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I do not know wether I should study more about this field or instead invest my time in writing melodies and song instead of reading theory? Did Bands like Nirvana, The Beatles, Radiohead etc focused very much on Music theory or did they just scribbled around until something listenable came out?

I'm very interested in mysteries and it's been cool finding this subreddit.
I'd like to dive deeper into criminal profiling and was hoping someone could answer the questions I had.
I'm looking for books on criminal profiling and books on motivations/psychological reasons why people do certain things.

Hi,
I'm a high-school student that has often struggled in creating and maintaining good habits. The year 2020 is the year I finally tried to change for the better. After years of wasting time, neglecting myself, and going astray, I had to change. I had no idea what to implement or where to start. I just drafted some habits that I was interested in: reading, exercising, programming, and bettering my relationships. Doing these things was no easy feat, but at the end of year, I was in a much better place. I had read 12+ books, went on jogs regularly, talked more to my friends (although through calls), and released my first app. So, how?

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community. There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief."
- The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

What helped me the most was accountability, support, and community. I would tell my friends about my "bad day" and they would pick me up. I would ask my dad to go on a run with me. I would check in with my friends, who were also running. I would get inspired by subreddits dealing with the habit. People sharing. People forming their own habits.
I wanted to build an app just for this: an app to form and share habits. A community of people forming habits. I started learning the iOS development (if you want to know a little bit more about how, leave a comment). I started spending hours each day building, debugging, revising. After a year, I finished. I can proudly say that my app has come to life.
I built Chain - The Productive Social Media, an app to form & share your habits. It works pretty simply. You form a habit, post it publicly, and track your progress. You can interact through following users, commenting, and liking and saving posts. Be addicted to becoming the best version of yourself. I think the technology sector has to reinvent itself from being tons of corporations preying on your data to developers trying to better the world because that's how it started. This is my way of stepping in that direction.
This year, you can start achieving your habit goals with people around you to encourage and motivate you to climb the mountain. Here is the App Store Link. Good luck and i'm rooting for you! The app is far from perfect, but i'm getting there, please stay with me. If you have any suggestions, comments, concerns, or feedback, please send me a PM. I might be a little bit slow as i'm just one high-schooler working on this, but I'm giving this app everything I got.
Screenshots
Thanks. You can do this. Send me a PM if you download/like the app, it means a lot.

[Warning: Long]
here are a couple pictures
I have changed my life tremendously in the past 5 years.
When I started this mission I,

suffered from a pretty hardcore pill addiction. I was taking 30 pain pills a day and about 10 Xanax a day. I was constantly out of it
smoked about 2 packs of menthol cigarettes a day
had a horrible weight problem and diet. I would bing on candy and fast food only. I would practically live off of chips. Never ate anything real. Only McDonald’s and junk food from the corner store
was actively attempting suicide through overdosing. I was in a deep and dark depression.
was facing a DUI and 2 counts of controlled substances and the judge was pressing jail time.
failing my classes because all I could think about was my next fix
was in a horrible relationship.

I would constantly try to change my life around but nothing seemed to work. This only led to me being more depressed. I felt like I wasn’t who I was meant to be. I was trapped in a shell of myself. This kept snowballing until one of the worst weeks of my life changed my life for ever.
The week started with my then girlfriend and me driving to go pick up pills. I was constantly lying to her about my pill addiction. I would tell her that we were going to this place to sell a part. She believed me and I got my pills. Well, we got pulled over and I fessed up to her. I told her that I had a bag of pills on me and I was probably going to jail. She grabbed the bag and told me she was going to take the fall for it because I was in school (she didn’t know I was failing out of college). Well, she got arrested and I didn’t. This sent me spiraling. The guilt weighed heavier than a mountain on me. All I could do was bury myself deeper in the drugs.
Well about 2 days later I was driving and I ended up with a dui and 2 counts of controlled substance. I was bailed out and a day later I was arrested again for PI. I was bailed out again and I went to go get my car out of impound and I was arrested again for driving without a license. I was bailed out again. My father bailed me out of every one of these. I remember the moment my life changed forever. I had just gotten my girlfriend thrown in jail for something that was my fault and was arrested three times. All in one week. All he did was look over at me and tell me that he wasn’t going to give up on me. That he was going to help me fight this.
I realized at that moment that I was letting everyone down. My girlfriend and father both had so much faith in me and I constantly let them down. I was a failure in every sense of the word.
I decided it was time that I fixed myself and became the person I wanted to. This is the point that I learned the first thing that changed my life. I couldn’t tackle every single thing that was wrong with me at once. I’ve tried it hundreds of times and every time was too overwhelming. I needed to prioritize my issues. Tackle them in level of importance. This made things more manageable. The first thing I attacked was the drugs.
I bought 3 suboxone and weened myself off within 4 months. I spent every moment of those 4 months in pain. The suboxone made it easier, but as I was running out, I was taking smaller doses. Eventually I was out. I pushed through the rest of the pain. I would smoke about 3 packs a day and eat about twice as bad as I normally did. But none of that mattered at the moment. What was important was getting off the drugs. My withdraws felt like having the severe flu for about 4 months. I would be sweating and freezing at the same time.
Eventually my withdrawals subsided and I decided to just knock the cigarettes out while I was accustomed to the pain. I decided to use the patch and I pushed myself of cigarettes. This was infinitely harder. But I had one advantage, I had momentum from the drugs. I realized that I conquered one aspect of my life so I didn’t want to lose any momentum. I pushed through the pain. At this point i hit my first speed bump. I had been in a pretty bad skateboarding accident and damaged my leg.
I was pretty sure that I tore my ACL but I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I couldn’t bend my leg anymore and it was incredibly painful. I knew that if I went to the doctor, I would need pain medication and I couldn’t afford to pay it. I made the decision to stop skateboarding and to wait it out. After about 6 months I was able to bend my leg again. I had to use a cane for about another 4 months.
Throughout this time, I started commuting myself more to school. I began attending class, I did my homework, I read the chapters, and I took advantage of any study sessions or extra cuticular activity I could find. My grades began improving substantially. I started making all A’s in my undergraduate. I changed my degree plan to legal studies. I started setting my eye on being a lawyer.
About a year after my injury I was clean off of drugs and cigarettes and I was just regaining the mobility in my leg. I had a new void, I couldn’t skateboard anymore. My leg would hurt tremendously when I jumped so I had to give up a passion I had for 15 years. My depression was creeping back until I met someone.
I can’t confirm or deny the existence of a higher power, but what i can say was that this person pushed me along my path. He lived in an apartment next to me. We got off work at the same time so he would always ask me to go to the gym with him. I would always avoid him by sitting in my car or waiting until I felt like he was gone but he was relentless. I finally caved and told him I’d give him one week. Well it turned out that I loved every bit of it.
Exercising helped me measure my personal growth in a way that was well . . . Measurable. Every week I was getting stronger. I could measure my strength increases in Pounds. My growth began again. I became obsessed with exercise. I would read books about it, I would think about it non stop and I would calculate different things to maximize my growth. Building my body up gave me confidence. The stronger I became, the more healthy ego I developed. Before, I still considered myself a loser junky. But with exercise, I was able to disassociate myself from that. After I developed a deep understanding of weight training, I turned my head to my diet. I quit eating fast food and quit drinking sodas. That led to me calculating my calories which lead to me actively do research on optimal nutrition.
At this point in my life, I had developed some theories to increase quality of life. I believed that three aspects of yourself needed to constantly be fed in order to develop a sincerely happy life. And by fed, I mean that they needed to constantly be challenged. These three laws are Mind, Body, Spirit.
Mind- always increase your knowledge and understanding. It doesn’t even matter what it is. I would challenge myself to cook more and more complicated meals, push my self to develop A’s in school, understand the mechanics of weight training for efficient lifting, or trying to understand some new concept. I would find a challenge and overcome it. Once I overcame it, I would try something slightly harder.
The same thoughts would apply to my body and spirit. Pretty much I would use progressive overload to push myself further. At this point in my life, I was confident, getting smarter and stronger every single day, and developing myself through constant introspection and viewing new ways of life.
I finally graduated with my undergraduate. But instead of going to law school, I found a new love, economics. I decided to enter my Masters Program. I spent the next 2 years busting my butt to conquer this program. During this time, my girlfriend and I got married and had a daughter. About 2 months after she had our daughter, she developed Steven Johnson Syndrome (sjs) which developed into Terminal epidermal necrolassis (TEN).
WARNING: DONT LOOK IT UP.
I’ll save you the search, it’s where your skin melts off of you. It’s pretty much chemical burns all over your body. She lost her lips, the skin on her lungs, and over 80 percent of the skin on her body. I was in the first semester of my masters. I hit another speed bump. I would drive to the hospital and do my school work in the burn ward. I’d alternate staying the night at the hospital and staying at home with my newborn with her mother. It was the most stressed I had ever been. There were two other people with SJS and they both died. At a certain point I was preparing for the inevitability that she would use to. I would help clean her wounds and apply cream to her lips so they wouldn’t weld shut. But I didn’t give up. I had spent 3 years bettering myself and she was there to support me the entire way. I refused to let her down.
Thankfully she pulled through. The doctors eventually released her but she was bed ridden for about 3 months. I spent the next three months taking care of her, my daughter, work, and my masters degree. This was probably the hardest point of my life. But I pulled through with all A’s. She healed eventually and we got married. But by the time we decided to get married COVID hit.
I spent the last year of my masters learning behind a computer. Before, I would use the resources to help me. I would borrow books from the library because I couldn’t afford them. I couldn’t do this anymore and I couldn’t afford the books. I pawned, sold, and hustler everything I could to afford the difference in money. But I pulled it off.
This brings me to today. I just graduated with a 3.9 gpa and I just had my honeymoon with my now wife. We saved up to go to Hawaii. We bought our tickets on discount during COVID and our hotel during Black Friday. We decided that I was going to climb Diamond ahead to take pictures to celebrate my graduation. We complied with every request by Hawaii to respect COVID regulations and made it to Hawaii and found out that Diamond Head was closed due to COVID. I was upset but it didn’t matter at this point.
Well, as fortune would turn, Diamond Head opened on the last day we were there. We were one of the first to hike it. We climbed the entire mountain and I took my pictures. For the record, we complied with all regulations. When I took the picture, the couple of people that were up there with me gave me about ten feet of space and I held my breathe while I took the photo.
On the way down we were actually interviewed by the local news station and ended up on the news!! They used my graduation photo and everything!
I’m now a loving father and husband, a masters degree holder, the best shape of my life, and I will be looking forward to the next part of my life!
Please, I say this sincerely. NOONE is too far gone. I didn’t start this journey until I was 28. It’s never too late to change your life to what you want it to be. Just take everything one step at a time, prioritize your tasks, push yourself one inch at a time, and eventually you can accomplish unimaginable things. If you asked me 6 years ago if this was where I’d be, I’d laugh at you. I understand that I had a support system. But my support system is only as good as I allow it to be. Seize your opportunities while they are there because they will not always be there. Go be the person you were meant to be!
I’m a little shy to post my story, but I hope it can motivate someone to change.
TL;DR: I overcame drugs, depression, poor health, and disease to accomplish a Masters degree.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.

Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...

..

BOOM

Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

“How do fighters stand out amongst other classes?”
“Is there a reason to play Fighter when Hexblade exists?”
“Fighters get outdamaged by…”
As a lover of non-magical classes, I get a little disheartened when they get overshadowed by other classes in games.
Yes, Fighter is a blank-slate character and it’s the player’s job to fill it, but if they’re feeling left-out or overshadowed by other classes, there are ways to elevate them in the narrative so they can hang in the same company of wizards who can rend the fabric of the universe, warlocks whose sugar-daddy is Asmodeus, and clerics who have a direct line to their gods. I think Fighters need a little nudge from the DM to keep their out-of-combat utility on par with other classes and there are a few ways I’ve found effectively do that.
Note: These suggestions require, as with everything, cooperation between players and DM’s. Players should be doing all they can, but putting the entire onus of the story on the player’s backstory is lazy DMing in my opinion. DM’s should create opportunities for each player to shine.

Knight Them Did your fighter do something impressive for a local lord? Congratulations; you are now SiDame PC of PCdom with all the rights and privileges therein. The Fighter has gone from being Guy with Sword to a member of the kingdom in their own right. You can lean into this by giving them advantage in Charisma checks where their knighthood would be appropriate or even offer resources from the local lord’s personal supply. This also gives built-in adventure hooks as the Fighter is now invested in the kingdom they are in.
Give them apprentices Word of your Fighter’s martial prowess has spread and they find themselves surrounded by people wishing to learn the way of the warrior at their feet. Maybe they open a school or maybe they take a squire under their wing. This offers great roleplay opportunities and gives the Fighter a respected role in the community. How do they respond to being looked to for guidance? What kind of teacher are they if they choose to become one? How does responsibility affect their character?

Lean into the Martial Arts aspect of being a Fighter Monks aren’t the only martial artists; dedicating yourself to practicing weapon arts is a discipline in itself. Consider having your Fighter represent a school of combat with its own nuances and techniques the Fighter works hard to perfect. Maybe there’s a reclusive sword-master that can help your Fighter reach the next level. Maybe there’s a book of esoteric techniques that will give them an edge in battle. Musashi was a fighter; Guan Yu was a fighter.

Weave their weapon into their legend Arthur didn’t chuck Excalibur the minute he found a better sword; instead of dumping an interchangeable pile of artifact weapons on your fighter, have their weapon evolve as the game progresses. What was once a simple steel longsword is now G’Th’ar’d’ric’’, The Hammer of Hell. Weave in interesting enchantments beyond the simple +X to attack (e.g. Fragarach was so called the Answerer because anyone who had the blade pressed to their throat needed to answer honestly. This could easily manifest as a Zone of Truth effect the fighter could employ out of combat).

Give them a rival Tales of their martial might have led upstarts to challenge them. This can easily evolve into a campaign-long rivalry where the PC and their enemy continuously one-up one another in an attempt to determine who is the better warrior. A good rival can bring out the best (and worst) in a PC in their quest to determine whose sword-fu is strongest. It gives them a goal to strive for and a marker for how far they’ve come. What once was an insurmountable rival might grow to be an ally, friend, or even love as the Fighter rises to and above their level.

“I hear the Fighter’s Guild is hiring…” Paladins/Clerics have churches, Wizards have libraries, Rogues have Thieves Guilds, Fighters should have a club they can join to hone their skills. Maybe it’s an exclusive group of warriors that sneers at magic use; maybe it’s a community-watch that values your fighter’s expertise. The Fighters Guild gives the fighter a built-in group of support and something to do with their downtime that’s uniquely suited to their niche.
And hey, when the shit hits the fan, guess who has 20-50 heavily armed friends they’ve spent the last few months helping?

Have non-Fighters react to them Fighters are not guys with swords; they are the guys with swords. They are a cut above the rabble and elite warriors in their own right. A regular guy trying to fight a Fighter should look like a purple belt from a stripmall McDojo trying to fight Bruce Lee. Their weapons should shatter under the Fighter’s blows; their strikes should look ugly and clumsy next to the Fighters’ attacks. Highlight how the Fighter is different from others who fight with weapons and make it clear that the party is rolling with a killing machine that’s a cut above 99% of mundane fighters.

Put them in charge of NPC units in mass battles Arthur had his Round Table, Achilles had his myrmidons, your PC’s should have their hand-picked followers who follow their example. Put them at the vanguard of major battles and have lesser soldiers form up on their banner. Is a group of soldiers more likely to follow a warlock who bleeds demonic energy, a scrawny wizard that uses words none of them understand, or a warrior like themselves who fights on the frontlines alongside them?

Highlight their athleticism and endurance Really highlight the fact that Fighters can go all day without needing the rests that casters need. Fighters go and keep going after all the magic users are farting out Firebolts. Fighters endure blows that would kill mortals and shatter sorcerers. They are as Indomitable as their class feature and one of the hardest (if not the hardest) thing to kill in the party. Fighters can simply endure more punishment and keep fighting long after the casters in the party beg for a rest.
Also, HP is a resource that Fighters tend to have a lot of. They can do riskier things and attempt cooler stunts because the penalty for failure is less steep than other classes. Losing 10 HP to grab a burning hot key from a blaze is less of a sacrifice for someone with 200HP than it is for someone with 99.

Build their legend Guts was the Black Swordsman; Robin of Locksley was called Robin Hood. At some point, your Fighter should pick up an epithet or two describing their heroic deeds. Slaughter a ton of orcs? You are now PC Orcsbane. Wear black armor emblazoned with a wolf’s head? Your Fighter is hailed as The Black Dog. Nothing makes a sword-and-board fighter stand out like a legendary nickname highlighting their legendary deeds and inspiring dread and awe in their wake.

Conclusion
This is not a Fighters and Casters are mechanically unbalanced debate; I am going to assume that a group of professional game developers knows more about designing a game than I do. But casters have aspects and tools for out of combat baked into their skillset that Fighters do not.
This gets worse at higher levels when a sword-fighter is hanging out with guys who can bring the dead back to life and summon natural disasters. It’s easy for the non-magic guy to get overshadowed in these scenarios, but a little nudging and a little support from the DM can elevate the fighter out of combat while playing to their strengths.
I’m interested to hear other ways you’ve kept fighters interesting/relevant in a team full of spellcasters.
EDIT: Thanks for the silvers, mates.
Edit 2: Formatting

So, right now, you might be asking yourself "Fuck Robinhood. Where should I, Timmy from Charlotte, move my account? Fuck Robinhood. How do I get away from Citadel? Fuck Robinhood. What is going on? Fuck Robinhood." I'm not 100% sure where this post is going so I can't promise I'll answer any of those questions but my goal here is still coherent conversation so maybe someone else might have those answers in the comments. Idk.

