It’s been a little under a month now since I announced I was taking a break from the community to focus on my personal life and heal. Everyone will be happy to know that during that time I was hard at work doing… well… absolutely fucking nothing and it was glorious. I’ve said it in another posts but it really rings true, sometimes you need a break and I can confidently say that I not only needed one, but that I’m better for having taken one.
Now, my break afforded me the opportunity to take my time and look at the where we are as a community and to think critically about where I want us to be. I got to watch everyone trade as they “want to” and see what individual members are chasing and playing on a daily basis. I got to watch everyone interact with the mod team and see in detail the way that some of our decisions were affecting the community for better and for worse. So, I come to you now with a greater sense of what needs to be done and a better understanding of how to do it. But even further, I’m coming back reenergized, motivated and excited for the future in a way that I never have been before.
So without further ado, here are some various changes that I’m generally making to the community as a result of my observations over the past month:
The Gates Are Opening
Right off the bat my first observation was that, in a way, Valhalla is dying. It’s not a natural death, but self imposed. After ESSC we closed off the community and instituted the verification system which was absolutely the right move to filter out those looking create drama, however, a lot of time has passed since then and this same choice is now suffocating the once thriving community we were building.
Fresh faces and ideas have always been a good thing for this community and there is no reason to think it’s any different now. So with that said, the verification system will be disabled and the community will remain open for all that wish to join for the foreseeable future. Verified members will keep their roles and should we need to lock down again, we’d be able to without any issue at all.
Ban Reversals
Not spending too much time on this, but, I think sometimes other people may need to be forced into a break and I’m not against second chances. I’m going to be reversing the bans of DookNukem and holi. I’ll be reviewing the ban list as well in the coming days and may make a few more reversals. I think the heightened drama and tension may have caused us to act a little too heavy handed in some respects and it may be time to give some of those people another shot.
The Training-Wheels Are Coming Off
My break was a catalyst for a lot of other people to admit that they were tired as well. Members and the mod team too. Some of the gods and I reflected upon how the community had “stopped being fun” and I watched as mod chat displayed frustration daily with moderating the behaviors of the server, looking to curb risky trading and getting people to focus on safer methods and reliable gains.
But it doesn’t work anyway. People play what they want to and frankly, that’s how it should be. Trading is risky and the most profitable opportunities are often the highest in risk. We’ve spent so much time trying to prevent people from trading irresponsibly… that we’d begun trying to prevent them from trading at all. Of course one of the root causes for this was ESSC. Let’s be honest, it sucked. However, if we rule out plays that are similar strictly because that one didn’t work out, we’re guaranteeing that the loss will be long lived. If we take the lessons we needed to learn and apply them now that the dust has settled, maybe we come out of the “next ESSC” as green as we were during the first.
So with that said, we’re easing up our “restrictions” on trading. If you want to sink your life savings in TSLA FDs, that’s on you. If you want to hold through a specific earnings, go for it. You’re trading at your own risk and if you risk it all, that’s on you. The focus of the mod team, Legends, Champions, etc. will be solely on trading opportunities and analysis from here on out, as it should be.
Grab Your Lab Coats
When I realized how much time was being dedicated to simply trying to moderate the community, it unveiled just how little was being dedicated to the most important part which was the research. We stopped being what we were best at; a think tank for trade ideas. I wrote the “earnings play” blueprint months ago and we’ve barely used any of it, we have some very solid threads going, but the collaboration is objectively not as strong as it has been in the past.
So while we’re adopting more of a “at your own risk” mentality, the attention that is being pulled away from that area will be refocused on completing the vision of Valhalla and focusing on content generation, tool development and consistent trade ideas/collaboration. The IRNT, SPY Chat, ZM DD and Ukraine Conflict analysis version of Valhalla should be what Valhalla is all the time. And we’re going to be moving full steam ahead to make sure that’s made reality.
The Challenge: Tough Love
One thing that I do need to touch on before I make some final announcements is the challenge. Naturally, it will continue. I’m adjusting my strategy and being blunt honest, I’m adopting the same mantra that was previously stated: you’re trading at your own risk. I’m going to trade how I would trade. This means I’m going to take risks, I’m going to cut when I’m personally good and I’m going to probably overleverage myself pretty routinely. I’m going to do these things because I’m generally able to be quite profitable when I do them. There is risk in trading and trying too hard to avoid risk can actually make you a worse trader.
One of the biggest problems that the challenge underwent was getting blown out. Except it wasn’t my account that was getting blown out… it was some of yours. I was keeping track and have heard feedback from others and there was a significant amount of members that were getting blown out while my actual account was objectively doing fine.
I’m going to be as direct as I’ve probably ever been and say that if this happened to you, it was your own fault. Sometimes in life we need to face hard truths and the truth in this scenario is that the challenge account was roughly 4X when I announced my break, if you were not the same it was not because of the challenge itself. Some of you probably tried to pick and choose which plays you took, some of you weren’t mindful of position sizing and couldn’t average down, some of you probably aren’t even being real about how many “other plays” you were in that probably chipped away at your profitability. But at the end of it all, it was a failure in your own trading of your own account.
I’m going to touch more on this in another post that I will actually be writing this time, but it is imperative that if you are following the challenge plays, you play them for your own account size and view the challenge account as a whole, not as singular plays. While sure, some will be more profitable and some will not be, I take plays on with the eye of keeping myself “afloat”, so let’s say I have a super risky play, I might take something less risky or play something that is moving in an obvious direction to hedge myself and if you’re missing these plays in your own account you are not trading alongside me and thus should not expect my entries and exits to work for you.
The challenge account’s performance definitely had some issues, many of which were my fault and which I plan to elaborate more on later, but in this scenario, that fault does not lie with me and the challenge still overall was green. As a tentative announcement I will be making a return to full time trading starting next week.
Valhalla, Inc.
It’s time to stop fucking around. We have in this community some of the brightest retail traders in the world. When we put our minds together we can achieve great things and there is no better example of this than the Ukraine plays. @anon59732070 had mentioned recently how much of a shame it is that RSX tainted that “saga” because holy shit did we nail it. One of the most complex geopolitical and economic scenarios of recent history and we nailed almost every bit of how to play it. That part of Valhalla needs to be cultivated and that is what we’re going to do.
My approach to this community is changing. Valhalla is now my next venture, I want to build tools and conduct research that will turn this into a “crowdsourced Quant”. The business is to change the lives of the members here through granting a market edge. That’s the goal and I’m ready to push the community in that direction.
I’m going to push some additional announcements over the weekend that further outlay some of the things I’m planning and you’ll be seeing some pretty quick changes to some of the features and the layout of both the Discord, Mimir and Forum all of which will receive individual announcements so be sure to read them thoroughly. This doesn’t happen with just my effort so be prepared to step your own game up as well and contribute as all of this only works if we do it together.
Stonkqueror
