Retro & Classic Video Games & Consoles | GameStop

video game consoles for sale near me

video game consoles for sale near me - win

Not a dev test console, but I managed to find this working ps1 with a controller at goodwill for $10! I find this shocking since the goodwill near me rarely has video game consoles for sale other than xbox360s, and PS3s.

Not a dev test console, but I managed to find this working ps1 with a controller at goodwill for $10! I find this shocking since the goodwill near me rarely has video game consoles for sale other than xbox360s, and PS3s. submitted by WebsterDz31 to gamecollecting [link] [comments]

In 2017 I sold 100 BTC (and BCH) for 1.5M dollars USD – Some thoughts

Since we are in a bull run (the big one?) I thought I might share some reflections. I’m seeing a lot of newcomers (welcome!) as well as some sophomore types with questions, ideas, admonitions, and the like. Pull up a chair, I've been around these parts for a while. And if anyone starts in with the "but yr account is only 2 years old" bullshit... come on, use your head.
First off, as Ecclesiastes 1:9 states:
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Over the last 7 years I have seen all these questions about what to do, these statements of selling, and others commenting how stupid and ignorant anyone who sells “right now” must be. People have called me a fucking moron for daring to part with some of my bitcoin, or argued with me that I don’t understand what I did. They are sad people (jealous? myopic? entitled? I still don’t know what they are trying to prove.)
Secondly: I’m certain a number of you will not believe my story. That is your right. I will not provide tx-id’s or any other form of proof. I just ask that you look at my post history and ponder – either this guy made up a story several years ago and stuck to it, posting every so often between /bitcoin and /financialindependence for magic internet points or maybe he is telling the truth. Seriously; if you doubt my story look at the post history and see if that helps, if not… so be it.
If you care about the deeper parts of my story, and the lively debates/admonitions/disbelievers check out my previous posts:
Short basics
More details / 1 year retired reflections
2yr retired reflections
Selling, Taxes, Coinbase
The story
I got into bitcoin back in 2013 or so, reading about it and really going down the rabbit hole. I am a scientist, and it is my nature to go deep on things of interest. One thing I learned in my graduate studies was “how to learn” (how to research). For you whippersnappers – that means more than Google and YouTube. So I learned, I read, I watched interviews, I set up a node, I mined shitcoins to understand how that worked (and traded them for bitcoin in the end.) Nobody I knew was into bitcoin, and nobody would listen to me about it. I tried to get my brother interested. I tried to get a tech friend interested. Both of them agreed it was “interesting” but not enough to acquire any bitcoin (this was around the time of bitcoin being just under $1k, before it dropped for several years post MtGox meltdown). So I carried on alone, with just the interwebs to console me.
In 2017 when bitcoin hit $4,000 or so, I sold 40 - enough to pay off my mortgage and cover my original costs to acquire all my holdings (avg sale price $4320). If bitcoin ate shit and died, I had a good ride, and had a paid off house to boot. I think it was a week or two later that it was $8,000. Then soon after it almost hit $20k and started dropping. I didn’t panic, but I woke up in mid-December and my brain screamed “don’t be greedy” to me. I listened to my brain and sold 60 BTC at around $15.6k each. Additionally, as I had my coins on Coinbase, when they opened trading for BCH in late December I dumped them within the first hour for around $3550 each. When all was said and done I had made somewhere near 1.5M USD.
If you have questions about how much I paid in taxes, how I moved the money, if my bank gave a shit (spoiler: they did not) etc. it’s covered in this post with details asked in the comments. You also get to see people tell me I am wrong, so there’s that fun as well.
I kept the rest of my BTC, and watched the price shrink down over the next couple years. I wondered if I had made a mistake by not cashing out, missed my “big chance for maxxx profits” or whatever, but it didn’t really matter that much because a few months after I made the initial money and paid my taxes, I fucking retired. Yes, as of almost 3 years ago, I retired. It wasn’t only because of the bitcoin – I had saved money, had a 401k, and an IRA. I was on my way to a modest retirement somewhere in my 50’s or so if I wanted it, but then BOOM, I had a huge nest egg, a paid off house, other savings, and additional bitcoin for the future. Cool. kthxbye work world!
I have spent the last 3 years leisurely pursuing my own things like art and music, woodworking, collage, gardening along with sleeping in and lots of meditation and porch dwelling. There have been several small tragedies in my life since then (parents in poor health, for one) and so I have been able to tend to that more so than I could if I was working. Being retired has given me so many options and so much control over my life. I love it.
Some of you might be thinking something along the lines of - Now here we are…bitcoin is worth $40k so roughly speaking this guy (me) “lost out” so far on about 2.4M after taxes. There’s also the fact that if I had kept working these last 3 years I would have additional income/savings that I could have invested so let’s round up to 3M after taxes, assuming I sold the 100 BTC now and the BCH immediately (I’m not a fan, and actually am surprised it didn’t die). How do I feel about losing out on $3M (and counting)? Honestly, not particularly bad.
Here’s the deal – when you get to a certain point in your net worth, where you can cover your costs for your lifestyle and more (and this number is different for everyone, for me I’m really chill, so no lambo interests) the money sort of converts itself into a score like on a video game. I can look back and think “oh man, 3 million fucking dollars more! Oh shit!” but do I lose sleep over it? No. Do I kick myself? Not really. My score is lower than it could have been… but in return, I got to help a friend die peacefully, I helped another friend pivot his business, I moved to a new city and bought a cool house (still own the old one as a rental, but maybe not for much longer), and I get to wake up every day and do exactly what I want to do (minus covid issues). It’s really nice to be out of the rat race. It suits me well. I know now that I could have made more - but at the time I had no clue, and there is something to be said for the comfort of the sure thing.
My base take is this – we only have so much time on this planet, and I’d like to maximize my control (vs. my wealth) as much as possible. It would be hard to imagine reliving the last 3 years with a full time job, and I don’t care to dwell on what might have been. I hit my retirement number (1.5x my number + remaining BTC) and GTFO of the system. That money has grown in the funds I put it into, and I never touch principle. My remaining bitcoin became and remain gravy and I plan on hodling until it doesn’t make sense anymore. My advice to all of you is to do your research, know your game plan for selling (I didn’t really have a solid one, honestly), be excellent to each other, and live that life. Ignore the noise – from nosy people in internet forums, from grouchy jealous jerkoffs, etc. This is your deal.
I’m happy to answer any questions. Hope you found this interesting.
submitted by FIRE_and_forget_it to Bitcoin [link] [comments]

🚀💎🙌 GME (Almost-)ULTIMATE DD 🙌💎🚀

🚀💎🙌 GME (Almost-)ULTIMATE DD 🙌💎🚀

EDIT 3 : CONGRATS TO ALL GME HOLDERS. TRUELY HONORED TO BE PART OF THE GME FAM. 🚀

Introduction

PDF VERSION HERE (20+ pages) with all the references and better quality illustrations but without updates and typo corrections. This is the FIRST VERSION of the post, but there could be more edits. I wanted to do a more extensive DD but as my exams start tomorrow I don’t have more time. If you want to take my work and extend it, please feel free to do so, just give a little shout out.
FIRST AND FOREMOST, SHOUTOUT TO 🚀💎🙌 GME GANG 💎🙌 🚀, YOU’RE IN MY ❤️.
This DD is just my own analysis. I put my money where my mouth is but this is definitely not advice. Do your own DD.
Last thing: Some stuff might be unsourced in this post but everything is sourced in the pdf version. While it’s not impossible that I might have missed some stuff, most of the time I put the stuff that I quote from other sources in italics. My ego is not big enough to feel like reformulating other people’s ideas and even less to steal other people's ideas. All I do is just gather insightful facts, figures, ideas and analysis.

Big picture

1.1 Macroeconomic View

I will be brief here, I think everyone knows what’s up basically.
Figure 1: although the USD is worth a lot less, the S&P 500 is doing alright. Thanks Jerome.
Enthusiasm is the key word here as we are in an environment with a very accommodative monetary and fiscal policy (thanks for the stimulus checks). Equities and Bitcoin hit record highs thanks to positive vaccine news and the markets hope for a fiscal package. The Federal Reserve is going heavy on asset purchases, bailouts and loans. And its balance sheet is expanding as well as money supply. Interest rates are extremely low.
Check for example, the Shiller PE ratio to see the enthusiasm driving the markets.
On a macro-level side from the risks related to the pandemic, the only worrying signs would be the shrinking money velocity or a suddenly-rising inflation (hyperinflation is bullish for stocks but not for the real economy).
That being said, we know how the FED and the government reacted to support the economy and the markets. Low interest rates and weak US dollar which is continuing to depreciate is very bullish for stocks overall.
I keep the macroeconomic view very short for that GME correlation with the S&P 500 is low - about 28% over the last 6 months. Moreover despite GME’s heavy reliance on brick-and-mortar stores, GME continues to get closer to profitability even with the pandemic.
If the pandemic would make the stock market to crash again during the trade, I wouldn't sell at a loss but wait a few days and then buy a LEAPS. This is my plan. Don't follow it, just make sure you have a plan in case it happens, it's important to avoid buying too much the first dip (because you might get a better price later) or worse, avoid a panic-selling and take a loss instead of tendies.

1.2 Sector(s) View

Figure 4: Video game market value worldwide from 2012 to 2023 (in billion USD)
Figure 5: Retail ecommerce sales in the United States from 2017 to 2024 (in million USD)
Video game total adressable market and ecommerce total adressable market keep growing, that's all we need to know on a macro-level. Now, the real question is not about the market itself but about the compny business model.

GameStop Corp.

  • Market cap $1.31B
  • 1-year performance 209.87%
  • Shares outstanding 69.75M
  • Short interest 68.13M (97.68% of the outstanding shares)
  • Held by insiders Between 13.6% to 27.3%
  • Held by institutions Between 110.5% to 122.0%
  • Owned by Ryan Cohen 12.9%
  • Owned by BlackRock 17.1%

2.2 Timeline


Table 1: GameStop timeline.
Short-term the sector is pretty hot with quarantines and the launch of next-generation consoles which will impact positively year-on-year sales growth. The pandemic could have been an opportunity but GME has still too many physical stores and not enough ecommerce presence yet to take advantage of it.
For the next earning release, the question is : how much PS5 and Xbox GameStop was able to get? And how much they sold in bundles (at high margins)?
Although it’s still unclear from what I’ve found it’s pretty bullish:
GameStop Corp. employees across the country were caught by surprise on Saturday when the video-game chain suddenly announced new shipments of the highly coveted PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles - bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-14/gamestop-employees-rattled-by-surprise-shipment-of-ps4-xbox
inverse.com/gaming/xbox-series-x-restock-walmart-target-gamestop-january-2021
https://preview.redd.it/h8lt7bwhd6961.png?width=774&format=png&auto=webp&s=e29536613629d3d86bce03bc9e4a89a4e983c337
Figure 6 : https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=gamestop

https://preview.redd.it/n42qka5prw961.jpg?width=1030&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e634ddea7ccf954277a70e57ffa4e957badff22b
The recent Microsoft deal is extremely bullish for GameStop and could help the company to reach profitability sooner than expected. Here are the details about how it could impact GameStop’s profitability:
  • In years 3 and 4 combined, if just 5 million customers extend the subscription for two years, GameStop makes $180 million in incremental profit with zero cost involved. That's nearly a quarter of GameStop's current market cap in recurring income at 100% margin. - Justin Dopierala, “GameStop Revenue Sharing Agreement With Microsoft Shifts Sentiment.” SeekingAlpha.