What is Citadel and what do they do?

A hedge fund wrapped up with an advisory service, an execution venue, a market maker, an IPO partner, a ~~sandwich shop~~, etc.. Such megacorps pay firms fractions of a cent to pass each order through them for execution. The more orders the brokerage passes along, the more they're paid. Money is involved because the more orders that pass through a particular execution venue first, the faster they can make decisions about the direction of the market on both the micro and macro scale. This is the current nature of the market. Order data for 'new' and 'small' traders using self-directed firms has been especially valuable the last 20 years because you do things institutions cannot. You can open a new position based on a tweet while the major advisory services need to whip out the scales and weigh the cost of moving assets for countless customers at once and that's even further complicated if they're designated fiduciaries because, in their book, reacting quickly implies that there's unknown risks involved. For example, they did the numbers on a particular company six months ago and decided it wouldn't be profitable in another six months. Even in 2021, they just can't move as fast as you but knowing what you're doing is a step closer to them being able to respond sooner with smaller changes rather than react with major changes when shit hits the fan. (BTW, the fatal flaw on $GME is that they tried to play the old 'cull the weak' game that worked for them for decades and absolutely chose to ignore the direction the market was moving until it was too late. If they'd used the order flow and other data they're paying so much cash to access and were as bright as they imagine they are, it would have been rough but even hardcore shorts could have lived through this week. Retail investors can pat themselves on the back for exploiting it but Melvin Capital got fucked by hubris and lack of awareness.)
Not to get all RZA between songs on it but that's why the title of this sub has been 'Welcome to the machine!' for a long time now. The major players know you dream of making it big, buying a car, having a steak, and all the other things Roger wrote about, just by doing something you enjoy (playing guitar but it could be your art, you talents in math or science, taps in a mobile game, or in this instance investing) and they'll welcome you in with open arms, convince you that they'll be a guide and there to help, knowing they'll get a cut just by letting you do what you do and finding a way to package it. People over simplify it with "if the service is free, you are the product" because they don't notice that the machine will also make you pay if it can. Money for order flow has made it easier for others to provide the space for you to do what you do without noticing they're cashing in even if you don't but don't forget that the machine can be other investors. The machine can be the large firms. The machine can be investment advice columnists. Hedge funds and brokerages aren't the only 'machine operators' in the financial industry.

Which firms use Citadel and which ones don't?

They all use Citadel.
I'm not joking, I've kept up to date on execution venues (people probably thought I was just lecturing them about understanding order flow here but I dislike Virtu as a venue and Apex as a clearing firm which I've talked about here for years) and the concentration of orders being fed to the short list of venues has not changed in a positive way because that's where the money is. The idea for this post came to me this morning because no news article, no TV interview, and not a single hot take on Twitter I've read so far has managed to mention just how embedded Citadel individually is in the modern market. I had AOC's live stream on in the background last night and even the guests seemed to imply that Citadel is a little firm propping up Robinhood and that nobody could have seen this blowing up one day. These relationships (even down to how much money is paid) are public by law. Every quarter, both sides are required to release data on order flow in 605 (raw), and 606/607 reports.
Here's a quick rundown of places I could come up with off the top of my head that use Citadel as their primary or secondary execution venue and what percentage of orders for S&P 500 listed securities they recently sent through Citadel:

Firm	Market orders %	Marketable* limit orders %
e*Trade	36.33	37.16
Schwab	31.61	30.06
TDA	60.04	59.25
Edward Jones	36.91	47.49
Webull	50.85	53.71
Interactive Brokers	25.34	11.24
Wells Fargo	35.02	32.85
Firsttrade ^#	0.95	0.60
TradeStation	28.14	26.90
ally	40.15	44.76
Robinhood	50.82	50.24
Alpaca ^$	11.07	3.31
IEX ^%	N/A	N/A
Fidelity	52.28	45.09
Apex clearing ^@	40.97	42.76
Wealthfront	100	50.01
Tastyworks	59.97	61.18

* Marketable limit orders are those that immediately have a chance of executing against the current spread
^# Firsttrade is predominantly a dark pool only sending orders away when they require liquidity
^$ Alpaca is an API-first firm which I like and talk about on Discord sometimes because I wish RH would open their API but they're still backed by Apex which I dissuade everyone from getting involved with because Penson Financial Services.
^% IEX is a closed loop exchange that internally clears orders among customers (great source for free order data to test algos)
^@ Apex is the clearing agent for many smaller firms including Public.com, Betterment, Acorns, M1, Rize, Stockpile, Stash,
Now, when you look at that list, remember three things:

that 99.9% of the remaining orders are going to Wolverine, Virtu, 2 Sigma, and other hedge fund adjacent venues for execution
brokerages were doing the same back when they were also charging commissions. I don't feel firms being paid for order flow is inherently wrong but whatever agreement Citadel has in place to force firms to act in Citadel's best interest over customers and even over the brokerage's own best interest is difficult to wrap my mind around right now. Which brings me to my next point...
Citadel's most loyal sources for order flow (Robinhood, TDA, Webull, and IB) all fell in line and limited trading at least part of the day. The agreements between these companies and Citadel are obviously not public but I'm sure Citadel has them bent over a contractual barrel that left them with no choice but to comply. As a customer of half of those firms, I say they should have done whatever they could to explain the actual situation to the public (spoilers: it wasn't risk on the retail side), taken whatever penalties Citadel could impose for ignoring them (all the way up to breach of contract, etc), and fight that out in court rather than act in ways that seems to have only punished and confused customers. Corporate level decision making is so fucking stupid.

Where to go?

Fino.
If IEX was larger, that would be a decent alternative for equities but they don't have a silly app that looks good in screenshots but tells you nothing useful. I can't think of a self-directed firm that can currently exist without Citadel and the rest. If you do, post about it, I guess.

More things I for sure do not know...

...but hope someone wants to talk about.

I don't know shit about the legality of anything that has gone on this week with Robinhood and no, I will not be a part of any lawsuit because I was not effected by what happened because I don't have any options or equity holdings in Robinhood and cannot claim damages. Stop asking me.
I'm not even sure if splitting corporations up anti-trust style would work for this. For sure, it was Citadel's vested interest that cascaded down to firms and then users but I don't know of any cases that forced divestiture on that scale. Hedge funds with cases in a friendly district could make a valid claim that they cannot function without access to both order data and current assets. It'll be interesting to see if anything changes over the next few years and how.

Disclosure

Doxxing myself more and more but I worked for a market analytics/quantitative research firm in the city that was eventually gobbled up by Virtu. I'd moved abroad months earlier anyway but we loved that job and they only wanted the algos we'd designed so fuck Virtu.
My current day job makes trading public companies complex (which is why I only talk about algotrading ETH on Discord). Most of my self-directed play money is still with TDA (haven't made a trade there or on RH in almost three years) but the majority of my family's assets, my retirement, my kid's inheritances and college funds, and on and on have been handled by GS for nearly two decades and likely will continue to be even after I return to the private sector. Now, what would be sweet is if Goldman Sachs would extend their investment arm (which sends orders directly to exchanges) to the general public like they have with their Marcus savings accounts. If they could devise a way to legally pass a good percentage of all (would be dependent on volume of the security, etc.) orders directly to the floor as a bundle, they'd break even at best on it but that would actually 'democratize the market.'

Apologies for the clickbait title but rest assured, there’s no scam here. I’ve come up with a list of time-tested, foolproof ways to save money that are infinitely more reliable than whatever investment scheme you’re cooking up. And speaking of cooking:

Learn to cook

Doordash, ubereats, skip-the-dishes, delete them from your phone. Learn to cook rice, vegetables and inexpensive proteins like beans, chicken, pork, tofu, chickpeas etc. Does your food need more flavour? Buy some salt, pepper and garlic. That’s all it takes to start. Is your food oveunder done? But a meat thermometer. Stop buying $10 lunches and $3 coffees. I used to buy $3 coffee every day. That’s $60 a month ($90 if weekends are included) On COFFEE. I bought a $50 coffee maker and it paid itself off in 2 months. Now I’ve owned it for 3 years.

Take care of your teeth

Brush twice a day. Try to do the same with flossing, but no one ever does it, so try to start once a week. You know why dentists make so much money? You know why they see your mouth as a goldmine? Because you won’t be able to put up with your painful, busted ass teeth for your whole life and you’re going to need them fixed. Taking care of your teeth cuts down on the amount of times over your life that you’ll wake up in the morning going “ow, my tooth hurts, wonder why” and then suddenly you’re out $500... or $2000...

