Today’s lesson goes to be somewhat controversial and should ruffle some feathers. I shall blow wide open and debunk tons of the knowledge you've got presumably been exposed to the present far in your trading journey.
The average trader is out there walking through a confusing and conflicting maze of data from a spread of sources including; blogs, forums, broker websites, books, e-books, courses and YouTube videos.
With of these learning resources available there's naturally getting to be some excellent and a few very bad information, but actually , there just isn’t how for many aspiring traders to understand what to concentrate to, who to concentrate to, or what information is useful and what information is non-beneficial.
I’m not getting to pretend that there's how for an aspiring trader to filter this giant sea of data composed by of these resources and mentors out there, because there simply isn’t. knowledgeable trader with 10,000 hours of experience might stand an opportunity of deciding the great from the bad and therefore the valid from the invalid. However, you, the beginner or intermediate trader simply won’t possess that filtering ability yet.
Becoming ‘Non-Average’
As traders, we concede to our instinctive feelings of social trustworthiness supported what we see and listen to , often to our extreme detriment. we frequently tend to require a leap of religion with our mentors and have a habit of taking things said to us at face value. we would like to hold close information that resonates with us and is sensible to us, especially if it’s delivered by a well-known source that we've come to understand and trust.
The ‘average trader’s brain’ is usually trying to find a shortcut due to the overwhelming desire to form money and be free. The brain wants to urge a winning result immediately with the smallest amount amount of effort possible. If you would like to ever make it as a professional trader or investor, I suggest you are doing everything you'll to avoid thinking with the ‘average trader’s brain‘ and begin being ‘non-average’. meaning becoming far more aware, thinking outside the box more and questioning and filtering the knowledge you read and watch. most significantly , slowing everything all down!
This now begs the apparent question…how does one even know what I’m close to write during this lesson is actually valid and factual? How are you able to really be sure? the reality is unless you've got followed me and my posts on this blog for an extended time and know me and know my work, then you can’t really make certain , and that i don’t expect you to easily believe it at face value. If you would like to return back and re-read this lesson during a few weeks, or a couple of months, or a couple of years, after you work out that i'm somebody worth taking note of about trading OR that i'm somebody not worth taking note of about trading, then so be it.
So with a degree of healthy skepticism, I ask you to think about the below list of eye-opening secrets that professional traders and therefore the trading industry, don’t want you to understand about or understand. I hope it helps…
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FOREX isn’t the sole market the Professionals trade
The FX market is large , with billions of dollars per day changing hands. It can cause you to great money if you recognize what you’re doing OR it can send you broke if you don’t. It’s a really popular market to trade globally, BUT it’s not the sole market the professional’s trade and it’s not always the simplest market to trade either.
A note on leverage:
The brokers and platform providers want you to trade FX on high leverage because the profit margins are very high for them. However, if you trade FX on lower leverage, the profit margins shrink dramatically for them. once you trade FX, start brooding about what can fail rather than just brooding about what can go right. I suggest avoiding stupidly high leverage like 400 to 1, as this will be very dangerous for you if the market moves quickly or experiences a price gap and your stop-loss orders aren’t executed at the worth you set. A more sensible leverage level would be 100 to 1 or 200 to 1, but any higher seems crazy. (Using an excessive amount of leverage is what wiped tons of traders out during Swiss Bank Crisis in 2015, The Brexit choose 2016 and therefore the Currency flash crash in early 2019).
Broaden your view:
Going forward, it'll serve you well in your trading career to start out watching a spread of worldwide markets including FX, Stock Indicies and Commodities. additionally to FX, I personally trade GOLD (XAUUSD), S&P500 Index USA, the SPI200 Index Australia, and therefore the Hang Seng Index Hong Kong , and sometimes individual stocks on various global exchanges. In short, there's more to the trading world than simply FX. I discuss the foremost popular markets I trade this lesson here.
Day trading isn’t what Pro trading really is
The internet is crammed with marketing trying to convince folks that the definition of a trader may be a one that spends all day actively trading in and out of the market on a brief term basis, all whilst living the life-style of a Wall St millionaire. there's a significant agenda within the industry to push this story to the masses, it's been relentless for many years .
I am yet to satisfy one successful day trader who is consistent over the future and that i have almost 25,000 students and 250,000 readers on this blog. i'm not saying there isn’t a couple of out there, but 99.9% of the people that do this sort of trading or attempt to live up to the standard day trader stereotype are getting to fail and perhaps even harm themselves financially or mentally. Watching a screen all day and searching for trades constantly is that the like a compulsive gambler playing roulette during a casino.
The successful traders i do know of (myself included) are watching higher time frames and longer time horizons (minimum 4-hour chart timeframes and predominantly daily chart time frames). they need no restriction on how long they're looking to carry a trade for and that they tend to let the trades find them. The professionals i do know , don't day trade, they are doing not watch screens all day, they are doing not search for trades constantly. they're going to typically fall under the category of a swing trader, trend trader or position trader.
The obvious paradox and conflicting reality within the ‘day trader story’ is blatantly obvious. How does a trader who is consistently watching a screen and constantly trading have time to enjoy his life and live the lifestyle? They chose to trade as a profession to possess a life, they didn’t choose it to observe a screen 24/5.
Here are some points to think about that employment against the so-called ‘ day trader’:
The shorter the time-frame the more noise and random price movement there's , thus increasing your chance of simply being stopped out of the trade.
Your ‘trading edge’ features a higher chance of yielding a result for you if you’re not trading within the intraday noise.
The same trading edge doesn't work or produce an equivalent results on a 5 min chart compared to a Daily chart.
Commissions and spreads churn your account, therefore the more you trade the more you lose in broker platform costs. (I will mention this below)
Risk-Reward ratios aren't relative on shorter and longer time frames. Statistical average volatility across different time periods also as natural market dynamics play an enormous role during this . there's much more weight behind higher time frames than lower timeframes.
Great trades take time because the market moves slower than most of the people ever anticipate. Trading from the upper timeframes and holding trades for extended time periods will provide you with greater opportunities to ascertain trades mature into big winners. However, shorter timeframes don’t provide you with this same opportunity fairly often .

