Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls,
I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps.
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I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders.
While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months.
Any feedback or additions are appreciated
Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer.
Here's what I tell options beginners:
I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot.
I like this beginner book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7
Helpful websites:

• Tasty Trade (TT) and Ally Invest have helpful articles and videos.
  • https://www.tastytrade.com/tt
  • https://www.youtube.com/c/tastytrade1/featured
• Ally training:
  • What is options trading? https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/trading-options-for-beginners/?CP=EM2012111
  • Top 10 options mistakes: https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/top-10-option-trading-mistakes/?CP=EM2012111
• 3 common option mistakes: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/library/options/common-mistakes-options-traders-make
• Common options strategies: https://www.optionsbro.com/basic-options-strategies/
• Investopedia has tons of great investing info for stocks and options: https://www.investopedia.com/
• Kamikaze Cash Theta Gang Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOweupE79XXiBaeH_xBpkUcYUsrAaKQen
• 20 rules of professional traders: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/022715/20-rules-followed-professional-traders.asp

Don't trade until you understand:

• You can lose your entire contract value when buying.
• You can lose a lot of money when selling "naked", theoretically unlimited.
• How option expiration works.
• Theta (decay) and how it works. This is imperative since it's attrition when buying and a payout when selling. https://www.optionseducation.org/advancedconcepts/theta
• DTE: Days till expiration/expiry
• Options positions with respect to price:
  • ITM: In the money; strike is below stock value. Signif
  • ATM: At the money; strike is just at or above the stock value, often very highly traded. Can be very effective with moderate - long term expiry.
  • NTM: Near the money; strike is above the stock value, but fairly close. Slightly unofficial term.
  • OTM: Out of the money; price is at least a few strikes from the current stock price. I would say 10-30% over stock price.
  • Very OTM: Not a real definition, this is essentially a lottery ticket. Cheap, but almost certain to expire worthless unless there is explosive movement.
• Understand delta in general and how delta changes with ITM and OTM options.
• Understand all the greeks at a high level, as you get better understand them well. The greeks: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/options-introduction/option-greeks/
• IV, IV crush, and how IV affects pricing. In general, you want to sell when IV is high and buy when the IV is low. Increasing IV is good for held calls/puts. IV drop or crush is generally good for sellers.
• Selling options can be quite beneficial. Once you have a good general understanding, lookup thetagang . Kamikaze Cash has good youtube videos on most theta strategies (linked above). I personally believe selling options (especially cash secured) is much safer and can consistently make you profits. Θ Gang 4 life.
• FOMO and how to avoid chasing a dangerous trend. DO NOT CHASE FROM FOMO!
• What intrinsic and extrinsic value are. Know how they are affected by being exercised/assigned and how theta affects them.
• Understand that some of WSB recommendations are straight up high-risk gambling and factor in the information accordingly. Be careful with Meme stocks and the survivorship bias on YOLO plays. However, I love the sub and think it’s hilarious. It has a lot of valuable information / DD if you are comfortable with the “colorful” language. It’s also great if you like rocket ship emojis.

Basics / Mechanics

• Understand the 4 "main" option types. Buying or selling a call and buying or selling a put. Spreads and more complex multi-legged option strategies are based off these in some way (see below)
• You can sell calls with 100 shares of stock or if you own an underlying longer term option; see LEAPS and PMCCs later. Selling calls naked is incredibly risky and often requires Level 4 (very advanced) permissions and usually a lot of capital. I will literally never sell calls naked since I don't want to ruin my life and end up living in a dumpster eating saltine crackers.
• Puts can be sold/written cash covered (cash secured), which means you have the cash in your account to buy 100 shares. Your broker will put this money on hold until the trade is closed. Puts can be sold "naked" using Margin and Level 3 (with most brokers). Your broker will hold a percentage of cost of 100 shares (often 30-40%, 100% on meme stocks) allowing you to sell more puts. This increases your available capital/power as well as increasing risk.

General Tips and Ideas:

• Don't EVER leave (short) spreads open on expiration day, close them. (more details below)
• Start off trading very small. Slowly build up over weeks / months. You need to get accustomed to a fifty dollar swing a day, then a few hundred, then a few thousand. You need to ensure you don't get emotional (see below). I started trading options with 5k, then 25k, 50k, and later over 100k. I added my own funds over time and used my gains to build my account. Don’t go all in immediately, that’s dangerous and unwise.
• Especially as you build up the amount of money you have invested, keep it diversified among several stocks.
  • Don't go all in on one thing, ever. Be able to take a hit from one stock and not mortally wound your portfolio.
  • A company may be doing great, then there's a major product issue out of nowhere. If you are overexposed in one stock this can really hurt you.
  • I had to roll options I sold that were about to expire completely worthless because FDX's CEO changed and the stock took a hard dip.
• Don't trade emotionally. If you realize you are emotionally trading for vengeance, you should probably exit the trade and cool off for several days with that stock. Same if you get caught up in a wave of hysteria.
• Have a plan for every trade, ideally with entries / exits that are specific values, ranges, or a set condition. This helps remove emotions. This is super important for strong movements and high volatility (see later).
• Use an options profit calculator from your broker or an online one before entering a "new" trade, especially a complex multi legged trade: https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
• “Rolling” an option: Closing your existing option and opening a similar one at different strike and/or expiration.
  • Rolling a call “Up” would be selling a call you own and buying a cheaper call at a higher strike.
  • Rolling a put “Down and out” closes your original one and buying or selling one at a lower strike at a longer expiry.
  • Better broker interfaces have a literal “Roll” button. I know E-trade does. You can manually do it by selecting relevant contract legs.
• If you have a losing trade, re-evaluate it. If your initial assumption is definitely incorrect, close it. Don't stay in losing trades forever and lose the entire value of the option over stubbornness. If you re-evaluate and you think your assumption was right, hold, potentially consider adding another cheaper option (or buy another call / put). Rolling out sold options can help here.
• Don't try to day trade, especially with options. It's statistically unlikely to be profitable. Day-trading with options introduces extra liquidity risks and is dangerous, especially with spreads.
• Try not to over-trade, you'll likely mis-time the market over time. When I get emotional I over trade, then lose additional money on wash sales. If you scale your entries into positions it should help alleviate your desire to exit positions when they turn badly against you. Whenever I buy calls I do it at larger increments after W almost made me loss my hair; luckily it eventually came back.
• NEVER enter a position on a stock you have no idea about, especially when you read about it online or heard about it from some rando.
• At market open options contracts are often volatile and inflated. Buying during this time can be more expensive. Options are usually cheaper mid-day, I read somewhere 2-3PM is cheapest. I’ve had success around 12-1PM EST after prices settle.
• Try wheeling on cheaper stocks once you get all fundamentals down.
• When selling puts if you are very bullish consider "doubling down"; note this is higher risk. Use the credit from your put sale to buy shares or a cheap call. This can be roughly inversed with puts, except I wouldn't ever recommend shorting shares.
• Learn from your mistakes. You can’t go back in time and beating yourself up (to a point) is useless. Make a physical &/or mental note of it so you don’t do it again. If you don’t learn from it, then beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.
• If you have friends that like to trade, I find it helpful to discuss strategies and planned plays. I talk openly with my close friends about my current holdings and planned trades, it helps keep me accountable. If I get a wide-eyed look, I might be doing something excessively risky or stupid. I’ve over-leveraged myself in calls twice and I knew I shouldn’t have done it both times. When I tell my friends what I did and I’m embarrassed, it exemplifies the face that I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You will also get ideas for new strategies or plays from them. It’s good to stay versatile and use multiple strategies when appropriate. Beware of group think/echo chambers.
• I recommend NEVER telling someone what to buy/sell and when. I’ll tell people MY plays or what I like and why, but I will not encourage them to emulate what I do. Depending on the audience, I’ll tell them my exact positions along with my exit and entrance strategy. With closer friends I’ll offer my thoughts on their trades (if asked). If my friend is doing something really risky (one of my friends does some scary stuff) I may ask them if they want my advice, and provide it, especially if they overlooked a risk/event. I will not encourage someone to execute/enter a trade since it has a high potential for hurt feelings or animosity all around.
• Don’t fall in love with a stock. Just because something made you money before and you have high confidence in it doesn’t mean it will keep performing. I joke that FDX betrayed me when it started dipping and losing me money. I was over-confident of its bounce-back and sold too many puts too quickly. I’m in several losing trades because of it. However, I will keep good stocks in my rostetracking list or try different strategies or re-enter trades when they change their behavior.
• As you start to both buy and sell options and get more experience in general, you'll start seeing the two sides to every trade. You will likely start adjusting your strategies or trying new trades out because of this. Things will likely click one day. Most/all the greeks and options concepts will become almost second nature. For me this was when I could build an Iron Condor from scratch, which was a watershed moment involving a good understanding of many strategies.
• Understand Liquidity and volume.
  • Trading in low volume, low open interest contracts results in wide bid/ask spreads and difficulty having your contracts filled. Look at all the data for a contract, not just the strike and price.
  • Monthly Expiration dates typically have better liquidity.
  • Multi-legged trades (Common examples are 2-legged vertical spreads or 4-legged iron condors) have more difficulty being filled, especially on bad brokers like Robin Hood. Having very liquid options for all legs is extremely helpful in obtaining timely and well-priced fills, which maximize your potential profits.
• Time in market vs timing the market:
  • It is extremely difficult to time the market perfectly. If you wait for the perfect opportunity forever, history has proven you will miss out on gains. Keeping all your money out of the market has proven to be ineffective. Now if there is something serious happening with a stock/the market (like say a new pandemic), don’t go all in. I recommend entering incrementally at dips. If the stock has huge upside potential it may never go down, so it might make sense to partially enter at the current price.
  • IMIO selling puts is a great strategy to get into a stock you like, or at least make money off it. I think buying stock in lots of 100 is usually for suckers. Selling an ATM or ITM put (assuming the math works out) on a stock you were going to buy and hold is ALMOST free money.
  • I recommend keeping some cash available regardless. If you have a very large account or expect a downturn, hedging with indexes like QQQ, SPY, or VIX or calls/puts may be wise.
• Every trade can't be a winner. You will take some losses, you must get used to it. I don’t like having a realized loss of 1K or more on any trade. However, this will happen, especially with larger accounts.
  • As long as you win more often and beat the S&P that year I consider it okay. I’m kind of aggressive, so I consider 20%+ annually good. 30%+ annually is great. 40%+ and I’m dancing. After trading options I am almost baffled by my old belief that 5% annual returns (mostly from dividend ETFs) was “good”. That’s nothing to me now since I’m willing to take risks. Note: While lots of people danced in 2020, realize that’s an insane Bull Run year and is atypical.
  • Adhere to your own risk tolerance and never over-extend yourself, especially with margin use. Don’t make huge gambles leaving you uncomfortable. Only gamble with money you are willing to lose.
  • My personal strategy is to make safer gains for the year and then enter slightly riskier strategies using those gains. I can be slightly-moderately more aggressive and compound my gains. For me I often sell puts to make money, then when I see a big opportunity I’ll sell a put and buy an OTM or moderately ITM call.
• Understand it’s not safe to try and get rich overnight. However, once you hit big “steps” things may start to snowball. You can enter more positions and take more risks if you choose to.
  • For me this when I hit 50k, then 100k. I was able to balance low and moderate risk positions to more significantly grow my account. I’ll even do a high risk thing now and again because my gains can absorb it (assuming I have them).
  • I can’t wait to get to 250K, then 500K. I know it’ll take quite a long time, but I am confident I’ll eventually be able to have 500K and (hopefully) 1M in my non-401k trading account with gains and additions from my job. I can only imagine how “dangerous” I will be with that kind of capital.
• If you missed "the next big thing" like AAPL, TSLA, or the time machine I’m building in my basement. Don't get upset, learn from it. Adapt and become a better trader for next time.
  • Figure out why a company was so promising, before they mooned. Determine how you would have traded differently in hindsight. Apply those lessons to the next company you believe has long term growth prospects.
  • For me that's putting in 1-2.5k towards shares and/or buying LEAPS on it. Depending on my bullishness I may buy “cheap”, fairly far OTM calls. The far OTM options are sort of lottery tickets. If I'm right the (relatively) low cost will have explosive profits; if I'm wrong, they didn't cost that much so it's a calculated loss I’m willing to accept. For more serious bets I’ll buy ITM LEAPS to run PMCCs on. I also like to buy 1-2K in my 401k for very long-term plays.
• The stock market hates uncertainty, it seems to crave the status quo. A shakeup can potential tank a stock, even if it's nothing. With shares you can wait it out, but this can be problematic for options. If you see volatile/uncertain times ahead (politics, disease, manufacturing, earnings, etc.), you might want to reduce your overall portfolio risks or hedge.

Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation

• If selling options, it is a viable strategy to close early after a large gain with many DTE left until expiry. See TT videos / strategies on this.
• Don't hold options through earnings unless you literally want to gamble. I like playing on earnings run ups, but that can be risky.
• If you hold options through earnings, IV crush will happen immediately afterwards, devaluing the option. However, if the option is profitable enough, IV crush won’t matter, which will still make money for a call buyer. A sold put sufficiently far OTM will benefit from IV crush, even if the stock dips after slightly bad or lukewarm earnings.
• Don't throw good money after bad. Don't gamble on a recovery if your assumption appears to be wrong or the market is flat out tanking. If you are wrong and still believe in the company, wait twice as long as your original plan (wait for your 2nd entry point vs 1st) before adding to your position.
• Consider using stop losses to lock-in profits on rides up or sometimes use them to prevent losses. Note, stops can be easily triggered in volatile options. Now when I'm up a lot on calls (especially around earnings or large momentum run-ups) I always set stop losses. I have been burned too many times. In December 2020 I didn't set a SL on several thousand dollars of FDX calls I was already up on and I "lost" ~$5K of unrealized gains. If you're up big, don't get too greedy.
• A possible strategy if a stock is on a tear and you have multiple options open: Close some positions (I prefer to do this incrementally if the stock has momentum), but leave 1+ open in case the stock goes into outer space/the floor. Next, set a stop loss with a little buffer below its current movement / range so it doesn't get hit unless the stock falls hard. Finally, watch the stock closely and if it keeps rising, keep moving the stop loss up in little bits incrementally. This will let you keep more profits on a hot streak, but give some protection and secure more gains. It will also help eliminate FOMO if a stock exceeds your expectations.
• Have rules when to roll out, down & out, or up & out. I like TT’s roll at break even or at 1x loss and to always roll for a credit (or for me a very minor cost). Obviously these rules need some monitoring. Know your stocks, the news, and technicals so you don’t jump the gun.
  • If you roll early for a credit and you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll just need to hold longer, which will obviously tie up capital. Sometimes it’s better to tie up some money (especially if you aren’t paying interest) than eating a huge loss.
  • Rolling too late can be worse though. I currently have a very underwater FDX put I sold that is over 2x loss, rolling it does almost nothing unless you want to pay a debit or extend it extremely far out.
• On huge options gains, I strongly you recommend taking profits by rolling up/down or incrementally sell your contracts at several different prices (this is why having multiple contracts is nice).
  • Rolling up involves selling your initial call, then using a fraction of your proceeds to buy a cheaper, further OTM call with the same expiry; puts are inverse this. When rolling up I like to ensure the new option’s cost is 15-40% of my realized gains. I’ll buy a more or less expensive new optoin based on my convication to the stock and predicted movements. You can also roll up and out to get a further expiry and strike.
  • This is monumentally important if you are playing with incredibly high rising stocks or during a short squeeze.
  • Sad story time: I completely screwed up when I forgot to roll up, twice, during the GME gamma/short squeeze. I didn’t take my own advice; I didn’t have a real exit or transition plan and I got emotional. It all happened so fast and I was at work; the insanity of the run up and subsequent gamma squeeze caught me off guard. I should’ve clocked out and thought through the situation for 15-30 minutes to form an impromptu plan, then executed trade(s). My moderate risk tolerance coupled with my desire to take profits took over. When the stock partially cratered after a run up, I sold to retain gains. In the heat of the moment I thought the squeeze was squoze and it was going to plummet into the ground and I wasn’t being rational.
    • On 1x 4K call I would’ve made an additional 15-25K if I rolled up to a cheaper contract with some of my profits.
    • I know I missed out on significantly more with a 2nd call I had. Depending when I rolled it, it would likely have been an additional 25-50k in profits.
  • I talked about learning from your mistakes above. This mistake is branded into my brain due to the massive gains I missed out on by not rolling up. I’m furious with myself as I write this 1 week after the GME gamma squeeze, I’m a planner and I didn’t plan. If anything I own is significantly up ever again, I’m rolling up (or at least setting a stop loss). If necessary, I’ll roll up a trade multiple times to keep extracting profits.
  • Learn from my mistake so you don’t miss out on gains too. I strongly recommend rolling up when you are up big on a call / roll down when you are up big on a put. This enables you to take profits, stay in the game, and keep extracting more gains.
• If you trade a lot of options, talk to your broker about a discount. I was getting the standard $.50/contract with E-Trade, but I traded over 300 contracts a quarter and was able to get the fee reduced by over $.10 by just asking. I am now doing more spreads and condors, so once my volume gets very high, I’ll ask again.
• If you have a broker that isn’t great and you want to switch, leverage your current trading fees to the new broker. Tell them you’ll move over $### thousand if they beat your current options trading fee per contract.

Trade Planning & Position Management Tips

• As you gain experience, start monitoring what kind of Delta, OTM, DTE, etc. you are most profitable with. Use it in your future trades. You'll often see the tasty trade 30-45DTE .3 Delta strategy for selling.
• Before entering a trade, look at rough technicals like resistances and supports to consider your relevant strikes as well as entry/exit points. Look at upcoming earnings & dividend dates as well as stock/market news.
• Consider staggering strikes and expirations for safety and diversity; it’s nice to avoid assignment on 3 puts at once because you used the same strike for all 3.
• Incrementally enter positions on large rises/falls. One of my favor strategies is to buy dips after over reactions. By doing this slowly in large price "steps" it helps combat FOMO and helps you avoid getting slaughtered.
  • This will also help you avoid "chasing a falling knife". It also ties into having a plan.
  • I set alerts at several predetermined prices and I REALLY try not to enter new trades unless I hit my preset points. It makes me less emotional and usually more effective.
• Don't buy far expiration options with poor liquidity for shorter term plays. I bought 1x GME 1-year+ LEAPS call before the 2021 short squeeze. That was stupid, I should've bought 2-3x 60-120 day calls to have better liquidity. I also paper-handed it and missed out on my lambo.
• If selling options, consider rolling (for a credit) to avoid assignment when it makes sense / meets your plan. Rolling closer to expiration can be a valid strategy to get theta on your side. On the flip side, if the stock moons or plummets it could've been better to roll before it got crazy deep ITM. See rolling “rules” above.
• Covered Calls:
  • If a stock has a large movement range, I think it can be worthwhile to wait to open a CC after the last one is closed/expires. I have been more successful waiting for another opportunity vs. opening one immediately on the Monday after the second the last one expires.
  • Consider selling covered calls at all time highs/peaks. If you sell a CC and the stock dips significantly, and you think it’s temporary, you can buy to close your CC for a quick profit, then reopen it later.
  • If you own Meme stocks, selling covered calls runs the risk of missing out on large gains. On these stocks I typically only sell them further OTM than I normally would or not at all. If I do sell CC on a Meme stock I try to ensure I have 25-100 other shares that won’t be called away.

-Advanced Beginner-
Spreads

• Spreads (with 2 legs) are neat because they manipulate how delta and theta act. It caps your gains and losses, but you can profit with less stock movement. Try several spreads on a P/L calculator to see for yourself.
• Spreads usually require margin trading.
• Spreads allow you to define max losses (assuming you close before expiration day) and use less capital.
  • Experienced traders will open many spreads at identical/similar strikes to heavily profit off movement. Spreads can make you/lose you a lot of money if you are right.
  • For example. I could make a $200 premium off a $500 risk trade, max loss would be $300. This is much more effective capital utilization than a naked or cash secured put, however it does not have the same downside protection or “wheel” potential as a sold put. Higher risk, higher reward.
• Vertical Debit spreads: I think of these like mini calls/puts. I personally don’t use them unless calls are outrageously expensive or the break even is absurdly high, but there’s nothing wrong with them. A call debit spread will lower your breakeven and overall cost vs just a call. You can do clever things like making a positive theta call spread if you’re creative. I like doing this since I hate losing money to theta.
• Vertical Credit spreads:
  • Very good theta strategy to define downside/upside risks.
  • A put credit spread is bullish and allows you to bet on upward movement with less capital and defined losses.
  • A call credit spread is a bearish strategy that allows you to bet on downward movement. These are very cool since they allow you to sell calls without selling naked calls, which can ruin you financially. I see selling these as better than buying puts since it’s so much easier to be profitable; to be redundant, Θ rocks.
  • https://www.schwab.com/resource-centeinsights/content/reducing-risk-with-credit-spread-options-strategy-0
• I repeat this on purpose: Don't EVER leave short spreads open on expiration day, close them. If you don't close, they better be VERY far from the strike on a non-volatile stock. In after hours a stock can jump/dip below your strike and be exercised without the other leg to protect you. This can lead to massive, life ruining losses. This is not an exaggeration, google this and be scared. It happened to a fair number of people with TSLA. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVFj9nRRDo&t=315s
• Short Straddle:

Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation

• Learn about wash sale rules. They suck and are very easy to activate with options. This will eliminate your ability to write off losses. Over trading can easily cause wash sales. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp
• Short attacks:
  • Learn to recognize these sketchy attacks by hedges/firms. They manipulate the market, it’s been documented countless times. A common one is rapid short selling, which pushes the price down.
  • Short Ladder attacks:
    • https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/3096735-anatomy-of-a-short-attack
    • Some people say short ladder attacks don't exist. I've seen some very strange stock nosedives off low volume, so I tend to think they do.
  • If you plan well enough and the market doesn’t give up on the stock you may be able to use it as a great opportunity to buy the dip.
• Cramer explains how he intentionally manipulated the market when he ran a hedge fund years ago. Multiple links to the video are below since this video gets pulled often, Cramer / The street never wanted this to go public.
  • Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/cramer-interview-idUKN2036292620070320
  • httpss://youtu.be/r07Gg92YjOI
  • https://youtu.be/VMuEis3byY4
  • https://youtu.be/JEzsfPmh894
  • https://youtu.be/QFfjX8dW-QQ
  • Due to this video I don’t fully trust Cramer. His show can give you stock ideas to buy (or inverse), but you never know where his true loyalties lie.
• Plan for taxes if you are up big. You may need to over withhold or contribute to taxes quarterly depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306

-Intermediate / Advanced Strategies (work in progress)-
You’ll notice many of these strategies inverse one another.
Options Strategy Finder
This website is great for learning about new strategies, you’ll see many links to it below.
https://www.theoptionsguide.com/option-trading-strategies.aspx
Short Strangle / Straddle

• Both of these strategies profit from little price movement. I recommend using a P/L calculator to determine BE, profit, etc.
• A straddle sells (or buys) two options at the same expiry and strike.
• A strangle sells (or buys) two options at same expiry with different strikes.
• Both these strategies involved selling a Call and a Put for a credit. Straddle uses ATM legs, strangle uses OTM legs.
• Limited max profits and unlimited risk. Due to the unlimited risk, I am not a fan. However, many people like these a lot.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-strangle.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-straddle.aspx

Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies

• These strategies profit from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. They receive a credit to open and benefit from theta decay. If your stock is range bound, these may be a good choice.
• These are both 4 "legged" trades, so you will have 4 trading fees to enter or exit the trade. A lower cost or zero cost broker shines here. However, “bad” free brokers will give you poor fills, which may not be worth the discount.
• Condors and butterflies have "wings" which are your purchased puts and calls. The wider the wing the higher the max profit/risk. The condor body can be riskier and skinny with a narrow high profit range or wider for a much greater chance of success with lower payout.
• An iron condor is built by combining a put credit spread and a call credit spread with the same expiry.
• An iron condor can be thought of as a modified short strangle with limited risk, and therefore a bit less profit. I prefer defined limited risk.
• The butterfly is similar except instead of a plateau it has a sharp peak. My personal mental note is that a condor looks more like a strangle with wings, while a butterfly looks like a straddle with wings.
• Pay attention to earnings dates when you open these, I have forgotten to check before and it led to bad trades.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-condor.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-butterfly.aspx

Long Condor (Debit Call Condor)

• The debit version of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to stay inside your defined range. This strategy profits from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. I’ve never tried this, Iron Condors make more sense to me.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/condor.aspx

Short Condor (Credit Call Condor)

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Credit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• Can be harder to set up. I want to try these, haven’t yet.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-condor.aspx

Reverse Iron Condor

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Debit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/reverse-iron-condor.aspx

LEAPs

• LEAP Options are options that are long term with many DTE, often over a year until expiration. LEAP calls are great for long term growth plays (downtrends with LEAP puts) or simply when you really like a company and can't afford 100 shares. LEAPs (or any "longer term" option) enables you to sell a PMCC or PMCP (below)

PMCC / PMCP

• PMCC or PMCP are poor man's covered call (or poor man's covered puts). They are diagonal options often used with purchased LEAPs. You sell a shorter DTE call/put with a further OTM strike than your purchased call/put. For PMCC/PMCPs it is often recommended to recoup your extrinsic value as soon as possible, some recommend with your first call CC or put sale, to ensure you are positive if the option is assigned early. These have a lot of moving parts and strategies. If you buy a barely ITM call/put and sell a nearby strike call/put you run the risk of the purchased option getting "blown by" on large stock movement and ending up with a very negative losing trade. Keeping your purchased LEAP deeper ITM should protect you. Check your initial PMCC using an options calculation to make sure you don't screw up.
• I'm currently tinkering with these myself. So far I like .7-.9 delta call LEAPS with 30-45 DTE calls on my CC. The goal is to hold the LEAP long term, potentially until expiration, and constantly sell calls/puts on it that expire worthless. Typically the call/put is rolled up and out or down and out if it's going to be assigned, unless you don't want your LEAP anymore.
• Some people look at these many sold CC or puts as profits, I look at them as lowering my cost basis until it's zero (or even negative). I have a page in my notebook I write each CC on my NIO LEAP (I Meme stock sometimes). I find it satisfying to slowly see the cost of the original option disappear. When I originally wrote this I had ~2 years left on it and it's 9-10% paid for; that doesn't even count the actual gains the LEAP has.
• TT states this is considered an IV play, which I partially agree with. You want to buy these during low IV times since an IV drop will hurt your LEAP value. I look at them more as a way to sell calls/puts on a high IV company with a lot of price movement and potential upside/downside.

Advanced Orders

• Guide to several order types: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/events/webinars/order-types-from-basic-to-advanced-07162019
• One Triggers Other (OTO):
  • Good brokers will allow you to set these up, some will require a desktop to do it. This lets you link one action to another. In programming think of it like an if-then. You’ll tie a buy/sell to another buy/sell
  • Setting trailing stops on options is very chaotic since their price movement can be drastic due to volatility. I prefer to set my trailing stop to a stock.
  • What I like to do is set a trailing stop on a stock (or just link it to a stock price drop) and have it sell 1 share I own. Then it immediately executes a market order to sell my call. I’ve had good luck doing this with incredibly volatile plays were stop losses aren’t effective. I’ll often have an order saved and ready saved for when a strong run up starts. When my price alerts start blowing up my phone, I’ll immediately hit execute to turn it on.

​
Disclaimer:
I’m not a financial adviser, I'm actually an engineer. I’m not telling you to invest in a specific stock/option or even use a specific strategy. I’ve outlined and more extensively elaborated on what I personally like. You should test several strategies and find what works best for you.
I'm just a guy who trades (mainly options) part-time for financial gain and fun. I don't claim to be some investing savant.

TLDR: They ran out of cash and can’t use customer cash as collateral. Brokers that had more collateral were not affected or were not affected to the same degree.
Edit: This is an explanation not a defense. Fuck them. They didn’t explain that they fucked up and basically got margin called. I didn’t use them but if I did I would have changed brokers instantly. The reason this is important is not just because of GME but because it happened to many brokerages and that means there is liquidity stress in the market right now.
Article from the FT:
The crucial role played by clearing houses in financial markets has been thrust into the spotlight after contentious moves by US brokers such as Robinhood and Charles Schwab to restrict retail investors’ bets on stocks at the heart of the Reddit-fuelled trading boom.
Customers reacted angrily on Thursday as brokers moved to stop them opening new positions in certain red-hot stocks, accusing them of unfair treatment or even a Wall Street establishment plot. But the brokers gave a more mundane explanation: the extra volatility in share prices meant they had to hold more capital at the institutions that clear their trades.
What do clearing houses do? These unobtrusive venues normally sit in the background of daily market activity but they can become the centre of attention during periods of volatility when they require more cash — or “margin” — from their members to ensure that deals are honoured as customers expect.
An equities trade that has been executed can take up to two days to be legally settled, creating a risk of it failing if either side of the trade defaults. A clearing house stands between the two sides to manage the risk to the market if that happens.
Each day members of the clearing house, which range from small brokers like Robinhood to big Wall Street banks such as JPMorgan and Citigroup, are required to put up margin as insurance for their trades.
The amount is calculated by the clearing house and is based on the amount of trading carried out by each member, as well as the volatility of the individual securities traded. Margin is generally collected at the start of the trading day, although there can be intraday calls in frenzied periods, in an attempt to protect the wider market from sudden trade failures.
The clearing member often has limited time to make up the shortfall and the margin typically has to be an asset that is highly liquid, such as cash, US government bonds or shares. In the middle of the market volatility last March, one US bank was required to find $9.6bn of margin for derivatives trades within an hour.
How do brokers such as Robinhood fit into this? In common with rivals such as Schwab and ETrade, Robinhood clears its own trades and is a member of the main US equities clearing house, run by DTCC.
While self-clearing saves on the fees that would otherwise go to another clearing broker, it also means Robinhood takes on the risk that an executed trade does not settle, and needs to have more cash on hand to cover shortfalls. It also faces higher costs if the clearing house raises margin requirements in volatile periods to protect against a member default.
“The extreme volatility is a big factor behind this,” said Andy Nybo, managing director at Burton-Taylor International Consulting. “They need to make sure they are able to meet cash requirements, whether it is for clearing or to investors that are owed money due to trading activity.”
As Robinhood said in a blog post on Thursday, the requirements “can be substantial in the current environment.” It declined to comment further.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, the margin call from DTCC across the US equities market rose from $26bn to $33.5bn, the clearing house confirmed.
DTCC said the frenzied trading in shares such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment “generated substantial risk exposures at firms that clear these trades . . . particularly if the clearing member or its clients are predominantly on one side of the market.”
How did brokers respond? Safety mechanisms built into the market’s infrastructure across Wall Street led to periodic halts in trading activity on Thursday. In order to ensure they had enough money to cover margin and capital requirements, Robinhood and others such as Schwab and TD Ameritrade raised margin for trading on some of the names at the heart of the volatility, which required more cash be set aside after each trade.
This limited its margin needs from escalating further. By allowing users to close positions, it was still permitting trades that would reduce its immediate need for cash.
Robinhood also raised the margin requirements for customers that had not paid for the total value of their trading up front, having cut its margin requirements in December in an attempt to drive more trading activity. That meant some customers suddenly needed to come up with cash to cover trades.
Behind the scenes, Robinhood moved to raise a fresh $1bn in capital from its existing investors, which it announced ahead of trading on Friday. The company said the fundraising was a “strong sign of confidence from investors that will help us continue to further serve our customers”.
Anthony Denier, chief executive of Webull, another company that was forced to restrict trading in some shares, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance that its clearing firm “simply could not afford” the cost of entering into new trades.
“This has nothing to do with a decision or some sort of closed, cigar smoke filled room of Wall Street firms getting together to the dismay of the retail trader,” he said.
————————- Simpler Explanation from Comments ————————
RH and other similar execution firms have to post collateral with the DTCC every time a position is opened. This collateral is to protect the DTCC in the event of the market moving against the position between the time of execution and the time the trade settles (T+2) AND the execution firm failing to settle the trade by being unable to come up with the cash (in the case of a purchase) or the shares (in the case of a sale).
When a share is particularly volatile, the DTCC will up the collateral requirements it imposes on both buyer and seller. When the trade does finally settle the collateral is returned.
RH and other execution firms are prohibited from using client funds for this purpose, which must remain in a segregated account until settlement is finalised. Even if RH decline to allow margin trading on certain volatile stocks, insisting that buyers stump up the full purchase price, this money cannot be used for the 2 day period when RH has to post collateral. If RH executed a sell order during this period, that would reduce DTCC's risk and allow it to return collateral to RH rather than ask for more. This collateral could be re-used by RH, allowing it to make another purchase on behalf of a client. This is why RH could accept sell orders nut not buy orders periodically. Once it had executed enough sell orders, which freed up collateral, it could then offer to accept buy orders, until the collateral ran out again. This is why the blocks on buy orders were periodic - they hit their collateral limit, so stopped accepting buy orders. They executed sell orders which freed up collateral (and collateral was returned as trades settled), allowing them to offer buy orders agin, until the collateral limit was hit again, when they had to once again suspend buy orders. etc etc
And ran out, it did. RH's business model is based on a steady stream of small orders on both the buy sand sell side. If it is executing both buys and sells consistently over time, as far as DTCC is concerned it has very little risk to RH so doesn't need to ask for much collateral to be posted. Hence RH had never planned for a situation where it would be asked to post large quantities of collateral (potentially $billions).
So, it ran out of collateral that it would need to post for buy orders, but sell orders would free up collateral. It arranged a convertible bond issue with existing shareholders that raised $500m immediately, and hopefully another $500m in a few days and it drew down on a loan facility it had with its banks. But still not enough.
The issue RH (and others experienced) is the ridiculously long time it still takes to settle trades (it could be more or less immediate) and the rules that prevent it using client funds as collateral (if settlement was immediate, the client funds wouldn't remain in the segregated account, but would be used immediately to settle the trade).
But it is what it is. If RH wants to execute trades it has to be able to put up the collateral. If it doesn't have the collateral, it can't execute trades (at least the trades that require collateral). But the wider market remained open. Anyone could buy or sell shares at all times. They just needed to put up the collateral themselves for the 2 day settlement period, or find someone who would do so on their behalf.
Edit: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

