The Meta Unicorn - Diana Invoke

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A Pre Note

I am not a top-100 player, as given the inevitable RNG of effects, matchups and draws in card games, and the lack of rewards for ranking up in LoR, I simply don't see the point in painstakingly grinding up to such a level. The highest I've climbed is low Diamond, but considering the above knowledge, I believe that at a certain skill level (perhaps at around Platinum), it's more about how much time one can put in than how skilled they are. HOWEVER, considering all this, I have the absolute conviction that this deck is a top-100 worthy deck.

Introduction

This is the only deck that I've played since Day 1 of Call of the Mountain, with various modifications, and I believe that it is a completely undiscovered meta unicorn. I've never faced a similar deck on ladder, and my deckbuilding experiments with any other archtypes have left me completely unsatisfied with the lack of interaction and agency, as well as the sheer counterability of the vast majority of tools currently out there.
A lot of people are frustrated with the current meta - a lot of points of which are covered by BruisedByGod in his recent video critique. To summarize his main points:

1. Most answers are completely outclassed by threats
2. Sheer lack of healing options locks out deckbuilding choices
3. Most top-tier strategies prey on lack of interactivity (Pirate Burn, Lee Sin OTK, Star Spring)

This is a Control deck which, while originally devised to prey on the inevitably popular Aurelion Sol and Troll Chant and abuse the broken, flexible toolbox of Invoke on Day 1, also manages to both answer all 3 of these problems efficiently.

Card Choices

Early Tempo/Nightfall

• Lunari Duskbringer x 3
• Spacey Sketcher x 3
• Diana x3
• Lunari Shadestalker x1
• Pale Cascade x 3
• Unspeakable Horror x 2
• Vile Feast x 3

Simply the best available early-game that an Invoke Targon deck could hope to muster - Diana functioning as both early game and late-game removal (we have just enough Nightfall Synergy) for practically no investment, Pale Cascade being legitimately one of the most broken cards currently in the game, and the ping cards also serving a modicum of uses at all stages of a match.
Spacey Sketcher has been severely underrated so far - providing critical tools for certain matchups and/or providing early game minions without needing to actually run them (a fundamental weakness of faster decks top-decking late). Its 'discard-replace' synergy with our late-game, as well as Duskpetal Dust and meta-call flex cards is just icing on the cake.
Finally, note how every early game card I've chosen scales well and still plays a role as the game goes later; as removal, Elusive blocking, tool-building, Burst-speed Nightfall, pings and cantrip Combat Tricks. This is an often overlooked but fundamental difference between Control early-drops, and aggro early-drops (such as Precious Pet).
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Removal

• Sunburst x 3
• Vengeance x 3

These two cards, combined with any generated Obliterates, form the only proper removal this deck has - and were the catalyst for me creating this deck in the first place. All three of these removal types leave almost NO room for the opponent to interact with them, and I believe that is the sole condition for a high-cost removal spell to be playable in the current game state.
NOTE: Ruination is easily and always played around at a high-level of play - and leaves the opponent with ALL of the agency/choice to play around it/bait it exactly how they wish, instead of you (whose only options are to play the card too early and get out-tempo'd afterward, use more than 3 mana elsewhere to catch-up at which point it becomes unplayable, or lose the game to a sudden-attack completely at your opponent's discretion) - the ultimate NO-NO for this deck: I never even considered putting it in.
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Meta Call Flex Spots

• Divergent Paths x 2

At times I feel as if this card could be cut to 1 copy, but right now 2 feels great against the current meta, and drawing into at least one is almost necessary in order to compete with Star Spring (Obliterate is conditional and too great a tempo loss early on). In other metas previously, I've experimented with 1 copy of Passage Unearned, as well as 2 extra copies of Lunari Shadestalker.
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Literally Everything Else One Could Ever Hope to Need

• Lunari Priestess x 2
• Solari Priestess x 3
• Mountain Scryer x 3
• Moondreamer x 3
• Starshaping x 3

I still believe that Invoke is one of the most broken mechanics currently in the game. This is one of the heaviest late-game decks I can possibly imaginable, yet the only cards above 5-mana we run are removal, and our mid-game minions and healing straight up provide whatever early OR late-game tools we might possibly need in any matchup - it's simply overly flexible (flexilibity in card games being a MUCH bigger deal than most people give it credit for) and not enough of a tempo/stat sacrifice IMO. I think that Invoke as a mechanic is even stronger when ran in bulk, and especially in a Control deck - as the game goes on slowly you generate a toolbox that can handle just about any dynamic situation that meta decks can throw your way.
The spell-mana nerf to Living Legends has balanced it out quite a bit, however the same-nerf to Cosmic Inspiration still hasn't convinced me that it isn't in the top 5 least healthy effects that a game based on carefully stat-balanced of minion trading could ever have (hit me up with your Cosmic Inspiration hate!) - a large proportion our games are won by this disgusting effect.
Solari Priestess and Starshaping need no introduction as some of the most popular, utilitarian Invoke cards, however Mountain Scryer and Moondreamer (not so much Lunari Priestess) really put in the work, and I've never seen anyone else play these cards. The former provides crazy mana-advantage as the game goes on given our huge focus on Celestials (it's a shame we can't afford to push its Invoke chances even higher), and the latter has juuussst the right stat distribution at 3/5 to blockade most midgame tempo plays out opponent might go for.
NOTE: Aurelion Sol is straight up unnecessary to compete late-game, is always burdensome and clunky draw, ruins our surprise factor (though that doesn't exist anymore with this post being made), and we often outvalue decks running him anyway (don't forget that the original premise of this deck was 'How can I best remove Aurelion?').
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Matchups/Strategy (Order Based on Mobalytics Tier List)

Lee Sin (60/40)

A somewhat favored matchup - although more recent lists that have cut Bastion in favor of Nopify may be a bit more in their favor (a proper Ping Counter). Hard mulligan for Spacey Sketcher, Sunburst and our pings. Generating Silence (Equinox) for Mentor of the Stones/Zenith Blade is our main early game goal. Our Mid-to-Late game goal is removing all 3 Lee Sin's at the expense of practically everything else (the rest of their deck is pretty much completely irrelevant, but rushing them down is also pretty much impossible) - after which our win is basically guaranteed.

• This matchup is sadly the most binary thing: Sunburst/Vengeance/Ping's VS Lee Sin/Spell Denial/Zenith Blade
• The rest of both decks are basically irrelevant other than to slow down the level up/speed up the level up/Draw into above cards
• Draw Draw Draw + Always save enough mana to Removal Spell + Ping if the opponent has 4 mana up late game

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Swain/TF (80/20)

I believe that we are very, very heavily favored if played properly (although it's a VERY nuanced matchup to play right), and most of our losses come from bricking our early-game draws and/or not drawing/generating a single Starshaping/Golden Sister as their burn damage inevitably builds up. Hard mulligan for all 1/2 cost cards (only keep 1 Pale Cascade with a 1/2 cost minion).

• NEVER, EVER play early minions proactively (e.g. NO turn 1 Lunari Duskbringer unless they play something) - only ever match however many minions the opponent has AND trade right away to minimise Make it Rain/TF value (For instance, if you proactively play a minion with nothing to trade it into, and then find yourself needing to play, say, Diana/Solari Priestess later - the opponent is basically guaranteed free additional AOE value: make EVERY chump blocker count)
• ALWAYS open attack into Powder Keg's (usually with our single developed minion)
• Take ANY trade you can get (even if somewhat unfavorable) to clear both sides of the board going into turn 8 - one of the ways we can lose is if Riptide Rex clears our heavy board and we only have time to develop one chump blocker before the onslaught - especially because Riptide is MUCH stronger against minions than the nexus > Late game, try to keep both sides of the board as empty as possible
• If you find yourself with priority against their activated Plunder past turn 8, play small minions to bait out Rex without having to pass the turn OR play larger minions, especially with uneven health like Moondreamer to protect the rest of your board from potential cannons
• ALWAYS try to find a NON-Rex'able position late game to develop Golden Sister, and save Pale Cascade if possible to protect her from Noxian Fervor and recover 6 previous health
• ALWAYS have enough mana to remove Leviathan if the opponent has more than 8 mana on any given turn (prioritise Leviathan over Swain himself)
• Sacrifice minions to TF attacks and remove Zap Sprayfin ASAP to minimise chip damage (which really builds up)
• Be careful and make sure you always have a way to prevent Swain connecting with the Nexus (even if they develop him this turn and open attack the next); Pale Cascade is a good tool here

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Pirate Aggro (55/45)

We are much more prone to bricking on draws here than Swain/TF, as we need quite a specific hand to deal with their onslaught - This is probably our most draw-dependent, low-agency matchup by far - as face-deck matchups tend to be. In addition - Captain Farron is much more effective against our removal strategy than the likes of Leviathan. Nonetheless, from my experience I think that we're still every-slightly-so favored in this matchup - often winning by the skin of our teeth. Starshaping/Golden Sister are mandatory late-game, and not bricking by not drawing/generating either is also basically a loss. Hard mulligan for all 1/2 drops, and keep a single Sunburst for Gangplank if your hand is already looking great.

• There's nothing much to say here given the nature of their deck - pray your draws are good and take the obvious trades

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Warmother's (25/75)

A very unfavored and binary matchup (see below as to why) that has luckily become rarer recently. Mulligan for Removal/Invoke cards.

• Save Starshaping for when you can actually make use of the heal (don't just play it on turn 3 because they're 'starting off slowly' - it's very important to maximise your leeway to survive Atrocity later on)
• Try to remove Trundle on curve with Sunburst/Vengeance
• Generate/Stockpile removal throughout the midgame
• Sadly, none of these choices really matter in the end and the match comes down to luck - if Warmother's pulls a Level 1 Tryndamere on their attacking turn, the obvious open attack followed by a loss is all but guaranteed (Vengeance doesn't stop Atrocity in this case - leading to too great a health/tempo loss, and my previous Passage Unearned tech to deal with specifically this scenario simply wasn't worth the dead card in other matchups). We can also lose to a big levelled Trundle, or simply not generating/drawing into enough removal. Sadly these cases happen more often than not. Warmother's generated too much tempo if left unchecked by hard removal for even a single turn so there is little leeway for bad luck.
• If Warmothers' timing and Invoke/draws are on our side, the matchup becomes pretty simple - Smartly use about a removal spell on their big guys for about 8 turns, play around Ruination and Atrocity, then cruise to victory.

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Trundle/Asol (75/25)

This deck was basically created on Day 1 specifically to destroy Trundle/Asol. Sadly though, even at 75/25 the matchup is worse than it should be due to the nature of Invoke RNG - if one player draws into Cosmic Inspiration and the other didn't the match is over, full stop + the occasional shenanigans involving The Great Beyond uninteractibly going face and non-stop Living Legends value. Mulligan for Sunburst, Vengeance and pings.

• Remove Trundle ASAP with Sunburst (Vengeance/Obliterates are best saved for Asol so getting Sunburst value while Trundle is still unleveled and 6 health is a big deal in terms of removal distribution)
• Always try to remove Asol on the first turn he's played with Vengeance chaining into a ping to minimise the opponent's chance of getting game-winning Invoke RNG/matching your late-game value with free Celestials
• If you still haven't drawn a ping late game, try to fish for Crescent Strike with Spacey Sketcher
• Play around 7-mana Asol (Augur of the Old Ones) as much as possible
• Pray you draw Cosmic Inspiration and the opponent doesn't

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Discard Aggro (80/20)

I don't know why this deck is considered competitive - maybe because our matchup here is basically as favored as TF/Swain except without any gameplay nuance required on our part. Mulligan for 1-2 drops. Keep Solari Priestess/Sunburst if hand is good. Only necessary statistical losses to bad early draws against an aggro archtype.

