Listen up you fucks, for most of you this is your first rodeo so let me tell you how this whole thing works. Some of you might remember me when I told you to hop on this tendie train at 9$ when MSFT deal happened, by my DD about why GameStop is worth 138$ or by my other posts I've made here for months. As you've noticed, I LOVE THE STOCK.
I've held through -90% at the lowest to +10,000% at the highest and I continue holding. I'm down $300k from the ATH at this point and I don't fucking care because this whole thing is far from being over.
Now get these points through your thick head:

• This is a fucking volatile stock.

This is how it goes: it shoots up, GME gang rejoices, a bunch of retards buys at the top. Then it crashes down for a while, 🌈🐻 keep blabbering about how the squeeze has squoze. Rinse and repeat. Every time it shoots up it does it more violently, the amplitude getting larger and larger. And every time it does there is a number of dickheads whining about not buying earlier:
"I wish I bought at $9..." - when it shot up to $13, and them came down
"I wish I bought at $11..." - when it shot up to $20, and them came down
"I wish I bought at $17..." - when it shot up to $70, and them came down
"I wish I bought at $40..." - when it shot up to $150, and them came down
"I wish I bought at $60..." - when it shot up to $450, and them came down
Being in GME gang was always about not caring about temporary swings, because in the end, the price always sets a new ATH
I've seen this shit happening so many times since October that I just sit there and smile while history repeats itself and my porfolio swings 5-6 digits.

• GME was never a squeeze play, despite what a lot of you retards think.

Read any DD more than a month old, the whole company is massively undervalued . Read about Ryan Cohen, a person who made a dog food company worth $45bn and who is a fucking shark, once he sets his mind to something he will never back down. Thanks to him we now have a star team assembled at GameStop formed of Matt Francis, CTO, former Engineering Leader at AWS; Kelli Durkin, Senior Vice President of Customer Care, former Chewy’s Vice President of Customer Service; Josh Krueger, Vice President of Fulfillment former senior fulfillment roles at Amazon, Walmart, and QVC (do I need to mention Reggie Fils-Aimé of a fucking Nintendo?). I am a firm believer that Cohen will manage to grow GameStop at the very least to the size of Chewy ($45bn market cap). Guess what GME has? $4bn. That's 12x bagger and I'm being very conservative here.
This is not about squeezing the hedge funds, this is about the company establishing it's true share price with wild swings along the way thanks to the 🌈🐻s. The true price for me is (conservatively) the size of Chewy, which translates to $650. I know I said $138 in my previous DD a few months ago, but it was before all the recent news of Ryan Cohen taking over with his star-team.
MOASS was a cherry on top (and still is on the table), not the main play
Also, GameStop had a $6bn in revenue in 2019, Tesla had $24bn. Think about it for a moment

• Short interest is still through fucking roof.

I know you're used to 100%+ SI and the new 41% number does not quite gets you off, but it's still fucking abysmal. VW, OSTK happened on less than 20%. Also keep in mind that this number is for 1/29, literally the top when a lot of shorts covered. It does not account for all the shorting that happened on the way down to $50 which I guaran-fucking-tee you was massive. Just wait and see the next report with increased SI, the shorts never learn.
TL;DR: GameStop is still undervalued. Conservative PT is $650, ambitious - $1200+ (assuming Ryan Cohen's success, which I don't doubt for a single moment). Short squeeze will last for a long time similar to $TSLA squeeze, with wild swings along the way - old shorts will cover, new ones will pile in because the bLoCkBuStEr narrative is still strong. This is still a risky gamble, no such thing as a sure bet, but the risk\reward is massively skewed to the upside
If you have short-dated calls you might be fucked, might be not. If you have shares or LEAPS, just get away from screens for a while if it's unbearable for you, but ultimately you'll be fucking loaded. This is one of those situations when in a year or two the price is $3000+ and you post your cost basis of $70 and all the paper-handed bitches in the comments scream "WOW HE FUCKING HELD GRATZ"
Positions: some Apr 40c, some Apr 200c and a shitload of Jan 2023 950c. Will dump the remaining cash into 2023 calls at open

