the champion from your partner, e.g.: Thresh-Lucian, Kog´Maw-Lulu, Ashe-Zyra, Draven-Leona.
If you partner picks something that wants to get a lead early game you pick something that is strong early game to help him achieve his goal (winning lane), if he just wants to sit back, farm and scale up (on ADC side) you pick something that excels at peeling so your ADC survives the laning phase (Nami, Yuumi, Lulu, Braum, Tahm Kench, etc.) and can wreck the enemies later on. The downside of this “strategy” is when you can´t achieve your goal (either win lane or scale up) because then you are in a really bad spot.
If you need 5-10 more minutes to hit your item spike as jinx or Tristana, Kai´Sa, etc. the game might be over before you get there and if you lost early game as someone like Lucian, Miss Fortune, Lethality Varus, Caitlyn, etc., depending on match up you might get outscaled by the enemy and will “lose” to their advantage due to their kit later on. If you play against another early game champion, he might snowball the lead onto other lanes so your whole team starts losing, etc.
Compensation:
Compensation is pretty specific and usually works only in one direction and that is the Support compensating the ADC in the early game.
The Support should play a poke/mage support to do this since these champions are very strong in lane and that´s when they want to shine. The poke support has the “duty” to get/ create openings/ advantages for his scaling ADC so he might scale earlie has an easier laning phase. A scaling ADC who can´t get touched is a happy ADC, even more if he gets a few free kills.
The Support shall make the lane more “competitive” so you are able to put more pressure on the enemy team as a whole (if their ADC has to recall 24/7 he can´t do shit + it forces their Jungler do something). Problems will occur if the Support dies while trying to get advantages since he can´t really expect help from his [still] weak ADC.
This playstyle requires a lot of work/skill from the Support since he has to do the main work in lane while he can´t afford f*ck up. If he f*cks up, he lost bot lane single handily and maybe even the game.
To the question: “Can you compensate an early game ADC with a late game Support?”:Hardly. Most "late game” Supports would be “Sustain” Supports since they excel at keeping their team alive and allow their carries to dish out the damage they need to do.
Even if you peel a Lucian really well, chances are bad that he will carry a team fight compared to a Jinx if they are on even terms.
Edit: Feel free to argue or comment as much as you like, just by doing that I got what I wanted:People thinking about it

