[PART 5]
Dressed to impress, in fully-tailored black slacks, long sleeved, button-up shirt, red and gold striped neck-tie, and black sports shoes, I drove my all black, middle-class city car deftly through traffic on my usual route to school. After all, angels, demons, or void-spawn be damned; it was 20 minutes until I had to be in class, teaching an English lesson.
This update should be anything but boring, and if you’re not surprised, concerned, intrigued or creeped-out a bit, maybe you might be interested in swapping places with me, see if that changes your mind. Yes, I’ve heard what some of you would do in my shoes…I can’t blame you. Honestly, I’m human too, 99.00% at least, and the thoughts you’ve expressed have crossed my mind as well. Some of you would take what I’ve learned, cut your losses and leave Sandy. Others would dump Sandy and specifically try to get with Coalcifer. Well, you’re not me, are you? And for that, try and consider yourself lucky.
To my relief, traffic was surprisingly light for that day of the week, so I decided to take a risk and stop at my favorite coffee shop. It’s nearby, never too busy around this time, and the baristas here know how to make a good cuppa Joe. Kind of a strange thing to call coffee. I suppose cup of Jon sounds pretty awkward, hmm…Cuppa Joseph? How about cup of Daniel? Nope. Cuppa Joe it shall remain.
In the middle of the road out in front of the coffee shop, I noticed that the skid-marks were still there from when Coalcifer “Saved” me from getting killed by a speeding car. That was the very first day she had ever materialized to me in her mostly human form. Years ago, she first appeared to me in the form of a grotesque, red demon. That was back when I thought she actually WAS a demon. She always did like to change forms, though I suppose I would too if I were some kind of celestial fugitive. I pulled into the parking lot, and couldn’t help but wonder where Coalcifer had gone off to. It wasn’t as if she stayed cramped inside her pocket dimension all day, nothing but musty old books lining her wall-to-wall shelves. Surely she would tire of the prying eyes of the damned which congregate in the lazily swirling shadows around her. Those agonized faces only seem to draw close to her when she uses arcane powers unrelated to her angelic nature, likewise, when she draws upon her divine power, those same shadows recoil.
“I’ll have a cappuccino with a shot of espresso, and one of those bacon and egg croissants. Thanks, and sorry, I don’t have time to talk today. Taking a risk just stopping by, haha, but your coffee is worth it.” The baristas smiled and replied “No worries, teacher!” I gave a smile and a nod as I took a seat, making sure to keep a watchful eye on the clock. Seconds ticked away, one after the other. Well, not exactly ticking, as some people find the tick tock of old clocks to be annoying or disturbing. No, the clock on the wall was one of those unnerving analogue ones, you know, where instead of actually ticking, the second hand just flows fluidly, never really stopping. It caused my anxiety to settle between my shoulders. It’s truthful nature showed what everyone knows, but tries to forget by carefully managing their schedule: Time flies, never slowing, never stopping. I need to get a grip.
I looked away Thinking about the dream I had last night, I wondered if I should bring it up to Coalcifer. She may try and deflect my questions, but I know in my bones that what I witnessed in my sleep last night couldn’t have just been a dream. It feels so much more like a memory once forgotten, and only just re-remembered.
I must have gotten lost in thought, but the sound of my phone alarm snapped me out of it. “I took the liberty of putting your items all in takeaway containers. I know you’re in a hurry.” I thanked the barista, swiped my card and punched-in my pin-number, snatching my stuff and heading out the door. I got in my car and headed towards my school.
I was confused about the lack of cars on the road as I drove, so I switched-on the radio to see if there were any traffic updates. The news anchor was in the middle of this exact topic: “-er. No casualties, no injuries reported, but three 18 wheelers; one carrying a shipment of coffee beans, one carrying unprocessed coal and another carrying liquid nitrogen, all experienced engine trouble several minutes ago. Reports claim that this incident happened at 3 major intersections, causing traffic to slow to a crawl as cars slowly make their way around the 3 large, immobilized trucks. Those intersections ar-” I switched off the radio, and cracked a smile. The coal truck obviously stands for Coalcifer, the coffee bean truck was a nod to my stop at the coffee shop, and the truck hauling liquid nitrogen? Hmm…Ha! I get it…Coalcifer is saying she’s so freaking cool! What a show-off. Well, at least with her help, the day seemed to be off to a good start, looming threat of cosmic void-spawn aside.
I arrived at school with almost 2 minutes to climb 4 flights of stairs, then start teaching class, but with such a valid excuse for my lateness, you can bet your sweet-roll that I’m taking my time, and finishing my coffee first. Though today is a light day, I usually skip lunch and order delivery around 3pm, and today I was in the mood for pizza…But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The director of the school eventually caught up with me shortly after my final class of the day. “Oh John, what sort of half-baked excuse could you possibly have for being so very late?” The graying director asked, his tweed suit 2 sizes too big. “Oh, good morning, Mr. director! You wouldn’t believe the traffic accident that happened nearly an hour ago now. I-” The director cut me off “Don’t bother, as I don’t want to hear it! …It’s always excuses with you, John.” I paused, unsure of how to react to his statement. I opened my mouth to give an apology, but he slapped one of his time-weathered hands on my shoulder. “HA! You should see the look on your face. Anyway, I happened to be watching the news this morning, so you’ve no need to bother embellishing the events to me. You’re off the hook this time, fair and square. See you bright and early tomorrow, that is, if I don’t see you again by 4pm.” I nodded and told the playful old geezer “Yessir, Mr. H”.
Horatio was his surname, and he’d been the director of this school longer than I’ve been alive. He may mean well by his kidding around, but it’s also only natural for employees to feel uncomfortable around employers when they like to joke about firing you. This was mild compared to some jokes he’s made in the past.
After he was out of sight, I wasted no time in heading to the breakroom, where I plugged in my phone, cracked open a bottle of water I’d grabbed from the fridge, and sat down in an oversized comfy chair. The breakroom was usually empty around this time, as most teachers take this time to nap at their desks, or teach an intensive class for extra cash. I took a moment to be alone with my thoughts, just to breathe and ready myself for my after-school meeting with Coalcifer. Thoughts of my vision from the night before, thoughts of my secret trip to the Nexus without her, and thoughts of how my heart stopped momentarily before that energy within me restarted it. Was this fallen angel trying to kill me? “Ugh, I need to get a grip!” I chided myself. Though fear wasn’t an emotion I could currently experience, I could still recall the sensation of being in danger; which I felt whenever I think back to that moment in the Nexus, when I listened to the sounds coming from the void.
I decided that I’d been sitting in contemplation long enough, after that last thought, so I started looking for the number to that pizza shop. It sure sounded like a better use of my time. I’d saved it in my contacts under the initials M.P., so I quickly found the number to my favorite pizza shop. Maurizio’s Pizzio, home of some of the most sinfully delicious pizza-pies in Asia, though he’s not publicly listed. And yeah, I’ve checked with the owner in the past, and it was indeed named by a nine year old. I giggle when I read it sometimes, sure it’s a funny name, but it’s some seriously tasty pizza.
I called the shop and ordered my favorite pie: Double-layer, stuffed crust, 4 kinds of cheese topping, salami and black olives. They told me it was a 20-30 minute wait, and asked where I wanted it delivered, so I told them to drop it off at the school, as per the usual. I hung up and put my phone on the charger. But something didn’t feel quite right. Something seemed, well…A bit off. And then I had a thought: “Here I am, about to indulge in a pizza like nothing’s wrong with my life. Like everything’s fine. Like there aren’t unknowable horrors lurking around, skulking in the realm between ours and theirs.” I sat a moment longer in silence, just staring at the phone, then picked it up and started dialing a number. “Yeah, it’s me, John. No, I still want it, but like some kind of psychopath, I completely forgot to order some cola. No, not that diet crud, thanks.” As I hung up the phone, it glitched. It wouldn’t end the call, not even registering my fingertaps on the red end-call button. “Huh…Guess I’ll just turn off the phone” Which was the most reasonable thing to do. I held-down the power button, for a moment, but the phone gave me a powerful little shock. “Ack! What the hell!?” Dropping it immediately, the phone fell right onto my foot as I tried to soften its landing, and it ended up screen side up. “Well, at least I caught- Wha? The speaker phone switched on…” [From the phone, in a demonic voice] “WE HAVE HER WHERE WE WANT HER, JOHN. WE SHALL NOT ALLOW YOU TO STRUGGLE FURTHER, FRUITLESS AS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN. HEHEHEH, WHY, YOUR MONGREL SOUL ISN’T EVEN WORTHY TO BE EATEN BY OUR LOWEST-.” I kicked my phone up to my hand, and poured a measure of the little mystical energy I could muster into my voice, cutting the voidspawn off mid-sentence “You sound like you’re in a hurry to take care of me, and that tells me one thing.” “REALLY? WHAT DO YOU IMAGINE IT TELLS YOU, MONGREL?” “Ha! It tells me that you’re pissing yourself to get rid of me before I become strong enough to spell your doom.” “FINE. WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, ONE SOLDIER IS ALL I SHALL SEND TO END YOU- A SOLDIER OF THE LOWEST ORDER WILL BE MORE THAN SUFFICIENT.” I hung up the phone using a jolt of arcane energy behind my button-press.
About 15 minutes later, I tried to mentally contact Coalcifer to give her a heads-up about the threat made by one of the Voidspawn, but I received no reply. I know that she must have gotten my message, but it seemed that maybe she was busy. Whatever, I’d see her later tonight anyway. *Knock-knock* I heard a knock from outside the breakroom door. “Who is it?” “Pizza delivery for John!” Finally, my pizza had arrived. “One moment, let me get my wallet.” I walked over to the door, the smell of those four cheeses and decadent sauce already wafting-through the cracks around the door. I could hardly wait to sink my teeth into that crispy, golden, cheese stuffed-crust. Money in hand, I grabbed the doorknob. You know when that spider super-hero’s sense starts tingling, then he jumps out of the way safely? I felt a sense of danger like a chime inside my head, spiking toward the direction of the door the moment I touched the handle. This prompted me to press-in the little knob lock. As the lock clicked, not a second passed before the door burst off of its hinges, smacking into me and knocking me down. The weight of a full-grown man was soon added to the door on top of me. In a slightly distorted human voice, my attacker spoke “WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECTED IT, I WAS DEPLOYED TO SNUFF-OUT YOUR LIFE. YOUR DEATH WILL BRING ME GREAT REWARDS FROM MY SUPERIORS!” Immediately, the creature tried to remove the door to get to me, but I held onto the knob with all my might. “ARGH!” It growled in annoyance, and began ripping at the door, strike after strike. “You piece of-! Look, uhh, any damn chance we could work out a deal?” Splinters were flying this way and that as the creature hissed “NO DEAL, SLOW DEATH ONLY” I grabbed a sharpened pencil from my pocket and readied myself to stab this sorry bastard in the face. “It was worth a freaking try!” I shouted before kicking the door to the side, and the void-soldier along with it. “REEE!” the creature screeched after colliding with a few chairs and a big table. I wasted no time in rolling to my feet, stance wide and pencil in hand. My name was John, after all. But when the creature stood up from the pile of furniture, I saw that it was still in the form of the pizza delivery guy. Activating my Second sight spell, I focused on his form. Pulsating, red tendrils were barely contained within his form, and his eyes shone with a sickeningly yellow light. “Oh come ON!” I shouted as I threw the pencil aside. I couldn’t stab this guy! His name was Stephan, and he had a frigg’n family. “Stephan, it’s me, John. Remember that 20 dollar tip I gave you last Tuesday?” The possessed man answered by dropping on all fours and scrambling at me like something out of a 90’s horror movie. “Oh no you don’t!” I leapt up and Mario stomped the poor delivery guy’s head into the ground. I didn’t land so gracefully when I bounced off, so it took me a second to get my balance. “JUST STAND STILL AND DIE, JOHN” I turned around to see the possessed delivery guy now standing up, not a single scratch on him from me, a solidly built guy, a head taller than most, stomping on his head… That should have seriously injured him at least, but being possessed must have given him unnatural durability. “MY TRUE SELF CAN WITHSTAND THE DEPTHS OF YOUR OCEAN, THE HARSHNESS OF SPACE. EVEN WITH MY ATTRIBUTES LIMITED BY THIS VESSEL, IT’S DEATH WON’T COME EASILY WHILE I INHABIT HIM.” I placed all my focus on trying to summon a fireball, but all I could manage was a stream of purple sparks. Then he threw a chair at me. I quickly regained consciousness as the possessed man leapt on top of me. I tried with all my might to call upon that inhuman energy deep inside of me, but it was merely a faint hum, and grew no-louder. I opened my mouth to shout obscenities at the low-ranking void-soldier straddling me, but his hands were quicker, wrapping around my throat. “A SSSLOWWW DEATHHH BY MY HANDSSS” The damned thing hissed, pleased with this turn of events and his imminent victory. It could have crushed my throat easily, but it clearly wanted to savour every moment of my death. Thankfully, even now I felt no fear, which allowed me to scan the floor nearby for anything useful. A quick look was all it took to see there was nothing to be found, and my anger surged. I focused my energy into my fist and arm, and let loose a punch that would have rocked a pro-boxer, and the man’s head snapped back, but still his grip never loosened. That was it. As furious as I was, the rest of my punches lacked even a fraction of the power I’d managed in that one punch, as each blow I landed hit more softly than the previous. My vision began to darken around the edges, and memories of Sandy’s smile, and the first time we’d met, flashed in my mind. Tears flooded my vision as sadness overtook the fury in me, and my eyes watered. It wasn’t until I tried once more to reach out to Coalcifer, only to be ignored once again, perhaps for the final time, that my tears of despair turned into tears of rage. I summoned all the strength I could, prying the hands of the possessed delivery guy off of my throat, and gasped for air, but that was all I could manage before being pinned-down by my throat once more. My vision cleared enough for me to see the room, and for whatever reason, I wanted to know the time. I figured I should at least get to know the time of my death. I spotted the clock on the wall, but it was analogue, so it took me a second to read the time. When it clicked in my mind that the time was 3:40pm, a sound strummed across my mind like a chord on a cello. “The Nexus!” I felt the hum within me respond to my realization, reaching out to that space between dimensions, my own mansion in the void. I formed a command in my mind, hoping the Nexus would fill in the blanks “Nexus. Emergency. Containment. NOW!” and to the surprise of the void-spawn and myself, swathes of void-stuff began to envelope us both. “WHAT?! NOOO!” The abomination raged. I saw a lone figure in the busted doorway, smile on her lips as she spoke to me with her mind “I knew you’d think of something-” She mouthed the last two words “Johnny-boy” then space itself warped itself around us, causing all to go dark.
With quite a sore throat, I awoke within a sea of tiny hands crawling all over my body, all comprised of void-stuff, and although I was thoroughly unsettled by this, I realized that a comforting warmth was emanating from these hands. I sat for a minute and watched them go to work at scrapes and bruises, as a soft glow came from each hand, making the bruises and scrapes shrink to almost nothing. I still felt like I’d been hit by a dang truck, but the feeling was closer to the day after a couple of intense hours at the gym. As the hands faded back into the Nexus, I sat up barely a stone’s throw from the edge of a large, silver warding glyph, encircled by a border-wall of barely visible energy. Next to me, I saw the unconscious form of the pizza guy, his chest slowly rising and falling. I looked again to the circle of warding and saw it empty, except for a few large Nexus-hands, balled into fists. The hands shook from time to time, then settled, and began again. “Nexus, firstly, thank you!” The Nexus hummed a short, agreeable note. “Secondly, deactivate invisibility within the warding circle.” I immediately saw what had been possessing poor Stephan: Red appendages like so many roots, no, like writhing blood vessels, pulsated and struggled sporadically against its bonds. Yellow orbs for eyes, staring straight into my soul. “Enable invisibility within the containment ward. Ohh, Coalcifer has some serious explaining to do!” I fumed for a while, contemplating exactly how I was going to get back at her for this. I just knew she had been watching that whole spectacle from the start. “Nexus, open covert viewing window into my previous location on Earth.” The Nexus swirled in front of me, and I could see Coalcifer rearranging the breakroom at blinding speeds, and fixing everything as if it the attack hadn’t even happened! I waited for a moment when she wasn’t looking, and commanded the Nexus to snatch the pizza and cola before she could see it happening. Then, I grabbed the bull by the horns. “Nexus, activate capture and containment wards. Initiate containment protocol, level: Coalcifer. Target for capture and containment: Coalcifer.”
She’s certainly NOT going to be happy about this.

Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin'. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human bein's if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelin's about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin' on you and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down.
Major Kong, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb [quote here] [full film available here at archive.org, highly recommend, definitive American dark comedy on the subject]
Hello! We're sort of taking a break from East Asia-specific this week to talk about a great conversation-starter: Thermonuclear war. As developments in this area have not entirely halted in the past few decades, and yet I suspect most [not all--there's probably like one 80-year-old or something] of the readers of this post were either not alive during the Cold War or were too young to really appreciate most of what was happening during that period, I feel that it's important to cover the topic, especially with "great-power competition" being a new buzzword and the possibility that the NPT and the other arms control and limitation agreements that have been prominent for the past few decades falling apart being very real.
I'm sorry in advance if I occasionally get a bit repetitive but I think I've made a fairly comprehensive post on the subject, and I don't think I've particularly biased it one way or the other [though of course, that's what I would think].
Glossary:
Bunker-buster = nuclear warhead designed to destroy hardened sites, like bunkers or missile silos
Nuclear weapon = nuclear bomb = nuclear warhead = weapon that uses an operating principle based on nuclear physics
Thermonuclear weapon = more advanced type of nuclear weapon that uses fusion as its primary energy source rather than fission
Warhead = the part of the weapon that goes boom
Fuze = what sets off the bomb, distinct from fuse, which is an electrical part
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty = one of the biggest arms control treaties in recent years, barred the US and USSRussia from having land-based missiles that were nuclear capable with a range from 500km to 5500km]
Ballistic missile = missile that travels in ballistic trajectories, fast, difficult to intercept, accuracy problems and always powered by rockets
Cruise missile = missile that travels in the atmosphere, smaller, difficult to intercept but easier than ballistic missiles--but harder to detect, powered by jet engines and air-breathing and thus slower
SRBM = Short-range ballistic missile [1000km range or less, most less than 300km to comply with MTCR or less than 500km to comply with the former INF Treaty]
MRBM = Medium-range ballistic missile [1000km to 3000km range, common in arsenals outside the US and Russia]
IRBM = Intermediate-range ballistic missile [3000km to 5500km range, common in arsenals outside the US and Russia, previously barred by the INF Treaty
ICBM = Intercontinental ballistic missile [5500km+ range, standard in US and Russian arsenals, China, France, and possibly North Korea operate a handful]
SSBN = "boomer" = ballistic missile submarine, nuclear powered and nuclear armed [no conventionally armed ballistic missile subs exist at present to the best of my knowledge, the only proposal being known a Trident conventional version]
Early warning = the systems used to detect missile launches and track them, could be ground-based radars or satellites
MIRV = Multiple independent reentry vehicles, a way to attach multiple warheads to one missile
SLBM = submarine-launched ballistic missile
Tactical nuke = determined by usage, not yield, tactical nukes are meant to be used in conflicts that do not escalate to an all-out nuclear war
Countervalue = a capability to strike against an opponent's cities and hard targets
Counterforce = a capability to strike against an opponent's hardened missile silos
Gravity bomb = nuke dropped from a plane
Nuclear triad = the full set of nuclear delivery methods: Air-launched cruise missiles/bombs, submarine-launched missiles, and ground-based missiles
SDI = "Star Wars" = strategic defense initiative, the origin of all of America's modern missile defense efforts
ABM = anti-ballistic missile
Nuclear sharing = a system via which nuclear warheads, owned by the US, are located in NATO countries [and in the past non-NATO countries] and can be turned over to their management in wartime
Some particular pieces of hardware to know about:
Trident = the submarine-launched ballistic missile currently used by the US and UK, can carry up to 14 warheads in MIRV configuration [typically 4 under treaty limits], solid-fueled and an ICBM as well as a SLBM
Minuteman-III = the current ground-based nuclear deterrent of the United States, ICBM, also MIRVed to handle 3 warheads, built in the 1960s originally and solid-fueled
Peacekeeper = MX = LGM-118 = the most sophisticated ground-based ICBM fielded by the United States and, possibly, by any power, solid-fueled and carried 12 [limited by treaty to 10] MIRVed warheads. Retired in 2005 due to high cost and arms limitation treaties. Meant to replace Minuteman.

1. The Bomb

The very first nuclear bombs relied on fission, the power of splitting atoms of fissile material to generate vast amounts of energy very quickly in a chain reaction. The general principle here is critical mass. Once a critical mass of the fissile material is achieved--usually either Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239--it activates a chain reaction which results in a nuclear explosion. These bombs are very simple in operating principle--pretty much anyone could build one if given the requisite materials. The main problem, and the reason we have not yet seen a nuclear warhead DIY, is that the fissile materials are very difficult to get. One must either synthesize plutonium in an atomic pile or use one of the various methods developed to enrich uranium--gaseous diffusion and centrifuges being the major ones. Either one takes a significant amount of time and specialized equipment, at least to produce nuclear weapons in any quantity. However, when you get down to it, any sufficiently motivated group could build one of these--at least if not stopped by another, more motivated group. Even North Korea could do this.
The next step in evolution was the boosted fission nuke. It represented a nuclear weapon that was more capable, but not radically so. By adding fusion fuel to the nuclear weapon, specifically the fission assembly, you could get a better yield--splitting more of the atoms in the core assembly before it suffered a critical existence failure and got spread out over several square miles. Fission-boosting is also fairly easily done, with the main obstacle being obtaining enough deuterium, lithium, and/or tritium to do the job correctly. These are, to my knowledge, pretty seldom seen; but I would suspect that both Pakistan and North Korea have them.
Thermonuclear weapons are, however, a major leap in capability. Much larger yield warheads can be built, in the multi-megaton range, and miniaturization is also possible, which is very useful for missiles in particular. Thermonuclear weapons rely on adding a fusion "secondary" stage, which is set off by a "primary" fission stage and generates vast quantities of energy. However, thermonuclear weapons are much more difficult to develop than fission-based weapons; largely because they rely on exotic materials and classified physics to operate. The United States itself has had difficulty building new thermonuclear weapons, or refreshing ones in current inventory, because it has lost knowledge of how to build some key materials. Most nuclear powers, however, are believed to or known to possess thermonuclear weapons, the exceptions being Pakistan and North Korea.

2. The Cold War

Nuclear weapons were probably the defining feature of the Cold War, at least once it finally began in earnest in the 1950s. To this day, the Cold War defines the cultural conception of nuclear weapons.
What this is about, though, is more a mechanical than philosophical or sociological discussion, explaining why nukes were, and are, used. Or rather, are planned to be used, because despite hundreds of nuclear tests, nobody has ever used a nuclear weapon in wartime in just over 75 years, since the US dropped a crude plutonium device on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
The very beginning of nuclear war involved hundreds of strategic bombers--first B-29s, which actually cost more than the Manhattan Project to develop--and then more advanced jet bombers, the most iconic of which and perhaps the most enduring is the B-52 Stratofortress, which the US Air Force expects to remain in service through possibly the end of the century. These were the only viable delivery vehicles, and thus both the US [well, mostly the US] and the Soviet Union rushed to build as many of them as possible, with [unfounded] concerns of a "Bomber Gap" resulting in the construction of thousands of strategic bombers. In the event of war, these bombers would take off from their bases and drop nuclear bombs on enemy positions. For a substantial length in time, the US actually maintained a constant patrol of B-52 bombers with nuclear warheads onboard, which, in the event of a surprise attack, would retaliate against the USSR. It is one of these bombers which Dr Strangelove focuses on--though I should note that only a handful of people actually possessed the ability to launch a nuclear strike, and even then only in contingencies when the president was unavailable, and this persists to this day, excepting submarines--which will be mentioned in a moment.
However, technology marched on, and soon the ballistic missile became the delivery vehicle of choice. Early ballistic missiles were relatively crude, based off of the original V-2 design and whose quality was largely determined by how many Nazis you had stolen at the end of the Second World War. However, technology continued to evolve, and soon ICBMs had enough accuracy to launch countervalue attacks. These attacks targeted cities and aimed to deter an enemy from launching a first strike by ensuring that doing so would destroy the nation of the attacker. This doesn't mean that ballistic missiles were the only delivery method, though. Smaller nuclear weapons were built, designed to be delivered by air. They offered greater accuracy and tactical utility, and lowered the risk of a strategic nuclear exchange breaking out. It was around this time that tactical and strategic nuclear exchanges began to be devised in nuclear theory, with tactical nukes becoming essential to NATO war plans due to the numerical, and sometimes qualitative, inferiority of their conventional forces when faced with Warsaw Pact opponents. Nuclear weapons found their way into practically every kind of format. Nuclear-tipped air-to-air rockets were an early invention, aimed at shooting down massed bomber formations. Nuclear-tipped surface-to-air-missiles soon followed. Nuclear anti-ship missiles, nuclear artillery, and even "backpack nukes" like the Atomic Demolition Munition all were developed for a variety of purposes. Nuclear depth charges, nuclear torpedoes--if you put explosives in something, chances are someone drew up a plan to put a nuke in it. [as an aside, Cold War schemes to use nuclear weapons to perform massive construction projects, such as liquidating the Athabasca Tar Sands or creating a giant salt lake in Egypt, are one of my favorite Cold War relics]. Nukes were the bread and butter of Cold War strategy in a way that seems hardly conceivable today. This is largely why both the US and USSR had stockpiles of tens of thousands of weapons.
Mutual assured destruction, or MAD as it is commonly known, was also derived during this time, suggesting that the way to prevent nuclear war was by ensuring that any initiation of nuclear combat would lead to certain destruction. The development of SSBNs and SLBMs, which provided a way to ensure survivability of the nuclear arsenal and a sure second strike capability--usually countervalue because of the lower accuracy of SLBMs--seemed to make this set in stone. These would avoid destruction in a first strike by hiding within the ocean, and would then launch based off of orders issued from base--or, in the case of Britain, off of orders written by the Prime Minister and secured in the submarines to be opened in event of war.
Unfortunately, life tends to make things more complicated, and this was and is the case with MAD. The first problem that developed was that of the MIRV, or Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle. This allowed missiles to carry large numbers of warheads, as many as twelve in the case of the LGM-118 Peacekeeper [probably the most sophisticated ICBM ever developed, the Soviet R-36 threw 10 and Trident D5 14 smaller warheads]. As a result of this fact, combined with increasing accuracy of reentry vehicles [especially, it is thought, on the part of the United States], a counterforce strike that could eliminate an enemy's ground-based nuclear deterrent became possible. MIRVs also place a high value on first-strike because each MIRVed missile can destroy numerous enemy silos but is correspondingly more vulnerable to first-strike as it replaces a dozen independent missiles with a single one. As a result limitations of MIRVed warheads have been a major focus of arms reduction treaties and several attempts have been made to ban usage of the technology altogether. Other problems complicated the situation further, such as anti-ballistic missiles, which potentially could shelter a nation from a weak second-strike. However, this broadly describes most of the key elements of nuclear war, skipping over the vast cultural and political impacts of nuclear weapons for the most part, because that's not really what I'm focused on here.