Prioritize the importance of your physical belongings and take care of them accordingly

Do you need a flashy, expensive (or even mid-range car) to impress clients at your job? No? Then it’s OK to drive a beater. Do you need a suit for work? No? Then it’s OK to buy your daily workwear from somewhere like Costco or Walmart. Those are your low-priority items. If you rip a hole in your $10 work shirt, you can probably afford to throw it out.
However, the flip side of that is, if you need to have a suit or nice car on-hand... TAKE CARE OF THEM. Don’t wear your nice suit and dress shoes out in a snowstorm... don’t skip the oil change on the car. If you’re tech savvy, you can keep your beater smartphone or laptop meeting your needs for a long time. Do you need a top-of-the-line gaming rig? If so, spend the money on long-lasting parts (I.e. CPU), and take care of your rig; clean it regularly, watch the temps, try not to get malware. I’m still wearing a jacket I bought 10 years ago.

Other tips and tricks

Buy long-lasting footwear - it’s insanely easy to spend a lot of money on cheaply-made, branded (and completely awful) footwear. I’m looking at you, Jordan’s. Buy some decent sneakers and hiking boots and rotate them around accordingly
Get away from Instagram/FB if you’re in circles where people try to promote their belongings, flex or look like they can afford a lifestyle they probably can’t. Way too many people go into debt trying to look fresh on Instagram. Don’t get sucked in. Speaking of debt...
Pay off your credit cards - Credit card companies make their money off you not realizing how much 20% interest really is
Edit Wow thanks for the feedback folks! Some really great tips in the comments too (esp. liked the one about taking care of your KIDS teeth, in addition to your own!)
And to clarify re #3, I’m definitely not saying “don’t spend money on luxuries that make you happy”. What I am saying is, if (when) you spend money on luxuries, TAKE CARE OF THEM!
Bought some fancy-ass dress shoes you like? Realize you’re wearing $700 on your feet and walking through puddles isn’t a great idea. Bought the new $2000 MacBook Air? Maybe keep your un-covered drinks away from it. Finally saved up for that Lexus? Slap some snow tires on that baby and make sure you have some decent insurance. Nice new phone? Yeah? Buy the case! If you decide to go all out, don’t skimp out, just spend your money where it creates (or protects) the most value.
Edit 2 Obligatory “I am not a financial advisor” but here’s some other tips to address some complaints from offended individuals that this isn’t real financial advice:

You likely don’t need balance protection insurance on your credit card - It’s notoriously difficult to successfully file a claim and the coverages are much narrower in scope than they are sold as
If your bank waives account fees for carrying a minimum balance, look into getting the best account you can (e.g. a “TD all inclusive” account provides free cheques, money orders, safety deposit box etc. And is free if you maintain a $5,000 minimum balance)
You only need overdraft protection if you regularly dip into overdraft (e.g. if it’s unavoidable based on your income cycle). If it only happens once in a while, the individual ding is likely still cheaper than total cost of the protection.
When shopping for a mortgage, don’t overlook credit unions. A massive component of a lot of credit unions’ business is lending, especially residential mortgage and small business lending. Credit unions can offer rates far more competitive than banks, even to non-members
If you’re thinking about investing and can stomach some short-term volatility, look into Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) - bundles of diversified securities issued by major financial institutions. Many sector-specific ETFs (including Oil/Gas, Real Estate and Finance) still haven’t recovered from COVID and it might be worth your while to look into them. COVID recession aside though, ETFs can be reliable, income-generating instruments
Financing can be a reasonable option if you’re trying to manage cashflow, but generally speaking it is better to outright buy something you can currently afford rather than finance it. Cars especially.

Edit - Last one, I promise

Protect your credit score! It’s not just a number, it’s your key to reliable, low-interest credit (which you’re going to need if you ever want to buy a house, or even just open a line of credit). Tanking your credit score and limiting yourself to alternative lending “solutions” is a very dangerous, slippery slope.

I'm an amateur film lover, as I'm sure many of the folks in /movies are. I will be the first to also admit that I was also one of the lucky ones last year to have 'boredom' as one of my biggest problems, and so to everyone reading this I hope you have a far better 2021.
Watching lots of movies isn't necessarily something new to me, especially in such a vast quantity, I watched a lot in 2019 as well and it's something that works for me. I know some people say they don't like watching so many in quick succession for various reasons, and that's cool, just know that this works for me and I like to think I have a fairly good memory of almost everything I've watched (certainly all of the ones that I've enjoyed). And I can safely say I don't feel burnout coming on either...at least not yet, fingers crossed.
I also feel we're incredibly lucky to live in the era that we live in, watching films has never been easier than it has now, there's so many ways, both legal and illegal. Just this year alone, we've had four major classics receive Blu-rays for the first time ever, Satantango, Los Olvidados, Roman Holiday and Beau Travail. I can't even begin to imagine how frustrating it must have been to be an amateur movie lover in previous decades without the conveniences we have today and without access to the benefits of being in film industry circles.
As a result, it becomes a case of, the more you watch, the more great movies you realise are out there and the 'never-ending watchlist syndrome' becomes a real thing. But I take that as a positive knowing that this isn't some tick-box exercise and that watching movies is a life-long journey. After all, we all watch movies for different reasons, sometimes to laugh, to kill time, to make us better people, for catharsis and various other purposes.
To keep this relatively short for the main post (I can detail further in the comments if anyone's interested) I'll post my top 5 (in no particular order) for each calendar month of 2020, varying from popular favourites to ones I feel like deserve way more attention in the general conversation.
FULL LIST HERE
Jan 2020

Le Cercle Rouge (1970) - The first film of the year I saw and only fitting because I adore Melville's work. Anyone who loves a good heist movie should absolutely do themselves a favour and watch this. What I love about Melville is how he uses action and silence to drive the story and build suspense rather than overload you with dialogue that would overexplain things you could figure out by just observing. Treating your audience with respect is the sign of a great filmmaker.
Seven Chances (1925) - Every Buster Keaton movie I watch, i'm more and more impressed with how much mileage he managed to get out of everything, from cameras, to sets, to space in the frame. For anyone looking to get into silent cinema, Buster Keaton is the most accessible place to start next to Charlie Chaplin. The blackface we could do without though.
Little Women (2019) - Greta Gerwig made the best adaptation of a book that has had like 8 adaptations before it, and some of them really good, she's a genius. That's all I have to say.
Mon Oncle (1958) - Tati's sense of humour is exactly my kind of humour. The production design in his films could have a book written on them. There's so much effort put into his films and watching them is a joy. There's no real structure to the movie as such, it's like a 2 hour string of gags put together all tied together by the central character of Monsieur Hulot who was the inspiration for Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean. If something light-hearted and fun like this sounds like your thing then give it a shot.
Certain Women (2016) - Kelly Reichardt is one of the greatest American filmmakers working today and even though I haven't seen First Cow yet, I can safely say that it's hard to find many working right now more consistently good than her. There's a vignette with Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone that is one of the most heartbreaking portrayals of loneliness and unrequited love that I've ever seen.

Feb 2020

L'Argent (1983) - the best exploration of money, its corrupting effects, Bresson's one of my all-time favs. The acting is deliberately different to what you might expect from a conventional (Hollywood for example) movie but stick with it and you'll get something viciously scathing and cynical about the current state of society. Best part, it all takes place in less than 90 minutes.
Landscape in the Mist (1988) - I had a funny experience with Angelopoulos, i saw The Travelling Players first and it really bored me, then I saw this and Eternity and a Day and now he's one my all time favourite directors. One of the greatest child performances I've ever seen. Such a great exploration of the innocence of childhood, what happens when that innocence is taken away, the uncertainty from uncaring parents, and how to move beyond that and find peace and beauty in life
The Big City (1963) - Ray's direction in this is overwhelmingly good tbh. There's a scene where Ray uses mirrors which is so, so good. It's feminist without feeling preachy.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) - The last movie I saw in cinemas. Also Celine Sciamma, idk where I've been all this time, but I'm glad I've finally been introduced. I could go on and on about this movie. Watch this with headphones if you don't have a good sound system, it's worth listening to how much care was put into the audio-visual experience of this film. Most people seem to take their time syncing with the rhythm of this film until there's a scene (and you'll know when you see it) halfway through the movie where the film sort of transcends above everything it's being doing and then the rest of the movie flies by.
Bullitt (1968) - Think I could count on one hand the number of great car chases that exist in cinema, Bullitt has one of them. McQueen's just effortlessly good in this.

March 2020

Intolerable Cruelty (2003) - I really want this to get a critical re-appraisal. Maybe its because I'm a Coen Bros diehard but I find this hysterical and George Clooney bringing back Cary Grant's ghost from the past is a thing of beauty.
The Assassin (2015) - Don't mistake this for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2.0 and you'll enjoy this. It's not as fast-paced and it doesn't want to be. But it's a memorable experience either way.
Toy Story 4 (2019) - I've been disappointed with Pixar in the last decade but this is proof that they won't drop the ball on the thing that made them iconic.
Eternity and a Day (1998) - see comments for Landscape in the Mist above. Also Eleni Karaindrou is in my top three composers of all time, her music alone is worth listening to even if Angelopoulos' films dont interest you.
Paddington (2014) - I'm using this as a spot to not just highlight this but also the sequel, for once I agree with Reddit, they backed the right movie and the circlejerk for Paddington is justified. So if youve not seen them, go do that, if you've seen them already well just do it again.

