I've taught college-level investments classes, and I think a lot of you people would benefit from some of what we talk about in there.
It's important for you to understand what exactly risk is, in the finance sense. Watch this video and think about how you would react in this scenario. The expected value (average value of all possible outcomes) of the case is $500,000.50. I have a feeling that if you sold that case on the market you'd find a market price below that; the difference between the expected value and the market price (assuming a fully liquid market) is the risk premium
A central concept of finance and investments is this: the more risk you take, the more return you get. The safest thing you can do is convert your holdings to cash and stick it in your wallet, but you would get zero return (and lose purchasing power due to inflation over time). Technically, sticking money in a savings account is riskier, though interest rates on savings deposits is essentially zero these days and deposit insurance removes most of that risk. Any market play that gets you massive returns is putting a bunch of capital at risk (think about that WSB guy who put $700,000 into GME options; imagine what happens to the guy if the price doesn’t move). The reason the most common investment advice is to fire everything into low-cost index funds is because it’s low risk and low cost (active management of mutual funds rarely justifies the extra cost, but that’s a different discussion entirely). If you’re undertaking extra risk, you theoretically should be getting extra return to justify that risk. Think about a lottery ticket. If the jackpot is high enough, the expected value (the averaged return you get from all possible outcomes) of a lottery ticket is higher than the price you pay for it. However, given the limited set of outcomes that a lottery ticket gives you and the likelihood of the worst case scenario (you lose your entire investment), the risk is too high for most people to seriously invest in (and if you do “seriously” invest in the Powerball, you’re probably not having a good time).
Another important consideration is liquidity. If you're selling a Stradivarius violin, you're going to have to spend a lot of time searching for a buyer who will pay full price OR you’ll have to sell it for less than it’s worth. In the market, this tends to be reflected in the bid/ask spread. We like to think about the market as a monolith, but in reality it’s just an aggregation of all the investors out there. That means liquidity isn’t a problem when it comes to most stocks on the NYSE and NASDAQ (eg. At the time of this writing the bid/ask spread on AAPL was $.01 for a price of $136.79), but when you head to OTC territory you might start seeing bid/ask spreads that can be up to 10% of the price for some of those real “no man’s land” stocks. That means that the price you pay (the ask price) and the price you can sell at (the bid price) can be wildly different. That also means that any “at current market price” order you send (especially in pre-market) may be filled at a price different than the price you think it’s going to be filled at.
A third concept to think about is market efficiency. The central idea of market efficiency is that the price reflects all available information (different forms of efficiency consider private/public/historical info). A truly efficient market will react instantaneously and accurately to any new information that is created/released, eg. A firm releases earnings and beats expectations, therefore the price jumps up.
If market efficiency is a product of investors discovering information and acting on it, that means your best opportunities are in places that are less visible to the aggregate investing public. That’s where pennystocks comes in. Do a search on most of the tickers listed here, and you’ll see a bunch of summary stock profiles and not much else. Do a search for any S&P 500 company and you’ll find an incredible amount of news, branding, and other information. If you’re looking for “good” penny stocks to buy up, you’re looking for an information advantage over the “average” investor. However, there is the hazard (that’s been around long before the internet) of bad or fake information.
Remember that the market is an aggregate of all the investors out there, and those investors are subject to psychological biases, differences in personal attitude, and individual risk tolerance. That’s why you see some interesting reactions to events: remember when TSLA stock dropped because Elon Musk was smoking marijuana? There’s nothing about the CEO smoking marijuana that should change the fundamental value of the company, but investors collectively seemed to think this was a negative for the long term prospects of TSLA.
A few common investor biases:
• Losses are treated as more impactful than a gain. Think about if you buy into a stock and it immediately drops $.10. Compare this to how you react if you buy in and it immediately jumps $.10; the average investor is going to react more strongly to the former.
• We all hate having made a “loser” trade. The effect is usually that investors hold on too long to a poorly performing stock in hopes that it will rebound.
• Investors tend to anchor their perception of a stock’s performance based on their entry price. A $.10 drop in price hits worse if it takes you below your purchase price
• Playing with “house money” (ie. your gains) is treated differently than your initial principal. In practice, this means that an investor that has done well recently is more risk-tolerant (and not always in a good way)
• Investors are susceptible to "herding" behavior, where they follow what someone else is doing not because they know what that someone else is doing is good, but because they think that someone else knows something they don't.
Stock prices are subject to the principles of supply and demand, ie. increased demand will raise the price, and people looking to sell more than buy will lower the price. This is especially important when it comes to momentum (the principle that an increasing stock price will continue to increase and a falling price will continue to fall). This is why you see overreactions to news items and a subsequent reversal; a news item creates a buying/selling frenzy that pushes the price until cooler heads walk in and say “maybe this price is wrong”. This is where swing traders try to profit: among other things, they look for stocks that have a drop that is unjustified in material info or in the degree of drop, buy up at “downward momentum” prices and sell after the reversal. Day traders also try to benefit by buying stocks with positive momentum and selling the second that momentum reverses.
So what does this mean for us at pennystocks? A few considerations that are unique for penny stocks:
1) I already mentioned it, but liquidity is a big consideration: Bid/ask spreads may be larger than normal and many brokers either don’t let you trade below $.01 or make you pay a fee to do so. This also means that options covering penny stocks are either sparse or nonexistent.
2) Information coverage: information can be hard to find, and sifting through good and bad info can be a chore
3) Low market participation: The smaller number of traders means that it takes fewer people to influence the price in a material way. This is what makes penny stocks susceptible to pump and dump schemes: A bad actor just needs to convince a (relatively) small number to buy in to a stock to bump up the price, then the dump can crater the price leaving a bunch of bag holders in their wake.
This also means that the price is subject to more psychological bias on the part of investors.
4) There are a lot of biotech firms in penny-stock land. The fortunes of these companies rest entirely on the outcomes of drug trials and/or acquisition by larger firms, which means you can see massive swings in price.
This scene from The Wolf of Wall Street should be required viewing for anyone wanting to jump headfirst into penny stocks. The modernization of trading means that commissions are drastically reduced, but the lessons here still apply. I’m not saying “don’t invest” because there are some mighty gains to be had if you do it right. I’m saying “be cautious” and certainly don’t trade on emotion. Understand that what we’re doing here is speculation, and that many stocks with penny prices are trading at penny prices for a reason. Increased volatility in the penny stocks market is going to make you feel a lot of things, but it’s important to compartmentalize this emotion and trade logically. The moment you start treating it, consciously or unconsciously, like a casino, you’ll get casino-like returns (spoiler alert, the house always wins in the end)
A few closing thoughts:
• Like another recently popular post here said, don’t be afraid to walk away for a few days to cool off.
• FOMO is the gains killer; there will always be a New Moon in terms of penny stocks.
• Pay attention to the sector you’re buying in and understand how that might influence the volatility of the stock’s price. Be especially wary of anyone trying to sell you on a “sure thing” biotech firm.
• MLFB to the moon! (Just kidding, don't rely on me to tell you what to buy) (EDIT: By Request 🚀🚀🚀)
And finally
• Do your own research! There are some legitimate DD threads on here, but you should do your own research and make sure they’re legit. Some threads here sound a lot like Jordan Belfort in the video above.
Further reading:
Wikipedia’s very long list of cognitive biases
Efficient markets hypothesis
Behavioral finance