RoyalRoad
Next
Story contains a lot about markets, logistics, development, and the best and worst of human history. Not so much Space Marines nuking aliens.
If you enjoyed the trade negotiations and Senate politics in the Star Wars prequels, and wished that there was an entire standalone story consisting solely of those parts, this might be for you!
In response to all the helpful feedback I've gotten, I am making major revisions to the start of this story, especially focusing on chapters one through three. While this occurs, there may be some inconsistencies.
The names of the brave astronauts aboard the first manned FTL spacecraft will forever be recorded in the annals of human history as a triumph of human ingenuity, determination, and international cooperation.
However, what came immediately after would be far more remembered.
"Hello, people of Earth! Humans! Welcome to the galactic community."
A shocked planet watched on their screens as an utterly alien character that looked like it was lifted out of a bad sci-fi show spoke. The alien mouth movements of what could only be described as a frog creature did not match the very human words that came out of the robotic translator.
The aliens did not pirate TV networks, nor did they hack into important government websites. They simply broadcast this openly on satellite TV for anyone with an antenna to hear. And for anyone who did not, there were CNN and social media.
"First, we would like to congratulate you on your first successful use of the blink drive. That itself is a feat of enlightenment most species we monitor do not achieve. Indeed, the physics of it all is not only extremely complex, it requires the cooperation and sacrifice of many beings, over many generations."
The young people at Mission Control in Johnson Space Center patted each other on the back tepidly as they watched the green headed frog-like alien addressing their hard work on the main screen.
"We come in peace. We are representatives of the Galactic Trader Guild."
Some humans let out a sigh of relief. Others, skeptical, watched intensely on.
"We are not here to take your resources or your people. The thousands of planets and species in the galaxy live in total peace and harmony with each other. Regional conflicts on planets are inevitable, but one thing we as a Guild pride ourselves on is our ability to ensure that none has ever reached the sacred frontiers of space."
That's a little odd, most people thought, and probably at least a little propagandized. After all, war is such a big part of human history and the human condition that it was hard to imagine an entire galactic community of thousands of FTL-capable species that never fought in space.
"Our spaceships represent millions of years of hard work, and these incredible investments must never be put into jeopardy. Therefore, weapons designed for use in space are banned. This ban will be enforced by regular ship inspections from your local Guild representatives, who are exceptions to this rule."
Most of the peace-loving people of Earth thought this was great news. After all, many nations had banned the usage of weapons in space. The only exceptions were, of course, the nations that actually had the capability to make use of space weapons. Government lawyers in the world were already starting their first drafts on their inevitable memos on how these rules obviously wouldn't or shouldn't apply to their country.
"As our name implies, we are a trade organization. We have rules for proper trade conduct that ensure a free and fair exchange of goods. All offworld traders from your planet must abide by them. Any breach of our bylaws and all fraudulent transactions can be reported to your local Guild representative. All our Guild documents will be transmitted to your people, translated to your dominant language."
A quick string of bytes followed on the digital transmission. Amateurs on the Internet quickly decoded the document. The content was a goldmine of information about the galaxy. Coordinates for alien planets on the blink drive, some engineering documents, and standardized units of measurements.
These are the temperatures and pressures at which pure water boils.
This is the standard strength of iron.
This is the distance light can travel in a vacuum while certain atoms decay. And so on.
Indeed, the big frog alien continued, "inside, you will find the specifications for an FTL beacon and the requirements for a standard trading spaceport. Once you have built them, traders around the galaxy will make the journey to make fair exchange with your people. Commonly traded items are food, manufactured goods, and workers. We are certain that your planet has many items of value for trade."
"We hope that you have a good cycle, and we eagerly await the arrival of you and your descendants in our spaceports!"
With that message transmitted, they and their ship disappeared. There were no negotiations. No exchange of handshakes.
As their ship blinked away, humanity pondered the colossal implications.
"Which planet is next on the list?" asked the big green frog as he parched his throat with water after the broadcast.
"That was it, representative. The railgun upgrade betting pool has Planet-3822 and Planet-8901 as the most likely next contenders for enlightenment. Would you like to place a wager?"
Some governments decided to suppress the news. North Korean state television cut to an orchestra playing classical music. Others made laws prohibiting the distribution of the material transmitted by the aliens until further study could be made.
In most of the connected world, the Internet rendered these measures pointless. By the end of the day, everyone had seen the aliens and that's not a genie that you could put back into the bottle. Most governments used this as an opportunity to justify dramatic increases in funding for space programs and defense.
There were very few incidents of the often exaggerated threat of civil unrest. Most people went on with their lives. They went to school, to work, and to ball games.
The arrival of the aliens had profound implications on the future of human philosophy. Most major religions had a dogma-compatible explanation by the end of the hour. Some sects even proclaimed this as evidence that their worldviews were correct.
In the stock market, this news was a massive upheaval in expectations. Thousands of alien worlds. This meant new markets with potentially trillions of customers. It also meant that potential alien technology could put entire industries out of business. Stock prices swung wildly as uncertain traders rapidly changed their positions.
Several development companies immediately announced their intentions to start construction on the spaceports mentioned in the Guild documents. As it turned out, building a place for spaceships to land wasn't that complex. You just needed something hard, durable, and flat that could withstand a bit of heat and wear. Using the formulas provided by the documents, experts agreed that the asphalt concrete normally used for airport tarmac would do just fine.
Normally, environmental reviews would need to be done, the sound pollution would need to be contained. Hundreds of tests needed to be conducted on site, but from what the frogheads said, if you built it, the traders were going to come.
Nobody wanted to be left out of what was going to be the new gold rush. So, money changed hands to grease the gears that ensured these new projects went through. Some lobbyists in Washington DC made a lot of money ensuring that no new regulations on "spaceport construction and operation" were added.
Even in California, the capital of NIMBYs and tree huggers, people could smell an opportunity if it boomed down from orbit and bonked them in the nose with it. Which it did in this case.
Thus, Livermore Spaceport.
What used to be a bunch of warehouses and parking lots just a short five-minute drive from Lawrence Livermore National Labs became a rapidly growing construction site. It was close enough to the San Francisco Bay Area metro that people could commute to it and see the first of the new generation FTL spacecraft take off and land, but far enough that they didn't have to hear about it when they slept.
BREAKING: LIVERMORE SPACEPORT OPERATIONAL
Looking up from her morning coffee, that's what the muted TV screen was trumpeting in big words on the CNN ticker. The mayor was talking, judging by the scrolling captions, something about how this will bring new jobs and money to the city.
Sarah snorted. Everything is always breaking news. She absent-mindedly watched as the TV played stock footage of the construction workers installing the antenna last month and humanity's first interstellar ships took off and landed on the concrete lot as she sipped her coffee.
Sarah Miller would not call herself a hard worker. She graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Communications, not exactly a field high in demand. When she got offered a job as a "marketing person" at a tech startup in SF, she grabbed it, more like you'd grab a life raft and less like it was an opportunity of a lifetime or anything.
Then, two years later, the startup failed. Funding dried up, and now she was out of a job in a metro with some of the highest cost of living in the world, with not exactly the hottest resume.
So now she was sitting at a breakfast shop just outside her rented apartment in Livermore, checking her emails to see whether she got any replies on her job applications (she had not) and contemplating how long she'd last before she'd have to go home to live with her parents in Seattle.
It was not exactly a fun thought.
"You going to the spaceport opening too, Sarah?" Rudely interrupted from her self-pity, she looked to see the woman across from her. She racked her memory to match the face to a name, but nothing came immediately. Mid to late 20s, Asian American, hipster glasses, t-shirt and jeans.
The writing on the coffee cup in her hand said her name was "Jan". Ah, yes, they met a few times on the BART commute into the city. Was her name Jan or…
"Hey Jen, naw I was just staring at the news. How's it going?"
"Great! What about you? Haven't seen you on the BART for a few. You still working at that place downtown?"
Sarah sighed internally, here it is again. "Not anymore, we just got shut down. So, I'm pretty much just lounging around."
"Aww that's terrible!" Then Jen thought for a second. "Listen, I've got a business idea about the spaceport stuff, but no one to share them with. You should come with me to the opening."
"Oh yeah? Why's that?" Sarah asked, leaning forward. Normally, this would sound like the start of some kind of MLM scam or something, but she'd been unemployed long enough but that the word "business" piqued her interest. She knew that Jen was some kind of fancy engineer who made enough to still have savings despite living in one of the most expensive places in the world, so she probably wasn't asking for money.
Jen almost whispered, "my cousin's one of the construction workers at the spaceport, and he said he could get me in. They have a lot of big companies bidding to get on the ground floor of the alien trade with truckloads of all kinds of goods, but he's got an employee pass that'll get us in on day one."
"Wait, what?" Sarah said, confused. "I thought we were just going to see the opening."
"We are," Jen replied, "but I'm thinking we rent a truck, load it up with food, and see what the aliens will give us!"
"What do you need me for?"
"Well," Jen hesitated, "I have money for the truck and the food, but I don't know much about selling stuff…"
Neither did Sarah. She was in marketing, not a saleswoman. But she wasn't going to mention that.
"Sure, I sell a ton of stuff on Craigslist," she said instead, "but I'm sure nobody has experience selling to aliens!"
Jen looked relieved. Really, she just wanted some kind of backup instead of going alone. "Ok, since I'm putting up the money, and you're going to do the selling, I think we split profits fifty-fifty after I recoup the cost of the U-Haul rental and the food. How's that sound?"
Sarah thought for a while, but not too long. It probably wouldn't make them that much money, she thought. Then again, she wasn't putting anything on the line. And she needed money, if there were any to be earned here. She reached her arm out for a handshake.
"Deal!"
It's not like she had anything else to do on Saturday.
Costco, Livermore
The froghead had said that aliens traded food, and food was relatively cheap, so it was probably a safer bet to stick to than manufactured goods. Who even knew if the aliens could ride a bicycle or were interested in a PlayStation? The part he mentioned about trading workers sounded an awful lot like slavery, so that was an obvious non-starter.
"Do you think the aliens eat meat?" Sarah asked, holding up a massive bag of hamburgers.
Jen considered that for a second. Some vegetarians and vegans would probably postulate that a morally superior species would not partake in the consumption of animal flesh. Then again, she didn't have to guess. She pulled out her phone, and looked up the Guild documents summary someone had helpfully compiled into Wikipedia.
"Hmm it says that many of the other alien species are omnivores because that's how they get a wider variety of calories," Jen said after browsing a while.
They loaded one bag of each of meat onto their carts, and made sure to buy ice boxes to keep them frozen. It took several trips to their rental truck, but they finally loaded it with enough fruits, vegetables, and frozen meats to make a dent in Jen's sizable bank account.
They hoped that these aliens liked apples and pears. Those were on sale.
Livermore Spaceport, Earth
It looked like the entire Bay Area showed up and were lining up to get in. Tourists were bussing in from out of town. They saw several groups of international tourist groups that were corralling their customers around with loudspeakers.
As they drove past the long line towards the vehicle entrance, they waved at the excited crowds and got a few whoops and cheers in return.
The security guards at the gate checked their pass and let them through to the security checkpoint. Several men that looked like they meant business opened up their truck and scanned it carefully with metal detectors and x-ray scanners to ensure that no one got any funny ideas.
There was a short delay while the customs officer tried to figure out whether they needed to fill out an elaborate looking form for the fresh food in the back of their truck. A few calls to his supervisor later, amid angry glares from the truck drivers waiting behind them, he let them go.
Sarah and Jen drove into a parking lot closer to the landing pads. The pads were large concrete surfaces with white and yellow painted targets. Off in the distance, they could see hangars and a tower that looked like an airport traffic control tower. There were also a few buildings under construction, including one that looked like the start of an upscale luxury dining establishment.
From behind, they saw some of the crowd were filing into a waiting area from where they could observe the aliens from afar.
Jen felt lucky. If the food in the back was the price of admission for seeing the visitors from outer space up close and personal, to her, it would have been well worth it. Sarah was checking the battery on her phone to make sure that there would be enough left to take pictures or video, if the opportunity arises.
Most of the other trucks in the parking lot with them had logos of recognizable companies on them. Several tech companies in the Bay Area that sponsored the construction of the spaceport won bids to get in on the action. Others were some local companies that had connections to the spaceport like Jen did.
Sarah saw them first before she heard it.
First one, then several more, spaceships descended from the sky, accompanied by sonic booms as the excited crowd looked up into the sky with hands on their brows shielding from the sun.
The alien spaceships couldn't be mistaken for human rockets, but there was a certain familiarity. Long, pointy, utilitarian hull shapes with rocket flames coming out the bottom. Like modern cars that all look like they're designed in a wind tunnel, it seems like there's one efficient way to build spaceships, and everyone stuck to it.
It's nice to know that at least we were on the right track, Sarah thought to herself as the ships touched down gently on the target landing pads. Human ships can't maneuver as sharply, nor are they anywhere near the same scale and size, but at least we got the shapes right.
