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.
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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...
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..
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BOOM
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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.

Hay hay, Ay, listen up, B, lemme holler at you a minute. I notice you been eyeing that portfolio real luscious like, almost like you found a couple extra bananas under your tree, am I right?
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Cool, cool. So whatchu holdin', homey? Tillllllray? Aw yiss. Aphria? Yeah, she fine as hell. CGC? Oh lawd, dat ass is bangin'. ACB? Aw man, you like the classics, that's dope. OGI? Into the up and comers, respect young blood. SNDL?
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SNDL? For real? Dude....
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Hi all, NrdRage here. You might remember me from such hits as "pegging $GME dead right multiple times during its bubble, making everybody rich on $RIOT, exposing the $PLUG infinite money glitch, accidentally helping start the $BB craze, never getting an $AMD weekly call right and being in an abusive relationship with the VIX" or maybe "The SEC and you: How you can just say no to having them shove a Mister Fister up your ass". Alright, apes, it's been a great few days being able to throw a dart at a wall of weed stocks and no matter where it sticks, you make money. It's been a great run. But if you're going to expand the acreage of your jungle and the amount of lady gorillas you earn the right to mate with, you gotta start thinking a bit. And that means - hear me out - thinking of how the hell you plan on getting out of SNDL alive. And yes, I realize I'm saying this right after it spiked almost a hundo percent in the last 24 hours. Look, I was playing it, too. I grabbed some 2/19 3c's and a shit ton of 1/22 1.5c's on Tuesday. I also got out of both of those today, though not as high up as I could have. If you check my history, you'll see I even said I was goingt to eye a re-entry. Then the market took a giant dump and gave me that entry, but I passed on it because I had done some research by that point. Whatever, profit's profit.
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Here's the TL:DR: It's basically a penny stock that's gotten pumped to hell. But the smart ape realizes when something has gone too mainstream and gets out of the way before the bulldozers wipe out his trees.
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Hey, I love shoving a share price around a bit as much as the next guy, I ain't gonna talk shit about that. But it seems like nobody has an exit strategy for this, and I'm starting to see a lot of really stupid shit about Holding to 42.69 and all the other ridiculous bullshit from people who clearly don't even know what they fuck they've invested in that the GME Gibbons fell for.
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Here's the reality of SNDL:

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The company was on the verge of bankruptcy around Thanksgiving, they have no other markets other than Canada, which is ridiculously oversaturated with weed to the point that wholesale prices are less than a dollar a gram. And they recently got forced to admit that their product fails to meet THC content requirements.
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In case you're wondering what that means, it means they sell skunkweed that they cut with paper and sawdust to make it cheaper. They sell garbage. And everyone knows it - their brand is associated with low quality crap.
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Plus, they actively solicited us to buy their stock to drive up the price, then diluted it to fuck with a billion share offering. Now, to their credit, this not only enabled them to become debt free, but also up their marketing budget and spend some time trying to create a brand. Don't get too excited, fucking Sam's Choice at Wal-Mart is a brand, too, doesn't mean you should stick a chub of their ground beef up your rectum. By reason of them selling skunkweed, their margins lag well behind that of their competitors.
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Looking at their financials, they've got 615 million in cash laying around. That's pretty good - except they're a company that burns 250 million a quarter. Which means they're going to dilute the fuck out of everyone again next month. They've got no exposure to the US market, but had no problem dropping "rumors" that they were going to break in to the US market through licensing deals - which turned out to be 1 pot shop in Bellingham, Washington. They have no real expansion plan anywhere in the world, for that matter.
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B...bu.....bu.bu....BUT NRDRAGE! Stonk go up ! Look at it! SNDL to the moon! 🚀 🚀 🚀 ).

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Yeah, I know. It's fucking crazy to talk shit about a stock when it's seemingly mid flight. But here I am anyways. Not to talk you out of the weed party - you should totally keep playing that for all it's worth - but rather to get people to see that they've probably outgrown skunkweed now.
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Look, the reason this thing mooned is because it was like a dollar. Hell, it was 13 cents not too far back. With a stock worth a dollar, it's easy to get a lot of other apes to throw a couple of bananas at it for the lulz. It's easy to shove around a penny stock with an extra 10 bucks you have laying around from another trade somewhere. But as the price goes up, so too goes up the perceived cost of entering. I can make a strong (unassailable, in fact), argument that $APHA at $25 is cheaper than SNDL at 3.25. But people are conditioned to like smaller numbers. Unfortunately, as the GME Gibbons learned, eventually you run out of buyers, and then things go tits up real fast.
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As the Prophet Biggie Smalls once said, Mo' Money Equals Mo' Problems. We all know this equation to be true. And here you are, sitting on bags of bananas you didn't know you were gonna have a week ago thanks to some stonk you hadn't heard of before yesterday. You don't think you've got a problem, but you do. Because those bags of bananas aren't edible until you turn them in to the bank for real cash. If you're sitting on bananas from the gold standard of the weed world (that would be, $TLRY), you're resting pretty easy that no other ape is gonna come by and steal your bananas. There are gonna be lots of bananas to go around, and mostly we're just taking bananas from fools who think their bananas will be less later. But you don't have that with SNDL. All the bananas are currently sitting with people who think the bananas will go higher. You can't all be right, especially when there are billions of bananas, and now your grandparents are starting to buy bananas because some Boomer on CNBC told them it would make their dick bigger and their friends think they were cooler.
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Again, I'm not telling you to leave the party

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But, if you recall your dorm room years, the best pizza you could afford was the Tony's school lunchroom style shit for a dollar. Then you managed to hide a few bucks from the people who collect your student loans, and you upgraded to Domino's. Maybe by now you're ordering from a local joint that makes it's own dough in house and the sauce is made with the love of an old Italian grandma who accidentally dips her sagging tiddies into the pot 3 times while making it. That just makes it taste better. That's science. But I digress.
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The point is, you can get better weed now. You don't have to smoke the skunk. So before you get the rug pulled out from beneath you and are stuck investing in shitty penny stocks again, maybe you should elevate your enterprise. Let's take a look at your options:
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Canopy Growth

You could go with $CGC. They not only sell higher quality weed, but are an established brand and also sell oils and shit to those hippie fucks who still think Burning Man isn't just a brogrammer beatfest and go to an acupuncturist to enhance their "luck". They've captured that all important 65+ stoner demographic by marketing their shit as a cure for seizures, cataracts, and dry vag, so they've got a lot of revenue. They've also had a much more muted rise this week because they just haven't been on everybody's lips, which means they've got a lot of room to run. The downside here is they burn almost as much cash as SNDL, but they've also got more bullets.
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Aurora

If you go with $ACB, you're going with a company that's already gone through its "shady as fuck" stage and has re-emerged healthy from it. You're also not only getting on weed, but the DIY urban chicken farmer types who want to grow their own weed. They, too, have had a strong run, but have a lot more runway than most because they've actually got a really strong path to dominance in the US market once it opens up to them.
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Organigram:

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Look, if your dick is still getting hard at the thought of playing a low dollar stonk or you've only got 28 dollars to invest, you could do a lot worse. They've got strong branding, large growth potential, a management structure that doesn't seem to act shady, and they've run almost as well as the other new generation of meme stonks, but lagged back enough because nobody can fucking rmeember their name to where they can rubber band a bit.
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Tilray and Aphria:

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I'm combining these because they're inexorably joined at the hip (or should be, more on that later) because the two of them are merging. For those who don't know, sometime in Q2, every share of $APHA you own will turn into .833 shares of $TLRY. Even though APHA is the one buying out TLRY. This is basically the gold standard of weed stonkery. When you start investing in these, you know you're a real investor.
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Here's the interesting thing with these guys, though. Even though APHIA should be just slightly trailing behind TLRY in terms of stock price, it's currently trading at less than half. With TLRY sitting at 73 a share as I write this, APHA should be at just over $60. But it's at 29. Now, obviously, this means that TLRY has a lot more momentum, and some of that is due to the fact that there's a mini (don't flog me for using the word, but it's true) short squeeze going on with that one, which has turned it into such a strong momentum play. But APHA, by virtue of actual math, needs to be within about 17% of TLRY's price. Which means APHA either needs to moon dramatically, or TLRY needs to fall precipitously. Now either of those things could happen, but the momentum of TLRY is hard to stop, which means it's more likely that APHA rubber bands to catch up to it in the coming months. Even if TLRY does falter, that means APHA still has to come up a bit to meet it. Making APHA kind of a "can't go tits up" situation. TLRY also has the benefit of having enough market cap to where fund bois will buy into it, whereas SNDL is too small to meet most of their requirements. Which can further propel TLRY (and thus, drag APHA with it).
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One of the interesting things that's been happening with this pair is that the order books, even though they should mirror one another, have completely inverted from one another numerous times in the last couple of days. This, of course, was a bull flag for TLRY every time it happened, leaving APHA to compensate to try and catch back up shortly thereafter. It's really easy money.
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Fundamentally, these guys have one HUUUUUUUGE advantage over the others: They secured the UK distribution, and now have the inside track to be the supplier for the rest of the Europoors across the pond who need to smoke a bond to help forget all the things wrong with them. And if you don't think they won't be able to leverage that to be the front runners out of the gate when the US opens for business, then you definitely ain't black.
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Or, you can just stay where you are and do the 💎👐 thing