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

Hey guys, this post is not intended to tell you what to do. I'm not a financial advisor. This isn't my day job. I am not even a day trader. I learned the difference between call and put options like 3 months ago. I don't trade options. I don't even know how yet, to be frank. I recently got an RH account to try to learn how and then this shit blew up. This post is viewable to the general public and is not "insider knowledge". Everything I am about to say, I have gleaned from PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE DATA. That Hedge funds and other people in the media, the government, and in the general public ALL have access to. This is MORE VISIBLE than even Facebook. Let alone a country club or private "dinner party". Just saying. I am a real person. I am not a bot. I am not trying to screw anyone over. I like the stock I am choosing to gamble my disposable income on and think it will be a good investment regardless of the action over the next few weeks. 💎🙌
I CAN earn it back if I have to. I didn't stake my entire savings. I don't advise people to gamble with money they don't have. Not for financial reasons, solely, but more for mental health reasons.
Bias disclosure: I currently have 1882 shares of AMC at an average price of 9.27$ and I occupied Wall Street for a bit after the financial crisis, mostly on reddit as I was in medical school at the time, and supported occupy the SEC. Please see my post history. It's all there in the top posts. I have nothing to hide as I know I am a valued member of our society, I pay my taxes, I treat mental illness, I follow the law, and I don't normally gamble. This is not about the money for me personally, it's about principle. It's my token of rememberance for the failed actions of our government to hold these types of people accountable for the great recession and the subprime mortgage crisis. Also, WSB just happened to stumble upon these criminal vulture firms, in the act of active company rape and decided to give them a licking. If you were interested in GME and were one of the people on the other side [IE at one of these firms] reading the discussion over at WSB should have been your job as a form of market research. If you missed the warning, it's not Reddit's fault. If you suck at your job, it's not Reddit's fault. I don't see how pinning them in that position was illegal. It wasn't planned, it wasn't private. It developed organically like a movement. It continues to grow. Silencing us will only make it louder. You need to level the playing field and regulate the markets. What they did to defend themselves was illegal. The manipulation of the market and the media was illegal. The restriction of buying was illegal. The algorithmic ladder attacks were illegal. Thus I will hold the line, as I HAVE been since Tuesday. It's been a wild ride and I'm tired of this shitshow. I want to get back to normal investing after this fiasco. It's much better for my sleep.
*So here goes my theoretical question. AGAIN, I AM NOT saying you SHOULD do this. What you do is your call. I am asking if this has been done before or if it even can be done. I'm a n00b. Educate me. I'm trying to learn how the arena works. Like how it really works.
If short ladders by algorithms are being used to artificially deflate the stock price. IE: tanking the price of AMC with low trade volumes that they simply pass amongst themselves. I think yesterday it was 5% buy and hold and 95% sell for AMC but each time with low volumes in a very predictable pattern. (Trey from the link below explained it very well several times better than me.)...
What prevents retail traders from spacing out their purchase orders to 1-10 shares at a time and holding. Wouldn't that be better than just impulse buying 100 shares because you want in and you like the stock? Would it do the same thing as short laddering but in converse? Just curious. Would like to hear your opinions.
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I've been watching this channel to learn about AMC action and markets in general and it has been super educational.
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*I am not investing in AMC to make a quick buck. I am not a day trader or a pump and dumper. I am doing this because I think AMC will not die from the pandemic, was artificially deflated by vulture hedge funds, almost to the point of bankruptcy, and will NOW be able to pivot into a better business model with fresher screens, Hollywood exclusive releases, fancier theaters, pent up demand, etc., with the new capital and public interest. People LIKE the MOVIES. I grew up in NJ and movie theaters were a HUGE part of my life and many of my most memorable moments occurred at the movies. They make me warm and fuzzy. They have a certain nostalgia for me personally and I like supporting local business when I can. [I know AMC was bought by China, but the staff are all local]. In my opinion GME has an antiquated business model bc I buy games on STEAM and online. AMC was only struggling because of COVID and I don't think that otherwise people would completely stop going to the movies. We Americans LOVE going to the movies. I love going to the movies. That's just my opinion. Don't hate on me for it. I think that the "real value" of AMC is AT LEAST about 10-20$ which is what they were at before 2020 and it wasn't even their peak value. Even if the real value is closer to 5$, according to the arguments of experts, that's just their fucking opinion. It's a different situation now and I don't agree. Is that my right to disagree with them and pick my own stocks? Or can I only bet on what Fox Business tells me to. Or Jim Cramer. As an individual investor, am I free in this country to spend my money how I want on the stock market, or am I not? Am I free to make my own choices about whether to buy a stock or not? At least I think I should be. If I am not, it will solidify my opinion [and the watching world's opinion] that "free market" capitalism is indeed a farce. It will highly depreciate the value of the American dream and my respect for our current government. Which I was Ecstatic about during Election Day. [Disclosure, Bernie/Liz Bro, who voted for Biden and abstained from voting in 2016 due to bitterness about the primaries. Damn you DWS, you know what you did.] We all know the hedge funds sure are free to buy as much stock as they want to. Apparently even to buy stock that doesn't exist. WTF is that? Glad I found out now. Even if I lost 8k by betting it will be 10$ in 2022 rather than 5$ isn't it my CHOICE when to sell? Am I not free to HOLD the damn stock if in my opinion, I'm willing to consider it a tax on sending a giant reddit shaped middle finger into space to these people that rape companies regardless of the consequences to local staff? These parasites who prefer profit to morality and decency? Who sold their souls in the search of...what?...private islands and yachts? Let THIS MOMENT be your Memento Mori, you soulless motherfuckers. If you have any of it left, now is your time to search for it. Your actions will leave behind a husk of an economy and earth if left unchecked. We the Reddit "Retards" stumbled upon our teeth. For the first time the MARKET BITES BACK AND WE ARE NOT LETTING GO. WE ARE MAKING A STAND. FUCK YOU. We all know that the American Citizens will end up footing the bill anyway in taxes when all those people start relying on the government for survival after you motherfuckers artificially drive their employer into bankrupcy. FUCK YOU. You're already taking my money and you know it. I pay 47% in taxes due to my income and living in NYC. FUCK YOU for evading them with offshore accounts you GREEDY FUCKS. I am willing to lose 8k to do that (send you a message) and to rapidly learn about what is going on to manipulate markets. It's also partially the cost of education in my calculus. I have learned more in one week riding this wave, than in 4 years of getting my Economics degree. Either way, my current buy in as at 9.27 so I will hold at least until I make my initial investment back. I am also disclosing that if the stock goes up to 30$ I will likely SELL enough shares to cover half of my position because I am not a degenerate gambler and have been holding the line since Tuesday and it has taken a toll on my sleep and my sanity. I know I might lose some money and this is a crazy roller coaster. I want to get out most of my investment ASAP and then ride the wave to then END with you all. IF it happens. I know it may not. I don't care. The message seems to have been sent. Seems like they received it. But we don't know who will be regulated and how yet. I am tired of this fight. I don't like it. I don't want to do it anymore. But I stayed in for the principle not the principal, and for the people just finding out about this now to still be able to make a choice about what to do before we release them from the HOLD. This is a constantly evolving situation. Will they censor the media from talking about stocks? Why target Reddit? Reddit is LIKE the media. It's not a private chat room. THESE WORDS CAN BE READ BY ANYONE WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION AND WE ARE AWARE OF THIS. If it falls, and I lose my money, I don't think the government will come in and save me. I don't expect them to. I EXPECT them to let this play out and not SIDE with these assholes. It upsets me that they seem to have decided to save Vulture capitalists. Anyway, despite my fear of posting this question and the associated rant, I really want to know the answer. Has it been done before by Algorithms pushing stocks higher? Is it possible to make a crowdsourced one? Is it legal?
If this gets removed or censored in some way. You have your answer I guess.
facta non verba.
Thanks.
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****IMPORTANT ADDENDUM****: I want to add that I was quite revved up when I wrote this and have had some time to reflect. I want to stress that it is not my intention to lay blame or judge any individual person or organization for the current situation [Of stacked odds in the retail investor vs hedge fund battle]. Emotions run high in the stock market. I know this through experience now. I was angry when I wrote this post. [I am leaving it unedited for posterity and since whoever needed to see it already saw it so removing it would be pointless] This should not become a witch hunt or be personal. These guys and girls are people too. They work for a corporation. They earn a paycheck. They have friends, partners, and families too. I am a person. You, reader, are a person. Don't make this personal. They didn't invent algorithms and weren't the ones that necessarily wanted to take these short positions. The market calculus at the time, dictated that this was a good call for them, it wasn't. We accidentally stumbled upon it on WSB and shit-posted about it until it blew up and they were really in a bind. I understand their calculus to a degree, but I am a "smooth brained" "retard" when it comes to these things. I am learning fast though. I understand that certain companies are likely to fail and it is possible to make a profit off that. My moral views about it are irrelevant as the situation they're in dictates their actions, not my personal views about that. I understand that they're getting screwed at the moment and I'm sorry. I truly hope most of them do not get too damaged by this and have had time to change their positions. But I also believe in the American dream, and think that the people that were able to find a good position in the stock market [the retail investors] should be rewarded. I sincerely hope this doesn't trigger a massive systemic issue and we don't accidentally BREAK the stock market with this action on those stocks. It doesn't seem like that would happen, but again smooth brain here. WE NEED THE MARKET TO STAY ALIVE to have peace and stability in this country. Reddit crew, I beseech you, please understand that the individuals involved are also playing by the rules given to them by the market. The problem I personally have is that the rules are different for the retail investors vs. the big institutions. I don't have a problem with them as people. I don't want to destroy anything or any institutions. That was never my goal as an activist nor as an investor-activist and I can only speak about myself. I just hope they could find it in their hearts to try to understand our outrage and consider playing by the rules or at least letting us play by the same rules. We are attacking them and they don't like it. I get it. In either case, please understand that I am not vested too strongly in either outcome anymore. I am tired and want to return to my regular life and will not be on reddit for a while, nor will I be investing any more money into the stock market for a while... The whole thing has taken it's toll on me and I am going back to my regular life. This is not my war.
On the government's side, I also understand that their goal is to enforce the rules. I hope I'm not breaking any here and will remove my posts if I am. I am not trying to cause a revolution. This country has been through too much and we finally have a shot at beating COVID and have a competent administration that can guide us back on the right track. I truly believe that the people in charge now are decent people and will do good for this country. If Biden says no more diamond hands, I will listen to Biden. What I do further with my shares shall remain my business otherwise. I will no longer tell anyone what I am doing with my shares. I realize now that this is not always a good idea and should be done with tact and experience. I am not a financial advisor. But also, financial advice and being one is not a joke. I realize this now. MEMEing about stocks is like MEMEing about drinking bleach. People might listen to you and sacrifice their lives on a losing battle. Not everyone knows the stakes and not everyone knows what they're doing. Now that this is blowing up, people can get really hurt financially. Reddit, we could be putting people in danger. I see this now. So you all, too, reading this, PLEASE be careful. About investing and about what you say on social media. INVEST but INVEST RESPONSIBLY and not with money you can not bear to lose. I pledge that I will personally no longer post any inflammatory shit on Reddit. Because now I'm afraid that WE are suddenly some form of weird market makers and I don't have as many lawyers as the hedge funds. I am tapping out from posting any more about the current battle. I wish you all luck on both sides, truly. In the next round tomorrow.
Dear Government: If you want this to end, don't you have the power to delist these "Meme" companies and distribute the shares somehow? If not, the the system is truly stronger than our institutions. If you do this, please make sure people don't lose their life savings somehow. That would be nice. Then, please try to make sure this won't happen again and that the SEC actually regulates and prosecutes people so their calculus isn't that the fines are too low to justify following the rules. [Just my humble opinion as a smooth brain with limited experience of markets. Do what you think is best and I will obey the laws as an individual]. Sorry you might disagree hedge fund guys and girls, but I am entitle to my opinion in a free country. This is my platform. You can have CNN and Fox News. Sorry for saying something. I promise this is the end of it. But also, a lot of market makers on TV seem to assert that the market will self correct and I don't see how this should be a large risk for overall wealth. Who knows, none of us can predict the future. But I think if a bunch of Reddit "retards" get a couple hundred thousand bucks, it won't change the overall situation or necessarily be a net negative; and may in fact trigger a renaissance in this country. You'll still be the biggest fish, just in a more biodiverse pond. It may just create a new class of petite bourgeoise in this country. But it is not likely that if they win, it will cause something like the French Revolution. There will be losers and winners, but in the end, it will be a good story for Hollywood. [Hopefully played on an AMC screen in a post covid world] But what do I know, I'm a just another "retard" on reddit.
I hope that after this, you are all decent humans at the end and don't break any law on all sides. [Reddit, Retail investors, Government, Hedge fund investors, etc] I hope we don't break the market over this. If that is a true risk we need to make the market unbreakable or this WILL keep happening. If anyone is resentful about losing future gains on a good position so the government can fix the market, don't be a fucking greedy idiot and look at what we've achieved so far. This is already a big win for the small guy. And if our markets are vulnerable, the next winners will not be idiots on reddit. But will likely be our enemies from abroad. Not to name names. We will ALL benefit more from long term stability than short term gains. We MUST come together as a country so we can spend that money in the future for things. If we break the stock market, we will not be able to buy things with all that worthless money. But if the system isn't at risk, I don't understand what all the hullabaloo is about. There have been countless bubbles before. Why weren't those regulated as much. Maybe they were and I'm an ignorant smooth brain. In any case, I hope that we can stop fighting over carcasses for greed. This was always about making the rules of the casino fair for me, personally. It's not life or death. I'm not an extremist or an ideologue. It's not about burning down the casino. I hope that the government will intervene if they think it is going to short circuit the whole thing and that people reading this gamble responsibly.
This will be my last post about this as I have a life to live.
-Tememachine OUT.
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EDIT 2: Now they're making fun of the movement. Fuck Wall Street. I hope they get what's coming to them one day. [In terms of regulation and prison sentences] I'm still out of this war. But seriously. Fuck them.

