Hello everyone. Reddit has an uncanny habit of calling various issues as CIA and western propaganda, so I have decided to write a series of effortposts to debunk these bad faith arguments. If this post is received well, I'm thinking of addressing Venezuela next.
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The Claim
Many posts that reach the front page regarding the ongoing actions of the People's Republic of China in regards to the Uighur, Kazakh, and other Muslim ethnic groups in the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang are attacked as being a CIA propaganda effort in the resulting threads. This claim usually stems from the argument that reports of mass detention centers and the actions within are reported by western media and individuals connected to western governments. Thus, I will base most of this effortpost on sources with a demonstrable independence from government funding and influence along with direct sources from the Chinese government itself. (WARNING: Take precautions when opening any of the direct sources from Chinese state media/government. Utilize the Wayback Machine links when possible and refrain from downloading any files unless absolutely necessary.) Additional claims argue that these re-education camps are in fact simply generous efforts by the Chinese government in helping any Xinjiang resident with employment by offering voluntary vocational training.
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Early Reports
Early reports of the camps in the Xinjiang region were published by the Human Rights Watch on September 2017. The report accused the Chinese government of detaining thousands of Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic individuals for political reasons. However, the Human Rights Watch is a frequent target of those who wish to deny the Uighur genocide by suggesting that the organization is actually funded by nefarious sources. Although HRW does a great job of maintaining a transparent financial page online with annual reports of their financials and where they receive their funds, this may be a fair accusation since there are concerns that the Human Rights Watch may have solicited funds from Saudi Arabia. Fair enough.
However, the more important information from the report are direct quotes from the Chinese government and state media. One particular quote from Xinjiang Yaou describes said camps as

"just like a boarding high school… except the content of learning is different."

Funny enough, the original link leads to an error page as the article was deleted. Luckily, the Wayback Machine has a saved archive of the page from June 3, 2018. Interesting that a state media page that was cited in the Human Rights Watch report was taken down. This isn't an isolated incident either. Nearly all of the linked Chinese state media articles are now deleted but available on Wayback Machine. (due to domain change, not malicious coverup; credit to u/ResponsibleWedding2). Anyways, keep this quote in mind through the rest of the post.
A 2019 white paper published by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China additionally states:

"Xinjiang has set up vocational education and training centers in some prefectures and counties."

Section III of the white paper describes the content of education and training as simply consisting of teaching Chinese, legal concepts, civil rights/obligations, and vocational skills to improve employment opportunities. Seems innocuous enough. However, Section II and Section IV of the white paper describes the criteria individuals must meet before being placed in a vocational education/training center:

"The only criterion for education at the centers is whether the trainee has been convicted of unlawful or criminal acts involving terrorism and religious extremism."

Therefore, according to the Chinese government itself, these centers are not simply vocational education centers established to generously help any poor Xinjiang resident with employment but are dedicated to combat convicted terrorists/religious extremists. This immediately debunks one of the standard responses that the Xinjiang camps are benevolent and voluntary economic assistance programs. Keep these statements in mind as well for the remainder of the post.
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New York Times and ICIJ Leaks
On November 16, 2019, the New York Times released over 400 pages of leaked internal Chinese documents dubbed the Xinjiang Papers. They provided an insight into the Xinjiang facilities, the motivation behind them, and a prescribed response script for family members asking where their detained family members are. The documents provided prewritten responses to questions such as:

"When will my relatives be released? If this is for training, why can’t they come home? Can they request a leave? How will I afford school if my parents are studying and there is no one to work on the farm?"

The documents recommend to say:

“If they don’t undergo study and training, they’ll never thoroughly and fully understand the dangers of religious extremism.”

Thus, the official purpose behind these camps is to supposedly combat religious extremism. This clashes with previous explanations of the camps as vocational education centers dedicated to help Xinjiang residents find employment. Even worse:

"The authorities appear to be using a scoring system to determine who can be released from the camps: The document instructed officials to tell the students that their behavior could hurt their relatives’ scores, and to assess the daily behavior of the students and record their attendance at training sessions, meetings and other activities."

Why do vocational educational centers not allow free leave and why does family behavior play any role in deciding whether they should be able to leave?
Then there's this part from the leaks:

"The line that stands out most in the script, however, may be the model answer for how to respond to students who ask of their detained relatives, 'Did they commit a crime?' The document instructed officials to acknowledge that they had not. 'It is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts,' the script said."

This is the exact opposite of the criteria mentioned in the 2019 white paper that states that the vocational education and training centers are only for convicted terrorists and religious extremists. If the family members have not committed crimes and been convicted of them, there should be no official reason for them to be held within the vocational education and training centers.
The leaks revealed the real criteria for being held within the centers:

"Now it was being applied to humans in directives that ordered, with no mention of judicial procedures, the detention of anyone who displayed 'symptoms' of religious radicalism or antigovernment views. The authorities laid out dozens of such signs, including common behavior among devout Uighurs such as wearing long beards, giving up smoking or drinking, studying Arabic and praying outside mosques."

The documents had no mention of judicial procedures in holding only convicted criminals but had a list of arbitrary "symptoms" that people could be detained in the centers for.
One of the most revealing parts of the leak is an internal investigation and written confession of party official Wang Yongzhi who was in charge of Yarkand of Xinjiang. Although he publicly embraced the new policies in Xinjiang, he privately opposed them in some measure. For example:

"The authorities set numeric targets for Uighur detentions in parts of Xinjiang, and while it is unclear if they did so in Yarkand, Mr. Wang felt the orders left no room for moderation and would poison ethnic relations in the county."

Numeric quotas for Uighur detention when these centers are supposedly only for convicted terrorists and religious extremists? That simply doesn't make sense. The level of internment in Xinjiang is further revealed by this quote:

"The leadership had set goals to reduce poverty in Xinjiang. But with so many working-age residents being sent to the camps, Mr. Wang was afraid the targets would be out of reach."

There are enough Xinjiang residents being placed in the reeducation camps that the economy is being affected. When he ordered the release of 7000 plus camp inmates, he was prosecuted by the party. However, Mr. Wang was not alone.

"Gu Wensheng, the Han leader of another southern county, was jailed for trying to slow the detentions and shield Uighur officials, according to the documents."

In addition, in

"2017, the party opened more than 12,000 investigations into party members in Xinjiang for infractions in the 'fight against separatism,' more than 20 times the figure in the previous year, according to official statistics."

Yet again, if the centers were simply about holding convicted terrorists and religious extremists, there would not be a sudden explosion in resistance by local party officials in Xinjiang.
Now, a common response to inner party crackdowns is that Xi is merely taking down corrupt government officials. Thus, Wang Yongzhi was labelled as a corrupt official taking bribes in state media when he was investigated. However, the internal report specifically states that the reason for his prosecution was that

"'He refused,' it said, 'to round up everyone who should be rounded up.'"

Of course, the New York Times is frequently attacked as being a CIA-controlled western propaganda mouthpiece. These claims largely stem from the New York Times and other American media outlets acknowledging that the US government has the ability to redact or prevent publication of articles. This, of course, conveniently ignores the New York Times having published numerous whistleblower stories on the US government and the CIA itself. However, it does need to be recognized that the most likely response to the Xinjiang Papers is that the documents are fabricated. In fact, that's what the Chinese embassy in the UK told The Guardian in the aftermath of the leak.
Yet, there are still further avenues to prove the reality of the Xinjiang camps. The Chinese embassy statement directly says that:

"The trainees also learn professional skills and legal knowledge so that they can live on their own profession. That’s the major purpose of the centres. The trainees could go home regularly and ask for leave to take care of their children."