Hi guys,
with this post I want to compress days of research so that you don't have to waste time by choosing long-term and undervalued projects.
You wouldn't believe how many hours of reading I've spent to come up with this list of projects.
I have "skin in the game" in each of the following coins, but don't worry because I'm plancton and can't dump on you.
I'll try to be as clear, using laymen terms, and as concise (no more than 3 points for projects) so that the reading won't hurt your brain.
The ordering is alphabetic to be fair towards the projects I've picked.
P.S.: This post took hours. If there's something wrong just tell me and I'll fix it. Enjoy!
Cartesi (CTSI #452 on CoinGecko 24M market cap) - It's a layer-2 solution running in Linux that helps layer-1 blockchains to scale. - They will release a Software Developer Kit and Optimistic Rollups (which are used to improve speed by quite a lot) soon. - CTSI token has utility: block rewards, staking and arbitration.
Celer Network (CELR #266 on CoinGecko 68M market cap) - It's a layer-2 solution that enables fast and low cost transactions. - It has a working an Software Developer Kit and an app called CelerX that showcases the speed they can achieve. - CELR token has utility: liquidity, staking and paying the service.
CertiK (CTK #288 on CoinGecko 58M market cap) - It's a Delegated Proof-of-Stake blockchain built with the Cosmos Developer Kit. - It's main product is the Security Oracle which is basically a piece of code you can call to check if a smart contract you is safe or not, think of it as an anti-scam oracle. - CTK token has both utility and governance: gas, staking, rewards, collateral and voting.
Chromia (CHR #462 on CoinGecko 23M market cap) - It aims to solve the scalability problem of current blockchains with a unique approach: by forming a network of relational databases (nodes). - It works similar to sharding (a technique used for parallel computing) and leverage existing Proof-of-Work blockchains to improve it's security (Chromia's transactions gets bundled and inserted into BitCoin or Ethereum). - CHR token has utility: rewards and paying.
Contentos (COS #348 on CoinGecko 39M market cap) - It aims to protect author's rights by building a decentralized digital content comminity capable of distributing and rewarding contents. - Provides smart contracts for automated monetization, copyright verification and storage of digital content right into the Contentos blockchain. Every interaction of a user within the eco-system is recorded and provides a credit status therefore incentivizing positive interactions. - COS token has utility and governance: gas, transactions and voting.
COTI (COTI #262 on CoinGecko 69M market cap) - It's a graph blockchain that combines Proof-of-Trust and Proof-of-Stake to achieve highspeed and low costs. - It enables other blockchains to use its trust score system to identify malicious actors, it also has a payment solution for merchants that works via web and POS. - COTI has utility: transactions and rewards.
Cover Protocol (COVER #347 on CoinGecko 41M market cap) - It's a risk coverage marketplace for Ethereum projects. In basic terms is insurance for DeFi, it works by people holding CLAIM or NOCLAIM tokens to cover themselves from possible losses resulting by project failures. - It withstood and hack and has learnt the hard lesson. - COVER is a governance token used to vote for proposals and validate/invalidate claims.
Cudos (CUDOS #642 on CoinGecko 10M market cap) - It aims to offer monetization for sellers' hardware idle time and competitive computing power prices for buyers. - It partnered with AMD and has pretty high profile advisors such as the Director of Blockchain for AMD and the former CEO of Sony Entertainment Europe. - CUDOS is the utility token for the platform.
DIA (DIA #268 on CoinGecko 67M market cap) - It's an open-source price oracle for DeFi applications. A price oracle is a piece of code that can be used to get reliable data for financial applications. - Its data feeds are open-source and verifiable by everyone. - DIA is both governance and utility token: voting, staking and payments.
DUSK Network (DUSK #380 on CoinGecko 35M market cap) - It's a blockchain that enables privacy-preserving transactions and smart contracts execution. - It could bring a privacy-friendly DeFi in which interactions with smart contracts are kept secret. - DUSK is the utility token used for transactions.
