Episode 2: Using Options to protect your crown jewels when the market starts to fall
There are many ways in which Options can be traded, for income, profit, loss, insurance or to subsidise a Stock purchase and in this, the 2nd of my introductory series on Options, I’ve decided to going to cover off why you might want to buy a PUT on either an individual stock or indices to cover and protect your ‘long’ positions.
So what is a PUT exactly?
At its simplest a PUT is a type of Option you buy (or sell - see Episode 3 next Monday) which can make you money when a stock or the market is going down. (NB: You don’t actually need to own a stock to buy a PUT, it just depends on whether you want to run around the market ‘sans underwear’ and risk your private assets for no good reason – other than profit! :-) Joking aside however, the purpose of this post is to explain how the financial ‘instrument’ known as a PUT - loved and hated in equal measure, can be used for the purpose for which it was originally conceived.
Timing is pretty much everything when working with the stock market and that becomes 100 x more critical when you start trading Options. Buying a PUT at the wrong time (i.e. when the market or your stock is going upwards) is unlikely to win you many admirers and can be detrimental to your relationship if you have a shared brokerage account! J But as I mentioned in the first Episode of this series on the Covered CALL, a single Option = 100 shares; a relationship often referred to as ‘leverage.’ As such, and if you had 100 shares in Apple for example, another trader could achieve a similar holding ON A TIME LIMITED BASIS for just 1% of the money you paid for those Apple shares (less spread and commission); tempting isn’t it - $13,000 odd of stock for just $1,300. The problem however, is that at some point in the future (and unlike the Stock), an Option expires and then becomes valueless – a time few investors relish. Also, when multiple Options expire at the same time it’s known as a ‘Witching’ or even a triple Witching when stock Options, stock index futures and stock index options expire at the same time - Fun, fun, fun for the boys and girls on their Option broomsticks sans underwear, but not do good for anyone else! :-)
On the plus side however, and with a 99% theoretical leverage on your money, a PUT will gain value rapidly whenever the market or the stock it relates too goes down, and even after taking the ‘spread’ into account (that’s the difference between the ‘buy’ and the ‘sell’ price of the Option) it typically delivers anywhere from a 65: 1 to 75:1 return (profit or loss), so it’s a cheap way to insure your portfolio against a V shaped dip. It would be fair to say that PUT purchased and sold for the right reasons at the right time can go a long way towards protecting your crown jewels (Stocks) against temporary stock market downdrafts, and at the wrong time is a ruddy nuisance J
So what’s the catch?
There’s more than one actually :-) Firstly, neither stocks nor indices tend to travel up or down in nice predictable patterns – if they did, we’d all be minted by now and I probably wouldn’t these articles from the cupboard under the stairs! :-)
When you buy a PUT, it will bounce around your ticker from red to green (and then back to red again), :-) in much the same way that you would if you suddenly decided to take a stroll across a hot bed of coals to impress your friends here on Reddit, and just like those hot coals and your pretty little feet, it’s painful, unnerving and it doesn’t smell too good either! :-) But joking aside, let’s run some scenarios to show how this defensive strategy might not do what you’d like it to do;
a) Imagine your stock takes a sharp dive and up goes your PUT (65: 1 after the spread). You call your Partner and rave about your natural genius and unrivalled flare, but by the time the phone call ends and you return to your screen, you discover that the Stock has actually recovered and that pesky PUT you were just raving about has sent your ticker back in the red again! (what's the betting you don’t ring them back and confess your sins!?) J (I appreciate you could put a STOP order SELL order on your Options but due to the ways these things bounce around, it’s not always an ideal strategy to do so – see b) for why.
or
b) Maybe your stock takes that proverbial dive again but this time bottoms out and bounces along the floor for a few minutes, then you see the candlesticks starting to change, confirming that the recovery is imminent so you sell your PUT on a wave of GREEN – Yipee! J - Only to discover that for reasons unknown, the candle has melted and your Stock is now launching itself off a vertical cliff with all your money to oblivion! You start to wonder if the PUT knew it was about to be dumped and in a last act of revenge at your unfaithfulness, waited till the last possible moment when you had taken off the parachute before sticking in the boot? (It happens believe me, and it’s a very weird feeling when it does, as if someone at the brokerage firm (aka Casino) was watching your moves and had set you up) . . . :-)
But please don’t be put off (no pun intended - honest) J Buying a PUT can be a great idea, and when successfully deployed can protect your assets against downdraughts in both theory and in practice, but working with one is not as straight forward as anyone would like; it’s a bit like riding a Tandem (bicycle) with a drunk co-pilot in the lead, you both know timing is everything and where you want to get too, but getting there seems frustratingly elusive (and you keep falling off in the road!) :-)
A PUT can and will protect you and it’s a great defensive play but don’t stay in one for too long unless you know that crash in your assets is both imminent and ongoing! Timing remember is everything (x100) and walking on hot coals hurts!
Next Monday, I’ll take a closer look at using a PUT as a way to buy an underlying stock you want and get paid for the privilege, but until then; stay safe ‘guys’ and watch the market right now, it’s looking a bit choppy out there. Mark