• Make obvious trades. Play around Mystic Shot on Diana. Chump block Draven/Jinx. Remove Draven/Jinx. Profit.

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Fiora/Shen (70/30)

Another draw dependent, but quite favored matchup. Quite difficult to play though - you need to balance maintaining some modicum of tempo whilst also being able to deal with their crucial threats. Mulligan for 1-2 drops ESPECIALLY Pale Cascade/Pings, and Removal.

• DON'T play ANY minion with less than 3 attack from turns 1-4 UNLESS you're getting tempo'd into the ground OR you have Pale Cascade (otherwise Fiora gets a free trade and the opponent gets to use their buffs reactively rather than proactively - giving you less leeway to remove her)
• Save ping's for Fiora Barrier's, NOT Fleetfeather Tracker UNLESS you're getting tempo'd into the ground
• Save a removal spell and mana for turn 3 Fiora, turn 4 Shen, turn 6 Genevieve and turn 9 Brightsteel UNLESS you're getting tempo'd into the ground

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Scouts (60/40)

Basically the Pirate Aggro matchup but a tad bit slower and with no burn - giving you more leeway to make up for bad draws both early and late.

• Make the obvious trades, pray to draw well and don't to let Genevieve get 2 attacks off

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Leona/Lux (80/20)

Basically the Trundle/Asol matchup except with no 'must remove ASAP' threats giving you more leeway to make up for bad draws. Celestial RNG and especially Cosmic Inspiration still give them a chance to win as usual.
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Shyvana Dragons (50/50?)

I surprisingly, haven't faced too much of this deck yet personally, but looking at it's cards compared to ours, I think the matchup would be about 50/50 (an otherwise favourable looking matchup affected a bit by their high tempo removal and guaranteed Cosmic Inspiration in the form of Kadregrin).
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Ashe/Sejuani (70/30)

This matchup is dependent on whether we draw removal for Ashe somewhat on curve, how much tempo they manage to build early on and whether we draw good enough to afford to play around Reckoning. Mulligan for Sunburst, Solari Priestess, Pings and Diana (only if you've already drawn support) as our other standard early drops are all pretty ineffective against theirs.

• Remove Ashe ASAP
• Try to Vengeance Sejuani on the attack if she directly attacks your Frostbitten minion in order to prevent the free value trade and maintain tempo on board.
• Play around Reckoning as much as possible, especially if it wouldn't affect their own board too much compared to yours - maximise your 5+ attack minions to theirs if Reckoning begins to look more likely
• Try to bait out an invested attack/Frostbite support for Trifarian Gloryseeker before pinging her - especially because Elixir of Iron is a bit rarer nowadays

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Endure (85/15)

Probably our most favored meta-deck matchup, and unfortunately rarer recently. Their win conditions - Kalista, Blighted Caretaker tempo, Neverglade Collector and They Who Endure simply don't stand a chance against our toolbox. Most losses come from unanswered Blighted Caretaker tempo. Mulligan for Spacey Sketcher, Sunburst and Pale Cascade.

• ALWAYS pick Silence (For They Who Endure) or Stun (For Blighted Caretaker) off Spacey Sketcher
• Try to hold a minion to play on turn 3/4 to kill an attacking Kalista with Pale Cascade AND get the Nightfall card draw
• Play as reactively as possible with your pings - playing them proactively will almost always be answered by Glimpse Beyond, and when they run out of gas later on they will be forced to play their Glipmse proactively - your chance to strike!
• Silence/Sunburst Blighted Caretaker as it comes down
• SAVE Vengeance for They Who Endure - going into the late game, stockpile Silence/Sunburst and Vengeance and maintain enough mana (usually open-attacking) if necessary (IF can still afford to play They Who Endure that turn) to use one of the former followed by Vengeance to counter into their Atrocity: with this line of play, it's basically impossible to lose the combo

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Deep (0/100)

The biggest downside and sheer impossible matchup of this archtype. Maokai manages to pack even less interactivity/inevitability than we do, and the nature of our deck gives us no chance of out-tempoing Deep early OR late. Auto-concede.
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Diana/Nocturne (75/25)

A simpler aggro matchup than the others. Mulligan for 1-2 drops - especially Spacey Sketcher and Diana, as well as Sunburst.

• ALWAYS pick the Stun spell off Spacey Sketcher, and save it for Diana, or of lesser priority, Nocturne/Ephemerals off Stalking Shadows
• Removing Nocturne ASAP with either Sunburst or Vengeance is a HUGE priority
• ALWAYS play around Pale Cascade
• Play around Atrocity and Doombeast damage later on in the match

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Tahm-Kench/Soraka (70/30?)

Another matchup that I haven't faced too much of just yet. Mulligan hard for Divergent Paths and Solari Priestess - Once we remove their uninteractive element trump-card in the Landmark win-condition, if we can survive their early tempo, the rest of the match should be a cinch given our heal/health-ignoring conditionless removal for their Champions.
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Conclusion

Thanks for reading up to this point, and pardon my formatting, the ridiculous length and the sheer pomposity of it all.
I still think Invoke is flexible to the point of being broken and the only reason the matchup spread is so good. I also think that with the release of this guide - more people will come to recognise this archtype and the element of surprise affecting enemy mulligans against an assumed more aggro, Nightfall-focused Diana archtype will be lost. People will also know to play around less common cards such as Sunburst, and I expect winrates to fall somewhat across the board.
To conclude this guide, I'd like to say that this is this is not a healthy deck. At the deepest level, this deck is fundamentally about removing agency from your opponent and giving it to yourself, as well as securing the critical boon of having inevitability over your opponent in a game with the nature of LoR. If all decks were like this, LoR would completely cease to be fun.
What else do I think is unhealthy right now? - Simple: anything removing interactivity from your opponent - ESPECIALLY as a win condition; Maokai, Star Spring, Cosmic Inspiration, Lee Sin. The avenues through which these cards can be interacted with are way too limited right now.
A lot of the metagame nowadays is about having an uninteractable win condition, or focusing damage to face so fast the opponent has no chance to react - another form of non-interactivity. Here's hoping that the meta in the near future heads back in the direction of the close but fair midrange board battles we all came to love back in vanilla LoR.
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(slinx4)

Going to keep this simple. EDIT: this isn’t simple and I should write a short story on this.
I am generally risk averse. I hate losing $100 at the casino, I hate paying extra for guac at chipotles, I will return something or price match an item for a few dollars of savings. I am generally frugal.
But, I somehow had no issues losing 10k in options...
How I started
I remember my first trades like they were yesterday. I was trading the first hydrogen run-up in 2014 (FCEL, BLDP, PLUG) and made a few hundred dollars over a couple weeks.
I quickly progressed to penny stocks / biotech binary events and general stock market gambling mid-2014. I was making a few % here and there but the trend was down in total account value. I was the king of buying the peak in run-ups. I managed to make it out of 2014 close to break-even to slightly down.
WSB Era
March 2015 was my first option trade. It was an AXP - American Express - monthly option trade. I saw one of the regular option traders/services post a block of 10,000 calls that had been bought for 1.3 and I followed the trade with 10 call options for a total of $1300.
I woke up the next day to an analyst upgrade on AXP and was up 50% on my position. I was addicted! I day-dreamed for days about my AXP over night success. I think around that time there was some sort of Buffet buyout of Heinz and an option trade that was up a ridiculous amount of %%%. I wanted to hit it BIG.
I came up with the idea that all I needed to reach my goal was a few 100% over night gains/ 1k>2k>4k>8k> etc. I convinced myself that I would have no problems being patient for the exact criteria that I had set and worked on some other trades.
Remember, the first win is always free.
I was trading options pretty regularly from March 2015 until August 2016. During my best week I was up 20k and could feel the milli within reach. I can remember the exact option trade (HTZ) and I was trading weeklies on it.
For those who have been in the market long enough, you will remember the huge drawdown of August 2015.
I lost half my account value on QCOM calls (100 of them) that I followed at the beginning of July and never materialized. I watched them eventually go to 0. It was another 10,000 block that was probably a hedge or sold.
In August 2015 there were some issues with China and all of us woke up to stocks gapping down huge. Unfortunately my idea of buying far dated calls during the following days/weeks after the crash went sideways. I quickly learned that an increase in volatility causes a rise in option prices and I was paying a premium for calls that were going to lose value very quickly (the infamous IV crush).
I kept trading options into the end of 2015 and managed to maintain my account value positive but the trading fees for the year amounted to $30,000+. My broker was loving it.
I tried all the services, all the strategies. I created rules for my option plays: 1. No earnings 2. Only follow the big buys at a discount (10,000 blocks or more). 3. No weekly options 4. Take profit right away 5. Take losses quickly 6. etc.
I had a whole note book of option plays that I was writing down and following. I was paying for option services that all of you know about - remember, they make money on the services and not trading.
I even figured out a loop-hole with my broker: if I didn’t have enough money in my account, I could change my ask price to .01 and then change it to market buy and I would only need to accept a warning ⚠️ for the order to go through. I was able to day trade the option and make money, who cares if I didnt have enough? After a few months of this, I got a call from my broker that told me to stop and that I would be suspended if I continued with this.
By the way, I was always able to satisfy the debit on the account - so it wasn’t an issue of lack of funds.
Lost it all. Started taking money from lines of credits, every penny that I earned and losing it quicker and quicker.
I was a full on gambler but I was convinced that 8 trades would offset all the losses. I kept getting drawn in to the idea that I could hit a homerun and make it out a hero.
I eventually hit rock bottom on some weekly expiring FSLR options that I bought hours before expiration and said to myself - what the f are you doing? I resolved to invest for the long term and stop throwing tendies away.
The feeling was reinforced during the birth of my first born and I thought - what a loser this kid will think of me if he knew how much I was gambling and wasting my life. It was a really powerful moment looking at my kid and reflecting on this idea.
I decided at that point I was going to save every penny I had and invest it on new issues with potential.
Fall 2016
TTD, COUP and NTNX IPO ‘ed I decided I was going to throw every dollar at these and did so for the next few months. I eventually started using margin (up to 215%) and buying these for the next 6 months. They paid out and managed to make it over 100k within the year.
The first 100k was hard but once I crossed it, I never fell below this magic number.
2017 - I did some day trading but it was mostly obsessing over the above issues. I did gamble on a few options here and there but never more than 1k.
2018 - SFIX was my big winner, I bought a gap up in June 2018 and my combined account value had crossed 400k by August 2018. I was really struggling at crossing the 500k account value and experienced 3 x 30-40% drawdowns over the next 2 years before I finally crossed the 500k barrier and have never looked back.
I still made some mistakes over the next few months - AKAO & GSUM come to mind. Both of these resulted in 20k+ losses. Fortunately my winners were much bigger than my losers.
I thought about giving up and moving to index funds - but i was doing well - just experiencing large drawdowns because of leverage.
2019 big winners were CRON SWAV STNE.
2017 / 2018 / 2019 all had six digit capital gains on my tax returns.
At the beginning of 2020 I was still day trading on margin (180-220%) and got a call from my broker that they were tightening up my margin as my account was analyzed by the risk department and deemed too risky. Believe it or not this was right before the covid crash. I brought my margin down to 100-110% of account value and even though the drawdown from covid hit hard, I wasn’t wiped out.
I stayed the course and bought FSLY / RH during the big march drawdown and this resulted in some nice gains over the next few months.
I am constantly changing and testing my investment strategy but let me tell you that obsessing over 1 or 2 ideas and throwing every penny at it and holding for a few years is the best strategy. It may not work at some point but right now it does.
I still day trade but I trade with 10k or less on each individual position. It allows me minimize my losses and my winners are 1-7%. I am able to consistently make between 3-700$/ a day on day trades using the above strategy. I still take losses and still dream about hitting it big with an option trade but dont feel the need to put it all on the line every month / week.
I finally crossed into the two , club. I know people are going to ask for proof or ban but I am not earning anything for posting and the details about some of the trades should be proof enough that I kept a detailed journal of it all. I have way more to write but these are the highlights.
Eventually I will share how I build a position in a story I love. I still sell buy and sell to early but I am working on improving.
TL:DR - I gambled, lost it all and gambled some more lost more. I made it out alive. I have only sold calls/puts lately.
The one common denominator in all successful people is how much they obsess over 1 or 2 ideas. Do the same. All the winners on this sub have gone all in on one idea (FSLY / TSLA ). Stick with new stories or ones that are changing and go all in...wait a second, I didnt learn anything.

