Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.
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Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...
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..
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BOOM
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Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

Yes, as you read, cross post from boringpeople, but it's well worth a read, as long as it is. All credit to u/jn_ku, and go read the other parts. Godspeed autists
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Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.
Pre-Market
Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.
You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!
Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
Back to the market action..
A Ray of Light Through the Darkness
So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.
The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?
Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.
DateVolumePrice at US Market CloseFriday, 1/22/21197,157,196$65.01Monday, 1/25/21177,874,00$76.79Tuesday, 1/26/21178,587,974$147.98Wednesday, 1/27/2193,396,666$347.51Thursday, 1/28/2158,815,805$193.60
What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.
Ok, So.. Questions
There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.
The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington
The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.
A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...
What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000*!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
*side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...
..
BOOM
Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.

Around this time last year around I wrote a preview for 2020 and while it did have some issues I only realized lateron, many people found it to be helpful. So here we go again. We're nearing the end of 2020 and while that year has been... interesting to say the least, it's time for another preview nontheless. This is all based on our Clairvoyance EX, that is, based on how NA pretty much follows JP just two years behind.
There's a few caveats to go here and before I go to a month-by-month rundown of next year. I feel like I should point out what to expect, in general, from our Clairvoyance - and what not to. As a baseline, you can expect all major events, servant releases, welfares and so on that JP had in 2019 in 2021 on NA in roughly the same order and timeframe. As in, if a major event happened on JP in April 2019, it will, with a high amount of certainty, happen in April 2021 on NA.
However, we do not follow JP to the letter on NA. For one, there's Commemoration Campaigns. Commemoration Campaigns, as the name implies, commemorate things. That means, they're tied to real-life happenings. Things like Expos, Anime releases or similar things. That, of course, means, that they cannot happen in the same way, just two years later. Things like Anime releases are usually held on NA when the anime releases there. KYOMAFS or FGO THE STAGE Campaigns don't apply to NA in the first place. Things like this.
So, as a baseline, whenever a Campaign or Event commemorates something, do necessarily not expect it on NA two years later. Sometimes we get these campaigns repackaged as another thing. Sometimes we get them way earlier, like with the Babylonia release campaigns that happened late 2019 and early 2020, near-simultaneously with JP on NA. Sometimes we don't see them at all. Our Clairvoyance doesn't apply here.
Finally, as a warning, sometimes events happen in slightly different timeslots. The most prominent example of this would be NAs anniversary, which is a month earlier than JPs. So the anniversary events are also a month earlier. This has ramifications during that time for other events as well, which I will try to predict, but take this with a hefty amount of salt. It's uncertain how DW will handle things. Moreover, sometimes DW also just likes to switch things around. Prominent examples of this during 2020 were the Murder at the KOGETSUKAN event, which happened later to sync up with real-life moonphases (yes, really) and the Interlude Campaign VII, which happened later than expected for no reason I know of. It just did.
So, with this out of the way, one last thing remains: What am I doing here? The following: I will not list every single rateup here, duh. Things like the event compendium, grandorder.wiki or this upcoming banner spreadsheet take care of that. What I will focus on os major events, welfares, new releases and "last rateups". With last rateups I refer to limited SSR servants that, as of right now, have not received another rateup on JP after their mentioned ones. This will, of course, change, over time. JP still progresses and many servants will see new banners throughout 2021 as well, including some that might have had their "last rateup". But I will point point out last rateups of limited servants as known of at the time of writing.
So. Let's go.

January

NA will start the year with the New Years Campaign and GSSR and the Enma-Tei Event, together with the release of the delightful Tongue-Cut Sparrow Benienma and with the SSR Assassin Version of Li-Shuwen. Be aware, thie event will require you to have cleared S I N, the third Lostbelt, to participate. So if you haven't done so until then, you really should get going.
Traditionally, the New Years Banner has lots of widely liked servants and this year is no exception. Besides Mainstays like Gilgamesh, Tamamo and Scathach, this is also the last known rateup so far (see above) for all of Hokusai and Caster Nero. While the latter is part of a 2022 Campaign, that one has an unreasonable amount of rateups so your chances to get CasNero there are marginal at best. If you want the Foreigner or Umu in a swimsuit, you better get them now, otherwise your chances look grim until JP puts them on rateup again.
January will also see the Rerun of the Prisma Codes Event and your last chance of getting Chloe (or delicious free 5 RP). The event also releases another Magical Girl (as if we didn't have a ton already) in Miyu Edelfelt, a support Caster that, to this date, hasn't seen another rateup banner, despite being limited. Much like Asagami Fujino had her one and only rateup in 2020, you need to be sure to get Miyu now if you want her, otherwise you run out of options immediatly.
Besides that, January had a lot of Campaigns that we likely won't see on NA - see my caveat about commemoration campaigns above. We might see some of them, if only to fill the time, but the past has shown that often we will not. This includes an FGO THE STAGE banner, the WinFes Campaign and the Heavens Feel Banner that already happened on NA in the past.

February

February will start traditionally with the Valentines Event, this time featuring Murasaki Shikibou and her storyline of cursed books. The banner features a hefty amount of female servants, all on rateup together with Shikibou herself, with Semiramis being the only exception, being granted a rateup banner just for herself. This year, the Valentines scenes will be voiced, so rejoice, masters, for you can hear your servants presenting you with their gifts for the first time! Interestingly enough, the only other rateup Murasaki had outside of her release campaign during the upcoming Valentines was a KYOMAF campaign in September 2019 on JP. As elaborated above, there's a good chance we don't see that on NA. It might happen, in fact, it recently has happened, but that was the first time and we cannot be sure about this one way or another. That said: If you want Murasaki, better get her now, if only for peace of mind.
Later down the month NA will see a new set of Strengthenings in the Part X Campaign, including Strengthenings for Semiramis, Passionlip, Edison, Beowulf, Lancer Li, Kiara and Hans Christian Andersen. Shorty following that will be CCC SE.RA.PH Rerun and our second meeting with the delightful devilish Kouhai BB! SE.RA.PH is, canonically, a main story chapter - it's part of Epic of Remnant and as such, a major part of the games storyline.
It's a bit weird how they implemented it as an event, but they've since rectified that and established it as a Main Interlude on JP. Still, until that happens on NA, more than another year will pass, so better get BB now and, honestly, read through the quite entertaining story. Besides a rateup of Meltlilith, the event also features another Sakuraface in the release of Kingprotea, the most gigantic part of the Sakura Five. Honestly, her battle sprite is ridiculously big and puts even Ivan to shame. And she's sitting down.

March

Early in March Moriarty will get his very own event!. Contrary to Murder at the KOGETSUKAN, this one is a full-fledged event, so Moriarty will be delighted to one-up his eternal nemesis, no doubt. Together with the event, the annual Chaldea Boys Collection Banner should happen. So in case you tend to collect Husbandos moreso than Waifus, this is for you to look forward to! It's also Moriartys last known rateup so far.
Worth mentioning, while this isn't a banner, the Main Quest Clear Aid Campaign should also happen in March. If you ever wondered why the fandom wiki has guaranteed rewards for story missions that you never got on NA, this is the reason: It's a system not implemented yet. It will be. Every story mission will from the on provide you with a guaranteed material drop. Since this is applied retroactively, Masters who have cleared all the story chapters so far will receive a huge amount of materials for free at once, so that's nice.
Edit: Turns out, that came early for NA a few days after writing this post. This goes to show our imprecise clairvoyance to a degree. For QoL updates, this is even more true than otherwise.
March will also see another set of interludes, with the 8th Interlude Campaign, including new stories for Semiramis, Ngihtingale, Hijikata Toshizo, Yagyu Munenori, Consort Yu and Hessian Lobo.
And, as a final treat in a pretty filled up month, the Kokugawa Kaiten Meikyu - Ooku Event should come at the end of March and with it, the long awaited Kama. Besides being possibly the best singletarget Assassin in the game besides maybe Jack, she's also the games prime Alter Ego killer. An all around strong servant and gameplaywise, one of the strongest choices of the year. The event is also a relevant story chapter, much like CCC SE.RA.PH, and it's dubbed "Lostbelt 3.5". So since the next main story chapter is quite far out, this one's there to bridge the gap.