EasyFi (EASY #445 on CoinGecko 26M market cap) - DeFi lending protocol that enables under-collateralized lending, it achieve this with TrustScore which is a mechanism to analyze borrower's activities on various platforms to determine the collateralization ratio required. - It uses Proof-of-Stake and Plasma to be high speed and low cost. - EAST has both governance and utility: voting, rewards and staking.
Frontier (FRONT #454 on CoinGecko 24M market cap) - It's a DeFi aggregation platform that makes super easy and comfortable to use the most established DeFi services on the following chains: Ethereum, BSC, Band, Kava, Harmony and Cosmos. - The financial services you can find in the app are: staking, swapping, liquidity provision, borrowing/lending and more! - FRONT is both utility and governance token: voting, liquidity provision and staking.
Injective Protocol (INJ #130 on CoinGecko 207M market cap) - It's a decentralized exchange that lets users trade digital and pegged-in-value copies of almost anything (crypto, fiat, stocks...). - It's built on layer-2 therefore it's fast and cheap. It's a Robinhood (trading app) killer. It's close to its mainnet. - INJ token is both utility and governance: voting, rewards and collateral backing.
Measurable Data Token (MDT #398 on CoinGecko 32M market cap) - It's a secure and anonymous marketplace for data exchange. - It also provides consumers insights to businesses with Artificial Intelligence. - MDT is the utility token to pay for data and is used for rewards.
Opacity (OPCT #754 on CoinGecko 7M market cap) - It's a cloud storage powered by OPCT token. - It's based on zero-knowledge principle, this means they can't track your uploads/downloads. - OPCT it's the utility token for payments and rewards.
Origin Protocol (OGN #207 on CoinGecko 101M market cap) - It aims to be the future of decentralized e-commerce to make it easy for people to commerce without paying commissions. - The focus is to build an open and free market in which participants have stakes in the network. - OGN is a utility token to pay for the service and affiliate/advertise the platform.
Orion Protocol (ORN #225 on CoinGecko 91M market cap) - It's a trading terminal that executes trades across different exchanges both centralized and decentralized. - It has a portfolio management app and app store (algo trading bots), and also other products for exchanges. - ORN is a utility token used for broker staking, rewards and discounts.
Prometeus (PROM #403 on CoinGecko 32M market cap) - It's a layer-2 project built on Binance Smart Chain and Arweave that aims to provide anonymous data store and exchange. - It's basically a way in which people can monetize data beyond jurisdiction. - PROM is a utility token used for staking and payments.
Prosper (PROS #647 on CoinGecko 10M market cap) - It's an prediction/hedging platform built on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. - Think of it as a betting platform in which you choose between BULL and BEAR scenarios (over a given period) and you can win/lose money. - PROS is both utility and governance token: rewards, liquidity provision, insurance system and fee discounts.
STP Network (STPT #458 on CoinGecko 24M market cap) - It will enable synthetics assets to be issued on Polkadot. - It aims to reduce collateralization needed and be able to work cross-chain. - STPT is the governance token used for protocol decisions.
TrueFi (TRU #287 on CoinGecko 61M market cap) - It aims to enable uncollateralized lending by letting TRU stakers to accept/refuse the requests submitted by borrowers, TRU stakers are subjected to upside/downside based on if the loan ends up repaid. - Borrowers sign a loan agreement and will face legal action in case they don't return the principal and interest. - TRU is the governance token used to make decisions.
Wing Finance (WING #411 on CoinGecko 31M market cap) - It's a lending platform that has two types of lending a) collateralized lending and b) credit-based lending. - Credit-based lending uses an OScore (ONTology Score) to reduce collateralization. - WING is used for voting, discounts and insurance contracts.
​
Thanks for you attention, Fredo Corleone