3. Arms control and non-proliferation

From the moment the US first got its hands on the bomb, it sought to keep it away from everyone else, including a very miffed Britain which had been promised access to the secrets learned from the Manhattan Project as a result of the contributions of its "Tube Alloys" program to the American development of the bomb. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, or McMahon Act, has largely set American nuclear policy since its creation. Britain ultimately developed its own nuclear bomb, and the Soviets, in a large part thanks to the involvement of traitorous American nuclear scientists, developed their own bomb as well. By the 1950s, the world was in a frantic race to build the bomb--those who had it, to build more of them, and those who didn't, to get them. Even Sweden ran a nuclear weapons program. France got the bomb, and China did as well--much to the chagrin of the Soviets, who had undergone a dramatic split with the Chinese a few years earlier and whose original research work was invaluable in contributing to the Chinese nuclear program. It must be understood that back in those days building nuclear weapons was much more difficult than it is now, without computers or without even easy resources as to how they functioned. Nowadays, I can learn how to build a nuke off of Wikipedia, and, barring the ten tons of heavy water, hundreds of kilograms of natural uranium, and large quantity of nitric acid required, doing so is a relatively trivial task.
The real shift, however, began around 1970. The first major act in this was the development of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which all the nuclear powers promised to work towards the reduction and abolition of nuclear weapons, and in return the majority of non-nuclear powers agreed not to build nukes, and it is upon this foundation that the modern order is built. However, it has hardly proved perfectly successful--only six years later the detonation of the first Indian nuclear weapon occurred, which had been built using Canadian technology that had not been adequately controlled, or, indeed, controlled at all--the reactors Canada sells are, by the way, essentially DIY kits for nuclear weapons. As a result, an increasingly involved control regime began to be built. The IAEA was founded and membership was generally required for the ownership of nuclear reactors. The nuclear powers banded together to ensure that critical components of nuclear programs were not exported, pressured nations in their own blocs into cancelling nuclear programs [as the US did to both South Korea and Taiwan], and, barring some relatively low-profile cheating on the part of China, which has sold peripheral equipment to North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran, this vast patchwork mostly held together. As a result, instead of a predicted 30-40 nuclear weapons states, there are only 9 today.
Also around this time, both the US and USSR recognized that spending large quantities on building ever-increasing quantities of nuclear weapons without either side gaining any decisive advantage was helping absolutely nobody, and the two states began to agree to various reductions in arms and limitations in weapons development, including the ABM treaty and SALT.

4. Anti-ballistic missiles and Star Wars

Eventually, starting in around the 1970s, people got the idea that maybe you could stop ICBMs. This sounds absolutely ludicrous--but it wasn't, per se, impossible, and it led to a lot of really advanced, science-fiction sounding technology.
The very first method was to launch interceptor rockets that carried H-bombs of their own, aiming to detonate them close enough to the missiles that they would either destroy the reentry vehicles, their electronics, or cause a non-critical "fissile" of the warhead. This was halted, however, by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, one of the first big arms limitations agreements, and also by a simple fact: Ground-based missile interceptors are generally much more expensive than building additional missiles--for instance, the US Ground-Based Midcourse Defense costs more to produce, missile for missile, than a LGM-118 with 12 warheads. This treaty actually held for its full term, despite what you may have expected, as it did not limit research, only the actual building of anti-ballistic missile systems, and actually, IIRC, excluded space-based defenses via omission. However, until Ronald Reagan came along, the idea of ABMs was largely cast to the wayside.
Reagan, however, revived the idea quite famously in his Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by many. It explored a number of ideas, many of which were quite outlandish--one of the more successful proposals, at least in terms of how much funding or attention was devoted to it, involved setting off nuclear warheads in space to power x-ray lasers to shoot down enemy missiles, which if nothing else sounded really cool. By far the most practical program to emerge out of this, however [a rather relative merit], was called "Brilliant Pebbles". It relied on a constellation of tens of thousands of kinetic interceptors, small, only a few kilograms each, which would target and destroy any ballistic missiles in low orbit. This plan was supposed to solve the issue where interceptors were more expensive than missiles, and allow the US unquestioned missile superiority.
It was also around this time when surface-to-air missile systems, originally designed with the mission to shoot down aircraft, began gaining limited anti-ballistic missile capabilities, which were... somewhat underwhelming in the Gulf War, though the technology was brand new at the time.

5. Peace dividend

When the Cold War finally ended, one of the parts of the peace dividend that probably made more sense than most was the vast savings made on nuclear weapons. The trend had already begun in the late Cold War, but once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, stockpiles fell from tens of thousands of warheads to just a few thousand on the part of the US and Russia. All sides had a vested interest in arms reduction, and so those thousands of warheads were disassembled and largely turned into fuel for nuclear reactors.
Ballistic missile defenses also got cut. The original Brilliant Pebbles scheme was cancelled and replaced with a less-expensive but substantially less effective program called the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, which relies on a relative handful of interceptor missiles in Alaska to shoot down ballistic missiles in the midcourse stage; primarily designed with China or North Korea in mind [oddly enough the first ballistic missile defense program of the US was also designed with the intent of stopping a Chinese nuclear attack]. Ironically Ground-Based Midcourse Defense ended up costing a large portion [more than half] of what the final Brilliant Pebbles implementations were proposed at, for a system with very limited capabilities [this cancellation may have also been part of what killed the DC-X spacecraft].
Vast fleets of SSBNs were disassembled. Expensive delivery platforms and programs, like the MX Peacekeeper, were scrapped. All in all, the threat of nuclear war practically vanished, excepting on the subcontinent, where India and Pakistan engaged in nuclear showboating multiple times. It's really hard to understate the sheer magnitude of what happened, with the number of warheads in existence shrinking from around 70,000 to 10,000 or so, with around half of those today being inactive. The US Navy went from stocking multiple warheads on each ship to removing them entirely from the fleet, aside from, of course, the SSBNs.
The successor states of the USSR, aside from Russia itself, were successfully convinced to hand over their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees--Ukraine most infamously--and their fissile materials were turned into [relatively] harmless nuclear fuel. South Africa became the first nation with an independently developed nuclear arsenal to voluntarily denuclearize, admittedly largely out of fear of what the black population might do with the bomb.
Other areas saw major reductions and non--proliferation efforts. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program decommissioned large quantities of nuclear delivery vehicles and Soviet biological and chemical weapons sites. The Missile Technology Control Regime expanded and enveloped most nations with the capability to develop ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles, making nuclear weapons delivery difficult for the aspiring third world dictator--for instance, an Iraqi program to develop a ballistic missile in partnership with Argentina was scrapped by American pressure and Argentine admittance into the MTCR. While India and Pakistan still harassed each other, their open non-nuclear conventional war assuaged some concerns while raising others [perhaps nuclear powers could engage in conventional war after all]. Nuclear programs in several countries were stopped by diplomatic pressure, as in Libya, rather than by Israeli bombing campaigns.
For a time, all was peaceful. In the last decade or so, however, things have changed--and for the most part, they have done so below the radar of even Washington policymakers.

6. A Return To The Old Days?

Things in the past decade or so, however, have changed the nuclear situation substantially.
First on the list is that North Korea now has nuclear weapons and, it seems, a deterrent. This has seriously tested the efficacy of non-proliferation already, with the merit of non-proliferation when North Korea and Pakistan have weapons being rather suspect. Iran is also building nukes. North Korea's case was, and is, dangerous in particular because it suggests that, barring strong support from a great power, nukes are the only way to maintain autonomy [Ukraine and Libya both offering examples of why surrendering nukes, or even a nuclear program, is a bad idea to the world], and that they aren't too difficult to get. North Korea also may well already be engaging in proliferation activities as a revenue source--it's already known that they sell ballistic missile delivery vehicles and have exported materials related to chemical weapons production in the past, so exporting nuclear technology is hardly a stretch, especially given that North Korea is not seriously threatened by these activities and they provide a useful revenue source for the regime. As a result, the non-proliferation circle built over decades by the various great powers now has a rather large North Korea-shaped hole in it. This, however, isn't leading to big changes in Russia, China, and the United States. Rather, technological advancements, largely by the US and China, are slowly nibbling away at the tenuous nuclear peace.
Second is the problem, for Russia, created by the new Trident super-fuze. Under cover of a "refurbishment" of the Trident warhead family, a new fuze was introduced. However, this fuze is no mere one-for-one replacement: Instead, it allows the warhead to detonate within a range of zones that could destroy the target, allowing warheads that would previously overfly the target and miss to instead detonate in an airbust directly above said target. In effect, it increased the power of Trident by as many as five times, and has made it into a counterforce or first strike weapon. Quoted figures are a .86 probability of kill for a 10kpsi target, about as hard as defensive structures get, and .99 probability of kill for a standard, 2kpsi hardened target. As most of Russia's missile silos are only secure to the point of the latter, and Russia uses liquid-fueled ICBMs for the most part that are much more sensitive to attack than Western or Chinese solid-fueled ones, what this means is that Trident is now capable of wiping out Russia's entire ground-based strategic deterrent at extremely short notice. This has, it seems, quite possibly frightened Russian leadership, and is the likely reason why they have been desperately trying to devise new outlandish delivery vehicles, like an unmanned nuclear torpedo or a nuclear-powered cruise missile. This is further complicated by the fact that Russia has more or less completely lost its space-based ballistic missile warning network and does not seem to have the capability to replace it, which means that Russia must rely on land-based early warning radars to inform it of a nuclear strike. As a result, Russia will have as little as ten minutes of warning for an incoming nuclear attack, and will have essentially no idea what it will look like or what scale it is on. When Russian sources say they'll treat any ballistic missile strike as a nuclear attack, they probably aren't lying, because their sensor network is so bad they can't tell whether a sounding rocket is a nuclear first strike, and their survivability is so bad they can't afford to not launch.
There's also the interesting problem presented by the development of a new low-yield Trident warhead. While it might possibly have some use, many believe that low-yield nuclear weapons are dangerous because they blur the line between conventional and tactical nuclear war, and the use of Trident as a delivery vehicle runs a substantial risk on account of the fact that it may be difficult for an adversary [such as Russia] to discern that the vehicle is a tactical nuclear strike rather than the beginning of a strategic exchange. These same very concerns scuppered a conventional variant of Trident proposed for the Prompt Global Strike program, which would have used Trident to launch large conventional payloads, a bad idea for multiple reasons.
Arms agreements that defined the 1990s and 2000s have also begun to fall apart. The cancellation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was just the latest in what has been a slowly escalating trend since the 2002 expiration of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, for instance, which required the US and Russia to convert their stockpiles of plutonium into MOX reactor fuel, is also dead, ostensibly for financial reasons on the part of the US, but quite possibly to allow the US to retain its 80+ tons of plutonium in a diluted form so it can be easily converted back into warheads [keep in mind only a few kilograms of plutonium is needed for a warhead so we're talking about thousands of devices in the several hundred kiloton range].
Why this is happening is an interesting question, and it seems that both the US and Russia [but, to be honest, mostly the US] are involved in the end of these arms restriction treaties. The first problem, and most obvious, is China. China has a general policy of not engaging in arms-limitation treaties, viewing them as a way for dominant powers to retain their position, and has a nuclear arms reduction policy that amounts to "get rid of all of your nukes and then we'll talk". With China becoming an increasingly significant threat to the United States, the arms controls placed on it by agreement with Russia have become problematic for American strategic planners. In particular, the limitation on intermediate-range forces was seen as a major difficulty given the increasingly capable conventionally armed intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles that are one of the edges the PLAN holds; and, I suspect [but cannot prove] that planners within the US government view tactical nuclear war with China as a very real thing they should plan for, with the US using nukes first to gain a decisive tactical advantage and not escalating to a strategic exchange--this is enabled by the fact that China has essentially no tactical nuclear weapons, seems to believe it can avoid nuclear war with the United States [or possibly not--I've heard both], and a very small strategic stockpile of which only around 50 missiles can hit the continental US. Russia, on the other hand, has a rather different problem. Its conventional forces in Europe are inferior in quality and quantity to what NATO can field, so it has to plan to make up the difference with nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the increasing sophistication of American capabilities in ways which Russia simply cannot match means that the survivability of the Russian nuclear force is beginning to be called into question, and thus a larger arsenal is required to ensure that a strategic deterrent can be maintained as it has traditionally. As a result, both parties are abandoning arms treaties with, well, reckless abandon.
Finally, the development of increasingly capable ballistic missile defenses, especially by the United States--which now holds pretty much all the cards in the event of nuclear war--means that nations will be required to develop either new and more sophisticated delivery vehicles, or, alternatively, produce more warheads, to ensure that they can maintain deterrence. These include the SM-3 anti-ballistic missile, which can intercept ballistic missiles in the midcourse stage, though only shorter ranged ones and not full ICBMs at the moment, and which is being deployed by the US not only aboard its numerous destroyer fleet but also in "AEGIS Ashore" sites in Eastern Europe [which also caused concern by Russia because these units could easily fire ground-launched cruise missiles that were banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty], and were to be deployed in Japan before local opposition halted construction. The US also designed THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, which provides an interceptor to destroy even ICBMs in the terminal stage, and has made significant improvements to the Patriot missile system which enhance its ABM capabilities. The US has also discussed reviving technologies from previously abandoned schemes such as the YAL-1, a 747 that aimed to shoot down ballistic missiles with lasers at a range of hundreds of kilometers [though it was suggested the new implementation be on a stealth drone] and even considered further research into space-based interceptors--which seem far more feasible in a day and age when private companies are already putting up constellations of advanced communications satellites in similar numbers to those proposed for the "Brilliant Pebbles" scheme.