Team has been involved in a substantial number of the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries’ most significant merger and acquisition transactions, holding key positions at, and transacting with Scientific Games Corp, Inspired Gaming Group, FOX Bets, Ocean Casino Resort, Resorts International Holdings, PokerStars, DraftKings, Mohegan Sun, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Harrah’s Entertainment, Tropicana Entertainment, Inc., TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming, Facebook, Inc, Wynn Resorts, Dubai World/MGM Resorts
Here's all the Bios. These guys are stellar! TEKK closed at $10.30 today. Still cheap!
If you don't like to read... you don't like to make money!!!!
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Matthew Davey — Chief Executive Officer and Director
Mr. Davey has over 25 years of experience within the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming ecosystems, as well as experience in the public sector. He is an experienced public company executive officer and board member. He has served in executive management positions across the gaming technology arena. Over the course of Mr. Davey’s career, he oversaw more than ten mergers and acquisitions and over $1.2 billion in debt and equity capital raised to support the companies he has led.
Most recently, Mr. Davey was Chief Executive Officer of SG Digital, the Digital Division of Scientific Games Corp. (“Scientific Games”) (Nasdaq: SGMS). SG Digital was established following the purchase by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Limited (“NYX”) (formerly TSXV: NYX), where Mr. Davey served as Chief Executive Officer and Director. The NYX acquisition provided Scientific Games with a vehicle to significantly accelerate the scale and breadth of its existing digital gaming business, including the strategic expansion into sports betting. In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of NYX, Mr. Davey developed and implemented a corporate strategy that generated strong revenue growth. Mr. Davey shaped company strategy to focus on digital gaming supplier platforms and content that provided various gaming operators with the underlying gaming and sports betting systems for their online gaming business. In 2014, Mr. Davey oversaw the initial public offering of NYX, and his experience in the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries helped NYX recognize momentum as a public company. After the public offering, from 2014 to 2018, Mr. Davey oversaw seven acquisitions which helped establish NYX as one of the fastest growing global B2B real-money digital gaming and sports betting platforms. These acquisitions included:
• OpenBet: In 2016, NYX completed the $385 million acquisition of OpenBet. This was one of the more complex and transformative acquisitions that Mr. Davey oversaw at NYX. Through securing co-investments from William Hill (LSE: WMH), Sky Betting & Gaming and The Stars Group (formerly Nasdaq: TSG, TSX: TSGI), Mr. Davey was able to get the acquisition from Vitruvian Partners completed successfully, winning the deal against much larger and well capitalized competitors. By combining two established and proven B2B betting and gaming suppliers, NYX was well positioned to provide customers with exciting player-driven solutions across all major product verticals and distribution channels. This allowed NYX to become the leading B2B omni-channel sportsbook platform in the market and the supplier to over 300 gaming operators globally with an extensive library of desktop and mobile game titles, including more than 700 on NYX platforms and more than 2,000 on the OpenBet platform.
• Cryptologic/Chartwell: In 2015, NYX completed the $119 million acquisition of Cryptologic and Chartwell. The acquisition provided NYX with more than 400 titles of additional leading gaming content, a broader customer base, and direct exposure to PokerStars and Intercasino, part of the Gamesys Group (LSE: GYS) — two of the world’s largest online casino offerings.
• OnGame: In 2014, NYX completed the distressed acquisition of OnGame, a premier poker content, platform and service provider. This acquisition provided NYX with one of the best poker products in the industry, access to several regulated jurisdictions, and a valuable talent pool that was instrumental in the growth of NYX. The addition of OnGame further established a path for NYX to continue its growth in both European and U.S. markets.
These acquisitions, together with meaningful organic growth, increased NYX’s revenue from $24 million in 2014 to $184 million annualized in 2017. During that time, Mr. Davey helped build NYX to have over 200 customers in the global gaming industry and a team of 1,000 employees. Mr. Davey’s success at NYX ultimately led to its sale to Scientific Games for $631 million in 2018.
Mr. Davey joined Next Gen Gaming, the predecessor to NYX, in 2000 as the Vice President of Technology, was appointed as Executive Director in 2003 and named Chief Executive Officer in 2005. Prior to that, he was the Senior Consultant for Access Systems, a company that specializes in the provision of back-end software for licensed online casinos. Prior to joining Access, Mr. Davey worked for the Northern Territory Government specializing in matters pertaining to the internet and e-commerce along with roles in the Department of Racing and Gaming. Mr. Davey received a Bachelor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Northern Territory University, Australia (also known as Charles Darwin University).
Robin Chhabra — President
Mr. Chhabra has been at the forefront of corporate acquisition activity within the digital gaming landscape for over a decade. His prior experience includes leading corporate strategy, M&A, and business development at two of the global leaders in the digital gaming industry, The Stars Group (“TSG”) and William Hill, and a leading supplier, Inspired Gaming Group (Nasdaq: INSE). Mr. Chhabra served on the Group Executive Committees of each of these companies. From 2017 to May 2020, Mr. Chhabra served as Chief Corporate Development Officer at TSG and, from 2019 to August 2020, he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Fox Bet, a leading U.S. online gaming business which is the product of a landmark partnership between TSG and FOX Sports, a transaction which he led. During that period, Mr. Chhabra led several transactions which transformed TSG into the largest publicly listed online gambling operator in the world by both revenue and market capitalization and one of the most diversified from a product and geographic perspective with revenues of over $2.5 billion. Mr. Chhabra’s M&A experience is extensive and covers multiple global geographies across the digital gaming value chain and includes the following:
• TSG/Flutter Entertainment Merger: In 2019, Mr. Chhabra led the TSG M&A team that was responsible for TSG’s $12.2 billion merger with Flutter Entertainment (LSE: FLTR). The merger between TSG and Flutter Entertainment is the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date. The combination created the largest publicly listed online gaming company with approximately 13 million active customers and leading product offerings, which include sports betting, online casino, fantasy sports and poker. The combined entity includes some of the world’s most iconic digital gaming brands such as Fanduel, Fox Bet, Sky Bet, PaddyPower, Betfair, PokerStars and SportsBet. TSG/Flutter Entertainment is one of the most geographically diverse digital gaming and media companies with leading positions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany and Georgia.
• TSG/Sky Betting and Gaming (“SBG”): In 2018, Mr. Chhabra led the acquisition of SBG from CVC Capital Partners and Sky plc, Europe’s largest media company, in a transaction valued at $4.7 billion. At the time of the acquisition SBG was the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom and one of the fastest growing of the major operators having doubled its online market share in three years. The acquisition of SBG provided TSG with (a) greater revenue diversification, significantly enhanced expertise and exposure to sports betting just ahead of the judicial overturn of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) by the U.S. Supreme Court, (b) a leading position within the United Kingdom, the world’s largest regulated online gaming market, (c) improved products and technology as a result of the addition of SBG’s innovative casino and sports book offerings and a portfolio of popular mobile apps, and (d) expertise in deeply integrating sports betting with leading sports media companies, positioning TSG to create more engaging content, deliver faster growth and decrease customer acquisition costs.
• William Hill (LSE: WMH): At William Hill, from 2010 to 2017, Mr. Chhabra served as Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Development where he led several transactions which contributed to William Hill’s transformation from a land-based gambling operator in the United Kingdom to a leading online-led international business. Mr. Chhabra led William Hill’s entry into the U.S. sports betting and online lottery markets with the acquisition of four businesses, including the simultaneous acquisitions of three U.S. sportsbooks, Cal Neva, American Wagering and Brandywine Bookmaking, in 2011 for an aggregate purchase price of $55 million. These businesses ultimately led William Hill to achieve a leading position in the U.S. sports betting market with a market share of 24% in 2019. Additionally, Mr. Chhabra played a key role in structuring William Hill’s successful joint venture with PlayTech Plc (LSE: PTEC) in 2008. The combined entity created one of the largest online gambling businesses in Europe at the time of its formation and led to William Hill’s buyout of Playtech’s interest for $637 million in 2013. Prior to the transaction, William Hill had struggled in its attempt to establish a strong online gaming platform and a meaningful presence outside the United Kingdom.
Mr. Chhabra has also successfully completed four transactions worth over $1.2 billion in Australia, the world’s second largest regulated online gambling market, and various partnerships in Asia. Additionally, he completed several technology and media related transactions, including William Hill’s investment in NYX, where he worked with Mr. Davey on NYX’s transformational acquisition of OpenBet.
Prior to working in the gaming sector, Mr. Chhabra was an equities analyst and a management consultant. Mr. Chhabra received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Eric Matejevich — Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Matejevich is a seasoned gaming executive with extensive experience in both the online gaming and traditional casino industries. From February to August 2019, he served as Trustee and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Casino Resort (“Ocean”) (formerly Revel Casino, which had a construction cost of $2.4 billion) in Atlantic City, where he successfully led the management team through an ownership change and operational turnaround effort. Over the course of seven months, Mr. Matejevich managed to reduce the property’s weekly cash burn of $1.5 million to an annualized cash flow run rate in excess of $20 million.
Prior to Ocean, from 2016 to 2018, Mr. Matejevich served as the Chief Financial Officer of NYX. At NYX, he focused his efforts on integrating the company’s many acquisitions and multiple debt refinancings to simplify its capital structure and provided liquidity for growth initiatives. Additionally, Mr. Matejevich was instrumental to the executive team that sold NYX to Scientific Games for $631 million.
Prior to NYX, from 2004 to 2014, Mr. Matejevich was the Chief Financial Officer of Resorts International Holdings and later, from 2011, also the Chief Operating Officer of the Atlantic Club Casino, a property under the Resorts International Holdings umbrella — a Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY) entity. As Chief Financial Officer, he provided managerial oversight for all finance functions for a six-property casino company with annual gaming revenue exceeding $1.3 billion, 10,000 gaming positions, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 11,000 staff members during his tenure. Mr. Matejevich led the transition effort to integrate a four-casino, $1.3 billion acquisition from Harrah’s Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR). As Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Club, he lobbied for and was successful in obtaining the first internet gaming legislation passed in the United States. The Atlantic Club was the sole New Jersey casino proponent of the legislation.
Prior to serving in various gaming positions, Mr. Matejevich was a Vice President of High Yield Research for Merrill Lynch, where he managed the corporate bond research effort for the gaming and leisure sectors and marketed high yield and other debt transactions totaling $4.8 billion. Mr. Matejevich received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Our Board of Directors
Morris Bailey — Chairman
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Bailey has been a leader in turning around Atlantic City, as well as being among the first gaming executives to embrace online gaming and sports betting in the United States. In his efforts, Mr. Bailey partnered with two of the largest digital gaming companies in the world, PokerStars, part of the Stars Group, and DraftKings (Nasdaq: DKNG). In 2010, Mr. Bailey bought Resorts Atlantic City (“Resorts”) and initiated a comprehensive renovation which allowed for the property to be rebranded and repositioned. In 2012, Mr. Bailey signed an agreement with Mohegan Sun to manage the day-to-day operations of the casino. In addition to Mohegan Sun’s operational expertise and ability to reduce costs via economies of scale, Resorts gained access to their robust customer database. Soon thereafter, Mr. Bailey and his team focused on bringing online gaming to the property. In 2015, Resorts established a platform to engage in online gaming by partnering with PokerStars, now part of the $24 billion Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR), to operate an online poker room in Atlantic City. In 2018, Resorts announced deals with DraftKings and SBTech to open a sportsbook on-property and online. For 2020 year-to-date, Resorts has performed in the top quartile in internet gross gaming revenue in New Jersey. Mr. Bailey’s efforts in New Jersey helped set the framework for expansion of online sports and gaming throughout the United States.
In addition to his gaming interests, Mr. Bailey has over 50 years of experience in all facets of real estate development, asset M&A, capital markets and operations and is the founder, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of JEMB Realty, a leading real estate development, investment and management organization. Mr. Bailey has notable investment experience within the energy, finance and telecommunications sectors through investments in the Astoria Energy Plant, Basis Investment Group and Xentris Wireless.
Tony Rodio — Director Nominee
Mr. Rodio has nearly four decades of experience in the gaming industry. Most recently, Mr. Rodio served as the Chief Executive Officer and director of Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“Caesars”) (Nasdaq: CZR), one of the world’s most diversified casino-entertainment providers and the most geographically diverse U.S. casino-entertainment company, from April 2019 until its acquisition by Eldorado Resorts, Inc. in July 2020. Mr. Rodio led Caesars through its $17.3 billion merger with Eldorado Resorts, one of the largest transactions in the gaming industry to date. Additionally, Mr. Rodio was instrumental to Caesars’ expansion into the digital gaming industry and oversaw the implementation of new digital segments such as its Scientific Games powered retail sportsbook solution that now operates in various states throughout the U.S. From October 2018 to May 2019, Mr. Rodio served as Chief Executive Officer of Affinity Gaming. Prior to Affinity Gaming, he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Tropicana Entertainment, Inc. (“Tropicana”) for over seven years, where he was responsible for the operation of eight casino properties in seven different jurisdictions. During his time at Tropicana, Mr. Rodio oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at the company, improving overall financial results with net revenue that increased more than 50% driven by both operational improvements and expansion across regional markets. Mr. Rodio led major capital projects, including the complete renovation of Tropicana Atlantic City and Tropicana’s move to land-based operations in Evansville, Indiana. Each of these initiatives, among others, generated substantial value for Tropicana. Ultimately, Mr. Rodio’s efforts at Tropicana led to its sale to Eldorado Resorts in 2018 for $1.85 billion. Prior to Tropicana, Mr. Rodio held a succession of executive positions in Atlantic City for casino brands, including Trump Marina Hotel Casino, Harrah’s Entertainment (predecessor to Caesars), the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort and Penn National Gaming. He has also served as a director of several professional and charitable organizations, including Atlantic City Alliance, United Way of Atlantic County, the Casino Associations of New Jersey and Indiana, AtlantiCare Charitable Foundation and the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming Hospitality & Tourism. Mr. Rodio brings extensive knowledge of and experience in the gaming industry, operational expertise, and a demonstrated ability to effectively design and implement company strategy. Mr. Rodio received a Bachelor of Science from Rider University and a Master of Business Administration from Monmouth University.
Marlon Goldstein — Director Nominee
Mr. Goldstein is a licensed attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in the gaming space. He joined The Stars Group (Nasdaq: TSG)(TSX: TSGI) in January 2014 as its Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary until his retirement from the company in July 2020 following the merger of TSG with Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR). Mr. Goldstein also previously served as the Executive Vice-President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of TSG. Mr. Goldstein was also the senior TSG executive based in the United States and was one of the primary architects of TSG’s strategic vision for its U.S.-facing business. During his tenure, TSG grew from an approximately $500 million market-cap company to an approximately $7 billion market-cap company through a combination of organic growth and strategic mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Goldstein participated in numerous M&A transactions and capital markets offerings at TSG, including several transformational transactions in the digital gaming industry. Notable transactions in which Mr. Goldstein was involved include:
• TSG/Flutter Merger: In 2019, TSG merged with Flutter for a $12.2 billion transaction value, the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date.
• TSG/Fox Bet Partnership: In 2019, TSG entered into a partnership with FOX Sports to create FOX Bet in the U.S., a leading U.S. online gaming business. Wall Street Research estimates an approximate $1.1 billion valuation for Fox Bet post-partnership with The Stars Group.
• TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming: In 2018, TSG acquired Sky Betting & Gaming, the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom at the time, for $4.7 billion.
• TSG/CrownBet and William Hill: In 2018, TSG simultaneously acquired CrownBet and William Hill, two Australian operators, for a total of $621 million in a multi-part transaction.
• TSG/PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker: In 2014, TSG acquired The Rational Group, which operated PokerStars and Full Tilt and was the world’s largest poker business, for $4.9 billion.
Through his ability to legally structure large and complex transactions, Mr. Goldstein was integral to TSG’s vision of becoming a full-service online gaming company. Additionally, he assisted in structuring TSG’s capital markets activity, which generated liquidity for acquisitions and strengthened its balance sheet.
Prior to joining TSG, Mr. Goldstein was a principal shareholder in the corporate and securities practice at the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig P.A., where he practiced for almost 13 years. Mr. Goldstein’s practice focused on corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, and financing transactions. Additionally, Mr. Goldstein was the founder and co-chair of the firm’s Gaming Practice, a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys representing owners, operators and developers of gaming facilities, manufacturers and suppliers of gaming devices, investment banks and lenders in financing transactions, and Indian tribes in the development and financing of gaming facilities.
Mr. Goldstein brings experience and insight that we believe will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target business. Mr. Goldstein received a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in accounting from Emory University and a Juris Doctorate with highest honors from the University of Florida, College of Law.
Sean Ryan — Director Nominee
Mr. Ryan is a digital media and technology operator with extensive global experience in online payments, e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile ad networks, digital games, enterprise collaboration platforms, blockchain, real money gaming and online music. Since 2014, Mr. Ryan has been serving as Vice President of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) (Nasdaq: FB), where he leads a more than 500 person global organization that manages the Payments, Commerce, Novi/Blockhain, Workplace and Audience Network businesses. Prior to his current role, Mr. Ryan was hired in 2011 as the Director of Games Partnerships to lead and grow the global Games business at Facebook. While the Director of Games Partnerships, Mr. Ryan focused on re-shaping Facebook’s games and monetization strategies to derive more value for Facebook, its users and its partners, including the addition of a Real Money Gaming offering in regulated markets. Mr. Ryan’s team helped accelerate a major trend in engagement through cross-platform games and therefore the opportunity to increase users through establishing games on multiple platforms. Prior to joining Facebook, Mr. Ryan created the new social and mobile games division at News Corp, an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by Rupert Murdoch. While at News Corp, Mr. Ryan led the acquisition of Making Fun, a San Francisco social-game start-up, that created News Corp’s games publishing division.
Before joining News Corp., Mr. Ryan founded multiple digital businesses such as Twofish, Meez, Open Wager and SingShot Media. Mr. Ryan co-founded Twofish in 2009, a virtual goods and services platform that provided developers with data analytics and insights for individual application’s digital economies. Twofish was later sold to online payments provider Live Gamer, where Mr. Ryan served on the board of directors. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Ryan founded and led Meez.com, a social entertainment service combining avatars, web games and virtual worlds. The white label social casino gaming company Open Wager was spun out of Meez and was later sold to VGW Holdings, Mr. Ryan also co-founded SingShot Media, an online karaoke community, which was sold to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) and merged into its Sims division.
We believe Mr. Ryan’s experience will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target and would provide an expanded perspective on the digital gaming landscape. Mr. Ryan received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Tom Roche — Director Nominee
Mr. Roche has more than 40 years of experience in the gaming industry as a regulator, advisor and independent auditor. Mr. Roche joined Ernst & Young (“EY”) as a partner in 2003 and opened its Las Vegas office. He was subsequently appointed as the Office Managing Partner and Global Gaming Industry Market Leader. In 2016, Mr. Roche relocated to the EY Hong Kong office to supervise the expansion of the EY Global Gaming Industry practice in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Roche has been integral to numerous transactions that have shaped the current gaming landscape, including:
• Wynn Resorts (Nasdaq: WYNN) initial public offering: Mr. Roche was the lead partner on Wynn Resort’s initial public offering, which raised $450 million in 2002.
• Harrah’s Entertainment/Apollo Management Group & Texas Pacific Group: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory advisory services on the buyout of Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company at the time, for $17.1 billion.
• Dubai World/MGM Resorts: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory and due diligence advisory services to Dubai World in its approximately $5.1 billion investment in MGM. Dubai World bought 28.4 million MGM shares, or 9.5 percent of the casino operator, for $2.4 billion. It then invested $2.7 billion to acquire a 50% stake in MGM’s CityCenter Project, a $7.4 billion 76-acre Las Vegas development of hotels, condos and retail outlets.
• MGM Growth Properties (NYSE: MGP) initial public offering: Mr. Roche provided tax and structural transaction services to MGM Resorts in the creation of MGM Growth Properties, a publicly traded REIT engaged in the acquisition, ownership and leasing of large-scale destination entertainment and leisure resorts. MGM Growth Properties raised $1.05 billion in its 2016 initial public offering.
Mr. Roche also directed EY advisory services to boards and management teams for profit improvement and technology related initiatives. In addition, Mr. Roche provided advisory support to the American Gaming Association on several research projects, including those specifically related to sports betting, the revocation of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) and anti-money laundering best practices in the gaming industry. Equally, he has assisted government agencies in numerous international locations with enhancing their regulatory approach to governing the industry especially in the online gambling sector.
Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Roche served as Deloitte’s National Gaming Industry Leader and as the co-head of Andersen’s Gaming Industry Practice in Las Vegas. In 1989, Mr. Roche was appointed by then Governor of the State of Nevada, Robert Miller, to serve as one of three members of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board for a four-year term, where he was directly responsible for the Audit and New Games Lab Divisions. As a board member, he spent a substantial amount of time assisting global jurisdiction regulators enact gaming legislation in the design of their regulatory structure. During his career, Roche has been involved in numerous public and private offerings of equity and debt securities. His background includes providing casino regulatory consulting services to casino licensees and to federal and state agencies including the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and industry associations such as the Nevada Resort Association and the American Gaming Association.
We believe Mr. Roche’s highly regarded reputation as a gaming auditor and advisor in the gaming industry will be valuable for us and a potential business combination target. Mr. Roche is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is licensed by the Nevada State Board of Accountancy and Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Southern California.