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

Pre-Market

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

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

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

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, So.. Questions

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

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

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

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

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

The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have deep ties to Donald Trump is deeply disturbing. Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
According to an ex-KGB spy...Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years.
Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money.
In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob.
“During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.”
When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider business prospects.
A short while later he made his first call for the dismantling of the NATO alliance. Which would benefit Russia.
At the beginning of 1990 Donald Trump owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with $800 million personally guaranteed by his own assets, according to Alan Pomerantz, a lawyer whose team led negotiations between Trump and 72 banks to restructure Trump’s loans. Pomerantz was hired by Citibank.
Interview with Pomerantz
Trump agreed to pay the bond lenders 14% interest, roughly 50% more than he had projected, to raise $675 million. It was the biggest gamble of his career. Trump could not keep pace with his debts. Six months later, the Taj defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin.
In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy.
So he bankrupted a casino? What about Ru...
The Trump Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half of operation in the early 1990s, according to the IRS in a 1998 settlement agreement.
The casino repeatedly failed to properly report gamblers who cashed out $10,000 or more in a single day, the government said."The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy."
....ssia
So by the mid 1990s Trump was then at a low point of his career. He defaulted on his debts to a number of large Wall Street banks and was overleveraged. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times.
Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Deutsche Bank.
The extremely controversial Deutsche Bank. The Nazi financing, Auschwitz building, law violating, customer misleading, international currency markets manipulating, interest rate rigging, Iran & others sanctions violating, Russian money laundering, salvation of Donald J. Trump.
The agreeing to a $7.2 billion settlement with with the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities and causing the 2008 financial crisis bank.
The appears to have facilitated more than half of the $2 trillion of suspicious transactions that were flagged to the U.S. government over nearly two decades bank.
The embroiled in a $20b money-laundering operation, dubbed the Global Laundromat. The launders money for Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB and its main successor, the FSB bank.
That bank.
Three minute video detailing Trump's debts and relationship with Deutsche Bank
In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country’s oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin, Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet.
Directly across the street from the United Nations building.
Russian Linked-Deutsche Bank arranged to lend hundreds of millions of dollars to finance Trump’s construction of a skyscraper next to the United Nations.
Construction got underway in 1999.
Units on the tower’s priciest floors were quickly snatched up by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” sales agent Debra Stotts told Bloomberg. After Trump World Tower opened, Sotheby’s International Realty teamed up with a Russian real estate company to make a big sales push for the property in Russia. The “tower full of oligarchs,” as Bloomberg called it, became a model for Trump’s projects going forward. All he needed to do, it seemed, was slap the Trump name on a big building, and high-dollar customers from Russia and the former Soviet republics were guaranteed to come rushing in.
New York City real estate broker Dolly Lenz told USA TODAY she sold about 65 condos in Trump World at 845 U.N. Plaza in Manhattan to Russian investors, many of whom sought personal meetings with Trump for his business expertise.
“I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “They all wanted to meet Donald. They became very friendly.”Lots of Russian and Eastern European Friends. Investing lots of money. And not only in New York.
Miami is known as a hotspot of the ultra-wealthy looking to launder their money from overseas. Thousands of Russians have moved to Sunny Isles. Hundreds of ultra-wealthy former Soviet citizens bought Trump properties in South Florida. People with really disturbing histories investing millions and millions of dollars. Igor Zorin offers a story with all the weirdness modern Miami has to offer: Russian cash, a motorcycle club named after Russia’s powerful special forces and a condo tower branded by Donald Trump.
Thanks to its heavy Russian presence, Sunny Isles has acquired the nickname “Little Moscow.”
From an interview with a Miami based Siberian-born realtor... “Miami is a brand,” she told me as we sat on a sofa in the building’s huge foyer. “People from all over the world want property here.” Developers were only putting up luxury properties because they “know that the crisis has not affected people with money,”
Most of her clients are Russian—there are now three direct flights per week between Moscow and Miami—and increasing numbers are moving to Florida after spending a few years in London first. “It’s a money center, and it’s a lot easier to get your money there than directly to the US, because of laws and tax issues,” she said. “But after your money has been in London for a while, you can move it to other places more easily.”
In the 2000s, Trump turned to licensing deals and trademarks, collecting a fee from other companies using the Trump name. This has allowed Trump to distance himself from properties or projects that have failed or encountered legal trouble and provided a convenient workaround to help launch projects, especially in Russia and former Soviet states, which bear Trump’s name but otherwise little relation to his general business.
Enter Bayrock Group, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and invested an incredible amount of money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management. Bayrock was run by two investors:
Felix Sater, a Russian-born mobster who served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven "pump-and-dump" stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant. He was an important figure at Bayrock, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Micahel Cohen --Trump's disbarred former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob.
Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former "Soviet official" who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic. Arif graduated from the Moscow Institute of Trade and Economics and worked as a Soviet trade and commerce official for 17 years before moving to New York and founding Bayrock. In 2002, after meeting Trump, he moved Bayrock’s offices to Trump Tower, where he and his staff of Russian émigrés set up shop on the twenty-fourth floor.
Arif was offering him a 20 to 25 percent cut on his overseas projects, he said, not to mention management fees. Trump said in the deposition that Bayrock’s Tevfik Arif “brought the people up from Moscow to meet with me,”and that he was teaming with Bayrock on other planned ventures in Moscow. The only Russians who are likely have the resources and political connections to sponsor such ambitious international deals are the corrupt oligarchs.
In 2005, Trump told The Miami Herald “The name has brought a cachet to certain areas that wouldn’t have had it,” Dezer said Trump’s name put Sunny Isles Beach on the map as a classy destination — and the Trump-branded condo units sold “10 to 20 percent higher than any of our competitors, and at a faster pace.”“We didn’t have any foreclosures or anything, despite the crisis.”
In a 2007 deposition that was part of his unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against reporter Timothy O’Brien Trump testified "that Bayrock was working their international contacts to complete Trump/Bayrock deals in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. He testified that “Bayrock knew the investors” and that “this was going to be the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, et cetera, and Warsaw, Poland.”
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. gave the following statement to the “Bridging U.S. and Emerging Markets Real Estate” conference in Manhattan: “[I]n terms of high-end product influx into the United States, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
In July 2008, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. This was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value. Must be nice to have so many Russian oligarchs interested in giving you money.
In 2013, Trump went to Russia for the Miss Universe pageant “financed in part by the development company of a Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov.… a Putin ally who is sometimes called the ‘Trump of Russia’ because of his tendency to put his own name on his buildings.” He met with many oligarchs. Timeline of events. Flight records show how long he was there.
Video interview in Moscow where Trump says "...China wanted it this year. And Russia wanted it very badly." I bet they did.
Also in 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
In 2014, Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programmes. We just go there all the time.’”
A 2015 racketeering case against Bayrock, Sater, and Arif, and others, alleged that: “for most of its existence it [Bayrock] was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated,” engaging “in a pattern of continuous, related crimes, including mail, wire, and bank fraud; tax evasion; money laundering; conspiracy; bribery; extortion; and embezzlement.” Although the lawsuit does not allege complicity by Trump, it claims that Bayrock exploited its joint ventures with Trump as a conduit for laundering money and evading taxes. The lawsuit cites as a “Concrete example of their crime, Trump SoHo, [which] stands 454 feet tall at Spring and Varick, where it also stands monument to spectacularly corrupt money-laundering and tax evasion.”
In 2016, the Trump Presidential Campaign was helped by Russia.
(I don't have the presidential term sourced yet. I'll post an update when I do. I'm sure you probably remember most of them...sigh. TY to the main posters here. Obviously I'm standing on your shoulders having taken a lot of the information or articles from here).

