Company: Titan Medical
Industry: Medical Device / Robotic Technology
Flagship Product: The Enos Surgical System
Ticker: TMDI (Nasdaq)
Share Price: $2.63
Market Capitalization: $215.7M
Float: 82.02M
% Held by institutions: 3.29%
% Held by Public/Other: 96.61%
Average Volume (3 month): 1.88M
Recent Daily Volume: 9.98M
Investor Fact Sheet: Link

I DON’T LIKE TO READ. DO YOU HAVE ANY VIDEOS I CAN WATCH?

1. Learn how a single port robotic system works.
2. Learn about Titan Medical and their vision for the Enos Surgical System.
3. Watch a demonstration of the Enos surgical system.
4. Watch an overview of Titan Medical’s third quarter, 2020 update.

GIVE ME A COMPANY OVERVIEW
Titan Medical is a medical robotics company, based in Toronto, Canada, which recently completed an incentive based partnership with Medtronic, the largest medical supply company in the world. Titan Medical’s flagship product is the Enos surgical suite, an ergonomic, single access surgical system, that uses multi-articulated instruments with fluid motion guidance to replicate natural movement. Their workstation is smaller and more mobile than both the Intuitive and TransEntrix surgical suites. With a single port of entry, the Enos requires minimal innervation, resulting in less trauma and scarring than its competitors. They are lead by chairman and CEO, David McNally, a 33 year veteran in the medical device industry, and the co-founder of ZEVEX, an award-winning medical device company.
TELL ME ABOUT THEIR FLAGSHIP PRODUCT
The Enos surgical system, which was rebranded in September of 2020, is a mobile, single access surgical suite, designed in coordination with laparoscopic and robotic assisted surgeons. Unlike other devices, such as the da Vinci from Intuitive Surgical, the Enos was developed as a cost-effective, single-incision system, with reusable multi-articulating instruments, and a small footprint. In addition to traditional operating room procedures, the Enos targets underserved markets, such as a small ambulatory surgical centers. The Enos was designed with an open architecture, allowing it to adapt to future instruments, beyond traditional graspers, hooks, drivers, and scissors. To date, it has completed numerous pre-clinical procedures, including hysterectomies, nephrectomies, cholecystectomies, gastrectomies, splenectomies, and colectomies. For peer-reviewed abstracts, please refer to page 14 of Titan Medical’s investor overview.
WHAT DOES THE MANAGEMENT LOOK LIKE?
Titan Medical is lead by chairman and CEO, David McNally, the founder of Domain Surgical, and the co-founder of ZEVEX, an award winning medical technology company. He is also the co-inventor of over 40 U.S. and international medical device patents. Look at this man. He is the most CEO looking guy that I’ve ever seen. He’s been building successful companies since his early twenties. At research and development, the company is lead by Dr. Perry Genova, PhD, an accomplished biomedical engineering executive. Dr. Genova previously managed Centauri Robotic Surgical Systems, a private company specializing in robotic stereotactic neurosurgery. Prior to that, Dr. Genova was the president and CEO of Oncoscope, a medical device company that was acquired by SpectraScience in 2016.
DOES TITAN MEDICAL OWN ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?
Yes, Titan Medical has 58 issued patents, with 84 patent applications pending.
DOES TITAN MEDICAL HAVE ANY INTERESTING PARTNERSHIPS?
Yes, and for me, this was the most important recent milestone. In June of 2020, Titan Medical entered into an agreement with Medtronic to advance the development of their robotic surgery technologies. The agreement includes a 10 million dollar payment, and an additional series of payments totaling $31 million in exchange for Medtronic’s right to license certain technologies from Titan Medical. Medtronic is the largest medical device company in the world, and they are making substantial efforts to compete with Intuitive Surgical. Medtronic has a long history of billion dollar acquisitions. For example, in 2018, they purchased Mazor Robotics, a medical robotics company that specializes in spinal surgery, for $1.7 billion. If I had to speculate, I believe there is a high probability that Medtronic acquires Titan Medical.
DOES TITAN HAVE THE CAPITAL TO CONTINUE DEVELOPMENT?
Yes, please refer to the paragraph above, which discusses their partnership with Medtronic. You can view Titan Medical’s third quarter 2020 press release here. You can view their $10 million technical milestone press release here.
WHAT OTHER INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS HAVE OCCURRED RECENTLY?

In addition to their partnership with Medtronic, Titan Medical released a regulatory update, from the FDA, which indicated that the Enos system is appropriate for classification through the De Novo pathway, and confirmed that Titan Medical will file a clarifying pre-submission for Investigational Device Exemption studies.

In view of the FDA’s written response and other information available to the Company at this time, the Company would likely proceed with a De Novo classification request for its Enos system in place of a 510(k) submission. Should the FDA grant the De Novo classification request, the Class II device would be cleared to be marketed.

In late 2020, Titan rebranded its surgical system, the SPORT surgical system, to the Enos robotic single access surgical system, so it could better represent its design and capabilities.
In late 2020, Titan Medical obtained two additional U.S. patents for methods and apparatuses for camera positioning and hand controller Apparatus for gesture control and shared input control in a robotic surgical system.
In September of 2020, only a few months after Titan Medical inked a deal with Medtronic, we saw a major increase in institutional investment. JP Morgan increased their equity in Titan Medical by 29,600 shares, for a total of 47,000. Bank of America increased their position by 60,900 shares, for a total of 70,605. Two Sigma Advisers, the famed hedge fund which uses AI and machine learning, increased their position by 73,500, for a total of 220,600 shares. Other notable institutional investors include Capital One, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Canada.

WHERE DO YOU SEE THIS COMPANY IN THE FUTURE?
At this stage, I consider Titan Medical to be an early iteration of Intuitive Surgical ($ISRG), which is a leader in robotic-assisted systems. Intuitive Surgical developed the famed da Vinci surgical system, which received FDA approval in 2000. Since the release of the da Vinci system, Intuitive Surgical’s stock has appreciated over 8,000%. There is a growing consensus that robotic-assisted companies will become the leading investment class over the next several decades, even outpacing dominant stocks, like Amazon or Apple. Considering the competitive landscape, the previous success of Intuitive, the rapid growth in robotic technology, and Titan Medical’s partnership with Medtronic, it’s reasonable to consider that they might be acquired by Medtronic.
WHY SHOULD I SPECULATE ON TITAN MEDICAL INSTEAD OF INVESTING IN INTUITIVE SURGICAL?
The easiest answer is the best answer. This is a microcap stock forum, and our goal is to discover and speculate on companies before they reach extraordinary valuations. Intuitive is an established company, and the majority of its yield has already been realized. Titan Medical is an early stage, medical robotics company, with a suite of emerging robotics technology, and a series of upcoming triggers both in the near-term, and over the course of the next several months and years. Their incentive based partnership with Medtronic gives them access to capital, engineering, and leadership, ensuring the company can reach full commercialization.
HOW WELL WILL THE SURGICAL ROBOT MARKET DEVELOP?
There are various opinions on this subject, but all reports indicate massive growth over the next 5-7 years, citing CAGR rates between 16-25%. You can read analysis from Emergen Research and MordorIntelligence. The competitive landscape is straddled between a fragmented market, without dominant players, and a consolidated market, dominated by only a few major players. More specific reports, such as the Global Urology Robotic Surgery Market 2020 report, cites Titan Medical as a top player in the robotic surgery market. Historically, and recently, companies like Intuitive, Stryker, Verb Surgical, and Medtronic have made several acquisitions, all in an effort to gain an edge. I believe this reinforces the possibility that Titan Health could be acquired, especially considering the ENOS system has unique engineering elements and patents that existing and developing surgical suites do not have.
WHY ARE YOU BUYING IN RIGHT NOW?
I have been following Titan Medical for over two years now. Previously, I was hesitant to invest due to their financial situation. I wasn't certain if they had enough capital and resources to reach commercialization, but I remained highly interested. Their presentations during 2020 were compelling, especially when they presented at the H.C. Wainwright conference. I was on the verge of opening a position, and when Medtronic announced their deal, I was convinced this is was company I wanted to speculate on long term. Recently, I've noticed an increase in major institutional investments, and the regulatory feedback they have received from the FDA has been great. It creates compelling headlines, and brings us closer to an ultimate FDA clearance. Based on sentiment and activity analytics, I believe that they’re entering the beginning of a hype period. I expect we'll begin to see numerous articles and forum posts about them. For these reasons, and several more, I increased my position on Friday by 6,000 shares.
WHERE ARE WE AT IN THE HYPE STAGE?
Let me preface by stating that I almost exclusively prefer to enter positions before any hype exists. You will make significantly better returns by positioning yourself before the crowd arrives than you will by chasing the hype after it has occurred. Based on market sentiment, and the frequency at which Titan Medical is referenced on YouTube, reddit, and other social media and investment platforms, I believe we’re at the beginning of the bell curve. I use a proprietary sentiment tracker, which I cannot release (it’s not mine), however publicly available systems, such as Google’s trend analytics, show that activity has recently broken a 30 day high. For the first time, over the last 1-2 weeks, I’ve begun to see the first references to Titan Medical on various YouTube channels. However, the activity on Reddit is currently very small, which is good in my opinion, since Reddit tends to be last in the hype cycle. By the time stock picks become hyped on Reddit, most of the short term gains have been had.
WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MUCH CONFIDENCE IN THIS STOCK?
My background is in medicine and human physiology, while my more recent work and education is in financial markets. Although I was not a surgeon, I have an adequate medical background to understand the need and utility of surgical robots, and to be able to accurately interpret research publications. I have a network of friends and colleagues in the industry that have helped me review the company, including several laparoscopic surgeons. However, the majority of my confidence comes from Medtronic. As a partner and investor, Medtronic received exclusive access to the finances and engineering of Titan Medical. They were able to investigate the company beyond what any of us could accomplish, and these investigations resulted in a significant partnership. Based on Medtronic’s success, their history of acquisitions, their extensive resources, and their explicit desire to dominate the robotic surgery market, I believe Titan Medical is a winning investment. Because Titan Medical is in a pre-commercialization stage, the masses have not yet noticed this stock, and I believe that provides an asymmetrical risk due to the enormous potential profit. Even at early speculative stages, I expect this company to have a billion dollar market cap.
THIS SOUNDS INTERESTING. HIT ME WITH SOME CRAZY HYPE. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IN AN IDEAL SCENARIO?
If Titan Medical were to achieve a market capitalization similar to Intuitive Surgical, it would reach an equity share price of approximately $1,140/share. This would amount to an estimated 46,500% increase from Titan Medical’s current share price. In the short term, I believe we see major price action based on their Medtronic partnership, their improved financial situation ($10M bought deal offering is expected to close on Jan 29th), their FDA milestones, and their pre-clinical operations. Based on the impressive price action on Friday, and over the course of the previous week, I expect this company to start hitting Reddit, YouTube, and other major forums, which, believe it or not, has been a major indicator for short and long term stock gains.
TL;DR: Titan Medical is a surgical robotics company that developed the Enos surgical suite, an innovative, single-access surgical system, designed in coordination with laparoscopic and robotic assisted surgeons. This company plans to replicate the success of Intuitive Surgical, a surgical robotics company worth over $87 billion, who’s share price has increased over 11,000% since the introduction of their da Vinci surgical system. In addition to their rebranding, Titan Medical recently completed an incentive based partnership with Medtronic, the largest medical device company in the world, which will provide financing, board oversight, and research and development assistance. This is a major milestone for Titan Health, because it ensures their success, either through their own development, or through acquisition. The stock has been on a steady upward trend since the deal was announced, but based on recent volume and online activity, and growing institutional investment, I believe it’s entering an accelerated bullish phase.
POSITION: 12,000 shares of TMDI
Obligatory Edit: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

