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A Comprehensive Compilation of All Due Diligence
First edit: Fuck this thing blew up. in all my years of redditing I have never been overwhelmed with wholesomeness like today. Thank you moderators for pinning this post - I will keep updating this on the regular! Before I go, if anyone wants further information going back before 25th January,here's a chronology of eventsfrom pre-squeeze till 4th February written by yours truly. Valentines Day 14/02 edit: Thank you all for your positive feedback and for literally all the awards. In all my life I never got platinum, let alone Argentium, and then Ternion!!! I had a few celebratory drinks last night and I woke up totally shitfaced. It's valentine's day and I will be spending the day with the gf (who as some of you noticed from my page-article, we are expecting by the end of the month and she is right about to pop so she needs extra care and attention). I will be reading all the comments during the day, every time the gf turns her head a bit from me. I'm saving the comments with links to DDs so that I can add them later on. I urge each and every one of you to read the new section 'HOW CAN YOU HELP ME WITH THIS THREAD' Again thank you for everything and stay positive! Make sure to let the ones who care about you know that you care about them too today! Happy Valentines Day! ______________________________________________ It took me a very long time to collect and create abstracts, but I finally finished. I'm totally exhausted but quite proud of myself for bringing you everything you need to know so far in one thread. I would love for this thread to be stickied, and if it does I plan to continue to update the same thread every day. If it does not I will continue posting updated versions every day. I also have my own website where I will keep updating this list.
Please help spread this around - knowledge is power. If you have a link to more DD leave a comment!
Please note that all Dates and Times posted are Central European Times (CET) Obligatory: This is not financial advice. I am a smooth-brained holder of GME 🚀💎🤲 We like the stock! ______________________________________________
First of all, THANK YOU. If you really want to help me and our brothers, here's what you can do:
Read and provide criticism, help me make better summaries and one-liners for the links to make it as readable as possible (think: ELI5)
Share this post to everyone you know - link this thread in WSB threads as comments so that we can educate the ignorant. We can link it in a way such as this: " Here’s a link to the motherload of DD for our favorite stonk " Empower others with knowledge
Look for any DD I have missed, old and new, especially in OG WSB from before the coup - send them to me as links in comments AND AS CHAT MESSAGES. I am going through all messages and I will update later today
We need to find a way to archive all the DD links from WSB so that if the mods of WSB catch on, we can have a backup of the threads before they delete them!
Collect more information on the coup, such as the info that was present from wallstreetbetstest and u/zjz posts. The retaliation messages, proof of removals of threads, bans for no reason ...etc.
Collect fake media articles that we can disprove so that I can compile a full list of bullshit media providers and articles
Let me know how I can better organize this thread.
and finally, don't forget to REPORT SHILLS. I would love to become a moderator and be able to investigate and ban shills myself. I applied but I don't think it will happen for now.
______________________________________________ Backdated posts added later in edits:
11-02 03:00
Added the Chronology of events from pre-squeeze to 4th February.
Price target prediction end of next week 19th Feb @ $58-59, with peaks above $60 to issue further Calls (to get paid the premium) then hold it below this line.
The following week 26th Feb will end below $70 as there is a large off-set of calls vs Puts at this strike price, and a gain from 50-70 in two weeks will bring in more retail investors again.
The surge up to $480 was likely not short-squeezing, but reducing liquidity along with massive retail investment along with Gamma squeeze covering naked options.
HFs liquidated significant positions of major holdings causing red days to have cash for covering positions.
Shills, bots and crooked mods have infested WSB to spread FUD and delete posts and users fighting the good fight.
Massive amount of $800 Calls expiring March 19th, along with massive amount of Puts for TSLA - as GME spiked TSLA tanks
We will likely not see a massive squeeze, but a slow cover similar to TSLA short squeeze.
A Comprehensive Compilation of All Due Diligence on $GME
First edit: Fuck this thing blew up. in all my years of redditing I have never been overwhelmed with wholesomeness like today. Thank you moderators for pinning this post - I will keep updating this on the regular! Before I go, if anyone wants further information going back before 25th January,here's a chronology of eventsfrom pre-squeeze till 4th February written by yours truly. Valentines Day 14/02 edit: Thank you all for your positive feedback and for literally all the awards. In all my life I never got platinum, let alone Argentium, and then Ternion!!! I had a few celebratory drinks last night and I woke up totally shitfaced. It's valentine's day and I will be spending the day with the gf (who as some of you noticed from my page-article, we are expecting by the end of the month and she is right about to pop so she needs extra care and attention). I will be reading all the comments during the day, every time the gf turns her head a bit from me. I'm saving the comments with links to DDs so that I can add them later on. I urge each and every one of you to read the new section 'HOW CAN YOU HELP ME WITH THIS THREAD' Again thank you for everything and stay positive! Make sure to let the ones who care about you know that you care about them too today! Happy Valentines Day! ______________________________________________ It took me a very long time to collect and create abstracts, but I finally finished. I'm totally exhausted but quite proud of myself for bringing you everything you need to know so far in one thread. I would love for this thread to be stickied, and if it does I plan to continue to update the same thread every day. If it does not I will continue posting updated versions every day. I also have my own website where I will keep updating this list.
Please help spread this around - knowledge is power. If you have a link to more DD leave a comment!
Please note that all Dates and Times posted are Central European Times (CET) Obligatory: This is not financial advice. I am a smooth-brained holder of GME 🚀💎🤲 We like the stock! ______________________________________________
First of all, THANK YOU. If you really want to help me and our brothers, here's what you can do:
Read and provide criticism, help me make better summaries and one-liners for the links to make it as readable as possible (think: ELI5)
Share this post to everyone you know - link this thread in WSB threads as comments so that we can educate the ignorant. We can link it in a way such as this: " Here’s a link to the motherload of DD for our favorite stonk " Empower others with knowledge
Look for any DD I have missed, old and new, especially in OG WSB from before the coup - send them to me as links in comments AND AS CHAT MESSAGES. I am going through all messages and I will update later today
We need to find a way to archive all the DD links from WSB so that if the mods of WSB catch on, we can have a backup of the threads before they delete them!
Collect more information on the coup, such as the info that was present from wallstreetbetstest and u/zjz posts. The retaliation messages, proof of removals of threads, bans for no reason ...etc.
Collect fake media articles that we can disprove so that I can compile a full list of bullshit media providers and articles
Let me know how I can better organize this thread.
and finally, don't forget to REPORT SHILLS. I would love to become a moderator and be able to investigate and ban shills myself. I applied but I don't think it will happen for now.
______________________________________________ Backdated posts added later in edits:
11-02 03:00
Added the Chronology of events from pre-squeeze to 4th February.
Price target prediction end of next week 19th Feb @ $58-59, with peaks above $60 to issue further Calls (to get paid the premium) then hold it below this line.
The following week 26th Feb will end below $70 as there is a large off-set of calls vs Puts at this strike price, and a gain from 50-70 in two weeks will bring in more retail investors again.
The surge up to $480 was likely not short-squeezing, but reducing liquidity along with massive retail investment along with Gamma squeeze covering naked options.
HFs liquidated significant positions of major holdings causing red days to have cash for covering positions.
Shills, bots and crooked mods have infested WSB to spread FUD and delete posts and users fighting the good fight.
Massive amount of $800 Calls expiring March 19th, along with massive amount of Puts for TSLA - as GME spiked TSLA tanks
We will likely not see a massive squeeze, but a slow cover similar to TSLA short squeeze.
Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls, I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps. I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders. While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months. Any feedback or additions are appreciated Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer. Here's what I tell options beginners: I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot. I like this beginner book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7 Helpful websites:
Tasty Trade (TT) and Ally Invest have helpful articles and videos.
ITM: In the money; strike is below stock value. Signif
ATM: At the money; strike is just at or above the stock value, often very highly traded. Can be very effective with moderate - long term expiry.
NTM: Near the money; strike is above the stock value, but fairly close. Slightly unofficial term.
OTM: Out of the money; price is at least a few strikes from the current stock price. I would say 10-30% over stock price.
Very OTM: Not a real definition, this is essentially a lottery ticket. Cheap, but almost certain to expire worthless unless there is explosive movement.
Understand delta in general and how delta changes with ITM and OTM options.
IV, IV crush, and how IV affects pricing. In general, you want to sell when IV is high and buy when the IV is low. Increasing IV is good for held calls/puts. IV drop or crush is generally good for sellers.
Selling options can be quite beneficial. Once you have a good general understanding, lookup thetagang . Kamikaze Cash has good youtube videos on most theta strategies (linked above). I personally believe selling options (especially cash secured) is much safer and can consistently make you profits. Θ Gang 4 life.
FOMO and how to avoid chasing a dangerous trend. DO NOT CHASE FROM FOMO!
What intrinsic and extrinsic value are. Know how they are affected by being exercised/assigned and how theta affects them.
Understand that some of WSB recommendations are straight up high-risk gambling and factor in the information accordingly. Be careful with Meme stocks and the survivorship bias on YOLO plays. However, I love the sub and think it’s hilarious. It has a lot of valuable information / DD if you are comfortable with the “colorful” language. It’s also great if you like rocket ship emojis.
Basics / Mechanics
Understand the 4 "main" option types. Buying or selling a call and buying or selling a put. Spreads and more complex multi-legged option strategies are based off these in some way (see below)
You can sell calls with 100 shares of stock or if you own an underlying longer term option; see LEAPS and PMCCs later. Selling calls naked is incredibly risky and often requires Level 4 (very advanced) permissions and usually a lot of capital. I will literally never sell calls naked since I don't want to ruin my life and end up living in a dumpster eating saltine crackers.
Puts can be sold/written cash covered (cash secured), which means you have the cash in your account to buy 100 shares. Your broker will put this money on hold until the trade is closed. Puts can be sold "naked" using Margin and Level 3 (with most brokers). Your broker will hold a percentage of cost of 100 shares (often 30-40%, 100% on meme stocks) allowing you to sell more puts. This increases your available capital/power as well as increasing risk.
General Tips and Ideas:
Don't EVER leave (short) spreads open on expiration day, close them. (more details below)
Start off trading very small. Slowly build up over weeks / months. You need to get accustomed to a fifty dollar swing a day, then a few hundred, then a few thousand. You need to ensure you don't get emotional (see below). I started trading options with 5k, then 25k, 50k, and later over 100k. I added my own funds over time and used my gains to build my account. Don’t go all in immediately, that’s dangerous and unwise.
Especially as you build up the amount of money you have invested, keep it diversified among several stocks.
Don't go all in on one thing, ever. Be able to take a hit from one stock and not mortally wound your portfolio.