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
► Trump commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Edit: thanks for the awards, credit should also go to u/victorvictor1 who originally composed this list. Also, please share so that more people can see this

Period: 364.05 days

	Submissions	Comments
Total	1000	3465
Rate (per day)	2.75	9.48
Unique Redditors	235	1337
Combined Score	44480	12132

Top Submitters' Top Submissions

1. 4310 points, 85 submissions: Superbuddhapunk
   
   1. Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead software engineer for the Apollo Program, stands next to the code she wrote by hand that took Humanity to the moon in 1969. (252 points, 15 comments)
   2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Geocache in Northern Italy (241 points, 10 comments)
   3. Cleaning tips from CleaningTips (194 points, 3 comments)
   4. Cheesy Origins - The etymologies behind the names of some of the world's most popular cheeses. (169 points, 45 comments)
   5. Around the World in 50 traditional breakfast dishes (155 points, 30 comments)
   6. Roosevelt dime 10c coin Mint error, off center strikes (142 points, 7 comments)
   7. President Obama Roasts Donald Trump At White House Correspondents’ Dinner (2011) (138 points, 30 comments)
   8. Beautiful elderly Common Snapping Turtle just coming to say Hello. Spring Lake, San Marcos, TX (137 points, 6 comments)
   9. Christmas tree in the main hall of the Galleries Lafayette department store in Paris, France. (124 points, 5 comments)
   10. Not open during a CAT 5 hurricane? 1 star for you! (119 points, 7 comments)
2. 3607 points, 135 submissions: 0and18
   
   1. The final Calvin and Hobbes strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995 (170 points, 6 comments)
   2. ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,’ by Hunter S. Thompson (85 points, 3 comments)
   3. Between 1995 and 2000 music companies were found to have used illegal marketing agreements such as minimum advertised pricing to artificially inflate prices of compact discs in order to end price wars by discounters such as Best Buy and Target in the early 1990s. (81 points, 1 comment)
   4. Yuki-toKori discovers his new jeans have a hidden inside pocket for a condom (80 points, 12 comments)
   5. Geof Darrow’s Hard Boiled (77 points, 2 comments)
   6. His Face All Red by Emily Carroll (73 points, 4 comments)
   7. American Public School teachers do not get paid over summer break. (68 points, 45 comments)
   8. The Pervert Who Changed America: How Larry Flynt Fought the Law and Won (66 points, 0 comments)
   9. This chart shows the most common display resolutions, makes zero sense to me. (64 points, 17 comments)
   10. Two Michiganders arrive in hell (64 points, 3 comments)
3. 2511 points, 38 submissions: InvisibleLemons
   
   1. The House of Slaves in Gorée Island, Senegal, is a museum and memorial dedicated to the Atlantic slave trade that some believe served as a major trading port for slaves captured from Africa. It's argued that up to 15 million people were put through the “Door of No Return” and shipped off as slaves. (175 points, 2 comments)
   2. Anna Bērzkalne was the first Latvian to earn a degree in Folkloric Studies. She purposely wrote her thesis in English rather than German as a form of non-violent resistance against the Nazi occupation of Latvia during World War II. Her degree was not recognized by the Soviet authorities. (138 points, 2 comments)
   3. Losing a language means more than the disappearance of words. This six-part film and multimedia experience follows four Indigenous communities who are revitalizing their languages and cultures. (136 points, 5 comments)
   4. Hilma af Klint belonged to "The Five", a circle of women who shared her belief in the importance of trying to make contact with what she called the High Masters, often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas. (129 points, 7 comments)
   5. Stephen Duneier, aka Yarn Bomber, has the world record for the largest crochet granny square made by a single person. The granny square measures 1,311 square feet, weighs over 60 pounds, took two years to make, and has over a half million stitches. (120 points, 7 comments)
   6. Fictional Map from one of my favorite book series as a child, Dinotopia (117 points, 7 comments)
   7. The indigenous city of Cahokia, across the river from St. Louis, is thought have had at most 40,000 people living there. Cahokia was large enough to have suburbs and had an equal pop. to London in the 1200s. No city would have surpassed it's pop. in north America until Philadelphia in the 1780s (112 points, 8 comments)
   8. Rand Paul was the national debt for halloween in 2015. He said it was a very scary costume. (104 points, 23 comments)
   9. World's Largest Rubber Stamp in Cleveland, Ohio (104 points, 7 comments)
   10. In 1949, Warren Buffett, the most successful investor in the world, was infatuated with a young woman whose boyfriend had a ukulele. In an attempt to compete, he bought a ukulele and has been playing it ever since, often at stock meetings. (93 points, 3 comments)
4. 2256 points, 58 submissions: sbroue
   
   1. A successful slave rebellion against the French made Haiti the second independent nation in the Americas. (118 points, 2 comments)
   2. Rare 300-Year-Old 'Beard Tax' Coin Discovered in Russia (112 points, 4 comments)
   3. The song Funiculi Funicula was composed to celebrate the opening of a Funicular railway up Mt Vesuvius (87 points, 5 comments)
   4. Wave Rock West Australia (87 points, 4 comments)
   5. Internet trolls are not who I thought — they're even scarier (77 points, 2 comments)
   6. Ethiopian 18th Century crown returns home (75 points, 1 comment)
   7. The Shocking True Tale Of The Mad Genius Who Invented Sea-Monkeys (75 points, 6 comments)
   8. When America Despised the Irish: The 19th Century’s Refugee Crisis (71 points, 0 comments)
   9. Blue Weevils "wrestling" (70 points, 8 comments)
   10. Step Inside the World's Most Dangerous Garden (If You Dare) (70 points, 4 comments)
5. 1879 points, 49 submissions: tillandsia
   