7. Conclusion

As a result of these shifts, the current lull in nuclear war preparations and small nuclear arsenals of today may not last much longer. Indeed, to an extent, the lull has already ended.
Without a doubt Biden will try to negotiate a renewal of New START--he himself has stated his intent to do so multiple times, but the short time window he has in which to renew it [it expires on 5 February 2021, little more than a week after his inauguration] means that whether he will be successful is uncertain. Even if New START is renewed or brought back in a new form I would expect it to be much less restrictive and a de facto abandonment of the arms reduction that has characterized the last thirty years of nuclear policy. I also don't think that New START, even extended, will last past 2026--that's the point when major nuclear modernizations are set to begin to the US arsenal, including the introduction of the Columbia-class SSBN into service and replacement of the 1960s-era Minuteman III ICBM that constitutes the ground-based deterrent.
Both the US and Russia are poised to make major modernizations to their nuclear arsenals and I expect both of their stockpiles to grow barring a renewal of New START as presently constituted. I also expect that the US may well begin preparing to build new facilities for nuclear weapons production, as its old ones have pretty much all closed at this point. Nuclear weapons may also begin to see a return to the naval field, with nuclear-tipped anti-ship missiles and torpedoes possibly seeing revivals--watch for a return to the US's historic nuclear ambiguity policy on whether or not its ships carry nuclear weapons.
New forecasts say that China is poised to double its nuclear arsenal in the next decade, and I suspect these ones will actually turn out, because China knows that their arsenal at present is too small to pose an effective deterrent to tactical nuclear war and may, within a relatively short time, become an ineffective strategic deterrent.
The list of states with nuclear weapons is likely to grow--South Korea is a near sure bet for reasons I have described previously, but I would not be surprised to see more states get the bomb. Iran seems likely to build one unless stopped via force, and they've gotten quite close already. However, more than the number of states which will possess nuclear weapons outright will grow, I predict a major expansion in nations which attempt to reach a nuclear-latent state. The recent burst of smallsat launchers provides a perfect cover for ballistic missile systems to be developed; drone technology and electronics have made cruise missiles easier than ever to design, and nuclear power will be sought after by a large number of states with potentially ulterior motives--once a sufficient stockpile of used fuel is made reprocessing it to extract the plutonium within is relatively trivial, and I expect more states to push for reprocessing technology and "full control over the nuclear fuel-cycle". As a result, strategic planners may ultimately have to reckon with a world in which most nations [or far more than the 9 current nuclear-armed states] could well develop modest nuclear arsenals within a few months to a few years.
As for what the US should do--well, my opinion is that the US should just embrace the inevitable. During the Cold War, the US saw that France wasn't going to be stopped from building the bomb--so instead they helped the French build their weapons and thus gained the trust and friendship of the entire French strategic community, at least to an extent where their nuclear and even conventional forces were de facto reintegrated into NATO.
That has lessons for today, I think. If something is going to happen one way or another, the US should just embrace it and try to help the process along and gain the trust and friendship of the nation involved, provided such a move is not directly contrary to American interests. For instance, take South Korea. If it becomes clear that South Korea intends to build nuclear weapons, the US would be better off discretely enabling that by amending its Section 123 agreement and clandestinely supporting the program than trying to fight it.
The US should also seriously reconsider whether it should maintain a non-proliferation stance, although I can see strong cases on both sides. Non-proliferation has failed to stop Pakistan or North Korea, and at that point it's really rather questionable whether it works, but for the moment it's the only thing that's holding the Middle East and world as a whole back from a nuclear arms race. If Iran does get the bomb, I doubt that the US will continue to hold onto that position. At that point [or this point] most of the nations the US doesn't want to have the bomb either already have it, cannot be stopped from getting it without war, or just flat out can't build it due to lack of money, will, and resources. It's unlikely that the US will openly support proliferation, especially Congress, but I find it quite probable that the US may well take a "wink-and-a-nudge" approach to the whole issue. A Section 123 Agreement might be amended to allow reprocessing and a solid-fuelled smallsat launcher sold or authorized, but how was the US government to know that the nation was pursuing nuclear weapons?
Furthermore, the US should start preparing as if an all-out nuclear arms race may resume, because it may well do so. Developing a new comprehensive ballistic missile defense strategy is part of this, possibly including Brilliant Pebbles--I'm a strong advocate of at least researching the solution especially given that so many hurdles already have been met by private companies like SpaceX--but also terminal defenses and directed-energy weapons. The US should also begin thoroughly examining the use of nuclear weapons in a modern context and prepare facilities needed for the production of additional warheads, including possibly a lithium-separation site to manufacture additional tritium, as well as reprocessing sites to produce additional plutonium.
[citations in comments due to max character limit]

Happy Thursday, Barkada --

The PSE closed up 2 points to 5925 ▲0%.

Humble thanks to Jarvis, who contacted me to suggest a form of digital tip jar as a means of getting to "revenue neutral" status. It's honestly touching to have readers request methods of paying for something that they could receive for free. I know that when I feel that way about free products, it's because I respect the content and support the goals of the creator, so to be the recipient of that feeling is... amazing, heavy, and humbling.
I think that I have a solution worked out, though! I'm just doing some final testing of it with my wife and friends to see if they can donate without providing personal info, or seeing any of my personal info. Like all solutions, it won't be perfect, but it will give readers who are so inclined a way to help out. Not only to help with the Mailchimp monthlies, but to purchase automation tools to keep the daily time overhead to a manageable level. Everything is appreciated! Thank you to everyone who has reached out with suggestions.
Shout-out to Killem0123 who likes the updates but hasn't been able to get successfully subscribed. Try this direct link, and if that doesn't work, send me an email at [email protected] and I'll put you on the list personally using the address you contacted me with!

Daily meme | Join MB | Today's email

COVID Update

WW: 38348717 PH: 344626 

Top 3 MB indices:

 2020 IPOs ▲2.91% 2019 IPOs ▲1.82% Fast Food ▲1.10% 

Bottom 3 MB indices:

 Media ▼1.97% MiddleClass ▼1.45% Logistics ▼1.22% 

Main stories covered:

• [NEWS] LT Group [LTG 9.90 ▲8.08%] and Heineken to quickly transition JV into a “partnership”... a shifting of the risk. In a press release yesterday, LTG announced that its subsidiary, Asia Brewery, had approved a transition of its joint venture (called a “JV”) with Heineken, an international beer juggernaut, into something that LTG called a “new partnership”. The details are not super clear, but LTG was specific about a few things: (1) Asia Brewery would brew and distribute Heineken and Tiger beer in the Philippines, (2) Heineken would establish a marketing office in Manila and take on a greater role in its Philippines presence, and (3) the transition would complete by December of this year.
  
  • MB: Without additional details, you’re going to have to allow me to speculate. With that out of the way, let’s get down to business. So we all know that Lucio Tan has been struggling for cash. He’s poured money into MacroAsia [MAC 4.52 ▼0.66%] to try and get the Sangley Point Airport project going, he’s dumped truckloads of cash into the open volcano that is Philippine Airlines [PAL 5.75 ▼1.71%], and he has watched Philippine National Bank’s [PNB 23.85 ▲0.63%] profit almost entirely disappear as loan losses begin piling up at the bank’s door. His best performing assets through this period were tobacco and alcohol, so if Lucio Tan wanted to cash-up to save any of his other businesses (cough PAL cough), he was going to have to do something with an asset that had value. My thinking here is that Asia Brewery offered (or accepted a timely inquiry by Heineken) Heineken the chance to convert the JV into something that Heineken has more control of by effectively buying Asia Brewery out. The new deal still has Asia Brewery doing the brewing and bottling, but they’re doing it as a white-label toll-packer, simply as part of Heineken’s domestic logistics chain. LTG loses control of the Heineken business, while retaining the logistics side of it, in exchange for some quick money.... just in time for Lucio Tan to throw into the yawning mouth of PAAL Volcano.
• [NEWS] AllHome [HOME 6.08 ▲2.01%] opens new “Builder’s Center” to try and capture additional market segments... look-out Wilcon [WLCON 15.34 ▼0.78%], HOME is coming for your lunch. The new location is in Las Piñas, and is HOME’s attempt to get upstream from retail customers to professional and quasi-professionals with bulk materials needs. HOME is trying to be a one-stop, “no frills” sourcing partner to contractors and developers in the area, and push those developers towards its own high-margin in-house brands in the process.
  
  • MB: This comes at a time when WLCON’s quarterly profit was stolen by COVID. HOME, flush with IPO money, is free to expand its footprint and respond to changing market dynamics. It’s already done this by pivoting away from the large, mall-based stores that were propped up by transpo (this was revealed to be weak to barangay lockdowns) to the smaller, community-based stores that are meant to service a particularly dense residential area. The press release also contains another interesting bit: HOME has now made its builder’s loyalty card free of charge. The program only has 1000 members, and HOME hopes to grow that 10x in 3 years. The card is a marketing tool to keep customers aware of promotions, and to push customers towards HOME’s own in-house brands by offering “automatic discounts” on purchases of products from those in-house brands... all with higher margins for HOME.
• [UPDATE] San Miguel [SMC 99.90 unch] officially received a 50-year franchise to construct and operate the New Manila International Airport in Bulacan... the Senate finally swiped right. Ending months of strange back-and-forth hinting at behind-the-scenes power shifts, SMC’s unsolicited bid to develop a massive airport in Bulacan to help decongest NAIA has finally grown up into a fat 50-year franchise to design, build, and operate the airport and the “adjacent airport city.” The bill granting the franchise was unanimously approved by the Senate in a 22-0 vote, but must still be approved by Congress before it can be presented to the President for final signing.
  
  • MB: Senate approval was the major hurdle, but it’s still a long walk to the bank for SMC through Congress and the President. A lot can happen. It will be interesting to see if the lower house squabble between Cayetano and Velasco will have any impact on this; I suspect if Congress simply adopts the Senate’s bill that perhaps this is convenient timing. Either way, the 50-year franchise is a massive deal loaded with luxurious tax-breaks; SMC is exempted from taxes during the 10-year construction period, and after that, is exempted from real estate and income tax until SMC has recouped its original investment. After that, once operating, the government gets to keep anything above SMC’s contractual 12% annual rate of return... so the deal isn’t entirely one-sided. But you gotta bet that SMC will be doing every single thing in its power to pin the annual rate of return at 12% by stuffing as much as potential revenue as possible into SMC-related expenses.

MB is posted to /PHinvest every Monday and Wednesday, but my newsletter goes out daily. To stay in the loop for daily email delivery, please join the barkada by signing up for the newsletter, or follow me on Twitter.

Join our Barkada here

Read today's full email here

First of all, will the autists who are saying that people will stay home because of coronavirus and watch Disney+ all day (which will somehow help Disney's financial situation) pour themselves a warm glass of shut the hell up and drink some of it? The ultimate DIS thesis is below.
Summary
Disney will fail miserably this year. It is already failing in the most epic way, but it's just the beginning for us who were smart enough to 🌈🐻 it. There are great American stories about success out there. Disney's 2020 adventures will not be among them. Disney's stock will reach the lows they haven't seen in years for the reasons provided below. Yes, it's fun to short pathetic loser companies like SeaWorld and Six Flags, but do you have what it takes to watch the asshole Goliath like Disney get fucked AND get paid for watching? Find out why and how.
Streaming
Disney has 30 million Disney+ subscribers and 30 million Hulu subscribers. Based on those numbers, the revenue from streaming is $3.6 billion a year (out of Disney's $59 billion total revenue). The profit is, however, much smaller. The Mandalorian costs $15 million per episode to make, while The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision and Hawkeye will run close to $25 million per episode. All in all, the budget for making content for Disney+ is approximately $1 billion for 2020 alone. Also subtract from 2020 revenue all the royalties they have lost by taking ALL their content off Netflix and other networks.
They have also spent billions on infrastructure and promotion of Disney+, so the best they were hoping for in 2020 was break even or maybe come in $0.5-1B ahead, which again, is very small.
Bottom line on streaming: it's tiny and is more of a liability than an asset when other divisions are crashing.
Sauce:
Disney Over the Top: Bob Iger Bets the Company (and Hollywood's Future) on Streaming
Disney is Spending a Ton of Money on Disney+, Including an Almost $1 Billion Original Content Budget
Network TV
It's a bad year for sports, and ESPN will suffer greatly. Because of the broad decline in the economy, advertising budgets of ALL companies will shrink, and ABC will also suffer greatly. Less money from the ads - less money for the mouse.
Box office
MGM recently moved 007 to November, but the assholes at Disney are pretending like Black Widow (due April 24) is not going to be moved. Jesus Christ, of course it is. New York is going to be on lockdown in a few days as will many other places. There will be no fucking movie watching this spring. They spent $200 million making Black Widow and expected it to make a billion. That's a billion they are not going to have now. But that's only part of the problem with Black Widow, the official launch movie of MCU Phase 4.
Black Widow is not 007, and Marvel is not MGM. Marvel has no flexibility to move Black Widow because of the way they plan their lineup. Moving Black Widow to November severely fucks with their budget and timeline for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Everything was riding on it, and they will now have to move releases AND production of upcoming MCU movies with established schedules out to 2021 and 2022. That completely fucks their projected box office for those years. It also fucks up their Disney+ lineup and affects the production of those shows. And merchandise. And a ton of other shit.
Mulan? They fucking canceled it in Asia. The movie they made for Asia. Canceled in Asia.
Sauce:
How Coronavirus Will Affect The Marvel Cinematic Universe
Marvel Will Struggle To Delay Movies Because Of Coronavirus
Parks
I am just going to save myself the energy and not bother writing about these retarded places where fat kids stuff their faces with ice cream and get fondled by characters, or vice versa. The parks will be closed. Orlando, Anaheim, and Paris.
Cruises
Lol
Target price
Yes, it has already dropped by a lot. So fucking what, idiots? Stop repeating the same dumb shit over and over. DIS was $98 less than a year ago and $92 in 2016, and that was without a pandemic that cancelled their biggest movies and closed all their parks, and there was no massive recession.
Even without closed parks and canceled movies, they already hit a $100.40 low in pre-market trading. The 100p guys are practically in the money, but I don't care because I'm no 100p March 20 retard, no sir (more on that below).
Without the parks closed and Black Widow cancelled, DIS already has already been dropping 1-1.5 percent more than total SPY drop on the bad days. It's like the more extreme, crackhead version of SPY that's going down quickly. Futures are currently down a full 5%, which means DIS will be firmly under $100 today, and that will lay down the groundwork for big, juicy drops for my April puts.
Specifically, I anticipate a $15 drop when the parks are closed and another $5-10 drop when Black Widow is cancelled. I expect further drops as TV talking heads start spending time talking about how Disney is dropping and how no one would have expected that 6 months ago. Jim Cramer will go from "Buy Disney, it's cheap" to "Wow, I actually think that Disney is not going to do too well in the next two years." That will tip boomer over the edge, and his weak hands will lead him to selling what he will have left of DIS at that time.
TL;DR My Apr 17 $75 puts will be firmly in the money when all is said and done.
Tendies (chart)
I have made a table of how the various tendies will print, depending on how far DIS drops. Because each strike has its own IV, the outcomes are different. I believe there is room for a drop to $50 and thus maximized my number of contracts. But in any scenario, it will print. The prices are still OK last time I checked despite the obviously high IV.
https://i.imgur.com/LUrl0cQ.png
Yes, I know DIS will not go bankrupt, the $0.01 column is just for fun
Note that these tendies do not include any time value. If the events described above (parks, movies) happen in March, you will also be paid a cumload in premiums for your in-the-money puts that boomer's broker will be buying to hedge his long positions.
Positions
123 contracts total, most with TDA and some with Robinhood, just because I want to experience the thrill of my orders failing again.
https://i.imgur.com/M4wYt2F.png
https://i.imgur.com/MkiUd2I.png
You can call this a YOLO play but to me it's a common-sense play, to bet against a company that makes money on movies, parks, cruises, and hotels in a year when there will be no movies, parks, cruises or hotels.
P. S. I do enjoy Disney animated movies and the Marvel movies even though they are cheesy as shit, but my overall feelings towards Disney as a company are overwhelmingly negative for making mockery of the copyright clause of the U.S. constitution and ruining copyright law for the entire 20th century by lobbying the fuck out of Congress to extend copyright terms until they became utterly ridiculous (which didn't stop the U.S. from pressuring the rest of the world to adopt them via mandatory WIPO membership for pretty much all countries). I am looking forward to the tendies but I would not at all be upset if Disney got severely punished for being a completely amoral company and making so many asshole practices an industry norm.
See you when this shit flips.

