There are different ways to trade in a choppy environment. Here’s a deep dive on how I attempted to use weekly options to trade a potential bounce in AMZN, and collected $.37 initially, for the possibility of making $50 more, even though the trade ended up being only an $.81 winner.

The Entry

Last Thursday, 9/24, when $AMZN was trading at about $3000 a share, I was looking for a cheap way to play a bounce in the stock. During that time, my bias in the markets had begun to shift to a more bullish stance after seeing how the market had difficulty grinding lower. With that in mind, I wanted to play a potential bounce in tech. But I knew I didn’t want to pay a debit at all to play for a bounce that might not even happen, given how uncertain and choppy the markets had been, but I still wanted to set myself up to capture some large gains if AMZN did indeed bounce. Therefore, the strategy that made the most sense to me, was a Call broken wing butterfly.
Given that I’m a very short-term options trader who loves trading weeklies, I was trying to look for a cheap butterfly for the upcoming week that I could put on for a net credit. After exploring the options chain, I came across the +1/-2/+1 3300/3350/3450 call broken wing butterfly for the Oct 2 series. This fly, at the time (on Sept 24), was trading for a total of $.37 credit. Meaning, by putting on that butterfly, I would get paid $.37, and the following scenarios could happen:

If AMZN decided to tank or hang out sideways and never get up close enough to the butterfly to expand the spread in my favor, then I’d walk away pocketing the $.37 credit
If AMZN slowly crept up to reach exactly 3350 by expiration, I’d not only get to keep the credit, but also be able to sell the butterfly back out for $50. Of course, it doesn’t need to reach exactly 3350 by expiration. If AMZN slowly worked its way up to near 3300, then the butterfly would expand very nicely as well.
If AMZN blew past 3400 by expiration, I’d see a loss, up to a maximum of $50 / spread (if $AMZN moves past 3450). That’s because the 3300/3350 long call vertical of the fly provides 50 points of coverage before I essentially start losing money from the 3350/3450 short vertical, up until that 3450 kicks in to cap off further upside losses.

So that is a rough outline of the potential scenarios that would happen with this trade.
Given the choppy market conditions, I was ok with risking $50/spread (point #3), in order to not lose money if I’m wrong on direction (point #1), while at the same time, keeping myself open to the possibility of the butterfly expanding in my favor (point #2) for some potentially very large gains.
But satisfying point #3 is tricky. I needed more data points suggesting that $AMZN wouldn’t surge higher early on in the trade. Because if $AMZN did surge higher early on in the trade, then while the 3300 long call would rise in value, those two 3350 short calls would also rise in value, and because there’d still be some time value left, they could be very juiced up and eat away at the profits of that 3300 long call, so much so that the 3450 long call won’t even be able to offset those losses, especially given how far out of the money that 3450 call is.

AMZN on 9/24, daily timeframe
Looking at the chart above on 9/24, we can see that AMZN was trading at around $3000/share. In order to reach $3300 (where the first long call of the broken wing butterfly is), the stock would need to

Breach the 38% fib retracement (~AMZN=3131) of the move from the 9/2 high to the 9/21 low,
Breach the 20MA and 50MA
Breach the 50% fib retracement (~AMZN=3211)
Breach the 61.8% fib retracement (~AMZN=3292)

before finally reaching the 3300 long call. All of these levels, I felt, should provide some resistance for AMZN to have to chew thru over the following week, before it even gets to the long call. And by that time, if AMZN did reach 3300, then the 3300 long call would still have a lot of extrinsic value left (somewhere around $20 on the last day), while the 3350 short calls would be very cheap (each around $5), so the entire spread could be roughly worth $10. Which would be great, because that means I’d be getting paid $.37 to make another $10.
So with all of the above considered, I chose to take on that upside risk, for a chance to make potentially $50 (realistically I try to aim for just half of the max profit: $25, and start harvesting profits and peeling off the flies at around $5-$10), and that day on 9/24, entered the Oct2 3300/3350/3450 call broken wing butterfly for a $.37 credit.
After entry, on Friday 9/25 and Monday 9/28, AMZN made steady progress upwards, from 3000 to 3175, breaching the 31.8% retracement and tagging the 20MA and 50MA from below.

AMZN on 9/28, daily timeframe
but this move wasn’t large and fast enough to expand the value of the 3350 short calls. In fact, theta did a great job draining those short calls, while the 3300 long call did a good job retaining its premium, so the butterfly had already expanded a bit in my favor, and I was sitting at about a small $1.00 profit.

The Adjustment

However, on Tuesday and Wednesday, AMZN began to stall out. By the end of Wednesday 9/30, when it looked like AMZN was putting in a topping tail, I decided that AMZN might not be able to make it near 3300 by expiration Friday, so I wanted to take in a bit more credit while I still could, before theta drained more of that 3300 long call. At the time, the spread was trading for almost $2.
That’s when I made a slight adjustment to the spread and sold the 3300/3310 call vertical.

AMZN on 9/30, daily timeframe
This essentially rolled the 3300 long call up to 3310, and I was able to collect a small $.44 credit for it. However, this adjustment did open me up to an additional $10 of risk to the upside, because now, the long call vertical portion of the butterfly is only $40 wide (instead of $50). Still, with only 2 days left for AMZN to go higher, I felt comfortable taking on a bit more upside risk knowing that theta is going to be working hard to drain those 3350 short calls if AMZN did decide to surge higher. And at that moment, I actually wanted AMZN to move more towards my fly. My deltas were still positive, and the risk graph showed that a move towards the short strikes of the fly would expand it by another $4-5 by Thursday.
So after this adjustment, the trade stood at a $.81 credit, and the profit potential on the fly was now $40 instead of $50. Which is still pretty good.

The Tease

On Thursday, AMZN showed some strength and closed above the 50% fib (3211), which meant that if on Friday, AMZN worked its way up to around 3300, the fly could potentially be worth $5-10. Things were looking good (on any continued bullishness, the next target for AMZN was the 61.8% fib retracement at ~3300). So I left the trade alone without making any more adjustments.

AMZN on 10/1, daily timeframe

The Flop

Unfortunately, on Thursday night, news broke out that Trump was diagnosed with Coronavirus, and the market fell lower. By the open, AMZN was already trading at around 3150, roughly 150 points below the fly. The spread had instantly lost all of its value, so I basically let it expire worthless and walked away pocketing the $.81 credit.

https://preview.redd.it/mpwrkjpk6xq51.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=8dd7f4da7b000b2266ab57a3c23c1863f9423704
While the trade did not work out as well as I had liked, the important thing to note is that I was able to get paid even when the trade didn’t go in my favor. With options, there are ways to trade an underlying to a certain target without ponying up a debit, albeit at the cost of introducing tail risk, while offering the possibility of very large upside. This may be a style of trading that one can consider employing when the outlook of the markets is uncertain, as long as the trader is willing to make the necessary adjustments to control risk.
Which leads me to the following section:

FAQ

What if AMZN decided to surge very early on during the trade? What if AMZN had surged to 3300 with 4-5 DTE, hence juicing up the short calls and causing the butterfly to take on large negative deltas?

Even though the position would be very theta positive, I would pony up the debit to cap off the upside risk by buying the 3400/3450 call vertical, hence turning the 3300/3350/3450 broken wing butterfly into the 3300/3350/3400 balanced butterfly. From there on out until expiration, I would look for ways to reduce the debit incurred from that adjustment.

But what if AMZN tanked afterwards? You could end up getting whipsawed.

I’d rather be safe than sorry and make the necessary adjustments to avoid getting run over, because I don’t like playing the hope card. I could always undo the adjustment and look for ways to collect back more credit (at the cost of introducing risk elsewhere), depending on my new directional bias on AMZN at the time.

Your maximum loss is so large, $5000. I’d never make that bet, I would never risk $5000 to make $5000.

This style of trading is not for everyone. There are different ways to perceive risk. I don't really think of risk as binary as “max gain vs max loss”. If the trade goes against me, I’m not going to open myself up to the possibility of eating the maximum loss. I’m going to manage that risk and make sure that I don’t lose any money at all on the trade. Basically, I’m not going to just put on the trade, walk away to the prayer room, and come back at expiration and hope that AMZN expired at 3350.

Why not just join thetagang and slap on iron condors / credit spreads in this environment? You could’ve collected more credit by selling a 50 point wide put vertical with your bounce thesis.

Different traders have different styles. I personally don’t like pure premium selling strategies. I’d rather have long options in front of the shorts to open myself up for some large upside and convexity in the P/L curve, rather than limit myself to the concavity of pure premium selling strategies. Having long options in front of the shorts also helps me sleep better at night.

It’s hard to read this. Is there a more visual explanation?

Here’s a video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uq76fZ3EME

TL;DR - I used weekly options to trade a potential bounce in AMZN, and got paid $.37 initially to do so, for the possibility of making $50 more. While the trade did not pan out, I walked away pocketing $.81 for being wrong.

Going to keep this simple. EDIT: this isn’t simple and I should write a short story on this.
I am generally risk averse. I hate losing $100 at the casino, I hate paying extra for guac at chipotles, I will return something or price match an item for a few dollars of savings. I am generally frugal.
But, I somehow had no issues losing 10k in options...
How I started
I remember my first trades like they were yesterday. I was trading the first hydrogen run-up in 2014 (FCEL, BLDP, PLUG) and made a few hundred dollars over a couple weeks.
I quickly progressed to penny stocks / biotech binary events and general stock market gambling mid-2014. I was making a few % here and there but the trend was down in total account value. I was the king of buying the peak in run-ups. I managed to make it out of 2014 close to break-even to slightly down.
WSB Era
March 2015 was my first option trade. It was an AXP - American Express - monthly option trade. I saw one of the regular option traders/services post a block of 10,000 calls that had been bought for 1.3 and I followed the trade with 10 call options for a total of $1300.
I woke up the next day to an analyst upgrade on AXP and was up 50% on my position. I was addicted! I day-dreamed for days about my AXP over night success. I think around that time there was some sort of Buffet buyout of Heinz and an option trade that was up a ridiculous amount of %%%. I wanted to hit it BIG.
I came up with the idea that all I needed to reach my goal was a few 100% over night gains/ 1k>2k>4k>8k> etc. I convinced myself that I would have no problems being patient for the exact criteria that I had set and worked on some other trades.
Remember, the first win is always free.
I was trading options pretty regularly from March 2015 until August 2016. During my best week I was up 20k and could feel the milli within reach. I can remember the exact option trade (HTZ) and I was trading weeklies on it.
For those who have been in the market long enough, you will remember the huge drawdown of August 2015.
I lost half my account value on QCOM calls (100 of them) that I followed at the beginning of July and never materialized. I watched them eventually go to 0. It was another 10,000 block that was probably a hedge or sold.
In August 2015 there were some issues with China and all of us woke up to stocks gapping down huge. Unfortunately my idea of buying far dated calls during the following days/weeks after the crash went sideways. I quickly learned that an increase in volatility causes a rise in option prices and I was paying a premium for calls that were going to lose value very quickly (the infamous IV crush).
I kept trading options into the end of 2015 and managed to maintain my account value positive but the trading fees for the year amounted to $30,000+. My broker was loving it.
I tried all the services, all the strategies. I created rules for my option plays: 1. No earnings 2. Only follow the big buys at a discount (10,000 blocks or more). 3. No weekly options 4. Take profit right away 5. Take losses quickly 6. etc.
I had a whole note book of option plays that I was writing down and following. I was paying for option services that all of you know about - remember, they make money on the services and not trading.
I even figured out a loop-hole with my broker: if I didn’t have enough money in my account, I could change my ask price to .01 and then change it to market buy and I would only need to accept a warning ⚠️ for the order to go through. I was able to day trade the option and make money, who cares if I didnt have enough? After a few months of this, I got a call from my broker that told me to stop and that I would be suspended if I continued with this.
By the way, I was always able to satisfy the debit on the account - so it wasn’t an issue of lack of funds.
Lost it all. Started taking money from lines of credits, every penny that I earned and losing it quicker and quicker.
I was a full on gambler but I was convinced that 8 trades would offset all the losses. I kept getting drawn in to the idea that I could hit a homerun and make it out a hero.
I eventually hit rock bottom on some weekly expiring FSLR options that I bought hours before expiration and said to myself - what the f are you doing? I resolved to invest for the long term and stop throwing tendies away.
The feeling was reinforced during the birth of my first born and I thought - what a loser this kid will think of me if he knew how much I was gambling and wasting my life. It was a really powerful moment looking at my kid and reflecting on this idea.
I decided at that point I was going to save every penny I had and invest it on new issues with potential.
Fall 2016
TTD, COUP and NTNX IPO ‘ed I decided I was going to throw every dollar at these and did so for the next few months. I eventually started using margin (up to 215%) and buying these for the next 6 months. They paid out and managed to make it over 100k within the year.
The first 100k was hard but once I crossed it, I never fell below this magic number.
2017 - I did some day trading but it was mostly obsessing over the above issues. I did gamble on a few options here and there but never more than 1k.
2018 - SFIX was my big winner, I bought a gap up in June 2018 and my combined account value had crossed 400k by August 2018. I was really struggling at crossing the 500k account value and experienced 3 x 30-40% drawdowns over the next 2 years before I finally crossed the 500k barrier and have never looked back.
I still made some mistakes over the next few months - AKAO & GSUM come to mind. Both of these resulted in 20k+ losses. Fortunately my winners were much bigger than my losers.
I thought about giving up and moving to index funds - but i was doing well - just experiencing large drawdowns because of leverage.
2019 big winners were CRON SWAV STNE.
2017 / 2018 / 2019 all had six digit capital gains on my tax returns.
At the beginning of 2020 I was still day trading on margin (180-220%) and got a call from my broker that they were tightening up my margin as my account was analyzed by the risk department and deemed too risky. Believe it or not this was right before the covid crash. I brought my margin down to 100-110% of account value and even though the drawdown from covid hit hard, I wasn’t wiped out.
I stayed the course and bought FSLY / RH during the big march drawdown and this resulted in some nice gains over the next few months.
I am constantly changing and testing my investment strategy but let me tell you that obsessing over 1 or 2 ideas and throwing every penny at it and holding for a few years is the best strategy. It may not work at some point but right now it does.
I still day trade but I trade with 10k or less on each individual position. It allows me minimize my losses and my winners are 1-7%. I am able to consistently make between 3-700$/ a day on day trades using the above strategy. I still take losses and still dream about hitting it big with an option trade but dont feel the need to put it all on the line every month / week.
I finally crossed into the two , club. I know people are going to ask for proof or ban but I am not earning anything for posting and the details about some of the trades should be proof enough that I kept a detailed journal of it all. I have way more to write but these are the highlights.
Eventually I will share how I build a position in a story I love. I still sell buy and sell to early but I am working on improving.
TL:DR - I gambled, lost it all and gambled some more lost more. I made it out alive. I have only sold calls/puts lately.
The one common denominator in all successful people is how much they obsess over 1 or 2 ideas. Do the same. All the winners on this sub have gone all in on one idea (FSLY / TSLA ). Stick with new stories or ones that are changing and go all in...wait a second, I didnt learn anything.