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

Intro

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

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

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

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

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

Stream Sniping

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

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

Match Fixing

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

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

North America

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

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

Talent

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

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

Valve

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

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

Closing Statements

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

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

Gamestonk. Gamestop. GME. My thoughts are on Reddit, under my u/martinshkreli & subreddit martinshkreli. Those are authentic and discuss why GME is one of the most unprecedented events in market history. Here, I'm going to discuss the populist attitude that is creeping into this odd situation and add some thoughts on short-selling in general.
Let's cover my own unique angle on the concept of a 'short squeeze'. Most would define it as an erratic upward change in price driven by short-covering. I believe short-squeezes defined this way are usually a fictitious idee fixe that aggregates a number of discrete market behaviors and dynamics into a convenient and pithy moniker. The image of python-like buyer constricting some hapless speculator into a higher stock price is evocative but misleading. Many knew me as a short-selling specialist on Wall Street, focused on 'binary events' of biotech stocks. I think I've seen it all: I was once short more than 75% of a company's shares outstanding (I do not recommend this). I bought 75% of a company on the open market, etc.
Short-sellers are governed by the same market dynamics as longs. They get nervous when positions go against them and consider exiting. Like longs, they can double down if they wish. The only difference is that, of course, short positions grow when stocks rise. And they can rise infinitely, while long positions fall asymptotically to zero. But both get, theoretically and assuming no fundamental changes have occurred, more attractive as they move against the trader.
Short sellers have to pay borrow fees to longs (typically tiny, but sometimes massive). They have to locate stock to short, again usually easy, but sometimes difficult. Both are perilous when those rare adverse times arise. Why? Despite the possibility of a growing cost of renting stock, the ultimate fear of a short-seller is a "buy-in". It is nightmarish and has only happened to me once or twice, excluding options-related activity. A buy-in occurs when a broker decides to forcibly exit the short position on behalf of the trader because the broker and trader cannot secure the 'locate' which is supposed to underlie the short sale. The buy-in order is typically violently disruptive: a market order for the whole position near the closing hours of the market! The SEC published a list of stocks at risk of buy-in: the fail to deliver list.
My point is that a 'short squeeze' can only practically affect the trader for two reasons. The first is that the trader digs in, doubles down and doesn't exit as his position grows. That's bad trading, and will eventually blow the trader up. But, if the stock is a 'good short', that short will be replaced by more traders with stronger hands/a better entry price/smaller position. What's more is the average investor can't tell if this is happening! The second is the buy-in. I haven't heard GME shorts being bought in, but again, how would you know, other than the grapevine? My point is most of the disruptive, exciting trading here is simply long speculators banging away at the stock.
New longs are sometimes attracted to rising prices, speculating they'll increase further: that's called momentum. Those buyers are typically offset by the existing longs who are excited to exit at higher prices. But, if there is a large short position in the stock, a speculator may feel that those covering (buying to get out) short-sellers will provide additional fuel to the momentum. That's sometimes the case, but higher prices should lead to more supply from both long and short sellers. My feeling is the actions of large long holders probably have more influence on the stock price than shorts who dart in and out, and typically in smaller size. Remember that shorts who capitulate are often just replaced by new shorts who are attracted at the new lunar prices.
In essence, 'short squeezes' become a self-fulfilling prophecy as new long investors pile in trying to 'squeeze' this sometimes phantom of a short seller, and existing long investors may hold off selling for the same reason. With some Popperian skepticism you will easily see that the same dynamic can exist without the short boogeyman, or with a short boogeyman of any size. Speaking of which, where is Chanos and his slavish groupie, Carson Block?
Speculative momentum can occur for any reason. Let's not forget that the 'trapping shorty' strategy is an awkward idea for a few reasons. Short sellers are often sophisticated market participants who are betting on the decline of a stock. You usually don't want these type of traders sniffing around your favorite longs: I recall writing a 'short report' on a stock to watch it fall 50% that day. If you do a study of stock returns of highly shorted stocks, they are pretty awful. The reason there is 'no arbitrage' is the borrow rate.
But even if you got this poor short to capitulate and squeeze, the amount of buyers who are now holding stock at absurdly high prices put way more energy (and money) into the stock than the short seller's white towel ever could. A sledgehammer killed the fly: now what? Alternatively, are you the host or the parasite?
On populism. I don't really think most investors or speculators should go into any investment thinking that there is 'an enemy'. Concentrated (big) investments (bets) give rise to emotional behavior, typically the enemy in trading and investing as it clouds rational thinking. It's a lot better to be Socratic with your 'opponent' and understand what they're thinking. If your position were to be half the size it currently is, would you be as emotionally interested? Try it! You'll lower your risk and feel better.