Episode 2: Using Options to protect your crown jewels when the market starts to fall
There are many ways in which Options can be traded, for income, profit, loss, insurance or to subsidise a Stock purchase and in this, the 2nd of my introductory series on Options, I’ve decided to going to cover off why you might want to buy a PUT on either an individual stock or indices to cover and protect your ‘long’ positions.
So what is a PUT exactly?
At its simplest a PUT is a type of Option you buy (or sell - see Episode 3 next Monday) which can make you money when a stock or the market is going down. (NB: You don’t actually need to own a stock to buy a PUT, it just depends on whether you want to run around the market ‘sans underwear’ and risk your private assets for no good reason – other than profit! :-) Joking aside however, the purpose of this post is to explain how the financial ‘instrument’ known as a PUT - loved and hated in equal measure, can be used for the purpose for which it was originally conceived.
Timing is pretty much everything when working with the stock market and that becomes 100 x more critical when you start trading Options. Buying a PUT at the wrong time (i.e. when the market or your stock is going upwards) is unlikely to win you many admirers and can be detrimental to your relationship if you have a shared brokerage account! J But as I mentioned in the first Episode of this series on the Covered CALL, a single Option = 100 shares; a relationship often referred to as ‘leverage.’ As such, and if you had 100 shares in Apple for example, another trader could achieve a similar holding ON A TIME LIMITED BASIS for just 1% of the money you paid for those Apple shares (less spread and commission); tempting isn’t it - $13,000 odd of stock for just $1,300. The problem however, is that at some point in the future (and unlike the Stock), an Option expires and then becomes valueless – a time few investors relish. Also, when multiple Options expire at the same time it’s known as a ‘Witching’ or even a triple Witching when stock Options, stock index futures and stock index options expire at the same time - Fun, fun, fun for the boys and girls on their Option broomsticks sans underwear, but not do good for anyone else! :-)
On the plus side however, and with a 99% theoretical leverage on your money, a PUT will gain value rapidly whenever the market or the stock it relates too goes down, and even after taking the ‘spread’ into account (that’s the difference between the ‘buy’ and the ‘sell’ price of the Option) it typically delivers anywhere from a 65: 1 to 75:1 return (profit or loss), so it’s a cheap way to insure your portfolio against a V shaped dip. It would be fair to say that PUT purchased and sold for the right reasons at the right time can go a long way towards protecting your crown jewels (Stocks) against temporary stock market downdrafts, and at the wrong time is a ruddy nuisance J
So what’s the catch?
There’s more than one actually :-) Firstly, neither stocks nor indices tend to travel up or down in nice predictable patterns – if they did, we’d all be minted by now and I probably wouldn’t these articles from the cupboard under the stairs! :-)
When you buy a PUT, it will bounce around your ticker from red to green (and then back to red again), :-) in much the same way that you would if you suddenly decided to take a stroll across a hot bed of coals to impress your friends here on Reddit, and just like those hot coals and your pretty little feet, it’s painful, unnerving and it doesn’t smell too good either! :-) But joking aside, let’s run some scenarios to show how this defensive strategy might not do what you’d like it to do;
a) Imagine your stock takes a sharp dive and up goes your PUT (65: 1 after the spread). You call your Partner and rave about your natural genius and unrivalled flare, but by the time the phone call ends and you return to your screen, you discover that the Stock has actually recovered and that pesky PUT you were just raving about has sent your ticker back in the red again! (what's the betting you don’t ring them back and confess your sins!?) J (I appreciate you could put a STOP order SELL order on your Options but due to the ways these things bounce around, it’s not always an ideal strategy to do so – see b) for why.
or
b) Maybe your stock takes that proverbial dive again but this time bottoms out and bounces along the floor for a few minutes, then you see the candlesticks starting to change, confirming that the recovery is imminent so you sell your PUT on a wave of GREEN – Yipee! J - Only to discover that for reasons unknown, the candle has melted and your Stock is now launching itself off a vertical cliff with all your money to oblivion! You start to wonder if the PUT knew it was about to be dumped and in a last act of revenge at your unfaithfulness, waited till the last possible moment when you had taken off the parachute before sticking in the boot? (It happens believe me, and it’s a very weird feeling when it does, as if someone at the brokerage firm (aka Casino) was watching your moves and had set you up) . . . :-)
But please don’t be put off (no pun intended - honest) J Buying a PUT can be a great idea, and when successfully deployed can protect your assets against downdraughts in both theory and in practice, but working with one is not as straight forward as anyone would like; it’s a bit like riding a Tandem (bicycle) with a drunk co-pilot in the lead, you both know timing is everything and where you want to get too, but getting there seems frustratingly elusive (and you keep falling off in the road!) :-)
A PUT can and will protect you and it’s a great defensive play but don’t stay in one for too long unless you know that crash in your assets is both imminent and ongoing! Timing remember is everything (x100) and walking on hot coals hurts!
Next Monday, I’ll take a closer look at using a PUT as a way to buy an underlying stock you want and get paid for the privilege, but until then; stay safe ‘guys’ and watch the market right now, it’s looking a bit choppy out there. Mark

To start, this should be a single player game. If Bethesda/Obsidian/MS can make it so I can play with 1 or 2 friends, I want that but understand it's not that simple.
So why it should be picked:
First, NY has an amazing history when it comes to Pre-Revolution, Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond. Major events like the battle at Saratoga (which is considered the turning point of the Revolution), the 1980 Miracle on Ice, and Woodstock (along with a whole lot more) all took place in upstate NY. So the rich history of the area is ripe for pro American stylizing and propaganda that gives FO it's unique take on American Atom-punk.
That along with more modern history of things like the Native Americans (The Oneidas) actually taking back their land and forming their own sovereign nation (basically they have their own gov. Pay no state taxes, and self govern with police, fire, and allow gambling which NY does not). So their modern government would not only be some great lore, but I honestly believe could be a basis for the main quest line. Things like their unique tribal leadership, philosophy, and gambling (hello 10 luck) could bring a very grey area to fallout that was kind of missed in FO3 + 4. Plus their mythology would make for a great weird scene that fallout has at least 1 of every game.
Also, for those who don't know, upstate NY is very country with major cities pocketed about. (Utica, Albany, Syracuse, etc). So if you liked NV style of wandering the wastes, or 3s style of city wandering, we've got both. Also, we've got two mountains areas, one in the Adirondacks and the Catskills are the other.
That said, one of the most important parts of fallout are the locations. Where can we go? For that I have a list:
Major locations:
Lake Placid Winter Olympics training facility - the winter olympics world be held in 2078 and if they still exist by then and to play into the game, LP could be the location of those games. Again, the miracle on ice where American Amateurs bested the Communist Russian Pros, was held there. The "Better dead than Red" sentiment would be full force. Not to mention one of a few great locations for a possible vault (80, in this case to house winter olympians). Plus, the weapons could be cool too. Hockey sticks, hockey skate blades on gloves, a goalie mask for armor, you name it.
Cooperstown Baseball HOF - Now when you think Americana, Baseball is one of your first thoughts, don't lie. Cooperstown is baseball central and very pretty. Another great place for pro-american styles and fun gear like baseball base mines, softball helmets (because fuck you "A League of Their Own" style pro-baseball league in FO sounds awesome), and of course bats and baseball grenades. Also a baseball Vault (Vault 4, 5, 7, or 9). Not my idea, but in this vault, there's 32 teams of mens and 32 teams of womens baseball (or coed teams, idk), all of whom are pro players. Vault tec test is simple, winner gets food and drinks, loser gets steroid infused food and drink (but they don't know it has steroids obviously). The idea is, test how good at baseball people can be if given monster amounts of steroids for generations. I'll make a separate post about this in detail if desired.
Canastota Boxing HOF - Another unique area for America. Canastota is pretty boring and empty, but for those of you old enough to remember Rocky when it came out, it basically revived Boxing as a major sport and also had a moment where America bested the Red Menace (Rocky IV). Maybe a spot for a vault or to learn unique unarmed moves. Pugilism Illustrated anyone?
Albany - NYs capital and an easy big city area along the Hudson. A great location for corporate greed, governmental corruption, and side quests. Can't say it'll be the focal point of the game since its very near the eastern border of it, but a good location for exploring and lore.
Buffalo/Niagara Falls - Ya ever gone over the falls in a barrel? Do ya want to? I think using Niagara Falls (which has an American and Canadian side, Canadas is the U-shaped famous one) as Fallouts first "Non-American" location would be fun. First, the falls are beautiful and are a major source of hydroelectric power. Second, in FO, America annexed canada, so it's technically still America! Third, right across the "border" are casinos! More gambling! Third and a half, it's another big city and buffalo is where the buffalo wing was invented (God bless buffalo wings). Besides the cool lore opportunity about the annexation and the city location, the falls could be a major location for the story if the main conflict was about powering the area, similar to NV.
Syracuse - NYs (literal) center city. The Salt City as it was formally known is a big city with some great old and new style. Again, not much about the city to say, but a great opportunity for corporate BS. The main attraction would be the Syracuse Dome (formerly the Carrier Dome). Due to its location and style, it's perfect as a central trading hub for the major cities and people. Think of Great Green Jewel style, people living, bars, shops, etc. BUT the really interesting part is what's right next to the Dome. SUNY ESF (Environmental Science and Forestry). This college is special because (A. I went there) it has very unique programs and with some future tech thrown in, could be a great location for a Fallout 3 Harold or NV vault 22-esq quest. The college already does experiments with major chemicals, evolution (FEV anyone?) and breeding plants for unique purposes. Again, I have a really cool idea for this area, but that can be a different post. Fun fact, ESF is actually working to bring back the North America Chestnut that went (nearly) extinct! Also, some asshole releases the fruit flies the genetics lab work with every year and it sucks.
NYC (Empire, 9/11 memorial, Statue of Liberty) - Yeah yeah, you can't have NY without the City, but frankly there's so much here to explore and deal with, I'd leave it to the pros to really do it justice.
Turning Stone Casino - Gambling, a hotel/restaurants like in NV, and a good spot for the main quest line.
Fort Stanwix - A real revolutionary war fort. HQ or major area for raiders. Safe, well protected and with plenty of history.
Fort Drum and Griffis Air Force Base: Two major bases that could be packed with guns, nukes, and power armor. Heavily guarded by turrets, robots, and security gates.
Main Quest:
Without too much detail, I figure your character will be hired to figure out the future of NY.
You'll be brought to the Turning Stone which is currently the HQ of the Oneida tribe. Your job would be to either work with the other tribes in the former Iroquois Confederation (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora [added later]). (Quick note: in my AU, some time after the bombs fell, the IC came to power because of their knowledge of living off the land and attempted to rebuild society. After some time rebuilding and establishing a post-war society, the tribes do the thing all humans do and bicker. Around 2200 the IC broke apart but the tribes retained power in their areas. They fight, trade, yadda yadda but no one is in control of everything.
Throughout your quest, it turns out that what is holding everyone back is a lack of power for things like lights and running water. Your job will be to determine where to get that power (Nuclear power plant in Oswego or the falls in Niagara?) And where to give it (one tribe? A few? Or all?). But that's not all, the tribes can't decide who should be in charge. One tribe wants to remain independent, don't help the outsiders and rebuild society in their image within NY, another wants to help others but would need to sacrifice their own people's safety and seclusion. Maybe another wants to be imperialist and expand their borders throughout America through way of force and fear while another agrees with taking land but wants it done through offers of protection for taxes. And each tribe has its own opinion on bringing the IC back together, staying separate, or taking over the tribes for themselves.
It's up to you character to decide who to help. Do you work hard to try and bring all tribes together under one banner or choose a side and execute their will as a paid mercenary/ambassador?
Other choices would be chaos by siding with raiders, or maybe a BOS path to take out all the tribes, idk, haven't thought it all out. Again, not a writer.
Mechanics:
So personally, I like the idea that if you choose to go with a single faction, there would a battle/war mechanic where you and an army (or alone if you really wanna try) take over and lay claim to areas similar to Nuka World where you fly the gangs flag. Nothing complicated, normal fallout fights, don't die and kill the leadehis troops to win.
Karma is back. You will garner good or bad rep with each tribe depending on what you do. I'd like an armor system like in NV but I can live without it.
There is an ending. Once you beat the game you can continue doing side quests for armoexperience/ammo but only for the tribes left in power. Occasional rebellions will rise up as random events that need to be put down.
Settlements are limited. Like skyrim, but a plot and build. No need to build one everywhere and you don't even need to do it if you don't want to.
Radio host? Gimme a Mr. New Vegas type guy. I don't want an eccentric 3-dog, I want a smoothed voiced person wishing me lady like luck.
Also, smarter AI.
Otherwise, typical FO mechanics. Weapons degrade, can upgrade weapons and armor, etc.
Main problems with NY:
No real borders to the south. Invisible walls would like be necessary which is stupid. Same to the East, but the Hudson could theoretically be used as a border if you put crazy strong mirelurks or something to kill the player if they tried to cross (or more invisible walls)
Don't want to disrespect the tribes. This is an issue with using each tribe as a possible faction. You're bound to piss off or disrespect one. So it'll be a task to make sure it's as limited as possible.
What to do with the city? It's a huge area that can be used for so much, but as a part of NY it's actually pretty seperated. It's a commercial hub now, but there's nothing there that would really be a reason to go down there. So do you make it one or do we just make it a glowing sea type area that's completely decimated from the bombs? That's my personal choice honestly, but it's a tough one to please as many as possible.
Conclusion: NY is rad.
I'll be taking questions as long as they do not involve Canadian trivia. Thank you.