The morning alarm woke up Ghen. With an annoyed sigh, he stretched out his arm and silenced the foul-sounding chirps. Slowly sitting up in bed, he let out a deep yawn and got to his feet.
Running a couple of chitinous fingers along his antennae to stimulate them to life, he made his bed and then went to his closet. Today was a work day, so he needed his suit. Once the pants were on, he stretched out his wings so that he could button up the shirt, then relaxing them once all the buttons were secured.
Dressing for the day was done, now for the morning meal. Entering his kitchen, he took out the chilled leftovers of the evening meal last night and popped it into the radiator, first defrosting and then slightly cooking it.
During that process, he also fished out a ceramic cup and placed it in his brewer, serving himself some synthesized caffeine. His idle thought led him to being amused that, when eaten directly off a plant, it has a concentration that could kill him three times over. But after going through some refinement and roasting, all it does is make him hyper.
Once the meal was put together, his plate of heated leftovers and a cup of almost-piping-hot cup of Xia's, he took his time to enjoy it. His communicator vibrated. When he looked, he found it was from his boss.
"Hello?" Ghen answered.
"Ghen, the meeting's been moved up to a few minutes from now." His boss, Xkik, announced. "Apparently higher up has something important they want to say. We have a terminal ready for you, I'll message the login details."
"Wha-, what's so important?" Ghen asked in bewilderment. "Did a water line rupture or something?"
"No, nothing like that." Xkik replied with a slight chuckle. "It's actually about the rumors we've been hearing. That human corporation wanting to acquire us? That's what they're talking about."
Ghen could feel everything inside his thorax drop to the floor. "That must mean it's true then, right? Did we get sold off by the Queen to this company then?"
"Show up to the meeting and you'll get your answer." Xkik said simply. When he finished, Ghen got the notification on his communicator. There's the login details, allowing him to remotely attend the meeting. "They're about to start, hurry up."
Once Xkik disconnected, Ghen worked fast to login and set up the remote viewing. Once everything was done, his screen started transmitting the meeting room. It was already packed. And off by the main board, he saw his answer. There was a human, resting against the wall on his two legs. Standing right in the center of everyone's view was the coordinator, Tizx, watching the clock periodically.
As soon as the meeting's start time was reached, the coordinator began. "Alright everyone. I realize that this was rather short notice, so I want to say how appreciative I am that you made it. Now then, let's just get right to it. For some time now, many of you have been hearing rumors that a human corporation has been interested in us. Why? We never really knew. We're just an organization responsible for finding, extracting and providing water to the colony here all under the direction of the Queen herself. Well, as of now, I have the answer for you. Why don't I let Ryan say that?"
Stepping back, Tizx motioned for the human, Ryan, to take over. With a nod, Ryan practically bounced over and then took the position. "Good morning to you all. I hope my Zazk is passable, heh. Anyways, the answer to those rumors, is yes. Terran Galactic Company is indeed interested in you all. Which now leads to me. I'm here to announce that, effective yesterday evening, this water company is now a subsidiary of Terran Galactic Company, under the name of Zilia Water Delivery."
Many other sub-coordinators broke into hushed conversation, no doubt speaking their thoughts with each other about this move. Ghen could only wonder if this was even a good thing. What will the humans do? Will he still have his job? Will he have to learn how to deal with the ruthless humans?
"Now, I am well aware this is quite the...uh, change." Ryan continued. "That's why I'm happy to inform you that, no, nothing negative or detrimental will happen to you. You just have new people to answer to. Operations will continue as normal, everybody here will still keep their jobs. The only real change any of you will personally experience is that Coordinator Tizx here will now report to someone else. On behalf of the Terran Galactic Company, we are extremely excited and are looking forward to working with you all. Thank you for your time."
A week later.
At least Ryan wasn't lying. After the initial shock wore off, things went back as they normally did. There were no terminations, no reductions in annual pay or anything. Nothing really changed. At least until this new meeting was called. Ghen was at the worksite this time, so he took his seat and watched as, once again, Ryan led the meeting.
"Hello again, everyone!" He said cheerfully, his Zazk noticeably improved. "I hope I didn't end up looking like a liar, right? Everything's still normal, all that?"
All the zazk in the room confirmed, providing comments to their pleasant surprise as well as lingering thoughts.
"Awesome! Awesome." Ryan said jubilantly, his fleshy mouth revealing his bone-white teeth. "Now then, you're probably wondering why I'm here again, right? Well, I got another fantastic piece of news for you all! Two, actually. I'll start with the first: Zilia Water Delivery has just completed its IPO. The company is now publicly traded!"
Ghen and the others voiced their confusion, having no idea what in the name of the Queen Ryan was talking about. What was Ryan talking about? What's an IPO? And why exactly is being publicly traded such a significant thing?
"Oh, you guys don't know any of that?" Ryan asked in surprised confusion. After everybody confirmed, he let out a quick huff as he began his explanation. "Well, to begin, IPO is short for Initial Public Offering. Basically what that means is that, before today, Zilia was privately held. Only certain individuals could buy and sell shares here. But now that we're public? Literally anyone can buy and sell shares in the company, hence us being publicly traded."
"Uh, what's a share?" Ghen asked, still completely lost.
"Oh, boy..." Ryan muttered under his breath before returning to his peppy image. "To simply put it, a share is short for having a share of ownership in a company. When you buy a share, you're buying a piece of ownership, and when you sell, you're selling that amount."
"So wait...if someone buys a share, they're a co-owner then?" One of the other team coordinators asked.
"If they get enough, yeah." Ryan nodded. "You need a lot though, and that really depends on the company. If I had to give an answer though? I'd say usually you need to have a lot more shares than a lot of people combined to be officially a co-owner, but we call that being a majority shareholder."
"And how do we do that?" Ghen asked, now growing curious but still not understanding why such a concept exists.
"Simple. Buy shares." Ryan said simply. "And that leads into the second piece of awesome news. Zilia's corporate has a product in mind, a premium-package of water delivery. Instead of the usual water that you pump out, filter and ensure its potable before delivery, with the premium package, not only will you get that, but you'll also get all of the required nutrients and vitamins the zazk body requires! And they feel you guys have the best expertise and understanding to pull it off! So, here's what we're offering as a good-faith bonus: A 25% increase to your annual salary as well as being given stock options."
Ghen wasn't sure about the second part, but the salary definitely got his attention, as well as everyone else's. Although his job was considered to have a good pay, Ghen isn't going to say no to a higher salary. In fact, he's been focusing his work on getting a promotion so he can come home with even more credits in pocket.
"What do you mean by stock options?" Ghen asked after some time.
Ryan let out that smile again, the one that revealed his teeth. "If you choose to transfer over to the new group, you'll be provided 50,000 shares in Zilia itself. Why's that awesome? Let me walk you through it. Right now, our last closing price per share was 3.02 credits. And if you have 50,000 shares during that time, you're sitting on 151,000 credits, if you cash it out immediately."
"And why shouldn't we?" One of the coordinators demanded in an ambiguous tone.
"Because the price per share changes a lot." Ryan explained promptly. "When we got done with the IPO? It closed at 2.73 a share. Right now? My money's on the closing price being 2.99 a share. However, we are extremely confident in this premium package being successful. If it does? Well, my bet is that the share price will skyrocket to 3.12 a share. If you hold those shares and the price gets to what my bet was? You'll instead get 156,000 credits. Just by holding onto them, you just made an additional 5,000 credits!"
"And what if we have more shares?" Ghen questioned, now getting excited at the prospect of free money.
"Even more money!" Ryan laughed a bit. "And don't forget about dividends, but that's for another time. The premium group is gearing up right now, we just need the workforce. If any of you wants in, I'll be back tomorrow with all the forms needed to make it official. Take the day and tonight to think it over, yeah?"
Everything else melted into a blur. Ghen was practically on autopilot that whole day. Was this the secret to the humans' incredibly massive economy? How so many of them have amassed so much money out of nowhere? All you had to do was just buy this share out of a company and you get more money without even working?
As soon as he got home, Ghen knew what he was going to do during the night. After feverishly looking through the galnet, now having the human race connected to it, he looked and gathered up as many books that were translated into zazk as he could find, all talking about the human economic system. The last time he undertook such an intensive study was during his primary education phase.
And during his search, he even found forums on the galnet that were completely dedicated to the human's economy. All of them talking about strategies on what company, or stock, to pick. How to analyze a company's performance to determine if it was worth the money, or it had potential to grow over time. And that was when he discovered the humans found another method to the extremely simple buying and selling process. There were humans and some other immigrated aliens who made five times what Ghen could receive over a simple month just by watching the share prices during trading hours, and then buying and selling them at the proper times.
Ghen's mind was just absolutely flabbergasted. He thought it was just some strange concept only aliens could make, but no, not with the humans. They've practically made their economy into an art or a science. No, not even their economy. Everything. If humans can see a way to make money off of it, they'll do it. And if there isn't, they'll look for a way.
Healthcare was monetized. Galnet services, transportation, shopping at the store, they even made all of their utilities into profit-oriented companies.
And it was there that Ghen paused, the realization slamming into him. Everything was monetized. Which means, if you don't have the money for it, you're not getting it. Right? Are the humans truly that ruthless? So obsessed with making money? To the point that they're willing to deprive their own people of the absolute necessities if it's a source of credits?
Ghen let out a scoff. There's no way. Nobody is that cruel and callous. He's never been to the United Nations. He can't rely on what a bunch of random people on the galnet says. He decided that from here on out, he'll only go as far as saying that humans are a little obsessed with credits, nothing more.
...
There he was. Ryan, sitting in the office provided to him. And there was a rather large line leading to him. Looks like word got around. Although, the line wasn't as large as he expected it to be. Maybe the others thought it was just a ruse? That there's no such thing as making free money by spending it on such a made-up concept?
Ghen only knows that, if it is a ruse, it's an extremely elaborate one, where all of the humans are in on it. And he believes that's just extremely ridiculous. At the end, if he's unsure, he'll just take the transfer for the very real increase in his very real salary. And although he spent a very good chunk of the night reading up on how humans do things, he's still going to play it smart. He'll leave his 50,000 shares alone and see where it goes from there.
"Good morning sir." Ryan greeted warmly once Ghen took his seat. "Now, name please?"
"Ghen." He answered, barely keeping his nerves down.
"Alright...and what's your position at this location?" Ryan questioned after scribbling on his form.
"I monitor the pumping stations near the extraction sites." Ghen explained, staying on point. "To be more specific, I check to see if they're in need of maintenance, as well as reading the flow rate that's determined by the calculators installed there. If there's too little for what's needed, I pump out more. And if there's too much, I pull it back a little."
"Nice...and how long have you been doing it for?" Ryan complimented with a nod.
"As of tomorrow, ten years." Ghen replied, voice quickly changing to minor awe once he realized that fact.
"Excellent. Do you have anyone in mind you'd like to replace you here?" Ryan questioned after another scribble. "If you don't have anyone, you're free to say so."
Ghen took a moment to think it over. A bunch of names went through his mind, but one stuck with him. "Tilik. He's just been accepted here, but he's learned quickly. Very attentive and he always catches something subtle. I think he'll do really well in my position, even better actually."
"Tilik, really?" Ryan questioned with a little shock, going through his completed forms. Ghen felt a short sense of panic in him. Did something happen, or was Tilik actually transferring? His answer didn't take long to reveal itself. "Right, Tilik was actually one of the first people to want to transfer here. He's actually requested to be part of the testing teams specifically. Do you have a second choice?"
"Um...no, actually." Ghen replied, feeling a little ashamed. "Tilik was my only choice, to be honest."
"Hey, don't worry." Ryan said assuringly with his hands raised. "Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, there's just nobody up to snuff, right? 'Kay, so, last question. Is there anything specific you'd like to do when given the transfer?"
"If you need someone monitoring new pumps, I'd be happy to do that." Ghen stated.
"So basically same job but with better payoff, am I right?" Ryan grinned. "I hear you. Sometimes, we're just not paid enough for what we're doing. I know I think that sometimes. Uh, our secret, yeah?"
"Yeah, our secret." Ghen nodded, thinking it'd be better to have friendly relations with the human, just in case.
"Awesome. Back on topic, that's it." Ryan announced, placing the form on his pile. "We'll give you a call when you're accepted."
"Oh, uh, that's it?" Ghen questioned with a shrug in shocked surprise.
"What, expecting a question like, why do you want to transfer?" Ryan chuckled a bit as he leaned in his seat. "You can bullshit all you want, but we both know the answer. Sweet money and stock options. Not saying that's a bad answer of course, just that it's pretty obvious."
"I suppose it is." Ghen commented, realizing the point. "Also, you mentioned this...dividend? Is that for Zilia shares?"
Ryan laughed a little bit before nodding. "Yep, announced before I came here. About 0.43 per share. Want to know why that's awesome? Instead of waiting for the proper price to cash out your shares, now? The company pays you for each share you hold."
"A...Are you serious?" Ghen demanded, flabbergasted.
Ryan nodded with his now-trademark grin. "Dead serious. If you get the transfer, and get those 50,000 shares? A little head math...right, if you hold onto those, in addition to your salary, you'll now annually be paid 21,500 credits, if you keep it at 50,000 shares. Only you can decide to sell or buy shares."
Ghen just stood there silent and motionless, no idea of whether to believe it or not, to which Ryan just laughed. Once he walked out of the room, he managed to snap back to reality. Again, just focus on the very real pay-raise. He'll deal with the other parts later.
After he returned to his spot, he spotted Tizx approaching by his desk. The coordinator seems to be as casual as always.
"I saw you in that line a bit ago, Ghen." He said as he leaned on the desk. "Guess you're really taking that human's word?"
"I mean, I don't know about all this share business or what not." Ghen began with a shrug, his tone sounding a little defensive. "But I mean, having a bigger salary? Course I'm going for it when I can. And if all this magic credits turn out to be real? You realize we can live like the royal servants, right? Get the best cars, the nicest food and all that?"
"I'd be very careful, Ghen." Tizx warned in a sudden shift in tone. "Don't trust those humans. The way they just...obsess over money? Come up with more and more insane ways of getting credits? I don't know, it just makes my wings twitch."
"You think this is a bad idea?" Ghen asked with a little surprise at the change-in-demeanor.
"I think you should be careful, with the humans, and with what you're saying." Tizx replied, straightening his posture. "I wouldn't put it past those Earthmen to backstab you if it gets them a few more credits. And we all know how the royal servants get if any of us lowly commoners start thinking we can break into their circle."