2.2 Business Model and Management

  • Gamestop is omnichanneling into online activities according to Ryan Cohen recommendations although it doesn’t mean they will execute it perfectly this is bullish.
    • GameStop needs to evolve into a technology company that delights gamers and delivers exceptional digital experiences – not remain a video game retailer that overprioritizes its brick-and-mortar footprint and stumbles around the online ecosystem.” Ryan Cohen.
Table 2: GameStop is dangerously (for the shorts) getting close to profitability.
  • The company attributes the losses this quarter to the end of the console cycle and the limited hardware and accessory availability that came with that, as well as various game delays, and an 11% reduction in its store base - partially offset by recaptured sales at other locations and online. → The company should be profitable very soon despite being priced for bankruptcy for a long time → Expectations are incrediblly low until recently, more investors are believing in the vision esp. with Ryan Cohen.
  • GME e-commerce sales were up 257% year-over-year.
  • GME reduced its selling, general, and administrative expenses by $115 million.
  • GME repaid $10 million in debt in Q3 2020.
  • GME is diversifying sales to include more high margin items like PC accessories, PC monitors, etc (If I speculate, there may be partnerships with certain brands).
  • Focusing on loyalty programs like power ups and rebranding.
  • As of Feb. 2020, GameStop had 5,509 physical stores.
  • GME is closing unprofitable locations: they are closing 1,000 stores in Q1 2021 (by the end of March of 2021).
    • I’d like to quote a fellow GME gang member on this: It's no secret that brick and mortar is falling off, and if GameStop were to fight tooth and nail to remain a largely brick and mortar retailer they would go bankrupt in no time. It is also a fact that underperforming stores drain cash, which lowers net income and thus lowers earnings per share. Any store that is LOSING MONEY or is barely breaking even is keeping the stock price down because it's preventing future growth and killing net incomes. Closing underperforming stores will lead to a higher EPS and more cash that can be allocated to growth. - horny131313.
  • Gamestop is rebranding, and shifting to becoming the one stop video game and video game related product online retailer. While we haven't seen exactly what this will be, it is bullish to see them pivoting into other products besides just video games. Headsets, TVS, PC parts, you name it. You've seen the omnichannel memes, but we know that If they are bullshitting, Cohen will step in. Expect to see real progress made.
Some words from the last earnings:
  • "We anticipate, for the first time in many quarters, that the fourth quarter will include positive year-on-year sales growth and profitability*, reflecting the introduction of* new gaming consoles*, our* elevated omni-channel capabilities and continued benefits from our cost and efficiency initiatives*, even with the potential further negative impacts on our operations due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.*" George Sherman, CEO.
Possible catalysts (from KYJELLYTIME69):
  • A possible new Nintendo console release in ~1-2 years
  • Currently distressed commercial REITs = ability to negotiate lower rent = more $$$
  • Likely return of inflation (debatable but money supply ballooned and we are seeing velocity pick up a bit) with JPOW promising to keep rates at 0% even when inflation comes back = bullish for all stocks, bears will get slaughtered
  • OG printer Yellen manning the treasury in a month + possible dem senate = more stimmy checks = more money going into GME
  • If sales improve and balance sheets continue improve, we might see more credit upgrades
  • Better sales = possible dividend reinstatement, I couldn't care less about dividends but guess who's going to be paying? The shorts lol. If Sherman had balls, he would pull an OSTK and announce a special dividend , which will actually lead to a short squeeze while wsb laughs collectively as we get meme returns from this boomer move.

2.3 The Short-Squeeze Thesis


Figure 6: Stare statistics from Oct. 2019 to Nov. 2020
In terms of metrics, the DTC (days-to-cover) actually decreases, lowering the probability to get a short-squeeze short-term. Don’t get me wrong, this DOESN’T mean that it can’t happen, the % of shares shorted is still crazy high.
Days to cover: It gives investors an idea of potential future buying pressure. In the event of a rally in the stock, short sellers must buy back shares on the open market to close out their positions. Understandably, they will seek to purchase the shares back for the lowest price possible, and this urgency to get out of their positions could translate into sharp moves higher. The longer the buyback process takes, as referenced by the 'days to cover' metric, the longer the price rally may continue based solely on the need of short sellers to close their positions. Additionally, a high 'days to cover' ratio can often signal a potential short squeeze. This information can benefit a trader looking to make a quick profit by buying that company's shares ahead of the anticipated event actually coming to fruition. (Investopedia).
In terms of corporate actions, here is a quote from September mentioning the hostile takeover from Ryan which would trigger a massive short-squeeze, here is the explanation:
Short Squeeze Potential - If Ryan Cohen successfully negotiates a purchase price with the Board then the shareholders will have to vote on it. Unlike the proxy battle where Hestia and Permit were running a minority slate of directors, an offer to purchase GameStop would force institutions like Vanguard and Blackrock to call in their shares. By doing so, the shorts would be forced to close out their positions and GameStop would finally have the greatest short squeeze of all-time. Ironically, Cohen could use this opportunity to sell all of his shares and use the proceeds to entirely fund the acquisition of GameStop going down as the first person in history to acquire a billion dollar company... for absolutely nothing. In fact, his acquisition price would be less than zero. It will be exciting to see how it all plays out as according to Bloomberg/WSJ there are now 58 million shares short as of 8/31/2020 with only 65 million shares outstanding.
If I were short, I'd be sweating bullets right now. This won't end well and will ruin many.
Justin Dopierala is President and Founder of DOMO Capital.
How to know when the potential short-squeeze could happen?
  • Massive volume in short dated calls. [...] If you have shares, DO NOT SELL COVERED CALLS FROM THEM. by doing this you make the likelihood of a squeeze decrease. - horny131313
  • Unwind their short position with some behind closed doors deal. A scenario like this could include: Melvin offering shares of other stocks at discounted prices in exchange for GME shares or to unload a portion of their short shares. The second party to this deal could also offer to buy GME shares for higher than market prices - horny131313
If you want to do a further analysis on short-metrics I put some additional figures - you might find some kind of pattern idk.
Figure 8: Share statistics of December 2020
Figure 9: Available shares to short vs. fees in %.

2.4 Is GME Manipulated?

Maybe.
I know there is actually a prob. with the % daily returns (it isn't equal to 100% BUT the proportions still hold true on a non 100 point basis). The main point is that: negative daily returns were much higher than positive ones.
If you are familiar with the stock market, you might have noticed that winners do not act like this usually: total return was +21% yet there has been 53.3% red days. If you look at regular stocks which have positive cumulative returns it doesn’t happen that often (outliers aside).
This is why I suspect that the stock is being manipulated but the weird stats might be explained just because the stock kept being shorted although it was not enough to keep the price down.
Another opinion on this:
  • Melvin and BoA both have short positions, and are desperately trying to drive the price down. Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to convince people that gamestop is a failing business. They are sweating and will continue to sweat. Given the buy side volume, they could close these short positions gradually without triggering a massive squeeze, however it WILL drive the price up significantly higher than it is now. - horny131313.

2.5 What 2020 Has Taught Us?

I think at this point it is the wrong question to ask (is the stock being manipulated?). To me, the most important thing is what is the upside potential and the risks associated? Then, how to trade GME?
  • If you're new to gamestop, the volatility will seem scary but the shorts fight hard with this one. -10% days followed by +20% days are not unusual. - horny131313
I would like to elaborate on this very idea. For this, check GME statistics for 2020:
https://preview.redd.it/t05xum2zc6961.png?width=764&format=png&auto=webp&s=b2e092560bba3b3091a6fe8bf0bceea2ce7b9f5c
https://preview.redd.it/odbxo3sxc6961.png?width=772&format=png&auto=webp&s=7897f1dac841aa381b916046c3652e2d2c4ece68
  • Whether the stock is manipulated or not, MOST of the 2020 trading days were negative.
  • The worst daily returns were hard to handle honestly we are talking multiple worst than 14% daily drawdowns.
  • You could more than triple your money WITHOUT LEVERAGE.
  • Let’s say you bought late Apr. and sold late Aug. you could have been at -13% returns and +31% the next week if you had diamond hands. For the real diamond hands you had +147% returns the next 2 months.
Psychologically this was a hard trade for sure. But for those who had diamond hands, it was pretty amazing. If you don’t feel comfortable being at -20% or even -30% returns for months before the stock literally BLOWS UP… Reduce your position and diamond hand with a smaller size. Better to win with less than lose with a lot…
TLTR: DIAMOND-HAND THIS OR DON’T TRADE THIS AT ALL.

Risks

3.1 Upside Risks

  • RC Ventures LLC increases its stake.
    • It could be VERY soon. On the 31 December 2020, someone bought 900K shares, it could be Ryan Cohen given the size of its last purchases:
Figure 10: Last RC Ventures GME Purchases. Notice how the biggest numbers (e.g. 800K & 500K) while the smaller ones weren't (e.g. 320K, 256K or 128K).
Figure 11: Check who tweeted this on the same date as the 900K shares purchase?
EDIT : the recent 900K-share purchase after hours were not "purchases", it was quarterly option settlement. - KYJELLYTIME69.
  • This is very bullish because after the disclosure of additional buying from Cohen last time, even though it strangely took 1 full trading day for the market to pop up, GME shot up 29%.
  • Surprise investors with their holiday sales and/or EPS.
  • RC Ventures LLC gets more than one seat on the board.
  • RC Ventures LLC begins a hostile takeover.
    • On top of its increasing stake, Ryan is supported by both a lot of small and now large investors too.
    • Moreover “there is a decent amount of evidence that Ryan Cohen spent the summer of 2020 hiring a badass lawyer and crafting a pretty solid plan to wrest control of a struggling Mall-based gaming retailer from its out of touch Boomer Board and CEO so he can turn it into an ecommerce juggernaut like his baby Chewy. the attorney listed on each of the 13Ds filed by RC Ventures. [...] Chris Davis, Activist Attorney Extraordinaire and His Successful Use of the Consent Solicitation to Remove Dipshit Boards/CEOs” - CPTHubbard.
  • Moody's Upgrades GameStop's credit rating a second time in a row
    • Hoping for a PR soon confirming the recent redemption of the 2021 notes. Potential credit upgrade from Moodys could come now that GME has officially redeemed 63% of their 2021 notes. If we don't get that now, we should get it in March when the entirety of the 2021 notes are retired. Debt considered investment grade and not junk is a big positive and one most overlook. - Stonksflyingup
  • Short sellers close a part of their position huge short position.
  • A major hedge fund takes a significant position on GME.
  • Dividend reintroduction.

3.2 Downside Risks

  • New short sellers open a position and current ones scale up theirs.
  • Momentum towards profitability dies out and the company goes bankrupt.
    • Honestly if you read this far you know this is extremely unlikely.
  • Share dilution.