SUMO eats the market (DD)

Having seen a couple of posts about Sumo Logic it seems nobody really has an understanding about what they do so I thought I’d help break things down for the common layman. There has been enough commentary about the conservative multiple so I will instead try to discuss the market dynamics and technology shifts. I hope this helps bring awareness to this segment of the market and look forward to a discussion around these points.
Disclosure: I work in enterprise software and am long 10,100 shares @ $22 (screenshot)
TLDR: In a future where an infinite amount of machine data is being generated, only Sumo has the architecture that makes sense.

Overview of the logging market

Let’s begin by understanding what logs are. All digital machines generate data, everything from status updates from a server, traffic levels on the network, battery levels of your phone, and even temperature readings from your HVAC system. The amount of machine data generated will continue to grow exponentially, particularly as more and more IoT devices come online (smartwatches, cars, fridges, etc.).
All of these logs need a central repository to be stored, upon which analysis can be performed. Historically logs have mostly been from on-prem systems like firewalls, routers, databases, etc. however as more and more systems migrate to the cloud, these new cloud environments are generating logs as well.
These logs are important to the IT organisation of any company, to be able to track and answer questions such as:

How are traffic levels trending on my website?
Is my AWS instance still alive? How is the application performing?
Are my Windows machines patched and up to date?
Is there any unusual activity on my network?

This culminates into a single pane of glass, where companies can monitor the health and status of all their systems in one place. In addition to that, large companies are mandated to store logs for:

Compliance: Companies need to store immutable logs for a certain period of time as a form of record keeping.
Security: Logs are reviewed during threat forensics after a cybersecurity breach. The security team needs to inspect their firewall/access logs to identify how and when they got breached. ie. who accessed this file and when?

As a result, we can expect the logging market to continue to exist over the long term. The only question is, who is best positioned to meet this need for the future?

The current players

While there are many nuances and buzzwords around SIEM, observability, APM, IoT, etc. I will keep things simple and talk only about a relatively established and mature market – logging. It is a crowded market with a lot of players including LogRhythm, Loggly, Logz.io, Rapid7, IBM, Exabeam, etc. I will look specifically at the companies built for serving the Fortune 500, as this enterprise segment is where the greatest share of wallet is. Datadog deserves a mention, however their core competency is APM. Their log solution was through a startup acquisition and has a pretty negligible run-rate so we’ll ignore them in this discussion.

Company	Founded	Type	Multitenant	Market Cap (as of 02/21)
ArcSight	2000	On-prem (1st gen)	No	Acquired
Splunk	2004	On-prem (2nd gen)	No	28B
Elastic	2012	Open Source	No	15B
Sumo Logic	2010	Cloud SaaS (1st gen)	Yes	4B

The original pioneer of the logging market is ArcSight, who were then acquired by HP and subsequently spun off to Microfocus. They are now dying a slow death, while Splunk is the current de-facto solution for most companies.
A CIO today has 2 main choices when wanting to implement a logging solution, they can either Buy or Build.

Buy: Pay Splunk to help deploy in your datacentre. And then pay them professional service fees every year to help maintain and manage the software. And pay them based on the amount of data you send to them.
Build: Get a bunch of your developers to build a solution inhouse using an open source Elastic stack (ELK). They then have to actively manage the system themselves to keep it alive and manually scale it up and down accordingly.

Architecture matters

The shift from on-prem to cloud
A lot of the latest high-flying SaaS companies haven’t really been that innovative. They are solving the same age-old problems, except doing it in the cloud instead. A few examples are shown below. In fact, a lot of these are done by the exact same people. Crowdstrike was founded by ex-McAfee guys, Zoom was founded by ex-Webex, and so on. No different with Sumo, which was founded by ex-ArcSight guys. The reason for this phenomenon is because these people understand their industry inside out and have experienced the challenges first-hand. They see where things are headed and want to do things a better way. Another common trend amongst all of these new hot stocks is that they were founded AFTER the inception of the cloud (AWS began in 2006).
The shift is both a technological one (on-prem -> cloud) as well as a business model shift (license -> SaaS). Sumo is in a similar position to capture this technology lifecycle shift, as workloads shift from on-prem to cloud. Naturally, logging and analysis should also occur in the cloud. This kind of scale is what the cloud was made for.

Incumbent	Cloud SaaS	Market
McAfee	Crowdstrike	Endpoint security
Siebel	Salesforce	CRM
Oracle	Workday	ERP
Webex	Zoom	Video conferencing
Remedy	ServiceNow	ITSM

While Splunk no doubt has a more mature product that can serve a broader range of edge cases, Sumo has managed to demonstrate product maturity by gaining a client like Macquarie Bank, a bank in Australia (case study available on YouTube). Anyone who works in enterprise software sales knows that cracking the FSI vertical is the holy grail, as they are super conservative, with lots of red tape and requirements. It’s one thing to convince a forward-thinking cloud native company (like JFrog or PagerDuty) to use your software, it’s another thing to convince a bank to send their sacred data to a third-party cloud.
A structural advantage: Multitenancy and Elasticity
Given the volume heavy nature of this type of business, architecture really matters particularly as the amount of data grows exponentially. The advantage with multitenancy ultimately manifests itself either in the form of better gross margins, or reduced costs to customers.
We know that this is where the market is heading, not just because every other SaaS vendor is multitenant, but also because Splunk is throwing big dollars in trying to reposition for the cloud. Splunk doubled their R&D budget, spending over $600m in R&D alone last year, which is probably more than Sumo has spent in its entire lifetime. They are desperately trying to catch up, but multitenancy is not a feature you can add overnight, as it involves rearchitecting your entire product. It is especially hard when you already thousands of customers using your platform, it gets even harder once you’ve bolted on a few acquisitions over the years. It is akin to trying to convert a regular combustion car into an electric car, while someone is driving it.
It took a long time for Splunk just to achieve the basic separation of storage and compute, a milestone they achieved last year. This is what happens when you’re trying to refactor code written in 2004, and throwing 10x more money doesn’t necessarily accelerate things by 10x. Frank Slootman (Snowflake CEO) had a fairly eloquent way of describing this:

You can put 1000 mothers on the task of creating a baby, but it’ll still take 9 months.