A company may be doing great, then there's a major product issue out of nowhere. If you are overexposed in one stock this can really hurt you.
I had to roll options I sold that were about to expire completely worthless because FDX's CEO changed and the stock took a hard dip.
Don't trade emotionally. If you realize you are emotionally trading for vengeance, you should probably exit the trade and cool off for several days with that stock. Same if you get caught up in a wave of hysteria.
Have a plan for every trade, ideally with entries / exits that are specific values, ranges, or a set condition. This helps remove emotions. This is super important for strong movements and high volatility (see later).
Use an options profit calculator from your broker or an online one before entering a "new" trade, especially a complex multi legged trade: https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
“Rolling” an option: Closing your existing option and opening a similar one at different strike and/or expiration.
Rolling a call “Up” would be selling a call you own and buying a cheaper call at a higher strike.
Rolling a put “Down and out” closes your original one and buying or selling one at a lower strike at a longer expiry.
Better broker interfaces have a literal “Roll” button. I know E-trade does. You can manually do it by selecting relevant contract legs.
If you have a losing trade, re-evaluate it. If your initial assumption is definitely incorrect, close it. Don't stay in losing trades forever and lose the entire value of the option over stubbornness. If you re-evaluate and you think your assumption was right, hold, potentially consider adding another cheaper option (or buy another call / put). Rolling out sold options can help here.
Don't try to day trade, especially with options. It's statistically unlikely to be profitable. Day-trading with options introduces extra liquidity risks and is dangerous, especially with spreads.
Try not to over-trade, you'll likely mis-time the market over time. When I get emotional I over trade, then lose additional money on wash sales. If you scale your entries into positions it should help alleviate your desire to exit positions when they turn badly against you. Whenever I buy calls I do it at larger increments after W almost made me loss my hair; luckily it eventually came back.
NEVER enter a position on a stock you have no idea about, especially when you read about it online or heard about it from some rando.
At market open options contracts are often volatile and inflated. Buying during this time can be more expensive. Options are usually cheaper mid-day, I read somewhere 2-3PM is cheapest. I’ve had success around 12-1PM EST after prices settle.
Try wheeling on cheaper stocks once you get all fundamentals down.
When selling puts if you are very bullish consider "doubling down"; note this is higher risk. Use the credit from your put sale to buy shares or a cheap call. This can be roughly inversed with puts, except I wouldn't ever recommend shorting shares.
Learn from your mistakes. You can’t go back in time and beating yourself up (to a point) is useless. Make a physical &/or mental note of it so you don’t do it again. If you don’t learn from it, then beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.
If you have friends that like to trade, I find it helpful to discuss strategies and planned plays. I talk openly with my close friends about my current holdings and planned trades, it helps keep me accountable. If I get a wide-eyed look, I might be doing something excessively risky or stupid. I’ve over-leveraged myself in calls twice and I knew I shouldn’t have done it both times. When I tell my friends what I did and I’m embarrassed, it exemplifies the face that I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You will also get ideas for new strategies or plays from them. It’s good to stay versatile and use multiple strategies when appropriate. Beware of group think/echo chambers.
I recommend NEVER telling someone what to buy/sell and when. I’ll tell people MY plays or what I like and why, but I will not encourage them to emulate what I do. Depending on the audience, I’ll tell them my exact positions along with my exit and entrance strategy. With closer friends I’ll offer my thoughts on their trades (if asked). If my friend is doing something really risky (one of my friends does some scary stuff) I may ask them if they want my advice, and provide it, especially if they overlooked a risk/event. I will not encourage someone to execute/enter a trade since it has a high potential for hurt feelings or animosity all around.
Don’t fall in love with a stock. Just because something made you money before and you have high confidence in it doesn’t mean it will keep performing. I joke that FDX betrayed me when it started dipping and losing me money. I was over-confident of its bounce-back and sold too many puts too quickly. I’m in several losing trades because of it. However, I will keep good stocks in my rostetracking list or try different strategies or re-enter trades when they change their behavior.
As you start to both buy and sell options and get more experience in general, you'll start seeing the two sides to every trade. You will likely start adjusting your strategies or trying new trades out because of this. Things will likely click one day. Most/all the greeks and options concepts will become almost second nature. For me this was when I could build an Iron Condor from scratch, which was a watershed moment involving a good understanding of many strategies.
Understand Liquidity and volume.
Trading in low volume, low open interest contracts results in wide bid/ask spreads and difficulty having your contracts filled. Look at all the data for a contract, not just the strike and price.
Monthly Expiration dates typically have better liquidity.
Multi-legged trades (Common examples are 2-legged vertical spreads or 4-legged iron condors) have more difficulty being filled, especially on bad brokers like Robin Hood. Having very liquid options for all legs is extremely helpful in obtaining timely and well-priced fills, which maximize your potential profits.
Time in market vs timing the market:
It is extremely difficult to time the market perfectly. If you wait for the perfect opportunity forever, history has proven you will miss out on gains. Keeping all your money out of the market has proven to be ineffective. Now if there is something serious happening with a stock/the market (like say a new pandemic), don’t go all in. I recommend entering incrementally at dips. If the stock has huge upside potential it may never go down, so it might make sense to partially enter at the current price.
IMIO selling puts is a great strategy to get into a stock you like, or at least make money off it. I think buying stock in lots of 100 is usually for suckers. Selling an ATM or ITM put (assuming the math works out) on a stock you were going to buy and hold is ALMOST free money.
I recommend keeping some cash available regardless. If you have a very large account or expect a downturn, hedging with indexes like QQQ, SPY, or VIX or calls/puts may be wise.
Every trade can't be a winner. You will take some losses, you must get used to it. I don’t like having a realized loss of 1K or more on any trade. However, this will happen, especially with larger accounts.
As long as you win more often and beat the S&P that year I consider it okay. I’m kind of aggressive, so I consider 20%+ annually good. 30%+ annually is great. 40%+ and I’m dancing. After trading options I am almost baffled by my old belief that 5% annual returns (mostly from dividend ETFs) was “good”. That’s nothing to me now since I’m willing to take risks. Note: While lots of people danced in 2020, realize that’s an insane Bull Run year and is atypical.
Adhere to your own risk tolerance and never over-extend yourself, especially with margin use. Don’t make huge gambles leaving you uncomfortable. Only gamble with money you are willing to lose.
My personal strategy is to make safer gains for the year and then enter slightly riskier strategies using those gains. I can be slightly-moderately more aggressive and compound my gains. For me I often sell puts to make money, then when I see a big opportunity I’ll sell a put and buy an OTM or moderately ITM call.
Understand it’s not safe to try and get rich overnight. However, once you hit big “steps” things may start to snowball. You can enter more positions and take more risks if you choose to.
For me this when I hit 50k, then 100k. I was able to balance low and moderate risk positions to more significantly grow my account. I’ll even do a high risk thing now and again because my gains can absorb it (assuming I have them).
I can’t wait to get to 250K, then 500K. I know it’ll take quite a long time, but I am confident I’ll eventually be able to have 500K and (hopefully) 1M in my non-401k trading account with gains and additions from my job. I can only imagine how “dangerous” I will be with that kind of capital.
If you missed "the next big thing" like AAPL, TSLA, or the time machine I’m building in my basement. Don't get upset, learn from it. Adapt and become a better trader for next time.
Figure out why a company was so promising, before they mooned. Determine how you would have traded differently in hindsight. Apply those lessons to the next company you believe has long term growth prospects.
For me that's putting in 1-2.5k towards shares and/or buying LEAPS on it. Depending on my bullishness I may buy “cheap”, fairly far OTM calls. The far OTM options are sort of lottery tickets. If I'm right the (relatively) low cost will have explosive profits; if I'm wrong, they didn't cost that much so it's a calculated loss I’m willing to accept. For more serious bets I’ll buy ITM LEAPS to run PMCCs on. I also like to buy 1-2K in my 401k for very long-term plays.
The stock market hates uncertainty, it seems to crave the status quo. A shakeup can potential tank a stock, even if it's nothing. With shares you can wait it out, but this can be problematic for options. If you see volatile/uncertain times ahead (politics, disease, manufacturing, earnings, etc.), you might want to reduce your overall portfolio risks or hedge.
Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation
If selling options, it is a viable strategy to close early after a large gain with many DTE left until expiry. See TT videos / strategies on this.
Don't hold options through earnings unless you literally want to gamble. I like playing on earnings run ups, but that can be risky.
If you hold options through earnings, IV crush will happen immediately afterwards, devaluing the option. However, if the option is profitable enough, IV crush won’t matter, which will still make money for a call buyer. A sold put sufficiently far OTM will benefit from IV crush, even if the stock dips after slightly bad or lukewarm earnings.
Don't throw good money after bad. Don't gamble on a recovery if your assumption appears to be wrong or the market is flat out tanking. If you are wrong and still believe in the company, wait twice as long as your original plan (wait for your 2nd entry point vs 1st) before adding to your position.
Consider using stop losses to lock-in profits on rides up or sometimes use them to prevent losses. Note, stops can be easily triggered in volatile options. Now when I'm up a lot on calls (especially around earnings or large momentum run-ups) I always set stop losses. I have been burned too many times. In December 2020 I didn't set a SL on several thousand dollars of FDX calls I was already up on and I "lost" ~$5K of unrealized gains. If you're up big, don't get too greedy.
A possible strategy if a stock is on a tear and you have multiple options open: Close some positions (I prefer to do this incrementally if the stock has momentum), but leave 1+ open in case the stock goes into outer space/the floor. Next, set a stop loss with a little buffer below its current movement / range so it doesn't get hit unless the stock falls hard. Finally, watch the stock closely and if it keeps rising, keep moving the stop loss up in little bits incrementally. This will let you keep more profits on a hot streak, but give some protection and secure more gains. It will also help eliminate FOMO if a stock exceeds your expectations.
Have rules when to roll out, down & out, or up & out. I like TT’s roll at break even or at 1x loss and to always roll for a credit (or for me a very minor cost). Obviously these rules need some monitoring. Know your stocks, the news, and technicals so you don’t jump the gun.
If you roll early for a credit and you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll just need to hold longer, which will obviously tie up capital. Sometimes it’s better to tie up some money (especially if you aren’t paying interest) than eating a huge loss.
Rolling too late can be worse though. I currently have a very underwater FDX put I sold that is over 2x loss, rolling it does almost nothing unless you want to pay a debit or extend it extremely far out.
On huge options gains, I strongly you recommend taking profits by rolling up/down or incrementally sell your contracts at several different prices (this is why having multiple contracts is nice).