3.3 Overview


Table 6: Upside risks
Table 7: Downside risks

3.4 Commentary

Figure 12: GME is one of or even THE most shorted stock for its valuation (in terms of % short interest).
This means two things:
  • It is very unlikely for the shorts to continue to short the company especially when its credit rating is being upgraded - we will see if it keeps getting upgraded or not in March.
  • If the shorts get to short it more (or new short sellers open a position) it will:
    • Drive the stock price down (lower market cap), drive the short ratio higher making the unwinding of the short sellers even harder and as a result making the probability to have a short-squeeze VERY BIG if good events happen moving forward.
    • Push Ryan Cohen to accelerate its plans.
      • I will personally increase my share-position if it happens.

Conclusion

4.1 Prices Targets

Here is a summary of my post:
When the short % of free float went from a high point (~160%) at around February 2020 to a low point (~140%) - which by the way are in absolute terms both huge numbers- the stock went up ~94% BUT most of the gain took place at 2 key moments: at the recovery of the market crash and then in late August which shows that 💎🙌-ing is key to capture most of the gains.
Figure 13: GME returns from 3 Feb. 2020 to 1 Sept. 2020
Why do I say this? Because when holding the stock you could “feel” like you bled when you watch the stats:
Positive daily returns Negative daily returns
49.3 % 50.7 %
But IT WAS IN FACT THE SHORT SELLERS WHO BLED HARD:
Best daily return Worst daily return
23.0 % -13.7 %
Imagine you sold GME when the -13.7% happened. You would not have captured the 94% returns. So just 💎🙌 and let those shorts go bankrupt.
Table 8: PTs.

4.2 Valuations

“Wallstreetbets - GME 4Q20 Financial Model 🚀 🚀 🚀.” Reddit, www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kh9na8/gme_4q20_financial_model/.
“GameStop Rips Higher as Hedgeye Pitches the Long Side of the Trade.” SeekingAlpha, 23 Dec. 2020, seekingalpha.com/news/3647009-gamestop-rips-higher-hedgeye-pitches-long-side-of-trade.
Thanks for reading.

4.4 Letter to the GME Gang

💎🙌 🚀
BIG SHOUT OUT TO THE ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE GME GANG.
I WILL MAKE MORE DDs IN THE FUTURE IF YOU LIKE THIS ONE.
I AM NOT DELUSIONAL OR COMPLETELY DUMB I KNOW THE TRADE IS RISKY BUT IF WE ARE RIGHT, WE WILL MOON THAT IS FOR SURE.
LET’S MAKE HISTORY WITH THIS ONE.
GME GANG 4 LIFE.
Sincerely yours,
ShortTheNasdaq, a proud member of the GME gang.
💎🙌 🚀
EDIT 2: Delos Capital Advisors turns BULLISH for GME throughout 2021 (https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/01/05/stocks-to-buy-in-2021-strategist-names-three-top-picks.html).
MORE LINKS (not included in the pdf):
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/implied-volatility-surging-gamestop-gme-135401645.html
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/krdqp5/gme_4q20_financial_model_update/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/krgvq6/gme_gang_digital_is_the_rebirth_of_gamestop_not/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kr98ym/gme_gang_we_need_to_complain_about_naked_short/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kr02y8/gme_gang_18_consecutive_days_on_nyse_threshold/
https://www.barrons.com/articles/gamestop-stock-soars-as-short-sellers-take-a-hit-51610572262
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/heavily-shorted-gamestop-soars-most-ever-as-day-traders-circle
FAQ 1 : Is GameStop going bankrupt? 300%+ yearly growth ecom sales, already closing top ~20% of their most unprofitable locations, high margin partnership with Microsoft, new gaming console generation, Moody's recent credit upgrade on 8 Jul 2020 from C (negative outlook) to B3 (stable outlook)... So extremely unlikely.
FAQ 2 : GameStop employees complain about the company, so is the stock going down? Well listen to Apple's iPhone manufacturers or Amazon employees... There is no correlation between their words and the stock price, if any there is a negative one.
Positions: shares, Nov. calls and some cash on the sidelines to buy the dips.
PDF VERSION HERE (20+ pages) without the corrections and updates but with ALL the references if you want to work from this post or dive deeper on certain points.
submitted by ShortTheNasdaq to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

Old Austin Tales: Forgotten Video Arcades of The 1970s & 80s

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975
ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.
March 3, 1976
ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.
First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984
A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.
I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983
Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."
Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982
'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."
Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982
Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.
This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:
Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.
The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003
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The REAL Greatest Short Burn of the Century Part III: GME Infinity War

Oh and uh short burn of the century comin soon. Flamethrowers should arrive just in time.
-Elon Musk
Oh Elon, sorry to steal your thunder. But GME will make TSLA vol look like TLT. Jeff haunting your every accomplishment yet again.
I’m back with the final warning bell. The next time I post in 2021 will be to recap the squeeze’s results and post gain porn along with u/Deep_Fucking_Value, u/SIR_JACK_A_LOT, u/Tomatotowers, and more. This is the last stop before the moon mission.
It’s currently not too late. But after Q3 earnings on Dec 8th, it will be. And of course, as always, not financial advice. Just for bragging rights and entertainment. Here goes:
Here’s a comprehensive GME overview for all new and returning WSB-monkeys. Sit down and grab some tea. This is a long one unlike the previous posts.
GME Overview:
The GME story can be broken up into 2 main theses. The first is a deep value play which has credibility all on its own. The second is an infinity short squeeze like we’ve never seen before in history, which has credibility all on its own. When combining the two, you get the trade of a lifetime.
In all my (albeit limited) days, I have never EVER seen a trade set up like this before. I’ve pored over every source of historical finance material I can get my hands on, and still have nothing to reference to. IMO, this will look more like the 2008-MBS bet, or the Ackman 2020-COVID “Hell is coming” bet, than TSLA, OSTK, KBIO, or VW.
Just a fucking face-ripping, out-of-nowhere, legendary-HOF-ticker bet that will bankrupt some funds and get people fired - and of course, with no community other than WSB’s name next to it in the history books (and if I could pencil in our lovely GME discord hosted by u/BadElf21 and u/RoaringKitty’s YT stream).
Let’s begin.
Act 1 - The Set Up:
Q: Why is GME so heavily shorted in the first place? Why are we betting the long? Aren’t they going bankrupt ala Blockbuster? If not, are we just trading this short term like a HTZ/CCL meme stonk?
A: NO. This is a fundamentally solid deep value play at its core.
First let’s go back a few years. We must give the shorts due credit in order to understand where we are now. GME has been profitably shorted since 2013 when the market correctly bet on the digitization of video games and spread of mobile gaming. Some data here:
The shorts are betting on $0.
However, in the last 12 months, GME has shown that their terminal velocity does not lead to bankruptcy. GME has a strong balance sheet. Cash on hand is worth over $12 a share. Net cash is worth over $5 a share and is FCF positive (nixing the bankruptcy thesis). They also paid off $125M in debt last month just to show Moody’s they are healthy due to their incoming console cycle FCF (which may lead to possible bond upgrade, enticing more institutional investors).
So give the shorts credit. They had a legitimate case until the last 12 months, when George Sherman (CEO), Reggie Fils-Aime (ex-Nintendo, current GME board member), and others have been conducting a phenomenally well executed turnaround.
That explains why we currently have ~70M shares short out of ~65M shares outstanding - but they’re all now caught on the wrong side of the trade.
In case the severity of the short interest hasn’t hit you yet, there is a bigger market for shorting GME than the business of GME itself. This is not even taking into account the long holders (Senvest, Ryan Cohen, Burry, Donald Foss, Sherman, Hestia/Permit) which takes ~25M shares out of circulation. So short interest in reality could be around 180%+ of true float.
A true head-scratcher.
And a worthy opponent.
But they’re wrong.
Act 2 - Avengers, Assemble:
Q: Why am I so sure GME is prime to blow? Isn’t this just another meme stonk hunch driven by WSB and Michael Burry hype? How can a few online gamblers and a few activist investors turn a dying business into a trade of a lifetime?
Couldn’t the shorts be right? Also, hasn’t it blown already?
A: NO AGAIN.
Let me show you the ridiculous Avengers team we have. By Avengers team, I mean all the bullish cases:
1) Ryan Cohen
Iron Man of the bunch, some call him the Dog-Man.
This guy is a crazy entrepreneur. He took on Bezos with a pet food company (CHWY) and won. Let me repeat - he beat Jeff Amazon without AWS subsidizing his loss leaders.
In other words, he built Markk I (CHWY) in a tiny cave with scraps all by himself with his dad, and now that he has billions, he wants to build nanotech Markk 50 (GME). Read up on this guy. He’s as crazy and as smart as they come.
He also wrote a scathing letter to GME leadership, but if you read between the lines, he’s not addressing the existing board, who had only been there temporarily. He’s setting this letter up in order to potentially offer a takeover bid (rumor mill - unconfirmed).
Either way, GME leadership needs to address this letter in the Q3 earnings call on Dec 8th - which means they need to either post a good quarter, provide good guidance, or add color to existing developments.
Otherwise George Sherman (Cpt America)’s ass is out the door and Cohen takes over as the leader of the Avengers through a vote or buyout. Either of which requires shares to be recalled.
One more thing to note about RC. There has been no 13D/A filling since his initial purchases. Which means he is STILL IN. He has not sold a single share.
2) GME Leadership and activist investors - Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Very Strange Burry, and the old Captain trying to fit in with the youngsters:
Dr. Very Strange Burry - AKA Big Short Man. Supreme numbers aspie who might have a screw loose but is unmatched at spotting contrarian trades. *Edit 2: BTW for those asking about his holdings drop. He's trimming to stay under 5%, but still has a large position:
Hestia/Permit/Senvest - Contrarian, activist investors.
Cpt George Sherman - Boomer CEO who knows what he’s doing.
Reggie Fils-Aime - Beloved ex-Nintendo President.
3) Bond repurchase
GME just bought back $125M of debt maturing in 2021. Who cares? Yes - normally this is a nothing burger even for a micro-cap, but if the shorts are betting on $0 - this is clear evidence against that bet.
Secondly, rumor mill has it that this debt repurchase plus positive Q3 earnings/guidance will allow Moody’s to upgrade their 2023 debt to A or maybe higher.
This is HUGE because it allows institutional investors to long GME without further restrictions. In other words, they may not be allowed to long companies with B- debt. Once this is upgraded, more buyers are allowed to come in.
Very underplayed story here.
4) TA - When the stars and crayons align. Here’s an excerpt from our resident astrologist u/JayAreW:
Ignoring the short squeeze element of GME and just looking at chart action, there are two elements that are important to keep track of. The cup and handle pattern and $15.80.
While my trading style is 90% technical analysis, there are certain elements which I shy away from – mainly chart patterns. However, it is important to at least recognize the obvious ones because if you see it, chances are others see it too. The main pattern I keep an eye out for are the massive cup and handle patterns. This is an example from Pring figure 1.
The buy signal is traditionally a breakout above the handle, and a good estimate for price target is the distance from the base of the cup to the handle, added to the breakout point. A recent example of this is $JMIA (daily - figure 2). Notice not one, but two failures to break the top of the handle and the subsequent parabolic run. Compare $JMIA with $GME and you see almost the same pattern (daily – figure 3). The traditional buy signal would be a breach above the red line (~$15.80). The difference between $JMIA and $GME is that $JMIA was far more condensed; the pattern played out over a period of a few months where $GME’s cup and handle started in late 2019. Playing this pattern exclusively, I would expect a price target of roughly $27, stretched out over a period of weeks/months and not as explosive as it’s African counterpart (assuming a squeeze doesn't happen between now and then). Typically, any chart pattern calls for a retest of the breakout point, so don’t be surprised if $GME retraces to $15.80 and look for a bounce there as confirmation that the breakout is on. The other important element is the $15.80 price. Not only is it the breakout point for the cup and handle pattern, but it coincides to a price point which I believe was a major short-selling entry point (fig 4). Notice the nearly 20% gap down on 33 million of volume. This type of action doesn’t just happen with selling alone and I believe massive short positions were opened on that day.
This $15.80 then represents a breaking even point for those shorts if they have not closed their positions (and we have no real reason to believe they have). Breaking even is a huge psychological barrier for people when a trade isn’t going their way and often times represents an exit point for crowded positions. Most of the shorts were already underwater - above $15.80 and that water begins to boil. I believe this position is becoming borderline untenable for existing short positions and is a crowded and disastrous trade. So to recap, $15.80 not only serves as an important chart pattern breakout point, but the proverbial “line in the sand” for existing short positions.
JeffAmazon here again: Note Jay and I don’t agree on a few major points, but are nevertheless both seeing bullish action to come very very soon.
5) Product Mix
GameStop is expanding their product mix to include monitors, PC parts, and more. GME is no longer a Disc-Drive only store (which is fine itself), but an all-things-tech e-commerce growth start up. Or you can at least bet that’s the narrative.
GIVE ME THAT F-ING CHWY SALES MULTIPLE.
6) Three signs of a bubble: leverage, lack of liquidity, and consensus.
This is an inverse bubble - it will rise as quickly as other bubbles drop. KBIO and VW are often quoted as short squeeze examples. Those are wrong comparisons. The only similarity is the fact that shorts were involved.
Instead, think of any other market bubble. It’s simply about leverage, lack of liquidity, and consensus. We have all 3 in GME. Everyone thinks GME will go like BlockBuster to $0 and is using leverage to short (by definition and current SI).
So instead, think of Burry’s 2008 MBS trade, Ackman’s 2020 COVID trade, PTJ’s Black Monday Trade, or Chanos’ Enron trade.
Same thing, different direction. Will go up as fast as the others went down.
And oh boy do we lack liquidity. Crowded party, one exit.
7) Phenomenal numbers due to current console cycle.
$GME bull Rod Alzmann (Uberkikz on Stocktwits) has great breakdowns on Q4 EPS/order count due to console cycle. He tracks orders by order number among a slew of other information here.
Check out his models. In short, we expect over $5 EPS in Q4 base case. Which is bananas.
8) MSFT Partnership gross margin
GME is getting free money from Satya Nadella.
Conservative estimate $180M, 100% margin for 2 years.
9) January and April option OI
OI in option calls for Jan and April are almost 4X that of Decembers. Is GME going to exercise the ITM calls for a squeeze? Why are they so insanely large? Who are these buyers? WTF are they doing?
No clue. But something is about to go down.
Note put call skew isn’t that low, so no infinity gamma squeeze yet, but it will come as GME obtains meme status.
10) Most importantly, YOU.
CNBC and other misled, egoistic mass media companies and institutional investors continue, time and time again, to look down upon the new generation of traders and laugh at WSB.
Tell me, which one of them has read all of Moody’s credit reports on GME? Which one of them live streams collaborative GME DD 20+ hours a week for 6+ months straight? Which one of them tracks order flows by the f-ing second based on skimmed CC data? Who scours GameStop to see how leadership is treating their employees and customers at a testimonial level? Do they even know about the bond repurchase?
They don’t know jack s-.
Act 3 - The Trade
What more evidence do you want? Time for action.
First, the PT. u/ronoron summed it up well:
A 3 billion market cap (not even 0.5x of their revenues) would already leave GME at $46/share.Going back to their 2013 peak at around 6 billion market cap would leave them at almost $100/share already, not the $56 peak/share. The algos trading still can't appreciate the fact that GME halved its number of outstanding shares a while ago.
For comparison. Bestbuy is trading at almost ~0.7x of revenues with lower gross margins. Nordstrom is almost at 0.4x of revenues despite the bigger liability their department stores are having through corona (never mind their uglier balance sheet). GME is still hovering just above 0.2x revenues because stinky shorts overestimated how bad corona would be for GME (e.g. delayed console cycle, digital consoles becoming widely popular).”
PT can easily be over $100. The JeffAmazon target is $420 which gives them about ~$25B market cap at a P/S ratio of 5, maybe 4 with console cycle revenue. That wouldn’t even be considered an euphoric price with today’s growth stocks. For comparison, NVDA is 22, TSLA is 20, and CHWY is 5.
Timing: This all hinges on Dec 8 earnings. If GME misses (it historically has), Cohen will use this opportunity to attack leadership and take over as CEO. Therefore, GME leadership needs to provide a great earnings report or else Sherman will lose his job.
Here’s my responsible trade (do whatever you want): All in calls and shares now. If IV and $GME is sky-high before earnings, sell half to secure profit. If GME misses and tanks, bet your bottom dollar a takeover bid will be announced shortly.
In all honesty, I'm going to probably hold everything through earnings WSB style.
My positions: 1/15/21 $30Cs, shares
(I would buy April $30Cs too, but I'm all tapped out of cash).
Shorts and longs both have their cases. All the cards are on the table. Which side are you on?
If I missed anything, comment and I will update above. I’m aiming to make this the final stop for all high-level GME DD.
*Edit 1: Educate yourself right now on IV crush (in short, we expect a lot of vol now, so option prices are high. After earnings, expected vol normally decreases, so your option prices will normally drop). GME is the king of IV crush after earnings. If you're playing FDs, prepare to get destroyed like always. Safer bets are LEAPs or FDs after earnings.
*Edit 2: All these beat earnings recently: SNE, MSFT, BBY, BBBY, NTDOY, ATVI, TTWO, JWN, M, KSS
submitted by Jeffamazon to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