Hello, dummies
It's your old pal, Fuzzy.
As I'm sure you've all noticed, a lot of the stuff that gets posted here is - to put it delicately - fucking ridiculous. More backwards-ass shit gets posted to wallstreetbets than you'd see on a Westboro Baptist community message board. I mean, I had a look at the daily thread yesterday and..... yeesh. I know, I know. We all make like the divine Laura Dern circa 1992 on the daily and stick our hands deep into this steaming heap of shit to find the nuggets of valuable and/or hilarious information within (thanks for reading, BTW). I agree. I love it just the way it is too. That's what makes WSB great.
What I'm getting at is that a lot of the stuff that gets posted here - notwithstanding it being funny or interesting - is just... wrong. Like, fucking your cousin wrong. And to be clear, I mean the fucking your *first* cousin kinda wrong, before my Southerners in the back get all het up (simmer down, Billy Ray - I know Mabel's twice removed on your grand-sister's side). Truly, I try to let it slide. I do my bit to try and put you on the right path. Most of the time, I sleep easy no matter how badly I've seen someone explain what a bank liquidity crisis is. But out of all of those tens of thousands of misguided, autistic attempts at understanding the world of high finance, one thing gets so consistently - so *emphatically* - fucked up and misunderstood by you retards that last night I felt obligated at the end of a long work day to pull together this edition of Finance with Fuzzy just for you. It's so serious I'm not even going to make a u/pokimane gag. Have you guessed what it is yet? Here's a clue. It's in the title of the post.
That's right, friends. Today in the neighborhood we're going to talk all about hedging in financial markets - spots, swaps, collars, forwards, CDS, synthetic CDOs, all that fun shit. Don't worry; I'm going to explain what all the scary words mean and how they impact your OTM RH positions along the way.
We're going to break it down like this. (1) "What's a hedge, Fuzzy?" (2) Common Hedging Strategies and (3) All About ISDAs and Credit Default Swaps.
Before we begin. For the nerds and JV traders in the back (and anyone else who needs to hear this up front) - I am simplifying these descriptions for the purposes of this post. I am also obviously not going to try and cover every exotic form of hedge under the sun or give a detailed summation of what caused the financial crisis. If you are interested in something specific ask a question, but don't try and impress me with your Investopedia skills or technical points I didn't cover; I will just be forced to flex my years of IRL experience on you in the comments and you'll look like a big dummy.
TL;DR? Fuck you. There is no TL;DR. You've come this far already. What's a few more paragraphs? Put down the Cheetos and try to concentrate for the next 5-7 minutes. You'll learn something, and I promise I'll be gentle.
Ready? Let's get started.
1. The Tao of Risk: Hedging as a Way of Life
The simplest way to characterize what a hedge 'is' is to imagine every action having a binary outcome. One is bad, one is good. Red lines, green lines; uppie, downie. With me so far? Good. A 'hedge' is simply the employment of a strategy to mitigate the effect of your action having the wrong binary outcome. You wanted X, but you got Z! Frowny face. A hedge strategy introduces a third outcome. If you hedged against the possibility of Z happening, then you can wind up with Y instead. Not as good as X, but not as bad as Z. The technical definition I like to give my idiot juniors is as follows:
Utilization of a defensive strategy to mitigate risk, at a fraction of the cost to capital of the risk itself.
Congratulations. You just finished Hedging 101. "But Fuzzy, that's easy! I just sold a naked call against my 95% OTM put! I'm adequately hedged!". Spoiler alert: you're not (although good work on executing a collar, which I describe below). What I'm talking about here is what would be referred to as a 'perfect hedge'; a binary outcome where downside is totally mitigated by a risk management strategy. That's not how it works IRL. Pay attention; this is the tricky part.
You can't take a single position and conclude that you're adequately hedged because risks are fluid, not static. So you need to constantly adjust your position in order to maximize the value of the hedge and insure your position. You also need to consider exposure to more than one category of risk. There are micro (specific exposure) risks, and macro (trend exposure) risks, and both need to factor into the hedge calculus.
That's why, in the real world, the value of hedging depends entirely on the design of the hedging strategy itself. Here, when we say "value" of the hedge, we're not talking about cash money - we're talking about the intrinsic value of the hedge relative to the the risk profile of your underlying exposure. To achieve this, people hedge dynamically. In wallstreetbets terms, this means that as the value of your position changes, you need to change your hedges too. The idea is to efficiently and continuously distribute and rebalance risk across different states and periods, taking value from states in which the marginal cost of the hedge is low and putting it back into states where marginal cost of the hedge is high, until the shadow value of your underlying exposure is equalized across your positions. The punchline, I guess, is that one static position is a hedge in the same way that the finger paintings you make for your wife's boyfriend are art - it's technically correct, but you're only playing yourself by believing it.
Anyway. Obviously doing this as a small potatoes trader is hard but it's worth taking into account. Enough basic shit. So how does this work in markets?
2. A Hedging Taxonomy
The best place to start here is a practical question. What does a business need to hedge against? Think about the specific risk that an individual business faces. These are legion, so I'm just going to list a few of the key ones that apply to most corporates. (1) You have commodity risk for the shit you buy or the shit you use. (2) You have currency risk for the money you borrow. (3) You have rate risk on the debt you carry. (4) You have offtake risk for the shit you sell. Complicated, right? To help address the many and varied ways that shit can go wrong in a sophisticated market, smart operators like yours truly have devised a whole bundle of different instruments which can help you manage the risk. I might write about some of the more complicated ones in a later post if people are interested (CDO/CLOs, strip/stack hedges and bond swaps with option toggles come to mind) but let's stick to the basics for now.
(i) Swaps
A swap is one of the most common forms of hedge instrument, and they're used by pretty much everyone that can afford them. The language is complicated but the concept isn't, so pay attention and you'll be fine. This is the most important part of this section so it'll be the longest one.
Swaps are derivative contracts with two counterparties (before you ask, you can't trade 'em on an exchange - they're OTC instruments only). They're used to exchange one cash flow for another cash flow of equal expected value; doing this allows you to take speculative positions on certain financial prices or to alter the cash flows of existing assets or liabilities within a business. "Wait, Fuzz; slow down! What do you mean sets of cash flows?". Fear not, little autist. Ol' Fuzz has you covered.
The cash flows I'm talking about are referred to in swap-land as 'legs'. One leg is fixed - a set payment that's the same every time it gets paid - and the other is variable - it fluctuates (typically indexed off the price of the underlying risk that you are speculating on / protecting against). You set it up at the start so that they're notionally equal and the two legs net off; so at open, the swap is a zero NPV instrument. Here's where the fun starts. If the price that you based the variable leg of the swap on changes, the value of the swap will shift; the party on the wrong side of the move ponies up via the variable payment. It's a zero sum game.
I'll give you an example using the most vanilla swap around; an interest rate trade. Here's how it works. You borrow money from a bank, and they charge you a rate of interest. You lock the rate up front, because you're smart like that. But then - quelle surprise! - the rate gets better after you borrow. Now you're bagholding to the tune of, I don't know, 5 bps. Doesn't sound like much but on a billion dollar loan that's a lot of money (a classic example of the kind of 'small, deep hole' that's terrible for profits). Now, if you had a swap contract on the rate before you entered the trade, you're set; if the rate goes down, you get a payment under the swap. If it goes up, whatever payment you're making to the bank is netted off by the fact that you're borrowing at a sub-market rate. Win-win! Or, at least, Lose Less / Lose Less. That's the name of the game in hedging.
There are many different kinds of swaps, some of which are pretty exotic; but they're all different variations on the same theme. If your business has exposure to something which fluctuates in price, you trade swaps to hedge against the fluctuation. The valuation of swaps is also super interesting but I guarantee you that 99% of you won't understand it so I'm not going to try and explain it here although I encourage you to google it if you're interested.
Because they're OTC, none of them are filed publicly. Someeeeeetimes you see an ISDA (dsicussed below) but the confirms themselves (the individual swaps) are not filed. You can usually read about the hedging strategy in a 10-K, though. For what it's worth, most modern credit agreements ban speculative hedging. Top tip: This is occasionally something worth checking in credit agreements when you invest in businesses that are debt issuers - being able to do this increases the risk profile significantly and is particularly important in times of economic volatility (ctrl+f "non-speculative" in the credit agreement to be sure).
(ii) Forwards
A forward is a contract made today for the future delivery of an asset at a pre-agreed price. That's it. "But Fuzzy! That sounds just like a futures contract!". I know. Confusing, right? Just like a futures trade, forwards are generally used in commodity or forex land to protect against price fluctuations. The differences between forwards and futures are small but significant. I'm not going to go into super boring detail because I don't think many of you are commodities traders but it is still an important thing to understand even if you're just an RH jockey, so stick with me.
Just like swaps, forwards are OTC contracts - they're not publicly traded. This is distinct from futures, which are traded on exchanges (see The Ballad Of Big Dick Vick for some more color on this). In a forward, no money changes hands until the maturity date of the contract when delivery and receipt are carried out; price and quantity are locked in from day 1. As you now know having read about BDV, futures are marked to market daily, and normally people close them out with synthetic settlement using an inverse position. They're also liquid, and that makes them easier to unwind or close out in case shit goes sideways.
People use forwards when they absolutely have to get rid of the thing they made (or take delivery of the thing they need). If you're a miner, or a farmer, you use this shit to make sure that at the end of the production cycle, you can get rid of the shit you made (and you won't get fucked by someone taking cash settlement over delivery). If you're a buyer, you use them to guarantee that you'll get whatever the shit is that you'll need at a price agreed in advance. Because they're OTC, you can also exactly tailor them to the requirements of your particular circumstances.
These contracts are incredibly byzantine (and there are even crazier synthetic forwards you can see in money markets for the true degenerate fund managers). In my experience, only Texan oilfield magnates, commodities traders, and the weirdo forex crowd fuck with them. I (i) do not own a 10 gallon hat or a novelty size belt buckle (ii) do not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out about the price of pork fat and (iii) love greenbacks too much to care about other countries' monopoly money, so I don't fuck with them.
(iii) Collars
No, not the kind your wife is encouraging you to wear try out to 'spice things up' in the bedroom during quarantine. Collars are actually the hedging strategy most applicable to WSB. Collars deal with options! Hooray!
To execute a basic collar (also called a wrapper by tea-drinking Brits and people from the Antipodes), you buy an out of the money put while simultaneously writing a covered call on the same equity. The put protects your position against price drops and writing the call produces income that offsets the put premium. Doing this limits your tendies (you can only profit up to the strike price of the call) but also writes down your risk. If you screen large volume trades with a VOL/OI of more than 3 or 4x (and they're not bullshit biotech stocks), you can sometimes see these being constructed in real time as hedge funds protect themselves on their shorts.
(3) All About ISDAs, CDS and Synthetic CDOs
You may have heard about the mythical ISDA. Much like an indenture (discussed in my post on $F), it's a magic legal machine that lets you build swaps via trade confirms with a willing counterparty. They are very complicated legal documents and you need to be a true expert to fuck with them. Fortunately, I am, so I do. They're made of two parts; a Master (which is a form agreement that's always the same) and a Schedule (which amends the Master to include your specific terms). They are also the engine behind just about every major credit crunch of the last 10+ years.
First - a brief explainer. An ISDA is a not in and of itself a hedge - it's an umbrella contract that governs the terms of your swaps, which you use to construct your hedge position. You can trade commodities, forex, rates, whatever, all under the same ISDA.
Let me explain. Remember when we talked about swaps? Right. So. You can trade swaps on just about anything. In the late 90s and early 2000s, people had the smart idea of using other people's debt and or credit ratings as the variable leg of swap documentation. These are called credit default swaps. I was actually starting out at a bank during this time and, I gotta tell you, the only thing I can compare people's enthusiasm for this shit to was that moment in your early teens when you discover jerking off. Except, unlike your bathroom bound shame sessions to Mom's Sears catalogue, every single person you know felt that way too; and they're all doing it at once. It was a fiscal circlejerk of epic proportions, and the financial crisis was the inevitable bukkake finish. WSB autism is absolutely no comparison for the enthusiasm people had during this time for lighting each other's money on fire.
Here's how it works. You pick a company. Any company. Maybe even your own! And then you write a swap. In the swap, you define "Credit Event" with respect to that company's debt as the variable leg . And you write in... whatever you want. A ratings downgrade, default under the docs, failure to meet a leverage ratio or FCCR for a certain testing period... whatever. Now, this started out as a hedge position, just like we discussed above. The purest of intentions, of course. But then people realized - if bad shit happens, you make money. And banks... don't like calling in loans or forcing bankruptcies. Can you smell what the moral hazard is cooking?
Enter synthetic CDOs. CDOs are basically pools of asset backed securities that invest in debt (loans or bonds). They've been around for a minute but they got famous in the 2000s because a shitload of them containing subprime mortgage debt went belly up in 2008. This got a lot of publicity because a lot of sad looking rednecks got foreclosed on and were interviewed on CNBC. "OH!", the people cried. "Look at those big bad bankers buying up subprime loans! They caused this!". Wrong answer, America. The debt wasn't the problem. What a lot of people don't realize is that the real meat of the problem was not in regular way CDOs investing in bundles of shit mortgage debts in synthetic CDOs investing in CDS predicated on that debt. They're synthetic because they don't have a stake in the actual underlying debt; just the instruments riding on the coattails. The reason these are so popular (and remain so) is that smart structured attorneys and bankers like your faithful correspondent realized that an even more profitable and efficient way of building high yield products with limited downside was investing in instruments that profit from failure of debt and in instruments that rely on that debt and then hedging that exposure with other CDS instruments in paired trades, and on and on up the chain. The problem with doing this was that everyone wound up exposed to everybody else's books as a result, and when one went tits up, everybody did. Hence, recession, Basel III, etc. Thanks, Obama.
Heavy investment in CDS can also have a warping effect on the price of debt (something else that happened during the pre-financial crisis years and is starting to happen again now). This happens in three different ways. (1) Investors who previously were long on the debt hedge their position by selling CDS protection on the underlying, putting downward pressure on the debt price. (2) Investors who previously shorted the debt switch to buying CDS protection because the relatively illiquid debt (partic. when its a bond) trades at a discount below par compared to the CDS. The resulting reduction in short selling puts upward pressure on the bond price. (3) The delta in price and actual value of the debt tempts some investors to become NBTs (neg basis traders) who long the debt and purchase CDS protection. If traders can't take leverage, nothing happens to the price of the debt. If basis traders can take leverage (which is nearly always the case because they're holding a hedged position), they can push up or depress the debt price, goosing swap premiums etc. Anyway. Enough technical details.
I could keep going. This is a fascinating topic that is very poorly understood and explained, mainly because the people that caused it all still work on the street and use the same tactics today (it's also terribly taught at business schools because none of the teachers were actually around to see how this played out live). But it relates to the topic of today's lesson, so I thought I'd include it here.
Work depending, I'll be back next week with a covenant breakdown. Most upvoted ticker gets the post.
*EDIT 1\* In a total blowout, $PLAY won. So it's D&B time next week. Post will drop Monday at market open.

November 2030
Well, uh, this sucks. Just a few short months after the Arab States of the Gulf finally unified, the world economy decided to explode. This is what we in the business of economics call a very bad thing.
The effects across the FAS have been relatively disparate. The United Arab Emirates, easily the most diversified economy in the region, has been the least heavily impacted (though it's still bad). Diversification programs in Oman and Bahrain have also helped to stave off some of the worst impacts of the crisis, though they haven't been as successful in avoiding the effects as the UAE. Qatar and Kuwait, still almost entirely reliant on hydrocarbon exports, are not happy with this turn of events. Falling global oil prices, though propped up a little by a sudden increase in demand from China, have left their economies struggling much more than the rest of the country, and in desperate need of assistance from the better off parts of the country.
One major pain point in this crisis has been the FAS's economic ties to the United States. While most of the FAS's trade is with Asia, Africa, and Europe, the US financial system still plays a crucial role in the FAS. The stability of the US Dollar has long been used to protect the economies of the Gulf using their vast Forex reserves (earned from oil sales) to peg their currency to the US Dollar. With the US Dollar in complete collapse, the value of the Khaleeji is plummeting right along with it, causing a significant degree of harm to the FAS's economy.
To help offset this harm (and to decouple the FAS's economy from a country that the FAS is starting to view as maybe not the most reliable economic partner), the Central Bank in Dubai has announced that the Khaleeji will switch its peg from the US Dollar to a basket of foreign currencies (the Euro, the Pound Sterling, the Swiss Franc, the US Dollar, and the Japanese Yen). The FAS hopes that this will help to salvage the Khaleeji's value, better protecting the economy from the collapse of the dollar-based international financial system. Rumor has it that the Central Bank is discussing the idea of unpegging the Khaleeji entirely and allowing it to float freely, but so far, the Central Bank has made no moves towards floating the Khaleeji.
Crises suck. They shatter the status quo and throw established norms and procedures into chaos. No one really wins during a crisis.
But in another sense, they're a double-edged sword. The status quo is often a repressive entity, reinforcing existing hierarchies and preventing dramatic shifts in the order of things. Chaos breaks that apart, giving the ingenuitive and the entrepreneurial on opportunity to better their lot in ways they otherwise could not.
Put differently: chaos is a ladder, and the FAS intends to be the one climbing it. As the largest economy in the Arab World (and one of the world's 20 largest economies) by both nominal GDP and GDP per capita (by a significant margin--it's probably either Saudi Arabia or Egypt in second place in nominal GDP, and definitely Saudi Arabia in second place in GDP per capita, but the FAS more than doubles the country in second place in both categories, so it's sort of a moot point), the FAS hopes to cement its place as the regional economic power.
The FAS has announced a new slate of policies intended to attract rich investors, manufacturing firms, and financiers fleeing the new nationalization program of the United States. New free trade zones have been created throughout the country--especially in the struggling, undiversified regions of Kuwait and Qatar--with the goal of convincing fleeing American manufacturers to set up shop in these areas. Attractions include wildly low tax rates (as low as zero percent in some instances), a common law framework (as opposed to the Sharia-based legal system in most of the FAS), highly subsidized land prices (sometimes free), relaxed financial restrictions (making it easier to move money in and out of the FTZ), and, for large enough firms moving enough operations into the country, preferential visa treatment (making it easier for them to relocate foreign employees into the country). Sitting at one of the major crossroads of global trade, moving operations to the FAS offers easy access to both the world's established consumer markets (like the EU and East Asia) as well as to some of its largest growing markets (South and Southeast Asia, East Africa, and MENA). Pair this with wildly high standards of living (for people who aren't ~~slaves~~ Asian or African migrant workers) and established expatriate communities, and the FAS becomes an incredibly attractive option for American and other foreign firms looking to relocate.
In addition to manufacturing-oriented FTZs, special attention has been paid to attracting service-oriented firms to new and existing FTZs in the vein of Dubai Internet City, Dubai Design District, Dubai Knowledge Park, and Dubai Media City, with the goal of developing a robust service economy that can capture growing markets in the MENA, South Asia, and East African regions. In advertising these zones, the governments of the FAS have highlighted the success of previous ventures in Dubai, which have attracted the regional headquarters of giants like Facebook, Intel, LinkedIn, Google, Dell, Samsung, Microsoft, IBM, Tata Consultancy, and more.
Perhaps one of the most substantial pushes, though, is to attract American financial services and FinTech firms to base in the FAS (particularly Dubai, Kuwait City, Doha, and Abu Dhabi, the traditional centers of regional finance). New financial industry free trade zones have been set up in the four cities, structured in the vein of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). These financial FTZs boast an independent and internationally regulated regulatory and judicial system, a common law framework, and extremely low taxation rates. All government services in these regions are available in English (the lingua franca of international finance), and in events where ambiguity exists in the legal and regulatory systems, the systems are set to default to English Common Law (except for the Kuwait City International Financial Centre, which is hoping to better tailor itself towards American financial firms by defaulting to American Civil Law from pre-2020 rather than English Common Law). Much like in the DIFC, these new FTZs will also run their own courts, staffed in large part by top judicial talent from Common Law (or in the case of Kuwait City, American Civil Law) jurisdictions like Singapore, England, and (formerly) Hong Kong. Using these FTZ, the four cities hope to raise their profile as financial centers. Dubai in particular is hoping to break into the top ten global financial centers--and it stands a good chance of doing so, too, as it sits at number 12, just behind cities like LA, SF, and Shenzhen--while the other cities are just hoping to boost their profile into the 20s or 10s (according to Long Finance, Dubai is number 12 in the world and 1 in the region, Abu Dhabi is number 39 in the world and two in the region, Doha is number 48 in the world, and Kuwait City is number 91).