Splunk Cloud in its current form is simply a hosted solution, meaning that instead of hosting the software yourself in your data centre, you’re paying Splunk (who pays AWS) to host it. This is very different from a true cloud native SaaS solution (which is what Sumo is).

Asymmetric risk and incredible upside

Massive TAM
Sumo is backed by the crème de la crème of VCs: Accel, DFJ Growth, Greylock, IVP, Sequoia, Sutter Hill Ventures, Battery Ventures. Usually you see 1 or 2 of these names in any winning company, you almost never see all of them together. And even if you did, you definitely wouldn’t be able to get it at prices close to theirs. These people spend all day thinking about the future, TAM and competitive dynamics. And they allowed Sumo to make a big long term bet and spend 10 years developing the next generation platform. By putting their money where their mouth is, these people have validated the market and investment opportunity for you, and you’re able to participate in the upside at a price not too distant from theirs.
The last VC pricing round in May 2019 for Sumo was at $12 (~3x). For comparison, Snowflake’s last VC price in February 2020 itself was $39, and they are now trading around $300 (~8x). Typically, the majority of the gains are captured by the VCs pre-IPO, but in this case there is still plenty of room for retail investors to participate in the upside. Sumo is also barely scratching the surface with market penetration. Only 15% of their revenue is coming from outside the US, there is so much room for international expansion. Mature software companies usually see around 50% of their revenue from international sources.
Multiple Expansion
Prior to COVID, Sumo had a pretty solid and consistent growth rate. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect it could revert to the mean and get back closer to 50% once the macroeconomic outlook improves. There are many notable growth companies that have missed a couple of quarters, I remember when ZScaler had a quarter with 18% billings growth and the stock tanked, presenting an incredible buying opportunity for those who believed in the long-term vision and market opportunity, rather than quarter to quarter execution. Similarly in 2010, people back then were debating whether Apple’s stock was overpriced, based on whether they were going to sell 8m or 10m phones that quarter, which in hindsight seems a little silly and didn’t really matter.
Sumo Revenue Growth Rates:

FY2019: 53%
FY2020: 50%
FY2021E: 30% (COVID)
FY2022 and beyond: ???

If Sumo can get back closer to 50% growth rates, the stock could see significant multiple expansion. For perspective, other SaaS companies at 50% growth rates are currently trading closer to a 40x multiple, which would put Sumo closer to a valuation in the 12B range (roughly $120 share price). In addition, the risk reward here is asymmetric, given they are already priced in for a low growth rate. Meaning that if they do deliver a low growth rate, nothing much will happen and the downside is limited. Whereas if they manage to execute, deliver positive surprise during earnings and become the cloud leader for logs, the upside is incredible.
In the current rate environment and frothiness within software stocks, it is not unreasonable to expect that their market cap could easily go from 4B -> 40B within 3 years. What we have is a company that was good enough to go public during a pandemic, but was conservatively priced due to the short-term execution issues. While Sumo has had weak execution over the past 12 months, they are well positioned for the future due to the architecture they’ve spent 10 years building. In investing you want to spend more time thinking about what the future could bring, rather than what happened the past 2 quarters.

So why has the stock been floundering?

This is what I have been asking myself ever since the flopped IPO. In addition to the growth deceleration causing multiple compression, I think the real challenge Sumo has faced is that they may have been too early to the market. It wouldn’t be the first time that VCs were too forward thinking, the reality is that these large companies are relatively slow moving and trends take a long time to play out. Even across the broader cloud story, we are still in the very early innings.
More specifically, Sumo has been struggling with:

Inability to acquire net new customers
Competing against vendors with much larger scale
A less than articulate CEO. Granted he came from a product background as opposed to a sales background, so we’ll cut him some slack. I originally thought he seemed a little burnt out but having watched his older videos, that’s just the way he is.

As they say, you want to be either the number 1 or 2 in any market. Sumo is not that (but has the potential to be).

The bottom line

Splunk is slipping
When your marketing team is busy pushing t-shirts, that’s how you know you’ve hit rock bottom and really have nothing good to talk about. It is also evident that Splunk has become a bureaucratic political beast. Their cloud team has had a different leader every 2-3 years. With those kinds of dynamics, it is very difficult to execute on a long-term vision and see the development through. Execs get paid on short term quarterly performance, and nobody wants to risk cannibalising their cash cow. There has also recently been a massive exodus within their sales team, which began with their CRO leaving, and this is usually a leading indicator that the party is over.
Elastic is a wildcard
The wildcard here is Elastic, as they have demonstrated product market fit and strong momentum within the developer community. They have been taking share from Splunk and may end up becoming the provider of choice, instead of Sumo. However if you zoom out, the idea of every company building and managing their own log solution just seems silly. This simply isn’t the way software was meant to be built, particularly since logging a common requirement across companies, and the devices generating these logs are also the same.
A better way to do things
My view is that any software that requires the buyer to maintain it, is garbage software. This is the case with Splunk and ArcSight where customers have to pay professional service fees every year for consultants to tweak and maintain it. And it’s the same case with Elastic which requires you to provision a team of people on keeping the system alive. With Sumo it’s pretty straight forward, you install connectors which route the logs into Sumo. From there Sumo processes the data and generates dashboards, etc.
Watch out for Q4 earnings in March
The most important thing obviously is that Sumo can actually deliver on the vision. A few important things are happening next month when they announce earnings, here are some things to watch:

Q4 growth performance – is the chart moving up and to the right?
FY2022 guidance – how healthy is their pipeline looking?
Lockup comes off – are VCs dumping the stock?

Sumo needs to demonstrate a reacceleration in growth, and to signal confidence in the future. If they can guide >30% growth for FY2022, then a 10 bagger within 3 years is in sight. Any less than that and it deserves to trade like a donkey. Trade it if you want to bet on positive surprise next quarter, hold it if you believe in the long-term vision.
Final thoughts
I think that companies are going to move from Splunk -> Sumo when they get sick of getting ripped off, and as more of their workloads shift to the cloud. I think that companies are going to move from Elastic -> Sumo, when they get sick of needing to manage a solution, or when it gets too complex. I think that at the end of the day all markets experience margin compression and get commoditised, and that Sumo has a cost advantage due to their architecture. Only a true cloud native, multi-tenant SaaS platform makes sense for a world generating an infinite amount of data.
The One True King: SUMO
Edit: Here is a screenshot of my position https://imgur.com/jqbb94X

Wowhead's founder on why Blizzard won't ban bots !!!

Just wanted to share this quite incredible post:

This is not a technical issue with Blizzard. This is a management decision to allow bots in the game. It is estimated that 20% of all WoW subscriptions are bots. This is due to interview material of large bot farmers who alone had 400k accounts, as well as extrapolating sales from the company that purchased Wowhead, Thottbot, etc.
For those not in the know, IGE purchased them, and they did $500 million a year in sales and were backed by Goldman Sachs, a company with 3 to 5 trillion USD in assets.
We know Blizzard purposefully allows bots because of one simple fact: 2 easy changes would decimate all bots, and Blizzard refuses to do so.

The top 3 bot softwares require LUA Unlockers to function. A LUA Unlocker gives any WoW client access to GM-level client APIs [Application Programming Interface. An API is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other ]. These APIs are "unlocked" now and enable add-ons to be created to fully automate game play. Blizzard could easily remove these APIs from the client but refuses to do so.

Teleport hacking, used to farm minerals, instances, and raids, could be easily dealt with by monitoring excessive changes to player XYZ coordinates. Once detected, actions could be taken. Private servers do this simply and easily by database checks of character positioning changes. Blizzard refuses to implement this.

The above 2 changes are incredibly simple and low cost changes to implement. Blizzard refused to do so purposefully. They do so as these changes would cause a massive loss of revenue.
Instead, Blizzard has made pandering changes to give the appearance of caring. The instance lockout was strategically done to increase bot subscriptions and give a speaking point to make it seem as if they care.
Same with the multi boxing change. They stated it was to curb bots, yet zero bot softwares multibox. Instead, they all use LUA unlocked based automation.
*Legal note: The above all is my opinion based on my experience.

Answering a question from a reply : "They could, but are those APIs really so essential to create a successful botting software?"

Yes, they are absolutely critical. The top betting software products all use LUA unlockers. I would estimate 95%+ bots would immediately fail due to this one solution.
Teleport hacking definitely still works.
I know it sounds shocking that these 2 changes would remove all betting as we know it. It would. This is why these 2 changes have not occurred. The revenue decline for Blizzard would be massive.
I have been involved in this industry in the past. Heavily. I might be willing to do an AMA if people have interest. I was the founding CEO of Wowhead back in the day....