Galactic Economics 3: The Unbanked

RoyalRoad
First
Previous
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Not all traders were taking Galactic Credits.
That was consistently a problem whenever cards and virtual currencies replaced cash in human society.
In tech business terms, this is called adoption.
In financial terms, there's a slightly fancier name for the people who didn't have an account: the unbanked. In modern banking, it is sometimes used as a more politically correct synonym for "poor".
Unfortunately for Galactic Credits, adoption was low, and the unbanked were the vast majority of traders.
In a human financial system, the way that banks solved this problem eventually was through incentives. Other than simply being convenient, credit cards were exclusive and gave off a feel of luxury. It made people feel richer than they are. But what really drove adoption over the edge was spamming them to everyone through the mail and promising they'd get discounts and money for using them.
Also unfortunately for Galactic Credits, the alien traders that used it didn't feel luxurious and rich. Instead, they had a sneaking suspicion that they were being ripped off by the humans. They just weren't sure how.
Some, like Zikzik, saw the convenience benefits, but the galactic aversion to debt and taboo of anything more advanced than a barter system counterbalanced with their innate businessbeings' need for efficiency.
Sarah had no idea why. All she knew was that only a quarter of the traders coming in were open to using Galactic Credits, and new traders were coming in every day. She can't go down to the spaceport, set up a booth, and try to talk every new merchant into ignoring all their financial instincts to adopt GCs!
This was unsustainable.
It was time to get an expert. They needed someone who could help resolve the problem and get more traders on board.
She'd found him on social media.
Dr. Max Stearns had struck it rich working at an early fin-tech startup, got bought out by Bank of America, and then retired at 35. He came out of retirement to teach graduate level Economics classes at a local college, and then somehow fumbled his way into a Professor position. Darn it, he was just here to not be bored out of his mind, not get a second wind in his career as an academic at age 50!
For a profession that was increasingly favoring non-tenured instructors over professors, it was a testament to how much they wanted to keep him there. It turns out he was almost as good at explaining things to students as he was at designing financial systems.
So, when Sarah, who was most definitely not a student though she could probably pass as one if she wanted to, came to his predictably empty office hours, he thought maybe she was lost. After the initial confusion, apology, and introduction, Sarah started explaining her problem.
In short, aliens have an extreme reluctance to adopt credits, blah blah blah.
Normally, Stearns was thinking, people would be charging for this. But like all nerds who know a good problem when they see one, he couldn't resist tackling it. He was nerd-sniped.
"You actually have two problems," he began, "first, your system isn't worthy of trust. Your company is non-sustainable and everyone knows it. The other human traders bought into it because they know they wouldn't risk much by doing it. As you can see in these charts you're showing me, they're immediately converting their GCs back into cash. And when they want credits because they've agreed generally to use it, they come back to you, buy GCs with cash, and then immediately use them on the traders."
"The human traders are well aware of your position, but they're temporarily using the system because it is far, far more convenient than barter. Unfortunately, the alien traders don't have that intuition. You're being kept afloat now by selling and trading goods, not by your business of being a financial firm," Stearns continued.
"I've thought about starting to charge the other human traders a fee to keep the business sustainable," Sarah explained, "but wouldn't that drive them away?"
"No. In fact, judging by what you're saying because the transaction costs of bartering is so high, the benefits the human side derives would keep them there even if you charged what would normally be considered absurdly high fees. This is one of those very few cases where charging people money might actually make them more likely to use your business!" Stearns replied. Then, he made a rough waving gesture with his hands. "I need to see more details and there needs to be an iterative process to build a model, but I suspect you would keep almost all of your human traders even if you charged a fee as high as about 20% for each transaction."
"Twenty percent!" Sarah yelped, "that sounds like an exorbitant fee! Wouldn't they just start another currency system?"
"Hah, it's an estimate, and you probably don't have room to lose any human trader right now. But no, they can't replace you. They'll face the exact same problems you face now. If they try to replace you, they'll also have to deal with the fact that they've just discredited your credits system. In fact, the aliens will probably trust them even less."
"Ok, I'll think about adding a fee structure for the humans," Sarah said thoughtfully, "what was the other problem you were going to mention?"
"Your second problem is actually an opportunity. Every functional economic system is a system of incentives and disincentives. The only incentive you're giving the aliens to switch to your credits is one they clearly don't understand. You need to provide incentives they do understand. Or, in this case, maybe disincentives if they don't switch."
"Like what? Get the spaceport to ban them from trading if they don't recognize GC?" Sarah asked.
"Nothing that extreme. And if you did that, I suspect they would simply meet up in orbit and exchange goods there. Without money, it won't be efficient for them, but for some, it would be an acceptable alternative. No, you'd need to provide them a more soft touch but clear disincentive that they understand when trading without GCs to drive them away from barter."
"Can you give me an example?" Sarah asked.
"Ah this is where I normally start charging an hourly consulting fee," Stearns smiled but made a dismissive wave as Sarah began the motion of pulling out a wallet, "but I think I'd rather have a stake in this. A bit of your company and the opportunity to go into space and see what I suspect is about to happen there if your little venture succeeds. Think about it, and let me know."
"I'll be in my office."
Sarah and Jen split the company evenly four ways: one for each of them, one for Benny and Junior combined, and one for Stearns. It was incredibly generous, they knew. Normally, the first few startup employees would get up to one or two percent of the firm, but this was a financial company without anyone with financial experience, and they'd owe it to Benny that they'd gotten their start.
After all, it didn't matter how big their portion of the pie was, if the pie was zero. And that's what their pie was right now: a big fat zero. It didn't make any money; it facilitated some of their food trades and ensured they got more profits there, sure, but it required them to be constantly recruiting and cutting into their time actually selling stuff to the aliens.
Sarah was sure that it was only a matter of time before a big bank caught wind of this and simply put them out of business. The only advantage GC had was they started first. Stearns had said that the first mover was an edge, yes, but they'd be nuts if they were gonna just rest on their laurels and depend on it.
They needed Stearns, and from their meeting, he seemed genuinely interested in helping them grow the enterprise. He had seemed to be surprised to be offered that much stake in the company, but the women both agreed that all they had so far was a good idea, which was worth nothing without good execution.
If anyone could turn their novelty into a business, Dr. Stearns was their guy.
And if him giving notice to his employers that it was going to be his last quarter at the college a week later was any indication, it was generous enough.
The first thing Stearns did was institute a human merchant transaction fee as he had suggested.
Except in very rare circumstances, most payment networks used by humanity charged a fee. In the US, this was around 1-3%.
In countries where networks are growing, the percentage is lower to encourage growth.
In countries where networks have high transaction costs, the percentage is higher to reflect costs. Having to barter was the ultimate transaction cost.
At Galactic Credits, they charged 8%. This was an extraordinarily high fee, calculated using careful models, but the alternative was literally bartering, which all the human have agreed by now is just plain dumb.
So, they grumbled at the fee, but not a single human trader got off the network.
They used this newfound income and the allure of the stars to poach the branch manager and several of his employees at the BoA office next doors, and put them to work selling the idea of cards and currency to the aliens.
As time went on, they noticed that more and more human traders were beginning to specialize. It used to be they all bought and sold. Now, some were only buying, or only selling. As Stearns had predicted it would, behavior started to change.
The aliens saw that more humans were now coming to the spaceport with only a card and driving away with goods, or vice versa. It signified trust in the system. Some of them started signing up not intending to use it, but just to try to figure out what the humans were doing.
A few of the more daring ones even started asking about using credits to pay for their fuel at the spaceport facilities, which many of the human traders were happy to facilitate, for a fee.
Stearns put a stop to that pretty quickly when he learned about it. They just signed up the spaceport authorities for an account and cut out the middlemen.
Sarah and Jen also noticed that some human traders complained about the transaction fees to the alien traders in small talk.
For the alien businessbeings who saw trade as an adversarial relationship where the trader on the other side of the table was someone to be convinced or even defeated, the humans’ complaints actually increased trust in the Galactic Credits system.
After all, if Sarah was ripping the other guy off, maybe she’s not ripping me off so much.
Adoption among aliens reached half by the end of the week.
The second thing Stearns did was to start offering incentives for the aliens to sign up, or rather he made it uncomfortable for them not to.
Normally in a payment system, the merchant eats the cost of each transaction. When you swipe your card at a point of sale terminal, you don't pay the fee, the merchant does. She may charge you more money to use a card, which is not supposed to be allowed, or she may just quietly up some of her prices, but that's another story.
In the Galactic Credits system, because all the transactions took place in the hands of a human, the human had to pay the cost of doing business on both sides, both when they were buying and selling goods. This was the target of a lot of the complaints from human traders, especially the increasing number of exclusive buyers.
This was where the incentive came in.
Human traders that agreed to only buy items from aliens that took galactic credits had their buy fees waived.
This incentive was supposed to be enough to drive business towards the alien traders taking credits at the expense of the others, but not enough to force humans who exclusively sold items (fruit truckers like Benny) to become exclusive buyers to avoid fees. After all, the fee was 8% but this was a gold mine. Everyone was making exorbitant profits from the aliens.
Moreover, Stearns wanted the complaints to change. The human traders could still complain, but he wanted them to complain about something else.
He reasoned that businessbeings that were part of a standardized galactic trade network instinctively understood the value of institutions. An institution responsive to complaints is an institution good for business. This would logically drive up adoption.
Unexpectedly, this second reason did not even come into play. They would only much later learn why.
The incentives themselves, on the other hand, started to work…
Gorok belongs to a species that developed out of an ocean planet, called Ara. The R is silent.
Their civilization had started underwater, and after hundreds of thousands of years of development, the Arans managed to breach the surface of their ocean world and reach the stars using technology developed and refined in water.
To the casual human eye, they were humanoid robots, robotic feet and manipulators, with a head peeking out from an aquarium. Many traders called them "dolphinheads" behind their backs.
Because of how long it takes for an underwater species to develop anything, they often took a long view of things. The dolphinheads were an old species. They didn't mind taking things slow. Some might even call them patient.
In Sarah's view, they were just goddamn stubborn.
Gorok isn't a particularly obstinate member of her species, but the average of stubborn is still stubborn. It was annoying to have to deal with her, and a few of the human traders openly joked about punching her and her stupid fishbowl face if the security guards were not there.
Gorok does not trust these human Galactic Credits.
N'har is an unremarkable bipedal humanoid businessman. His planet, Yis'meh is known for incredibly beautiful and jarring landscapes, formed from active tectonic plate behavior and extreme weather patterns at high altitudes.
On the list of most interesting things on his planet, his species does not rank top 50.
Like most of the galaxy, he too had no concept of money, credit, or literally any economic system more complex than barter.
N'har does not trust these human Galactic Credits.
Scrulvi is from a species of six foot tall hedgehog-like quadrupeds called the Dlaivo.
They are born with incredibly hard shells, grow poisonous spikes on their back, and can gallop deceptively fast. Also, they breed very quickly. In the early days of their development, some combination of these factors was how they survived.
It was definitely not their brains. Most galactic species consider the Dlaivo to be the dumbest species to ever gain sentience and reach the stars. They survive in spite of their brains.
When they finally discovered FTL, predators on their home planet were actually still a major threat to their average resident because the Dlaivo had never found a solution to them. A neighboring species (the Bhaks) pitied them, decided to use their planet as a military training camp, and killed off all their natural predators for them over a couple of months of target practice exercises.