TL:DR

• This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
• This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
• The second part (already released, you can read it here - but get through part 1 first :) ) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
• DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
• I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Hello, welcome to my first deep dive write up.
My name’s Mark and I’m an accountant with a passion for investing. About two years ago, I used to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm and have been behind the scenes at many different publicly traded and privately held companies in the U.S. My goal is to bring my unique perspective from that past experience, my current experience working in a new role at a large corporation, and my understanding of accounting to help break down some of the most exciting growth stocks on the market today.
I’m a long-term investor. I am focused on finding great companies and holding them for a long time. I’m willing to endure volatility, crazy price drops, and everything that comes with this approach as long as the facts that led me to originally invest and believe in that company have not changed. If you want to learn more about this approach. I recommend reading the book “100 Baggers” by Chris Mayer.
Introduction
I think it’s fitting that my first stock pick has to do with sports. Sports has been a part of my life since I could walk at the age of 2. First with baseball and soccer, and then later in my childhood with golf. I’ve always played American football and basketball for fun as well and have always been an avid fan of all the major sports in the US.
I started playing fantasy sports (mostly just fantasy football) about 6 years ago and have always enjoyed it. Traditionally, with fantasy football you draft a team at the beginning of the year and those are your players for the rest of the season. If you have a bad draft, oh well. You can try to improve your team with trades and free agent additions but it is tough. Leagues usually consist of 10-14 teams (each managed by an individual) and there’s obviously only one winner at the end of the season (about 4 months after the draft). This can lead to the managers of the lower performing teams losing interest as the season wanes on. I believe DraftKings’ (DK) founders saw this issue and saw an opportunity. Enter, daily fantasy sports. Now, with the DK platform you can draft a new team every week. Or if you want, every day. This allows fans of fantasy sports to engage at whichever point of the season they want and at varying financial stakes.
The Thesis Statement
For every stock pick I make, I want to provide a quick thesis statement that can serve as a reminder for why I’m buying and holding that stock for the long term. I’ll always aim to make it just a few sentences long so it can easily be remembered and internalized. This helps during times when the price may sporadically drop and you need to remember why you’re holding this position.
The thesis statement I have come up with for DK is as follows:
“DraftKings: The leader in allowing fans to engage financially with their favorite sports, teams, and players. Having money at stake makes the game a lot more interesting to watch. The era of daily fantasy sports games, online sports betting, and online betting (outside of sports), is just getting started and DK is as well positioned (or better positioned) than anyone to capitalize off of this trend.”
Notice how I said “allowing fans to engage financially” as the first sentence and not necessarily “allowing fans to gamble”. There’s a reason for that. According to US Federal Law, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests have specifically been exempted from the prohibitions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). DK has always been, and I believe will continue to be DFS contests 1st, sports betting 2nd, and other forms of gambling/entertainment 3rd. It is noteworthy that states at an individual level can still deem DFS contests illegal if they so wish, but as of this writing (11/26/20), 43 of the 50 US States allow DFS contests and DK, accordingly, is offering DFS contests in all 43 of those US States.
I’ll try to clarify the difference between DFS contests and sports betting real quick:
DFS Contest – Pay a pre-set entry fee to enter a contest. All entry fees go towards “The Pot”. “Draft” 9 players to be on your “Team” for 1 week. Enter your “Roster” into a contest with other players (could range from 1 other person to 1,000s of people, the DK user can choose). Whichever “Roster” amasses the most points for that week out of all contestants wins. The winner will get the highest payout, and depending on the nature of the contest, other top finishers will receive smaller payouts as well.
Sports Gambling – Team A is considered a 10 point favorite to defeat Team B. This means that Team A is expected, by the professional gambling line setters, to outscore Team B by 10 points. This is known as a point spread. You can bet on the underdog or the favorite. If you bet on the favorite, they have to win by more than 10 points for you to win the bet. If you bet on the underdog, you will win the bet as long as the underdog keeps the game within less than a 10 point defeat.
These are just a couple simple examples to help you see the difference. Sports Gambling (the 2nd priority of DK) is a very lucrative market just as the DFS contests are. However, in the US, Federal Laws and regulations are a lot stricter on Sports Gambling than they are on DFS. As of this writing (11/27/20), 22 states (including the District of Columbia) out of 51 possible allow sports gambling.
DK is still in the infancy stages of getting their sports gambling business going. In the 22 states where they could potentially operate, they currently have a sports gambling offering in 11 of those states. The sports gambling business model for DK can be broken into two main offerings – mobile sports betting, and retail sports betting. Mobile sports betting means you can place a sports bet online from the comfort of your own home, while retail sports betting means you must go to a casino and place a bet with the sportsbook in person. I personally believe mobile sports betting is the real potential cash cow for DK out of the two types of sports betting offerings due to the convenience and ease of access. DK is currently working on and encouraging customers to lobby their state lawmakers to legalize sports gambling in more states.
How DK makes money
At the very least, before you invest in a company, you better understand how they make money. In Chris Mayers’ excellent book, 100 Baggers, that I mentioned above, he continually references top line revenue growth as one of the main common indicators of a possible 100 Bagger. This isn’t to tell you that any stock I pick will be a 100 Bagger just because it has great top line revenue growth, but if I am looking at a growth stock to hold for the long term, revenue growth is one of the first things I look at.
For DK, their means of making money is quite simple. I already went into detail above about DFS Contests and Sports Gambling. In DK’s latest 10-Q filing with the SEC (filed 11/13/20), revenue is broken out into two main streams: Online Gaming and Gaming Software.
Online Gaming (82% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
Online gaming is the true core business of DK and includes the aforementioned DFS Contests, Sports Gambling and additional gambling (non-sports) opportunities. DK refers to their additional gambling (non-sports) as “iGaming” or “online casino”.
For the 9 months ended 9/30/20, Online Gaming revenue totaled $239M, up 30% YoY from $184M in the same prior year period. Keep in mind, that this is an increase that happened during a COVID-19 global pandemic that delayed and shortened many professional sports seasons.
Online gaming revenue is earned in a few ways that are slightly different, but very similar overall. In order to enter a DFS contest, a customer must pay an entry fee. DFS revenue is generated from these entry fees collected, net of prize payouts and customer incentives awarded to users. In order to place a sports bet (sports gambling), a customer places a wager with a DK Sportsbook. The DK Sportsbook sets odds for each wager that builds in a theoretical margin allowing DK to profit. Sports gambling revenue is generated from wagers collected from customers, net of payouts and incentives awarded to winning customers. The last form of online gaming revenue is earned in similar fashion to a land-based casino, offering online versions of casino games such as blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
Gaming Software (18% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
While the Online Gaming revenue stream mentioned above is a Business to Consumer (B2C) model, the Gaming Software revenue stream is a Business to Business (B2B) model. The Gaming Software side of the business was born out of the acquisition of SBTech, a company from the Isle of Man (near the UK) founded in 2007 that has 12+ years of experience providing online sports betting platforms to clients all over the world. The acquisition occurred as part of the SPAC driven IPO in April of 2020 that combined “the old DK company” with SBTech so that they now are “the new DK company” listed as DKNG on the NASDAQ. SBTech is a far more important part of the story than just being 18% of today’s revenue. The reason for this is because DK will eventually (planned mid-late 2021) be migrating all of their DFS and gambling offerings onto SBTech’s online platforms. Currently, for DFS, DK uses their own proprietary platform but that will move to SBTech with the migration. Currently, for online gambling, DK uses Kambi, the same online gambling platform that services Penn Gaming (PENN), a DK rival. But that’s enough about the software migration for now, back to the Gaming Software revenue.
The Gaming Software revenue stream for DK is essentially a continuation of SBTechs’ B2B business model. DK contracts with business customers to provide sports and casino betting software solutions. DK typically enters two different type of arrangements with B2B customers when selling the gaming software:

1. Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
2. Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

As mentioned above, SBTech was an international company based in the Isle of Man before being acquired by DK. Thus, the majority of their business in their first 12 years of operating independently has always been international and outside of the United States. This has helped DK, which has historically been US focused, expand it’s international reach.
A perfect example of expanding this international reach occurred recently during October (technically Q4) in which DK’s B2B technology (powered by SBTech) helped enable the launch of “PalaceBet”, a new mobile and online sportsbook offering from Peermont, a South Africa based resort and casino company. The deal was headed by DK’s new Chief International Officer, Shay Berka, who previously spent 10 years working for SBTech as CFO and General Manager. Mr. Berka took on the role of DK’s Chief International Officer upon the merger in April earlier this year. I think this deal shows that DK has integrated SBTech and it’s business very well into the larger business as a whole. They are not wasting any time using their newly acquired resources to expand their reach and bring in new sources of revenue.
This is the end of my first article about DK. My goal is to drop Part 2 later this week. The focus of Part 2 will be an in depth answer of the question – “Can we 10x from here?”
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKNG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