April

The Ooku event will most likely last well into April, yet the month itself also has a lot to offer. Early in April, the 16M Downloads Campaign together with MHXA as a featured servant should take place. Besides the usual amount of goodies and a 1/4 AP Main Quest Campaign up until LB2, Masters will receive 10 SQ per 10 completed Interludes as permanent extra Master Missions in the same vein that we already have the 10 SQ per 10 Strengthenings.
After the freebies (or alongside them, possibly), we will see the GUDAGUDA Rerun. If you haven't gotten the lovely pair of Ryouma and Oryou already, here's your chance! A solid singletarget Rider that, while not rivaling Kintoki, isn't a bad choice at all. The banner features Okita Alter, Hijikata Toshiza and the limited 3* Okada Izou.
And if that wasn't enough for you already or you're desperate for more welfares, rejoice, since there's more to come! Lady Reines Case Files will happen shortly after and with it, we'll be getting one of the most anticipated welfares of the year: Gray. Not only is she an interesting variant of the Saberface, she's also extremely competent at what she does. Decent AoE Assassins are few and far between and between her being NP5 for free and having a 20% battery to boot, she'll be the go-to Assassin Waveclearer for many masters. Look forward to her, she's really strong.
Oh and if Grey isn't enough for you, there's a Waver rateup right before the event and tehe event Summoning Campaign comes with the releases of Reines herself and Astraea. Now that's a great month if I've ever seen one. Keep in mind: Reines will only really begin to shine once she receives her Strengthening in 2022, which also features a rateup shortly after, so it's up to you if you want her now already.

May

With all the action packed into the previous months, May will offer some respite for masters on the brink of burning out and a well-deserved rest before summer will be upon us. If you still need to clear things, there's a 1/4 AP Campaign for the Epic of Remnant Chapters and a 1/2 AP event for all Free Quests during May, but if you've done everything already, you're looking forward for some slow burn for the month.
Besides the (usually) annual Class Based Summoning early in the month and Hunting Quests late in it, the only actual event in the fifth month of the year will be "A Study in the Dubious Meiho-sou" and that mirros Murder at the KOGETSUKAN, so it's a story-focused event without much farming going on. The summoning Campaign features JAlter, Tristant and Salieri.
If you've never played on JP but have listened about JP players talking about "things slowing down", this is part of what they refer to. May will be very calm and you should mentally prepare for that to not be surprised when it happens.

June

June is when things get interesting from a scheduling point of view. As I've mentioned before, NAs anniversary is a month earlier than JPs, so we should see it at the end of June or early July instead of at the end of July into early August. So we might need to accomodate for it in this month and that might see anothe
As such, it might very well be that the 9th Interlude Campaign, featuring Arthur, Osakabehime, Assassin Li, MHXA, Raikou, Emiya Alter and Wu, might or might not happen in early June. Lots of Skill upgrades in it, so it would be kind of sad.
Because, also in June, the 4th Lostbelt will drop. And that definitely will happen before anniversary. It's been a while since LB3 at that point, hasn't it. About time the main story continues, eh? Thinking, as of me writing this, shortly before the arrival of S I N on NA, this is like 8 months out? That's quite a long time, even if Kamas event is kinda like LB 3.5. In any case, together with LB4, Arjuna Alter will appear and boy will he be fun. He's like Spartacus on steroids and if you want to roll for just one servant based on gameplay alone, Godjuna is probably the one you want. He's amazingly strong in both his farming performance, as in his singletarget Buster Crits and while he comes with the usual caveats of being a Berserker, he's just extremely potent. Oh and this is, so far, his first and final rateup. If you want him, plan ahead and get him then.
But Junao isn't the only new servant. LB4 comes with a plethora of new servants and while he might be the most popular one, the others most definitely deserve mentioning: Ganesha, the only Non-BB Mooncancer so far E: I forgot about Summer Kiara!, Lakshmibai, the unluckiest Jeanneface in existence and William Tell a new 3*, are all unlimited, but Ashwatthama and the quite powerful Arts Support Asclepius are both storylocked, so your best chance of getting them is probably now. And since the latter two are on the same banner as Arjuna Alter... I mean you're not going to be disappointed in your rolls here, right?
JP also had the 17M DL Campaign in June though that's another clear candidate to be moved around to later for anniversary. In any case it features Nero Bride for the first - and the last - time in ages. She'll get a Strengthening, possibly together with the Anniversary, which makes her a prime Arts Looping support until Castoria shows up in 2022 and, as mentioned, it's her last known rateup, so if you want her, you have to get her now.
And, as mentioned, either in late June or in early July, the 4th anniversary event will take place and, as usual, bring a huge lot of goodies with it. Besids tons of free quartz for various reasons it comes with the Release of Rider Da Vinci Lily and a plethora of new 1-2*s. Jason, Paris, Gareth, Bartholomew Roberts, Charlotte Corday, Salome and, most notably, Chen Gong, who will feature in lots of future farming setups, I'm sure. These new bronze servants will be availabe in the Friend Gacha and you will have no issue getting them soon. They're not even 3*s, so geting them to NP5 is trivial, no need to worry about it.
For many people, the most important feautre of the 4th anniversary campaigns will be the changes to the summoning system. From then on, Masters will get a free 11th roll for every 10 rolls on one banner. Regardless if you're doing the rolls one by one or in a batch of 10, the 10th roll will come with a free additional roll on top of it. Furthermore, the SSR single rateup chance will be changed from 0.7% to 0.8%. The overall SSR rate per roll remains at 1%, but the chance to get spooked during single rateup rolls is reduced from 0.3 to 0.2%, essentially making it more likely to get the servant you want instead of one from the general pool.
In JP, Strenghtening Quests Part IX happened in conjunction together with the anniversary, so expect that here as well. Besides the aforementioned Strengthening to Bride, it also includes Altera, adds a Battery to Romulus, further Strengthenings to Medusa Lily, Gorgon, Iskander and Alexander, Medea Lily and Kotarou and Boudica, Martha, Maid Alter and Gawain. I'm sure there's something for everyone here.

July

Depending on how our June went, we might see a few events and campaigns from then in July instead. As mentioned, the 9th Interlude Campaign and the 17M Downloads Campaign might happen early this month instead. But, depending on schedule, July will see 2 events: 2019s GUDAGUDA and the summer rerun.
GUDAGUDA Final Honnoji will be this years GUDA event and with it, an amazingly strong and fun welfare will be given to masters: Nagao Kagetora. Seriously, her animations and voice lines are some of the best in game and the way her seeming enthusiasm accompanies everything she does is very enjoyable, at least to me. She's an Arts Singletarget Lancer and a master in her role, I've enjoyed playing with her tremendously.
Besides Kagetora, the event also features the releases of Demon King Nobunaga and the limited 3* Berserker Mori Nagayoshi, together in a summoning campaign with Summer Nobu as the featured 4*. All these will feature again a year later in the events rerun, so if you're not in a hurry, you can roll for them then.
Also in July (or maybe in early August, depending on how the schedule might change around annversary), Summer Jeannes Summer Event Rerun will happen, with the usual rateups that we know from her original run. If you haven't gotten her with the original event, this is your last chance to get a very useful Berserker welfare and if you've gotten her and all the costumes already, this rerun has a whooping 11 RP for you, so that's definitely something to look forward to!
This is your last chance (bar the already mentioned Swimsuit Campaign, the biggest bait banner ever) to roll for Summer Jeanne, Summer Ushiwakamaru, Summer Medb and MHXX and has also, so far, been the last rateup for Edmont Dantes, so have an eye out for them then.