Hi all, I posted a thread back a few months ago when I started getting seriously back into trading after 20 years away. I thought I'd post an update with some notes on how I'm progressing. I like to type, so settle in. Maybe it'll help new traders who are exactly where I was 2 months ago, I dunno. Or maybe you'll wonder why you spent 3 minutes reading this. Risk/reward, yo.
I'm trading 5k on TastyWorks. I'm a newcomer to theta positive strategies and have done about two thirds of my overall trades in this style. However, most of my experience in trading in the past has been intraday timeframe oriented chart reading and momentum stuff. I learned almost everything "new" that I'm doing from TastyTrade, /options, /thetagang, and Option Alpha. I've enjoyed the material coming from esinvests YouTube channel quite a bit as well. The theta gang type strategies I've done have been almost entirely around binary event IV contraction (mostly earnings, but not always) and in most cases, capped to about $250 in risk per position.
The raw numbers:
Net PnL : +247
Commissions paid: -155
Fees: -42
Right away what jumps out is something that was indicated by realdeal43 and PapaCharlie9 in my previous thread. This is a tough, grindy way to trade a small account. It reminds me a little bit of when I was rising through the stakes in online poker, playing $2/4 limit holdem. Even if you're a profitable player in that game, beating the rake over the long term is very, very hard. Here, over 3 months of trading a conservative style with mostly defined risk strategies, my commissions are roughly equal to my net PnL. That is just insane, and I don't even think I've been overtrading.
55 trades total, win rate of 60%

• 33 purely directional trades - 57.5% win
• 18 long call or long put positions, +692, 55% win
• 15 call or put verticals, -121, 60% win

22 neutral / other trades

• 13 iron condors, +345, 77% win rate
• 7 strangles, -163, 71% win rate
• 1 straddle, -310, 0% win rate
• 1 butterfly, -83, 0% win rate

Biggest wins:

• PTON call purchased and held through earnings, sold the morning of announcement +410
• Trading the range on the daily chart in GLD from 158 up to 165, a mix of various calls +245
• NKLA 30 put purchased before the close on the day it went north of 100, just a pure fade +215

Biggest losses:

• EWZ 22/26 strangle that I held just way too long as it beat me up day after day from May 20-Jun 3, -316
• ZM pre earnings vertical, fading another 2 SD move (the day it hit 200 for the first time). Was expecting a post-earnings selloff given the magnitude of the up move. Stock basically hasn't had a down tick since. Max loss -247
• EWW 29 straddle, put on around the same time as the EWZ strangle. Rolled from Jun to Jul to no avail. Out at a -310 loss.

This is pretty much where I expected to be while learning a bunch of new trading techniques. And no, this is not a large sample size so I have no idea whether or not I can be profitable trading this way (yet). I am heartened by the fact that I seem to be hitting my earnings trades and selling quick spikes in IV (like weed cures Corona day). I'm disheartened that I've went against my principles several times, holding trades for longer than I originally intended, or letting losses mount, believing that I could roll or manage my way out of trouble.
I still feel like I am going against my nature to some degree. My trading in years past was scalping oriented and simple. I was taught that a good trade was right almost immediately. If it went against me, I'd cut it immediately and look for a better entry. This is absolutely nothing like that. A good trade may take weeks to develop. It's been really hard for me to sit through the troughs and it's been even harder to watch an okay profit get taken out by a big swing in delta. Part of me wonders if I am cut out for this style at all and if I shouldn't just take my 5k and start trading micro futures. But that's a different post...
I'll share a couple of my meager learnings:
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• Larger bid/ask spreads make it almost impossible to trade the higher priced names, even if you have a correct assumption. I have traded some bigger underlyings during this time like LULU and NVDA. They are just tough fills, both getting in and getting out. I almost want to say that you shouldn't even bother trading underlyings bigger than a 10 cent bid/ask spread with a small account.
• Get an idea of the timeframe you're interested in holding before putting anything on. Have a plan for entering and exiting everything that goes beyond "I'll take this trade off at 50%". You can use TA, you can use a news catalyst, a binary event, just have something. Countless sources out there talk about trading a plan. It doesn't have to be the perfect plan, it just has to be "a" plan.
• Undefined risk trades in tiny accounts need hard stops. Yes, some of the studies say that you'll do better without having fixed stop loss rules (50% of max loss, 100% of max loss) -- but what the studies don't say is the effect that it will have on you, mentally. I got pretty bent out of shape over how badly EWZ and EWW went against me -- much more than I expected. It made no sense, as I've lost way more on the turn of a card in .5 seconds and been unfazed. I was unprepared for the mental toll that it took waking up day after day, watching positions move further and further against me. Great time to be short calls during the mother of all rallies.
• My initial plan for undefined risk trades in my account was that I would only do them in ETFs. Logic being that I'm just not going to wake up to an accounting scandal or a buyout and take a $1k loss on the chin. I later expanded my range into lower priced underlyings like BBBY, TLRY, and yes, AAL. But these ETFs can and do move (I learned the hard way) and can soak up a surprising amount of BP. It might be better to have 5 iron condors taking up $1000 of BP @ 200 each instead of 2 strangles @ 500 each.

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My new questions :
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• My big wins felt like I simply leaned on my TA background or got lucky. My big losses, I sure felt like I earned those, through mistakes I've definitely since identified. The stuff in the middle, I'm just not sure. I'm up money, but it feels like I'm just spinning my wheels. My win rate is good, but I still struggle with expectations about how quickly a trade should progress. What is the next step of the process for a newer options trader? I've read some stuff on narrower spreads + more contracts vs. wider spreads and fewer contracts. Is there a number where I should just keep doing what I'm doing until I reach a specific # of occurrences? Should I even think about branching out into different strategies yet (ratio spreads, jade lizards, etc) or continue to work on these basics?
• I still feel like I am super weak in delta management. In some cases I feel like I've taken a loss simply because I didn't know what the proper management techniques were. I understand the concept of rolling out in time for a credit, but I just don't think it's in my nature to hold trades for longer than a month, and even that is hard for me. At what delta is it appropriate to start thinking about hedging?
• Every time I put on a credit spread for a 2-3 day move and am directionally correct, I often wish that I had just bought a naked option. I've caught several big moves this way in things like AAPL; most recently I bought the FB dip to the 50 day MA around 215 and took it off today at 225 (which was always my plan) -- it leads me to wonder if my expectations for credit spreads are completely out of line. I can't lie, it feels bad to catch a 10 point move and only make $40, haha. What is the ideal timeframe for a credit spread to be left on? Is it better to just buy premium with a stop loss and have a more profitable risk/reward equation for situations like the above where the only intent is to hold for a couple days?
• Here's a random question -- other than when the BPR hit is too much (ie names over $50) for undefined risk, would you rather hold 1) a strangle for 10-14 days or 2) an iron condor for 25-30 days? So far my criteria for IC vs strangle has largely been driven by the risk profile and BPR and not so much profit potential in X number of days. If you're collecting the standard 1/3rd on the IC and taking the trade off at 50% (if you're lucky) , it seems like it takes about a month to get there, most of the time.

That's enough of this wall of text for now. If you made it this far, I salute you, because this shit was even longer than my last post.

Congratulations! You are a bag holder of company XYZ which was thought to be the best penny stock ever. Instead of feeling sorry, you consider selling covered calls to help reduce your cost basis - and eventually get out of your bags with minimal loss or even a profit!
First - let's review the call option contract. The holder of the call option contract has the right but not the obligation to purchase 100 shares of XYZ at the strike price per share. This contract has an expiration date. We assume American style option contracts which means that the option can be exercised at any point prior to expiration. Thus, there are three parameters to the option contract - the strike price, the expiration date and the premium - which represents the price per share of the contract.
The holder of the call option contract is the person that buys the option. The writer of the contract is the seller. The buyer (or holder) pays the premium. The seller (or writer) collects the premium.
As an XYZ bag holder, the covered call may help. By writing a call contract against your XYZ shares, you can collect premium to reduce your investment cost in XYZ - reducing your average cost per share. For every 100 shares of XYZ, you can write 1 call contract. Notice that that by selling the contract, you do not control if the call is exercised - only the holder of the contract can exercise it.
There are several online descriptions about the covered call strategy. Here is an example that might be useful to review Covered Call Description
The general guidance is to select the call strike at the price in which you would be happy selling your shares. However, the context of most online resources on the covered call strategy assume that you either just purchased the shares at market value or your average cost is below the market price. In the case as a bag holder, your average cost is most likely over - if not significantly over - the current market price. This situation simply means that you have a little work to reduce your average before you are ready to have your bags called away. For example, you would not want to have your strike set at $2.50 when your average is above that value as this would guarantee a net loss. (However, if you are simply trying to rid your bags and your average is slightly above the strike, then you might consider it as the strike price).
One more abstract concept before getting to what you want to know. The following link shows the Profit/Loss Diagram for Covered Call Conceptually, the blue line shows the profit/loss value of your long stock position. The line crosses the x-axis at your average cost, i.e the break-even point for the long stock position. The green/red hockey stick is the profit (green) or loss (red) of the covered call position (100 long stock + 1 short call option). The profit has a maximum value at the strike price. This plateau is due to the fact that you only receive the agreed upon strike price per share when the call option is exercised. Below the strike, the profit decreases along the unit slope line until the value becomes negative. It is a misnomer to say that the covered call is at 'loss' since it is really the long stock that has decreased in value - but it is not loss (yet). Note that the break-even point marked in the plot is simply the reduced averaged cost from the collected premium selling the covered call.
As a bag holder, it will be a two-stage process: (1) reduce the average cost (2) get rid of bags.
Okay let's talk selecting strike and expiration. You must jointly select these two parameters. Far OTM strikes will collect less premium where the premium will increase as you move the strike closer to the share price. Shorter DTE will also collect less premium where the premium will increase as you increase the DTE.
It is easier to describe stage 2 "get rid of bags" first. Let us pretend that our hypothetical bag of 100 XYZ shares cost us $5.15/share. The current XYZ market price is $3/share - our hole is $2.15/share that we need to dig out. Finally, assume the following option chain (all hypothetical):