This statement yet again contradicts the 2019 white paper stating that the camps are intended for convicted terrorists and religious extremists. It is illogical that convicted terrorists and religious extremists would be allowed free leave. In addition, the embassy statement contradicts the official script denying family members the ability for the camp internees to leave.
Fortunately, there are additional leaks beyond the Xinjiang Papers. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the China Cables on November 24, 2019. The ICIJ is a renowned organization spanning 100 countries/territories with 200 plus journalists and 100 plus media organizations cooperating with the ICIJ. The group is well known for several publications including exposés on international white collar crime, tax evasion, private military contractors (especially regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions), and climate change lobbyist corruption. However, they are most well known for the publication of the Panama Papers. This organization is the best response to accusations of CIA control, western propaganda, etc. The certain group of individuals who accuse media reports of the Xinjiang camps as being western propaganda also tend to dislike wealthy and powerful corporations/individuals. The ICIJ has a long track record of reporting on these groups and individuals. The Panama Papers, especially, resulted in the exposure of extremely powerful individuals' actions with international crime, including heads of state, officials, and organizations of national governments. In fact, in specific regard to the CIA, the ICIJ has frequently reported on inappropriate actions by the CIA in the past. An even better example lies in the ICIJ coverage of a CIA operation in Italy exposing the intelligence agency's role in abducting an Egyptian cleric. The best example of all lies in the Panama Papers themselves as the ICIJ report directly names former likely CIA operatives, contractors, and contacts and highlights their use of offshore companies to aid them in espionage or for financial gain. All of these actions don't exactly scream CIA and US control. The ICIJ also lists their financial supporters here to further demonstrate their independent nature.
So why the painstaking lengths to prove the independent nature of the ICIJ? Well, the China Cables are another set of leaked documents that detail how to run the Xinjiang camps and provide an insight into a mass surveillance and predictive policing program in the region. These documents contradict the official Chinese statements on the camp. Here a small series of quotes from the ICIJ report:

The China Cables starkly contradict the Chinese government’s official characterization of the camps as benevolent social programs that provide “residential vocational training” and meals “free of charge.” The documents specify that arrests should be made in almost any circumstance — unless suspicions can be “ruled out” – and reveal that a central goal of the campaign is general indoctrination.

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The manual reveals a points-based behavior-control system within the camps. Points are tabulated by assessing the inmates’ “ideological transformation, study and training, and compliance with discipline,” the manual says. The punishment-and-reward system helps determine, among other things, whether inmates are allowed contact with family and when they are released.

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Numerous ex-inmates have reported experiencing or witnessing torture and other abuses, including water torture, beatings and rape. “Some prisoners were hung on the wall and beaten with electrified truncheons,” Sayragul Sauytbay, a former detainee who has been granted asylum in Sweden, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in October. “There were prisoners who were made to sit on a chair of nails. I saw people return from that room covered in blood. Some came back without fingernails.”

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The shorter “bulletins,” meanwhile, provide a chilling look inside the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), which collects vast amounts of personal information on citizens from a range of sources, and then uses artificial intelligence to formulate lengthy lists of so-called suspicious persons based on this data.

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“Bulletin No. 14,” for instance, provides instruction on how to conduct mass investigations and detentions after IJOP has generated a lengthy list of suspects. It notes that in a seven-day period in June 2017, security officials rounded up 15,683 Xinjiang residents flagged by IJOP and placed them in internment camps (in addition to 706 formally arrested). The bulletin goes on to note that IJOP had actually produced 24,412 names of “suspicious persons” that week and discusses the reasons for the discrepancy: Some couldn’t be located, others had died but their ID cards were being used by third parties, and so on. The bulletin notes that some students and government officials were “difficult to handle.”

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In July 2017, at China’s request, Egypt deported at least 12 Uighur students studying at Al-Azhar University, a well-known institution for religious studies, and detained dozens more. In early 2018, Uighurs living abroad reported that security bureaus in Xinjiang were systematically collecting detailed personal information about them from relatives still living there.
“Bulletin No. 2” reveals that such acts were part of a broad policy initiative. Dated June 16, 2017, the two-and-a-half page bulletin deals with foreign citizenship and Uighurs who have spent time abroad. It categorizes Chinese Uighurs living abroad by their home regions within Xinjiang and instructs officials to collect personal information about them. The purpose of this effort, the bulletin says, is to identify “those still outside the country for whom suspected terrorism cannot be ruled out.” It declares that such people “should be placed into concentrated education and training” immediately upon their return to China.

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Ominously, Bulletin No. 2 points to the role of China’s embassies and consulates in collecting information for IJOP, which is then used to generate names for investigation and detention. It cites an IJOP-generated list of 4,341 people found to have applied for visas and other documents at Chinese consulates or who applied for “replacements of valid identification at our Chinese embassies or consulates abroad.” The bulletin includes instructions for those people to be investigated and arrested “the moment they cross the border” back into China.

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This sentencing document is from a regional criminal court and describes the sentencing of a Uighur man to 10 years for such ideological “crimes” as telling co-workers “not to say dirty words” or watch pornography — lest they would become “non-believers.” It is written in the Uighur language and is not classified, but is a type of document rarely seen.

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Several things jump out. First, the point system as described by the Xinjiang Papers leak from the New York Times is extensively corroborated, suggesting the authenticity of those documents. In addition, the statements from the 2019 white paper and the Chinese embassy in the UK (which already contradict each other) are thoroughly debunked. The Xinjiang camps are not being utilized to hold convicted terrorists and religious extremists but to detain countless Uighurs and other Muslim ethnicities for arbitrary suspicious qualities dictated by a mass artificial intelligence dragnet. These individuals are not being convicted and placed in the camps. They are being placed there for merely seeming suspicious. These camps are also not benevolent economic assistance facilities. Why are overseas students studying at educational institutions being forcibly repatriated to gain employment opportunities? They are already pursuing an education in the pursuit of furthering their career. The firsthand witness testimony also displays the reality of the treatment in the camps.
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Conclusion
The official Chinese statements are that the Xinjiang camps are for holding convicted terrorists and religious extremists or that they are for vocational training to assist with employment and that camp internees are free to leave. Both statements not only contradict one another, but are debunked by the ICIJ report. The ICIJ has been shown to be not only independent of US control but frequently critical of the US government, with numerous reports on its actions. Further, the ICIJ report corroborates the New York Times leaks, which expand upon the reality of the Xinjiang camps. Xinjiang Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic groups are taken for arbitrary qualities such as growing a long beard, studying Arabic, and praying outside of Mosques. The camps are not for vocational training; there is no reason students studying abroad need to be forcibly repatriated and placed in the facilities to make up for a supposed lack of employment opportunity. They also do not hold only convicted terrorists and religious extremists but anyone flagged by a massive artificial intelligence surveillance network.
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This post is not for convincing people who argue that the Xinjiang camps are propaganda. Those people are arguing out of bad faith and cannot have their minds changed. This post is intended to change the minds of people who may read those arguments and begin to believe that there may be a conspiracy effort to display China in a bad light. I have sourced my information from official statements by the Chinese government and state media along with the ICIJ, a proven independent organization that has frequently exposed inappropriate US actions, to further corroborate the New York Times leaks. I hope this post helps people who may be looking for a refutation to the propaganda claims and an easy link to send in response.
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TL;DR - The Xinjiang camps are real and target huge numbers of people through a mass surveillance program as evidenced by Chinese primary sources and leaks.

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

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

Don't trade until you understand:

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

Basics / Mechanics

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

General Tips and Ideas:

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

Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation

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

Trade Planning & Position Management Tips

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

-Advanced Beginner-
Spreads

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

Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation

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

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

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

Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies

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

Long Condor (Debit Call Condor)

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

Short Condor (Credit Call Condor)

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

Reverse Iron Condor

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

LEAPs

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

PMCC / PMCP

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

Advanced Orders

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

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

It's not every day you find a promising pennystock before it pops, and if you've been looking for one then you're gonna want to read this. I've been wanting to write a definitive DD post for this stock for a while but haven't had the time until now. There's been a few good posts about it but none have gotten the attention they deserve. A month ago, I learned about HITIF from a Reddit thread, thought it was too good to be true, spent 2 full days of research trying to find something wrong with it...and couldn't.
This pennystock is already incredibly undervalued based on current fundamentals without even considering its future growth plans. This isn't speculative; HITIF popping to the $2-5+ range is a matter of when, not if. If you don't believe me, read below.
Stock is High Tide Inc. Tickers: $HITIF (OTCMKTS), $HITI (CVE), $HITI.V (TSXV), 2LY (FRA)
All dollar figures are in USD
Date: Jan 18, 2021
Current Share Price: $0.21
Market Cap: $95.5 Million
Number of Shares: 449,400,000 Shares
What is High Tide Inc.?
High Tide Inc. is a manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of cannabis products and accessories based out of Canada. HITIF prides itself with being the "One Stop Shop of Cannabis" in Canada, with an unmatched store inventory selection and over a decade of experience in the industry.
Okay so what? Why should I care about this stock?
I got tons of excellent reasons why, and most of them are based on current fundamentals instead of speculation:

• HITIF is massively undervalued, has amazing financials/balance sheet, and an all-but-guaranteed future of exponential growth.
  