"I hear you, I'll be on my guard, promise." Ghen stated with a nod. With a confirming nod of his own, Tizx returned back to his duty, walking past Ghen's desk.
Several weeks later.
Everything became so much better. Ghen got the transfer. He didn't need to relocate to a new residence either. And after he was walked through into learning how to manage his stock account, and seeing that new form of payment in his hands, he already felt as though he made the best decision. But it was only when he decided to take those shares more seriously that he became privy to what he was given. After receiving the dividend payment, and actually seeing it was real, valid credits after transferring it to his main bank account, all he could describe was the most powerful high he ever felt.
While his first thoughts were to buy himself a royalty-class car, some nicer furnishings for his home, or even a better home entirely, he ended up going the smarter route.
After going back to his stock account, he discovered that Zilia's shares rose to about 3.22 credits in price. Knowing that this was the easiest money he could ever make, he took all of his dividend earnings and bought more shares in Zilia, bringing him to owning 56,891.
And from his new regional coordinator, a human named Dylan, tomorrow is the grand release of the premium package. For just a monthly rate of 14.99 credits, the tap water will now include a sizeable portion of all nutrients and vitamins required in the zazk physiology. Still, Ghen has to admit. He's not entirely sure why anybody would want such a thing, if they'd even go for it. But, as long as he's practically swimming in easy credits, he won't pay much attention to it.
And just like when he was intensively studying the basics of how the human economy worked, he barely got any sleep. His mind was constantly thinking about the things he would buy. Or rather, what other stocks to put his credits into. Even now he can still hardly believe it. Just spend your money on some, make-believe thing and, if you wait long enough and picked the right stock, you'll get more than you spent back?
His mind even wandered onto what human colonies, or even their homeworld, Earth, was like. If everybody was making so much money, what kind of things would they offer? What kind of ridiculous service or product or item can you get? He's even debating on joining some forum and just asking around. Explain how he's new to how humans do things and was wondering what he should expect if he's successful.
By the time he felt like he can go to sleep, the binary-stars of the system were rising from the horizon. After getting out of his bed and changing to clean clothes, his mind returned onto what-ifs.
What if he bought better clothes? He's had his eye on that human brand of luxury clothes, Tessuti di Venezia, that's been all the rage amongst the royal servants. Or maybe he can go on vacation and just check out Earth for real?
It was a short ride to his workplace from his home. After getting stuff his stuff and preparing to walk through the doors, he heard the roar of a car grow louder. When he looked, he saw the sleekest and quite possibly the coolest looking car he's ever seen. Each time the engine revved it would startle him, both from how harsh it sounded as well as just how intense it sounded. And after it parked, he saw the doors pop out and then slide along the body back. And there, he saw Tilik, the seat literally turning and extending out a bit before he got off.
As soon as he saw Ghen staring, he struck a rather prideful pose after putting on his lab coat and then sauntered over to Ghen.
"What do you think?" Tilik said, without any doubt inviting praise or compliments.
"D...Did you actually buy that?" Ghen asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the car.
"You're Queens-damn right I did!" Tilik laughed happily. "Thing takes off like a starship, has temperature-controlled seating, all-in-one center console, barely any bouncing on rough roads. Hoof, best decision I've ever made!"
"How much did that thing cost?" Ghen asked after letting out an incredulous laugh.
"Five million credits." Tilik replied, earning an absolutely shocked stare from Ghen. "And thanks to the incredible salary I have, in addition to all these shares and dividends, I'll pay back the credits I borrowed in no time!"
Ghen needed a few moments before he could speak again. "All I've been doing is buying more shares."
Tilik laughed and then patted the now-envious monitor's back. "Smart man. I got a little carried away, yeah, but not anymore. Any spending credits I got, going right back to investing. That's what it's called right, investing?"
"Yeah, it is." Ghen nodded, feeling a fire light up in his thorax. "And also? Today's the day that the premium water thing is being released. Here's hoping it starts out well, right?"
"Oh it will, trust me." Tilik chuckled as they both began making their way inside the workplace. "Lots of research, lots of study. By the Queen, so much of it...it'll make your head spin."
And after hearing that, Ghen had a moment of realization. "Hey, Tilik? How did you get such a nice position anyways? Weren't you just studying under me before the humans came along?"
Tilik let out a sigh after opening the door. "I'll be honest, I never wanted your job. Not because it's boring or terrible, just...I didn't suffer so many sleepless nights in the science academy just to be a glorified button pusher. This is what I've always wanted. Doing science, solving problems rather than just applying the solution, you know?"
"Wait, you got an academic certificate?" Ghen questioned, completely floored. "How did you end up beneath me then? I should've been answering to you!"
"Simple." Tilik gave a heavier sigh. "A royal servant was asking for the same job I was. Take a guess at who got it."
"Ouch. Good thing the humans came along when they did, yeah?" Ghen was taken aback. He never heard anything about a servant taking a job at his place. "Looks like you're proving yourself to be well suited."
"By the Queen, of course I am." Tilik nodded. "Like I said, I nearly broke my wings through so many nights, got certified top of my class, all just to get pushed to the dirt because someone who was born into a particular family wanted the same thing I did? I know I'm smarter than any of those empty-skull servants back in the Center. I know that, whatever, uh...corporate? Yeah, whatever corporate wants out of science, I will xeek give it to them."
"Well, let me know how things go in the lab." Ghen said, admiring his drive as they neared the main office floor. "Because this is where the button pusher needs to go."
Tilik let out a laugh as he nodded. "Hey, how about we meet up at Queen's Fine Eatery tonight. I'll pay, yeah?"
Ghen, at first, wanted to admonish him for choosing such an outrageously expensive place to go. But he quickly realized that, he truly is good for it, thanks to the humans. "Well, hey, if you're paying for it."
...
It was a fantastic opening. After being told what news sites to keep in mind for stocks, he first heard it from Dylan, and then got more detail on Business Today. There was such a massive demand right from the start that Zilia needs to increase extraction just to meet it. But what really got his attention was the effect it had. Zilia Water Delivery's share price just blasted off. After seemingly holding steady at about 3.15, by the time he got home and logged onto his account, it already reached 7.04 a share. The calculator on his account told him that he got a value-gain of 54.26%.
Never in his entire life had he felt such...joy. With all of the shares he currently has? He's sitting at 400,512.64 credits. He knows that it is woefully pathetic compared to what the royal servants have just in their pockets, but the fact that he has such money, just by owning some intangible concept? Why even work at Zilia? Why doesn't he just sit at home, figure out what companies to invest in and make his money that way?
What's even the point in working a real job, getting a pathetic pay when you can just take the money you have, determine where to spend it, and get triple back? All just sitting on your wings at home, researching?
He was so wrapped up in his excited high that he completely forgot he was going to meet Tilik at Queen's. After quickly and haphazardly putting on his nicer clothes, he got to the place only a few minutes late.
Tilik was there by the guide, no doubt having been waiting for him. As soon as he strode up, Tilik's wings stiffned out some. No doubt he must've seen the numbers as well.
"I can see your wings, Ghen." Tilik began with an excited chuckle. "Made some serious credits?"
Ghen let out an incredulous scoff, struggling to find the words for a moment. "Incredible. All I'm going to say."
"Likewise." Tilik chortled some before nodding to the table guide. "All here. Table please?"
"Right this way, sir." The guide said politely. It was a short walk, travelling between round tables. The vast majority were populated by zazk, but Ghen was surprised at seeing a few humans here as well. No doubt corporate workers checking out the local food. He did spot them having bowls filled with some kind of mass. Some were brown, others white with what looks to be black specks on them.
They arrived at their table. A rather nice one, affording a view out the windows into the busy colony streets. Once Tilik and Ghen settled in, the guide handed out the menus.
"May I suggest our rather popular option for tonight?" The guide began. "Human ice-cream. Ingredients sourced from Earth itself. Very cold, but incredibly sweet, and coming in many flavors. The most popular amongst us is called vanilla-bean. The vanilla itself soaks in the cream for much of the process, and then the innards sprinkled on top of it near the end. Rumor has it that the Queen herself has demanded personal shipments of such a treat straight from the home of vanilla, an island on Earth named Madagascar."
Ghen didn't even spare a single thought. "Vanilla bean ice cream then, please."
"Same." Tilik seconded when the guide glanced to him. With a slight bow, the guide proceeded to ferry their orders to the kitchen. Thankfully it was just a short wait before the guide returned, carrying a large plate containing bowls of ice cream. Ghen could feel the saliva on his mandibles as the bowl was placed before them. He could just feel the cold air around that glistening mass of sugary goodness. The white snow decorated with the black dots of vanilla bean.
Once the guide left them, Tilik and Ghen both dived in at the same time. As soon as the ice cream entered his mouth, touched his tongue, he exploded in incomprehensible bliss. The sweetness, the smooth and creamy mass, even the taste of vanilla he wasn't sure about was just absolutely delightful. It was so overwhelming that his entire body limped, slumping in his seat as he was forced to ride on the surging tide of joy and happiness sweeping over him.
Tilik was no different. He too was taken completely by the effects of the ice cream, his wings fluttering some against the seat. Ghen could hear some noise. It was the humans they passed by. They were chuckling, grinning, and glancing over at them discreetly. Unlike the two zazk, the humans seemingly just enjoyed the ice cream as if it was just another nice dessert to them. Or perhaps they couldn't allow themselves to succumb to the high?
And as soon as the wave of indescribable bliss and happiness subsided, Ghen knew. He just knew. This was the life. He wanted this. The ice cream was just the beginning. So many things denied because he didn't have the credits, or worse, not the blood. Because he was just a drone in the great Collective, even if he had the credits, he wasn't allowed because of what caste he was born in. That fire that sparked in him when he saw Tilik's new car? It exploded into a raging firestorm.
And when looking into Tilik's eyes, Ghen could see the same. He was on the same page as Ghen was. Both of them were sold. They have the credits. And the humans? If you can pay for it, they'll never discriminate. All they cared about is if you have the money.
And by the Queen, Ghen and Tilik will endeavor to amass as much credits as physically possible.
The rest of the night faded into a blur. A blur that evokes only one thing. Bliss. It was only when he walked through the door of his pathetic hut that Ghen's mind snapped back to focus. His mandibles felt sticky. And he felt a weight in his stomach. How much ice cream did he eat? Whatever it was, he ate such volume that the lower-section of his throax extended and rounded out, visible even under his shirt. He felt something odd in his pocket. It was a receipt. 43,000 credits for ten bowls of vanilla bean ice cream. Was that ten bowls for both of them? Or individually? Ghen didn't care. He's good for it.
Returning back to his calculator, he acted upon the decision that he had made at that eatery. He's acquiring as many books about investing and stock trading as he could find, frequent and study all the discussions and arguments presented by other like-minded individuals such as he, all to ensure he can live the good life. And he had a very good feeling Tilik was doing the exact same thing.
Well, first, the gurgling in his stomach, as well as the feeling of something rising demanded his attention. Looks like he'll need to take the night off to let his stomach get back to normal.
Three Years Later.
Ghen looked out beyond the horizon, seeing the colony that he grew up in. On the far side was where his old house was. With only a simple robe on, made from the finest silk from Earth's nation-state of China, he relaxed in his seat.
It was a long road. Stockpiling credits from pre-existing investments and from subsequent pays, he and Tilik made it. From having only half a million in assets and cash, now transformed to over eight-hundred million. And now, his call contracts on American Interstellar? They've just announced a breakthrough in their next generation of warp drives, reducing the speed coefficient even further, resulting in far faster travel. And with that, their stock price climbed sharply.
Another hundred million credits in the bank. Soon, very soon, he and Tilik are about to become the galaxy's first zazk billionares. But that's not enough. There are many humans who are billionares. Only those he can count on one hand are considered trillionares. He's going to break into that circle. He and Tilik.
Looking beyond the colony, he saw the abandoned building of the workplace he transferred to when the humans arrived. Turns out, the reason for such a high demand was that the humans also slipped in sugar to the tap water. As soon as that broke, many influential royal servants demanded investigations and outright banning of Terran Galactic Company's influence over the former government division. Zilia's stock price plummeted. But thanks to an advance tip from his human coordinator, Dylan, he and Tilik made a put contract. And that's where they struck gold, as the human saying goes.
Dylan warned that if they were citizens of the United Nations, they'd be investigated and convicted for insider trading. But, since they weren't, and the Collective were only just introduced to capitalism, there's no risk at all. Now the colony is going through a withdrawal phase, Zilia has been dissolved and reformed back as a government division and are currently at work re-establishing the standard, plain water delivery.
"Well, shit." Tilik muttered as he walked up to Ghen's side, taking well to human speech. "Looks like you win. American Interstellar's announcement really was a good thing. There goes a million credits. Ah well, the Royal Shipyards will make it back for me soon."
"Oh? Did they just go corporate?" Ghen asked curiously, glancing to Tilik.
"Hell yeah they did." Tilik chuckled, sitting down. "Queen and her retard servants fought it hard, but Royal Shipyards is now officially a human-style corporation. And, to a surprise to all the xenophobes in the galaxy, they're already being offered contracts for ship production. That'll raise the stock price pretty good."
"What's that human word...?" Ghen muttered, already having a reply in mind. "Dick? Yeah, calls or suck my dick, Tilik."
Tilik roared in laughter. "Already made them. Forty credits a share by this day next month."
"I have half a mind to go thirty." Ghen chuckled. "Either way, until then, I heard from Dylan that he knows a guy who knows several prime human women who happen to be into zazk."
"You're interested in women?" Tilik said as his wings fluttered. "With how often you tell me to suck you off, I'd have thought differently."
"Oh, I always thought it was you who was into men." Ghen responded dryly. "Just wanted to be a good friend, you know? Considering how you never seem to make it past, Hey sweet thing, I'm rich you know."
"Oh, go fuck yourself." Tilik countered with a little laugh. After he stopped, wings stiffened, he looked to Ghen. "So, know any royal servants we can put the squeeze on for more revenue streams?"
"I got just the one." Ghen nodded, sitting up. "Fzik. He's been fighting to control the ice cream trade. Worried it's a corrupting influence. Got done talking with the human CEO of Nestle earlier. If we clear the way, he'll know how to squeeze a little more gains in stock price when he makes the announcement."
Tilik's wings stiffened even more, signaling his approval. "Alright, time to throw some credits around, yeah?"
AN: Sorry for the period of no updates. College is starting up, lots of stuff to clear and work out. Not sure why but I just got a bug up my butt about incorporating money and the stock market into a short. Here it is. Sorry if it seems abrupt, character limit fast approaching. Let me know how you guys think about it!