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Ask the $GME Gibbons how well that worked out for them. The ones still holding that stonk are like that one dude sitting at the edge of the bar of the Viper Room, still rocking his mullet and chain wallet, just convinced that Warrant and Slaughter are going to ring in the glory days of hair metal once more and that Queensryche is going to start selling out stadiums again. It's just sad. You're flying right now, but a rug is gonna get pulled out from under you and then you're gonna have your own daily thread where you reassure yourselves that it's gonna be OK and that you're gonna ride it to a thousand one day. Lots of us (myself included) made a fuck ton of money on GME. And we've made a fuck ton on SNDL and the rest of the Weedies this week. But there are always people who Melvin it and hang on to their position too long and get stuck. That's gonna be a lot of you, but you shouldn't let it be you.
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TL:DR: Smart apes should look at their much bigger pile of bananas from SNDL while you're way ahead and upgrade them to plantains before the other apes. Plaintains equals breeding with better apes, not low quality apes that cannibalize fellow apes and give ape diseases.

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All my love
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-Chad Dickens
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EDIT 1: I forgot to list my positions
CGC - None
ACB - None
OGI - 10,000 shares @ $4.23, 1000 1/22 5c, 500 2/19 7.5c
TLRY: 20,000 shares @ 18.74, 100 2/12 65c, 500 2/19 65c, 500 2/12 42c, 5000 6/18 43c
APHA: 500 2/19 26c, 500 2/19 25c, 5000 7/16 30c
SNDL: Opted out today

Yes, as you read, cross post from boringpeople, but it's well worth a read, as long as it is. All credit to u/jn_ku, and go read the other parts. Godspeed autists
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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').
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.
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.
DateVolumePrice at US Market CloseFriday, 1/22/21197,157,196$65.01Monday, 1/25/21177,874,00$76.79Tuesday, 1/26/21178,587,974$147.98Wednesday, 1/27/2193,396,666$347.51Thursday, 1/28/2158,815,805$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.

