It's a big problem if you get into trading without a lot of prior knowledge only to completely trust your money on information from strangers. Don't get me wrong, these trading groups that offer signals to everyone can be helpful when finding a new trade, but they are no guarantee to make a profit. Even the best trader in the world will not always be right. As a beginner it's a good idea to learn from other people and if they are successful to try and copy them. In the end it's always your own money and we are responsible if we lose some of it. What I noticed from friends and colleagues who gave trading a try is that they are not really realistic for their return expectations. It's the stories about insane profits that make a few lucky traders millionaires overnight that makes people think it will happen to them too. It's important to start small in the trading world, keep track of our personal finances and to get more experience before we put on the big trades. It hurts to miss out on a profitable trade, or to feel that we should have bought a larger position. But better to miss out on some profits than lose a large part of our bankroll.    

It's true that luck affects all of us and should therefore not play a too big of a role in our decision making. But this implies that we are playing a lot of hands in poker regularly to get the randomness (positive and negative luck) out of our strategy. For someone who only plays maybe one night per month poker the aspect of luck is completely different. If we meet a recreational poker player who goes allin preflop with his 22 for example, only to hit another 2 on the river, we will lose a big pot. For him the win could mean everything and he might take a break for another 3 weeks from poker and enjoy his profit.  Swings in our profitability are part of every poker player, and the smaller the number of played hands the more will the swings affect our bankroll. That is also why tracking software for poker hands is so important. It will show me exactly how my swings are affecting my gameplay and if my strategy is still giving me an advantage over my opponents.

You are right that 2022 is a very unpredictable year with a lot of extreme events. But so far the world is still holding it together and trying to move on. If you had asked me last year I would have said inflation was way too low for the long period of low interest rates. And now with double digit inflation rates, it's way too high. Hopefully next year things will go to normality again. I wouldn't call the high USD a black swan event, because there are two ways to look at it. First is the high dollar, but this also happens due to weakness in the other currencies. The Euro is screwed because of the energy crisis from the Russian embargoes, and many emerging markets are also screwed because of higher food prices and higher oil prices. It's the relativity to other countries that makes USA so strong right now.
The next big black swan event that could make everything worse and send the whole world in crisis would be if China invades Taiwan. The probabilities for it to happen are not so high, but with everything going on this year we might underestimate that risk.

It's  not a bad idea to invest in stocks of gambling companies. In my opinion anybody who is looking to invest money should atleast put some of his funds into stocks. Historically stocks have outperformed most of the other asset classes. A well diversified portfolio should contain stocks, crypto currencies, commodities, real estate and bonds. Especially now with 2 digit inflation rates it becomes more important to look for high return investments. The problem with the list of companies you propose is that many of them operate physical casinos, which have a lot of areas that are part of their business model. All of the big casinos also operate hotels that have a lot of costs and could be affected harshly again by another covid wave. That's why I would prefer to invest only in online casinos without all the side business. Also gambling returns are very different from investing. With gambling we can get our winnings immediately, as for stocks it can take years for the stock price to rise.

I fully agree with you, we should be buying low and sell high, not the other way round. If we hold our bitcoins through the whole year already there is no point in selling now. When it comes to the price patterns of crypto currencies, they are no different to stocks, commodities or other risky assets. That's why mean reversion strategies work so well with crypto currencies. As for bitcoins one good approach is to use DCA for buying new coins. When we use a fixed dollar amount to buy each month that we will take advantage of the cheaper prices by acquiring more coins. Looking at a longer time frame also helps to not fall in the trap of panics and sell when everybody else is selling.

What do you mean with crypto gambling projects? Are you interested in running your own crypto casinos? A crypto casino is not really different from a normal online, only that it deals mainly in crypto currencies. Do you have prior experience in running gambling companies? If not, you should make a lot of research before getting into it. Over the last 18 month we saw a lot of new casinos entering the online market and many of them failed. It takes a lot of time, resources and money to run a successful casino. The main issue with new casinos is that they are struggling to attract enough customers to remain profitable. A promotion can bring a lot of gamblers to a csfino, but it's difficult to make sure that they stay and gamble regularly.

Looks like the Russian gas won't even be able to come back to Europe quickly. There were sabotages on the north stream 1 & 2 pipelines that is leaking now. Both Sweden and Denmark noticed under water destinations that damaged the pipelines. So far it's not clear how severe the damage is and if it can be repaired quickly. I read an analysis yesterday that the pipeline can easily be reached by normal divers, there is no submarine needed for the sabotage. This increases the suspect pool and makes it very hard to find out who did it. For 2 weeks Russia hasn't been sending gas through it and it doesn't seem logical to damage the pipeline themselves. The baltic countries, USA or Ukraine seem like more realistic suspects, as they are gaining from not operating north stream pipelines. So far Europe seems to be fine, but it all depends on how cold the winter will be. Europe could face serious issues if we are getting a long and cold winter. So far the autumn feels already cold and more people are getting worried.