August

Since anniversary will have happened at late June / early July, August will, most likely, be a calmer month for NA again. While we might see the Summer rerun in early August instead of in July, there's not much else happening here, but the actual summer event, Las Vegas Official Bout, featuring the lovely and very capabale Saber Hokusai as welfare. Another strong addition to every Masters roster, this Arts Singletarget Servant comes with a plethora of string skills and is, for the most part, a straight upgrade to the other ST Saber welfare so far, Brave Liz. Sorry Eli. Newer Master should definitely get her, just as Kagetora is a strong ST Lancer, Hokusai is a just as strong ST Saber.
Besides that, Masters will see the first Merlin rateup in ages during the Summer Event and the newly released Ruler Artoria, Lancer Melt, the long awaited Swimsuit Okita, Berserker Musashi, Archer Okasabehime and Rider Carmilla. Gameplaywise, especially Lambda and Berserker Musashi are the standouts here, but we all know that nobody rolls on swimsuit servants for gameplay value, right?
Rolling aside, Las Vegas is an excellent opportunity to stack up on large amount of QP and just by playing the event, Masters will easily gain 300M QP or more, without special grind. Swimsuits, QP, Gambling, a strong welfare... what's not to love about this event?

September

Remember when I mentioned that 2020s schedule will be slower than you're used to? September will be another relatively slow month but, as is customary, the one event that does take place will be guaranteed to take up a lot of your attention, but first things first. JP started September with the 10th Interlude Campaign that includes Interludes for Ishtar, Tesla and Enkidu (who all get NP or Skill upgrades with them) and Jack, Amakusa Shirou and Parvati (for whom you'll just see SQ).
Also in September, another Class-based Summoning Campaign should hit Masters, so if you're moreso looking for a whole plethora of different options from one class than for a specific servant, consider giving that a try?
And, as promised, September will feature the recurring Autumn Lottery: Battle in New York Part II, also called IshtarFest because, well, you'll see. :) Obviously at this point you should have your setups ready for heavy grinding, as with every lottery. This years features Snake Jewels, Horeshoes, Proofs and Chains as Materials. Not quite Dust and Bones but eh, can't always have those, right? Obviously, Gilgamesh is on rateup there, because of course he is.
Finally, September did see a KYOMAF Campaign. Now, in the past, Kyomafs weren't a thing on NA because they're neither relevant, nor in the correct time, after all, the according exhibit had happened 2 years earlier. However, in 2020, we did see the Kyomaf campaign on NA rebranded as Shuten Douji Summoning Campaign. So... there's precedence. But who knows if it happens or not, we can't really give any proper prediciton here.

October

For October I need to start with a Disclaimer about the Babylonia Commemoration Campaigns. From October 2019 on, JP had a line of Commemoration Campaigns featuring the Babylonia Anime because that was when it first released. As I've already mentioned in the beginning, Commemoration Campaigns are difficult for NA to predict and these especially so, since they already happened. NA had them in 2019 and 2020 as well, just a very short time after JP had them and very out of schedule.
As such, I believe it's extremely unlikely that we see a repeat of them. However, we might see certain aspects of them transferred to a different event, to Thanksgiving or anything else. This is not really a thing to predict as we have no idea how DW might handle them. As such, I will list the Campaigns here, just for completeness sake, but just once and not refer to them again in the months after. Babylonia I, Babylonia II. The third and fourth Campaign were in early 2020 for JP.
In any case, the thing we'll definitely see is the Halloween Rerun, which, sadly, is the last Halloween Event so far. With no new Halloween themed event either in 2019 or in 2020 on JP, Halloween simply has ended in Chaldea with this rerun, so savor it while it lasts. It's the second and last chance to get Caster Shuten of course and also features the last rateup for Lancer Ibaraki so far.
As a second event during October (or possibly during very early November), Saber Wars II will happen. While not a Halloween Event, it stands very well on it's own two legs and comes with two new limited servants, Space Ishtar and Calamity Jane. Space Ishtar is another servant with three completely different forms for each of her ascensions, much lika Demon Nobu, and will be the Queen of Castoria Looping once she releases in 2022. On her own right, she's a bit like Jeanne just as an AoE Servant, in that, she's always useful with her 50% battery and her NP color-changing shenanigans, she will fit into any Masters roster well, but she'll rarely be the single best choice for anything. With Castoria however, she's a go-to servant for essentially anything the game throws at you and if you plan on going down the Castoria hole in 2022, gettins SIshtar here is most definitely your best bet.
As of the time of this writing, neither SIshtar nor Calamity Jane had another banner, but it's fully expected to see the Saber Wars II Rerun on JP in the near future, as it's still outstanding. Hard to predict, of course, as are all things JP, but it might very well happen. MHXA also has a Banner during SW2 and that has been her last rateup so far just the same. So if you're into Sith Lords with a thing for earthly sweets, better prepare your Quartz! And if you'd like her original Version, the Prerelease Campaign is so far the last time MHX herself is on rateup.

November

We're nearing the end of the year already and besides SW2 that will go well into November, Christmas will soon be upon us. But first, it's time for the 18M Downloads Campaign and Skadis second ever showing. If you missed her during 3rd anniversary, here's your next chance in getting the Queen of Snow and Ice and yes, you need to wait that long for her to come up again. It'll be interesting to see how many people will try to get their Skadi here on NA with our Clairvoyance telling us about Castoria the year after, guess we'll have to wait and see. Besides Skadi, November will also bring another iteration of Hunting Quests.
Now, famously, JP did skip the Christmas rerun in 2019. As such, it's likely that NA doesn't see a second iteration of Quetzmas either. Instead, Christmas itself comes early this year and the End of November will see Nightingales Christmas Carol featuring, of course, Santa Nightingale as a welfare. A pretty decent mixture of support, sustain and AoE Archer, she comes with an Arsenal of Carpet Bombs as NP and an Ishtar-like Crit-Charisma. Together with the Event, Saber Astolfo sees the light of day and if you've ever dreamed of Astolfo in a Bunny Costume wielding a chain-sword, well, here's your chance!
As usual, of course, the Christmas Event is the second lottery of the year and even if it's early for real Christmas, the presents in the FGO version are definitely worth grinding for. Lanterns, Octuplets, Pages and Fangs, together with a Ticket in each box that can be exchanged for either a Claw, a Phoenic Feather or a Ring of Giant means happy grinding indeed. As usual, prepare your setups well in advance and save up on your apples if you want to go hard.
Not to forget, around this time we should also see the NA-exclusive Thanksgiving Event and Banner. I'm not going to go into speculation about this right here as it's not really possible to predict this a year in advance, just keep it in mind: it should happen around here as well.