Rolling up involves selling your initial call, then using a fraction of your proceeds to buy a cheaper, further OTM call with the same expiry; puts are inverse this. When rolling up I like to ensure the new option’s cost is 15-40% of my realized gains. I’ll buy a more or less expensive new optoin based on my convication to the stock and predicted movements. You can also roll up and out to get a further expiry and strike.
This is monumentally important if you are playing with incredibly high rising stocks or during a short squeeze.
Sad story time: I completely screwed up when I forgot to roll up, twice, during the GME gamma/short squeeze. I didn’t take my own advice; I didn’t have a real exit or transition plan and I got emotional. It all happened so fast and I was at work; the insanity of the run up and subsequent gamma squeeze caught me off guard. I should’ve clocked out and thought through the situation for 15-30 minutes to form an impromptu plan, then executed trade(s). My moderate risk tolerance coupled with my desire to take profits took over. When the stock partially cratered after a run up, I sold to retain gains. In the heat of the moment I thought the squeeze was squoze and it was going to plummet into the ground and I wasn’t being rational.
On 1x 4K call I would’ve made an additional 15-25K if I rolled up to a cheaper contract with some of my profits.
I know I missed out on significantly more with a 2nd call I had. Depending when I rolled it, it would likely have been an additional 25-50k in profits.
I talked about learning from your mistakes above. This mistake is branded into my brain due to the massive gains I missed out onby not rolling up. I’m furious with myself as I write this 1 week after the GME gamma squeeze, I’m a planner and I didn’t plan. If anything I own is significantly up ever again, I’m rolling up (or at least setting a stop loss). If necessary, I’ll roll up a trade multiple times to keep extracting profits.
Learn from my mistake so you don’t miss out on gains too. I strongly recommend rolling up when you are up big on a call / roll down when you are up big on a put. This enables you to take profits, stay in the game, and keep extracting more gains.
If you trade a lot of options, talk to your broker about a discount. I was getting the standard $.50/contract with E-Trade, but I traded over 300 contracts a quarter and was able to get the fee reduced by over $.10 by just asking. I am now doing more spreads and condors, so once my volume gets very high, I’ll ask again.
If you have a broker that isn’t great and you want to switch, leverage your current trading fees to the new broker. Tell them you’ll move over $### thousand if they beat your current options trading fee per contract.
Trade Planning & Position Management Tips
As you gain experience, start monitoring what kind of Delta, OTM, DTE, etc. you are most profitable with. Use it in your future trades. You'll often see the tasty trade 30-45DTE .3 Delta strategy for selling.
Before entering a trade, look at rough technicals like resistances and supports to consider your relevant strikes as well as entry/exit points. Look at upcoming earnings & dividend dates as well as stock/market news.
Consider staggering strikes and expirations for safety and diversity; it’s nice to avoid assignment on 3 puts at once because you used the same strike for all 3.
Incrementally enter positions on large rises/falls. One of my favor strategies is to buy dips after over reactions. By doing this slowly in large price "steps" it helps combat FOMO and helps you avoid getting slaughtered.
This will also help you avoid "chasing a falling knife". It also ties into having a plan.
I set alerts at several predetermined prices and I REALLY try not to enter new trades unless I hit my preset points. It makes me less emotional and usually more effective.
Don't buy far expiration options with poor liquidity for shorter term plays. I bought 1x GME 1-year+ LEAPS call before the 2021 short squeeze. That was stupid, I should've bought 2-3x 60-120 day calls to have better liquidity. I also paper-handed it and missed out on my lambo.
If selling options, consider rolling (for a credit) to avoid assignment when it makes sense / meets your plan. Rolling closer to expiration can be a valid strategy to get theta on your side. On the flip side, if the stock moons or plummets it could've been better to roll before it got crazy deep ITM. See rolling “rules” above.
Covered Calls:
If a stock has a large movement range, I think it can be worthwhile to wait to open a CC after the last one is closed/expires. I have been more successful waiting for another opportunity vs. opening one immediately on the Monday after the second the last one expires.
Consider selling covered calls at all time highs/peaks. If you sell a CC and the stock dips significantly, and you think it’s temporary, you can buy to close your CC for a quick profit, then reopen it later.
If you own Meme stocks, selling covered calls runs the risk of missing out on large gains. On these stocks I typically only sell them further OTM than I normally would or not at all. If I do sell CC on a Meme stock I try to ensure I have 25-100 other shares that won’t be called away.
-Advanced Beginner- Spreads
Spreads (with 2 legs) are neat because they manipulate how delta and theta act. It caps your gains and losses, but you can profit with less stock movement. Try several spreads on a P/L calculator to see for yourself.
Spreads usually require margin trading.
Spreads allow you to define max losses (assuming you close before expiration day) and use less capital.
Experienced traders will open many spreads at identical/similar strikes to heavily profit off movement. Spreads can make you/lose you a lot of money if you are right.
For example. I could make a $200 premium off a $500 risk trade, max loss would be $300. This is much more effective capital utilization than a naked or cash secured put, however it does not have the same downside protection or “wheel” potential as a sold put. Higher risk, higher reward.
Vertical Debit spreads: I think of these like mini calls/puts. I personally don’t use them unless calls are outrageously expensive or the break even is absurdly high, but there’s nothing wrong with them. A call debit spread will lower your breakeven and overall cost vs just a call. You can do clever things like making a positive theta call spread if you’re creative. I like doing this since I hate losing money to theta.
Vertical Credit spreads:
Very good theta strategy to define downside/upside risks.
A put credit spread is bullish and allows you to bet on upward movement with less capital and defined losses.
A call credit spread is a bearish strategy that allows you to bet on downward movement. These are very cool since they allow you to sell calls without selling naked calls, which can ruin you financially. I see selling these as better than buying puts since it’s so much easier to be profitable; to be redundant, Θ rocks.
I repeat this on purpose: Don't EVER leave short spreads open on expiration day, close them. If you don't close, they better be VERY far from the strike on a non-volatile stock. In after hours a stock can jump/dip below your strike and be exercised without the other leg to protect you. This can lead to massive, life ruining losses. This is not an exaggeration, google this and be scared. It happened to a fair number of people with TSLA. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVFj9nRRDo&t=315s
Short Straddle:
Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation
Learn about wash sale rules. They suck and are very easy to activate with options. This will eliminate your ability to write off losses. Over trading can easily cause wash sales. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp
Short attacks:
Learn to recognize these sketchy attacks by hedges/firms. They manipulate the market, it’s been documented countless times. A common one is rapid short selling, which pushes the price down.
Some people say short ladder attacks don't exist. I've seen some very strange stock nosedives off low volume, so I tend to think they do.
If you plan well enough and the market doesn’t give up on the stock you may be able to use it as a great opportunity to buy the dip.
Cramer explains how he intentionally manipulated the market when he ran a hedge fund years ago. Multiple links to the video are below since this video gets pulled often, Cramer / The street never wanted this to go public.
Due to this video I don’t fully trust Cramer. His show can give you stock ideas to buy (or inverse), but you never know where his true loyalties lie.
Plan for taxes if you are up big. You may need to over withhold or contribute to taxes quarterly depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306
-Intermediate / Advanced Strategies (work in progress)- You’ll notice many of these strategies inverse one another. Options Strategy Finder This website is great for learning about new strategies, you’ll see many links to it below. https://www.theoptionsguide.com/option-trading-strategies.aspx Short Strangle / Straddle
Both of these strategies profit from little price movement. I recommend using a P/L calculator to determine BE, profit, etc.
A straddle sells (or buys) two options at the same expiry and strike.
A strangle sells (or buys) two options at same expiry with different strikes.
Both these strategies involved selling a Call and a Put for a credit. Straddle uses ATM legs, strangle uses OTM legs.
Limited max profits and unlimited risk. Due to the unlimited risk, I am not a fan. However, many people like these a lot.
These strategies profit from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. They receive a credit to open and benefit from theta decay. If your stock is range bound, these may be a good choice.
These are both 4 "legged" trades, so you will have 4 trading fees to enter or exit the trade. A lower cost or zero cost broker shines here. However, “bad” free brokers will give you poor fills, which may not be worth the discount.
Condors and butterflies have "wings" which are your purchased puts and calls. The wider the wing the higher the max profit/risk. The condor body can be riskier and skinny with a narrow high profit range or wider for a much greater chance of success with lower payout.
An iron condor is built by combining a put credit spread and a call credit spread with the same expiry.
An iron condor can be thought of as a modified short strangle with limited risk, and therefore a bit less profit. I prefer defined limited risk.
The butterfly is similar except instead of a plateau it has a sharp peak. My personal mental note is that a condor looks more like a strangle with wings, while a butterfly looks like a straddle with wings.
Pay attention to earnings dates when you open these, I have forgotten to check before and it led to bad trades.
The debit version of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to stay inside your defined range. This strategy profits from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. I’ve never tried this, Iron Condors make more sense to me.
Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Credit to open.
Limited risk / limited reward.
Can be harder to set up. I want to try these, haven’t yet.
Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Debit to open.
LEAP Options are options that are long term with many DTE, often over a year until expiration. LEAP calls are great for long term growth plays (downtrends with LEAP puts) or simply when you really like a company and can't afford 100 shares. LEAPs (or any "longer term" option) enables you to sell a PMCC or PMCP (below)
PMCC / PMCP
PMCC or PMCP are poor man's covered call (or poor man's covered puts). They are diagonal options often used with purchased LEAPs. You sell a shorter DTE call/put with a further OTM strike than your purchased call/put. For PMCC/PMCPs it is often recommended to recoup your extrinsic value as soon as possible, some recommend with your first call CC or put sale, to ensure you are positive if the option is assigned early. These have a lot of moving parts and strategies. If you buy a barely ITM call/put and sell a nearby strike call/put you run the risk of the purchased option getting "blown by" on large stock movement and ending up with a very negative losing trade. Keeping your purchased LEAP deeper ITM should protect you. Check your initial PMCC using an options calculation to make sure you don't screw up.
I'm currently tinkering with these myself. So far I like .7-.9 delta call LEAPS with 30-45 DTE calls on my CC. The goal is to hold the LEAP long term, potentially until expiration, and constantly sell calls/puts on it that expire worthless. Typically the call/put is rolled up and out or down and out if it's going to be assigned, unless you don't want your LEAP anymore.
Some people look at these many sold CC or puts as profits, I look at them as lowering my cost basis until it's zero (or even negative). I have a page in my notebook I write each CC on my NIO LEAP (I Meme stock sometimes). I find it satisfying to slowly see the cost of the original option disappear. When I originally wrote this I had ~2 years left on it and it's 9-10% paid for; that doesn't even count the actual gains the LEAP has.
TT states this is considered an IV play, which I partially agree with. You want to buy these during low IV times since an IV drop will hurt your LEAP value. I look at them more as a way to sell calls/puts on a high IV company with a lot of price movement and potential upside/downside.