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

Intro

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

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

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

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

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

Stream Sniping

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

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

Match Fixing

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

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

North America

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

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

Talent

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

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

Valve

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

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

Closing Statements

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

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

Disclaimer I want to thank everyone for the gilds, replies and suggestions. I just do not have time to reply to everyone, but I am reading everything. I am not sure how much bigger the thread can be, I already typed this but it vanished so I think I'm at the limit. I will try to keep updating, but I don't expect the thread to be up top for much longer and will likely vanish soon, so if you need anything save it.
Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it.
Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions:
For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month!
For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k.
I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device.
Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers

• Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
  
• Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
  
• Now TV (I believe it's 7 days)
  
• Disney+
  
• Britbox
  
• Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
  

If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system.
Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section.
Completely free TV

• Pluto TV
  
• Viki
  
• Roku
  

If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox.
Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like.
Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird.
Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device.
For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV.
Anime
If you are into Anime there is

• Crunchyroll
  
• Funimation
  
• HiDive
  

The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two.
PC Centric software
If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design

• Humble Bundle
  
• Fanatical
  
• IndieGala
  

Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12.
Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development.
The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals.
Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap.
Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam.
**BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however.
IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff.
Game Store Fronts

• Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
  
• Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
  
• GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
  
• Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
  
• Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
  
• Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
  
• Games with Gold Bleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
  

Gaming Subscriptions
Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months

• Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
  
• Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
  
• EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
  
• PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
  

There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that.
Audiobooks & Ebooks

• Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
  
• Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
  
• Marvel Unlimited No experience with this. ItFuckingWont wanted me to add it. A subscription service for Marvel.
  