TL:DR

• This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
• This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
• The second part (to be released later this week) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
• DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
• I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Hello, welcome to my first deep dive write up.
My name’s Mark and I’m an accountant with a passion for investing. About two years ago, I used to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm and have been behind the scenes at many different publicly traded and privately held companies in the U.S. My goal is to bring my unique perspective from that past experience, my current experience working in a new role at a large corporation, and my understanding of accounting to help break down some of the most exciting growth stocks on the market today.
I’m a long-term investor. I am focused on finding great companies and holding them for a long time. I’m willing to endure volatility, crazy price drops, and everything that comes with this approach as long as the facts that led me to originally invest and believe in that company have not changed. If you want to learn more about this approach. I recommend reading the book “100 Baggers” by Chris Mayer.
Introduction
I think it’s fitting that my first stock pick has to do with sports. Sports has been a part of my life since I could walk at the age of 2. First with baseball and soccer, and then later in my childhood with golf. I’ve always played American football and basketball for fun as well and have always been an avid fan of all the major sports in the US.
I started playing fantasy sports (mostly just fantasy football) about 6 years ago and have always enjoyed it. Traditionally, with fantasy football you draft a team at the beginning of the year and those are your players for the rest of the season. If you have a bad draft, oh well. You can try to improve your team with trades and free agent additions but it is tough. Leagues usually consist of 10-14 teams (each managed by an individual) and there’s obviously only one winner at the end of the season (about 4 months after the draft). This can lead to the managers of the lower performing teams losing interest as the season wanes on. I believe DraftKings’ (DK) founders saw this issue and saw an opportunity. Enter, daily fantasy sports. Now, with the DK platform you can draft a new team every week. Or if you want, every day. This allows fans of fantasy sports to engage at whichever point of the season they want and at varying financial stakes.
The Thesis Statement
For every stock pick I make, I want to provide a quick thesis statement that can serve as a reminder for why I’m buying and holding that stock for the long term. I’ll always aim to make it just a few sentences long so it can easily be remembered and internalized. This helps during times when the price may sporadically drop and you need to remember why you’re holding this position.
The thesis statement I have come up with for DK is as follows:
“DraftKings: The leader in allowing fans to engage financially with their favorite sports, teams, and players. Having money at stake makes the game a lot more interesting to watch. The era of daily fantasy sports games, online sports betting, and online betting (outside of sports), is just getting started and DK is as well positioned (or better positioned) than anyone to capitalize off of this trend.”
Notice how I said “allowing fans to engage financially” as the first sentence and not necessarily “allowing fans to gamble”. There’s a reason for that. According to US Federal Law, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests have specifically been exempted from the prohibitions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). DK has always been, and I believe will continue to be DFS contests 1st, sports betting 2nd, and other forms of gambling/entertainment 3rd. It is noteworthy that states at an individual level can still deem DFS contests illegal if they so wish, but as of this writing (11/26/20), 43 of the 50 US States allow DFS contests and DK, accordingly, is offering DFS contests in all 43 of those US States.
I’ll try to clarify the difference between DFS contests and sports betting real quick:
DFS Contest – Pay a pre-set entry fee to enter a contest. All entry fees go towards “The Pot”. “Draft” 9 players to be on your “Team” for 1 week. Enter your “Roster” into a contest with other players (could range from 1 other person to 1,000s of people, the DK user can choose). Whichever “Roster” amasses the most points for that week out of all contestants wins. The winner will get the highest payout, and depending on the nature of the contest, other top finishers will receive smaller payouts as well.
Sports Gambling – Team A is considered a 10 point favorite to defeat Team B. This means that Team A is expected, by the professional gambling line setters, to outscore Team B by 10 points. This is known as a point spread. You can bet on the underdog or the favorite. If you bet on the favorite, they have to win by more than 10 points for you to win the bet. If you bet on the underdog, you will win the bet as long as the underdog keeps the game within less than a 10 point defeat.
These are just a couple simple examples to help you see the difference. Sports Gambling (the 2nd priority of DK) is a very lucrative market just as the DFS contests are. However, in the US, Federal Laws and regulations are a lot stricter on Sports Gambling than they are on DFS. As of this writing (11/27/20), 22 states (including the District of Columbia) out of 51 possible allow sports gambling.
DK is still in the infancy stages of getting their sports gambling business going. In the 22 states where they could potentially operate, they currently have a sports gambling offering in 11 of those states. The sports gambling business model for DK can be broken into two main offerings – mobile sports betting, and retail sports betting. Mobile sports betting means you can place a sports bet online from the comfort of your own home, while retail sports betting means you must go to a casino and place a bet with the sportsbook in person. I personally believe mobile sports betting is the real potential cash cow for DK out of the two types of sports betting offerings due to the convenience and ease of access. DK is currently working on and encouraging customers to lobby their state lawmakers to legalize sports gambling in more states.
How DK makes money
At the very least, before you invest in a company, you better understand how they make money. In Chris Mayers’ excellent book, 100 Baggers, that I mentioned above, he continually references top line revenue growth as one of the main common indicators of a possible 100 Bagger. This isn’t to tell you that any stock I pick will be a 100 Bagger just because it has great top line revenue growth, but if I am looking at a growth stock to hold for the long term, revenue growth is one of the first things I look at.
For DK, their means of making money is quite simple. I already went into detail above about DFS Contests and Sports Gambling. In DK’s latest 10-Q filing with the SEC (filed 11/13/20), revenue is broken out into two main streams: Online Gaming and Gaming Software.
Online Gaming (82% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
Online gaming is the true core business of DK and includes the aforementioned DFS Contests, Sports Gambling and additional gambling (non-sports) opportunities. DK refers to their additional gambling (non-sports) as “iGaming” or “online casino”.
For the 9 months ended 9/30/20, Online Gaming revenue totaled $239M, up 30% YoY from $184M in the same prior year period. Keep in mind, that this is an increase that happened during a COVID-19 global pandemic that delayed and shortened many professional sports seasons.
Online gaming revenue is earned in a few ways that are slightly different, but very similar overall. In order to enter a DFS contest, a customer must pay an entry fee. DFS revenue is generated from these entry fees collected, net of prize payouts and customer incentives awarded to users. In order to place a sports bet (sports gambling), a customer places a wager with a DK Sportsbook. The DK Sportsbook sets odds for each wager that builds in a theoretical margin allowing DK to profit. Sports gambling revenue is generated from wagers collected from customers, net of payouts and incentives awarded to winning customers. The last form of online gaming revenue is earned in similar fashion to a land-based casino, offering online versions of casino games such as blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
Gaming Software (18% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
While the Online Gaming revenue stream mentioned above is a Business to Consumer (B2C) model, the Gaming Software revenue stream is a Business to Business (B2B) model. The Gaming Software side of the business was born out of the acquisition of SBTech, a company from the Isle of Man (near the UK) founded in 2007 that has 12+ years of experience providing online sports betting platforms to clients all over the world. The acquisition occurred as part of the SPAC driven IPO in April of 2020 that combined “the old DK company” with SBTech so that they now are “the new DK company” listed as DKNG on the NASDAQ. SBTech is a far more important part of the story than just being 18% of today’s revenue. The reason for this is because DK will eventually (planned mid-late 2021) be migrating all of their DFS and gambling offerings onto SBTech’s online platforms. Currently, for DFS, DK uses their own proprietary platform but that will move to SBTech with the migration. Currently, for online gambling, DK uses Kambi, the same online gambling platform that services Penn Gaming (PENN), a DK rival. But that’s enough about the software migration for now, back to the Gaming Software revenue.
The Gaming Software revenue stream for DK is essentially a continuation of SBTechs’ B2B business model. DK contracts with business customers to provide sports and casino betting software solutions. DK typically enters two different type of arrangements with B2B customers when selling the gaming software:
​

1. Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
2. Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

As mentioned above, SBTech was an international company based in the Isle of Man before being acquired by DK. Thus, the majority of their business in their first 12 years of operating independently has always been international and outside of the United States. This has helped DK, which has historically been US focused, expand it’s international reach.
A perfect example of expanding this international reach occurred recently during October (technically Q4) in which DK’s B2B technology (powered by SBTech) helped enable the launch of “PalaceBet”, a new mobile and online sportsbook offering from Peermont, a South Africa based resort and casino company. The deal was headed by DK’s new Chief International Officer, Shay Berka, who previously spent 10 years working for SBTech as CFO and General Manager. Mr. Berka took on the role of DK’s Chief International Officer upon the merger in April earlier this year. I think this deal shows that DK has integrated SBTech and it’s business very well into the larger business as a whole. They are not wasting any time using their newly acquired resources to expand their reach and bring in new sources of revenue.
This is the end of my first article about DK. My goal is to drop Part 2 later this week. The focus of Part 2 will be an in depth answer of the question – “Can we 10x from here?”
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKNG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Hey everyone, I am a former Wall Street trader and quant researcher. When I was preparing for my own interviews, I have noticed the lack of accurate information and so I will be providing my own perspectives. One common pattern I see is people building their own algorithm by blindly fitting statistical methods such as moving averages onto data.
I have published this elsewhere, but have copy pasted it entirely below for you to read to keep it in the spirit of the sub rules. Edit: Removed link.

What it was like trading on Wall Street

Right out of college, I began my trading career at an electronic hedge fund on Wall Street. Several friends pitched trading to me as being a more disciplined version of wallstreetbets that actually made money. After flopping several initial interviews, I was fortunate to land a job at a top-tier firm of the likes of Jane Street, SIG, Optiver and IMC.
On my first day, I was instantly hooked.
My primary role there was to be a market maker. To explain this, imagine that you are a merchant. Suppose you wanted to purchase a commodity such as an apple. You would need to locate an apple seller and agree on a fair price. Market makers are the middle-men that cuts out this interaction by being always willing to buy or sell at a given price.
In finance lingo, this is called providing liquidity to financial exchanges. At any given moment, you should be confident to liquidate your position for cash. To give a sense of scale, tens of trillions in dollars are processed through these firms every year.
My time trading has been one of the most transformative periods of my life. It not only taught me a lot of technical knowledge, but it also moulded me to be a self-starter, independent thinker, and hard worker. I strongly recommend anyone that loves problem solving to give trading a shot. You do not need a mathematics or finance background to get in.
The trading culture is analogous to professional sports. It is a zero sum game where there is a clear defined winner and loser — you either make or lose money. This means that both your compensation and job security is highly dependent on your performance. For those that are curious, the rough distribution of a trader’s compensation based on performance is a tenth of the annual NBA salary.
There is a mystique about trading in popular media due to the abstraction of complicated quantitative models. I will shed light on some of the fundamental principles rooted in all trading strategies, and how they might apply to you.