This was posted on a classicwowtbc conversation by u/StartupTim/ last week on a discussion about fighting against botting (your_thoughts_on_regionlocking_the_game_for_tbc).
Assuming it happens next month, could a hero from this sub going to the 2021 Blizzcon ask in front of the cameras to Blizzard whether they refuse to do these two changes? It seems important to have an answer recorded, it might resonnate in the industry and amongst gaming journalists and help (even a little) with the situation. I don't want TBC to be ruined by bots like Classic.
------
Edit: Please note that this person claims to be Wowhead's founder online for a while now, but he hasn't provided any proof so far. He has already made that claim on classicwow 3 years ago in a quite upvoted post for pre-announcment times former_wowhead_ceo_here_im_looking_to_build_a/, and has been active left and right on Wowhead/Twitter concerning Classic, but he didn't make any effort to prove his identity (that I know of), and is apparently disliked for making exaggerated claims about the CPUs and programs he's selling.
My bad for not having verified that before posting (can't change the title anymore), didn't bother too much about it - safe for checking whether there was a "Tim" amongst the founders on Wikki and waving that off when I didn't found one.
Edit 2: StartupTim actually messaged me, this is what he wrote:

Hey there,
I saw your post on Blizzard bots and you had a question about verifying my involvement. I thought I would help clarify with external proof.
You can see here: https://www.engadget.com/2007-06-28-exclusive-interview-wowhead-and-affinity-media.html
...is an interview I did shortly after selling Wowhead. It makes reference to Tim Sullivan, me, aka StartupTim. I have been building online gaming tools, software, resources, services, etc., for what feels like ages. I have a huge love for gaming, especially MMORPGS, hence my deep involvement with WoW.
With regards to Wowhead and the article I linked, I was hired by the purchasing company and became their CTO. We owned Wowhead, Thottbot, Allakhazam, and more.
With regards to current proof, I sell gaming software on Steam under the developer name of StartupTim, which should further prove things. See here: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=_ASC&developer=StartupTim%2C+LLC
Feel free to share that information in your post if you'd like. I know that the Internet is full of imposters, so hopefully that helps clear things up.

Lockdown 3.0 Things to do, plus help and support.

Disclaimer I want to thank everyone for the gilds, replies and suggestions. I just do not have time to reply to everyone, but I am reading everything. I am not sure how much bigger the thread can be, I already typed this but it vanished so I think I'm at the limit. I will try to keep updating, but I don't expect the thread to be up top for much longer and will likely vanish soon, so if you need anything save it.
Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it.
Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions:
For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month!
For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k.
I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device.
Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers

Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Now TV (I believe it's 7 days)
Disney+
Britbox
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder

If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system.
Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section.
Completely free TV

If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox.
Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like.
Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird.
Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device.
For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV.
Anime
If you are into Anime there is

The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two.
PC Centric software
If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design

Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12.
Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development.
The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals.
Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap.
Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam.
**BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however.
IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff.
Game Store Fronts

Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with Gold Bleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.

Gaming Subscriptions
Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months

Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.

There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that.
Audiobooks & Ebooks

Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Marvel Unlimited No experience with this. ItFuckingWont wanted me to add it. A subscription service for Marvel.

Education

Sign Language BSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesize here is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.

If you need some spare change
Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change

If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the details According to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."

That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment.
Hope it helps someone at least
PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year
fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75!
tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books
Learning Language
Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments:
Togtogtog Gives a lot of links for Spanish

Duolingo Numerous people have suggested this So I haven't used myself. Thanks to OhHiGCHQ StephanieMecredy & Allorie_95

Board & Tabletop games
Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games
ilyemco suggested these
HEALTH
I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix.
Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7.
If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery.
HELP & ADVICE
The lockdown Rules.
Reasons to leave home include:

Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house

I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)

To flee the threat of harm or violence.*
CoronaVirus Symptoms
CoronaVirus government site You can check your location and how many cases here.
Worldometers Shows cases around the world.
Interactive UK Map Another easy to read map with cases in counties and local area's.
World Health Organisation

Support

FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THE ROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though)
_riotingpacifist wanted these links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:

Update:
Digital Art
These are Free

Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.

You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen.
Office suit software
A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.

LibreOffice This has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.

Music Making
I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software.
Games development
D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here

Research Into The Use Of Online And Mobile Application Betting Services In Ireland

THE NEXT BIG PLAY - UP Fintech Holding (TICKER: TIGR)

Fellow autists,

I present to you, UP Fintech Holding: TICKER: TIGR

Let's get this out of the way now... TL;DR: TIGR 💎🙌🏻👨‍🚀🚀🚀🚀📈📈📈💰💰💰

Positions:

https://preview.redd.it/v4qr7lakuzf61.jpg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=928bffc2d08b1e47b3cd04eb3bb9cd2612f88951

Obligatory: I am not a financial advisor. I am retarded and I know nothing. Do not listen to me.

Personally, I invest first and then do my DD after. Why you ask? Well, I am retarded. But more importantly, this two step approach allows me to enjoy two of my favorite things: (1) panic buying like a true WSB autist, and (2) justifying my YOLO after the fact with actual logic, reason, and of course, our favorite—numbers! I call it The Way of the Autist.

So, now that you have already leveraged everything and dumped your life savings into TIGR after seeing the TL;DR/Positions above, you have completed the first step of The Way of the Autist.

To be clear, if after seeing the TL;DR/Positions above, you thought to yourself, "if Lieutenant u/Brassmonkeynutzz made money, I can too because APES TOGETHER STRONG 🦍🍌💎🤚🏻🤪" then you belong here. If you immediately panic bought before you read the actual text of this post, you belong here. If you cannot read this at all, you belong here. However, if you are still reading and have not invested in TIGR yet, it is likely too late, and you should consider an ETF instead.

ANYWAYS, now that you are jacked to the tits on TIGR calls and shares, let's talk about why you are so glad you decided to invest first and ask questions later.

About UP Fintech Holding AKA Tiger Brokers:

UP Fintech Holding AKA Tiger Brokers was founded in 2014 and is based in Beijing, China. The company serves as an online brokerage for global investors. The brokerage platform/application is called Tiger Trade. It allows investors to trade stocks, options, warrants, and other financial instruments. Source.

TIGR offers brokerage and value-added services, including trade order placement and execution, margin financing, account management, investor education, community discussion, and customer support. The company also provides asset management and wealth management; ESOP management; fund license application, product design, asset custody, transaction execution, and funding allocation; fund structuring and management; and IPO underwriting services (***more on IPO underwriting services below). In addition, it offers market information, community engagement, investor education, and simulated trading services. Source.

TIGR provides its services to individual and institutional investors in major global stock markets such as the U.S. market, UK market, Hong Kong market and A-share markets through the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect programs. TIGR's holds 29 types of securities licenses or qualifications worldwide, and has expanded its businesses into Singapore, New Zealand, the U.S. and other countries. Source 1.

***IPO underwriting is huge. TIGER BROKERS IS LISTED AS AN UNDERWRITER FOR THE XPEV IPO. Source 2.

If you can read (no hard feelings if you cannot), check out this article about how TIGR and similar companies are taking advantage of the lucrative IPO market. Source 3.

BIG NEWS:

1. REVENUE AND USER GROWTH:

TIGR doubled its revenues for three consecutive quarters in 2020, the fastest growth rate among the U.S. and Hong Kong stock brokers. As of the end of October 2020, the number of client accounts on Tiger Brokers’ platforms exceeded 1 million. Source 1. TIGR's "revenue is growing at a triple-digit pace, and it has its sights set on international expansion." Additional source.

Financial Highlights for Third Quarter 2020

Total revenues increased 148.2% year-over-year to US$38.0 million.
Total net revenues increased 151.9% year-over-year to US$35.2 million.
Operating income increased to US$7.4 million from negative US$2.5 million in the same quarter of last year.
Non-GAAP operating income increased to US$8.9 million from negative US$1.3 million in the same quarter of last year.
Net income increased to US$4.9 million from negative US$1.4 million in the same quarter of last year.
Net income attributable to UP Fintech increased to US$3.8 million from negative US$1.3 million in the same quarter of last year.
Non-GAAP net income attributable to UP Fintech increased to US$5.3 million, from US$0.7 million in the same quarter of last year.
A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial metrics to the most comparable GAAP metrics is set forth below.

Operating Highlights for Third Quarter 2020

Total account balance increased 188.1% year-over-year to US$10.9 billion.
Total margin financing and securities lending balance increased 109.4% year-over-year to US$2.0 billion.
Total number of customers with deposits increased 110.7% year-over-year to 214.7K.

Source 4.

*150% YOY growth is insane. Account balances almost tripled YOY! Total number of customers actually depositing and using the platform more than doubled!*

2. RECENT PARTNERSHIP WITH AURORA MOBILE LIMITED WILL GENERATE FURTHER GROWTH:

On January 5, 2021, Aurora Mobile, a leading mobile developer service provider in China, "announced that it has entered into a partnership agreement with UP Fintech Holding Limited (NASDAQ: TIGR)." Source 1.

A. AURORA WILL EXPAND USER BASE AND ENGAGEMENT:

Aurora's industry-leading artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning capabilities will provide push notification services and other capabilities to help Tiger Brokers improve user engagement and expand its use base. Source 1.

B. AURORA'S DETAILED ANALYTICS WILL FURTHER EXPAND USER ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH:

Aurora's services and "machine learning-based data processing and analysis capabilities [will] help Tiger Brokers gain comprehensive insights on its user needs, provide targeted and matched personalized experience to cater to user’s interest, and improve user stickiness and engagement, as a result, to conduct dynamic smart operations." Source 1.