Some of the behavior going on at WSB sounds more jihadist than speculative. The idea that there are some investors who are 'good' and others who are 'bad', or that there is an 'establishment' is BS. Everyone has the same goal: I have a pile of money, I'm trying to make it bigger, fuck your pile--I don't care about it. Anything other goal is contrived, foolish and won't help you win. You can't 'fight the rich' by trying to become one of them. Don't you see the irony? A related thought experiment: what if this trade continued to work really well? And another, and another? Then some WSBers are billionaires. Aren't they the new 'enemy/establishment?'
Who do you think hedge fund managers are? They're typically the anti-establishment. Things have changed a bit, but the most successful HFMs are actually the WSBers of the past. These are guys who didn't fit in well at i-banks, often got kicked out for having big mouths or not wearing the right ties, or just wanting to wear jeans at work and not fill out TPS reports. When they started their firms, people like Soros, Icahn, Steinhardt, Robertson, Cohen, Griffin, Loeb (who has posted anonymously on boards), Samberg, even Cramer were fish out of water and had very tiny amounts of capital, often begging for investors.
The need for an enemy. To sustain increasingly insane behavior, it isn't uncommon to use a straw man or a scapegoat. Oppressive regimes used this technique in the past, and the media uses it today. Retail investors don't have much power individually. With your $5k RH account, you can't day trade or even qualify for margin. It's pitiful. So, it's understandably quite exciting to finally feel like a 'player' that you read about. To be a part of 'something'. The problem is the media is goading you to be somewhere between a lemming and a life-agnostic but impotent jihadist. Blowing yourself up won't impress anyone, and there is no afterlife here, other than a minimum wage career and mom's sofa. GME and shorting in general is small potatos in the scheme of the Wall St. machine. Don't worry about getting 'even' with the rich. That's jousting at a windmill that will waste your energy.
No one here, hopefully, wants to be a lemming. Those willing to 'die on this hill' have to realize something: Wall Street doesn't care about its speculators. The new traders who vanquish the old simply replace them. Nothing changes. When LTCM blew up, or Amaranth, Visium, Galleon, or anyone else, it is 'out with the old and in with the new'. So, perhaps WSB can blow up 1 hedge fund or maybe 5, but so what? Eventually, the tables will turn and it will blow up. The leveraged, fast-money trading markets are a violent place and the only people who care one whit are the brokers charging fees (directly or indirectly). They only care to make sure the sorry carcasses can pay their bills. They know there will always be another speculator lined up, ready to shove his money into the lotto machine. There is no pride here. There is no credit for being a good solider. You either survive or you don't. Your job is to survive and thrive. Becoming a lemming will guarantee failure as per the statistical truism of gambler's ruin (enjoy the proof in measure theory). With enough time, anyone playing a game with <50% success rate (equal payouts), will lose all their money. Get that number above 50%. Add the Kelly Criterion to your trading strategy.
You might ask, "(that's all well and good OR we'll agree to disagree) but, Mr. Shrek, isn't this a good trading strategy? (ganging up on shorted stocks)?" As long as you're not a lemming/jihadist (willing to walk over the cliff, whether or not you have a "cause"), and you ignore a somewhat slimy ethical/market manipulation question, I don't see anything wrong with it. There are better ways to make money, since you're asking. Stoking (or worse, participating in) a buying frenzy that is akin to a forced musical chairs game is a little crazy. Once a stock is absurdly valued, you're just hoping the sell-off doesn't happen while you're holding it. If you have enough lemmings or jihadists 'helping you', that's a good thing. They will hold your bag--someone needs to.
Of course, if you've found the "next" Microsoft or Apple, no one needs to hold any bags. But, no company can increase its objective (aka fair) value quickly enough for this... phenomenon? situation? absurdity?... to make it reasonable. Those things take years, go slow and steady, and this frenzied buying/"short squeeze" phenomenon won't let value play a factor. That's why WSB GME longs have shifted theses from "well, Gamestop was/is cheap" to "the gaming cycle" to "Ryan Cohen will save us" to "...jihad?!"
Each member of the herd has its own financial parameters, too. Some may have $500, some $50,000,000 or more. Some may be willing to lose their entire stake (and even more) on an out-of-the-money or levered trade. Some are not. Some were in the latter and somehow end up in the former. Some are in one column at one price and another column at another--some are switched from column to column by force. Today's lemmings/jihadists are tomorrow's sellers. When you're hanging off the mountain, pay attention to the guy holding the rope.
Loosely 'coordinated' buying can certainly affect stocks. Heavily shorted stocks and small cap stocks are the kind that require less capital than typical to 'move' a stock. The irony here is when putting on a position, the trader's goal is typically NOT to move the stock with his actions!
I still think GME is wildly overvalued, but that doesn't exactly mean I'm 'bearish'. One funny idea here is reflexivity: GME stockholders may become serious GME customers and the company's fundamentals improve that way! Excluding some such miracle, eventually GME stock will trade at <50 again. I still think it will trade at 1,000 or more BEFORE that happens, and that the decline process will take a long, long time (several years). Keep in mind, anything can change. GME can do serial secondaries that destroy its stock. Management's job is to create value for their shareholders--but perhaps they will avoid pissing them off. There's a strange loop! Finally, the stock could be halted by the SEC or completely banned by brokers. Don't overdo it. Watch the borrow rate. Keep your positions at less than 25% of your capital--live to play another day.
Disclosure: I've never traded GME stock and do not intend to.
(From martin, posted by mo)