So here it is, three more days and October begins, which marks one year of trading for me. I figured I would contribute to the forum and share some of my experience, a little about me, and what I've learned so far. Whoever wants to listen, that's great. This might get long so buckle up..
Three years ago, I was visiting Toronto. I don't get out much, but my roommate at the time travels there occasionally. He asked everyone at our place if we wanted to come along for a weekend. My roommate has an uncle that lives there and we didn't have to worry about a hotel because his uncle owns a small house that's unlived in which we could stay at. I was the only one to go with. Anyways, we walk around the city, seeing the sights and whatnot.
My friend says to me "where next?"
"I don't know, you're the tour guide"
"We can go check out Bay Street"
"what's 'Bay Street?'"
"It's like the Canadian Wall street! If you haven't seen it you gotta see it!"
Walking along Bay, I admire all the nice buildings and architecture, everything seems larger than life to me. I love things like that. The huge granite facades with intricate designs and towering pillars to make you think, How the fuck did they make that? My attention pivots to a man walking on the sidewalk opposite us. His gait stood out among everyone, he walked with such a purpose.. He laughed into the cell phone to his ear. In the elbow-shoving city environment, he moved with a stride that exuded a power which not only commanded respect, but assumed it. I bet HE can get a text back, hell he's probably got girls waiting on him. This dude was dressed to kill, a navy suit that you could just tell from across the street was way out of my budget, it was a nice fucking suit. I want that. His life, across the street, seemed a world a way from my own. I've worn a suit maybe twice in my life. For my first communion, it was too big for me, I was eleven or whatever so who gives a shit, right? I'm positive I looked ridiculous. The other time? I can't remember.
I want that. I want the suit. I want the wealth, the independence. I want the respect and power, and I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about it.
Cue self doubt.
Well, He's probably some rich banker's son. That's a world you're born into. I don't know shit about it. \sigh* keep walking..*

A year later, I'm visiting my parents at their house, they live an hour away from my place. My dad is back from Tennessee, his engineering job was laying people off and he got canned... Or he saw the end was near and just left... I don't know, hard to pay attention to the guy honestly because he kind of just drones on and on. ("Wait, so your mom lives in Michigan, but your dad moved to Tennessee... for a job?" Yea man, I don't fucking know, not going to touch on that one.) The whole project was a shit show that was doomed to never get done, the way he tells it. And he's obviously jaded from multiple similar experiences at other life-sucking engineer jobs. My mom is a retired nurse practitioner who no longer works because of her illness. I ask him what he's doing for work now and he tells me he trades stocks from home. I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't know "trading" was a thing. I thought you just invest and hope for the best.
"Oh that's cool, how much money do you need to do that?"
"Ehh, most say you need at least $25,000 as a minimum"
"Oh... guess I can't do that..."
Six months later, I get a call and it's my dad. We talk a little about whatever. Off topic, he starts asking if I'm happy doing what I'm doing (I was a painter, commercial and residential) I tell him yes but it's kind of a pain in the ass and I don't see it as a long term thing. Then he gets around to asking if I'd like to come work with him. He basically pitches it to me. I'm not one to be sold on something, I'm always skeptical. So I ask all the questions that any rational person would ask and he just swats them away with reassuring phrases. He was real confident about it. But basically he says for this to work, I have to quit my job and move back home so he can teach me how to trade and be by my side so I don't do anything stupid. "~~My Name~~ , you can make so much money." I say that I can't raise the $25,000 because I'm not far above just living paycheck to paycheck. "I can help you out with that." Wow, okay, well... let me think about it.
My "maybe" very soon turned into a "definitely." So over the next six months, I continue to work my day job painting, and I try to save up what I could for the transition (it wasn't a whole lot, I sucked at saving. I was great at spending though!). My dad gives me a book on day trading (which I will mention later) and I teach myself what I can about the stock market using Investopedia. Also in the meantime, my dad sends me encouraging emails. He tells me to think of an annual income I would like to make as a trader, and used "more than $100,000 but less than a million" as a guideline. He tells me about stocks that he traded that day or just ones that moved and describes the basic price action and the prices to buy and sell at. Basically saying "if you bought X amount of shares here and sold it at X price here, you could make a quick 500 bucks!" I then use a trading sim to trade those symbols and try to emulate what he says. Piece of cake. ;)
Wow, that's way more than what I make in a day.
He tells me not to tell anyone about my trading because most people just think it's gambling. "Don't tell your Mom either." He says most people who try this fail because they don't know how to stop out and take a loss. He talks about how every day he was in a popular chatroom, some noob would say something like, "Hey guys, I bought at X price (high of day or thereabout), my account is down 80% .. uhh I'm waiting for it to come back to my entry price.. what do I do??"
Well shit, I'm not that fucking dumb. If that's all it takes to make it is to buy low, sell high, and always respect a stop then I'll be fantastic.
By the end of September, I was very determined. I had been looking forward everyday to quitting my painting job because while it used to be something I loved, it was just sucking the life out of me at this point. Especially working commercial, you just get worked like a dog. I wasn't living up to my potential with that job and I felt awful for it every minute of every day. I knew that I needed a job where I could use my brain instead of slaving my body to fulfill someone else's dream. "Someone's gotta put gas in the boss's boat" That's a line my buddy once said that he probably doesn't know sticks with me to this day.
It ain't me.
So now it was October 2018, and I'm back living with Mom n' Pops. I was so determined that on my last day of work I gave away all of my painting tools to my buddy like, "here, I don't need this shit." Moving out of my rental was easy because I don't own much, 'can't take it with ya.' Excited for the future I now spend my days bundled up in winter wear in the cold air of our hoarder-like basement with a space heater at my feet. My laptop connected to a TV monitor, I'm looking at stocks next to my dad and his screens in his cluttered corner. Our Trading Dungeon. I don't trade any money, (I wasn't aware of any real-time sim programs) I just watch and learn from my dad. Now you've got to keep in mind, and look at a chart of the S&P, this is right at the beginning of Oct '18, I came in right at the market top. Right at the start of the shit-show. For the next three or four weeks, I watch my dad pretty much scratch on every trade, taking small loss after small loss, and cursing under his breath at the screen.
Click.
"dammit."
Click.
"shit."
Click. Click.
"you fuck."
Click.
This gets really fucking annoying as time goes on, for weeks, and I get this attitude like ugh, just let me do it. I'll make us some fucking money. So I convince him to let me start trading live. I didn't know anything about brokers so I set up an account using his broker, which was Fidelity. It was a pain and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to day trade with this broker. I actually had to make a joint account with my dad as I couldn't get approved for margin because my credit score is shit (never owned a credit card) and my net worth, not much. Anyways, they straight up discourage day trading and I get all kinds of warning messages with big red letters that made me shit myself like oooaaahhh what the fuck did I do now. Did I forget to close a position?? Did I fat finger an order? Am I now in debt for thousands of dollars to Fidelity?? They're going to come after me like they came after Madoff. Even after you are approved for PDT you still get these warning messages in your account. Some would say if I didn't comply with "whatever rule" they'd even suspend my account for 60 days. It was ridiculous, hard to describe because it doesn't make sense, and it took the support guy on the phone a good 20 minutes to explain it to me. Basically I got the answer "yea it's all good, you did nothing wrong. As long as you have the cash in your account to cover whatever the trade balance was" So I just kept getting these warnings that I had to ignore everyday. I hate Fidelity.
My fist day trading, I made a few so-so trades and then I got impatient. I saw YECO breaking out and I chased, soon realized I chased, so I got out. -$500. Shit, I have to make that back, I don't want my dad to see this. Got back in. Shit. -$400. So my first day trading, I lost $900. My dumbass was using market orders so that sure didn't help. I reeled the risk back and traded more proper position size for a while, but the commissions for a round trip are $10, so taking six trades per day, I'm losing $60 at a minimum on top of my losing trades. Quickly I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing. What about my dad? Does HE know? One day, in the trading dungeon, I was frustrated with the experience I'd been having and just feeling lost overall. I asked him.
"So, are you consistently profitable?"
"mmm... I do alright."
"Yea but like, are you consistently profitable over time?"
.........................
"I do alright."
Silence.
"Do you know any consistently profitable traders?"
"Well the one who wrote that book I gave you, Tina Turner.. umm and there's Ross Cameron"
......................
"So you don't know any consistently profitable traders, personally.. People who are not trying to sell you something?"
"no."
...................
Holy fucking shit, what did this idiot get me into. He can't even say it to my face and admit it.
This entire life decision, quitting my job, leaving my rental, moving from my city to back home, giving shit away, it all relied on that. I was supposed to be an apprentice to a consistently profitable day trader who trades for a living. It was so assumed, that I never even thought to ask! Why would you tell your son to quit his job for something that you yourself cannot do? Is this all a scam? Did my dad get sold a DREAM? Did I buy into some kind of ponzi scheme? How many of those winning trades he showed me did he actually take? Are there ANY consistently profitable DAY TRADERS who TRADE FOR A LIVING? Why do 90% fail? Is it because the other 10% are scamming the rest in some way? Completely lost, I just had no clue what was what. If I was going to succeed at this, if it was even possible to succeed at this, it was entirely up to me. I had to figure it out. I still remember the feeling like an overwhelming, crushing weight on me as it all sunk in. This is going to be a big deal.. I'm not the type to give up though. In that moment, I said to myself,
I'm going to fucking win at this. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to find out. I cannot say with certainty that I will succeed, but no matter what, I will not give up. I'm going to give all of myself to this. I will find the truth.
It was a deep moment for me. I don't like getting on my soapbox, but when I said those things, I meant it. I really, really meant it. I still do, and I still will.
Now it might seem like I'm being hard on my dad. He has done a lot for me and I am very grateful for that. We're sarcastic as hell to each other, I love the bastard. Hell, I wouldn't have the opportunity to trade at all if not for him. But maybe you can also understand how overwhelmed I felt at that time. Not on purpose, of course he means well. But I am not a trusting person at all and I was willing to put trust into him after all the convincing and was very disappointed when I witnessed the reality of the situation. I would have structured this transition to trading differently, you don't just quit your job and start trading. Nobody was there to tell me that! I was told quite the opposite. I'm glad it happened anyway, so fuck it. I heard Kevin O'Leary once say,
"If I knew in the beginning how difficult starting a business was, I don't know that I ever would've started."
This applies very much to my experience.
So what did I do? Well like everyone I read and read and Googled and Youtube'd my ass off. I sure as hell didn't pay for a course because I didn't have the money and I'm like 99% sure I would be disappointed by whatever they were teaching as pretty much everything can be found online or in books for cheap or free. Also I discovered Thinkorswim and I used that to sim trade in real-time for three months. This is way the hell different than going on a sim at 5x speed and just clicking a few buy and sell buttons. Lol, useless. When you sim trade in real-time you're forced to have a routine, and you're forced to experience missing trades with no chance to rewind or skip the boring parts. That's a step up because you're "in it". I also traded real money too, made some, lost more than I made. went back to sim. Traded live again, made some but lost more, fell back to PDT. Dad fronted me more cash. This has happened a few times. He's dug me out of some holes because he believes in me. I'm fortunate.
Oh yeah, about that book my dad gave me. It's called A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online by Toni Turner. This book... is shit. This was supposed to be my framework for how to trade and I swear it's like literally nothing in this book fucking works lol. I could tell this pretty early on, intuitively, just by looking at charts. It's basically a buy-the-breakout type strategy, if you want to call it a strategy. No real methodology to anything just vague crap and showing you cherry-picked charts with entries that are way too late. With experience in the markets you will eventually come to find that MOST BREAKOUTS FAIL. It talks about support/resistance lines and describes them as, "picture throwing a ball down at the floor, it bounces up and then it bounces down off the ceiling, then back up." So many asinine assumptions. These ideas are a text book way of how to trade like dumb money. Don't get me wrong, these trades can work but you need to be able to identify the setups which are more probable and identify reasons not to take others. So I basically had to un-learn all that shit.
Present day, I have a routine in place. I'm out of the dungeon and trade by myself in my room. I trade with a discount broker that is catered to day traders and doesn't rape me on commissions. My mornings have a framework for analyzing the news and economic events of the particular day, I journal so that I can recognize what I'm doing right and where I need to improve. I record my screens for later review to improve my tape reading skills. I am actually tracking my trades now and doing backtesting in equities as well as forex. I'm not a fast reader but I do read a lot, as much as I can. So far I have read about 17-18 books on trading and psychology. I've definitely got a lot more skilled at trading.
As of yet I am not net profitable. Writing that sounds like selling myself short though, honestly. Because a lot of my trades are very good and are executed well. I have talent. However, lesser quality trades and trades which are inappropriately sized/ attempted too many times bring down that P/L. I'm not the type of trader to ignore a stop, I'm more the trader that just widdles their account down with small losses. I trade live because at this point, sim has lost its value, live trading is the ultimate teacher. So I do trade live but I just don't go big like I did before, I keep it small.
I could show you trades that I did great on and make people think I'm killing it but I really just don't need the validation. I don't care, I'm real about it. I just want to get better. I don't need people to think I'm a genius, I'm just trying to make some money.
Psychologically, to be honest with you, I currently feel beaten down and exhausted. I put a lot of energy into this, and sometimes I work myself physically sick, it's happened multiple times. About once a week, usually Saturday, I get a headache that lasts all day. My body's stress rebound mechanism you might call it. Getting over one of those sick periods now, which is why I barely even traded this week. I know I missed a lot of volatility this week and some A+ setups but I really just don't give a shit lol. I just currently don't have the mental capital, I think anyone who's been day trading every day for a year or more can understand what I mean by that. I'm still being productive though. Again, I'm not here to present an image of some badass trader, just keeping it real. To give something 100% day after day while receiving so much resistance, it takes a toll on you. So a break is necessary to avoid making bad trading decisions. That being said, I'm progressing more and more and eliminating those lesser quality trades and identifying my bad habits. I take steps to control those habits and strengthen my good habits such as having a solid routine, doing review and market research, taking profits at the right times, etc.
So maybe I can give some advice to some that are new to day trading, those who are feeling lost, or just in general thinking "...What the fuck..." I thought that every night for the first 6 months lol.
First of all, manage expectations. If you read my story of how I came to be a trader, you can see I had a false impression of trading in many aspects. Give yourself a realistic time horizon to how progress should be made. Do not set a monetary goal for yourself, or any time-based goal that is measured in your P/L. If you tell yourself, "I want to make X per day, X per week, or X per year" you're setting yourself up to feel like shit every single day when it's clear as the blue sky that you won't reach that goal anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it will appear you are moving further AWAY from that goal if you just focus on your P/L, which brings me to my next point.
You will lose money. In the beginning, most likely, you will lose money. I did it, you'll do it, the greatest Paul Tudor Jones did it. Trading is a skill that needs to be developed, and it is a process. Just look at it as paying your tuition to the market. Sim is fine but don't assume you have acquired this skill until you are adept at trading real money. So when you do make that leap, just trade small.
Just survive. Trade small. get the experience. Protect your capital. To reach break even on your bottom line is a huge accomplishment. In many ways, experience and screen time are the secret sauce.
Have a routine. This is very important. I actually will probably make a more in-depth post in the future about this if people want it. When I first started, I was overwhelmed with the feeling "What the fuck am I supposed to DO?" I felt lost. There's no boss to tell you how to be productive or how to find the right stocks, which is mostly a blessing, but a curse for new traders.
All that shit you see, don't believe all that bullshit. You know what I'm talking about. The bragposting, the clickbait Youtube videos, the ads preying on you. "I made X amount of money in a day and I'm fucking 19 lolz look at my Lamborghini" It's all a gimmick to sell you the dream. It's designed to poke right at your insecurities, that's marketing at it's finest. As for the bragposting on forums honestly, who cares. And I'm not pointing fingers on this forum, just any trading forum in general. They are never adding anything of value to the community in their posts. They never say this is how I did it. No, they just want you to think they're a genius. I can show you my $900 day trading the shit out of TSLA, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Gamblers never show you when they lose, you might never hear from those guys again because behind the scenes, they over-leveraged themselves and blew up. Some may actually be consistently profitable and the trades are 100% legit. That's fantastic. But again, I don't care, and you shouldn't either. You shouldn't compare yourself to others.
"Everyone's a genius in a bull market" Here's the thing.. Markets change. Edges disappear. Trading strategies were made by traders who traded during times when everything they did worked. Buy all the breakouts? Sure! It's the fucking tech bubble! Everything works! I'm sure all those typical setups used to work fantastically at some point in time. But the more people realize them, the less effective they are. SOMEONE has to be losing money on the opposite side of a winning trade, and who's willing to do that when the trade is so obvious? That being said, some things are obvious AND still work. Technical analysis works... sometimes. The caveat to that is, filters. You need to, in some way, filter out certain setups from others. For example, you could say, "I won't take a wedge pattern setup on an intraday chart unless it is in a higher time frame uptrend, without nearby resistance, and trading above average volume with news on that day."
Have a plan. If you can't describe your plan, you don't have one. Think in probabilities. You should think entirely in "if, then" scenarios. If X has happens, then Y will probably happen. "If BABA breaks this premarket support level on the open I will look for a pop up to short into."
Backtest. Most traders lose mainly because they think they have an edge but they don't. You read these books and all this stuff online telling you "this is a high probability setup" but do you know that for a fact? There's different ways to backtest, but I think the best way for a beginner is manual backtesting with a chart and an excel sheet. This builds up that screen time and pattern recognition faster. This video shows how to do that. Once I saw someone do it, it didn't seem so boring and awful as I thought it was.
Intelligence is not enough. You're smarter than most people, that's great, but that alone is not enough to make you money in trading necessarily. Brilliant people try and fail at this all the time, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, engineers.. Why do they fail if they're so smart? ~~It's all a fucking scam.~~ No, a number of reasons, but the biggest is discipline and emotional intelligence.
Journal every day. ~~K no thanks, bro. That's fucking gay.~~ That's how I felt when I heard this advice but really that is pride and laziness talking. This is the process you need to do to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Review the trades you took, what your plan was, what actually happened, how you executed. Identify what you did well and what you can work on. This is how you develop discipline and emotional intelligence, by monitoring yourself. How you feel physically and mentally, and how these states affect your decision-making.
Always be learning. Read as much as you can. Good quality books. Here's the best I've read so far;
Market Wizards -Jack Schwager
One Good Trade -Mike Bellafiore
The Daily Trading Coach -Bret Steenbarger
Psycho-cybernetics -Maxwell Maltz
Why You Win or Lose -Fred Kelly
The Art and Science of Technical Analysis -Adam Grimes
Dark Pools -Scott Patterson
Be nimble. Everyday I do my research on the symbols I'm trading and the fundamental news that's driving them. I might be trading a large cap that's gapping up with a beat on EPS and revenue and positive guidance. But if I see that stock pop up and fail miserably on the open amidst huge selling pressure, and I look and see the broader market tanking, guess what, I'm getting short, and that's just day trading. The movement of the market, on an intraday timeframe, doesn't have to make logical sense.
Adapt. In March I used to be able to buy a breakout on a symbol and swing it for the majority of the day. In the summer I was basically scalping on the open and being done for the day. Volatility changes, and so do my profit targets.
Be accountable. Be humble. Be honest. I take 100% responsibility for every dime I've lost or made in the market. It's not the market makers fault, it wasn't the HFTs, I pressed the button. I know my bad habits and I know my good habits.. my strengths/ my weaknesses.
Protect yourself from toxicity. Stay away from traders and people on forums who just have that negative mindset. That "can't be done" mentality. ~~Day trading is a scam!!~~ It can certainly be done. ~~Prove it, you bastard.~~ I'm posting to this particular forum because I don't see much of that here and apparently the mods to a good job of not tolerating it. As the mod wrote in the rules, they're most likely raging from a loss. Also, the Stocktwits mentality of "AAPL is going to TANK on the open! $180, here we come. $$$" , or the grandiose stories, "I just knew AMZN was going to go up on earnings. I could feel it. I went ALL IN. Options money, baby! ka-ching!$" Lol, that is so toxic to a new trader. Get away from that. How will you be able to remain nimble when this is your thought process?
Be good to yourself. Stop beating yourself up. You're an entrepreneur. You're boldly going where no man has gone before. You've got balls.
Acknowledge your mistakes, don't identify with them. You are not your mistakes and you are not your bad habits. These are only things that you do, and you can take action necessary to do them less.
It doesn't matter what people think. Maybe they think you're a fool, a gambler. You don't need their approval. You don't need to talk to your co-workers and friends about it to satisfy some subconscious plea for guidance; is this a good idea?
You don't need anyone's permission to become the person you want to be.
They don't believe in you? Fuck 'em. I believe in you.