If our kids are already studying at a university than I don't think we can forbid anything to them anymore. As long as they are minors gambling should never be an option, but once they leave the house and become young adults things change. Under aged children are not allowed in casinos and this could lead to legal consequences. If a kid has access to 50,000 USD as minor there are definitely things wrong. Another issue is if the father is doing gambling himself and spends a lot of money in the casino. Would you ever listen to your father if he tries to forbid you something he is doing himself? I personally wouldn't listen to my dad. As for Michael Jordan he has so much money that gambling away 5m USD won't hurt him. The bigger problem is the publicity of it when he brags online about it and seem to not care about it. His fans might become angry and it will hurt his sales.

New investors in the crypto world who are looking for get rich coins shouldn't invest in bitcoins alone anymore. Bitcoin is a developed coin now that many people know, it's not a hidden investment anymore that will make investors rich quickly. Don't get me wrong, bitcoin is still a great investment and returns of 50 or 100% are realistic in long enough time frame. It's just that returns of 1,000% or more are not realistic anymore. For such high returns it makes sense to invest alt coins. New crypto coins which are not yet discovered by mainstream investors can yield much higher returns than bitcoins. But new investors need to be aware that there is a lot of risks involved in the alt coin market. The most important thing is to not put all your money into one coin. It's much better to spread your money  out across multiple projects to reduce the risk of losing a lot.

ESL Pro League 16 group stage is over and playoff games are starting today. So far the tournament has shown some surprises and ruined a few save bets for me. Both Cloud9 and MOUZ played really well so far and are already in the quarter finals, hopefully they can survive the next round as well. From NaVi and Faze I expected more, but hope they are going to recover now during the next match. FaZe is playing today against complexity, which is going to be a clear win for FaZe. And fnatic is playing against Team Liquid, which shows Liquid as the clear faourite, but I am not convinced on that match. Fnatic played well in Group A, with winning 1 round against NaVi and Vitality. I will go with fnatic on that match, and the odds of 2.3 give a nice payoff if I am lucky. As for tomorrow NaVi is meeting Heroic, they played the last time during the PGL Major in Antwerp where NaVi won 2-1. I am sure NaVi will win this match again. The match Furia vs Outsiders seems very close and could go either way. The last time the two teams played was at the IEM Cologne where Furia won 2-0. I will go with the Brazlians on this one.

No I have never seen or heard of a gambler getting banned from an online casino for card counting. The main thing is that the casino doesn't know if you are counting cards or not. You can be lucky a few nights in a row and make some decent money. The casino could expect something is wrong, but they don't have any proof for it. This might only come out if the casino is running some advanced gambling software to keep track of various card counting strategies. I am not really sure if this is viable for a casino. And if the casino would start banning people who got lucky and made a profit the reviews for the casino would tank and many gamblers would switch casinos. I am still not even sure if counting cards actually works in online casinos. The strategy behind it is to bring your chances of winning above 50% by making sure there are more cards in the remain deck with the value of 10 or 11. The problem with online casinos is that they don't really need to shuffle cards and cut decks. It's usually a gambler at the table in pyhsical casinos that marks where the deck will be cut and can make sure that almost all of the cards of the deck will be used. The more cards available to play, the higher the chance to turn the deck into your favour. But if the casino can keep shuffling constantly the chances will not increase for us to win.

Being fully honest I would probably run away if I would get drafted to join the military during a full scale war. First of all, I have 0 military training and never really shoot a rifle. In my country military training is not mandatory anymore and the military doesn't have a high social standing. The second motivation would be that the news out of Ukraine are very bad for Russia, the front line is collapsing and the chances of winning are very small. Why risk your life in a doomed war? The third problem for me is that it seems there is only 2 weeks of military training before being developed to the front line. That's not enough to get effective soldiers who will be able to fight veteran Ukrainian troops.
The effect on the Russian economy will be devastating. I read on the weekend that already 250,000 young Russian man left the country. Together with all the people that are being drafted there will be a lot of people missing from workforce which is going to reduce the economy even further.

Yes I had similar experiences myself in the past. Whenever I lost a big bet, I felt really bad about it and looked for smaller more risky bets to recover my losses. My problem was that I went into too many of those bets and I lost control over it. In sum the small bets were larger than my initial bet, and because they were more risky I usually lost more money. It took me a few months to identify my problems and find ways to correct them. The first step that helped me was to have less money at the casino and sports betting site. Like that my chances are smaller that I spent too much money in a week with gambling. The second step was to have more control over my bets by keeping track of them. I started writing down all my bets in an excel file to see how much money I bet, win and lose. This helped me the most to not fall into bad habits.