Good brokers will allow you to set these up, some will require a desktop to do it. This lets you link one action to another. In programming think of it like an if-then. You’ll tie a buy/sell to another buy/sell
Setting trailing stops on options is very chaotic since their price movement can be drastic due to volatility. I prefer to set my trailing stop to a stock.
What I like to do is set a trailing stop on a stock (or just link it to a stock price drop) and have it sell 1 share I own. Then it immediately executes a market order to sell my call. I’ve had good luck doing this with incredibly volatile plays were stop losses aren’t effective. I’ll often have an order saved and ready saved for when a strong run up starts. When my price alerts start blowing up my phone, I’ll immediately hit execute to turn it on.
Disclaimer: I’m not a financial adviser, I'm actually an engineer. I’m not telling you to invest in a specific stock/option or even use a specific strategy. I’ve outlined and more extensively elaborated on what I personally like. You should test several strategies and find what works best for you. I'm just a guy who trades (mainly options) part-time for financial gain and fun. I don't claim to be some investing savant.
I reached "Mission Complete" for a second time yesterday. Here's what I learned this time!
I was wrong about power. Thermal can be a great option and possibly even better than solar but it requires a little more planning than simply ringing a planets equator with solar panels.
Your best bet is to put every single component into logistics towers. You can access logistics tower items from anywhere on the planet so it's really handy if you're on the other side of the planet and realize you forgot iron.
Going off of tip number 2, keep your components seperate. I know you can make some really tight and crisp combinations but then it makes expansion really hard later on. If you just have a processor setup seperate from your quantum chip setup and later realize you need more processors it's way easier to expand if you don't have them directly connected. Their are obviously some exceptions to this (looking at you red/yellow science combos) but obviously I can't cover every situation you're going to come across.
I strongly believe any more than 2/s cube production is a bit of a waste. You should be setting up chests for every cube production site and stockpiling them when you are not doing research. You will probably have a decent space of time when you're setting up green production where you have nothing to research. Maybe you're faster than me and this doesn't happen... but I reached mission complete in 40 hours so if you're faster than that you probably don't need any tips.
A really solid strategy for oil is to connect them in groups of 12/s using logistics towers as soon as you can. It makes utilizing all of your oil a lot easier and is probably absolutely essential for a thermal power setup.
You should definitely automate logistics production including production of accumulators. Having the ability to ring a gas giant with logistics towers is nearly essential to get through the game with any sort of speed and without giving yourself a massive headache.
Once you get logistics towers a really handy strategy is to start at the equator and build out horizontally in sections slowly moving each section farther north/south until you reach about 2/3 of the way to a pole. This should MOSTLY mitigate any fault line issues ruining your setup.
If you take you're time in the beginning, setup things cleanly and properly it will save you a TON of time in the long run. Mistakes are extremely amplified in this game and I've wasted hours correcting a mistake that I could have prevented with 30 minutes of careful work.
I lightly touched on it but red/yellow cube production can be combined really easily into a tileable setup that produces 1/s of each. There are a few examples on this subreddit. I highly suggest you take a look at them.
DSP calculator. I use it fore literally everything and it saves so much time. Use it. Save yourself the headache.
One of the first things you do, possibly after setting up an initial hub for essentials is setting up a stone site that produces silicon. Especially if you plan on using solar. It makes life so much easier considering the other planet in your solar system that has silicon is usually not the first one you want to visit.
If the first time you visit a planet you setup 8-10 miners and make 4 groups of 6 titanium production lines and just line them with chests to fill up until you get back and place logistics towers this is nearly enough to supply you all the way through to the end of green cube production. (results may vary obviosuly depending on how slowly you play/how much you do before green)
You can use chests as elevators. I know some other people have posted about it here already but it can come in really handy so in case anyone doesn't know.
Rare veins are a little underwhelming. The three I like to use a lot though and would recommend you look for first are organic crystal, spiniform, and fire ice (if you don't have a gas giant with it, hopefully you do)
I just want to emphasize that to produce 2/s green cubes and 1/s rocket for the dyson sphere you need over 50 Mk.2 assemblers making processors. If you're like me you will constantly think you have enough and then realize you don't.
This has been really inconsistent but something to look out for is if you have a logistics tower set to supply with a product both going in via belt and out via belt sometimes it won't properly supply to the other towers. It only happened to me a few times but it' something to keep in mind and look out for.
If you're going to go for a thermal power and want it to last you into late game you should really bank on having access to sulfuric acid within the first 4 light years so that you can access it quickly. That frees up a decent amount of oil production. If you are able to do that and shoot for 2/s per cube you should have somewhere around 15/s free oil for hydrogen cracking to produce power.
Gobi planets are the rare resource planet version for soil. Also if it's not obvious setup a decent sized production of foundation early on.
Always bring more than you think you need when visiting a new system for the first time. The game can throw some pretty wild curveballs you're way like the planet you desperately need resources from being a water planet and you have no soil or foundation. Speaking from experience here :(
In my experience you don't need to worry about space as much as you think. My endgame home planet is only 1/3 covered with factories. I do build relatively tight and organized and I also setup my iron/silicon/titanium/copper ingot production on the other planets so results may very but this is just my experience. I know some people like to ship in ore and then have one center for ingot production but personally I think it's easier to make sure you're utilizing all you possibly can if you keep ingot production local to the veins you're getting it from.
That's all for now! I wanted to give double the tips that I gave from last time and it was pretty tough but I hope this helps someone somehow! I am definitely not an expert and feel like there is so much I can still learn so if you disagree with anything I said that's totally okay and I would love to hear why! Once again, HAVE FUN!
I have dabbled in PFC over the years and I have always found this sub to be wonderful in terms of the level-headed advice and strong values that really make a long-term difference in people's financial well-being. And so it's a bit jarring to see the WSB/GME jargon creep into the sub over the last few days (as it has everywhere) and I honestly feel somewhat of an obligation to address a few investment-related things: One Loss Can Wipe Out a Lifetime of Gains Investing has asymmetric outcomes. i.e. a 10% loss is not equivalent to a 10% gain. To recoup a 10% loss, you actually have to make an 11% gain. And the difference grows exponentially, so if you lose 90% of your investment, you will now need to return 900% just to get back to break even. the riskier your bets, the more asymmetric the outcomes. but its worse than that: you can go on an awesome run where all your big bets are paying huge ... then erase it all with one bad trade. but its even worse that that: it is a statistical guarantee that, over enough trades, you WILL make a bad trade. FOMO Humans are social animals. And good thing b/c we learn from each other. We have special brain cells called mirror neurons that fire when we do something, or when we see someone else doing something. Its what makes my 8 month old son bang away on the laptop keyboard like he's a WWII typist. Monkey see, monkey do. And that approach to life is so successful in some parts that we naturally assume that it will work well in others. u/deepfuckingvalue made $40MM on GME, maybe I can too!?!?! But this is where our meat sacs can lead us astray again and the trappings of this approach are well documented. See the Madness of Crowds and the Great Crash of 1929 and Tilray and Volkswagen and AOL TimeWarner and Amazon (yes, amazon was down 95% from its peak in 2001), and on and on. Everyone rushes in b/c everyone's making money b/c everyone is rushing in until there's no one left to rush in and the whole thing collapses. Whatever anxiety or fear you have need only be understood and accepted, not reacted to, and then regardless of how you feel you must revert to your core principals: what am I buying and why? Do i think the investment is undervalued, do i like the dividend, what is the RISK / REWARD, WHAT ARE MY FINANCIAL GOALS? DOES THIS INVESTMENT FIT WITH MY GOALS? WHO IS ENCOURAGING ME TO BUY THIS INVESTMENT AND WHY?????? There's BEING AGGRESSIVE, and then there's BEING DUMB Don't get me wrong, I love some of the WSB culture around YOLO/diamond hands/etc. You cannot be successful without having the fortitude to take some risks, either with your investments or in your personal life. And if you take well-calculated, well-researched risks (typically on things no one else will), you will see the rewards. u/deepfuckingvalue is a great example. He has been holding GME calls for two years and took nothing but shit from the wsb crowd for a bad trade and sharing his fact-based, well-grounded and researched reasons for doing so along the way. Aggressive - and brilliant. Buying a stock for 100x what it was a month ago, with no understanding of the business b/c you heard about it on the evening news is probably dumb. I don't mean to get preachy. If you are on this sub, you are on the right path. Stick with the principals you have learned here and good fortune will snowball your way. And I'm not giving financial advice here, but I beg caution of anyone thinking about diving in now with a major proportion of their wealth (Whatever it may be). It could be gone in a week.
I created an algo that tracks the most hyped stocks on Reddit. Here are the results for this week
I created an algo that scans the most popular trading sub-reddits and logs the tickers mentioned in due-diligence or discussion-styled posts. Instead of scanning for how many times each ticker was mentioned in a comment, I logged how popular the post was among the sub-reddit. Essentially if it makes it to the 'hot' page, regardless of the subreddit, then it will most likely be on this list. There are two parts to this post. The first is for posts that were submitted in the most active trading sub-reddits (such as this one), and the second part has the most mentioned tickers from the WSB sub-reddit. How is "Hype" calculated? Well, this is a little tricky but it's based on the engagement that the post received in that sub-reddit relative to other posts in the same sub-reddit How can I use this list? The best way to use this data is to learn about new tickers that might be trending. As an example, I probably would have never known about the ARK etfs, or even Palantir, until they started trending on Reddit. This gives many people an opportunity to learn about these stocks and decide if they want to invest in them or not. The data on this list is limited to one post per ticker. I've taken the most 'popular' post for that ticker on whichever sub-reddit it may have been. What I've found is that normally if tickers begin to trend on one sub-reddit then generally-speaking there will be posts for the same ticker on various other sub-reddits. Here's the data from the last week.