Apr 2020

Raw (2016) - I'm not a horror enthusiast, but this is definitely one I would recommend to everyone. Made me a bit queasy at times even though I'm not easily scared. The themes are explored in such a unique way.
The Koker Trilogy - Cheating a bit here, but I'm a sucker for meta cinema and Kiarostami's an all time great for me. They're all short in runtime but what they explore is enough for two trilogies let alone one. The first movie starts off quite simply and is very accessible, and it's also a movie that never feels like its exploiting the group of people its filming for the purposes of entertainment. In a more conventional movie, you could've expected a weepy melodrama about how hard the poor have it. The next two films then build on that and what cinema means as an artform and the meta connections that it creates become something else entirely. It'll leave you thinking over it all for a while.
Faces Places (2017) - Agnes Varda's a national treasure. Her work is ridiculously unpretentious and her life experience alone makes it worth listening to her, she always had fun and so did the audience too through her infectious personality and her endless curiosity for life. And best of all, its a short and sweet runtime.
Down by Law (1986) - Jim Jarmusch is the king of the hangout movie. Idk how he does it, one day I'll understand how he makes such low stakes movies seem so compelling but I'm not there yet.
Beetlejuice (1988) - I miss peak Tim Burton. I know Kevin Kline's Oscar that year is one of the few rare occurrences where a comedic performance won but Michael Keaton deserved it way more in my opinion. Without him, there is no movie. And the music choices are fantastic.

May 2020

Secrets and Lies (1996) - This could've been really silly in the wrong hands, its the kind of premise I might expect from an Adam Sandler comedy and yet it's genius.
Minding the Gap (2018) - The depiction of the lasting, ripple effect of domestic violence in this is so honest and raw and the way it's cut together is so fantastic. I'm so glad Bing Liu got the recognition he deserved for this.
Dogville (2003) - in a career full of provocations, von Trier's Dogville is maybe his greatest provocation. An experiment that pulled off and then some and so dense you could write a paper on this movie alone. I will say I had a funny experience with Dogville as I put it on one day and then I tried watching it and found the way it was shot quite distracting, but then something came up about 15-20 mins into the movie and I had to turn it off and restarted it the next day. The next day it just worked I guess because I was already aware that von Trier was using a completely different camera and it didn't bother me so much.
Faust (1926) - one of the absolute best silent films out there. Murnau's a goddamn master. Feels so modern, and for a tale that's been done to death, I do urge people to check out the first cinema adaptation because it's still fresh.
Man with a Movie Camera (1929) - I will admit, my stamina with experimental films is pretty limited but this was a blast, and it has more innovations in like 70 minutes than most decades of cinema do. The Michael Nyman score with this is highly recommended.

June 2020

Beau Travail - The ending to this is one of the best endings ever. I won't spoil for anyone who's not seen it. Definitely more austere and slower-paced for some but for those who sync with the rhythm, it's well worth it.
Scenes from a Marriage - In a well-worn subgenre, maybe the best movie about marriage and divorce ever?
What's Up Doc? - Really makes me wish the screwball comedy genre wasn't dead. Someone bring it back.
Da 5 Bloods - Honestly I really thought this was a blast, and another case of an auteur smuggling a great film into a genre flick.
A Hidden Life (2019) - I've not seen To the Wonder, Song to Song or Knight of Cups yet, but I'm just glad Terrence Malick is still making great movies. James Newton Howard and Jorg Widmer need way more recognition for their work on this for music and cinematography respectively.

July 2020

The Square (2017) - So apparently this is one of the more hated Palme d'Or winners but I loved it, Ruben Ostlund's keeps making movies and I'll keep watching them. I thought this was hilarious and really well acted.
Shoah (1985) - If there's a film on here I could get everyone to see, it would be this, but I have no misguided expectations considering the runtime and the material. But you could break it up into parts, there are clear stopping points in this. I would say it's the best thing I've seen this year. I think the way the Holocaust is taught in schools is not up to scratch at all and its the reason why antisemitism is still so present in society today. I think if everyone watched Shoah, it would do a good deal towards understanding how humans work and how something like this happened and how we can prevent it from ever happening again.
OJ Made in America (2016) - For a subject matter that has been written about ad nauseam with dozens of on-screen adaptations, docs and God knows what else, Ezra Edelman performed a goddamn miracle making something as good as this. One of the best examinations of how America reached the point that it's at right now.
Carlos (2010) - Cheating a bit here with this one, but seriously, Olivier Assayas what the fuck? How did you make something like this? Genuinely baffles me how Edgar Ramirez has been wasted ever since this movie came out. One of the best biopics I've ever seen and I think I had my heart in my mouth for the entire OPEC raid.
The Right Stuff (1983) - The editing in this is flawless, so many remarkable choices in the cutting department which is why this felt so well-paced for its length. It also has an ensemble cast that has become quite famous in the years which makes it worth the watch too. Definitely one to check out for any sci-fi or space movie enthusiasts. The satire in this is razor-sharp as well.

Aug 2020

Birth (2004) - Honestly feel like the flack for this was undeserved, Jonathan Glazer needs to be better funded. So well-shot, there's a long take in this that feels like it inspired Portrait of a Lady on Fire's ending. Nicole Kidman sells this as well, could've been bad in the wrong hands.
Winter Sleep (2014) - I'm a sucker for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's dialogue, he writes like no one I've ever seen. For anyone unfamiliar with him but familiar with Chekhov or Dostoevsky, do check his work out. It's one of those movies which really manages to capture the complexities of life and how no person is perfect and the importance of coming to grips with the positive things that 'shitty people' do and the bad things that 'good people' do. I love the climax to this film, one scene in particular and what it has to say about class and social differences.
An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) - Honestly this was 4 hours long but it felt like 2. There's no denying this is a heavy movie but for its subject matter, it seems to float through its runtime because of deeply you care about the characters by the end. It should feel very grim to get through and I guess it is in parts but you're so drawn into the world that it doesn't matter. RIP Hu Bo.
Happy Hour (2015) See above except 5 hours, however this is probably lighter in tone than An Elephant Sitting Still. It's the dynamic between the four leads, the intimate details we come to know about them and how their relationship changes over the course of the story which is what makes it so weirdly riveting. This is a must-watch for Ozu/Koreeda/Rivette fans. The workshop sequence is weirdly hypnotic and such a genius way of setting up the lead characters.
Life is Sweet (1990) - One of the great films about food and the love of it. Mike Leigh makes it look easier than it is.

Sept 2020

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) - Not gonna write too much on this as it's quite recent and quite popular on here. But Charlie Kaufman shows no signs of slowing down. As long as people give him the money, seriously someone keep giving him money.
Tomboy (2011) - I'm kinda convinced that in the two decades Celine Sciamma has been working, she might be one of the best needle droppers in cinema ever. This film just exudes empathy for its protagonist. The lead performance is what makes this so tender and charming as well.
A Face of Another (1966) - A film that never wastes its high concept premise, a stunning lead performance (considering the impediments), and a director who deserves praise equal to some of the other Japanese greats.
Muriel's Wedding (1994) - Ridley Scott said he saw this 6 times and that was enough to convince me. I hope it's enough for anyone reading this too. Best use of ABBA in a movie (sorry Mamma Mia fans). Looks so basic on the surface and yet it has some of the best cinematography in any comedy I saw last year.
Mommy (2014) - Best use of montage in the 21st century I've seen. I had a weird experience with this movie in that I found it quite irritating (I know Steve is supposed to be irritating) and then when the montage happened, everything clicked and it was an all-time favourite.

Oct 2020

Drug War (2012) - Johnnie To's direction in this is so meticulous, it's like watching competence porn. The action scenes are back-loaded but they're worth the wait. The movie builds to its climax so effortlessly and it's a tight script, not a minute wasted. At 104 minutes, you could do a hell of a lot worse for an action movie.
Ryan's Daughter (1970) - Feel like this deserves a bit more respect than it already gets in the David Lean canon. It's a case of it being compared to Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago which I feel like is why it's hard done by. The music by Maurice Jarre is fantastic and the central romance is fantastic.
The Heiress (1949) - In a career full of masterpieces, William Wyler's The Heiress stands at the top for me. I gave this a watch after Olivia de Havilland's passing this year and her performance is so so good. The ending is an all-timer for me.
The Vanishing (1988) - If you love thrillers, you owe it to yourself to watch this. Most people have seen it recognise it for the classic it is. The structure of the story takes a more innovative and different turn to how a more conventional movie would set this up.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) If you ever wanted an interesting take on a religious story, then a take by a homosexual, an atheist and a Marxist might just be the one to watch. Very respectful of the source and proof that religious movies can be great.

