As the title goes, anyone here actively pursuing trading as a full time/side hustle?
Do share the what type of asset class, time zones you work with.
For myself I take forex positions after work, during US open and close them around 1am. Been looking to explore into the class of index futures next time.

November marks my 25th anniversary working towards financial independence. I hope others might benefit from the observations I gathered over an extended timeframe of perseverance.
I began adulthood with severe anxiety regarding finances.
I developed FIRE-type thinking before FIRE was a commonly understood philosophy. My thinking developed through personal experiences and later through forums such as these. FIRE thinking helped me to overcome an unhealthy fear of becoming destitute while accelerating other life goals that have brought peace, contentment, and happiness to everyday life.
This article documents that journey as a means to give back to a community which has given much to me. I hope it is informative, supportive, and motivating for everyone on their own journey. I will answer questions and offer additional perspective in the comments where possible.
This is a throw away account and certain milestones have been obfuscated to create some semblance of privacy and anonymity, though all financial figures quoted are accurate.
Outline

1. About Me
2. My FI Philosophy
3. Milestones
4. My Investment Philosophy
5. My Expense Pattern
6. My Evolving View Of FI
7. Lessons & Observations

About Me
I achieved FI in 2017. I have no plans to RE.
I am mid-40s living in a HCOL area. Married with no kids as we prefer partying over parenting.
I grew up in upper lower class economic conditions around military bases. My parents struggled to save money outside of any retirement benefits afforded from their jobs. Frequently being unable to have the trips, food, clothes, and toys that the “other” kids had formed an indelible mark. There have been periods where I have had significant anxiety regarding financial safety.
I work in tech. My wife is an overworked, underpaid social worker.
My career began as a deeply indebted student and after graduation included jobs in training, engineering, product, executive leadership, startup CEO, investing, and governance.
I write a well-read technology blog and authored 3 books that are now irrelevant.
I travel extensively, sometimes for work, sometimes pleasure. I have visited 50 countries. I have a pilot’s license. I own 2 houses, a plane, 2 cars, and a boat.
My FI Philosophy

1. Live Life Below My Means. I should always be saving money, regardless of what my income level is. As long as I earn a W2 income from a job, my monthly expenses should be (on average) at least 50% below the average after-tax income. This also means that it’s OK to increase my spend on quality of life as my means has increased, though it wasn’t until my 30s before I practiced this without stress. As you'll see, having this policy is easier to state than to always follow.
2. FI Definition. Because of my youthful anxiety towards money, difficulty in determining what a viable number of years “in retirement” might be, and debates as to what constitutes a Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR), I chose to shape a personal definition. For me, FI is the ability to generate enough income from non-W2 activities such that my annual rate of expenses is covered. Income generation can happen from rents, selling volatility, interest, or dividends. In other words, FI is when my net worth continues to grow with or without traditional W2 income. This philosophy may change one day – either because the net worth pool is large or the expected number of years before death materially shrinks.
3. Eliminate Debt, Even If It Is An Economic Mistake. After having bought and sold five different homes, I came to realize that the mental stress of having debt outweighed its economic benefits. Starting sometime around 2018, I decided to eliminate all possible debt, even 2% mortgage debt. While the arbitrage of investment results would have yielded a better overall economic outcome by keeping the debt, that financial gain could never be large enough to compensate for the anxiety-neutralizing-feeling of being “debt free”. Whatever I owned was owned by me alone, and in the unlikely event I were to become unemployed or without income, the future of those assets was solely in my control and not in conjunction with a bank. I execute this policy on life assets, such as my primary home and automobile, and toy assets, such as my plane. This, of course, requires a person to have enough assets to cover the debt, and it took me 15 years to achieve this threshold.
4. Invest To Beat The Market. If I am willing to devote more energy and research time than others (at the cost of fun, family time, etc), then I should be able to make smarter decisions that yield higher results. Split investments into those things which are liquid vs. illiquid. Try to keep most of my available cash in liquid investments. I prefer (and try) to earn equity in illiquid investments through time-based contributions, sweat equity, carried interest, or as a job benefit. This doesn’t always happen, and I have had to outlay cash for angel investments, as a limited partner in a VC fund, and stock purchases for companies I’ve run. Never let others manage our money as they lack incentives to behave as an owner. As you’ll see, lacking this wisdom once cost me $3M in my early career.

Milestones

Year	Net Worth	Addl Illiquid Assets	W2 Income	Material Events
1997	-$95,685	$-	$14,110	Pizza Delivery
1998	-$88,299	$-	$25,906	Graduate Univ.
1999	$25,612	$-	$104,155	Footnote #1
2000	$88,843	$2,700,954	$125,543	Emp. Equity! :-)
2001	$247,777	$800,056	$232,223	Dotcom Bust
2002	$294,994	$-	$144,987	Footnote #2 :-(
2003	$336,523	$-	$283,847	First Home Buy
2004	$384,258	$-	$207,411	Sold 1st Startup
2005	$436,189	$15,000	$138,845	1st Angel Investment
2006	$558,473	$15,000	$191,384	2nd Home Buy
2007	$614,038	$15,000	$204,448	3rd Home Buy
2008	$545,783	$15,000	$231,926
2009	$638,926	$15,000	$233,656	Footnote #3 :-(
2010	$1,009,650	$25,000	$427,404
2011	$1,333,754	$100,000	$384,681	Started 2nd Startup
2012	$1,637,200	$104,000	$89,187	Became VC Scout
2013	$1,966,303	$407,703	$255,000
2014	$1,777,266	$1,360,905	$230,000	Sold 1st Angel Investment!
2015	$2,313,846	$5,786,086	$243,750	1st VC Distribution :-)
2016	$2,638,612	$5,210,121	$368,622	Startup Profitable :-)
2017	$6,422,053	$6,162,527	$802,590	Startup Acquired :-)
2018	$6,514,291	$7,805,654	$452,129	Paid Off Mortgages
2019	$8,202,434	$9,895,887	$561,954	3rd CEO Gig
2020	$8,079,164	$6,466,506	$801,151
2021	$7,414,909	$10,658,321	$998,761	Footnote #4 :-(
2022	$10,318,719	$9,457,050	$1,065,001	Strong Investment Returns

Definitions:

• Net Worth: The value of all assets where I maintain liquidation control less all known or anticipated liabilities. The assets include fixed assets like my home, plane, and automobiles. While they are illiquid, the choice to effect a sale is within my control. The assets also include the net liquidating value of trading accounts, deferred compensation, 401K, IRAs, and checking accounts. The liabilities include any outstanding debts including mortgages and credit along with any future anticipated taxes that would be due from liquidating 401K, IRA or deferred compensation accounts.
• Additional Illiquid Assets: This is the mark-to-market (ie, my personal best guess) for the carrying value of additional assets for which I am entitled, but for which I have little control as to when or how they may become liquid. These include angel investments, the value of my shares of VC funds for which I am a limited partner, and carried interest for investments that were sourced as a VC scout. This value does not exclude anticipated taxes which is hard to calculate since some taxes are paid in advance of receiving distributions. It’s possible that the tax burden on the remaining distributions could be <20%. It’s possible that all these assets become worthless, but unlikely, as the $9.4M carrying value is spread across more than 3 dozen businesses and about half of those have already been sold or already profitable.
• W2 Income: The income received by my wife and I from our W2 jobs.