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.

This is mainly a comparison between Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla (I think those 3 are way better than old AC games.)
1- The Abilities and their upgrades:
Not only are all the abilities are extremely fun but also they can suit all 3 playstyles and make you specialize in each of them. Hunter, Warrior or Assassin. for example: No fall damage, Breaking enemies' shields, Stealth and Assassination abilities, refill health, Sparta kick and all the arrow abilities. Odyssey hands down has the best abilities. and Upgrading your spear is crucial to getting those sweet high level 3 upgrades for the abilities, it also gives you an incentive to hunt cultists to get the upgrades. also it increases your adrenaline slots which is great.
ALSO: you can tame animals and legendary animals and have them as pets to destroy everyone. they will follow you everywhere and you can have an engraving to boost their health and damage. That's one of the coolest things in the game.
2- Difficulty and scaling option:
Mainly I'm taking about the level scaling, in Valhalla or Origins if you miss a side quest and level up you can't go back to them because it would be too easy. In Odyssey you can adjust the scaling to make everything scale to your level or 1 level below or 2 or 4 if you want, but you have the option to keep the game fun and going for its entirety.
3- Ikarus (Eagle Vision):
I can't tell you how good this is and it's improved from Origins and how it's so bad to not have it in Valhalla. You can Improve the accuracy of your eagle by discovering fast travel viewpoints (which encourages me to actually discover them.) so you can highlight all the enemies by hovering with your eagle and highlighting them and also treasures and mission objectives. (you also HAVE THE OPTION to disable them unlike Valhalla where it's horrible to explore and find treasures which brings me to my 4th point)
4- Exploring and Loot:
In Odyssey you can easily visit forts and camps and highlight the loot and easily find where they are, unlike Valhalla where everything is underground and you have to spend so much time and be annoyed just to find loot that's hidden and do the same exact puzzles every time.
5- Gameplay:
This is for most is the most important thing or one of the most important to most people, including myself. Odyssey has the best combat system in all of them. Enemies are not easy and their attacks are quick and different, and you have to time your block and dodges and also include your fun abilities in the combat. It doesn't get boring like Origins and it's not extremely easy like Valhalla where you can go through all enemies on Nightmare difficulty with ease.
​
Note: In Valhalla how many times do we have to see the same goddamn kill animation for all those elite enemies?! like it's the same kill animation every single time and you can't disable them and they don't even look good after a while. it ruins the flow of the combat and after a while it gets really boring and you skip the elites or just shoot them with an arrow. that is very very poor gameplay design. and again, it shows you how good odyssey's combat is.
5.1- Gameplay/Role playing:
Odyssey is the best one for role playing, you can be really good and focus on any of the three roles in the game (Hunter, Assassin and Warrior). Now to explain how Odyssey is better, first the Assassination Animations, it's so satisfying to use stealth and go around and stab and kill people, it just feels good and brutal, unlike Origins where it becomes so boring and tedious after a couple of hours, there's basically like 2 or 3 animations in Origins and Bayek just holds them or hugs them and does the same exact kill, it doesn't feel satisfying to play stealth and it doesn't feel satisfying to play as a hunter so you'll end up fighting everyone head on, just like Valhalla (where you just Raid every time or fight everyone head on because stealth is useless). Odyssey is superior in making you actually enjoy playing in all three roles.
6- Armor and Weapons:
Odyssey has the most variety of weapons and armor in all 3 games. not only that but also a lot of the armor and weapons look so cool and way better looking than Valhalla and Origins. Valhalla has the worst ArmoWeapon system in all AC games. basically they're all the same weapons but with different stats. AND this is so funny, you can't pick up weapons from enemies, you can only find them in treasures and get them from the story. It's stupid. and for Origins, the weapons and armor sets are so few and just bland, you'll end up playing with the sword and when you get the fire sword you'll only use that because nothing else is worth it. also the stats and the ability to engrave things on your weapons and armor in Odyssey really helps that role playing I was talking about and you can buff your Assassin role or Warrior role. and also all the weapons are fun to use.
*Note: I will say Valhalla dual wielding is amazing to use, that's the best thing about the combat. also using the shield. This is better than Odyssey and Origins because you have to use a shield in Origins and in Odyssey there are no shields)
*Angry Note: The best armor and weapon in Valhalla (Thor's Armor and Hammer) you get after completing everything in the game. that's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. What's the point of that? I get the best gear after finishing the game? good job Ubisoft.
​
6.1- Armor and Weapons:
you can edit the looks of your weapons and armor without changing the actual gear. all the loot you collect regardless if you sell or dismantle them, they will still be available for you to change the looks. so you can have whatever armor you have look like let's say... the spartan armor, without changing the armor. it also applies to weapons and arrows. that is amazing if you actually think about it. having the option to choose whatever look you want without sacrificing the gear itself. it's actually one of my favorite things about the game.