December

We're in December and Christmas is already out of the way. Weird, huh? Talk about a change in scheduling. 2019 was a strange year on JP and if we continue to follow that schedule in NA as we did in the past, it will be a weird year on NA as well. But things are as they are and DW moves in mysterious ways, as we all know.
In any case: While the early December will still feature the end of the Christmas Event and Masters grinding for presents, it will also feature andother Interlude Campaign with Interludes for Napoleon, Ivan, Anastasia, Lanling, Tomoe, Qin Liangyu and the Valks, with Napo, Ivan and Tomoe all receiving NP upgrages in the process.
And finally, didn't we forget something? Through all of the year, there was only one story Chapter with LB4, so... time for at least a second one, right? Right. Lostbelt 5.1 - Atlantis! We do, after all, get a second story chapter in 2021. The first act to the fifth Lostbelt finally arrives late in the year and concludes it all the same. Together with the chapter, Super Orion amd the unlimited Europa and Mandricardo release and that means, it's time for another powerhouse.
While you might know Orion only as a perverted bear from the hijacked Saint Graph where Artemis is really the Servant in question, this one is on a completely different level. A bear he might be, but he's an insanely strong singletarget Archer which, thanks to his selfbuff on NP, has a super easy time reaching absurd damage numbers with his facecards. I mean it, it's ridiculous how easy Super Orion is able to get to hundreds of thousands of damage per card. If you're into that and need a capable Archer, he's your man... well, maybe not exactly, Artemis wouldn't be happy if he was, but err... he's there for you? Maybe better that way.

Final words

So that's it for 2021 - or that's how 2019 was in JP. Overall it's a bit of a less exciting year than 2018/2020 was. Between just two story chapters, spaced out widely (assuming you don't count the Kama event), the lack of a Halloween Event and the missing Christmas Rerun, people started to feel like things didn't go quite as planned on JP anymore. Still, with several new powerhouses released, capable welfares and upgrades to servant we know and like, the game doesn't really get any worse than it was and there's lots to look forward to in 2021 as well. Even if the beat kind of slowed down a bit.
As with last year, I hope this helps you plan around the next year and maybe you are able to find one or two or five servants worth saving up for. There's potential there, most definitely. If you want to know how much SQ you will have at any given time, you can either use this spreadsheet with event rewards together with this calculator or you can make a copy of this spreadsheet that does the calculation for you. Both methods will give you a pretty decent idea about how things will be looking.