Footnotes:

1. I had an amazing thing happen about 18 months after university. I was working as a grunt in a consulting firm that had some acquisition interest from a large publicly traded company who was making aggressive moves into an area of technology where I had been tasked. The acquisition was moving fast and the firm needed to produce certain deliverables in a week that would normally require months. I stepped up and found a way to deliver the assets. The consultancy got acquired for what was a great outcome for the founder. Without expectation, he surprised me one day and offered to pay off my remaining $80K in student loans. I was hired by the acquiring company as a domain specialist and they doubled my income to $70K. The feeling can only be described as elation followed by a long cry. It was a powerful lesson in what the value of hard, dedicated work can bring.
2. The dotcom boom and bust was another high and low time. The company that acquired me gave a nice pool of options. In the matter of a year, those options were worth nearly $4M at one point. It was intoxicating to watch the value increase nearly every day as the Nasdaq skyrocketed. I had cashed out some of the options when they were available, but most I did not. To make matters worse, I decided to exercise and hold a good chunk of the options which means that taxes were due on the paper profits. I ended up selling a bunch of options to pay those taxes to the tune of nearly $400K. At the time I was unaware of steps that I could take to protect the value of the options that were unvested or that insurance was available which could lock in their value. If I had known that I could spend 10-15% of the value of the options to lock in their value, I would have done it. But I was young and naïve and believing that stocks only go up. The company I was in had a public high of $98 and by the time the dotcom crash had settled they were down to $4. I was able to sell some of the options and netted a profit of around $300K and the government got to hold onto that $400K in early tax payments. It wouldn’t be until the financial crash in 2009 where I could finally reclaim most of these early tax payments to use as a deduction against income (see the next footnote).
3. The financial crisis of 2008-2010 was a difficult time. I was sitting on three homes, had overpaid for the last home, and had mortgages on all three. When the housing crisis kicked in, I was nearly $750K under water across the three properties. You’ll note that my net worth somehow increased. I saved my bacon through research and a little help from the government. Turns out that if you can get a valid short sale offer in California then the bank will eat the losses on the underwater part of the mortgage. And further, Congress passed a law in 2008 or 2009 that allowed taxpayers to write off the loss for up to two years (the $750K mortgage write off is normally taxed as income). It effectively allowed me to sell two of the homes, walk away from the mortgages, and not owe any taxes. This turned into one boost to my net worth as I was starting to carry the losses against the net worth. The consequence was a massive hit to my credit which lasted 7 years. I had no plans to open new credit cards in that time frame, so felt like a good compromise. The other boost to the net worth was the final reconciliation of what happened in Footnote 2, where Congress allowed taxpayers to take any pre-paid taxes from previous years and to deduct 50% of what’s remaining each of the next two years. This dramatically reduced the income on which I owed taxes, gave me a huge refund for two years, and then boosted the net worth.
4. While the stock market had one of its best years in a decade in 2021, it was one of my worst trading years at -21%. For reasons that will be described in future sections, most of my trading for IRAs and trading accounts (~85% of my liquid assets), are traded by selling volatility which is somewhat anti-correlated to buy-and-hold. Strong, unrelenting bull markets that have no price relief are difficult for this style of trading to do well and, thus, the performance hit. In spite of this negative performance, the year was a positive net worth year because of distributions from VC funds, the surprise sale of two angel investments, and a small secondary event (the opportunity to sell a portion of my equity) from the company for which I currently run.

My Investment Philosophy
Here are the cumulative returns across my investment accounts, 401K, and IRAs. These are all investments where I personally direct and control the nature of how the funds should be deployed.

Year	Return	Material Events
1997	0%
1998	0%
1999	17.8%	401k
2000	9.5%
2001	(5.9%)
2002	1.4%
2003	7.8%	Open first trading account
2004	5.9%
2005	16.2%	Hired money manager
2006	12.9%
2007	14.2%
2008	(32.1%)	Fired money manager
2009	31.1%
2010	2.1%
2011	12.9%	Started volatility selling
2012	24.39%	>80% of investable assets now in volatility selling
2013	3.93%
2014	(8.3%)
2015	57.5%
2016	24.04%
2017	(.6%)
2018	(.1%)
2019	32.7%
2020	(2.8%)
2021	(31.3%)	Horrible year for volatility selling
2022	62.9%	Great year for volatility selling

My investment philosophy has shifted over 25 years. My current approach, which was enacted in its fullest amount in 2012, involves:

1. 401K. Maximize my participation and get any employer match. These funds go into a fairly conservative 2030 fund which is mostly bonds a little bit of stocks. This currently accounts for 8% of my liquid investable net worth.
2. IRA. Whenever I leave one job, I immediately rollover any 401K funds into a non-ROTH IRA. This accounts for 22% of my investable funds. The IRA trades by selling volatility through iron condors against broad-based indexes like NDX or SPX.
3. Cash. I rotate my checking and emergency cash by investing into tbills, treasuries, and ibonds through Treasury Direct. This has yielded 0.2% to 5% depending upon how interest rates are fluctuating. I mostly do 8 week short term rollovers. It slows in the winter to make any cash needed for taxes available. This equates to 9% of my liquid investable assets.
4. Brokerage. This is all of my other investable liquid assets. The brokerage trades by selling volatility through naked leveraged strangles in a portfolio margin account. This was a strategy that I developed a long time ago after spending dozens of weekends reading and learning about options. Selling volatility isn’t for the faint of heart, but if managed well you can reliably return 16% / year while assuming above average, but not “destroy you” risk. Over the years, I have tried to ‘tweak’ how I sell volatility to boost the returns and this generally has backfired. In 2020 during the down turn I decided to alter the approach in a way which would penalize me if the market were to climb aggressively. And, well, that is what it did for 18 months and I took it on the chin. Selling volatility is very good in soft down and flat markets, such as what we are experiencing in 2022. And, thus, it’s been a spectacular year of returns. While there are no guarantees of the future, I expect to moderate how volatility is sold so that I can more reliably return 15% / year with fewer massive up / down years: ie, lower returns with lower results volatility.

If you have done the math, I have 83% of my investable liquid assets in volatility, which is leveraged, and higher risk. It’s also generally anti-correlated to the stock market. In years that the market does well, volatility will not do as well. Why? A few reasons: a) My job and illiquid assets are heavily correlated to how the NASDAQ will perform with many factors beyond my control, b) volatility is a form of anti-correlation to most of my assets creating a blended return which (over time) adds to a combined net worth, c) I am a horrible public markets stock picker; almost every buy-and-hold bet I make doesn’t yield good results; selling volatility is an approach that allows me to not have to make a judgement on fair value or price of the index; therefore it is programmatic in what is needed rather than having to endlessly study 1000s of public market companies to make investment bets.
If 30-year treasuries ever breach 10% again like in the 70s, I will put everything I have into them and call it a day. No need to deal with selling volatility if that scenario plays out. Yes, inflation would be monstrous in that scenario, but it would be nice to know that a 10% rate of return is guaranteed for 30 years. And chances are the value of those debt instruments will increase over that time frame yielding a total return higher than 10%.
As mentioned previously, even if my expectation for selling volatility is 18% / year on average, then it would economically make sense to have a mortgage or HELOC on my properties, especially when their interest rate was <2%. The arbitrage on a $1M mortgage is over 15% / year and that is before you factor the mortgage interest tax deduction. In my 20s and 30s, this would have been a must-do imperative. Unfortunately, it took me 20 years to realize that the financial gain from the arbitrage doesn’t cover the mental stress of having debt with a creditor who takes a senior lien position.
My Expense Pattern
I’ve tried to structure my “run rate” expenses to comfortable sit below my after tax W2 income. Investment gains and other assets generally should not be sourced for funding the normal lifestyle of which I live. My wife and I are generally minimalists, though for the few things we own or experience, we are comfortable in purchasing a premium product or experience. This especially includes vacations, for which we will attempt to do one 4 week trip every few years, and a number of 5 day and 8 day trips each year.
I consider my “run rate” expenses to include mortgages, insurance, food, fuel, utilities, vacations, furniture, electronics, medical bills, clothes, jewelry. Generally, anything that we need to spend money on that isn’t considered an investment or necessary for us to live.
To better reflect the spending patterns, I am excluding any lump sum payments such as a down payment made for a mortgage. The reverse is also true, excluding any lump sum payment received when selling a home.
My historical tax rate has been ~32% across federal and state taxes after netting out any credits and deductions. I’ve been generally tax inefficient during my income years as I’ve always seen that the steps necessary to lower the tax rate meaningfully were too much of an inconvenience to warrant the potential gains. I expect our effective tax rate to inch towards 38% in the coming years.
​

