I currently (40M) had my ex (35F) completely destroy our relationship while I was working out of town for a few months. This happened a year ago and wish I had these stories as a resource while going through it. I have just started to use Reddit and been reading the experiences of others here and have decided to share my story in hopes it will maybe help others. That way some good may come from some of the worst times of my life.
A little backstory for context for the story and insight to some of the decisions I made. When I turned 30 I left the major city in my Province (it is like a state if you are an American) because buying just a simple house is over a million dollars and I don't make near enough to afford that. My goal was to move to somewhere more rural to buy a house, meet someone, get married and have a child or two. It was my only dream I had and believed I could attain it. I lived out in the bush on my step dads property in a run down trailer I bought so I could save money for the first 3 years. I had my dog but the loneliness of living in the middle of nowhere had got to me. By then I had saved a fair amount of money, so I decided to move into the town. It was nice, it cut my commute down by 40 minutes, I had started to make a few friends and no longer felt so isolated. It was through my friends I met my future ex. Let's call her Kali. She had a long term boyfriend when we first met. Their relationship ended a couple of years after meeting her and we started dating a few months after.
We mostly had a great relationship for the next 4 years. The only thing was it was on again off again. She would dump me after I did anything really special for her for a week and beg me to take her back. It was like clockwork. I used to think it was because of her depression and that she didn't believe she deserved to be truly happy. Nowadays I actually think she might have been cheating the whole time and just felt guilty about it when I did nice stuff for her but I will never know the truth. I don't care what the reality is anymore anyway, Time has a funny way of making stuff like that irrelevant. We did have one bigger break of about 5 months. When it happened I took time off work to travel in my RV the whole time. From spring to summer. I really didn't like the town I lived in and decided to use that time to check out the rest of my Provence to figure out where I wanted to restart my life. She was basically the only reason I stayed for so long. I did have a decent job and family close by but most people I met there were not good people. Lots of drug users, liars, and general scumbags. I had only a few real friends there. After I got back and had decided where I was going to move to she had decided she wanted me back. She begged me to stay and be with her. She told me that she wanted to get serious. We started making real progress about getting married, having kids and looking at buying a house. Everything was coming up Milhouse and I couldn't be happier. So You can probably guess this is when my tale becomes interesting for you and life got real bad for me.
My career is seasonal. I work from spring to the end of fall and can go on unemployment insurance or find work. My dad had asked if I could help on his farm breeding horses that winter when I had still planned to leave my town. I had promised him that I would because it would give me a place to stay before people in my field of work would be looking for employees. This had been agreed upon before me and Kali had got back together. Now I have always been a man of my word. It's something I take great pride in. I have always hated liars. I don't mind a little embellishment to make a story more fun or if two people's stories are different as long as they both believe that was how the events happened. Everyone remembers things slightly off. She was upset that I had intended to keep my word to my dad but I had every second weekend off. The town my dad is in was only a 2 hour drive. So I told her I would be back twice monthly for weekends and that it would only be for 4 months. For the first two months everything seemed fine. During this time I started to look at rings to pop the question and booked an expensive spa for two days in May to propose. There was only one weird thing that happened during the first two months. On one of my visits she confided in me that her brother's wife had cheated on him and that their newborn baby was most likely not his. I was shocked that she not only knew but didn't plan to tell him. She said she didn't want to tell him for fear of breaking up the family. I told her that he has the right to know and that she was being a bad sister by knowing and not telling him. I also informed her if he found out she knew and didn't say anything that he would most likely kick her out of his life. She made me swear I wouldn't tell him. Even though I thought it was wrong I did agree to not say anything. It did get me wondering how she could not only not tell him but stay friends with someone that could do that to her brother. I think that's when I started to question her morals. The third month she asked that I didn't come out because she was "sick". I told her I didn't care, I could still come out and take care of her. She convinced me that she didn't want me to come so I just worked on the farm instead. I switched weekends so I could come out the next instead of in two weekends. The weekend she was "sick" her phone was off the whole time, lasting into the week. She told me her phone went through the washing machine. She was actually on a bender but I didn't learn that till later.
So I head out the following weekend. As soon as I arrive I start getting super sketchy vibes. I was already weirded out about the stuff with her brother and ghosting me for 4 days as we talked/texted multiple times a day normally. At first she acts great to me, cooks me steak and we go out to the bush to have a fire in the snow. At the fire she really started drinking heavily. She then mentions a guy she had been hanging with lets call him Brad. So alarm bells start going through my head. We go back to her house and she keeps drinking. I wanted to keep a clear head so I only had three beers all evening. She put her phone down unlocked because of how drunk she was and I took it to the bathroom with me to look up texts between them. I felt so guilty for doing it at first but once I see the text between the two of them the guilt is replaced with rage. I go to her room to confront her and she breaks down. First, how dare I go through her phone, this never would have happened if I would have broken my promise to my dad, nothing really happened between them, blah, blah, blah. I was furious and drove off. She blows up my phone the whole time. I don't answer. Ten minutes after I left her mother called me. She lives at her moms house. I took the call and her mom said she is freaking out and has harmed herself. I decide to go back and she has a bandage wrapped around her arm. Her mom hid all the sharp objects she could find. She was having a full on panic attack and begs me to not leave. I told her I would stay if she told me the truth. She admits to hooking up with him one time just that last weekend when she asked me not to come out. It kind of matches the messages and I believe her. I stay there till she falls asleep. Once she does I send Brad a text saying that she has a boyfriend with some screen shots of our conversations me and her have had that week. I was about to drive back to the farm when the dude called her phone. I pick up the call and tell him I am her boyfriend. He asks if that was a joke and I assure him it is not. He said he didn't know and actually apologized. I tell him that I'm pissed but if he didn't know I couldn't blame him. I should have asked him more questions but I was tired, not thinking straight and just wanted to go back to the Farm even though it was two am by this point. I get home and crash. Turned my ringer off because I know once she wakes up she will start calling like crazy. After getting the horses in for the night I decided to look at my phone for the first time all day. Around thirty missed calls and a ton of texts. I decide I need another day before I talk to her. Now while the whole day all I can think about is that it was just one time, she seems to be genuinely remorseful about it, how I'm 39 and really want children before I get too old. I took a call from her the next day on Sunday in the morning. She is still wasted. She hadn't stopped drinking since I was there Friday. We talk and I tell her that I am really upset but am willing to give us another chance. I still was in love with her and wanted to have kids, get married and buy a house with her. It was the dream I felt I worked so hard for. She was so happy I took her back and swore to me nothing like this would ever happen again. Basically I was a fool lol.
So I decided on my next set of days off to borrow my stepdads summer home on the river so we can have the place to ourselves. I grab food that she loves so I can cook her dinner and try to make it very romantic. I want to rekindle my love with her so I wanted to go all out on an amazing weekend. I pick her up and she is already a little drunk. I kind of wanted to hang sober but I don't wanna mess up with her so don't say anything thinking we can do a sober day when I take her out to go shopping and dinner the next day. When we get there she gets hammered. Kali had brought a big of bottle fireball on top of a bunch of white claws. I again didn't really drink that night. Once she was drunk and tired I carried her to the bed. As Kali is in my arms she looks up at me and says in slurred words "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Joe" I ask "what did you just say?". "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Brad" she replied. I put her to bed and my mind starts racing. Now her ex before me has a really close name to the one she said first but I also know she has a friend named Joe I only met a couple of times. They were not close or even hung out but were more like acquaintances. I go in her purse to look at her phone again but the battery is dead and I can't find her charger. I have an Iphone so I can't charge it up to look. I didn't sleep that well that night with everything going on in my head. I woke up at 6 am to her being very loud on the phone. I went out to the living room and she had drank all the booze left over from the night before. I ask her who she was on the phone with and she tells me an uber to leave. I ask why is she going to leave? Kali tells me she is upset that I tried to get into her phone. Guess I didn't put it back in her purse. Must have been out of sorts and forgot. I tell her I can drive her once I go to the washroom and get some clothes on. I go to do that, come out of the washroom to see Kali has already left. She was so drunk that she had left half her stuff behind. I decided to have breakfast before bringing her stuff to her house. After breakfast I packed her stuff into my SUV and noticed it had snowed that night. I could see her footprints out into the driveway. While Dropping off her stuff I noticed there were no footprints leading to her house, so I tried calling Kali. No answer. I left her stuff in the snow and decided to drive by her brothers and sisters house to see if there were footprints going into any of their houses but there were none. I sent her a nasty text about knowing she didn't go home, to go be with Brad or Joe or whoever and never call me again. It was a lot more profane than that but that's the gist of it. Cleaned up the house my stepdad lent me and back off to the farm yet again. The next day she blows up my phone and again I wait another day to talk to her. She tells me that she went home but I know that can't be true from the snow, but she says I must have been mistaken. She apologizes for getting drunk and leavening and that she is going to stop drinking after her birthday in two weeks. She has rented a hotel in the town I'm in for her birthday and wants to spend it with me. I agree just because I have to know the truth and want to look at her phone to make sure I am not crazy. She had gaslit me to the point I was questioning what I saw with my own eyes. A couple of days later I decided to send Joe a message on Facebook to see if he would give me the truth. I get a text from her telling me not to bug her friend and that she is embarrassed. I apologize and tell her I am excited about her birthday soon.
The weekend of her birthday comes so I go to meet her at the hotel. She brought her sister and other friend along. It actually is a really fun time. The girls did coke the first night into the second evening. I don't really like it but I figured she can let loose especially if she is going to stop drinking after her birthday. I also knew by Saturday night that they would all crash hard so it would give me time to look at her phone so I could know the truth. As I mentioned the weekend was really fun so I felt bad about going into her phone yet again. I did it anyway and my whole world came crashing down. Now I figured that I would maybe see Brad or Joe texts and Facebook messages. Seemed like Brad was done but Joe and her were totally hooking up. I also found out that she had slept with 3 other guys. I also saw she was using coke all the time now. She did it maybe three times a year when we dated but now it was every weekend. It looked like she started using regularly right before I left for the farm. Joe helped get it for her too, out of all the guys he was the one she hung with the most. Turns out he was also a meth head who was trying to quit for her. She also went to his house the morning she left the other weekend to hook up and buy coke. I was floored. I just staired and took screen shots till the early morning. I decided I wasn't just going to dump her but I wanted to ruin her life not realizing she was already doing that all by herself but hindsight is 20 20. So I started coming up with a plan of what I was going to do. I woke up the next morning and acted like everything was fine and went back to the farm. I was still so upset and didn't want to harm myself or others so had a family friend take my firearms for a while. I don't think I would have used them on myself or others but I knew I wasn't thinking clearly and didn't want them in my house while I was like that.
I didn't have to see her till I moved back because the next set I had off I had tickets for a concert in the city I used to live in. During that time all I thought about was how I was going to do something to ruin her life. I came up with some small things but my main plan was to pretend like we were fine and ghost her when my contract was up with my boss next winter. I had promised him another year after kali and I had gotten back together. Just typing it out makes me look back and cringe that I was so crazy. When I went to the city for the concert I told my best friend, my brother and a few others my plan. No one liked it and thought I should just go no contact, cut her straight out of my life. That probably was the smart thing to do but emotion was clouding my judgement. Also you all would get this story. They even informed me that because I would be lying to her, that I would be compromising my morals and turning into a worse person they didn't recognize. I either didn't see it that way or care. I have a hard time recalling what my brain was thinking during that time. All seems like a haze now that it's been a year. I think I was really upset that my dream and all I had worked for was ruined. A friend later said I may have been in love with the dream and not her. Maybe that's the reason I kept up all this insanity.
My time on the farm had come to an end and I was moving back to the town me and my ex lived in. I was set with my plan, excited to implement it and have what I considered just. But you know what they say of the best laid plans. My ex wanted to go to hang at her brothers as a welcome home party. I went but ended up drinking. Heavily drinking, to the point of black out. I don't remember much from that night but have had it recounted for me. I woke up in the drunk tank. Guess I couldn't lie and play it cool then huh? The story I was told later is, while at her brothers I had gotten drunk and loud. Kept waking up the new baby and we were asked to leave. So we caught a cab and I confronted her in the cab but all I could do was call her a lying, cheating, whore on repeat. She got upset and ran into the house locking me out. I had a bunch of my stuff in her house so I went to the door and demanded she let me in. All the while still only referring to her as the aforementioned 3 words. She told me to leave but my jacket and wallet were inside. It was below freezing at night still and probably wouldn't have made it home in the state I was in. I then kicked in her door to keep calling her LCW and grab my stuff. She was on the phone to the police, so I was taken away by them. One of the lowest points in my life. It still brings me so much shame to this day but it is what happened and I am not going to sugar coat it. I never laid a finger on her and I am so happy that I hadn't. Laying hands on women in that way is one of the scummiest things a man can do. I had to go back to her house once they let me out because my stuff was still there. I apologized to her mom who had been at her boyfriends that evening promising to repair the door for her. Kali begged me to talk to her and like an idiot I didn't just leave. I told her I saw everything and she only admitted to Brad and Joe. Lying about them and the others the whole time. Even when I brought up the screen shots she still couldn't come clean. I left just shaking my head. There is still a ton to this story but this is long enough. I could do a part 2 if there is interest. Catching you folks up to where I am now and the messed up things that happened in between.

I’m typing this on my phone because I’m too scared to use my laptop. I threw it into the back of my closet and covered it with clothes to try to dampen the high-pitched ringing sound it keeps emitting, but I can still faintly hear it from where I’m sitting in the living room. I tried shutting it down – it wouldn’t turn off. Doesn’t restart either. I closed the screen but that didn’t do anything. Tried to let the battery die and once it hit 0%, it stayed on as if it were fully charged. This thing can’t be turned off. I’m sure this all sounds silly and nobody is going to believe me, but there is something wrong with my laptop.
The easiest option would be to just get rid of it but I’m tight on cash and my job requires a laptop. I’m a marketing assistant at a small creative agency. It’s not the most glamorous job, I mostly fill out grids and review decks but it took me nearly a year to find this position. It’s completely remote which is a plus, the benefits are decent, and the pay is low but it’s something.
I was hired about a month ago. I hadn’t bought a laptop since 2017 and I wore out my last one so badly it basically refused to hold a charge and had to be plugged in all the time. I thought it made sense to get a new one – a new job, a fresh laptop, the beginning of a new career era. All the new Apple models are insanely overpriced, well above my price range. I could buy a new one in a few months after I save up a bit, but I needed something asap.
I browsed the internet and found a used electronics site. They refurbish phones and laptops and resell them at an affordable price – perfect. I found a 2022 Mac, placed the order, and it was delivered less than a day later. I actually think there were only three hours between purchasing the laptop and it showing up on my doorstep.
Excited to get it set up, I ripped open the box and sitting atop the neatly packaged laptop was a jet black business card with small white lettering in an odd font choice.
HANTER’s REFURBISHMENTS
Thank you for supporting small businesses. Enjoy your product.
609-3006
Ignoring the card, I threw it away and dug into the laptop. Beautifully dark brushed metal, no trace of fingerprints anywhere. It looked almost new save for a couple of scratches on the underside. I plugged it in, turned it on, made a new user profile, and clicked through the setup guide. The setup screen faded away and the preloaded wallpaper appeared. It didn’t really look like the typical Apple wallpapers that we’re all familiar with. Not Big Sur or the Sierra Nevada’s. It was a landscape photo of a farmhouse sitting in a field of tall yellowing grass, a single oak tree bending its awkward limbs over the decaying porch. There was some dark beauty to it. The sunset behind the farmhouse cast bands of golden light on the grass making it appear as if it were shimmering. Maybe it was taken on the East Coast? Some farm in New England? Didn’t really matter to me. I had a new laptop and it was working perfectly. I gave my ancient 2017 one a quick eulogy and tossed it.
– – –
- Good morning! Marie needs the TOOTHPASTE deck to go out by EOD for client review.
-- Morning! Got it, should be ready by afternoon. I’ll upload it to Monday and ping you when it’s up.
- Thanks!! :)
The first time I noticed something was the next day. I was sitting at my desk going over my bosses notes on a deck for some toothpaste commercial when I minimized my Chrome window and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. On the front porch of the farmhouse was a figure sitting in a rocking chair. I brought my face closer to the screen to try to make out any details but the farmhouse was so far in the distance, the scale of the figure was smaller than the cursor. It was so tiny I guess I just hadn’t noticed the day before. It’s not like anyone really stares at their computer wallpaper. The figure had a pale white face and was draped in some sort of black cloak but again it was so tiny I was basically making guesses. I shrugged it off and went back to Outlook to keep working – I had a deadline to meet.
My bedroom darkened as evening fell, the only source of light being the blue glow of my laptop. I uploaded the deck and sent a note back to Marie to let her know I was finished. I’d gotten so caught up in the day that I had forgotten about the figure in the rocking chair. I went back to the wallpaper and studied the landscape again before deciding to just change it to another preloaded one. Something less spooky. I chose a sunrise off a blue coastline.
I love watching Netflix in bed as I fall asleep, so that night I got comfortable and logged in on my laptop to put some Arrested Development on. I must’ve been exhausted because I fell asleep almost immediately. I always just end up sleeping with my laptop either next to me on my comforter or on my nightstand and let the episodes keep going until Netflix realizes I’m no longer watching. I guess that must've happened, but at around 3:00a I bolted awake to a screeching ringing tone coming from my laptop. It was ear piercingly loud, almost at an unbelievable volume for a laptop. Gone was Arrested Development, the laptop screen was static white like an old VHS tv, illuminating my otherwise pitch black bedroom in a cloudy light. I scrambled to turn the volume down, afraid my neighbors would come banging on my front door, but the sound stopped as quickly as it had begun. The screen went dark, the room went dark, the night got quiet.
I sat and stared bewildered in a drowsy daze at my laptop, the quiet hum of cicadas in the night outside, when suddenly it felt as if I were being watched…. I could barely see my own hand in front of me. The night seemed darker than usual…I slowly turned over my shoulder to the open door of my bedroom and in the darkness I could just make out the faint silhouette of a hunched figure standing right outside the doorway. Staring right at me. My blood chilled, I froze. I fumbled for the lamp on my nightstand and turned it on. Warm light extinguished the blackness. Nothing in the doorway…just the long stretch of hallway to the living room. It felt kind of similar to that movie that came out last year, Skinamarink. You sit in the darkness of your bedroom long enough that suddenly you start seeing things in the inky black. I thought it was nothing, but I swear I could make out the faintest trace of a pale white face grinning at me.
The next day I’m back to work as usual, tired from the night before. I clicked out of Chrome to my desktop to open up Adobe when I noticed the farmhouse wallpaper was back… It had changed by itself. It wasn’t exactly the one from yesterday though, no, the figure wasn’t in the rocking chair anymore. Instead, the figure had moved off the porch and was now standing in the field, closer to where the photographer would be. I could really make it out now. A pale white grinning face with distended lips, rotting teeth. That wasn’t the worst part though. Where its eyes should be were instead empty pockets of nothing. Just completely grotesque, definitely not a fucking preloaded wallpaper for a laptop. I changed it back to the beach and dug around in my trash can for the refurbishment card that came with the package. I wasn’t going to wait around to see what happened. Maybe one of the tech guys there was playing a trick and had programmed some jump scares into the computer or something? Maybe that’s something they do. Similar to jailbreaking an iPhone or pretending to control someone's computer remotely. I don’t know.
I found the card and dialed the number. It rang once before a young woman with a pleasant voice picked up.
- “Hi, Hanter’s Refurbishments! How may I help you?”
-- “Um hey I recently ordered a laptop. It came the other day and setup was normal but there’s something going on with the wallpaper. I changed it but then it changed back by itself and the photo –.”
- “One moment let me place you on a brief hold. Thank you!”
I hadn’t even finished speaking when she cut me off and put me on hold. Hold music began playing, some upbeat jingle shrill enough to drive anyone insane. I sat on hold for twenty minutes, then an hour. I ended the call and tried again, went through the same motions with the same woman only to continuously be placed on hold. Maybe they were really backed up with calls and other people experiencing issues with their orders. I called again and instead of the woman answering, an automated voice greeted me and sent me to hold immediately. Fuck it. I decided to wait it out. The fucking jingle was boring a hole into my head – the most annoyingly enthusiastic hold music. I could’ve strangled someone.
Suddenly the music stopped. Finally, someone was becoming available to help me. But instead of the call being redirected to a person, the automated voice returned with a simple
“Goodbye!”
And the call dropped.
I screamed, I literally screamed out of agony, out of pure fucking frustration.
I turned back to my laptop. The wallpaper changed itself again, back to the farmhouse and the pale faced thing. It moved in the field again. It was getting closer. Gaping holes for eyes, distended lips wet with saliva. It looked like it was laughing at my misery.
I left my laptop closed on my desk that night. No Netflix tonight, I needed to sleep and didn’t want the computer near me. I scrolled on TikTok for a bit before I dozed off…
The jingle woke me.
The fucking hold music. I picked up my phone in my fatigue thinking maybe Hanter’s was calling me back. It wasn’t coming from my phone. It was coming from my closed laptop.
I looked to the doorway, thinking the figure from the night before would be back, before getting out of bed and crossing to my laptop to shut it off. I opened the laptop and a wave of nausea crashed over me. The pale faced thing was even closer. The farmhouse was barely visible now, its face nearly filling the entire screen. Still grinning, still laughing. Bits of red stuff wedged in its teeth.
No matter how many times I held the power button, nothing was happening. It wasn’t shutting down, the jingle wasn’t stopping.
I fucking cracked. At that point I didn’t give a fuck if I needed the laptop for work. I picked it up and smashed it on the floor. Threw it again and again till the screen was shattered and keys were flying off. I just needed the jingle to stop and the pale face to be gone. I threw it down one last time with a final blow, satisfied with the damage I’d caused.
I picked the laptop up thinking it would be dead, but the screen was still glowing with light. Through the splintered glass of the screen I could see the farmhouse, the field of yellowing grass, the rocking chair, the oak tree – everything was there except for the pale faced thing. As if my havoc had caused it to flee the wallpaper.
The screen flickered off. The room went black. The cicadas outside filled the silence.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
It felt as if I were being watched.