The Dlaivo thanked them profusely and never considered the possibility that they might be there to occupy and sell their people into slavery. Which, to their credit, the Bhaks did not do.
The Dlaivo were the butt of many village idiot jokes in the galactic community. For example, some would joke that the underwater Arans actually discovered how to make fire at an earlier point in their development than the Dlaivo.
Like other galactic beings, however, their prejudice against credits ran deep.
Scrulvi does not trust these human Galactic Credits.
Scrulvi trusted the humans, though. After all, Sarah and Jen had never cheated him. None of the human traders ever did. Sure, it seemed like they were giving the other traders better goods for their items, but the humans’ goods were very valuable, everyone could win, and Scrulvi almost always stumbled into one small profit or another anyway.
When Sarah offered to give him a credit account and to start trading with credits, he didn't understand, but Sarah is so nice! Surely, what she's offering can't be bad for him.
So Scrulvi stumbled into the greatest profit of his life when he was the only trader landed on the spaceport taking credits when Stearns’ incentives program got announced.
He offloaded all his sale items, filled his cargo hold with the highest quality fruit, all in record time, and with a fairly big chunk of change in his credits account.
He didn't know what to do with the credits, but maybe he can ask Sarah about that the next time he comes back to Earth… oh well.
N'har, the unremarkable, did not trust these credits, but he was seeing with his own six eyes what it's doing. For some reason, all the humans wanted to trade with the idiot Dlaivo next to him first.
Thinking about it, hah, they must be scamming him out of all his goods.
When Scrulvi took off half an hour later with a full hold, he was shocked. This must be some new scheme the humans are running with their new credits.
But when another Dlaiva (seriously, how did these morons even figure out how to operate spaceships?) took off ten minutes after she started taking credits, he was beginning to wonder.
Alright, maybe he was the mark, but he was burning to know what the trick was. The worst he has to lose is a little of his cargo, right? And whatever clever scam the humans thought up, maybe he could learn it and try it on someone else later.
He beckoned Sarah over, got a credits account, and took off half an hour later with a full hold of fruit and some leftovers in his credits account.
Must be a long con.
Gorok did not fill her hold that day. She watched angrily as the other traders around her all offloaded their goods and filled their cargo with fresh fruit.
One after another took off.
She refused to take credits from this Sarah human.
It was silly. It's just all numbers on a viewscreen.
She was a trader. She traded goods, for goods.
That's how it's done. That's how it's always been done. And that's how it'll always be done.
Eventually, the other traders in orbit complained that she was occupying the landing pad for far too long. She was forced to leave Earth without conducting a single sale or transaction.
After this trip, Gorok did not make many sales. Dwindling profits meant that she was forced to trade her ship in for a relatively small underwater plot near where she grew up. She built a beautiful home, had many little Arans, and lived happily ever after.
Not everyone was built for the offworld trading life.
They quit the fruit business. That was a side hustle that built up capital for them initially. What Galactic Credit had now was a bustling bank business that no longer needed that extra profit on the side to sustain their business model. And they didn’t want to remain in competition against their customers.
Benny Jr and Jen had done a little side project on a jailbroken Bohor air filter, and found that with a little tweaking, they could have the air filters intake the aerosolized oxides of carbon clogging up the atmosphere and forge them into beautiful pure diamonds.
They were selling that on the side for now, purely because of how profitable it was, but it was likely once everyone else figured that out, the artificial diamonds flooding the market would force a commodity crash, like gold had when alien gold flooded Earth's markets. There were rumors that the De Beers diamond monopoly company was buying up numerous Bohor air filters from the newly opened Johannesburg spaceport in South Africa.
Other than that, the fees were more than covering all their cost of doing business. The lawyers, the accountants, the servers, and a sizable salary for every founding employee.
Over the alien trader booths, more and more traders started putting up the signs that said, "I ❤️ GC”. Sarah was especially proud of those signs. They were given to traders who would take GC for all transactions to signal to humans that they were open for business.
By now, this was most of them.
Some new traders would occasionally come down and not have an account. They would quickly get an account and one of the GC signs, or rarely, they would refuse and be asked to leave by other traders waiting in line in orbit.
As it turns out, peer pressure was often just as powerful an economic force as a market incentive.
Getting the alien FTL comms tech from a bunch of technical drawings to interface with the Galactic Credits site was not easy, but Jen and her team of engineers had done it. They'd put together the first financial application on the GalacticNet, and to go with it, the first offworld point of sale system in the galaxy.
You can instantaneously access your credits account from one side of the galaxy to another. Several backup systems were also copied from existing human credit card systems, like offline transaction storage and carbon copy card sales slips.
After the traders' credits cards were upgraded to chip cards, Galactic Credits were rapidly becoming indistinguishable from any other payment systems on Earth.
As a result of the aliens' consumer economies being restricted in scale by barter, their GalacticNet was used much like the human Internet was in its early days: for academic, governmental, or military use.
Much of the traffic was for big picture information exchange. What passed through the FTL comms were big news headlines, research data, emergency calls for help…etc. Without widespread consumer goods in most societies, there were no personal computers, tablets, and phones.
It's not that aliens couldn't produce those goods; in fact, their electronics were in some ways much more advanced than human ones, but few people had them. They were produced in big batches, and then bartered off one by one to people with goods that electronics makers had.
The first consumer apps on the GalacticNet were made by humans because the first consumers on the GalacticNet were humans. And like the academics who watched normies flood the Internet in its early days, the existing users on the GalacticNet were filled with fascination, mixed with a noticeable trace of horror, as the residents of Earth began to flood the GalacticNet with porn, social media, games, businesses, and more porn.
At first, it was lonely. The GalacticNet wasn't much different from the Internet, plus a few brave aliens who would venture to upload videos introducing themselves to the masses of Earth.
Not to be left behind, some other civilizations started buying consumer electronics from Earth traders and handed them out to their people. And what started as a lonely project was starting to make the galaxy a closer, more connected place.
What the residents of Earth saw was definitely not what they expected.
As Sarah learned more about the way the galaxy worked, the more she felt bad for the aliens. From what she heard from the traders, saying that life sucked outside of Earth was an understatement.
There were always shortages. Not enough things were always being produced, so beings had to share things that shouldn't be shared. Most beings lived in absolute squalor.
The tiny percent of traders that she'd interacted with are supposedly some of the richest beings to have ever existed in the galaxy, and yet they still sometimes have trouble upgrading their ships, finding supplies or maintenance, or even just to buy a nest or house. They had few luxuries and quality of life goods.
"Without widespread usage of currency, economies are extremely limited. Bartering is so primitive by human standards, that there are some economic historians who say no barter economy has ever existed in human history because currency is so vital to any real economic activity that they have always gone together," Stearns had said.
Other economic experts on Earth have been predicting the same thing since the news of lack of money spread. She didn't believe it until she saw the footage on GalacticNet. Video of what the aliens considered to be normal life looked like ghettos, or even worse, disaster zones.
They had been able to make and acquire the ships and goods they had, through tens or hundreds of thousands of years of inheritance and hand-me-downs. They could create technological marvels beyond humanity's current means, but they could only do so with time. Lots and lots of time.
On a technological basis, they were collectively a bit further advanced than Earth. They could travel between the stars, cure cancer, and modify the atmosphere!
On a GDP or production per year basis, forget about industrialization. The galaxy hasn't even fully entered the feudal age.
This paradox shocked humans to their core.
For Sarah: At first Galactic Credits was a project to make money off aliens. At some point, it started being a project to make aliens smarter, to make them understand money, so it was easier to make money off them. And now, she could only see a path forward for it as a charity or some kind of galactic advancement project.
The galaxy needed help — now.
Galactic Credits was about to hold the galaxy's hands through a speed run of the last three millennia of human economic development.
A couple months after Stearns started making changes, the whole company drove down to the spaceport.
As Sarah and co reached the trader booths, they noticed a mix of human and alien traders chatting and joking around.
"Oh how about this one. What's the easiest way to become a millionaire?" Asked a human trader, with one of the oldest money jokes in the book. After a pause where the other human traders respectfully didn't ruin his joke, he delivered the punchline, "you start as a billionaire and let your son go shopping with your credit card harharhar."
The humans grinned and the aliens made their approximations of laughter.
"Hey it's Sarah and Jen! Speak of credits and cards, and here she comes!" Zarko said as he noticed them approaching.
"Hey-o Zarko, here's Dr. Stearns. Dr. Stearns, Zarko," Sarah introduced the two, and they nodded at each other in the traditional universal greeting that's become commonplace on the spaceport.
"Ah! Dr. Stearns," said Oliver, a human trader, grinning, "I hope you're not here to increase our fees again."
"You better believe your fees are increasing. I know what you put in that OJ you sell. That much sugar isn't good for the poor alien children, you know?" replied Stearns, who could take it and hit back about as good as any boomer could.
The other traders pretended to look at Oliver scandalously. Hah, as if they weren't all pumping their goods full of additive sugars to get the aliens hooked.
"Speaking of orange juice, I was trying to offload two tons of it for some reactor fuel on Zakabara Prime, and unfortunately the exchanges there did not accept fruit juice as an acceptable trade item for reactor fuel. Guess I won't be taking my business there again," huffed Zarko.
The other traders nodded knowingly. Zakabara Prime rarely accepted food products in exchange. The Zakabarans were an incredibly protectionist planet that had many farmers who didn't like the incredible competition that Earth was bringing to the table.
"Actually, that's one of the things we came here to talk about," Stearns put on his serious face, "we're about to start making offworld Galactic Credits consoles available to the trading public, within a year. It would allow you beings to buy and sell from other traders from anywhere in the galaxy!"
By this point, many of the alien traders that had normally bartered or traded with each other would come to Earth to use the terminals that the human merchants had to conduct fractional transactions, for a processing fee from the humans, of course. There was a small but growing number of human traders that would come with just their tablets and process cargo for aliens for free all day.
Technically, this was rent seeking of the worst kind, but GC had not discouraged this type of behavior. For one, Earth was growing to be an increasingly popular destination for traders galaxy-wide. This was excellent for business, and it was cementing Earth as the trade goods and exchange center of the galaxy. All trade routes led to Sol.
For another, technically these processing merchants were providing a service, one that was only necessary because there was no offworld usage of credits.
Now, GC was about to put them all out of business.
The implications of this were not lost on the aliens. They didn't understand money, but they are not stupid.
Well, except the Dlaivo.
Those oversized hedgehogs are very stupid.
What the traders knew is that whatever the humans were doing with these credits on Earth was very profitable for the traders, and they no longer thought of credits as a scam or scheme, but rather an intricate new institution that was rapidly expanding.
Traders everywhere were whispering about Earth's new system. The idea of a currency was becoming less of a taboo. The pamphlets freely handed out at its spaceports certainly didn't hurt.
Skeptics were still coming down the gravity well to see how it all worked, and not all of them were convinced. But many lifted off with a full cargo of fresh fruit and a credits account…
If you could use human credits offworld, no one was really sure what could happen.
Not even the humans.
"Sounds good, where do I sign up?"
Sneak peek on themes for the next chapter:
This chapter was meant to be a natural stopping point for the first arc of the story. The next chapter gets a bit darker and deals with some pretty mature themes to set up the next arc. There's quite a bit of death, not due to war.
RoyalRoad
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$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)