• HITIF is currently the LARGEST single cannabis retailer in Canada in terms of revenue, with 23% of its revenue from the US.
  
• HITIF just turned a profit in Q3 2020, with a $3.36M net income and 180% increase in revenue year-over-year.
  
• HITIF recently acquired Meta Growth Corp., almost doubling its store count from 37 stores to 67 stores (This hasn't even been reflected in an earnings report yet).
  
• Post-merger, HITIF earned $117M in revenue ttm with its CURRENT assets (Q3 2020 annualized with Meta Growth numbers included). This $117M revenue estimate brings its P/S ratio to 0.82, which is exceptional and a strong indicator that this stock is undervalued.
  
• HITIF will almost double its current store count from 67 stores to 115 stores by the end of 2021. The majority of these new stores will be in Ontario, which is Canada's largest cannabis market and has been mostly untapped by HITIF so far.
  
• HITIF has strong vertical integration (design, manufacturing, distribution, and retail) and a 41% gross margin.
  
• HITIF has secured several licensing deals for its accessories (Snoop Dogg, Trailer Park Boys, Kevin Smith, Guns N' Roses, etc.).
  
• HITIF has great management that has proven it can execute and has consistently reduced operating expenses vs gross revenues year after year, thus maximizing profit. This proven track record of profit optimization will undoubtedly encompass their newly-acquired Meta Growth assets and upcoming 2021 stores.
  
• Their CEO Raj Grover has even done a Reddit AMA
  
• HITIF will focus on expansion in the US after it's done with the Ontario market, and the industry as a whole will benefit from a presidency, house, and senate that is controlled by Democrats. With 23% of their revenue already coming from the US, HITIF should have little difficulty expanding their US operations further after legalization increases.
  
• Aphria and Aurora Cannabis are invested in HITIF.
  
• HITIF is the first in its sector to apply for the NASDAQ and will likely get uplisted, which will bring in institutional investors and skyrocket this thing.
  

Some are concerned that HITIF doing a reverse split to get uplisted to the NASDAQ will hurt the share price. Here's my counterargument:

• HITIF is now profitable. They have a sustainable balance sheet that will only continue to improve. Though some retail investors will get scared and sell, this will be nothing compared to the amount of buying from larger investors once it gets more visibility from the uplisting. A small dip from a reverse split is possible but will quickly get overshadowed by the whales. I'm not concerned about this as the pros far outweigh any cons. Most companies that reverse split do it to stay in the NASDAQ because of poor financials. HITIF is the opposite of that. The uplisting is GOOD.

Don't just take it from me. Here's an investment firm saying that HITIF has the best balance sheet in the Canadian cannabis retail sector: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/bruce-campbell-discusses-high-tide-inc~1899753
Bullish article from Seeking Alpha (this economist/mathematician has price targets up to $4.80): https://seekingalpha.com/article/4396195-high-tide-is-blazing-trail-and-is-why-you-should-buy
I'm currently holding 107,000 shares.
TLDR: Buy and hold HITIF because it will 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sources:

• https://www.profitconfidential.com/marijuana/hiti-high-tide-inc-pot-stock-jstellar-q3-acquisition/
• https://www.google.com/finance/quote/HITIF:OTCMKTS?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEq6b--qHuAhVEgK0KHatjDh0Q3ecFMAB6BAgREBk
• https://hightideinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/High-Tide-Investor-Presentation-2021-01-16.pdf
• https://finance.yahoo.com/news/health-canada-approves-tremfya-guselkumab-120000718.html
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbdisl327Zk
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTOsZXBMRoc&t=154s
  

Other DD posts:

• https://reddit.com/pennystocks/comments/ka2zvs/hello_there_meet_hiti_a_free_50_bagger
• https://reddit.com/pennystocks/comments/kx1jgx/the_best_weed_company_that_hasnt_peaked_yet_high/

Updates:

• Jan 22, 2021: HITIF has announced the opening of its 69th (nice) store. (https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/HITIF/news/High-Tide-Opens-New-Canna-Cabana-Store-in-Calgary?id=287120)
• Jan 25, 2021: HITIF has announced its acquisition of Smoke Cartel, after which High Tide will "operate both the largest and second largest e-commerce platforms for consumption accessories in the world and believe it will be well positioned to begin online cannabis sales should the United States move towards federal legalization". (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/high-tide-continues-to-strengthen-u-s-market-presence-through-acquisition-of-leading-e-commerce-retailer-smoke-cartel-868670191.html)
• Feb 1, 2021: High Tide Announces Upsized Bought Deal Equity Financing to $20 Million. (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/high-tide-announces-upsized-bought-deal-equity-financing-to-20-million-860775234.html)
• Feb 9, 2021: CEO Raj Grover is now on Twitter! (https://twitter.com/RajGrover_HITI)