Education

• Sign Language BSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
  
• BBC's Bitesize here is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
  

If you need some spare change
Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change

• If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the details According to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
  
• Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
  
• Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
  
• There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
  
• Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
  
• Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
  

That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment.
Hope it helps someone at least
PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year
fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75!
tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books
Learning Language
Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments:
Togtogtog Gives a lot of links for Spanish

• Duolingo Numerous people have suggested this So I haven't used myself. Thanks to OhHiGCHQ StephanieMecredy & Allorie_95

Board & Tabletop games
Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games
ilyemco suggested these
HEALTH
I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix.
Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7.
If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery.
HELP & ADVICE
The lockdown Rules.
Reasons to leave home include:

• Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
  
• Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
  
• Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
  
• Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
  
• Communal religious worship
  
• Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
  

I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)

• To flee the threat of harm or violence.*
  
• CoronaVirus Symptoms
  
• CoronaVirus government site You can check your location and how many cases here.
  
• Worldometers Shows cases around the world.
  
• Interactive UK Map Another easy to read map with cases in counties and local area's.
  
• World Health Organisation
  

Support

• Samaritans
  
• Mental Health UK forum on reddit
  
• Link to above's stick post for support outlets
  
• Mindful
  
• Mind.org
  

FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THE ROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though)
_riotingpacifist wanted these links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:

• https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/
  
• https://www.goodsamapp.org/
  
• https://vaccinationvolunteers.sja.org.uk/roles/volunteer-vaccinator.html
  
• https://nhsvolunteerresponders.org.uk/getting-you-started-guide-steward-volunteer
  
• https://peoplesmomentum.com/evictionresistance/
  
• https://londonrentersunion.org/
  

Update:
Digital Art
These are Free

• Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
  
• Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
  
• Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
  

You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen.
Office suit software
A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.

• LibreOffice This has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
  
• Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
  

Music Making
I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software.
Games development
D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here