DTE	Strike	Premium	Intrinsic Value	Time Value
20	$2.5	$0.60	$0.50	$0.10
20	$5.0	$0.25	$0	$0.25
20	$7.5	$0.05	$0	$0.05
50	$2.5	$0.80	$0.50	$0.30
50	$5.0	$0.40	$0	$0.40
50	$7.5	$0.20	$0	$0.20
110	$2.5	$0.95	$0.50	$0.45
110	$5.0	$0.50	$0	$0.50
110	$7.5	$0.25	$0	$0.25

Purely made up the numbers, but the table illustrates the notional behavior of an option chain. The option value (premium) is the intrinsic value plus the time value. Only the $2.5 strike has intrinsic value since the share price is $3 (which is greater than $2.5). Notice that intrinsic value cannot be negative. The rest of the premium is the time value of the option which is essentially the monetary bet associated with the probability that the share price will exceed the strike at expiration.
According to the table, we could collect the most premium by selling the 110 DTE $2.5 call for $0.95. However, there is a couple problems with that option contract. We are sitting with bags at $5.15/share and receiving $0.95 will only reduce our average to $4.20/share. On expiration, if still above $2.5, then we are assigned, shares called away and we receive $2.50/share or a loss of $170 - not good.
Well, then how about the $5 strike at 110 DTE for $0.50? This reduces us to $4.65/share which is under the $5 strike so we would make a profit of $35! This is true - however 110 days is a long time to make $35. You might say that is fine you just want to get the bags gone don't care. Well maybe consider a shorter DTE - even the 20 DTE or 50 DTE would collect premium that reduces your average below $5. This would allow you to react to any stock movement that occurs in the near-term.
Consider person A sells the 110 DTE $5 call and person B sells the 50 DTE $5 call. Suppose that the XYZ stock increases to $4.95/share in 50 days then goes to $8 in the next 30 days then drops to $3 after another 30 days. This timeline goes 110 days and person A had to watch the price go up and fall back to the same spot with XYZ stock at $3/share. Granted the premium collected reduced the average but stilling hold the bags. Person B on the other hand has the call expire worthless when XYZ is at $4.95/share. A decision can be made - sell immediately, sell another $5 call or sell a $7.5 call. Suppose the $7.5 call is sold with 30 DTE collecting some premium, then - jackpot - the shares are called away when XYZ is trading at $8/share! Of course, no one can predict the future, but the shorter DTE enables more decision points.
The takeaway for the second step in the 2-stage approach is that you need to select your profit target to help guide your strike selection. In this example, are you happy with the XYZ shares called away at $5/share or do you want $7.5/share? What is your opinion on the stock price trajectory? When do you foresee decision points? This will help determine the strike/expiration that matches your thoughts. Note: studies have shown that actively managing your position results in better performance than simply waiting for expiration, so you can adjust the position if your assessment on the movement is incorrect.
Let's circle back to the first step "reduce the average cost". What if your average cost of your 100 shares of XYZ is $8/share? Clearly, all of the strikes in our example option chain above is "bad" to a certain extent since we would stand to lose a lot of money if the option contract is exercised. However, by describing the second step, we know the objective for this first step is to reduce our average such that we can profit from the strikes. How do we achieve this objective?
It is somewhat the same process as previously described, but you need to do your homework a little more diligently. What is your forecast on the stock movement? Since $7.5 is the closest strike to your average, when do you expect XYZ to rise from $3/share to $7.5/share? Without PR, you might say never. With some PR then maybe 50/50 chance - if so, then what is the outlook for PR? What do you think the chances of going to $5/share where you could collect more premium?
Suppose that a few XYZ bag holders (all with a $8/share cost) discuss there outlook of the XYZ stock price in the next 120 days:

Person	10 days	20 days	30 days	40 days	50 days	100 days	120 days
A	$3	$3	$3	$3	$3	$4	$4
B	$4	$4	$5	$6	$7	$12	$14
C	$7	$7	$7	$7	$7	$7	$7

Person A does not seem to think much price movement will occur. This person might sell the $5 call with either 20 DTE or 50 DTE. Then upon expiration, sell another $5 call for another 20-50 DTE. Person A could keep repeating this until the average is reduced enough to move onto step-2. Of course, this approach is risky if the Person A price forecast is incorrect and the stock price goes up - which might result in assignment too soon.
Person B appears to be the most bullish of the group. This person might sell the $5 call with 20 DTE then upon expiration sell the $7.5 call. After expiration, Person B might decide to leave the shares uncovered because her homework says XYZ is going to explode and she wants to capture those gains!
Person C believes that there will be a step increase in 10 days maybe due to major PR event. This person will not have the chance to reduce the average in time to sell quickly, so first he sells a $7.5 call with 20 DTE to chip at the average. At expiration, Person C would continue to sell $7.5 calls until the average at the point where he can move onto the "get rid of bags" step.
In all causes, each person must form an opinion on the XYZ price movement. Of course, the prediction will be wrong at some level (otherwise they wouldn't be bag holders!).
The takeaway for the first step in the 2-stage approach is that you need to do your homework to better forecast the price movement to identify the correct strikes to bring down your average. The quality of the homework and the risk that you are willing to take will dedicate the speed at which you can reduce your average.
Note that if you are unfortunate to have an extremely high average per share, then you might need to consider doing the good old buy-more-shares-to-average-down. This will be the fastest way to reduce your average. If you cannot invest more money, then the approach above will still work, but it will require much more patience. Remember there is no free lunch!
Advanced note: there is another method to reduce your (high) average per share - selling cash secured puts. It is the "put version" of a cover call. Suppose that you sell a XYZ $2.5 put contract for $0.50 with 60 DTE. You collect $50 from the premium of the contract. This money is immediately in your bank and reduces your investment cost. But what did you sell? If XYZ is trading below $2.50, then you will be assigned 100 shares of XYZ at $2.50/share or $250. You own more shares, but at a price which will reduce your average further. Being cash secured, your brokerage will reserve $250 from your account when you sell the contract. In essence, you reduce your buying power by $250 and conditionally purchase the shares - you do not have them until assignment. If XYZ is greater than the strike at expiration, then your broker gives back $250 cash / buying power and you keep the premium.
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Early assignment - one concern is the chance of early assignment. The American style option contract allows the holder the opportunity to exercise the contract at any time prior to expiration. Early assignment almost never occurs. There are special cases that typically deal with dividends but most penny stocks are not in the position to hand out dividends. Aside from that, the holder would be throwing away option time value by early exercise. It possibly can handle - probably won't - it actually would be a benefit when selling covered calls as you would receive your profit more quickly!
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This post has probably gone too long! I will stop and let's discuss this matter. I will add follow-on material with some of the following topics which factors into this discussion:

• Effect of earnings / PR / binary events on the option contract - this reaction may be different than the underlying stock reaction to the event
• The Black-Scholes option pricing model allows one to understand how the premium will change - note that "all models are incorrect, but some are useful"
• The "Greeks" give you a sense about how prices change when the stock price change - Meet the Greeks video
• Position Management - when to adjust, close, or roll
• Legging position into strangles/straddles - more advanced position with higher risk / higher reward

Open to other suggestions. I'm sure there are some typos and unclear statements - I will edit as needed!
\I'm not a financial advisor. Simply helping to 'coach' people through the process. You are responsible for your decisions. Do not execute a trade that you do not understand. Ask questions if needed!**