Arbitrage

One way traders make money is through an arbitrage or a risk free trade. Suppose you could buy an apple from Sam for $1, and then sell an apple to Megan at $3. A rational person would orchestrate both legs of these trades to gain $2 risk free.
Arbitrages are not only found in financial markets. The popular e-commerce strategy of drop-shipping is a form of arbitrage. Suppose you find a tripod selling on AliExpress at $10. You could list the same tripod on Amazon for $20. If someone buys from you, then you could simply purchase the tripod off AliExpress and take home a neat $10 profit.
The same could be applied to garage sales. If you find a baseball card for $2 that has a last sold price on EBay for $100, you have the potential to make $98. Of course this is not a perfect arbitrage as you face the risk of finding a buyer, but the upside makes this worthwhile.

Positive expected value bets

Another way traders make money is similar to the way a casino stacks the odds in their favour. Imagine you flip a fair coin. If it lands on heads you win $3, and if it lands on tails you lose $1. If you flip the coin only once, you may be unlucky and lose the dollar. However in the long run, you are expected to make a positive profit of $1 per coin flip. This is referred to as a positive expected value bet. Over the span of millions of transactions, you are almost guaranteed to make a profit.
This exact principle is why you should never gamble in casino games such as roulette. These games are all negative expected value bets, which guarantees you to lose money over the long run. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as poker or card counting in black jack.
The next time you walk into a casino, make a mental note to observe the ways it is designed to keep you there for as long as possible. Note the lack of windows and the maze like configurations. Even the free drinks and the cheap accommodation are all a farce to keep you there.

Relative Pricing

Relative pricing is a great strategy to use when there are two products that have clear causal relationships. Let us consider an apple and a carton of apple juice. Suppose there have a causal relationship where the carton is always $9 more expensive than the apple. The apple and the carton is currently trading at $1 and $10 respectively.
If the price of the apple goes up to $2, the price is not immediately reflected on the carton. There will always be a time lag. It is also important to note that there is no way we can determine if the apple is trading at fair value or if its overpriced. So how do we take advantage of this situation?
If we buy the carton for $10 and sell the apple for $2, we have essentially bought the ‘spread’ for $8. The spread is fairly valued at $9 due to the causal relationship, meaning we have made $1. The reason high frequency trading firms focus so much on latency in the nanoseconds is to be the first to scoop up these relative mispricing.
This is the backbone for delta one strategies. Common pairs that are traded against each other includes ETFs and their inverse counterpart, a particular stock against an ETF that contains the stock, or synthetic option structures.

Correlations

Correlations are mutual connections between two things. When they trend in the same direction they are said to have a positive correlation, and the vice versa is true for negative correlations. A popular example of positive correlation is the number of shark attacks with the number of ice-cream sales. It is important to note that shark attacks do not cause ice-cream sales.
Often times there are no intuitive reason for certain correlations, but they still work. The legendary Renaissance Technologies sifted through petabytes of historical data to find profitable signals. For instance, good morning weather in a city tended to predict an upward movement in its stock exchange. One could theoretically buy stock on the opening and sell at noon to make a profit.
One important piece of advice is to disregard any retail trader selling a course to you, claiming that they have a system. These are all scams. At best, these are bottom of the mill signals that are hardly profitable after transaction costs. It is also unlikely that you have the system latency, trading experience or research capabilities to do this on your own. It is possible, but very difficult.

Mean reversions

Another common strategy traders rely on is mean reversion trends. In the options world the primary focus is purchasing volatility when it is cheap compared to historical values, and vice versa. Buying options is essentially synonymous with buying volatility. Of course, it is not as simple as this so don’t go punting your savings on Robinhood using this strategy.
For most people, the most applicable mean reversion trend is interest rates. These tend to fluctuate up and down depending on if the central banks want to stimulate saving or spending. As global interest rates are next to zero or negative, it may be a good idea to lock in this low rate for your mortgages. Again, consult with a financial advisor before you do anything.

I don't know, it may be just my paranoia. But sometimes it feels like Pokemon Go is intentionally trying to humiliate me.
I have noticed, that sometimes in PVP I get the worst opponents for my set of pokemons. For example, if my first pokemon has fast water attack - I get opponents who's first pokemon is resistant to water. Several battles in a row! But when I change my pokemon's fast attack to lightning and keep playing with EXACTLY THE SAME set of pokemons - I start getting opponents who's first pokemon is resistant to lightning. What the hell?!
Another example: I can play several battles without any issue, but when I change one of my pokemons - I start getting error "failed to find opponent" or something like that. Why? Is it because Niantic is trying to calculate which pokemon combination will destroy my pokemons? Or is it because there are no suitable opponents who are guaranteed to defeat me? Even changing order of pokemons may cause this error! As a result, sometimes I can win several battles in a row, 5 out of 5. And sometimes I lose several battles in a row with exactly same pokemons on the same rank level.
I suppose, they are trying to motivate people to spend more money. Like in casino: First, they let you win several times - to show you that you can win, to encourage you. Then they start humiliating you to make you question yourself what is wrong, read guides and probably spend money to buy some incubators, remote passes, lures etc. in order to get better pokemons. Then they let you win again. Then they make you lose and spend more money again. I don't know what is the exact formula. Maybe they also consider how many times did you play today or how much money did you spent or what is you current win\lose ration. This should be discovered by experiments. Theoretically, the system can be abused if figured out what is the exact logic. Previously I found that if I start losing I can start changing my pokemons until I start getting better opponents. But I think recently they fixed that hole. So instead of better opponents I start getting error message.
Anyway, if this system exists - it is really unfair and offensive. I hope it is just my imagination and I am playing against more skilled people rather then Niantic's algorithms of player humiliation. But I will collect more statistics to proof my thoughts.