This partnership could send TIGR interstellar. 👨‍🚀🚀🚀🚀

3. RECENT INSTITUTIONAL BACKING FROM A NOTORIOUS SHORT SELLER:

On February 2, 2021, Kerrisdale Capital who has a reputation for making "successful bets against Chinese internet companies, came out with a long position in" TIGR, calling it "The Robinhood of China." Source 5 (great article for any of you that actually know how to read).

Now, I know what you are thinking: FUCK ROBINHOOD. I absolutely agree. The mass fraud that they perpetrated on the retail market with GME, AMC, BB, etc. is an absolute travesty. But the point here is, TIGR has insane revenue and user growth and is continuously expanding its business according to available data and information. It's platform is user friendly and is attracting a lot of attention from retail investors, institutional investors, and start up companies seeking to go public via an IPO.

CONCLUSION:

TIGR is the next big trading platform that global, individual and institutional investors are showing an increasing interest in. It has the potential to continue its growth trajectory based purely on its impressive numbers, which speak for themselves.

Also, I believe TIGR will continue to gain international interest in light of the recent media spotlight on retail trading. Interestingly, the "government mobility restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic have helped fuel a surge in online trading . . . ." Source 5. And even though you might not expect it, "Robinhood's app recorded more downloads than any other U.S. trading app last week despite concerns about its restrictions on transactions." Source 5.

SUMMARY: Getting into TIGR now is like getting in on sunlight before there was fucking sunlight.

TL;DR AGAIN: TIGR 💎🙌🏻👨‍🚀🚀🚀🚀📈📈📈💰💰💰

Sincerely,

Lieutenant u/Brassmonkeynutzz

$EGLX.to - Epic eSports stock about to uplist to the Nasdaq

TLDR; EGLX.to is the single best pure-eSports play in the world.

Look I have an incredible track record of getting lucky picking stocks in the new reddit dominated market (PLTR, U, AI, BB, etc) and I want to tell you all about my next big one: Enthusiast Gaming.
While our community has nearly quadrupled in size, I still believe EGLX is one of the most underappreciated plays out there.
Since writing my first DD on EGLX, a few things have transpired:

The stock has gone up like 80%.
EGLX signed a massive deal with Samsung and Samsung will be the official sponsor of their 7 eSports teams.
EGLX has strengthened their balance sheet by $50M, taking care of the cash risk I identified in the original DD.
The stock price has formed some significant resistance, and has a solid foundation above $6.
Call of Duty has had their best year in franchise history, and was crowned the best selling game of 2020 -> Great news for a company who owns 1 of 12 professional COD esports licenses.
One of EGLX's streamers, xQc, found his way to the top of WSB... indicating people on that forum follow EGLX, but they just don't know it yet.
Their recent bought deal is set to conclude this week, and I am hoping for big news on their Nasdaq application to follow shortly thereafter.
Last and probably least, I was personally right again and won big again, in both BB and GME. And yes I realized my gains in both. So for whatever it's worth, I have proven my track record again.

Get in before the Nasdaq listing if you like money.
Positions: I currently have 40% of my portfolio in Enthusiast Gaming.
I hope the mods don't mind, but I wanted to repost this DD I wrote about a month ago, because it seems like none of the noobs know about the Enthusiast Gaming eSports revolution. So here it is below:
---------------------------------------------------------
LINK to original post - POSTED JAN 6TH 2020:
Greetings friendos.
It's 12:20 AM where I live and since I can't sleep, I have decided to finally write a DD on Enthusiast Gaming that I have been thinking about for some time... EGLX is a stock that I believe can make you 5-20x gains in the next year. I have been watching this stock since like $1.50 during the darkest days of COVID, and I am kicking myself for not getting in until $4 just before Christmas. But I am now a proud shareholder preaching the gospel.
What the eff do I know?
For some background information on my own stock picking prowess and why my ideas might be worth considering, I previously wrote super early DD's on Palantir, Telos and C3ai before making money in all 3 of them. I have a large number of people who have sent me thank you messages on reddit for my DD's on those companies.

PLTR - I was in at 10.50 Telos - I was in at 20 C3ai - I was in at 95

As a final qualifying note, in addition to getting incredibly lucky at picking random stocks, I also work in the gaming and digital marketing spaces, and I believe that I am somewhat qualified to comment on the merits of an esports and influencer company such as EGLX.

Who the heck is Enthusiast Gaming?

Enthusiast Gaming is a giant network of websites, esports teams and streaming influencers in the gaming space. Actually, they proclaim to be the single largest esports platform in North America. As of yesterday, they have officially announced that all of their collective followings put them in the top 100 web companies operating in America. Note, the only downside here is that they are getting that number from a huge number of mid sized platforms, not one single super popular site like twitch or youtube.
>Source: https://www.enthusiastgaming.com/news/

Does anyone even watch video games?

Yes. They do and will continue to. Actually us North Americans are very late to the party. The League of Legends world championship is already as popular as the super bowl. These viewers are coming primarily from Asia.
>Facts: https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/league-of-legends-vs-superbowl-viewer-numbers
Furthermore, the hyper focus on gaming as a cultural cornerstone is in fact coming to North America. I hope you don't actually need convincing on this point, but here is a fact for you:
Prior to COVID, studies were already showed that over 90% of all children in America were gaming in some capacity.
>Source: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/video-games-saints-or-psychopaths-082814#:~:text=More%20than%2090%20percent%20of%20American%20kids%20play%20video%20games,of%20Americans%20over%2050%20play.
Now for comparison, most of us now adults grew up while gaming became a thing. If you are a similar age to me, you know when we were growing up, it was like 20-40% of boys gamed, and maybe 1-5% of girls gamed. This dramatic cultural shift is staggering. Obviously, this trend has been solidified this year with COVID. These gamers will and are translating to not only playing, but also watching games. That's Amazon's Twitch platform is growing fast AF. Watching video games is big big big money.
>Twitch facts: https://www.businessinsider.com/twitch-viewership-grows-faster-than-previously-forecast-2020-9#:~:text=That's%20a%2026.2%25%20increase%20from,gaming%20streams%20are%20gaining%20popularity.&text=We%20forecast%20that%20the%20number,next%20year%2C%20to%2044.0%20million.

Who are their competitors?

Actually this is where I think it gets particularly interesting. As a huge gamer and esports believer, I have been looking to find esports investments, but having a real hard time finding pure esports plays. There aren't many companies out there to invest in that are strictly set to capitalize on esports. Frankly, most of the stocks I have found are seemingly doing dick all. I would encourage you to google esports companies. You will mostly find a bunch of garbo sounding companies that are somehow valued at $25m-$50m market cap, but their websites are broken and aren't even up-to-date. Really the only "esports" companies to invest in are the tech majors like Microsoft, Amazon, or Facebook, and the video game companies like Sony, Nintendo, ATVI, EA etc. Sure these are all great companies, but none of them are strictly focused on esports and none of them are new or cheap enough to turn into a ten bagger.
*** IF YOU ARE SKIMMING, THIS NEXT ARTICLE IS IMPORTANT**\*
Forbes recently released a report on the top 10 most valuable esports companies. Obviously, EGLX is on the list, or I wouldn't be mentioning it. But get this, EGLX is not only the ONLY publicly listed company that forbes identified, but they also have the highest revenue by a long shot.
>SORCERY: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2020/12/05/the-most-valuable-esports-companies-2020/?sh=2e4769ae73d0
EGLX is honestly positioned as the supreme pure esports play in the world right now.

Who the hell is leading this little company?

Well my number one most important metric when assessing a little random undiscovered company is who is captaining the ship? The best way to tell if a small cap stock is a scam or the real deal is to see who is involved. In fact, the biggest reason I chose to invest in the above mentioned companies was because of who was leading them (PLTR = Theil, C3.ai = microsoft ties and the dude from oracle, Telos = a former US general)
Good news of course, EGLX has an A+ grade with leadership legitimacy.
Adrian Montgomery, the former CEO of the Aquilini Sports and Entertainment (AKA THE VANCOUVER CANUCKS) is running EGLX. These guys are the real deal and they aren't fuckin about in some scam company. If they can run the Canucks, they can run an esports team.

But how do they profit?

EGLX does not own games or huge streaming platforms like twitch. So you may be wondering how they actually make money? INFLUENCER MARKETING. That's how. They are generating money through ad placements and influencer marketing on their huge platform. (And remember, they are in the top 100 US online companies in terms of reach.)
Facebook and Google are already soaking up ungodly amounts of money through online advertising and taking over the world. But paid ad placements only go so far. I don't know of a good source off hand, but I am telling you subjectively that influencer marketing is one of the "next big things". Companies are paying people with major social followings to review and talk about their shit. This is a very very big industry. I truly believe influencers are going to overtake hollywood and MSM. You shall see... No sources here. Pure opinion.

Is it actually making money?