Hi everyone,
I've been passionate about sandbox games and how they are designed into a functioning coherent environment. I developed most of this passion in Eve and served as a CSM last year. I'm hopeful that DU will be the future of sandbox sci-fi games. I wanted to note down how I think NQ can better some of the game's most important aspects. Some of their staff probably read here too. The forums have this "one idea per thread" rule, so I decided to put them here. Here are some problems, and how I would solve them.
PvP
1) Cube Meta: Need viability for non-cubes.

By small changes in the math, it should be possible to make drag matter more in atmo, not for small cross sectioned ships, but for the ones with bigger CS.
A developmentally costlier option would be letting players edit the "area" that a core unit provides. PvP rewards smaller core units so it becomes important to cram all the elements into small areas. That promotes the cubes. If we could edit the area into a 3d rectangle (total area remains the same, just changes shape), that'd let us to make ships that aren't cubes and cram the same amount of stuff.
The best option would be making cross section matter in PvP. Ideally (not sure if servers can handle this), weapons should miss more if target ships have a narrow cross section from the attacker's POV. If servers can't calculate relative POV's, then an easier way to implement cross section into PvP is using the smallest CS of a ship as a coefficient in the miss chance.

2) Small vs Big Ships: Need drastic balance.

The lock range differentiation wrt target core unit size needs to go. It's keeping everyone from even thinking about M or L core PvP ships. Eve has this mechanic entirely right. Larger ships should be able to lock and fire at longer ranges. They should just miss more.
Small ships should have tracking and lock time advantages. Tracking should matter to the extent that if I am going 90 degrees wrt a big ship in a smaller core, even at ranges like 100km, that should make me easier to miss. After all those are the ranges most of the combat happens.
Some sort of limitation to cramming L guns to small constructs is needed. If "power" isn't going toward that direction, NQ should just make M/L gun models way larger (and make them slower-turning too that'd align with the above recommendation).
More tanking advantage to larger ships is needed. Perhaps weapons tear through too many voxels at the same time. Or voxels should be overall less heavy so we can use more of them.
Instead, the larger cores actually have speed advantage where they shouldn't. This is because you can cram way more Delta V in an M/L core compared to how much you can cram in an S/XS core. Sure the reactivation time is a good balancing factor but it's not enough if the large ships can accelerate and decelerate at way higher Gs. Again, one easy option would be drastically increasing the size of L/XL engine models to match the proportions of area differences among cores.

3) Non-Consensual PvP:
The current non-consensual PvP is very binary and unsustainable. If you can find some people careless enough to go in a direct path between two planets with no radars, you kill them. People will wake up (or they already did) to this very fast, plus warp drives will become abundant, and pretty soon no such PvP will be possible. Meanwhile, if you are a new player with no knowledge and you get caught to pirates like this, you basically have zero options to protect yourself.

For Offense: Steal warp bubbles (disrupts your warp path), webs (slows down your target ship), combat probes (detects position of a target ship) from Eve. They'll be great additions.
Create rewards in space for which people will be willing to take risks. Asteroids/asteroid mining is supposed to function like this. But depending on implementation they can either become monopolized or just too abundant/wide to go and find any targets in.
Hope eventually stealth gets added. It's easy to imagine it as radar immunity (until close proximity). But it should have drastic downsides.
For Defense: Combat probes can actually be used defensively too.
Some sort of "evasive maneuver". Perhaps a module that provides a quick random change in the ship's direction but not the speed that the offender needs to adapt.
Some sort of temporary damage mitigation solution.

Economy
1) There is no need to trade.

People don't use the markets too much. Every org has a mining/industry wing and everything is made in-house. I think this problem arises from the fact that the only scalable and reliable way to make money is mining/industry (maybe add logistics but that's dependent on the first two). Sure you got some people with eccentric ventures and ship developers but you can't scale that across hundreds of people. Since you have to have a factory to earn money, why wouldn't you scale it so you make everything and are self-sufficient? Now, if there was a plethora of other moneymaking activities in the game, then we'd see a way more an Eve-like market and specialization of activities. Imho this is hard to achieve without NPCs. It's really hard to imagine a functioning sandbox without the bottom layer of the ecosystem. NPCs to a sandbox MMO are what grass/vegetation is to an ecosystem. Without them there are no missions, nothing to kill and earn money from in a multitude of ways. No reward that people in adequate ships can go and chase, and become prey to other people like pirates. I kinda just wish NQ had 3 more years/funding to develop the game. The Minecraft/Factoria will be attractive for only so long if there is no meaningful economy, trade, differentiation, and things to do with things you make. Talents seem to be made in a way to foster differentiation, so maybe that's where we'll see some improvement. But game design needs to change.

2) Resource Hexes are too disposable.

The game has a great digging system. We create these elaborate mines. We could voxelize them and make wonders with them. Instead, we abandon them in 2 hours. With the territory warfare, under current ore system, the only place that'll be worth attacking is the HQ of a corp with the stashes and factories. And I'm pretty sure most people will move those to the Sanctuary once the territory warfare hits. Resource hexes would have been great places to fight over. But even meganodes last just a day as of this point.
In an ideal design, ore should have been way less scattered across different hexes. And once it's found in a hex, it should have lasted a long time, so there are these valuable resource mines to fight over. The pace of mining is actually perhaps fine. But there are lots of other ways to achieve "long lasting resource mines". Like going deeper could "destabilize" a hex so people would have to put down units that take a week to anchor. And bettemore abundant ore could have been found in deeper attitudes. This is just one way on top off my head.

3) No mining robots please.

Ditch this idea that was mentioned months ago if it's still in the cooking. You don't want to delegitimize the human time spent on the only meaningful resource gathering activity in the game.

Overall I have great hopes but also concerns about the game. One major concern/test was whether the server tech will hold. It has improved a lot and that's great news for NQ. The next concern is whether NQ is spread too thin. The game's development was probably too early to commit to a non-wipe environment, and NQ might be underestimating how much it lacks vs an actually functioning ecosystem. Not to mention customer support is pretty nonexistent (god forbid you have a problem that's beyond the Discord staff's abilities). People will get bored of cool looking handcrafted ships pretty fast unless they have meaningful stuff to do in them very soon.
Let's see how things develop.
o7

I did not think we'd get here. COVID cases are in the single digits, and many cases are off-campus (https://health.gatech.edu/coronavirus/health-alerts). Test positivity rates are incredibly low (https://gatech-covid-tracker.com/). I think we can say that Georgia Tech has navigated through it's first wave of COVID cases.

How did this happen? I'm not an epidemiologist, and even Dr. Fauci himself wouldn't be able to give you a 100% correct answer, because nobody can give you a 100% correct answer - there are too many unknowns. But, we can look at a few factors.

1.) Modified herd immunity threshold. Immunity is likely a real phenomena with COVID-19. Yes, there are now 7 confirmed cases of reinfection, but immunity is not a binary thing. It is not as if every person infected with COVID will either be immune, or they will be as unprotected as the rest of us. It's likely that the majority of COVID cases will gain some sort of immunity, and some will gain no immunity. For the sake of simplicity, let's just assume everyone infected with COVID at our campus has immunity.
Georgia Tech has, in total, around 900 positive COVID cases. There are ~14,000 people on campus if you wildly extrapolate from a few surveys taken on this subreddit - if anyone could find where the actual number is, it would be helpful. Additionally, around 5-10% of the US was probably infected in the original Feb-March surge, which would be 700-1400 people. This brings us to 1600-2300 immune people in a population of 14000.
The herd immunity threshold is given by (1-1/R0). Uncontrolled, the R0 for SARS-CoV2 is ~4. This means roughly 75% of the populace must be infected to gain "true immunity" - IE, you can do whatever you want, no distancing, no masking, etc. Obviously this is a bad idea. But, we aren't letting SARS-Cov2 spread uncontrollably. Mask compliance is high, people are trying to distance, people are washing their hands more often, etc. R0 is a function of environmental parameters as well - increasing distancing and hygiene decrease your R0. So what is the R0 with distancing and masking? That's a big question, but estimates from New York and Western Europe say it was somewhere around 0.8-1.1. A college campus will have a higher R0 than a typical state or nation, so we'll shift this up to 1.1-1.3.

This brings our herd immunity threshold to anywhere between 9-23%. We currently have in the range of 11.5%-16%, and some cases on campus may have gone totally undetected. Here's a twitter thread by an MIT data scientist if you want to read more about the "modified herd immunity" phenomena.

2.) The people who took the most risks have already gotten COVID. Anecdotally, and logically, this makes sense. People going to bars, frat parties, etc have already been infected, and that was our "first wave". Unfortunately, I don't know how to quantify this in any meaningful way, but it is probably a factor.

3.) Behavior change. People could've seen the surge in cases and decided to be more careful - get tested weekly, avoid indoor dining, go to the CRC early in the morning when it's less crowded rather than in the middle of the day, etc. This would lower R0 as well and aid with point 1, although again, I don't know how to meaningfully quantify this. But it is a possible factor.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you made it through the above, congratulations.

The question now is what Tech should do. Frankly, I feel like I am wasting both money and time this semester. This is unavoidable, and not Tech's fault or USG's fault - just a virus doing it's thing. But, just as governments - those of New York, China, South Korea, Germany, etc - gradually eased back on restrictions as the first curve was crushed, I believe Tech can and should do the same. We should not throw the floodgates open and let all hell break loose - but I think we can slowly loosen the screws in a manner that improves educational experiences, and in a way that avoids a second wave. Remote learning sucks. At least for intro classes, there is far better free material on Coursera - made by people who know how to deliver content online and who have been doing it for years - as opposed to professors who were thrown into this a few months ago.

As we all know, many "hybrid" courses are pretty much all online. I'd suggest the OPTION - for both professors and students, mandates are a god awful idea - to have more in-person hybrid sections. This won't give me my money's worth - but it'll give us something. As of now, I have three hybrid classes - and yet have not had a single in person class. These classes can be conducted in a safe, distanced/masked manner, as to keep our R0 low and keep reaping the rewards of the "modified herd immunity" discussed above. This might be difficult to implement in the middle of this semester, but I think it can be implemented next semester, in the absence of mass vaccination until (in the most optimistic case) February-March.

Other things include opening up lounges in dorms. Also, I know visiting other dorms is technically banned, but everyone I know is ignoring that rule. Many people aren't even aware of that rule - might as well just get rid of it if compliance is close to nil. But, I'd prefer more in-person classes above all else.