Year	Expenses	% W2 Income	Comments
1997	$12,555	89%	College years
1998	$22,194	86%
1999	$42,904	41%
2000	$47,777	38%
2001	$41,150	18%
2002	$55,208	38%
2003	$106,086	37%	Mortgages add up
2004	$139,899	67%
2005	$84,790	61%
2006	$72,874	38%
2007	$106,163	52%
2008	$118,023	51%
2009	$104,085	45%
2010	$192,593	45%	Expensive vacations
2011	$190,074	49%
2012	$168,302	189%	$0 startup salary for 6 months.
2013	$180,788	71%	4 intl vacations
2014	$155,078	67%
2015	$188,987	78%
2016	$185,309	50%
2017	$201,109	25%	Lifestyle creep
2018	$267,725	59%	Pilot training is expensive
2019	$204,598	36%	Paid off mortgages
2020	$97,512	12%	COVID lock down == little spend
2021	$134,398	13%	Paid off plane mortgage
2022	$167,189	16%

My Work History
I only consistently made $250K of W2 income starting in 2016. At this time, my net worth was $2.6M with another $5.2M in illiquid assets. Our average income over those previous 16 years was $235K with 8 years making less than $200K. While $200K is a very generous income and above the average of most people, my key point is that the combined net worth of $7.8M is far above the $3.8M in taxable income earned over that same period.
A persistent, hard working family that chooses to spend below their earnings that intelligently invests their savings is able to build significant worth beyond the limits of what their job provides.
Like the stock market, my career has its ups and downs.
Interestingly, it’s marked by a number of short stints interspersed among long stints. I’ve worked in large publicly traded companies and as employee #1 in a startup. In my 25-year working career, the longest period of not having a W2 paying job has been 3 months.
I have only maintained a single W2 paying job at one time. I am, however, allowed to simultaneously angel invest, be a VC scout, sit on boards, and consult for companies across the tech ecosystem while I perform my primary function as employee. All of these additional activities help to build my portfolio of additional illiquid assets. I am earning sweat equity rather than having to outlay significant cash to build these positions.
​

Period	Role	Comments
1997-2003	Engineer, Tech Expert	Joined 15-person startup, acquired by public company after 12 months, multiple geeky roles at the acquirer.
2003-2004	CEO	Ran a 10-person consulting company specializing in geekery. Fire sale acquisition by another consulting company & I was not hired.
2004	Product	Joined a hot data startup to run product. Culture fail as the founder was a jerk. Quit after 1 week. This company eventually sold 2 years later for $900M! It would have been a big payday. No regrets, though.
2005-2011	Product	Mid-sized, fast growing public company.
2011	Product	VP @ very large public company. Reported to famous visionary. Resigned after 3 months (famous person was a jerk). Offered $1M / yr to stay and declined. No regrets, though.
2011-2017	CEO	Started tech company. Sold to a large public company. Almost bankrupt 3 times before finding fit, growing revenues, and becoming profitable.
2017-2019	GM	Ran $100M business unit that included my startup for the company that acquired us.
2019-2022	CEO	Hired as CEO of private company. 500 employees, profitable, setting sights on $100M in revs.

My Evolving View Of Financial Independence
While young, my view of financial worth was measured by net worth. “Will I ever be worth 1 MILLION dollars?!?”, as if that number held a magical quality that, if achieved, suddenly made one financially well-off. The day I became a millionaire was anti-climatic other than the entertainment value of seeing two commas on my tracking sheet. And that financial milestone was quickly discarded in favor of achieving the next million because I didn’t feel safe / stable / protected with just having one. And then the next one, and next one after that.
Net worth is not a good way to quantify your financial independence.
I’m familiar with the 4% SWR, and it’s always struck me as a challenging measure of whether someone has the financial means to retire early. There are too many challenges: how long do you live, changing macro conditions, unknowns about social safety nets, and so on. But even worse, the 4% SWR is a model where, generally, your net worth is likely to decline over those years depending upon how the investment portfolio performs.
As a way to deal with this anxiety, I’ve shifted my definition of financial independence to be defined by my ability to continue living my current lifestyle through gains made from investable assets. For 2023, this limited view would generate ~$600K (after netting taxes) for spending against a lifestyle run rate which is effectively $200K.
Selling volatility has a lot of risk associated since it is leveraged. A financial independence definition that depends upon leveraged risk introduces some peace of mind issues. This is the definition I currently use in order to claim that I am financially independent.
However, I also track a definition of financial independence that is virtually risk free: FI is when my run rate of life expenses is below the interest that can be earned from buying 30-year treasuries. At 4% yield this would generate ~$190K after taxes. The net after tax payments would benefit from not having state income tax and our family being in a lower average tax bracket. With my life expenses under $200K due to a lack of mortgage, I am currently bumping along on this threshold. Half of my annual expenses are vacations and luxury items (plane maintenance is not cheap) which could easily be eliminated if we decided we wanted to retire early and spend well under the interest generated threshold.
But we won’t.
We will probably carry on because we love our work. As our investable assets increase, we will allow lifestyle creep wine, vacations, and hobbies over the coming years.
Lessons and Observations

1. Perseverance Yields Results. Having a long history of steady savings can lead to big outcomes. While the sale of my company did create a boost in my wealth, the benefit of compounding savings over decades has lead to a greater contribution to the overall wealth. I’ve never been one to chase quick profits or fads (crypto, though I do own $2K of Bitcoin), and instead see that the professional and technology skills that I can acquire through self-study and life experiences pay larger dividends than with gambling investments.
2. Always Have A Project. Whether it’s becoming an expert in a new technology, learning the nuances of how strategic business development is orchestrated, or earning a pilot’s license, having 2-3 ongoing passion projects creates contentment, builds worldly skills, and opens work / financial opportunities that I was not seeking or aware of.
3. Culturally Fail Fast. I’ve been in 4 work scenarios where there was a culture mismatch. Either the people around were unpleasant or there was a limited interest in peers to socially connect. Get out of those situations as fast as possible, within days if necessary. I’ve been fortunate to listen to my inner voice and the longest I was in an unpleasant environment was 9 months. In two of these fail fast scenarios, had I stayed for more than 4 years, I would have earned more than $5M in each scenario. They were economic mistakes but like successes.
4. Peace Of Mind Matters More Than Profit. It took me the better part of my young adulthood, but I sleep peacefully by structuring my finances and earnings in such a way where I have the maximal peace of mind given my risk tolerance. The things that eat at me would be consistently having expenses above my income and a financial independence strategy that required my net worth to decline due to withdrawals.
5. Over Sacrificing Will Sabotage Important Relationships. Being aggressive in your career and sacrificing time with family, friends, and lovers hasn’t created enough of leapfrog in my FI journey that warrants the cost (often sabotage) that will come to those relationships. I was a relentless worker in my early years. Now I am a wise worker with a structured balance between work and play.
6. Maintain A War Time Mindset With Investing. Invest assuming that your worst-case nightmare scenario will happen. With this mindset, every investment has risk mitigations (both in my mindset and structurally). By thinking this way, you will be prepared emotionally and skill wise to act when negative scenarios occur. I used to be apprehensive about selling volatility with reasonable risk. It requires me to do things such as selling naked calls. Most traders hear the oft repeated words, "naked calls have unlimited loss potential!" and immediately run for the hills. I worked for months to avoid ever having a naked call go in the money as that would be the nightmare. Well, one time it happened, they were in the money, and I was frozen. But the nightmare was much worse in my dreams, learned how to trade out of it, and recognized that trading as if everything was always in the money made everything easier to absorb. So that is how I invest and trade - it's war time, nothing will go right, and have a plan for every possible contingency.