The cargo-plane-sized spaceships settled on the concrete landing pads without so much as a crunch. Small hatches opened at the bottom of each, and walkway ramps rolled down.
At some hidden signal, the security guard gestured to the parking lot that they were free to approach, and the dazed merchants sprang into action.
The alien they've just greeted through a translator calls himself "Zarko". He was apparently part of a species of rock planet humanoids called the Zeepil that came from a system about 200 light years from Earth, and his skin had a charred appearance that made him look like a heavily sunburned sloth on two legs.
"Let me guess, what you've brought is your native foods," Zarko's translator said in a monotone Stephen Hawking voice that did not match the movement of what looked like his lips.
"Yes! How did you guess? Can you guys eat the fruits and vegetables that we have?" Sarah asked. She stopped herself from mentioning the steaks and chicken in their ice boxes. She figured there's no knowing whether these aliens thought about carnivores, so she started with the safe stuff first.
"We consume silicon and uranium for sustenance," Zarko made a strange face and then burped, "I am joking. Every newcomer species asks the same question. Most species share the same diet. Some species eat meat from other animals. Sapient meat is of course illegal on most planets."
Relieved that Jen didn't just waste thousands of dollars on the meat, they showed Zarko their wares. And with their permission, he sampled some of each goods they had, including a bit of the raw meat.
"Good, good," Zarko was pleased. "I detect a high amount of sugar and starch in a lot of your wares. I would take it all." The Gaks would be impressed the next time he stopped at their planet.
"Can we see what you have?" Jen asked excitedly. She pushed a funny image of the aliens grabbing all their stuff and just taking off out of her mind. They wouldn't go through all the trouble of coming here just to steal some food… would they?
"Yes, yes," Zarko pulled out a tray of gadgets and started describing his goods to them.
"This is a spaceship rated fire extinguisher," he described several slightly oversized aerosol cans, "good for even reactor fires!"
"First aid kits for basic bandaging and wound cleaning, compatible with human physiology." They were several plastic looking boxes with an alien looking skull marked on all six sides. It looks like the red cross symbol wasn't so universal anymore.
"Civilian hunting rifle," Zarko set it on the table. "Powered by laser. Holds twelve shots."
It was a familiar looking weapon. Jen and Sarah looked nervously around at the security guards, but they didn't seem to notice. This was very illegal in the state of California.
They shook their heads at that one and asked to see something else. Whoever was dumb enough to buy that one would probably get it confiscated on their way out of the spaceport.
"Advanced mathematics calculator, base-24," he said. This one looked like a regular calculator but with more buttons. Interesting, but probably not that useful to humans.
"Stasis box. Keeps food safe to eat for years. Operates on solar power." Ah, a space fridge, basically. Finally, something that would probably cover their expenses.
Zarko also claimed to have tons of raw materials in his ship, including what he called "better concrete" and "better steel". The translator had some problems with these; it seems like they just hadn't been invented on Earth yet. But Zarko had customers for those on other planets already, so he didn't bother to put them out for display.
After a little haggling, Sarah and Jen settled on four of the first aid kits, six of the fire extinguishers, and one of the stasis boxes. Sarah reasoned that the stasis box could probably fetch a much higher price if they resold it as "alien technology" online, and Jen deferred to Sarah's experience in selling her old stuff online.
Zarko printed out instructions for each of the items in English, even if they did all look fairly intuitive to use by themselves. The aliens may look different from them, but by the way the fire extinguisher buttons seem to activate, the way they made their stuff did not seem that different.
The most significant difference they saw between the alien goods and what their human counterparts would be is the amount of care that clearly went into making each item. Each of the first aid kit boxes, Sarah observed, looked just a little different from each other. The adornments and decorations on the side were painted or carved on with details that weren't exactly the same, and one even had a bright gold finish.
She wondered why.
As she got home around midnight, Sarah immediately got onto Craigslist and thought about where to list "alien first aid kits". Technically, it could be under "household items", or "tools", but "collectibles" would probably get them the most-
That's when she found the "alien" section. Of hecking course. For a website that looks like it was made in the 90s, they'd already adjusted to the latest fad with remarkable speed. She found dozens of listings of alien items that she saw that Zarko was parading around, and quite a few that he didn't have.
There were no other first aid kits listed on the market. Which was strange because she definitely saw dozens of those being sold by the other traders. Hm… without a starting price, it was hard to gauge how much she should be selling it for.
She refreshed the page out of habit and watched the new items scroll in.
Her first reaction was: Ah, someone just posted a first aid kit.
Her second reaction was: Wait, for how much?
There was a listing of a first aid kit for $20,000. Which was ridiculous. It's a collectible, but a box of bandages was not worth the price of a brand-new car.
Something nagging at her instinct, Sarah opened one of them up. It was just a bunch of bandages, syringes, and basic medical stuff. Some of it had the wrong shapes, or had a different color than they'd normally be, but there's only so many ways to bandage an open wound, and everything looked familiar-ish.
She read the English manual that Zarko had printed for her. It said:
"Rated for human use. Includes:
Bandage 4 rolls,
Skin adhesive 16 pieces,
Pain relief cream 2 ounces,
Radiation exposure injection 2 doses,
Cold relief medicine 24-"
Wait, what? Radiation exposure injection? Like in case the spaceship hull leaks or something?
Sarah skimmed through the list and looked at usage instructions for:
"Radiation exposure injection: use in case of emergency hull exposure. Rapidly repairs cell and bone marrow damage for patients with acute radiation exposure and kills all cancer cell growth in body. Dose takes effect within 30 seconds. Side effects may include nausea, dehydration, drowsiness…"
Her blood chilled. She read it again.
And again to be certain.
Then she wiped away the sweat around her eyebrows to make sure she wasn't dreaming.
"Kills all cancer cell growth in body."
She looked at her laptop and refreshed the page. The previous first aid kit listing she saw had been taken down, presumably sold for $20,000. If this kit did what it said it would…
Excited, she refreshed the online listing page again. She saw two listings for the alien first aid kit, both up to well over $100,000 now.
Refresh.
A million. Some guy was selling a darn first aid kit for a million dollars.
This was incredible. Some corner of her brain whined something about putting a price on health, but she cast that out of her mind to refresh again and see more listings in the millions of dollars. And she was holding four of them in her lap.
Half an hour later, it seemed that the prices had stabilized around $4 million, the price of a small closet in downtown San Fran.
This was evidently the market price for the life of a cancer patient.
Horrific.
She put up a listing for $15 million for her four boxes.
Instantly, her email inbox started getting notifications, a number of apparently wealthy individuals with sick relatives desperate to buy a miracle cure that hadn't even been tested or proven on humans yet, introducing themselves and sharing their life stories.
There was a guy who owned a large database company but had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer. He knew he should have stopped smoking years ago, but he needed something to manage the stress.
Another, a business executive, who had a heartbreaking story of her dad dying of liver cancer.
Then, a short and simple "Willing to offer twenty million in cash today for all 8 doses of anti-radiation medicine in alien aid kit, J&J VP of Research and Innovation, Alexi G."
She looked him up online.
He was legit, from a big pharma R&D.
She reasoned that maybe selling to someone who could do research on it would help more people. And he was offering more…
She replied.
He wanted to meet at their company office downtown first thing in the morning.
Downtown San Francisco
Alexi had made good on his offer. He hadn’t tried to haggle the price, as she’d know some Craigslist buyers would try to do once you met them in person. It was generally considered a jerk move.
It was Saturday, so the offices were mostly empty, except for one conference room with several employees as well as Alexi. She handed over her duffel bag with the four kits, he opened and checked each to make sure their contents were all there, and handed over a cashier’s check for the agreed amount.
And that was it.
It had taken her bank an hour to process the check, and several additional hours to clear it. The money appeared in her account around midnight, at which point Sarah let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding for a day.
Sarah was rich.
Sarah got out her phone to text Jen the news.
Huh, there was an email notification "Hey Sarah, thank you for your interest in applying to be our marketing assistant. If you can send us your resume and a co-"
Delete.
Twenty million dollars was a lot of money.
Neither Sarah nor Jen had ever seen that much money, but they knew enough to leave something like this to a professional.
An accountant at a Big Four company helped them divide up the assets and ballparked how much they’d eventually need to render unto Uncle Sam the things that were his come April 15th.
Sarah paid all her bills on time, a first in months.
Jen quit her job the next day. After all, what was the point of being a web developer for a measly six-figure salary when there was a gold rush next door?
Figuratively speaking.
They both vaguely knew the history of the gold seekers during the California Gold Rush.
Some of them struck it rich, but some found nothing in the river beds of the Sacramento. The people who had made the most money in 1849 were actually not the flood of gold prospectors who came into the area.
The people who had gotten the richest out of the gold boom were the merchants who sold them the prospecting equipment they used, the services they needed, the food they ate, and the clothes they wore. The masses of pioneers who came for a new life in the American West: they were the real gold rush.
Most people today do not know the name of a single gold seeker.
Most people today have heard of some of the merchants who got rich off the gold seekers’ businesses. Levi Strauss, John Studebaker, Sam Brannan.
And of course, Henry Wells and William Fargo.
This was the fourth time they've been back to the spaceport, Sarah thought, and they'd gotten something new each time. They'd dealt with different traders each time, though they did see Zarko at least one other time as he was leaving with a full hold of fresh fruit.
After the first couple days, the alien traders had noticed that there seemed to be shortage of first aid kits on Earth, and the inevitable flood of anti-cancer syringes put online dramatically lowered its listing price.
Several large pharmaceutical companies had also issued press releases that they were within months of the development of generic anti-cancer medicine. The lawyers were working overdrive over the IP implications of adapted alien technology, but there didn't seem to be any laws preventing companies from doing it…
This brought its price down to the tens or hundreds of thousands. Nothing to sneeze at for most people, of course, but it was a literal cure for cancer and well within range of some other items the aliens were bringing.
Today, Zarko was trying to sell her and Jen on some kind of liquid medical adhesive in industrial quantities. Some hardy tree-like species use it to glue deep wounds together or something, but Sarah saw a few listings for it on Craigslist a couple of days ago that had no takers, even for cheap. Medical companies must have thought it not really worth pursuing as Earth already had similar products.
Unfortunately for Zarko, he'd already filled his cargo hold with tons of the liquid after hearing how well medical supplies were selling on Earth. His reward for his entrepreneurial spirit was an empty paw. It was beginning to look like he'd need to dump his cargo for a few boxes of worthless Vton trinkets on his way home.
Sarah and Jen had driven all the way out here with a U-Haul truck worth of pears, and most of the other traders were ready to leave for the next cycle of traders to come in anyway. They could dump their goods on Zikzik, the trader next door, but all he had left are a bunch of "better steel". Apparently some construction companies were learning to work with it, but from what she heard, it was annoying to sell those because the government was still looking at the regulations around these new building materials.
And they looked soooo heavy to have to carry home.
Sarah had learned to read a little more of the humanoid sloth's facial expressions, and he was clearly not happy about having made a trip for nothing. "Tell you what, Zarko. I'll give you the fruit, and you can bring me my goods the next time you come back," she said.
Zarko's snout perked up as he thought. Fundamentally, Zarko considered himself an honest trader. He didn't cheat or skimp on quality of materials, and he didn't lie about what he sells. Sure, he embellished a little sometimes, as all traders do, but who doesn't?
Zarko had never taken on debt to a customer. He's heard of other traders doing this, but the far more common use of debt across the galaxy was to trap people into a lifetime of hard work in unpleasant conditions.
But Sarah and Jen didn't seem like the kind of people who would be capable of doing that.
For a second, Zarko thought about cheating them. Just take their fruits, and never come back to Earth, but immediately he put the thought out of his mind. That was not the right thing to do.
Zarko agreed. He would just have to remember to bring more first aid kits next time right?
"Did you see the way Zarko reacted to the IOU?" Sarah asked Jen on the way home.
"Yeah, do you think he'll just abscond with the fruit?"
"Nah, apparently the pears are selling out like hotcakes. He can't just leave Earth and never come back. I heard Zikzik say he got a brand-new reactor upgrade just from one trip of pears alone," Sarah sounded confident, and hoped that she was right. Something else was bothering her about the alien traders.
"Good. Maybe he's worried we're naive or something and someone else will take advantage of us," Jen brainstormed.
Naive? For what? Getting cheated out of a truck full of ugly pears Safeway was going to throw out at the end of the day? Then, it dawned on her.
"I think there's something missing," Sarah said slowly, thinking about their past interactions with the alien traders, "they don't think about selling things the way we do."
"You mean they don't have money?" Sarah smiled and rolled her eyes in her head, of course Jen was thinking about money.
"Yeah. Come to think of it, they clearly don't live in some kind of Star Trek galaxy where everything is free," Sarah continues her train of thought, gears turning in her head, "they just barter and haggle for all our stuff."
"They don't have money, they don't have debt, they don't have Craigslist!" Jen blurted, the implication of this was beginning to excite the inner businesswoman in her that she's been discovering the past week.
"Coming to the spaceport is their Craigslist, but without money or debt, they must also not have a lot of the other stuff we take for granted," Sarah was already making a list in her head, "that explains why the small variety of consumer goods they have are all related space travel and cargo storage, and why most of their big trade is in industrial goods. They can't have banks! What about loans and mortgages! What about paying fines! How do they even buy stuff normally?"
"Ah, must be such a simple and happy existence without having to think about money," Jen said wistfully.
"Yup," Sarah grinned, "let's go ruin it!"
RoyalRoad
Next