Hey folks - following up on the Full list of all artists with badges : post I thought I'd try to start a full-on beginner's guide/FAQ for people who are just starting the game and/or have questions. I hope this will become a living document and all of you Soundmappers will start contributing your knowledge and insights.
I'm not a developer (though I think they're doing a great job!) or gaming expert, just a fan of the game. Hope this helps!

What is Soundmap?

Soundmap is a location-based mobile music collection game. Think Pokemon Go, but with songs. You collect the songs and then can trade them for other songs or “coins”, the in-game currency.

What kind of device do I need to play this?

This is an iPhone only app for now. Dev notes that an Android version is coming in the summer sometime.

Is Premium worth it?

Short answer: Yes. (if you intend to play the game long term)
Think of the standard edition as a demo. Reminds me of the shareware model from back-in-the-day (dating myself here). Premium unlocks so many features that make the game truly playable in the long run – expanded collection range, level, etc.
I’d say the lifetime license for $20 is a really good deal. You’re supporting the developers’ hard work so that the game can continue to grow and prosper. And believe me, I’m normally a person that doesn’t pay for ANYTHING on the App Store, but the hours I’ve put in to this game made it worth it. I’ve been neglecting Tears of the Kingdom in favor of this.
You can also get premium if you invite 8 friends to join but I haven’t tested that functionality. I’ve heard mixed reports of it being bugged, but the game purports to have 4500+ users go premium via this route.

Where are the best places to go to get songs/drops?

I don’t know how they determine where things drop but I'm guessing it’s some combination of cell phone signals and users who have the app installed. As such, places like open fields and parks are pretty sparse, but where I’ve found the most drops are:
· College campuses
· Malls/shopping centers
· Tourist attractions
Also remember to regularly “scan this area” when going to new places to refresh.

How can I tell if something is a rare, shiny, and/or epic on the map? Do they have their own drops?

Rares are easy to spot because they are darker and glowing, and they stand out against the yellow perimeter.
Shinies have their own drops (looks like a shiny mixed with a regular drop) but, if you’re lucky, can also be pulled from other common, uncommon and rare drops (this is very infrequent, however).
The developers initially created standalone epic drops but took them out of the game because of spoofing/cheating. As of now, the only way to pull an epic is from other drops, but they appear at an even lower probability than shinies.

I was going to pick up a drop and it’s greyed out now. Did someone get to it first?

Yes. Drops are shared with other players so someone might have gotten to it first! On the discord people have complained that in popular areas people camp out to wait for the timers to reset and then pick up the drops right away. So if you’re in an area where you don’t see a lot of grey drops enjoy it while you can :-)

What do the numbers on the epics mean?

The lower the number, the more valuable it is. #1 means it’s the first copy someone found from a drop. Think of it like collecting comic books or trading cards. Numbers over #25 just read #25+ and over #100 read 100+.

How does the trade economy work? What is X worth? How much can I get for X?

The game’s trade economy generally follows basic rules of supply and demand with commons being worth the least, uncommons more, then rares. What’s “fair” is subjective but in my experience the general range has been this, hard-to-find artists being more:
· Commons: 100 - 500 coins
· Uncommons: 300 - 1500 coins
· Rares: 500 – 3000 coins
· Common Shiny: 500 – 1500 coins
· Uncommon Shinies: 1000 – 10000 coins
If a track is really popular and/or new, expect to pay more (for example, the Kendrick/Drake beef tracks were at premium for a while).
Rare shinies and Epics are all over the place though, with people asking for literally a million+ for a #1 Kanye West epic. I don’t know if they get it but certainly 6 figure trades for the most popular shinies and epics are not out of the ordinary.
Hip-hop seems to be the most universally popular genre, with artists like Travis Scott and Playboi Carti fetching the highest trade prices. Female pop stars like Taylor, Lana, Billie, Olivia, etc. have selling power. K-Pop (StrayKids, NewJeans, BTS, etc.) are also very popular, but a bit more niche.

How do I earn coins?

· Buy via in-app purchases. This ranges from 2 bucks for 1000, to 100 bucks for 100,000.
· Invite friends. Get 1000 coins for each person that signs up.
· Through trade by offering songs.
· Get your free daily drops.
· Converting unwanted songs to coins.
I’m usually free to play on everything (aside from buying the premium license) so I ended up doing the latter three to earn. You can really stock up with some good rares or a couple of lucky shiny or epic pulls.
Converting commons is a good way to earn some coin quickly in the early game, and your pull to earn ratio is usually pretty good, especially if you’re able to farm drops in your area. However, as you get more coins, try to keep and sell commons via trade instead as you’ll be able to earn some coins and get a common back in the process.
Try to avoid converting uncommons or rares whenever possible. Even if you offer them cheaply for a few hundred coins it’s better than burning them outright. Also, you never know what people might be interested in – one person’s trash truly is another’s treasure. Conversely you can get some really great songs that someone is just looking to be rid of.

How do I convert songs to coins?

Long press (hold down) on an individual song to convert to coins. If you hit the … next to “Your Collection” it will give you the option to “Select to Sell” and you can convert songs to coins in bulk.

How do I offer coins in a trade?

When you “request to trade” you’ll see that there’s an “add coins” option. Click on that and add the desired amount of coins. If you are aiming to trade coins only, just use any throwaway common to facilitate the trade (no way to trade without using at least one song.)

What is the benefit of setting favorite artist(s)? Does it actually work?

The favorite artists does work to help you increase probability of picking up your favorites, moreso if the artist has a deep discography. I set Taylor Swift as a favorite and I picked up a bunch of her tracks. (I love classic hip-hop and R&B but I’m a Swiftie nonetheless lol). It does take time as the overall drop rate is still low even at 10x.
I would recommend setting one unique artist for each genre if you’re trying to accumulate. (I.e Taylor for pop, Kanye for hip-hop, SZA for R&B, etc). This can help with badge collection as you’ll see next.

What are artist badges and what are they used for?

When you collect a certain amount of songs by a particular artist, you earn a badge. This badge is a picture of the artists’ face (or a full body shot of the band), and you can designate a favorite artist badge to appear next to your username throughout the game. You can own multiple badges per artist. Badges are categorized as follows, depending on how many songs you collect:
· Bronze – 5 songs
· Silver – 20 songs
· Gold – 50 songs
· Platinum – entire discography (song count varies by artist)
· Diamond – entire discography plus 5 shiny songs
A full list of artists with badges can be found here on my other post about the topic. So far the badges themselves seem cosmetic but they are a great way to keep track of which artists are most popular (and thus fetch the highest trade prices).

How do I know how many songs are in a specific artist’s discography?

After you collect the gold badge for an artist, the game will provide you with the count of the remaining songs to collect for a platinum. As far as I know this is the only way (and thus only works for badge artists).

What are lootboxes and should I buy them?

Lootboxes are basically a way to purchase drops with coins. They can be very, very useful if used correctly and at the right phase(s) of the game.
~Daily Drop – free: You can select a free drop of the genre of your choice (or randomly). It resets everyday at midnight. Always pull this everyday. Most of the time it’s common, but I’ve pulled some really good uncommons and rares from this. And it’s free!
~Daily Free Coins – free: Self explanatory. Always pull this everyday. The reward gets larger and larger as your streak gets longer. For example, my next reward after 42 days of playing will be 1040 coins.
~Fav Artist Drop – 2000: This is a drop that becomes more valuable as you get more experienced/powerful in the game. It drops commons thru rare so I wouldn’t use this in the beginning. However, if you’re working towards a platinum badge it becomes invaluable as it becomes one of the only ways you can complete your collection as you find it harder and harder to trade for what you need.
~Best of the Best – 2000: You can pick your genre here and it gives you a pull from a random popular artist in that genre. Note: "best" doesn't mean "rare" necessarily. I've pulled rares but other folks have pulled uncommons. Also, "popular" artist doesn’t necessarily mean badge artist, so be mindful.
~Super Rare – 1000: This is the absolute best drop for beginners aiming to build a collection for trading. As it says, you get a guaranteed rare, though it’s a blind drop (can’t pick genre). With 10,000 coins you can get 10 rares and in conjunction with stuff you collect around town that’s a great platform to start building from.
~Today’s Top Hits – 1000: If you love the most popular songs you can try your luck here. I just tried this to see what I’d get and I got a Taylor Swift rare. Most of the time you should get a rare but not sure if it’s guaranteed.
~RapCaviar – 1000: This is for the hip-hop fans. As it’s curated you’ll get a currently popular artist, but rarity is not guaranteed. I pulled an Uncommon Yeat most recently.
-New Music Friday - This is a new one offering new music that comes out on Fridays. I think it's free but it's a little bugged right now so more to come on that.

What is the point of exp and levels?

Every time you level up you get a 2000+ coin bonus (more at higher levels), which is a nice incentive to stay active. The higher your exp, the higher your worldwide rank, which so far looks to be just bragging rights. The higher your level, the more exp it takes to level up.
How to earn XP:
· Common song: 20 XP
· Uncommon song: 50 XP
· Rare song: 100 XP
· Shiny song: 300 XP
· Epic song: 800 XP
· New drop visited: 20 XP
· New artist seen: 20 XP
· New person traded with: 20 XP
· Daily check in: 100 XP
However – the exp you gain in a week does have an impact on your league position.

What are leagues?

Leagues are another way to compete with other Soundmappers and earn a little bit of coins as well.
Each user is assigned to a league that consists of 30 random participants of a common rank. Like the artists, there are Bronze/SilveGold/Platinum/Diamond Tiers. You advance (or maintain your rank) by earning XP. Top players in each tier get some coins. If you rank highly enough you get promoted, if you are too low, you get demoted to a previous rank.
Check out the in-game League FAQ for more info. (I tried to link it here but it keeps trying to post some huge goofy Notion ad alongside the link so I'll not do that).

What is Discord and why does everyone keep talking about it?

From Wikipedia: Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform which allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media and files.
There is no in-game messaging system (yet) so Discord is the platform you can use to communicate with other gamers to negotiate trades, advertise things you’re selling, contact the developers about desired features. The devs are active and you can often get very good insights from the help and announcement channels.
However, as with any social chat community there is always the danger of people getting toxic/abusive in the general rooms. Generally I stick to direct messages about trades, and everyone I’ve spoken to in DMs is nice and polite, but your own experience may vary.
If you click on the “chat” icon in app it will automatically invite you to the discord.

Why am I banned?

If you’re unlucky you’ll find yourself locked out of login with an error that your account has been banned. Generally, if you’ve violated the terms of service (we all read those, right?).
From what I’ve seen, the following things can get you banned:
· Location spoofing (using apps/tools to pretend you’re in a different place than you actually are)
· Scamming (trying to trick people into giving up high value tracks for nothing, etc.)
· Invite spoofing (using fake emails to sign up for multiple accounts and then using those to get free premium
If you think you’ve been falsely/mistakenly banned, send a help ticket and plead your case.
That's all I've got for now. Good luck and have fun! I hope both this subreddit and the Soundmap community grows and prospers.

Hi, Everyone. Love this sub and I now find myself needing legal advice so now please allow me to partake of the legal wisdom fountain.
My wife and I are taking over a commercial farm operation in Washington State and have agreements with the previous owner to lease his land and buy his equipment. We signed a boilerplate land lease saying I own the crop but not the land, the owner is not liable for my operation, etc. with a percentage of sales going to him for rent. Typical stuff. We signed a purchase agreement on the equipment, transferring ownership the day of signing with first payment due by end of 2024. Again, typical in our world.
I have secured insurance and lending and literally built my business using these agreements. They are how I prove I own my future crop and current equipment.
The day we signed the agreements I took an iPhone picture and scan of the documents and gave him and his wife the hard copies (my wife was also there). We were chatting as I did the copies and they may not have been aware of what I was doing. No idea. But now it is very relevant.
In the last few weeks they have begun to hint that they wanted to change our agreements, maybe not wait until the end of the year for first payment. They asked if I considered the equipment mine or if they could consider it a partial equity ownership thing. Our agreement clearly transfers ownership “free of all liens, etc” so I told them I do in fact fully own the equipment. They even texted and asked if I had copies of our agreements and I did not respond to that, suspecting they were fishing.
Today my fears are being realized. They now say they never had a copy of our agreements with my signature and don’t remember that we signed anything.
I’m very saddened by this and don’t think they realize I have digital copies. But I am worried they may try something even then.
So my question is- what should I do at this point to protect our original agreements? Am I good since I have the scans and my wife as a witness? I have all the texts from them this last month proving they used to consider our agreement signed and sealed and were wanting to maybe change it. And the ones now where they act like we never did sign them but that we had only “met to discuss them” and not sign them.
Looking forward to your advice and thank you in advance!

With the M4 debut in the 2024 iPad Pros, just half a year after low-yield M3, it’s time to speculate what this means for the next desktops and MacBooks, as well as whether upgrade will be required for Siri Language Modeling.
In order of likelihood, this is the likely rollout of M4 across the Macs:

• June @ WWDC: Mac Studio, Mac mini / Mac mini Pro
• Sep Keynote: iPhone 16 line, Apple Watch SE, Apple Watch X
• Oct Video: MacBook line, iMac

Reasoning:
With all the latest acquisitions and white-papers focused on LM, we know WWDC is set to be AI-focused.
M4 is set to provide on-device LM, as already tested through Siri on the Apple Watch 9. Asking Siri rudimentary tasks and shortcuts equates to “simple” prompting of what’s been the smallest of language models.
M4 will enable Siri prompts to query all your on-device* data with robust contextual understanding. Siri will become the most personal chatbot.
WWDC will introduce a DevKit that should allow apps to fulfill complex prompts from anywhere in the OS. This will answer “Why can’t the Rabbit R1 just be an app?”
M4 Pro, Max, Ultra and/or Extreme are likely to be unveiled in some mix of desktops to developers at WWDC.
APPLE HAD BETTER NOT REQUIRE M4 TO DEVELOP THIS! That said, it is standard practice for Apple to limit their latest and greatest functionality to the new devices, regardless of prior Gen capability.
As for what looks promising, I was wrong in my prediction that M4 would increase the neural cores from the uniform 16 across the M-series. What Apple did announce was that CPU gains would augment the NPU and that, once again, the M SoC would have 16 neural cores.
This parity should permit all M-series SoC to perform all the language model functions, albeit at varying speed. IT SHOULD, but then again, we know how Apple can be with forced obsolescence.
*As for prompts requiring off-device transformers, as mentioned in MacRumors earlier this week, server farms are being constructed, largely-comprised of M2 Ultra machines. This pleases me, as I need my year-old M2 Ultra to remain capable for the M4 Gen.
If you’re a human and read this far, I appreciate your depth of attention and welcome your comments.

Hello everyone! We are just over a month from being reunited on the Farm together, and so I emerge from my Reddit slumber to bring you some words of wisdom in preparing to make the pilgrimage to Manchester, TN.
For those who don't recognize my username, I'm a Roo Medic and have been here for about 6 years (not including the cancelled years of 2020 and 2021). I've worked load-in, load-out, and every spot during the festival including the pods, the tents, the carts, roaming on foot, and more. In my day job, I'm a 911 paramedic who also does ICU level transports and special events in my spare time. All of that is to say, I've been around the block a time or two. I'm also a native of Tennessee, so I'm fairly acquainted with the temperamental nature of our state.
Whether you're a Rookie here with us for the first time or a veteran who's been around since the days of yore, I'd like to offer my completely unsolicited but necessary advice on ways to make your time the best and safest it can be.

Dealing with Emergencies 101

While a majority of Roovians won't experience a medical emergency during the course of Roo, the chance of seeing or being near one is relatively high. Between the heat, the "sand", and the stimuli present at Roo, something is bound to happen. In the event of any kind of emergency, but especially a medical one, here's a few steps you can take in order to maximize the chance's of us finding you and getting much needed help as soon as possible.

1. When you realize an emergency is occurring, the first thing to do is immediately send someone to find the nearest staff member. Whether this is a vendor, a light/sound crew member, a safety staff, or whoever, find someone, preferably with a radio. Once you find them, tell them you need medical staff and a BRIEF description of what is going on. Often, "my friend collapsed" is sufficient. After that, STAY WITH THE STAFF MEMBER UNLESS DIRECTED OTHERWISE. Unless you can provide VERY specific directions, you are much better off meeting us in a common spot (near a bar or major landmark) and guiding us to the patient, rather than us have to navigate an extremely large crowd of chaos without an idea of where we need to go. If you leave the area and no one knows how to get to the sick person, it wastes precious time. STAY PUT.
2. Once medical staff arrive, follow our instructions and answer every question you can, but only what we ask. Often, we will ask about fluid/food/drug intake. We are not here to judge, nor are we here to narc. We need to know EXACTLY what the sick person may have taken, as different combinations have different effects. Everything you tell us is protected by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). This FEDERAL law provides that any information you tell us is privileged information and will only be released to those who need it for healthcare purposes. This only includes law enforcement if they have a warrant or are investigating a crime, and can not be asked for to ascertain probable cause. TL;DR? What you say to us is safe with us.
3. STAY CALM. If you are not the one who is sick or injured, this is not your emergency. I understand how callous of a statement this may seem. However, when we need your help, a calm and collected bystander is leagues more useful than one who is screaming incoherently. Try to take a deep breath, and realize that we may ask you to take a step back or walk away if your actions are contributing to a worsening or unsafe scene. As I mentioned earlier, we don't narc on drug use. However, we will narc on those that assault or harm us. Don't waste your ticket, and just stay calm.

When to seek help

If you or someone with you experiences any of the following, follow my steps above and seek immediate help.
(Note, this is note an exhaustive nor all-inclusive list. If you think you need us, come find us. There is nothing too big or too small for us)

• Disorientation
• Agitation/aggression inconsistent with past experience
• Sudden changes in behavior
• Unresponsiveness
• Shallow/significant difficulty breathing
• Injuries (even minor ones can get much worse without proper care)
• Lack of sweating after prolonged sweating (this is sign of impending heat stroke)
• Assault (of any nature)

As mentioned earlier, everything you say to us stays with us. We are here to help.

What to pack

If you're inexperienced with camping or outdoor festivals in general, there are a few things I'd recommend bringing with in order to maximize your comfort and minimize your risk.

1. Durable, BROKEN IN, and comfortable shoes. Your shoe choice is probably the most integral part of anything you wear at Roo. Your feet will bear the weight of everything you carry, including yourself. The farm is over 700 acres, and after day 1, it shows. While things like the JamTrak and peddle carts decrease some of it, there is a LOT of walking. Getting a blister on day 1 will make the rest of your week into hell. A good pair of BROKEN IN hiking shoes/boots will be your best friend. While they may clash with your outfit, blisters match nothing. If you haven't already bought your shoes, do so now and start breaking them in. Walk around your yard or neighborhood as much as you can. You do not want to be wearing new and stiff shoes around the farm, trust me.
2. Sunscreen/thin outer clothing/something to protect you from the sun. The Tennessee sun is no joke. Our climate is a sub-tropical one, and it shows. There is very little shade outside of your tent or inside a vendor tent and there isn't always enough to go around for everyone. Even if your tan would make the cover of Sports Illustrated, please wear sunscreen or something to protect you from the harsh UV rays. In addition to the risk of sun poisoning or burns, direct sun exposure will rapidly deplete your fluid volumes and will dehydrate you extremely fast. Find sweat-resistant/sport sunscreen and apply frequently. Follow the manufacturer's instructions.
3. A hydration source. Whether this is a hydration pack like a Camelbak or a water bottle, you need to drink water. Again, the brutal Tennessee heat has made many a fool of those either naive or foolish enough to think they can go off of one bottle of water in the morning with a glance at a bottle later. You will sweat a lot, and if you don't, then see a doctor because sweat is natural. There are hydration stations all over Centeroo and at all of the showebathroom locations. While it may or may not be cold, it is VERY necessary. I personally carry a 100 mL Camelback that I refill about 3-4 times a day. Also, if you can't find/lose your hydration source, here's a tip. Go near the rails of any stage. There should be safety staff who have bottles/cans of water and they may be able to get you so much needed hydration. Another aspect of this is electrolytes. Additives like Liquid IV, Gatorade powder packs, and more, are incredibly useful in replenishing the electrolytes you sweat and pee out.
4. A list of your medications, medical history, and allergies. This can be crucial if you experience a medical emergency and aren't able to coherently communicate with us. We need to know what you take daily and if you have certain conditions (epilepsy, diabetes, POTS, etc), as this will guide how we treat you. If you don't want to write a physical list, both Android and IPhone have apps that allow us to access your medical info in an emergency without unlocking your phone. Additionally, have the number for someone who knows you that can communicate with us in the event you need to go to the hospital. Android IPhone Samsung
5. If you take specialized medications (insulin, Ozempic, etc) that require refrigeration, figure out how you're going to cool it now. A good cooler can be bought from any outdoor store, but do so now. The mark-ups at the local Walmart during the week of Roo is INSANE. In the event you can't reliably find a way to keep your meds cool, come find us at a medical tent, and we'll work something out. Additionally, if you take any meds daily, such as blood pressure meds, see if your provider can write you an extra prescription in order to have a surplus. You do not want to lose your only supply of meds for home at Roo, especially if you're travelling from abroad.

Ok, now with all of my preaching out of the way, I hope everyone is as excited for Roo as I am! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer.
P.S., Around when Roo starts, I'll post a picture from somewhere in the Farm. If you can find me, I'll provide the first person to meet me with a prize!