Valuable information for new investors
Warning. Looooong post. TL:DR in the bottom.
Recently I have been chatting a ton with people who are very new to investing. I don’t claim to have mastered anything, however I have been able to help a lot of people through chats and messages. I’ve given advice and answered questions, and through that I found out a lot of problems new people run into, and decided to compile some of the points I found important. I will start this with the primary compiled information I usually give people when prompted, and then move on to specific questions I found important. A final note is that this is my own opinion and views, so feel free to disagree! I’d love input, even if I feel confident about this advice.
First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.
The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.
Books to recommend: Anything written by Warren Buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).
Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required. This method of reading, finding things you do not understand and looking it up (and learning it), will be the absolute unavoidable key to improvement.
There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:
Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.
Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.
Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG, and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.
Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.
Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?
If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.
If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.
What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?
Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?
What exactly am I buying?*

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up, and should rethink your strategy.
A last but VITAL note is to keep a journal. You should note down every stock purchase you make or decided to not make, noting down the stock, price, date and answers to the 6 questions. This will help massively over time, where you can look back how you felt before and why you made decisions. It helps to keep temporary emotion out, as well as self reflecting which is the most vital learning method of any craft.
Q&A
Should I buy cheap stocks like $XXX for 4 dollars per share, or expensive stocks like $YYY for 500 dollars per share? IT DOES NOT MATTER. The price of the individual share have no effect whatsoever on the price of the company, how much you will gain or how much risk there is. If you buy 10 A-stocks for 1 dollashare, and if you buy 1 B-stock for 10 dollars/share, both these purchases are EXACTLY the same, in practice. If stock A gains 10% you earn $1.00, if stock B gains 10% you earn $1.00. Then the stocks are valued at $1.1 and $11 respectively. But there is no different. Don’t let the price of the share fool you. The only thing that matters is the market cap, which is the (number of shares*price of 1 share). The market cap is the cost of ALL the shares in the entire company. Some stocks like being expensive to seem exclusive and expensive, but it’s really the company's choice.
What numbers matter the most for the companies so I can compare? Well, that's complicated. DIfferent investors value different things. Some value P/E (price per earnings) and some value margin changes. You have to decide for yourself what matters, which leads to tons and tons of reading. Really, if you don't like reading and analyzing, this isn't something for you. Look at ETFs then. As a rule of thumb, 1 or 2 numbers is not enough to gauge the HUGE and COMPLEX being that is a corporation, so don’t get caught on something like P/E. Compare everything.
Will I be able to profit? Probably. As a new investor, especially a young one, will see both success and failure over time. This is natural. I recommend investing a smaller amount of money. Either you will gain a few % and be excited to learn and continue, or you will lose a few % and you find the ultimate opportunity to analyze what your mistake was.
Is $XXX enough money? Probably. It depends on your broker and fees. Any amount invested into the market is great, and a 10% increase is a 10% increase no matter how much you invest. Depending on your broker though, it might be easier or harder. With high commission, a smaller amount will be eaten by fees. With smaller amount, some expensive stocks (see $BRK.A) might be out of your reach. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem though.
What broker should I use? The best one for you! Hard question. It is country dependent. Look around. You want low commission and any perks you require. To start out, depending on how much money you have to invest, look for low-commission brokers. $0 - $3 is a good range per stock purchase. If you pay more than 2% on your investment, you lose 2% to buy in. This would generally cause stock to not be worth to buy. So do some thinking on your own, to invest you will have to get used to it. Some brokers let you buy partial shares as well, which might be a plus if your capital is low to buy the more expensive stocks.
What should I invest in? There are so many things! Like said above, cheap funds and common stock are good places to start. They are the core of investing, and should be your start. After that, move on and understand bonds. It will be all important during your career in investing. On top of that there are warrants, options, forex, commodities, and all kinds of additional derivatives. Stay clear of those completely until you can confidently make the call to try it out.
My stock increased/decreased in value. Should I sell?
Asking this question means that you weren’t thorough enough when you made the purchase. You should always have it written down on a paper. When do you get out? A valid answer is never. If you believe in the business and they prove themself strong, why ever sell? Some people like selling if they gain 30% or lose 30%. Some do the same on 15% respective 10%. It comes down to how much long term faith you have in the company, when you’ll need the money and what your risk tolerance is. Personally, when I buy a company, I will ignore it until something changes in the core business. I re-analyze each company each earning. It takes a lot of time, but its my method. If I buy something more high risk, I will sell at a set loss-% (20-40% loss) and the same on gain.
How does taxes work and how should I plan for taxes? Taxes are hard and complicated, but it is something you must understand how it works. Capital gains taxes are vital to understand. Sadly, they work differently in each country, so there is no easy answer except for you to look up it yourself. But know it, it is vital.
To end, these are the most important 4 rules of learning how to do all this:

Read. Everything.
Keep a journal and record the answers to all 6 questions each time you make a purchase, or decided in the end to not.
Each time in your reading if you come over a concept, word or idea that you do not understand, get used to looking it up and learning what it is. It’s key.
When you succeed, analyze if you got lucky or if your actual reasoning was the correct call. When you fail, analyze what your mistake was and write it down in your journal. Both are vital.