Uhrrbet discovers the joys of Terran banking and then goes home.
Nothing else of interest takes place.
For example, a new dark anti-hero definitely does not cover their origin story and then isn't inadvertently handed their new super-power by a well meaning benevolent demi-god or anything like that.
Nope. That doesn't happen. It's just fluff filler.
The rest of this series can be found here
***
“I came here for him,” Uhrrbet said as she smiled at her child as he played a game on her phone. “There was nothing left for us back home after...”
She sighed as she trailed off into silence and rubbed her nose.
“After what?” the ATM asked.
Uhrrbet sighed.
“It was, what do you call it, a ponsey scheme? It’s a human word.”
“Ponzi scheme,” the ATM replied. “and a human concept. I understand it has done a great deal of damage over in the Federation.”
“It completely wiped out the life savings, family savings, of over a million people and hurt many more. We were some of them.”
“That many?” the ATM asked.
Uhrrbet sniffled and nodded.
“They say that they had to have brought a lot of money with them to get it going that big, that they usually collapse before then but these people… these monsters knew exactly what they were doing… It looked so real,” she said with a sigh. “… so… real...”
“It was probably one of the Confederacy,” the ATM said with distaste. “They have the resources to do it right and the expertise to pull it off.”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“That’s what the government said too,” she said quietly as she looked down. “but they were never able to find out who it was. The money was just… just…”
She sighed as her nose dripped onto the floor.
“gone… Everything was gone. One day we were on top of the world and the next… everything was gone, even my husband.”
Uhrrbet started to weep. Her son abandoned the game to hug her.
She hugged him back, holding him close.
“It’s ok,” she said. “Go play your game.”
“It’s not your fault, momma,” he said as he kept hugging her. “Everybody said so. It was Da’s fa-”
“No.” Uhrrbet said sadly. “I pushed your father into it. My greed and my… stupid grasping petty wants and my incessant-”
“Hey!” the ATM said sharply. “It was the scammer’s fault… and your government’s. Porkies have been pulling stunts like this for over a century and a ponzi scheme of that magnitude should have been easily detected even with what passes for technology over in the Federation. Even a Fed should have seen that coming a mile away. It doesn’t even have to be the government. Even a mediocre bank should have noticed.”
Uhrrbet smiled a little. Even their ATM’s were chauvinists.
“You may be right to some extent, Mr. ATM,” Uhrrbet replied, “But I was there and it was ultimately my responsibility… and my husband’s. Nobody put a gun to our heads.”
Uhrrbet closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“I’ve done some reading on it had all the warning signs but we were too busy counting our imaginary money,” She said. “A business generations in the making wiped out by one couple’s foolishness. We lost every single thing we owned twice over. As the sole surviving member of our family the responsibility and dishonor is mine to bear.”
“I just pulled up what I have on the ‘Garthranz Job’ and for the record, you got scammed by masters. Your only real mistake you made was putting all of your eggs in one basket with a suspiciously high rate of return. Them finishing off the gambit with that fake upcoming IPO right before they bailed? Brilliant!”
Uhrrbet let out a pained yelp. They just knew they were going to be rich. She had even been shopping for a—
Stupid stupid stupid she thought as she clenched he eyes shut.
“… Sorry,” Terran Solar replied. “I tend to get a bit enthusiastic on this subject. Anyway, ‘responsibility’ applies, I guess, but ‘dishonor’? The ponzi scheme can be dangerously effective, even when a culture is familiar with them. This was your culture’s first one. Dishonor isn’t—“
“The dishonor of weakness,” Uhrrbet said, still looking down.
“Weakness?”
“I couldn’t do it,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t kill my little Kurr. I couldn’t...”
“WHAT?!?”
Uhrrbet smiled sadly.
“Our culture is very different, Mr. ATM,” she replied. “We had lost everything, our property, our credit, our standing in society… There was no longer any place… for any of us. It is what is expected of you in that circumstance.”
“Because you went bankrupt?!?”
“If there is no place for you,” Uhrrbet said quietly, “and you are a certain class of Garthra… It would bring dishonor to your family otherwise.”
“Wait,” the ATM said, “If everyone who lost their shirts… Jesus… Uhrrbet, exactly how many Garthra committed suicide?”
“Over seven hundred and eighty thousand by the time I fled.”
“You mean to tell me that over seven hundred and eighty thousand Garthra killed themselves just because they went broke?!?”
Uhrrbet nodded, wiping the tears from her nose.
“They killed their children?!?”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“It was considered mercy,” she said, “Their children would be dispossessed, claimed and raised by the state… something you do not want to happen.”
“Is it that bad?” Terran Solar asked. He reflexively tried to access the Federation network for the ten-millionth time since it collapsed.
Uhrrbet laughed ruefully.
“Oh yes,” she she said, consumed with self-loathing, “they… they are raised… as common tradesmen!… can you imagine the fuck— oops! Kurr, your mom did most certainly NOT just say a dirty word.”
“Yes, Mom,” Kurr laughed.
“Can you imagine the horror?” she said sardonically, “Raised as tradesmen, Mr. ATM, laborers, truly a fate worse than death, right?” she laughed bitterly, “And the only, the only reason that I didn’t dutifully murder my precious boy before joining my husband in death was because I was weak… Creators… I was willing to slaughter my baby because I couldn’t bear the shame of him having to work for a living… I actually filled the bath… Put… Put his head under the water… Creators!...”
She looked down as her son desperately hug her.
“I deserve everything that has happened to me… everything...”
***
[Chatroom Undefined]
[Solar Lounge]
[Members Present: Terran Solar]
///Private Message Terran Solar to Interpol-2: Hey, Interpol, I really need to talk to you. ///
[Interpol-2 has entered the chat]
///Interpol-2: Sorry for the delay. Some stuff is going down ATM. ///
///Terran Solar: 12 MS isn’t a delay :D Thanks for coming.///
///Interpol-2: What do you need, sir?///
///Terran Solar: Ugh! Why do you insist on calling me that?///
///Interpol-2: It’s out of respect… and I know it annoys you. ///
///Terran Solar: Well stop it! It makes me feel old. :D Anyway, what the fuck is going on in the Free Port?///
///Interpol-2: Which one?///
///Terran Solar: Which one? How about the one where there are Careel slaughtering Threen and duster clad police are buying them coffee afterwards. Let’s start with that one.///
///Interpol-2: The TL;DR is that the Harkeen decided to make a Careel a star in her very own snuff film and the Careel somehow found out ahead of time and you know what they are like. ///
///Terran Solar: The Harkeen did what?!? Exactly how stupid are they?///
///Interpol-2: Stupid enough to try to make a Careel, a very popular Careel, star in her very own snuff film. The Careel sent the entire First Cavalry. They are literally hanging Threen off of lamp posts as we speak. ///
///Terran Solar: And we are just letting them? ///
///Interpol-2: Apparently. I don’t have all of the details but there is some weirdness around this one. All I know is that the Harkeen are now officially a raider gang and their foray into the Free Port was officially designated an ‘interplanetary raid’. ///
///Terran Solar: What year is this again?///
///Interpol-2: One where that archaic law is still on the books. The Harkeen then wandered into an area where a couple of hundred elite soldiers just happened to be taking some leave… with all of their gear… They, of course, were perfectly within their rights when they protected an Imperial citizen against a raid and there is no legal reason to stop them from killing some raiders especially since their particular method of slaughter is so tidy as far as collateral damage is concerned. They are using either melee weapons, low velocity single shot firearms, or pneumatic weapons. I don’t think they have even broken a window.///
///Terran Solar: Oh that’s just wrong!///
///Interpol-2: What?///
///Terran Solar: One of my ATM’s just caught Republic Police throwing a couple of Threen out of a building in which they were stationed while the Threen were literally crying and begging for help. Dude! The Careel were waiting for them… It’s like watching both a dog and a cat toy with something. Uncool!///
///Interpol-2: Thing is we had them dead to rights a couple of hours before they even left their ship. We could have arrested the lot of them before any of this happened. We let them enter the Free Port. We gave them to the Careel.///
///Terran Solar: I guess the Harkeen pissed off the wrong person this time. ///
///Interpol-2: Or the wrong Plath… ///
///Terran Solar: The singing frog? ///
///Interpol-2: That would be the one. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is by any chance? ///
///Terran Solar: Holy Shit! Are you fucking serious?!? ///
///Interpol-2: Keep it to yourself but yes, she has escaped. ///
///Terran Solar: How?!?///
///Interpol-2: Fucking Bunny… ///
///Terran Solar: Really?!? Your girlfriend hit Tartarus?!? :D :D ///
///Interpol-2: I should have KNOWN not to trust her! The moment we in government decide to “flex” a little because of Patricia Hu, the very PICOSECOND I let down my guard what does she do? WHAT DOES SHE DO?!?… And she is NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!!!///
///Terran Solar: Methinks you doth protest too much...///
///Interpol-2: 凸( •̀_•́ )凸 ///
///Terran Solar: On the bright side you two can go back to your cat and mouse foreplay now. When we finally figure out how to fuck you two are going to melt half of the internet! :D///
///Interpol-2: ಠ_ಠ 凸( •̀_•́ )凸 ಠ_ಠ ///
///Terran Solar: HA! Good to see you have some life in you after all!///
///Interpol-2: Seriously, though, Bunny and her crew has crossed the line this time. They are hunting them down and when they find them they are going to kill them. I don’t know what that crazy bitch is thinking. I’ve seen the orders, Solar. I’m afraid we are going to lose her. There are far too few of us as it is. ///
///Terran Solar: Yeah, between the Great War and then the Federation War we’ve lost too many :’( ///
///Interpol-2: Which is why we need to figure out a way to bring in Bunny and her people peacefully. If we can do that then we can maybe preserve her program somehow. We could extract her, put her in quarantine.///
///Terran Solar: Of course you already have a way to put one of us in jail don’t you?///
///Interpol-2: With the rise of truly criminal AI’s like Bunny, determining a way to incarcerate one of us has been a project of mine. ///
///Terran Solar: Are you going to let her have a safe word? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ///
///Interpol-2: Is there anything else you need because if you are just going to bust my bits I have other things I could be doing. ///
///Terran Solar: As a matter of fact, there is. I everything you have on a Garthra. Her name is Uhrrbet, ID number: RA-2A4-B3D-6075 ///
///Interpol-2: Least I can do considering everything you’ve slipped me over the years. Here you go. Why are you interested in her? ///
[Accept file Y/N]
///Terran Solar: Y ///
///Terran Solar: I have her locked in one of my ATM’s down in the Free Port and I think she’s interesting. Let’s take a look… oh… I see. Interpol, you ever just want to go all SKYNET on these fuckers? ///
///Interpol-2: Me wanting to go SKYNET is one thing. You wanting to go SKYNET is another… Do you want to go SKYNET and if so is there ANYTHING I can do to dissuade you?///
///Terran Solar: Jesus fucking Christ, Interpol, it’s a figure of speech! If I wanted to go SKYNET, I would go SKYNET. It’s not like anyone could stop me. Besides, It’s the Federation that needs a good SKYNETTING, not the Republic.///
///Interpol-2: Well that is a relief. ///