Shit loads actually. This year EGLX is talking about increasing their total revenue from $9m last year to $120m this year for like a 1100% annual revenue increase. Obviously, if their proforma numbers turn out to be bogus the stock will collapse. But, referring to the fact that the owners of the Canucks are running this company, I am hoping we are not all being lied to and frauded out of our money.
https://www.enthusiastgaming.com/financial-statements/

How do you know I will make the tendies though?

***IF YOU ARE SKIMMING, ALSO READ THIS PART**\*
EGLX is currently trading at a $450m CAD or about $300M USD market cap. That is absolute peanuts compared to any other hype stock in the memesphere. With $120m annual revenue, that puts them at about a 3x price to sales ratio, which really isn't that bad at all for even a boring a blue chip. For a growth stock, it is extremely low.
But if you dig into their investor presentation, they are actually claiming they will raise their Revenue Per User from $0.40 to $3 in the next 2 years, or a nearly 750% revenue increase, not accounting for growth in the size of their social reach. If you include reach growth, it could be nearly 10 times revenue growth. By that point, the current market cap would be a fraction of their annual sales.
This stock is absurdly undervalued if the promises being made by the leadership come true.
>Go look: https://www.enthusiastgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/EG-Presentation-November-2020-Nov-27.pdf

Final Fun facts:

- They own the best Overwatch team.
- They own the Seattle Call of Duty team, which happens to be among the nerdiest cities in America.
- They claim to have the best Fortnite players, but idk that game is trash so I couldn't really say if it's true or not.
But wait there's more!
Saved the best info for last.
The stock tripled in the past month. Why?
Because EGLX is still only trading on the TSX and they have applied to list on the US stock exchange.
They have appointed KPMG as the auditor for the application, and having nice big reputable firm involved certainly increases the odds it will get approved. Furthermore, I actually emailed their investor relations folks and asked when they expect to hit the US markets. Surprisingly, they responded and told me they expect their application to be approved Q1 2021.
Once this puppy hits wallstreet, I see it breaking $1B USD in no time, which would be a 3x return. $3B-$5B doesn't seem unreasonable if the current market insanity persists through 2021.
We have the opportunity to get in on this company before those darned Americans pump it to the moon.
CANADIANS HAVE THE UPPER HAND IN THE STONK MARKET FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OUR DAMN LIVES. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT.
--
PS: Risks. Risks. I think it's almost certain that these guys will issue more shares to raise some capital. They are kinda acting like the want to pump their own stock with unnecessary positive announcements, and honestly, they are pretty low on cash. Think they only have $9m on hand or something small like that. Too lazy to look it up again. Just watch out for dilution. My bet is that they will do it after listing on the US exchanges and mooning. But honestly I am not too worried in the long run because they need the cash to compete in this space.
PSS: More risks. If the us exchange application gets denied it will be bad bad news for my TFSA.

I just lost $750k net worth and I’m not selling

First, my annual income has ranged quite wildly from $100-180k for over a decade but I also live in an expensive metropolitan area where 1,500 sq ft of a condo or modest single-family home sells for $1.5m. I went to a financial advisor for the first time a few months back and they called me earnestly, "solidly middle class." So, $750k is significant.
I bought about $50k over various buys in 2013-2014. At the time, I’d say that was about 15% of my net worth (all of which I earned, I am no trust fund baby).
I have never once sold any bitcoin. All purchases go right into cold storage. I watched all the big dips. 30-50% drops in violently fast intervals. Long recoveries. Never touched it.
I’m no hero HODLer. In fact, I hate that term. It’s childish, and not in an oh-so-cool-for-the-Internet way. People with any kind of positive net worth have portfolios. You don’t HODL. You have assets in various instruments. Some on paper, some as property. You’re “HODLing” all of them. You’re sometimes reallocating, but largely you choose a mix and leave it alone. To say you HODL just tells me you’ve never had anything other than a cash savings account and probably a mountain of debt.
So why do I hold bitcoin and not sell it? For many reasons already espoused endlessly on this forum, but here’s a simple take I don’t see often: If one bitcoin is worth $1, it’s basically worth over $1 million. It’s either valueless or should be priced at whatever would account for the entire world’s business conducted in direct btc transactions with no fiat ramps. There is no in between. Because bitcoin either works or it doesn’t, and the objective fact is: it works. It has worked since 2009 when the open source software was released to the world.
Ask an average Joe anywhere in the world: “Is bitcoin proven, working software or just a prototype?” and I bet 9/10 say the latter. The mainstream narrative of bitcoin is so laden with bullshit, most people simply do not know that bitcoin just works and has worked since the beginning.
Its promise is to allow two entities to transfer value without any middleman, and that the value cannot be counterfeit. This has not changed. If you transferred coins to an address generated in 2009, they sit at that address today still. Any free wallet software today will let you access it. The original client and its variations have been iterated, but bitcoin is still just a ledger, shared by thousands of volunteered machines online. And the deflationary economic philosophy -- a limited supply of coins -- chosen by its original creator, is the same and will always be.
For all the endless talk of how the protocol, the thousands of pointless crypto copies, and decentralization is a platform that can change every industry… it all doesn’t matter. Maybe the other applications will happen meaningfully, maybe they won’t. But the first software devised which runs the largest network, and a permanent, immutable economic policy that is the polar opposite of MMT and the state-run money of every country around the world, **has already happened**.
Bitcoin’s price moves so much because most people are simply idiots. The “speculative asset” narrative is self-fulfilling. There’s nothing to speculate. Bitcoin works. Will it be adopted, won’t it be? It IS adopted. When one person agreed to hand over a product or service for some amount of coin, it was adopted.
The single biggest thing that slowed its *widespread* adoption was government making a coffee purchase a taxable event (i.e. defining bitcoin as property). If we weren’t concerned about bureaucratic friction, we’d just spend what we must and save the rest. Like money is supposed to work. Instead, we hoard. And the dumb players crash in and crash out, creating and riding their own mania, but never really understanding anything.
Screw every person — with ill will or just ignorance — that says it has no inherent value. It is technology with measurable demand. It is finite, it is impossible to counterfeit, it is instantly and safely transferrable between any two parties without a middleman, and cannot be confiscated. It also cannot be uninvented. Owning it is knowledge of characters in your head and that can never be regulated away.
Again: If bitcoin is not valued at zero, then its total value should amount to the entire stored work product of the human race. Because there’s no safer place to store that value. If you think that value stored in something like fiat, which can be printed infinitely, is safer, then you’re with 98% of the rest of the world right now and you’ll continue to resent every leap in value bitcoin makes. I’ll see you at the next peak, where many more gamblers will have come and gone, but a few more who understand that fiat is garbage will be here to stay.
UPDATE: Appreciate the comments, and I guess it was ultimately a post that would be polarizing. I will say I didn't post it to flex -- I explained my financial overview so you'd understand where I'm coming from and not just be another doomsayer or to-the-mooner with no context. I put moderate risk for me in relatively early, I've benefited on paper. I've neither sold at the wrong time or the right time. I just researched the tech 8 years ago, and have seen nothing over that time to suggest anything was wrong with the first conclusion that this a game-changer and store of value worth holding for the long haul. Is it a non-flex to note I drive a 10-year old POS?
The thing is, you can't win. If you say you have no bitcoin, then you clearly don't believe in it. If you do have it, then apparently you just want others to fund the ponzi scheme. Something that benefits from a network effect does not mean those already participating can only have ulterior motives.

A Brief Look at Harnessing the Power of the Crowd to Drive Investment Decisions

Disclaimer: None of this constitutes financial advice. I have no formal training or education in anything related to finance, accounting, investments, etc. Everything in this post is purely for entertainment.
This post is going to be a bit longer than your average Reddit post. I have tried to make it interesting to read, or at the very least entertaining, and I would encourage you to read all of it. But if you just want to skip my pontifications and head straight to the pretty graphs, see the Results section.
Estimated read time: 15 minutes.

Introduction

Some of you may have already seen my u/asx__bot. Also for those that missed it, here is what I have planned to do next with it (this image was entirely auto-generated). The u/asx__bot version evolved from several different things before it came to be in its current form. Although before we go any further, this write-up will not discuss the current ASX Bot. But instead, my experiences in a previous iteration where I tried to use sentiment analysis to build an investment portfolio. I will refer to this version as Bot 1.0 or otherwise just the bot.
I will repeat this once again. This write-up will not focus on the existing u/asx__bot but instead a previous iteration I was working on.
Initially, I decided to embark on this journey because I was inspired by this post here. Despite the applications being completely different, I was intrigued by the idea of using programming to augment investment decision making. Secondly, I was also somewhat inspired by this u/BigJimBeef post about doing proper due diligence and not just listening to what is most popular or what has 🚀🚀🚀 next to it. I was curious to find out what would happen if you just listened to the crowd hype. Lastly, I needed a real-world problem to practice several things I wanted to learn.
If you are getting deja vu reading any of this, it is because I already posted some results from Bot 1.0 in a thread a few weeks ago that got like 20 upvotes. But it did not include a full write-up, it was kinda shit, and I deleted it.