Nov 2020

Magic Mike XXL (2015) - Yeah honestly this slaps. This is another one of those sequels sort of akin to Mad Max Road Warrior and Fury Road, and Evil Dead 2 where it's better than the first installment because it doesn't have to spend time laboriously setting the world and the characters up. It gets straight into the story and any melodrama is avoided, it's a bro hangout movie without the baggage of 'bro culture' and there's no toxic masculinity. It's a movie that also knows its progressive without having to make it known to the audience like a lot of other (mainly Disney) blockbusters do nowadays. It also breaks rules in the cinematography and editing department by breaking the 180 degree rule. It's really low-stakes, doesn't take itself seriously at all and technically it's really well put together.
A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (2016) - One of those movies where you will never be able to guess where it ends up based on how it begins.
Blue Collar (1978) - For anyone who was a fan of the portrayal of class differences in Parasite, this is definitely worth a watch. Genuinely one of the best directorial debuts I've seen and the ending is a classic. Every character's motivation is so fleshed out and maybe features one of the more morbid death scenes in cinema as well.
The Counsellor (2013) - Yes I also enjoyed this as well lol. This is so hypnotic if you're in the right mood. This is probably one of the most cynical mainstream movies I have ever seen and you'll know within a few minutes if the dialogue is your type of thing. I did see the extended cut for this as I heard it was better than the theatrical version which seems to be a consistent thing with Ridley Scott. Bardem gives a wild performance too.
The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) - Lord is the animation in this stunning. Also this is the best adaptation of the Superman story of 2013, don't @ me.

Dec 2020

Terms of Endearment (1983) - I know the Best Picture winners of the 80s seem to get the most flack from the more recent decades, which is why I, for silly reasons, put this off for so long as I have also fallen victim to caring more about the perceived hype around a film and the awards it gets rather than just assessing a film for what it is. This is a deeply touching, heartfelt movie with I guess you could call an ensemble cast that I think honestly almost anyone could enjoy. What's great is how it avoids easy chances for melodrama and it doesn't villainise anyone in the movie, it only asks us to understand where they're coming from. For anyone Jack Nicholson fans, this is a must-watch.
Sound of Metal (2019) - This is such a compassionate and sensitive film right down to how it was cast, some of the best use of sound design I've seen in a movie in a long time. Again another movie that could've opted for easy choices in writing to create drama between Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke's characters or at Paul Raci's community. Parts of it are telegraphed and expected and yet they still hit you with the force of a train.
Centre Stage (1991) - Maybe Maggie Cheung's career-best performance? The movie itself shows how paint-by-numbers most biopics are by juxtaposing scenes of the actual cast and crew of the film discussing the story of the subject with scenes of the actors recreating the history. I'm not sure if this was influenced somewhat by Kiarostami's Close-Up from the year before, I can't imagine it as there's only a one year gap, but regardless, very impressive. Great use of music as well.
Another Round (2020 I feel like enough has been said about this already, it's certainly blowing up. Vinterberg and Mikkelsen need to work way more than they already do, The Hunt is one of the best of the last decade, and Another Round will be one of the best of this decade. The use of music is phenomenal and the movie makes me wish ensemble awards for acting existed at the Oscars because this everyone is perfect. Maybe one of the best modern movie endings I've seen.
The Up series (1964-present) - This is sort of a collective nomination as I have yet to finish it but if anyone found the central conceit of Boyhood fascinating then this is one to watch. Maybe one of the greatest social examinations conducted ever and for a society thats becoming gradually more and more class conscious, this is worth a watch. Probably not recommended to binge it as video clips from previous installments do get re-used for context because of how they were aired 7 years apart for audiences.

For anyone wondering if I'm going to list my most hated movies, unfortunately for those lot that's not something I'm going to do, as I feel like this sub already dumps on a lot of movies as it is and I don't feel the need to add onto that any further.
If you have any questions or thoughts you'd like to share, please do; a big thing that kept me going was the conversation it let me have with others.
Thanks for reading.

Hi!
I'm a high-school student that has often struggled in creating and maintaining good habits. The year 2020 is the year I finally tried to change for the better. After years of wasting time, neglecting myself, and going astray, I had to change. I had no idea what to implement or where to start. I just drafted some habits that I was interested in: reading, exercising, programming, and bettering my relationships. Doing these things was no easy feat, but at the end of year, I was in a much better place. I had read 12+ books, went on jogs regularly, talked more to my friends (although through calls), and released my first app. So, how?

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community. There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief." - The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

What helped me the most was accountability, support, and community. I would tell my friends about my "bad day" and they would pick me up. I would ask my dad to go on a run with me. I would check in with my friends, who were also running. I would get inspired by subreddits dealing with the habit. People sharing. People forming their own habits.
I wanted to build an app just for this: an app to form and share habits. A community of people forming habits. I started learning the iOS development (if you want to know a little bit more about how, leave a comment). I started spending hours each day building, debugging, revising. After a year, I finished. I can proudly say that my app has come to life.
I built Chain - The Productive Social Media, an app to form & share your habits. It works pretty simply. You form a habit, post it publicly, and track your progress. You can interact through following users, commenting, and liking and saving posts. Be addicted to becoming the best version of yourself.
This year, you can start achieving your habit goals with people around you to encourage and motivate you to climb the mountain. Here is the App Store Link. Good luck and i'm rooting for you! The app is far from perfect, but i'm getting there, please stay with me. If you have any suggestions, comments, concerns, or feedback, please send me a PM. I might be a little bit slow as i'm just one high-schooler working on this, but I'm giving this app everything I got.
Screenshots
Thanks. You can do this. Send me a PM if you download/like the app, it means a lot.

Hey,
Male 36 here, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, the inattentive type (ADD). Not only did my ADHD diagnosis gave me a whole new perspective on why I have always struggled in many areas of my life. In particular, music production, where I have over 1000 unfinished songs which I have collected over 10+ years.

What led me to my discovery of my ADD was this article https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/symptoms-of-inattentive-adhd/ (I then emailed local psychiatric clinics/ psychiatrist to ask if they do tests for ADHD). Rest is history. The 3 most effective treatments for ADD/ADHD is Medication, Meditation and Movement (exercise) .
After getting my ADHD diagnosis, trying meds and reading a lot of general books about ADHD (Driven to Distraction & ADHD 2.0 are by far the best). I began to understand that less is more for ADHD brains. Fewer distractions mean more music.I have developed a few production techniques for my ADHD brain that I want to share with other ADHD producers here.

Follow the rule of 3 in your life. In the past, I was obsessed with installing the latest plugins and trying out the latest presets packs, etc. But this leads to more distractions. So I chose to only use 3 VST synths that will cover all my needs.

Even if those 3 synths are limited, it will help me to think creatively and outside the box. I chose 3 VST synths that I think had the easiest to use user interface and not too many presets.
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2. Instead of starting new songs when you get bored of working on your current songs, make a folder with 3 songs to work on. When you get bored of song 1, you switch to song 2, when you get bored of song 2, switch to song 3. When you get bored of song 3, switch back to song 1 again.
If you get bored of all songs, take a break of a few hours or days. When you do this, you will eventually start finishing your songs. Because otherwise, you will start new song templates and those will reach to 100+ templates. When you work a little bit on 3 songs and rotate in between them, you will get more done than starting 100s of new templates.
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3. Produce with imperfections and work fast. Do not get stuck in details or 16 bar loops. ADHD minds look for perfection and this holds us back. We need to learn to overcome perfectionist thinking and get used to strive for imperfections.
That is why I always record my ideas fast, the intro, bridge, verse, chorus or whatever. Even if there are wrong notes recorded, i keep them. Because progress is more satisfying than aiming for perfection.
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4. You will be more proud and remember the imperfect songs you finished than remembering that perfect 16 bar loop you worked on for hours. After I have roughly recorded my bridge, intro etc. I roughly copy and paste the sections so it makes a full song.
When I do this, I get the feeling that i have accomplished something and that I look at a fully finished song. Then i make sure to put colors on all the sections in the song so i get a better overview.
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5. When you have roughly recorded and sketched your song, start to fine-tune each section. Remember, you should never edit when you record ideas or sketches. The recording process is separate from editing. A writer who write articles never edit while writing the first draft. The same applies for recording music. That is why i follow this principle.
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6. Do not compare yourself to others, you can only compare yourself to yourself. If it feels good, it probably is good. once you start doubting yourself, you start editing the sections too much until you get frustrated and leave the project to collect dust.
Remember, progress makes perfections, not details. No one will hear the details except for you the producer. If you have managed to translate your feelings in a roughly recorded sketch, you have succeeded.
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7. Make sure to create a start-up template in your DAW that loads with your favorite synths so you easily can get started. I use Logic Pro X.
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8. Choose your 3 VST synths that are more basic with fewer features and less fancy menus. Its all about music and not loads of features. More features mean more distractions for the ADHD mind.
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9. Choose your 3 VST synths with a few preset packs and soundsets. Otherwise, you keep downloading sounds and get addicted to just browsing sounds and not making music. Make sure your 3 VST synths are not too similar or overlap in features. You can not choose 1 because ADHD minds get bored on sameness. 3 keeps get you enough stimuli. I use Dune 1 (1-page layout and easier than version 2 and 3) and Sculpture & Retro Synth stock plugins in Logic.
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10. Keep a structure of your song ideas and sounds. Create folders like 90% finished, 3 songs to work on, songs to mix, soon finished. More details the better. As for your sounds, name them properly and create folders fr LEAD, BASS, etc.
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BONUS TIPS:

Produce in an environment outside of your home

Try to leave home at specific times or days of the week to make music in a public place like a cafe. Do not bring your internet stick with you. This keeps you focused. Apparently, studies show that you are more creative in a cafe with 70 dB background noise. I always leave home 2-3 hours a few times a week to work on music. The visual and noise stimuli from a cafe give enough stimulants to focus on music.