Hello ICONists! Today we’re happy to outline and highlight the intricate components of FutureICX, our vision for the dapp’s future and the reason for its creation through this AMA with ICON Pilipinas. Many community members have highlighted questions they’d like answered and were happy to discuss the foundations of our project, our ideas and how FutureICX differentiates itself from other gamified trading applications within the blockchain sphere! We look forward to answering all of your questions!
nblaze: Hey everyone! As most of you probably know I’m nblaze from ICON P-Rep team Midos and together with the P-Rep team Sharpn we have built the FutureICX.io app, which was released earlier this week. This has been quite a long and exciting journey which started almost a year ago and we are all very excited that we have finally been able to achieve such a successful app release with so much positive feedback coming in our direction.
Jenny: How did you come up with the idea for FutureICX and how was this project started?
nblaze: Well, as a long-term holder of ICX, I have always been fascinated by ICON’s system and was looking into ways to contribute to it. I began extensive research surrounding the best P-Rep teams to delegate my ICX to, but somehow this did not feel enough, and I wanted to do more for the chain (and respectively for my investment). After jumping through a lot of different plans and ideas, including lotteries, raffles, games, payment systems etc., I noticed that a lot of people in the trading channels love to make predictions; long story short, approximately half a year later I partnered with the Sharpn P-Rep team. We’re extremely grateful for a Grant that the ICON Foundation and the ICONation teams provided us and we continue to press forward with amazing results.
Jay: Throughout the entire development journey, there's sure to be plenty of ups and downs experienced. What's one particular fond memory that stands out to you the most?
nblaze: Oh, I would need to go all the way back to the planning phase of FutureICX. I had gone to bed pretty late one night as I was very excited about the Dapp idea, but somehow, I constantly kept hitting a brick wall in trying to figure out how it would work. No matter what I thought of, several hours of planning later I have thought of something critical that would be a major issue. That night I was tired and honestly becoming a bit discouraged that I would never find a system that would work. After going to sleep, I woke up approximately an hour later with a clear idea about the system that I would like to use for FutureICX. I had no sleep from this moment onwards, just got to my computer and worked on it all night. It was really an ‘Eureka’ moment that I'm quite fond of.
Jenny: What are your plans, either near-term or longer-term now that FutureICX has been released?
nblaze: Of course, we are still working on FutureICX’s current state and are making sure that everything is running well. The app is stable, and players are happy with it. We have already started making plans for our next development stage through and although I cannot share very much, I can tell you that we are aiming for 3 additional original trading games, additional trading pair predictions and maybe even different crypto payment options. Hopefully everything will go well, and we would be able to reach those targets (and who knows, maybe more).
Twitter and Telegram follower questions
theanerz: What is the Mission and Vision of FutureICX?
nblaze: I like this question as it is simple and yet very complicated to answer. FutureICX is aiming to be a multi-purpose platform that could be used by a wide range of players. It could be used as a mean to get additional gains from trading, as a learning tool, as a proof-of-skill or even as a fun app that you can have fun and gamble on. It is also very beneficial to the ICON chain as it not only creates transactions, it could also be a replacement of the ‘exchange’ trading in which no ICX are leaving the system (thus reducing sell pressure and increasing the price of ICX) and finally as a tool which can reduce the circulating supply as the ICX tokens placed in predictions are locked until the outcome is processed.
I wrote an article a few days ago about this exact topic – what has inspired us to make the app and what are the benefits of using it. Anyone interested can find it at this link:
https://forum.icon.community/t/futureicx-io-vs-conventional-trading-article/1069
ricnnobre: FutureICX is a platform for traders and therefore a minimum of knowledge in technical analysis is needed to predict where the value of ICX is going. Doesn't that restrict the audience that will use the platform?
nblaze: True, the platform is for the most part aimed at traders, however most people that trade in it are not professionals. This allows for beginner traders to have a tool where they can compete with a lot of similar skilled traders instead of professionals, whales and institutional traders and this makes FutureICX a good learning tool to use. The prediction times are also fixed so this eliminates second-guessing and reacting emotionally on a trade that you have already set. As you are not competing against the bank, this also gives the players the opportunity to progress with their prediction sizes as they get better and even potentially make a living out of this if they are good enough and hit their predictions on a regular basis.
It can of course also be used as a fun gambling tool as a lot of traders seem to be using the exchanges for that anyway.
RGerburt: DApps in which users spend money without obtaining any benefit causes loss of interest over time. Does FutureICX have any form of reward for traders who fail to succeed in their predictions? How to maintain the loyalty of users, mainly those who are not good traders?
nblaze: We have put in great efforts in trying to be helpful to such players. FutureICX offers dividend returns (each 1 icx that you spend gives you 1 dividend point and the dividend points respectively give you a % of the dividend pool, which is 10% of the amount of ICX that all players spend, at the end of the week – you can see details of that on top of the main screen and in the ‘help’ section, which is the place where our system’s theory is located). One of our awards also gives returns to the player that has spent the most. If that doesn’t work, you can always go for an ‘influencer’ strategy and have your friends and followers generate dividends for you (every 1 icx spent by someone that registered via your affiliate link gives you 0.5 dividend points)
lavicrep69: They call us Betlords of the Icon Pilipinas we are one of many supporters of FutureICX. I just would like to know, because for us statistics and achievements are really a big deal. I saw the "Tropies (Sniper, Marksman, Cannoneer, Monthly) and the ICX reward" that you will get from consistent playing/predicting. I’m just wondering if you have global ranking of top players on each trophy or tier like a data base link on blockchain that we can always check to improve our standing? And will we have a "copy prediction options?” I’m sure it will be a good idea coz we can follow players and see their statistics.
nblaze: There are such options, but we are planning to expand on those. In your ‘Profile’ page you can see how many awards you have earned, the most recent ones and how much you have earned through them. The monthly awards are also giving a monthly ranking of the top 10 players and giving them rewards for it. However, we do understand that we will need to and will improve even more in this direction
nhene00: The market today has a lot of development projects on the blockchain platform. One of the factors that makes the platform appealing to many users is its special features. So, what are the outstanding features and advantages of FutureICX to attract users and investors?
nblaze: We truly believe that our app was designed in a really unique way. You have the exchanges, binary options and futures on one hand, you have the raffles, lotteries, casinos and games on the other. We try to be none of those and to provide a new experience to our players. We also think that we offer a unique system, created from scratch, that benefits a lot of different types of players and strategies. As every other platform though, we would need the users/community’s support and feedback in order to progress even further. We do not believe that this will be an issue with ICON’s community though.
ThomaXMiller: How will the dividends/point system work? When will the $3000 Pool be distributed?
nblaze: You earn dividend points with every prediction that you and your affiliates make, and you get a % of all prediction amounts respectively to the amount of points that you have at the end of the week
CHARLoTTE9o: If it’s less risky and much more profitable for traders, how will you and the whole team benefit from this?
nblaze: The app has built in 5% commission, that is how we profit (you can see the full details in the 'help' page of the app). It is also not much more profitable for all traders of course; it simply provides better opportunities (according to our own deductions of course) than a normal exchange would.
Ketz23: DeFi is one of the hottest topics in the blockchain space right now. Can $ICX share your opinions on DeFi with us? Do you think that DeFi will disrupt the existing financial system? What is Unification approach towards the DeFi sector?
nblaze: I don’t think that I’m qualified enough to give such comprehensive opinion in Defi in general I’m afraid.
willydavec1: You mentioned earlier about gambling, more games to play,
In this era where there are tons of cryptocurrency gambling addicts, do you have any plans to minimize their addiction? A good project needs to care for its users/gamblers/players. Do you have any plans for them, any limitations? For example, 1000 USD worth of loss, they must be restricted for a few hours, something like that.
nblaze: I believe that it would be hard to get addicted to our app - its 1 prediction/day or week, that is not a major concern imo. Also please keep in mind that this is no gambling application - you are not playing against the house and you can easily be profitable long term. So, an 'addiction' could mean improving your trading skills and making a living out of this.
Neajmik: The hardest thing about any business is not building a product. What is often the hardest is getting people to use the product. How will FUTUREICX team resolve this to make your project become mass adopted and be more attractive in investotraders eyes?
nblaze: True, we are doing our best from the app's side - getting feedback, building a product that our players like, promoting it to the best of our abilities. I think that the rest is up to the actual players: if they like it, they will naturally promote the product. I also think that the affiliate system would help a lot with that as a player could earn by being a 'promoter' and not even playing a single game (although not playing would limit his potential gains).
SiliLovers: How does it feel after the first daily prediction was resolved earlier?
nblaze: Amazing. 2500 ICX placed in predictions on the first day, quite a bit of positive feedback, happy winners all around. I love it!
lavicrep69: If I am an ICONist and use d’apps like ICONbet how will you convince me to play FutureICX if it was my first time?
nblaze: We wouldn’t. We believe that ICONBet has their own player market and we have ours. The activities on both platforms are completely different so there will be no need to pull players from one to the other. ICONists could play easily play on both and be equally happy with their experience
Neajmik: What are the ways that FUTUREICX generates profits to maintain your project and how can it benefit both investotraders and your project simultaneously?
nblaze: We have a 5% commission for that, so we don’t actually aim to benefit from the players' losses, on the contrary, we try to limit them for the less experienced traders. That is why each prediction amount is split into: 80% into the selected reward period pool, 5% towards the weekly/monthly awards, 10% towards the dividends and 5% to our team so we can keep improving the Dapp. That gives players opportunities to gain, even if their prediction did not come true
HiImGroot: What are your plans for global expansion; is FutureICX focusing on only trading at this time or are you focused on building and developing your Dapp for more quality experience with users?
nblaze: We’re hoping that with the second phase of our app we will be able to go into different crypto markets as well. This is still a long shot of a plan and requires a lot of variables to piece together but if we are able to do this, that would generate ICX transactions (as our Dapp is fully based on the ICON chain) while we are processing predictions that are payed with other cryptocurrencies.
matT325: Where do you see FutureICX 2 or 3 years from now?
nblaze: As a large gamified trading platform with a lot of players, many more trading games and options and working with a lot of different chains and projects while generating icx transactions in the process.
LadyCrows: To advertise a project, you need to provide benefits and features, security aspects of the project. How does FutureICX differ from other decentralized trading applications?
nblaze: There are quite a bit, so I’m not sure that I can list all of them in one short message. We have multiple gain channels, tiered rewards, dividends, awards, independent affiliate gains, our Dapp is fully decentralized (so every transaction is secure and verifiable), we are using a decentralized oracle for results (fairness and security), our tx process time is short and recorded on the chain thanks to ICON as well.
ThePredator11: Why did you choose this platform name "FutureICX?
nblaze: This was entirely a team Sharpn contribution. I picked Midos as an app name - they suggested FutureICX and we went with it and kept Midos as the name of my P-Rep instead.
CryptoHodler22: If you put in an amount of $ICX for a long term prediction you can't stake them. Is there a form of divided for long-term wages?
nblaze: That is absolutely correct – you would not receive any staking rewards for the duration of the prediction and that is the main reason that we have not set up a ‘monthly’ prediction or something like that. FutureICX is not aimed to make long-term holders to unstake their bags and come play. It is focused on the circulating ICX that instead of going to the exchanges, can come to ICX and have greater benefits from that.
In terms of if the players are not losing from locking their ICX into a prediction on FutureICX, instead of staking them, the staking rewards for 10 days are around 0.2% - with FutureICX the rewards start from 120% and you could earn up to 450%/day if you know what you are doing
I think that as with anything else, you have to balance your targets and decide what would be the best strategy for your money
Ramle13747634: What is the greatest risk that you've taken before you do the first move of making the FutureICX that was released recently? Is it worth it to take the risk?
nblaze: I think that building FutureICX was a very large risk in itself for me as in order for the project to see the light of day, I have personally spent almost an year working on it without any payment so far (while financing some parts of the app’s development out of my own pocket) and without any guarantees that I would be able to finish it. However I think that it was worth the risk and I would definitely do it again – I have not done this app to make money and have no delusions that it will make me rich or something. Im just happy that Im seeing it live and players loving it so far. This motivates me to develop FutureICX even further and provide even more fun experiences for the Iconists
Neajmik: You received a lot of questions related to utilities and technology, future vision etc. So now I want to ask what do you want to receive from the community?
nblaze: The greatest support that we can receive from the community is spreading the word about our app, about your opinion of it (good or bad it doesn’t matter – you are entitled of your own). At the end of the day, we have designed the app to be attractive to newcomers and to reward properly the proactive players assisting us with that task (via the affiliate bonuses), however our PR resources are limited and we would appreciate any help that we could get.
So if I have to summarize – talk with people, brag, show off, discuss, even rant about FutureICX to people, it will all be of help to us and will also earn you extra gains 😉.

Hi! I am hoping someone could lend some advice re how to configure the strategy tester to work with binary options style trading.
In case you're not familiar with binary options, a few notes:
- There is no stop loss, take profit
- There are no spreads/commissions
- I must set an expiry time in minutes or candles
- Simply, if I go "long" (called a CALL) and the expiry price > strike price, that's a win (and < would be a loss); if I go "short" (called a PUT) AND the expiry price < strike price, that's a win (and > would be a loss). Also I could "Push", meaning the strike price = the expiry price. These should be disregarded from the calculations as there is no loss or gain of $.
- As such, I just need a W/L/P (P being 'Push', meaning strike price = expiry price)
Thanks! Welcome any advice. 😀

Sup nerds. Tomorrow is my birthday and I’m probably waking up to a nice fat 4 digit red number because I dared bet against a company so badass as to have a one letter ticker. So my birthday gift to all of you is the gift of knowing how to lose money like I do.
If you’ve tried to play earnings with options though you’ve probably experienced IV crush. The stock moves in your favor but you lose money anyway. So I thought I’d give a quick rundown of what IV crush is and some simple strategies to avoid it.
Skip ahead to number 2 if you already know what IV crush is.
(Yes there have been some posts on IV crush over the past few months but as far as I can tell they’re all huge walls of text, don’t give enough clear advice, and aren’t specifically about earnings, so here you go.)
​

1 . What is IV crush in relation to earnings?