I am the Bard, who has seen the rise of kings and emperors. In the first stage, they were merely first among citizens. In the second stage, semi-divine, or appointed by the divine. In the third, an incarnation of the public will, which became a sort of god unto itself. And these third type were the most terrible of all.
”The entire world is at stake.” Keelah remarked dryly. “Of course it is. It always is. Somebody other than me can deal with it.”
”Saving the world does come with its rewards.” Ascalon replied. “Among other things, it is where all your possessions reside.”
”You’re paying me? Alright then, I’m willing to listen.” The ever-mercenary kobold replied. “Please enlighten me as to what the hell is going on, and what exactly happened to Morrell there?”
”In a short version, Morrell was infected with a sort of demonic corruption, bringing him under the influence of Yeenoghu.” Ascalon explained as he casually removed a nail from his wrist and absent-mindedly tossed it aside. The hole in his flesh closed over, leaving only the slightest mark. “I removed his soul from his body, purified it, and since he wasn’t exactly using it any longer, I used it as a method to incarnate.”
”So why nail up a corpse?” Keelah asked. “Seems a bit unnecessary.”
”Because that’s the way it has to be.” Ascalon explained. “When you’re using powerful rituals, and playing with power on this level, you don’t skip out on the symbols.” He explained. “To make a very complicated story short, if you want to use something’s power, you use the letters it recognizes. Bones for necromancy, ash for pyromancy, symbols for the Story. I’m not entirely certain of the exact details of this particular symbol, but it’s potent, and therefore useful.”
”Right. Since you know who I am, I can safely assume you’re up to speed with what’s going on and have a plan?” Keelah asked.
”Of course I do, I-“
”-Always have a plan, yep.” Keelah replied with her usual level of snark. “You and Ray are going to get on far too well. The sheer amount of overcomplicated scheming between the two of you will probably make me implode. You’re not going to explain your plan until it’s happening so you can make yourself seem smarter, so can we cut the pageantry and get on with it? There is a war to stop after all.”
Ascalon paused, stared at the impertinent kobold, and then broke down chuckling. “Gods, you remind me of Sen. You’re right. We’ve got far too much work to do, too much ground to cover, and not nearly enough time.”
He went to the doors of the chapel and threw them open, stepping out into the night. He drank in the cool air, felt the soil crunch under his feet. At last, after nearly two hundred years, the warmaster had come home. He had come back to his union. He looked up, and seemed about ready to laugh at the stars, still following their unchanging paths, the silver moon, faithful even in its constant inconstance.
He closed his eyes, and breathed it in a deep, satisfying sigh. “It’s good to be home.” He muttered. “But no time to sit and enjoy it. This isn’t a vacation. Bucephalus, to me.” He called, and the great nightmare came. There was a sound like thunder, as it came out of a rift in the world, a wound bleeding fire that healed as swiftly as it came. “Illuminari, mount up!” He ordered his followers. “We have a war to end.”
Continuing this section’s habit of leaping backwards and forwards in time, we will return to the south and the immediate aftermath of the battle. Both sides could have argued victory, but only a phyrric victory. The first of the Ordani walls had been breached, and their paladin defenders bloodied by the assault.
However, the remaining two walls and the keep still stood, and the defense of the gate by the paladins had ensured the mortals were able to retreat in good order. Beyond that, the destruction of the enemy’s powder wagons ensured that there would not be a repeat of the bombardment from before. The enemy still had powder and shot, but not nearly enough to knock down the walls. The Iron Wardens had not escaped their battle with the paladins unscathed either, so both party’s elite infantry had been bloodied.
That said, the morale victory had certainly gone to the invaders. The supposedly invincible walls of Southguard had been proven woefully vincible, and the sheer weight of enemy firepower was utterly terrifying. Even beyond that, their sacred defenders, their heroes, had sallied forth, and while they hadn’t lost, they hadn’t exactly won either. The Ordani had unleashed terrible weapons against the enemy, but the Pale Legionaries had been largely destroyed, and while the Maximillian Gun was terrible, it was only one gun.
The remaining garrison was also now divided. Raymond’s experiments, while highly effective, were equally disturbing. There were mutterings in the mess, as the men argued (quietly) over whether it was a good thing to have let the wizards fight with their monstrosities or not. They were quiet of course because Elsior was still there, and any commentary about magical abominations was ill-said around a Black Lion.
Elsior had taken command while Vesper was indisposed, and conferred with the other officers. She would have brought Matlal and Lamora, but they were busy doing all they could to assist the medical staff. Magical healing was abundant, but so too were injuries. Anyone who had been on the second wall, or the courtyard between, had been wounded by shrapnel when the first wall fell. To say nothing of the injuries sustained in the clash before the gates. The paladins were exhausted, most of their magic already spent, and would need time to recover.
A piece of good news finally arrived as the sun began to set, as a messenger arrived to bring a report of the iron fleet’s victory. The naval battle had taken place several days ago, but magical communications were clearly on the fritz. It seemed that the enemy had discovered how to interfere with their sending stones. That also meant no report from Keelah, not that the kobold would be able to return in time to help.
The commanders evaluated their situation. With the defeat of the enemy navy, the Iron Fleet would be free to assault the enemy’s main force while it was still assembling. In fact, by this point, it may have even taken place. While confidence had been almost certain in victory, the recent battle had shaken it severely. More than a few muttered that their certainty in Ordani supperiority had been base arrogance. If the enemy to the south was as skilled as the iron wardens, then their gambit might turn quickly to disaster.
In any case, with no ability to communicate with the southbound army, they would be forced to wait. Elsior reasoned that if the strike at the mustering grounds failed, then the enemy army would reveal it to the defenders, hoping to cause a surrender. However, if it had succeeded, then the enemy would be forced to either retreat, or make a desperate attempt to break through. Given what she knew of Thorgrim, the later was far more likely.
”They’re going to hit us again. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but they’re going to attack again. They’ll either break against our walls, or be forced to retreat by our forces to the south.” She informed the command staff. “We must be ready for them when they come.”
”I doubt that they’ll be in any position to launch another assault on the scale of the last one, not with their powder destroyed. They’ll have to wait for new wagons to arrive, which will take time especially with our allied tribes harassing them.” One offered in disagreement. “Which if the strike on the main force succeeded, will take too long and they’ll be forced to retreat.”
”The southern strike will work.” Elsior replied. “The Iron Wardens are here, not in the south, and they’re the only thing that would even stand a chance against five orders. With support from the regulars and the element of surprise on their side, they’ll pull it off. Which is why Thorgrim is going to attack. The bastard didn’t give up after we dropped a mountain on him, he’ll sooner try his shot at a suicide charge than give up and go home. He’s every bit as capable of pulling off the impossible as we are.”
”A new attack will be unlikely to be a direct bombardment then. They might attempt a rush with their remaining powder to open a breach or destroy the gate, but even then there’s still the third wall and the keep to get through.”
”Beliar is likely to be a problem.” Another remarked. “His geomancy could allow him to move under our feet and potentially launch an attack with his remaining golems. We’ll have to keep the men on high alert.”
”If he appears, alert me immediately. I’ve fought his golems before, I know I can beat them.” Elsior replied. “Though if he were capable of breaching the walls by himself, he’d have done it by now. He won’t be able to destroy the walls, which means he’d need to take control of the gatehouse and hold it long enough for the enemy to stream in. If they start moving up, be ready for trouble. He’s smart enough to know that he can’t hold it for long, so it will come while another attack is already in progress. We can also count on Janus being back. That bastard just doesn’t die.”
”I’m not so certain.” One of the other commanders noted. “Based on the report of his conduct, he might be satisfied with his duel against Lord Vesper.”
”Possible, he did beat my uncle.” Elsior replied. “But despite what he might say, he survived me, he sure as all nine hells never beat me.”
Vesper awoke groggily in the central keep, shaking his head as he came to his senses. He suddenly started, and bolted up in bed, glancing to his side. His arm was no longer attached to his body, but instead sat, perfectly preserved, nearby. “Magic preservation. Should work just fine if we can get it back on.” Raymond remarked.
Vesper turned to the necromancer, who was sat up in a bed not far from him, writing something into one of his spellbooks. His staff rested close by, and he leaned heavily on it as he set the book down and got up. His leg was at least still attached, but he walked with a pronounced limp.
”You certainly seem to have gotten out of it better than me.” Vesper remarked.
”I’m pretty good at manipulating tissue, and good thing too, there aren’t any spares in my size around.” Raymond joked, then winced. “Unfortunately, while I’m good enough to keep the leg, I somehow doubt it’s perfect. It certainly didn’t hurt this much before. Well, before before it hurt worse, so I’ll manage until I find a spare.”
”You’re concerningly blaise about the idea of replacing your limbs.” Vesper grumbled. “Though I suppose I shouldn’t complain considering you’re probably going to be the one re-attaching mine.”
”Probably. Though I’ll be honest, it’s going to hurt like a bitch regardless, especially since you’re literally glowing with the kind of magic which tries to burn out mine.” Raymond explained.
Vesper checked himself, and raised an eyebrow at the lack of glow, to which Raymond tapped the middle of his forehead. “Magical spectrum. Most people are flames in the dark, you paladins are bloody lighthouses and it gives me a headache.”
”I can’t imagine why, given the nickname you’ve picked up.” Vesper replied.
”If past life memories were a thing for whatever I’ve got going on, I wouldn’t be sticking your arm back on.”
”Tch, so much for an early retirement.”
Raymond snorted. “You’re not more than two years older than me. If you’re rich enough to retire already we might need to see how much of the budget is going to your salary.”
”Oh, my job isn’t the sort you go into for the money, though the benefits are exceptional, including a nice pension when I can’t fight any longer.” Vesper replied. “And since I don’t have any family, I suppose my stipend will go back to the abbey when I eventually kick it hard enough to not come back.”
”Hm. Well I don’t suppose I should have expected an abbot to be married to anything but his work.” Raymond replied. “Still honestly have a hard time remembering you actually are one.”
”I have a hard time remembering you’re an arch-necromancer. Neither of us really look the part.”
”You haven’t seen my bad side.” Raymond replied with a faint grin. “Too busy fighting the great flagstone trebuchet.”
”I took your advice, fought him out of the way of any roads.” Vesper replied with an amused grin. “Though he’s as tough an old bastard as you said. Though I’ll beat him next time. Assuming I have to. I might have gotten what I wanted by losing.”
Raymond shook his head. “You’re the only man I know crazy enough to get one of his arms chopped off and call it a win. Actually, no, Matlal probably would.”
”He’s good people.” Vesper agreed.
”Too much for his own good some days.” Raymond replied. “Alright. Enough gabbing. Get some rest so I can get that arm back on you in case Janus comes back. Otherwise El’s gonna have to deal with him and she might cause more damage to the fortress than Thorgrim did.”
Raymond left the medical ward, and limped up towards the roof to survey the field. It was late, a bit past midnight, but he didn’t sleep. Something felt off, like an itch or burn at the back of his mind. Some instinct that something terrible was occurring, or perhaps had already occurred. He met Elsior on the roof, and they shared a look.
”Something else has taken the field.” He noted, and Elsior nodded.
”Makes me wonder about your theory of conspiracy. We can’t contact Keelah, which is dreadfully convenient.” The dragonborn replied. “Just a hunch though, nothing we can take action on.”
”Aside from getting ready for when it inevitably comes knocking on our door.” Raymond replied. “You know, I thought after San Jonas we might be able to stop playing hero, that the adults would take over and we’d be able to peaceably settle down and open up another bar. But it turns out we are the adults, or at least only a couple years younger than them.”
Elsior snorted. “Don’t let uncle’s age fool you. It fools him plenty. Whatever’s coming, I’ll be glad to have him with us.”
”It’s just a strange thing. You grow up hearing all the stories, and then when you meet the supposed legends they’re really just... well, not all that different. Not sure what I was expecting.”
”I mean you could have asked about them.” Elsior replied. “I mean it’s not like I didn’t grow up knowing them. Hells, Yndri was basically my great-aunt. But you’re right, they’re just people. Most stories forget about it. They’ll forget we were people too.”
”Seemed rude.” Raymond replied. “And we were certainly plenty busy.” Then he considered the last words. “Think they’ll be telling stories about us?”
”Oh certainly. You said we’re the adults. I think you meant heroes. Like it or not, we’re them.”
”If we’re the heroes of this story then Adonai have mercy on us all.” Raymond replied.
”Why that god?” Elsior asked, after a long moment of quiet.
”Don’t know.” Raymond replied. “Seemed to be a fitting one. If his followers are to be believed he was just a man like us.”
”I’m a man then eh?” Elsior asked.
”Manlier than me.”
”True.” Elsior snorted. “Well, at least we’ve one comfort. We might be heroes, but we’ll never be gods, thank anyone. That’s more responsibility than anyone sane wants.”
”True, and we’d be rubbish deities as well.” Raymond replied, and as he was preparing another joke. Then he spied something moving beneath the starlight at the other end of the pass. He peered closer, and then his eyes widened. “Blood and darkness!” He swore. “El, sound the alarm, attack incoming.”
”What is it? Your eyes are better in the dark than mine.” The dragonborn asked.
”You know that big earthen mound they built to put their cannon on?” Raymond asked. “Well it seems somebody taught it how to run.”