Meditate or exercise before each studio session

After medication, meditation and exercise have proven to be the most effective treatment for ADD/ADHD. That is why I re meditate before I start producing, some of the best songs have come after I have meditated for only 10 minutes.
Meditation resets your brain and slows your brain down. I use mindfulness meditation. Check out https://www.youtube.com/useTheHonestGuys for meditation tapes. 5-10 minutes meditation sessions per day is enough. Or when you need a break. I also exercise before each studio session.
Work with the limits of your ADHD mind and optimize your production flow according to it. The key is to limit yourself with fewer distractions.
Hope this helps.

Hey guys. I've been really into improving my practice routine lately, and there's arguably no better source for inspiration than Coltrane.
I did some digging into old interviews and tried to pull out some useful lessons.
I've posted the whole thing here, but if you'd rather read it on Medium, you can. If there are any practicing tips you stand by I'd love to hear them as well. Always looking to get better.

“You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere” — John Coltrane
Coltrane’s blistering lines and soaring beauty are often complemented with a sort of zealot mystique. It’s easy to recognize his genius, but it often feels shrouded in unattainable prestige.
Apart from his stunning music, Coltrane was known for his feverous practice sessions and obsession with harmony, so is there anything useful we can learn from a genius like Coltrane?
I believe there is always something to be learned from people who “get it”. Coltrane is no exception. In fact, his thinking is deeply insightful for any musician looking to better their playing — or even their approach to thoughtful living—precisely because he was such an introspective and analytical musician.
Here are 7 tips for bettering your never-ending practice journey—inspired by Trane himself.
#1 Take ownership of the music you love and learn all of it.
Coltrane repeatedly talks about the impact Charlie Parker (a.k.a. Bird) and Dizzy Gillespie had on his playing. He was obsessed with understanding how they were able to play like they did and was desperately trying to match it.
“I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.”
It’s easy to feel pulled in different directions as a musician. We’re told to make music that sells. Or to make music that is at least popular — or we feel pressure to make music that our friends like.
There’s an understandable tradeoff between creativity and market viability when attempting to make a living. I have a friend who makes a lot of money creating what are essentially derivative works of the most popular songs on big sync sites and then pitching them back to those same sites — and there’s no shame in that — but Coltrane understood that his growth — a.k.a. his practice, should be all-in on the style and sound he wanted to help create and discover.
In other words, own your genre. Own what you love to make. Don’t let society, your community, or your own psyche hold you back from practicing what you want to get better at. This is often a blend of what you listen to the most and what your chops are best equipped for. If you love and only want to play gypsy jazz — gear your practice toward that. If you are all-in on metal or folk. Go for it. There is no wrong answer.
Motivation is critical in practice, so once you determine what motivates you, run for it with all of your energy.
#2 Obsessively analyze and critique your weaknesses
Practicing efficiently requires knowing your weaknesses. Spotting holes in your musicianship is key to understanding what to practice. Coltrane understood this and obsessively worked at being more comfortable in different musical situations. The catch? It’s different for every person.
Working through books that Coltrane did like the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns isn’t necessarily what you need. Instead, you should always design your practice based on your unique weaknesses and goals.
Try analyzing your strengths and weaknesses by these criteria:
Scales
Chords
Improvisation
Ear Training
Composition
Phrasing (a.k.a. musical vocabulary)
Sense of Timing (rhythm)
Memorization
Think of these as your big branches and then drill down into each of them individually. Is your improvisation over a blues lacking? Why? Perhaps you need to improve your sense of rhythm and feel. Or maybe you can’t think of what to play when improvising? That means you need to hone in on your phrasing and pull out more vocabulary from your desired genre.
Then use that analysis to create a practice routine that fixes them. Continuing with the blues example, you could look up the 10 most common blues licks, strip them away to their rhythms, and then do routine metronome work playing them at slow and fast speeds while focusing exclusively on “time feel”.
#3 Relentlessly practice technicalities to unlock soundscapes
“There is never any end…there are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at. And always there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we’ve discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are . . . we have to keep on cleaning the mirror.”
Saxophonist Jimmy Heath called John the “most dedicated practitioner that he ever met,” and he was obsessed with soundscapes.
Being more technically proficient on our instruments naturally produces the ability to explore different soundscapes. Even if we understand what a Mixolydian lick sounds like in context, we won’t be able to access that sound in real-time unless we have the technical proficiency to pull it off.
There’s a difference between conceptual understanding and skill development. You can have conceptual understanding without practicing, but developing skills requires practice. It’s the difference between understanding what a butterfly stroke looks like and actually being able to do it for 25 yards [*].
Whatever “sound” you want to create, practice exactly what you need to produce it. Build specific drills around it. For example, say you wanted to intertwine darker Phrygian sounds with classic rock licks. What should you do?
Practice the Phrygian and minor pentatonic scales in all 12 keys to a metronome.
Find 3 licks in the music you like that does this.
Transcribe these licks.
Write 3 of your own licks loosely based on the licks you transcribed.
Play those licks in context with a backing track.
Loop the changes and record yourself.
Improve and iterate on the licks until switching between Phrygian and the minor pentatonic feels natural.
Test that you can still switch between those sounds in different keys and at different BPMs.
See how this uses a technical foundation and combines it with musicality to foster efficient practicing? That’s the goal.
#4 Find your heroes and join them

Thelonious Monk was a big inspiration and eventual collaborator for Coltrane.
Coltrane didn’t wait around to be “perfect” before finding his heroes and joining them and their community. He understood he needed to learn from the people who were doing what he wanted to do, so he started climbing the ladder early.
“Coltrane’s apprenticeship took place from 1946 to 1955. He was a horn-for-hire, blowing the blues out front of small groups, backing various jazz and R&B singers, adding to the punch and blend of the sax section in a number of big bands. He worked his way up the ranks, from local groups (Jimmy Heath’s big band for one; Bill Carney’s Hi-Tones, a small R&B outfit, for another) to national ensembles in the early ‘50s — like big bands led by saxophonists Johnny Hodges, and Earl Bostic, and Dizzy Gillespie, the latter demanding he switch from alto to tenor saxophone. Coltrane followed orders, and his development continued.”
Source
Competitive environments do wonders for your motivation.
Don’t waste time and use that to your advantage. Jump in headfirst and use the times you inevitably fail as benchmarks for your progress. That could mean anything from moving to a new city, attending a music program at a school, finding online communities to interact with, or simply showing up to venues and making relationships with other musicians. Don’t let doubt or fear get in the way of action.
#5 Build pattern-based thinking into your practice

https://preview.redd.it/7pi6sf4a61361.png?width=769&format=png&auto=webp&s=bdc462b77f7296932efdb4a3390e32e234f4635c
The “Coltrane Circle” — Go here for more info on this.
Coltrane was “theory mad”.
“He continually studied recordings and books about music and philosophy and created challenges for himself and other musicians based on that study: “The ‘Giant Steps’ changes were the stiffest exercise he had as yet given himself as an athlete of improvising…. Why did Coltrane do this?… He felt…he wasn’t good enough.”
Source
He would critique his playing, identify a soundscape or weakness he wanted to work on, and create musical exercises to push back or beyond them.
How can we apply this thinking? By creating patterns and mathematical exercises around a specific goal.