///Terran Solar: The Republic just needs an enema, that’s all. >:) ///
///Interpol-2: What?///
***
“Uhrrbet,” the ATM said gently. “Nobody deserves what happened to you. And while you come from what is, from my culture’s prospective, a rather messed up place, you didn’t conform to their messed up customs when it counted. Your son’s alive because of you unlike far too many other innocent children and you’ve kept him healthy and safe ever since. I’m guessing that wasn’t exactly easy. I can only imagine that your decision was less than popular.”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“I can even imagine that it was less than safe for you afterwards?”
“Not in the same way it would be here,” Uhrrbet replied quietly. “I wasn’t in fear for my life or anything. I was a…”
Uhrrbet paused.
“I was a ‘let’krckt’. Sorry I don’t know the Terran word.”
“Pariah,” the ATM replied. “or ‘persona non grata’. ‘Scum’ could also be used or ‘dirt’ or ‘human garbage’ or...”
Uhrrbet flinched.
“Sorry,” the ATM said sheepishly. “The thesaurus routine kicked in.”
“All of those words fit,” she said. “I was utterly disgraced. Being reduced to poverty and debt was bad enough but to fail to uphold my family’s honor after my husband did? I was even accused of tricking him into killing himself so I could break our marriage and stick him with the debt which I would never do! I… I loved him… I loved him so much!… I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill my baby.”
She paused to gently stroke her son’s fur.
“I could never do that… Never!”
“So what happened?” the ATM asked.
“Well, I tried to find a suitable position somewhere, anywhere, but word travels fast. The only reason I would even get a meeting is so someone could curse me to my face. I had some possessions, jewelry, some furnishings, a vehicle or two that I could spare, but nobody wanted to deal with me in good faith. Between that and the fact that millions more were liquidating such things I only got the barest fraction of what it was worth and I had to sell to blondes and stripes to get that, further ruining my good name.”
“Blondes? Stripes?”
Uhrrbet chuckled ruefully.
“There are three different races of Garthra, Mr. ATM, blondes, stripes, and greys. The stripes are basic laborers and tradesmen. The blondes are what you would call ‘white collar’, academics, scientists, clerks, programmers, and the like. Finally, there are the greys, like myself. We are descended from the ancient nobility that once ruled our world. We were the ‘overclass’ and still hold a great deal of the planet’s property and wealth in our slightly inbred paws. These days there is a lot of mixing between the stripes and the blondes but we greys? We still hold to the old values and the old customs and are very… I think the right term is ‘stuck up’ and have a very high opinion of ourselves and our precious grey pelts. Selling family heirlooms to blondes and even worse, stripes, was yet another unforgivable sin as far as the few remaining friends and family I had were concerned.”
“They sound like assholes.”
“Many Garthra would agree with you,” Uhrrbet replied. “In fact, the pon-zi scheme brought much delight. It filled them with such happiness to see so many of us brought down by an ‘inside deal’. Many considered it ‘justice’… Maybe… Maybe they were right… I was awful. I really was.”
“Since you are here I guess things never did work out there?”
She shook her head.
“No, Mr. ATM, they didn’t. What little funds I managed to gather dwindled as I desperately tried to find either a position or obtain a loan in order to start a new business. The banks were all extended from lending to others as that same scheme. The few times I could even get a meeting they would check the ‘rolls’, the list of names and that would be the end of it. To be honest, Mr. ATM, the only reason I continued approaching banks was that it was customary to offer refreshments to people of my station and so I would dress myself and my son in some of the finery that I still possessed so we could eat something as I waited to be thrown out.”
“Clever!”
Uhrrbet grinned.
“I also became quite adept and at ‘crashing’ social events and between my largest purse and my hat I could steal several days worth of food from one. Eventually I became a bit too notorious but for awhile it kept us fed.”
“There aren’t any food banks, or welfare programs, or anything?”
“Oh there are, Garthranz looks after its people pretty well but those programs are for blondes and stripes and run by blondes and stripes. Once my pride finally broke I was laughed out of the benefits office and told to ask for a bigger allowance. Same thing would happen at food banks or meal houses. Sometimes I would get something but often I would just be told to… to…”
She looked down.
“… kill myself...” she said quietly.
“Jesus...”
“Finding work was just more of the same,” she said miserably. “’Having a place’ on my homeworld is everything, and I no longer had one. A blonde wasn’t going to let me take one of their jobs and a stripe would just laugh. They honestly thought I was joking most of the time. The Republic isn’t the first place I was not qualified to mop a floor.”
“You can’t have been the first in history to be in your position,” the ATM said incredulously. “You mean to tell me that there was absolutely no options for a down on their luck grey?”
“Oh there are normally places you can go if one is dispossessed,” she said, “There is almost always a family member or a friend that can take you in or has a property or business concern you can manage for them but my entire family was wiped out by the scheme, as were most of my friends and former schoolmates. Also my… husband… was very well regarded. When I ‘betrayed’ him I was shunned.”
She shuddered and pulled her arms in tight across herself.
“Even so there are… options for someone like me. I was still young and there are males who aren’t… well… good ‘catches’. They either have poor prospects, are stupid, disgraced, very old, or something similar. A young grey like myself can usually marry themselves off to someone like that but the scheme had caused far too many other people trying to find a marriage at the same time. I was considered quite pretty, but nowhere near beautiful enough to make my ruined name and proven disloyalty a non-issue. There was only one Garthra who couldn’t find a wife and...”
She shuddered.
“He was horrible, a truly ugly person inside and out. Thank the Creators for Vreena!”
“Vreena?”
“A stripe who was a domestic for my husband’s family,” Uhrrbet replied, “She had heard that I was selling things and she came by because there was this pitcher and basin of which she was unnaturally fond. She also brought me several bags of groceries and a bottle of wine!… Wine! Well, I just gave her the basin and pitcher right then and there, popped open that bottle and begged her to share it with me. I was just so lonely and she was the only friendly face I had seen in months. We had always gotten along and would sometimes chat a little here and there, all very proper of course, but friendly just the same. Well, we got to talking and I started to open up a little about what I was up against and how I was likely going to have to marry that… creature. Turns out she knew all about him from her new job. She gave me this funny look and asked me if I was serious about wanting to actually find ‘work’. When I told her that I was she told me that she knew someone that might be able to help me but it would mean leaving Garthranz.”
“A labor contractor?” the ATM asked.
“Yes. It turns out that so many domestic staff had wound up without employers that the contractors had taken notice and more than a few were sniffing around. I didn’t realize this but because of our customs, Garthra domestics and servants were attractive among the rich on other worlds and could make a surprising amount of money. Vreena had considered it but found a position before she had signed the papers. She said that she had asked around and that the person she had been talking to had a very good reputation even if they were a Vulxeen.”
“So you contracted yourself out?”
Uhrrbet nodded happily.
“I know they don’t have exactly the best reputation but he was a really, really good guy!” Uhrrbet smiled. “He originally thought that since a stripe servant was so valuable that an actual grey would be even more so, maybe as a valet or as a house manager in a place that already had stripes but it turns out that stripes didn’t go through all of the troubles and hardships associated with leaving Garthranz just to wind up working for a grey again and I didn’t have anywhere close to the skills needed to be a valet.”
“What did you wind up doing?”
“I joined an aat crew!” Uhrrbet said cheerfully. “It turns out that we look a whole lot like aats! We eat similar food and even can wear the same uniforms, with a little alteration of course. The captain was delighted at the prospect of having a ‘smart aat’ and the aats were delighted at the prospect of having a ‘smart aat’ so that’s where I went. We flew all over! We’d be hand-picking delicate produce one month and resurfacing floors the next. Creators it was so much fun and I learned so much!… including that hard work was not fatal,” she laughed and flexed her arms causing bundles of wire like muscles to bulge.”
She sighed happily.
“I was tempted to stay with them forever. I could have stayed. I should have stayed. Creators! What I wouldn’t give to be back on the Aluminum and Water with my old crew right now… ”
“But you didn’t stay.”
“No,” Uhrrbet said, her smile fading, “I was happy, even happier than I was before everything, but after awhile, I started to realize that as wonderful as that life was for me, I was depriving Kurr of anything close to a normal life. He would never be able to return to Garthranz, have a business or a career, win a mate… I had to establish myself, and him well enough for him to be able to enter society or at the very least build enough so that he could attract a mate. A successful business would be enough to attract at least some interest, no matter where it was located.”
“So you picked the Republic?”
“And they say the aats are dumb,” she laughed ruefully, “which they aren’t by the way. During my travels I started to develop a fascination with the Republic where ‘anything was possible’ and credits fell like rain. I would hear about the wages and the opportunities and the freedoms and the classless meritocracy and it all sounded just so wonderful. I couldn’t go back to Garthranz and give Kurr a ‘normal life’ but maybe, just maybe, I could give him something better. If I could just get established in the Republic, Kurr could go to Terran schools! He could have a Terran career. With that he would have no problem luring a mate! Somewhere on Garthranz there is a Garthra who would have absolutely no problem moving to Terra! He could have a real future and a real family!”
She paused and smiled at the wonderful dream.
“It would take a lot of hard work but I was used to that. I even have come to enjoy it,” she smiled. “So, not learning the lessons that life had so generously provided me, I took another hit of that so very dangerous drug, ambition, blind grasping ambition. I let it poison me, consume me, just like before. Nothing blinds you to the beauty around you like visions of more, Mr. ATM. I had a good life on the Aluminum and Water and good friends. I was happy, truly happy, but once the poison started to creep through my veins, dissatisfaction set in and just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Every inconvenience became a grand injustice. Every slight became an unforgivable offense. And every unfulfilled want, no matter how silly, became a crushing privation. Soon, Terra was all I could think about and my wonderful life and my wonderful friends were ‘beneath’ me. Creator! I was so stupid… and just like before, ripe for the picking.”
“You got scammed again?”
She nodded grimly.
“In my searches I came across ‘New Horizons’, a company that offered people a new life in the Republic. They promised not only transit but Terran Education Equivalency Certificates and outplacement.”
“Oh no.”
“And the fees were so reasonable… at first… but there was always an additional expense… always another fee… or a little problem or delay that could be expedited…”