$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)
Listen up retards. Do you happen to feel regret because you always think “ohhh if I yoloed my savings on TSLA/AMD/NVDA 🚀 leaps years ago I could be rich by now!!!”
Well if you didn't know already, it doesn’t really matter what happened in the past. Hindsight will always be 20/20. You shouldn’t be harsh on yourself on your past self that your past self wasn’t retarded enough to yolo their savings into AMD/TSLA/.... Your past self doesn’t have the same knowledge that your current self has. It’s fine. If you judged those stocks with the best DD you could do at the time and didn’t think they were worth it, then you did a good job.
If you always think about what you could/should have done in the past, then you don't have the right attitude to play the stock market casino imho.
The single most important thing is to be able to look ahead. There are always plenty of opportunities around. There are thousands of rockets that are still on earth right now. Some may depart this year, others will stay a little longer on earth. The true strength lies in being able to identify those rockets with the knowledge you have right now. And if you still miss most rockets that will take-off this year that's fine, maybe you'll learn, get better and you'll do better next year.
Now, what if I told you there’s a big rocket that’s parked right right here on earth and it has decent chance for take-off this year? Maybe it won't quite reach the moon this year yet, but hey leaving the exosphere should already be a cool milestone.
It has rock-solid fundamentals and will see lots of growth in the following years/decade.
It’s a company that has the fundamental technology to power all the computer vision tech, which is bound to boom this decade.
The company we’re talking about is of course Sony, and it is extremely undervalued right now.
Its P/E is only 14. They have a P/S of 1.65, a PEG of 0.92 (< 2 is already somewhat exceptional for a company/conglomerate of Sony’s size, under 1 is a steal)
Much lower than all of its same-sector peers. This indicates significant undervaluation.
Next up Sony has a P/CF 13.2, ROE of 20% (S&P 500 average is 14% which would already be considered pretty good. 20% ROE is excellent), PEGY of 0.89, P/B of 2.65 and finally Sony has $41.6B in cash on hand. This makes Sony one of the cheapest tech/entertainment/EV/semiconductor growth stocks you will find on the market.
(ROE of 20% + PEGY of 0.89 + PEG of 0.92 means this company is a growth stock based on the numbers alone, but we’ll dig into the actual company and overall outlook in a moment)
I challenge all retards to find a company with similar benchmarks in one of the mentioned sectors, seriously.
Quite frankly doing this DD honestly blew my mind. I kept looking everywhere for reasons why the company could be so undervalued and why they may struggle in the future. Very important to look at all the challenges the company faces to make sure I’m not just doing confirmation bias DD. But all I could find was the opposite. After several weeks and months of working on this DD, I can only conclude that it is overall a very solid company for a bargain price. The new CEO is taking the company in a great direction imho and I'm begin to think he could be Sony's Satya Nadella.
So if you want some easy tendies, maybe consider $SNE while it is still cheap, I’d say.
For the autists out there who care about analyst ratings, SONY ($SNE) currently has 18 BUY ratings, 2 OVERWEIGHT, 4 HOLD and 0 SELL. (= analyst consensus is a STRONG BUY). Very little analysts cover this stock compared to other entertainment/tech companies, so this adds to my assertion that the stock is very much under the radar. Which means you have time to get in before it gets noticed by the larger investing world and before it starts to get a more fair valuation (P/E of around 30 would be more fair for this company I think, but still cheaper than many same sector peers). But, anyway the few analysts who do happen to cover this company are basically all saying it’s an instant-buy at its current price.
Most boomer investors still think big Japanese tech companies are dinosaurs that have long been surpassed by China, South Korea and Apple etc ages ago. Young boomers may think Sony = PlayStation and that it's it. But the truth is that PlayStation, while very important (about 24% of Sony's total revenue last year), is a part of a larger story.
Lots of investors in general associate Sony with the passé Japanese electronics companies from the 80’s and the 90’s. Just like a lot people may think BlackBerry is a struggling phone company.
While Sony may not be the powerhouse in consumer electronics it was in the 80’s and the 90’s, in a lot of ways they are more relevant than ever before. Despite being a well-known brand and being known as the company behind PlayStation, for some reason its stock still seems to be under the radar among both retail and institutional investors. And boy, are they mind-blowingly undervalued. Even if a big part of its business would collapse tomorrow, they would still be slightly undervalued. And I am about to tell you why.
(& btw compared to Japanese tech/entertainment stocks $SNE is still super cheap (Canon, Nikon, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Square Enix, Capcom, Nintendo, Fujitsu all have P/E ratios ranging from 18 to 77 and none of them have the combination of global clout, fundamentals & growth prospects that Sony has))
2021 Sony as a corparation is not the fucking Sony from 2005-2015’s, just like BlackBerry in 2021 is not the fucking Blackberry from 2012. Just like Garmin in 2021 is not Garmin from 2011. Just like AMD in 2021 is not AMD from 2012.
No, in 2021, Sony is the global leader in imaging technology and people do not fucking realize it. Sony has 50% marketshare in the CMOS image sensor market. There’s a very good chance the smartphone in your pocket has Sony image sensors (unless it’s a Samsung phone). Sony image sensors are powering a big part of today's vision/camera technology. And they will power even more of tomorrow's computer vision tech.
In 2021, Sony is a behemoth in video games, music, anime, movies and TV show production. Sony is present in every segment of entertainment. Sony’s entertainment branches have been doing great business over the past 5 years, especially music and PlayStation. Additionally, Sony Pictures has completely turned around.
In 2021, Sony is the world’s biggest music publisher (and second biggest music company overall). Music streaming has been a boon for Sony Music and will continue to be.
In 2021, Sony is among the biggest mobile gaming companies in the world (yes, you read that right). And it’s mainly thanks to one game (Fate/Grand Order) that nets them over $1B revenue each year. One of the biggest mobile gaming companies + arguably biggest gaming brand in the world (PlayStation).
In 2021, Sony is an EV company. They surprised the world when they revealed their “Vision-S” at CES 2020. At the reception was fantastic. It is seriously one of the best looking EV’s. They already sell sensors to Toyota. Sony will most like sell the Vision-S's tech to other car manufacturers (sensors for driving assistence / autonomous driving, LiDAR tech, infotainment system).