Most of my friends who have pets treat them as full family members, they would never consider giving a pet away only to save some money in recession. Same goes for the food they get, animals are usually getting the same food all the time and are very used to it and if you switch to a more cheap alternative he might not even touch it. In my family we have dogs since I was little and they are an important part of our family. Whenever we have lunch there is always an extra portion for the dogs and they know it. All day they are not touching their food and wait for the good stuff after eating lunch. And whenever my mother goes to the butcher, she will bring back some bones as a special treat. If inflation keeps rising and living cost keeps skyrocketing than I am sure we would be cutting back everywhere else before even thinking about our dogs. My parents would rather not go on vacation and use that money instead to make sure our dogs are fine. A vacation you enjoy for 1 or 2 weeks, with the dog you have fun and companionship all week, it's an easy choice.

Why would bitcoins be dead if you say that the price needs 4 years to stabilise? That doesn't make sense at all. If bitcoins were dead than the price would be 0, or at least very close to 0 and not at 18.700 USD as it is right now. Bitcoins and other crypto currencies tend to move in cycles. There are always bull and bear markets, we shouldn't worry too much about it. Also if you are true that in 4 years we are back at the old ATH then it still a pretty good return. From current levels it would mean a rise of more than 250%, which is a pretty good return if you ask me in 4 years. Much more than you would make with stocks, bonds or your savings account.  

Sorry to hear that you are struggling so much with gambling. But honestly, what did you expect using your school fee money for gambling? This is a complete nogo and was a huge mistake by you. The first rule of gambling is the same as in trading, never use money that you can't afford to lose. How do you even have access to all your school money at such a young age? Shouldn't your parents be managing the money for you? This is a really sad story and I hope you learned from it. Especially if you are very new to gambling in the first place, there is no need to gamble with large sums of money. Hopefully you managed to recover your school money with help from your family and took a break from gambling after that. I would never say that for me the worst day in my life was with gambling. There are some days where I lost a lot of money, but I was always aware of the risks and made sure I could lose that money in the first place. All the necessary money for housing, food or education I would never touch and risk it in a casino. The worst day in my life was either when my dad was diagnosed with cancer or when my grandmother died. I would give a lot of money to make either of these two days to never have happened.

It's a bit hard to identify every bull and bear market, because I wasn't always so active in the crypto world as I am now. The first time I got engaged with Bitcoins and other crypto currencies was in 2016. I stayed active until the end of 2017 and that was the first real bull market for Bitcoins. The real hype happened in the beginning of 2018, but unfortunately I had already sold all by bitcoins by then. The first real bear market happened in 2018/19 and I missed completely, only at the end of the bear market I came back to the crypto world. In 2020 was only very minor bar market that turned into the biggest ever bull market in 2021. And now we have my second bear market so far. All in all in have been part of two crypto cycles and can't wait for the next bull market cycle to start.

I don't think we are going to see a big difference in twitch revenues after the ban. The main question will be how many of the big gambling streamers are trying to take their viewers to  different platform, and how many streamers will stick with twitch. Instead of stopping their gambling streams, the streamers can switch to American licensed casinos and continue the stream. Which in return also means that twitch has no problem with gambling as long as it's licensed and regulated. A third option could also be that streamers try to mobilise their fan base and push back. Why should twitch only allow USA licensed casinos? With enough support this exemption could be widened to maybe include European countries as well, or casinos licensed in Macau. Twitch has a very international customer base and shouldn't only be focused on American law.

I don't think we can compare the inflation in Argentina with USA. 100% inflation in a year is insane and while increasing the interest rate is necessary I don't think this is going to do much. USA is at the start of rising inflation periods and reacted very aggressively to fight inflation. You can see the difference between Europe and USA, with ECB being very cautious and afraid of interest rate hikes. The US Dollar is now on its 20 year high compared to the Euro. The strong currency means that imports are less expensive for Americans and inflation should fall. A more interesting comparison for Argentina would be Turkey, their inflation is at 80% at the moment, but they are not increasing interest rates. Turkey is being unconventional and lowers their interest rate instead. It would be nice to see which country gets their inflation under control better.

That's good news, I don't really like what Mark Zuckerberg is trying to do withe the metaverse. All the promotions I see make me wonder why the visuals are so outdated and what's the real point of. I am trying to stay as much as possible away from Meta products and will not join the Zuckerberg metaverse. It's great that there is now competition and I hope the Chinese version is more successful. Metaverse casinos seem like the next big step in gambling world. Visiting physical casinos was always a very social experience, drinking with friends, gambling with money while interacting with strangers, witness crazy winnings bt the most random people. It would be nice if all those things could also be experienced in the online gambling community.