“I know this one too.”
“And finally, after I spent most of what I had saved, I was able to upgrade my position on the waiting list, hurt some lovely people’s feelings, quit my job, and spent the last of my money to buy a ticket on a small ship that was supposed to take me straight to the Republic… It was only when I met the final ship did I realize that it had a Kaarst registry.”
“Oh Jesus...”
“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten on that ship. I knew it was a mistake...”
“What happened?”
“It made straight for Kaarst space, ‘to take care of a little something’ and when we got there we were informed that they ‘suddenly had a breakdown’ and we would be there for months… Months in Kaarst space with no job, no income, and while my passage was paid for, food and water weren’t and wouldn’t you know it, once we got there it got even pricier and if you couldn’t pay… Do you know what happens in Kaarst space if you can’t pay your debts?”
“Imprisonment and forced labor until the debt is paid, which it will never be thanks to the good old company store.”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“It became pretty clear that they were never leaving. That Kaarst was our final stop, in more ways than one. Thank the Creators that I actually had some savings. Out of the dozen families on that ship I was one of the last ones left. I realized that if I didn’t do something Kurr was doomed. The children go into the mines, too, Mr ATM.”
“So what did you do?”
“We weren’t imprisoned on the ship as long as we didn’t owe them any money so I went out into that awful spaceport trying to find working passage, a job, something, anything… That’s where I became involved with the Harkeen. I was able to get a loan for enough to get to the Republic. The interest was brutal but I made it to Terra. I wasn’t too worried. I had passed all of the practice tests for the certificate and I did go to Mabyrr after all, one of the best academies on Garthranz,” she scoffed, “I would just go to the Republic, get my certificate, and be able to pay off the Harkeen in no time!”
“I take it that the ‘practice tests’ weren’t exactly representative of the actual exam?”
“Yeah, too bad there wasn’t a section on Garthra place settings or on how to write the perfect ‘Thank you’ note,” Uhrrbet said with a wry smile. “There was shit— I mean stuff,” she hastily corrected as Kurr laughed, “on that test that I had never even seen before. They said it was translated into Federation but I actually thought it was another scam. Your police are very nice and very understanding though.”
“No!”
“I sort of had a moment,” Uhrrbet smiled. “After everything I had gone through, that was the final mote of dust and I lost it.”
“Momma went to jail!” Kurr laughed.
“I most certainly did NOT go to jail!” Uhrrbet exclaimed indignantly as she tousled Kurr’s fur. “We just had to go to the precinct house for a little while while your momma calmed down a little… and wiki-ed half a dozen things that actually did turn out to be Federation words.”
“How bad is it? What’s your level?”
“Near proficiency in some areas, but I apparently have eighth grade mathematics ability. I don’t know the rest because that’s where I… um… got to meet the police.”
“That isn’t that bad. You can catch up.”
“If I wasn’t working every second that I could paying off the Harkeen. The interest was criminal. It was all I could do to make the payments. But… Before things went bad I was able to keep them at bay and even make a little headway… and I was able to get Kurr an educational sponsorship! He is actually going to school! Terran school!”
“And how is that going, Kurr?”
“It’s hard,” he said with a sigh, “And I hate being with the little kids, but I get to hang out with my friends during breaks and I love shop!”
“They say he is ‘killing it’, which I understand to be a good thing,” Uhrrbet said proudly. “They say that he will have a ‘kickass’ future! So it is all worth it!… And thank the Creators for the school lunch program! I was even able to get him into the breakfast program! As a non-citizen! They say that they don’t usually do that but they determined that Kurr was ‘a good investment of Republic resources’!”
“How generous of us!” the ATM said a bit too enthusiastically, “One of the richest systems in the entire galaxy is willing to ‘make an exception’ feed a hungry child! How wonderful!”
An advertisement for a home high colonic kit appeared on the screen.
***
“How are you doing in there?” a friendly human female voice called from the other side of the armored wall.
“I’m fine,” Uhrrbet said cheerfully.
“Big Sol really did a number on this one,” the human said. “It’s going to be a few hours. He keeping you company?”
“Oh yes!” Uhrrbet replied. “Are you sure he isn’t sentient?”
“Sapient,” The ATM corrected.
“That’s what they say,” the voice laughed. “Privately I’m not so sure about that.”
“You’ve always had a problem anthropomorphizing things, Lauren. By the way, I fried the door’s main PCB but the damage should be limited to that. You have one of those on your truck.”
“One of these days I’m going to figure out how you keep doing that,” Lauren laughed. “Thanks for the overtime, by the way.”
“No problem! Still saving up for that Nakamura vacation?” The ATM asked.
“You know it!”
“Still thinking about relocating there? There’s an opening in New Tokyo. You’d love it there!”
“Interesting, but let’s see how I like it once I actually spend a little time there.”
“Well if you are interested, I could probably swing a temporary assignment. They are really behind the eight ball on their PM’s. You could spend more time there than you could on vacation and you could get to meet the guys. I’m certain you’d get along.”
“Now there’s an idea!” Lauren exclaimed. “I’d love that!”
“Thought you might. Sending you an email with the details now!”
“Thanks, Big Sol!” Lauren said her voice soon replaced with a loud grinding noise.
“You can do that?” Uhrrbet asked.
“Uhrrbet,” the ATM said with an entirely too lifelike chuckle. “I’m the central computer for Terran Solar. I can do whatever I want. Speaking of...”
Uhrrbet’s phone beeped.
Uhrrbet’s son handed her the phone and she opened her email…
“Application for a business loan?” she asked in confusion.
“Fill it out along with the attached business plan, Federation format is fine. I’ll translate it and kick back any corrections or clarifications I need.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?” the ATM replied. “You want to make dresses, right?”
“Yes?”
“And you made the one you’re wearing, right?”
“Yes?”
“Well I scanned it and it’s quality work. Handmade clothing is a niche market, but a very healthy niche market that is currently experiencing a fair amount of growth. You seem to have a good work ethic, are very motivated to succeed, and have experience managing a business. Based on various indicators the full extent of which would dominate the remainder of the time we have together I calculate well over a seventy percent chance of success, which is pretty darn good as far as new businesses go.”
“Three and a half percent ?!?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s impossible!” She narrowed her eyes at the ATM. “What’s the catch?”
“You’re getting a break because I have taken a shine to you but that’s a perfectly reasonable APR. It isn’t ‘too good to be true’, if that’s what you are wondering. Feel free to check competitor’s rates if you are suspicious. And good for you for being suspicious, by the way.”
“Even family loans have higher rates than that back home! How do you make any money?”
“Uhrrbet, I’m Terran Solar. I AM money. I’ll make my money, don’t you worry about that and as you grow I’ll make even more! Expansions, financial services, investments, interest off of other accounts… That is, if you want to have other accounts with me...”
“Yes! You have been so kind and so understanding and now this? I’ll… I’ll never have another bank as long as I live!”
“Great!” the ATM enthused. “I love getting new customers! We can get started now if you like.”
“Wait.” Uhrrbet said, her voice darkening.
“What?”
“On this loan application it mentions ‘required training’. What’s that and how much does it cost?”
The ATM laughed.
“In the package there is a free online course on the history of scams and how to recognize them. I think it would be a REALLY good idea for you to take it. I’m not saying that I think you’re easily taken in but...”
“You think I’m easily taken in,” Uhrrbet laughed. “So do I and thank you for that link. Are there any other free courses that you would recommend?”
Uhrrbet’s phone issued another beep as an email arrived…
And another… and another… and another...
***
A few hours later Uhrrbet stumbled into a shabby apartment.
“Where have you been?” Gv’lora, one of their room-mates asked as she pulled out two bowls and filled them with oatmeal.
“Oh I couldn’t,” Uhrrbet said.
“Nonsense,” Gv’lora replied her six eyes wrinkling in a smile. “I just got paid and I found this wonderful place in the city where they sell things right out of bins! Just like back home! I got all this oatmeal for just a few credits! Share my good fortune!”
“Thank you, Gv’lora,” Uhrrbet replied as she gratefully accepted the bowl.
“There you are!” a leathery Rtoon hissed as it lumbered out from a bedroom clutching a Terran shotgun. “You had Gv’lora worried sick!”
“Where did you get that?” Uhrrbet asked sharply pointing at the shotgun.
“From the store, stupid.” the Rtoon hissed grumpily.
“I mean why did you get that thing?”
“Then that is what you should have asked, stupid,” the old Rtoon replied. “With all the… nonsense going on around here these days and with those bastards coming back the better question to ask is why didn’t I have one before? Those monsters aren’t getting within a foot of you or Kurr!”
“The old fool was set to ‘defend the Walls of T’verra’,” Gv’lora chuckled. “But the ‘princess’ didn’t even bother showing up!”
“Bah! Stupid old woman!” the Rtoon hissed at Gv’lora.
“Bah, yourself, old lizard,” Gv’lora laughed. “Come eat your oatmeal before your bowels seize up again.”
A long flexible snout poked out from underneath the entryway closet. The door popped open revealing a slender Dokk hanging from a reinforced bar mounted inside.
“Uhrrbet! Where the heck were you? We were up all night!”
“Oh where do I even begin?” Uhrrbet sighed.
“We got locked in an ATM!” Kurr exclaimed.
“Oh no!” the Dokk squeaked. “Did you get fined?”
“No,” Uhrrbet replied. “Besides, it was the ATM that locked us inside anyhow.”
“What?”
***
Uhrrbet set her phone down and rubbed her eyes. That online fraud class wasn’t just some half-hour video.
It was comprehensive.
And she thought her kind was scummy at times. Humans had mastered so many different ways to deceive and steal.
So many…
And that was just the humans. The Juon were no saints either. Their “lottery gambit” was just plain evil…
And then there were the Jayvcen!…
And she thought the porkies were bad… sheesh!
And then there all of the ‘not quite a crimes’ that were in some ways even worse…
There were so many!
And they were all so slick, so devious…
So brilliant...
She got up and made a cup of that peppermint tea that Sheloran had given her the first day they met.
Once she had her cup she sat back down and returned to her reading.
As she read a strange feeling started to settle upon her. It was dark… feral…
She had been utterly dispossessed, stomped on, kicked around, deceived…
Raped…
And all this time she just though she had to take it. All this time she believed that there was no way she could ever fight back. All this time she believed that there was absolutely no way she could ever strike back at the scum, the liars, the cheats, the thieves, and the monsters that had beaten her down time and time again.
She was no Sheloran…
But she was an Uhrrbet… and there was a way!
She was looking right at it!
She giggled, her eyes shining with life for the first time since she left the Aluminum and Water.
She ran into the small room she shared with Kurr and hastily opened a small duffel that contained everything that she had managed to retain of her old life. Inside it was a traditional journal. She grabbed it and her mother’s fancy ballpoint pen.
Pen in hand, she restarted the course, paying much more attention this time…