First Chapter Chapter 6-The Second Dojo Chapter 8- If...
Chapter 7-Private Lessons and Private Conversations
Travis stood over the pan, watching the bacon fry. He had set it in the pan about 2 minutes ago and it was sizzling rather nicely. He had eggs whipped up for scrambled eggs ready and the batter ready to fry. Mel’Bae was in the shower. It had been three months since he and Mel’Bae had started dating and things were going great. The dojo had grown in the first month to about 20 new students, but over the month it fell to about twelve, when the ladies figured out it wasn’t a dating service. Well, not intentionally.
Tonboon, the usually studious med student had become a bit of a ladies man. Hell, he practically had a sign-up sheet! Sensei had to take him aside and give him a talk about not hooking up inside the dojo. What he does outside is ok, but in class we gotta keep it professional. He’s almost a black belt and the rules are different when you attain that rank. Tonboon and Travis weren’t the only ones that had been involved with the Shil’vati in more than a professional manner. While Travis hadn’t seen Sensei or Sadie. Travis had seen Mark sneaking out of one of the officer’s quarters. It took Travis a moment of shock to process what he was feeling. He hadn’t had the time to even form the words in his head: What do I do about this? Should I tell Julie? When he then saw her, sneaking out of the same room. Oh, well thank Goddess for that!
Goddess? Damn Mel’Bae’s rubbing off on me.
Travis was staying over with her about three or four times a week now. They were still being exclusive together. They had talked about maybe adding someone new, but he wasn’t ready for that yet.
The bacon was done so he pulled it out. He skimmed off a bit of grease and then added the eggs to what remained, letting it slowly fry before folding it over itself to make sure the eggs turned out smooth and not dry. Using a towel, he wicked his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes from the hot stove and the hot room.
He had come up with a novel solution to staying in a room set to her preferred temperature. He was wearing a YUKATA. The thin, cotton KIMONO-like robe that was a gift from a friend during a summer festival in Japan was comfortable at Shil’vati temperatures, it also covered his body enough for their ideas of male modesty. It worked well in the kitchen too, as it kept him from violating the general rules of bachelor cooking:
1 Always wash your hands before going to the bathroom if you have been handling chilies.
2 Never fry bacon naked.
It also had one more advantage: it was easy to slip on and off.
The eggs were ready and he put them on a serving plate. Next he re-greased the pan with some of the leftover bacon grease and began to pour the batter in small batches waiting for it to fry and bubble up. When it was golden brown he flipped it over to cook on the other side.
Mel’Bae got out of the shower, she pulled on a sports bra and a pair of shorts. Then toweled her long hair off before tying it loosely behind her back, she usually did this most mornings now waiting to put it up in her usual bun until after breakfast when she had to go on duty.
Travis set the table and each scooped eggs and bacon out onto their plate. For the other item Travis had some honey (real maple syrup was out of his price range, and he refused to buy the imitation “maple flavored” crap) and some elderberry jam his mom had sent him. Mel’Bae and his mom hadn’t met in person yet, but they had talked through video conferencing. Similarly, Travis had only seen recorded messages from Mel’bae’s family. She apparently had six mothers. All of whom Travis was trying to tell apart. No real word sent by her father though. Deal with that later, Travis thought.
“I’ve got to run back to my apartment today,” He told Mel’Bae. “But I should be back by the time you’re off duty. I’ve got a private class with Nosis at ten o’clock and his wife probably will want to talk to me afterward.” Nosis was Agent Sommarsdar’s young husband. Travis couldn’t judge the dude for marrying into money, I mean both men and women have been doing that for centuries.
He was coming along as a good student and taking private lessons from Travis had improved him in regular classes quite a bit. Though it was odd, training with him felt a lot like training with a gentler version of Sadie. Which is either the most logical or the strangest thing to think.
“I’ll pick up some stuff from the commissary annex for dinner,” Mel’Bae offered. The Base’s version of a grocery store.“ Any chance back in town you could pick up some more of the stuff to make these?” She asked as she held up a piece of one of the golden brown disks with her fork. “They’re really good. What are they called again?”
“They’re flapjacks.” Travis told her.
_____________________
Mel’Bae gave him a quick kiss as she headed out to start her shift in the shuttle hangar. Things between them hadn’t cooled in the bedroom exactly, but they were restraining themselves from copulating in the mornings, well in the mornings she had to go on duty. If they both had Shel off…
He hung up his YUKATA and took a shower. Getting ready for his private class. The stipend the military was paying for Sensei to teach lessons was enough to keep their regular dojo open, though they still didn’t have any new students walk through the door. And with Travis teaching some private classes he had enough money to meet his needs without having to bounce if he didn’t want to. He would occasionally pick up a shift as a favor to someone, but that was just as a little extra spending money.
Showered and shaved, he put on his regular clothes and placed his GI in his backpack. He loaded up the omni-pad Mel’Bae gave him as a gift. Saved on it was the complete series of Aikido videos he could use to show Nosis to help him understand how techniques could be done. In a ready-to-transfer file he had uploaded a bunch of videos and texts for his wife to help her understand humanity better.
Perhaps it was all just subterfuge, him teaching her husband, but Agent Sommarsdar had been picking his brain to help herself understand humanity. And if it meant less loss of life to help the Shil’vati figure out how to drain the ranks of angry young men and women from the rebels, then he was happy to do it. Today’s collection was of original texts, essays, and commentaries from some of the great thinkers in human military strategy. Clausewitz, Sun Tsu, Musashi Miyamoto, Max Brooks.
All packed up he turned his attention to clearing the dishes and getting some laundry done before his class. Since he was crashing at her place he had taken up more responsibilities of basic housework. It was best to try to use the laundry room in the mornings when most of the Marines were on shift. Nobody had yet tried “the ol’ grab ‘em by the dick” brand of courtship with him yet. However the best way to win a confrontation was to not be in one. Gathering up his and Mel’Bae’s clothes he headed out.
__________________
“SHIT!” Nosis whined as Travis corrected his movement, showing him how to lift his arm in such a way that his whole body was aligned in the movement and focused on the weakest part of his partners arm allowing it to raise easily.
“It’s OK, just remember to keep your hand inside of his arm, if it goes to the outside he ..um..or she can use their bicep to pull you down. Raising this way works on the triceps muscle which is not as strong. But the most important part of Tenshinage is the bottom hand. You’ve got to draw it down and to the side like this.” Travis slid at a forty-five degree angle in toward Nosis and lowered his hand that he was grabbing. Nosis’ shoulder dropped and he lost his balance. “Like this, Tenshinage doesn’t look like much, and almost nobody will ever grab you this way, but It has the building blocks of a lot of different moves.
“How do you remember all of this stuff!?!” He asked exasperatedly.
“Hey, remember, over ten years vs about three months. You’ll get there, you just have to keep trying and have patience. It’s like Zen meditation, minus the getting hit with sticks part. You do it a thousand times, or ten thousand times wrong then one day it comes to you.”
“If you two are ready to call it a day, I’ve got us some lunch.” Said Agent Sommarsdar coming into the room. Travis had been teaching Nosis for the last two hours in their home.
“Sure we can end here.” Travis then turned to Nosis and bowed.
“Thank you, Sensei.” Nosis called out
“Hey, remember, our Sensei is Sensei, I’m just Travis or if you want to Travis Sensei.”
“Sorry, Travis Sensei.”
“Don’t worry about it just remember next time. Ok on three.”
“Domo arigato gozaimasu,” They bowed to the picture of the O sensei, the founder, that Travis had brought. “Well, let’s get lunch.”
_________________
Sitting around the table eating with the two of them it was easy to remember how alien they were. Agent Sommarsdar treated her husband with a level of pampering or maybe mothering he and Mel’Bae definitely did not have with each other nor did he want there to be. She was practically spooning his food into his mouth for him. It made the conversation a little distracted. “What you really need to understand is very complex in its simplicity: if humans feel they are treated well, we will be the best friend you ever had. If we feel disrespected and put down, we’ll hate ya till the day you die.”
“But we are treating you well. Your standard of living has increased significantly and you are from what was the wealthiest of your nation states. What we’ve done for some of your ‘lesser developed nations’ should have been seen as a Goddess sent miracle.”
“You’re right, but that’s not how most people feel,” he tried to explain. “For a lot of people anti Shil’vati sentiment and resistance started when we saw the footage of that incident at the Grimmsville Hospital. None of us knew that woman, or her husband, but seeing that we all felt like we did. She could have been our sister, or wife, or mother. That could have been our child or grandchild. If the roles were reversed Nosis, even with amazing leaps forward in living do you think you could forgive?”
Nosis looked at Travis, you could see that the idea had struck a nerve with him. And with his wife. “Have you...”, he asked, “Been able to forgive?”
“I try to.” Travis thought about the best way to phrase his next words. “I try to remember that Shil’vati are people no better or worse. and judge the individual by their actions. Do I feel that the Shil’vati in charge should face some punishment for her incompetence? Yes.” This garnered a look from Agent Sommarsdar, She seemed to be thinking of something, or remembering. "However, I don’t blame all of the imperium for her actions. It's hard sometimes to separate the actions of a system from that of the individuals in that system. But that’s basically how my country was founded.”
“Have you read any of the works about the British Empire?” He continued. “They, at their height, controlled a quarter of the planet. The country I grew up in was started when they felt disrespected. They fought because they were taxed without having a say in the government. From that start they became the world's largest political and military power. I grew up believing in the idea of ‘American Exceptionalism’. The idea that we were, despite our faults, the best there was. That belief has been shattered and many now feel that they are fighting to get that back.” Travis took a breath. “Even though they’re fighting for an idea that was a lie. Yeah America had the greatest military strength, but we also had a crumbling infrastructure and massive debt that was the cost of that military. There was a political deadlock that made sure every problem was politicized and argued about endlessly and never fixed.”
“So you never saw this American Exceptionalism?” She asked holding out another morsel for Nosis to pluck from her hand.
“I saw it every time I saw a homeless man with a sign that read:
HOMELESS VET
PLEASE HELP
GOD BLESS”
“I hope you’re not thinking of The Imperium as some kind of flawed saviors.” Nosis added. Which earned him a reproachful look from his wife. Travis had learned that he was the far more liberal of the two.“
“Oh God...dess no!” He blurted out. “I know you didn’t come here for our benefit but for yours. You took us over ‘cause we were here. But in the end It’s simple. Like a… a marriage.” Pointing to the two of them. “Humanity needs to feel special.”
“That’s a lot to think about,” Agent Sommarsdar replied. “But sadly our lunch needs to come to an end. I’ve got to get back to the office, my sweet.” she said to Nosis.
“Yeah I gotta get going too. Before I go though, have you thought about that riddle I gave you.”
“I have but I’m still puzzled.”
“What riddle?” Nosis asked.
“Maybe you can solve it for her. What’s the easiest way to get someone to clean your house for free? Think about it awhile and maybe next private class you can give me an answer.”
_____________________
Travis walked around the grocery store picking up the ingredients for making more pancakes as well as some large ham steaks that would go well with them. It seemed like he was turning more into a homemaker, cooking and taking care of Mel’Bae, but to be honest there wasn’t much to do with his time right now that his financial situation was more stable.
It was strange the way things that would appear bizarre to an outsider become normalized after a few months. The fact that he was practically living with Mel’Bae now was one of those bizarre facts. For humans it was bizarre because he was livin’ in sin with an alien woman, and for Shil’vati because he was doing it with only one of them. But hey, it was working for them right now so why try to mess with a good thing? However, he knew his ego would draw the line if she tried to start hand feeding him.
Nosis had been a wealth of information for Travis on how the Shil’vati were viewing his group. Being that they are the first civilian employees on any military base. In a way, it was funny, the nicknames the ladies came up with for them sounded almost like they were a boy band. Sensei was still Sensei, but Tonboon was the sexy one. Sadie was the scary one. Julie and Mark were the lovers. And Travis?
The boring one.
Heading up to the check out Travis thought. Who cares if I’m boring, I’ve got a lover and I’m getting laid regularly. How many of them can claim that? The answer to that though probably depended on how tired Tonboon was on any given day. Sensei and himself might have to do another sit down with their soon to be black belt in the near future.
_________
Travis walked down the hallway to his apartment door. Grocery bag in his left hand as he took out his phone. He had gotten through the security check point rather fast. Last time he had been stopped and taken into the back room because the marine on station was one of their students and she had a question about last class. Which then turned into a fifteen minute impromptu workshop on Kaitennage. Travis unlocked his phone and looked at his messages. It had been a while since he had come back to his apartment. He started writing down the codes for his door so that he wouldn't forget. He glanced at the number and then put his phone away. Even now too many people still spent most of their life looking at a screen and not paying attention. Before coming up with the idea to teach the Shil’vati, Travis had thought about printing up business cards that had the dojo’s logo and phone number on them. Then have everyone go around slapping them onto the screen of someone they notice being too absorbed in their phone or tablet or omni-pad. The card would simply read. If you knew Aikido, I would have never got this close.
Getting to the door he keyed in the code and pressed UNLOCK. The door pushed open. Home sweet home, except for the three men standing in his room. One of whom was the man that had followed him from the hotel.
First Chapter Chapter 6-The Second Dojo Chapter 8- If...
Author's Post Script: Thank you again to u/WastedHope17 for all of his help as well as my Beta readers. You all ROCK!
I'm not sure how long I can commit to two chapters a week due to my work picking up but I will try to continue till I cannot.
Thank you all again for reading my work.