   1. What do you mean we, paleface? (128 points, 4 comments)
   2. In the myth of Narcissus, Nemesis, goddess of revenge, decides to punish Narcissus. She lures him to a pool, where he leans upon the water and sees himself in the bloom of youth. Falling deeply in love with his reflection, and unable to leave, he melts away, eventually turning into a flower. (112 points, 2 comments)
   3. Fragment of a Queen's Face, possibly either Queen Nefertiti or Tiye, Egypt, New Kingdom, Amarna period, ca. 1353-1336 B.C. (97 points, 4 comments)
   4. Pumpkin Spice Latte Tiramisu (81 points, 17 comments)
   5. 1970s Key West (76 points, 12 comments)
   6. The garbage pickup on my street, before covid, was always sometimes a minute before 8 am, sometimes a couple of minutes after. Sitting in the house, drinking my coffee on Monday and Thursday mornings, I'd always know what time it was when I'd hear the truck. (74 points, 3 comments)
   7. How to make spaetzel, a pasta made with fresh eggs (68 points, 6 comments)
   8. ‘The Death of Marat’: A Powerful Painting of One of the French Revolution’s Most Famous Murders (66 points, 8 comments)
   9. Color Aid Paper, used in art school to teach Josef Albers' theory of color (62 points, 5 comments)
   10. Not a lizard nor a dinosaur, tuatara is the sole survivor of a once-widespread reptile group (62 points, 1 comment)
6. 1857 points, 26 submissions: Mr_Caterpillar
   
   1. Diane's NPR ringtones [Bojack Horseman] (227 points, 15 comments)
   2. The Hulk throws a bear into space (173 points, 15 comments)
   3. Bryan Cranston tells the story of an ad-libbed joke as dentist Tim Whatley on Seinfeld (133 points, 3 comments)
   4. There's something about holding a good, solid mace in your hand (124 points, 8 comments)
   5. Side-by-Side scenes from Ghost in the Shell and the original animated film (107 points, 7 comments)
   6. Twilight in Prague (97 points, 2 comments)
   7. Roller Derby Fact [SLAM #1] (91 points, 3 comments)
   8. Tracer Bullet - Calvin and Hobbes' hardboiled detective parody (89 points, 4 comments)
   9. Mapping out the evolution of Rock Music from the film School of Rock (88 points, 24 comments)
   10. Ronald Jenkees started his career by making music in his bedroom and posting to youtube. This is his song "Try The Bass" (77 points, 10 comments)
7. 1120 points, 27 submissions: coiso
   
   1. a high school football coach got half the fans of his own team to cheer for the other team, because the other team was from a maximum-security juvenile correctional facility and didn't have any fans of their own (157 points, 5 comments)
   2. Animals see more colours than humans. Here's a chart. (135 points, 16 comments)
   3. If a beta male mandrill wins a fight, it physically morphs into an alpha male over time, gaining facial coloration, bigger testicles, and the ability to breed.) (95 points, 6 comments)
   4. Urinetown - a 3 times tony award winner musical about a town where private toilets are outlawed... (68 points, 5 comments)
   5. Stormtrooper hits his head (63 points, 4 comments)
   6. The story of grindcore: "This isn't metal, it isn't punk, I don't know what the f**k these guys are doing" (61 points, 1 comment)
   7. the longest single set at the laugh factory lasted 7h and 34m (by Dane Cook in 2008). (58 points, 64 comments)
   8. 5 Ways to Spot Greenwashing (51 points, 1 comment)
   9. Jeffrey Dahmer’s Childhood Friend Talks About His Graphic Novel "My Friend Dahmer" and Its Movie Adaptation (41 points, 3 comments)
   10. Daily life in Russia – gallery by The Guardian readers (38 points, 1 comment)
8. 1097 points, 23 submissions: gorditasimpatica
   
   1. “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” (126 points, 3 comments)
   2. The First Labor Strike in History: In 1159 BCE, the tomb-builders and artisans at Set-Ma’at refused to wait any longer for their wages and marched toward the city shouting “We are hungry!” (125 points, 2 comments)
   3. Get the feel of a winner, 1978 Sears Catalog (104 points, 6 comments)
   4. Polls are not always right (90 points, 38 comments)
   5. "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism..." (84 points, 4 comments)
   6. The Sonoran Desert is thought to have the greatest species diversity of any desert in North America, including 60 species of mammals, 350 bird species, 20 amphibians, 100 reptiles, 30 species of native fish and more than 2,000 species of plants (77 points, 5 comments)
   7. They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues..." Brendan Behan (76 points, 6 comments)
   8. "Lafayette We Are Here" (59 points, 2 comments)
   9. The Wuppertal Suspension Railway is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. Designed by Eugen Langen, it opened in 1901 and is still in use as public transport, moving 25 million passengers annually. (56 points, 2 comments)
   10. Mugshot model Jeremy Meeks continues his topless runway streak (44 points, 1 comment)
9. 1062 points, 18 submissions: eladarling
   
   1. Ways the Great Lakes try to Murder Ships - illustrated (219 points, 17 comments)
   2. The Dunning-Kruger Effect: the least competent are more likely to overestimate their ability (123 points, 4 comments)
   3. Before video games, Nintendo sold a variety of other products including playing cards depicting nude women, and by-the-hour sex hotels. Their first big customer was the Yakuza, who used their cards in illegal casinos. (106 points, 6 comments)
   4. Earl Grey tea is black tea flavored with oil of bergamot, a green citrus fruit grown mostly in Italy (105 points, 9 comments)
   5. "At Last," Etta James's signature song that most people today associate with her (75 points, 3 comments)
   6. One of the largest piñatas on record was a 65 ft tall donkey filled with 8000 lb of candy. It was smashed open with a wrecking ball to release the sweets inside. (74 points, 3 comments)
   7. World Islands, a cluster of man-made islands in Dubai, was supposed to be a lavish multicultural paradise. Most are still undeveloped or abandoned due to economic, climate, and construction issues. (62 points, 3 comments)
   8. What If God Was One of Us - Joan Osborne (56 points, 2 comments)
   9. GonzoVR was a short lived VR app where users could drive an rc car around my living room and buy treats for my dog Gonzo (40 points, 4 comments)
   10. Hysteria High: How Demons Destroyed a Florida School (35 points, 1 comment)
10. 1024 points, 22 submissions: ShimataDominquez
    
    1. The head of a tapeworm under an electron microscope (256 points, 19 comments)
    2. What happens when you have heated tile flooring (150 points, 4 comments)
    3. Jon Stewart Deep Dish Rant (84 points, 14 comments)
    4. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida The Simpsons take on a Psychedelic Rock classic (82 points, 4 comments)
    5. Ewoks should have met a terrible fate, scientists say (46 points, 0 comments)
    6. Robocop Commercials (38 points, 2 comments)
    7. Green Onions (32 points, 1 comment)
    8. The Jetsons! (32 points, 0 comments)
    9. Frank Lloyd Wright, a narcissist and control freak. (31 points, 8 comments)
    10. Why is smiling being frowned upon in the Russian culture? (31 points, 11 comments)

Top Commenters

1. 0and18 (659 points, 466 comments)
2. jostler57 (145 points, 40 comments)
3. Otterfan (139 points, 19 comments)
4. Superbuddhapunk (124 points, 43 comments)
5. astronoob (110 points, 7 comments)
6. anotherkeebler (101 points, 23 comments)
7. Goyteamsix (94 points, 21 comments)
8. goofballl (85 points, 14 comments)
9. thespaceghetto (84 points, 20 comments)
10. swizzler (81 points, 21 comments)

Top Submissions

1. The head of a tapeworm under an electron microscope by ShimataDominquez (256 points, 19 comments)
2. Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead software engineer for the Apollo Program, stands next to the code she wrote by hand that took Humanity to the moon in 1969. by Superbuddhapunk (252 points, 15 comments)
3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Geocache in Northern Italy by Superbuddhapunk (241 points, 10 comments)
4. It's Dangerous to go Alone... by yankee4357 (228 points, 11 comments)
5. Diane's NPR ringtones [Bojack Horseman] by Mr_Caterpillar (227 points, 15 comments)
6. Ways the Great Lakes try to Murder Ships - illustrated by eladarling (219 points, 17 comments)
7. How a deep sea blobfish looks with and without the extreme water pressure by Imaginary-Cow (216 points, 10 comments)
8. How to Talk Minnesotan: The Power of the Negative by SteelWool (203 points, 5 comments)
9. Cleaning tips from CleaningTips by Superbuddhapunk (194 points, 3 comments)
10. All movies on IMDB are rated on a ten-point scale. All except one. by anotherkeebler (188 points, 9 comments)

Top Comments

1. 48 points: jesseaknight's comment in In the show St. Elsewhere, a character in the finale is shown to have thought of the whole series, which means he also made up all the shows that had crossovers with St. Elsewhere. This expands into the shows that were mentioned in the shows. There is at this point 419 shows in this universe
2. 44 points: Derosa6037's comment in the longest single set at the laugh factory lasted 7h and 34m (by Dane Cook in 2008).
3. 43 points: astronoob's comment in Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead software engineer for the Apollo Program, stands next to the code she wrote by hand that took Humanity to the moon in 1969.
4. 42 points: rus_reddit's comment in Rand Paul was the national debt for halloween in 2015. He said it was a very scary costume.
5. 40 points: thejesiah's comment in Close Encounters of the Third Kind Geocache in Northern Italy
6. 38 points: electro_hippie's comment in Why is smiling being frowned upon in the Russian culture?
7. 37 points: SlideNERD's comment in The head of a tapeworm under an electron microscope
8. 37 points: wtfisthisnoise's comment in Is U.S. income tax invalid because Ohio wasn’t legally a state when the 16th amendment was ratified?
9. 35 points: Otterfan's comment in President Obama Roasts Donald Trump At White House Correspondents’ Dinner (2011)
10. 35 points: _Foy's comment in Ways the Great Lakes try to Murder Ships - illustrated