It’s easiest to think of it in terms of “expected move.” Implied volatility (IV) is how much of an "expected move" is implied in the current options price. Add up the price of the ATM call and ATM put, and this is how much of a move the market has priced in.
Example: $W today at close:
$134 5/8 call = 11.80
$134 5/8 put = 11.00
Expected move between now and expiration: 22.80
Naturally, after the earnings report is released there will be a much smaller expectation of movement over the remainder of the week, so the expected move will go down no matter which way the stock goes. This is another way of saying IV is going down, i.e. IV crush.
​

2. Strategies to play earnings without getting IV crushed:

a) Buy Deep ITM calls/puts

Deep ITM options get the majority of their price from their intrinsic value (what you’d make if you exercised the option today) as opposed to their extrinsic value (IV and theta) so there’s a lot less IV for them to lose, assuming you get a good fill. You want to pay as close to intrinsic value as possible.
Strike - Stock price = intrinsic value
Example: $160 put - $134 stock price = $26 intrinsic value
So if you’re buying the $160 put on a stock trading for $134, pay as close to $26 as possible. You’re gonna have to pay a little over but don’t just hit the ask, as the bid/ask can be wide on these.
​

b) Sell naked options or spreads

Get on the right side of IV crush. Personally I like to sell naked options, but spreads are good if you are a scared little baby or if your fake broker doesn’t let you sell naked options.
i) ATM vs OTM
I like ATM the best because you collect the most premium, and if the stock trades flat you still win because IV crush works in your favor.
OTM does offer extra protection from the stock moving against you. Keep in mind as you move OTM you are moving toward smaller wins and bigger losses, but also a higher win ratio. Pennies in front of the steamroller.
ii) Spread positioning
Position the outer leg (the leg you’re buying) as far OTM as possible to increase your profitability if the stock trades flat and improve your odds of winning.
Or make it a narrower spread to make it closer to a binary event. If the stock is trading at $134.50 and you sell the $134/$135 put spread for $0.50 (half the width of the strikes), that’s basically a double or nothing coin flip. If you have a high degree of confidence in which way the stock is going, that's pretty good leverage.
​

c) Use options to be synthetically short/long shares

If you want to gamble on direction in a way that is more leveraged than shares but completely free of Greek headaches, this is for you.
To go long: Buy the ATM Call, sell the ATM put
To go short: Sell the ATM call, buy the ATM put
If you buy an ATM call and sell the ATM put of the same strike, your position is exactly the same as being long 100 shares. The greeks from the long and short options cancel each other out.
The same is true if you buy the ATM put and sell the ATM call. Your position is mathematically the same as being short 100 shares.
The beauty, though, is that it uses about half as much buying power as buying or selling shares on margin. Just for example, based on numbers at market close today, buying an ATM call and selling an ATM put on $W uses $3716 in buying power, as opposed to roughly $6700 to buy 100 shares on margin.
ii) If your fake broker won’t let you sell naked options
You can just buy a wide leg. So if you’re going long just buy the ATM call, Sell the ATM put, and buy a deep OTM put. If you're going short, buy the ATM put, sell the ATM call, and buy a deep OTM call.
​
That's it I think. Hopefully someone found this helpful and it wasn’t just a bunch of obvious shit you all already know. I’m gonna get started on drinking some wine and eating some edibles and contemplating how fucking old I am. Feel free to ask any questions or add any thoughts.

So I've been starting trading forex about a week ago and so far seem to be profitable.
I already have experience trading stocks and options as well as gambling with binaries back when they were still legal in europe.
My strategy so far is to just long EUUSD and respectively short USD/CHF as there are literally no good news comming from the states and the trend shows. Decision for these 2 pairs is based upon the fact that I'm most informed on the euro coming from europe myself and the CHF has always been a very stable and strong currency, so most of the movement in USD/CHF should be from the USD.
So I basically go in long on the EUUSD (short USD/CHF), especially when its dipping, and open up 3-5 positions hroughout a day all with .01 lots. I then let it rest until im satisfied with the profits or I think it will turn. Stop loss at 40 pips.
Reason for the multiple positions a day being cost average effect which seems to work very well with long term stonks.
Now the real question: Would it make sense to hold positions for longer than lets say, a week? Or would the swap/commission consume most of the profit? Because as of right now I don't really see the USD rising in value anytime soon. So in theory I would open up positions, whenever there seems to be a good entry point and hold it for a few months until there are good news coming from the states.

Introduction

Greetings, this is dumnem, also known as Theorchero, but you can call me Theo. I'm an experienced Tarkov player and I'm writing this guide to try and assist new Tarkov players learn the game, because it has one hell of a learning curve. We'll be going over a lot of different aspects of this guide, and it is going to be huge. Feel free to digest this in parts.
Additionally, this is a work in progress. I will write as much as I can in one Reddit post, but subsequent parts will be in additional comments. Google Docs Version (Note: Link is placeholder atm, but here is a sneak preview!)
Disclaimer: Tarkov recently updated to .12! That's a HUGE amount of information that I need to update. Please be patient! If there is anything I have gotten wrong or may have omitted, please let me know.
This is Primarily directed towards Tarkov Novices, but should be useful for even Tarkov Veterans. It hopefully includes everything you need to know to be able to go into a Raid equipped for success and to successfully extract with gear.
Want to play with friends? Want to have fun and learn Tarkov? Check out my discord here.

Changelog

3/9/20:

• [Updated for .12]
• Money making strategies completed.
• Minor grammar adjustments, adding additional medical items.
• Added additional resources, updated old ones.
• Hideout section complete

Table of Contents

• Tarkov Overview - What is Escape from Tarkov?
• Tarkov Resources - Useful links
• Tarkov's Maps
• Tarkov's Health System
• Tarkov's Hideout System
• Tarkov's Quest System and Progression
• Tarkov's Hotkeys to Know
• Getting Started
• Player Scavs
• New Player's loadouts - LL1 Traders
• What to Loot - How to get the most money per slot
• Stash Management - How to combat Gear Fear
• Tarkov Economy - How do I make money?
• What now?

Tarkov Overview - What is Escape from Tarkov?

Escape from Tarkov is a tactical, realistic, FPS with MMO elements developed by Battlestate Games. It is currently in closed Beta. The game features several maps in which your primary character, your PMC, goes into Raids in order to find and salvage loot and useful equipment to survive and thrive in Tarkov. Death is very punishing in Tarkov. If you die you lose everything you had on you when you die (with the exception of what's inside your Container and your melee weapon) including any equipment you brought with you or what you found inside the Raid.
Enemies can be players (PMCs) or Scavengers ('Scavs') that are either controlled by AI or by players. Unlike many shooters, AI enemies in Tarkov are deadly - they can and will kill you on sight. They have recently been upgraded to act more intelligently, shoot more accurately, and react to situations on the map, such as investigating noise of gunfire or searching. It features beautiful and immersive environments, intricate and in-depth weapon modification system, a complex health system, dynamic and specific loot placement, and multiple options for engagement. Do you want to play slow and stealthy, to avoid fights, or set up a deadly ambush on an unwary foe? Or do you prefer raw combat, where only your quick wit, placements of shots, and tenaciousness determines who gets out alive? It's your Tarkov. You make the rules.

Tarkov Resources - Useful links

I take no credit or responsibility for any of the content in these links. To the best of my knowledge, these are updated consistently and are accurate, but user beware.

Quick-Reference Ammo Chart

An updated ammo chart can be found on the wiki.

Tarkov Wiki

Absolutely fantastic resource. You can visit them here.
It is a massive collection of everything that we players have been able to find.
They contain trades, user-created maps, lists of ammo, parts, weapons, loot, etc. If it's in the game, it's on the Wiki, somewhere.
I highly recommend opening the wiki page for the Map that you plan on raiding in.
Factory
Customs
Woods
Shoreline
Interchange
Reserve
The Lab ('Labs')

Map Keys and You

Huge collection of all the keys in the game. These are also on the wiki, but this page has them all on one page, and tries to inform the user if the key is worth keeping or using.
Check it out here.
This section is open to revision. Mention me in a thread (or in the comments below) about a resource and I'll see about adding it here.

Tarkov's Weapon Compatibility Guide

Pretty self explanatory. Also includes a Key guide and a Mod guide.
Check it out here.

HUGE Reference Bible by Veritas

Courtesy of Veritas (Send me his reddit username?), It's located here. (Open in new tab.) Contains: Detailed information about: Ammunition, Health, Firearms, Body Armor, Helmets, Rigs & Backpacks, Labs & Quest keys. Outdated! Needs to be updated for .12

Offline Raids - Player Practice

Offline raids is a feature added for testing and learning purposes for both new and veteran players alike. It is an incredibly useful tool.
In an offline raid, your progress is not saved. This means you don't keep anything you find, keep any experience 'earned' if you successfully extract, or lose any gear when/if you die. To access OFFLINE Raids, head into a Raid normally until you see this screen. Then Check the box indicating that you want to do an OFFLINE raid and you're good to go! You even have a choice on whether or not to add AI. You can also control how many AI enemies spawn, fewer than normal or a great deal more! You can even make Scavs fight each other. (Framerates beware.)
You can control how many scavs spawn (if any) as well as a number of other paramaters. New players should use offline raids as a tool to practice shooting, controls, movement, etc.

Tarkov's Maps

Tarkov features several maps - ranging from wide, beautiful vistas to ruined factory districts, to an abandoned laboratory where illegal experiments were being conducted. It is important to learn the maps you intend to play. In order to keep your gear, you must 'extract' at one of your designated exfiltration points. Not all extracts will be active every game, and some are conditional.

To see what extracts are available to you, double tap 'O' to show raid time and your exfils. If it has a ???? it might not be open.

Factory

Gate 3 Extract
A small, fast-paced map that was primarily created for PvP. Scavs spawn in all the time. Very close quarters, shotguns and SMGs tend to dominate here. PMCs can only access one Exit (Gate 3) without the Factory Exit Key. Good place to go if you need PMC kills as action is pretty much guaranteed. It is recommended NOT to bring in a lot of gear to Factory until you are experienced.
Factory Map in PvP is best played in Duos - due to the layout of the map, a Maximum of 6 PMCs may be present in the game. Due to the split spawn points, you effectively have 'sides' that have up to 3 spawn locations that are close together. This is why it is recommended to secure/scout enemy spawn locations. If you go in with a Duo, you at max have 2 players on your side for an even 2v2, and if played smartly you can eliminate them and know your 'side' is secure from aggression for the time being.
Upon loading in, scavs usually take a couple minutes to spawn, though this depends on the server in question and isn't super reliable. For new players, the best loadout in Factory is going to be a MP-153 Loadout - using just an MBSS (or similar bag) and ammo in your pocket to fight other players and Scavs. Scavs will often spawn with AKs and other 'vendorable' weapons, so is a good source of income.
Factory is also one of the best maps to Scav into, as Scavs can typically avoid the Exit camping strategy employed by a lot of weaker or newer players in order to secure gear, because they typically have extra exfiltrations whereas PMCs without the Factory Exit Key are stuck using Gate 3.
If you go in with a modicum of gear, it is recommended to keep at least a flashbang (Zarya) in your container. This will allow you to quickly slot it into an empty chest rig or pocket so you can throw it into the exit door, this will flash enemies and is cheap to do - the one time you survive because you flashed the 3 exit campers using shotguns will make this strategy extremely valuable.