Warning: massive amount of text ahead. I created a mostly functional race route around the world (all loactions like buildings, businesses, landmarks, etc. are REAL locations and could theoretically actually work in the race). I tried to have a good variety in locations and types of challenges, but it's really hard! I find it a lot harder to complain about challenge design after making this. Even though this could technically happen there are probably some safety concerns in going to South Africa and Lesotho and it's probably not possible for the American Amazing Race to film in Cuba, but I decided to do it anyway. If you have any questions or feedback please let me know!
​
RACE #2
Leg 1 (USA - Japan)
Leg 2 (Japan - South Korea)
Leg 3 (South Korea - India)
Leg 4 (India - Oman)
Leg 5 (Oman)
Leg 6 (Oman - South Africa)
Leg 7 (South Africa - Lesotho)
Leg 8 (Lesotho - Greece)
Leg 9 (Greece)
Leg 10 (Greece - North Macedonia)
Leg 11 (North Macedonia - Cuba)
Leg 12 (Cuba - USA)
​
LEG 1
USA - Japan
Start at Cloud Gate, Chicago, Illinois
Run to clue at Millenium Monument
Clue #1
Make your way to the Gunma region of Japan, and travel to Sarugakyu Onsen. However, to get your tickets to Japan, you must make your way on foot through the busy streets of Chicago to Navy Pier, where flights will be given out according to the order of your arrival. Flights go to Tokyo, and you must make your own travel arrangements from there.
Flight 1 (5 teams): Chicago - Los Angeles - Tokyo, arrives 8:00 AM
Flight 2 (4 teams): Chicago - Tokyo, arrives 9:30 AM
Flight 3 (2 teams): Chicago - San Francisco - Tokyo, arrives 9:45 AM
Clue #2
Both team members must go into the hot springs and search it for the partly submerged cluebox to get your next clue.
Clue #3
Travel to Sarugakyo Bungy for your next clue.
Clue #4
Roadblock: Who’s ready to take a jump?
Bungy jump at the largest bungy jump in all of Japan at 62 meters, or over 200 feet! Once you’ve taken your leap of faith, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #5
Travel to Uenokunirokunomiya Haruna Shrine, Takasaki, for your next clue.
Clue #6
Create one string of paper cranes in Senbazuru. Senbazuru is the crafting of 1000 paper cranes for good luck. Following the demonstration, learn how to craft paper cranes. Once you have created forty of them and strung them together, deliver them to a Shinto priest at Akiba Shrine. He will give you your next clue.
Clue #7
Travel by train to Akihabara, Tokyo, and go to the top of the Tokyo Skytree to receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Roadblock: Who can ‘go’ kart? The teammate who did the first roadblock cannot do this one.
Travel to Akihabari Street Kart 1 and dress up in one of the many ridiculous costumes the company has to offer. Then, join a fifteen minute go-karting tour around the streets of this bustling region and look for three enormous signs in race colors with three different Japanese characters on them. If you can spot and write all three characters down correctly during the rush of Tokyo, you’ll receive your next clue. If you can’t get it right, you’ll have to join the next available tour.
Clue #9
Travel to Horin Park on foot to find the first pit stop! The last team to check in here may be eliminated.
Pit Stop, Leg 1
trip to Canada
last: eliminated
​
LEG 2
Japan - South Korea
Clue #1
Fly to Busan, South Korea! Upon arrival, make your way to Beomeo-sa for your next clue.
Fast Forward, Leg 2
Go to Songdo Beach and swim out into the ocean, locating the five whale statues in the water. At each statue, pick up marked letter tiles. Once you have all seven (two statues have two tiles), you can go back to the beach and unscramble the letters that spell out the name of a traditional South Korean delicacy that the other contestants eat at their first challenge. If you get the right word, you’ll be given a clue that takes you straight to the end of the leg.
Clue #2
Master the art of Korean meditation. If you can master all of the moves correctly, then your instructor will give over your next clue.
Clue #3
Head to Taejongdae for your next clue.
Clue #4
Roadblock: Who’s desperate to eat?
Take the marked path over one mile uphill to the marked food stand, and finish one serving of Soondae, a traditional South Korean delicacy that is made of pig intestines and pork blood. Once you have finished the food, you can run down to your partner and get your next clue.
Clue #5
Take the Songdo Marine Cable Car from Songnim Park to Amnam Park to receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Detour: Fish Identity or Fish Delivery
Fish Identity: Go to Jagalchi Fish Market and search for the marked stall. Once there, sort an enormous box of fish and organize them. Once the stall owner approves, put them up for stock in the stall to receive your next clue.
Fish Delivery: Go to Jacky’s Seafood and take three orders and three addresses that need to be delivered. Once you have delivered all the fish to all the correct addresses throughout the Gamcheon Culture Village, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Make your way to the pit-stop at Haedong Yonggungsa. The last team to arrive may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 2
-first: trip to Belize
-last: non-elimination
​
LEG 3
South Korea - India
Clue #1
Fly to Hyderabad, India, and go to the Charminar for your first clue.
Clue #2
Travel to Ramoji Film City Main Entrance to receive your next clue.
Speed Bump, Leg 3
Make your way to Saha’s Adventure Park and zorb down a steep hill. Once you’ve made it, you can continue racing.
Clue #3
Detour: Birdy Woods or Bollywood
Birdy Woods: Dressing up in clumsy bird costumes, search through Asia’s largest aviary for a cutout of the bird your partner is dressing up as. Once you’ve found the two cutouts, head to the Bonsai Garden. If you match the right bird, you’ll receive your next clue.
Bollywood: Head to Ramoji Movie Magic. Dressing up in traditional Indian outfits, memorize a short dance to the tune of some Bollywood music and perform it to the live audience and judges. If you meet their standards, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #4
Head to Nehru Zoological Park where your next clue will be waiting.
Clue #5
Take an amazing elephant ride! With both teammates on the elephant’s back guide it through a short course. If you can reach the end in under two minutes, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Make your way to Bidar Fort by public transport for your next clue.
Clue #7
Roadblock: Who’s itching to get etching?
One team member must help in the process of the creation of bidriware. First, you must chisel one section in the piece of bidriware very precisely. Any error and you must restart. If given the clear, then you must then make their way inside Bidar Fort and collect a total of three baskets of soil for the artisans to use later in the process. Finally, you must use some of the soil you collected and coat a piece of bidriware in it. If every part of the challenge was done to the satisfaction of the artisans, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Make your way to the Bahmani Tombs and the pit-stop! The last team to arrive will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 3
-first: trip to Japan
-last: eliminated
​
LEG 4
India - Oman
Clue #1
Fly to Muscat, Oman! Once you have arrived, make your way to Al Alam Palace, where you will find marked cars waiting outside. Your clue will be waiting on the car.
Clue #2
Drive all the way to the Nizwa Souq in Nizwa, Oman, where you will find nine different tags, each releasing teams at different times the next morning, when you will be given your next clue.
Tag 1: departure at 7:00 AM
Tag 2: departure at 7:05 AM
Tag 3: departure at 7:10 AM
Tag 4: departure at 7:15 AM
Tag 5: departure at 7:20 AM
Tag 6: departure at 7:25 AM
Tags 7-9: departure at 7:30 AM
Clue #3
Detour: Selling Goats or Weighing Dates
Selling Goats: Navigate through the souq to the weekly goat market. You must select a seller and help them sell their goats. First, thoroughly clean five goats so they are ready for selling. Then, parade five goats around the “walking circle,” where potential buyers will inspect which goats to buy. You must finally buy a goat yourself, haggling for a price under 100 riyals, or 260 US dollars. Once you can purchase a goat, you will receive your next clue. Keep the goat for the next challenge.
Weighing Dates: Find the marked stall in the souq that is selling dates. Your goal is to weigh out 200 grams of Ajwa Dates, 175 grams of Barhi Dates, and 125 grams of Hayani Dates. To do this, you must travel across the market to a scale at a different date stall. If you can get the perfect amount of dates, you will receive your next clue. Keep the dates for the next challenge.
Clue #4
Travel on foot to the Contemporary Mosque with either your goat or dates and trade them with the man waiting out front for your next clue.
Clue #5
Make your way back to the souq, and head to Omani Craftsman's House where you will find your next clue.
Clue #6
Roadblock: Who can work and weave?
The teammate participating in this roadblock must help create a small basketwork bowl. After watching the example, you must use the provided materials to finish off the bowl. If it meets the requirement of the shop owner, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Make your way to the pit-stop for this leg of the race, Nizwa Fort! The last team to arrive may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 4
-first: continue racing
-last: continue racing
​
LEG 5
Oman
Clue #1
Drive yourself to Bimmah Sinkhole in Muscat, Oman! You will receive your next clue after having a cup of delicious locally-made coffee. Caution! Double U-Turn ahead!
Clue #2
Detour: Script Write or Shipwright
Script Write: Drive to Bait al Zubair and go into the Manuscript Room. Using a provided paper and translation guide, figure out what the marked manuscript says in English. If anything is wrong when submitting it, though, you must start completely over.
Shipwright: Drive to Oman Maritime Boatyard and find the marked boat. Oman Maritime has been reviving the craft of making the traditional wooden boats of Oman’s past, and you must help with the process. First, you must hand-sand a small section of the marked vessel. Then, you and your partner must work together to stitch coconut palm fiber through twenty holes, or eighty total stitches. Once you’re done, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #3
Make your way to Mutrah Souk for your next clue and the U-Turn board!
Clue #4
Search through the enormous market for one of three marked stalls. One you’ve found a stall, search through their wares for a trinket with a red/yellow flag on the bottom. Give the correct trinket to the shop owner, and they will hand you your next clue.
Clue #5
Drive yourself to Qurum Beach, where you will receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Roadblock: Who will pass the shells?
For this challenge, one team member must watch the demonstration of two fishermen playing a traditional Omani game, Al Hawalees. You must first create a “board” in the sand and collect the required amount of shells to play. You must then challenge a local fisherman. If you can win while following all of the rules correctly, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Make your way to the pit-stop at Wadi Bani Khalid. The last team to check in will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 5
-first: trip to Tanzania
-last: eliminated
​
LEG 6
Oman - South Africa
Clue #1
Fly out of Oman to Durban, South Africa, on one of two flights.
Flight 1 (2 teams): Muscat - Durban, arrives 7:30 AM
Flight 2 (6 teams): Muscat - Dar es Salaam - Durban, arrives 8:00 AM
Upon touching down, make your way to Moses Mabhida Stadium, where you will find your next clue.
Clue #2
Roadblock: Who will swing for the skies?
One team member must strap in and complete the Big Rush Big Swing, the largest swing in the world! Dive 263 feet down. Once you have finished the swing, you will receive a section and seat number. You will search the stands for your next clue.
Clue #3
Make your way to Umhlanga Lighthouse for your next clue.
Clue #4
Shake it up! In this challenge, you must create Lighthouse Bar’s famous “Umhlanga Schling.” Use the provided recipe to create fifteen drinks to perfection, and you will receive your next clue.
Clue #5
Head to Addington Beach and dig underneath one of the large sandcastles for your next clue.
Clue #6
Detour: Tree or Sea
Tree: For this detour, go to Durban Botanical Gardens. Use a provided golf cart to make your way to the famous Wood’s Cycad, a tree dating back to the age of dinosaurs. It has been cared for here since 1848. Once there, use one of the provided pieces to put together a large 3d puzzle of the tree. Once it has been approved, you will be handed your clue, and you can drive back to the front of the gardens and continue racing.
Sea: Go to uShaka Marine World and help out with some chores! First, help the kitchen staff and prepare 5 pounds of specially made vegetables for some of the aquarium’s fish. Second, travel around the park and take water samples from each of the specified exhibits. Finally, record blood test results taken during routine health check-ups. If you’ve completed all of the steps correctly, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Head to the pit-stop at Suncoast Casino and Entertainment World! The last team to check in may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 6
-first: 5k each
-last: eliminated
​
LEG 7
South Africa - Lesotho
Clue #1
Drive yourself through Qacha’s Nek and into Lesotho! Once in Lesotho, drive yourself to Maletsunyane Falls where you’ll find your next clue.
Fast Forward, Leg 7
By completing this fast forward, you will skip an overnight rest point and will be able to head directly to the pit-stop. Head to Sehlabathebe National Park. Once there, using the provided map and compass, ride by horseback to the nomadic tribal people’s current village. At the village, help cook pap-pap, a type of porridge common in Lesotho. The first team to complete the challenge will be able to head directly to the pit-stop.
Clue #2
Drive yourself to Seshoeshoe Decor and Fashion Designers in Maseru for your next clue.
Clue #3
Who can cut up a pattern?
One teammate will choose one of the complicated tribal Lesotho designs, and must find five pieces of fabric that match it perfectly. But be careful, the designs have miniscule differences between them. Once you’ve found all of your fabric, cut them at the directed places to receive your next clue.
Clue #4
Make your way to the Subeng River Dinosaur Footprints, where you will find seven tags, each releasing you at a time in the morning when you will receive your next clue.
Tags 1-2: departure at 7:00 AM
Tag 3: departure at 7:20 AM
Tag 4: departure at 7:40 AM
Tags 5-7: departure at 8:00 AM
Clue #5
Detour: Cave or Maze
Cave: For this challenge, go to Liphofung Cave. You must memorize all of the rock paintings in a specified section (15 paintings), and then run approximately a quarter-mile away and select the correct paper cutouts and put them in the right order as they were shown in the cave. When you have everything selected and ordered correctly, you’ll receive your next clue.
Maze: Make your way to the second largest dam in Africa, Katse Dam. Enter the first marked gallery and record the air temperature and the humidity. Use those observations to crack a complicated code, and enter the parallel gallery it directs you into. Be careful, it might be hard to find! If you enter the correct gallery, you will find a boat key, which you must give to the boatmaster. He will then give you a small ride around the reservoir and you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive yourself to Sani Stone Lodge for your next clue.
Clue #7
Help a local Basotho Shephard and their dogs move their sheep to a new grazing location. Don’t let the sheep get away! Once they’ve all been successfully moved, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Make your way on foot to the pit-stop at Sani Top Chalet! The last team to check in may be eliminated!
Pit-Stop, Leg 7
-first: trip to Egypt
-last: non-elimination
​
LEG 8
Lesotho - Greece
Clue #1
Via Maseru International Airport, make your way to Athens, Greece, known to be the home of the first democracy! From there, make your way to the Theatre of Dionysus on The Acropolis, where you will take part in a U-Turn vote. The two teams with the most votes will be sentenced to an automatic U-Turn when they arrive at the detour. After the vote, teams will be given their next clue.
Clue #2
Fly to Chania, Greece on the island of Crete! Upon touching down, use the provided cars to make your way to the Agora and search for the marked stall.
Speed Bump, Leg 8
Together, team members must eat through a total of twelve Greek figs. Once all of the fruits have been stomached, that team can continue racing.
Clue #3
Detour: Traverse or Immerse
Traverse: Make your way to the Maritime Museum of Crete, and find the small yacht model outside the museum. Your goal is to remember as much as you can without writing it down, then make a half mile walk through the streets of Crete to the yacht harbor, where you must find a marked yacht and rearrange the items until it is just like it was in the model. Once the actual yacht matches the model, you’ll receive your next clue.
Immerse: Travel to Minoan’s World 3D Museum, and get treated to a five minute long “9D movie” on Cretan History which engages all of your senses. If you can answer all five questions correctly, you’ll receive your next clue. However, only two teams can participate in the show at once.
Clue #4
Drive to the Palace of Knossos for your next clue.
Clue #5
Use the provided map to navigate through the ruins, collecting puzzle pieces at each of the marked rooms. Once you have all ten bundles of pieces, head outside and recreate the large painting using the pieces you collected. Once it has been finished, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive to Cretan Olive Oil Farm for your next clue.
Clue #7
Roadblock: Who is feeling oily?
In this challenge, one teammate will help in the process of creating olive oil. First, set up special tree-shaking equipment and a net, used to efficiently get olives out of the tree without bruising them. You will then sort the olives between bruised and fair. Finally, crush both bruised and fair olives with a traditional granite olive press. Once they have been successfully grinded into a paste, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Find the pit-stop along the coast of the small village of Loutro back on the west side of Crete. You will soon discover, however, that the village is completely blocked off from the mainland by mountains, so you will have to find alternate transportation. Hurry, because the last team to arrive will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 8
-first: trip to Austria
-last: eliminated
​
LEG 9
Greece
Clue #1
Fly back to the mainland in Thessaloniki! When you’ve arrived, search Aristotelous Square for your next clue.
Clue #2
Detour: Serve or Observe
Serve: For this detour head on foot to Bougatsa Giannis, a renowned restaurant in the Ladadika area. You must take the orders of twelve total people and retrieve the correct dishes for them from the kitchen. Each person also has a dessert, which must be retrieved from nearby pastry shop Trigona Elinidi. You may take notes, but if you mess up someone’s order, you must start it over again.
Observe: Go by taxi to the Thessaloniki Science Centre Technology Museum and make your way to the main planetarium. The night sky will be projected above, and will be moving around you at one hour of regular movement per second. Using the provided key, identify five Greek constellations first identified by Claudius Ptolemy- Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Centaurus, and Perseus. Be careful, it might be dizzying! Once you’ve found all of the constellations, you’ll be rewarded with your next clue.
Clue #3
Find the Arch of Galerius for your next clue.
Clue #4 Use one of the marked cars to drive yourself for the rest of the leg. Go to the Thessaloniki Concert Hall for your next clue.
Clue #5
Roadblock: Who can blow a note and hold a tune?
Macedonian brass bands are extremely popular in the Macedonia region of Greece, so for this roadblock, learn how to play the trumpet, a popular instrument played in these bands. If you can play a few notes of the folk song with the band, you’ll get your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive to Dalamara Winery. Once there, follow the guide to the directed area, where you must load two empty kegs onto a horse drawn cart. Direct the horse approximately half a mile through the vineyard and return back to the kegs. You will continue to load and deliver a total of eight kegs to receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Drive to Ski Center Voras and take the lift to the top where Kajmakcalan, a chapel right on the border between Greece and North Macedonia is situated. The last team to arrive at this pit-stop may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 9
-first: trip to Colombia
-last: eliminated
​
LEG 10
Greece - North Macedonia
Clue #1
Drive yourself across the border into North Macedonia to Popova Kula Winery! Once there, pull a tag that departs you at a certain time the next morning.
Tag 1: departure at 8:00 AM
Tag 2: departure at 8:10 AM
Tag 3: departure at 8:20 AM
Tags 4-5: departure at 8:30 AM
Clue #2
Roadblock: Who is a master chef?
The teammate doing this roadblock will use the provided recipe to cook the national dish of North Macedonia, Tavche Gravche, a special type of baked beans. If it is cooked to perfection, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #3
Drive yourself to the Millenium Cross in Skopje for your next clue.
Clue #4
Detour: Art Block or Charity Walk
Art Block: Drive to the Art Bridge, which is home to 29 statues of important Macedonian artists and musicians. Wandering on and around the bridge are 29 people dressed up as those artists and musicians. You must match nine total people to their statues. A maximum of three teams can complete this challenge.
Charity Walk: Drive to the Mother Teresa Memorial House and load a trolley cart with a marked group of items that will almost completely fill the trolley. On foot, travel to the SOS Children’s Village National Office where you are to deliver the items. If you do not choose this option, your items will still be donated after the leg.
Clue #5
Drive to the city of Struga, where the North Macedonian national anthem was created. Make your way to the Saint Archangel Michael Cave Church for your next clue.
Clue #6
Teammates must work together to memorize four total stanzas of the Macedonian national anthem- in Macedonian. If you can perform it with the orchestra without forgetting the lyrics, you’ll receive your clue to the next pit-stop.
Clue #7
Drive to the Monastery of St. Naum and the pit-stop! The last team to check in may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 10
-first: trip to Indonesia
-last: eliminated
​
LEG 11
North Macedonia - Cuba
Clue #1
Make your way back to Skopje, then fly to Havana, Cuba, on two predetermined flights. Once there, go by taxi to Taller Calle 8, a car repair shop, where you will receive your next clue.
Flight 1 (2 teams): Skopje - Paris - Havana, arrives 6:30 AM
Flight 2 (2 teams): Skopje - London - Miami - Havana, arrives 7:10 AM
Clue #2
Roadblock: Who can fix it up?
The teammate doing this roadblock must follow the example to repair one of the classic Cuban cars. If it makes it past inspection, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #3
For the remainder of the leg, you’ll have to drive the car you just fixed. Head to Fusterlandia, where you’ll find your next clue.
Clue #4
Find where the attached image is in person throughout the folk neighborhood of Fusterlandia. If you can find where the image actually is and show the judge, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #5
Sell the Box or Find the Band
Sell the Box: Drive to Santa Maria del Mar Beach and sell the provided boxes of boxed rum, the “juice box for bug kids.” While never selling any box for under 25 Cuban Pesos, make 375 Cuban Pesos (around fifteen US dollars). Once you’ve made your sales, you’ll receive your next clue.
Find the Band: For this detour, drive to the Cuban Art Factory and observe the large, marked piece of sheet music in the first room. Going from room to room in the factory, try to find the band who is playing the music that was in the first room. You must make your guesses ten minutes apart, so be confident in your answers! Once you have chosen the right band, you’ll be rewarded with your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive to Vinales Valley Tobacco Field and search the marked area for your next clue.
Clue #7
Perfectly roll ten Cuban cigars, five per contestant. Watch the example closely, as any small mistake in rolling the tobacco leaf will cause the cigar to fail. Once all of the cigars have been perfectly rolled, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Take a long drive to the eastern side of Cuba and the pit-stop at Ignacio Agramonte Park in Camaguey! The last team to check into the pit-stop will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 11
-first: trip to Botswana
-last: eliminated
​
LEG 12
Cuba - USA
Clue #1
For the first part of this leg, you’ll be staying in Cuba! Drive yourself using the car you used in the last leg down Neptuno street in Havana, where you will find a guarapo stall with a flag.
Clue #2
Using the hand-press to crush sugarcane, make forty glasses of guarapo. Once all of the glasses have been successfully made, you’ll be handed your next clue.
Clue #3
Drive to the Tropicana Night Club for your next clue.
Clue #4
Roadblock: Who can make it and shake it?
For this challenge, one team member must follow the instructions of the costume designer to create a costume for one of the showgirls. If the costume is made correctly and given a pass, teams will be given their next clue.
Clue #5
Teams must drive to Aeropuerto de La Habana Ciudad Libertad, where you will embark on a charter flight to Key West, Florida, back in the United States. Once in Key West, teams must go to the southernmost point in the continental United States for their next clue.
Clue #6
Make your way to the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, where you’ll find your next clue.
Clue #7
Roadblock: Who is a reader, a writer, and a decipherer?
Ernest Hemingway, known for books like The Old Man and the Sea, had a notoriously bad handwriting, with little regards to punctuation or accuracy. One team member must copy one of Hemingway’s notes perfectly, letter for letter, on the provided typewriter. If it was typed perfectly, you will be handed a decoder key which you can use to find the hidden message, which will reveal the location of your final challenge.
Answer: Smathers Beach
Clue #8
Now that you’ve made it to Smathers Beach, you’ll partake in a final challenge. Out in between the marked buoys are bundles of letter tiles. You must dive down to retrieve them and bring them back up to shore. Figure out what you’re supposed to spell out with them, and once you think you have the answer, hang the tiles in order on your clothesline. If you have the correct answer, you’ll be given the final clue.
Answer: United States, Japan, South Korea, India, Oman, South Africa, Lesotho, Greece, North Macedonia, Cuba, United States (teams must figure out that they have to spell out all of the countries they visited in order on the race)
Clue #9
Congratulations! Make your way to the final pit-stop at Fort Zachary Cruise Pier! Go, go, go, the first team to reach the pit-stop will win 1 MILLION dollars!
Pit-Stop, Leg 12
10 countries
4 continents
over 27,000 miles
first: 1 million dollars