Generated with BBoe's Subreddit Stats

Hello, you may know me from DD posts about IVZ and 3DP. I'm still heavily in these. But today I bring you SBW.
Ok for real, this might be the laziest DD you've read because it was copy pasted direct from hotcopper. But it will also be the best DD you've read (no offence to u/bigjimbeef recent DD on this but he's always drunk and while his DD did get me interested in this, I think maybe some people didn't take his post seriously because the post read like he had a beer in one hand and his dick in the other).
But I've been thinking lately... wouldn't it be nice if I could, for once, jump on a stock, before it rockets? Like... Every stock I've been in so far has holders who are already 10 bagging. How do they find these stocks and how can I become one of them?
Well, here is your chance. Full disclosure, I'm in at 26.5c, closing price today is 24.5c. It IPOd at 35c so we are still at bargain prices. No rocket yet. If you can think of a reason not to buy, please say so, before I take a larger position tmw morning, as I am trying to keep myself from getting overly keen on yet another stock but so far I can't find a good reason to put money anywhere else.
Copy pasta below:
I thought it was about time that I made the “Ultimate Guide to SBW” and consolidated months of research and analysis into one comprehensive post. Then we can add bits to it from there as more positive news develops.
Let us start with capital structure.
Capital Structure and Why This Is Important!
There are currently 139 million shares on issue, sitting at a price of 32 cents.
This gives a Market Capitalization of approximately ~45 million AUD.
Keep this in mind when we discuss partners and peers later - it’s arguably a more important metric than share price.
The Top 20 shareholders of SBW (which includes key management as the Top 2 holders) have about 90% of the stock on issue. The interests of management are well-aligned with shareholders.
What does this mean in plain English? It means management are extremely incentivized to perform, and are not just idly sitting by collecting an easy paycheck like so many other ASX companies. They have as much at stake as you do! Probably more.
The Core Business
The core business is a profitable operation which has been selling weighing systems to both retail and healthcare sectors – with reliable recurring revenue from customers including, but not limited to, household names like Toshiba and Fujitsu.
SBW have a combination of weighing + artificial intelligence + advanced mathematics which cannot be easily duplicated. The company was first founded in 1971 and was one of the first to shift from mechanical to digital weighing and ultra-thin IoT load sensors.
If you are interested in reading up on some of their patents, please see this link:
https://patents.justia.com/search?q=Shekel scales
I found 11 separate patents here, which are probably not an exhaustive list, but ranging from weighing vehicles in motion, to load cell devices (this is the flagship technology), point of sale apparatus and infant weight systems (for their medical customers)
SBW's three main technology pillars, including patented ultra-thin high precision load sensors, can distinguish between Coke, Fanta & Pepsi - even if they are all in 1.5 litre bottles!
The Hitachi Project (Hitachi’s Market Cap = roughly ~33 billion USD at time of writing, SBW = ~45 million AUD)
http://hlds.co.jp/product-eng/1079
[Translated from Japanese] Hitachi-LG Data Storage. Inc. exhibited in “NRF 2020 Retail’s Big Show” which took place at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York from 1/12-1/14/2020, where Unmanned Store solution using 3D LiDAR(TOF) was jointly exhibited with Hitachi America, Hitachi Vantara, and Shekel Brainweigh (Israel).
Some quotes I found from Hitachi themselves
“Micro-markets are the fastest growing segment of convenience shopping. We see them exploding in high traffic areas, such as workplaces, campuses, train stations and airports,” said Hideki Hayashi, Sales and Marketing Manager, Hitachi EU Ltd.
“Deploying the joint Shekel-Hitachi solution enables retailers and micro-market operators to provide the 24/7 frictionless shopping experience consumers demand without sacrificing accuracy, performance or profitability.”
“As the manager responsible for LiDAR products in EMEA markets, I consider the R&D and commercial collaboration with Shekel Brainweigh to be the perfect partnership as we both bring our respective capabilities to develop a seamless consumer shopping experience. We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Shekel Brainweigh, which we believe is the best digital weighing technology developer globally."
“The collaboration builds on our expertise in optical motion sensors, together with Shekel’s advanced Product Aware Technology, and further strengthens our commitment to overcome the challenges, and address the significant opportunities, in global retail store automation.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-uxk2Ycoqw
The Open Retail Initiative
https://www.lfedge.org/2020/02/13/n...ensor-fusion-for-intelligent-loss-prevention/
For the one-year anniversary of ORI, six initiative members Edgify, Flooid, Shekel and LF Edge members HP, IOTech and Intel inspired by the initiative, worked together on a demo for the Intel booth that showcased the value of Real Time Sensor Fusion for a loss prevention use case at self-checkout. The retail environment has become incredibly complex. The latest technologies enable data-driven experiences and unlock business value like never before, yet there is still a lack of interoperability making it difficult for retailers to deploy integrated solutions with speed and ease. The demo illustrates how integration roadblocks can be a thing of the past.
The demo pulls together real time data through the EdgeX middleware from different common systems including POS real-time transaction log, CV-based object detection, scale solution, and RFID, and data fusion—all in a single pane of glass.
Here are some PowerPoint slides of IBM, Intel & Hewlett-Packard talking about the joint solution
https://wiki.edgexfoundry.org/downl...amp;modificationDate=1579904283000&api=v2
The Fast Track Project
https://www.edgify.ai/retail/
Reduce time at till and selection at self-checkout by up to 98%. Computer vision-based product recognition, that continuously learns directly on the till, so the accuracy of the detection always increases.
Friction-less stores are great in theory but extremely complicated to scale in practice. Our edge training solution makes autonomous stores scalable, by having all the AI train directly on the camera. No infrastructure costs and no added complications.
Reduce incorrect selections by up to 90%. Either intentional or unintentional, use computer vision that is trained directly on the SCO itself to reduce loss by more than half!
No barcodes, no packaging, no worries. Simple USB cameras can detect the produce at close to 100% accuracy. Use as a decision support for cashiers, or to avoid consumers having to go through long and confusing menus.
https://www.edgify.ai/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Retail_Intro.pdf
https://twitter.com/Edgify_AI/status/1277859718413930505
https://twitter.com/Edgify_AI/status/1230534216133332997
Shekel’s Visual Recognition Platform embedded with Edgify’s machine-learning training framework is the world’s first cloudless software that automatically recognises products, including fresh produce, at a retail self-checkout.
This ~45 million AUD Market Cap company allows retailers to potentially bypass expensive cloud services from Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
Sending data to the cloud is a very costly process with the Google Cloud Platform charging 1,000 stores more than US$7.2 million in cloud computing power per annum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrpZ56IdFtg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpqwqQ1tJ4A
You can see the Shekel system 35 seconds in.
Patnership with Madix (2nd Largest Retail Shelves Manufacturer in NA)
https://www.bloomberg.com/press-rel...ade-product-aware-cabinets-to-retail-industry
NEW YORK -- January 13, 2020
Madix Inc., the second largest retail shelves manufacturer in North America, and Shekel Brainweigh Ltd. (ASX: SBW), the leader in advanced weighing technology, today announced the availability of ready-made Product Aware shelves and solutions for the retail industry.
“By seamlessly integrating Product Aware shelves into our hardware, our customers are armed with accessible data giving them reliable inventory visibility and assisting them in addressing over-stock and out-of-stock problems, as well as better control over shrinkage” said Steve Kramer, VP Sales, Madix.
“For the retail industry, this is a defined competitive edge that promotes the opportunity to increase profitability.”
Conclusion
So, remember - the core scales business is what drives the revenue we see today, but the innovation division is where the real potential resides. That will take a few more months/years to play out. I think most people are buying for the fully autonomous frictionless retail technology which comes with a huge addressable market. That’s still being undervalued in my humble opinion.
Considering there are quite a few ASX-listed tech companies with no revenue and over 100 million market cap (some even @ 1 billion market cap right now…
I don’t see why SBW couldn’t move past ~45m market cap in the near future.
Now if you read all this - links included- I commend you for your diligence. It should be obvious now that the Capsule (in partnership with Hitachi) is the “crown jewel” or “holy grail” of retail disruption technology plays (look at the success of Amazon GO for example).
So you are probably thinking: "This sounds great @verce but it’s all just aspirational and hypothetical. When will it be put into operation?" Well I’m glad you asked. The answer might surprise you. And it may be sooner than you think.
The SBW Half Year Report from 31 August 2020 had a little snippet that I think a lot of people missed. Specifically, the following text:
“Flagship micro-market project Capsule is in an advanced stage of pilot in Europe, and expected to be open to the public for trial in the second half of 2020.”
Now you are probably wondering: "That’s great but what if it’s just some obscure insignificant corner store somewhere?" Again, the answer may surprise you, and requires a little digging.
Enter Groupe Casino. A historic player in French retailing since 1898, the Casino Group is one of the world leaders in food retailing with more than 12,200 stores worldwide, located in France, Latin America and the Indian Ocean and a turnover of 37.8 billion euro.
In their Annual Report this year, they mentioned an exciting new disruptive project they were working on with a relatively obscure company.
https://www.groupe-casino.fwp-content/uploads/2020/06/RapportActivite_Casino_2019_EN.pdf
And we have some commentary from SBW featured on Page 42-43 of their Annual Report plugging "the first fully autonomous store in Europe". I'll leave it to readers to determine the significance of being mentioned in the Annual Report of a leading mass-market retail group with billions of Euro in revenue.
The same group who claim to be the source of many innovations such as the first distributor's brand in 1901, the first self-service store in 1948 or even the display of a sell-by date on consumer products in 1959. They are always pushing the boundaries of innovation, and it's an exciting partner to have.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that issuing shares are not the only mechanism by which to raise money. And that a placement at a premium to a sophisticated cornerstone investor can yield great results. Kind of like what happened with 3DP and IHR.
If I was them, I’d be asking Hitachi to chip in.
SBW also have the luxury of generating enough revenue (we are talking USD millions) in 2H20 from the core scales division, that a capital raising may not actually be necessary at this point in time. So they can wait for a better outcome.
Source: “Post 30 June 2020, the business has seen a resurgence of orders for Shekel’s products, resulting in July 2020 sales exceeding July 2019 sales by approximately 18%.”
The final thing I would like to add (if you have in fact read my other two posts which are worth reading) is coming to an appropriate valuation. This is the tricky part, especially with microcap stocks which are valued on their future potential.
We do know that there are medium to high barriers to entry, and that SBW have accumulated a competitive edge with their technology iterated over several decades, with certain patents in place.
We also know that the opportunity is global in scope with a huge total addressable market (TAM) - and that traditional retail is ripe for disruption.
Remember when there were more human checkout lanes at supermarkets than self-checkout? Now it's the other way around. We are even starting to see self-checkout in Bunnings. The trend for autonomous and friction-less shopping - what some term "Grab & Go" - was inevitable. And coronavirus has only accelerated this trend.
https://www.ibtimes.com/5-tech-tren...-end-year-result-coronavirus-pandemic-3011819
5 Tech Trends Expected To Shape Retail Through The End Of The Year As Result Of The Coronavirus Pandemic
“Retailers and brands will need to collaborate more than ever with technology startups to futureproof their businesses and be better equipped to meet fast-changing consumer demand and behavior,” Coresight said.
Coresight reported the pandemic has piqued consumer interest in cashierless models.
Technology firm Shekel Brainweigh said 87% of respondents to its global consumer survey indicated they would choose stores with self-checkout over those with only cashier lines.
So if you ask me, when you consider all the different technology projects SBW are working on - most of which we now know are "close to commercialisation*" - is 45m AUD market cap really fair value for something that has the potential to roll out globally? I personally think it is still undervalued, but the market will eventually decide one way or the other.
Even at 70 cents per share, the implied market cap with only 139 million shares on issue is about ~97 million AUD. Which is still less than 100m. And still quite low when you compare SBW's proven technology and revenue to a lot of unproven technology companies with no real customers whatsoever. And extremely low when you compare SBW's market cap to their collaborative partner Hitachi (ranked 38th in the 2012 Fortune Global 500).
Even at 32 cents as it currently stands, we are still below the IPO price when SBW first listed at 35 cents per share. How does that make any sense?