Tactical Nuclear Warheads and You: A Neheb, The Eternal Decklist/Primer
Hey you. Yeah, you. You tired of playing the same Golos deck, playing two lands a turn, drawing into your combo pieces, and winning while the entire table finishes War and Peace on their phones? You bored with your Sultai landfall deck, where you play solitaire for three hours? Board police getting too much to bear? Well, let me introduce you to your new best friend: [[Neheb, the Eternal]]. Now, if you've never seen Neheb before, I know what you're thinking. "Wow, that card looks absolutely absurd", and buddy, you're right. Neheb decks aren't as much EDH decks as they are high-score attempts, seeing how much damage they can dish out in a single turn. Damage doublers, triplers, pingers that only go face, and enough X spells to make Zaxara cry in a little Sultai corner. You want infinite combats? Neheb. You want to [[Comet Storm]] for 80? Neheb. You want to burn that lifegain deck right back to the pit it crawled out of? YOU WANT TO PUT THE FEAR OF GOD INTO ANYONE WHO DARES CONTINUE TO LIVE? N E H E B. STEP ONE: RAMP While Neheb himself is both a beeftank of a man and creates mana like he's eighty mountains strapped to a rocket sled, Neheb works best when he's out, and five mana isn't exactly cheap. So, what do we need? The standard rocks and ramp, like [[Sol Ring]], [[Wayfarer's Bauble]], [[Mind Stone]], [[Arcane Signet]], [[Ruby Medallion]], you get it. We do, however, run a few interesting ramp cards. [[Cryptolith Fragment]] comes in tapped, sure, but once we have our big Lazotep Lasher out, we can tap it for one mana in the main phase, and three (3!) mana in the 2nd main phase. The good news is that if it transformed, something has gone horribly wrong, so we're not even gonna talk about the back. If it does flip, though, nine mana in the 2nd main isn't bad at all. [[Everflowing Chalice]] isn't a rock, it's a bank. If you have a ton of mana floating in the second main, and you will, Everflowing Chalice is a way to keep some of it and use it on turns going forward. You can replace this with [[Horizon Stone]], I guess, but Everflowing is just a bit faster, and remember: Horizon Stone is based on Kruphix, and he's Simic, and we blow Simic players into small chunks. Oh, also, we have better Horizon Stone. THAT'S RIGHT WE HAVE [[Leyline Tyrant]] BABY. You want to float mana? Leyline Tyrant. You want an evasive beater? Leyline Tyrant. You want protection from removal in the form of Leyline Tyrant choosing violence and blowing up someone's face? Ley. Line. Tyrant. You want mana? You want it NOW? Cool. We got [[Seething Song]] and [[Jeska's Will]] for all your mana needs. Turn 2 Neheb is always a bucket of fun. Black can keep [[Dark Ritual]], I bet they're casting single target removal with it, what a bunch of nerds. Our mana doubler is [[Extraplanar Lens]] and [[Snow-Covered Mountains]]. We want mana. Not them. If they have snow-covered mountains, blow them up first. Cowards. [[Chandra, Torch of Defiance]] has two +1 abilities: gain red red, or deal two damage to each opponent, draw a card, and get six red mana. She's here for her good +1. Now that we have our mana online, let's talk about our two plans: Nukes and Dukes. STEP TWO: DUKES PART ONE: BOXING GLOVES Neheb is a commander that likes to attack. Once he's out, we're going to want to have him swing probably ever turn, because even if he's blocked he goes right over the top. The issue, however, is that while he has 6 toughness, that's not a lot going into the late game. So, we've got some boxing gloves for our beeftank. [[Darksteel Plate]] lets us not really worry about Neheb. Slap some darksteel on that lazotep and watch the haymakers fly. [[Sword of War and Peace]] and [[Sword of Sinew and Steel]] give him protection from white and black, and also importantly, RED. We can use our X spells that also hit creatures with impunity once we give Neheb one of his twin blades. [[Shadowspear]] gives Neheb trample, which lets him smack harder, and also, for two mana, you can remove indestructible and hexproof from an opponent's permanents. A glorious piece of tech. The lifelink can be nice, but it's, there to punch through. Speaking of punching through [[Embercleave]] needs no introduction. If you're turning something sideways, Embercleave is always a great way to make sure it damn well hurts. [[Swiftfoot Boots]] makes killing Neheb harder, and anything that makes Neheb stickier is good in my books. Haste is also an absolute plus. We don't have [[Lightning Greaves]] because we want to give Neheb more equipment than just lightning greaves, and shroud makes that harder than it needs to be. PART TWO: SIDEWAYS CREATURES If we're swinging more than once a turn, and we WILL be swinging more than once a turn, we want to swing with things that create effects that benefit from multiple combats. Enter our beaters: [[Tectonic Giant]] swings once and deals three damage to everyone, or impulse draws. You swing multiple times with him and with Neheb in play, and boy howdy did you just draw and make a ton of mana. An absolute unit of a card. [[Etali, Primal Storm]] is four free draws per swing. You swing multiple times with Stompy McCardsteal, and you've basically cast Villainous Wealth in red. [[Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion]] is both real and not impulse draw and mana ramp. Swing, dump bad cards, get mana, repeat. EZ Clap. PART THREE: TECHNICAL KNOCKOUT [[World at War]] and [[Savage Beating]] gives us extra combats, with World At War having rebound to guarantee us extra combat the next turn and Savage Beating giving us double strike to combat trick like an absolute madman if we need to really add insult to injury. [[Aggrivated Assault]] takes a small amount to explain. So, if we swing with Neheb, and he's unblocked, we get four mana. Tap a mountain, five mana, get an extra combat, swing with Neheb, go to the next main phase, EIGHT MANA, because Neheb cares about total damage of the turn, and checks every post-combat main phase, not your first one. That's right. We go infinite. Blow up the world, send out Neheb, and swing for infinite gaining infinite mana. Also do not shout the names of the cards in this section because most of them are absolutely crimes and your pod will call the cops to stop you from beating their life totals into the dirt. STEP THREE: NUKES PART ONE: PRIMING FOR FISSION Before we can bow up the world, we need to prime ourselves for it. To do this, we need to damage our opponents, and get our damage increasing abilities online. [[Acidic Soil]] and [[Price of Progress]] are pretty much free damage. That guy who spent all game mana fixing? Yeah, he's getting shot for 16. The Golos deck? 30. Acidic Soil is there because it also counts basics, so the budget player who thought he was safe can get slapped for daring to play Magic as well. [[Chandra's Ignition]] is 5 red mana for 12 red mana if you hit Neheb with it. It also board wipes. Slap it on Etali if you have protection for Neheb, and watch the world go down in fire. [[Flame Rift]], [[Slagstorm]], and [[Fiery Confluence]] hit our opponents for dirt cheap costs. Three mana to get nine mana? two mana and four life for 12 mana? Treasonous Ogre is crying, he's been unemployed. Fiery Confluence is also a board wipe and a removal spell, which is super neato, as we're a mono-colored deck, so our toolbox isn't super diverse. [[Combustible Gearhulk]] says "Give me draw or give me mana''. It's our Fact or Fiction, and much like Fact or Fiction, there are only bad answers. With an average CMC of 3, we're going to either draw three or get our mana back when someone takes 6 damage. [[Pyrohemia]] says "pay one red mana: Gain three red mana". It's literally just Dark Ritual that is also removal. If you can't see why that's good I have no idea what you're doing in a red burn deck explanation. [[Heartless Hidetsugu]] deals damage to each opponent equal to half their life total, rounded down. Deals damage. This isn't loss of life, this isn't 'becomes', Hidetsugu takes their life totals outside with a baseball bat and teaches it to fear the color red. Shadowspear on him makes you gain all the life they lost. If you have a damage doubler out, Hidetsugu says "Tap this creature, Win the Game." If he taps, and Neheb is out, one X spell almost guarantees a player death. PART TWO: ROCKET FUEL [[Torbran, Thane of Red Fell]] is not a damage doubler, but it does make our smaller pingers like Flame Rift, Fiery Confluence, and Pyrohemia absolutely backbreaking. Think of him as the initial charge. [[Insult // Injury]] often time reads "Pay 3 mana: Your next spell kills a player". Injury is nice, but we're really here for the cheap damage double and to stop any damage prevention shenanigans. We're casting Insult when we know we can go off. [[Fiery Emancipation]] Is here because, honestly, we make so much mana we'd be stupid not to run it. Six mana to triple damage when we make dozens of mana a turn is an incredible deal, and because it's one-sided, we don't have to worry about people killing us immediately with their tiny creatures. [[Furnace of Rath]] is two mana cheaper, yes, but importantly it doubles instead of triples, and also, uh, it doubles on US. We're trying not to self-destruct. PART FOUR: DETONATION [[Rolling Earthquake]] hits everything without horsemanship, so it hits everything. It's strictly better than Earthquake, because if we're casting an X spell, 80% of the time we're casting it because either A) We're about to lose or B) We're about to win. [[Molten Disaster]] has split second, which makes it uncounterable, unreturnable, and uninteractable. It's our "YOU DARE PLAY BLUE?!" card. [[Jaya's Immolating Inferno]] targets up to three targets. You will have three opponents in your pod. The math works. [[Comet Storm]] is flexible, in that if you've already blown someone to kingdom come, it costs one less mana! So that's nice! It's also great target removal, and great with our newest card... [[Toralf, God of Fury]]. Oh yeah. In this deck, a deck where we overkill everything, Toralf becomes an absolute monster. Earthquake everyone, and have the excess damage dealt to their creatures finish them off. The flip side of the card also goes mana-positive with Neheb, if we really need to get there and are just out of reach. This is a card this deck loves like your opponents love not being blown off the face of the earth by fireballs. PART FIVE: CLUSTER MUNITIONS [[Primal Amulet]] lets us copy our damage when it flips, and makes our damage spells cheaper before it does. It's easy to see why it's an all-star here. [[Reverberate]] lets us copy something. Sometimes it'll be the counter that's trying to stop Jaya's Immolating Inferno. Sometimes it'll be the Immolating Inferno itself. [[Reiterate]] is a multi-use reverberate, and we have the mana to use it. STEP 4: THE REST OF THE DECKThisIsn'tAStepButShhhhhh HASTE We want to give our creatures haste. [[Generator Servant]], [[Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded]], we can wheel away an [[Anger]] with ease, and [[Ogre Battledriver]] gives us a bit of oomph when our creatures enter the battlefield. Purphoros also functions as a sneak attack for when we want a creature to attack, but we don't have the mana to get it out. DRAW Look. We're in mono red, which means we have... one tutor that's halfway decent for our plan, and that's [[Gamble]]. We need draw. We're running a lot of it. [[Valakut Awakening]], [[Reforge the Soul]], [[Molten Psyche]], [[Magus of the Wheel]], [[Commune with Lava]], [[Cathartic Reunion]], [[Faithless Looting]] whatever we need to draw a whole ton, we have. The real all-star draw card is [[Knollspine Dragon]]. Draw equal to damage to target opponent? In a burn deck? In a burn deck where our burn makes mana? Oh baby you best believe that when you slam this puppy down people are going to quake in their boots. From the dragon. And maybe from the Rolling Earthquake. Or the Molten Disaster. Whatever. REMOVAL We're not running much actual removal, because, well, A: Mono Red, and B: We're a player removal deck. If you want board control, or if you want a deck that doesn't feel like piloting a crashing roller coaster that is currently on fire, go play [[Zada, Hedron Grinder]]. We're here for the boom boom. [[Vandalblast]] and [[Shattering Spree]] let us remove pesky artifacts, [[Blasphemous act]] removes board states for dirt cheap, and [[Chaos Warp]] lets us deal with one of anything. [[Deflecting Swat]] is for anyone trying to touch our Lazotep Loverboy or for stack interaction when our [[Pyroblast]] fails to stop a counter. LANDS [[Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx]] is pure gas, [[Ancient Tomb]] gets Neheb out fast, and [[Rogue's passage]] gets us through chump blockers and deathtouchers if we need to swing with Neheb. Other than that, it's mountains, a [[Myriad Landscape]], and a [[Smoldering Crater]] to remind our opponents of the fate that awaits them and also some draw if we need it. SIDEBOARD For some, four X spells isn't enough. [[Fall of the Titans]] and [[Earthquake]] are easy to slot in, and for those who want more combat, [[Fury of the Horde]] is easy enough to get. [[Mana Geyser]] is great against landfall decks, [[Red Elemental Blast]] is good if your meta includes people who try to stop you from throwing the sun at them (Cowards.). If you want more draw, [[Apex of Power]] is a free draw 10 spell, and [[Dragon Mage]] is a [[Wheel of Fortune]] on a stick. Well, Magus of the Wheel is Wheel of Fortune on a stick ALRIGHT YOU GET IT. UPGRADES The easiest upgrade path for this deck is fast mana. [[Mana Crypt]], [[Grim Monolith]], [[Mana Vault]], [[Jeweled Lotus]] the faster you can pump out Neheb the better. They're not on this list because they're pretty goddamn expensive, and if you turn two Neheb people are going to focus you into the absolute dirt. [[Doubling Cube]] is neat, but honestly, it's just a but overkill. Otherwise, upgrades include [[Wheel of Fortune]], your favorite EldraziTitan as a big ol' beater if you like the multiple combats, [[Sword of Fire and Ice]] is just the best damn sword we can get, and I'd say get [[Gauntlet of Might]] but for many people that card costs more than rent for the month, so just skip it. GAMEPLAN Step 1) Cast Neheb as fast as possible. Step 2) Deal symmetrical damage, swing in. Step 3) Go infinite with Aggressive Assault or cast a spell where X is, like, six trillion. We're not interested in things like "Midrange" or "Control". No. We're Neheb. We're here to get high scores on the "How much damage can I make without going infinite" leaderboards. This is not a deck that does anything besides slam into people. It explodes. It goes absolutely haywire, totally off the rails, you'll need a calculator to check your mana. This deck exists for one reason and one reason only: This deck is for Burn Timmies. Is it competitive? Eh. Does it win a lot? Eh. Does the fear in the eyes of your opponents make this deck worth it? Yes. For your consideration, Nuclear Neheb: https://www.archidekt.com/decks/1072303#NUCLEAR_NEHEB
Happy 2nd anniversary, everyone! Now that we have our first global-first character in Melissa, AS Tiramisu has released on the JP version, and we're getting close to the final few banners that my last guide managed to cover, its time I come out of my winter hibernation to make another one of these. I should mention that, while these guides were always inherently very opinionated, that might be even more the case this time, because the guides I used as a sort of second opinion to bounce my impressions off of have sadly yet to update past Mistrare. As such, my main sources this time are limited to the unofficial wiki as well as altema. Also, like last time, I will omit the whole spiel on normal banners vs. AS banners, general summon behavior, etc. for the sake of keeping this guide short and concise. However, if you're new, and you wanna know what I'm talking about, here is a link to my 2.0 guide. So, lets address how these ratings work. The ratings work the same as always in that the banners are rated under the assumption that you're an F2P-player who has none of the featured units. They're also sorted in the expected chronological release order, but if the whole thing with Yipha has shown us anything, its that WFS can throw us a curve ball any time they want. Its also still true that, due to ever-increasing powercreep, modern review-culture does not apply here: Instead of a 7/10 being average like you often see with videogame or movie reviews, a 5/10 represents a banner of average quality in this guide. This is so that, with all these powerful new units, my ratings don't turn into nothing but 9.5 and 10/10s, which would make rating them in the first place pointless. With all that out of the way, lets get to the actual ratings (aka from here, there be spoilers!): EDIT: Thanks to u_sdw4527, it was brought to my attention that I have missed some banners. I have now added them at the end of the guide.
The anniversary banner: 7.5/10 - We're starting off with the big one. Counting AS and NS forms as seperate, we're looking at 30 different 5 star units available, with no unfeatured 5 stars. However, there really aren't a lot of duds in here: Both forms of Isuka, AS Felmina, Hozuki, Toova and Mighty are very underwhelming nowadays (although even those, except Isuka, can be sidegraded to become at least decent, and at most incredibly strong) but every other character on this banner is at least okay, with some real powerhouses thrown into the mix as well. Its also worth noting that units that only have one 5 star version have their summon chance further increased (0.24%) compared to units with two seperate 5 star forms (0.13% per form), which works in the favor of the player because a lot of the units you'd want out of this banner like Mistrare, Victor or Myunfa only have one 5 star form and hence have their summon chance boosted further. It is however a VERY diluted banner due to the sheer number of units, and a lot of them are only decent, so its 'only' a 7.5.
Melissa/Premaya: 8.5/10 - I don't claim to be some sort of all-knowing god when it comes to this game, so when a character comes out that is new for EVERYONE, the banner gets a little harder to rate, but I truly think that Melissa is amazing. Not like, best character in the game, but I'm thinking top 20, MAYBE top 15 material. The 1TAF her new zone allows is gimmicky, but what makes her amazing is her insane utility: You can put her on ANY team and she will boost your damage and AF generation in the first turn, meaning you don't need to worry about switching your fastest character with your zone setter to get the zone active as soon as possible. And if that weren't enough already, her capable of inflicting break every second turn means you can just adjust the speed of your team with equipment so your strongest damage dealer goes after Melissa (and you put said damage dealer after her during AF), which essentially gives a 50% damage increase to that damage dealer (as their damage is being doubled every second turn) for free. Couple that with the absurd Nephrite Boost, and she is most likely optimal on wind zone. All in all, I think she is crazy good, and the only reason why this banner isn't rated higher is because Premaya drags it down a fair bit, being a good but definitely not great unit.
AS Rosetta: 8/10 - Nothing has changed for this banner since last time, but I'm giving it a slightly higher rating compared to last time because I think I undersold the relevance of AS Rosetta being the only magic zone setter in the game, and what getting her means for the viability of a lot of older staff wielding characters, in my last guide.
AS Hozuki/Biaka/Shannon: 8/10 - Despite u_xPalox' feedback left on my last guide, this would have still been an 8.5, but after a lot of consideration, its not the fact that both Biaka and Shannon are wind that made me rate the banner slightly lower, its that AS Hozuki is an AS unit whose OG is terrible to the point of basically being useless. And since a boatload of amazing AS units have released on the JP version since my last guide that can hang with or even surpass AS Hozuki, it became less likely that you'd make her your AS-upgrade goal over any of the other AS units that have come out on JP by now with limited chant scripts and the difficulty of getting treatises, assuming you land the 1.2% chance of pulling her 4.5 star version.
AS Ilulu: 5/10 - Now that Cress made slash zone an F2P zone, this banner has lost the slight rating boost that AS Ilulu being a slash zone setter gave it. As I said in the last guide, if you have a banner that features both one of the worst and one of the best characters in the game, you get a perfectly average banner.
AS Ewan/AS Laclair: 9.5/10 - AS Laclair becomes a beast after her manifest (guaranteed pain, int debuff, stacking water res debuff, wolf seal doesn't get consumed in AF, and a damage multiplier of up to 1300%), and AS Ewan is frankly insane. Like, in my opinion, 'best unit in the game' insane. This man is a jack of all trades done right: Team-wide priority phys and type res buff (which is a godsend with how mobs in more recent content have started becoming borderline impossible to outspeed and kill before they do damage) which also reduces MP consumption, an attack that is either really solid or straight-up absurd in terms of damage (I'm not sure if 'critical damage +100%' means 100% extra to the multiplier, or if the damage is doubled if he crits, would love input from the comments on that one), and that attack changes its damage type depending on in what attack type zone he is, which makes him a viable pick in 5/8 possible zones (not counting Melissa's), similar to Cynthia, only that AS Ewan is the WAY better unit. What is holding the banner back from being a straight-up 10 are Ewans only decent and Laclairs slightly underwhelming NS forms.
The weapon zone banner: 10/10 - I hope y'all didn't expect me to not give this a 10 just because we now have an F2P slash zone setter. The thing is, Cress lacking the usual end of turn buff leaves his slash zone significantly weaker compared to Radias' and AS Ilulu's, so if you can get your hands on one of them, they're still MILES better, even ignoring their individual skills. Anyways, for this banner, same thing applies that applied to the elemental zone banner back in the day: Only the 5 weapon zone setters and AS Ewan are featured, meaning the value of the banner drastically decreases with every featured unit you already have. Purely mathematically, you're better off summoning on this banner over a banner with normal rates if you have 2 or less of the featured units. I didn't include my calculations, but if you wanna see the numbers behind that statement, check out the zone banner rating in my last guide.
Mirusha/AS Nagi: 9/10 - I personally like this banner a LOT. If earth wasn't already pretty damn stacked in terms of F2P units, I'd give this a 9.5, because Mirusha is definitely top 15 characters in the game material (I mean, a shadow character who can offset the negative effects of her lunatic skill with a damage reduction ability? HELLO?), and AS Nagi has arguably aged like fine wine.
AS Hismena: 8.5/10 - NS has aged very well to the point that both I and the tier list agree she isn't that much worse than her AS, and the AS is REALLY good. I was very tempted to give this a 9, but its an 8.5 because the AS form has one big problem: If your goal is damage optimization, you're not gonna have a fun time using AS Hismenas skills during AF, as there is a LOT of annoying move-switching mid-AF required to get the most out of her. For that reason, I personally even prefer her NS.
Radica AS: 5/10 - Its the fire version of AS Ilulus conundrum: Her zone is already covered by an F2P unit, and while the AS is one of the best units in the game, the NS is one of the worst.
AS Miyu / AS Toova: 9.5/10 - Now thats what I call a banner. AS Miyu has arguably the best offensive team-wide buff in the entire game (even if its only the best for units with the miglance castle personality), while being a potentially insane damage dealer, getting up to a 1600% modifier at 8 distinctive buffs (keep in mind, boosts from equipment and grasta count as buffs) and 0 MP (again, keep in mind that, during AF, you can stay on that 0 MP and still use your skills), and AS Toova becomes arguably the offensively second strongest staff wielder in the game, all while still buffing staff wielders, debuffing power and int of all enemies, and buffing her own speed with her skills.