A number of important events took place on April 3rd and I’ve tried to place them as much as possible in chronological order together with the times of the girls’ cell phones, to see whether a pattern appears.
On April 3rd, the Samsung lost its battery power during the very early morning hours (at night) and the iPhone made its last attempt to make an emergency call. The last time the iPhone’s dBm value was recorded, was at 4 p.m. when “Mytiam”s phone number was displayed. After this event, the iPhone never recorded its dBm again. Not even on April 11, when it remained on for 65 minutes.
The exact times of some of the events remain unknown to the public; they might be available in the police files though. Based on the descriptions of said events I have tried to estimate their times. These events are marked with *. Here is the chronological order of events of April 3rd:
02:21 a.m. Accuweather is opened for 13 seconds on the Samsung and then closed again
07:00; Feliciano reports the disappearance at SINAPROC
07:36 a.m. the Samsung has only 1% battery left and is switched off
*After Feliciano reports at SINAPROC, he goes home to change his clothes (LitJ) (time unknown).
*SINAPROC goes to Miriam’s house and to the school to inspect Miriam’s house and the school. Miriam and Eileen are questioned by SINAPROC (SLIP).
09:00; Miriam’s neighbour Veronica sees a red truck with tinted windows drive past Miriam’s house and at high speed. We can assume that the driver(s) would have seen the SINAPROC cacars parked outside Miriam’s house and/or the Spanish school.
9:32 a.m. the iPhone is switched on for a few seconds. Two emergency call attempts are made to 911. This is the last time that emergency call attempts have been made or recorded. The dBm value remained at -113.
*After inspecting the school, 10 men are grouped to start a search at the Pianista, together with Feliciano.
*SINAPROC and Feliciano head to the Pianista. When they reach more or less at the height of “M”s finca, the SINAPROC leader of the group receives a phonecall from the “highest authority” to abandon their search on the Pianista trail and to return to Boquete to set up base for the Dutch ambassador’s visit on April 4th.
*The Personería starts its criminal investigation too (time unknown). May we assume that it started in the morning? Morning early or late(?)
*IMELCF searches Miriam’s home and K&L’s bedroom. They take fingerprints and DNA swabs, etc. (time unknown) The time might have been recorded in the files(?)
*“A few hours after SINAPROC had questioned Miriam” (SLIP), also the CID questions Miriam. So it could have been about 11:00 a.m. or noon(?)
*Feliciano decides to proceed on his own and he walks up to the Paddock. The times of Feliciano’s departure and arrival back in Bqt are unknown. We could estimate the time of his departure towards the mirador from the spot where the group had been halted, at about 11:00-11:30 a.m. (?)
*E.P. drives (with the same red truck as on April 1st) again to “M”s farm together with colleagues, to collect orchids (time unknown). Sidney (of the Feria) denies this and says that the truck was supposed to drive to Palo Alto that day.
11:47 a.m. iPhone is switched on and immediately off again without any further action. No emergency calls.
*Feliciano could have reached the Paddock at about 12:30-13:00 (?) Or was it later??
15:59; “Mytiam” is looked up in the contacts (not in Whatsapp!) Miriam had got a new cell phone number since March 31st. The dBm value is still at -113. This is the last time that the dBm value is recorded in the iPhone.
Because the dBm was no longer recorded by the iPhone, according to SLIP there is much to suggest that something decisive changed after 4:00 p.m. on April 3 (SLIP; page 121). SLIP suggests that the mobiles could have been brought from a place with absolutely no signal to a place with signal again. To avoid signal measurement the iPhone could only have been switched on and off from then on. The girls -or their phones- could have been taken to an area with absolutely no signal. This area could have even been on the Boquete side of the Mirador, where there are some isolated huts (SLIP).
I’d like to add my own thoughts on the dBm: without excluding any isolated area with no signal, either in front or behind the Mirador, another explanation could be that the phone(s) ended up in a Faraday cage. Either a natural Faraday cage (area, environment, metals, barriers) or man made, such as a Faraday bag/pouch. My personal belief is that the girls remained behind the Mirador, together with their phones.
As for a possible pattern: It seems that the red truck passed by Miriam's house at a very high speed just when SINAPROC was present at her house and the SINAPROC cars were presumably parked outside her house.
More exact times would be needed for the events marked as *

ANALYSIS:

• Following price action yesterday, Vol skew for QQQ points higher. Traders are increasing exposure to calls over puts ahead of NFP, but more importantly more buybacks are set for next week. Bears probably need NFP to deliver negative catalyst otherwise looks like market heads higher.
• Traders expect a softening in NFP by the way , but it does seem that official number has been deviating from the private payroll numbers, and numbers reported from softer data sources. So we probably see some more manipulation and NFP come hot.
• IV in put options is v low in SPX. VIX is also now.
• Now that we are past the FOMC, and have seen price action settle back into its pattern, traders not overly seeing risk.
• We can see NFP surprise hot and market dip, but with VIX where it is, probably see it recover quickly. Especially because Powell on Wednesday said he sees wage growth as a positive thing.
  
• If we look at AAPL, we had a pop on eanrings but earnings were not AMAZING. Just low expectations coupled with a nice buyback, and China not as bad as expected.
  
• AAPL upside looks limited today to 185/186, maximum it seems is 190 if data comes soft to support. Let's see.
  
• Gold - potentially seeing signs that traders may be betting on move higher again as we see some bullish divergence in skew. however, 2300 is the key level to support still. Above this, Id still say bulls in control.
  
• Oil - recent weakness as per my analysis on this sub, but maybe starting to see signs of possible short term move higher soon. Looks like skew has found a bottom and is pointing higher, as traders expect USD to move lower. Lets see
  

DATA LEDE:

• Australia Services PMI revision came slightly worse than expected, at 53.6 vs 54.2 expected
• French industrial production numbers MOM came worse than expected, -0.3% MOM, vs +0.3% forecast
• UK services PMI final revision came slightly better than expected.
• Eurozone unemployment rate in line with forecast at 6.5% , same as previous. Has been same for almost last 12 months.
• NON FARM PAYROLL NUMBERS OUT LATER, WITH UNEMPLOYMENT AND AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS.
• AFTER THAT, WE ALSO HAVE ISM SERVICES PMI, Which will have Services Prices data, which will be the key as that often leads PPI.

MARKETS

• SPX - Yesterday closed at 5066 after earlier testing 5010. After hours, with Apple earnings, it pushed higher to 5082.
• Traded flat there since. Traders wait for NFP.
• Nasdaq - Trading at 17,650. Yday, closed at 17550. Pushed higher to 17.660 after apple, and has been there since
• Dow Jones - Trades above 38,500. Up 0.67%
• HKG50 - Flat today at 18,500. Had a mammoth push yesterday of nearly 6%, so is normal for it to have a flat/proce correction day
• Ger40 - flat at the 18k level again today. Waiting for US reaction to NFP
• Uk100 new highs again.
• Oil - flat at 79. Out of the downtrend, will depend on dollar what its next step is.
• Gold - flat at the key level of 2300.

FX

• Dollar lower into NFP data today.
• Yesterday, dollar continued lower on continued effect of Powell dovishness. Market is trying to recalibrate some of the hawkishness it priced in. Before FOMC in march, it was at about 104, so dollar will try to move back towards this.
• This morning, it continues lower following yday.
• Has now fallen from 106.5 during the FOMC meeting to now 105.2. So down 1%, still has some room to come down.
• Yen is stronger as is CHF.
• AUD relatively flat.
• GBP and EUR relatively flat, down slightly but dollar down more.
• AS such, we have USDJPY trading down significantly to 153 again. We want to see it come below 152.
• GBPUSD trading flattish at 1.255 EURUSD trading at 1.074
• AUDUSD at 0.6583

EARNINGS:
AAPL

• Not actually an amazing quarter, just a product of relatively low expectations.
• EPS $1.53, EST. $1.50. Beat by 2%
• REVENUE $90.75B, EST. $90.33B. Beat by 0.5%.
• IPHONE REVENUE $45.96B, EST. $45.76B. Beat by 0.5%
• PRODUCTS REVENUE $66.89, EST. $66.95B. in line.
• GREATER CHINA REVENUE $16.37B, EST. $15.87B Beat by 3.2%
• WEARABLES, HOME & ACCESSORIES $7.91B, EST. $8.29B Miss by 5%
• TOTAL OPERERATING EXPENSES $14.37B, EST. $14.33B. More or less in line.
• MAC REVENUE $7.45B, EST. $6.79B. Beat by 10%
• SERVICE REVENUE $23.87, EST. $23.28B. Beat by 3%
• IPAD REVENUE $5.56B, EST. $5.91B. Miss by 6%
• WEARABLES REVENUE $7.91B, -9.6% Y/Y, EST. $8.29B. Miss by 4.6%
• GROSS PROFIT was a beat by 0.4%
• Gross margin came more or less in line.
• Operating margin was a slight miss.
• APPLE TO BUY BACK ADDITIONAL $110B OF SHARES, BOOSTS QUARTERLY DIVIDEND, 4.2% TO 25 CENTS/SHR
• This buyback amounts to around 4% of their market cap
• So most product line sales were in line. Wearables and iPad was weak
• Mac was a surprise beat
• China revenue was stronger than anticipated.
• Buyback was bullish as is sizeable.
• Service growth of 14% was much better than their YOY guide
• Product revenue was more or less in line.
• GUIDANCE:
• Said they expect low single digit revenue growth next quarter.
• Expectations were set for 1.2% YOY, so more or less in line.
• They said they expect service growth to remain in low double digit.
• They expect iPhone revenue to again decline YOY next quarter.
• Gross margin guidance for next quarter is 46%, in line with expectations.
• Said they set a new record in 12 countries this quarter.
• This year, iPhone has tough comps, as it recovered from supply Chian pent up demand last year. This is why iPhone sales were down 10% YOY, but its not bad.
• With a normal comp, iPhone revenue is more or less flat.
• Iphone revenue grew in China. Thats good considering all the negative news we have heard on Apple in China the last quarter.
• GEOGRAPHY:
• America revenue fell slightly
• Europe rose slightly
• Remained optimistic on Vision Pro

NET

• Strong quarter in truth. Beat and raise quarter.
• Investors were just disappointed that despite beating revenue this quarter, they didn’t raise full year guidance.
• BEAT revenue estimates by 1.5%
• BEAT EBIT estimate and guidance by 22.5%
• EPS of 0.16 beat estimates of 0.13 by 23%
• FCF beat estimates by 75%
• YOY growth in 100k ARR clients by 33%.
• Revenue growth at 30.5%
• ANNUAL GUIDANCE
• Reiterated their annual revenue guidance which met estimate
• Raised EPS guidance slightly by 0.03
• Raised EBIT guidance a bit,
• Cloudflare said that their guidance was conservative, due to geopolitical chaos around the globe.
• This is why, despite beating revenue guidance this time, they kept full year rev guidance the same.
• GUIDANCE:
• Sees 2Q Rev $393.5-394.5M vs $394.5M est. That’s a tiny miss. but being absolutely punished
• 20% growth. This at a valuation of 125x earnings. This sounds a lot but is reasonable considering the quality of Net.
• Talked a lot about go-to-market approach on the call.
• Said they have best in class products, and is building a go to market engine that will be the envy of the industry as well
• Said applicants rose 56% MOM for this last month
• They set a new record for large deals signed in the quarter
• Double digit YOY improvement in sales productivity
• Sees this trend to continue, due to robust pipeline and new talent. Is accelerating pace of new hires.
• Workers AI tool went live

MELI:

• Beat revenue estimate by 11.9%. Up 36% YOY.
• If we neutralise for FX, the revenue growth as 94%. So very strong growth here by deli.
• Beat EBIT estimate by 7.9%. EBIT was up 26% YOY
• Beat the 5.95 EPS estimate by 0.83 (beat by 14%)
• GMV growth rate was 21% YOY
• TPV growth rate was 10% YOY
• With Meli, thier biggest markets are Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
• COMMERCE REVENUE:
• Overall, v strong, grew 49% YOY
• Brazil was especially strong, up 72% YOY
• Mexico v strong up 54% YOY
• Argentina weaker, due to the economic problems going on there.
• FINTECH REVENUE
• Overall grew by 22%
• Brazil finch was up 38% YOY
• Mexico was up 69% YOY
• Argentina again lagged.
• SO overall, strong operational performance in Brazil and Mexico, which offset negative impact of weak macro in Argentina, and peso devaluation there.
• Remains confident in their vision.
• Argentina had FX devaluation and weak macro drove lower consumption. Some pressure on shipping costs too.
• So devaluation and macro problems there have hurt consumption over there.
• Meli Delivery Day - which is a day in the week that user chooses to get their products. This helps them to lwoer shipping costs by optimising way they group certain products
• TPV reaccelerated in Brazil which is bullish due to online payment with larger merchants and a change in POS GTM strategy
• Said ecommerce in LATAM is still VERY far from maturity, MEli is leading platform there.
• Is gradually extending to advertising.

FTNT:

• IMO: Fundamentally a bit reliant on legacy side of network security, hardware sales etc.
• Revenue of 1.35B more or less in line withe estimates, was up 7% YOY
• EPS of 0.43 beat estimates by 13%
• PROBLEM WAS
• BILLINGS WAS DOWN 6.4% YOY
• FCF was down by 6% YOY
• Product revenue was down 18% YOY
• Service revenue was up 24% YOY
• GUIDANCE:
• Q2 guidance: IN LINE GUIDANCE
• EPS of 0.39 - 0.41 beat estimates at midpoint by 2.5%
• Revenue of 1.375-1.435B beat at midpoint by 1%
• Gross Margin expected to be 77%
• FULL YEAR GUIDANCE: ACTUALLY RIASED GUIDANCE.
• EPS of 1.73-1.79 (beat estimates by 3%)
• Revenue of 5.745-5.845 beat estimates
• Services revenue expected to be 3.94-3.99
• Said they are diligently executing on strategy that was announced 6 months ago to leverage scale.
• SO guidance overall was not bad at all.
• Was this billings that was the problem.
• That and product revenue

MNST - overall good commentary in the earnings.

• Revenue came in in line with expectations
• EPS missed slightly at 42 vs 44 cents
• Revenue grew at 15.6% YOY which is in line with long term energy drinks growth rate
• Their energy drink sales were up 10.7%
• Gross margin improved to 54.1% from 52.8%
• Implemented price increases in certain international markets
• On earnigns call spoke about competition from Bang, Redbull etc, but did not mention CELH.
• However, said they maintained their leadership position in energy drink market.
• New product launches = strong innovation pipeline.
• Robust international growth, especially EMEA, Asia and LATAM.
• Sales outside of US were up 19%
• Expects to increase prices further in Q4 2024. Currently in Q2.
• Said that their pricing actions have not impacted demand negatively.
• Operating expenses were up due to higher market, and warehousing costs.
• Said they continue to see growth in energy drink market.

BKNG earnings:

• Revenue of 4.4B beat estimates by 3.5%, up 17% YOY
• EPS of 20.39 beat estimates by 44%, up 76% YOY
• Net income was 776M, up 192% YOY
• Adjusted EBITDA was 898m, up 54% YOY
• GROSS TRAVEL BOOKINGS was 43.5B, which beat estimates by 3%. Was a growth of 10% YOY
• Room nights booked was up 9% YOY
• SO clearly seeing very strong travel trends continue

MGA

• Asset impairments due to Fisker problems.
• MGA signed agreements with Fisker in 2020 to engineer and manufacture its Ocean SUV.
• Expects sales of 42.6-44.2B, down from prior guidance of 43.8B-45.4B
• So cut full year sales guidance by 3%
• This missed expectations by a wider 3%
• Cut their sales forecast due to supply chain issues
• Sees Adj. Net Income Of $1.5B - $1.7B (Prior $1.6B-$1.8B) - 5.8%
• Missed profit guidance on higher costs.
• Magna benefited from a 2% increase in global light vehicle production, which includes 2% and 11% higher production in North America and in China, respectively. This was offset slightly by a 2% decline in output in Europe.

MAG 7 NEWS:

• Apple up 6% on better than expected earnings. Expectation was set pretty low
• TSLA down in premarket without major news associated to it

COMPANY SPECIFIC:

• Yesterday, news that RIVN to receive $827M in Illiinois state funding to expand normal, Illinois facility
• PARA - yesterday news that Sony and Apollo have expressed interest in buying Paramount for $26B.
• AMGN - discontinues weight loss pill. Shifts focus to injectable obesity drug Maritide. Its in mid stage trial. They also reported earnings, better than expected EPS and sales, with narrow beats.
• SQ - up on earnings
• DVA - up following strong earnings and guidance boots.
• MNST up on earnings
• XPO up on earnings, revenue higher as core segment sees a bump in yield and shipments
• HSY up on earnings, beats top line and bottom line estimates, and reaffirms Fy 2024 outlook. Strength in North America confectionary sales
• BKNG up on earnings
• NET and FTNT down on earnings . Cybersecurity stocks like PANW down slightly in sentiment
• Some of the price targets on FTNT were v harsh, at 62 by Wells Fargo
• Coin down on earnings
• MGA down on earnings
• HWM price correction after big move yesterday
• Nio and Li and XPEV price correction after big move yesterday, and as hog market comes down today
• ADNT down on earnings
• FLR down on earnings

OTHER NEWS:

• Bank of America, citing EPFR data say:
• Investors pulled 600m from crypto funds during the week, most since June 2022.
• 9.8B inflow into equity funds.
• European stocks seeing inflows.
• ECB’s Lane:
• Tightening effects of previous monetary policy are still coming through due to lag
• Expectations are for inflation to normalise further.
• More data supports, more we can bring rates down.
• Fed moves matter but what matters most is our domestic issues
• Kremlin says that Macron’s latest statement of possible French intervention in Ukraine is very dangerous
• 40% of telecom companies in US say they cannot replace Huawei or ZTE equipment in US networks without additional gov funding.
• Freddie Mac yesterday said potential homebuyers likely won’t see relief from rising rates anytime soon. Said potential homebuyer have acclimatised to high rates.
• Finance ministers and central bank governors of China, Japan and S Korea say FX volatility can affect ASEAN prospects in near term. Japan and S Korea both struggling on FX weakness.
• BOK Gov Rhee says they are closely watching currency volatility.
• Israeli strike hits Syrian security building outside Damascus

To support my content, and to view more of my stock specific updates, please join Tradingedge
ANALYSIS:

• Following price action yesterday, Vol skew for QQQ points higher. Traders are increasing exposure to calls over puts ahead of NFP, but more importantly more buybacks are set for next week. Bears probably need NFP to deliver negative catalyst otherwise looks like market heads higher.
• Traders expect a softening in NFP by the way , but it does seem that official number has been deviating from the private payroll numbers, and numbers reported from softer data sources. So we probably see some more manipulation and NFP come hot.
• IV in put options is v low in SPX. VIX is also now.
• Now that we are past the FOMC, and have seen price action settle back into its pattern, traders not overly seeing risk.
• We can see NFP surprise hot and market dip, but with VIX where it is, probably see it recover quickly. Especially because Powell on Wednesday said he sees wage growth as a positive thing.
  
• If we look at AAPL, we had a pop on eanrings but earnings were not AMAZING. Just low expectations coupled with a nice buyback, and China not as bad as expected.
  
• AAPL upside looks limited today to 185/186, maximum it seems is 190 if data comes soft to support. Let's see.
  
• Gold - potentially seeing signs that traders may be betting on move higher again as we see some bullish divergence in skew. however, 2300 is the key level to support still. Above this, Id still say bulls in control.
  
• Oil - recent weakness as per my analysis on this sub, but maybe starting to see signs of possible short term move higher soon. Looks like skew has found a bottom and is pointing higher, as traders expect USD to move lower. Lets see
  

DATA LEDE:

• Australia Services PMI revision came slightly worse than expected, at 53.6 vs 54.2 expected
• French industrial production numbers MOM came worse than expected, -0.3% MOM, vs +0.3% forecast
• UK services PMI final revision came slightly better than expected.
• Eurozone unemployment rate in line with forecast at 6.5% , same as previous. Has been same for almost last 12 months.
• NON FARM PAYROLL NUMBERS OUT LATER, WITH UNEMPLOYMENT AND AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS.
• AFTER THAT, WE ALSO HAVE ISM SERVICES PMI, Which will have Services Prices data, which will be the key as that often leads PPI.

MARKETS

• SPX - Yesterday closed at 5066 after earlier testing 5010. After hours, with Apple earnings, it pushed higher to 5082.
• Traded flat there since. Traders wait for NFP.
• Nasdaq - Trading at 17,650. Yday, closed at 17550. Pushed higher to 17.660 after apple, and has been there since
• Dow Jones - Trades above 38,500. Up 0.67%
• HKG50 - Flat today at 18,500. Had a mammoth push yesterday of nearly 6%, so is normal for it to have a flat/proce correction day
• Ger40 - flat at the 18k level again today. Waiting for US reaction to NFP
• Uk100 new highs again.
• Oil - flat at 79. Out of the downtrend, will depend on dollar what its next step is.
• Gold - flat at the key level of 2300.