Period: 364.24 days

	Submissions	Comments
Total	1000	3498
Rate (per day)	2.75	9.53
Unique Redditors	239	1369
Combined Score	44704	12314

Top Submitters' Top Submissions

1. 4330 points, 90 submissions: Superbuddhapunk
   
   1. Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead software engineer for the Apollo Program, stands next to the code she wrote by hand that took Humanity to the moon in 1969. (250 points, 15 comments)
   2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Geocache in Northern Italy (242 points, 10 comments)
   3. Cleaning tips from CleaningTips (195 points, 3 comments)
   4. Cheesy Origins - The etymologies behind the names of some of the world's most popular cheeses. (166 points, 45 comments)
   5. Around the World in 50 traditional breakfast dishes (155 points, 30 comments)
   6. Roosevelt dime 10c coin Mint error, off center strikes (143 points, 7 comments)
   7. President Obama Roasts Donald Trump At White House Correspondents’ Dinner (2011) (139 points, 30 comments)
   8. Beautiful elderly Common Snapping Turtle just coming to say Hello. Spring Lake, San Marcos, TX (131 points, 6 comments)
   9. Christmas tree in the main hall of the Galleries Lafayette department store in Paris, France. (129 points, 5 comments)
   10. Not open during a CAT 5 hurricane? 1 star for you! (121 points, 7 comments)
2. 3830 points, 138 submissions: 0and18
   
   1. The final Calvin and Hobbes strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995 (170 points, 6 comments)
   2. In the final minute of the 1984 game at the Orange Bowl, Doug Flutie's "Hail Mary" pass as time expired to lift Boston College over the University of Miami, 47-45 (120 points, 3 comments)
   3. Ozymandias Prevents Nuclear War (90 points, 5 comments)
   4. Between 1995 and 2000 music companies were found to have used illegal marketing agreements such as minimum advertised pricing to artificially inflate prices of compact discs in order to end price wars by discounters such as Best Buy and Target in the early 1990s. (84 points, 1 comment)
   5. Yuki-toKori discovers his new jeans have a hidden inside pocket for a condom (80 points, 12 comments)
   6. ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,’ by Hunter S. Thompson (80 points, 3 comments)
   7. Geof Darrow’s Hard Boiled (77 points, 2 comments)
   8. His Face All Red by Emily Carroll (75 points, 4 comments)
   9. This chart shows the most common display resolutions, makes zero sense to me. (66 points, 17 comments)
   10. Mouse Guard members Saxon, Kenzie and Lieam (65 points, 1 comment)
3. 2454 points, 36 submissions: InvisibleLemons
   
   1. The House of Slaves in Gorée Island, Senegal, is a museum and memorial dedicated to the Atlantic slave trade that some believe served as a major trading port for slaves captured from Africa. It's argued that up to 15 million people were put through the “Door of No Return” and shipped off as slaves. (174 points, 2 comments)
   2. Losing a language means more than the disappearance of words. This six-part film and multimedia experience follows four Indigenous communities who are revitalizing their languages and cultures. (137 points, 5 comments)
   3. Anna Bērzkalne was the first Latvian to earn a degree in Folkloric Studies. She purposely wrote her thesis in English rather than German as a form of non-violent resistance against the Nazi occupation of Latvia during World War II. Her degree was not recognized by the Soviet authorities. (135 points, 2 comments)
   4. Hilma af Klint belonged to "The Five", a circle of women who shared her belief in the importance of trying to make contact with what she called the High Masters, often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas. (130 points, 7 comments)
   5. Stephen Duneier, aka Yarn Bomber, has the world record for the largest crochet granny square made by a single person. The granny square measures 1,311 square feet, weighs over 60 pounds, took two years to make, and has over a half million stitches. (121 points, 7 comments)
   6. Fictional Map from one of my favorite book series as a child, Dinotopia (118 points, 7 comments)
   7. The indigenous city of Cahokia, across the river from St. Louis, is thought have had at most 40,000 people living there. Cahokia was large enough to have suburbs and had an equal pop. to London in the 1200s. No city would have surpassed it's pop. in north America until Philadelphia in the 1780s (110 points, 8 comments)
   8. Rand Paul was the national debt for halloween in 2015. He said it was a very scary costume. (105 points, 23 comments)
   9. World's Largest Rubber Stamp in Cleveland, Ohio (103 points, 7 comments)
   10. In 1949, Warren Buffett, the most successful investor in the world, was infatuated with a young woman whose boyfriend had a ukulele. In an attempt to compete, he bought a ukulele and has been playing it ever since, often at stock meetings. (92 points, 3 comments)
4. 2136 points, 56 submissions: sbroue
   
   1. A successful slave rebellion against the French made Haiti the second independent nation in the Americas. (118 points, 2 comments)
   2. Rare 300-Year-Old 'Beard Tax' Coin Discovered in Russia (110 points, 4 comments)
   3. The song Funiculi Funicula was composed to celebrate the opening of a Funicular railway up Mt Vesuvius (86 points, 5 comments)
   4. Internet trolls are not who I thought — they're even scarier (79 points, 2 comments)
   5. The Shocking True Tale Of The Mad Genius Who Invented Sea-Monkeys (73 points, 6 comments)
   6. Ethiopian 18th Century crown returns home (72 points, 1 comment)
   7. When America Despised the Irish: The 19th Century’s Refugee Crisis (72 points, 0 comments)
   8. Step Inside the World's Most Dangerous Garden (If You Dare) (70 points, 4 comments)
   9. Blue Weevils "wrestling" (68 points, 8 comments)
   10. Alcohol belts of Europe (59 points, 5 comments)
5. 1850 points, 27 submissions: Mr_Caterpillar
   
   1. Diane's NPR ringtones [Bojack Horseman] (228 points, 15 comments)
   2. The Hulk throws a bear into space (173 points, 15 comments)
   3. Bryan Cranston tells the story of an ad-libbed joke as dentist Tim Whatley on Seinfeld (133 points, 3 comments)
   4. There's something about holding a good, solid mace in your hand (124 points, 8 comments)
   5. Side-by-Side scenes from Ghost in the Shell and the original animated film (105 points, 7 comments)
   6. Twilight in Prague (98 points, 2 comments)
   7. Roller Derby Fact [SLAM #1] (87 points, 3 comments)
   8. Mapping out the evolution of Rock Music from the film School of Rock (86 points, 24 comments)
   9. Tracer Bullet - Calvin and Hobbes' hardboiled detective parody (85 points, 4 comments)
   10. Ronald Jenkees started his career by making music in his bedroom and posting to youtube. This is his song "Try The Bass" (80 points, 10 comments)
6. 1756 points, 46 submissions: tillandsia
   
   1. What do you mean we, paleface? (125 points, 4 comments)
   2. Fragment of a Queen's Face, possibly either Queen Nefertiti or Tiye, Egypt, New Kingdom, Amarna period, ca. 1353-1336 B.C. (97 points, 4 comments)
   3. Pumpkin Spice Latte Tiramisu (83 points, 17 comments)
   4. The garbage pickup on my street, before covid, was always sometimes a minute before 8 am, sometimes a couple of minutes after. Sitting in the house, drinking my coffee on Monday and Thursday mornings, I'd always know what time it was when I'd hear the truck. (76 points, 3 comments)
   5. 1970s Key West (73 points, 12 comments)
   6. Trojan Horse clip from "Troy" (72 points, 5 comments)
   7. Color Aid Paper, used in art school to teach Josef Albers' theory of color (68 points, 5 comments)
   8. How to make spaetzel, a pasta made with fresh eggs (68 points, 6 comments)
   9. The Doctor who Gave Himself an Ulcer & Solved a Medical Mystery - an old advance in medicine, but a really great one (67 points, 1 comment)
   10. Not a lizard nor a dinosaur, tuatara is the sole survivor of a once-widespread reptile group (61 points, 1 comment)
7. 1076 points, 22 submissions: gorditasimpatica
   
   1. “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” (127 points, 3 comments)
   2. The First Labor Strike in History: In 1159 BCE, the tomb-builders and artisans at Set-Ma’at refused to wait any longer for their wages and marched toward the city shouting “We are hungry!” (121 points, 2 comments)
   3. Get the feel of a winner, 1978 Sears Catalog (100 points, 6 comments)
   4. Polls are not always right (92 points, 38 comments)
   5. "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism..." (86 points, 4 comments)
   6. They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues..." Brendan Behan (80 points, 6 comments)
   7. The Sonoran Desert is thought to have the greatest species diversity of any desert in North America, including 60 species of mammals, 350 bird species, 20 amphibians, 100 reptiles, 30 species of native fish and more than 2,000 species of plants (78 points, 5 comments)
   8. "Lafayette We Are Here" (61 points, 2 comments)
   9. The Wuppertal Suspension Railway is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. Designed by Eugen Langen, it opened in 1901 and is still in use as public transport, moving 25 million passengers annually. (52 points, 2 comments)
   10. Mugshot model Jeremy Meeks continues his topless runway streak (44 points, 1 comment)
8. 1039 points, 18 submissions: eladarling
   
   1. Ways the Great Lakes try to Murder Ships - illustrated (212 points, 17 comments)
   2. The Dunning-Kruger Effect: the least competent are more likely to overestimate their ability (122 points, 4 comments)
   3. Before video games, Nintendo sold a variety of other products including playing cards depicting nude women, and by-the-hour sex hotels. Their first big customer was the Yakuza, who used their cards in illegal casinos. (104 points, 6 comments)
   4. Earl Grey tea is black tea flavored with oil of bergamot, a green citrus fruit grown mostly in Italy (104 points, 9 comments)
   5. "At Last," Etta James's signature song that most people today associate with her (77 points, 3 comments)
   6. One of the largest piñatas on record was a 65 ft tall donkey filled with 8000 lb of candy. It was smashed open with a wrecking ball to release the sweets inside. (69 points, 3 comments)
   7. World Islands, a cluster of man-made islands in Dubai, was supposed to be a lavish multicultural paradise. Most are still undeveloped or abandoned due to economic, climate, and construction issues. (67 points, 3 comments)
   8. What If God Was One of Us - Joan Osborne (52 points, 2 comments)
   9. GonzoVR was a short lived VR app where users could drive an rc car around my living room and buy treats for my dog Gonzo (44 points, 4 comments)
   10. Hysteria High: How Demons Destroyed a Florida School (36 points, 1 comment)
9. 989 points, 24 submissions: coiso
   
   1. a high school football coach got half the fans of his own team to cheer for the other team, because the other team was from a maximum-security juvenile correctional facility and didn't have any fans of their own (158 points, 5 comments)
   2. Animals see more colours than humans. Here's a chart. (135 points, 16 comments)
   3. If a beta male mandrill wins a fight, it physically morphs into an alpha male over time, gaining facial coloration, bigger testicles, and the ability to breed.) (93 points, 6 comments)
   4. Urinetown - a 3 times tony award winner musical about a town where private toilets are outlawed... (68 points, 5 comments)
   5. the longest single set at the laugh factory lasted 7h and 34m (by Dane Cook in 2008). (64 points, 64 comments)
   6. Stormtrooper hits his head (63 points, 4 comments)
   7. 5 Ways to Spot Greenwashing (52 points, 1 comment)
   8. Jeffrey Dahmer’s Childhood Friend Talks About His Graphic Novel "My Friend Dahmer" and Its Movie Adaptation (40 points, 3 comments)
   9. Daily life in Russia – gallery by The Guardian readers (38 points, 1 comment)
   10. List of retired Atlantic hurricane names (33 points, 0 comments)
10. 965 points, 19 submissions: ShimataDominquez
    