Ywera/AS Anabel: 9/10 - Of all the crystal characters, Ywera is probably the most offensively potent, being able to even outdamage AS Miyu during lunatic, potentially even by a lot (this is another character where it says '+xx% critical damage', in this case 50%, and I'm not sure if thats just extra percent to the damage multiplier if she crits, or if it means the move deals 1.5 damage when it crits), all while still coming with a crit rate and crit damage buff rolled into one skill. And well, AS Anabel is AS Anabel: Pretty wack outside of AF, a very strong beatstick in AF.
Dunarith AS: 8/10 - I will admit that I very well might be biased here, but I don't see the appeal in AS Dunarith enough to give his banner anything higher than an 8. Yes, he is a solid support for magic zone, and he can inflict permanent poison, but thats kinda it. His damage is lackluster since he consumes his Taufe stacks (which he needs to power up his strongest skill) when they're fully stacked, and half his support won't be THAT good even on a magic zone team since the staff wielder damage buff will stack with diminishing returns with the end of turn buff of AS Rosetta. And NS Dunarith, while certainly still good, is far from unique in his ability to provide team-wide guaranteed crits by now.
ES Melina: 8/10 - As hyped as I am for ES Melina, I'm hyped to upgrade her NS to her ES manually, I'm not hyped about trying to pull her. In a vacuum, this banner is alright: NS Melina has aged considerably but is still totally usable, and ES Melina is another unit I'd consider top 15 in the game. But when compared to some of the banners that will release shortly before and shortly after this one, it just isn't worth your stones unless you already pulled something from Yweras banner and you still want another usable addition to your water zone team.
AS Shigure: 6.5/10 - AS Shigure is really good, being a potentially insane damage dealer (though you have to make sure you can do 7 (or at least 6) seperate attacks in one turn the turn before you AF with him, and... hell if I know how to do that on a water or a slash zone team), and being the first unit whose VC is both an attacking and zone-setting VC (and the zone is set BEFORE the attack triggers, meaning you get both the extra damage and extra AF building on that VC attack), but NS Shigure is just... like, not Ilulu or Radica bad, but still pretty damn bad.
AS Tiramisu: 9.5/10 - We've reached the final banner currently released on the JP version, and its another banger. I think the gospel of NS Tiramisu has been sung enough on this sub that you all know how good she is, but sadly, we don't fully know how good her AS is yet because she only just released, and at least I wasn't able to find concrete damage multipliers for her new skills. However, we do know what her abilities do, and they're... good if a little specific (as she seems to be made to specifically support earth pierce units, even if she does also work for general earth units to a lesser degree). Regardless of that though, the fact alone that she FINALLY is the second earth zone setter in the game makes this a must pull for any F2P player that doesn't have Myunfa, because of how many really strong F2P earth units there are. And if you're in that boat but you don't wanna spend too many stones on her: As soon as you pull even just the 4.5 star version, you can call it a day and then make her your AS-upgrade goal.
So, turns out I missed the new years banners that JP got. Last time JP got new years banners, we did eventually get them as well considerably later, but since we don't know when they'll come out for us, I'm gonna put their ratings down here at the bottom.
Blunt banner (ES Melina, AS Ewan, Yipha, Myunfa, Felmina): 10+/10 - Yeah I'm guessing its no suprise to anyone that these banners are REALLY good. And we're starting off with the best of the bunch: Except for Myunfa, these are literally the best characters for a blunt zone team in the game, and while putting Myunfa on a blunt team is redundant since her and Yipha cover basically the same ground, Myunfa is still the best earth zone setter even now that AS Tiramisu is a thing. And not to mention, AS Ewan can be put on any weapon zone team, making this banner shine even more compared to the other weapon zone-specific banners that follow. This is basically a perfect banner. However (and this goes for all 4 of these banners), while they have an increased featured rate at 5%, 1% for each featured unit, if the last new years banners are anything to go by, these banners work the same as the general weapon zone banner that comes out with AS Ewan: No other 5 star units are available on the banner, meaning the value quickly drops off the more units you already have on the banner.
Slash banner (AS Ilulu, AS Miyu, Victor, AS Renri, AS Tsukiha): 9/10 - As you can probably tell, the main reason why this is 'only' a 9 is because slash is already an F2P zone, and also because there are a boatload of good F2P slash units already. Also, having either AS Renri or AS Tsukiha kind of disincentivises you to go for the other, since they have the same attack type and element, while filling the exact same role of a decent damage dealer that also guarantees crits for the team, the main difference being that Renri leans towards damage more while Tsukiha is a bit more of a support unit. So, pulling one of them makes pulling the other one not THAT great. Still obviously a fantastic banner though.
Pierce banner (AS Foran, Ywera, Yukino, AS Hismena, AS Ciel): 10/10 - My only gripe with this banner is that I personally don't like AS Hismena a whole lot, but that doesn't mean this isn't easily a 10/10. Matter of fact, if this banner had featured another zone setter alongside AS Foran, like what the blunt and magic banners did, or if they had switched out AS Hismena for someone like Mistrare or Mirusha, this would have been another 10+, its that close.
Magic banner (AS Rosetta, AS Dunarith, AS Radica, AS Myrus, AS Mighty): 9.5/10 - Sadly, WFS felt the need to put AS Mighty on this banner. don't get me wrong, he isn't terrible, but he just can't compete with all the other units featured on these 4 banners. Couple that with the fact that I think AS Dunarith is WAY overhyped by the tier list, and this would have been another 9. What made it a 9.5 is AS Radica: Yes, her zone is already covered by an F2P unit, but she is LEAGUES better as a zone setter compared to AS Gariyu (or Hardy, for that matter), her end of turn buff providing healing and MP recovery instead of just buffing her own fire attack and no one elses like Gariyu does, AND she is the first and so far only unit in the game that can provide guaranteed crits to both physical attacks and to magic, and I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar that that makes her one of the most future-proof units in the game.
Apple [AAPL] Stock Price Predictions | Buy or Sell AAPL? Apple [AAPL] Stock Price Target & Analysis
Should you buy Apple stock or has the company run out of growth opportunities? What is my price prediction for Apple in the next years? Read until the end as I reveal my price target for Apple and also what I think will happen in the next couple of days, weeks & months! ~ Warning! Very Very Long Post~ Hello everyone! So, let’s go over some of the latest news on Apple before moving on to some fundamental and technical analysis, predictions and my price target for the stock in the next years. So, let’s start with the news that Apple will cut the App Store commission in half for small app developers starting in the next days, this will affect developers who earn less than $1M annually from the App Store Sales. This is likely to lead to a small decline in commission revenues for Apple as around 98% of the app developers will qualify for this tax reduction from 30% to 15%, but all these small developers only contribute to about 5% of the estimated $50B in annual revenues from the App Store, so that would be only a $1.25B loss for the company, that is less than half a % of the company’s total net sales in the last fiscal year. Also, these changes may lead to a potential long-term revenue boost, as it is likely this will lead to an increasing creation of apps which will generate more commissions in return. Alongside this we also saw the company releasing the new MacBook’s with their first in-house chip, which promises faster video and imaging processing times, with both CPU and GPU performance up to 2 times faster than the latest PC laptop chip using just a fraction of the power consumption, with both of the macbooks promising big improvements in battery life. Apple is also expected to roll out even more in-house chips in future products, as they have started the 2-year breakup with Intel chips. We also saw Morgan Stanley upgrading their base case to $191 at the end of November, as they have cited record lead times, supply chain forecasts and carriers demand as they expect that the company will sell around 270M iPhone in fiscal year 2021, that’s 50M more than the consensus and almost 30M more than the previous estimate of Morgan Stanley, with an average selling price of 842$, 9% more than the base case, as people tend to chose the more expensive and high tech versions of the lineup in this new 5G cycle. The 5G super-cycle, which I believe is on the way, and will continue in the next years, as 5G become more available worldwide, could still be the biggest thing coming right away for the company with 5G smartphones expected to surpass 4G sales by 2024, with the average sale price of the 5G phones also coming down, helping them become more popular. This will also be helped by the recent entry to the Indian market, as India will probably become the world biggest country in the next decade, this could be a huge opportunity for Apple to start and take away market-share from their competitors like Samsung and Xiaomi which have the biggest market shares right now. They also released an update iPad Pro and an all-new iPad Air in September which will also boost sales in this work-from-home environment that will keep the demand very high for this kind of products, just like the Macs. Alongside the increasing demand from the Wearables, Home & Accessories that include Air Pods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and many more products. But the biggest reasons I believe Apple is poised for continued growth, is primarily due to its services business, as they start to offer more and more services like the Apple ONE BUNDLE, which include up to 6 services from (Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, the new Apple Fitness+ and the iCloud service) for a pretty reasonable price in my opinion starting from 15$ up to 30$/month, this could be a great option for families and even individuals who use their services a lot. The latest services, Fitness+ just launched in the past days, and is a direct competitor to the likes of Peloton, as the service is available on the iPhone, iPad or even Apple TV. This also makes consumers buy the Apple Watch which syncs to the other devices to show you different information. The Fitness+ app just on its own is 8$/month or 80$/year which is less expensive than Peloton subscription which charges 13$ or even traditional gyms like Planet Fitness at 10$/month. I think this will be the fastest growing sector for the company, as this aligns with the new macro trends, as the world is moving more and more to a digital approach to almost everything as consumer preferences, with more & more younger people reaching the point in life when they use these services start to align to this increasing digital approach. We also shouldn’t forget the Apple Card & Apple Pay service among many others which also seem to gain from the move to digital & contactless payments, as this has been accelerated due to the current situation in the past year. And one last piece of news, and the most recent one, is that Apple may have fast-tracked the Titan project. The Titan project is targeting a 2024 or 2025 push to develop an electric vehicle with advanced battery technologies, that will deliver significant increases in range at much lower costs than the current technologies while also offering self-driving capabilities. It’s reported they will not use the same technology as Tesla Full-Self-Driving feature, but will use LIDAR sensors, similar to those that we can find in the latest iPhone 12 PRO. I think Apple can go 2 ways with this project, they can either use the huge amount of cash the company has to buy another car-maker like Ford, GM or any other car manufacturer expect Tesla and Toyota which do have a big market cap, so that they can fast-track the potential manufacturing of cars, or they can enter into a partnership with big companies like Tesla, Volkswagen or any other car marker to either produce cars or license their technology to this other car-makers which would ultimately and probably have higher margin-returns than the effective manufacturing of cars. Apple’s current overall gross margins stand at 38% vs the 15% average of the world top 10 automakers by market cap, which is significantly lower. But this Apple Car thing is so far out, and there are so many unknowns, I will not try to predict anything related to this until there is more clarity on the subject. And last, before moving on to some predictions, here are some of the highlights that we heard from the latest investors conference meeting, as the CEO, Tim Cook expressed optimism ahead with the launch of many new products