Gather around all you sneaky bitches and fomo bag holders and let me tell you about some shit I'll call the "FOMO wheel of delight" AKA the "how to kinda profit buying the top or at least not get fucked" strategy.
I'm talking to you if you fd'd or yolo'd your weed money into weed stocks today, and no i don't care they're still going up, because they've been going up since mid jan and now they're getting memey and all overbought (time to find the door). I saw so many people today saying "oh crap i fomo'd all over myself and bought today." Hush yo mouth now and listen. This entire strategy is not guaranteed to make you money, but it should make your bags a bit lighter or even let you get out of a dumbass play (eventually), so don't come back to me whining about your heavy bags because I make no guarantees -- if you want a better more practical play this strategy is based off the more conservative wheel aka triple three-way or whatever strategy as defined here but this one is squished down, deformed and mutilated to fit your fomo fd desires, well at least the weekly part.
Here's how it works. First, go read that post. Now, once you've done that and actually understand the big words in there, and how you're actually supposed to do it, heres how you mutilate that strategy in such a way that in the best case scenario you get 10-30% (or more in some cases) on your fomo plays and reduce your downside risk by the same amount.
I'm gonna ignore the greeks in this little fireside chat because I betcha my audience don't know a damn thing about them or think they know more about them than they actually do (if you can calculate black-scholes in your head just stop reading now - if you can, why are you fomo'ing bro?)
Anyways... here we go:

• Step 1: Recognize your FOMO. The first step is admitting it. It feels like, "Shit this shit is really doing some green dildo shit, maybe i should buy that shit now, even though everyone's been talking about it for days/weeks/whatever... fuck it, ok, here i go... oh crap did i just buy the top?" (yep, you did) - next time it happens try this instead. I know we all like loss porn, but I already see enough dumbass yolos to have my fill but fomo bag holding feels bad for everyone (unless you're yolo'ing fd's then I still like it).
  
• Step 2: Read the crayon drawings. Take a look at the angle of that big green dildo (or big red dildo if you think about how this works hard enough i'll leave that as an exercise to you the reader) - if its pointed up like a boner securely tucked into the belt of your pants, this strategy will probably fuck you, but go ahead and look at the option chain - if you know your maths try to figure out the best fit mean line to determine what you expect the greed spike to fall back to and look in those areas of the option chain (but i've not seen a worthwhile play there yet, unless you're playing monthly's at that point)
  
• Step 3: Sell a cash secured put. Look at the put option chain and make a decision: do you think its still gonna keep going up with a solid thrust? Pick an itm weekly (or 2/3 weeks away if you got the balls - the deeper or longer the itm the bigger the balls) with good premium to sell, 25%+ minimum premiums or more for this one (if its gonna hurt more if you're wrong you might as well get paid for it) - keep in mind the break even value for later, thats your initial cost basis (aka what your silly ass better not sell the stock below later), and dictates how you're gonna recover later. Do you think you're near the top but think the run will continue for the week? Sell ATM weekly puts for at least 15%+ premium, maybe slightly less but less than 10% though is definitely not worth it imo. Think you missed the train and you know you are actually at the top? sell otm weekly puts just above worthless - should get 5-7% premiums here.
  
• Step 4: Patience. That's right, at least this time you wont be babysitting your weekly call option as often as you jerk off, since this time you will be actually holding some kind of equity in the end no matter what, so now you have more time to jerk off. Congratulations, you've taken the first actual action of this shitty fomo wheel strategy.
  
• Step 5: Expiration. Expire worthless? good, now you made cash money and can feel "accomplished" in your fomo play and walk away with decent fomo gains (unless you were a greedy ass). Still going up but made some cash? Rinse and repeat with as much pain/pleasure tolerance you got. Expire in the money and got assigned? proceed to next step, at least these bags you're holding don't have holes in the bottom like the dumbass calls you usually buy.
  
• Step 6. Lower your cost basis and gtfo or profit. Since your dumbass is now holding bags, lets get some interest until you can get out or profit. Sell covered calls for a strike price no less than your cost basis, or at least have the premium cover the cost basis you are discounting off the strike price. If you are super OTM then you definitely fucked this up, because the idea is not to be so far OTM that you can't turn around and sell a covered call (thats why you want those sweet sweet high premiums) ... but if you are, I guess you are stuck selling fd's for a while. Either way, the idea is, every time you sell a cc you get another premium that lowers your cost basis, so essentially you can rinse/repeat to chase the leg down until you at least break even. There's more strategies here, but this is the basics.
  

TL;DR:

• Sell cash secured puts into fomo instead of calls dumbass (they're both bull bets) - you're not gonna get a 10 bagger this way but you fomo'd bro so suck it up
  
• If you don't fuck up - free money - rinse, repeat until it hurts i guess.
  
• If you do fuck up, now you can sell covered calls until you get back to even via premiums, or god forbid come back for a profit
  
• you're welcome you sneaky bitches and fomo derps
  
• P.S. I made those premium percentages up but they are close to what i do, make your own percentages up and think for yourself.
  

If you're up 100s or 1,000s of percent on something FFS, take some fucking profits. There's nothing wrong with it, you don't have to sell your entire bag, but God damn don't be an idiot. All of this "hodling" meme crap is going to screw you over.
Holding is inarguably the best long term strategy for crypto, but there's nothing wrong with cashing out a bit along the way. Never worry about the "but what if it goes up to ____ amount". Just worry about what you DID make. Just knowing you're up from your initial investment, will bring you so much peace of mind. Then whatever happens along the way won't matter as much.
Next alt-season we have, for the love of God. Don't hold into the ground, if you're way ahead, enjoy the fruits of your Investment. Don't live in denial when you're 90% down that the rocket ship is still coming.
Maybe I'll eat my words in the next few weeks. But I still don't see literally any harm in quitting while you're ahead.