Chapter One: Bozeman or Bust (lots of bust)
I had done it once again, like so many other years before, by traveling north to one of the harshest and coldest states that a hobo could possibly go to during the dead of winter, late-January 2021: Mon-fucking-tana. Or as the locals jokingly say, "Montucky". (edit: Shout-out to Montucky Cold Snacks, the cheap horse-piss watered down beer that is Montana's equivalent of Washington's "Rainier Ale" or Oregon's "Session Lager"). I digress.
If I was a goose, I'd surely be the Jonathan Livingston Seagull of the flock…the black sheep shitshow of a goose flying in the completely wrong direction at the worst time of the year. As forementioned, this was not the first time, nor second time, that I've done this. In fact, it's become a habit, if not straight-up routine.
Laramie, Wyoming circa November 2016. Glendive, Montana circa January 2015 Minot, North Dakota circa January 2014. Yukon, Canada circa November 2013. Bellingham, Washington circa January 2006. The list goes on, and on, and on…
And here I am. Bozeman Fucking Montana, circa January-February 2021. The locals say it's an unusually warm winter, which by Montana's standards might include 5 inches of snow in the afternoon and temperatures dropping below 10F degrees at night. However, according to the high standards of a low-class hobo born and raised on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, this weather is colder than a witches tit.
Now, that's not to say that I ain't prepared though. I assure you that I am. Sixteen years of living on the road and rails has made this black goose a well-seasoned bird, with all the trimmings. I have a military sleeping bag that can keep me alive down to negative 30 temperatures. My military backpack is waterproof, and so are the snowboarding pants that I wear under my insulated Carharrt overalls. I have alpaca wool thermal pants, merino wool socks, thermolite waterproof boots, thinsulated gloves, and several wool and polyster beanie hats. My dual-layer mountaineering tent can withstand hurricane-force winds and all the snow that a blizzard can muster.
Winter? Montana? Bring it bitch. Hit me with your best shot. You know I like it. wink
Sigh. However, DESPITE the freezing temperatures and shit tons of snow, there's a lil secret that I've learned during my many years of traveling, and that secret is certainly DUE to these wintery conditions: Jobs! Lots and lots and lots and lots of jobs! Jobs here, jobs there, jobs every-fucking-where. Hotel jobs, restaurant jobs, retail jobs, construction jobs, maintenance jobs, driving jobs, even jobs just to help other people get more damn jobs!
You want a job during winter? Well they got jobs out northern Californie way, Oregonie way, Montanie way, Washingtonie way, North and South Dakotie way, and every which way can go above above the Mason-Dixon line!
If you can't find a damn job in the Northwestern United States of America during winter, you ain't fucking looking, and that's a fact. If you got one arm and you can swing a hammer, or punch a number on a cash register, then consider yourself hired on the spot and you can start today.
Before this chapter turns into an entire damn book of its own (A Hobo's Guide to Finding Jobs) let's get back to the story here: Bozeman or Bust.
As I begin this chapter, I have a red-wine hangover that is enough to drive me to a bullet in the head. I made a pot of coffee only to puke it back up on my hands and knees in front the porcelain thrown. I think it was good ole Earnest Hemingway that once said "Write Drunk, Edit Sober". Experienced words of wisdom from a fine man that knew everything a man could possibly know about drinking shit tons of wine and writing shit tons of stories. I wouldn't be lying if I was to confess that Mr. Hemingway, along with Mr. Steinbeck and Mr. Twain, are drunken heroes of mine that I could only hope someday to sit alongside in the bookstores of Hell and Hades with a gallon of cheap Merlot. Salut, gentleman.
After puking, rolling cigarettes, drinking coffee, and puking several times more, I was finally able to sit down to try and remember what-the-fuck happened yesterday; a solemn meditation technique that involves tons of coffee and contemplation; a time to worship the asinine achievements that are accompanied in both rejoice and regret.
Yesterday started off sober as a saint. I had a job interview at this place I had found on craigslist, some place looking for fresh warm bodies to fill up their production-assembly line. I took a bus to the address they had given me, which ended up being the adress to the Bozeman City Bank.
"A bank?", I thought, as I wondered around the parking lot dumbfounded and confused for a solid 5 minutes, checking the address several times on my phone, wondering why on earth I've been sent to a state bank. After circling the parking lot, I noticed a door on the side of the bank that said "Job Choices Employment Services: Second Floor".
Godammit. I had been fucking conned. Fucking craigslist. I know what's going on here…this a goddamn employment agency that wants to take 10-15 percent of my paycheck, take away my rights to healthcare and benefits, in the so-called promise of finding me a "great career path of opportunity".
Employment agencies. Just like rats. The only "opportunity" here was them: Creatures of opportunity, parasites hellbent on scavaging peoples money and benefits. "A not-even-close-to-great career path of 9-5 slave-labor bullshit involving years of suckling away your mind, body, and spirit", the sign on the door should have read.