and services, especially the Home Pod Mini and the new 5G iPhones, as these new iPhones include new LIDAR scanners that greatly improve the camera capabilities, as the iPhone as seen very positive reviews. We also saw the Senior VP and CFO, Luca Maestri give us great outlook for the company as they expect the installed devices base to continue to growth despite already being at an all-time high as they have over 585M paid subscriptions on their platforms and expect this to surpass 600M by the end of 2020. I also researched and found what products we can see in the near future, with the first half of 2021 bringing new iMacs, the AirPods3 and the iPad Pro, while in the FALL event we will probably get the new iPhone 13 alongside the iPhone SE PLUS and the Watch Series 7 with more products coming later in 2021 or that don’t have an estimated release date like the Air Pods Pro, the Air Tags and the iPad Mini 6. So, before even starting, you should know that I am bull on Apple but I am willing to hear other opinions so don’t be afraid to leave a comment down below. I have made some predictions based on the growth rate of the company, the latest plans announced by them and used some estimates. So, keep in mind this are only projections and are calculated by myself, this is not an investment advice and you should do your own research. This are my 2025 projections for Apple, let’s take a closer look at them, each on their own. So, in term of revenues, Apple has 5 big sources of income, which saw an overall increase of 6% despite lagging sales in the iPhone. The biggest revenue is by far the iPhone right now with over $137B in revenue in the fiscal year ending in September. I expect to see the iPhone sales increasing in the next years, especially in 2021, with the new 5G iPhone creating a super-cycle for the company, as most iPhone users, including myself here, as I will upgrade from my iPhone X, will switch to this new product. The iPhone sales have decreased in the last couple of years by 14% and 3% as a result of the product not having big improvements, as well as iPhone usually starting to last longer than previous models, so I expect to see a 12% increase in sales next year and a gradual decrease in the growth of sales as more people upgrade, ending with just a 5% growth in iPhone sales in 2025. The next revenues stream is from the Mac, which has seen an increase in the past 2years, with revenues topping $28B this year after the huge demand from the work from home consumers. I expect this trend to continue as they plan to continue to launch better products and I can see the company having a similar growth next year before starting to decline slightly until 2025, also ending with a 5% growth. The iPad is currently the smallest revenue stream for Apple but has also seen an increase in demand in the past 2 years with a 13% average increase in revenues. I also expect the iPad to continue to grow in the next couple of years, especially with the learn-from-home environment for kids, and even after this period ends, the transformation for learning will implicate more digital usage. I expect the iPad to see some similar growth to the Macs, especially with the latest generation also bringing a new iPad air to the market. The 4th revenue stream and the fastest growing in the past 2 years, with an average growth of 33% are the wearables, home & accessories revenues. This have topped $30B this year, as Apple has also just launched the Apple Watch series 6 and also feature other great products like Apple TV, the Air Pods the Home Pod and the Home Pod mini alongside other third-party accessories. I gave this revenue stream a growth of 20% starting next year with a gradual decrease to around 8% by 2025, as I believe this will become more & more popular as they start to offer more vertical integration. And last, but by no means least, the revenue stream that I expect to grow the most and the fastest is the revenue from the services that Apple offers. This includes revenues from Apple Care, Advertising, Cloud Services, Payment Services like Apple Card & Apple Pay and of course the digital content which includes fees from the App Store alongside subscription-based income including the new Apple One Bundle and Apple Fitness+ alongside the already know Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple TV+ and hopefully I don’t forget any others. So, I expect this to become the clear 2nd biggest revenue stream for Apple by 2025, as I expect this to grow more than 20% next year, mainly due to the Apple One Bundle and Apple Fitness+ followed up by a slightly decreasing growth, ending with a 10% increase in revenues in 2025. I think this are fairly conservative base case scenarios for the revenues, as I expect them to continue to increase the other revenue streams and not have such a large percentage of the revenues coming from the iPhone sales as you can see in this chart. In terms of expenses, I pretty much kept the same margins as in previous years, with a 68% expense ratio on product sales [ iPhone / iPad / Mac / WHA ] and 35% expense ratio on SERVICES, as this are way more lucrative. In the past 3 years, the products gross margin was 32.7%, so I actually imply bigger expenses for the manufacturing and sales of products, as this is mostly impacted by the company’s supplier’s ability to make up for and demand, while for the services revenue, the gross margins for the last 3 years has been 63.5% on average, but I expect this to be more in-line with the 66% margin in this past year. So, if services manage to grow to about half the revenues from the iPhone, this will effectively double the gross revenues, as every buck gained in the service revenues account for 2$ in the product sales. So, I expect the total revenues for Apple to increase from $274B in 2020 to over $440B by 2025, increasing by approximately 10%/year, while I will keep the expense ratio pretty much in-line and have them increasing by 11%/year, this would bring the total gross income for Apple to $177B, increasing mainly due to the services revenues as I said earlier. This growth is just above the 4year average, and below the 2018 levels, which we might see again with this 5G super-cycle and explosive growth in the services revenue. I also think the company will continue to invest in both Capital Expenditure and Operating expenses. I think the operating expenses will remain pretty much in line with the previous years, as this number has increased by 1% annually both in R&D and SG&A. So, I will keep the exact percentages from previous years, as I expect the revenue to increase, thus I don’t see a big increase percentage wise. This would account for over $60B in operating expenses by 2025 and over $11B in Capital Expenditures by 2025, as I expect this to increase, mainly due to the possible EV developments or investments in self-driving capabilities alongside other manufacturing capabilities. You can see that the Capex spending has been decreasing in the past years with just over $8.8B in payments for business acquisitions and the other traditional Capex spending. Some people may use the cash generated by investing activities as Capex, but that is more unreliable. I also can see the Capex going back up, so I wanted to be safe and implied a 10% growth. This money would account for over $73B in expenses and would bring the profit for the company to almost $104B before interest and taxes. Moving on, let’s see what interest income and expenses the company has had in the past few years. We can see a decrease in interest expense in the past few years as the company has been paying off debt, but they have also been generating less money in this department, with an overall decrease in this department of more than 50% in the past year, way less than the amount from 2018. So, for safety reasons, I used a 10% decline in both income and expenses related to interest, while increasing the other losses by 10%/year. This would bring the company pre-tax income to just over $104B in 2025. Let’s move on to taxes. I know the Federal income tax rate is 21% for the company, but the actual effective tax rate for the company was lower than 15% in the past year, mainly due to lower tax-rates on foreign earnings alongside tax-benefits and tax-settlements. The average effective tax rate has been just over 16% in the past 3 years, but with more and more of the revenues coming from outside the US, I think it’s safe to say that the company will have around a 15% effective tax rate by 2025, this obviously if nothing major changes in tax policy around the world. So, Apple would have $88.6B in income after tax by 2025 and with the current outstanding shares standing at just under 17B, so I don’t even account for the company probably continuing to do share buybacks, this would mean a $5.22 future earnings/share. And with today’s price for Apple just around 136$, that would mean to company is trading at just over 26 times forward price to earnings. I don’t think Apple will ever trade at a discount again, with the current PE standing at over 40, I believe this will eventually go down, probably to around 35, despite the increase in services revenue, which is highly valued by investors. I think we can see Apple trade somewhere near 35 times P/E in 2025, especially if something big happens with the EV project, this could be even higher, just look at Tesla which trades at insane P/E. Of course, we also have to take into consideration the dividends that will be received from owning the stock, as Apple has started to pay dividends almost a decade ago and has 9 years of dividend growth, with a 10% annual rate of growth in the past 5 years. Here is the dividend growth history for the company, as I also went conservative on this estimate and implied a 7% growth for the next 2 years, 6% for 2023 and 2024 and just 5% in 2025. So here are my 3 price targets for the company, including dividends but not reinvested. My bear case scenario is that Apple will trade at almost 165$ which implies a return of over 21% by 2025, while my base case scenario would see Apple trading at 195$ with a return of capital of 43%. I will also make the bull case for Apple trading at 225$ by 2025 with dividends included, which would imply just over 65% in gains by then. I think this is possible as Apple has also continued to buy back shares of the company on a constant basis, as they continue to an impressive campaign with over $72B worth of common stock repurchased in 2020. They continue to buy back shares at a very fast pace, having repurchased over 1.3B shares in 2019 and 2018, while also issuing less stock every year. So here is the full spreadsheet that I have projected for Apple by 2025 and the breakdown of everything i estimated [ 1 / 2 ] , if you do have another opinion or a suggestion please leave a comment down below, I think I have been conservative in most of my projections, but feel free to give your opinion. Keep in mind, these targets might sound ridiculous, but just look at the growth Apple has had in the last 5years. The company has increased in value by more 400% in just the past 5years and is over 100.000% up since it started trading. So yes, the valuation is mad right now for the company. So, are you willing to bet against Apple? The company also has pristine financials, with more than $65B in total assets compared to total liabilities, and more than $38B in cash and cash equivalents. So, what do I expect in the next couple of days, weeks and months for Apple? Let’s look at this CHART, so starting with the stock split, Apple saw a correction within the September stock market pullback, in a buy the news & sell the event, after a huge runup post-announcement of the stock split. The stock entered a consolidation period, and didn’t have any big catalysts, especially with new iPhone lineup not being included in the Q4 results due to the late launch. The stock found some levels of resistance near the $120 levels that it struggled to get past but acted also as support after breaking them just before the recent news of the possible EV developments or self-driving-features to be licensed to other car manufacturers. After that news the stock spiked and has now reached the previous highs made before the stock split and is facing some resistance, if the stock pushes over $140 I think we can officially say that it broke the resistance at those levels and is not just a fake-out. But I think it’s likely that the stock will consolidate between 122 and 135$ in the next weeks until the next iPhone sales and quarterly results are released, as the stock has entered overbought territory again with an RSI over 70, the first time since the stock split. So, what would I do? Well, I own Apple stock, and I really believe this company will remain the biggest or one of the biggest in the future, so I would really add on any weakness that the stock shows before the next quarter earnings are released, as typically Q1 earnings are the best for the company due to increased holiday sales combined with the launch of new products. I think any entry below 130$ would be really nice to start and build a position or increase it if you already own the stock. As I believe Apple is one of the most stable stocks out there with large institutional holders like Vanguard, BlackRock and Berkshire owning over 900M shares each. Thank you everyone for reading! Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion on the stock market! Have a great day and see you next time!
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