Let's cut through the pre-amble:

What is Devil May Cry?

Devil May Cry is an action series developed and published by Japanese company Capcom, beginning with Devil May Cry 1 in 2001 for the Playstation 2 (Here's an advert showing it as part of Sony's holiday lineup that included landmark gaming titles such as Final Fantasy X, Grand Theft Auto 3, Metal Gear Solid 2 and... Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance). The game series began as a prototype build for Resident Evil 4 that had more of an overt action focus than the acclaimed horror franchise was known for. Rather than scrap the build, Capcom saw potential in the idea of a stylish action game, and gave director Hideki Kamiya permission to make it a full title.
Kamiya would involuntarily leave the series after DMC 1 as Capcom didn't ask him to work on DMC 2. Instead, a still-to-this-day unknown phantom director was put in charge of the game and he ran it into the ground. With less than half a year before DMC 2's 2003 release, Capcom brought in a new director to course-correct and get the game out for release: Hideaki Itsuno. In less than six months, Itsuno would rally the team, basically make the entire game, and create several features that would go on to become series staples, and while DMC 2 sold well, it was critically panned for being a very boring game. Itsuno, not wanting his reputation to be sullied, came back in 2005 with Devil May Cry 3, generally considered one of the greatest action games of all time. From here several core traits are instilled: chief among which being style meters that track the player's skill with combos and Dante having a style system that lets him use different movesets.
And it's in 2008 with the release of Devil May Cry 4, marking the series going multiplatform for the first time as it came out on the PS3 and Xbox 360, that this story really begins:

The build up to 2010

With DMC 4's release in 2008, Capcom set the sales expectation that the game would sell 1.8 million units by the end of the fiscal year. DMC 4 would sell two million units in under a month, but Capcom were a bit unimpressed. They were hoping that now that DMC was on a wider range of platforms that the sales would correspondingly go up, but instead the game just saw a modest increase over DMC 3. The cost of game development had also shot up in the new console generation, making Capcom more concerned about DMC4's sales just being fine, especially coming off of huge sales juggarnauts from 2007 such as Halo 3, Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Bioshock. (It doesn't help that DMC 4 had a very rushed development leading to the now infamous case of Dante's playable chapters just being Nero's but backwards)
Japan at the time was also in a weird place when it came to gaming. The mobile phone gaming market was about to take off, and the playerbase in Japan was already smaller than the worldwide market for obvious reasons. In the home regions, it was safer to look into handheld gaming, and while Capcom had dallied with the idea of a DMC game on the Playstation Portable (at one point considering a remake of the first game that reached in-game screenshots and box art that was quietly shelved for unknown reasons, alongside a prequel focusing on Dante's father Sparda), these ideas never left the ground. Seeing how Western markets were more traditionally concerned with console gaming at this time (and the success of the God of War franchise proved Action was a genre people wanted), Capcom's idea was simple:
Give their IPs to Western studios and let them take a crack at it, with the idea being their knowledge of what the West wants would let the games sell better. The results were mixed. The Bionic Commando reboot is nowadays more known for the twist of YOUR WIFE IS THE ROBOT ARM and only sold 27,000 units in a month, but Dead Rising did fairly well under a Capcom Vancouver branch until Dead Rising 4 happened and uh... kinda killed the series because it was awful.
Capcom eventually set their sights on giving the West a crack at DMC, leading to them eyeballing several studios. This worked out well for them in that Itsuno was also burnt out. After having spent five straight years on DMC and having redeemed its image after DMC 2, Itsuno was ready to take a break and make his dream game: Dragon's Dogma, a dark fantasy game that is very fun. It got a Netflix anime adaptation recently that is... not as fun. But while Itsuno was making Dragon's Dogma, Capcom had some time to spitball handing the series off. They eventually settled on Ninja Theory, an up and coming British team best known for Heavenly Sword (a very pretty game with mediocre action combat and a priority on storytelling), and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (a modernisation of Journey to the West that was very pretty but priotizied story over gameplay). Rumors began to circulate in early 2010 that Ninja Theory had acquired the license and would be making a prequel focusing on Dante's early days, but it would only become clear at Tokyo Games Show that year when DmC: Devil May Cry* was formally announced.
And the fanbase collectively hated it.
(* Yes that does technically mean this reboot's name is Devil may Cry: Devil May Cry. I'm going to call it DmC from here to differentiate it from the core series)

The TGS Trailer

For those unaware of DMC, I should stress that by 2010, it had a reputation for a certain flair and theatics. Dante was known to be a goofball in cutscenes, taunting enemy demons and making a mockery of them. He has an entire cutscene in DMC 4 where he acts like he's on the stage of a theatre with how grandious he is. People liked Dante for this reason, he was a breath of fresh air in a time when most protagonists were stotic, gritty jerks who only talked in curse words and gravelly shouts. And his flowing white hair was also certainly iconic.
So here comes the new take on Dante, the West giving him a go and oh... hoo boy. There's no charisma, there's no panache. The trailer has no gameplay. Dante doesn't look like a trash talker, he looks like a meth addict. He's smoking, something the DMC 1 design documents said Dante would never do as (per Kamiya) smoking is uncool. His hair isn't even white!
Now let me be clear: I am not opposed to a new take on Dante. Certainly, the idea presented in the reveal trailer that Dante is imaging the demons he fights as an acute case of psychosis is an interesting idea, as it raises the question of whether or not the demons are real or if he's senselessly killing random people. But the execution would have had to be perfect, and opening with just a fancy trailer that had no signs of gameplay for an action franchise was not the right foot to start on.
What doesn't help was that the entire Western Capcom initiative was one pushed by a very controversial figure in gaming called Keiji Inafune, who would leave Capcom right after DmC's announcement in 2010. Inafune was the one most strongly advocating for the western development approach (Something Capcom were quick to stress in 2010 after his departure), but with his departure the movement had less steam. Inafune would go on to make Mighty Number 9, a Kickstarter that went miserably wrong on every turn and is usually seen as one of the most disappointing games of the 2010s.
I should also point out here: Dante's radically different design from the norm of the series was a mandate imposed by Capcom. Ninja Theory's original concept art for Dante was much more closer to his traditional design- white hair, red coat and all. But Capcom, and Itsuno especially, were adament that if Ninja Theory were going to be doing something new with the franchise, that they needed to go off the cuff- in Capcom's own words, "Go crazy."

The development

So Dante got a new color palette, a darker jacket and black hair. But at the time (this news only came out two years after the redesign was revealed), people didn't know about Capcom explicitly telling NT to go off the rails, and what they saw... was Ninja Theory going off the rails in the wrong way.
So from the word go, fans aren't happy. Fans are usually never happy but I mean they were unhappy. Chief Creative director for Ninja Theory Tameen Antionades said after the reveal: “The vitriol was immediate, aggressive and relentless for the next two years. Without a second of gameplay being shown, it had been written off as a disaster in the making.” Tameen would become the ball and chain around DmC's marketing, which is quite apparent in how Ninja Theory would dial back on his appearances as we get closer to the game's release. The backlash to the launch clearly surprised Ninja Theory and caught them off guard, with Tameen publically lashing out at the original fanbase for writing the game off or being unhappy at Dante's visual redesign. This would go on to dominiate the discussions about DmC for its pre-release cycle, as it became less about the game and more about the community and whether or not the response was justified (alongside in typical internet fashion, a few death threats being tossed around which apparently included a full metal song). No matter which side of it you lean on though, Tameen had habit of putting his foot in his mouth in regards to PR:

• When asked by Venturebeat how he felt about the fan reaction to the TGS trailer, Tameen (and I am quoting them word for word here) “took a drag of his cigarette and without blinking or pausing to exhale the smoke from his mouth, said: ‘I don’t care.’”
  