1. Based on the other 9 heroes in the game, judge whether the game is going to be played in a 5 man teamfight kind of way. If the game is going to be about getting pickoffs & skirmishes based on your heroes, then don't bother with pipe crimson vlads etc. Buy euls/manta/blinks/forcestaffs/bkbs etc.
2. Your skill build / item build should be for the lane first, and the game second. If you are a useless pile of crap after laning, it doesn't matter how sick your max chains no flameguard build on ember is against thier heroes if you just have 2k networth at 10 min.
3. If lane A pushes by X, lane B pushes by -X, then there can be no plays made. This can be fixed by clearing more waves in either team. More waves are cleared only by pushing waves more survivably or by buying waveclear items.
4. Plan fights/smokes around big creep waves as cores are baited by 15 creeps hitting a T1
5. The will of the core is the will of the team.
6. Recognize waves you farm to push the lane vs waves you farm to actually get the last hits. The mid wave, in the river, for instance is a place where many greedy players can be found dead as they walk into the centre of the river to last hit the creeps at 15 min when the enemy team is missing. If you cannot nuke dangerous waves from range, have supports do it. If no one can do it reliably, then hopefully you have a hero who is survivable on waves to their heroes. Otherwise, the game is actually just impossible & your draft sucks as anyone who pushes that wave will get jumped and die.
7. Your team is allowed to play 2 lanes; if you play the 3rd, your time there should always be limited otherwise you risk dying or getting your teammates killed.
8. Always play according to how mechanically confident you are in executing. If you are an ember who *should* be able to sleight dodge a sven stun, but you do not feel confident doing so, then don't do it.
9. Play according to what the game is, not what it could be.
10. Imagine the enemy team to be one mind, and yours to be a hundred.
11. Realize that there are things (and weaknesses) you will never learn about without playing the heroes. For example, when tinker gets soul ring, he is often jungling at low health.
12. Realize what the current situation is, when it is going to inevitably change, which team is going to cause the team, and consider whether the change in gamestate can be avoided without comitting too many resources.
13. If there is ever a rotation you can immediately make to improve the gamestate, you should make it as even though your own game is currently good, the gamestate could be horrible. They could, for example have a beastmaster that has taken your bot t1 and is now going to inevitably rotate mid with the catapult and roar. You are a monkey king mid, and even though you crushed the enemy ember, you still have only phase boots + ogre axe at 10 min and will be unable to fight the beastmaster off to defend. Thus the gamestate is horrible.
14. Itemize to play, do not play to itemize.
15. Past the early game (10-15 min), think more about team timings and less about your individual timing. At this point, no matter how strong you are as a core individually, you need to consider your strengths as teams at all times. Typically, the position 1 starts making calls around this point as they start hitting their timings (fury/manta AM, deso/fury PA, fury/aghs MK, radiance manta WK etc)
16. Realize that when your team is playing 2 lanes, and you go to the 3rd, you are effectively resetting the map. This may be good if your team fought and now has no cooldowns as the enemy is also forced to reset the map.
17. It is not necessary to have an idea of your entire teams optimal orientation of the map; all you need to know is what type of piece you are in the puzzle. If you are in a competitive team and are the captain, this is even more so true. If you are the captain, then you are not only a piece in the puzzle, but you are the hand that plays the puzzle itself.
18. All strength will always be temporary, unless you make it permanent. Use your advantages the second you get them. Whether this means skipping boots to rush a fury and farm faster, or running at the enemy PA at level 6 only 5 minutes into the game as a midlaner, do your part.
19. The reason casters are apparently so good at dota, and in practice generally not even top 500, is because they make what is already happening on the screen entertaining, which means they do not highlight the possibilities before and they do not understand why this particular path was chosen. Spectating dota will typically not make you better, as there will be a lack of you seeing things, rather than you seeing things which were done incorrectly. Play.
20. In a bad lane matchup against a farming core, your choices are to either bring heroes to your lane and pressure them, or leave your lane to pressure elsewhere. This initially meant only mid, but I realize it applies to sidelanes equally. It is only when your hero cannot pressure other lanes AND you do not have heroes which can rotate mid that you accept the gamestate. And in this case, it is probably a drafting error. It is never 'okay' for both teams to farm while one has a farming mid and the other has a ganking mid.
21. Plays made out of desperation are rarely worthwhile. Identify whether it is your actual hero in the game that is desperate, or it is your desire to forget your (and your teams) past gameplay errors.
22. Dota is not a game which can always be played reactively; you will not improve by simply reacting to opportunities, such as a CM running into a hasted ember spirit, or having an opportunistic ward which scouts a low health tinker in the jungle. The biggest difference between good and bad players in the game is that good players create opportunities; bad players react to opportunities. Bad players will never just TP to a beastmasters lane at 5 min and help him take the tower if they do not already happen to be there. Good players will.
23. Skill build and itemize according to how you will play, and play according to how you skill build and itemize. If you have max jingu on monkey king, you either made a mistake or you are supposed to run at people; that is a sign the game is giving you telling you to run at people. Use it.
24. Assume the best, expect the worst. For example, if there is a highground you absolutely must walk up, then do it, but make sure you switch your treads to str and use any defensive abilities on you or wait for your team to come closer.
25. Visualize certain 'forcing' facts in the game; by forcing facts, i mean certain key ideas in the game which allow you to 'solve' the mid game orientation puzzle. For example, pushing against tinker with travels with a wk monkey king underlord cores? Not happening. Then where should you play on radiant? Well, if you are not strong, you need to worry about losing your objectives. This is typically bottom tier 1 for radiant. What about mid? Well, mid is sort of a 'useless' lane, so we can have a weak but survivable hero like wraith king farm the lane. Underlord cannot jungle, and he needs to be at the fight before it happens, so he should be bot. Monkey king wants to be around trees and wants to farm as well, so he should be top, ready to tp bot. The supports? Well, when defending a tower like this (in a greedy way with 2 farming cores), the 4 support can look for either pressure with the pressuring core (monkey king) or stay behind the underlord for counterinitiation.The 5 typically sits behind the underlord as a save or a bait to make the enemy dive deeper. If the 4 is a greedy hero as well like rubick/lina, then you need to REALLY hope you crush your lanes as this hero needs to farm a lane to function, and so one of your 2 farming cores is not going to get a full lane. However, by realizing the presence of the enemys strong depush with Tinker, we have constructed a 'necessary' orientation for our team.
26. Assume the enemy is in this 'optimal' orientation, unless they give you reason to believe otherwise. For example, smoking for an AM with battlefury, the enemy radiants bottom lane is likely not going to work as AM farms ancients and top side, not bottom.
27. Every individual player's idea in the game has a certain 'margin' it is sullied by due to the 'execution gap', which is the gap between what a player expects to happen and what actually happens. Ideas are not necessarily bad because they do not work; team secret compared to some tier 4 NA team would make the same strategy look completely different because they just 'know' what that strategy looks like so much cleaner. For example, for splitpushing, they know who is supposed to push which lane. What conditions are required for a certain hero on their team to show? Where should wards be placed around? Who should place these wards? Who sits behind who? What heroes actually do the split pushing? What items/levels are required to begin split-pushing?
28. Truth is, past a certain skill bracket, no one truly knows what plays are good or bad anymore. At the highest brackets (and nowhere else), execution matters far more than the play itself. If miracle pulls some sick aegis steal where 99% of players would've failed miserably, died without buyback, and lost the game, is that a good play? I think so. Because it worked.
29. Play like there is no other person in the game. Play as if it is a singleplayer game to avoid tilt. Think of the all chat and stuff as things being said by an AI, DotA 2. Would you become upset by something an AI said? No, because an AI cannot really 'feel' your dissatisfaction, so you should not be dissatisfied.
30. Be dissatisfied when your hero is dissatisfied. As with marriages, do not stay in a toxic environment; if the lane is rough , start considering alternatives. At some point in the game, the lanes break down, and yours will too. Consider how you can accelerate this process, or make it happen in the first place
31. Think of the 'hard to think about' factors in a game. For example, to take your game to the next level, try and anticipate blink reveals. When there are 2 cores in a lane, consider whose job it is to push the wave and whose job it is to stand around the other guy to protect him / threaten people near him. Another one would be that if you are smoking at XX:40, a good place to go would be the enemy triangle if they have an ancient farmer. The carry, if he is any good, will be waiting close to the ancient camp for it to respawn, and you will be able to get a clean pick as (on radiant) he will be on the left side of the hill, so you can smoke up the hill from the right without worrying about it breaking for the most part.
32. While split pushing, decide between applying pressure on 1 lane, or relieving pressure from 2 lanes by cutting. This depends on mainly how urgent it is to relieve pressure. If they are about to go highground, that wave needs to get cut, unless you push almost as fast as all 5 of them combined against the heroes your team currently has alive. The answer is generally no to this, so if they're about to push objectives, the correct play is typically to cut waves instead of apply tower pressure of your own. In some games, cutting waves will be far more dangerous, and in these buying your own wards/sentries can be super helpful.
33. In every mid lane, there is typically 1 mid laner that walks to the rune before it spawns. For example, as puck vs ember, ember would need to walk to the rune before because if they both wait until spawn, puck can just orb to it and take it as puck orb > ember MS. Same with ember vs lesh; lesh is faster than ember, and if ember tries to 'not 50-50' the rune, then lesh will just press edict and chase him down. Realize which one this is, and itemize accordingly; boots as lesh or ember would help, as well as a point in chains on ember.
34. Recognize that when a certain gamestate is bad, you do not always need to change it. It could be that any play you make is going to fail and just make the gamestate worse, so your goal should be to do the 'small things' better rather than making a big fancy play. For example, some tinker wards to scout the enemy tinker with a hex, having oracle sit behind people who push lane rather than pushing it alone, positioning better while pushing waves, putting a highground ward and camping it etc. Just because the enemy tinker is very strong and outfarming you does not mean you instantly smoke up and try to make something happen in desperation; any play you make will likely result in a 5 man feed since the enemy will have vision and all lanes will be pushed into you. Instead, wait for a mistake or a better timing to make this desperate play off. A cores bkb, or lvl 25 for example. Or an opportunistic ward that the enemy supports forgot to deward.
35. While split pushing, make a list of the 'necessary' heroes a team needs to catch you. These are typically only 1 or 2 in each team. For e.g if the enemy team has undying, death prophet, bristleback, crystal maiden, earthshaker, and you are ember spirit with a euls, then the only hero that threatens you at all in shaker. For everyone else, you do not even need to look at them. But shaker should concern you. Look at him whenever you get a chance to see if he has a blink or smoke or some wards or shadowblade; even just checking his mana level can give you an idea of whether he can actually threaten you or not.
36. As a support with catch, make a similar list, but now from the enemy splitpushers perspectives. If you have catch for them, and no one else in your team does, do not show on waves. Do not show on any waves. Every wave you push is at least 2 that the enemy splitpusher does because they do it faster than you, but if you push no waves, the enemy cannot push any waves either. However, your team can push waves for you, and they cannot for the enemy splitpusher because that is the whole point of splitpushing; he is playing away from his team, so they cannot help him push waves.
37. With every rotation, there is a cost. If you leave lane as mid, the enemy gets to push the wave freely. After this, they can choose to either countergank you directly, indirectly, or pressure the tower (anything else is a mistake by the enemy mid unless the mid hero is some hardcore farmer like naga siren). If the enemy has lots of tower push mid (death prophet / leshrac) and they are unable to push while you are there, and able to push while you are not, then you simply cannot rotate without killing the enemy mid or forcing them to use enough resources that they may be dead already, or until your supports become strong enough to hold the lane on their own.
38. Early deaths (especially solo deaths) as a midlaner are gamechanging. When one midlaner dies and the other pushes the wave, he will likely be forced to tp back in to a now bad matchup, 99% of midlaners will tp if you just push the wave, and the remaining 1% will tp if you have any tower pressure (DP/DK/Lesh/wind with focus fire). You can then walk to a sidelane and apply a ton of pressure. Note this only works if the enemy mid doesn't just kill your tower; if he does, then the play is to actually punish his tp directly by ganking him with supports.
39. A good rule of thumb for judging when your rotations are good is by asking yourselfi) What happens if the guy that is likely to rotate (typically mid or 4) rotates to counterii) What if they see you coming on a wardiii) The lane that was against you is left alone (or vs your support if you're in a sidelane). Do they threaten to kill your support instantly and take your tower, or will they use a lot of resources to kill your support and then not be able to take it?iv) Are you going to threaten an objective of your own with the rotation? Such as towers/bounty runes/ taking enemy stacks/ taking control of the enemy jungle/ rosh/ outpost.
40. Watch the minimap. There are SO many fights which would never begin if one team watched their minimap at the time & walked into the enemies. A cool minigame you can play is watching a replay of a pro player playing a hero & then coming up with possible reasons as to why they make the movements they do based on only the minimap (without looking at the gameplay itself).
41. The 2 reliable ways to force fights are by forcing objectives, or having initiation. Thing about forcing objectives is that if both teams have 5 heroes alive, unless one is way stronger, the weaker team will still be able to defend. Because it is based around an enemy objective (besides Rosh) so they have a natural advantage. In every single game, initiation means something different. Against AM, pre-manta, it may mean silences or roots, but post-manta, you need hard stuns. Against Puck, instant disables. After linkens, AOE instant disables. This is why deathball lineups are hard to win with; they can typically force objectives early on, but if the enemy doesn't feed too much, they can split the map and cut waves indefinitely since deathball lineups are very slow and lack disables.
42. Dota is a 5 man game; do not panic if you are having a bad game. Ask the ones who are having good games to communicate their timings and play according to their gameplan. If it is AM, chill till manta abyssal. If you have a super farmed venomancer, force teamfights. If your mid ember spirit is popping off, run around with him and skirmish a bunch. If it is natures prophet, play away from him and set up disables for him so he can TP in and get pickoffs. If it is alchemist or some greedy battlefury hero and it is still early in the game, put wards in your triangle, have a hero camp the highground to break any smokes, and focus on protecting your towers while they get massive.