40 sensors in the Sony Vision-S
Considering the overwhelmingly good reception of the Vision-S so far, I suspect the Vision-S could be another catalyst that will put Sony as a company on the radar of investors and consumers.
We've seen insane investment hype for anything even remotely related to EV over the past year. We've seen a company that barely had a few EV design concepts (oh wait, they had a gravity-powered truck though) even get a $30B market cap at some point lmao.
But somehow a profitable company ($SNE) that has an EV that you can actually drive, doesn't even have a fair valuation?
In 2020’s Sony’s brand value is at their highest point since 12 years. In 2021, it is projected to be a its highest point since 2001 assuming same growth as average yearly growth from 2015 to 2020. Keep in mind brand valuation is a bit bullshitty as there’s no standardization to compare brands from different sectors, let alone non-consumer-facing brands with consumer-facing brands. But one thing we can note is that Sony both as B2C brand and as a B2B company is on a big upwards trend.
https://interbrand.com/best-global-brands/sony/
https://careers.uw.edu/blog/2020/03/17/these-are-the-10-biggest-video-game-companies-in-north-america-shared-article-from-zippia/
In 2021, Sony is an entertainment behemoth. They have grown their entertainment branches by a huge amount over the past 5 to 10 years (they made some big acquisitions in the music space especially and they’re now also all-in in anime). I don’t think people realize how big Sony is as an entertainment company. I dug up the numbers and as of Q3 2020, PlayStation is the second biggest video game company in the world (Tencent is #1) in revenue (I suspect Sony might dethrone Tencent after Sony’s FY Q3 2020 is released). But Sony already comes very close to Tencent especially if you add Fate/Grand Order (which is under Sony Music and not under PlayStation) under PlayStation.
There’s no single other company that has this unique combination of a dominant/important position in all entertainment segments. (video games + music + movies + TV series + anime + TV networks). I guess Tencent maybe?
In 2021, Sony has amazing momentum in the camera space. If you’re familiar with the enthusiast photography space, you should know this. Basically, the market is slowly shifting from SLR to mirrorless cameras. This is because mirrorless cameras tend to smallelighter, have faster AF, better low light performance, better battery life and better video performance. Sony is the company that has been specializing in the development for mirrorless cameras for over a decade while Canon’s bread and butter has always been SLR cameras. Sony is in the lead when it comes to mirrorless cameras and that’s where the market is shifting towards. Because the advantages of mirrorless have become more and more apparent and Sony’s cameras have become technically superior, Sony has gained quite a bit of market share over Canon and Nikon in the last few years. In 2019, Sony overtook Nikon as the #2 camera manufacturer. Sony is in an upwards trend here. (they have the ambition to become the world’s #1 camera brand) Sony also has very good marketing for their cameras. (Sony has a lot of YouTubers / influencers / brand ambassadors for their cameras despite being a smaller brand than Canon)
(just search on YouTube and/or Google “switching to Sony from Canon” just to give you an idea that they do have amazing brand momentum in the camera space. You won’t get as many hits for the opposite)
A huge portion of Sony’s profit comes from image sensors in addition to music and video games. This is in addition to their highly profitable financial holdings division & their more moderately profitable electronics division.
Sony’s electronics division, unlike other Japanese brands, has shown great resilience against the very strong competition from China & South Korea. They have been able to maintain their position in the audio space and as of 2020 are still the global market leader in high-end TV’s (a position they have been holding for decades) and it seems they will continue to be able to maintain that.
But seriously this company is dirt-cheap compared to any of its peers in any segment and there’s various huge growth prospects for Sony:
  • CMOS image sensors & Sony’s overall imaging prowess will boom due to increased demand from automotive sector, security & surveillance industry, manufacturing industry, medical sector and finally from the aerospace & defence industry. On the longer term, image sensors will continue to boom due to increased demand for computer vision & AI + robotics. And for consumer electronics demand will remain very high obviously.
  • Sony is aiming for 60% market share in the CMOS image sensor market by 2026. Biggest threat here is Samsung here who have recently started to aggressively invest in image sensors and are challenging Sony. Sony has technological lead + higher production capacity (and Sony will soon open a new plant in Nagasaki), so Sony should be able to hold off Samsung.
  • The iPhone 12 Pro has 3 cameras + a lidar sensor. Apple now buys 3 image sensors (from Sony) + LiDAR sensor (from Sony) per iPhone 12 Pro they manufacture. Remember the iPhone X and iPhone XS? That one had “only” 2 rear cameras (with image sensos from Sony of course). Basically, Sony will be selling exponentially more image sensors as more smartphones get equipped with more and more cameras.
  • Now think about how many image sensors Sony can sell to Apple if the iPhone 13 will have 5 cameras + LiDAR sensor (I mean the number of cameras on smartphones certainly won’t decrease)
  • Gaming (PS5 hype, PSN game sales are booming, add-on content is booming, PS+ subscribers count is booming and finally PSNow & first-party games sales are trending upwards as well). Very consistent year-on-year profit & revenue growth here. They have a history of beating earnings expectations here. The number of PS+ subscribers went from 4M to 48M in just 6-7 years. Investors love to hype up recurring revenue and subscription services such as Disney+ and Netflix. Let’s apply the same logic to PS+? PS+ already has more subscribers than HBO Max in the USA.
  • PlayStation (video games in general) has not even scratched the fucking surface. Most people who play video games now are millennials and kids. Do you think those millennials will stop playing video games when they grow older? No, of course not. Boomers today also still watch movies and TV. Those millennials have kids and those kids are now also playing video games. The kids of those kids will also play video games etc. Basically the total addressable audience for video games will by HUGE by the end of the decade (and the decades after that) because video games will have penetrated all age ranges of the population. Gaming is the fastest growing segment of the whole entertainment business. By a large margin. PlayStation is obviously in a great position here as you can guess from the PS5 hype, but more importantly imho, the growth of PS+ subscribers (currently a bit under 50 million) and PSN users (>100 million MAU) over the past 5 years shows that PlayStation is primed to profit from the audience growth.
  • On top of that you have huge video game growth in the China where Sony & PlayStation is already much better established than Xbox (but still super small compared to mobile games and PC gaming in China). Within the console market, Xbox only competes with PlayStation in North America. In the rest of the world, PlayStation has an enormous lead over Xbox. Xbox is simply a lesser known and lesser desirable brand in the rest of the world
  • Anime streaming (basically they have a monopoly already + vertical integration, it might still be somewhat niche right now, but it will be big within 5 years. Acquiring Crunchyroll was a very good move)
  • Music streaming (no, they don’t have a music streaming service, but as music streaming grows, Sony Music also gets a piece of the growing pie through licensing/royalties, and they also still have a little 2.8% stake in Spotify)
  • Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are currently battling it out in the streaming wars. When there’s a war you have little chances of winning, you shouldn’t be the one waging the war. You should be the one selling the ammo. Basically Sony Pictures (tv shows + movies) is in that position. Sony Pictures can negotiate good prices for their content because Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T are thirsty for content and they all want their own exclusive content. Sony Pictures does not need to prop up their own streaming service just like Sony Music doesn’t need their own music streaming service when they can just license out their content and turn a profit. There will always be demand for TV & movies content, so Sony Pictures is well positioned is as an independent content provider. And while Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are battling it out on the forefront, Sony is quietly building their anime empire in the background. Genius business move from Sony here, seriously. They now have anime production & distribution.
  • Netflix has 200M subscribers and they currently have a 250M market cap. Think about what Sony will have in 5 years? >30M Crunchyroll subscribers (assuming all anime will be consolidated into Crunhyroll) & >100M PS+ & PSNow subscribers? Anime and gaming is growing faster than movies and TV shows. (9% CAGR for anime, 12% CAGR for gaming vs. 5% CAGR for the whole movies & TV show entertainment segment which includes PVOD, SVOD, box office, TV etc etc). And gaming as a whole is MUCH bigger than SVOD streaming. Netflix gets 99% of their revenue & profit through subscriptions. For the whole Sony Group Corporation, their subscription services (games + anime) it’s currently only 4.5% of their total revenue. And somehow Sony currently has a meagre $128B market cap?
  • PlayStation alone is bigger than Netflix in terms of operating profit. PlayStation has a MUCH higher profit margin than Netflix. For Q3 2020 Netflix posted $790M operating profit and PlayStation posted $988M operating profit. Revenue was was $6.44B for Netflix vs. $4.77B for PlayStation. (and btw Sony’s mobile gaming revenue (~$1B / year) is under Sony Music, it is not even in those PlayStation numbers!!!)
  • Think about it. PlayStation alone posts bigger operating profit than Netflix (yes revenue is bit smaller, but it’s the operating profit that matters most). And gaming is growing faster than movies. And PlayStation is about 24% of Sony’s total revenue. And yet Netflix has a market cap that is equal to the double of Sony's market cap? Basically If you apply Netflix’ valuation to PlayStation then PlayStation alone should have a bigger market cap than Netflix' market cap.