• Tameen went on to insult Dante's original costume in a later interview when saying that what was and wasn’t cool had changed in the years since DMC1: “If Dante, dressed as he was, walked into any bar outside of Tokyo, he’d get laughed out.”
  
• Finally, he disparaged the original series for its depiction of women, particularly the demon hunters Trish and Lady, saying: "I've nothing against big tits - I'd rather have my head resting on a pair right now - but if you're going to try and stimulate someone on different levels, there's better ways to do it... We did that in Enslaved with Trip. People loved her, not because she had big breasts and high heels, but because she felt like someone who could be your girlfriend. That to me is more attractive than a prostitute walking around with a big gun." The idea that Tameen was dismissing Lady and Trish (Lady especially has basically the largest character arc in DMC3 and it's as much her story as Dante's) irked the fanbase.
  

Capcom likely stepped in behind the scenes and encourged a few changes. Notably, Dante's design underwent a few shifts, including making him more muscular and rewriting portions of the game to give him a few more of Old!Dante's trademark quips. A few voice actor was also cast, named Tim Phillips... though NT wouldn't budge on the haircut as it was part of the story. The Dante psychosis/prisoner angle from the TGS trailer was also completely scrapped from the final product, having Dante instead be confirmed to be sane and fighting demons, not people. Even though Capcom had encouraged NT to go off the rails... money still reigns supreme and Capcom wanted to turn a profit. So closer to release, Capcom made a point of stressing that Itsuno and several other DMC veteran staff were supervising the combat system and offering guidance. Combat designer Rahni Tucker spoke positively of the exchanges she had with Itsuno:

While Capcom Japan kept a close eye on Ninja Theory’s work on DmC’s characters, story and world, its greatest focus was, naturally, on the game’s combat. Itsuno and other key personnel would visit the studio in Cambridge every few months to check in on its progress, Ninja Theory staff would often make the trip out to Japan, and in between those times there would be regular video conferences and daily email updates. All that communication helped to unify the two companies, despite a fundamental split between their approaches to game development: Ninja Theory liked to start with the visual design, and Capcom with the mechanics. Modestly, Itsuno admits he learned a lot from the collaboration; Tucker believes she picked up an awful lot more. “I learnt so much,” she says. “Itsuno would speak philosophically about how he approaches combat and enemy design. They build most of the player’s set of actions first, and then think about the things they can build to allow players to exploit particular elements of the system they’ve designed. They really put the emphasis of the baddie design back onto the player’s actions. It’s kind of obvious, but just the way that he spoke about it was inspiring, and it made a lot of sense to me.”

The damage however, was long done. Even with the post-TGS revisions, DmC was facing an uphill battle from the community, with a minority waiting to give it a try themselves before casting judgement, but the majority either being apathetic or downright hostile to the game, not helped by Tameen's attitude creating the idea that Ninja Theory inherently hated what made Devil May Cry good (again, keep in mind most players wouldn't learn that Capcom were pushing for the radical Dante changes until years post-release). Ultimately though, Capcom themselves are to blame for the choices that impacted DmC: Ninja Theory were only doing their jobs to the best of their abilities and for the most part many of the staff clearly loved getting to work on such a popular franchise and boosting their studio's name. It came down an unfortunate blend of Capcom misreading what people wanted from future projects, an attempt to appeal to a Western market that fell on its face, and a director unprepared for the mass backlash his product got.
Either way, the game finally came out in early 2013.

The game itself

Eh, it was OK.
DmC launched in March 2013 and got decent reviews on all platforms, getting a consistent 8/10 on all platforms on Metacritic. The PC port was especially praised for its sheer variety of features including an uncapped framerate. Critics quite liked it, praising the story and art direction, feeling it was a necessary step for the series to make the games somewhat easier to let newcomers in without facing as daunting a challenge as the games could be (I'm pretty sure learning how to fly a plane is easier than mastering Dante in Devil May Cry 4). Old Dante's most famous voice actor, Reuben Langdon, spoke on a podcast about the game and admitted that while he wasn't fond of the new Dante's characterisation, he applauded Ninja Theory's craftsmenship.
The fanbase were colder, even with the pre-release biases set aside (this wasn't helped by Platinum, helmed by several ex-DMC 1 developers including Kamiya, releasing Metal Gear Rising Revengeance also in 2013. Metal Gear Rising is a very good game that involves flipping giant robots and fighting a very actractive Brazillian man with a gun-sheath sword). The game's framerate on consoles was capped at 30FPS for technical reasons when all prior games ran at 60FPS. Dante had lost a lot of his mechanical complexity (including DMC 3 and 4's style system which offered Dante special abilities he could switch between such as more sword and gun combos, blocking and dodging) in favour of a more universal moveset. The Devil Trigger super mode was pretty lame and automatically knocked all enemies into the air, which people didn't like as it made most encounters too easy. Building up style was too easy and the game had no systems to stop you spamming the same combos over and over. The game's weapon system of angel/demon themed weapons included color-coded enemies that forced you to use the right gear or you'd be punished. There was no Turbo Mode, a feature in most games that automatically boosted the game's speed by 20% on average.
Ninja Theory still made a good action game, albeit one that needed a bit more refinement to reach its true potential. But the lack of several core features (or worse, poorly implemented iterations of said features) led to the fanbase adopting a term:

"It's a good game, but it's not a good Devil May Cry."

The fanbase were willing to concede to the good aspects of the game- especially in audiovisual aspects. Enemies now got a subtitle during their first appearance, weapons getting a slight glint when the player pauses to let them know they can launch a pause combo attack, the soundtrack was now dynamic and evolved up the higher your style rank got, alongside the killing blow at the end of a fight getting a cinematic camera angle. Ninja Theory's sense of style itself was something that impressed the Capcom team, as all of these aspects were modified and adopted into the mainline games come 2019. The game was also very beautiful in places, leaving the Gothic archetecture of the main games for a more European feel in Limbo City. Madrid in Spain and Genoa in Italy are clear influences on the archetecture, and the design team adapt them well in making Limbo a city that is itself a weapon trying to kill Dante through compressing alleyways, closing off paths or mocking him through writing on the walls, Splinter Cell Conviction style. Combichrist and Noisia's collaberations for the soundtrack were also praised between their licensed work and new music composed just for the game, especially the songs Never Surrender and Throat Full of Glass.
But for all the praise, reluctant or otherwise, that game got mechanically, the story that the critics had acclaimed as mature and a right step forward had few supporters among the playerbase. There's been a lot written and said about DmC's story so I'll cap off the highlights here:

• Dante, even after the TGS revisions, was still far too crass and unlikeable. A scene early on in the game was also seen as a potshot at fans of the old games as a response to the TGS backlash where a mop falls on Dante's head, making him look like his older self, before he snarks "Not in a million years" and throws the mop aside. Fans quickly took to several creative nicknames to refer to this new iteration of the character, with the most popular being DINO (Dante In Name Only) or Donte. Fans hated Donte's personality so much that they began unironically championing the Spanish dub of the game due to his dub actor having more fun in the role, leading to people making mods to highlight the misadventures of Donté, el exterminador de demonios. Dante being changed from a half-human half-demon to half-angel half-demon also led to mocking jokes comparing Dante to the Adam Sandler film Little Nicky.
  
• The game relied far too heavily on swearing, with the exchange between Dante and Succubus becoming infamous for the lines "Fuck you!" "Fuck you!" "FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUU." A scene with Dante and Vergil where the two engage in brotherly banter only for Vergil to end the argument with "And I've got a bigger dick" also went viral for all the wrong reasons.
  