    1. The head of a tapeworm under an electron microscope (256 points, 19 comments)
    2. What happens when you have heated tile flooring (149 points, 4 comments)
    3. Jon Stewart Deep Dish Rant (83 points, 14 comments)
    4. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida The Simpsons take on a Psychedelic Rock classic (82 points, 4 comments)
    5. Ewoks should have met a terrible fate, scientists say (48 points, 0 comments)
    6. Robocop Commercials (37 points, 2 comments)
    7. Why is smiling being frowned upon in the Russian culture? (33 points, 11 comments)
    8. The Jetsons! (31 points, 0 comments)
    9. Green Onions (30 points, 1 comment)
    10. How Milwaukee Got The Nickname 'Cream City' (28 points, 3 comments)

Top Commenters

1. 0and18 (666 points, 467 comments)
2. jostler57 (141 points, 39 comments)
3. Otterfan (139 points, 20 comments)
4. Superbuddhapunk (132 points, 44 comments)
5. astronoob (109 points, 7 comments)
6. anotherkeebler (101 points, 23 comments)
7. Goyteamsix (91 points, 20 comments)
8. thespaceghetto (87 points, 20 comments)
9. goofballl (84 points, 13 comments)
10. swizzler (83 points, 21 comments)

Top Submissions

1. The head of a tapeworm under an electron microscope by ShimataDominquez (256 points, 19 comments)
2. Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead software engineer for the Apollo Program, stands next to the code she wrote by hand that took Humanity to the moon in 1969. by Superbuddhapunk (250 points, 15 comments)
3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Geocache in Northern Italy by Superbuddhapunk (242 points, 10 comments)
4. Diane's NPR ringtones [Bojack Horseman] by Mr_Caterpillar (228 points, 15 comments)
5. It's Dangerous to go Alone... by yankee4357 (228 points, 11 comments)
6. My immigrant Chinese parents make tamales every year. by bigtcm (222 points, 25 comments)
7. How a deep sea blobfish looks with and without the extreme water pressure by Imaginary-Cow (214 points, 10 comments)
8. Ways the Great Lakes try to Murder Ships - illustrated by eladarling (212 points, 17 comments)
9. How to Talk Minnesotan: The Power of the Negative by SteelWool (205 points, 5 comments)
10. Cleaning tips from CleaningTips by Superbuddhapunk (195 points, 3 comments)

Top Comments

1. 49 points: jesseaknight's comment in In the show St. Elsewhere, a character in the finale is shown to have thought of the whole series, which means he also made up all the shows that had crossovers with St. Elsewhere. This expands into the shows that were mentioned in the shows. There is at this point 419 shows in this universe
2. 45 points: Derosa6037's comment in the longest single set at the laugh factory lasted 7h and 34m (by Dane Cook in 2008).
3. 42 points: astronoob's comment in Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead software engineer for the Apollo Program, stands next to the code she wrote by hand that took Humanity to the moon in 1969.
4. 42 points: thejesiah's comment in Close Encounters of the Third Kind Geocache in Northern Italy
5. 41 points: rus_reddit's comment in Rand Paul was the national debt for halloween in 2015. He said it was a very scary costume.
6. 38 points: srone's comment in The New BMW X6 Has Light-Absorbing 'Vantablack' Paint
7. 37 points: SlideNERD's comment in The head of a tapeworm under an electron microscope
8. 37 points: wtfisthisnoise's comment in Is U.S. income tax invalid because Ohio wasn’t legally a state when the 16th amendment was ratified?
9. 36 points: _Foy's comment in Ways the Great Lakes try to Murder Ships - illustrated
10. 36 points: bigtcm's comment in My immigrant Chinese parents make tamales every year.

Generated with BBoe's Subreddit Stats

There's a lot of disinformation out there spread by foreign trolls and domestic militants. Qanon is nonsense but it serves a purpose of blunting the facts. "You say Trump was helped by the Russians? What about Hillary eating babies?"
A poster named Tobert420 put together a comprehensive list that worth reviewing before voting in the coming election. Since the goal of those spreading disinformation is to muddy the waters, I thought I would share his work. Knowledge is power.

An Overview of Donald Trump’s numerous ties to Russia, with sources!

📷
Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
► Trump commuted the sentence of Robert Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Not Financial Advice (NFA)
Warning: Wall of Text. If you hate reading just skim through the bolded/italicized
Ever since I publicized my findings on DKNG, the stock has underperformed & probably has fucked a lot of people here, especially given the overly bullish stance back in June. Unless you took my advice & got into Puts then, congrats, welcome to tendie town. For the ADHD retards, here’s what the next wall of text is going to summarize: I believe at the current price of ~$30, the stock is oversold.
A tech-focused, high-growth Company that has made sports betting easy to understand with an aesthetically pleasing interface similar to how Robinhood has neatly laid out stock market gimmicks so even high-schoolers can make sense of it I believe, is underpriced at these levels.
Let’s get into some details as to why the stock has underperformed:
First off, the news slate revolving sports with the rumored delay/cancellation of the MLB season & the NFL watching from the sidelines is in my view, just a part of why the stock has underperformed. We’ll revisit this later in this post, but I want to focus on the drivers of the stock’s recent underperformance, & why these factors are now in the rearview mirror.
Part I – The Past Has Passed – SPAC-related Equity Dilution
History lesson first: DKNG went public via a SPAC merger, which has exploded in popularity recently. Anyone serious about analyzing stocks going forward needs to do their homework on this, Google is your friend.
A feature of most SPAC merger to public listings that creates a headwind to near-term share prices are embedded equity dilution events, usually in the form of earn-outs (stock bonuses to execs, the SPAC sponsor) & conversion of Warrants.
On 5/24, the earn-outs were triggered, adding 6m shares to the share count.
On 6/26, 16.3m warrants converted to DKNG, netting them ~$188m of cash.
Stepping back a little, in addition to the above, on 6/18 DKNG launched a follow-on equity offering of 16M shares @ $40/Share [1], receiving $621M in proceeds.
The last part is tricky to understand from a dilution perspective. To simplify, historically it’s almost a coin toss whether a Company’s shares outperform on the onset of an equity offering. While issuing shares does dilute the existing shareholder base, it theoretically shouldn’t, if the proceeds from the offering are earmarked for investments/projects that yield outsized returns. This is the reality for the long term, theory for the short-term. For the short-term, the ‘reality’ isn’t that the proceeds will be used for investments/projects that yield outsized returns, it is more about how convincing management is to investors that the investments they intend to pursue with the proceeds will outweigh the dilutive effects of issuing incremental shares. That’s a mouthful, but hopefully you get what I’m trying to convey.
All of this stuff put together – the Company has increased its share count by ~39M, but now has a whopping ~$1.4Bn of cash [2]. More on this in the next section.
Part II – MLB News Should Not Fucking Matter & DKNG Is Positioned As the Leading Online/Mobile Sports Platform
DKNG should not be so tied to MLB news or any of this shit as the ongoing success of the NBA/NHL season + Soccer in Europe has effectively created a blueprint on how to regulate player behavior so that they maintain professionalism amidst the pandemic. I’m going out on a whim here, but I truly think the MLB threatening a cancellation of the season is pure posturing to get these fuckers to behave appropriately. Maybe a ‘bubble’ is what it takes to get these players to focus on their jobs instead of going out & contracting COVID, but I argue that isn’t necessarily required given Soccer in Europe. So there’s already a proven path here without the need for a bubble in Soccer, so MLB/NFL should be fine, and execs need to study how they got it done in Europe. Okay, back to some facts.
Anecdotally, I’ve kept in touch with a handful of sports bookies from California to New York & even internationally about what they’re seeing – all of them say that since the NBA season started on 7/30 & since Soccer (especially the Premier League) resumed in June, along with other leagues like La Liga & Serie A, they’ve seen massive increases in betting.
These numbers are also showing up in the official data [3]:

• Average % increase in sports betting handle from April 2020 to June 2020 (handle is the total $ wagered in sports bets) from the states that reported up to June 2020 (NJ, PA, MS, RI, WV, IA, IN, NH) of +258%!
  
  • Note: NV is left out due to the site I sourced showing a weirdly negative number – so I dug into the official filings & show specifically, Sports Mobile betting growth from June since April has growing by at least +73% [4]

REMEMBER: This is for June only! No NBA, No NHL, No MLB, just Soccer, Golf, NASCAR & UFC.
The data clearly shows that there was a ton of pent-up sports betting demand, which leads one Wall St. analyst to think that betting on the NBA/NHL could ABSORB the MLB’s sports betting handle (handle = total $ size of sports bet) [5]. Remember, the MLB season is still ongoing, with games being played. The entire focus is on the Miami Marlins & St. Louis Cardinals. Fucking retards.
Additionally, I want to remind everyone that DraftKings.com is the #1 Fantasy sports website in the U.S. [6]. Also, since April 2020 site visitations are up +86% [7] & Google Search Trends for “Draft Kings” is up ~3x compared to PRE-COVID levels [8]. What does this mean? They are piquing more people’s curiosity than prior to COVID/ongoing slate of sports.
This is important because remember that ~$1.4Bn chest full of cash I mentioned DKNG had assembled earlier? Well, that money is being put to work & results are already coming in, which is exactly what DKNG intended to do with it.
Part III – Legalization of Sports Betting in the U.S.
I could write a fucking bible on this topic alone, but for now we’ll stick to some basics. Due to COVID, it’s easy to understand that each State’s financial situation is clearly in shit. Because of this, you better believe that these guys are going to start taking a hard look at how they can extract additional tax revenues, & what’s one of the easiest ways to do this? Legalization & taxation of gambling.
The big players: CA, TX, FL & NY. First, CA pushing its legislation out to 2023 was fucked up, but here’s a twist I want to add to this: Anything that has to do with gambling in CA you better believe is lobbied against by not just the Tribal casino owners in CA, but by the deep pockets of Las Vegas money. Similar thing can be said for FL, but let’s take a look at some actions by LV/nationwide gambling companies that are starting to align financial incentives with guys like DKNG.

• MGM / GVC Holdings JV in BetMGM - $450m total invested
• PENN invests $163m into BS Sports
• Caesars has a 20% stake in William Hill plus partnership deals with The Stars Group (TSG) & our winner DKNG for operating its sports books

So it’s safe to say going forward, nationwide legalization of sports betting will reap rewards for everyone involved, & no longer be something LV money is completely focused on safeguarding.
Let’s also not forget that DKNG didn’t become the Company they are today because of their fancy app, but because their management team has a HISTORY of navigating the U.S.’s legal framework to get what they want out of it.