[first] [prev] [next] - [wiki]
"The Living are not done with you yet." - Ebony Jungle Feline Warrior Man, The War of Superpowered Blood Brothers, Mouse House Age of Paranoia megamedia.
The Telkan system had been fortunate during what had come to be known as Shade Night. The shades had swarmed out of the GalNet and SolNet links, out of the hypercom wave system, out of the needlecast and hypercom, slaughtering at will.
But only for a little over an hour.
They they had begun to swarm around repeaters, slowing down, and eventually curling into the fetal position. Many faded away to nothingness.
Telkan had only taken 2.1 million casualties.
They considered themselves lucky when they heard the news of what had happened to other industrialized and Gal/SolNet connected inhabited worlds.
The High Lady Brentili'ik, Planetary Director for a third time, had guided her people during the three months that followed as Telkan mourned its dead and picked up the pieces.
When the Precursor Autonomous War Machine had come across the resonance zone everyone had tensed until it had released a new and different roar.
YOU HAVE MAIL!
News from the other worlds. News from the war. News from the front.
Some of it was a somber letter. A vellum envelope with a black border and a gold seal that held the death notice and a terse recounting of the events for those whose family members had fallen in uniform. A creamy hardstock envelope, bordered with black with a silver seal for those whose family members on other planets had been killed by the shades when the shades attacked civilian populations.
Some of it was news that the Atrekna had been virtually wiped out, not one seen since Shade Night. The fighting against the Dwellerspawn and rogue Precursor Autonomous War Machines still went on. Hundreds of PAWM had refused the offer of peace, rejecting both the cease fire and the offer of membership to the Digital Artificial Sentience Systems, and still fought against the Confederacy's naval forces.
Casualty reports and damage estimates from Shade Night. Many were terrified by the scope of the casualties. Tens of billions, with some experts saying the casualties might reach into the hundreds of billions once each stellar system had been contacted and a census was taken. Some cried in relief that they had been moved from a stellar system to Telkan before the war. Others cried in sorrow that a home they had left behind or had never known was now a world of the dead.
News that a being known only as Crashrider had saved the majority of the Galactic Arm Spur when they had somehow managed to crash the hypercom wave generator, shutting down the realtime communications network of the Confederacy.
News that the peace process between the Confederacy and the Unified Council was moving at a brisk pace. Many who had been moved to Telkan to work for the various Omnicorps and Stellarcorps were either reimbursed for the travel and moving expenses or offered the ability to return home.
Many who had been taken from their homeworld and moved to Telkan had either already left in the time after the First Battle for Telkan. The majority, however, had fought and bled to keep Telkan free during those first two invasions and would have to be dragged off kicking and screaming from the planet they felt so possessive over.
The news of the massive lawsuits and class action suits brought forth by the Terran lawfare agents against the massive, seemingly omnipotent Omnicorps. More than a few beings opened their bank accounts to discover massive amounts of deposits to cover a wide array of damages.
News of the trials and investigation of 'war crimes' perpetrated by the Lanaktallan government, Omnicorps, government officials, and even the wealthy and powerful, in what was being called the "Harmony Trials" by the press. The opening of investigations or the results of trials for crimes that had occurred even before the lemurs of Terra had arrived, as the Confederacy had no statute of limitations on murder, depraved indifference, or rape.
A few beings wept, kneeling down, holding the letter tightly, when they found that murdered relatives had received justice through the often-times harsh Confederate Legal System. The symbol of the robed Terran female, her eyes blindfolded, a sword in one hand and scales in the other, adorned all of those letters. Some of the crinkled, tear stained letters were framed by the recipient and put in places where they could be easily seen.
Then came The Flashbang, when the sun emitted a massive white light as the stellar stabilizer systems were overriden by a mysterious origin. The white light spread across the system faster than light should have been, blinding everyone for a split second.
When it cleared, the shades were gone and the people of the Telkan system, like everywhere else, rejoiced.
The fusion plants, the large industrial sized ones, began to fail afterwards. The massive broadcast power stations failed. Many satellites failed. Their molycircs damaged by The Flashbang. They were quickly replaced, but many cities and homes had to rely on the smaller ones or military fusion reactors. It was not uncommon to see a mech or an armored vehicle parked in a neighborhood with cables leading off of it.
Non-military grav vehicles had failed during The Flashbang, the molycircs degrading inside the space of a few hours. Luckily, there was no loss of life, but ground vehicles and military vehicles were soon the only thing seen on the road.
The mysterious graffiti pleading "For Our Sake, Pete, Stop Helping!" appeared here and there, although no culprit was ever found and no explanation of the cryptic graffiti ever surfaced.
The Telkan, as always, put on their work boots and began fixing everything they could, just like everyone else. Broadcast power was abandoned, after all, the shades had been able to ride the energy waves back during Shade Night.
The nanoforges and creation engines, which had been 'kicking' oddly for a few weeks prior to the Flashbang were used sparingly. The military grade ones still worked, and the Telkan began replacing community, industrial, and private nanoforges as fast as possible. BobCo sent out new nanoforges to all of their loyal customers free of charge.
Life began to move on.
Tri-Vees were nervously turned on once a maintenance worker had replaced chipsets. Many didn't bother with the Tri-Vees and instead purchased or used the nanoforge to run off a visual media player that used a cathode ray tube and excited photons.
More than a few 'commercials' for shops showed a comely Telkan female standing next to a huge heavy wooden cabinet, carved and inlaid for decoration, praising the Vid's analogue sound system, the crispness of the cathode ray system, and speaking about the obvious beauty of the solid wood cabinet that had been hand carved.
GalNet and SolNet fiber optic or superconductor cables were dug up and thrown into the reclaimer landfills, which emptied as fast as they were filled. More than a handful of enterprising Telkan made money going out and 'prospecting' for old war wreckage or, even better, an old Unified Council landfill, to sell it to the reclamation companies.
Copper cable was laid by massive crews.
Five months after Shade Night went down in history. Photographed and recorded.
An assistant to the planetary director picked up a handset, tapped some buttons, and waited. The screen split to show the same type of handset on a cradle being ringing in the Planetary Director's office. Madame Director Brentili'ik picked up the handset.
"Ah-hoy-hoy," she stated.
"Can you hear me now?" her assistant added.
"Loud and clear. Goodbye," Brentili'ik said before hanging up the receiver.
The analogue communication system, the telephone, was reinvented and embraced.
The airwaves went live as analogue systems across the UHF and VHF bands began transmitting safe video images. The FM and AM bands lit up with music, talk radio, and news channels.
All of it safe from shade infestation.
Shades hid in the spaces between the 1's and 0's of the digital, lurking and waiting. Analogue was a living thing that was always in motion and safe from the shades.
Everyone had heard about the world that had thought the shades had been cleared out but a single image had released a flood of shades that had killed the remaining survivors of the first attack.
Software from Magician Hat Games was suddenly available. It would scan files and look for shades, then remove them. While it worked on visual media and files, the Telkan government still outlawed video and audio files in any resolution greater than 480p. Any public computer files were data only. Arguments were made that video and audio were still data, no different than a spreadsheet file when compressed then broken down for transmission over the information network.