FX

• Dollar lower into NFP data today.
• Yesterday, dollar continued lower on continued effect of Powell dovishness. Market is trying to recalibrate some of the hawkishness it priced in. Before FOMC in march, it was at about 104, so dollar will try to move back towards this.
• This morning, it continues lower following yday.
• Has now fallen from 106.5 during the FOMC meeting to now 105.2. So down 1%, still has some room to come down.
• Yen is stronger as is CHF.
• AUD relatively flat.
• GBP and EUR relatively flat, down slightly but dollar down more.
• AS such, we have USDJPY trading down significantly to 153 again. We want to see it come below 152.
• GBPUSD trading flattish at 1.255 EURUSD trading at 1.074
• AUDUSD at 0.6583

EARNINGS:
AAPL

• Not actually an amazing quarter, just a product of relatively low expectations.
• EPS $1.53, EST. $1.50. Beat by 2%
• REVENUE $90.75B, EST. $90.33B. Beat by 0.5%.
• IPHONE REVENUE $45.96B, EST. $45.76B. Beat by 0.5%
• PRODUCTS REVENUE $66.89, EST. $66.95B. in line.
• GREATER CHINA REVENUE $16.37B, EST. $15.87B Beat by 3.2%
• WEARABLES, HOME & ACCESSORIES $7.91B, EST. $8.29B Miss by 5%
• TOTAL OPERERATING EXPENSES $14.37B, EST. $14.33B. More or less in line.
• MAC REVENUE $7.45B, EST. $6.79B. Beat by 10%
• SERVICE REVENUE $23.87, EST. $23.28B. Beat by 3%
• IPAD REVENUE $5.56B, EST. $5.91B. Miss by 6%
• WEARABLES REVENUE $7.91B, -9.6% Y/Y, EST. $8.29B. Miss by 4.6%
• GROSS PROFIT was a beat by 0.4%
• Gross margin came more or less in line.
• Operating margin was a slight miss.
• APPLE TO BUY BACK ADDITIONAL $110B OF SHARES, BOOSTS QUARTERLY DIVIDEND, 4.2% TO 25 CENTS/SHR
• This buyback amounts to around 4% of their market cap
• So most product line sales were in line. Wearables and iPad was weak
• Mac was a surprise beat
• China revenue was stronger than anticipated.
• Buyback was bullish as is sizeable.
• Service growth of 14% was much better than their YOY guide
• Product revenue was more or less in line.
• GUIDANCE:
• Said they expect low single digit revenue growth next quarter.
• Expectations were set for 1.2% YOY, so more or less in line.
• They said they expect service growth to remain in low double digit.
• They expect iPhone revenue to again decline YOY next quarter.
• Gross margin guidance for next quarter is 46%, in line with expectations.
• Said they set a new record in 12 countries this quarter.
• This year, iPhone has tough comps, as it recovered from supply Chian pent up demand last year. This is why iPhone sales were down 10% YOY, but its not bad.
• With a normal comp, iPhone revenue is more or less flat.
• Iphone revenue grew in China. Thats good considering all the negative news we have heard on Apple in China the last quarter.
• GEOGRAPHY:
• America revenue fell slightly
• Europe rose slightly
• Remained optimistic on Vision Pro

NET

• Strong quarter in truth. Beat and raise quarter.
• Investors were just disappointed that despite beating revenue this quarter, they didn’t raise full year guidance.
• BEAT revenue estimates by 1.5%
• BEAT EBIT estimate and guidance by 22.5%
• EPS of 0.16 beat estimates of 0.13 by 23%
• FCF beat estimates by 75%
• YOY growth in 100k ARR clients by 33%.
• Revenue growth at 30.5%
• ANNUAL GUIDANCE
• Reiterated their annual revenue guidance which met estimate
• Raised EPS guidance slightly by 0.03
• Raised EBIT guidance a bit,
• Cloudflare said that their guidance was conservative, due to geopolitical chaos around the globe.
• This is why, despite beating revenue guidance this time, they kept full year rev guidance the same.
• GUIDANCE:
• Sees 2Q Rev $393.5-394.5M vs $394.5M est. That’s a tiny miss. but being absolutely punished
• 20% growth. This at a valuation of 125x earnings. This sounds a lot but is reasonable considering the quality of Net.
• Talked a lot about go-to-market approach on the call.
• Said they have best in class products, and is building a go to market engine that will be the envy of the industry as well
• Said applicants rose 56% MOM for this last month
• They set a new record for large deals signed in the quarter
• Double digit YOY improvement in sales productivity
• Sees this trend to continue, due to robust pipeline and new talent. Is accelerating pace of new hires.
• Workers AI tool went live

MELI:

• Beat revenue estimate by 11.9%. Up 36% YOY.
• If we neutralise for FX, the revenue growth as 94%. So very strong growth here by deli.
• Beat EBIT estimate by 7.9%. EBIT was up 26% YOY
• Beat the 5.95 EPS estimate by 0.83 (beat by 14%)
• GMV growth rate was 21% YOY
• TPV growth rate was 10% YOY
• With Meli, thier biggest markets are Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
• COMMERCE REVENUE:
• Overall, v strong, grew 49% YOY
• Brazil was especially strong, up 72% YOY
• Mexico v strong up 54% YOY
• Argentina weaker, due to the economic problems going on there.
• FINTECH REVENUE
• Overall grew by 22%
• Brazil finch was up 38% YOY
• Mexico was up 69% YOY
• Argentina again lagged.
• SO overall, strong operational performance in Brazil and Mexico, which offset negative impact of weak macro in Argentina, and peso devaluation there.
• Remains confident in their vision.
• Argentina had FX devaluation and weak macro drove lower consumption. Some pressure on shipping costs too.
• So devaluation and macro problems there have hurt consumption over there.
• Meli Delivery Day - which is a day in the week that user chooses to get their products. This helps them to lwoer shipping costs by optimising way they group certain products
• TPV reaccelerated in Brazil which is bullish due to online payment with larger merchants and a change in POS GTM strategy
• Said ecommerce in LATAM is still VERY far from maturity, MEli is leading platform there.
• Is gradually extending to advertising.

FTNT:

• IMO: Fundamentally a bit reliant on legacy side of network security, hardware sales etc.
• Revenue of 1.35B more or less in line withe estimates, was up 7% YOY
• EPS of 0.43 beat estimates by 13%
• PROBLEM WAS
• BILLINGS WAS DOWN 6.4% YOY
• FCF was down by 6% YOY
• Product revenue was down 18% YOY
• Service revenue was up 24% YOY
• GUIDANCE:
• Q2 guidance: IN LINE GUIDANCE
• EPS of 0.39 - 0.41 beat estimates at midpoint by 2.5%
• Revenue of 1.375-1.435B beat at midpoint by 1%
• Gross Margin expected to be 77%
• FULL YEAR GUIDANCE: ACTUALLY RIASED GUIDANCE.
• EPS of 1.73-1.79 (beat estimates by 3%)
• Revenue of 5.745-5.845 beat estimates
• Services revenue expected to be 3.94-3.99
• Said they are diligently executing on strategy that was announced 6 months ago to leverage scale.
• SO guidance overall was not bad at all.
• Was this billings that was the problem.
• That and product revenue

MNST - overall good commentary in the earnings.

• Revenue came in in line with expectations
• EPS missed slightly at 42 vs 44 cents
• Revenue grew at 15.6% YOY which is in line with long term energy drinks growth rate
• Their energy drink sales were up 10.7%
• Gross margin improved to 54.1% from 52.8%
• Implemented price increases in certain international markets
• On earnigns call spoke about competition from Bang, Redbull etc, but did not mention CELH.
• However, said they maintained their leadership position in energy drink market.
• New product launches = strong innovation pipeline.
• Robust international growth, especially EMEA, Asia and LATAM.
• Sales outside of US were up 19%
• Expects to increase prices further in Q4 2024. Currently in Q2.
• Said that their pricing actions have not impacted demand negatively.
• Operating expenses were up due to higher market, and warehousing costs.
• Said they continue to see growth in energy drink market.

BKNG earnings:

• Revenue of 4.4B beat estimates by 3.5%, up 17% YOY
• EPS of 20.39 beat estimates by 44%, up 76% YOY
• Net income was 776M, up 192% YOY
• Adjusted EBITDA was 898m, up 54% YOY
• GROSS TRAVEL BOOKINGS was 43.5B, which beat estimates by 3%. Was a growth of 10% YOY
• Room nights booked was up 9% YOY
• SO clearly seeing very strong travel trends continue

MGA

• Asset impairments due to Fisker problems.
• MGA signed agreements with Fisker in 2020 to engineer and manufacture its Ocean SUV.
• Expects sales of 42.6-44.2B, down from prior guidance of 43.8B-45.4B
• So cut full year sales guidance by 3%
• This missed expectations by a wider 3%
• Cut their sales forecast due to supply chain issues
• Sees Adj. Net Income Of $1.5B - $1.7B (Prior $1.6B-$1.8B) - 5.8%
• Missed profit guidance on higher costs.
• Magna benefited from a 2% increase in global light vehicle production, which includes 2% and 11% higher production in North America and in China, respectively. This was offset slightly by a 2% decline in output in Europe.

MAG 7 NEWS:

• Apple up 6% on better than expected earnings. Expectation was set pretty low
• TSLA down in premarket without major news associated to it

COMPANY SPECIFIC:

• Yesterday, news that RIVN to receive $827M in Illiinois state funding to expand normal, Illinois facility
• PARA - yesterday news that Sony and Apollo have expressed interest in buying Paramount for $26B.
• AMGN - discontinues weight loss pill. Shifts focus to injectable obesity drug Maritide. Its in mid stage trial. They also reported earnings, better than expected EPS and sales, with narrow beats.
• SQ - up on earnings
• DVA - up following strong earnings and guidance boots.
• MNST up on earnings
• XPO up on earnings, revenue higher as core segment sees a bump in yield and shipments
• HSY up on earnings, beats top line and bottom line estimates, and reaffirms Fy 2024 outlook. Strength in North America confectionary sales
• BKNG up on earnings
• NET and FTNT down on earnings . Cybersecurity stocks like PANW down slightly in sentiment
• Some of the price targets on FTNT were v harsh, at 62 by Wells Fargo
• Coin down on earnings
• MGA down on earnings
• HWM price correction after big move yesterday
• Nio and Li and XPEV price correction after big move yesterday, and as hog market comes down today
• ADNT down on earnings
• FLR down on earnings

OTHER NEWS:

• Bank of America, citing EPFR data say:
• Investors pulled 600m from crypto funds during the week, most since June 2022.
• 9.8B inflow into equity funds.
• European stocks seeing inflows.
• ECB’s Lane:
• Tightening effects of previous monetary policy are still coming through due to lag
• Expectations are for inflation to normalise further.
• More data supports, more we can bring rates down.
• Fed moves matter but what matters most is our domestic issues
• Kremlin says that Macron’s latest statement of possible French intervention in Ukraine is very dangerous
• 40% of telecom companies in US say they cannot replace Huawei or ZTE equipment in US networks without additional gov funding.
• Freddie Mac yesterday said potential homebuyers likely won’t see relief from rising rates anytime soon. Said potential homebuyer have acclimatised to high rates.
• Finance ministers and central bank governors of China, Japan and S Korea say FX volatility can affect ASEAN prospects in near term. Japan and S Korea both struggling on FX weakness.
• BOK Gov Rhee says they are closely watching currency volatility.
• Israeli strike hits Syrian security building outside Damascus

To support my content, and to view more of my stock specific updates, please join Tradingedge
​

To support my content, and to view more of my stock specific updates, please join Tradingedge
ANALYSIS:

• Following price action yesterday, Vol skew for QQQ points higher. Traders are increasing exposure to calls over puts ahead of NFP, but more importantly more buybacks are set for next week. Bears probably need NFP to deliver negative catalyst otherwise looks like market heads higher.
• Traders expect a softening in NFP by the way , but it does seem that official number has been deviating from the private payroll numbers, and numbers reported from softer data sources. So we probably see some more manipulation and NFP come hot.
• IV in put options is v low in SPX. VIX is also now.
• Now that we are past the FOMC, and have seen price action settle back into its pattern, traders not overly seeing risk.
• We can see NFP surprise hot and market dip, but with VIX where it is, probably see it recover quickly. Especially because Powell on Wednesday said he sees wage growth as a positive thing.
  
• If we look at AAPL, we had a pop on eanrings but earnings were not AMAZING. Just low expectations coupled with a nice buyback, and China not as bad as expected.
  
• AAPL upside looks limited today to 185/186, maximum it seems is 190 if data comes soft to support. Let's see.
  
• Gold - potentially seeing signs that traders may be betting on move higher again as we see some bullish divergence in skew. however, 2300 is the key level to support still. Above this, Id still say bulls in control.
  
• Oil - recent weakness as per my analysis on this sub, but maybe starting to see signs of possible short term move higher soon. Looks like skew has found a bottom and is pointing higher, as traders expect USD to move lower. Lets see
  

DATA LEDE:

• Australia Services PMI revision came slightly worse than expected, at 53.6 vs 54.2 expected
• French industrial production numbers MOM came worse than expected, -0.3% MOM, vs +0.3% forecast
• UK services PMI final revision came slightly better than expected.
• Eurozone unemployment rate in line with forecast at 6.5% , same as previous. Has been same for almost last 12 months.
• NON FARM PAYROLL NUMBERS OUT LATER, WITH UNEMPLOYMENT AND AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS.
• AFTER THAT, WE ALSO HAVE ISM SERVICES PMI, Which will have Services Prices data, which will be the key as that often leads PPI.

MARKETS

• SPX - Yesterday closed at 5066 after earlier testing 5010. After hours, with Apple earnings, it pushed higher to 5082.
• Traded flat there since. Traders wait for NFP.
• Nasdaq - Trading at 17,650. Yday, closed at 17550. Pushed higher to 17.660 after apple, and has been there since
• Dow Jones - Trades above 38,500. Up 0.67%
• HKG50 - Flat today at 18,500. Had a mammoth push yesterday of nearly 6%, so is normal for it to have a flat/proce correction day
• Ger40 - flat at the 18k level again today. Waiting for US reaction to NFP
• Uk100 new highs again.
• Oil - flat at 79. Out of the downtrend, will depend on dollar what its next step is.
• Gold - flat at the key level of 2300.

FX

• Dollar lower into NFP data today.
• Yesterday, dollar continued lower on continued effect of Powell dovishness. Market is trying to recalibrate some of the hawkishness it priced in. Before FOMC in march, it was at about 104, so dollar will try to move back towards this.
• This morning, it continues lower following yday.
• Has now fallen from 106.5 during the FOMC meeting to now 105.2. So down 1%, still has some room to come down.
• Yen is stronger as is CHF.
• AUD relatively flat.
• GBP and EUR relatively flat, down slightly but dollar down more.
• AS such, we have USDJPY trading down significantly to 153 again. We want to see it come below 152.
• GBPUSD trading flattish at 1.255 EURUSD trading at 1.074
• AUDUSD at 0.6583

EARNINGS:
AAPL

• Not actually an amazing quarter, just a product of relatively low expectations.
• EPS $1.53, EST. $1.50. Beat by 2%
• REVENUE $90.75B, EST. $90.33B. Beat by 0.5%.
• IPHONE REVENUE $45.96B, EST. $45.76B. Beat by 0.5%
• PRODUCTS REVENUE $66.89, EST. $66.95B. in line.
• GREATER CHINA REVENUE $16.37B, EST. $15.87B Beat by 3.2%
• WEARABLES, HOME & ACCESSORIES $7.91B, EST. $8.29B Miss by 5%
• TOTAL OPERERATING EXPENSES $14.37B, EST. $14.33B. More or less in line.
• MAC REVENUE $7.45B, EST. $6.79B. Beat by 10%
• SERVICE REVENUE $23.87, EST. $23.28B. Beat by 3%
• IPAD REVENUE $5.56B, EST. $5.91B. Miss by 6%
• WEARABLES REVENUE $7.91B, -9.6% Y/Y, EST. $8.29B. Miss by 4.6%
• GROSS PROFIT was a beat by 0.4%
• Gross margin came more or less in line.
• Operating margin was a slight miss.
• APPLE TO BUY BACK ADDITIONAL $110B OF SHARES, BOOSTS QUARTERLY DIVIDEND, 4.2% TO 25 CENTS/SHR
• This buyback amounts to around 4% of their market cap
• So most product line sales were in line. Wearables and iPad was weak
• Mac was a surprise beat
• China revenue was stronger than anticipated.
• Buyback was bullish as is sizeable.
• Service growth of 14% was much better than their YOY guide
• Product revenue was more or less in line.
• GUIDANCE:
• Said they expect low single digit revenue growth next quarter.
• Expectations were set for 1.2% YOY, so more or less in line.
• They said they expect service growth to remain in low double digit.
• They expect iPhone revenue to again decline YOY next quarter.
• Gross margin guidance for next quarter is 46%, in line with expectations.
• Said they set a new record in 12 countries this quarter.
• This year, iPhone has tough comps, as it recovered from supply Chian pent up demand last year. This is why iPhone sales were down 10% YOY, but its not bad.
• With a normal comp, iPhone revenue is more or less flat.
• Iphone revenue grew in China. Thats good considering all the negative news we have heard on Apple in China the last quarter.
• GEOGRAPHY:
• America revenue fell slightly
• Europe rose slightly
• Remained optimistic on Vision Pro

NET

• Strong quarter in truth. Beat and raise quarter.
• Investors were just disappointed that despite beating revenue this quarter, they didn’t raise full year guidance.
• BEAT revenue estimates by 1.5%
• BEAT EBIT estimate and guidance by 22.5%
• EPS of 0.16 beat estimates of 0.13 by 23%
• FCF beat estimates by 75%
• YOY growth in 100k ARR clients by 33%.
• Revenue growth at 30.5%
• ANNUAL GUIDANCE
• Reiterated their annual revenue guidance which met estimate
• Raised EPS guidance slightly by 0.03
• Raised EBIT guidance a bit,
• Cloudflare said that their guidance was conservative, due to geopolitical chaos around the globe.
• This is why, despite beating revenue guidance this time, they kept full year rev guidance the same.
• GUIDANCE:
• Sees 2Q Rev $393.5-394.5M vs $394.5M est. That’s a tiny miss. but being absolutely punished
• 20% growth. This at a valuation of 125x earnings. This sounds a lot but is reasonable considering the quality of Net.
• Talked a lot about go-to-market approach on the call.
• Said they have best in class products, and is building a go to market engine that will be the envy of the industry as well
• Said applicants rose 56% MOM for this last month
• They set a new record for large deals signed in the quarter
• Double digit YOY improvement in sales productivity
• Sees this trend to continue, due to robust pipeline and new talent. Is accelerating pace of new hires.
• Workers AI tool went live

MELI:

• Beat revenue estimate by 11.9%. Up 36% YOY.
• If we neutralise for FX, the revenue growth as 94%. So very strong growth here by deli.
• Beat EBIT estimate by 7.9%. EBIT was up 26% YOY
• Beat the 5.95 EPS estimate by 0.83 (beat by 14%)
• GMV growth rate was 21% YOY
• TPV growth rate was 10% YOY
• With Meli, thier biggest markets are Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
• COMMERCE REVENUE:
• Overall, v strong, grew 49% YOY
• Brazil was especially strong, up 72% YOY
• Mexico v strong up 54% YOY
• Argentina weaker, due to the economic problems going on there.
• FINTECH REVENUE
• Overall grew by 22%
• Brazil finch was up 38% YOY
• Mexico was up 69% YOY
• Argentina again lagged.
• SO overall, strong operational performance in Brazil and Mexico, which offset negative impact of weak macro in Argentina, and peso devaluation there.
• Remains confident in their vision.
• Argentina had FX devaluation and weak macro drove lower consumption. Some pressure on shipping costs too.
• So devaluation and macro problems there have hurt consumption over there.
• Meli Delivery Day - which is a day in the week that user chooses to get their products. This helps them to lwoer shipping costs by optimising way they group certain products
• TPV reaccelerated in Brazil which is bullish due to online payment with larger merchants and a change in POS GTM strategy
• Said ecommerce in LATAM is still VERY far from maturity, MEli is leading platform there.
• Is gradually extending to advertising.

FTNT:

• IMO: Fundamentally a bit reliant on legacy side of network security, hardware sales etc.
• Revenue of 1.35B more or less in line withe estimates, was up 7% YOY
• EPS of 0.43 beat estimates by 13%
• PROBLEM WAS
• BILLINGS WAS DOWN 6.4% YOY
• FCF was down by 6% YOY
• Product revenue was down 18% YOY
• Service revenue was up 24% YOY
• GUIDANCE:
• Q2 guidance: IN LINE GUIDANCE
• EPS of 0.39 - 0.41 beat estimates at midpoint by 2.5%
• Revenue of 1.375-1.435B beat at midpoint by 1%
• Gross Margin expected to be 77%
• FULL YEAR GUIDANCE: ACTUALLY RIASED GUIDANCE.
• EPS of 1.73-1.79 (beat estimates by 3%)
• Revenue of 5.745-5.845 beat estimates
• Services revenue expected to be 3.94-3.99
• Said they are diligently executing on strategy that was announced 6 months ago to leverage scale.
• SO guidance overall was not bad at all.
• Was this billings that was the problem.
• That and product revenue

MNST - overall good commentary in the earnings.

• Revenue came in in line with expectations
• EPS missed slightly at 42 vs 44 cents
• Revenue grew at 15.6% YOY which is in line with long term energy drinks growth rate
• Their energy drink sales were up 10.7%
• Gross margin improved to 54.1% from 52.8%
• Implemented price increases in certain international markets
• On earnigns call spoke about competition from Bang, Redbull etc, but did not mention CELH.
• However, said they maintained their leadership position in energy drink market.
• New product launches = strong innovation pipeline.
• Robust international growth, especially EMEA, Asia and LATAM.
• Sales outside of US were up 19%
• Expects to increase prices further in Q4 2024. Currently in Q2.
• Said that their pricing actions have not impacted demand negatively.
• Operating expenses were up due to higher market, and warehousing costs.
• Said they continue to see growth in energy drink market.

BKNG earnings:

• Revenue of 4.4B beat estimates by 3.5%, up 17% YOY
• EPS of 20.39 beat estimates by 44%, up 76% YOY
• Net income was 776M, up 192% YOY
• Adjusted EBITDA was 898m, up 54% YOY
• GROSS TRAVEL BOOKINGS was 43.5B, which beat estimates by 3%. Was a growth of 10% YOY
• Room nights booked was up 9% YOY
• SO clearly seeing very strong travel trends continue

MGA

• Asset impairments due to Fisker problems.
• MGA signed agreements with Fisker in 2020 to engineer and manufacture its Ocean SUV.
• Expects sales of 42.6-44.2B, down from prior guidance of 43.8B-45.4B
• So cut full year sales guidance by 3%
• This missed expectations by a wider 3%
• Cut their sales forecast due to supply chain issues
• Sees Adj. Net Income Of $1.5B - $1.7B (Prior $1.6B-$1.8B) - 5.8%
• Missed profit guidance on higher costs.
• Magna benefited from a 2% increase in global light vehicle production, which includes 2% and 11% higher production in North America and in China, respectively. This was offset slightly by a 2% decline in output in Europe.