This is a revised version of my previous article. I am going to try to update frequently as it appears people have more and more questions and misconceptions or misinformation is being spread quickly. This post is to educate not only the Dogecoin community but anyone who is interested in cryptocurrency/currency is general.
This information below is important. I ask that you please take the time to read this entire post before making judgment or commenting. My discord group of over 100 people have grouped together the majority of the most asked questioned and misunderstandings regarding Dogecoin, into the following 20 key points. Even if you know the answers to some of these please read the entire post. (Especially if you’re from the cryptocurrency community) Please read them below.

1. Question: What is Dogecoin?

Answer: Dogecoin (/ˈdoʊdʒkɔɪn/ DOHJ-koyn, code: DOGE, symbol: Ð) is a cryptocurrency invented by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system that is instant, fun, and free from traditional banking fees. Dogecoin features the face of the Shiba Inu dog from the popular "Doge" meme as its logo and namesake. It was introduced on December 6, 2013, and quickly developed its own online community reaching a market capitalization of US $5,382,875,000 on January 28, 2021. [Wikipedia, 20210203]

1. Question: Why Dogecoin?

Answer: For the Lolz. Well, not quite. Initially as a purely meme-driven alternative to the likes of Bitcoin and Litecoin, Dogecoin in-fact boasts very low transaction fees and fast transaction times, very little network congestion, and most importantly, is designed to be used as a daily means of exchange, like your morning cup of coffee. Also, it is really fun, and who doesn't like the Dog ?!
1/2 - second perspective) Question: What Is Dogecoin? And why Dogecoin?
Answer: Back a few years ago, some crazy people banded together in support of a cryptocurrency known as Dogecoin. Similar to other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin, the people's crypto, finds itself with the support of hundreds if not thousands of individuals pushing for this currency to succeed. But what is that? Unless you have been absent from every social bubble, you may have heard of Bitcoin. For the purpose of this explanation, you will find that Bitcoin is not exactly an easy thing to equate to Dogecoin, but lets think about the criteria of a Cryptocurrency.Bitcoin did not find its foothold overnight. In fact, it took several years. A lot of people fought tooth and nail for their belief in the coin. Crypto, in a nutshell, is a decentralized form of currency that finds its value in a combination of individual asset involvement, ease or difficulty in security of an exchange, creating a method of reliable, secure, trustworthy exchange, and other reasons.
Think of it like this: to exchange goods and services without currency, one must barter. I can barter a service (a haircut, for example) towards someone who needs a haircut, and in exchange they can barter a good or service to me.Currency then becomes an "IOU" (I Owe yoU) so that, if somebody needs me to cut their hair, they can give me an IOU for a good or service they control. When enough people begin adopting this, a centralized currency eventually takes hold. Crypto seeks to take this a step further and, insteal of relying on building up a centalization in terms of valuable metals or debt, it is built up solely on the exchange of goods and services. Dogecoin, compared to other cryptocurrencies, finds itself in a strange position where the origins did NOT see it soaring to the moon in any situation. Funny how things can change in time. Dogecoin has pros and cons to it. Comparing it to other cryptos, it does not face a supply cap like Bitcoin does. It is not a directly equated asset, such as how Bitcoin can be attributed as a digital gold asset. Mining dogecoin is also much simpler (comparitively) and does not face difficulty spikes, a source of Bitcoin slow-down. In essence, in 50 years, Dogecoin will still be around, still be mined, still be traded. Bitcoin will cease to be created, hoarded, and become the digital currency of the affluent.