This was a long post. Ultimately, COVID is a game of trades - we could lock everyone in their homes until there's a vaccine, but that would destroy our society. We could let everyone run wild until there's a vaccine - again, that would destroy our society. It's a multivariate optimization problem, where we are trying to maximize safety, education, and the student experience. I'm just a dude trying to help us find that maximum.

TLDR: COVID-19 first wave beaten due to number of factors. More in-person classes would be nice.

TLDR: FOLO out of $100,500 in potential profit. Learned to let my winners run and BUD trade as example!
Hey all. First of all, I just want to throw out a disclaimer that I am by no mean an experienced, professional trader. In fact, I made my first option trade a little over a year ago and only started to take this seriously about 6 months ago. I recently hit a milestone in my pursuit of trading as a career so I decided that I would share some of the experiences I’ve gained in hope that maybe someone that’s looking to pursue this seriously can take from my limited experience to not make the same mistakes I made. It’s been a rough 2020 and hopefully by helping each other we’ll pull through this horrible year together.
I don’t know how some of you guys are but to me the fear of losing out (FOLO) on a trade that you’re in is actually worse than the fear of missing out (FOMO) on a trade that you’ve missed due to a ridiculous run. The single most haunting FOLO trade I was involved in was during the week that TSLA had its crazy melt up in February 2020.
The TSLA trade:

Robinhood Trading History

Trading Journal TSLA200207C900 Trade Flow

TSLA200207C900 Chart

I woke up to a notification from Robinhood that TSLA made a 10% pre-market run the morning of Monday, February 3, 2020. So the FOMO in me scrambled to login to Robinhood and scrolled through the option chain for a cheap weekly option. Decided on the $900 strike expiring that Friday and bought 10 option contracts at .11 per contract with a net debit of $110. The rest is pretty murky from memory but I remember within a matter of minutes, the option value went up to .29, then .35 then it quickly pulled back to .28 back to .25 and I frantically sold my option contracts for .23 which netted me a $230 credit. I made $120 in a matter of minutes and I was damn proud of myself. I spent the next few hours watching the stock run up and up and up by then I didn’t want to get back in because I needed to get ready for work and wouldn’t be able to monitor the action to sell it at the “right price”. I didn’t want to spend more money on another FOLO trade and risk it running back down and losing all the money that I had just made. So I begrudgingly got ready for work that evening. The next day, TSLA ran all the way past $900 to make all time high and I was stuck at work feeling like a dumbass. That option contract in particular ended that Tuesday trading day at 100.5 per contract or in theory I would have made $100,500. In theory and hindsight is always 20/20**.**
What I learned from this trade was that FOLO is real and you’ll never be able to sell at the top. In hindsight, I could have just set a GTC sell price and be content with the profit I made or not.
Months later, once I started to take trading more seriously: I listened to podcasts, read all the market wizards books, read the story of Jesse Livermore, watched various trading YouTube channels and compiled all of that experience together to apply them to my trades. The single most pivotal idea that I gathered from all of these experiences was that trading decisions should not be based on a single binary decision to buy or sell but rather it should be framed around the idea of “how do I extract the most value from this particular trade” (Let your winners run). I use this idea every day to help me structure most of my trades that I also track obsessively to help me make decisions that would optimize profit potential while limiting the risk of FOLO. This leads me to the BUD trade
The BUD trade:

TOS BUD Trade History

Trading Journal BUD200918C55 Trade Flow

This is the trade where I applied what I learned to manage the trade from beginning to end. However, at the very end I still managed a fumble and lost out on a potential gain of approximately $3300 had I followed my trading plan.

The opening trade was simple, I was looking for any companies that would benefit most from COVID yet still hadn’t recovered like most of the other companies at the time. I chose BUD because of these criterias and the strike price was about what it was trading at prior to COVID. Note: I was still learning and had not really learned to make trading decisions based on the Greeks. The trade was purely speculative along with the strike. However, I did start to track certain data for every at the point the trade is made for future analysis.
Early June most companies had major run ups and BUD was also one of the companies that benefited. Price improvement was up about 14% which consequently led the option prices to rise to about 2.5 - 3. However, I did not want to close out the trade and miss out on subsequent run-ups. I didn’t want to just sell half. I wanted to be in the entire trade the entire time without sacrificing too much profit gained. So, I sold the 60 strike to essentially convert my original call to a debit spread while at the same time I was able to collect $2180 which was approximately $630 in profit. This allowed me to stay in the trade and should BUD continue its run I would still have a maximum profit potential of 5000 remaining to collect.
By July BUD was ranging around $53 and so I decided to buy back the September 60 strike and sell the August 55 strike which converted my original trade to a Calendar spread. This allowed me to net an additional $700 in profit.
Mid July, I saw that BUD was still trading under $55 so I decided to sell 5 contracts of Credit Spread to capitalize on the lack of movement. The worst thing that could have happened was that it would skyrocket and I would have lost $600 from the original trade overall. Thankfully, it didn’t and I was able to buy the credit spread back for $10. Which yielded an additional $150 in profit.
Finally by the expiration date BUD was trading around $55 and I had to close out the trade or risk assignment on my short strike in August. I waited the entire day and frantically sold the calendar spread to essentially close out the entire trade which yielded an additional $1700.
1. Where I messed up was that I should have bought back the August 55 short strike and sold the September 60 strike for a small $150 additional profit. This would have converted the trade back to a 55/60 debit spread. In addition, this would have allowed me to remain in the trade for at least a couple of more weeks in case of a run up and I would still be able to collect the full remaining $5000. Last I checked, the debit spread would have sold for $3.75 which would have yielded $3750 instead of the $1700 from closing the trade as a calendar spread.
2. Another step for those that really want to stay til the end is to convert the debit spread into a credit spread to gain a larger profit if you believe that BUD will pull back under $60.

So, hopefully my experience helps those that are still learning to trade like I am. I know trading isn’t easy and it's all fun and game when we see people post massive gains on their YOLO trades. Just remember, for every trade with massive gains, there’s someone on the other side experiencing the same frustration for his/her massive losses. Good luck, everyone.

Hello Reddit!
My name is Keenan Dakota, I have lived at Twin Oaks, an income-sharing, intentional community in rural Virginia for 36 years, since 1983. I grew up in northern Virginia, my parents worked in government. I went to George Mason University where I studied business management. I joined Twin Oaks when I was 23 because I lost faith in the underpinnings of capitalism and looking for a better model. I have stayed because over time capitalism hasn't looked any better, and its a great place to raise children. While at Twin Oaks, I raised two boys to adulthood, constructed several buildings, managed the building maintenance program, have managed some of the business lines at different times.
Proof this is me. A younger photo of me at Twin Oaks. Here is a video interview of me about living at Twin Oaks. Photo of Twin Oaks members at the 50th anniversary.
Some things that make life here different from the mainstream:

The labor system - all work is considered equal, whether you are earning income for the community or not. Cooking/cleaning counts the same as planning the annual budget. Also, you don't have to do the same job all week - your day can be a mix of indoor and outdoor work, you have freedom to arrange your day, and you can gain skills in a wide array of tasks and trades.
Non-gender binary, queer and trans people are very welcome at Twin Oaks. People introduce themselves with their pronouns and a significant number of our members go by they/them.
Verbal consent culture is very important here. It is not okay to touch anyone without asking.
Nudity and partial nudity is allowed in some parts of the farm, such as in the sauna, swimming hole, on the hiking trails, etc.
Our social norms prohibit using phones in common areas when other members are present, with the exception of a few cafe-style spaces.
Every day we provide a home-cooked, plant-based lunch and dinner with options for special diets including vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and no onions & garlic.
Raising kids here is easier. Some of the time that parents spend raising their children counts towards their labor quota. Many of the kids are home-schooled or "unschooled", and they spend more time outside than in front of a screen. The kids have no problem passing the state's annual standardized test to move onto the next grade level.
We have a shared clothing resource called Commie Clothes, which is like a free thrift store. Borrow something and then return it dirty, and it gets washed and re-hung up.

More about Twin Oaks:
Twin Oaks is an intentional community in rural central Virginia, made up of around 90 adult members and 15 children. Since the community's beginning in 1967, our way of life has reflected our values of cooperation, sharing, nonviolence, equality, and ecology.
We do not have a group religion; our beliefs are diverse. We do not have a central leader; we govern ourselves by a form of democracy with responsibility shared among various managers, planners, and committees. We are self-supporting economically, and partly self-sufficient. We are income-sharing. Each member works 42 hours a week in the community's business and domestic areas. Each member receives housing, food, healthcare, and personal spending money from the community.
We have open-slots and are accepting applications for new members. All prospective new members must participate in a three-week visitor program. Applicants to join must leave for 30 days after their visit while the community decides on their application.
We offer a $5 tour on Saturdays of the property, starting in March. More info here.
Ask me anything!
TL;DR: Opted out of the rat-race and retired at 23 to live in the woods with a bunch of hippies.
EDIT: Thanks for all the questions! If you want some photos of the farm, you can check out our instagram.
EDIT2: I'm answering new, original questions again today. Sort by new and scroll through the trolls to see more of my responses.
EDIT3: We DO have food with onion & garlic! At meals, there is the regular food, PLUS alternative options for vegan/vegetarian/no gluten/no onions & garlic.
EDIT4: Some of you have been asking if we are a cult. No, we are not. We don't have a central leader or common religion. Here are characteristics of cults, FYI.
Edit: Yikes! Did I mention that I am 60? Reddit is not my native land. I don't understand the hostile, angry and seemingly deliberately obtuse comments on here. And Soooo many people!
Anyway, to the angry crowd: Twin Oaks poses no threat to anyone, we are 100 people out of a country of 330 million? Twin Oaks reached its current maximum population about 25 years ago, so not growing fast, or at all. Members come and go from Twin Oaks. There are, my guess is, 800 ex-members of Twin Oaks, so we aren't holding on to everyone who joins—certainly, no one is held against their will.
Twin Oaks is in rural Virginia, but we really aren't insular, isolated, gated or scared of the mainstream culture. We have scheduled tours of the whole property. Local government officials, like building inspectors, come to Twin Oaks with some frequency. People at Twin Oaks like to travel and manage to do so. I personally, know lots of people in the area, I am also a runner, so I leave the property probably every day. There are lots of news stories about Twin Oaks over the years. If you are worried about Twin Oaks, maybe you could go read what the mainstream (and alternative) media have to say.
Except about equality Twin Oaks is not particularly dogmatic about anything. (I know some people at Twin Oaks will disagree with that statement.) Twin Oaks isn't really hypocritical about Capitalism, Socialism, or Communism, we just don't identify those concepts as something that we are trying to do. Twin Oaks is not trying to DO Communism, we are trying to live a good life with equally empowered citizens—which has led us to try to maintain economic parity among members. Communists also do that. In making decisions in the community I don't remember anyone trying to support or oppose an idea due to excess or insufficient Communism, Socialism, or Capitalism. In most practical senses those words aren't useful and don't mean anything. So, no need to hammer Twin Oaks for being insufficiently pure, or hypocritical.
Twin Oaks is very similar to the Kibbutz in Israel. If anyone has concerns or questions about what would happen if places like Twin Oaks suddenly became much larger and more common, read about the history of the Kibbutz, which may have grown to possibly 1% of the population at their largest? There was and is no fight with Capitalism from the kibbutz—or with the State. My point is—not a threat.
To the other people who think that the ideas of Twin Oaks are interesting, I want you to know it is possible to live at Twin Oaks (or places like Twin Oaks) and happily live ones entire life. There is no central, critical failing that makes the idea not work. And plenty of upside. But do lots of research first. Twin Oaks maintains a massive web site. (Anyway, it takes a long time to read.)
But what I would like to see is more people starting more egalitarian, income-sharing communities. I think that there is a need for a community that is designed and built by families, and who also share income, and provide mutual support with labor and money. If you love this concept, maybe consider gathering together other people and starting your own.
Ideologically speaking:
-Ecology: the best response to ecological problems is for humans to use fewer resources. The easiest way to use fewer resources is to share resources. Living communally vastly cuts down on resource use without reducing quality of life.
-Equality: ideologically speaking, most people accept the idea that all humans have equal rights, but most social structures operate in ways that are fundamentally unequal. If we truly believe in equality then we ought to be willing to put our bodies where our ideology is. In a truly equal world, the issues of sexism and racism and all other forms of discrimination would, essentially, not exist.
-Democracy: Twin Oaks uses all manner of decision-making models and tools to try to include everyone and to keep people equally empowered. There is no useful word for this. We do use a majority vote sometimes, as a fallback. But sometimes we use consensus. We sometimes use sociocracy (dynamic governance). The word "Isocracy" (decision-making among equals), would be useful to describe Twin Oaks' decision-making model, but Lev in Australia has written an incomprehensible "definition" on Wikipedia, that he keeps changing back when someone corrects it.
-Happiness: The overarching goal of all ideologies is to make people happy, right? I mean, isn't it? Capitalism is based upon the belief that motivation is crucial to human aspiration and success (and therefore more happiness). Under Capitalism, equality is a detriment because it hinders motivation (less fear of failure, or striving for success). Twin Oaks believes that humans are happier when they are equal, and equally empowered. So the place to start up the ladder of happiness is to first make everyone equal. Well, Twin Oaks is mainly still working on that first step.
EDIT5: Some have asked about videos - here are links to documentaries about Twin Oaks by BBC, VICE and RT.