• Dante's brother Vergil in the core series is a man of MOTIVATION who would sooner cut his throat than admit to anything being stronger than him, alongside someone who hates firearms. Entire essays have been written about how amazing Vergil is in Devil May Cry 3 and in some communities, his name has become synonymous with the rival archetype. Here, he's presented as a thinly veiled analogue to the Anonymous movement (you can carbon date this game to early 2010s in general with the Anonymous analouges and WAKE UP SHEEPLE energy), openly admits to Dante that "I'm powerless to stop you" from just leaving his goal to stop the demons, and in the most infamous scene of the game, uses a sniper rifle to shoot a pregnant woman in the chest, blowing out her entire stomach, before headshotting her. To make things even worse for the reputation of this version of Vergil (who had been mockingly named Vergin), the launch version of DmC had him wearing a fedora. In 2013. I don't think I need to add anything to that if you remember what became of the fedora around 2013.
  
• Despite Tameen's comments about women in video games and "prostitutes with guns," DmC was reviled for how deeply mysoginistic the game truly was. Kat (the one heroic female character in the game and the only female character to survive the game), had several far more revealing costumes planned in concept art (Alongside the idea that Kat fought with a violin weapon pre-Lindsay Sterling which was pretty cool). Here's one of the better pieces of art where Kat was planned to be a biker chick with platinum blonde hair. Kat is ultimately a vehicle for Dante's character development as he softens up around her, only for her to be kidnapped and brutalized by the police. Dante and Vergil then kidnap the mistress of Mundus (the main antagonist) who is pregnant with his child, and trade the two women off like Pokemon cards (the camera in the trade scene, linked above in the Vergin section includes several disturbing shots that linger on Kat trying to get up after being shoved to the ground), leading back to the Sniper Rifle Abortion. The fanbase got very creative with memes relating to that part of the game. Kat's main involvement in the final act of the game is just to give Dante a map of the building she was tortured in, then hide behind a dumpster when Dante and Vergil come to blows over whether or not they should rule humanity. And in the re-release of the game, the final cutscene is modfied so the last shot of the game is Dante copping a feel of Kat's ass.
  

The end was an OK game let down by a bad story. The tale of many a game. And unfortunately, partly thanks to the game just not being good enough for the DMC pedigree, DmC underperformed. Capcom initally hoped for 2 million units to be sold like DMC 4, but later quietly lowered their projections down to 1.2 million. Some rumors speculate that Capcom had to artifically boost the game's sale numbers by counting anyone who downloaded the game when it was for free as part of Playstation Plus in January 2014 (games that go on PS+ or Microsofft's Xbox Live Games with Gold service are usually games that are either selling so well they can take the hit, are past their lifespan and looking to reignite the playerbase, or did very badly and this is a last ditch effort to get interest into the game). While not speaking directly about DmC, Capcom spoke frankly in a financial report regarding their Western outsourcing, attributing the lack of success to a "delayed response to the expanding digital contents market," "insufficient coordination between the marketing and the game development divisions in overseas markets," and a "decline in quality due to excessive outsourcing". The long and the short of it was: DmC flopped commerically, failing to meet the sales of DMC 4 in the West (which remember was Capcom's entire reason for the reboot) when it was released on the exact same platforms, and the consoles had a larger install base due to five years having passed. For what it's worth, Itsuno himself support the game and approved of Ninja Theory's efforts, even saying he'd have been honored to work on a DmC Devil May Cry 2 had Capcom gone with that project.
Some post-launch support would follow, including DLC costumes based on concept art for Dante and several alt skins based on his DMC 1 and 3 appearances, Bloody Palace (basically a time trial gauntlet run) and a campaign focusing on Vergil that sets up a sequel hook which never gets followed up on.
Some Ninja Theory staffers didn't take the news well, especially as they knew that their reputation was going to take a large hit after DmC. Art director Alessandro Taini gave a GDC talk where he went on a weird rant involving editing DMC 4 Dante into stills from... Brokeback Mountain and Batman and Robin, while also saying reboot Dante was based on... Tyler Durden from Fight Club (for those who don't know Fight Club, you're not meant to agree with Tyler or find him a role model). Keep in mind that this is Taini basically shit-talking character designs he had no hand in making. In a hilaripus twist of irony, Dante would later in the series get a cowboy hat as a weapon. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Capcom up to this point had been going back and forth on what DmC even was- was it a prequel, a reboot, an alternate universe? They seemed to change the answer every month. But after the game's failure to meet expectations commercially, they quietly settled on it being based on an alternate universe, as was confirmed in of all things, Donte appearing as a DLC alt skin for Dante in Marvel vs Capcom Infinite.

(While I'm on the topic of weird fighting game trivia, Donte actually also got a full fighting game appearance in the "classic," Playstation All Stars Battle Royale as an attempt to market DmC ahead of its release. Yes, Donte technically didn't even debut in his own game. This story is so weird to me! In the trailer he even fights the protagonist of previous Ninja Theory game Heavenly Sword)

In 2015, Capcom re-released the game for the new consoles as DmC: Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition. This was largely helmed by the Capcom team in Japan who modified the game to make it more in line with DMC's series standards of gameplay. And you know what? It's really good! Genuinely, it actually makes the game and takes it from "A good attempt" to "one of the best Western attempts at action games period." 60FPS on consoles, all DLC included, Turbo Mode was back, a new mode called Must Style where you have to get an S Rank in combos before your attacks do damage, all alongside an insanely detailed changelog penned by Rahni Tucker. The one downside? It never got released on PC for unsaid reasons, presumably that most of the new gameplay additions... were based on mods made by the PC fanbase. Mods you can no longer find as the site storing them has gone down.
However even with this, DmC would get sand in its eye one more time. In the same year, Capcom released a similar re-release of DMC 4 called Special Edition. It was far more bare bones than DmC: DE, only adding three new playable characters in Lady, Trish and MOTIVATION Man himself, Vergil. Despite the game only getting a physical release in Japan and being digital only here in the West (whereas DmC: DE got a full release), Capcom eventually said that DMC 4 SE obliterated the DE in sales, with Capcom specifically saying that 4SE's digital sales led to a better quarter in 2015 than they were anticipating. As of 2020 (due to Capcom counting their re-releases of games separately than the original release when it comes to sales), we know that DMC4SE has sold 1.5 million units, while DmC: DE sold 1.1 million.
However, ultimately, I'm very joyful to admit that everyone got a happy ending! No, literally, everyone came out of this for the better. Ninja Theory in 2017 would release Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, a critical and commerical darling made on a self-styled "AA" budget that was praised for its handling of mental health through the lens of its MC Senua. It made its budget back easily, they're now owned by Microsoft and they're currently working on a sequel called Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2. Capcom would bounce back from their slump in the Early 2010s, beginning in 2017 with the releases of Resident Evil 7, Monster Hunter World and a certain title I'll mention in a minute. They've been releasing hit after hit for the last four years and they have more on the horizon. And Itsuno, now having made Dragon's Dogma, came back raring to go with more Devil May Cry. Though there are some rumors by Dante's voice actor that he had to threaten to leave Capcom to get it, at E3 2018 as part of the Microsoft panel, Itsuno took to the stage and announced:
"DMC IS BACK!!!"
(Watching people react to this trailer and freaking out when they see it's DMC gives me so much serotonin)
Thanks for reading this... long disaster of a post. Have a good one, and remember to keep this party crazy. Let's rock. :)

Additional reading if you'd like more words on this reboot:

• An analysis of DmC as an actual game to play.
  
• A breakdown of why Vergil in DmC fails compared to his mainline counterpart.
  
• Comparing DmC to that Metal Gear Rising game I mentioned earlier.