1. Question: Places to buy dogecoin places where you can spend Dogecoin?

Answer: Refer to dogecoin posts by the moderators or a simple Google search for a list of businesses that accept doge as payment.

1. Question: Cryptocurrencies vs stocks. The main differences between them.

Answer: A stock is a type of investment that represents an ownership share in a company. Investors buy stocks that they think will go up in value over time. ... A stock is an investment. When you purchase a company's stock, you're purchasing a small piece of that company, called a share.
A cryptocurrency: When comparing crypto to stocks, the main thing to keep in mind is that cryptocurrencies have few if any regulations applied to them. It is still the "wild west" of trading. You can be scammed, skimmed, pumped-dumped, as so forth, much more often and more easily than with stocks. Terminology is similar to exact between the two, but both require a certain mindset. Crypto is almost always a long-haul game, where stocks can be short play or long haul.

1. Question: Dogecoin vs Bitcoin - their competitive advantages and disadvantages. Many cryptocurrencies have a higher degree of scarcity in comparison with FIAT (e.g. the US Dollar). For example Bitcoin / BTC has a strictly limited supply. And even though Dogecoin is not strictly limited, it is still a lot more scare in terms of supply than the US dollar. This simply means that if more people want to hold BTC or Doge versus the limited supply of the respective coin, the value of the cryptocurrency increases.
   
2. Question: Is Dogecoin a meme or should it be taken seriously?
   

Answer: We have all witnessed the power of a meme, the depths it can reach in society, especially in recent years. We have seen it many times before with video games, consoles, Oreos, or as of late even toilet paper... A meme has inherent value in the form of “widespread information”. A meme can spread an idea across diverse communities, and even entire countries literally overnight. This can bring about lasting effects on culture and society. If correctly taken advantage of, Doge can become the dominant meme currency of the internet, and amass real-world value just by being a popular, recognisable meme itself. This is where the saying “Dogecoin is the people’s coin” comes from.

1. Question m: Mining Dogecoin and the history of Dogecoin). How a new currency entered the market.

Answer: mining is the process of creating new cryptocurrency by solving a computational puzzle. mining is necessary to maintain the ledger of transactions upon which cryptocurrency is based. Miners have become very sophisticated over the last several years using complex machinery to speed up mining operations. Approximately 600,000 dogecoins are produced per hour and 5,256,000,000 per year,

1. Question: Circulation of currencies. The importance of buying, selling, and holding - and the differences between them.

Answer: To briefly explain this, a lot of people have been saying “buy and hold” or “I’m never selling!” - which in itself is great start. But there remains a lot of misinformation around the topic, for example that simply "buying and holding Doge" will drive up the price indefinitely. Unfortunately, that is just not true. Buying, holding, and selling are all intricately connected with each other. ALL of those three states are essential for a (digital) currency to flourish. Holding does neither hurt or raise the value of the asset, but rather it helps to establish a baseline, which is also called "setting a floor". Those who have diligently kept on holding their coins, have allowed Dogecoin to stabilize at roughly 0.03 USD cents for the past few days. Remember, this remains a huge gain from where Dogecoin has been just weeks ago. The reason the price is not changing much from this baseline right now is because few are buying and few are selling their Dogecoin, specifically due to topics which will be covered in other sections here. However, an active circulation of a currency is critical to establishing it as an effective means of exchanging goods and setting it up for long term growth. The best way to increase the overall value of the currency in the long run is by eventually by exchanging your coins for goods, services, or just by tipping and trading with other Dogecoin holders. The value of any means of exchange is fundamentally driven by supply and demand. If two parties agree that X amount of asset A is roughly worth the same as Y amount of asset B, you effectively have established a market.

1. Question: Establishing a floor or a baseline.

Answer: Due to other current issues, such as "RH" and other platforms artificially delaying FIAT-to-Crypto exchanges, these trends may appear strange at first sight, but those who continue holding onto their Doge are affecting or rather creating the floor. The floor is essentially the lowest value Dogecoin will drop to at current market conditions. The floor is currently around .06 USD cents. Which is up from 0.008 USD cents just a few months ago.

1. Question: Inflation and deflation Infinite supply / no cap vs cap in regarding to cryptocurrency

Answer: Inflation and deflation are common economic terms used to explain the change in the inherent value of a currency. This means that that 1 US Dollar today does not have the same value or “worth” as it did, for example, in 1950. Inflation is a situation of rising prices in the economy. A more exact definition of inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level in an economy. Deflation on the other hand occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0%, that is a negative inflation rate. While inflation reduces the value of a currency over time, a sudden deflation of a currency increases its relative value. This would allow more goods and services to be bought than before with the same amount of currency. Deflation can be a factor in leading to a recession and also result in a deflationary spiral.
10a) What does all this mean with regards to cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin versus Dogecoin?

 Well - Bitcoin is stagnant or deflationary over time, while Dogecoin is inflationary overtime. This is due to the way they are architected and mined, and how new coins are added into their respective markets - covered in other section. What gets misunderstood is which one is “better” or rather "the lesser evil". Since Dogecoin has an “infinite supply”, how can it maintain value? 

10b) You may have read things like: "You're stupid if you buy Dogecoin. It has no value. It has unlimited supply. It's just a stupid meme." Let's look at the US dollar (or essentially any major FIAT currency of your choice). FIAT currency is created out of thin air. It is backed by large sums of debt, and in the normal course of the economy it is inflating endlessly. But FIAT currency does have value. It's a value assigned to it by governments and people, a commonly accepted means for exchange. Again, FIAT does not have a limited supply. In fact, the supply of the US dollar is a lot more inflationary than Doge would ever be. Please think about that for a moment and make up your own mind.
10c) Yes, Dogecoin has a supply growth of about 5 billion coins (that's about 4-5% right now) per year, but why is that a problem, practically speaking? The growth is there to keep transaction fees to a minimum and allow a small, but healthy inflationary tendency, rather than the opposite.
10d) Dogecoin doesn't need a supply limit like Bitcoin, because in the long run it will be much easier to exchange Dogecoin for goods and services, than with other crypto currencies or regular currencies for that matter.

 If Bitcoin wants to become a real global currency with buying power, not just a speculation tool to exchange it for a few thousand debt based USD, when it hits a new record high every few months or years, its supply will have to grow inevitably. We have to see the bigger picture! Dogecoin may well climb to one US dollar, but why stop and sell there? Instead, we could build a new, fair, balanced monetary ecosystem based on Dogecoin, not to make a quick profit, but to change the whole world. Our current money is backed by signatures on debt contracts, not on real values. But it works, because we believe in it, even if it will be our downfall if it continues like this. Dogecoin is different. Dogecoin has a set amount of coins entering the market by the minute. There are plenty of spreadsheets out there showcasing exactly how much many Dogecoin will be in circulation at any given moment of time. People get confused because they think inflation is a bad thing, when in fact it is actually beneficial in small quantities and beneficial to the longevity of a currency. Dogecoin doesn't need a supply limit like Bitcoin, because in the long run it will be much easier to exchange Dogecoin for goods and services, than with other crypto currencies or regular currencies for that matter. If Bitcoin wants to become a real global currency with buying power, not just a speculation tool to exchange it for a few thousand debt based USD when it hits a new record high every few months or years, it's supply will have to grow inevitably. 

1. Question: Financial aspects of Dogecoin. Who will profit from it? What will happen if Dogecoin has exponential growth? A zero- sum game. Explaining that you only realize a loss or profit at then time of sell.

Answer: To clear things up - cryptocurrency is essentially what economist call a Zero Sum Game. A zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants. What this means is that across a group of people who engage in selling and buying Dogecoin, if one person gains another person loses. For example if you bought at 0.08 and sold at 0.03 someone made a profit of 0.05 cents per Dogecoin while you lost 0.05 cents per Dogecoin. The important thing to understand is that in these situations the only way you truly lose or gain anything is when you sell. You don’t realize your gains or losses until you complete that transaction. What this means is that if Dogecoin does increase exponentially the people who have been holding since the price has been low will gain astronomical returns on their investment, while others who joined late will not.

1. Question: Stability vs Volatility

Answer: This describes basically how stable something is over a set period of time. Volatility is how much prices change over time. Stabilization of Dogecoin is important for the overall health, however, cryptocurrencies are known to and will likely remain very volatile for the foreseeable future.
13a) Pump and dump vs long term growth. "Pump and dump" is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Pump and dumps are consider illegal. While a subset of people are trying to pump and dump Dogecoin the legitimate community is focused its long term growth and stability which is achieved through the rest of the topics addressed here
13b - second perspective) Essentially many people are just coming onto DOGE because it has low barrier to entry, and enticed by the idea of coming in low, selling what they have and running with the profits short term. This has lead to pumps and dips, and a lot of misinformation being thrown around. I should clarify some points for those who are coming in, instead of repeating the HODL and diamond hands rhetoric. Planned pumps are not what Doge needs. Pumps of this nature usually have an attached implication, which is that people will plan on selling, capitalising on the hype and then buying low to wait for the next pump. This leads to money being taken out of the coin, resulting in the lower price we now see. This means that planned pumps are essentially feeding sellers. We are not doing this in secret. This is a public forum and people with the intention have the information needed to drain us dry if we let them. Essentially, if we want Doge to grow, planned pumps need to stop being openly advertised, or they need to die altogether. Of the two, the latter is the easiest, and it is what this post will be focusing on. Sustainable Growth is now the way. Pumps are fine when they're unpredicted - Elon Musk is living proof of that. However, planned pumps will result in our good boy coin shooting down to the dips, where sellers can reinvest and wait to harvest our money again at the next pump. If however, we grow the price slowly, the floor will increase in a much more stable fashion, resulting in smaller dips. This will mean that the insane dips where sellers truly farm their coin at become very inhospitable to them, as they'd need to put more and more money to receive less and less profit. Essentially, by slowly growing the coin with organic 'food' instead of steroids, we can slowly choke out those parasites who are ruining the growth of the coin by making every dip a horrible investment for their time and efforts. Sure, buy at the dips. Sure, hold the coin. But don't plan any more pumps. The less room you give to the sellers, the doubters and the paper hands, the more coin you can collect and the more profit that awaits you in the future. Conclusion If we come together as a community, Doge will truly live up to the hype - the people's currency. If we choose to continue listening to planned pumps, we have a very difficult, long and risky road ahead of us. Sustainable growth will beat large planned spikes any day.