“All musicans are subconsciously mathematicians.” — Thelonius Monk

For example, let’s say you noticed when learning a tune that maj9 arpeggios were giving you a hard time, and you wanted to be more fluid at accessing them. Why? So you can unlock that sound in your improvisation and better your access to them.
Let’s think through this.
A “maj9” chord is made up of the 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 of the major scale.
In D, that’s D, F#, A, C#, and E.
Okay. So the simplest pattern would be to play up and down the arpeggio. So 1–3–5–7–9–7–5–3–1.
While that’s important to have in your toolset, it’s just the beginning.
Here are just a few options you could build from this:
Skipping the fifth: 1–3–7–9–7–3–1
Up 2 intervals 1 back: 1–5–3–7–5–9
Repetition of every third interval: 1–3–5–5–7–9–7–7–5–3–1–1
And then, you can add BPM and key considerations into any of these options.
For example:
Choosing any of these arpeggio patterns and cycling through the circle of 4ths: C, F, Bb, Eb, and so on.
Applying the spider technique for BPM practice: so start 60, then go to 80, then go to 70, then go to 90, then go to 80 — going up higher and then back down a bit with each repetition.
The point? It’s not just about practicing more — it’s about getting better at choosing what to practice based on your unique needs.
More on that in the next point.
#6 Practice for depth over breadth
https://preview.redd.it/hiztdqlb61361.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=99796df9102001ee945a8e3a2fae0473202425ef
Coltrane reportedly spent more than 10 hours practicing a single note. His wife even talked about hearing the sax stop and going to find John asleep with the instrument still in his mouth.
Even if the details are apocryphal, what was he doing? I suspect working intently on tone, vibrato, sustain, and single-note expression.
This is the ultimate form of depth over breadth. A man who was famous for playing “sheets of sound” practicing a single note for hours?
It’s always better to practice more thoughtfully on fewer topics than to spread yourself thin. Put another way, you can get more out of an hour and a half of focused practice than you will in 8 hours of mindless practice. This is true across any sort of learning.
Josh Waitzkin, a famous productivity coach and chess player, says that “depth beats breadth any day of the week because it opens a channel for intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.”
Josh also says that “growth comes at the point of resistance” — in other words, the best practice resides at the edge of our abilities. The edge of our abilities isn’t comfortable — if it sounds good, you probably aren’t pushing yourself.
Remember: noodling is the death of practice.
#7 Having a goal is more important than the time you put in.
On a similar note, Coltrane only practiced when he had a specific goal.
In the book “Coltrane on Coltrane” (Chris DeVito), there is an interview of Coltrane conducted in 1966 where Coltrane is asked: “About how many hours a day do you play, would you say?”
Coltrane replied: “Not too much at this time. I find that it’s only when something is, is trying to come through, you know, that I, that I really practice. And then it’s, it’s — I don’t even know how many hours, you know — it’s just all day, on and off.”
To Coltrane, practicing was pointless without understanding what he was trying to achieve.
With everything you do, understand why you’re practicing. Is it to expand your vocabulary in your genre? To develop a specific technical proficiency? To improve your sense of timing? To be more comfortable with standards? To not make a fool of yourself at a rehearsal, gig, or seminar?
You must understand your why before you can best create your how.
—
Hope you all dig this. And again, would love to hear what's been working for you. I'm starting to write about this kinda stuff more often but don't want to be spammy, so just DM me if you want me to put you on a newsletter list of sorts.

Fuck you. You useless piece of shit. You absolute waste of space and air. You uneducated, ignorant, idiotic dumb swine, you’re an absolute embarrassment to humanity and all life as a whole. The magnitude of your failure just now is so indescribably massive that one hundred years into the future your name will be used as moniker of evil for heretics. Even if all of humanity put together their collective intelligence there is no conceivable way they could have thought up a way to fuck up on the unimaginable scale you just did. When Jesus died for our sins, he must not have seen the sacrilegious act we just witnessed you performing, because if he did he would have forsaken humanity long ago so that your birth may have never become reality. After you die, your skeleton will be displayed in a museum after being scientifically researched so that all future generations may learn not to generate your bone structure, because every tiny detail anyone may have in common with you degrades them to a useless piece of trash and a burden to society. No wonder your father questioned whether or not your were truly his son, for you'd have to not be a waste of carbon matter for anyone to love you like a family member. Your birth made it so that mankind is worse of in every way you can possibly imagine, and you have made it so that society can never really recover into a state of organization. Everything has forever fallen into a bewildering chaos, through which unrecognizable core, you can only find misfortune. I would say the apocalypse is upon us but this is merely the closest word humans have for the sheer scale of horror that is now reality. You have forever condemned everyone you love and know into an eternal state of suffering, worse than any human concept of hell. You are such an unholy being, that if you step within a one hundred foot radius of a holy place or a place that has ever been deemed important by anyone, your distorted sac religious soul will ruin whatever meaning it ever had beyond repair. You are an idiotic, shiteating, dumbass ape and no one has ever loved you. Rhodes Island would have been better off if you'd never joined us. You are a lying, backstabbing, cowardly useless piece of shit and I hate you with every single part of my being. Even this worlds finest writers and poets from throughout the ages could never hope to accurately describe the scale on which you just fucked up, and how incredibly idiotic you are. Anyone that believes in any religion out there should now realize that they have been wrong this entire time, for if divine beings were real, they would never have allowed a being such as you to stain the earth and this universe. In the future there will be horror stories made about you, with the scariest part of them being that the reader has to realize that such an indescribable monster actually exists, and that the horrific events from the movie have actually taken place in the same world that they live in right now. You are the absolute embodiment of everything that has ever been wrong on this earth, yet you manage to make it so that that is only a small part of the evil that is your being. Never in the history of mankind has there been anyone that could have predicted such an eldrich abomination, but here you are. It’s hard to believe that I am seeing such an incredible failure with my own eyes, but here I am, so unfortunately I cannot deny your existence. Even if I did my very best, my vocabulary is not able to describe the sheer magnitude of the idiotic mistake that is you. Even if time travel some day will be invented, there still would not be a single soul willing to go back in time to before this moment to fix history, because having to witness such incredible horrors if they failed would have to many mental and physical drawbacks that not even the bravest soul in history would be willing to risk it. I cannot imagine the pure dread your mother must have felt when she had to carry a baby for nine months and then giving birth to such a wretched monster as you. Not a single word of the incoherent, illogical rambling you may be wanting to do to defend yourself or apologize would ever be able to make up for what you just did. The countries of the world would have wanted to make laws preventing such a terrible event like this from ever happening again, but sadly this is not possible since your horrific actions just now have shattered every form of order this world once had, making concepts such as laws irrelevant. Right from the moment I first set my eyes on you I knew you were an absolute abomination of everything that is wrong with humanity. I was hoping I would have been able to prevent your evil from being released upon this world by tagging along and keeping my eye on you, but it is clear to me now that not even the greatest efforts would have been able to prevent a terrible event in this scale from occurring. You are the worst human being, or even just being in general, that I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing. Events like the infected plague apparently only happened with the goal of teaching humanity to survive such a horrible event as the one you just created, but not even mankind’s greatest trials were able to even slightly prepare anyone for the insufferable evil you have just created. If you ever had them, your children would be preemptively killed to protect this universe from the possibility of anyone in your bloodline being even half as bad as you are, except you will never be able to have children, because not a single human being will ever want to come within a hundred mile radius of you and anything you have ever touched. You are a colossal disappointment not only to your parents, but to your ancestors and entire bloodline. The disgusting mistake that you have just made is so incredibly terrible that everyone who would ever be to hear about it would spontaneously feel an indescribable mixture of immense anger, fear and anxiety that emotionally and physically they would never truly be the same ever again. The sheer scale of your mistake, if ever to be materialized, would not only surpass the size of the world, but it would reach far beyond the edges of the known, and almost certainly the unknown universe. I could sit here and write paragraphs, nay, books describing your immense failure, yet even if I were to dedicate my life to describing the reality of what has just gone down here, and I would spend every moment of it until my heart stops beating working as hard and efficiently as possible, yet there is not even a snowballs chance in hell that I would be able to come close to transcribing the absolute shitshow you have just released upon the world. You are an irresponsible, idiotic, disgusting, unloved, horrible excuse for a living being who’s soul contains less humanity than every ginger in history combined. The absolute disgust I feel when thinking about anything that has even a slight resemblance to anything that might have to do with you and your unholy actions is so incredibly great that when I am honest about it I think that even I do not posses a consciousness great enough to comprehend my own feelings about it. When people of Columbia fought to break free from Lungmen, countless soldiers fought and lost their lives in favor of a chance at a better future for their children, they did not give their lives to have you fuck the world up beyond repair to the degree that you are doing right now. Honestly, even when technology advances and studies on the subject become more and more accurate, I do not think humanity will ever truly be able to understand what your failure actually means for the universe. My hate for you and everything you stand for is so much deeper than the depths of Shambala that you could probably take the entire Lungmen population down there and back up around twenty million times before you would have sunk to the end of my hate, and honestly, I do not want to exaggerate, but I think that that insult was low balling it such a massive amount that all mountains in this world combined would not be able to stack up to this imprecise judgement in light of the fact that when being honest, my hate is almost certainly bottomless. There is no one in this world that has ever loved you, and especially after what you just did, no one will ever love you in the future either. There is no hope that your idiotic behavior and especially your crooked soul will ever change for the better, and in fact quite the opposite might be true. By making the mistake that you just did, you have shown me that you are so incredibly hopeless that you will only devolve into a more idiotic and wretched creature than you already are. The only possible way in which your future would be brighter than the black hole your existence currently is would exclusively be because there is absolutely no conceivable way that you would even be able to sink lower than the pathetic place your current failure has put you in. Jk 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪😜😜🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂🤣🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂😂🤣🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣🤣

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