Good morning from the UK. Happy St Patricks day. It'll be a woeful one for many Irish people around the world with pubs and bars shut in multiple US states, several European countries, several Asian countries and worst of all, Ireland itself. Here in the UK you can still go to the pub, although as of late yesterday afternoon the UK government advised against it says the BBC.
​
Virus statistics
Several comments from redditors in past days complained the WHO stats I C&P'd did not come very close to reflecting stats being quoted by national media wherever they lived. As a result, I'm abandoning the WHO stats and going back to the John Hopkins University tracker stats for all countries. If it's good enough for the likes of Forbes, Business Insider, FT, USA Today to regularly cite it then it's good enough for me:-
​

Region	Today (John Hopkins Stats at time of writing)	Yesterday (John Hopkins stats not the WHO's)	% daily change
Global	182,424	169,387	+7.7%
China	81,053	81,020	+0.4%
Italy	27,980	24,747	+13.1%
Iran	14,991	13,938	+7.6%
Spain	9,942	7,844	+26.7%
South Korea	8,320	8,162	+1.9%
Germany	7,272	5,813	+25.1%
France	6,655	5,437	+22.4%
USA	4,661	3,774	+23.5%
Switzerland	2,330	2,200	+5.9%
UK	1,553	1,395	+11.3%
Netherlands	1,414	1,136	+24.5%
Norway	1,347	1,256	+7.2%
Sweden	1,121	1,032	+8.6%
Belgium	1,058	886	+19.4%
Austria	1,018	860	18.4%

​
All other countries with under 1000 identified infections not listed (sorry Denmark), yesterday's threshold was 750. Total countries infected worldwide = 155, an increase from yesterday of 9. Source for all countries (as discussed above): the John Hopkins University dashboard (Link). (Personal note: Western countries infection counts are increasing each day much faster than Asian countries but that may be due to cultural differences or it may be that they're doing my testing, if anyone can shed light on this please do).
Reminder, these are identified case counts and medical experts are reporting this virus has a long incubation period with people being infections despite displaying no symptoms; the true infection figures are likely to be much higher. Note that some countries are reporting shortages of test kits which further skews the data available; assume true cases are much higher.
Finally, no, I don't believe China's official statistics either.
​
Selected Virus news
​
Warnings of shortages of regeants (ingredients) to make test kits in the US - the Fool (a high quality finance website despite the name) reports that FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn stated last week in testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that there could be supply chain issues with reagents needed for novel coronavirus diagnostic kits. He noted that the supply issues specifically apply to RNA used in testing for coronavirus disease COVID-19.
​
Shortages in US supermarkets likely to continue until panic buying eases - The LA Times says that shortages will continue until people calm down in their shopping habits. The major chains usually get shipments overnight, or perhaps twice a day, to restock essentials such as paper towels, toilet paper and water, but “manufacturers in some cases are having trouble keeping up, and that’s where the void is, they’re not able to keep up with demand,” said Bob Reeves, vice president for the West at the Shelby Report, a research firm that tracks the grocery industry. “We’re seeing shipments coming into the stores sometimes without any of those products, and it will be like that until people calm down a little bit,” he said. In some cases, chains are sending their delivery trucks directly to manufacturers — bypassing warehouses and distributors — to get the items to the stores faster. (Personal note: the same applies for all supermarket supply chains globally)
​
Pa. hospitals are rationing protective gear as the number of coronavirus cases grows - (Personal note, this is an example, there seems to be a general global shortage of medical PPE (personal protective equipment) - The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that hospitals across Pennsylvania are drastically limiting the use of key protective gear out of fears that a dramatic increase in coronavirus cases could diminish reserves and cause a dangerous shortage. The rationing comes as the state Department of Health maintains that it has personal protective equipment available and is working with health systems to make sure they have what they need. The gear includes eye protection, gowns, and N95 respirators, which are essential in preventing a health care worker from breathing in infectious particles when in close contact with someone who has COVID-19. In Philadelphia, two doctors who work at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania said it’s barring the use of N95 respirators “except in extraordinarily limited situations.” Penn Medicine declined to comment. Another city doctor, Daphne Owen, said in a tweet Thursday her clinic “for uninsured and undocumented patients” was out of masks. Two days later, the clinic, Puentes de Salud, said it was closed due to the pandemic.
​
Other Virus news in brief
- The Scottish courts and tribunals announced today that no new criminal jury trials would be commenced or new juries empanelled until further notice.
- Iran has temporarily freed a total of 85,000 prisoners, including political prisoners, a spokesman for its judiciary said on Tuesday, adding that the prisons were responding to the threat of a coronavirus epidemic in jails.
- Britain had “no time to lose” in changing tactics in order to prevent thousands of deaths and the NHS being overwhelmed, scientists providing guidance to the UK government have said. The Imperial College Covid-19 response team – which is one of several scientific teams advising UK ministers – published a paper (I've put it in the addendum below) showing that 250,000 people could die if efforts were focused only on delaying and slowing down the spread of Covid-19.Separately, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, could not rule out the strict measures having to last for a year but predicted they would last at least “several months“.
- Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs has advised Australians to return home as soon as possible by commercial means because overseas travel is becoming “more complex and difficult” as countries impose travel restrictions and close their borders.
- Leaders of EU states were expected on Tuesday to suspend all travel into the passport-free Schengen zone by non-EU nationals for at least 30 days in a bid to instil uniformity across the bloc after some member states, including Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, unilaterally began imposing border checks.
- China has issued an angry reaction (by diplomatic standards) to the US president Donald Trump’s characterisation of the disease as “the Chinese virus.” (he tweeted late last night "The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!"). China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the US president should take care of his own matters first and not seek to “stigmatise” China.
- The postponement of soccer’s Euro 2020 Championship may already have been decided after Uefa last week cancelled its hotel bookings in Copenhagen.
- The UK just advised its citizens against all non essential travel worldwide in the past 10 minutes
- Mobile phone networks are struggling in some areas of the UK with significantly increased demands according to down detector. For sure a lot of people seem to be home working, my commute in this morning was like it was the middle of August and everyone else was on holiday.
- Alitalia, the Italian airline flag carrier is to be renationalised by Italy
- Cinema chains are closing in multiple countries due to shutdowns
- Kazakhstan is closing down its two largest cities (despite only having 32 cases so far)
- A preliminary calculation by a US expert suggests that tens of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution may have been avoided by the cleaner air in China, far higher than the 3,208 coronavirus deaths.
- Jordan: the army has said it will deploy at entrances and exits of main cities in the kingdom in a move officials said was ahead of an imminent announcement of a state of emergency to combat the spread of coronavirus.
- In a joint statement, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit and YouTube said they would help ensure people could stay connected to each other during isolation as well as fight any misinformation and fraud linked to the outbreak. “We are working closely together on Covid-19 response efforts,” the statement said. “We’re helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in co-ordination with government healthcare agencies around the world.
- Almost all Germans shops are about to close by government decree; supermarkets, pharmacies will remain open (including on Sundays when they are usually closed). Separately, government press briefings there have gone online only.
- Olympic organisers in Japan are asking people not to create crowds along the route of the Olympic torch relay and not to gather near the route if they feel sick. A Boeing aircraft flew to Greece on 15 March to bring the torch to Japan.
- France: No movement allowed except for essential work or health reasons. “There can be no more outside meetings, no more seeing family or friends on the street or in the park. We must slow the spread of this virus by limiting the number of people we are in contact with each day to the strict minimum. If we do not, we endanger the lives of those we hold dear.” said the French President Macron.
- Israel’s government has approved emergency measures to track people suspected or confirmed to have been infected with the coronavirus by monitoring their mobile phones, immediately raising privacy concerns in the country. The cabinet unanimously approved the use of the technology, developed initially for counter-terrorism purposes, in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said providing the country’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, with new secretive powers was a “dangerous precedent and a slippery slope that must be approached and resolved after much debate and not after a brief discussion”.
- Indonesian president Joko Widodo said on Saturday that he had withheld some information about cases to prevent the country from panicking, the Jakarta Post reported. He has rejected calls for a lockdown to be imposed on hard hit areas.
- Malaysia has announced it's closing its borders prompting neighbouring Singapore's citizens to panic buy (90% of their food is imported from Malaysia).
- New Zealand on Tuesday deported its first unruly traveller flouting the country’s mandatory 14-day self-isolation rule for almost all arrivals, the health ministry said. The tourist, who had checked into a backpackers hostel in the city of Christchurch, was removed from the accommodation by the police after officials learned she did not have clear self-isolation plans.
​
Economics
​
Goldman Sachs doesn't think the stock market drops have finished - BusinessInsider says that Goldman Sachs thinks that the S&P 500 might plunge as low as 2,000 before recovering through the rest of the year, the investment bank wrote Friday. The level is the benchmark index's lowest since early 2016 and implies a 20% decline from Monday's open. Such a tumble would also place the index more than 40% below its February 19 peak. The coronavirus outbreak is responsible for "unprecedented financial and societal disruption," the analysts said, and equities have so far served as accurate leading indicators before the release of relevant earnings or macroeconomic data. That said, the analysts pointed out that "The lesson of prior event-driven bear markets is that financial devastation ultimately allows a new bull market to be born,".
​
U.S. factories are likely to close because of the coronavirus’ supply-chain shock - Marketwatch reports (link) that there is a very real chance that companies from auto makers to electronics manufacturers will soon begin to cease or limit production. With a downed China as the headstream of global manufacturing, mercantile America simply can’t function as it’s accustomed to. We’re starting to see this happen in official reports: The New York Fed’s Empire State business conditions index, released Monday, plunged by a record 34.4 points to minus 21.5 in March. And Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Sunday he expects a contraction in GDP in the second quarter. (Personal note: I expect similar problems across all G20 countries). The article goes on to explain that many supply chain directors may understand their first tier suppliers but often do not have full visibility of the status of their 2nd or 3rd tier suppliers
​
Supply impact of the coronavirus outbreak is waning, but demand shock will linger, economist says - CNBC says that in January and February, industrial output fell by 13.5% from the same period a year earlier, the weakest reading since January 1990 — when Reuters' record began. China's industrial production is likely to improve in March over a slump in January and February due to the coronavirus outbreak, but consumer demand will take longer to recover both in the country and globally, an economist said Monday. "We will see some recovery, but this recovery, I think, is being undermined by the global spread as well," said Bo Zhuang, chief China economist at TS Lombard. Meanwhile, retail sales in January and February shrank 20.5% from a year ago, compared with a 8% growth in December as fearful consumers avoided crowded places like malls, restaurants and cinemas. "We were worried about supply-side issues, but now it's becoming a demand shock issue," said Zhuang. Smaller outfits like restaurants and service-oriented businesses have "resumed work but there are no customers," said Zhuang. "I think we are going to see a delayed V-shape (recovery), and this V may be a tilted V or W, or even U. We are not sure," he added.
​
Coronavirus Impacts Every Sector of the Supply Chain - Supply and demand chain executive reports that the global supply chain continues to experience disruption. "We have seen that in the way that it’s spreading across into different hubs where we see alternative routes to be overly burdened, such as the rail system,” says Koray Köse of Gartner. “Now with the crisis and the hubs being closed and product movements are still active to some extent, but not necessarily from those regions, will become crowded and impacted. This means that there’s an additional strain on the overall network to move material.” Some products have experienced significant upticks including Chicken noodle soup (+37%), Hand sanitizer (+65%), Disinfecting Wipes: (+353%) and Cold & Flu medications (+197%) amongst others.
​
Coronavirus pandemic worse than 1997 financial crisis, Malaysian ex-PM Mahathir warns - The Strait times reports on Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the former premier who steered Malaysia's recovery from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, expects the current coronavirus pandemic to hit the global economy even harder. "This is worse than the financial crisis," he said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "This is really a terrible blow to the economies of the whole world." Dr Mahathir joins other world leaders in warning that the virus impact may be worse than past periods of upheaval (Personal note: I pointed out yesterday the NZ PM also saying this).
​
Supply chain news relating to Covid-19
​
For Global Supply Chains the Worst Is Yet to Come - Supply Chain Management review says (Link) that most industrial companies have 30-60 days of parts and raw materials either on hand, in-transit, or obtainable on short notice. After these supplies run out, we will start to see shortages of finished products as well as parts needed to produce other goods. Shortages will start to become more evident toward the end of March and beginning of April. Production in some non-Chinese factories will have to be put on hold for lack of parts. Partially finished products will remain in suspension until all parts are available to build finished products. Some companies are pressing their engineers to redesign parts that can be sourced in the U.S., or at least outside of China. Other companies are giving 3D printing a serious try for the first time. The article goes on to point out delays in sea freight ex-Asia and extremely high airfreighting costs are exacerbating the situation.
​
U.S. Suspends Truck-Driving Limits to Speed Coronavirus Shipments - The Wall Street Journal reports as of 2 days ago that maximum working hours for truck drivers in the US have been suspended. This applies to truck drivers moving emergency supplies such as medical equipment, hand sanitizer and food in response to the nationwide coronavirus outbreak. It comes as hospitals report shortages of medical masks and as retailers and manufacturers are straining under surging demand for everything from hand sanitizer to staples such as toilet paper and rice. As anxious consumers stockpile goods, grocers have turned to rationing, imposing purchase limits on disinfectant wipes, cleaning supplies and other high-demand products. The move is the first time the FMCSA has issued nationwide-wide relief from hours-of-service regulations, although regional declarations have waived those rules in response to disasters such as hurricanes. Federal regulations limit most commercial truck drivers to 11 hours of driving time in a 14-hour workday, restrictions intended to reduce accidents caused by highway fatigue.
​
For supply chain companies, U.S.-Mexico border closures could be catastrophic - Marketplace points out that Mexico’s deputy health minister says he’s worried about people coming into Mexico from the United States; currently the U.S. has far more cases of COVID-19 than Mexico. The Mexican government even said it might consider restricting access at its northern borders. For businesses that operate on both sides of the border, any shutdown could be catastrophic. The article gives a case study of a manfacturer employing 150 people in Texas. The company president says before anyone considers closing the border, President Donald Trump and Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, should discuss a coordinated response to the virus. As for now, he says all of his people can work from home, if the situation calls for it. Everyone here has a laptop, he said. But he says the independent truck drivers and contractors who work on the loading docks, they have to be on site to run things. Those people also only get paid if they show up for work. So, for now, they’re glad the COVID-19 hasn’t shut this part of Texas down, yet.
​
It won't be long before Coronavirus shuts down local African supply chains - The major Kenyan newspaper daily nation reports that there are imminent difficulties facing Kenyan pharma firms due to the industry importing 70% of its ingredients from India and China, both of whom have restricted exports. Studies show that the Kenyan pharmaceuticals market is worth Sh100 billion ($965m USD), 80 per cent of which is prescription drugs. Although Kenya exports 50 per cent to the COMESA region and 75 per cent to East African Community, most of these exports are re-exports from India and China.
​
European automotive factories shutting down - Ferrari and Lamborghini have both suspended almost all production (says the Express and Star) whilst Yahoo Finance reports that Fiat Chrysler said in a statement on Monday 16 March that it would halt operations at most of its European plants, from now until 27 March because of an “interruption in market demand.” The Italian-American automotive group said the manufacturing stop includes six factories in Italy, the EU country worst hit by coronavirus. Italy has had over 24,700 infection cases so far, and more than 1,800 people have died from the virus. The PSA group, which includes Peugeot, Citroen, and Opel, said today it will close all its European plants, including in the UK, France and Germany for the remainder of the month too. German car giant Volkswagen is also suspending production at a number of manufacturing bases in Europe, including in Slovakia and Spain. VW-owned Seat has shuttered its main factory near Barcelona for at least the rest of the month. Meanwhile, according to the Financial Times, Volkswagen may also be forced to curtail production at the main factory in its home town of Wolfsburg, because of running low on parts.
Useful parcel courier current operational status links for anyone else in eCommerce:Canada Post, DHL Express, DPD, Fedex, Parcelforce, USPS. If anyone has any other major courier links for service status, please let us all know :)
​
Good news section
Amazon to hire 100,000 more workers and give raises to current staff to deal with coronavirus demands - CNBC says that Amazon is hiring an additional 100,000 employees in the U.S. to meet the surge in demand from online shopping amid the coronavirus outbreak, the company said Monday. The company is looking to add extra full-time and part-time positions for warehouse and delivery workers. Through the end of April, it will raise pay for these employees by $2 per hour in the U.S., £2 per hour in the UK, and approximately €2 per hour in many EU countries. Amazon currently pays $15 per hour or more in some areas of the U.S. for warehouse and delivery jobs. Amazon encouraged employees in other industries whose jobs were "lost or furloughed" as a result of the coronavirus to apply, including members of the hospitality, restaurant and travel industries. "We want those people to know we welcome them on our teams until things return to normal and their past employer is able to bring them back," the company added.
​
Educating in denial older relatives anecdote
Personal story time; my 69 year old Aunt is very grumpy because despite me telling her for well over a month, it is finally dawning on her that her dream guided coach bus tour of the West USA national parks in 10 weeks time is rapidly going up in smoke whilst my 75 year old Dad has realised his third cruise of the year (this time around the med) in 5 weeks time is also about to be toast. My Aunt complained on Facebook yesterday that nobody is mentioning the 46,000 people who have recovered from the illness and that "it's just a bit of flu". It isn't, otherwise governments around the world would not be reacting as they are.
If you have an elderly relative like mine who relies far too much on social media anecdotes rather than good quality fact based mainstream media, maybe point them at this businessinsider article here where it points out that 1) flu mortality rates are 0.1% vs. Covid-19 is 3.4% and 2) for 70-79 the mortality rate is 8% and for over 80's it's 14.8%. Hopefully they might just realise the seriousness of the situation; my Aunt dismissed it as "a website I've never heard of and won't believe" despite the article clearly citing CDC figures.
​
----------------
Donations
Several asked if they can send me $/£/€ via Patreon (in some cases because I've saved them time or money, others for no reason at all). I don't need the cash (that's lovely though) but food bank charities are getting really hit hard with all this panic buying. Please consider giving whatever you'd have given me to a foodbank charity instead:
UK: https://www.trusselltrust.org/
France: https://www.banquealimentaire.org/
Germany: https://www.tafel.de/
Netherlands: https://www.voedselbankennederland.nl/steun-ons/steun-voedselbank-donatie/
Spain: https://www.fesbal.org/
Australia: https://www.foodbank.org.au/
Canada: https://www.foodbankscanada.ca/
USA: https://www.feedingamerica.org/
Thanks in advance for any donations you give. If there's foodbank charities in your country and it's not listed above, please suggest it and I will include it going forward.
​
EDIT: Missed out virus news in brief, added as of 12:45. EDIT 2: Added in the Dutch foodbank link (hat tip siliconfrontier)