Lil intro:
So Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling is an indie game, put together by Panamanian dev duo Moonsprout Games, to follow the legacy of the original two Paper Mario games. Now as someone who would name Paper Mario 2 in my top 5 games since it came out in 2004, I'm happy to report Bug Fables is an excellent successor to that legacy and the few negative comparisons that can be made seem to me to be the result of the difference in scale of available resources between Nintendo and Moonsprout.
The prologue and first chapter introduce the explorers league and the three main characters who enlist together to further their own goals, which are given time to gestate while the world and characters are established. The player characters, a standard trio of an honour-bound knight, a feisty rogue, and a dry humoured, aloof mage, are tasked with adventuring across the lands of Bugaria to collect MacGuffins by the Ant Queen's royal blade Maki. This typical plotline is interrupted and diverted in interesting ways, and the trio of different attitudes keep the dialogue fresh. It's especially nice to see the trio's dynamic shifting as they grow closer. All this to say the writing is about on par with Paper Mario 2, what it lacks in (comparative!) charm it makes up with in coherence.
The better:
There's a lot in this game that could be pulled pretty directly from its inspirations, but in many cases those ideas have been reinterpreted to suit Bug Fable's setting, characters, and unique aspects. This starts with the three main characters allowing a good amount of customization via levelups and badges, which in turn allows for a large variety of strategies to be employed in combat. This is improved by Bug Fables excellent badge selection; very few (often expensive) badges only add power and most badges include trade-offs or otherwise incentivize normally unusual strategies. This deeply strengthens the customization by eliminating the obvious choices for all situations that the Paper Mario games had.
Another large improvement was the use of the trio with the Tattle function, allowing every NPC, enemy, and room to be an opportunity for optional characterization between the teammates. Comparatively, in the Paper Mario games this characterization was limited to Goombario and Goombella, with cutscenes being the only chance other partners could be characters at all - often interchangeably. Often in Bug Fables I would extend a boss fight just so I could hear each of the trio's reaction to the enemy.
Beyond that, many features just seem so much more streamlined than in the Paper Marios: the transit systems fit better into the world and were available sooner though money-gated early on to preserve difficulty, the game economy was balanced to allow for resource scarcity or exploitation without either being tedious as well as having purchases worth saving up for, and a lot of freedom in where and how to travel is given remarkably early on which allows for certain items or badges to be rushed. Best of all, a lot of the lore, world building, and characterization is optional, allowing for uninterested players, replayers, or speedrunners to bypass many walls of text. So many features like these struck me as something a dev would include in a post-release patch, and they make the game much smoother to play.
Lastly, the biggest improvement for me was the difficulty: after the first battle a zero cost Hard Mode badge becomes an option, which keeps the battles threatening til lategame. This is such an important improvement as it turns the early game into a resource balancing act, which encourages thoughtful battling, using the cooking system, and creating badge builds. Unlike in Paper Mario, items are relevant all game long with the best items being simple, if expensive, cooked items that won't win fights on their own. Also, superblocking reduces damage by 1 more than blocking, removing the binary "all or nothing" aspect of superguarding. The only times combat felt unfair was when one enemy had an unpreventable, single target status effect which twice caused me to lose by unluckily targeting my buffed bug, and another when a rapid shot status ailment attack one-shot my tank after a marathon of battling. Additional difficulty options are also available, tho I haven't play around with them yet.
The worse:
The "in the field" controls are somewhat finicky, especially when the camera angle in large or curved rooms adjusts as you move. Additionally, most field skills are usable 360 degrees around the leading character, as opposed to Mario skills which usually are restricted to Mario's direct left or right. This can lead to some spatial confusion, as positioning 2D character models to use 2D animations in a 3D environment can be frustrating - dodging enemy shots while trying to engage in combat comes to mind.
This is also true of several platforming puzzles; solving the puzzle was frequently much easier than executing the solution. While this was barely an issue that took longer than a minute, I could see how it could be frustrating, especially without certain badges.
I also felt that a lot of the decorations in areas could have questionable physics models. Poking around behind foreground or midground items could feel awkward, as their meshes sometimes didn't feel like what the graphics reflected - especially when the item was large enough for the backside of the object to have to be assumed.
Lastly, some of the side content felt unfleshed-out: interesting characters used for a single fetch quest or function, cool side areas with a single purpose, or just unused potential like a sea with two islands. Add to this that the enemy variety was good for the story (exactly one instance of palate swaps, and one area of mostly reused enemies) but lacking for side areas, and my biggest problem with the game is there isn't slightly more of it.
Also:
The music is consistently great, with very few songs not memorably contributing to an area/event's mood. Midway thru the game, the battle music changes to reflect the upped stakes and that's just great. Snakemouth Den and several boss tracks being standouts for me.
Conclusion:
With Bug Fables being an indie dev game as well as a first release its possible the 1.1 patch and/or DLC could change some of the rougher parts, but even besides this it is a solidly great game within the genre. With a bit of sequel baiting sprinkled into the endgame, I'm very impressed by Moonsprout and I may actually change my Sticker Star created rule to never, ever preorder once Bug Fables 2 is announced. If the improvement between this game and its sequel is as big as between the Paper Marios, it could easily be my favourite game of all time.

sitbomm here with another MASTER PIECE full of good shit Let's get started on this shit ASAP cuz i have no time to waste and i want to make this shit as short and straight to the point as possible this will be the HOLYGRAIL of making BIG fucking money just trading binary options online, ok ?! i want to tell you that i will teach you the strategies with REAL MONEY ACCOUNTS EXAMPLES, not bullshit DEMO ACCOUNTS but REAL MONEY ACCOUNTS exactly like on my VIDEO PROOFS too that i included on these folder where you got this guide where you can see myself making $3950 USD and more within FEW MINUTES on a fucking REAL MONEY ACCOUNTS LIVE in front of you, ok guys ?! so all the EXAMPLE images that will be shown here are all from REAL MONEY ACCOUNTS and REAL WON TRADES and REAL FUCKING MONEY made by myself ! so let's get started ! First of all guys i want to share with you the BEST and my FAVORITE BROKERS starting by my FAVORITE ONE now... their only problem is that they don't accept USA customers but that is not a problem cuz i have a way to teach you guys if you are from USA, to sign up with them and use them even though you NOT on USA
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Hi all, I posted a thread back a few months ago when I started getting seriously back into trading after 20 years away. I thought I'd post an update with some notes on how I'm progressing. I like to type, so settle in. Maybe it'll help new traders who are exactly where I was 2 months ago, I dunno. Or maybe you'll wonder why you spent 3 minutes reading this. Risk/reward, yo.
I'm trading 5k on TastyWorks. I'm a newcomer to theta positive strategies and have done about two thirds of my overall trades in this style. However, most of my experience in trading in the past has been intraday timeframe oriented chart reading and momentum stuff. I learned almost everything "new" that I'm doing from TastyTrade, /options, /thetagang, and Option Alpha. I've enjoyed the material coming from esinvests YouTube channel quite a bit as well. The theta gang type strategies I've done have been almost entirely around binary event IV contraction (mostly earnings, but not always) and in most cases, capped to about $250 in risk per position.
The raw numbers:
Net PnL : +247
Commissions paid: -155
Fees: -42
Right away what jumps out is something that was indicated by realdeal43 and PapaCharlie9 in my previous thread. This is a tough, grindy way to trade a small account. It reminds me a little bit of when I was rising through the stakes in online poker, playing $2/4 limit holdem. Even if you're a profitable player in that game, beating the rake over the long term is very, very hard. Here, over 3 months of trading a conservative style with mostly defined risk strategies, my commissions are roughly equal to my net PnL. That is just insane, and I don't even think I've been overtrading.
55 trades total, win rate of 60%

33 purely directional trades - 57.5% win
18 long call or long put positions, +692, 55% win
15 call or put verticals, -121, 60% win

22 neutral / other trades

13 iron condors, +345, 77% win rate
7 strangles, -163, 71% win rate
1 straddle, -310, 0% win rate
1 butterfly, -83, 0% win rate

Biggest wins:

PTON call purchased and held through earnings, sold the morning of announcement +410
Trading the range on the daily chart in GLD from 158 up to 165, a mix of various calls +245
NKLA 30 put purchased before the close on the day it went north of 100, just a pure fade +215

Biggest losses:

EWZ 22/26 strangle that I held just way too long as it beat me up day after day from May 20-Jun 3, -316
ZM pre earnings vertical, fading another 2 SD move (the day it hit 200 for the first time). Was expecting a post-earnings selloff given the magnitude of the up move. Stock basically hasn't had a down tick since. Max loss -247
EWW 29 straddle, put on around the same time as the EWZ strangle. Rolled from Jun to Jul to no avail. Out at a -310 loss.

This is pretty much where I expected to be while learning a bunch of new trading techniques. And no, this is not a large sample size so I have no idea whether or not I can be profitable trading this way (yet). I am heartened by the fact that I seem to be hitting my earnings trades and selling quick spikes in IV (like weed cures Corona day). I'm disheartened that I've went against my principles several times, holding trades for longer than I originally intended, or letting losses mount, believing that I could roll or manage my way out of trouble.
I still feel like I am going against my nature to some degree. My trading in years past was scalping oriented and simple. I was taught that a good trade was right almost immediately. If it went against me, I'd cut it immediately and look for a better entry. This is absolutely nothing like that. A good trade may take weeks to develop. It's been really hard for me to sit through the troughs and it's been even harder to watch an okay profit get taken out by a big swing in delta. Part of me wonders if I am cut out for this style at all and if I shouldn't just take my 5k and start trading micro futures. But that's a different post...
I'll share a couple of my meager learnings:

Larger bid/ask spreads make it almost impossible to trade the higher priced names, even if you have a correct assumption. I have traded some bigger underlyings during this time like LULU and NVDA. They are just tough fills, both getting in and getting out. I almost want to say that you shouldn't even bother trading underlyings bigger than a 10 cent bid/ask spread with a small account.
Get an idea of the timeframe you're interested in holding before putting anything on. Have a plan for entering and exiting everything that goes beyond "I'll take this trade off at 50%". You can use TA, you can use a news catalyst, a binary event, just have something. Countless sources out there talk about trading a plan. It doesn't have to be the perfect plan, it just has to be "a" plan.
Undefined risk trades in tiny accounts need hard stops. Yes, some of the studies say that you'll do better without having fixed stop loss rules (50% of max loss, 100% of max loss) -- but what the studies don't say is the effect that it will have on you, mentally. I got pretty bent out of shape over how badly EWZ and EWW went against me -- much more than I expected. It made no sense, as I've lost way more on the turn of a card in .5 seconds and been unfazed. I was unprepared for the mental toll that it took waking up day after day, watching positions move further and further against me. Great time to be short calls during the mother of all rallies.
My initial plan for undefined risk trades in my account was that I would only do them in ETFs. Logic being that I'm just not going to wake up to an accounting scandal or a buyout and take a $1k loss on the chin. I later expanded my range into lower priced underlyings like BBBY, TLRY, and yes, AAL. But these ETFs can and do move (I learned the hard way) and can soak up a surprising amount of BP. It might be better to have 5 iron condors taking up $1000 of BP @ 200 each instead of 2 strangles @ 500 each.

My new questions :

My big wins felt like I simply leaned on my TA background or got lucky. My big losses, I sure felt like I earned those, through mistakes I've definitely since identified. The stuff in the middle, I'm just not sure. I'm up money, but it feels like I'm just spinning my wheels. My win rate is good, but I still struggle with expectations about how quickly a trade should progress. What is the next step of the process for a newer options trader? I've read some stuff on narrower spreads + more contracts vs. wider spreads and fewer contracts. Is there a number where I should just keep doing what I'm doing until I reach a specific # of occurrences? Should I even think about branching out into different strategies yet (ratio spreads, jade lizards, etc) or continue to work on these basics?
I still feel like I am super weak in delta management. In some cases I feel like I've taken a loss simply because I didn't know what the proper management techniques were. I understand the concept of rolling out in time for a credit, but I just don't think it's in my nature to hold trades for longer than a month, and even that is hard for me. At what delta is it appropriate to start thinking about hedging?
Every time I put on a credit spread for a 2-3 day move and am directionally correct, I often wish that I had just bought a naked option. I've caught several big moves this way in things like AAPL; most recently I bought the FB dip to the 50 day MA around 215 and took it off today at 225 (which was always my plan) -- it leads me to wonder if my expectations for credit spreads are completely out of line. I can't lie, it feels bad to catch a 10 point move and only make $40, haha. What is the ideal timeframe for a credit spread to be left on? Is it better to just buy premium with a stop loss and have a more profitable risk/reward equation for situations like the above where the only intent is to hold for a couple days?
Here's a random question -- other than when the BPR hit is too much (ie names over $50) for undefined risk, would you rather hold 1) a strangle for 10-14 days or 2) an iron condor for 25-30 days? So far my criteria for IC vs strangle has largely been driven by the risk profile and BPR and not so much profit potential in X number of days. If you're collecting the standard 1/3rd on the IC and taking the trade off at 50% (if you're lucky) , it seems like it takes about a month to get there, most of the time.

That's enough of this wall of text for now. If you made it this far, I salute you, because this shit was even longer than my last post.

Forex Trading – Is It Legitimate?

Forex (Foreign Exchange) is not a scam and certainly can be a credible and legitimate way of making money. However, whenever there are large sums of money involved, the shadier elements of society are never lagging. There are plenty of nefarious brokers that target novices, experienced traders and everyone else in between.
Forex scams are unfortunately common. At Broker Complaint Registry we have seen many forex, binary options and CFD scams emerge. Here are a couple of things to look out for whether you are an experienced trader or a complete novice.

Regulated Forex Broker?