This was definitely a mistake. And anyone that has ever had the unfortunate pleasure of being with me can you tell one thing about me: I fucking love mistakes. I love making them, and I love learning from them. I am a walking-talking connoisseur of mistakes. In fact, I just made a mistake trying to spell connoisseur, so I asked Google "Hey Google, spell connoisseur", and due to lack of interpreting my Alabama accent, Google made the mistake of showing me the word Coitus. I have now learned that the word "coitus" is another word for sex. As a writer and the son of an English teacher, I love learning new words. As a human male, I love sex. So learning a new word for "sex" is a fantastic trade-off for that fortunate mistake!
I digress.
I decided to walk into the bank, up the stairs to the second floor, and down the hall to the employment agency. A well-dressed and very sexy debutant by the name of Tracy stood up and greeted me with a smile that was formal, professional, and admittedly very sexy.
While my dirty mind started playing cheap porn music, along with vivid images of me and Tracy wrecking that office like wild alleycats, I was suddenly snapped back into reality with Tracy's sexy voice, saying:
"Hey, you must be Mr. Huck! Are you here for the 3:00 o'clock interview? Could you please start by filling out this application? You can have a seat over at the desk here"…
Godammit. This employment agency was GOOD. I was Tracy's submissive little slut. I walked right where Tracy told me to walk, sat right in the chair Tracy pulled out for me to sit in, and I started filling out the application with the ballpoint pen that Tracy had somehow put in my hand without me even realizing it. Tracy could have stolen my wallet and the 11 dollars inside of it as well, had she wanted to, and I wouldn't have even noticed. And even if I had noticed, I would have let her do it anyway. Godammit!
As I started to fill out the application, I got to the section I dreaded most: job references. Oh boy…allow me to tell you a little about Huck's references, or lacktherof:
At my last job, I was fired because of a fight that broke-out between my ex-girlfriend and myself, which began with lots of shouting and shoving, and ended with me getting a black-eye from being punched in the face twice. Fun fact: Italian women are fiery as they are fierce, and bold as they are beautiful. And just like their male Italian counterparts, such as Sylvester Stalone or Al Capone, they know how to land a solid right jab. This fight erupted in the worker's dormitory for all employees to hear and see. And although I was the one with the swollen black eye, I was the one they decided to fire. C'est la vie, such is life. Que sera sera, it be what it fucking be.
We can scratch that job off as a reference, without a doubt.
The job before that, I was at a marijuana farm called "Great American Cannabis", in which my managers and co-workers tried to recruit me into a far-right group of sexist and racist baboons called "The Proud Boys".
There was a pre-determining factor in why that farm had hired me, and assumed I would be interested in their idealogical gang. That pre-determing factor was the very same factor that led Google to teaching me the wrong word and definition: my Alabama accent.
Great American Cannabis had hired me based on a phone interview, in which they assumed my southern accent indicated two things, in which case one of their assumptions was right, and one was wrong:
Assumption Numero Uno: Huck has an Alabama accent, which therefore indicates that he has years of experience working on farms, growing plants, and being an honest and hard-worker.
Assumption Numero Dos: Huck has an Alabama accent, therefore he must be idealogically aligned with far-right beliefs including sexism and racism.
Welp, I am proud to say that even that although a 50% winning percentage may be fine and dandy with gambling in Vegas, and can be seen as half full or half empty based on however optimisitic or pessimistic you might be, in the case of Great American Cannabis and The Proud Boys, those odds ended pretty badly.
As it turns out, despite being raised by a racist father and surrounded by bigotry in the not-so-sweet home of Alabama, those very dispositions made this black sheep child rebel from such ass-backward beliefs, and I am staunchly pro-civil rights, which means I am pro-immigration, and a proud supporter of the sufferage movement for womens right.
Obviously, that did not go very well with my co-workers at the farm, and I was fired within the first month. But wait, theres more tragic humor to the story of this farm, which I'll organize in two keypoints:
Keypoint Numero Uno: The farm was owned by Iranian immigrants. I…shit…you…not. That's right. YOU DID READ THAT CORRECTLY. Not only was the farm owned and managed by a minority group of immigrants, those very immigrants came directly from the very country is at the VERY TOP of White-America's shitlist: Iran.
Keypoint Numeros Dos: After I was fired based almost entirely according to my leftist and progressive views on race and gender equality, within just a couple of weeks nearly everybody on the farm was fired and replaced by cheaper immigrant labor in the form of Laotian women. That's right…a white-blooded American-born legal-working male, was replaced by brown-blooded, foreign-born, mostly-illegal-working females, on a farm owned and managed by right-wing racists and sexists that were anti-immigration. Once again, I…shit…you…fucking…not...let THAT shit sink in.