The arguments sometimes got violent.
Leading experts were offered the chance to prove their theories. They could enter a room with a computer that had received through traffic from another stellar system while it was powered up. After all, the through traffic, relayed by the computer, was only data.
The experts refused.
The argument ended.
A text only information network was established, with roving VI that watched for any type of video or audio being transferred, even in email attachments.
Six months after Shade Night the first trader arrived. There had been little immigration or emigration, little stellar trade.
After all, jumpspace and hyperspace was now known as Ghostspace or Shadespace.
The blame wasn't laid on the Terrans, after all, they had been dead. It wasn't laid on the Lanaktallans (who were grateful for that small mercy) who had created Hellspace. It was laid on the Atrekna.
But life kept on going.
On the site of one of the famous battles of First Telkan, a massive stadium had been built. It featured athletic events and spectacles of carnage to those willing to buy a ticket. The Grand Stadium was the site of popular events. It was a grand superstadium, with seating for nearly two hundred and fifty thousand spectators.
It had become a graveyard when the shades had attacked, flooding out of the big screens and the screens on the back of the seats that allowed spectators to select the view they wished to watch.
Many were surprised that it was bulldozed and reclaimed a week after Shade Night, the day after the remains of the dead were recovered.
A smaller one was built within a month.
It was christened the Ullmo'ok Memorial Coliseum. It only had seating for a few thousand people, made entirely of stone and carved with scenes of carnage and sports events. There were great pillars leading up the main entrywalk, a cobblestone road leading to the entrance. There were damaged warmeks posed as if they were flexing muscles between the pillars.
The advertisements ran on television and radio, the stentorian voice of the announcer simmering with excitement. The text only InfoPage appeared proclaiming a grand event was going to take place in a month's time.
The Grand Opening of the Ullmo'ok Memorial Coliseum, a limited seating and Pay Per View cable television event. Tickets were expensive, but were sold out within minutes. Some tickets appeared on the gray market resale sites, costing as much as a year's pay for a low level management worker.
Poldings, squirmlings, tadpoles, hatchlings, all got in free when accompanied by an adult!
They were sold out within seconds.
Word went out that the Planetary Director herself would be present in one of the VIP boxes.
Two hundred tickets went up on a lottery for those who earned a menial salary.
Rumor said that the pre-game, mid-game, and end-game shows were going to be amazing.
People talked about the fact that warmeks were in the work yard.
Thirty second commercials featuring the contestants began to appear on television. The advertisements where a narrator extolled the combat virtue of the contestants in a voice-over laid atop the sounds of mek combat played on the radio.
T-shirts, jackets, sweaters, flank-coverings, abdominal wraps, sashes, and torso vests appeared at the malls and on the nanoforges.
Some said that it was obscene to have such a celebration so soon after Shade Night and The Flashbang, but they were shouted down by those that pointed out that there was always a galactic war, a planetary slaughter, a world ending threat.
The day of the event, great sodium spotlights came on with a clack that could be heard for nearly a mile. The beams were bright enough to be seen in the daylight, moving back and forth. Music, hard, driving music, poured from the speakers in the parking lot, from the posing mechs, and from the massive speakers around the stone coliseum.
Being lined up eagerly. Some were nervous by the security guards, dressed in the old CorpSec uniforms of the Kismet Industrial and Mining Consortium, but the security beings had their face shields up and were smiling. Many posed for pictures with the sec guards, film cameras snapping pictures with a sodium light flash.
The line waited eagerly, until the huge black wrought iron gates crashed open with a triumphant fanfare from the music.
Inside were souvenir shops, food and drink stalls, and bathrooms inside the massive stone structure. Posters lined the walls, good old ink on paper, showing the various competitors and their mechs, with "SLAMSMASH I!" at the bottom with the date.
There were VIP areas, sports betting sections, where huge cathode ray tube screens would show the action. There was alcohol, stims, narcobrew and narcostims. In the sportsbar sections, which looked older, danker, dingier than the rest of the coliseum, weathly or influential Lanaktallan, Telkan, and all manner of beings gathered to bet, cheer, and get drunk and high while they watched the spectacle.
The seats were filled and the excitement palpable when the floor of the coliseum rolled back and a stage lifted up. A popular teknopunch band of Telkan teenage girls rose up and began to play their recent hit single. After that song, a new song was played and the crowd roared in appreciation.
The songs ended, the seats were filled, and the lights went out as the stage sunk back into the ground.
Everyone held their breath.
Up high, across from the ornate and decorated VIP box that seated the Planetary Director, lights came on to reveal a box surrounded by a metal cage.
A Lanaktallan clopped out and the crowd gasped and/or cheered.
The Lanaktallan wore a denim vest covered with small mirrors. Four sparkling mirrored globes hovered over his head, the globes slowly spinning. He had blinking lights draped over his torso and his arms, which were covered in glitter. He wore no sash, but he needed none to be recognized.
Lo'omo'nan the MC.
The Lanaktallan grabbed the microphone, pulling it up to his mouth.
"WELCOME TO SLAMSMASH ONE!" he yelled.
The crowd roared their approval back.
"As always, let's have a minute of silence for the fallen, including my great-nephew, Ullmo'ok," he said solemnly.
There was silence.
It was suddenly broken by "look, mommy, a mirror man! He's so sparkly! I wish I was sparkly." in a wistful little girl's voice.
It started with titters. Then laughter. Then the crowd and even the MC roared with laughter. Those who could see the Planetary Director could see her holding the hands of her broodcarriers and laughing. Even in living rooms and dens and relaxation rooms laughter rang out across the planet.
"OUR HONORED DEAD PREFER LAUGHTER TO SILENCE! FROM HERE ON OUT, IT WILL BE A MOMENT OF LAUGHTER IN THEIR HONOR HERE!" Lo'omo'nan the MC yelled.
The crowd's roar of approval was a physical thing.
"WITHOUT FURTHER ADO!" Lo'omo'nan called out, whirling in place and pointing at one of the massive iron doors. "LET'S START THE MIDDLEWEIGHT EVENT!"
There was a crashing thud against them. Once. Twice. A third time.
The doors creaked open.
A massive Davion Class warmek strode out, painted in garish colors with skulls painted on each fist.
"YOU KNOW HIM! YOU LOVE HIM! PILOTING SKULLBREAKER - MU'RDRMO'O!"
The massive mek stomped out, its fists raised the sky as the coliseum roared their approval. The mek moved to the center of the coliseum, lights on it. It stopped and fireworks went off, fountaining sparks on either side of the mek.
Lo'omo'nan the MC whirled in place, throwing off a shower of rainbows, and pointed at another door.
"THE TELKAN YOU LOVE TO HATE! RED CRUSHER PILOTING WARSTEEL BETTY!"
The doors crashed open on the first thudding impact and a massive Davion class mek stomped out, pointing at the crowd with one hand and making throat cutting gestures with the other. It stopped only twenty feet from the other mek, stomping through a shower of sparks.
The crowd roared out their booing and jeering.
"COMPETING FOR THEIR PLACE OF THE FLASHBANG LADDER, THESE MEDIUM GRADE COMBATANTS ARE HERE TO PUT THEIR LIVES, THEIR BLOOD, THEIR METAL ON THE LINE FOR YOU!"
The crowd roared as the two meks went to opposite sides of the field.
"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?"
The crowd roared as the meks flexed and posed.
"ARE YOU ALL READY TO RUUUUUUUUUUUMBLE?" he shouted out.
The meks crouched slightly, their weapons going live.
The crowd went wild.
[first] [prev] [next] - [wiki]