Watch me own while stoned: www.twitch.tv/high_shaggy

I’m 8 episodes into season 1 of survivor and.... it’s insane. These people are out there legitimately surviving and some seem to actually be going insane. The way Greg changes after the tribes merge and they interview everyone about it and everyone is saying some seriously crazy thing like that he is like playing toward the fact that he is an attractive guy and Richard finds him Attractive. I’m at a loss of words for just how absolutely amazing this season is compared to the latter seasons where it seems like everyone just has tons of food and the challenges aren’t nearly as intense as some of season 1.
Edit: just saw the part where Richard walks around naked..... this is amazing
Edit: the alphabetical voting strategy...... these people are insane
Edit: they go hard at the mud challenge and then the reward is going to some awkwardly fake bar with Jeff.... who tf thought of this stuff
Edit: omg Jeff have a clue in a Blair witch project theme..... what am I watching
Edit: why the hell did the cover them selfs in mud before walking the island..... I love it
Edit: holy crap Richard let’s go of the idol and puts it all on Rudy to win it.... I thought I licked Richard buuuuut dam that was shady....
Edit: I’m at the final tribal council.... I can’t believe who the final 2 are..... best season yet
Edit: sues speech at final council was amazing but so god dam cringe about snakes and rats haha
Edit: shout out to Rudy for sticking with the alliance till the end.... even tho it sounded like he wasn’t all that into it..... love Rudy
Edit: just finished it.... wow..... I swear it all came down to god dam mother fing Greg who said “GuESs A NUmbER beTWENn 1 AnD 10” fricking survivor man wow what a god dang great season
Final edit: just watched the after show..... god dam Rudy you are the absolute biggest legend to ever grace the show of survivor..... most humble and kind hearted person on the island.