Part 1/3 - Robinhood:
Let's start with Robinhood.
And no, not the legendary outlaw who robbed the rich to give to the poor.
Robinhood made around $100 million from selling its customer order flow in the first quarter of this year.
This means that Robinhood is selling retail order flow to hedge funds, who can then use high frequency trading algorithms to front run the trades.
Citadel, a hedge fund which manages a cool $32 billion, paid Robinhood almost $50 million in Q1 2020 just for its order flow.
Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya described the practice as "shady AF".
So basically, Citadel takes free money via the New York Fed's overnight Repos, places huge leverage bets (which may or may not blow up - who cares anyway!), but gets to buy order flow from Robinhood to front run retail, then the US Treasury issues checks to retail, who buy stocks via Robinhood, and the circle of 'capitalism' is complete.
This is why Ken Griffin can buy $238 million condos. Citadel know who is leveraged, they know where all the stops are and they trade against everybody. And of course the SEC is bought and paid for.
​
Part 2/3 - Shoeshine Time:
After making good money owning stocks in the roaring bull market of the 1920s, Joseph Kennedy Sr. found himself needing to get his shoes polished.
While sitting in the chair, Kennedy Sr. was shocked to have the shoeshine boy gift him with several tips on which stocks he should own.
Kennedy Sr. quickly went back to his office and started unloading his stock portfolio.
In fact, he didn't just get out of the market - he aggressively shorted it - and got filthy rich during the epic crash that followed.
Fast forward to today, and we have the Buy High Sell Low Kings, CNBC's Fast Money, talking about the Rise of the Day Trader.
We have a record number of Wall Street professionals saying the S&P is overvalued.
We have Jerome trying his best to keep the market propped up.
We have Hertz pumping nearly 1000% after filing for bankruptcy.
We are clearly at the death throes of the market cycle.
​
Part 3/3 - Hedge Funds:
Let me tell you the fascinating story of Ke Xu, a Chinese quant.
Xu studied maths at Cambridge, by the way one of the most competitive courses in the world, and graduated third in a class of 250.
He then worked at Goldman Sachs, got bored and in 2012 joined the relatively secretive quant hedge fund G-Research.
He spent his days writing code in G-Research's "secure zone", which could be entered only through a special pod with a biometric finger scanner and a weight sensor designed to detect unauthorised equipment entering or leaving the area.
Xu's first bonus at G Research, awarded only a few months after joining, shattered any illusions that he had joined the hedge fund elite.
He wrote in an online message to his girlfriend, who was working as a corporate lawyer in Hong Kong:
"Bonus only 3k, Fuck me, why? Only December, but it is still crap, crap crap, crap. It should be more."
So Xu stepped his game up - he came up with 20 trading strategies - "signals" in quantspeak - and tested each in numerous simulations.
Seven proved profitable enough to adopted by fund and put to work in real markets.
So at the start of 2014, Xu was feeling confident about his second-year bonus.
"If I get 1.1 million this year, next year should be 3.3 million. Next year it will be 16 million, then 100 million."
Instead, he was awarded a bonus of £400K and, although this was a huge amount for a young man from provincial China, it was far less than he was expecting - so he began planning his exit.
It was around this time that Xu began covertly accessing his colleagues' signals.
After all, he would have a better chance of getting a good job elsewhere if he had ready-to-use signals to offer potential employers.
He landed two offers in Asia, but told his managers at G-Research nothing about his plans.
One evening, Xu cleared out his desk and placed a resignation letter on his manager's desk, and boarded a flight to Hong Kong.
The abruptness of Xu's departure raised immediate suspicions.
The next morning security personnel at G-Research reviewed video footage of his activities the night before, leading the company's attorneys to get an emergency court order.
To cut a long story short, G-Research then got the prestigious law firm Allen & Overy on the case, got a travel ban against Xu, who was reported to police in London, then arrested in Hong Kong in August 2014, extradited to the UK in December 2014, then sentenced in July 2015 to four years in prison.
But that's not all: G-Research then used an ancient quirk of the British legal system called a private prosecution to find out who's seen the 55 stolen signals.
This allows the purported victim of a crime, if they are rich of course, to prosecute the perpetrator if the state fails to do so.
Although G-Research were paying their bills, the lawyers spoke to the jury per the norms of private prosecutions, as representatives of the Crown - the British Government.
In January 2017, jurors founds Xu guilty of two of the five charged in the private prosecution, and the judge sentenced him to an additional 18 months.
​
So the top hedge funds secure their IP like a military facility, have an informational advantage, have the world's best lawyers at their beck and call, have the Fed on their side if things go wrong, and normies think they can match this and be day traders?!
Yes, of course people like this dude regularly beat the hedge funds and make a profit every day!
The vast majority of online courses are scams.
Don't buy them.
Every dollar you save and invest is a soldier working for you.
Don't supply these scammers with ammunition to increase their ad spend and fleece more people.
​
CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, DON'T DAY TRADE!
These hedge funds have intellectual capital and infrastructure you can only dream of.
Invest, don't gamble.
These dopamine-inducing roulette tables scramble our brains' natural rhythm,
Don't take on more risk than you can handle, and don't amble,
Hit that like button for the algorithm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9JcFAadCVo

^{Updated to real time}

Its your boy chimpu back with daily updates and insights

____________________

Asian markets after in a very narrow belt, it's in the upper end of the range but is unable to go up like it has been going like in the past few days
India up 0.081%
Hangseng up 0.42%
Nikkei down 0.78%

_____________________

Europe indices are facing continued selling pressure from yesterday
Dax futures up 0.37%
CAC40 futures down 0.66%
FTSE futures down 0.69%

_____________________

Dow futures (25,825.5) +55.5(+0.22%)

____________________

Global markets are in a bullish trend on the long term charts but we have been flat for the month mixed with some volatility, thus it gives a vibe that globally markets have transitioned from expansionary Market to contractionary marketing

____________________

Nifty is currently on the upper end of yesterday's range,but down rn
NIFTY 50 : (10,808.40) +8.75 (0.081%)

____________________

commodities

Crude oil futures : (40.43) -0.19(-0.47%)
Gold price : 50,075

____________________

Coronavirus India data

Confirmed 742K (+22,252)
Recovered
Deaths 20,642 (+467)

__________

Coronavirus Global data

Confirmed 11.8M (+203K)
Recovered 6.42M
Deaths 544K
Cases are still present so a small request to y'all is to never compromise on safety and follow all the guidelines of the government

______________________

Some interesting news

___________

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive for COVID-19
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/brazil-bolsonaro-tests-coronavirus-positive-200707161522468.html

___________

First of its Kind Project in the World Commissioned by Indian Railways in collaboration with BHEL
https://currentaffairs.gktoday.in/first-of-its-kind-project-in-the-world-commissioned-by-indian-railways-in-collaboration-with-bhel-072020331033.html

___________

Elon Musk hints his next Tesla gigafactory will be in ‘Asia outside China’
https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto/news/elon-musk-hints-his-next-tesla-gigafactory-will-be-in-asia-outside-china-41594183070275.html

___________

Facebook pays ₹43,574 crore subscription amount to Jio Platforms
https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/facebook-pays-rs-43-574-crore-subscription-amount-to-jio-platforms-11594144969615.html

_____________________

FII and DII data

Yesterday, Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares of worth Rs 829.9 crore while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares of worth Rs 784.47 crore in the Indian equity market on July 7, provisional data available on the NSE showed.