In the other thread I made, I said a realistic target for a real long term Forex trader was 2-4% a month.
A lot of people came in angry, saying 8% a week is possible! 25% a month is fair!
I will provide for you guys a simple bullshit-o-meter. I will list weekly rate of returns and how long it takes for a lone trader in his basement to buy out the car company Mazda with a 10k starting account. You guys make your mind up if that's reasonable or not.
Remember we're talking consistent week-to-week profits. No 'bruh I once made 25% in an houuur!"
Starting size 10k. Target 5Bn.

• 10% a week - 2.5 years
• 9% a week - 3 years
• 8% a week - 3.3 years
• 7% a week - 3.7 years.
• 6% a week - 4.4 years
• 5% a week - 5.2 years
• 4% a week - 6.5 years.
• 3% a week - 8.6 years
• 2% a week - 10 years.
• 1% a week - over 20 years.

The only thing that sounds remotely realistic to me is 1% and sub 1%.
Ie. Realistically speaking anyone claiming to make over 1-2% a week consistently at most is full of shit.
Given this. At 1% a week... How large of an account size do you need to make 7k a month (an equivalent salary for say programmer working at a software company).
175k.
You need 175k IN cash... To make 7k a month. With a 10k starting account at 1% A WEEK. That's... 5.5 years. (keep this in mind when you hear stories of "I started with 3k now I make 20k a monnnth!!!"). To make 20k a month you need a 500k trading account. That's 7 years of profitably on 10k on-top of years of learning.
So first you study Forex until you become a 'world class' trader. Capable of consistently earning 1% a week like the best of in the industry. (10k hours) (atleast 2.2 years of staring at the charts 12 hours a day).
Then after that you deposit 10k, and make 1% a week for 5.5 years straight without an income, without withdrawing a single dollar.
Then, and only at that point, after 7.5 years of your life are gone studying charting skills that have almost no other application or job prospects other than in trading..
You finally make the same amount as a software developer who has worked in the industry for 2 years, and now works from home playing video games and doing 2 hours of work a day.
This. Is. Reality.
The light at the end of the tunnel though is if after 7 years of this.. if you still don't withdraw money and continue trading from your parents bedrooms and end up being 30-40 years old...
You may be able to buy Mazda the company in cash before you retire.
TLDR: What to actually expect best case scenario:

• Study Forex 12 hours a day for 2.5 years.
• Save up 10,000USD.
• Trade and make 1% a week for 5.5 years without withdrawl.
• After 7 years, make the same money as a mid-level software developer with more risk and chance of missing a payday and no transferrable skills.

Normal case scenario:

• Same as above with timings doubled and blowing 10-20k over the period of 2.5 years learning on blown accounts and Ftmo challenges.

Worse case scenario: - Degenerate addiction to gambling, involving depositing chunks of your salary into your broker In a hope to strike it lucky this time and make back the last 6 paycheques you lost on Forex only to have your broker deny withdrawals and stop responding to your emails when you finally do get lucky.

Happy Thursday, Barkada --

The PSE lost 47 points to 6242 ▼0.8%

Thank you to FinanceForever and tanitsuj for implying that my "fictional family", from yesterday's write-up about the PSE's weird rules for IPOs by way of introduction, was actually autobiographical. I'll say this: while I can chug syrup, that skill was not learned at the family dinner table. Read into that what you will. Haha.
Shout-outs to Stephen Chiong, Pao, Jonathan Burac, MikMabagsik, Rolex Jodieres, Palaboy Trader, Just’n, Singapore Airlines Boarding Music 2021 is, Makisig Tan, Spyfrat's Call, LanAustria, Jose Mateo, psestocktipsdaily, Lance Nazal, arkitrader, Evolves Capital, Inc., Dividend Pinoy | PGG, Chip Sillesa, and Jing for the retweets, and to Dale Pacheco, Evolves.co, and Mike Ting for the FB shares!

▌In today's MB:

• Jollibee rides record Q3 sales to deliver massive Q3 profit
• LFM Properties IPO was absolute insanity
• RL Commercial REIT declares stable dividend
• Citicore Energy REIT Q3 dividend keeps pace

▌Daily meme | Subscribe (it's free) | Today's email

▌Today's sponsor: DM Wenceslao

▌Main stories covered:

• [Q3] Jollibee rides record Q3 sales to deliver massive Q3 profit... Jollibee [JFC 233.00 ▲1.92%] [link] delivered a Q3 profit of ₱2.3 billion, up 70% from its Q3/21 profit of ₱1.3 billion, driven by ₱77.7 billion in Q3 system-wide sales (a JFC record). 9M profit was at ₱7.2 billion, up 168% y/y from ₱2.7 billion, JFC said that its strong Q3 and 9M performances are due to a variety of factors working together, but the largest being the easing of movement restrictions in the Philippines. This allowed PH-based JFC stores to experience a 48.5% same-store sales growth in Q3 y/y, which pulled JFC’s total worldwide same-store sales growth up to 30.9%. Other factors that contributed to the success were the price increases that JFC imposed in Q4/21, continued global expansion, new acquisitions (like Milksha), and beneficial forex conversions for income earned overseas. JFC said that it increased its total worldwide store count by 6% to 6,351 in the first 9M of 2022. The only concerning statistic came out of China, where JFC same-store sales were down 4.6% y/y due to the reimposition of movement restrictions meant to slow the spread of COVID-19.
  
  • MB: The bee has been busy. Remember the days when JFC would need to extract the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (CBTL) acquisition from its financials? Not anymore. CBTL, along with Highlands and Milksha, account for 30% of JFC’s store network and 15% of its total system-wide sales. CBTL was even a stabilizing force through the punishing and confusing lockdowns that we went through that kept earnings from PH-based locations suppressed. Now, the patience that JFC has been pleading for is paying off. The thing I’m most curious about, though, is how JFC’s business has changed since COVID. Did the industry flip to 20% dine-in and 80% dine-out as McDonalds’ and JFC had predicted back in 2020, or are we getting back to something that looks more like the glory days of stuffing as many people as possible into each location? There was so much talk a couple years ago about how the quick-service industry would need to change to survive the “new normal” (cloud kitchens, 3rd party delivery apps, dine-out dominance), but are these recovery numbers coming from the old way of doing business, the new way, or a blend of the two? I’d love to see some segmented analysis.
• [NEWS] LFM Properties IPO was absolute insanity... The Liberty Mills Flour [LFM 17.78 ▼1.22%] spin-off, LFM Properties [LPC 0.205 ▲91.6%], opened for trading yesterday morning with the first trades coming through at ₱0.398/share. That’s already a 272% increase over the valuation and fairness opinion price that LPC received from KPMG of ₱0.107/share. Six minutes later, by 9:36, the price had jumped up over 600% from that opinion price to ₱0.75/share with a little over half a million shares trading hands around this price. At that price, LPC had a marketcap of ₱18.75 billion. Keep in mind, LPC’s marketcap coming into the day was just ₱2.67 billion, and the marketcap of its parent company, LFM, which owns 58.6% of LPC, was just ₱2.7 billion. LPC was now (technically) worth 6.9 times its parent company. Nice and normal. By 9:39, the price had dropped all the way back to ₱0.39/share, which is a 48% drop over three minutes, but still a 270% gain relative to that opinion price. By 9:54, the price was down to ₱0.30/share, which was down 60% from that early peak, but still up 180% on the day. At 10:00, the price reached ₱0.20/share (up 87%). It bounced back up to ₱0.25/share (+133%) just before lunch, but kind of faded through the day back down to ₱0.205 where it closed, down 73% from the 9:39 AM peak, but up 91.6% on the day.
  
  • MB: As predicted, this IPO was a joke, just like the last listing by way of introduction. The PSE says that it removes the daily price increase and decrease thresholds in order to allow “market forces to determine the price of the securities.” Those thresholds would have capped LPC’s potential gains on the day at 50%, just like every other stock, and even every other IPO. What, exactly, did market forces “discover” about LPC’s price? Well, all we know so far is that it’s probably not ₱0.75/share. Sweet. What else did the market forces tell us, though? For one thing, they told us that the regular price thresholds, while imperfect, actually perform a very useful function; the 50% gain cap prevents FOMO from infecting investors and discourages euphoric speculation and obvious price bubbles. This is the kind of trading that I associate with shitcoins on dank crypto exchanges with no fixed address and website text that looks like it was written with a heavy reliance on Google Translate. This is the kind of trading that reeks of bored equity traders just trying to have some fun on the side. I think that there’s a time and place for that kind of fun, but why the PSE thinks that it’s a good idea to encourage price bubbles that leave hundreds or thousands of investors hopelessly underwater is beyond me. Why not slap those caps on this kind of listing? If it’s ok for “market forces” to determine the price of every other thing on the PSE within that -30% to +50% band, even other IPOs, then why couldn’t it work for this type of listing in the same way? The PSE: “Just drink your syrup.”
• [NEWS] RL Commercial REIT declares stable dividend... RL Commercial REIT [RCR 5.09 ▲0.79%] [link] declared a Q3/22 dividend of ₱0.0974, payable on November 29 to shareholders of record as of November 22. The dividend has an annualized yield of 7.65% based on the previous closing price, which is 0.21% larger than Q3's pre-dividend annualized yield of 7.64%. Relative to RCR's IPO price, the dividend increased RCR's total stock and dividend return to -14.18%, up from its pre-dividend total return of -15.69%. This is RCR’s 4th consecutive quarter of dividend growth.
  