With Nocturne being considered for a buff plus VGU and /Nocturnemains fooling themselves in to thinking he deserves it over other champions on the list, I felt I should talk about it.
Hi, I am RuneKatashima, a High-ish ELO Nocturne Main with well over a million mastery points and multiple accounts and I have been playing him since Season 2, own all the skins, and even made a comprehensive (but now outdated) guide! I also wrote the book on all spellshields interactions in the game. Unfortunately that book was on ethercalc who has changed their model and I can no longer access it if it even exists anymore. But here's the guide; https://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/official-r-nocturnemains-guide-to-darkness-573831
We'll update it shortly since the new Season is in swing, but I didn't want to say I made one with xstrangecloudx without showing it existed for real.
I didn't vote for Nocturne in the poll, I didn't vote for Shyvana either, who was my next strongest pick. Because I don't feel like Riot is equipped to handle either of these characters (maybe not even Skarner). I know, for a fact, that they do not understand Nocturne. In Season 7 when Nocturne was getting hella buffs I was asking them to tone it down since Celerity had just been changed to convert MS to Adaptive Force and that was more than good enough. But they did not listen. When I asked for them to take a look at him when he was weak. They did not listen. And when he was getting strong in mid I offered solutions that they did not listen to. The result of all of this is that ended up going through 3 or more cycles of repeated nerfs or buffs that also ended up in additional nerfs or buffs because they had no idea what they were doing. They don't know what a Nocturne player wants, nor his strengths and weaknesses.
Back during the Assassin rework, Nocturne was moved off the list and classified as a Diver only to later be reinstated as an Assassin and the Diver rework never came anyway.
The only Rioter who ever listened to me about Nocturne was, ironically, DanielZKlein who unfortunately passed away in a freak Twitter incident when he called the League playerbase manchildren.
In order to understand Nocturne's problems you must first begin with his symptoms and identity.
What is Nocturne and what is Nocturne?
Nocturne is a champion who plateau's in strength in Gold as a Jungler and Diamond as a mid laner. This has been the case for years. You cannot climb with Nocturne reliably. I've been saying as much since /Nocturnemains became a place.
This is because Nocturne is a champion who has the depth of a puddle with a small hole at the bottom of it that is constantly draining the water, no matter how much you try and fill that puddle with more water.
Nocturne is not a rewarding champion to play. He cannot make "big plays" and I don't mean flashy. He can't exert his will over more than 2 people at once. And 2 is a stretch based on his level of income. A Malphite will always be useful due to his ult regardless of his lane state. Nocturne's ult will not always be useful, despite the amount of power people, especially Riot, think it has. It has no right to be considered as powerful as it is. I have played Hundreds of games with friends and can count a handful of times they have said my ult has affected their fight that I didn't participate in. Overall, I'd say it's about 2% of the time. I watch replays too. His own ult puts him in danger due to the lack of tools to operate once he's landed. He can't insta-gib people nor stop people from fighting him and if he becomes CC'd he will die in the duration from most champions. He HAS to rely on his skill using W just to succeed. Nocturne cannot fail any of his skills or he will die. But most champs can. And his spellshield can be stripped easily and from things that weren't even meant to strip it. Over the years the ability has gotten worse and worse as well, blocking less and less things.
It's been a long time since the days of full armor pen builds where Nocturne really could be a cruise missile. I did play that style, but I haven't since Lethality was introduced. People think it's the same, and it isn't. You can't even do it with Electrocute anymore.
So Nocturne must rely on himself, because his ult will often put him alone, and not his opponents, as his voice line would indicate. So the ideal choice to make is to wait until either team engages and attention is diverted and cool downs are used. Indeed, this is the best strategy. A Katarina main could tell you that. But this runs against the best laid strategies that any Solo Queue Ladder Hero would tell you about and in competitive the darkness part is all but useless. Not to mention that Nocturne will let you know he's coming in not 1, but 3 ways. The first being the obvious voice line and Darkening of the screen, then the green umbra blades indicator under you, then seeing him fly towards you starting from 900 range away which is the furthest "nearsight" in the game.
Nocturne hardly survives past Gold because he is not rewarding to play. You need to learn how to W things just to survive, but not thrive. You aren't rewarded for learning all the tells of a spell coming at you. What you get is double your current passive AS boost and a fair chunk of your mana gone. Because Nocturne has THE most awful mana pool to spell cost ratios in the game. [Back to the AS] This isn't anything. Most champions get that much AS by just clicking a button, and you might argue that he gets some as AS always, but he sacrifices that in his base stats. Nocturne's stat line is quite awful for a melee champion. He sits middle of the road of all champions in the game and happens to be slightly tankier than some Assassins when what he needs is something akin to other divers like Vi, Jarvan, and Wukong. For all the risk he puts himself in. Attack speed is a crap reward, especially since it only benefits you if you're already attacking and lasts a very short amount of time. Not to mention being a very high CD. Then it has the audacity to allow hit-confirmations, ignore certain spells, let some stack abilities continue to stack and some not (Yuumi, Kennen, Viktor), no longer block AA modifiers, and more. In what world can I tell someone Nocturne is an enjoyable champion to play when I have to tell them, "Yeah, you can block bard Q but you still get stunned. You just have to deal with it XD." And it's not just Bard Q, it's Anivia Q, it's Qiyana ult. That's not fun or intuitive! The spell requires a lot of knowledge on making it work with little payoff. Are there instances of Nocturne getting a kill without it? Of course, but usually due to extenuating circumstances like easy targets. He has to block projectile spells like they're point-and-click instant spells because he's melee. His power budget is unironically attributed to this. I could go on about this ability for longer but I'll stop here.
His Q is counter-intuitive due to it's cast time. You want to chase? Here's a very low MS buff, and we'll make you stand still to cast it. The MS buff has no noticeable effect at level 1 unless you max range it and hit, and follow the trail the entire way. For a minor increase in distance. The chase spell is also tied to your AD steroid so it's not a good idea to even fire the thing at max range. You will catch up to them right as the trail wears off.
The spell is also counter-intuitive to the natural learning pattern of a player. It's one of the worst designed spells in the game. Every melee wants to attack and walk with their enemy to stay on them. Even going past them if they can. Nocturne cannot do this because he will lose his Ghosting, MS, and AD bonus. And he wants to walk past people more than anyone due to his Fear (which ticks poorly and they may not even walk backwards at all lol). He's also chained to his trail. He MUST stay on it if he wants to be a champion. Whereas other melees who close on enemies have freedom of movement, including almost all of the ones with MS boost that can go in any direction. They can dodge and weave. Nocturne is not allowed this and it is my opinion a trail mechanic has no place in League except on Trundle and that's for chasing people off his territory. If you want, give it to him.
His E is the most balanced ability except for the fact that it exists in a game where nobody plays by the rules. It does magic damage with an AP ratio, neither of which he will build for and is outdated as a design concept of "reliable" damage because of it. If someone is denying his physical damage it's because they're tanky, it needed to do %hp magical damage if anything. It must channel 2 seconds to CC people and he has to be in range for the shortest tether range in the game. Oh and he has no reliable dashes, just a small MS boost to stay on top.
Don't get me wrong and don't twist it. I'm not saying Nocturne can't stick and nobody has ever been feared by his E ever, of course they can. I am merely citing the problems to which makes him feel bad to play, which will cause that disconnection with new players.
Nocturne is a jobber. You don't see him in highlight reels unless it's as a champion to be defeated. He's a stepping stone villain. There to make others look good, not himself. At best, he is Worf.
His passive is an afterthought to allow him to survive the jungle. It got mega-buffed because he was having trouble in the jungle and now he's a "problem" (48% WR at best right now) in mid lane. Clearly, eventually, they handled it. See above where I said they had to go through multiple cycles to fix it :)
But it's still an afterthought. It doesn't lend to his fantasy or realistically to his power and decision-making regarding it is minimal (not absent, just minimal).
I have to give some props to Riot, however, I once had the thought that Nocturne could never abuse an item or rune better than any other champ and that made him stale. FWIW, it's still true in a way. But they at least opened my eyes that it's not a perfect statement when they made Celerity convert bonus MS to AF, that shit was hilarious.
So, what is Nocturne's identity? Well, it's what the players make of it, to be honest. And his identity has thus far been pretty malleable in terms of potential, and it seems that's what the players like. He has versatile item choices, just about any non-AP item is usable on him and many Runes have a place on him, and even more would be if the power of Runes were equal, but they're not.
But what do the players want? Well, some months ago I asked that very question: https://www.reddit.com/nocturnemains/comments/ivydba/what_do_you_actually_want_with_nocturne/ but I can summarize it for you. SPOOK. Well, that's dandy. But how does he play? Well, going by what I could actually glean from that thread and over the years as well as my personal talks with people and personal feelings. We want to haunt people and dismantle everything they do. And we want to occasionally blow someone up/duel someone in to the ground. For that reason, I think build diversity is the third most important thing after keeping his ult. The second being spook. And honestly I feel like spook is part player, part in-game mechanical assistance. The only time I've ever felt some genuine fear is when Warwick's W is on me. I can't risk pushing forward and I can't just go facechecking bushes. The ability is great for setting a mood. Think about that. Fiddle is just cheap jumpscare, that ain't how you run a successful horror movie/novel.
Overall, Nocturne is a decent duelist but not unparalleled. The issue is his power curve isn't treated like other junglers these days. In order to be a successful jungler you need some ability to send yourself over walls and Nocturne's being an extremely long ult CD isn't viable in that aspect. If you look at modern day junglers, they all have some form of terrain scaling. While he trades some of that power for the ability to duel, he's really not that strong at it. He either needs the ability to go over walls or needs to be very strong at dueling. Currently, and it isn't always the case, but currently he has neither.
Personally, in addition to all that. I'd like to keep his W. It's the only thing that gives me a sense of control in this game. The ability to 'nope' someone, you don't get to do that. It also allows me some peace of mind when a champion becomes OP or is released as such. As I can generally 'nope' their bullshit mechanic. I enjoy Yi for the same reason. It just needs to be rewarding. I can't imagine Nocturne without it.
I bring it up like this because Nocturne's identity is malleable, it is. Over the years it has changed without reworking. In season 2 he was a Support-tank and while that started to change a bit in Season 3, he didn't come in to his own until season 4, where he became an assassin with full AD/armor pen builds, even crit, at times. It wasn't long until it was discovered he could succeed with bruiser builds. After all, it wasn't much of a departure from his past. And soon, attack speed and on-hit, in the age of Feral Flare and eventually Devourer. Then these things never left him. Assassin changed when armor pen changed, but the style stuck with most players. Currently, your Nocturne build is a stylistic choice. Some can't move off Lethality, and some swear by Attack Speed. As for myself, as I tell all who come through, you build for the game you're in. And that doesn't sit well with a lot of people who just want to mindlessly follow a build path. But I've convinced some number of people and, miraculously, they have stuck with Nocturne and will say the same as I do.
Finally, a suggestion;
Normally, I like to keep these to myself since I feel like suggestions are hubris and almost a surefire way to make sure they don't get implemented, but I've also learned people do not value your opinion if you can't form some kind of solution. I've thought deep and hard about a rework for the better part of 4 years now. Iterating and iterating. I have something that satisfies me, which I find interesting as usually I would say art is never finished.
But I won't post it. Instead, I'll just say I've left hints throughout this whole post on recommended tweaks (though not what I would do for a full rework) and this last bit that has remained the same regardless of the change at hand being Ezreal or Sion sized. Remove all damage from his ult and move that power elsewhere. The damage doesn't tie well to any identity of Nocturne. There is no discernible reason why his power should be gated by the activation of this cooldown. The ult, instead, should be thematic. Make the fog go black, not transparent. BLACK. Most veterans know where things are but I believe real and true darkness is more unsettling. Blur the HuD and prevent it from updating. [And remove bars above heads] Long-time vets know their CDs, but this will help put that little bit of doubt in them. I want to test their mettle. Lastly, hide their allies. They're invisible now. You can't target them or see what they're doing. If you have a ground effect or skillshot you can work with that (e.g. Lux shield, how appropriate?). You can still see all enemies. But you can't see your friends and they can barely affect you.
You are alone.
Thank you for coming to my darkness talk.
P.S. I'm willing to elaborate further and at great length if anyone wants to listen.
TL;DR Nocturne isn't rewarding to play, mastery does not beget rank. This keeps him in a poor state and is exactly why people pick him up and drop him. Fun for a few games, but he's just a booty call.