• The Crown Jewel – The Internet Gambling Prohibition & Enforcement Act: I said it in a previous post, but I want to emphasize that them getting Fantasy Sports to be labeled a ‘game of skill’ by FEDERAL Law as opposed to gambling is just something for the history books. Fucking genius shit. When this happened I bet every casino from LV to every Indian Tribe that has one was against it, yet DKNG & other DFS providers won.
• There’s more, but more recently: Getting into IL:
  
  • In IL, there’s an 18-month ‘penalty box’ for Companies that offer DFS to offer sports betting. Our guys at DKNG created a workaround to this situation with their partnership with Casino Queen [9]. DKNG being savvy again.

These guys are at the cutting edge of creating legal frameworks to successfully launch their products & now with more of their ‘competitors’ financially aligned with them, combined with financial deterioration of State budgets, we should see an overweighting of good news vs. bad on the legal front.
Final Part – Share Price Targets
Under-fucking priced at anything below $42.50
Near-term catalysts:
8/14: DKNG files 2Q’20 results, might be shitty, but you can bet that the Earnings Call is going to contain rhetoric on how massive the uptick in sports betting has been since late June/July.
Sometime from now until November: NY releases ‘study’ by Spectrum Gaming on online/mobile sports betting.
8/20 – 9/7: PGA Championship for FedEx Cup Title
9/5 – KY Derby
9/10: NFL KickOff Game
9/17: PGA U.S. Open Start Date
Month of October: NBA/NHL Playoffs
10/1: Estimated launch of online sports betting in TN
11/1: Estimated launch of online sports betting in VA
[1] https://draftkings.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/draftkings-announces-proposed-public-offering-class-common-stock
[2] Wall St. Research – DKNG on 6/29/20
[3] https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting/revenue/
[4] https://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=16984; Note: Nevada did not break out April/May figures but from the Revenue difference of 3 month ended June 30 of 4,950 vs. month of June of 2,297 for a total difference of 2,653 spread evenly over April/May for a base case April estimate of 1,327.
[5] Wall St. Research - 7/27/20
[6] https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/category/sports/fantasy-sports/
[7] https://www.similarweb.com/website/draftkings.com/#overview
[8] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=draft%20kings Feb 23-29, 2020 vs. Current Aug 2 – Aug 8, 2020
[9] https://www.legalsportsreport.com/42314/draftkings-illinois-sports-betting-market-access/

Good morning everyone, get ahead of the week, follow your rules, let’s all make some money
Of note for Semiconductors (SOX), Japan is aiming to invite Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) or other global chipmakers to build an advanced chip manufacturing plant jointly with domestic chip equipment suppliers.
Of note for Automakers (F, GM, FCAU, TSLA), Volkswagen (VOW3 GY) CEO Diess reportedly told the Executive Board that the Co. is expecting to return to pre-COVID sales/profit at the commencement of 2023.
This week’s Barron’s articles argues that chains like Dollar General (DG) and Dollar Tree (DLTR) are focused on value, and as a result, they are a growth story when other retailers are not, noting that when economic conditions become more difficult for consumers, the dollar stores get going. A separate article notes that SoftBank (SFTBY) considering an IPO of its Arm Holdings makes sense, and it’s an important signal for investors about the future of the chip business. Chipotle (CMG) should “crush its earnings” this week, and Barron’s notes one sell-side analyst stating investors should buy the August USD 1,150 call option to cover the July 22nd earnings report. On banks (XLF, BKX), It might be time to embrace the uncertainty around bank names and consider Wells Fargo (WFC), the worst-performing of the big banks this year, noting that Wells has something the other banks don’t have: problems to fix. Goldman Sachs (GS) is a rare big financial company with an improving business and earnings outlook, Barron’s said, and it has a stock that looks reasonably priced at little more than 10x forward earnings. Barron’s argues that while shares of index providers MSCI (MSCI) and S&P Global (SPGI) aren’t cheap, both stocks could keep rising as new products and services translate into higher sales and profits

DOW JONES

Boeing Company (BA) is running out of space to stash newly-built 787 Dreamliner’s, with dozens of the planes sitting on the company’s premises, sources said; one BA watcher puts the number at 50, more than double the number of jets typically awaiting customers along Boeing’s flight lines. Elsewhere, Boeing and Etihad broaden its sustainability alliance by testing innovations on ecoDemonstrator 787, which flies on sustainable fuel made from vegetable oil, and waste animal fat. Meanwhile, NASA administrators are very confident in the SLS flying during 2021.
Chevron Corp. (CVX) is to acquire Noble Energy (NBL) for USD 5bln in an all-stock transaction, or USD 10.38/shr, with a total enterprise value, including debt, of USD 13bln; the deal marks a 7% premium for Noble, which trades at 50% below its 52-week high.
Goldman Sachs Group (GS) Senior Executives flew into Malaysia for talks with the government on the recovery of 1MDB assets; Malaysian prosecutors have charged GS and 17 current and former directors of its units for allegedly misleading investors over bond sales totalling USD 6.5 billion that the US bank helped raise for sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) signed an agreement with the UK to secure 90mln doses of two possible COVID-19 vaccines from the company and French Group Valneva. Note, the two Cos also announced early positive update from German Ph1/2 study; generated strong t-cell data; supports and expands upon early results from the corresponding US trial reported earlier in July.

NASDAQ 100

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) had its PT raised to a street high of USD 3800 at Goldman Sachs and Jefferies. Goldman Sachs maintains a conviction buy rating on the shares, rising the PT to the street high from USD 3,000. Analyst Heath Terry updated his estimates ahead of earnings to reflect the accelerating e-commerce growth. Revenue estimates are increased by 3% per year on average, while EBTIDA is left unchanged due to COVID expenditure and for an increase in infrastructure spending due to faster growth in retail and AWS.
Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) NBCUniversal is reportedly planning broad-based layoffs to offset losses from the pandemic.
eBay Inc. (EBAY) Classifieds business auction has been awarded to Norway’s Adevinta for close to USD 9bln, where eBay will keep a minority stake in the unit, according to a source. Earlier reports noted it would be USD 8bln or above. Elsewhere, eBay (EBAY) is to begin expanding its management of payments globally; expected to deliver USD 2bln in revenue and USD 500mln in operating income in 2022.
Facebook, Inc. (FB) has had its advertising expenditure by Disney (DIS) dramatically cut, according to sources. Disney was Facebook’s top US advertiser for the first six months of 2020, research firm Pathmatics estimates. Meanwhile, The FTC is considering taking sworn testimony from Facebook (FB) CEO and COO as part of its investigation into whether the social-media giant has violated US antitrust laws, sources said; top Facebook officials are preparing for potential depositions and some are worried about the possibility.
Tesla (TSLA) is being probed by South Korean Fair Trade Commission, who launched an internal review of its advertising that described its autopilot as self-driving technology, according to Korea Herald citing sources. Meanwhile, it has also pulled another “demand lever” for it Model Y and has begun offering a lease agreement to customers for the vehicle.

S & P 500

Celanese (CE) announced it has raised its share repurchase authorisation by USD 500mln to USD 1.563bln.
Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) told its pilots that furloughs could be avoided if they agree to a cut in guaranteed minimum pay, according to CNBC.
Ford Motor (F) and MobilEye have expanded its relationship to offer better camera-based collision avoidance in vehicles.
Halliburton Co. (HAL) Q2 20 (USD): Adj EPS 0.05 (exp. -0.12), Revenue 3.2bln (exp. 3.34bln). It recognised USD 2.1bln of pre-tax impairments and other charges in the quarter. North America revenue -57% Q/Q to USD 1bln.
Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) has been awarded a USD 15bln contract for C-130J development.
Quest Diagnostics (DGX) received the FDA’s green light for pooled testing, using the same COVID-19 molecular diagnostic first authorised by the agency in mid-March.
Southwest Airlines (LUV) – Almost a quarter of pilots accepted either early retirement or voluntary leave offers, according to CNBC.
Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO) is expanding capacity for those developing new and existing therapies for COVID; now supporting more than 200 projects globally.
Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) announced the hackers on last week’s attack did more than cryptocurrency fraud, but they also walked away with some users personal data, according to WSJ. The report notes that data was taken from eight users.

OTHER

Alibaba (BABA) Ant Group is to plan simultaneous IPOs in Shanghai and Hong Kong, according to reports.
AstraZeneca (AZN LN, AZN) to publish eagerly anticipated COVID-19 trial results today. The FDA authorised its first COVID-19 diagnostic test for pools of samples, to let laboratories conserve resources by evaluating several people at once
Eldorado Resorts (ERI) USD 17.3 billion acquisition of Caesars Entertainment (CZR) received approval from The New Jersey Casino Control Commission, the last regulatory approval needed before the deal can close; the deal will result in the formation of the largest gaming company in the US.
Nikola (NKLA) chairman filed a new stock offering of up to 53.4mln shares related to warrants, but later noted it was just part of the process, adding “it’s difficult going ipo and after this, we’ll be full steam ahead”. Deutsche Bank note that the S-1 filing became effective, meaning 24mln warrants are now exercisable, which provides holders the right to buy shares for USD 11.50 and the 53.4mln shares owned by PIPE investors, enables them to be traded on the market. The analyst believes the potential for a portion of these 77mln shares to hit the market could create large technical selling pressure.
PTC Therapeutics (PTCT) and Royalty Pharma (RPTX) announced an agreement to acquire a portion of PTC’s royalty interest in risdiplan for USD 650mln in a one-time payment.
Samsung (SSNLF) is reportedly struggling to improve 5nm process yield, according to Digi Times citing sources. The article notes “It remains to be seen whether unsatisfactory yield rates at Samsung Electronics’ 5nm EUV process may affect the launch of Qualcomm’s next-generation flagship 5G mobile chip series.
Uber (UBER) and Alphabet Google (GOOG, GOOGL) announced a four-year agreement with Alphabet’s unit to use the Google Maps Platform Rides and Deliveries Services; Financial terms were not disclosed.
Yum China (YUMC) named official retail food services sponsor of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, also becomes an official sponsor of the Chinese Olympic Committee through 2024-end.

Edit 10:00AM

Additional US equity stories

Walmart (WMT) is restarting talks of a potential sale of its UK supermarket unit, Asda - potentially of note for Tesco (TSCO LN), Sainsbury's (SBRY LN), Morrison's (MRW LN), Marks & Spencer's (MKS LN)
Sorento Therapeutics (SRNE) FDA has cleared the co.’s Abivertinib for Phase Two safety and efficacy study in hospitalized patients with moderate to severe coronavirus.
Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) announce early positive update from German Ph1/2 study; generated strong t-cell data; supports and expands upon early results from the corresponding US trial
Crown Castle International Corp. (CCI) - Elliott Management calls upon CCI to outline a five-year plan for its fiber segment on its July 30th earnings call.
Halliburton Co. (HAL) CEO says international business is continuing to be a more meaningful contributor to the company going forward; believes North America production will remain structurally lower in the future. The CEO Expects to see a more disciplined market with stronger operators and