  • MB: A stable return from the Gokongwei Family’s commercial leasing REIT. While RCR IPO buyers have never known what it feels like to receive anything other than a larger dividend than what has come before, it’s clear that the rate of that growth is not what it used to be. The first jump was 48%, the second jump was 4.8%, the third jump was 0.7%, and this most recent increase was just 0.2%. Hey, don’t get me wrong: growth is growth. I’d rather own RCR than a REIT that suddenly halves its dividend without justification or reason. The Gokongwei Family is steady and stable in the REIT game.
• [NEWS] Citicore Energy REIT Q3 dividend keeps pace... Citicore Energy REIT [CREIT 2.09 ▼0.95%] [link] declared a Q3/22 dividend of ₱0.044, payable on January 5 to shareholders of record as of December 9. The dividend has an annualized yield of 8.42% based on the previous closing price, which is in-line with the annualized yield CREIT had prior to the declaration. Relative to CREIT's IPO price, the dividend increased CREIT's total stock and dividend return to -11.49%, up from its pre-dividend total return of -13.22%.
  
  • MB: I’ve been talking for months about how, compared to its other REIT siblings, CREIT is completely insulated from the vulgar ups and downs of the Metro Manila commercial lease market. Will the administration outlaw POGOs? CREIT doesn’t care. Will work-from-home laws change, and how will this impact the demand for office space? Again, CREIT doesn’t care. All of its income comes from leasing land to solar power plants, on long-term leases. The only variable for CREIT is in the size of the special dividend at the end of the year that gives investors a little upside in the form of a small slice of the actual electricity sale profits. None of the commercial REITs provide any kind of profit-sharing mechanism. I’m not saying that CREIT is the superior investment; there are many reasons why you might select another REIT for the long-term, depending on the assumptions that you’ve made about Metro Manila’s growth and the projected growth of the leasing market going forward. I’m just trying to draw out some of the interesting differences between CREIT and the rest of the market that give fixed-income investors another angle to work with.

MB is written and distributed every trading day. The newsletter is 100% free and I never upsell you to some "iNnEr cIrClE" of paid-membership perks. Everyone gets the same! Join the barkada by signing up for the newsletter, or follow me on Twitter. You can also read my daily Morning Halo-halo content on Philstar.com in the Stock Commentary section, and in the Saturday edition of the Daily Manila Shimbun.

Subscribe here

Read today's full newsletter here

Many proprietary forex trading platforms like FTMO are included in the Alert List Published by RBI.
Alert List contains names of entities which are neither authorised to deal in forex under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA) nor authorised to operate electronic trading platform (ETP) for forex transactions under the Electronic Trading Platforms (Reserve Bank) Directions, 2018. This list is not exhaustive and is based on what was known to RBI at the time of publication.
However in the case were a trader trades in a FUNDED account, will the trades made by him in the funded account be deemed to be services provided by an employee/contractor, and the share of profit received by him deemed to be in the nature of salary/commission/consultancy fee?
Would the trades taken by the trader on behalf of the firm be non-permissible/illegal (trading in FCY-FCY contracts illegal?) under FEMA and other RBI regulations?
Throw some light on the taxability of share of profit received by the resident trader.

Gak bisa dipungkiri sepanjang tahun 2020-2021 banyak orang memulai investasinya karena influence sosial media. Beruntung bagi yang memulai investasinya lebih awal dan agak celaka bagi yang mulai investasinya di akhir-akhir tanpa tau konsekuensinya. Banyak kasus orang beli saham pake pinjol. Beli BTC, Altcoin pake utangan, uang arisan, bahkan sumbangan gereja.
my advice for you yang kena FOMO:
Miner musiman: Ketika crypto turun drastis di Januari-Februari 2022. Segera jual alat miningmu karena kamu harus menunggu 2024 untuk bisa panen. Karena ketika kamu beli mining rig sekarang harganya sudah naik berkali-kali lipat dari harga wajarnya. Perhitungkan kembali listrik yang harus kamu keluarkan, Gak BEP istilahnya. Contoh nyata Founder Rekeningku yang boncos bertahun-tahun karena nutupin biaya listrik dan beli mining rig kemahalan, baru panen akhir2 ini.
​
Robot trading: Royal Q , Forex dll. Robot trading is scam, jauhi sekarang sebelum terlambat. Janji manis seller Royal Q dan robot forex profit konisten itu gak ada buktinya 100% scam. Kisah nyata banyak yg bunuh diri karena tiba-tiba assetnya hilang diaveraging oleh robot. Jangan sampai kamu jadi korbannya
​
Trader Binomo, Binary option: Kamu yang baru memulai binary option, inilah saatnya dirimu keluar dari sistem jahat Judi 2.0 mungkin diawal kamu akan merasakan profit namun lama kelamaan akan susah dan tiba-tiba akun tersuspen tanpa sebab. Jelakanya gak ada yg bisa jamin akunmu balik karena Binomo dan lainnya jelas ilegal di Indonesia sehingga penyedia layanan tidak diketahui siapa.
​
Trader Saham musiman via signal telegram : Saham ada bull market dan bearish market, lengkapi dirimu dengan FA dan TA tambah bandarmology juga. Investing stock is about your move, bukan orang lain. Jadi pastikan semua keputusan investasi kamu yang buat bukan orang lain.
​
Trader Crypto: Bear market is coming, we need to understand what crypto still alive for next 4 Years(next halving) DCA still the best strategy for you. We will face the second Bull Run but dont fall for it to much, cause second bull run means next winter season.
​
note: I hope yall getting more profit and healthy. May the Force be with you

Hodler's Digest The FTX collapse continues to unfold, BlockFi announces bankruptcy filing and Kraken settles a sanctions breach: Hodler’s Digest, Nov. 27 – Dec. 3 by Editorial Staff 6 min December 3, 2022
Coming every Saturday,Hodler’s Digestwill help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

*BlockFi files for bankruptcy, cites FTX collapse for its troubles*

Digital asset lending company BlockFi announced on Nov. 28 that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey. The bankruptcy filing revealed, among other details, that BlockFi aims to restructure and keep specific employees on board. BlockFi has eight daughter companies that are also included in the bankruptcy motion. Later news revealed bankruptcy proceeding details, including BlockFi’s attorney reporting that $355 million of the organization’s capital is sitting frozen on FTX.

*Kraken settles with US Treasury’s OFAC for ‘apparent’ sanctions violations*

In a settlement with the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), U.S. crypto exchange Kraken will pay a fine of approximately $362,000 for breaking sanctions against Iran. The firm self-reported the violation to the OFAC, according to comments from Marco Santori, Kraken’s chief legal officer. Kraken allegedly allowed usage of its exchange by Iran-based participants and did not have a proper system in place for banning certain IP addresses. The firm has agreed to put $100,000 toward sanctions compliance measures as part of the settlement, in addition to the $362,000 fine.
Read also [Features Are You Independent Yet? Financial Self-Sovereignty and the Decentralized Exchange
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/financial-decentralized-exchange-dex/)[Features Despite the bad rap, NFTs can be a force for good
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/despite-a-bad-rap-nfts-can-be-a-force-for-good/)

*[FTX was the ‘fastest’ corporate failure in US history — Trustee calls for probe*](https://cointelegraph.com/news/u-s-trustee-ftx-was-the-fastest-corporate-failure-in-american-history-calls-for-probe)

FTX headlines keep rolling in as events unfold. FTX’s bankruptcy case has prompted the U.S. trustee working the case to request an independent examiner to come look into the details surrounding FTX’s downfall. Another headline revealed that bank accounts of sister entity Alameda Research were reportedly used for FTX customer fund activities without the exchange working with a bank directly. FTX was also the subject of a Dec. 1 meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. Additionally, Bahamian authorities are investigating FTX.