Customs

Extract map
A fairly large map that was recently expanded and is expected to receive an overhaul within a patch or two, due to the choke point design of the map. Essentially, players spawn either on 'warehouse' or 'boiler (stacks)' side. If you see a large red warehouse ('big red') near you (Customs Warehouse), then you spawned on the warehouse side. If you don't, you likely spawned near Boiler side. Players can also spawn in several places in the woods North of boilers.
This map has the most quests in the game. Geared players often come to customs to challenge other squads over Dorm loot and to fight a Scav boss. New players are usually trying to do one of several early quests, such as ‘Debut’ which tasks them with killing 5 scavs on Customs and acquiring 2 MR-133 shotguns (pump shotties) from their corpses. Construction is also a popular hotspot as it has a lot of scav spawns as well as the location for the Bronze Pocketwatch, which is Prapor’s second quest.
Customs itself does not offer very much loot on average. There are several spots which can contain decent, but the vast majority is located in a couple different locations.
Dorms is the best loot location for Customs. It has two sets, 2 story and 3 story dorms. They each have their own sections of good loot, but the best is considered to be 3 story dorms, due to the presence of the Marked Room. The marked room requires a marked key to open, and has a good chance to spawn rare loot, such as keytools, documents cases, weapons cases, and high-end weapons. Due to the nature of the high value of this room, it’s almost always contested and it’s one of the best rooms in the game to farm, albeit with difficulty to successfully extract with the loot found. Note, though the key required has a maximum amount of uses, it is a fairly cheap key, and worth buying if you like to run customs and go to Dorms.
Dorms also has a ton of early quests (Operation Aquarius, for one) with some keys being valuable to use, but most dorms keys aren’t worth that much on the market. There’s too many to list here, but make sure to check the Map Keys and You at the top of the guide to determine what the value of a particular key is.
Checkpoint (Military Checkpoint) is also a decent loot spot, though not nearly as good as Dorms. If you have the key, it has a grenade box and 2 ammo boxes which can spawn good ammo. The jacket in the blue car also can spawn good medical keys as well as medical items. It is very close to the gas station, so I’ll include that here as well.
The Gas Station is one of the possible spawn locations for the scav boss. It has loose food items, a weapon box in the side room, with two keyed rooms leading to a safe and a med bag and box. Also contains a couple registers and food spawns on the floor. The emercom key can spawn on the seat in the ambulance out front.
North of the gas station is the Antenna, which contains 3 weapon boxes, a tool box, and a med bag. Possible location for scav boss spawn, albeit rarely, and also spawns regular scavs, like checkpoint and gas station.
Beyond that, there’s scattered loot around the map in different places, but usually not enough to warrant going out of your way for. There’s also scav caches, mostly around the middle road outside construction and around the boiler area.
The scav boss for customs is 'Reshala.’ He has 5 guards that have above-average gear and can be tough to deal with solo. The guards tend to be more aggressive than normal scavs, so they can be a lot to handle but are vulnerable to fragmentation grenades or flashbangs due to their close proximity to one another. Reshala himself has a good chance to have one or more bitcoin in his pockets, as well as his unique Golden TT, which is required for a Jaegar quest and used in conjunction with other Golden TT's to purchase a Tactec, good plate carrier. Reshala may spawn either Dorms (either bldg), New Gas Station, or rarely the tower north of the gas station. Scav bosses are dangerous enemies with escorts that have above-average loot (sometimes great loot) and are hostile to everyone, Including player scavs. Scav guards will approach a player scav and basically tell them to leave the area, and if they walk closer towards the scav boss they turn hostile.
The ‘official’ spawn rate for Reshala is 35%.

Woods

Woods Map with Exfil
A very large map that is mostly just a large forest, with the occasional bunker, and the Lumber Mill in the center. The Lumber Mill is the primary point of interest, as it contains a couple quest locations and is the primary location to farm Scavs, as Scavs killed on woods are a good source of end-game keys that are hard to find.
Since the map is so large and open, sniper rifles with scopes usually reign king here. You will see a lot of players with Mosin rifles as they are a cheap way to train the Sniper skill (for a quest later on) and are capable of killing geared players and scavs alike.
Overall, not usually very populated. An early quest from Prapor sends you here to kill a number of Scavs. A good map to learn the game, as although the loot is not fantastic, you can get experience with how the game runs and operates while fighting AI and possibly getting lucky with a key find off a scav.
As of .12, Woods now houses a Scav boss that acts as a Sniper scav. He is incredibly dangerous and usually carries a tricked-out SVDS. The 7.62x54 caliber is not to be underestimated. That caliber can and will wreck your shit through what most players are capable of wearing, especially early on in a wipe. He may also carry an AK-105, so he's going to be dangerous at both short and long ranges.
He has two guards, and he typically patrols the area around the Sawmill, and carries a key to a cache nearby full of goodies. His key is part of a quest for Jaegar.
Woods also has two bunkers, one of them being an extract and requiring a key. Both bunkers have some moderate loot in them, thus worth visiting, though not necessarily worth going out of your way for them. Several quests occur around the sawmill area, which contains a good couple keys that can spawn.

Shoreline

Shoreline Map, with Loot, Exfil, etc
A very large map, notorious for its FPS hit. Generally speaking, one of the better maps for loot. The primary point of interest is the Resort, but scavs spawn there, and is primarily occupied by hatchlings (players only with hatchet, ie melee weapon) and geared players. Resort has great loot, but requires keys to access most of it.
A great map to learn though from new players as the outskirts still contains plenty of loot and combat opportunities with AI scavs. You can hit Villa, Scav Island, Weather station, Docks, etc and come out with a backpack full of valuable gear fairly easily. The Village (Not to be confused with villa) contains a lot of toolboxes which can contain lots of parts used to upgrade your Hideout.
Location of many quests, including a large quest chain where players are required to kill many, many, scavs on Shoreline. For this and other reasons, probably the best map for new players to learn the game with.
A good loot route is to hit the village (caches in it), scav island (2 med bags, 2 toolboxes, 2 weapon boxes, 1 cache), burning gas station (weapon boxes and a safe), pier (potential extract, 2 pcs 2 safes and lots of filing cabinets), and weather station. Scavs may spawn around these areas, but most players just head straight for resort anyway, so you are much less likely to encounter them, especially if you avoid Mylta power (most players hit it on the way to or leaving from the resort). Excellent route as a player scav as well.

Interchange

Detailed map
Great, great loot area, but very complex map. Old computers might face unique struggles with this map. Features a mostly-binary exfil system like Shoreline, but.. kinda worse. Exfil camping is fairly common on this map, but usually avoidable. Huge map with multiple floors and many many different stores. Communication with teammates is a challenge on this map, but the map is also fantastically detailed.
This map features a lot of loot that depends on the kind of store you're in. It's a great place to farm rare barter materials which are valuable to sell on the Flea market or to use for quests or for hideout upgrades. An early quest (from Ragman) sends you here to kill a large amount of Scavs. I'd recommend getting Ragman to level 2 and accepting his quest asap when going to Interchange, as getting this quest done can take a while as it is and you want all scav kills to count towards progress.
Both the tech stores (Techlight, Techxo, Rasmussen) and department stores (Groshan, Idea, OLI) are the primary places to hit. There’s also Kiba (weapons store) as well as Emercom and Mantis. Players have different strategies, but this map is unique in the sense that it really rewards exploring. Most stores will have things you can grab that are worth quite a bit but are often overlooked. Very popular place to go in as a Player Scav.

Reserve

Brand new map, chock full of loot. Has more complex extracts than other maps, save for Labs. Excellent place to farm rare barter items, computer parts, and especially military hardware. PMCs have limited extracts, most being conditional, and the ones that aren’t require activation of ‘power’ to turn on the extract, which alerts the map the extract has been opened and can spawn Raiders (more on them below.)
Additionally, has a scav boss by the name of Glukhar, who has multiple heavily armed guards. He has multiple spawn locations and can arrive with the train.

The Lab ('Labs')

Here's a map.

DISCLAIMER: Labs, like much of Tarkov, is under constant development, so issues may be fixed or created without warning. Always check patch notes!

Labs is a very complex map compared to the rest of Tarkov. There is a great deal more exfiltrations but many of them have requirements or a sequence of events needed to be able to extract from them. It is recommended to read the Tarkov Wiki on Labs before raiding there.

LABS IS NOT LIKE OTHER MAPS. READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY.

Labs is a lucrative end-game raid location, comparable to 'dungeons' in other games. They are populated by tougher enemies that give greater rewards. In order to go to labs, you need to acquire a keycard, this functions like mechanical keys but instead of opening a door, they unlock your ability to select Labs for a raid.
They may be found in-raid in various locations, most notably in scavs backpacks, pockets, and in filing cabinets. They may be purchased from Therapist at LL4 for 189K Roubles. Labs are populated by a unique kind of AI enemy, Raiders.

Raiders

Raiders are the Labs form of Scavs, or AI enemies. However, unlike other maps, they cannot contain player Scavs. Raiders have a much tougher than your average scav, they are capable of advanced tactics (such as flanking) and throw grenades and use other consumables as a player would. Once 'locked' onto you, they are typically capable of killing you very quickly, even if you are wearing high-end armor.
In Tarkov, Raiders act like the avatars of Death. They are clad in USEC and BEAR equipment, as they are effectively AI PMCs. Many changes have been made to labs and specifically how Raider AI works and to prevent exploits to easily farm them as well as bugs where they could be deadlier than intended.
A general rule of thumb is not to fight Raiders directly. They can and WILL kill you. Raiders can spawn with 7N9, or 'big boy' ammo. This ammunition type is incredibly lethal to players, even those wearing the toughest armor. If you get shot in the head, doesn't matter what kind of helmet, face shield, killa helmet, etc you are wearing, you will almost certainly die.
Because Raiders are controlled by AI, they have zero ping. They may also end to immediately respond as if you were aggressive even if they did not originally know you were there - ESP Raiders effectively will prone and return fire even as you ADS and put them in your sights.
This is why engaging a Raider must be done very, very carefully. There are a few strategies that you may employ, most commonly some form of baiting them towards an area and then killing them when they arrive. Players may accomplish this by generating noise - gunfire, melee weapon hitting walls, crates, etc, player deaths, players Mumbling (F1 by default) can all attract Raiders to investigate your area.
Due to the high power of Raiders, players often go in with minimal loadouts and seek to avoid conflict with other players, especially geared ones. Most players avoid PvP in Labs, though a good portion of the playerbase thoroughly enjoys hunting down poorly-geared players after they kill a few Raiders for them.
As such, players will lay prone in a hallway, or crouch in a room, and attract Raiders to enter their domicile by opening the door, and immediately headshotting them. Few Raiders actually wear helmets (though some do) so most players specialize in 'flesh ammo' or, ammunition that foregoes armor penetration in favor of raw damage in order to kill Raiders more reliably, because Raiders have slightly higher head health than PMCs do.
Raiders spawn with a great variety of equipment, weapons, armor, and materials such as medication or hideout parts. They tend to have chest armor and may have different helmets. Their pockets can contain Labs keycards, morphine, Ifaks, cash, and other items. They're always worth checking.
Raiders are a good source of grenades, they will often have F-1's and Zarya's in their rig or pockets that you can use to fight off players and Raiders alike.
Recently, changes have been made to Labs to make them less profitable so that other maps are more appealing. The cost and rarity of keycards increased, as well as reducing the frequency that raiders spawn, so that they come in more infrequent groups but also tighter in formation, while also lowering the overall output of individual Raiders, so that they are less likely to have a bunch of extra materials, such as grenades and other items.