TL:DR: Investing is about reading. You should probably start by reading this now or give up. If you read it all, success! Keep going!
Disclaimer: Don't invest money that you can't afford to lose. You might lose all your funds. Probably don't.
lykosen11

TL;DR - I will try and flip an account from $50 or less to $1,000 over 2019. I will post all my account details so my strategy can be seen/copied. I will do this using only three or four trading setups. All of which are simple enough to learn. I will start trading on 10th January.
----
As I see it there are two mains ways to understand how to make money in the markets. The first is to know what the biggest winners in the markets are doing and duplicating what they do. This is hard. Most of the biggest players will not publicly tell people what they are doing. You need to be able to kinda slide in with them and see if you can pick up some info. Not suitable for most people, takes a lot of networking and even then you have to be able to make the correct inferences.
Another way is to know the most common trades of losing traders and then be on the other side of their common mistakes. This is usually far easier, usually everyone knows the mind of a losing trader. I learned about what losing traders do every day by being one of them for many years. I noticed I had an some sort of affinity for buying at the very top of moves and selling at the very bottom. This sucked, however, is was obvious there was winning trades on the other side of what I was doing and the adjustments to be a good trader were small (albeit, tricky).
Thus began the study for entries and maximum risk:reward. See, there have been times I have bought aiming for a 10 pip scalps and hit 100 pips stops loss. Hell, there have been times I was going for 5 pips and hit 100 stop out. This can seem discouraging, but it does mean there must be 1:10 risk:reward pay-off on the other side of these mistakes, and they were mistakes.
If you repeatedly enter and exit at the wrong times, you are making mistakes and probably the same ones over and over again. The market is tricking you! There are specific ways in which price moves that compel people to make these mistakes (I won’t go into this in this post, because it takes too long and this is going to be a long post anyway, but a lot of this is FOMO).
Making mistakes is okay. In fact, as I see it, making mistakes is an essential part of becoming an expert. Making a mistake enough times to understand intrinsically why it is a mistake and then make the required adjustments. Understanding at a deep level why you trade the way you do and why others make the mistakes they do, is an important part of becoming an expert in your chosen area of focus.
I could talk more on these concepts, but to keep the length of the post down, I will crack on to actual examples of trades I look for. Here are my three main criteria. I am looking for tops/bottoms of moves (edge entries). I am looking for 1:3 RR or more potential pay-offs. My strategy assumes that retail trades will lose most of the time. This seems a fair enough assumption. Without meaning to sound too crass about it, smart money will beat dumb money most of the time if the game is base on money. They just will.
So to summarize, I am looking for the points newbies get trapped in bad positions entering into moves too late. From these areas, I am looking for high RR entries.
Setup Examples.
I call this one the “Lightning Bolt correction”, but it is most commonly referred to as a “two leg correction”. I call it a “Lightning Bolt correction” because it looks a bit like one, and it zaps you. If you get it wrong.

https://preview.redd.it/t4whwijse2721.png?width=1326&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9050529c6e2472a3ff9f8e7137bd4a3ee5554cc
Once I see price making the first sell-off move and then begin to rally towards the highs again, I am waiting for a washout spike low. The common trades mistakes I am trading against here is them being too eager to buy into the trend too early and for the to get stopped out/reverse position when it looks like it is making another bearish breakout. Right at that point they panic … literally one candle under there is where I want to be getting in. I want to be buying their stop loss, essentially. “Oh, you don’t want that ...okay, I will have that!”
I need a precise entry. I want to use tiny stops (for big RR) so I need to be cute with entries. For this, I need entry rules. Not just arbitrarily buying the spike out. There are a few moving parts to this that are outside the scope of this post but one of my mains ways is using a fibs extension and looking for reversals just after the 1.61% level. How to draw the fibs is something else that is outside the scope of this but for one simple rule, they can be drawn on the failed new high leg.

https://preview.redd.it/2cd682kve2721.png?width=536&format=png&auto=webp&s=f4d081c9faff49d0976f9ffab260aaed2b570309
I am looking for a few specific things for a prime setup. Firstly, I am looking for the false hope candles, the ones that look like they will reverse the market and let those buying too early get out break-even or even at profit. In this case, you can see the hammer and engulfing candle off the 127 level, then it spikes low in that “stop-hunt” sort of style.
Secondly I want to see it trading just past my entry level (161 ext). This rule has come from nothing other than sheer volume. The amount of times I’ve been stopped out by 1 pip by that little sly final low has gave birth to this rule. I am looking for the market to trade under support in a manner that looks like a new strong breakout. When I see this, I am looking to get in with tiny stops, right under the lows. I will also be using smaller charts at this time and looking for reversal clusters of candles. Things like dojis, inverted hammers etc. These are great for sticking stops under.
Important note, when the lightning bolt correction fails to be a good entry, I expect to see another two legs down. I may look to sell into this area sometimes, and also be looking for buying on another couple legs down. It is important to note, though, when this does not work out, I expect there to be continued momentum that is enough to stop out and reasonable stop level for my entry. Which is why I want to cut quick. If a 10 pips stop will hit, usually a 30 pips stop will too. Bin it and look for the next opportunity at better RR.

https://preview.redd.it/mhkgy35ze2721.png?width=1155&format=png&auto=webp&s=a18278b85b10278603e5c9c80eb98df3e6878232
Another setup I am watching for is harmonic patterns, and I am using these as a multi-purpose indicator. When I see potentially harmonic patterns forming, I am using their completion level as take profits, I do not want to try and run though reversal patterns I can see forming hours ahead of time. I also use them for entering (similar rules of looking for specific entry criteria for small stops). Finally, I use them as a continuation pattern. If the harmonic pattern runs past the area it may have reversed from, there is a high probability that the market will continue to trend and very basic trend following strategies work well. I learned this from being too stubborn sticking with what I thought were harmonic reversals only to be ran over by a trend (seriously, everything I know I know from how it used to make me lose).

https://preview.redd.it/1ytz2431f2721.png?width=1322&format=png&auto=webp&s=983a7f2a91f9195004ad8a2aa2bb9d4d6f128937
A method of spotting these sorts of M/W harmonics is they tend to form after a second spike out leg never formed. When this happens, it gives me a really good idea of where my profit targets should be and where my next big breakout level is. It is worth noting, larger harmonics using have small harmonics inside them (on lower time-frames) and this can be used for dialling in optimum entries. I also use harmonics far more extensively in ranging markets. Where they tend to have higher win rates.
Next setup is the good old fashioned double bottoms/double top/one tick trap sort of setup. This comes in when the market is highly over extended. It has a small sell-off and rallies back to the highs before having a much larger sell-off. This is a more risky trade in that it sells into what looks like trending momentum and can be stopped out more. However, it also pays a high RR when it works, allowing for it to be ran at reduced risk and still be highly profitable when it comes through.

https://preview.redd.it/1bx83776f2721.png?width=587&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c76c3085598ae70f4142d26c46c8d6e9b1c2881
From these sorts of moves, I am always looking for a follow up buy if it forms a lightning bolt sort of setup.
All of these setups always offer 1:3 or better RR. If they do not, you are doing it wrong (and it will be your stop placement that is wrong). This is not to say the target is always 1:3+, sometimes it is best to lock in profits with training stops. It just means that every time you enter, you can potentially have a trade that runs for many times more than you risked. 1:10 RR can be hit in these sorts of setups sometimes. Paying you 20% for 2% risked.
I want to really stress here that what I am doing is trading against small traders mistakes. I am not trying to “beat the market maker”. I am not trying to reverse engineer J.P Morgan’s black boxes. I do not think I am smart enough to gain a worthwhile edge over these traders. They have more money, they have more data, they have better softwares … they are stronger. Me trying to “beat the market maker” is like me trying to beat up Mike Tyson. I might be able to kick him in the balls and feel smug for a few seconds. However, when he gets up, he is still Tyson and I am still me. I am still going to be pummeled.
I’ve seen some people that were fairly bright people going into training courses and coming out dumb as shit. Thinking they somehow are now going to dominate Goldman Sachs because they learned a chart pattern. Get a grip. For real, get a fucking grip. These buzz phrases are marketeering. Realististically, if you want to win in the markets, you need to have an edge over somebody.
I don’t have edges on the banks. If I could find one, they’d take it away from me. Edges work on inefficiencies in what others do that you can spot and they can not. I do not expect to out-think a banks analysis team. I know for damn sure I can out-think a version of me from 5 years ago … and I know there are enough of them in the markets. I look to trade against them. I just look to protect myself from the larger players so they can only hurt me in limited ways. Rather than letting them corner me and beat me to a pulp (in the form of me watching $1,000 drop off my equity because I moved a stop or something), I just let them kick me in the butt as I run away. It hurts a little, but I will be over it soon.
I believe using these principles, these three simple enough edge entry setups, selectiveness (remembering you are trading against the areas people make mistakes, wait for they areas) and measured aggression a person can make impressive compounded gains over a year. I will attempt to demonstrate this by taking an account of under $100 to over $1,000 in a year. I will use max 10% on risk on a position, the risk will scale down as the account size increases. In most cases, 5% risk per trade will be used, so I will be going for 10-20% or so profits. I will be looking only for prime opportunities, so few trades but hard hitting ones when I take them.
I will start trading around the 10th January. Set remind me if you want to follow along. I will also post my investor login details, so you can see the trades in my account in real time. Letting you see when I place my orders and how I manage running positions.
I also think these same principles can be tweaked in such a way it is possible to flip $50 or so into $1,000 in under a month. I’ve done $10 to $1,000 in three days before. This is far more complex in trade management, though. Making it hard to explain/understand and un-viable for many people to copy (it hedges, does not comply with FIFO, needs 1:500 leverage and also needs spreads under half a pip on EURUSD - not everyone can access all they things). I see all too often people act as if this can’t be done and everyone saying it is lying to sell you something. I do not sell signals. I do not sell training. I have no dog in this fight, I am just saying it can be done. There are people who do it. If you dismiss it as impossible; you will never be one of them.
If I try this 10 times with $50, I probably am more likely to make $1,000 ($500 profit) in a couple months than standard ideas would double $500 - I think I have better RR, even though I may go bust 5 or more times. I may also try to demonstrate this, but it is kinda just show-boating, quite honestly. When it works, it looks cool. When it does not, I can go bust in a single day (see example https://www.fxblue.com/users/redditmicroflip).
So I may or may not try and demonstrate this. All this is, is just taking good basic concepts and applying accelerated risk tactics to them and hitting a winning streak (of far less trades than you may think). Once you have good entries and RR optimization in place - there really is no reason why you can not scale these up to do what may people call impossible (without even trying it).
I know there are a lot of people who do not think these things are possible and tend to just troll whenever people talk about these things. There used to be a time when I’d try to explain why I thought the way I did … before I noticed they only cared about telling me why they were right and discussion was pointless. Therefore, when it comes to replies, I will reply to all comments that ask me a question regarding why I think this can be done, or why I done something that I done. If you are commenting just to tell me all the reasons you think I am wrong and you are right, I will probably not reply. I may well consider your points if they are good ones. I just do not entering into discussions with people who already know everything; it serves no purpose.

Edit: Addition.

I want to talk a bit more about using higher percentage of risk than usual. Firstly, let me say that there are good reasons for risk caps that people often cite as “musts”. There are reasons why 2% is considered optimum for a lot of strategies and there are reasons drawing down too much is a really bad thing.
Please do not be ignorant of this. Please do not assume I am, either. In previous work I done, I was selecting trading strategies that could be used for investment. When doing this, my only concern was drawdown metrics. These are essential for professional money management and they are also essential for personal long-term success in trading.
So please do not think I have not thought of these sorts of things Many of the reasons people say these things can’t work are basic 101 stuff anyone even remotely committed to learning about trading learns in their first 6 months. Trust me, I have thought about these concepts. I just never stopped thinking when I found out what public consensus was.
While these 101 rules make a lot of sense, it does not take away from the fact there are other betting strategies, and if you can know the approximate win rate and pay-off of trades, you can have other ways of deriving optimal bet sizes (risk per trade). Using Kelly Criterion, for example, if the pay-off is 1:3 and there is a 75% chance of winning, the optimal bet size is 62.5%. It would be a viable (high risk) strategy to have extremely filtered conditions that looked for just one perfect set up a month, makingover 150% if it was successful.
Let’s do some math on if you can pull that off three months in a row (using 150% gain, for easy math). Start $100. Month two starts $250. Month three $625. Month three ends $1,562. You have won three trades. Can you win three trades in a row under these conditions? I don’t know … but don’t assume no-one can.
This is extremely high risk, let’s scale it down to meet somewhere in the middle of the extremes. Let’s look at 10%. Same thing, 10% risk looking for ideal opportunities. Maybe trading once every week or so. 30% pay-off is you win. Let’s be realistic here, a lot of strategies can drawdown 10% using low risk without actually having had that good a chance to generate 30% gains in the trades it took to do so. It could be argued that trading seldomly but taking 5* the risk your “supposed” to take can be more risk efficient than many strategies people are using.
I am not saying that you should be doing these things with tens of thousands of dollars. I am not saying you should do these things as long term strategies. What I am saying is do not dismiss things out of hand just because they buck the “common knowns”. There are ways you can use more aggressive trading tactics to turn small sums of money into they $1,000s of dollars accounts that you exercise they stringent money management tactics on.
With all the above being said, you do have to actually understand to what extent you have an edge doing what you are doing. To do this, you should be using standard sorts of risks. Get the basics in place, just do not think you have to always be basic. Once you have good basics in place and actually make a bit of money, you can section off profits for higher risk versions of strategies. The basic concepts of money management are golden. For longevity and large funds; learned them and use them! Just don’t forget to think for yourself once you have done that.