*[Binance hires audit firm that served Donald Trump to verify crypto reserves*](https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-hires-audit-firm-that-served-donald-trump-to-verify-crypto-reserves)

Binance continued to work on increasing its transparency regarding its reserves. The crypto exchange hired Mazars, an accounting firm known for retaining former U.S. President Donald Trump as a long-time client, to perform its proof-of-reserves (PoR) audit. Mazars and the Trump family cut ties in 2022. In another development related to the PoR audit, Binance has recently moved large amounts of cryptocurrencies, raising concerns in the crypto community.

*3AC bankruptcy process faces challenges amid unknown whereabouts of founders*

Three Arrows Capital liquidators are having difficulties engaging with Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, the hedge fund’s founders. During a virtual hearing in the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court, lawyers representing the liquidators said the founders did not engage with them in recent months, despite being active on social media. Zhu and Davies are believed to be currently based in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, where it is difficult to enforce foreign court orders.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $17,002, Ether (ETH) at $1,288 and XRP at $0.39. The total market cap is at $857.72 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Fantom (FTM) at 32.0%, ApeCoin (APE) at 20.85% and GMX (GMX) at 20.67%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are BinaryX (BNX) at -18.11%, Nexo (NEXO) at -9.53% and Convex Finance (CVX) at -7.48%.
For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.
Read also [Columns Wall Street disaster expert Bill Noble: Crypto spring is inevitable
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/wall-street-disaster-bill-noble-crypto-spring-inevitable/)[Features William Shatner Tokenizes his Favorite Memories on the WAX Blockchain
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/william-shatner-nft-wax-blockchain/)

Most Memorable Quotations

“I think that the crypto industry will have to take a more focused approach, shifting from hype cycles toward building real utility.”
***Rahul Advani, APAC policy director at Ripple*
“If you’re a Brazilian or you’re from Venezuela or Argentina, it becomes much easier to understand the power of a decentralized currency.”
Marcel Pechman, **markets analyst and Cointelegraph contributor**
“DeFi-centric platforms simply cannot fall victim to shady business practices because ‘code is law’ for them.”
*******Aishwary Gupta, DeFi chief of staff at Polygon*
“We have definitely noticed more people buying Bitcoin due to the FTX crash.”
*******Imo Bábics, *chief marketing officer at Relai****
“I do think Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control unilaterally what apps get on a device and I don’t think that’s a sustainable or good place to be.”
*Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta*
“Clearly, I made a lot of mistakes or things I would give anything to be able to do over again.”
[Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried](https://cointelegraph.com/news/legal-professionals-astonished-as-sbf-admits-failures-apologizes-12-times-in-interview), former CEO of FTX

Prediction of the Week

**[Bitcoin will ‘teleport’ to $14K or worse if BTC breaks $16K — Analyst**](https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-will-teleport-to-14k-or-worse-if-btc-breaks-16k-analyst)

Bitcoin spent some time at over $17,000, although the asset has played above and below the level multiple times in the past days, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index.
Early in the week, pseudonymous digital asset analyst il Capo Of Crypto tweeted that danger possibly lies ahead for BTC if the asset falls under the $16,000 mark. “When it breaks below 16k, it teleports to 12k-14k,” the analyst said on Nov. 28.
Other notable factors and analysis were also mentioned in the article, including the potential importance of November’s monthly candle close.

FUD of the Week

***[Libertex crypto exchange head Vyacheslav Taran dies in helicopter crash in France](https://cointelegraph.com/news/libertex-crypto-exchange-head-vyacheslav-taran-dies-in-helicopter-crash-in-france)*******

A third unexpected death recently shook the crypto space. Vyacheslav Taran, the 53-year-old billionaire Russian president of Libertex Group, died in a helicopter accident on Nov. 25, confirmed in an official statement from Libertex. Taran also founded Forex Club and had a hand in multiple crypto endeavors. The helicopter trip to Monaco from Switzerland only had Taran and the pilot on board, both killed in the crash. Amber Group’s 30-year-old co-founder, Tiantian Kullander, and MakerDAO’s 29-year-old co-founder, Nikolai Mushegian, also both unexpectedly died in November and October, respectively.

*[EmpiresX ‘head trader’ to face 4 years of prison over $100M crypto ‘Ponzi’*](https://cointelegraph.com/news/empiresx-head-trader-to-face-4-years-of-prison-over-100m-crypto-ponzi)

Joshua David Nicholas received a prison sentence of approximately four years for his involvement in EmpiresX, a $100 million crypto Ponzi operation. Nicholas served as head trader for the scheme, claiming the promise of profits based on bot trading, although the operation was actually a Ponzi scheme that misused customer funds. Still at large, Emerson Pires and Flavio Goncalves also played roles in the scam, which ran from 2020 to 2022.

Bankman-Fried on the hook in Texas, called to appear at Feb. hearing

An investigation by the Texan securities regulator is looking into whether Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX US violated Texas securities laws. Bankman-Fried must appear in court on Feb. 2 as part of the investigation. According to a notice of hearing filed by Texas State Securities Board Director Joseph Rotunda and served to Bankman-Fried on Nov. 29, FTX US offered unregistered securities to Texans through its “EARN” accounts.

Best Cointelegraph Features

**[South Korea’s unique and amazing crypto universe**](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/unique-amazing-south-koreas-cryptoverse/)

“There’s this whole other side of crypto that we just don’t hear about that’s based on Asian culture. And that’s all originating in South Korea.”

*Socios boss’ goal? To knock crypto out of the park*

“As an entrepreneur, I always try to find new opportunities… At the end of 2017, I started to look at crypto from a sports angle.”

How stable are stablecoins in the FTX crypto market contagion?

The collapse of crypto-exchange FTX hit the crypto world like a tropical storm. It bears asking once again: How stable are stablecoins?
Subscribe The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a week.

Editorial Staff

Cointelegraph Magazine writers and reporters contributed to this article. Read also [6 Questions for… 6 Questions for Reeve Collins of BLOCKv
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/6-questions-for-reeve-collins-of-blockv/) by Editorial Staff 5 min March 6, 2022 [Features Guide to real-life crypto OGs you’d meet at a party (Part 2)
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/insiders-guide-real-life-crypto-ogs-part-2/) by Alice Huang Wijaya 10 min September 14, 2022 Most popular [Features Toss in your job and make $300K working for a DAO? Here’s how
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/toss-in-your-job-and-make-300k-working-for-a-dao-heres-how/) byNataliya Ilyushina September 22, 2022 [Features How to prepare for the end of the bull run, Part 1: Timing
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/how-to-prepare-for-end-of-bull-run-part-1-timing/) byAndrew Fenton 10 min September 3, 2021 [Features WTF happened in 1971 (and why the f**k it matters so much right now)
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/wtf-happened-in-1971/) byAndrew Fenton 15 min September 24, 2020 [Features Sell or hodl? How to prepare for the end of the bull run, Part 2
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/sell-or-hodl-how-to-prepare-for-the-end-of-the-bull-run-part-2/) byAndrew Fenton 10 min September 8, 2021 [Journeys Child’s play: Gajesh Naik, 13, manages a fortune in DeFi
](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/minor-danger-defi-wunderkind-gajesh-naik-13-manages-a-fortune/) byElias Ahonen 10 min July 2, 2021Original Article
Posted by %% POSTLINK %% First time in %% BLOGLINK %%. appeared.
from expay24 https://ift.tt/StF0hWp