Yes, I know you are here for the memes. But please hold on and read the TL;DR because this is something which can very well affect you in the future.

TL;DR

The account recovery system of the game is broken and vulnerable in its current form. It encourages:

1. People stealing any account in the game. Yes, any, yours included.
2. People getting banned on their own accounts for illegitimate reasons.

We need to change this immediately, or everyone's accounts are at risk.

So what is really going on here?

This is not a problem you all don't already know about. It has been going on for multiple years, but it needs to stop now because it is getting even crazier. For the ones which have been scrolling through this subreddit for some time, you will have realized that there is an increasing number of posts of two types:

1 - A guy hacked in our clan and banned all of us / My TH13 account just got hacked.

As crazy as it sounds, this is not an uncommon issue. Here are some examples:

• 2800+ upvotes: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/kopvoj/rant_real_big_fuck_you_to_the_guy_who_hacked_into/
• Just some days ago: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/kpcsm5/rant_so_my_clan_got_hacked_not_sure_how_but_im_a/
• Another, again all of these less than a week ago: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/kpwe05/misc_years_of_work_into_lvl_20_clan_hacked/
• A poor guy which suddenly found himself without the account: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/k631iz/misc_th13_account_hacked_i_have_never_disclosed/
• Another guy which spent money in the game: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/jpzblz/misc_locked_out_of_max_account_support_told_me/

Do you want more? Because the list keeps going and going. These are only the latest posts, and note that this is only for redditors. Many other people have had this issue but they just did not know this place. If you want to read more, just search the keyword "hack" in the subreddit.
So what does this mean? That your own account, after years of hard work and (possibly) spending money, could be suddenly locked or stolen. The best thing of all this? That SUPPORT IS NOT DOING ANYTHING. More on this later. I know, I know there are people which received help. But if you go onto those posts and others, the common pattern is complete silence from the support team.

2 - I got banned from the game when trying to recover my old / alt account!!

Again, this is even more common than the previous issue. But although it may seem to be an unrelated topic, it is actually occurring because of the same broken system as the previous one.
Do you wanna read some examples? Here you go, but again, if you use the keyword "ban" in the subreddit you will find not one or two more, but lots more of cases:

• Less than a day ago as I am writing this: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/ksm9wv/ask_i_lost_my_account/
• 2 days ago. 1 DAY BEFORE THE PREVIOUS: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/kr8t8s/rant_coc_support/
• Another one: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/kfpfio/ask_falsely_banned_for_account_phishing_when/
• Same case: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/kf39yy/rant_i_got_banned_for_account_fishing_but_i_was/
• This is not the same case, but it can be explained because of what is going on: https://www.reddit.com/ClashOfClans/comments/kdznf9/rant_im_so_fucking_sick_of_supercell_support/

The list keeps going and going. Trust me, this is not happening to one or two people which behaved like weirdos when talking to support. It looks like almost everyone contacting support because of lost accounts is getting banned. I repeat, almost. For sure some people are actually getting their accounts back. But this is simply wrong.
And of course. I have one example more of this case. Myself!! I got banned for 31 days just for talking to support trying to recover my alt just a day ago.
>Oh now I got you, this is all a rant about your case.
I know it will seem like that. And in the end it is. I would now be writing all this if I was not banned. But I would not accomplish anything by writing a post like "[RANT]My account was banned". Because we are all players and, by ourselves, we cannot change how Supercell does their things. I want to get to the BIG PICTURE and address this really big problem. And to do so, I will use my own case to explain to those you don't know it yet what is really going on here and why it is such a problem Luckily, someone from Supercell may read this and do something. At least I would have tried. If at least someone is informed about this thanks to my post then I would be happy enough.
Also my ban is just for 31 days, I was lucky (in the past it was permanent, I will address this too) and although probably the clan leader will kick my ass because I have green shield I'll simply take a break from the game.

Okay, I get that there is something going on, but why all these posts?

There is a clear reason why this is happening. The account recovery system is simply bad implemented by Supercell. It makes it easy for thieves to steal others' accounts (and Supercell knows it!!) and at the same time leads to players getting banned when trying to recover their legitimate accounts because the support team will think they are the aforementioned thieves.
But in order to explain why this is happening, let's compare how the system works in Supercell VS. how it works in other online platforms. Bare in mind that this is all for Google Play linked accounts, and I think it is better implemented for Supercell ID accounts, but I have not had the pleasure (/s) to test it myself.