PS+ growth and software digital ratio growth

  • Sony Vision-S & autonomous driving tech (selling sensors + infotainment system to other car manufacturers). Sony surprised everyone when they revealed their Sony Vision-S electric vehicle last year at CES 2020 (in-house design and made in cooperation with Magna Steyr). And it’s currently being tested on public roads. Over the past year we have seen absurdly big investment hype into anything even remotely related to EV’s (including a few questionable companies). We’ve even seen an EV company with a gravity-powered truck get a $30B market cap in June last year. Meanwhile Sony, out of nowhere, revealed what is arguably (subjectively) one of the best looking EV’s. It got very positive reception at CES 2020. An EV that you can actually drive. But somehow their stock is still dirt-cheap based on their current fundamentals alone? Yet some companies that had pretty much nothing but some EV design concepts got insane valuations purely due to hype?
  • LTE chips for IoT & Industry 4.0 (Altair Semiconductors)
  • Cross-media IP (The Last of Us show on HBO, Uncharted movie etc). Huge unrealized potential synergy here (it’s about to change). We have seen that it can turn out super well when you look at The Witcher, Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu. When The Witcher released on Netflix, sales of The Witcher 3 significantly increased again. Imagine the same thing, but with Sony IP’s. Sony Pictures is currently working on 7 video game IP based TV shows and 3 movies. We know The Last of Us tv series is currently in production for HBO. And then the Uncharted is currently in post-production and scheduled to be released in July this year currently. If Uncharted turns out to be successful, it will mark a big, new milestone for Sony as an entertainment company imho.
  • Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan subsidiary for anime production, distribution & mobile games) had a fantastic year in 2020. (more on this later) There is a lot of room for mobile games growth with Aniplex. Thanks to Aniplex, Sony might beat their earnings forecast.
  • Drones. DJI just got put on Entity List in USA and Sony started developing drones for prosumer / professional a few years ago. Big opportunity for Sony here to take a bit from DJI’s dominance. It only makes sense for Sony to enter the drone market targeting the professional & prosumer video market, considering Sony’s established position in the professional audio/video/photography space
  • Currently Sony also has several ventures & investments in AI & robotics
  • Over the past decade, Sony has also carefully expanded into medical equipment tech & biotechnology. Worth noting that Sony also has an important 33% stake in M3 inc (a medical services through-the-internet company with a market cap of $65.5B) (= just their stake in M3 Inc is worth $22B alone, remember Sony, with their large, diversified revenue streams & assets only has a market cap of $128B?)
  • Sony Pictures has a great upcoming movie slate (MCU Spider-Man, Uncharted, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Venom 2, Morbius, Spider-Verse sequel, Hotel Transylvania 4, Peter Rabbit 2, Vivo, The Nightingale). They will profit from the theatre reopening and covid recovery. They may even become more favourable among movie theatre chains because they won’t release their movies on the same day on streaming services like Warner (and yeah movie theatres are here to stay, at least for a while imho)
  • All the above comes on top of established, mature markets (Financial Holdings & Electronic Products)
  • Oh yeah, btw though TV’s are a cyclical and mature market and are not that important for Sony Group Corporation’s bottomline*, Sony TV’s will continue to do well for the following successive years: o 2020: continued pandemic boost
  1. 2020-2021: PS5 / Xbox Series X/S
  2. 2021 Summer Olympics (tv sales ALWAYS spike during the olympics) (& the effect is more pronounced for high-end TV’s, = good for Sony because Sony’s market share is concentrated in the high-end range (they are market leader in the high-end range)
  3. 2022 FIFA world cup (exact same thing as for the olympics)
  4. You could say it’s already priced in, but the stock is already ridiculously undervalued so idk…
You would think this company somehow has a bad outlook, but that could not be further from the true, let me explain and go over some of the different divisions and explain why they will moon:
Sony Entertainment
While Netflix, Disney, AT&T, Amazon, and Apple are waging the great streaming war, Sony has been quietly building its anime streaming empire over the past years.
  • Sony recently acquired Crunchyroll for $1.175B (it is a great deal for Sony imho and will immediately be more valuable under Sony. Considering the growing appetite for anime I honestly do not even understand why AT&T sold it, they could have integrated it with their other streaming service (HBO Max) but ok)
  • With Crunchyroll Sony now has the following anime empire:
  • Aniplex (anime production & distribution, subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan) F
  • Funimation
  • Manga Entertainment UK (production, licensing, and distribution, UK)
  • Wakanam (licensing and distribution in Europe)
  • AnimeLab (licensing and distribution in Australia & New Zealand)
  • Crunchyroll (3 million paying subcribers, 90 million registered users and 50 million social media followers)
* Why anime matters:

Anime growth
“The global size is expected to reach USD 36.26 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 8.8% over the forecast period, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing popularity and sales of Japanese anime content across the globe apart from Japan is driving the growth”
(tl;dr anime 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀, Sony is all in on anime and they have pretty much no competition)
Anime is the fastest growing subsegment of movies/video entertainment worldwide.
  • Sony also has a partnership with Bilibili for anime distribution in China:
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201903/26/WS5c990d93a3104842260b2737.html
  • Bilibili already partnered with Sony Music Entertainment Japan to bring Aniplex’s hugely successful Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order mobile game in China.
  • Sony acquired a 5% stake in Bilibili for $400M in March 2020 (that 5% stake is now already worth $2.33B at Bilibili’s current share price ($BILI) and imho $BILI still has lots of upside potential considering it is the de facto video creation/sharing/viewing à la YouTube/Twitch for GenZ in China)
https://ir.bilibili.com/news-releases/news-release-details/bilibili-announces-equity-investment-sony

Sony Music Entertainment Japan
Aniplex
  • Sony Music (mobile games) generated $400M revenue from its mobile games in Q2 FY2020, published through Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan, “SMEJ”) subsidiary
  • They are the publisher of Fate/Grand Order, one of the most profitable mobile video games of the past 5 years (has generated $4B in revenue (!!) by the end of 2019 and is still as popular as ever). Fate/Grand order is the 7th most profitable mobile game in revenue worldwide as of 2020 (!)
Fate/Grand Order #9 game by revenue last year as of Q3 2020

  • Aniplex launched Disney: Twisted Wonderland in March this year. In Q3, it was the #10 most downloaded mobile game in Japan. (Aniplex now has two top ten games in Japan)
  • Fate/Grand Order was the #2 most tweeted game in 2020 and #3 was Disney: Twisted Wonderland. You can see that Aniplex has two hugely successful mobile games. (we are talking close to $1B of revenue a year here). It is the #2 game in Japan by total revenue from Q1 2016 to Q3 2020 and the #9 game in worldwide revenue from Q1 2020 to Q3 2020.
Aniplex has two very popular mobile games
  • SMEJ earns about > $1B from mobile games in revenue from mobile games and there is still a lot of future growth potential here considering Japan’s mobile game market grew a whopping 32% yoy from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020.
  • Aniplex recently co-distrubuted the movie Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in Japan in October 2020. It became the highest grossing film of all time in Japan with a total gross box office revenue of $380M. In the middle of a pandemic. It still needs to release in South Korea, China and USA where it will most likely do great as well.
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) (Game & Netwerk Services business unit):

  • We all know 2020 was a huge year for video games with the stay-at-home pandemic boost. The whole video game sector brought in $180B of revenue in 2020, a whopping 20% increase yoy.
  • But 2020 will not be just a one-off temporary exceptional year for video games. The video game market has a CAGR of 13% which means it will be worth $291B in 2027. Video games is by far the segment with the highest growth rate in the whole entertainment industry.

US video game market growth (worldwide growth has a 13% CAGR)

PlayStation revenue and operating profit growth

  • PlayStation obviously has a huge piece of this pie and over the past years has seen consistent yoy revenue and profit growth. Think about it, for every FIFA/Call of Duty/Assassin’s Creed sold on PS4/PS5, Sony gets a 30% cut. There have been sold a billion PS4 games so far.
  • 5 years ago 20 to 30% of PS4 games were purchased digitally. Flashforward to 2020 and it’s 60-75% and the digital ratio looks set to still increase a bit. This means higher profit margin for game publishers and for Sony at the expense of retailers
  • SIE has seen huge success in its first-party games over the past 5 years. Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 2, Uncharted 4, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, Ratchet & Clank have all been huge successes. This is really big and represents a big change compared to the previous generations where Sony never really hit it big as a games publisher even though most of their games were considered quality games.
  • SIE is now not only a powerful platform holdeprovider, but also a very successful games publisher with popular IP’s (Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank). This is an enormous asset, because firstly it increases the chances of success for cross-media opportunities (Sony Pictures can make TV shows and movies out of it to expand the popularity of those IP’s even more). And secondly, it is an obvious selling point for PS5. The more popular and bigger their exclusive content, the more they can draw people to their platform/service. This should increases PS5 total marketshare over its competitor.
  • The hype for God of War: Ragnarok will be absolutely through the roof. Hype for Horizon: Forbidden West is also very good already (10 million yt views, 273K likes which is very good). Gran Turismo 7 and Ratchet & Clank will also do very well in 2021. (I suspect that GoW oand Horizon might be delayed to 2022)
  • PS5 reception has been extremely good. Demand is through the roof as well all know. The only problem is that they cannot quite capitalize on the demand due to lack of supply, but overall, it is a very good thing that demand is very high, and that reception has been very positive. The challenge will primarily supply and production-related for the following 6 months and to be able to maintain brand momentum. Hopefully, they won’t push disappointed/inpatient customers to competitors.
  • Considering there’s backwards compatibility from PS4 to PS5, users will want all their PSN content to transition with them as well, so I expect them to lose very little marketshare to Xbox. Also, I do not know if Americans realize it, but Xbox is not nearly as big as PlayStation in the rest of the world as it is in the USA. PlayStation just has global brand power that Xbox just doesn’t have, so Xbox isn’t much of threat at all I’d say. Where I live, in Belgium, In Europe everyone is talking about the PS5, nobody really seems to care about Xbox Series S/X that much. Comparing PlayStation to Xbox in terms of mindshare is like comparing Apple to Motorola (not meant to be a diss to Motorola, I have a Motorola phone myself, just saying that Xbox has significantly less mindshare / brand power in Europe).
  • SIE is likely working on PSVR 2, this could be big.
  • Sony has a small stake in Epic Games (1.4%) and they have a good business relationship with them, so this might also make them open to release first-party games on Epic Games Store after exclusivity period on PS5.
  • Remember the Travis Scott concert in Fortnite? I believe that was one of the reasons why Sony invested in Epic Games. It serves as an example how music can sometimes converge with video games, and this can play to Sony’s strengths.
  • PlayStation also has way superior presence in Asia compared to Xbox. Have been expanding into China as well. Another great opportunity for revenue growth.
  • PS+ subscribers grew from 5.7 million by the end of 2013 to 46 million by October 30th, 2020. This is an average growth rate of 28% over the past 5 years. Considering most of the growth was early on, it will slow down, but I predict that they will have about 70 million PS+ subscribers by the end of 2023. This is huge and represents a stable, recurring source of income. Investors who keep hyping Netflix/Disney+ will love this, but it seems they have yet to discover $SNE.
  • There is a reason why Amazon, Google, Nvidia have been aggressively investing in video games & games streaming. They know the business is huge and is about to get even bigger. But considering the established, loyal PlayStation userbase, the established global brand of PlayStation and the exclusive games, PlayStation should be able to easily standoff competition from Amazon, Google and Nvidia (GeForce Now) in the next few years. So far, Amazon’s venture into game development, publishing & streaming has completely failed. Stadia and GeForceNow seem to have a bit more success, but still relatively niche. Therefore, I think PlayStation is well-positioned to remain one of the leaders in the industry for the following decade.
I'll get to the other divisions later, I figured this is a good first step.
But so far the tl;dr
Image sensors: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
IoT/Industry 4.0 chipsets: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
PS5/PSN/PS+: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Online medical services (M3 inc.): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Anime: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Fate/Grand Order: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Music / music streaming (the performance of Sony Music’s in Sony’s business is seriously understated. The numbers speak for themselves): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Electronics 🚀
Sony Financial Holdings (very stable & profitable business, even managed to grow slightly during pandemic when most insurance companies performed more poorly): 🚀🚀🚀
Still have to cover Sony Pictures, but their upcoming movie slate looks pretty good honestly (Spider-Man sequel, Venom: Let There Be Darkness, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Uncharted, Morbius, Hotel Transylvania 4 so that's worth one rocket as well imho 🚀
tl;dr of tl;dr:
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. I am an idiot that's trying to understand why $SNE stock is so cheap.
Positions: SNE 105C 21st January 22
submitted by Audacimmus to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

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