​
7- Bounty Hunters (Mercenaries) and Cultists:
*Bounty Hunters:-
(Mercenaries)-The bounty hunters are extremely fun and makes the game much better and more enjoyable, where they can hunt you down when you commit crimes or kill enemies, and you can pay them off or kill the guy who hired them. They'll go from 1 bounty after you to 5. This is a great system and it's like having to fight mini boss battels or you can run from them which makes things intense and sometimes ruin your plans when they come. In Origins there are like 12 of them and they're basically useless or you rarely encounter them, same with Valhalla. Bounty Hunting system is done perfect in Odyssey (YOU CAN ALSO GET GREAT LOOT FROM THEM.)
*Cultists:-
when you read what I'm gonna type about Valhalla you're gonna find it hilarious. In Odyssey all the cultists wear capes and masks and you can't tell them apart. not only that, hunting cultists is extremely encouraging, not only because you get great loot, but you can upgrade your spear which in turn means you can now level up your awesome abilities to level 3 which is insanely better cause it gives you actual differences and not just stat buffs. in Valhalla, and you're gonna laugh. All order is LITERALLY visible in the menu tab hahahaha. the figures are dark and slightly silhouetted but you can easily tell who's who by just focusing on the figure. I literally knew who the main order guy (the father) is by just hovering over and looking at it. It's insane how they thought that was a good idea. When it comes to Origins, the order is like 8 or 9 and they're all main missions, you can't hunt them whenever you want. (Also in Odyssey you have to be at their level to kill them, In Valhalla I watched a YouTube video and killed the entire non-story order members in a row with 1 Assassin hit.)
8- Graphics and Sailing:
*Graphics:-
When it comes to the world and how beautiful it is, Odyssey is the best one out of the three followed by Origins and then Valhalla. From the beautiful ancient greek buildings to the beautiful seas and the night sky and the moonlight and the islands and the thunder and rain while sailing and the waves hitting your boat. This is subjective of course and my opinion, I find Odyssey the most stunning and best looking out of the three. it's a lot of fun walking around and exploring, everything feels alive.
*Sailing:-
This is obvious really and for people who like sailing. You have a ship where you can upgrade everything in it from Archers to Spears, but the best thing is having special lieutenants where you can recruit by knocking high level enemies out rather than killing them. and they give you advantages like ship armor or damage with arrows or rowing stamina.. you get the point. You can have very fun ship battels and sail across the map if you want, and you actually feel like sailing and naval warfare is part of the game. there are mercenaries and cultists in the sea as well which is great. In Origins it's only once or twice in main missions where you use ships and it's underwhelming also. and in Valhalla you almost never use the ship except for a couple of times to get to certain places. Odyssey hands down wins in Naval gameplay and that's not an opinion even. (Although I wish you could call your ship like in Valhalla instead of going to a dock or fast traveling to it, but in Valhalla it probably made more sense because of the horn?)
9- The story and side missions:
This is just my opinion and I know not a lot of people like the story, but for me it's my favorite one. The side missions are very fun to do (also because of the level scaling I mentioned) and the main story is much better than Origins BECAUSE you can have your own choices in the game, you can choose to kill or spare or lie and build your own Alexios or Kassandra story. In terms of acting, Bayek is the best one out of all three, how can you not love him. and In terms of the actual story (including the ability to have your own choices) for me Odyssey is better. and the side missions are so much better than Origins. In Origins the only purpose of those god awful side missions is just to progress to the main mission's level (Which is one of the annoying things about Origins) and if you level up and forget a side mission you can bet that it's gone because you won't play a level 3 mission with a level 20 Bayek. I'd say Valhalla is second and Origins is last (Mainly because you HAVE CHOICES)
There are a lot of other things to talk about like materials and money and upgrading and selling but those are not that important to mention I guess, but of course the economy system in Odyssey is the best one.
Final words: Odyssey is the game in the middle, it's after Origins and before Valhalla, and that is great because Origins was the first new AC game they made and it didn't feel like it was perfect or a full game. and Valhalla removed a lot of great features I mentioned above that were in Odyssey and even in Origins. so Odyssey is the perfect game because they had more time to make it than Origins and also improve on the whole new AC system and game. and before they removed a lot of the great things in it in Valhalla.
I don't get why Odyssey got so much hate, and honestly I find it crazy tbh. Of course the majority of people find Odyssey and Origins better than Valhalla. But I don't get how Origins is better than Odyssey, I've never seen any arguments other than Bayek is a better voice actor (Which he is) or that the story is better (which it's subjective). I'm sad to see people's bad opinions on the game and I'm positive that's why Valhalla removed a lot of features and was a step down in the serious, I think the changes came from the hate towards Odyssey. and I also feel sad because we won't see games like Odyssey anymore where almost everything is perfect and we'll get more things removed and just back to mediocre.
Thanks for reading if you did read, It's long I know. and remember it's just my opinion, and I feel I made actual good points rather than just hating or loving something.