1. Question: Difference between cold storage, internet wallets and Robinhood

Answer: Coldstorage - in the cryptocurrency world cold storage refers to physical objects/devices that contain your cryptocurrency.
Wallets are an electronic program of service that stores your cryptocurrency
Robhinhood- as of right now robinhood does not actually give you cryptocurrency when purchased through them. From Robhinhood’s cryptocurrency page: “We don’t currently provide you with access to your wallet or your wallet address. You own the cryptocurrency assets in your account, and you can buy or sell them at any time. We’re evaluating features to allow you to safely transfer coins to and from Robinhood, and we’ll update you when these features are available.” Robhinhood will be addressed in another section.

1. Question: Elon Musk - Is he important for Dogecoin? The impact of celebrities and big business supporting Dogecoin Celebrity/Influencer Involvement

Answer: Elon Musk, Mark Cuban As many may know, Elon is highly involved when it comes to “meme culture.” we can see Elon has tweeted several times concerning “doge,” reposting memes found from Reddit, as well as concerning himself with the ripples of the recent stock news. Mark Cuban, another notable wealthy, down-to-earth, community-involved individual, has recently mentioned “#dogecoin” specifically. Regardless of whether these people have positive intentions towards $DOGE or not, their mention carries weight and public opinion and is a good assumption that new eyes are looking at us as a result. It should be noted that they have tweeted neutrally to positively towards $DOGE, not indicating a full-send support but they clearly are not talking down the possibilities.
Big business allowing Dogecoin to be supported as means of exchanging goods, and people like Elon musk supporting and backing this cryptocurrency are important to proving its value and legitimacy.

1. Question: Is getting Dogecoin to increase to the equivalent of one US dollar possible? Can and will it really happen? What will change if it does happen? How high can Dogecoin realistically rise in price. Market cap explanation and comparison to US currency and global FIAT currency.

Answer: Yes, despite not having a fixed or capped supply, the value of the currency can rise based on its relative value against other currencies in the market. You can find examples of this in the FOREX market where currency pairs are traded, like Euro against US dollar, or US Dollar against Japanese Yen. As the value of Dogecoin rises, more and more businesses will recognise its potential and importance, and subsequently begin to accept it in exchange for goods and services. This will also help to grow the developer community around Dogecoin.
Market cap = price x supply. Price is determined by supply and demand (buying snd selling of Dogecoin. Supply is determined by mining Dogecoin.
The current market cap of Dogecoin while writing this article is 9,000,000,000 (9 billion) if Dogecoin was to reach $1 it would have a market cap of 128 billion dollars. Bitcoin (the most successful cryptocurrency$ currently has a market cap of approximately 700,000,000 (700 billion dollars). This means that at $1 the total supply of Dogecoin would be “worth” about 1/7th of Bitcoins total supply. The estimated supply of the US dollar is 2,000,000,000 (2 trillion) since 1 dollar = 1 dollar (LOLZ) the market cap of the US currency is 2 trillion. If Dogecoin were to reach this market cap - the price can be calculated through dividing the market cap (2 trillion) by the supply (128 billion). This means that dogecoin would equal the entire US currency at $15.60. This is definitely not impossible but highly highly improbable to ever reach this value any time soon. As in like 3-10 years away minimum. Now the entire supply of the entire worlds fiat currency is 37 trillion dollars. You can apply the same logic from above and see that the value would be $288.6. This is the theoretical limit to how much Dogecoin can be worth due simply to the fact that if it was valued at anymore than that amount it would be “worth” more than the entire world’s currencies combined which is not possible without adding more supply.

1. Question: Is Dogecoin a product of the Wallstreet Bets movement? What differentiates dogecoin from GME/AMC?

Answer:!Just like some other investment opportunities (Nokia, Blackberry), DOGE was brought into the spotlight amidst the whole GME situation during the previous week. Unlike those stock, however, Doge is not another short squeeze, it is not a stock. It is a cryptocurrency / asset that many people think has potential, despite its Meme origins. Many who feel that they were late for embarking on the GME hype or the Bitcoin train in 2013 respectively, are now looking towards Doge, one of the early alternatives to the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Doge got a lot of interest recently, for example with the Elon Musk tweeting the same week.

1. Question: The situation with Robinhood - Changes in terms and conditions. Disclaimer, it is important to read through Robhinhoods entire terms and conditions to fully under what happened. The information below is just a summary and is not Robhinhoods terms and conditions but an explanation of what happened and why it happened

Answer: Robhinhood has received high profile backlash in the media recently for their involvement with GME/Wallstreetbets. A lot of the cryptocurrency and Dogecoin community were outraged when they found out that about one week ago Robhinhood stopped allowed instant transfers for their cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, while we may not agree with what happened there they do have a reason for this. Over the past week the sheer amount of people trying to buy cryptocurrency skyrocketed at one instant. When robinhood allowed for instant transfers what they were really doing is essentially “loaning” you money to make trades or purchase cryptocurrency before the funds actually hit Robhinhoods business account. This caused a huge liquidity issue and Robhinhood could not meet the demand. That is why you had to wait 5 business days for your funds to be approved. This is standard practice across multiple brokerage firms before Robhinhood pioneered the instant transfer option. Whether we like it or not, Robhinhood is a power house in their industry and not going away. Robhinhood is one of the most mainstream ways to purchase and sell cryptocurrency and if everyone pulled their money out of Robhinhood the entire cryptocurrency market would collapse which I believe we can all agree no one wants to happen.

1. Question: if all of the above information is true why the cryptocurrency full of people who are trying to discredit Dogecoin as legitimate cryptocurrency.

Answer: The cryptocurrency is horribly misinformed. They may have a solid understand of the technology aspect of cryptocurrency but the reason why Dogecoin will be successful is based on economics, mathematics, social theory and statistics as WELL as the underlying technology. cryptocurrency is full of gatekeepers who horde their knowledge while the Dogecoin community is focused on explaining and educating new people. cryptocurrency is notorious for being extremely serious and feel threatened that something that started at as a joke/meme has the potential to be better at cryptocurrencies intended purpose - exchanging goods and services - than Bitcoin or any other popular cryptocurrency which is deflationary in nature.
Thank you for reading this post in its entirety. It took a large amount of collective effort of people in my discord. I appreciate them to no end. We have over 100 people in that discord and we are here to stay. We are interested in explaining Dogecoin, reducing the scare factor and backing up Dogecoin through economic, social, financial, mathematical theory, etc. Per Dogecoin rules I cannot give out this discord, but if you are interested message me. It goes into greater detail on every one of these topics, with resources, links, articles etc. thank you and above all else remember that at the end of the day this is a meme cryptocurrency from 2013. But the people have spoken, and this is now official the people’s currency as well. Dogecoin🚀🪐🚀

Reposting this just because I tried to get this idea out on a crazy titled post that was removed... but feel it should be thrown up for debate. Or crucifixion more likely. But fuck it.
Here's my sentiment on the current situation of all of us, this situation with GME and whatever.... I feel this merits serious thought so... if anyone agrees lets discuss. Like the intelligent bad mother fuckers we are.
Remember, act like you've been there.
We all should know what we’ve done. Everyone here has now been there. I’m not trying to talk shit for real. I’m just saying that sometimes the real hype and power in your words comes from the cold, calculating and poise inherent to people that know they know what is up, what to do, and how to do it.
If we’re going to thrive as a real group we all need to set examples for the new people here as senior members who have been through it. Think about the long term. We keep our memes and our jokes and our style but it’s gotta be immune to trends and outside influence because we see ourselves as professionals... professional renegades. Autists. Whatever you wanna call it. We need to all reel in the 4 million wild eyed new members and show them the way of WSB. Not for the now but for the future of the sub and the very fabric of the culture we’ve forged in fire here. The GME great short squeeze will go down in history. And it should. But we can’t let our own success be our demise. We can’t give the media and naysayers any ammunition. In fact. When they come here and lurk I want them to report back something somber. That it appears to be the Wild West but once you’re in it for a while you see the beautiful and subtle unspoken rules, respect for innovative ideas, respect for knowledge and respect for those that see an improbable outcome and bet wildly on it and win. Because talent hits a target no one else can and genius hits one no one else can see.
No one saw GME like WSB did. And if they had no other group of people would throw billions at this collective wild ass idea to force into reality what was just a crazy idea like this.
I know this will get downvoted to hell. But the point is to throw your two cents into the machine and hope the butterfly effect is in your favor. Also in that vein I’d like everyone here to consider what effects their own agenda is behind a post and the effect it may have on the whole of the sub. And in turn the lives of those that live and breathe WSB, because for so long it’s not been a group of retards but rather one of the greatest collections of intellectual prowess on the internet. In realizing what we have here I am still amazed. I've been following this sub for about 3 years now and the crazy things I've seen here are nothing on the scale of GME but epic in their own right. The scale of a thing is not relative to the degree of badass it is. We do badass things here all the time if you just look at the DDs and dig into the sub. We all downplay ourselves because that’s the WSB way of being. We don't brag to the point of being insanely opposite most of the time. Hell my girlfriend was flat out appalled when I told her we affectionately call ourselves autists and it's a term of endearment... That's just who we are.
We do not brag. We do not seek to influence others. We all do what we do and at the end of the day love the others here. All jokes aside. Let’s not let GME and AMC take our sights off the long term. And the fact we have to incorporate 4-6? million new members and their ideas and agendas ect. *Now we are weak to outside influence more than ever before at a time when every cocksucker on Earth is setting their sights on us and gearing up the propaganda machines for some social financial engineering experiments that will be, no doubt, some heavy handed and long term projects that are seriously going to be difficult to survive as an 'independent' group of thinkers. For when we cross the murky line from ideas that naturally form here to ideas seeded and nurtured into our psyches and group think no one can see until it's in hindsight. The strongest way to defend against this is to encourage free thinking, intellectual and deep cultural norms that are inherently unwritten such that no imposter or seeded idea can survive the critical minds and crazy ass personalities here much less mimic being one of us... Just like you would know if one of your friends was an imposter because you just fucking know them down to the tiniest little thing, so too should we consciously forge and support this as a group. We should get it going and the new people can assimilate or move on. We should adapt to this new world that we've made, but do it with open eyes and a critical mind because there are serious dangers ahead my friends. *
Stop looking outside. The danger is now within. In our own success.