I literally cannot make this shit up, and let it be forever proof that reality, however tragic or ironic it may be, is far greater than fiction. You can write that last sentence in a letter, shove that puppy in an envelope, slap that bitch with a stamp, and mail it to the fucking MOON. Or you can mail it to Iran, or Laos, whichever you prefer.
However, I digress.
So, being that I was fired from Great American Cannabis by a bunch of Iranian Proud Boys, you can scratch that job off of the "reference" list as well. Sigh.
So, how about the job before that? Well, that's a hell of a story too, but I'll make it quick and cut shorter to the chase:
I worked on a fishing boat for a Mormon captain. Although I loved him like a Dad, and he often treated me like a son, my job ended in these words:
"Huck, I really like you. You're one of the hardest working deckhands I've ever had, despite it being a very terrible year for fishing. However, as a man that is a Latter Day Saint of God, as a Mormon, I'm going to have to ask you to leave because of three reasons:
1) You smoke cigarettes, marijuana, and drink alcohol and coffee.
2) You curse worse than a sailor.
3) You are an atheist/agnostic."
And in case you, the reader did not know: Mormons HATE cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, AND coffee. They are forbidden to curse, and they are not even allowed to tolerate the company of anyone that isn't a believer in God.
Well Godammit. How in the hell am I so goddamn misfortunate and unlucky, to be the must FIRST FUCKING PERSON in the entire HISTORY OF FISHING, that has gotten fired for using curse words and drinking whiskey. I couldn't even absorb the fact that my boss was firing me because I couldn't get over the fact that I was possibly the first sailor or fisherman in all of ocean-faring humanity that had gotten fired for doing what sailors and fisherman are guaranteed and known to do best: drinkin' and cursin'
We can also scratch THAT job off the possible reference list as well.
It was at this point in the office of Job Choices Bozeman that the porn music had long since stopped playing in my head, and that I suddenly and swiftly fell deeply into a full blown existential crisis right there in Tracy's office while simply trying to think of a single reference from my last 3 jobs. The unbelievable amount of misfortune, tragedy, irony, and utter insanity of my last 3 job experiences had truly started to sink in, and I was beginning to legitimately lose my temporary grasp on sanity along with my faith in humanity altogether in one great, big, sloppy sandwich of existential fucking crisis.
Allow me to self-diagnose this existential crisis sandwich by peeling off some of the layers of this enormous stinking onion that is in the middle of it all: Either that curse that was put on me a few years ago by a Mexican trainhopping gypsy from New Orleans is proof that curses are indeed fucking real, or either I am the unluckiest son of a bitch on this entire planet that is so very unlucky that I am slowly (or quickly) coming to the conclusion that this entire life is a simulation that is programmed by some sick comedic asshole that specializes in the tragedies of both irony AND misfortune. And though some people in this world call that programmer God or Allah or Jehovah, I call him Jeff. I call him "Jeff in Programming", with same amount of disdain and hatred that Michael Scott refers to "Toby in Human Resources" in the American version of the show "The Office".
(Sidenote: If you do not understand my last reference because you have not watched The Office, then you need to stop reading this book right now, go sign up for one month of Netflix, and spend that entire month binge-watching one of the greatest sitcoms ever made in the history of television: The Office (US Version). Go. Now!)
I digress.
As I collapsed into a full-blown existential crisis while thinking of job references on the second floor employment services office above Montana State Bank, my fantasy-based relationship with Tracy was also about to crumble into an existential crisis as well, based on two very important qualities:
Quality Numero Uno: Tracy and I had no relationship that actually existed outside of my head and a stupid job application form. We had never knocked over all of the filing cabinets, water-cooler, or broken the copying machine with tantric sex. That scenario never existed period.
Quality Numeros Dos: I was about to not only lie, but also commit non-existent adultery to Tracy, thus putting a very real end to a not-very-real relationship.
I stood up from the desk that me and Tracy had never fucked on, and I told Tracy that I had to use the bathroom. And though I did really have to use the bathroom, it wasn't for the purpose of pissing or taking a shit, it was for the purpose of throwing the application in the toilet and sneaking my way down the hallway and out of the employment agency. In which case, that is precisely what I did.
Upon stepping out of the door and back into the parking lot of Bozeman City Bank, I noticed another hot little woman across the street: A dazzling red-headed freckle-faced damsel by the name of Wendy, who promised in her fertile bosom the birth of two-dollar cheeseburgers and loaded baked potatoes. I went inside Wendy's house, and began to have an oral relationship by penetrating my mouth with nearly everything that was offered on Wendy's dollar-value menu.
Stop here, acquire coffee, booze, and cigarettes until I feel like writing again, which may be later tonight, tomorrow morning, or possibly fucking never