____________________

Results today

South Indian Bank
Automotive Stampings
Dish TV India
Kokuyo Camlin
Prozone Intu Properties
Radha Madhav Corporation
Swelect Energy Systems.

____________________

Motabhai tracker (reliance industries) :

(1,814.20 INR) −9.25 (0.51%)

____________________

Random tip for the day : "intelligent person is a person who learns from his own mistakes, a wise person is a person who learns from others mistakes"

____________________

Yesterday's daily update and insights post: https://www.reddit.com/IndianStreetBets/comments/hmo00q/7_july_2020_its_your_boy_chimpu_back_with_daily/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

_____________________

its your boy chimpu and will be back with more updates and insights

On February 23rd, I posted a couple of coronavirus predictions. I was mocked on economics at the time, because the things I anticipated seemed ridiculously outlandish in “normal” pre-coronavirus America.
More and more of the stuff I anticipated came true in the weeks that followed. From today’s perspective, my predictions don’t seem so outlandish anymore. Now they just seem like statements of fact and common knowledge.
A lot of people have asked me for an update and more predictions. So here we go. Let’s start by looking at which of the predictions came true so far:
​
----- PREDICTIONS THAT ALREADY CAME TRUE AS OF MARCH 31 -----
​
“They're gonna shut down his rallies, and the Democratic primary, to avoid more mass infections.”
March 10: Sanders, Biden cancel rallies as coronavirus fears haunt the campaign trail (NBC)
March 12: Amid virus fears, Trump moves away from rallies — for now (Associated Press)
March 30: 14 States Have Postponed Their Primaries Because of Coronavirus. (New York Times)
​
“The Olympics in Japan will be cancelled.”
March 24: Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics Officially Postponed Due To Coronavirus (Forbes)
​
“Air travel between the US and Europe will be suspended.”
March 11: Trump is suspending all flights from Europe to the US to fight coronavirus (Quartz)
​
“There will be severe supply/food/medical shortages in the coming weeks.”
March 13: The toilet paper shortage caused by the coronavirus is real (Washington Post)
March 24: ER Doctor describes impact of medical supply shortage (MSNBC)
March 26: Coronavirus measures could cause global food shortage, UN warns (The Guardian)
​
“As the market continues to decline, mega-funds that hold billions in passive ETFs will automatically dump their holdings when certain price triggers are reached.”
March 3: In a Down Market, ETFs Could Make Things Even Worse (Wall Street Journal)
March 29: Coronavirus puts an end to ETFs’ decade-long spree (Financial Times)
​
“Before the end of March, the Dow will crash so bad, they will halt trading.”
March 9: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet (Axios)
March 12: Trading halted after stocks plunge following Trump's coronavirus response (MSNBC)
March 16: Stock markets halted for unprecedented third time due to coronavirus scare (TechCrunch)
​
“There will be tens of thousands of dead people by the end of March, and tens of millions of dead people by the end of 2020.”
March 31: U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses China As Global Fatalities Top 40,000 (US News & World Report)
​
“In the next few days, we'll be seeing outbreaks in every country on earth”
Global coronavirus map (John Hopkins University)
​
“The market is not going to keep going up up up anymore. It's gonna keep going down”
March 31: Stock markets suffer worst quarter since 1987 (BBC)
​
“In a few days you'll see massive panic buying and empty store shelves in the US.”
March 16: Panic Buying Leaves Empty Shelves At Supermarkets And Stores (Today Show)
​
“In a few weeks, people will refuse to accept cash (if you can even find an open store at all) because cash spreads the virus.”
March 7: Dirty money: The case against using cash during the coronavirus outbreak (CNN)
March 16: America Closed: Thousands Of Stores, Resorts, Theaters Shut Down (NPR)
March 20: Paper money shunned for fear of virus spread (ABC News)
March 26: Merchants shun cash as coronavirus infection fears widen (Nikkei Review)
​
“Entire cities in the US will be put under quarantine, just like in China, South Korea and Italy. The same will happen all over the world, until WHO officially announces that it's a pandemic. From that point on they will no longer try to contain the outbreak, but manage it somehow, by telling people to avoid others.”
March 11: WHO declares novel coronavirus outbreak a pandemic (CNN)
March 14: Why Experts Are Urging Social Distancing to Combat Coronavirus Outbreak (USCF)
March 18: New York: The city that never sleeps on lockdown (BBC)
March 19: California Orders Lockdown for State’s 40 Million Residents (Wall Street Journal)
March 20: Illinois governor issues order requiring residents to ‘stay at home’ starting Saturday (Chicago Tribune)
​
“A lot of medical personnel will quit their jobs and not show up for work, rather than risk getting infected.”
March 20: “Two of her nurses had just quit, in tears. “They were fed up,” she said. “They couldn’t take it any longer.” (New York Times)
March 25: Georgia Nurse Quits Her Job After Being Assigned To The ‘Corona Floor’ (BET)
March 26: Sibley Memorial Hospital nurse quits over ‘lack of protection’ (WTOP)
March 27: Health care workers on frontlines feel like 'lambs to the slaughterhouse' (CNN)
March 27: More Than 50 Doctors in Italy Have Now Died From Coronavirus (Newsweek)
​
“The police force and the US military will have more and more infected and quarantine thousands of troops. It's already happening in South Korea. The US bases in the epicenter of the South Korean outbreak quarantined themselves and are under lockdown.”
March 27: Defense department reports more than 600 cases of coronavirus and 2 related deaths (CNBC)
March 30: Pentagon orders military bases to stop releasing specific COVID-19 numbers (The Hill)
March 31: 15 percent of NYPD officers out sick amid coronavirus crisis: commissioner (New York Post)
March 31: Commander of aircraft carrier hit by coronavirus outbreak warns Navy 'decisive action' is needed (CNN)
​
----- PREDICTIONS THAT ARE VISIBLY IN THE PROCESS OF COMING TRUE SOON -----
​
“There will be tens of thousands of dead people by the end of March, and tens of millions of dead people by the end of 2020.”
My prediction of tens of thousands dead by the end of March was based on the same math model as the prediction that there will be millions dead by the end of 2020. Since the March figures were true, the year end figures will most likely be true too.
March 31: U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses China As Global Fatalities Top 40,000 (US News & World Report)
​
“The US healthcare system will collapse”
The pandemic follows very similar trajectories in countries all over the world. We are 2 weeks behind whatever happens in Italy and Spain. So looking at what’s happening in other countries is a good predictor of what will happen in the US in the coming weeks, because it’s already happening elsewhere.
March 12: U.S. states scramble to slow virus spread, prevent hospital collapse (Reuters)
March 16: Doctors: COVID-19 pushing Italian ICUs toward collapse (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy)
March 20: Brazil's health system will collapse by April: Health minister (Aljazeera)
March 26: Spain’s healthcare system on verge of collapse as another 655 die of coronavirus (Metro UK)
March 25: More Than 1,000 Massachusetts Doctors Sign Plea Warning Health System Could Be Close To Collapse (WBUR)
March 27: New York City Hospital Director Says Equipment Supply Will Only Last Through March (NPR)
March 31: Hospitals Tell Doctors They’ll Be Fired If They Speak Out About Lack of Gear (Bloomberg)
​
“There will be millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans going bankrupt because of insanely high medical bills, because millions of Americans will require extensive ICU treatment that will last weeks. It will cost a fortune. People who are lucky enough to survive will be bankrupt.”
This pandemic is the perfect time to start Medicare for All, like the systems they have in the rest of the civilized world. America is the only country where people have to worry about sky high medical bills.
March 10: Kept at the Hospital on Coronavirus Fears, Now Facing Large Medical Bills. Care was mandated by the government, but it’s not clear who has to pay. (New York Times)
March 19: Total Cost of Her COVID-19 Treatment: $34,927.43 (Time)
​
“When the US government tells us to quarantine and stay home to slow the spread of infections, the quarantine will fail, because homeless people and drug addicts will continue to spread the virus.”
We still haven’t reached the point of a nationwide lockdown yet, but there are already signs that it’s failing because people aren’t listening:
March 24: A shortage of illicit drugs is imminent due to the coronavirus lockdown – and the consequences could be deadly (The Independent)
March 29: People Are Throwing Coronavirus Parties, Prompting Arrests And Citations (Huffington Post)
March 30: Cops Break Up Drug-Fueled Orgy, Confiscate Liquid Ecstasy and Cocaine (Rare)
​
“We'll be seeing an explosion of infections in India in the next few days.”
India hasn’t done nearly enough testing in the past few weeks. That’s why we didn’t see the explosion of officially confirmed infections yet. But it’s finally starting to show.
March 20: Coronavirus: Why is India testing so little? (BBC)
March 20: India scrambles to fight its hidden coronavirus epidemic: ‘The explosion is already here’ (The Indendent)
March 22: Indian Migrant Workers Crowd Trains, Defying Virus Curfew (US News & World Report)
​
“At least one old politician (Trump, Bernie, Biden, members of Congress or the Senate) will probably die from coronavirus before the end of the year. Probably more than one since it's so fatal for old people.”
No one in the Senate, Congress or White House has died of the coronavirus yet, as far as we know. But there have been several infections reported inside the beltway in recent days, as well as among political leaders around the world. Statistically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before a high ranking US politician dies from the virus.
March 13: Canadian PM Trudeau's wife tests positive for coronavirus (BBC)
March 21: Rand Paul is first senator to test positive for coronavirus (CNN)
March 27: Coronavirus in Congress: Lawmakers who have tested positive (The Hill)
March 27: Coronavirus strikes UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his health secretary and his chief medical adviser (CNN)
March 31: White House predicts 100,000 to 240,000 will die in US from coronavirus (CNBC)
​
“This pandemic will be a cataclysmic change to our way of life. A bigger change catalyst than 9/11. There was a world before coronavirus, and there will be a world after coronavirus. But it won't be the same world. This nightmare is worse than a nuclear war.”
We’re not quite there yet. But we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. The coming weeks will be much worse. But already it is pretty clear that Covid-19 has changed the world forever and is one of the biggest disasters in human history.
March 20: How the World Will Look After the Coronavirus Pandemic The pandemic will change the world forever. (Politico)
March 31: NYC paramedics overwhelmed by coronavirus cases: "We've had 9/11-type calls for eight days" (CBS News)
March 31: The coronavirus has now killed more people in the US than the 9/11 terror attacks (Vox)
March 31: America's deadliest day to date: Coronavirus death toll soars to 3,180 - an increase of 605 with a person dying every TWO MINUTES - as 22,000 new infections are recorded and experts say the worst is yet to come (Daily Mail)
​
----- PREDICTIONS THAT WERE WRONG -----
​
“I think it's a pretty safe guess that Trump will inevitably get infected with coronavirus in India, and within the next 30 days, he'll have symptoms. And in the meantime, while he's symptom free, he'll infect hundreds if not thousands of people at his rallies.”
Out of all my predictions from 2/23, this is the only one that I got wrong.
But using Trump as an example was really only meant to illustrate that the virus will not stay in Wuhan, but even reach the upper echelon in Washington.
And at the time I made that prediction, one day before Trump’s India trip, it seemed the most obvious way he will get infected.
As far as we know, Trump has not been infected yet. But several people around him have. Well, who knows, maybe they didn’t infect him, because he infected them. Maybe Trump simply was lucky enough to have very mild symptoms.
March 9: Republicans who came in contact with Trump self-quarantine (Politico)
March 13: Trump dinner companion tested positive for coronavirus, White House physician says (Politico)
​
----- MORE PREDICTIONS, FOR APRIL AND THE REST OF 2020 -----
​
13 coronavirus predictions for April, the rest of 2020, and beyond. Let's hope they don't come true.
​
​
​

Wagering on cricket in India is a tale as old as time itself – online betting india, on the other hand, is a pretty new concept. Whether it’s Test, ODI or T20I, everyone wants a piece of the action to make some real money.Here, you will learn all about:
Best cricket betting sites in India
Live cricket satta rates
Cricket betting odds comparison
And much more!
Cricket betting tips and predictions
Welcome to the free cricket match betting tips and predictions section! Our experts will help you win your bets by analyzing all aspects of the games from squads, a venue to team statistics and betting odds. We aim to provide 100% accurate & free cricket match prediction tips for today on major cricket leagues: IPL, International (ICC World Cup, T20 Internationals, etc.), Asia Cup and many more Indian sports betting events. The Top CricBookies is all about helping you to make money out of your love of cricket.
Our site features cricket betting tips and predictions for games taking place all over the world, from Tests to T20s and IPL, with One Day Internationals also included.