Hello!
I am Mr. Way, and it is theoretically possible that you've seen one or more of my articles on Medium. Here's a link, if you are interested! https://medium.com/mr-ways-guide-to-clash-of-clans
Okay, so here's the deal. I've been running one clan for several years (ikr), and that was cool, but for a lot of reasons, I think it would be much cooler if I initiate the organization of a whole bunch of clans together into one self-governing and self-maintaining "institution" that could function with or without me, and support many more players in the ways a good leader does than I could support, myself.
So, since I happen to have 16 accounts at high levels, I've been creating additional clans, and pumping multiples at once! The idea is, ultimately, to have a type of clan for every type of player, and to have as many of each type of clan as players want to join, with players able to move easily between different clans in the organization depending on whether they are farming, warring, trophy pushing, base designing, hero upgrading, etc.
Here is the discord link that unites the clans, and which I will be using to organize interclan activities and offshoots etc.
https://discord.gg/ZekS3uEFNs
We are still fairly early in this process, but we currently have accumulated 4 clans populated with about 130 accounts, many of which are people with minis. I try to purge the inactive accounts regularly, but there must be a few hiding in there somewhere.
Clans in the Tribe: #1 Mr. Way's Casino, Clan level 16, #LGPP9088 This is my original clan, and it is the highest average level. Players range mostly from TH10-TH12 with a couple 13s, and then my own mini squad of TH13s when I have them there.
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#2 Way of Blitz 13, Clan level 5, #29UURR2RJ Clan dedicated to the "War Blitz Rush" strategy, all the way to TH13, following certain guidelines for upgrades to maintain war capabilities despite "rushing." Rushed bases welcome.
Large span of TH levels, probably from TH6-TH13, mostly very rushed, but in such a way that we are still highly competitive in wars. Get ahead in your attack levels, and don't wait to unlock anything! Join the fast track!
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#3 Guerrilla Wars [sic], #2YRUGPPGQ "Pirate War" Clan. That is, we don't try to win wars. This clan is all about looting, ideal for pushing heroes fast. Wars are seen as a source of cheap loot, which you will just use a low power attack to snipe the TH for the loss loot against the enemy #1.
Everyone plans to lose with their attacks, so they can use extremely cheap attacks, Perhaps just the heroes, for a totally free bit of loot. The point, again, is that we accept all bases of all types, and we lose wars on purpose (unless it looks really easy to win) for the assured easy loot w/o army.
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#4 WayOfSanctuary, #2L92JCQC8 Clan dedicated to helping rushed bases recover into war readiness, in a welcoming, inclusive, understanding, accepting environment. Also a place where you could rush intentionally, if you wanted.
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If you are already the leader of a clan, and you would be interested in having your clan added into our collective, please contact me!
If you are yourself wanting to start a clan, and would be willing to start it a part of this organization, also please contact me. I can lend you my mini squad to get the initial war win record, high level donations, and clan EXP that can push you past the initial threshold. It is my intention not to be the leader of the clans in this organization, but to hand off as many as possible to solid leaders that I can trust to maintain positive clan environments. This vision I have is not something one leader can build alone.
I hope to see you in the game, or better yet, on our discord server!