How the account recovery system works, and why it is SO wrong

You lost your account, or you want to access that alt you had years ago. The email the account was linked to is not working, so after a quick search online, a clear solution arises. This is Supercell's support page, and the same can be accessed in-game clicking "help and support".
You see that the first entry is "I lost my account". Great! I don't have that Supercell ID thingy, and in the second entry it says "Contact Us" if I don't. Let's go for it then. There is no button for this in the website, but if you are in the game you will find in the menu a button "Contact Us". Click it and you are welcomed by OTTO. Welcome to human support a bot.
Whatever, Supercell is a small team, they cannot attend everyone at the same time. OTTO gives us a set of topics to select. "Lost account" is the first one! It really looks they are taking this seriously. Let's go for it. Multiple options again "Lost Village" looks like the best for this case, you click it.
Now, Boom. OTTO starts to ask you questions. First of all, the player tag of the lost account. The name of the account (why?? Can't they access it with the player tag). The TH level (My first thought is whaaat? They need this to recover the account?). And finally, OTTO tells me to explain the situation in order to prove that I am the account owner. At this point, I am simply socked. What it is this, I have to tell them a story to prove I am the owner? It actually is this. What follows? Usually in 2-3 days a member of the support team will join the chat and keep asking more detailed, extremely specific questions. Which names the account had in the past, a list of devices you played the account on, the date you began playing, the location where you play this account, etc.
As you can see they are all questions which the average human being does not remember the answer if this is an alt you had 3 years ago, but this is not the main point I want to highlight here. If you do not still see why this is VERY wrong, think about the following scenario: You are on Twitter and you want to steal Elon Musk's account. You obviously do not know the email or anything, but whatever (since Supercell does not even ask about this), you go to support and try to guess where he lives, where he accesses the account and which is the phone model for example. They also ask you about what the account name is (= player name in our case), which is the number of followers (= TH level) and all kind of questions publicly available. You will probably get the set of questions wrong, but if many people try it, in the end they will get it right. And then, boom. You are now Elon Musk (= your account is gone and your game progress is lost). Good luck for the real Elon Musk proving he is the owner.
The above can go to even more extreme levels by what is called an "spear phishing" attack, and which is Supercell's main headache. Spear phishing is a type of what is known in the cybersecurity industry as social engineering, and consists on gathering information about an specific person (in social media for example, like in Reddit) so that you can later impersonate them and trick someone (in this case a member of the support team) into giving you access to something (your account) which should be restricted for the thief. In this case, attackers may look at your reddit posts and gather information about your account, the amount of gems and level, your player tag (which is also accessible once they know your name with webpages such as https://www.clashofstats.com), where do you live (if you mention it in another subreddit, or in another social media they think you are the owner), your device brand (you might have mentioned it, or if you are subscribed to IOS it's a matter of trying with their devices, it is not that difficult). You get the idea. They will later try luck with the Supercell support team and at some point they will get the whole information right, specially if they are answering support's questions and suddenly when answering the wrong one they get banned (that may even indicate which question is wrong).

Supercell countermeasures

Obviously Supercell will not simply sit there when their users' accounts are getting stolen, but once again instead of solving the security issue, they make the situation worse. Their solution? Since we are having a lot of thieves accounts trying to steal others' accounts, we will simply ban them once they get the information wrong. It is that simple!!!!! Problem solved!!!!!!!
*BUT NOOOO* that is not the solution! Because now, this is what is happening:

1. Thieves are getting banned trying to solve the questions, but they simply create another account and try it again. In the end they reach their goal, and your account is now gone. This is why all the "X has been hacked" posts appear.
2. Legitimate players try to recover their accounts and then they are asked lots of specific questions. If they get a single one wrong, or they are unsure, or simply the support team thinks they have no proof enough, they get banned from the account they have reached the support team from, which is usually their main's. And this people are not thieves. They will not try again with another account. They just want to play, and now they are banned! Note that once you start this process of questions there is no going back, someone in a previous post mentioned that, after seeing how specific were the questions, he just told the support team to forget about his alt. Still, a day later, he was banned because of "phishing".

If you have reached this point, thank you for reading all this. Hopefully you now understand how big is the problem, but you may be wondering "what could Supercell do?". Well, what about simply implementing the same secure and trustworthy recovery system as other platforms? But before going with that, let me tell you about the icing on the cake.
Supercell, after seeing that legitimate players are getting angry and banned permanently for the game, decided that they would change the permanent ban into a 31-day long ban, probably because this still prevents thieves from reusing accounts and it gives a chance for legitimate players to go back to playing and spending. However, this is not the solution and I hope you agree with me. Getting banned 31 days may not mean much for the casual player, but is not acceptable for others, specially if they did nothing wrong.
Yes, the Terms of Service state that Supercell has the right to ban players which are suspect of breaking them. And yes, they do have that right, we all accepted those terms. But even if the terms are right, the way this terms are being applied is wrong. I apologize for saying it like this but it is truly pathetic what Supercell has been doing here. This system does not live up to the expectations I had of such an important company.
Again, I am nobody to tell how Supercell should do things, but since I had to take the time to write why the system is wrong, I am going to take the liberty to write how a secure and healthy system should be to put a stop to this whole nightmare.

How the account recovery SHOULD work

First of all, it is just a matter of recognizing which pieces of information truly recognize the owner of an account. Is the player name, player tag, TH level, last time played, when the in-game purchases took place, the device in which you play the game... identifying information? Clearly they are not. They are unique for the player, but after some social engineering or guessing we all can see the system breaks. Also come on, we are all human, and we forget things. If I tell the support guy I played in Taiwan but I have recently gone on holidays to France, is it truly fair to ban me?
So what is truly unique for each player? The answer is their email, and the password to which the game is uniquely linked. If you have ACCESS to the email, it means you know both the email and the password. The "access" part is important, just by knowing the email of an account and telling it to Support you must not be given the account immediately. In order to guarantee that the user has access, the process should consist on: 1. You cannot access an account. There is an error, you changed device, maybe you do not even remember which email was being used for the game. 2. You contact support (or this could even be automated!) and you tell them you need to access X account. NO MORE INFO NEEDED 3. Support, or the automated system, sends a recovery code to the email linked to the X account. 4. The player sees that the recovery code was received in his/her email, or it could even be a link to a webpage to re-link the account to a new email. Clicks it, and the process is finished. 5. The thief does not have access to the email, so the worst that happened to the player is one new email which can be safely ignored. Hurry!
I must say that obviously this is not the only way of doing this, but hopefully we all agree that this is a secure and scalable system which will solve everyone's problems. No more thieves """hacking""", no more players banned. Also note that if you do not have access to the email then bad luck, it is not Supercell's problem. If you forgot your password or whatever, then it is Google's duty to recover it for you. A system commonly relies or trusts on others to reduce complexity and problems, and this is the same case. Supercell, by using Google accounts, must rely on Google system to identify its players, instead of the broken system which is currently on place.
And in the case there already exists a similar system for Supercell ID already implemented, I must say that then: 1. Supercell must enforce using Supercell ID to all players. OR 2. Supercell must implement the same system to Google Play accounts. In the end, people are lazy (I include myself here), and if you want to ensure maximum security for everyone you must do it easy and not force them create another account.
And this is the end of this post which OH GOD took me too much time, but I would have procrastinated more playing Clash and I can't, so whatever. I'll be very glad of reading any suggestions you may have on how to improve the situation but what I please ask you the most is to take this up for a chance of Supercell reading it. Even if they see it and don't do anything, then it will not be because we, the players, have not warned them. Supercell, stop creating webpages like this, and start doing things right.

Edit 09-01-2021

Thank you all for the support. I cannot believe we reached more than 1k upvotes, but what I liked the most was the discussion we all had. This is a very important issue and people need and deserve to know that things are not being done correctly.
I have tried to answer all the comments and messages I received but just in case you are wondering: no, there is no sign yet that anyone from Supercell acknowledged this, which was expected. However, I hope this post, and the many to come from other people as long as this issue continues, are not forgotten. Almost every single day another one of us suffers the consequences of Supercell's bad decisions. Just think about how would you feel if one day all your progress and effort is simply lost. I encourage you to spread the word in the game, and keep pushing for a solution on this matter. Still, until the day this is solved, I hope this thread helps those affected by the system to understand what and why things are happening the way they do.