MAG 7 NEWS:

• Apple up 6% on better than expected earnings. Expectation was set pretty low
• TSLA down in premarket without major news associated to it

COMPANY SPECIFIC:

• Yesterday, news that RIVN to receive $827M in Illiinois state funding to expand normal, Illinois facility
• PARA - yesterday news that Sony and Apollo have expressed interest in buying Paramount for $26B.
• AMGN - discontinues weight loss pill. Shifts focus to injectable obesity drug Maritide. Its in mid stage trial. They also reported earnings, better than expected EPS and sales, with narrow beats.
• SQ - up on earnings
• DVA - up following strong earnings and guidance boots.
• MNST up on earnings
• XPO up on earnings, revenue higher as core segment sees a bump in yield and shipments
• HSY up on earnings, beats top line and bottom line estimates, and reaffirms Fy 2024 outlook. Strength in North America confectionary sales
• BKNG up on earnings
• NET and FTNT down on earnings . Cybersecurity stocks like PANW down slightly in sentiment
• Some of the price targets on FTNT were v harsh, at 62 by Wells Fargo
• Coin down on earnings
• MGA down on earnings
• HWM price correction after big move yesterday
• Nio and Li and XPEV price correction after big move yesterday, and as hog market comes down today
• ADNT down on earnings
• FLR down on earnings

OTHER NEWS:

• Bank of America, citing EPFR data say:
• Investors pulled 600m from crypto funds during the week, most since June 2022.
• 9.8B inflow into equity funds.
• European stocks seeing inflows.
• ECB’s Lane:
• Tightening effects of previous monetary policy are still coming through due to lag
• Expectations are for inflation to normalise further.
• More data supports, more we can bring rates down.
• Fed moves matter but what matters most is our domestic issues
• Kremlin says that Macron’s latest statement of possible French intervention in Ukraine is very dangerous
• 40% of telecom companies in US say they cannot replace Huawei or ZTE equipment in US networks without additional gov funding.
• Freddie Mac yesterday said potential homebuyers likely won’t see relief from rising rates anytime soon. Said potential homebuyer have acclimatised to high rates.
• Finance ministers and central bank governors of China, Japan and S Korea say FX volatility can affect ASEAN prospects in near term. Japan and S Korea both struggling on FX weakness.
• BOK Gov Rhee says they are closely watching currency volatility.
• Israeli strike hits Syrian security building outside Damascus

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ANALYSIS:

• Following price action yesterday, Vol skew for QQQ points higher. Traders are increasing exposure to calls over puts ahead of NFP, but more importantly more buybacks are set for next week. Bears probably need NFP to deliver negative catalyst otherwise looks like market heads higher.
• Traders expect a softening in NFP by the way , but it does seem that official number has been deviating from the private payroll numbers, and numbers reported from softer data sources. So we probably see some more manipulation and NFP come hot.
• IV in put options is v low in SPX. VIX is also now.
• Now that we are past the FOMC, and have seen price action settle back into its pattern, traders not overly seeing risk.
• We can see NFP surprise hot and market dip, but with VIX where it is, probably see it recover quickly. Especially because Powell on Wednesday said he sees wage growth as a positive thing.
  
• If we look at AAPL, we had a pop on eanrings but earnings were not AMAZING. Just low expectations coupled with a nice buyback, and China not as bad as expected.
  
• AAPL upside looks limited today to 185/186, maximum it seems is 190 if data comes soft to support. Let's see.
  
• Gold - potentially seeing signs that traders may be betting on move higher again as we see some bullish divergence in skew. however, 2300 is the key level to support still. Above this, Id still say bulls in control.
  
• Oil - recent weakness as per my analysis on this sub, but maybe starting to see signs of possible short term move higher soon. Looks like skew has found a bottom and is pointing higher, as traders expect USD to move lower. Lets see
  

DATA LEDE:

• Australia Services PMI revision came slightly worse than expected, at 53.6 vs 54.2 expected
• French industrial production numbers MOM came worse than expected, -0.3% MOM, vs +0.3% forecast
• UK services PMI final revision came slightly better than expected.
• Eurozone unemployment rate in line with forecast at 6.5% , same as previous. Has been same for almost last 12 months.
• NON FARM PAYROLL NUMBERS OUT LATER, WITH UNEMPLOYMENT AND AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS.
• AFTER THAT, WE ALSO HAVE ISM SERVICES PMI, Which will have Services Prices data, which will be the key as that often leads PPI.

MARKETS

• SPX - Yesterday closed at 5066 after earlier testing 5010. After hours, with Apple earnings, it pushed higher to 5082.
• Traded flat there since. Traders wait for NFP.
• Nasdaq - Trading at 17,650. Yday, closed at 17550. Pushed higher to 17.660 after apple, and has been there since
• Dow Jones - Trades above 38,500. Up 0.67%
• HKG50 - Flat today at 18,500. Had a mammoth push yesterday of nearly 6%, so is normal for it to have a flat/proce correction day
• Ger40 - flat at the 18k level again today. Waiting for US reaction to NFP
• Uk100 new highs again.
• Oil - flat at 79. Out of the downtrend, will depend on dollar what its next step is.
• Gold - flat at the key level of 2300.

FX

• Dollar lower into NFP data today.
• Yesterday, dollar continued lower on continued effect of Powell dovishness. Market is trying to recalibrate some of the hawkishness it priced in. Before FOMC in march, it was at about 104, so dollar will try to move back towards this.
• This morning, it continues lower following yday.
• Has now fallen from 106.5 during the FOMC meeting to now 105.2. So down 1%, still has some room to come down.
• Yen is stronger as is CHF.
• AUD relatively flat.
• GBP and EUR relatively flat, down slightly but dollar down more.
• AS such, we have USDJPY trading down significantly to 153 again. We want to see it come below 152.
• GBPUSD trading flattish at 1.255 EURUSD trading at 1.074
• AUDUSD at 0.6583

EARNINGS:
AAPL

• Not actually an amazing quarter, just a product of relatively low expectations.
• EPS $1.53, EST. $1.50. Beat by 2%
• REVENUE $90.75B, EST. $90.33B. Beat by 0.5%.
• IPHONE REVENUE $45.96B, EST. $45.76B. Beat by 0.5%
• PRODUCTS REVENUE $66.89, EST. $66.95B. in line.
• GREATER CHINA REVENUE $16.37B, EST. $15.87B Beat by 3.2%
• WEARABLES, HOME & ACCESSORIES $7.91B, EST. $8.29B Miss by 5%
• TOTAL OPERERATING EXPENSES $14.37B, EST. $14.33B. More or less in line.
• MAC REVENUE $7.45B, EST. $6.79B. Beat by 10%
• SERVICE REVENUE $23.87, EST. $23.28B. Beat by 3%
• IPAD REVENUE $5.56B, EST. $5.91B. Miss by 6%
• WEARABLES REVENUE $7.91B, -9.6% Y/Y, EST. $8.29B. Miss by 4.6%
• GROSS PROFIT was a beat by 0.4%
• Gross margin came more or less in line.
• Operating margin was a slight miss.
• APPLE TO BUY BACK ADDITIONAL $110B OF SHARES, BOOSTS QUARTERLY DIVIDEND, 4.2% TO 25 CENTS/SHR
• This buyback amounts to around 4% of their market cap
• So most product line sales were in line. Wearables and iPad was weak
• Mac was a surprise beat
• China revenue was stronger than anticipated.
• Buyback was bullish as is sizeable.
• Service growth of 14% was much better than their YOY guide
• Product revenue was more or less in line.
• GUIDANCE:
• Said they expect low single digit revenue growth next quarter.
• Expectations were set for 1.2% YOY, so more or less in line.
• They said they expect service growth to remain in low double digit.
• They expect iPhone revenue to again decline YOY next quarter.
• Gross margin guidance for next quarter is 46%, in line with expectations.
• Said they set a new record in 12 countries this quarter.
• This year, iPhone has tough comps, as it recovered from supply Chian pent up demand last year. This is why iPhone sales were down 10% YOY, but its not bad.
• With a normal comp, iPhone revenue is more or less flat.
• Iphone revenue grew in China. Thats good considering all the negative news we have heard on Apple in China the last quarter.
• GEOGRAPHY:
• America revenue fell slightly
• Europe rose slightly
• Remained optimistic on Vision Pro

NET

• Strong quarter in truth. Beat and raise quarter.
• Investors were just disappointed that despite beating revenue this quarter, they didn’t raise full year guidance.
• BEAT revenue estimates by 1.5%
• BEAT EBIT estimate and guidance by 22.5%
• EPS of 0.16 beat estimates of 0.13 by 23%
• FCF beat estimates by 75%
• YOY growth in 100k ARR clients by 33%.
• Revenue growth at 30.5%
• ANNUAL GUIDANCE
• Reiterated their annual revenue guidance which met estimate
• Raised EPS guidance slightly by 0.03
• Raised EBIT guidance a bit,
• Cloudflare said that their guidance was conservative, due to geopolitical chaos around the globe.
• This is why, despite beating revenue guidance this time, they kept full year rev guidance the same.
• GUIDANCE:
• Sees 2Q Rev $393.5-394.5M vs $394.5M est. That’s a tiny miss. but being absolutely punished
• 20% growth. This at a valuation of 125x earnings. This sounds a lot but is reasonable considering the quality of Net.
• Talked a lot about go-to-market approach on the call.
• Said they have best in class products, and is building a go to market engine that will be the envy of the industry as well
• Said applicants rose 56% MOM for this last month
• They set a new record for large deals signed in the quarter
• Double digit YOY improvement in sales productivity
• Sees this trend to continue, due to robust pipeline and new talent. Is accelerating pace of new hires.
• Workers AI tool went live

MELI:

• Beat revenue estimate by 11.9%. Up 36% YOY.
• If we neutralise for FX, the revenue growth as 94%. So very strong growth here by deli.
• Beat EBIT estimate by 7.9%. EBIT was up 26% YOY
• Beat the 5.95 EPS estimate by 0.83 (beat by 14%)
• GMV growth rate was 21% YOY
• TPV growth rate was 10% YOY
• With Meli, thier biggest markets are Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
• COMMERCE REVENUE:
• Overall, v strong, grew 49% YOY
• Brazil was especially strong, up 72% YOY
• Mexico v strong up 54% YOY
• Argentina weaker, due to the economic problems going on there.
• FINTECH REVENUE
• Overall grew by 22%
• Brazil finch was up 38% YOY
• Mexico was up 69% YOY
• Argentina again lagged.
• SO overall, strong operational performance in Brazil and Mexico, which offset negative impact of weak macro in Argentina, and peso devaluation there.
• Remains confident in their vision.
• Argentina had FX devaluation and weak macro drove lower consumption. Some pressure on shipping costs too.
• So devaluation and macro problems there have hurt consumption over there.
• Meli Delivery Day - which is a day in the week that user chooses to get their products. This helps them to lwoer shipping costs by optimising way they group certain products
• TPV reaccelerated in Brazil which is bullish due to online payment with larger merchants and a change in POS GTM strategy
• Said ecommerce in LATAM is still VERY far from maturity, MEli is leading platform there.
• Is gradually extending to advertising.

FTNT:

• IMO: Fundamentally a bit reliant on legacy side of network security, hardware sales etc.
• Revenue of 1.35B more or less in line withe estimates, was up 7% YOY
• EPS of 0.43 beat estimates by 13%
• PROBLEM WAS
• BILLINGS WAS DOWN 6.4% YOY
• FCF was down by 6% YOY
• Product revenue was down 18% YOY
• Service revenue was up 24% YOY
• GUIDANCE:
• Q2 guidance: IN LINE GUIDANCE
• EPS of 0.39 - 0.41 beat estimates at midpoint by 2.5%
• Revenue of 1.375-1.435B beat at midpoint by 1%
• Gross Margin expected to be 77%
• FULL YEAR GUIDANCE: ACTUALLY RIASED GUIDANCE.
• EPS of 1.73-1.79 (beat estimates by 3%)
• Revenue of 5.745-5.845 beat estimates
• Services revenue expected to be 3.94-3.99
• Said they are diligently executing on strategy that was announced 6 months ago to leverage scale.
• SO guidance overall was not bad at all.
• Was this billings that was the problem.
• That and product revenue

MNST - overall good commentary in the earnings.

• Revenue came in in line with expectations
• EPS missed slightly at 42 vs 44 cents
• Revenue grew at 15.6% YOY which is in line with long term energy drinks growth rate
• Their energy drink sales were up 10.7%
• Gross margin improved to 54.1% from 52.8%
• Implemented price increases in certain international markets
• On earnigns call spoke about competition from Bang, Redbull etc, but did not mention CELH.
• However, said they maintained their leadership position in energy drink market.
• New product launches = strong innovation pipeline.
• Robust international growth, especially EMEA, Asia and LATAM.
• Sales outside of US were up 19%
• Expects to increase prices further in Q4 2024. Currently in Q2.
• Said that their pricing actions have not impacted demand negatively.
• Operating expenses were up due to higher market, and warehousing costs.
• Said they continue to see growth in energy drink market.

BKNG earnings:

• Revenue of 4.4B beat estimates by 3.5%, up 17% YOY
• EPS of 20.39 beat estimates by 44%, up 76% YOY
• Net income was 776M, up 192% YOY
• Adjusted EBITDA was 898m, up 54% YOY
• GROSS TRAVEL BOOKINGS was 43.5B, which beat estimates by 3%. Was a growth of 10% YOY
• Room nights booked was up 9% YOY
• SO clearly seeing very strong travel trends continue

MGA

• Asset impairments due to Fisker problems.
• MGA signed agreements with Fisker in 2020 to engineer and manufacture its Ocean SUV.
• Expects sales of 42.6-44.2B, down from prior guidance of 43.8B-45.4B
• So cut full year sales guidance by 3%
• This missed expectations by a wider 3%
• Cut their sales forecast due to supply chain issues
• Sees Adj. Net Income Of $1.5B - $1.7B (Prior $1.6B-$1.8B) - 5.8%
• Missed profit guidance on higher costs.
• Magna benefited from a 2% increase in global light vehicle production, which includes 2% and 11% higher production in North America and in China, respectively. This was offset slightly by a 2% decline in output in Europe.

MAG 7 NEWS:

• Apple up 6% on better than expected earnings. Expectation was set pretty low
• TSLA down in premarket without major news associated to it

COMPANY SPECIFIC:

• Yesterday, news that RIVN to receive $827M in Illiinois state funding to expand normal, Illinois facility
• PARA - yesterday news that Sony and Apollo have expressed interest in buying Paramount for $26B.
• AMGN - discontinues weight loss pill. Shifts focus to injectable obesity drug Maritide. Its in mid stage trial. They also reported earnings, better than expected EPS and sales, with narrow beats.
• SQ - up on earnings
• DVA - up following strong earnings and guidance boots.
• MNST up on earnings
• XPO up on earnings, revenue higher as core segment sees a bump in yield and shipments
• HSY up on earnings, beats top line and bottom line estimates, and reaffirms Fy 2024 outlook. Strength in North America confectionary sales
• BKNG up on earnings
• NET and FTNT down on earnings . Cybersecurity stocks like PANW down slightly in sentiment
• Some of the price targets on FTNT were v harsh, at 62 by Wells Fargo
• Coin down on earnings
• MGA down on earnings
• HWM price correction after big move yesterday
• Nio and Li and XPEV price correction after big move yesterday, and as hog market comes down today
• ADNT down on earnings
• FLR down on earnings

OTHER NEWS:

• Bank of America, citing EPFR data say:
• Investors pulled 600m from crypto funds during the week, most since June 2022.
• 9.8B inflow into equity funds.
• European stocks seeing inflows.
• ECB’s Lane:
• Tightening effects of previous monetary policy are still coming through due to lag
• Expectations are for inflation to normalise further.
• More data supports, more we can bring rates down.
• Fed moves matter but what matters most is our domestic issues
• Kremlin says that Macron’s latest statement of possible French intervention in Ukraine is very dangerous
• 40% of telecom companies in US say they cannot replace Huawei or ZTE equipment in US networks without additional gov funding.
• Freddie Mac yesterday said potential homebuyers likely won’t see relief from rising rates anytime soon. Said potential homebuyer have acclimatised to high rates.
• Finance ministers and central bank governors of China, Japan and S Korea say FX volatility can affect ASEAN prospects in near term. Japan and S Korea both struggling on FX weakness.
• BOK Gov Rhee says they are closely watching currency volatility.
• Israeli strike hits Syrian security building outside Damascus

It makes no difference to me if people believe me or not, but this is my experience. I started playing pokemmo back around NovembeDecember this last year. I was hooked and I had been playing every day since then. I invested over 600 hours, almost 700 hours into my character. Learned all the different farming activities, gym reruns, etc.
I never played on a pc. It's more convenient for me to play on android. I have a device called the AYN Odin 2 Max. It has Android 13, 16bg of ram, Snapdragon 8 gen 2, 1080p 60h screen. Pokemmo ran beautifully on this device.
This morning, I went to log in to harvest my leppa berries. We'll... Not gonna happen because I have been permanently banned for "3rd party software". I figured it had to be a mistake. I haven't installed anything prohibited or that interacts or interferes with the Pokemmo client. So I start my appeal. I figure they will investigate, ask me questions, work with me, something, anything. I was very wrong.
This was the response I got.
The usage of third-party automation tools, commonly referred to as bots, macros, or scripts, is a breach of the Terms of Service that you agreed to when you created your account. Even if you regret your actions now, a violation has still occurred and it comes with consequences.
Your appeal has been denied. You are allowed to continue playing with a new characteaccount, but your old one will remain banned. If you are caught automating any aspect of the game again in the future however, the consequences for doing so will become more severe, up to and including a permanent barring from all PokeMMO services.
Banned characters cannot be renamed, deleted, or have their assets transferred. Please review the Terms of Service and Code of Conduct to ensure that you are familiar with the rules in the future.
Okay, so the just aren't going to tell me any details or help.
So I did some research. I found this https://support.pokemmo.com/knowledgebase/article/tampering-ban-as It turns out that on android, the accessibility services can have an auto-clicker option. I didn't know this was a thing. So I go to check on my device. Sure enough, there it is... Never knew it was there, it was off by default, can't even remove it. Great... I remember a while ago that people were scared of playing on iphones because people were getting banned. I looked it up and guess what... Some of them also now have built in auto-clickers.
Since I was not to a detailed reason for my ban, my assumption is that this was the reason. I understand that they need to be strict, but it would be nice if they would give us chance, even if just one.
So, this is my goodbye to the pokemmo community. I'm not going to make another account just for the same thing to happen. I know some people will believe me and some won't. That's fine. I don't want people debating over if I'm truthful or not. Just pay attention to what device you're using so you don't lose your pokemon.
Goodbye Pokemmo
UPDATE: After some discussion in the comments, it seems I'm wrong in my assumption about the auto-clicker. I was not aware there would be a prompt that would pop up if there was one enabled. Some are speculating it may be the built in button mapper that may be getting flagged due to it having an auto fire option for the buttons. Although this now sounds like the more likely culprit, with no word from pokemmo staff, there's no way to know for sure if it's the mapper.