Experience Farming on Labs

Labs is one of the best places to farm experience in the entire game. Killing a Raider with a headshot awards 1100 Experience. This does not include any looting, inspection (searching bodies), examine, streak, or other experience.
Killing a large sequence of Raiders gives additional bonus experience in the form of Streak rewards, usually 100 bonus exp per additional kill.
Surviving the raid multiplies all of these sources of experience by 1.5x

Changes coming to Labs

Disclaimer: I am not a BSG developer or employee. This is what I have seen on this subreddit and heard elsewhere. Some might be purely rumor, but other points are confirmed by Nikita Labs is undergoing constant changes. Nikita and BSG take feedback seriously, and always consider what the players are telling them. It known that Labs will eventually be accessed via the Streets of Tarkov map, and will require you to enter that map, make it to the labs entrance, and then extract from Labs to return to Streets of Tarkov and exfil from there as well. This will likely add an additional layer of risk to being ambushed for your goodies along your way out, as well as punishing damage taken in labs more severely. Additionally, keycards will have a limited number of uses, and may open more than one room.
The full extent of the changes coming is not known.
Remember, you can load a map in OFFLINE mode to practice against bots or to learn the map without fear of losing gear.

Tarkov's Health System

Tarkov Wiki Article
Tarkov has a very advanced health system, and while it might seem overwhelming at first, you'll get the hang of it rather quickly. It features a very wide variety of effects and injury, including hydration, energy, blood pressure, blood loss, fractures, contusion, intoxication, exhaustion, tremors and more.
Not all of the Health System is implemented yet. Expect changes!
Your character (PMC, or otherwise) has a combined Health of 435. Each of his limbs have separate health. Taking damage to a limb that reduces it to 0 'blacks' that limb. Blacked limbs are a problem. They greatly impair the activities your PMC performs, and taking damage in a blacked limb amplifies the damage by a multiplier and spreads that damage among your other non-black limbs equally. You cannot heal a blacked limb without the use of a Surgical Kit.
Notes: Bloodloss applies damage to the affected limb and can be spread like other damage to a blacked limb. Treat immediately. Also causes significant dehydration! Bloodloss also helps level your Vitality skill, which in turn gives you experience towards your Health skill, which is necessary to reach level 2 of in order to improve your hideout.
Losing a limb applies additional effects. Fractures also apply these effects but not the damage amplification (Except for damage if running on fractured leg.) Fractures require specialized medical kits to heal.
Dehydration is what happens when your Hydration level reaches 0. You can view your Hydration level in your gear page, at the bottom left. Becoming dehydrated is extremely bad. You take constant damage. Taking dehydration damage can kill you if you have a black chest or head. Restoring hydration helps train Metabolism, which improves positive effects from food and drink.
Head/Chest: Bullet damage resulting in losing your head or chest is instant death. Note: Bloodloss resulting in your Head/Chest being black does not result in death, but any damage to them beyond that point will! A back chest will causes you to cough (much like your stomach!)
Painkillers: Prevents coughing that comes from your chest. Doesn't help otherwise.
Stomach: Massively increased rate of dehydration and energy loss. You must find liquids or exit the Raid soon. Additionally, your PMC will cough sputter loudly, attracting attention. A black stomach multiplies damage taken by 1.5 and redistributes that damage across your entire health pool.
Painkillers: Significantly reduces the frequency and volume of the coughs.
Arms: Makes activities like searching, reloading, etc, take additional time, as well as adding a sway, reducing accuracy. Arms have a .7x damage multiplier.
Painkillers: Reduces sway, removes debuff Pain.
Legs: Blacked legs cause your PMC to stumble and be unable to run. Blacked legs have a 1x damage multiplier.
Painkillers: Allows you to walk at full speed and to run.
WARNING: Running while your legs are blacked or fractured WILL DAMAGE YOU.

Health Items

Tarkov features many health items - 'Aid' items, which can be used to restore your characters health and to fix ailments or injuries he receives as the result of combat or mishaps. The two most important health conditions to consider are bloodloss and fractures, which have both been covered above. Some food items may have ancillary effects, such as losing hydration.
Since in the current patch the only ailments to worry about are bleeding and fractures, it changes which health items are most necessary. We'll go over them below.

Health Restoration

Medical Items on Wiki
AI-2 medkit
The newb's medical kit. You receive several of these when you start Tarkov - they'll already be in your stash. Available from Level I Therapist, they are cheap and effective way of healing early in the game. They will not stop bloodloss. Because of this, you also need to bring bandages or a higher-grade medical kit. Affectionately called 'little cheeses' by the Tarkov community. Using it takes 2 seconds, and because of how cheap it is, it's often brought in by higher level players to supplement their healing without draining their main kit (which is capable of healing bloodloss or sometimes fractures). Due to its short use time, it's often very useful during combat as you can take cover and quickly recover damage taken to a vital limb. They're also useful as you can buy them from Therapist to heal yourself if you died in a raid.
Bandages
The newb's bloodloss solution. Available from Therapist at Level I. A better version, the Army Bandage is available at Level II, after a quest. Mostly obsolete after unlocking the Car Medical kit, but some players value them due to the Car's overall low health pool. Activating takes 4 seconds, and removes bloodloss to one limb.
Splint
The newb's solution to fractures. Cheap, takes five seconds to use, and takes up 1 slot. Fractures are much more common this patch, due to them being added back in the game from standard bullet wounds, not just drops. Available from Therapist at Level I, no quest needed. Can be used to craft a Salewa.
Alu Splint
More advanced form of the normal split. Works the same, but has up to 5 uses. Recommended to carry in your container if possible, due to frequency of fractures from gunfire.
CMS (Compact Medical Surgery) Kit
New medical item added in .12, fantastic item. Allows you to perform field surgery, removing the black limb state and allowing you to heal it beyond 0 hp. Takes 16 seconds to use, and cannot be cancelled so make sure you are safe if you are using it! Will reduce the maximum health of the limb it's used on by 40-55%, but will effectively remove all negative effects incurred by having a black limb. Highly recommended to carry in your container for emergencies. Can be bartered from Jaeger LL1, and purchased for roubles LL2.
Surv12 field surgical kit
Same as the compact surgical kit, but takes 4 seconds longer, and the health penalty is reduces to 10-20% max health of the limb. Considering this kit is 1x3, taking up a huge amount of space, it's probably not worth using. It's just too large. Better this than nothing, though.
Car Medical Kit
The newb's first real medical solution. Available LL1 as a barter (2 Duct Tape) and available for Roubles after completing Therapist's second quest. Has a larger health pool than AI-2's (220, vs AI-2's 100), and removes bloodloss. Takes up a 1x2 slot, so requires to be placed in a tactical rig in order to be used effectively. Cheap and fairly efficient, takes a standard 4 seconds to use. Rendered effectively obsolete when the Salewa is unlocked.
Often kept in a player's secure container as a backup health pool, before IFAKs are unlocked.
Salewa
Good medkit for use in mid and end-game. Contains 400 total health and can remove bloodloss. More rouble efficient form of a healing due to its high health pool, costs 13k roubles. Same size as the Car medical kit, so requires a tactical rig to use effectively. Because Tarkov does not currently have effects like Toxication in the game at the moment, this kit is favored by most players who go into a raid with at least a moderate level of gear. With a high health pool and relatively low cost, it's also a more efficient way of healing damage sustained while in raids. Unlocked at Therapist Level II after completing a level 10 Prapor quest, Postman Pat Part II. Required as part of Therapist's first quest, Shortage. This makes Salewas very valuable early on in a wipe as it gatekeeps the rest of Therapist's quests, most of which occur on Customs early on. Can be crafted in your meds station with a painkiller, splint, and bandage.
IFAK
Fantastic medical kit, and is the one preferred by most players. Features 300 health and the ability to remove bloodloss and a host of other negative effects that are not yet implemented into the game. It does not, however, remove fractures. Taking up only a single slot, it is favored by players in all stages of gear, and it is recommend to carry one in your Secure Container in case of emergencies. Is available at Therapist Level II for a barter (Sugar + Sodium), and may be purchased for Roubles at Level III after completing Healthcare Privacy, Part I. It is a fairly expensive kit, but due to its durability, its small size, and ability to remove bloodloss, it is a very common medical item used by players of all levels. Can be crafted in Lvl 2 medstation.
Grizzly
The 'big daddy' medical kit, boasting an impressive total health resource of 1800. It is also a very large kit, taking up 4 slots (2x2) - in order to be able to use this quickly, it would require specialized tactical rigs that feature a 2x2 slot. It removes all negative effects (some costing HP resource), including fractures. Used by highly-geared players who intend on staying in raids for an extended period of time, or by players with additional Secure Container space available in case of emergencies. It is available for barter at Therapist Level II, and purchase at Therapist Level 4. Due to its price point from Therapist at just under 23k Roubles and its healthpool of 1800, it is by far the most efficient method of healing from raid damage, at a 1.3 roubles per health, dramatically lower than other options available. Can be crafted in Lvl 3 medstation.

Pain Management

Using any of these items results in your character being 'On Painkillers' which allows you to sprint on fractured and blacked legs, as well as reducing effects of fractures and blacked limbs, and removing the debuff Pain. Essentially, the only difference between most of these items are the speed of use, price, availability, and duration of the effect. Note that the Hideout has changed how some of these items are used, and because Tarkov is under constant development, it is very likely that these materials may be used to create higher-grade medkits or to upgrade your medstation. That being the case, it's best to hoard the unknown items for now as efficiently as possible until you know you don't need them.
Analgin Painkillers
The holy grail of pain medication. "Painkillers" have 4 total uses. The total duration is greater than Morphine and less risk of waste. Takes a short time to use, and is available from Therapist Level 1 for both barter and Roubles. Makes a loud, distinctive gulping noise. Can be used to craft Salewa kits.
Morphine
Quick application of painkillers. Favored by some highly geared players as it has greater usability in combat then it's typical counterpart, Painkillers. Has a longer duration, but only one use. It is required for a fairly early Therapist (and a late Peacekeeper) Quest, so it is recommend to hoard 10 of them, then sell the rest unless you intend on using them. They are worth a good amount to Therapist and take up little space so they are a valuable loot item. Available from Therapist for Roubles at Level 4, after completing Healthcare Privacy, Part 3.
Augmentin
Basically a cheaper Morphine. One use, 205s. Not recommended over Painkillers due to its cost. No current barter for this item, so usually it's just a fairly expensive, small loot item. Most likely a component of a medstation manufacturing process or upgrade. Keep it.
Ibuprofen
Powerful painkiller. Lasts 500 seconds and has 12 uses. This item is recommended as your long-term solution for painkillers. While it is valuable because it's used to trade for THICC items case, it's the cheapest component and is very useful as a painkiller. It has a long duration and a large amount of uses, so keep it in your container for use as a painkiller if your primary painkillers wear off. Don't use it completely up, though. Keep the 1/12 bottles for the trade.
Vaseline
Powerful medical item. Cannot be purchased from dealers. Has a maximum of 10 uses. Removes Pain, applies Painkillers for 500 seconds (8.3 minutes). Useful to keep in your container as an alternative to Painkillers, though it takes 6 seconds to use, which is longer than other painkillers. Used as part of a barter trade for the Medcase.
Golden Star Balm
Fairly useful medical item. It can remove Pain and Contusion (not a big deal of a debuff, goes away on its own shortly) and provides a small bonus to hydration and energy. It also removes toxication and Radiation exposure, both of which are not yet implemented into the game. Like Vaseline, has a maximum of 10 uses. Painkiller effect lasts for 10 minutes, and takes 7 seconds to apply. Recommended to take only if you are going on large maps and you have extra room in your container. Can be used with Ibuprofen and 5x Med parts to craft 7 Propital.

Continued below in a series of comments, due to character limit.