Update -

Okay, I have thought this through a bit more and decided I don't want to post my live account investor login, because it has my full name and I do not know who any of you are. Instead, for copying/observing, I will give demo account login (since I can choose any name for a demo).
I will also copy onto a live account and have that tracked via Myfxbook.
I will do two versions. One will be FIFO compliant. It will trade only single trade positions. The other will not be FIFO compliant, it will open trades in batches. I will link up live account in a week or so. For now, if anyone wants to do BETA testing with the copy trader, you can do so with the following details (this is the non-FIFO compliant version).

Account tracking/copying details.

Low-Medium risk.
IC Markets MT4
Account number: 10307003
Investor PW: lGdMaRe6
Server: Demo:01
(Not FIFO compliant)

Valid and Invalid Complaints.
There are a few things that can pop up in copy trading. I am not a n00b when it comes to this, so I can somewhat forecast what these will be. I can kinda predict what sort of comments there may be. Some of these are valid points that if you raise I should (and will) reply to. Some are things outside of the scope of things I can influence, and as such, there is no point in me replying to. I will just cover them all here the one time.

Valid complains are if I do something dumb or dramatically outside of the strategy I have laid out here. won't do these, if I do, you can pitchfork ----E

Examples;

“Oi, idiot! You opened a trade randomly on a news spike. I got slipped 20 pips and it was a shit entry”.
Perfectly valid complaint.

“Why did you open a trade during swaps hours when the spread was 30 pips?”
Also valid.

“You left huge trades open running into the weekend and now I have serious gap paranoia!”
Definitely valid.

These are examples of me doing dumb stuff. If I do dumb stuff, it is fair enough people say things amounting to “Yo, that was dumb stuff”.

Invalid Complains;

“You bought EURUSD when it was clearly a sell!!!!”
Okay … you sell. No-one is asking you to copy my trades. I am not trading your strategy. Different positions make a market.

“You opened a position too big and I lost X%”.
No. Na uh. You copied a position too big. If you are using a trade copier, you can set maximum risk. If you neglect to do this, you are taking 100% risk. You have no valid compliant for losing. The act of copying and setting the risk settings is you selecting your risk. I am not responsible for your risk. I accept absolutely no liability for any losses.
*Suggested fix. Refer to risk control in copy trading software

“You lost X trades in a row at X% so I lost too much”.
Nope. You copied. See above. Anything relating to losing too much in trades (placed in liquid/standard market conditions) is entirely you. I can lose my money. Only you can set it up so you can lose yours. I do not have access to your account. Only mine.
*Suggested fix. Refer to risk control in copy trading software

“Price keeps trading close to the pending limit orders but not filling. Your account shows profits, but mine is not getting them”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
* Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Buy limit orders will need to move up a little. Sell limit orders should not need adjusted.

“I got stopped out right before the market turned, I have a loss but your account shows a profit”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
** Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Stop losses on sell orders will need to move up a bit. Stops on buy orders will be fine.

“Your trade got stopped out right before the market turned, if it was one more pip in the stop, it would have been a winner!!!”
Yeah. This happens. This is where the “risk” part of “risk:reward” comes in.

“Price traded close to take profit, yours filled but mines never”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
(Side note, this should not be an issue since when my trade closes, it should ping your account to close, too. You might get a couple less pips).
*** Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Take profits on buys will need to move up a bit. Sell take profits will be fine.

“My brokers spread jumped to 20 during the New York session so the open trade made a bigger loss than it should”.
Your broker might just suck if this happens. This is brokerage. I have no control over this. My trades are placed to profit from my brokerage conditions. I do not know, so can not account for yours. Also, if accounting for random spread spikes like this was something I had to do, this strategy would not be a thing. It only works with fair brokerage conditions.
*Suggested fix. Do a bit of Googling and find out if you have a horrific broker. If so, fix that! A good search phrase is; “(Broker name) FPA reviews”.

“Price hit the stop loss but was going really fast and my stop got slipped X pips”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
If my trade also got slipped on the stop, I was slipped using ECN conditions with excellent execution; sometimes slips just happen. I am doing the most I can to prevent them, but it is a fact of liquidity that sometimes we get slipped (slippage can also work in our favor, paying us more than the take profit would have been).

“Orders you placed failed to execute on my account because they were too large”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. Margin requirements vary. I have 1:500 leverage available. I will not always be using it, but I can. If you can’t, this will make a difference.

“Your account is making profits trading things my broker does not have”
I have a full range of assets to trade with the broker I use. Included Forex, indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies. I may or may not use the extent of these options. I can not account for your brokerage conditions.

I think I have covered most of the common ones here. There are some general rules of thumb, though. Basically, if I do something that is dumb and would have a high probability of losing on any broker traded on, this is a valid complain.

Anything that pertains to risk taken in standard trading conditions is under your control.

Also, anything at all that pertains to brokerage variance there is nothing I can do, other than fully brief you on what to expect up-front. Since I am taking the time to do this, I won’t be a punchbag for anything that happens later pertaining to this.

I am not using an elitist broker. You don’t need $50,000 to open an account, it is only $200. It is accessible to most people - brokerage conditions akin to what I am using are absolutely available to anyone in the UK/Europe/Asia (North America, I am not so up on, so can’t say). With the broker I use, and with others. If you do not take the time to make sure you are trading with a good broker, there is nothing I can do about how that affects your trades.

I am using an A book broker, if you are using B book; it will almost certainly be worse results. You have bad costs. You are essentially buying from reseller and paying a mark-up. (A/B book AKA ECN/Market maker; learn about this here). My EURUSD spread will typically be 0.02 pips or so, if yours is 1 pip, this is a huge difference.
These are typical spreads I am working on.

https://preview.redd.it/yc2c4jfpab721.png?width=597&format=png&auto=webp&s=c377686b2485e13171318c9861f42faf325437e1

Check the full range of spreads on Forex, commodities, indices and crypto.

Please understand I want nothing from you if you benefit from this, but I am also due you nothing if you lose. My only term of offering this is that people do not moan at me if they lose money.

I have been fully upfront saying this is geared towards higher risk. I have provided information and tools for you to take control over this. If I do lose people’s money and I know that, I honestly will feel a bit sad about it. However, if you complain about it, all I will say is “I told you that might happen”, because, I am telling you that might happen.

Make clear headed assessments of how much money you can afford to risk, and use these when making your decisions. They are yours to make, and not my responsibility.

Update.

Crazy Kelly Compounding: $100 - $11,000 in 6 Trades.

$100 to $11,000 in 6 trades? Is it a scam? Is it a gamble? … No, it’s maths.

Common sense risk disclaimer: Don’t be a dick! Don’t risk money you can’t afford to lose. Do not risk money doing these things until you can show a regular profit on low risk.
Let’s talk about Crazy Kelly Compounding (CKC). Kelly criterion is a method for selecting optimal bet sizes if the odds and win rate are known (in other words, once you have worked out how to create and assess your edge). You can Google to learn about it in detail. The formula for Kelly criterion is;
((odds-1) * (percentage estimate)) - (1-percent estimate) / (odds-1) X 100
Now let’s say you can filter down a strategy to have a 80% win rate. It trades very rarely, but it had a very high success rate when it does. Let’s say you get 1:2 RR on that trade. Kelly would give you an optimum bet size of about 60% here. So if you win, you win 120%. Losing three trades in a row will bust you. You can still recover from anything less than that, fairly easily with a couple winning trades.
This is where CKC comes in. What if you could string some of these wins together, compounding the gains (so you were risking 60% each time)? What if you could pull off 6 trades in a row doing this?
Here is the math;

https://preview.redd.it/u3u6teqd7c721.png?width=606&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b958747b37b68ec2a769a8368b5cbebfe0e97ff
This shows years, substitute years for trades. 6 trades returns $11,338! This can be done. The question really is if you are able to dial in good enough entries, filter out enough sub-par trades and have the guts to pull the trigger when the time is right. Obviously you need to be willing to take the hit, obviously that hit gets bigger each time you go for it, but the reward to risk ratio is pretty decent if you can afford to lose the money.
We could maybe set something up to do this on cent brokers. So people can do it literally risking a couple dollars. I’d have to check to see if there was suitable spreads etc offered on them, though. They can be kinda icky.
Now listen, I am serious … don’t be a dick. Don’t rush out next week trying to retire by the weekend. What I am showing you is the EXTRA rewards that come with being able to produce good solid results and being able to section off some money for high risk “all or nothing” attempts; using your proven strategies.
I am not saying anyone can open 6 trades and make $11,000 … that is rather improbable. What I am saying is once you can get the strategy side right, and you can know your numbers; then you can use the numbers to see where the limits actually are, how fast your strategy can really go.
This CKC concept is not intended to inspire you to be reckless in trading, it is intended to inspire you to put focus on learning the core skills I am telling you that are behind being able to do this.

main trading company

We created this website to bring together all the tools and services you’ll need to start trading for real. If you want to start taking advantage of the markets now, without having to become an expert, our free trading signal. Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it with us.
Here you’ll learn the basic terminology to be a successful Forex trader. To begin learning Forex, you’ll need to have a good grasp on the basic definitions, rules and terms used by professional traders. At first, this can sound daunting but after we spell out the fundamentals, it will become clearer and you’ll be on your way to becoming a Forex trader. We will cover terms, such as; base currency, the quote currency, micro lots, mini lots, standard lots, long position, short position, pips, spread, margin and many more.
Someone who is using more than 10% of the whole equity into a trading session is probably not having a good money management strategy. Because you should always trade safe and also because the market may turn back on you and you would find yourself in a big margin problem. With good risk management, having 10% of your account invested can bring consistent returns with no problems.

Profit Rate :

Some traders can’t make 10% per year. Others can safely and consistently make 30% per month and they are not afraid to show their verified performance as a solid proof of what they offer. While taking into consideration a proper risk and money management, you should never aim to make millions in one week with a small account because that would probably mean hitting margin call. Just remember: a good strategy and analysis will always bring profits. And if at the end of the month you have only 1% profit, that means you don’t have -1% loss.

Choosing the Best Forex Broker :

In order to start trading Forex, you will need to find the right online Forex broker for you with the cash rebate program. It’s important to find the right Forex broker for your trading needs according to several important criteria, such as security, customer service, trading platform, transaction costs, live quotes and more. While reading our guide on how to choose the best FOREX BROKERS.

Forex for free :

Most Forex brokers offer many free options, services, tips and information to help you trade better. Real-time charts and news, help guides, and blogs help you understand and learn about the market in real time. There are also many “demo” accounts to try the market before putting in real money.

Why Trade Forex?

The Forex market is fast becoming the most attractive and popular market in the world. The traditional stock is no longer relevant and traders are moving fast into the Forex. We collected here a few reasons to show you why this is happening and what advantages the Forex market has to make is so popular.
We choose to focus on a few very important advantages of the Forex trading and the reasons that people choose this market:
forex is the largest financial market in the world. The daily volume of the Forex market is huge over $3 trillion per day. This makes the stability of the market very good compared to stock trading. The price in the Forex market is exactly what you see is what you get and you can follow it very easily.
Forex trading simplifies everything, there’s no clearing fees, no exchange fees, no government fees, no brokerage fees, no middlemen. The elimination of the middlemen gets the traders closer to the actual trade and makes the traders responsible for their pricing. The brokers are usually paid through a service called “bid-ask spread”.
The Forex market is open 24 hours a day. Opening on Monday morning (in Australia) and closing in the afternoon (in New York). This is great for traders that can trade all day long or in parts. You can choose the times that are convenient for your trading, day-night, when you eat or when you sleep, whenever you want.
In Forex trading you can minimize the risk by depositing a small amount that will control a larger contract value. This is controlled by leverage and can make you profitable in the Forex market. If a broker gives 50 to 1 leverage it means that with $50 deposit you can buy or sell with $2500. If you put $500, you can trade with $25,000. All this needs to be done with great risk management because high leverage can easily lead to great loss, as well as great profit.
The Forex market is huge and therefore also very liquid. This means that on every buys or sell that you make, there will be someone who will take the other side of the trade. You will never be grounded because there’s no one on the other side.
To get started you would think that you need a lot of money. The reality is that online Forex brokers have “mini” and “micro” options and some of them have a minimum of only $25. This is great for Forex beginners because it makes the trading starting point easier. I’m not saying that you need to start with the minimum, but being cautious is never bad and starting small is good for the average trader.
main trading company

Forex the best trading market :

You can easily predict the movements in the Forex market you have many repetitive patterns and it’s fairly easy to learn, recognize and analyze these movements. The prices tend to go up or down and return to the average. They stay for quite a long time up or down and this stability makes the Forex market a much easier market to follow. This gives the traders a huge advantage in controlling their trades much better than the disorder.