As we know by now, the comment section of Dhar Mann videos are mostly just delusional kids praising him and his videos, but there are actually rare moments where people in the comment section actually criticize the videos. Here are some examples.
Road Rage Driver Goes Too Far
Sisters Secrets Episode 1
Boys Try Poisoning A Teacher
Teen Gets Fired For TikTok Obsession
Girl Shamed For Playing Roblox Games
Mischief Mikey: 3 Teens Must Solve Mom’s Murder Mystery
Kid Does 100 Dares In 24 Hours
Kid Ditches School To Throw Party
12 Year Old Saves Farm Animals
Shy Kid Gets Humiliated At School
Kid Kills His Mom For IPhone 14
Movie Star Slaps Host At Award Show
Feel free to name any that I missed

So, with The Ones Who Live now having aired, I took some time to mull over this topic. The original concept was of course the Rick movie trilogy. Upon rewatching all six episodes, I personally think the movie trilogy idea would have worked. This is just my opinion, but allow me to elaborate.
When it was announced in July 2022 that instead of three movies, we'd be getting six episodes, I was actually more excited. I prefer TV more than film. In this case, however, I think a Walking Dead movie would have been awesome. If it was a Walking Dead movie that had nothing to do with the original series, I wouldn't really be excited for it. However, a Walking Dead movie in theatres that follows Rick Grimes? Sign me up!
Seeing how The Ones Who Live ended, it makes me think how a film trilogy could have worked. I understand there were probably lots of behind the scenes stuff that led to it becoming a TV series instead, which I totally get. But I actually think there may have been more time to elaborate on some stuff and expand in a film than a movie.
If I were to condense this miniseries into a movie trilogy, this is how I'd do it. I'll just word it like I'm describing the synopsis instead of just saying "Combine this, cut that."
Years Gone Bye: A Walking Dead Movie
Over the five years since being captured by the CRM, Rick has undergone physical therapy to recover from his wounds after the bridge. He has attempted to escape multiple times, but each attempt has been unsuccessful. While in the woods, he cuts off his own hand in an attempt to escape, but this fails and he is recaptured. During his time as a consignee, he has hallucinations of Carl to keep him going, but eventually, those dreams begin to fade away over time. One day, Rick spots Jadis, who explains her people's deal with the CRM and her intention to sign up. However, Rick is only interested in escaping. After this conversation with Jadis, Rick eventually accepts Okafor's offer to join the CRM. Okafor then attempts to recruit him and Thorne in his plan to change the CRM from the inside. After another failed escape attempt, Omaha's destruction and Okafor knowing about his family, Rick decides to accept his life in the CRM and burns his letters to Michonne.
Simultaneously, Michonne helps Aiden and Bailey reunite with their massive caravan, but refuses to join it out of disgust over the caravan's rules and her determination to find Rick and go back to their children. Aiden, Bailey, Nat and several others are inspired by Michonne to break away from the caravan and help in her search for Rick. Suddenly, the CRM attacks with chlorine gas killing everyone except for Michonne and Nat who are forced to spend a year recovering from the damage done to their lungs. Pressing on to the location mentioned in the boat's log book, Michonne and Nat find an abandoned and destroyed safe zone and dozens of burned bodies. Nat convinces Michonne to return to Alexandria, much to her devastation.
On the way back, Nat points something out to Michonne as the scene quickly cuts to Rick and Okafor in a helicopter. As Rick recalls a story about his father, Okafor is hit and blown up by Nat's explosive projectile. A massive shootout ensues that ends with Michonne reuniting with Rick. Nat is killed by a surviving CRM soldier, who Rick then kills. As soldiers close in, Rick helps Michonne create a successful cover story for the CRM, promising that they will escape together. At the CRM base, Rick and Michonne secretly meet to catch up with one another, but Michonne refrains from telling him about R.J. as she will wait until they escape. Rick enters his apartment, where Jadis sits inside, telling him that if he and Michonne try to escape, she will kill everyone back at Alexandria. The final shot of the film is Rick and Michonne on two separate screens; Michonne is confident that they will get away, but Rick is fearful.
What We Become: A Walking Dead Movie
The film begins with the first Gabriel and Jadis flashback, which are then scattered throughout. In the present, Michonne is working as a consignee and Rick now being a Sergeant Major, with Thorne being promoted by Beale after Okafor's death. Rick puts a plan into motion for Michonne to escape and fake her death, however, Rick refuses to leave with her. Unwilling to escape without Rick, Michonne returns to the CRM, much to her husband's dismay, who urges her to go. She wanders Millennium Park and meets the artist who made Rick's iPhone engravings. Thorne brings Michonne along for a mission, where she almost kills her for breaking protocol, resulting in Rick breaking up with her to protect her. However, while riding back in the helicopter, Michonne throws Rick out of it in the pouring rain.
Rick and Michonne seek refuge in an apartment, where they argue over escaping the CRM. Michonne tells Rick about R.J., but this doesn't change his mind and only furthers his desire to want Michonne away from the CRM. Unable to get through to Rick, Michonne leaves, but Rick catches up to her and eventually, they both reaffirm their love by having sex. During this time, Michonne informs Rick of all that has happened: Siddiq, Tara, Enid, the Whisperers, Jocelyn, etc. After this, Michonne gets through to Rick resulting in him admitting that he can't see Carl's face anymore due to his traumas and that he's terrified to be with Michonne again as Rick wouldn't survive losing her again. After Michonne gives Rick an iPhone engraved with Carl's portrait, she convinces Rick to go home with her.
At the CRM, Mason Beale expresses his desire to join the military, but his father refuses to let him. Beale asks Jadis about Rick, which she begins to grow suspicious over he and Michonne's "deaths". On their way back to Alexandria, Jadis catches up to them. She unsuccessfully tries to kill them and is badly wounded. She runs away as Rick and Michonne pursue her. Jadis reveals that Rick was slated to receive the Echelon Briefing and move up in the CRM and reaches a deal where Rick will return to the CRM while Michonne can go home, but they betray each other and Jadis is fatally bitten by a walker in the melee. Jadis explains that after losing her people, she dedicated herself to a cause that seemed like it would last. Deciding to die as Anne rather than as Jadis, she tells them where to find the dossier and gives Rick a wedding ring that Gabriel had found for him. At her request, Rick kills Anne. Rick gives Michonne the wedding ring and they formally exchange vows. "Can't Help Falling In Love" by Haley Reinhart plays as Rick and Michonne take off in Jadis' helicopter, back to the CRM. Elsewhere, Gabriel arrives for his yearly meeting with Jadis, but when she doesn't arrive, he creates a makeshift grave for her.
The Ones Who Live: A Walking Dead Movie
The film begins with a flashback to the immediate aftermath of Rick's "death" at the bridge. "Creep" by Radiohead plays as Michonne tells Judith that her father's dead, holds a memorial service and discovers she is pregnant. It then cuts to the present, where Rick and Michonne are laying in bed, preparing for what is to come. They return to Cascadia Base where Michonne sneaks into Jadis' apartment, but is unable to find it. After much investigating, it is revealed that Mason snuck into Jadis' apartment, desperate to find something to prove his worth to his father. She captures Mason and demands he hand over the dossier. Michonne and Mason bargain over the dossier and eventually come to a deal: she agrees to destroy the dossier and leave, never to return. She tears up the dossier and leaves.
Rick is given the Echelon Briefing in which Beale informs him of the truth about the destruction of Omaha and the Campus Colony and the upcoming attack on Portland. Beale reveals that, believing that humanity only has around fourteen years left, the CRM is going to declare martial law on the Civic Republic and destroy survivor communities all across the world, scavenging their resources to ensure their own survival. Reluctant at first, Rick swears on the sword and leads a mission to bomb a settlement with a group of soldiers. Unwilling to allow this to happen, Rick kills his fellow comrades and leaves the settlement alone, telling Beale and Thorne that the settlement fought back and killed them all, but Thorne has her suspicions.
The next day, Rick and Michonne attend a briefing for the Frontliners where Beale announces their plans to destroy Portland. Rick and Michonne rig up a makeshift bomb on the chlorine gas arsenal before being confronted by Mason who is infuriated that Michonne betrayed their trust. He then shoots Michonne non-fatally, causing Rick to lose it and attacks Mason, which draws attention from Beale and the other soldiers. Rick holds Mason hostage as he delivers the infamous "We are not the walking dead" speech before encouraging the CRM to not let Beale lead them. As the soldiers agree and stand down, Beale angrily pulls out a gun and fires at Rick, but misses and sets off the bomb trap that Rick and Michonne set, killing the CRM Force Command and all of the Frontliners. Rick and Beale fight, which ends with Rick stabbing Beale and leaving him to die from the gas. Mason, critically wounded from the gas, crawls to his dying father as they succumb to the gas together. Thorne saves Michonne and Rick has another near death experience when the gas causes severe damage to his lungs and almost flatlines.
Rick and Michonne recover from their wounds at the Civic Republic, the civilian government takes over and reforms the CRM to aid other survivors while enabling free travel to and from the city. Thorne becomes the Governor, eager to honor Okafor's legacy. As Rick bids farewell to Thorne and Esteban, he and Michonne return home to their family.
Twenty-five years, Rick and Michonne are in their 70's, Judith is 37 and R.J. is 33. Rick and Michonne live out at a farm house peacefully. R.J. is a farmhand, as his parents are older. A wagon approaches the farm and it's Judith, who has married Ezra (Jerry's son) and they have a six-year old boy named Carl. Judith and Ezra have dinner with the family and Carl Jr. wants Grandpa Rick to read him a bedtime story.
Let me know your guys' thoughts!

Alright, my fellow content crusaders, let's veer off the beaten path of the tired old "create great content and THEY will come!" mantra, because let's face it - the internet is a wild, untamed beast! It's a virtual jungle out there, and you need more than just a pretty piece of content to survive in the digital wilderness.
Have you noticed how digital marketing, especially the often overlooked gem that is content marketing, doesn't get the respect it deserves? It's like the quirky cousin at the family reunion - everyone knows they are cool, but they don't always get a seat at the grown-up table. While other industries have textbooks thicker than a an old-school phonebook, digital marketing seems to get shoved aside like last year's iPhone model. But this might change, for I am on a noble quest to change that narrative.
My new book, Clickonomics, is here to hopefully shake up the status quo with fresh ideas, innovative frameworks, and tools that will not only revolutionize how we approach internet marketing but will also make the skeptics sit up and take notice. I will take some extracts from the book and post them here.
First new idea: Simba's Five Forces
Picture yourself as Simba the Lion King on the digital savannah. The sun beats down on the pixelated landscape, and beneath the buzzing of social media notifications, you hear it: the distant roar of competition. Other businesses, content creators, and aspiring influencers are circling like hungry hyenas, all vying for attention within the vast expanse of the World Wide Web. This, my friend, is the thrilling, chaotic, and sometimes cutthroat realm of marketing on the internet or as we clickonomists say, competing for attention.
But fear not! For you are no helpless little cub, destined to be left behind by the relentless stampede of online trends. You, the savvy content marketer, have stumbled upon a powerful tool – your survival guide to navigating the online jungle.
Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you Simba's Five Forces.
Now, before you start groaning and rolling your eyes at the mention of another marketing framework, let me assure you - this isn't just some dusty theory cooked up by academics who still think Myspace is the latest social media craze. No, no, my friend, Simba's Five Forces are inspired by something far more exciting than your average business school jargon. We are talking about the OG of business strategic thinking here - the one and only Porter's Five Forces. Simba's Five Forces (SFF for short) is not just standing on the shoulders of giants, it's practically riding on their backs like a boss! I mean, Porter's Five Forces has been the backbone of business strategy since Michael Porter decided to grace us mortals with his wisdom back in 1979 in that Harvard Business Review article “The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy?” Pure gold!
This isn't your run-of-the-mill marketing fluff; this is the real deal. We are talking about competitive forces that can make or break a business, shaping strategies and defining success on the internet. And hey, if it's good enough for Michael Porter and legions of fortune 500 businesses, it's definitely worth a second look.
Think of it this way: the internet is its own kind of ecosystem. It has its predators (established brands with massive followings), its scavengers (those who recycle trendy content), and its adaptable survivors (the ones who roll with the punches and evolve with the ever-changing digital landscape). To thrive in this environment, you need a strategy that taps into both the primal instincts of a lion and the clever resourcefulness of a meerkat.
So, what exactly are these mystical forces?

Force #1: The Threat of New Content – Outsmarting the Deluge on the Internet Jungle
In the kingdom of Clickonomics, the battle for attention is as fierce as lions vying for a prime cut of an antelope. You might think you have crafted a masterpiece of content – a perfectly polished blog post, a hilarious meme, or a viral-worthy video. But wait! Before you unleash your creation into the wild, remember this: the digital savannah is teeming with hungry competitors, constantly churning out fresh content designed to steal your precious audience.
We live in the age of the content deluge. It's estimated that over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day, much of that in the form of online content. That's the digital equivalent of a hippo stampede, with each new post, video, or tweet threatening to trample your own carefully crafted work into obscurity.
Think of it like this: you are a skilled hunter on the savannah – you have honed your skills, stalked your prey (aka your ideal audience), and prepared the perfect snare. But just as you are about to make your move, an entire pack of newcomers bursts onto the scene, their noisy and haphazard methods scaring away your potential catch. Frustrating, isn't it?
This relentless flood of new content is both the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity on the internet.
The first rule of surviving the content deluge? Never, ever be a mere copycat. In the oversaturated digital jungle, mimicking what everyone else is doing is a surefire way to be ignored. Remember, back in the glory days of the early internet, a simple text-based web page might have cut it. These days, that's the digital equivalent of showing up to a cocktail party in sweatpants – technically, you are dressed, but you are definitely not making an impression.
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Instead, your mission is to offer something unique, a piece of content that stands tall like a majestic giraffe against the backdrop of the digital plains. Embrace the power of niche – focus on becoming an expert in a specific area, providing the kind of in-depth knowledge your audience craves. Carve out your specialized watering hole, and soon, your thirsty audience will flock to you.
It might be tempting to panic and think, "I need to churn out content faster!" But resist the urge to sacrifice quality for speed. Think of the infamous tortoise and the hare fable. Slow, steady, and strategic wins the race in the online world too. One thoughtfully written insightful article can leave a longer-lasting impact than ten hastily thrown-together social media posts.
Instead of aiming to be everywhere at once, select a few key content platforms at first, and focus on creating content that truly shines there. Remember, your audience would rather see one truly remarkable piece of content per week than mediocre filler content on a daily basis.
Understanding the rhythm of your audience is vital to content mastery. Imagine yourself as a zebra at a watering hole. Visit at the wrong time, and you might find it dried up, or worse, swarming with lurking crocodiles. Similarly, posting the most amazing article at 3 AM when your audience is fast asleep is a recipe for digital crickets.
Analyse when your target audience is most active online. Tools for social media analytics are your best friend here. Publish strategically, so your content has a fighting chance against the deluge, instead of getting swept away unnoticed.
The best news? Not all content is destined to be swept away by the tides of the internet. Invest in creating 'evergreen' content – content that remains valuable long past their publish date. Think in-depth guides packed with practical tips, curated resource lists, or thought leadership pieces that tackle timeless problems in your industry. These are your content workhorses, attracting new audience members long after they are first created.
Of course, even evergreens need some maintenance. Periodically revisit your best-performing older content. Update any statistics, add fresh examples, or improve the formatting. This demonstrates that you are invested in providing the most up-to-date value, earning you serious trust with your audience.
Let's address the big elephant in the digital room: AI content generation tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Co-Pilot and Google’s Gemini. These have the potential to revolutionize the content creation game, giving smaller businesses and solo content creators a fighting chance against big business. AI can help you generate ideas, whip up attention-grabbing headlines, create image variations, and even draft scripts for videos – it can do so much more!
However, as with any powerful tool, AI in the wrong hands can be dangerous. It's tempting to fall into the trap of churning out generic, AI-written content en-masse. But here is a word of caution: the inhabitants of the digital savannah are getting smarter. Audiences can sniff out soulless, AI-generated content a mile away. And worse, search engines like Google are cracking down on sites that overuse these tactics.
The key to harnessing AI lies in using it as your intelligent assistant, not your creative replacement. Let AI handle some of the grunt work, giving you the building blocks that you then enhance with your unique insights, expertise, and brand voice.
Standing out and creating timeless content is essential, but so is the ability to stay nimble in the fast-paced digital world. Trends emerge and disappear faster than a chameleon changing colours. Ignore them at your peril, but don't become a slave to them either.
Think strategically. Can you leverage a trending topic in a way that aligns with your brand and niche? Is there a way to put your unique spin on a viral challenge in a way that feels authentic? Don't be afraid to experiment, just make sure there is always a method behind your choices (or madness!).
Let's step back for a moment and ponder this: we are living in an age where everyone's vying to create and share the latest and greatest thing, yet our attention spans are notoriously short and getting shorter. It's a paradox: we crave constant novelty, yet, at the same time, we are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to navigate this contradiction. Become a digital curator – the one who sorts through the chaos, providing a carefully selected set of high-quality content that truly resonates with your audience. By offering value instead of simply adding to the noise, you become an oasis in the vast desert of information overload.
The threat of new content is a constant force in the realm of Clickonomics, but it's one you can learn to wield to your advantage. Remember: there is always space for content that offers genuine value, that cuts through the clutter, and provides your audience with experiences they wouldn't find anywhere else on the internet.
So, channel your inner Simba. Understand the landscape of this digital savannah, be both fierce and strategic in your content creation, and never underestimate the power of high-quality contributions that stand the test of time. Do this, and you won't just survive the content deluge, you will reign supreme as a king or queen of your digital domain.

Force #2: Threat of Different Type of Content – The Content Chameleon, Adapting to the Buffet of Consumer Preferences.
In George Orwell's thought-provoking masterpiece, Animal Farm, the animals were all gung-ho about the whole 'equality for all' gig. They even had a snazzy placard with the catchy slogan "All Animals Are Equal." But lo and behold, as soon as the pigs got a taste of power (and probably some delicious apples), that placard magically transformed into a new and improved version: "All animals are equal BUT some animals are more equal than others." Talk about a classic case of equality taking a nosedive straight into the realm of irony!
Yes, yes, we all know that "content is king." But let's not forget that in the vast kingdom of the internet, some types of content are like the royals of the British royal family. With over a hundred different flavors of content to choose from – blog posts, videos of all shapes and sizes, podcasts, infographics, memes, quizzes, you name it – it is no wonder we are all swimming in a sea of choices. Sure, all content should be engaging and attention-grabbing, but let's face it, some types of content are just born to rule the internet like the content monarchs they are. So, whether you are into dissecting the stats of Cristiano Ronaldo vs. Lionel Messi in a 10,000-word essay or prefer a 15-minute video reel of Cristiano and Messi dancing their way to greatness on the football pitch, remember, not all content is created equal – some are just destined for internet stardom!
Imagine yourself at a digital buffet, tables overflowing with every conceivable type of content: long-form blog posts that go deep into complex topics, bite-sized infographics perfect for a quick information fix, hilarious memes that make you snort-laugh in public (not ideal, but hey, we have all been there). This is what its like on the modern internet – a land of abundance and overwhelming choice for your target audience.
Here is the challenge: in this content smorgasbord, simply creating good content isn't enough. You need to become a master content chameleon, adapting your approach to suit the ever-evolving preferences of your audience. Remember the mantra of Simba's First Force: Content is King. But here is the twist: in the realm of Clickonomics, all content is indeed royalty, but some content types reign more supreme than others.
Let's face it, the internet has spoiled us rotten. We crave constant stimulation, flitting from one engaging type of content to another like a hummingbird between flowers. Statistics don't lie: studies show that our attention spans have shrunk to the size of a goldfish (cue Dory's voice: "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!"). This means that long-form content, once the undisputed king of the internet, now faces stiff competition from its more concise cousins: listicles, infographics, and – the undisputed champion of the short attention span – the mighty short-form video.
Think about it this way: would you rather spend an hour poring over a dense blog post analysing the philosophy of The Lion King, or watch a 5-minute video filled with hilarious clips and insightful commentary on the same topic? For most internet users, the answer is clear – short, engaging video wins every time (unless you are a die-hard text fiend, in which case, kudos to your dedication!).
But hold on a second, Simba! We wouldn't want to paint the internet with one broad brush. Not everyone craves the same content format. Understanding your target audience goes beyond demographics like age and location. Delving deeper, you need to understand their content consumption habits. Are they avid podcast listeners who crave in-depth conversations? Or perhaps they are visual learners who get lost in the world of infographics?
Here is where the Customer Ikigai and web analytics become your secret weapons. These tools tell you a fascinating story about how your audience interacts with your content. Did your latest blog post get crickets? Analyse which format performed best with past audiences and consider repurposing the content into another content format. Perhaps a captivating video summary could breathe new life into the topic.
Repurposing your content isn't about laziness; it's about strategic efficiency. Imagine crafting a captivating blog post – it took time, research, and a hefty dose of creative energy. Now, picture the untapped potential this content holds beyond the written word.
Embrace the content chameleon spirit! Here is where Simba's Content Matrix comes into play (you will learn more about this ingenious tool later, stay tuned!). This matrix helps you map your existing content across different formats, transforming your blog post into a captivating infographic, a bite-sized social media post, or even the script for a short, engaging video.
By repurposing your content, you cater to the diverse preferences of your audience, ensuring your message reaches the right people in the format they crave. It's like serving the same delicious meal on different plates – some might prefer a fancy five-course experience, while others just want a quick and satisfying snack.
This abundance of content formats presents both a challenge and an opportunity. It forces you to be more strategic, to understand your audience on a deeper level, and to constantly adapt your approach. However, it also empowers you to reach a wider audience than ever before.
Think of it this way: in the pre-internet era, a marketer's message was limited by traditional media formats. They had to choose between print ads, radio commercials, or expensive television slots. Now, the internet offers a buffet of possibilities, allowing you to tailor your message to resonate with specific audience segments.
But here is another secret sauce that binds all these formats together: the power of storytelling. Regardless of whether you are crafting a lengthy blog post or a short video, weaving a narrative into your content is the most potent way to capture and hold your audience's attention. After all, humans are wired for stories. They transport us, educate us, and evoke emotions in a way that dry facts and figures simply can't.
In the grand scheme of storytelling, a history textbook might as well be the plain oatmeal of narratives - bland, forgettable, and lacking that certain spice that makes you want to come back for more. It's like trying to sip on a lukewarm cup of tea when you could be sipping on a tropical cocktail with a little umbrella in it. And when it comes to the epic showdown between Simba and Scar, well, let's just say a bullet-point recounting is like ordering a cheeseburger with no cheese, no burger, and just a random slice of lettuce on a plate.
But, oh, watching that battle unfold on the screen? It's like biting into a juicy, perfectly cooked steak - it's savory, it's satisfying, and it leaves you wanting more. The drama, the suspense, the heart-pounding music swelling in the background - that's the stuff that makes your hair stand on end and your heart race with excitement. So, if you had to choose between reading about Simba's triumph in a textbook or watching it all play out in vivid animation, well, let's just say Hakuna Matata wouldn't be in your vocabulary if you missed out on that cinematic experience.
The ever-changing landscape of the internet demands a relentless spirit of experimentation. Don't be afraid to try new content formats, analyse how your audience responds, and pivot your strategy accordingly. Remember those meerkats from the Pride Lands? They are always vigilant, testing out new routes and keeping an eye out for both predators and tasty snacks. That same sense of adventurous curiosity should guide your content strategy.