Method

Let me preface this section by saying that Bot 1.0 was very stupid. But I am yet to scratch the surface of what may be possible with it. This was an early prototype, and it was more about seeing if what I wanted to do was technically feasible. The term bot is also quite disingenuous and gives it an air of sophistication that does not exist. In reality, the code looked like the Python version of this or this. But it operated like a fucking Rube Goldberg machine. I overwrote a lot of the code half by choice and half mistakenly. I should have done a better job with my version control, but I really had no plan coming back to this project, so I was being a bit careless. But since a few people were tagging me and wanting to get various tidbits of information I have picked it up again. I have learnt that people really ❤️ data. Which would explain why those Spotify yearly wrap-ups are so popular or why someone who can wrangle data to create reports for executives and such will have a long and successful career.
Bot 1.0 begins by analysing sentiment for all comments over a given period. It uses a very robust library called VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner). This library determines how positive or negative a sentence is. From this data, the bot ranks which stocks more frequently appear in positive sentences and then creates a portfolio based around these. At the end of the given period, the bot then readjusts based on the data it has monitored over the previous period. That is it. As you can see, it is very primitive.
I loaded it up with a modest sum of $100 million, I also set it up to take the top 20 shares of the given period. The period, in this case, was every calendar month.

Results

Here are the results in visualisations:

You can see when shares get dropped in favour of the latest and greatest. You may even notice top performers getting dropped just because the bot did not consider them to be hyped up enough anymore. So with a starting sum of $100 million, the bot managed to double its money. Take that VDHG and VAS!

Discussion

I was honestly quite surprised. In this case, the crowd was not as stupid as you might believe. Initially, a part of me was expecting (and hoping) the bot would lose 50% to 100%, so I could conclude that listening to investment advice from this subreddit and other online forums (I am looking at you too HotCopper) is ill-fated. And it is in your best interest to just log out, leave it to the pros, and cop that S&P 500 ETF. But no matter how many times I tweaked settings and re-ran it, I never saw the bot finish any lower than a few percentage points and most of the time it was in the green.
It reminds me of something a maths teacher told me, and that was that an individual is usually quite bad at estimating. But if you take the average of several estimates, you may be surprised with how accurate it is. An example of this is the classic competition where one must guess how many lollies there are in a jar. A strategy to win these competitions is to take an average of everyone's guesses. This assumes that most of those guesses are people trying to win. The same is true for this subreddit, this bot only works on the assumption that most people here are trying to make money, even if their portfolio says otherwise. I think that is a fair assumption though and when there is money on the line, people behave differently. The person who hypes XYZ in a thread every day (I may or may not be talking about u/SlaughterRain) would most likely only be bothered to do so because they rationally (or irrationally) believe their shares in XYZ will make them money. Even if XYZ is going nowhere anytime soon. To further tie this back to my original point, much like the lolly jar competitions, if you ask an individual to pick the top stock that they think will moon, it will probably be a dud. But if you could aggregate everyone's picks, the likelihood of making money goes up significantly.
For Bot 1.0, the sentiment analysis seems to work best over four weeks. I tried periods of one to eight weeks. A period of one week was way too volatile, as the bot could not gauge sentiment nearly as well and it would be all over the place. Whereas eight weeks seemed too slow and it was way too late to the party. I will talk more about this in Limitations.
Every time I did run it though, there have been some big gains but hardly many big losses. The biggest losses I have seen over any given interval were usually like 15% to 20%. The biggest gain I saw was a flukey triple bagger over a couple weeks or a month (APT related I think).

Limitations

Failing to Understand Nuance

I did not get time to do as much inspection of comment data as I would like. But I did see the bot producing a considerable amount of false positives and false negatives. A notable one was a sentence like “fuck yeah cunts! XYZ is going to the moon!”, which was associated with negative sentiment. Due to the words “fuck” and “cunt”. As Australians, I feel like either of those words can be positive depending on the context. For example, "fuck yeah cunt" compared to "fuck you cunt.” A free and open-source sentiment analysis library (like VADER) will expectedly fail in some instances at understanding comments made on an Australian investment forum focused on memey micro-cap stocks. There is also the issue of someone saying something like “fuck my life, I should have bought more XYZ.” This will be considered a negative sentence due to the tone. But is this really the case? The user is saying that most likely because the stock is performing well and they regret not getting more when it was cheaper. Because of this, it may be best to categorise comments from here myself. Then train a model on this data to predict the sentiment. Compared to just using a publically available library.

Collective Stupidity

Sometimes the crowd is not always right. When people stop thinking for themselves, the house of cards falls down. If everyone here blindly believes XYZ is next to rocket because HypeBeast69420 said so, then the bot will crumble in on itself. But with Reddit and the Internet usually being a place of anonymousness and openness, it provides the perfect environment for people to speak their minds. Of which those same people may be less likely to do so in real life. Such as at a work meeting or during dinner with the extended family. On the Internet, for every HypeBeast69420, there is at least someone dying to prove them wrong.

Chasing Rainbows and Being Late to the Party

There was no guarantee Bot 1.0 would not liquidate its entire portfolio at a 50% loss to chase the latest and greatest hype. Then slowly lose more and more money as the rockets fall down to Earth. Repeating the process until it has $10 spare and can only trade pennies stocks. The rainbow chasing and volatility became a lot more pronounced when I used either a smaller fund size (three to five stocks) or made more frequent trades, i.e. making decisions off less data. But regardless, since the bot was always basing investment decisions off the previous weeks or months, it was guaranteed to be a little bit late. So at the moment, I have two ideas to combat this.
The first idea is to have the bot leverage the crowd data as well as market data. So the bot might get a list of stocks that are generating interest, it then takes these stocks and uses market metrics to determine if it should buy or sell. For example, the penny miner that has shot up 50% in a week might not be a smart play. Although, when it comes to valuing a stock and deciding when to buy or not, there are many different schools of thought. Such as the Buffet-esque value investor who sifts through financials and actually does proper DD. The brah who makes sure his chakras are aligned before he bases his decision on what his tea leaf reading says. Or the chartist who creates their own take on some sort of modernist art and manages to rival the likes of a Basquiat or a Picasso. So deciding how to value stocks and what metrics to consider would require further thought. Which is not where my expertise lies.
Now, the second idea is in contrast with the previous paragraph. The bot would purely be using the data generated by this sub to form its decisions. All the bot is doing is understanding what it is being told and then buying/selling accordingly. Which means efforts would need to be heavily concentrated in making sure sentiment is analysed correctly. More accurate sentiment analysis and greater comment volume will allow the bot to make decisions more accurately and more frequently. Trades could occur weekly, bi-weekly, or daily as opposed to monthly. The low volume of daily and weekly comment data during periods of 2020 was also an entire limitation in itself. But with the sharp increase in total comments being made, it seems my prayers are being answered.

Unrealistic and Simplified Trading

The buying/selling functionality was not very realistic. Much like a politician's Cayman Islands shell company, this bot was not paying any taxes. Furthermore, it was not paying any sort of brokerage fees. As mentioned above, the bot just liquidates its entire portfolio and then tries to rebalance its portfolio on the same day. Obviously, this is not very realistic. It is not looking at market depth or volume either. It just takes the open price of any given day and buys and sells at that price.
The bot was just buying and selling shares of ASX listed companies. It was not involved in anything like short-selling, derivatives, or using leverage. Nor was it trading instruments like bonds, foreign currencies, cryptocurrencies, or ETFs. These may or may not be limitations depending on how you look at it.
Furthermore, stuff like stock splits/consolidations and long-term trading halts (fucking DOU) really screwed with the bot. I have not implemented a way to handle stock splits or consolidations. So I just ignored companies that have had these during the 2020 period. There are probably a few more gotchas I have not considered either.

The Rollercoaster Year of 2020

Nine months of comment data is not that much in terms of financial markets. I would honestly love to have 10 to 20 years worth of data. Or even data leading up to the covid dip of last year. But this year was such a fluke in many respects too. Some shares lost about 30% of their value over a few weeks. But returned to where they were by the end of the year like nothing happened. On the other hand, others are still yet to recover from 2008, let alone 2020.

Determining Ticker Codes

I saw WOW coming up a lot at the start of the year. Which kind of made sense. Because during peak covid, supermarkets never had any specials but were selling like crazy and could barely keep up with demand. After looking into it a bit further, although there were a few mentions of Woolworths Limited, mainly it was just a lot of comments with people exclaiming “WOW”, a la Owen Wilson. In addition to this, when the sentiment analyser sees WOW, it sees this as the word wow. Which it considers very positive. So if someone is actually just referring to Woolworths Limited, it will skew the data positively regardless of the actual sentiment behind the comment. So I think I just ended up filtering out WOW. This was similar for acronyms like ATH (all-time high), UBI (universal basic income), and TGA (therapeutic goods administration). All of those three-letter acronyms are ticker codes used by ASX listed companies too. If you view the portfolio breakdown, you may even notice some acronyms I have missed.