The very first step to take to avoid becoming a victim of a Forex scam is to make sure you open an account with a regulated broker. There are many dominions that regulate Forex trading including the FCA in the UK, ASIC in Australia, and the CFTC and the NFA in the United States. Do not solely rely what is on the broker’s website. Check them out online and make sure they are regulated. It is simple to place a regulation on a website so use the resources available to you such as https://register.fca.org.uk/. Be sure to call the forex broker and find out who they are and what they do. Do not get pressured into opening an account unless you are 100% at ease.
However, merely checking to see whether the broker is regulated is not enough. There are numerous regulatory agencies such as CySEC that do not apply strict enough oversight and fail to implement harsh penalties for any brokers that violate their rules.

Guaranteed ROI

Any broker that guarantees a return on investment (ROI) is a surefire scam. For example, a “broker” may be approached to invest your money with an organization that will trade on your behalf and promise yearly or monthly returns for as long as you keep investing with them. Many of these con artists promise 40-50 % of your invested capital guaranteed PER MONTH. These “returns” are absolutely unsustainable and almost always involve other investors continuing to add money to the pot. This is called a Ponzi scheme. Remember Bernie Madoff anyone?
Forex trading is risky and while there are plenty of individuals who can consistently earn money trading, no one will say it is a guarantee.

Fund Withdrawal

If the forex broker or account manager tries to prevent you from withdrawing your funds or your return on investment, then you know that it is a forex scam. There is absolutely no reason that it should take anymore than a few business days for your money to be returned. Even some regulated brokers have refused to allow their clientele to withdraw. Take OTCapital as an example. They are regulated by ASIC, but Broker Complaint Registry has dealt with numerous individuals that have been unable to withdraw their funds.
What to Do if You Have Been Scammed
If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

The Art of a Binary Options Scam

Binary options, fraudulent “trading products” that are designed to part prospective investors from their money are very different from real options. In essence, they are simply a bet that the price of a particular asset will rise in a given time frame. If you win the gamble, the company is supposed to pay a fixed payout, within the 70%-95% range. If you lose, however, you not only lose the “payout” but the initial investment as well.
If this was merely the case this would fall under the category of gambling, something that millions upon millions of individuals do recreationally. However, that is primarily not the case. With almost all binary options brokers you are “trading” against the broker and not the market. The broker wants you to lose, or else the company would not make a profit. Even if the broker pays out your winnings he can easily govern your profit with payout conditions. This means that even if you have a winning formula, the company will just decrease the payout, ensuring you ultimately lose in the long term.

There is more to the scam

That, unfortunately, is not where it ends. Numerous “brokers” are notorious for spreading fictitious stories about their clientele making gigantic profits with trading robots. Almost all of them manipulate their price curves to prevent you from winning. What’s worse is even if you do win, many of them refuse to pay out, and ultimately drop off the face of the earth (with your money).
Now clients are left in with a major dilemma. To whom do they turn? To the police? To regulators? The answer to these questions is that it depends. Most of these binary options brokers are not regulated and are located offshore, allowing them to do what they want. Often in their terms and conditions, they concoct various rules that ensure they keep your money once they have it. When it comes to regulators such as ASIC or the FCA they are relatively useless as they cannot shut down the actual binary options websites and to make it even worse search engines such as Google allow these websites to appear in their search content.

Shouldn’t the banks put a stop to this?

Yes, they should. However, the banks, which should be the number one line of defense against these scams either do not know the extent of the problem or are turning a blind eye to their nefarious activities. Additionally, in order to process credit card, debit card payments most of the binary options brokers have registered a small company in an E.U. country.

Recovery scams

Unfortunately, fraud encourages more fraud. Various individuals targeted U.S. citizens who were swindled by the now-defunct brokerage, Banc de Binary, and a few other binary options companies that were being sued by the SEC or the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). They impersonated SEC officials as part of an advanced-fee fraud scheme in which they deceived victims into forwarding them money. Approximately 95 individuals were targeted by this despicable scheme and 25 of them sent 235 thousand dollars in total to these swindlers.
What to Do if You Have Been Scammed
If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

Yes, Regulated Forex Brokers Commit Scams

When one typically hears the phrase “forex scam” one automatically assumes that it is being perpetrated by an unlicensed or unregulated forex broker. For the most part, that assumption is correct. All you have to do is a quick google search and you will find numerous articles detailing reprehensible acts committed by unregulated forex and binary options brokers. However, there have been numerous instances of regulated forex brokers skirting the rules.

Not all regulated brokers are trustworthy

Unfortunately, there are numerous regulated forex brokers that have defrauded unsuspecting clientele as well. Last year on the CFTC slapped a $7 million fine on Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) in a civil monetary penalty for engaging in fraudulent and misleading solicitations, spanning from September 4, 2009, through at least 2014.
Additionally, the CFTC emphasized that FXCM had misrepresented that its ‘No Dealing Desk’ trading platform had no conflicts of interest with its clientele. Instead of running a true ECN execution platform where trades are performed directly in the interbank market, their clientele’s trades would be redirected to a Effex Capital LLC, which was originally designated to be an independent market maker but was, in reality, an extension of FXCM. Effex Capital would take very aggressive forex trades against the investors in order that they would lose and in return, FXCM would be the beneficiary of some very high kickbacks, which they received under the table from FXCM.

FXCM barred from the U.S.

Because of their duplicitous practices, the CFTC withdrew their regulation and FXCM was no longer allowed to service U.S. customers. Additionally, FXCM was caught by the FCA in yet another forex scam. They took away their investors’ positive swaps, causing them to only receive negative swaps. Surprisingly, the FCA did not remove their regulation.

Beware of OTCapital

OTCapital, forex broker regulated by ASIC has been swindling numerous investors. Broker Complaint Registry has received numerous complaints from those who have been victimized by their reprehensible practices. Complaints have ranged from not allowing clients to withdraw their earnings to never receiving a call back after they had deposited. Unfortunately, ASIC has not taken any action against OTCapital.

Protect yourself from a forex scam

Before you deposit money with a broker you must first make sure that the broker is regulated by an entity such as the CFTC, FCA, ASIC or the IIROC. Remember not all regulatory bodies are created equal. For example, if the broker that you are interested in has only a CySEC (Cyprus) regulation it would be wise to steer clear. Although they have gotten tougher on rulebreakers, CySEC is still lax in numerous areas.
Additionally, do your research. This means reading reviews, looking at various forums, and so on. It is not enough that the broker you are interested in has a regulation. You must vet them.
If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

I'm hopeless at formatting text, so if you think you can structure this post better take everything i write and put it into an easy to digest way. I'm just going to type out everything i know in text as fast as possible. I'm not a legal expert, I'm not somehow who understands every bit of information in the PDF's below, but i know I'm a retail trader that uses leverage to make profit which is why I'm posting this, in the hope that someone who can run a charge better than me, will.
Some of you are already aware of what might be happening, this is just a post to educate retail traders on changes that might be coming to certain brokers. This effects Australian Customers the most, but also effects those living in other countries that use Australian brokers, such as Pepperstone and others.
Last year in August 2019, ASIC ( Australian Securities and Investments Commission ) was concerned about retail traders going into Forex and Binary options without understanding these instruments properly and started sticking their noses in for tough regulation.
ASIC asked brokers and anyone with interest in the industry to write to them and explain what should and should not change from the changes they proposed, some of the proposed changes are very misguided and come from a lack of understanding exactly how OTC derivatives actually work.
I will provide the link to the paper further down so you can read it yourself and i will provide a link to all the submission made by all parties that sent submissions to ASIC, however the 2 main points of debate are:
1, To reduce the overall leverage available to retail traders to either 20:1 or 30:1. This means people who currently use leverage such as 100:1 to 500:1 and everything in between will be effected the most, even more so are those traders with relatively small accounts, meaning in order to get your foot in the door to trading you will need more capital for it to be viable.
^^ This point above is very important.
2, The removing of Binary options trading, which basically includes products like "Bet if gold will rise to this price in the next 30 seconds" This sort of stuff. So far from all the submissions from brokers and individuals nobody really cares if this changes as far as i know, though if you have concerns about this i would start voicing your disapproval. Though i would not waste your time here, all is pointing to this being eradicated completely with brokers also supporting the changes, I've never used such a product and know very little about them.
^^ This point above isn't very important and will probably be enforced in the future.
Still to this day i see retail traders not understanding leverage, they think of it as "dangerous and scary", it's not, position size is the real danger, not leverage. So ASIC is aiming to limit retail traders access to high leverage, they are claiming it is a way to protect traders who don't really understand what they are getting into by attacking leverage and not the real problem which is position size relative to your capital.
If it was truly about protecting retail traders from blowing up their accounts, they would look for ways to educate traders on "understanding position sizes and why it's important" rather than attacking leverage, but their goal is misguided or has an ulterior motive . I will give you a small example below.
EXAMPLE - We will use 2 demo accounts for demonstration purposes. If you don't understand my example, i suggest you try it for yourself. - Skip if not interested in examples.
Lets say we open 2 demo accounts with $1000 in both, one with 20:1 leverage and one with 500:1 leverage and we open an identical position on both accounts ( say a micro lot '0.01' on EURUSD ). You are safer on the 500:1 account as you don't need to put up as much margin as collateral as you would on the 20:1. If the trade we just opened goes against us and continues against us, the account with 20:1 leverage will run out of free margin a lot faster than the 500:1 account. In this simple example is shows you that leverage is not dangerous but safer and gives you a lot more breathing room. This trade was a small micro lot, so it would take hundreds of pips movements to get margin called and blow up that $1000 on each account. Lets now use a different position size to truly understand why retail traders blow up accounts and is the reason why trading can be dangerous.
This time instead of opening a micro lot of '0.01' on our $1000 dollar demo accounts, lets open a position size much larger, 5 lots. Remember we only have $1000 and we are about to open a position much larger relative to our capital ( which we should never do because we can't afford to do that ) the 20:1 probably wont even let you place that trade if you don't have enough margin as collateral or if you could open the position you would have a very tiny amount of free margin left over, meaning a small pip movement against you will instantly blow up your $1000 account. On the 500:1 account you wouldn't need to put up as much margin as collateral with more free margin if the trade goes bad, but again a small movement could blow up your account. In this example, both accounts were dangerous because the lack of understanding position sizes, opening a position you can't afford to open. This is what the true danger is, not the leverage.
Even in the second example, the higher leverage would "margin call" you out later. So i would go as far to say that lower leverage is more dangerous for you because it margin calls you out faster and just by having a lower leverage doesn't stop you from opening big positions that can blow you up in a 5 pip movement anymore, any leverage size is dangerous if you're opening positions you can't afford to open. This is also taking into consideration that no risk management is being used, with risk management higher leverage is even more powerful.
ASIC believes lowering leverage will stop people opening positions that they can't afford. When the reality is no matter how much capital you have $500, $1000, $5000, $50,000, $500,000, $5,000,000. You don't open position sizes that will blow that capital up completely with small movements. The same thing can happen on a 20:1 or 500:1 account.
Leverage is a tool, use it, if your on a lower leverage already such as 20:1, 30:1 it means your country has been regulated and you already have harder trading conditions. Just remember higher leverage allows you to open larger position sizes in total for the amount of money you own, but the issue is NOT that your using the higher leverage but because you are opening positions you can't afford, for what ever reason that is, the only fix for this is education and will not be fixed by simply lowing leverage, since you can just as easy blow up your account on low leverage just as fast or if not faster.
So what is going on?
There might ( get your tinfoil hats on ) be more that is involved here, deeper than you think, other agendas to try and stop small time retail traders from making money via OTC products, theories such as governments not wanting their citizens to be traders, rather would prefer you to get out there and work a 9 to 5 instead. Effective ways to do this would be making conditions harder with a much larger barrier of entry and the best way to increase the barrier of entry for retail traders is to limit leverage, lower leverage means you need to put up more money, less breathing room for trades, lower potential. They are limiting your upside potential and the downside stays the same, a blown account is a blow account.
Think of leverage as a weapon, a person wielding a butchers knife can probably destroy a person wielding a steak knife, but both knifes can prove fatal. They want to make sure your holding the butter knife then tell you to butcher a cow with it. 30:1 leverage is still workable and can still be profitable, but not as profitable as 500:1 accounts. This is why they are allowing professionals to use high leverage, this gives them another edge over successful retail traders who will still be trying to butcher a cow with a butter knife, while they are slaying limbs off the cow with machetes.
It's a way to hamstring you and keep you away rather than trying to "protect" you. The real danger is not leverage, they are barking up the wrong tree, how convenient to be barking up the very tree most retail traders don't fully understand ( leverage) , pass legislation to make trading conditions harder and at the same time push the narrative that trading is dangerous by making it even harder. A full circle strategy to make your trading conditions worse, so you don't succeed.
Listen carefully especially if you trade with any of the brokers that have provided their submissions to ASIC. Brokers want to seem like they are on your side and so far some of the submissions ( i haven't read them all ) have brokers willing to drop their leverage down to 30:1 because they know by dropping the leverage down it will start margin calling out their clients at a much faster rate, causing more blown up accounts / abandoned accounts with residual margin called funds, but they also know that if they make trading environments too hard less people will trade or even worse move their funds elsewhere offshore to unregulated brokers that offer higher leverage.
Right now it's all just a proposal, but as governments expand and continue to gain more control over it's citizens, it's just a matter of time till it's law, it's up to you to be vocal about it, let your broker know that if they drop their leverage, you're out, force them to fight for you.
If you have any more information related to this, or have anything to add, post below. I'm not an expert at this technical law talk, i know that i do well with 500:1 leverage and turn profits with it, it would be harder for me to do on a lower leverage, this is the reason for my post.
All related documents HERE
CP-322 ( Consultation paper 322 ) & Submissions from brokers and others.
https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/consultation-papers/cp-322-product-intervention-otc-binary-options-and-cfds/

Salary: $97,000
Years of experience: 8.0
Recommended Education: Apprenticeship

What’s a day in the life for an electrician?