Force 3: Threat of Competition – The Roaring Crowd, standing out in the Internet’s Coliseum
Welcome back to the Clickonomics arena, where the battle for attention plays out with the ferocity of a gladiator duel in the Colosseum. Here, the roar of the crowd isn't measured in decibels, but in clicks, shares, and that coveted social currency – engagement. And guess who you are competing against? Not just your direct competitors, but a cacophony of voices vying for the same precious commodity: attention.
In the brick-and-mortar business world, competition often follows a clear line: you versus the company across the street offering similar products. But the internet mercilessly shatters these boundaries. Here, the playing field is vast and the competition is fierce, often coming from unexpected corners of the internet.
Remember the wise words of Gary Vaynerchuk, the social media guru himself: "And I’m terribly sorry for the biggest advertisers in the world wasting all their money because they are taking the consumer’s attention for granted.” This statement rings especially true online. Take HSBC, one of the biggest banks founded by a thrifty Scot, for example. They might think their biggest competition is another bank like JP Morgan or Citigroup. But on the internet, a single personal finance blogger churning out content about financial freedom could pose a far greater threat. Why? Because that blogger is capturing the very thing HSBC desperately craves – the attention of potential customers.
This abundance of options online presents a fascinating paradox. What entrepreneurs and businesses traditionally perceive as "competition," internet users simply see as "choice." They have the luxury of filtering through a vast sea of voices, choosing the ones that resonate with them most.
Here is a counterintuitive truth: competition online isn't about eliminating your rivals; it's about carving out a distinct space within this crowded marketplace. It's about understanding what makes your brand unique, what value proposition you offer, and how to communicate that message in a way that cuts through the digital noise.
Think of a lion stalking its prey on the savannah. It blends into its surroundings, using its natural camouflage to remain undetected. But then, it pounces – a burst of power and agility that sets it apart from the rest of the herd. That's the essence of differentiation in the digital world.
Now, here is a surprising twist: those seemingly fierce internet competitors can actually be a valuable source of knowledge. Analyse their digital marketing strategies, see what content resonates with their audience, and identify any gaps you can exploit. Remember, the internet isn't a zero-sum game. Learning from your competitors, and constantly iterating on your own approach, is what leads to long-term success.
Let's not forget the power of disruption. The internet thrives on innovation. Think of companies like Airbnb and Uber – they challenged established industries by offering fresh perspectives and disrupting the status quo. Could your brand take a similar approach? Is there a way to shake things up in your niche and capture the attention of a weary audience tired of the same old strategies?
In the digital coliseum, the roar of the crowd isn't a threat, but an opportunity. It's the sound of potential customers, waiting to be captivated by a brand that stands out from the rest. Embrace the challenge of competition, leverage the insights it offers, and most importantly, never stop refining your roar. That is how you transform competition into a catalyst for growth, attracting your ideal audience and establishing your dominance in your digital corner of the internet.
Remember, Simba didn't win the battle for Pride Rock by simply copying his father. He learned from Mufasa's wisdom, embraced his own strengths, and ultimately, found his own roar.
And most importantly, remember that the battle for clicks isn't about crushing your competitors; it's about connecting with your audience in a meaningful and authentic way. Carve out your unique niche, understand your audience's roar, and make sure your message resonates across the digital savannah.
The internet, with its boundless opportunities and fierce competition, offers an exhilarating and ever-evolving marketing landscape. While the battle might feel overwhelming at times, equipped with Simba's Five Forces, you have a powerful arsenal of strategies and insights to navigate this vibrant yet often chaotic ecosystem.
So, channel your inner lion, stand tall among the digital crowd, and let your brand's unique roar resonate through the internet, attracting the right audience and securing your rightful place in the Clickonomics kingdom!

Force #4: Bargaining Power of Content Platforms and Content Creators.
Ah, the shimmering oasis of the internet – a place teeming with content creators, each vying for a coveted sip from the well of audience attention. But hold on a second, Simba! This digital watering hole isn't quite as democratic as it seems. In the realm of Clickonomics, a complex dance unfolds between content platforms and creators – a delicate tango where power dynamics shift like desert sands.
Cast your eyes upon the digital horizon. You see them, don't you? The towering figures – Google, YouTube, Facebook – the content platforms that dominate the internet landscape. These digital behemoths hold immense power, controlling the algorithms that determine who gets seen, who gets heard, and who fades into the background noise.
Imagine a bustling marketplace where shopkeepers (the content creators) vie for customers' attention. But here is the twist: the market square is owned by a single, all-powerful landlord (the content platform). This landlord decides which shops get prime locations, sets the rent (through algorithm manipulation), and ultimately controls the flow of foot traffic (audience attention).
Now, don't get us wrong. Content platforms offer incredible opportunities for creators. Imagine having access to a global audience with just a click (or a well-placed hashtag). The potential for building a loyal following and amplifying your message is truly astounding.
But here is the paradox (yet again!): content creators need platforms to reach their audience, but platforms rely on content creators to create captivating content to attract users in the first place. It's a symbiotic yin and yang kind of relationship, a delicate dance where both parties hold a modicum of power.
Think of it like Simba and Nala in their playful cubhood days. Nala, with her adventurous spirit, pushes Simba to explore beyond the boundaries of Pride Rock. Without Nala's encouragement, Simba might never have discovered the world beyond the familiar. Yet, Simba brings his own strength and potential to the table, ensuring their adventures are exciting and memorable.
Content creators fuel the engines of these platforms. But creators also hold the power to walk away, taking their talents elsewhere. A mass exodus of popular YouTubers, for instance, could be a major blow to the YouTube's viewership and advertising revenue.
The algorithm – the mysterious gatekeeper in the digital marketplace – deserves its own paragraph (or perhaps an entire book!). These complex sets of rules determine how content is ranked, displayed, and ultimately, discovered by audiences. Understanding how algorithms work is crucial for any content creator or business hoping to navigate the power dynamics of Clickonomics.
But there is a catch: algorithms are constantly evolving, shrouded in a veil of secrecy by the platforms themselves. It's a game of cat and mouse, where creators try to decipher the algorithm's preferences to optimize their content, while platforms refine their systems to stay ahead of the curve.
Now, let us not paint a picture of complete content creator disempowerment. In today's digital world, creators with large, engaged followings wield significant power. Think of Mr Beast or PewDiePie on YouTube – they are celebrities in their own right, attracting billions of views and commanding hefty advertising fees. These "superstars" have the leverage to negotiate better deals with platforms, ensuring a fairer share of the digital pie.
The bargaining power dynamic between platforms and creators and businesses that want a piece of the attention pie is constantly in flux. New content platforms emerge, established giants fall, and the dance continues.
However, there is a growing trend – the rise of decentralized content platforms (…ahem, blockchain enters stage right!). These decentralized content platforms promise greater autonomy for creators, challenging the stronghold of the established players. Could this shift the balance of power in the future, leading to a more creator-centric ecosystem? Only time will tell.
In the realm of Clickonomics, understanding the interplay between Content platforms and creators is essential for forging a successful path. It's a game of chess – not checkers. Play the long game, focus on quality content, build your community, and navigate the shifting sands of algorithms.
While the content platforms wield immense power, remember the vital role you – the content creator – play in the success of the digital landscape. Your creativity, passion, and connection with your audience are what ultimately drive the engines of these platforms forward.
So, channel your inner lion! Recognize the power dynamics at play and use your own unique voice and talent to carve a place for yourself in the digital savanna. In the ever-evolving world of Clickonomics, the interplay between platforms and creators is a dance of both dependence and defiance, a struggle for visibility and the potential to reap the rewards of your hard work.

Force 5: Bargaining Power of Internet Users – Understanding the Power of the People in Clickonomics.
Amidst the noise of content and the allure of clicks on the internet, one force often gets overlooked: the power of the people themselves – the internet users, the consumers, the silent (but very much clicking) majority we call the Clickocracy.
In the realm of Clickonomics, we spend a lot of time dissecting algorithms, crafting content strategies, and analysing click-through rates. But sometimes, we get lost in the numbers game, forgetting the most crucial element – the human beings behind the clicks!
Think of it this way: imagine Simba, all grown up and ruling Pride Rock. He can have the wisest advisors (digital marketing specialists), the most loyal lionesses by his side (brand ambassadors), and the juiciest antelope herds (high-quality content) at his disposal. But if the pride itself (your target audience) loses faith in his leadership (your brand), well, that reign might come crashing down faster than you can say "Hakuna Matata."
The internet has empowered its users like never before. They have an abundance of choices at their fingertips – a million websites to browse, countless social media platforms to scroll through, and an endless stream of content creators vying for their attention. This, my friend, is the paradox of choice.
On the one hand, it's fantastic for users. They have the power to be discerning, to choose brands that resonate with their values, and to actively shape the digital landscape with their clicks and online behaviours. But for entrepreneurs and marketers like you and me, it presents a significant challenge. How do you stand out from the digital din and capture the attention of a fickle, ever-connected audience?
In this age of algorithm manipulation and sponsored content, one marketing force remains timeless: word-of-mouth marketing. Remember the days of blockbuster movies (RIP Blockbuster!) fuelled by positive reviews and enthusiastic chatter amongst friends? The internet thrives on a similar principle.
Think about the last time you bought something online. Did you blindly add it to your shopping cart, or did you scour review sections, check social media mentions, and maybe even watch a few unboxing videos? Chances are, you relied heavily on the opinions and experiences of your fellow internet citizens.
This phenomenon is rooted in something fundamental – trust. We, as humans, are wired to value the opinions of others, especially those we perceive as similar to ourselves. A glowing Amazon review from someone with similar interests holds far more weight than a perfectly crafted sales copy.
The Clickocracy isn't a silent majority; it's a vocal, engaged audience with the power to make or break your digital presence. Embrace the challenge, prioritize building trust, and focus on creating value for your audience.
Remember, it's not about manipulating clicks but about forging genuine connections. When you empower the Clickocracy, you don't just gain customers; you gain a community of loyal advocates who will champion your brand message far and wide across the vast digital savanna.
So, dethrone the outdated marketing tactics of the past. Welcome the Clickocracy era, understand the power of the people, and watch your brand ascend the ranks in the ever-evolving realm of Clickonomics. Remember, Simba didn't win the hearts of the Pride Lands by brute force. He earned their respect, their loyalty, and ultimately, their clicks (well, roars in this case) through trust, authenticity, and a genuine connection with his fellow lions.
The balance of power in the digital sphere is constantly shifting, but one thing is certain: the Clickocracy's influence will only continue to grow. With the rise of social media platforms, review sites, and the democratization of information, internet users have more power than ever before.
This presents both opportunities and challenges for businesses and creators in the realm of Clickonomics. Those who understand the evolving needs and expectations of the Clickocracy, who prioritize building trust and delivering genuine value, will be best positioned to survive and thrive on the internet.
This digital age we live in is a customer-centric one. It's no longer about blasting out sales pitches into the ether, but about cultivating a two-way dialogue, where businesses listen and respond to the voices of their audience. It's an era where businesses can build meaningful, lasting relationships with customers through digital channels, forging a bond that extends beyond mere transactions.
Remember as you navigate the vast landscape of the internet, never underestimate the power of the people on the other side of the screen. Their clicks may seem small, but collectively, they have the power to shape industries, launch brands into the stratosphere, and ultimately, determine the winners in the ever-evolving game of Clickonomics.

Super quick post on price, because I've been getting a bunch of questions recently. ...HMMM BUT HOW WILL I COMPETE ON PRICE? This is something that I get a lot from new entrepreneurs. It usually comes in the form of a question of this type: "Why would someone sign up for dollarshaveclub, when they can get the exact same razor from Dorco for half the price?" Dollarshaveclub by the way is now at like 1 million subscribers. That's 1 million customers that did not care about this seemingly sound reasoning. Why? Because unless you're selling widgets, purchasing decisions are NOT made in this way. "Why would you buy milk from a supermarket when you could go directly to a farm and get it for half price?", said No one ever! Bottomline, purchasing decisions online are determined by branding, tribe, emotional connection, convenience, and a list of other things that have little to do with price and everything to do with utility or presentation. You don't buy your jeans directly from China to save a couple dollars, nor do you buy the cheapest cell phone you can find. Chances are, you have an iphone in your pocket right now. Yes there is a certain range that people expect, but we try to be near the top of that range and build in value, rather than being at the bottom scrounging for margin. We heard the same questions when we came out with a suite of wordpress themes for $450 each. Folks were like, there's no way you can sell them for $450 when you can get wordpress themes on themeforest for $45. We sold $100k of them in the first year. They were especially useful for a particular niche and the branding was fire!!! To wrap this up, kill that noise. If you build something that is well branded, useful, and you can communicate that utility clearly and effectively, you could sell water to a well. And the better the branding, the more you can charge for that water. Real talk: If no one is complaining about your price, you're not charging enough!!!

Super quick post on price, because I've been getting a bunch of questions recently.
...HMMM BUT HOW WILL I COMPETE ON PRICE?
This is something that I get a lot from new entrepreneurs.
It usually comes in the form of a question of this type:
"Why would someone sign up for dollarshaveclub, when they can get the exact same razor from Dorco for half the price?"
Dollarshaveclub by the way is now at like 1 million subscribers.
That's 1 million customers that did not care about this seemingly sound reasoning.
Why?
Because unless you're selling widgets, purchasing decisions are NOT made in this way.
"Why would you buy milk from a supermarket when you could go directly to a farm and get it for half price?", said No one ever!
Bottomline, purchasing decisions online are determined by branding, tribe, emotional connection, convenience, and a list of other things that have little to do with price and everything to do with utility or presentation.
You don't buy your jeans directly from China to save a couple dollars, nor do you buy the cheapest cell phone you can find.
Chances are, you have an iphone in your pocket right now.
Yes there is a certain range that people expect, but we try to be near the top of that range and build in value, rather than being at the bottom scrounging for margin.
We heard the same questions when we came out with a suite of wordpress themes for $450 each.
Folks were like, there's no way you can sell them for $450 when you can get wordpress themes on themeforest for $45.
We sold $100k of them in the first year.
They were especially useful for a particular niche and the branding was fire!!!
To wrap this up, kill that noise.
If you build something that is well branded, useful, and you can communicate that utility clearly and effectively, you could sell water to a well.
And the better the branding, the more you can charge for that water.
Real talk: If no one is complaining about your price, you're not charging enough!!!
More stuff I've written: https://www.reddit.com/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/1ase92j/from_an_idea_to_replacing_my_fulltime_salary_in_4/

Trip Date: March 21-April 8
Interests: Coffee, Tea, Food, Anime, Gardens, Castles, Museums, Sakura
Priorities: trying good coffee, eating good food, minimizing waiting in lines, buying some chef knives, one piece, pokemon, Sakura.
Route: Tokyo > Nagoya > Kyoto > Yasugi > Hiroshima > Yufuin > Osaka > Hakone > Tokyo
Expenses (rounded to nearest $10):

• Transportation within Japan: $1300
  
• Luggage Forwarding: $80 (2 carryon sized luggages 3 times)
  
• eSim: Ubigi - $26 for 2 10gb plans
  

General tips to newer travelers or first timers to Japan:

• Get an IC card regardless of JR pass or not, physical or Apple pay, either work. There were some people who said IC cards were unnecessary, but we traveled using the booths for the first day, and after getting our Pasmo (for me) and loading a Suica onto my wife’s iPhone, traveling was immensely easier. No need to spend time calculating how much fare to pay, just tap in and tap out and it’s auto calculated.
  
• Make sure your card/phone actually scans/beeps when you enteexit stations. If you accidentally enter or exit without scanning, your card will have an error, and you will need to speak to an attendant to fix it. They will ask you for your last entry/exit station.
  
• Ubigi eSim: while I rarely had service outages, I never got the advertised 5g speeds and was stuck on 4g the whole time. Apparently this is a US Pixel specific issue (I have Pixel 7Pro). My wife has an iPhone 13 and she had 5g the whole time, but she had to change some privacy settings in order to use her web browser (apps worked fine). We both got the 10gb/30day plan and I had 800MB of data left while my wife had 2.8GB. I did all the navigation but I wasn’t watching videos or using social media unless on wifi.
  
• Prioritize what you want to do. Sometimes you may end up spending more time at a location than you expect, or maybe there is a longer wait for something, or maybe you just missed the subway/got on the wrong train.
  
• Google maps is wonderful for train/metro/subway, and a little more confusing when it comes to buses. My wife and I rarely used public transit before this trip so our time in Kyoto was very stressful because google maps would not match up with the bus lines perfectly and the colors/”platforms” were sometimes incorrect. Don’t pack the first 2-3 days of your trip with tons of locations to travel to because you’ll be using these days to learn the transit system.
  
• Learn some Japanese and Japanese culture/etiquette. There were definitely areas where we felt like some business owners and residents were weary of tourists. But knowing simple things like where to wait, how to say how many seats you need, or just simply being mindful of those around you will go a long way.
  
• Don’t be “those tourists”! You’re visiting someone else’s home. You should respect the rules of the house even if you were raised differently. I read plenty of reviews on google for places that were negative because “no one spoke english”. If you see people lined up for something, you should assume that it’s because they are waiting to get into the place/train/bus you are trying to get to. I could go on and on, but rude/ignorant tourists were by far the worst part of our trip.
  
• If you want to avoid the crowds, you will have to go early (or late) to popular tourist spots. The downside to going early is that a lot of the shops are not open yet.
  
• For those that are lactose intolerant, some places advertise oat milk/oat lattes. My wife had 2 incidents (out of 20+) where she believes they were using oat FLAVORED milk. If you’re really sensitive to dairy, just stick to black, or bring your own non dairy creamer, or use lactaid every time.
  
• Google translate works best when you understand how the Japanese language structure works. I have completed Pimsleur Japanese 1 and 2, I have been doing DuoLingo for almost a year, and I watch anime regularly, so I was able to start understanding how to word things better when using the translate functions. Sometimes I would type something into translate and they would give me a confused look, and then I would reword my questions using different words/sentence structures and then it clicked for them.
  
• Cards or cash? I see this asked often and I see a varying degree of answers. My personal experience is that I was able to use cards at a lot more establishments than I was expecting, especially since I went to more rural areas. I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum card and they were allowed at probably around 90% of the businesses I visited. If you have a physical IC card, you need cash to reload it. For 18 days, I brought 300000 Yen (Chase bank’s currency exchange was not bad) and I used about 135,000 Yen, over half of which was used to reload my IC card.
  

This was a re-do of our canceled 10 year anniversary trip that was planned for 2020. I was really bummed because that trip was timed PERFECTLY with the sakura blooms. I had hopes for this year as well, because all the reports up until the week before our trip were forecasting late March blooms again. Unfortunately, we missed the blooms and were, instead, given rain and strong winds for the first half of the trip. I booked our Ryokan stays first based on availability and pricing which is why the route may not look optimal to seasoned travelers. My initial concept was to book Ryokans as “rest days” in between the more active days of the trip and to also use the longer train/bus rides as down time. I wanted to end with Osaka/Tokyo as I had plans to purchase some chef knives and do some shopping and wanted to get a feel on the prices during my initial stay in Tokyo to see if I should buy in Osaka or not.
Days 1-3: Tokyo
Notable Coffee:

• Glitch - 8/10:this is made for people who prefer light/medium roasts with fruity and floral notes and enjoy drinking coffee black. My wife and I prefer darker roasts in the chocolate/nutty family with some milk. So while we didn’t particularly enjoy our brews, we definitely appreciated the time and effort they take to make you a special cup of coffee. It can take a while if you come at the wrong time because they walk everyone through their coffee process so if you have a bunch of people lined up in front of you who like to ask questions and don’t know what they want, it will be a while.
  
• Fuglen - 10/10: apparently this is a tourist hotspot and is especially popular with Chinese/Taiwanese tourists. There is a guy who seems to regularly sit in the front in a military outfit (he was there both times we went). The coffee jelly was AMAZING (best I had). This was the first time my wife could have non dairy milk (oat) with her coffee and she loved it. It was in the top 5 coffee spots in Japan for us. The waffle was good, but we didn’t get it the second time we visited.
  
• Kielo Coffee - 9/10: Another spot with non dairy milk and it was really tasty. The vibes were nice as well - chill and relaxed.
  

Notable Food:

• Himuro Ueno - 8/10: our first meal in Japan after landing. They went a bit heavy on the beansprouts for my wife’s miso ramen. Gyoza was excellent. Eggs were amazing (theme for the trip)
  
• Tonkatsu Hasegawa - 10/10: I believe you need reservations to dine here, but I saw a couple people walk up and try to get seats (not sure if they were successful or not). Best Tonkatsu we’ve ever had. We never ate katsu for the rest of the trip because we were certain it would not live up to this place.
  
• 銀座すし和 - 9/10: our first sushi spot in Japan. It is underground and there is only 1 person running the whole thing. He speaks no english and there is no english menu. It takes about 10-15 minutes for him to finish 1 person’s order. We both ordered the medium sized meal (for 1.5 people) and everything tasted fresh.
  
• Boulangerie Jean Francois - 10/10: we made the mistake of stumbling across this bakery at the basement level of Ginza 6. I say mistake because we loved their baked goods so much that we compared every other baked goods to this place. Their cinnamon rolls, butter croissant, regular croissant, and curry bread were the best we had.
  
• Yasubee - 8/10: Known for their Tsukemen, but they have ramen options as well. I was confused because they price the small, medium, and large serving sizes all the same. I got the large size (maybe it was XL?) Tsukemen and my wife got a medium ramen. They go HARD with their noodles… I only finished about 80% of my meal and I actually had to sit for 45 minutes after my meal at a starbucks because I was in such a massive food coma. Amazing noodle texture, and the eggs.. Holy moly people weren’t kidding about the eggs in Japan.
  

Touristy Spots:

• Square Enix cafe - 7/10: our only cafe experience and it will probably be our last. I know it’s not as well done as, say the Kirby cafe, but as much as I LOVED Final Fantasy 7, this was just not worth the price. The drinks were very tasty, but you don’t get a lot of it (ice takes up most of the space). I’m glad I experienced it, but themed cafes are just not my thing.
  
• Sensoji Temple - pretty cool temple grounds with cool gates. Lots of vendors all around the temple area. Easy to get to and worth a stop if you’re in the area.
  
• Nakamise Dori - right next to Sensoji Temple, so you might as well walk around there after. Tons of food and souvenir vendors but you’re probably better off buying things at Don Quijote price-wise.
  
• Gundam Factory - they decommissioned the moving Gundam at the end of March, so I’m glad I got to see it before they did.
  
• Cup Noodle Museum (Yokohama) - if you aren’t doing the ramen making workshop or the cup building workshop, you can probably walk through the whole place in 30-45 minutes. The lines for the instant noodle kitchen was insane when we went. We only bought admission tickets to look around.
  