Risk Warning :

We always suggest our clients to carefully consider their investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite. try to money management with every trade.
Trading foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. The high degree of leverage can work against you as well as for you. FOREX IN WORLD takes no responsibility for loss incurred as a result of our trading signals. Before deciding to trade foreign exchange you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience and risk appetite.
The possibility exists that you could sustain a loss of some or all of your initial investment and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose. You should be aware of all the risks associated with foreign exchange trading and seek advice from an independent financial advisor if you have any doubts.
FOREX TRADING IN INDIA: Forex means currency pair trading. Indian citizens can trade only currencies that have a pairing with INR. It is legal to trade with Indian Brokers providing access to Indian Exchanges(NSE, BSE, MCX-SX) providing access to Currency Derivatives. Since 2008, RBI and SEBI have permitted trading in currency derivatives. The currency pairs available for trading are USD-INR, EUR-INR, JPY-INR and GBP-INR.

https://preview.redd.it/tvww8mia26741.png?width=554&format=png&auto=webp&s=4ee96c0de0801313431871cd24dbd18dfd355ac0
For a long period to come, it cannot be denied that the global economic downturn is inevitable, and the ROI of not a few financial products keeps falling. As the economic downturn is ongoing while a continual rise of the commodity price, how can we ensure our asset preservation and appreciation? Most people always complained:” We missed out on the perfect timing to invest, if we bought bitcoin several years ago, we would be the winners!”
It is definitely that we live in the world with opportunities such as stocks, forex, P2P, etc. Those miracle words came out and became the magic to make lucky ones rich. However, most people did not catch fortunes as they wished. Bitcoin, a burgeoning digital asset, seems to be our new “Noah’s Ark”.
Since bitcoin was born, the price of bitcoin has risen by several ten thousands times for 10 years. Perhaps it just started its legend. Maybe the next 10 years is the period that bitcoin starts performing. If you already missed out on the stock market 10 years ago, then bitcoin might be your next train for the next 10 years. Fortunately, the 3rd halving of bitcoins is on the timetable of 2020. For normal investors, to buy and hold bitcoins from now on is the most perfect timing to invest.
Even then, the price of bitcoin today is still expensive, which is priced at about $7,500. For most investors, their affordance for buying bitcoins is low because they are short of budget. So, how can they solve this problem?

https://preview.redd.it/pbup05wb26741.png?width=554&format=png&auto=webp&s=6c8433f620b932fc67622a652c3c89deeac1e000
BTC Options, which only requires a few premium then the investors own the rights equal to holding bitcoins.
What is BTC Options?
In short, BTC Options is the rights in the future; When I buy BTC Options, I own the rights of bitcoin within a specific period. A BTC Options contract equals the rights of a bitcoin. In a way, options and spot trading both need to predict the bitcoin price direction in the future. But options trading allows users to buy call (Expect the market to be bullish) or put (Expect the market to be bearish).
What are the differences between BTC Options and the bitcoin on the spot trading market?
For example, BTC Options launched by BitOffer, which requires 0 fees, 0 margins, and no exercise.
Like what I mentioned before, A BTC Options contract quals the rights of a bitcoin, when the minimum price of a BTC Options contract is $5, if you buy 10 BTC Options contracts with $50, you would directly own the rights of 10 bitcoins.
When the bitcoin price rises from $7,500 to $8,000, $500 profits would be made by holding a bitcoin as well as buying a BTC Options contract. The profits are the same, but the budget difference is 1,500 times. And $5,000 profits would be made if buying 10 BTC Options contracts. Thus, we can see that BTC Options is a better choice than other investments.
How Do You Trade BTC Options?
For example, now the bitcoin price is $7,500, you predict that the bitcoin price will rise in an hour. Then you buy a 1-hour call options contract with $5. As you expect, the bitcoin price rises by $500 in an hour. When the contract settled, you will get $500 as the return, which is 100 times to your premium.
That is how options trading works, without paying the full amount, then you will be able to earn the price spread with a few premium.

https://preview.redd.it/n11x3r0e26741.png?width=554&format=png&auto=webp&s=30de9f62f020579b86cb28ee59c3acafceaad006

https://preview.redd.it/u74wblb7u5741.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=f743d263a1e13c8a928095223073470f9923deda
For a long period to come, it cannot be denied that the global economic downturn is inevitable, and the ROI of not a few financial products keeps falling. As the economic downturn is ongoing while a continual rise of the commodity price, how can we ensure our asset preservation and appreciation? Most people always complained:” We missed out on the perfect timing to invest, if we bought bitcoin several years ago, we would be the winners!”
It is definitely that we live in the world with opportunities such as stocks, forex, P2P, etc. Those miracle words came out and became the magic to make lucky ones rich. However, most people did not catch fortunes as they wished. Bitcoin, a burgeoning digital asset, seems to be our new “Noah’s Ark”.
Since bitcoin was born, the price of bitcoin has risen by several ten thousands times for 10 years. Perhaps it just started its legend. Maybe the next 10 years is the period that bitcoin starts performing. If you already missed out on the stock market 10 years ago, then bitcoin might be your next train for the next 10 years. Fortunately, the 3rd halving of bitcoins is on the timetable of 2020. For normal investors, to buy and hold bitcoins from now on is the most perfect timing to invest.
Even then, the price of bitcoin today is still expensive, which is priced at about $7,500. For most investors, their affordance for buying bitcoins is low because they are short of budget. So, how can they solve this problem?

https://preview.redd.it/hsttbhkau5741.png?width=554&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f294ae79c2dfa9f365ad2a35cb05748fa237cbf
BTC Options, which only requires a few premium then the investors own the rights equal to holding bitcoins.
What is BTC Options?
In short, BTC Options is the rights in the future; When I buy BTC Options, I own the rights of bitcoin within a specific period. A BTC Options contract equals the rights of a bitcoin. In a way, options and spot trading both need to predict the bitcoin price direction in the future. But options trading allows users to buy call (Expect the market to be bullish) or put (Expect the market to be bearish).
What are the differences between BTC Options and the bitcoin on the spot trading market?
For example, BTC Options launched by BitOffer, which requires 0 fees, 0 margins, and no exercise.
Like what I mentioned before, A BTC Options contract quals the rights of a bitcoin, when the minimum price of a BTC Options contract is $5, if you buy 10 BTC Options contracts with $50, you would directly own the rights of 10 bitcoins.
When the bitcoin price rises from $7,500 to $8,000, $500 profits would be made by holding a bitcoin as well as buying a BTC Options contract. The profits are the same, but the budget difference is 1,500 times. And $5,000 profits would be made if buying 10 BTC Options contracts. Thus, we can see that BTC Options is a better choice than other investments.
How Do You Trade BTC Options?
For example, now the bitcoin price is $7,500, you predict that the bitcoin price will rise in an hour. Then you buy a 1-hour call options contract with $5. As you expect, the bitcoin price rises by $500 in an hour. When the contract settled, you will get $500 as the return, which is 100 times to your premium.
That is how options trading works, without paying the full amount, then you will be able to earn the price spread with a few premium.

https://preview.redd.it/hexuskxcu5741.png?width=554&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe129ab11e2fc442fc81b5397988de1c59e6bd99

I'm doing a tribute to the 24 days of Christmas by going over the financial statements of 24 companies that are considered downrange, speculative, and just plain high risk.
The legal cannabis industry already has a ton of risk in it - but this stuff - is only for thrill seekers. All opinions are my own, and certainly not a recommendation for or against any of them, or to buy or sell.
I've limited myself to 45mins to each, and kept to most recent financial statements You'll likely know more about the company than me if you're following them. This is only my reactions with a brief commentary about what I see in their financial statements.
I haven't been consistent in following them all over the past year: some I have, others not.
The first one this year.....is here
LDS - Lifestyle Delivery Systems
Price Then: $0.34 - Price Now: $0.37

They call themselves a pharmaceutical company. Ok. Yet R&D as a percentage of expenses is less than 5% of total. Guessing they discovered what they were looking for.
SBC $1.8MM last quarter.
Revenues have been languishing until this quarter. $600k reported, double the first 6 months of their year.
G&A is fugly
Lost $3.7MM last quarter
Gotta say, related party transactions seem to be an emerging theme of this year’s crawl. Note 7.
At the burn rate they have (consulting fees per note 7), they’re gonna have to go back to the well pretty quick.
PP&E increased by $6MM, to $16MM.
Capital structure is a steaming pile (Note 8). Should have a warning statement in front of it before reading.
Speaking of which, immediate vesting of stock options for management is waaay cute.
And unlike most of the year, share price decay is going to be shutting down any fun that could’ve been had.
Almost all o/s warrants exercised. Only 5MM left now.

Bleh. Still looks like a very expensive front office for a million a year in revenue and 50% margin. Leverage is nose bleed inducing, $26MM in accumulated deficit, and no real end in sight. If I was a shareholder - I’d be all over mgmt. As in: ‘when will a business actually emerge here?’. Still looks like an ATM for mgmt.
RTI - Radient Technologies
Price Then: $1.54 - Price Now: $0.77

Buckets and buckets of cash. $47MM. 2 large raises, one each previous quarter.
Revenue flat yoy. $3.5MM in operating expenses last quarter. Expenses suggest operational build out occurring.
Given quarterly sales of $100k - that build out will need to do something. Sometime. Soon.
SBC is down from $4.2MM to $800k same period. Hmm.
Margin no hell.
Share printer on overdrive (glowing white hot really. Probably could be deployed as a cogen for heat recapture).
Long term debt is cheap.
Share capital in Note 10: an abominable snowman. Really. And since so many of these seem to land in the #10 slot, I’m going to avoid that number on all lotto tickets I buy from here on out.

Take out the bank balance, the market is valuing the business at about $0.50. For 2 years of stagnant revenue and billowing losses...$7MM last 2 quarters alone...meh. They do look to be operationalizing, perhaps that’s the dev cycle this industry business model is within. If that’s the case, I’m looking to see what happens over the next year - and if the spend justifies the returns.
Investors should be hoping their sales pipeline doesn’t turn into a TransMountain.
TNY - Tinley Beverage Company
Price Then: $0.85 - Price Now: $0.46
Funny enough, Tinley came across the radar a few months ago, and the elves took a stab at it. A couple of fans of this outfit took umbrage with their characterization at the time. They still didn’t put up any math though. Nor referenced the financials.
I was talking with u/GoBlueCdn the other day on the phone, and in conversation, he said: ‘fundamentals will always bear out.’ I couldn’t agree more. The noise and heat and smoke and knees and elbows of the intra-houday/week/month price moves….will always get throat-punched by solid ops. Never a question of it. It’s simply a function of time. The question of whether fanboys (and their accusations) will still be there when night turns to day….is an answerable one. They usually melt like toilet paper put into water. I stick to financials. If they're rocking it, I'll say so. If they're not......same deal.
I haven’t looked at these guys since then. Let’s do it again…..

Cash issues on back burner, they have some now. Given they need it to operate, that’s a good thing.
Intangibles mercifully low (fresh as a spring rain in this crowd).
$30MM deficit in S/E. A pretty large bump under the corner of the rug.
Lost $1.1MM on $52k of sales. Been a year now. And they’ve had the margaritas out now for a quarter. Maybe haven't shown up yet.
Net $100k loss on forex. Sigh. Just like the good ol’ days of last year's Crawl.
Props to them for a SBC and G&A. If this thing looked like an actual business, I suspect it’d be higher.
Shares o/s metastatic. Shares that are issued are seemingly born pregnant.
Godammit. Another Note ’10’. This one is like staring at the sun. Where’d I put those welding glasses…..
CFO is cheap relative to others in c-suite. Bad negotiator, or, value for money? Your choice.
G&A inelegant. See for yourself….Note 15. Honest.

Ok. I could wax poetic for awhile on this, nothing other than incremental at this point really. I don’t have anything against it. I like the idea of drinkables, but I've never tried one. And….I’m woefully ignorant about emulsions and such. If it’s a good product: I’m there. Probably like most people.
The reality is that these guys have tripped and slipped and reset several times…and aren’t delivering. Maybe I have expectations that are unreasonable (like the one’s they’ve established in the investor decks?).
One way or the other, limping along with no sales will eventually catch up with you. Despite the pitch. Revenues fix almost everything.
Onward:
~~iAn - Ianthus Capital Holdings~~
Scratched! Now post merger with MPX - and that I’ve already done that one - means redundancy at this juncture. We’ll skip this, and add a newcomer to the list at the end. Xmas surprise time!
CHV - Canada House Wellness Group Inc
Price Then: $0.37 - Price Now: $0.13

Lots of cash atm. That’s definitely gonna be needed as we’ll see. Sales Tax rec’ble says they’ve had sales too. They're gonna need every cent.
Liabilities remain as big of yoke as last time. An ox pulling a dull plough through compacted soil is the mental image I get.
$32MM in accumulated deficit in S/E. Plenty of ‘junk in the trunk’.
$1.2MM in revenue. $1.4MM in salaries.
That $1.4MM in salaries is only 38% of total operating expense.
Love the detail in financials. Remember it from last year. All companies can do this. And it’s appreciated.
Interest expenses are from another planet. A very, very big planet.
These guys need a tourniquet. Hemorrhaging from every limb, orifice, window, door, niche and crevice.
Seeing SBC of $1.4MM - in this operational state - C’mon. Seriously. There’s pushing envelopes, and then there’s that.
Added $1.1MM in ‘intellectual property’ - but it’s not itemized. WTF. Did I miss it? Curious if actually omitted. ?
Another Note 10 setting new benchmarks of vulgarity….I got light headed reading it.
This one could have a sign over it’s Note 10 portcullis: ’Abandon all Hope Ye Who Enter Here.’
Interest free loans to a director (when an outfit is in this shape????)