I’m a foreman, which is a much different role then if I was still a journeyman electrician. As a foreman, it’s more managing than electrical work. My goal is to make project managers happy, keep everyone focused (so the customer is satisfied), make sure our shop is making money, and deliver something that I can be proud to stand by. The electricians beside me need to be enjoying their day; otherwise, they will resent me and put in sub-par work. Part of what I do is to try and keep things interesting, so my team doesn’t lose interest. I do this by giving guys responsibility, because there’s pride associated with everything they do, or when things are more mundane, creating competitions.
The best thing about being a journeyman is that when you go home, you don’t have to think about work AT ALL. When you wake up, you don’t think about work; even when you drive to the job site, you don’t have to fire up your brain until the clock starts. But, as soon as you start working, you’re in a different world, and none of the problems from your home life consume you because you’re too busy problem solving, you’re dealing with something different every couple hours.
On a typical day, you wake up early as hell and drive to your job site. The site might be a mudhole, or it might be a nice parking garage, but it changes every couple of months, you’re never in the same situation. For example, let’s say I get assigned to work at General Mills at a factory assembly line with some issues and have to work on it for three days. That might be a casual experience where they have prints, plans, and diagrams to look at, and you follow the instructions and install it. Or, you might be working for that customer and BOOM, an entire assembly line goes down, which prevents thousands of chocolate bars from being made. You now have workers standing there, and your job is to get that line fired back up, quickly. You need to be able to walk into that environment and figure out how to approach it safely. I go through a mental checklist: turn the power off, determine what’s feeding it, find the electric room, what kind of equipment is needed, how many motors there are, what caused the problem, isolate the source, etc. At some point, you go on auto-pilot, and your brain solves the issue. There’s also more thought to it; you need to quickly determine if you can fix it today, how soon you can get the part, whether there’s a temporary solution, or whether you have enough knowledge to fix it.

What’s the best part of being an electrician?

Don’t be afraid to try it; once most people get into the work, they end up liking the profession a lot more than they ever expected. The variety of backgrounds I see seems to be increasing; this includes first-generation Americans, people looking for new careers later in life, and many more women. There’s a lot of job stability, and it’s something that isn’t going away because there’s a huge need. You’ll challenge yourself physically and mentally, and will likely receive opportunities you would never see elsewhere. If you have a lot of ambition, it can be your passion, but it also doesn’t have to be.
When you’re starting, you need to push through your training until you’re able to get your license. Once you get your license, you can’t have it taken away, and there’s a lot of freedom that comes with it, so it’s worth sticking it out.

What’s the downside of being an electrician? Words of caution?

For most people trying to get into the trades, I recommend thinking about the long-term implications. Don’t go after the first big paycheck you get offered; if the situation isn’t what you’re looking for, keep looking. Also, you need to be continually aware of what you’re doing, attentive, and present to the task. You learn to be hyper-focused.
If you’re looking to get experience and you can’t get into a union program, there’s no problem working non-union. If you’re going to be a non-union worker, you have to have more ambition; you have to be more confrontational, vouch for yourself, ask your employer for more, and there’s no one backing you with negotiated contracts. If you want an excellent education that’s varied and hope to prevent yourself from getting into dangerous situations, the union might be the way to go. Non-union, there’s no curriculum, and you have to do additional research. All things aside, there are some great non-union workers out there. You can do it if you have the drive and determination.
If you’re somebody who has no mechanical aptitude, doesn’t like to spend your free time figuring out how things work, or you’re afraid to fix something that’s broken, it might take you a while to enjoy being an electrician. You might still be good at it, but it might not come naturally. You need to have a strong work ethic if you want to have consistent employment and want to be a good electrician. You don’t need to be a perfectionist, but you need to try and do your best.

Describe the path you took to become an electrician

Before I started, I had a vague idea of what trade work looked like, and I tried to visualize myself as one of “those guys.” I wasn’t necessarily thinking, “do I like electricity?” or “do I want to work on electrical hazards?” I figured I could probably do it and gave it a try. Many people expect that if you’re blue-collar and your parents are blue-collar, then you’re the next candidate to be a trades worker. But, that’s an outdated idea. Most people don’t get into the trades because they want a high income, but when you tell anyone how much you make, they’re generally surprised.
Because there’s such a demand for electricians, there’s limited space in apprentice training programs. As a result, there are many pre-apprentice (or unindentured apprentice) training programs emerging to ensure that the people who get accepted are likely to see it through. How much pre-apprentice work you need is location dependent (usually 6-24 months), so if you want to get in without this, you may need to research various states or cities.
I completed six months of pre-apprentice work and was able to sign up because you no longer needed to complete the full two-year program. Due to high demand (in Minneapolis), they lifted the requirement so long as you could pass their interviews and entrance exams.
Once you’re accepted, you have five years of apprenticeship. Each year brings a different program, a pay increase, and every six months, they switch you to a new contractor. Some of the content included learning various installations, people skills, safety, bending pipe, physics/math, high voltage, DC/AC theory, ladder logic, binary, national/state code, etc. But, the biggest thing is learning how to problem-solve, which goes well beyond the codebook. You get a taste for more technical aspects, but you can also really dive into topics like programmable logic controllers, solar, building automation, data, etc. There are lots of certifications for each of these, and in the end, they prepare you very well to take the state exam for the journeyman license.
Starting as an apprentice allows you to make money right away. In my first year, I started at $15/hour, which doesn’t include your perks: paid vacation, pension, annuity, an unemployment slush fund, full health coverage for family, etc. Fast forward to today, I make $48.50/hour as a foreman or $46.50/hour as a journeyman. The pay rates are standardized through the union by location. What’s most in-demand right now is for low voltage and inside wireman, which is what I am. But, where you end up depends on your ambition and what you want to do. A lot of guys are content just being a worker; they don’t mind being laid off or moving from contractor to contractor. My preference is to work for a contractor that I like; I work hard to have that security.
In terms of options, you can be a journeyman, a foreman, a general foreman (required when you exceed a specific crew size), or a master electrician (requires 2,000 hours of additional work and a master’s license). As a master electrician, you’re likely to get paid more, but you’re bonded to the shop, so you may not do much electrical work, and you will take all the heat if things go wrong.

What’s the future outlook for an electrician?

Since COVID hit, our shop has had to adapt by taking on less profitable jobs; doing this allows our best guys to keep working and stay engaged. For example, we just did a sizable solar rooftop installation, where the work was mostly outside in a safe environment versus a busy construction site. If things start to change, and people don’t want to invest in new commercial buildings, there’s always going to be a need to build homes, apartments, hospitals, schools, or facilities that need constant maintenance. The trades might take bites and hits along the way, but if you’re reasonably smart with your finances, you’ll be able to make it through any tough times, which I’ve never really seen. If need be, I could always find low voltage or travel to where the work is. I know several guys who went to Australia to improve the electric grid and help train locals. The scenario is a little extreme, but there are always opportunities.
Ultimately, technology isn’t going to slow down; electrical equipment will always get better, faster, cheaper, and more efficient. Electrical work is nearly impossible to automate, so that can be a good thing if you’re coming from an industry that’s in decline.

Anything else?

If you’re trying to change careers, analyze the things you don’t like about your position now, because if you’re not coming from a trade, you could be in for a big surprise. I’ve observed that service workers who work in fast-paced environments and do a lot of multitasking do very well. You have to enjoy physical work; you have to be willing to work in many different environmental conditions, whether that’s filthy outdoor dirt, extreme temperatures, hot and cold, uncomfortable positions, etc. You have to be able to see the bigger picture so that your work doesn’t become mundane.
Job/Career Demand - 5.0
Positive Impact - 4.0
Satisfaction - 4.5
Advancement/Growth - 4.0
Creativity - 4.5
Work-Life Balance - 4.7
Compensation & Benefits - 5.0
Work Environment - 4.0
---
For anyone with questions, I am unfortunately not the writer of this content. We are working on building messaging capabilities on our website, which will hopefully be live in a couple of months. If there are any urgent questions, I can reach out to my friend directly :)

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TLDR: Made $120 on 10 TSLA200207C900 Contracts and missed out on a potential $100,500 profit. Learning to shake off that habit by making trades with the purpose of maximizing profit while at the same time avoiding FOLO. BUD200918C55 as an example.
Hey all. First of all, I just want to throw out a disclaimer that I am by no mean an experienced, professional trader. In fact, I made my first option trade a little over a year ago and only started to take this seriously about 6 months ago. I recently hit a milestone in my pursuit of trading as a career so I decided that I would share some of the experiences I’ve gained in hope that maybe someone that’s looking to pursue this seriously can take from my limited experience to not make the same mistakes I made. It’s been a rough 2020 and hopefully by helping each other we’ll pull through this horrible year together.
I don’t know how some of you guys are but to me the fear of losing out (FOLO) on a trade that you’re in is actually worse than the fear of missing out (FOMO) on a trade that you’ve missed due to a ridiculous run. The single most haunting FOLO trade I was involved in was during the week that TSLA had its crazy melt up in February 2020.
The TSLA trade:

Robinhood Trade History

Personal Trade History

TSLA200207C900 Chart
I woke up to a notification from Robinhood that TSLA made a 10% pre-market run the morning of Monday, February 3, 2020. So the FOMO in me scrambled to login to Robinhood and scrolled through the option chain for a cheap weekly option. Decided on the $900 strike expiring that Friday and bought 10 option contracts at .11 per contract with a net debit of $110. The rest is pretty murky from memory but I remember within a matter of minutes, the option value went up to .29, then .35 then it quickly pulled back to .28 back to .25 and I frantically sold my option contracts for .23 which netted me a $230 credit. I made $120 in a matter of minutes and I was damn proud of myself. I spent the next few hours watching the stock run up and up and up by then I didn’t want to get back in because I needed to get ready for work and wouldn’t be able to monitor the action to sell it at the “right price”. I didn’t want to spend more money on another FOLO trade and risk it running back down and losing all the money that I had just made. So I begrudgingly got ready for work that evening. The next day, TSLA ran all the way past $900 to make all time high and I was stuck at work feeling like a dumbass. That option contract in particular ended that Tuesday trading day at 100.5 per contract or in theory I would have made $100,500. In theory and hindsight is always 20/20**.**
What I learned from this trade was that FOLO is real and you’ll never be able to sell at the top. In hindsight, I could have just set a GTC sell price and be content with the profit I made or not.
Months later, once I started to take trading more seriously: I listened to podcasts, read all the market wizards books, read the story of Jesse Livermore, watched various trading YouTube channels and compiled all of that experience together to apply them to my trades. The single most pivotal idea that I gathered from all of these experiences was that trading decisions should not be based on a single binary decision to buy or sell but rather it should be framed around the idea of “how do I extract the most value from this particular trade” (Let your winners run). I use this idea every day to help me structure most of my trades that I also track obsessively to help me make decisions that would optimize profit potential while limiting the risk of FOLO. This leads me to the BUD trade
The BUD trade:

TOS BUD Trade History

Trading Journal BUD200918C55 Trade Flow
This is the trade where I applied what I learned to manage the trade from beginning to end. However, at the very end I still managed a fumble and lost out on a potential gain of approximately $3300 had I followed my trading plan.

The opening trade was simple, I was looking for any companies that would benefit most from COVID yet still hadn’t recovered like most of the other companies at the time. I chose BUD because of these criterias and the strike price was about what it was trading at prior to COVID. Note: I was still learning and had not really learned to make trading decisions based on the Greeks. The trade was purely speculative along with the strike. However, I did start to track certain data for every at the point the trade is made for future analysis.
Early June most companies had major run ups and BUD was also one of the companies that benefited. Price improvement was up about 14% which consequently led the option prices to rise to about 2.5 - 3. However, I did not want to close out the trade and miss out on subsequent run-ups. I didn’t want to just sell half. I wanted to be in the entire trade the entire time without sacrificing too much profit gained. So, I sold the 60 strike to essentially convert my original call to a debit spread while at the same time I was able to collect $2180 which was approximately $630 in profit. This allowed me to stay in the trade and should BUD continue its run I would still have a maximum profit potential of 5000 remaining to collect.
By July BUD was ranging around $53 and so I decided to buy back the September 60 strike and sell the August 55 strike which converted my original trade to a Calendar spread. This allowed me to net an additional $700 in profit.
Mid July, I saw that BUD was still trading under $55 so I decided to sell 5 contracts of Credit Spread to capitalize on the lack of movement. The worst thing that could have happened was that it would skyrocket and I would have lost $600 from the original trade overall. Thankfully, it didn’t and I was able to buy the credit spread back for $10. Which yielded an additional $150 in profit.
Finally by the expiration date BUD was trading around $55 and I had to close out the trade or risk assignment on my short strike in August. I waited the entire day and frantically sold the calendar spread to essentially close out the entire trade which yielded an additional $1700.
1. Where I messed up was that I should have bought back the August 55 short strike and sold the September 60 strike for a small $150 additional profit. This would have converted the trade back to a 55/60 debit spread. In addition, this would have allowed me to remain in the trade for at least a couple of more weeks in case of a run up and I would still be able to collect the full remaining $5000. Last I checked, the debit spread would have sold for $3.75 which would have yielded $3750 instead of the $1700 from closing the trade as a calendar spread.
2. Another step for those that really want to stay til the end is to convert the debit spread into a credit spread to gain a larger profit if you believe that BUD will pull back under $60.

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