Chris Makara:
As with any social media platform, Instagram allows businesses of all sizes a great opportunity to connect with others on a more personable level. Check this out if your business is just getting started with Instagram. With that said, it is key to be as personable as you can on Instagram, and not just another logo.
First you must know your audience. An easy way to do this is by getting a list of your Instagram followers into Microsoft Excel so you can start filtering their bios. In Excel you will be able to slice and dice the data to see common characteristics among your followers.
Once you have a better idea of who your audience is, you can really get more personable with your followers.
This can be done with the type of images you post as well as the way you interact with those who leave comments. You’ll need to be sure you use imagery they relate to as well as respond to comments in tones that appeal to them.
Sure, you want to be able to make sales for your company, but constantly pushing your followers to buy can very well have a negative effect. Instead of focusing on “salesy” content, why not use imagery that shows how others use your product.
As an ecommerce site, you more than likely sell tangible items. No one wants to see your stale product image. Instead, why not use your product in action. Even better if you can have images of real customers using your products.
David Schneider, NinjaOutreach:
I believe the key to getting started on Instagram is the same for many other social media platforms – network with influencers. It is certainly possible to build an audience from scratch but it is difficult. Start by identifying influencers in your niche. Engage with them.
This can be on Instagram itself or on another medium like their website, etc. Get to know them, and then you can begin working with them if you have common goals. This will boost your Instagram presence much quicker than going it alone.
Neil Patel:
Ecommerce businesses should connect with users who have high follower counts that are engaged and would be potentially interested in their products. Once you have a list of users, I would work out deals where you give them free products in exchange for the promotion of your business.
When doing this make sure you have a lot of Instagram users promoting your ecommerce company at the same time. Making a big splash is much more effective than slowly doing it.
Richard Lazazzera, A Better Lemonade Stand:
My number one Instagram strategy for getting massive exposure and building a huge audience is to find large Instagram accounts that are already catering to your demographic and pay for sponsored posts on them. It’s the cheapest CPM (Cost-per-thousand impressions) of any ad platform right now.
The fact is, there are tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Instagram accounts being built solely for the purpose of selling featured shout-outs to companies and brands. Many times, one person runs multiple, sometimes dozens of accounts that have hundreds of thousands of followers in a variety of niches like health, fitness, cars, sports, fashion, nutrition, and a hundred other niches.
Once you find one that targets your ideal demographic and follow them, Instagram will show you “similar accounts”. You’ll know these accounts accept paid sponsored posts if they have an email address in the bio. Usually it will say something like “For Business Inquires” as well.
From there, it’s as simple as emailing them, telling them (briefly) about your brand/company (the smart ones are also looking for a good fit) and asking for their sponsored post pricing.
Once you strike a deal with the account, make sure you review their past posts to see what type/style of photos receive the most engagement and consider this when you’re creating your ad image/copy.
Your best bet is to link back to your Instagram account, instead of trying to send the users directly to your website since Instagram doesn’t allow linking in comments.
Using this tactic makes it easy to gain thousands or tens of thousands of new followers in your target demographic overnight. The key now is cultivating these new followers with great content that appeals to them and slowly introducing them to your brand.
Melinda Fleming, Curated Cool:
Instagram is a visual medium where a lot of business owners might forget how art and a beautifully laid out IG page is paramount to success. You can’t just sell to your audience the entire time, but use a 50/50 rule on inspiration meets selling. Using posts from other people that have used your product and photographed it in a beautiful way, then tagging the person in the post title is great idea. Also creating a custom hashtag for your business is a great marketing tool. hashtags are the new search engines.
Ryan Stewart, Webris:
By far the best option (for any business) is influencer marketing. With no ads available to the greater public, influencer marketing is the only real white hat way to experience explosive growth on Instagram. The concept is simple – do some research, find Instagram users with large followings who post content related to your business / product, follow them, send them an inbox message asking if they would be interested in promoting your product for a price. 99% of them will. This can get a little costly, but it’s by far the most powerful method right now.
Ivana Taylor, DIYMarketers:
Instagram is all about getting to know the person behind the business. If you’re running an ecommerce store, then allowing your customers to know YOU both personally and professionally will attract more of your ideal customers and increase loyalty. You can use your existing Instagram profile – BUT – this means no embarrassing posts. Encourage your customers to send you photos with your product or engaging with your service. Upload pictures that show people who you are – if you like flowers, add pictures of flowers. Let your customers get into a relationship with you.
Joe Brown, MediaJunkies:
The truth is that digital consumers have the world in the palm of their hands. No matter how many apps there are, no matter how many websites there are, consumers will keep using media that is easily to digest and easy to use.
Too many functions, too many algorithms, too many marketers on social networks make consumers switch platforms as quickly as they join them.
This is why Instagram is a booming network where you only see what your network is posting, where the only thing you need to do is to swipe up and down.
As a marketer that means several crucial things:
The attention span is even shorter than on any other network. The life span of a post is shorter than on any other network. You cannot be identified as a marketer or your audience will run away. The solution is to use Instagram as a visual story teller who shares content that actually matters to people. This is a massive opportunity for everyone who is keen to build a brand with real people who are really interested in what you have to say and to show.
The future will hold how Instagram can help driving brands. The announcement of Instagram ads and the possibility of an in-build ‘Shop Now’ button make Instagram an exciting space to watch.
John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing:
Ecommerce has really been able to take Instagram by the horns and run with it. Not only is it a great way to showcase your product for free, but you can interact with and form a relationship with your fans. Utilizing hashtags, contests, and purchasing directly in Instagram can help your fan base grow from your local neighborhood to a worldwide ecommerce site. Be interesting and engage.
Asia Zukowska, Colibri.io:
Post images which engage your potential customers – See what’s interesting for your potential customers. Start by checking the most popular hashtags on Tagsforlike.com Create your own hashtag & encourage to use it – Check out how simple it is Connect Facebook & Twitter – you can post straight to Facebook/Twitter and Tumblr when uploading any image to Instagram Invite friends – Instagram allows you to find friends that already exist across yours social networks Run contests for your Followers – Select a unique hashtag for your competition and check its effects and increase engagement with River Create Instagram only offers – It allows you to attract new followers that are interested in special offers that they wouldn’t see anywhere else Ask for engagement from users – You can do this in 2 ways: a) ask for opinions b) or ask for like and show your post to other people like here Use Instagram to show off new product – Instagram is the perfect way to sneak product peeks with followers Show Instagram galleries on your site – This is awesome social proof, increasing product exposure on Instagram Partner with Influencers – This is a great way to reach new users
Aubrey Rose Madrona, SEO Hacker:
Instagram is one of the biggest image heavy social media platforms today; however, many e-commerce sites are unaware of its value. With the right strategy and content. Instagram can help the company increase its reach, engagement, and conversion.
Aside from promoting products to potential buyers from the online store, you can increase engagement with your brand by showing them behind-the-scenes moments through Instagram. By doing this, you will be able to build a strong personal bond with your customers. The platform can also be used for promotional strategies such as online contests using customized hashtags. Just make sure that every post ties back to your e-commerce website by reminding them to click the link on your bio.
Instagram is mobile-friendly and also released a web-based interface that makes it accessible via personal computer, this would mean reaching both mobile users and desktop users.
Darren DeMatas, SelfStartr:
I would start by creating a lifestyle persona of your ideal buyer. What do they like to do? How do they use your products? Where will they use your products? Once you nail that down, I would spend a few hours taking lifestyle photographs of your products in action.
Nike posts images of their products, but their page is heavily focused on sport lifestyle images. Research shows that consumers seek comfort and self-expression in the brands they choose.
A lot of new ecommerce sites make the mistake of sharing nothing but their product photos on Instagram. While product photos on a white background are ideal for your store, they are boring on Instagram. If your Instagram page is nothing but a product catalog and sales promotions, you’re doing it wrong.
You don’t have to hire a professional photographer, either. As long as you have a good camera, photogenic friends and decent lighting you can create images that generate a connection with your target audience. You can also repurpose the images on blog posts, too. A two-hour photo shoot can go a long way.
Contests and promotions are great tactics, but unless you understand your buyer, you’ll lose traction quickly. You can’t build a brand on discounts.
Jock Purtle, Digital Exits:
As a e-commerce business broker having sold many e-commerce businesses we have found that a lot of businesses can be grown up to $5m per year in sales just from Instagram marketing and community. The main strategies that founders have been using is creating customer loyalty and following on Instagram and then developing products that their customers want.
Some tips on gaining users. Do a promoted page swap where you reach out to an account and get them to promote you as well as you promote them. Another strategy is to pay for sponsored posts where you pay generally between $50 – $500 for an account to post about you, your brand or your product on their account.
Find Jock on Twitter u/Jockpurtle
Alex Ditty,SEEN:
Instagram is all about user-generated content. If your goal is to promote your products on the visual network then you need to develop a strategy that encourages and utilizes content from your community. Incentivizing your customers to share photos of your products with contests and campaigns will create valuable authentic promotion to their followers. Displaying this content on your website enables you to show your products from your customer’s perspective.
Additionally, you can increase awareness of your products by leveraging Instagram influencers like those found in the Snapfluence network. When you tap influencers who drive engagement with your target customers, they’re able to help create awareness for the items you’re selling by getting them into the feeds of those customers. Successful Instagram marketing for e-commerce will depend on driving UGC and engaging your community.
Rodney Hess,BBR Creative:
With Facebook’s constantly declining organic reach, Instagram has quickly become the social media platform for ecommerce businesses on a budget. Make Instagram a central portion of social media marketing strategy. Offer discounts and promotions for your followers. Create a hashtag that customer’s can use to have their images featured on your page. If you’re savvy enough, you could have 100% user-generated content on your Instagram page.
Original post here
Edit: TL;DR: Know your audience, Find influencers, Run sponsored posts, Go big, Form a relationship with your fans, Proportion your products/engagement posts, Use a separate business account!

Part 1/3 - Robinhood:
Let's start with Robinhood.
And no, not the legendary outlaw who robbed the rich to give to the poor.
Robinhood made around $100 million from selling its customer order flow in the first quarter of this year.
This means that Robinhood is selling retail order flow to hedge funds, who can then use high frequency trading algorithms to front run the trades.
Citadel, a hedge fund which manages a cool $32 billion, paid Robinhood almost $50 million in Q1 2020 just for its order flow.
Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya described the practice as "shady AF".
So basically, Citadel takes free money via the New York Fed's overnight Repos, places huge leverage bets (which may or may not blow up - who cares anyway!), but gets to buy order flow from Robinhood to front run retail, then the US Treasury issues checks to retail, who buy stocks via Robinhood, and the circle of 'capitalism' is complete.
This is why Ken Griffin can buy $238 million condos. Citadel know who is leveraged, they know where all the stops are and they trade against everybody. And of course the SEC is bought and paid for.
​
Part 2/3 - Shoeshine Time:
After making good money owning stocks in the roaring bull market of the 1920s, Joseph Kennedy Sr. found himself needing to get his shoes polished.
While sitting in the chair, Kennedy Sr. was shocked to have the shoeshine boy gift him with several tips on which stocks he should own.
Kennedy Sr. quickly went back to his office and started unloading his stock portfolio.
In fact, he didn't just get out of the market - he aggressively shorted it - and got filthy rich during the epic crash that followed.
Fast forward to today, and we have the Buy High Sell Low Kings, CNBC's Fast Money, talking about the Rise of the Day Trader.
We have a record number of Wall Street professionals saying the S&P is overvalued.
We have Jerome trying his best to keep the market propped up.
We have Hertz pumping nearly 1000% after filing for bankruptcy.
We are clearly at the death throes of the market cycle.
​
Part 3/3 - Hedge Funds:
Let me tell you the fascinating story of Ke Xu, a Chinese quant.
Xu studied maths at Cambridge, by the way one of the most competitive courses in the world, and graduated third in a class of 250.
He then worked at Goldman Sachs, got bored and in 2012 joined the relatively secretive quant hedge fund G-Research.
He spent his days writing code in G-Research's "secure zone", which could be entered only through a special pod with a biometric finger scanner and a weight sensor designed to detect unauthorised equipment entering or leaving the area.
Xu's first bonus at G Research, awarded only a few months after joining, shattered any illusions that he had joined the hedge fund elite.
He wrote in an online message to his girlfriend, who was working as a corporate lawyer in Hong Kong:
"Bonus only 3k, Fuck me, why? Only December, but it is still crap, crap crap, crap. It should be more."
So Xu stepped his game up - he came up with 20 trading strategies - "signals" in quantspeak - and tested each in numerous simulations.
Seven proved profitable enough to adopted by fund and put to work in real markets.
So at the start of 2014, Xu was feeling confident about his second-year bonus.
"If I get 1.1 million this year, next year should be 3.3 million. Next year it will be 16 million, then 100 million."
Instead, he was awarded a bonus of £400K and, although this was a huge amount for a young man from provincial China, it was far less than he was expecting - so he began planning his exit.
It was around this time that Xu began covertly accessing his colleagues' signals.
After all, he would have a better chance of getting a good job elsewhere if he had ready-to-use signals to offer potential employers.
He landed two offers in Asia, but told his managers at G-Research nothing about his plans.
One evening, Xu cleared out his desk and placed a resignation letter on his manager's desk, and boarded a flight to Hong Kong.
The abruptness of Xu's departure raised immediate suspicions.
The next morning security personnel at G-Research reviewed video footage of his activities the night before, leading the company's attorneys to get an emergency court order.
To cut a long story short, G-Research then got the prestigious law firm Allen & Overy on the case, got a travel ban against Xu, who was reported to police in London, then arrested in Hong Kong in August 2014, extradited to the UK in December 2014, then sentenced in July 2015 to four years in prison.
But that's not all: G-Research then used an ancient quirk of the British legal system called a private prosecution to find out who's seen the 55 stolen signals.
This allows the purported victim of a crime, if they are rich of course, to prosecute the perpetrator if the state fails to do so.
Although G-Research were paying their bills, the lawyers spoke to the jury per the norms of private prosecutions, as representatives of the Crown - the British Government.
In January 2017, jurors founds Xu guilty of two of the five charged in the private prosecution, and the judge sentenced him to an additional 18 months.
​
So the top hedge funds secure their IP like a military facility, have an informational advantage, have the world's best lawyers at their beck and call, have the Fed on their side if things go wrong, and normies think they can match this and be day traders?!
Yes, of course people like this dude regularly beat the hedge funds and make a profit every day!
The vast majority of online courses are scams.
Don't buy them.
Every dollar you save and invest is a soldier working for you.
Don't supply these scammers with ammunition to increase their ad spend and fleece more people.
​
CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, DON'T DAY TRADE!
These hedge funds have intellectual capital and infrastructure you can only dream of.
Invest, don't gamble.
These dopamine-inducing roulette tables scramble our brains' natural rhythm,
Don't take on more risk than you can handle, and don't amble,
Hit that like button for the algorithm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9JcFAadCVo