“You are now entering Liquidation City”
Population: CHV
Home of the ‘cash only’ auction. All purchases must be removed by 5PM or goods and purchase price will be forfeited
From doing these guys last year, I recall vividly how much I appreciate good disclosure. With it, there’s not only many more items to divine the entrails of - it also allows one to get a 3D look at an outfit. Often, business dislikes this for obvious reasons (it signals activities/plans/competitive advantages), but also because many people are uncomfortable taking a shower in public.
I took my foot off the throttle though after a certain point with these guys - there’s much more to speak to. All of it negative. I went a little overtime on this one, because I like the idea of a patient-centric Canadian producer. But.
If these guys last a year….there’s going to have to be capital infusion, and Note 10 will probably expand to the size of a large city’s phone book. It’s looking as proof that c-suite changes don’t change underlying business realities. And these guys need major changes, in far more than management.
LIB - Liberty Leaf Holdings
Price Then: $0.48 - Price Now: $0.10

not much cash, all they had seems to have gone into ‘facility equipment’.
Since they don’t seem to have a facility (on their books anyhow) that makes sense.
Appears to have pivoted (the elves always chuckle hearing that word) from aspiring producer, to ‘cannabis business accelerator’.
I read this as that they took a couple of runs at getting a grow op up, but got high centred on the meridian of ACMPR licensing delays (Pivot Time!)
Note 8 & 9 cover their ‘investing activities’. But it’s mainly transactional. If they’re ‘building value’ for shareholders, odd way to do it using paper on non-operating assets, and no apparent uplift able to be predicted.
CEO has gotten some help - he’s gone from ‘Chief Cook & Bottle Washer’ to mainly big chair activities.
SBC of a million dwarfs all other income statement spends
60% of assets is their own paper, issued as ‘investment in associate’
$26MM of S/E? Please meet $26MM deficit in S/E. LIB’s capital is ostensibly only paper, and more paper.
If liquidated on hard assets, company would realize $2MM. I didn't have time to look into unconsolidated subs.
The loading of optionality in 2019? Pretty much all struck. Most of management's fruit has been shaken from the tree.
Whoop. Spoke too soon. Still 5MM of $0.17 options left to go. Looks like there’s still a lot of fruit up top yet
Note 19 is all one needs to read on this thing.

This feels like a squatter-aspiring-to-be-taken-out…..shifted to……business-accelerator-ATM-for-mgmt.
The businesses they’ve invested in could use a lot of accelerating btw, they’ve picked ones that are like cars rusting in a field. The blockchain outfit has shed half its value since listing, and the late stage applicant’s business(es) appear to be suspended in amber.
They’re also connected to some clinical trials, a retail facing outfit, among several others. All paper, all the time.
If there’s a business in here outside of a cashlessly fuelled pitch deck (written on lots of paper), I can’t see it. Perhaps something will happen someday. Nothing has in the last 365 of them. Excepting SBC of course. It's been busy there.
QCC - Quadron Cannatech Corp
Price Then: $0.38 - Price Now: $0.12

Cash and inventory and liabilities and S/E relatively flat.
A/R shows sales throughput
30% margins. G&A lean. SBC exemplary for industry.
SBC might also be low because share price has tanked.
Sales needed. Slower industry ramp has slowed industry need for equipment. Should be stronger year if the underlying operational capacity begins to expand, and demand for units cranks.
Very clean financials. Not much else to say or see.

This one is dead simple in the financial statements. Love love love.
Whether they’ll start extracting revenue, is solely a function of their sales channel. As I’ve learned over the past year - everybody (and I mean everybody) - is in the extraction space. Operating in this industry sub-sector is like being in a sardine can without any oil (pun intended). Crowded space indeed.
Cashflow is the core of business, and, if QCC can compete and succeed within what is a very competitive landscape - all power to them (and Canadian manufacturing as well). Calling this a ‘challenging environment’ is an understatement. Sales need to begin growing. Another year in the same general state will test market patience, which, is looking like its' already becoming impatient.
Disclaimer - I've met Rosy several times now, and have come to respect her very much. I believe she’s a class act: both professionally, and personally. FWIW, full disclosure.
I’m gonna go have some egg nog with the elves and compliment them on their behavior. They don't start drinking until after 1PM most days now.
That they get out of bed around noon, it's not really saying much. Still, a big improvement over last year.

TIO Markets: the next-generation of FX trading.
Q : If TIOMarkets is the first company to offer FX trading using crypto, why don't we switch the domain to dot com (.com) instead of dot uk (.uk) ?A >> We are switching to dot com (.com). The website is still in progress. What you see now is not the website that we are going to be launching with. So, don't worry about that.

Q : What is the symbiosis between the tradeio and TIOMarkets?A >> The biggest thing that I want to mention is the Liquidity Pool. Although there's different companies, and there's different entities, the registrations are completely different. Even the platforms are different between TIOMarkets and tradeio. However, what happens is as TIOMarkets gets bigger and stronger, and there's more volume, there are more clients. People are trading and the company is making money, the profit from that is going to go back into Liquidity Pool. Anybody on trade.io Liquidity Pool is going to start benefit in a big way when they start seeing that daily income get bigger and bigger. So, I would say that it’s probably the biggest symbiosis there.
Q : Tell a little bit about TIOMarkets and how we are planning to make it really big.A >> For TIOMarkets, we have been preparing for the launch for a long time and we really want to make this something very different. We have come up with innovative packages and innovative methods that appeal to traders. Without letting too much of the cat out of the bag, I just want to say that we have actually come up with certain subscription packages that really allow traders to experience some very innovative features and benefits.
Not only that, whatever that we are pushing out to our trading community, allows you to be able to trade with really low commissions. Commissions can be as low as 0 per standard lot. And spreads will be very low as well. And not only that, we are pushing out some really very innovative features.
We have actually talked to some traders about the features and they loved it. For example, one of the features is that it actually allows you to be able to (what I call), " add an undo" button for your trade. So, just imagine this scenario, imagine that you are actually trading and within the first 60 minutes of you executing your trade, if the market actually goes against you, if you actually took up insurance for the trade (for just a very small insurance premium), you will actually have the ability to undo your trade. And whatever floating losses you had will be reimbursed back to you.
Not only that, we believe that traders should be given a chance. Even if they make mistakes. So, just imagine this, within the first month of you trading with us (TIOMarkets), you somehow experience a margin call, or you lose what you put in, what we will do is that we will actually reimburse 50% of your first time deposit back for you to trade again. Why we do this is because we want to make it a point for our traders to have a second chance. We believe that everybody deserves a second chance to be able to learn as they go along. These are just some of the innovative benefits that we have come up with.

Q : How is the 10K users target going to be attained, apart from the 3 months free?A >> We are going to start on 2nd of April. We have 6 big pre-registration campaigns and each of those campaigns have a slightly different message, tone and they are going to be targeted to slightly different people target groups. So the idea is, whatever attracts you the most is the thing that helps you to click. So we've got a wide range of messaging, channels and platforms that we're using to get the message out and we are really going to go as big as we can to try and get the numbers in. We really believe that the numbers will be big for a lot of reasons.
And just to add to the previous question about what makes us different, some of here at the trade.io office have FX background. Like myself, we have been involved in FX before. We know the industry, we know what talks and what doesn't talk, we know what works and what doesn't work. We have seen that there is a lot of fatigue in the FX industry. The people are sick and tired of attempting to trade, and for various reasons (maybe that trade is not getting through, etc). Any reasons that makes it frustrating for the trader, when they just want to trade FX. And we are coming in here from this angle. We know the industry, we know what's possible and what not possible from a brokerage perspective. We are going to try to completely overcome any of those issues. Our solution to that problem is essentially the subscription package.
Here's the theory, that you are trading and where your usual FX brokerage is taking out their commission (maybe they are paying commissions for IB, maybe they are widening the spread, maybe they are taking money from here to try and meet their other target they've got). We are saying that none of that. We are not taking anything out. Our subscription package is very transparent. It is once per month at a fixed cost, you know what exactly that cost is and it is at very good price. And thereafter, your trading is essentially free. This will be really cheap and there will be big savings to be made.
This isn't anywhere else in the FX industry at the moment. It will be completely unique to us and it will be something that is extremely attractive to season traders. And for the millennials or the aspiring traders (who don't know how to trade yet), it will be appealing as well because we are saying we know what the issues are, we know what the problems are in FX. If you trade with us, thing are clear, things are clean. We'll support and educate you and you will have a much better overall experience.
That’s our positioning. Aside from that, we've got the FCA Regulation, which is absolutely huge. I'm just personally speaking having worked for a couple of FX companies in the past that didn't have the FCA Regulation, it was always something that clients keeps asking for. So that is one that is really significant for us.
**Terence adding in to Helen's explanation >> Coming from the viewpoint of a lot of us have in the FX industry, one way or another, we really want to come from the angle where we want to be able to create a perfect trading environment for traders. At this point of time we are putting the focal point on our traders creating an environment which is great from them in terms of trading and not like other brokers out there where the emphasis is mainly on profit. Whatever we do such as the subscription packages and the other innovative features that we have are all from the view of a trader.

Q : What makes us stand out from the competitors?
A >> Its going to be our subscription package that isn't available anywhere else. Secondly would be the TIO reimburse (that's what Terence talked about before).Next would be the TIO Shield. That is our fancy name for the really cool feature whereby if you trade on a specific currency pair and if it all goes wrong, you will get your money back (essentially minus a small premium). These are the 3 big points that differentiates us aside from the other stuffs I've said about our tone and angle.
Q : Should we expect TIOMarkets to be fully operational on the 9th of April?
A >> We are opening the doors for pre-registration on the 2nd of April. We've got a little surprise campaign coming out a little earlier than that. That's all I'll say about that for now but then there are 10,000. We don't know exactly when that will be. We believe that it will be sooner rather than later. Even so, one week wouldn't be long enough, so give us a couple of weeks and then we will fully open the doors and let you know when that will be.
Q : The profit for trade.io will just come from the subscription and not from the spreads?
A >> It comes from both, actually. The profit from the company comes firstly from the subscription packages. And then secondly, we are going to be offering what I am calling an "ala carte" option which is maybe you don’t want to pay monthly, that's fine. You can just trade on-the-go as you go. And the spreads will be a little wider but we're going to be fully transparent and honest about that. So, it's your choice which you prefer to trade.
** Additional point from Helen >> It is going to be green (beginner) user friendly and we're creating some pretty cool educational packages. Pretty much everything we're doing, we are saying right. What is different to what we've done before, what is different to how the others are doing it. How can we make it more interesting, less jargony and more fun. Thus it will be definitely friendlier to new users.
Q : Who is our liquidity provider?
A >> that is way out of the marketing remit perhaps. We (Helen and Terence) are unable to answer that.
Q : What is our plan to get partners onboard?
A >> We actually have a very big plan in terms of having joint venture partners and affiliate onboarding because we believe affiliates are going to play a very big part of our whole entire strategy. So we actually have plans that will be launched in Phases.
We'll be paying our joint venture partner and affiliates CPA commissions. Those of you who are in the industry will be familiar with that its Cost Per Acquisitions(CPA). So depending of the numbers of traders or clients that you refer to us and which country they are from you will be paid one time CPA commission. This is kind of controversial in the sense of we don't pay out IB commission because what is mentioned earlier, we basically want to create a great trading environment for traders and probably those of you who know that when IB commissions were paid it has to come from somewhere and very often is comes from the traders. So in our case we are just paying one time CPA commission. Later on down the road, we will launch other hybrid commission program as well. In terms of the CPA commission we'll also allow our partners to be able to have sub-affiliates as well down to about 2 tiers. In other words, not only you will be able to refer traders but you will actually be able to refer sub-affiliate as well.
Not only that, previously like Helen mentioned we actually have a lot of different funnel which we coming out with and those funnel will be made available to our affiliate as well so we'll be testing those funnels and we'll let you know whichever funnel that works, we'll provide you with the emails plus we provides you with the banners and landing pages. So all you have to do as an affiliates is to mail to our databases or however you're going to drive the traffic to your landing pages and after that the company will take over to help you convert those leads into actual clients for you.
It is really exciting in term of the partners. We are giving all the resources they need, we are making the resources as attractive as possible, to make it easiest as possible for them to make lots of money. That will help us a lot. And just as at the partnership side, we've got an exciting addition to the team over here. We've got a new Head of partnership that started with us today in fact and she is a bit of a of a big deal in FX. She has got some of the incredible contacts and networks so that we can really hit the ground when it comes to the partnership.
Q : When is our website is going to live?A >> Firstly, we are going to have what we called landing pages go live on the 2nd. They are individual pages not connected to a bigger website specifically and their purpose is specifically to lead generate. So there we will be going live. For the actual website is as you all know is a big project and a work in progress so that’s going to come a bit later.
Q : How are we going to differentiate ourselves?
A >> I've seen it three or four times now on the chat they are very worried about how we are going to differentiate ourselves. We will! You can trust that we'll because as I said we've been there and we've done that. We've been in FX before. Many of us we don’t want to be like the other brokers. We going to be different not only our offerings and our products but in the way that we express those things. From the tone to the visuals to the actual offerings. It's going to be a breath of fresh air in all aspects apart from the actual platform we're using which is a very well-known very popular platform and of course the instruments are going to be popular instruments that will also be offered by the brokers we can't differentiate there, we don't want to. So, you'll see.
Q : Will hedging be available and what is the maximum leverage available ?A >> Yes and the maximum leverage 1:500
Q : Is there any plans to collaborate with another full bright firm like another Forex firm or other to boost our trade volume?
A >> No plans to partner with another FX at this stage to boost our trading volume.

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