Buzzfeed, Youtubers, any person who feels the desire to repost this somewhere, I beg of you not to. This is my life. Please don’t make it more difficult. Besides, if anyone deserves to profit off of my suffering, it’s me.
Again, I’m so sorry for the length of this post... I may not use a lot of words in real life but Jesus do I use way to many when explaining something. If there are inconsistencies with timing, it’s because I’ve been getting little bits of sleep at odd times of the day and night for a while now because pre baby insomnia, general discomfort, and stress so all the days are kind of running together at this point.
So I posted the other day, Sunday I think, about JNMIL’s reaction to being told she couldn’t come to the hospital on delivery day and though I wish I could say nothing eventful had happened since... that would be a lie. The situation in the original post took place last weekend so I shouldn’t be surprised as she’s had a week to work on it. Things had already gotten worse within a couple of hours of my post.
The thing I have figured out about JNMIL is that she starts this when she gets bored. She’s a widow, lives alone, has run off half of her children, and been demoted to polite small talk on holidays and birthdays with half the ones who still talk to her. Ergo, she gets lonely and I guess either decides or comes to the subconscious conclusion that the best way to solve this it to outrage people enough to pay attention to her (think a toddler breaking a vase because his parents are busy working) because, though she has been difficult to get along with since I met her, it’s gotten unbearable since FIL died.
The company she works for gives her a paid week off every few months, I’m not clear on the rules but her off week started some time at the end of last week meaning she’s bored and has too much free time.
This also means she has more time to talk to DH. I knew she had been calling him a lot since the night at her house and didn’t think much of it. I’m don’t want anything to do with her, but she is his mom and he has every right to talk to her. If she was just calling to talk to him, that would be awesome! I would love for DH to have a good relationship with his mom. I pretty quickly realized that this wasn’t what was happening when he had her on speaker phone shortly after I made my post.
She was being nicer than I’ve ever heard her before. Asking how me and baby were doing, how things were going at work, telling him about something cute his nephew did, stuff like that. I was skeptical, but pleasantly surprised. Maybe she had a change of heart? Maybe she decided to mellow out with old age in the past couple days?
Not exactly. Probably around twenty minutes into the call I’m sitting on the floor wrapping presents and responding to Reddit comments ironically about her, only sort of registering the conversation when I hear something to the effect of, “You’re going to call me when you guys are on the way to the hospital, right?”
I was a little annoyed because I’d already told her we weren’t notifying anyone until I had been checked and admitted in active labor. I don’t want to be making “Opps, no baby today, false alarm” calls on the way home after like peeing my pants or having false contractions or something. But whatever, maybe she forgot. Not a big deal. I’m used to having to say things twice, DH himself occasionally struggles with selective hearing.
DH looks at me with this what am I supposed to say face and I shake my head. No we aren’t changing the plan. He looks kind of upset but reminds her what we decided. She then again asks when she’s going to meet baby, though we’ve been over this more than once. Again, DH looks at me like what do I say again, I shake my head. We aren’t changing the plan. He still looks upset but tells her the same thing we agreed on before. She pushes a little bit longer, he keeps looking at me wondering if I’m going to change my mind, and I keep shaking my head until I just go back to wrapping and responding and ignore both of them. I really don’t like repeating myself that many times, and I’m hormonal and cranky anyway and didn’t want to have this discussion with her again.
This went on a bit longer, they hung up. I was annoyed but it’s almost Christmas, you know? Who wants to fight on Christmas? So we turn on a movie and pretend it didn’t happen.
Until what I guess was yesterday for everyone else? I unfortunately haven’t been to sleep yet. She calls DH while he’s on his way home from work around 3pm. When he gets home he’s on the phone with her and puts her on speaker so he could make something to eat. I’m folding laundry a few feet from the kitchen and basically hear the exact same conversation go down. Again, he keeps looking over at me hoping that I would give him permission to relent which I really don’t want to do. If he wants to change the plan, he can tell her what he wants but I’m not consenting to it. She pushes harder this time but eventually gives up.
Now before I add this next part, just know that I finally changed our Netflix password late last night. I didn’t tell her and as far as I know, she hasn’t realized yet as DH hasn’t gotten a call to my knowledge.
I finally decided to do this not because of the encouragement I got on my last post (though that was entertaining) but because she deleted my profile. You know, the thing that saves all your individual preferences, progress, and watch lists? She deleted it. I’ve been using that profile since individual Netflix profiles became a thing an I was pissed. I still am. I didn’t even notice at first because I’ve been watching something on Hulu the past couple days, DH saw it when he went to turn something on. He called and asked why as she’s the only one with the password and she said one of the grandkids must have done it when they were over earlier that day. He believed her, I didn’t, not after the conversations I overheard. The timing was too perfect. It has petty revenge written all over it. I think she was mad at me because she knows that before I got involved she could manipulate DH into anything she wanted and this time I’m not letting it happen because my child and I are involved. It was the only way she could get to me because I don’t answer her calls or respond to her text messages anymore and I’m pretty sure she knows I unfollowed her on Facebook awhile ago. Honestly I didn’t even know that she knew how to delete profiles, which is why I never worried about that (also just... who DOES that? What kind of person would do that? Ugh.) but I do know that there is no way to accidentally do it. Even if a kid was randomly pressing buttons which I don’t see the grandkids doing as they range from 6-13 and would know better, it’s still incredibly unlikely. Especially given that there are 4 profiles, one is hers, and a “Just for kids” one for when the littles are at her house. No one would have had any reason to even click on my profile. So I changed the password. DH is pretty annoyed with me now, and that is where my biggest issue is.
She’s causing problems in my marriage. All DH has wanted his entire life was a supportive family. Now his dad is gone and his mom has spent the past year and a half making him miserable but he’s still that little kid who just wants his mom to be there. In his eyes she’s finally trying to be a positive part of his life and he can’t see past that.
I know what she’s doing. It’s textbook manipulation and she’s done it to him before more times than I can count. To turn him against his dad when they would fight, get him to come over and fix something, even just to get our passwords. He falls for it every time because he just wants so badly for her to be there. Then he’s devastated when she doesn’t need him for anything anymore and goes back to her same old crap.
So now she has him convinced that I’m the bad guy. He’s convinced that I’m trying to keep her from her grand baby because I don’t like her, I’m holding grudges about stuff she’s done in the past, making up problems that don’t exist, and that I just hate his family in general. Which I don’t. I just don’t want to be bothered with all the crap they put us through.
What really got me was when he told me I need to “forgive and forget” I’m all about 2nd chances, but where do you draw the line? 3? 300? 3,000? How can I just forget the past five years?
So I guess that’s were it ends for now. DH is at work, but I’m sure I’ll hear about the password thing tonight, and there will be another fight about whether to change our plans with baby or not. Until then, I’m going to try to take a nap now that I’ve eaten a whole bag of chocolate and gotten all this crap out of my head.
Edit: Keep in mind that DH was raised in an unbelievably toxic environment. He dad was an alcoholic, his mom has always been incredibly manipulative, he’s always been the one who tries to make everyone happy which kept him torn between trying to please his mother, his father, and his siblings. Every single one of them is strongly opinionated and they all pretty much hate each other. He’s the baby of the family and has spent his whole life trying to make everyone in his family like him. It isn’t that he’s choosing her over me, he’s just trying to do the same thing he’s done his whole life: find a way to make everyone happy so that no one is mad at him. It just so happens that this isn’t a situation that his strategy will work in.
Edit 2: Okay, I know you guys are trying to help and I appreciate that, but my husband isn’t the bag guy here. He has been manipulated, abused and gaslit by his family for his whole life. Calling him names, and not acknowledging the pain that he is in or the fact that he really doesn’t even understand has badly he has been treated isn’t helping. It’s victim blaming and he is even more so the victim of his families issues than I am because while I can just ignore their calls he has what he feels is a moral obligation to be there for him recently widowed mother. There is no easy solution here for anyone involved and I think that needs to be acknowledged.