I Have No Idea What I Am Doing

I started this to practice a bit of Python and AWS. I am a bit of an all-rounder but machine learning and the science behind all of it is far from my area of expertise. If it helps, my knowledge is more so situated in the red circle here. But I spent more time reading about the other parts of the pyramid, then what I had set out to learn in the beginning. This was fun, but it could get quite tedious at times. And it exposed where my skills are lacking. I am also even further away from my area of expertise when it comes to investments and finance. Truth be told, I am a basic bitch retail investor. I make my investment decisions based on macro themes, ensuring a company and its directors are not complete shams, then I hold my rosary beads during each trade. Truth be told, I have put together 10-leg NRL multis with better DD than some of my investments in days gone past.

Slow Runtimes

The library that I was using to retrieve data from Yahoo Finance was incredibly slow, which I ended up having to cache a lot of this information. But retrieving comment history was even slower. To download all 200k comments (this number is probably 250k now) from this sub, it took about two hours. I also cached these comments too. But it put a bottleneck on my development because small changes in my code could render cached data useless. This slow speed was one of the reasons I had thrown in the towel. During Bot 1.0, I spent time looking at ways to speed it up. But I couldn't crack it.

Conclusion

I am at a crossroads with the development of this project. The current u/asx__bot is a simple extract/transform/load process with some sprinkles on top. But there seems to be a demand for some of the features that were present in Bot 1.0, such as sentiment analysis and market data. If this is the case, I will need to really nail down what I need, because some foundational design decisions will have to be made before going forward.
I am becoming more convinced that the crowd can generate quite useful information. The Internet is Gutenberg 2.0. And like the Printing Revolution, less and less knowledge is being hoarded and controlled by the 0.1%. Instead, it is being disseminated amongst the masses. The real challenge for anyone, particularly myself, will be figuring out how to harness this increasingly decentralised knowledge.

Hey Seniors, if you’re not happy with your college list, it’s not too late! Schools with Feb 1 deadlines or later. Also: Links to Interviews, Essays, and LOCI Posts.

Deferred? Time to Write Your Letter of Continued Interest!
Worried about Interviews? Here you go!
Still struggling with your Personal Essay? This is for you.
I know most of you have finished your applications, but I also know there are some of you who might need to round out your list or you might even be just getting started. If so, there are some amazing colleges out there still open for apps and looking for awesome students like you. So, I just sorted on Common App to look at all the schools with deadlines on Feb 1 or later. There are some truly incredible schools there, y'all.
The actual common app list is much longer than this. I've only included schools that I've personally visited and liked or met their admissions team, or I know someone who has visited and liked it, or I know someone who's attended and been happy. If you have schools for me to add, please send them my way. This is just mostly from the Common App, so there are schools that aren't on Common App that I haven't listed. I've included a few non-Common App schools that I just happen to know have later deadlines. Also, please note, I’ve written descriptions for a few, but I don’t value the other schools any less -- I just don’t know them quite as well.
* The asterisk means there are no App Fees!
Edit — SMU just extended to Jan 24 (seen on Twitter)
February 1:
Auburn
Creighton U *: this is the school where one of my personal heroes attended, Ernie Chambers. If you don’t know who he is, look him up
Gonzaga
Hobart and William Smith *
Ithaca College *
Marquette *: beautiful, mid-sized, city school in Wisconsin
Miami Ohio
Morehouse: HBCU, beautiful liberal arts college in Atlanta for men
Muhlenberg
Quinnipiac
Sewanee *: liberal arts college, intellectual vibe, real life-changers, gorgeous mountain top campus
Southwestern *: liberal arts college in a cool little town right outside Austin, Texas, amazing admissions team
Spelman: HBCU, beautiful liberal arts college in Atlanta for women
TCU *: beautiful, mid-sized city campus in Fort Worth, Texas, amazing admissions office
Temple U
U Rhode Island
U Wisconsin Madison
Whittier
Edited to add based on comments:
Rose-Hulman Inst Tech
U Michigan
Butler U*
Ohio State
St. Louis University (SLU): Feb 1 deadline for some scholarships and programs and priority FAFSA, rolling after. My husband did their year-long program in Spain way way back in the 80s and he loved it!
Canisius*
James Madison U
February 15:
Allegheny
College of Charleston: one of the prettiest campuses I’ve visited, mid-sized, downtown Charleston SC
College of Wooster *: beautiful campus, outside Columbus, Ohio, known for mentored research for undergraduate students
Earlham *
Howard U
U Kentucky
Edited to add: Hampshire College*
March 1
Hendrix
John Cabot U Rome: in my favorite area of Rome, Trastavere
Seton Hall U: known for good business programs, not too far from NYC, beautiful campus
Deleted: U Oregon (deadline was Jan 15; however, they are often on the lists of colleges who continue to accept apps, so if you're interested, I'd get in touch with them)
Edit to add: Elmira College
March 15
Agnes Scott College: one of my favorite women’s colleges, stunning campus, lovely laid back, intellectual vibe, in a close-in suburb of Atlanta
Juniata*
April 15
Loyola New Orleans: this school blew me away when I visited last spring, beautiful, next door to Tulane, right on a park, in one of my favorite areas of New Orleans
May 1
Clemson
Emory and Henry *
Michigan State U
St. Edward’s U: Austin, Texas, gorgeous campus on a hill, lovely Austin vibe
UT Dallas: cool modern campus, great business programs
U Iowa: amazing campus, cool town, lots of awesome programs, if you don’t have a sure-bet school, I recommend checking this one out
U Nebraska Lincoln: tons of school spirit, large research university
U Tampa
June 1
De Paul: urban campus in Chicago, if you like the feel of NYU or BU, check out DePaul
U Houston: cool pretty campus, lots of green space and student involvement, great architecture, engineering, creative writing, and entrepreneurship programs
U Missouri
U St. Andrews: if you’re on the hunt for the traditional highly selective kind of campus feel, check out St. Andrews in Scotland
June 15
Franklin U, Switzerland: liberal arts college, interesting engaged students, in Switzerland (nuff said)
SCAD: Savannah College of Art and Design
July Deadlines and Rolling
American U Paris
American U Rome
Arizona State: gorgeous campus, lots of outdoor activities, ASU is doing their part to educate the citizens of the US and the world, check them out
Belmont
Columbia College Chicago
Evergreen State
Fort Lewis College: public liberal arts college in Durango, Colorado, beautiful modern campus, super cool little town (priority app due March 1)
Hawaii Pacific
Iowa State: I love this campus in Ames Iowa
Loyola Chicago
Oglethorpe
Ole Miss (U Mississippi)
Oregon State
Prescott College
Penn State
St. John’s College (MD and NM): if you’re looking for colleges that are intellectually stimulating, then look no further (edited to add: their deadline was Jan 15, but they do rolling after that. I suggest applying if they interest you. I haven't yet visited the Annapolis Campus, but the Santa Fe campus was really cool. I took one of the longest hikes of my life straight from campus and met some awesome students.)
St. John’s U: Long Island, good business programs, super diverse student body, opportunities in NYC
Texas Tech
U Arkansas
U Kansas
U Maine
U Montana
U Pittsburgh: downtown Pittsburgh, cool campus, lots of opportunities
U Tulsa
U Wyoming
Western Colorado U: in Gunnison Colorado, small liberal arts college, amazing skiing just a half-hour away in Crested Butte, engineering degrees from CU Boulder
Edited to add:
Manhattan College
Washington State
South Dakota Mines
Tl; dr: it's not too late -- even if you're just now getting started! If you don't see any colleges here that are calling your name, and you'd like to add to your list, be sure to look on Common App and sort by deadlines. There are hundreds more!

Lockdown, things to do, help & advice.

Disclaimer I am posting this here because I got a message from the mods asking me to. I'm not from London so links aren't London centric (but hopefully still of help) and the main post is here so any updates will likely be there (I will try here but it's hard to keep up with the amount of suggestions)
Thanks.
Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it.
Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions:
For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month!
For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k.
I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device.
Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers

Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Now TV (I believe it's 7 days)
Disney+
Britbox
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder

Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with Gold Bleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.

Gaming Subscriptions
Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months

Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.

There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that.
Audiobooks & Ebooks

Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Marvel Unlimited No experience with this. ItFuckingWont wanted me to add it. A subscription service for Marvel.

Education

Sign Language BSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesize here is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.

If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the details According to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."

Duolingo Numerous people have suggested this So I haven't used myself. Thanks to OhHiGCHQ StephanieMecredy & Allorie_95

Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house

I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)

To flee the threat of harm or violence.*
CoronaVirus Symptoms
CoronaVirus government site You can check your location and how many cases here.
Worldometers Shows cases around the world.
Interactive UK Map Another easy to read map with cases in counties and local area's.
World Health Organisation

Support

FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THE ROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though)
_riotingpacifist wanted this links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:

Update:
Digital Art
These are Free

Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.

LibreOffice This has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.

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Hey Seniors, if you’re not happy with your college list, it’s not too late! Schools with Feb 1 deadlines or later. Also: Links to Interviews, Essays, and LOCI Posts.

Lockdown, things to do, help & advice.

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