Buckle up retards cuz this autist is about to take you on a ride to tendy town. Inb4 you all check my post history and bitch about all my WKHS posts, ya no fucking shit I’m gonna post about a stock I love. Inb4 Inb4 you tinfoil hat wearing GME/AMC fucks attack me, last time I checked there’s more than two stocks on the exchanges. Anyways here goes,
Workhorse group is a Loveland, Ohio EV manufacturer. 100% American Made (insert American Eagle boner gif) and completely electric for all you who value the environment or whatever. I’m sure you’ve all come across it at some point especially when I was the top trending stock for like a week at the end of June/July. As many of you might now, this shitshow of a government we have here in the good ol’ USA is looking to upgrade their self combusting USPS fleet via a NGDV (Next Generation Delivery Vehicle) bidding process for a contract to the tune of approximately 8 billion. When all is said and done, including maintenance and upkeep, the contract in the span of a decade or more is about 20b. This NGDV contract is the “betting” portion of this stock and despite what all the retarded naysayers claim, there is a fuck ton more to WKHS besides this contract. This is the cherry on top so I’m starting top down with this masterpiece.
Currently, there are three remaining bids from companies involved in this NGDV selection process. Karsan (a Turkish company), Ford/Oshkosh (joint venture), and our beloved WKHS.
Karsan - I can’t see this winning even a fraction of a percent of the contract due to it not being American. Not because it’s a bad company but if you check the requirements for the companies, they snuck in a clause that mandated 75% American made parts to be selected. Also, Biden, for the better part of his campaign and to this day has been proclaiming that he will be bringing American manufacturing to the forefront again and we will be buying American (something he and Trump miraculously had in common). For this reason, Karsan is seen as a non-factor.
Ford/Oshkosh - The only realistic challenger to WKHS and only bear case being made against it. Undoubtedly, Ford is as American as it gets. But even more undoubtedly, they are shitty and unreliable as fuck. Millions of recalls on Ford vehicles in the past and present. Another big issue with this is that Biden was “zero-emission”. The prototype submitted for the proposal was a hybrid and not fully EV. For this reason, I think Ford receives a portion of this contract no greater than 25%. Another reason I think they’ll get only a minor stake in this is because their prototype does indeed actually fare better in rural routes where charging stations just aren’t all that practical or possible.
The whole NGDV process has been going on for about 6 years and there’s no surprise that this inefficient government has been unable to wrap the process up at this point and then Covid took over. Yes there have been delays to the contract award as recently as October 2020. In a lettememo addressed to the USPS Board of Governors, they were urged to not further delay this process as with the current degradation of the existing fleet, doing so would harm the project altogether and further complicate the process of removing these shitboxes that have been around since ‘87. With Covid being the last excuse to delay, and the vaccine now being rolled out, I DO NOT foresee another stalling of the process.
Another reason WKHS is my favorite in this race is that DeJoy’s current philosophy on the USPS is to cut costs and to have the entity become for cost efficient. In case you haven’t noticed, ICE vehicles are much more costly to run and maintain that a 100% EV vehicle. Fewer parts means fewer problems and much less maintenance and repair costs. Also, in their recent financial statements, the USPS had requested a 600% increase in their infrastructure spending. I don’t see too many post offices crumbling to the ground, so this can only mean they’re gearing up to install a metric fuck ton of charging stations. By going fully EV, billions will be saved over time by the post office, an entity that’s currently burning cash like it’s their fucking job.
THE LAST DELAY IN THE NGDV SLATES THE CONTRACT TO BE AWARDED FISCAL 2021 Q2 WHICH MEANS JANUARY-MARCH 2021.
Enough about the contract though, let’s talk other aspects. WKHS is currently partnered with UPS in testing by out their fleet and also more importantly their drone delivery capabilities. WKHS currently owns the patents to vehicle borne drone launching technology. This isn’t talked about enough. Many people think the future of this company hinges on that shitshow of a contract when in reality the really exciting part is this drone tech. It would be extremely helpful and useful in efficient package delivery especially when there’s a whole fleet management system capabilities that the company offers. As the autonomous tech and drones sector begin to grow exponentially, WKHS has a head start on it (the commercial delivery aspect).
Institutional holdings lies at almost 50%. The big boys and big girls (BAE Cathie Wood) are in on the company and they are in heavy. My wife Cathie must be seeing something in the future of this company if she’s grown her holding to over 2.2m shares and she’s not gonna throw some money into a gamble on a fucking government contract.
Many claim that production is an issue but this is more a scare tactic than an actual issue. Sister company Lordstown Motors (Ticker: Ride) is led by former WKHS CEO. They have offered their factory, which has the capability to pump out about 600k vehicles a year, if WKHS needs it. Important to note that WKHS has a 10% stake in Lordstown and will receive royalties on the first 100k Endurance EV pickup trucks that Lordstown sells. So there’s another form of revenue the company has going for it.
It’s a growth stock with a lot of potential and it’s logistically gearing up to grow. Received 200m financing from an institutional Investor during the late summeearly fall, and it entered into an agreement with Hitachi, to be assured in the logistics of the company. Hitachi is a pretty serious company to be partnered with unless you plan on slinging out vehicles. Most recently, a 6,320 truck order came in from Pritchard which totals around 250m give or take a few bucks. This is all while IKEA a company that aims to go fully electric by 2025 is testing out a fleet of WKHS C1000 vehicles.
Connect the fucking dots and join the ride fellow autists. I’ve been long WKHS since January of 2020 and there’s plenty of room to run. High risk high reward with this growth stock but that’s why we’re all here right?
Positions - 1000 shares, 11x $60c 2/12 (USPS BOG meeting Tuesday so these are scratch off lottos basically), 5x $60c 2/19 (see previous calls), 11x 45c 4/16.
Let’s ride this horse to tendy town fellas 🤝
Edit: I’m a retard blah blah blah THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE I JUST LOVE THIS STOCK blah blah blah
EDIT 2 - WKHS vehicles are being showcased at the super bowl as Pritchard is using WKHS trucks to take people to and from the super bowl and various surrounding locations. Essentially they are marketing themselves by providing shuttle services.
Edit 3 - WKHS is currently at about 30% short sold so a contract announcement in their favor will easily rocket this to 100+ as shorts scramble to cover. It sneaky made the list of highly shorted stocks.
Edit 4 - 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 (FOR THE VISUAL LEARNING RETARDS)
Edit 5 - TLDR: WKHS is 100% American made EV Last Mile Delivery Vehicle. Has Patents pending for its drone delivery tech. Frontrunner for USPS 8.2b+ Government Fleet Contract (NGDV Contract). Heavy institutional ownership including BAE Cathie Wood. 30% Short Float to be squeezed on contract announcement.