• Akihabara - just wow. I didn’t think I could get sensory overload, but I did. The malls here are either super tight and tall, or super wide and tall and LOADED with signs. Not only that, but there are simply SO many people walking everywhere. It makes Vegas look like child’s play. When taking videos, try not to point your cameras at the cafe girls. They all looked away/turned around when they saw people with cameras shooting the streets.
  
• Tsukiji Market - cool to walk around, hard to figure out what you want to eat and where to get it. Lots of people are trying to buy things and if you don’t assert yourself at some of the shops, you’ll never get help. Stopped by a couple knife stores and the prices weren’t great. Had some “onigiri” from a random shop outside of the market and it was really delicious.
  

Other thoughts:
This was our first international flight over 5 hours so I wanted to make our arrival as frictionless as possible. We got Ubigi esims for my Pixel 7pro (US unlocked) and her iPhone 13 (US Unlocked) so we wouldn’t have to pick up a pocket wifi. I opted to forgo JR pass, as the calculator said we would barely be saving money and I read that the JR Ticket lines at the airports are always packed and slow moving (for obvious reasons). And I opted to use the Keisei Skyliner and book a hotel in Ueno to avoid needing to transfer stations.
We arrived at Narita Airport around 5pm. When we landed, immigration only had two lines: 1 for Japanese residents and 1 for tourists. Everyone in the tourist line had to line up and do the same things regardless of if you had a QR code or filled out the hardcopy paperwork. Everyone had to scan their face and fingers. I noticed that the customs agents seemed to work quicker for people who had QR codes (maybe due to illegible or incorrectly filled out paperwork).
We headed straight for the ticketing booths on the B1F and I headed for the Skyliner Ticket booth. The Keisei information booth was much longer. The JR Line was even worse. I waited about 10 minutes before getting to the front of the line and purchased our Skyliner tickets to Ueno. They had no Pasmo Passports or any IC cards at the booth. The lady told me I had to pick one up at Ueno station. We boarded the Skyliner and arrived at Ueno station around 7pm. Information booth was closed and the JR office had no IC cards.
I had to shift gears a bit for one of the days because I was planning to visit Shinjuku National Garden and Yoyogi park for the Sakura. Unfortunately, we had wind and rain instead, and no blossoms in sight. So we opted to explore more of the Taito city area and take it easy. I am not a rain person so my spirits were quite low, but we got umbrellas and trudged on!
Day 4-6: Nagoya and Kyoto
Notable Coffee:

• Kitaoji Roastery Lab - 8/5/10: run more like a roastery than a cafe, but they know how to make a good latte. We were the only ones there and we got to see them roast 2 batches of beans while enjoying our lattes and iced coffees.
  
• % Arabica - 10/10: this was maybe our favorite coffee spot in all of Japan. Perfectly steamed milk and beans that are strong enough to burst through the creamy milk in perfect harmony. They are opening another 2nd location right across the street in April that looks to serve food as well. I’m note sure if the new location will be replacing the original location or not.
  

Notable Food:

• Funaokayama Shimizu - 10/10: our first kaiseki dining experience and it did not disappoint. Reservations only, as the place only seats 6. Chef Shimizu doesn’t talk much besides explaining the dishes he was presenting to us with the help of google translate. Top 3 meals for us in Japan. Everything was done so well and the flavors were immaculate. My wife’s favorite dessert was this orange juice jelly that he built inside of an actual orange. Located in a residential neighborhood, so it’s a little disconcerting to get there if you’re walking from the closest bus/metro stop.
  
• Charcoal-grilled eel Togawa sakae - 10/10: we actually wanted to eat at Atsuta Houraiken in Nagoya, but there was a 3 hour wait when we arrived at 11am, so we found this place nearby. They were fully booked for lunch already but were willing to make takeout boxes for us. We took these to the nearby Parco mall to eat. I was curious to see my wife’s reaction as she is not a huge unagi fan, but this unagi bowl changed her mind. They pack it with extra eel sauce and some onion/salt packets for the egg. Not cheap, but so so good.
  
• Yamamoto Menzou - 10/10: We typically aren’t udon people because the texture of the udon in the US isn’t very good. It’s usually too mealy, or thick, or the broth is too bland. But this place? Amazing. They seem to require reservations but we came at a down time and they were able to seat us right away. We had the spicy udon and spicy miso udon with burdock and chicken tempura. This was one of the only places that used white meat chicken that we tried in Japan and it was cooked perfectly. I wish I had ordered more. The burdock tempura was interesting. It was very firm and crunchy like a carrot. The texture of the udon noodles here were to die for: wonderfully chewy while somehow feeling like an al dente noodle. Was a perfect compliment to the broth.
  
• Ramen Tanaka Kyu Shoten - 8/10: everything here was pretty delicious, but it is definitely overpriced. This was the first place we dined at that we felt like we were paying tourist prices. Eggs were more yellow vs the orange we were used to seeing, but still cooked perfectly. Gyoza was okay and the karaage chicken was good.
  
• Pizzeria Da Yuki - 10/10: neapolitan style pizza has become our go-to in recent years and this place knocks it out of the park. They just changed locations about 150 meters away from the previous location. The menu is extensive and their dough has the perfect amount of chew and bubbling. We definitely felt underdressed here.
  

Touristy Spots:

• Nijo Castle: very cool castle with large grounds and gardens to walk through. Several Sakura trees, so I bet it'd be awesome to walk through when in bloom. Admission includes the ability to walk through the castle. We were planning to skip this in favor of west Kyoto (Arashiyama areas) but the rains changed our minds and we're glad we got to see this castle.
  
• Kiyomizu Dera: Very cool to walk around without hordes of people. We arrived around 7am and there were maybe 10-20 other people at the time we went. Kodaiji Temple: cool stairway to the main entrance. Again, no one around here early so you can take some cool photos.
  
• Sannenzaka: there were already people lined up to take photos here despite the gloomy weather. We couldn’t see the temple through the fog and clouds. No shops were open.
  
• Ninenzaka: cool to walk through while it was empty, but sad that we couldn’t explore the shops. Pick your poison I suppose.
  
• Philosopher’s path: was really looking forward to walking here with the trees in bloom but it was still a nice walk. We saw some fat neko here.
  
• Kinkaku-ji: Cool golden temple with a nice garden and short “hike”.
  
• Fushimi Inari: we got here around 5:00pm and there was still a decent crowd, probably because it had stopped raining and the sun was starting to peek through. We ended up taking a random path out of the hallway of tori gates because we saw several people go that way, and we ended up hiking up the backside of the trail. It was very cool to see the forest of bamboo, and we met a friendly neko that gave me a headbutt of affection, so that was the only reprieve of taking a very difficult (for us) hike up to the top. At one point, we were confused about where to go and this kind old man pointed us in the right direction. We went back down the normal path and it was significantly easier… so do with that information what you will. Definitely less people at the top, but not an insignificant amount of people either.
  
• Takumi-no Yakata: very cool place to learn how to brew teas. For 1000 yen, you can pick a tea to learn how to brew and drink and also pick a tea snack. This is where I learned I don’t like gyokuro tea. For whatever reason, it hits the umami centers of my tongue really hard, so it tastes almost like broth to me instead of tea. Wife learned how to whisk matcha so now I don’t have to whisk it up every morning for her haha. They are able to communicate effectively in English and Chinese here.
  
• Nakamura Tokichi Honten: if you want to try this place, I recommend stopping by here first before you explore Uji. There is a kiosk you put your name and party size into and it prints out a ticket for you to track where you are in line. When we got there around 11:30am it was a 3 hour wait. We explored Uji in the meantime and came back with an estimated 30 minute wait left (total time was about 3 hr 15 mins). I wasn’t impressed, but I also didn’t get the parfait. I got the mochi, jelly, and icecream dessert along with matcha latte and my wife got a traditional matcha.
  

Other thoughts:
Overall, we liked Kyoto the city, but we encountered so many awful tourists here. For example, there were some American teens who were crossing the rope boundary at Kinkaku-ji to grab yen on the ground to toss into the statue bowls for good luck and constantly yelling at each other to miss their tosses. We also had unpleasant experiences on the buses where tourists would cut the lines that Japanese residents were waiting in to get into packed buses and then proceed to act like ass hats (super loud nonstop conversations, watching tiktok on their phones at full volume, etc). We skipped west Kyoto because we were tired of wandering around in the rain, and spent a half day out in the rain at Uji instead. We were thinking that mud+rain would make everything less enjoyable in Arashiyama. We discovered how much we love warabi mochi, and I am so so sad we didn’t buy more Hojicha warabi mochi here.
Day 7: Yasugi

• Ryokan - Saginoyuso 8.5/10: Amazing stay here and they are very accommodating. Mainly booked this because I wanted to visit the Adachi Museum. My wife has several tattoos so I wanted to book Ryokans with private onsen in the room to avoid any discomfort. It’s so nice to be able to soak in the comfort of your private quarters instead of having to walk down several hallways to get to a private one you can book. Kaiseki meals were amazing. Dinner is served in your room, and breakfast is served in a communal dining/banquet area.
  
• Adachi Museum - 10/10: amazing garden with some cool art and sculptures. We sat and had coffee in one of the tea rooms, but you can probably skip it and find a bench to sit on in various areas of the museum. The views from the tea room were amazing, but at 1500 yen per drink (free refills) for pretty bad coffee, I don’t know that it’s worth it on top of the price of admission.
  

Other Thoughts:
We really wanted to visit Himeji castle, but after our hike, we were wiped and just wanted to get to the Ryokan and chill. Really cool view of Mount Daisen from the train on the way to Yasugi. There wasn't much else to do in Yasugi, and this Ryokan is literally across the street from the museum. I think I would try and stay in Matsue if we visit again. Pretty rural area in the mountains, but almost no tourists here aside from the tour groups stopping by the museum. If you stop at Okayama station, make sure to pick up the wasabi flavored nori snacks. We didn’t find those anywhere else and they were one of our favorite snacks of the trip!
Day 8-9: Hiroshima
Notable Coffee:

• Obscura Coffee Roasters Hondori - 10/10: one of the few places that have dark roast beans in their main rotation. This was one of the only places we actually bought beans from. Loved the vibe and ambiance in this location (they have another location closer to the peace park). Our second favorite coffee place after %Arabica.

Notable Food:

• Kome Kome Shokudo - 10/10: my wife picked this place out as she was wanting karaage. It was the best Karaage we had all trip. Skip the sizzling steak plate and just get the karaage chicken. I also tried the minced tuna don and it was okay. Their specialty is the karaage chicken and it was by far the best we had in Japan. Perfectly crispy outside with juicy chicken on the inside. They cut out all the gristle which we loved. They also have takeout option for their chicken.

Touristy Spots:

• Miyajima Island: I initially ruled this out because my wife gets motion sick and the ferry ride from Hiroshima is about an hour long. But I found that if you take the train to Miyajimaguchi Station, the ferry ride from there is only 10 minutes and apparently the ferry is bigger as well so it’s less rocky. My wife was fine for both ferry rides and we got to “enjoy” the hike up Mt. Misen and the street food. We took the Daishoin path up and it took us just over 90 minutes which is what the suggested time is for the hike. We didn’t have tickets to take the ropeway down, but there are signs indicating that you can pay for the ride down after you get to the base of the ropeway. Just know that if you take the ropeway up, you still have to hike for a bit to get to the top of Mt. Misen. We saw a woman in a nice dress and fur jacket and leather boots walking up from the Gondola and we were thinking “she does NOT know what she signed up for dressed like that…”
  
• Peace Memorial Museum: very sobering experience. It takes a while to get through because there are so many people in there that you get bottle necked sometimes. If you’re in Hiroshima, there’s no reason not to visit. The park and dome are right
  

Other Thoughts
The oysters weren’t my cup of tea. I tried them deep fried in a ball and grilled with Yuzu miso sauce. I think they taste too much like the water they were farmed in? Not sure how else to describe it. They don’t taste like the ocean like the oysters I’m used to, but they taste like… what you would expect brackish lake water to taste like? We also didn't do too much in Hiroshima because there was super strong winds on top of rain, so we mainly just explored the areas next to our hotel.
Day 10-11: Yufuin

• Ryokan - Yufuin Yasuha 8/10: special blue colored water (aoyu) that makes your skin silky smooth. The private bath in our room was not as smooth as the other ryokans we stayed at so it was slightly less comfortable if you’re going in naked. You can’t control the amount of spring water that goes into the bath, only the amount of cold water, so make sure not to leave it on too long or else you’re stuck with a lukewarm bath unless you ask the staff to resupply your bath. The welcome mochi and cold towel were amazing after sweating on the bus. Kaiseki dinner was good but one of my beef slices was super chewy. Meals are served in a communal area with partitions and sliding doors separating diners.
  
• Ryokan - Ryunohige 10/10: This was by far the best ryokan experience we had but it should be because it was also the most expensive haha. There are only 10-15 rooms in the whole Ryokan I think and every room is isolated from each other. Dinner area is in a communal area with separate, closed off rooms. Our favorite server in all of Japan was here. This was our 2nd favorite kaiseki meal after Shimizu’s and it introduced me to hojicha gelato (soooo good!). The breakfast was not as good as Saginoyuso’s breakfast though. The views here from the outdoor onsen were amazing, and Mt. Yufuin peeked through the clouds during my last soak before checkout.
  

Notable Coffee:

• Ordinary Day Coffee - 9.5/10: Really chill place to get coffee after walking around Yufuin all day. I didn’t confirm, but it seemed to be run by a husband and wife. They use manual press espresso extraction and the flavor was excellent.

Touristy Spots:
There is one main road that has all the stores, shops, restaurants with a few more off the side streets. When you’re at Yufuin Station, it’s easy to see where to go. On this street, some of our favorite food were: sweet potato, fries with chili salt, chicken tempura, Warabi Mochi, and Mochi dango. Yufuin Cider is a must try as well.

• Comico Art Museum: pretty expensive for what it is. I was fine with it because Takashi Murakami is one of my favorite artists and his art was one of the main exhibits.
  
• Kinrin Lake: smallish lake at the end of the path with a few cafes/restaurants around it.
  
• Flower Village: cool if you like Ghibli, smells like a poorly maintained petting zoo. Stores are very small and cramped. Random assortment of caged animals you can feed and several animal cafes
  
• Oita River: there’s a long path where you can walk along the Oita river. This is where we finally saw Sakura in full bloom on some of the trees.
  
• YUFUIN strawberry farm: you need reservations to access this location and I didn’t find out about it until the day we were walking around so I couldn’t get in. But if the strawberries in the dango that I ate in the Yufuin area were any indication of the quality, you should definitely try to get a reservation here.
  

Other Thoughts:
We decided to fly from Oita Airport to Osaka instead of taking the train as the airfare was actually cheaper than a train ride. We asked the host at Ryunohige about when we should get to the airport, and he said we could take the 10am express bus from Yufuin station to the airport and we would be fine for our 12pm flight. I was a bit anxious because I’m used to needing to get to the airport at least 2 hours early. But we trusted him and it took us less than 5 minutes to get from the bus to our gate. We should have spent more time outside of the gate because that’s where all the food and shops were but we rushed through and then just ended up sitting at the gate for 45 minutes with not much to do. They board people in a very efficient way, with window seats going first in general boarding. Took maybe 15 minutes to board the entire plane. Highly recommend flying in and out of here. So many people with dogs in Yufuin! It seemed like mainly Korean tourists and Japanese residents in the Ryokans we stayed at.
Day 12-14: Osaka
Notable Coffee:

• Lilo Coffee Kissa - 8/10: very cool vibes in this shop with 2 floors. They have all the brew methods you can ask for for their beans. Coffee jelly is good (but not as good as Fuglen). Mainly light/medium roasts with fruity/floral notes here though.
  
• Cafe Ciao Presso - 6/10: coffee wasn’t great, but the views from the 17th floor and the fact that it’s not jam packed with tourists was really nice. They have some “panino” sandwiches which weren’t bad.
  

Notable Food:

• Mizutaki Iroha - 9/10: the best sukiyaki we’ve had. It is definitely a bit on the sweeter side - but it might be possible for you to request for them to add less sugar. They cook the meat for you and then leave you with a tray of veggies to cook afterwards. Beef was SUPER tender. It is very pricey though. I don’t think I would come back, as there were other sukiyaki places for half the price. But if price isn’t an issue for you, definitely give it a try. Lots of autographs and pictures on the wall so I assume a lot of celebrities dine here.
  
• Sumibiyaki Unagi no Nedoko - 10/10: hard to compare this with Togawa sakae because we had a dine-in experience, but it was amazing. We had reservations for dinner and I believe they are required as we saw several people turned away. This was also not a cheap dinner, but unlike Mizutaki Iroha, this was worth every penny. I would dine here again in a heartbeat. We both ordered the eel bowl set and the hostess gave us instructions on how to eat the meal to best appreciate it.
  
• Mugito Mensuke - 10/10: we got here 45 minutes before opening on a rainy day on a Wednesday and were the first in line. We both got the Guinea Fowl ramen, and while we didn’t care for the actual Guinea Fowl meat, every other component of the ramen was top notch. This was our favorite ramen experience for sure. The chashu bowl is also a must get, as they cook the chashu while mixing it in a bowl using a hand torch. The eggs here were the best eggs we had all trip.
  
• Sakamoto Sushi - 10/10: I actually had to wake up twice at 5am (PST) to reserve a table at this location because they open reservations on tablecheck on the 20th of every month and I miscalculated which day that would be in the US. But it was so worth it. Chef Sakamoto was our favorite chef all trip and was so accommodating and interactive. We actually met up with my cousin and her husband on this leg of the trip and the 4 of us got the prime seats right in front of Chef Sakamoto. He and his wife know some English but rely on google translate. Very affordable omakase and I would go to Osaka again just to dine here.
  

Touristy Spots:

• Wada Knife Sharpening Class - highly recommended for anyone who is a home chef or interested in knives. The class includes a knife for you to take home and a trip to the knife museum and Yuji is amazing at explaining the history and all the intricacies of bladesmithing in Japan. There are two sharpening masters at the shop who help guide you in the knife sharpening process and at the end of the class, you can pick out a handle and you set your knife in the handle yourself (with assistance).
  
• Dotonbori - go at least once to experience the sheer amount of people and food stalls. We didn’t end up eating anything here though as the prices seemed a little high compared to the areas immediately outside of it. We also didn't want to wait in the lines.
  
• Shinsaibashi - So. Many. Stores. Also, people seem to not give a damn here. I saw an old lady just sitting at the end of the strip on the floor with her shoes and socks off next to her 8 shopping bags. Lots of cool looking places to eat as well.
  
• Shinsekai - we only came during the day but it seems like it would be similar to Dotonbori.
  
• Expo ’70 Commemorative Park - pretty cool park that I think would be awesome to visit when the Sakura bloom. There’s a neat museum in the park (need to pay for it) that details the creation of the park. Reminiscent of large regional parks we have in California, with a lot more things to do. Shopping and small amusement park at the south entrance to the park. 90% of the visitors looked to be locals.
  

Other Thoughts We came to Osaka to eat and shop for knives. Nara was supposed to be a part of the trip too but we were just so over the rain and we got our deer fix on Miyajima Island. We definitely spent a pretty penny here (knives are expensive haha). Overall, the vibe is definitely younger here and a lot more people are smoking everywhere. It was also the first time we noticed trash on the streets. For shopping, I would recommend Umeda over Shinsaibashi. Namba walk also had a ton of food in the underground area. There were several bento style shops that had massive lines of people with baskets overflowing with food which I assumed were discounted due to the time (around 7pm). We grabbed a box of tuna sushi for about 800Y from one of the stands and it was excellent quality.
Day 15: Hakone

• Ryokan Mizunoto - 7/10: a lot of families at this Ryokan. Definitely a different vibe compared to the other 3 Ryokans we stayed at previously. There are several private baths you can “reserve”. Kaiseki meals here were good and they give you the option of grilled or hotpot for the meats portion of the meal at dinner and we chose grilled. There were also free snacks/foods at various times: dango, meat buns, ramen.

Touristy Spots:

• Owakudani - The souvenir and egg store were flooded with people when we went. Really annoying when groups of people would just stand at the entrance/exit for no reason just loitering. Eggs come in sets of 4 for 500 yen. They taste like normal eggs but have a black shell. They come with a packet of salt.
  
• Open Air Museum - It was okay.
  

Other Thoughts:
It was very gloomy when we went so there weren’t any good views of anything. We didn’t end up doing the loop because we weren’t going to go on the ship and the gloom and fog didn’t offer any views. Overall we weren’t impressed with Hakone compared to Yufuin. I’m sure a lot of the charm was lost because of the weather, but there are just way too many obnoxious tourists here too. We were stuck on the ropeway ride and subsequent railcars with a group of really obnoxious people.
Day 16-19: Tokyo
Notable Coffee:

• The Roastery - 8/10: the baked goods here were some of the best we had in Japan. Donut and cinnamon rolls were amazing. Coffee and lattes were decent but not super remarkable compared to our favorite coffee shops in Japan.
  
• Koffee Mameya Kakeru - 9/10: this was a very interesting experience. They offer an omakase coffee experience where they serve you coffee 4-5 different ways based on your course selection. Our barista informed us that it would take up to 2 hours. We didn’t have the time to spend here so we just opted for some a la carte options. If you are into the science of coffee, and want to experience all the different preparations of coffee, including alcoholic drinks, I don’t know where else you can go to have this experience. Baristas were fairly fluent in English.
  
• Little Nap Coffee Stand - 9/10: great place to stop by next to Yoyogi park. Excellent coffee stand. Don’t sit in the outside bar area though - the bathroom vents to that counter.
  

Notable Food:

• Harajuku Gyozaro - 6/10: Very skippable. Pretty much only tourists ate here. Gyoza was very forgettable. I guess a lot of people like this place because they serve beer, but the food itself was very meh.
  
• Sobahouse - 5/10: this was a big disappointment for us considering its Michelin star rating. They have a bunch of rules about how to dine there to help facilitate moving as many people as possible through the restaurant as they have limited seating. We were 14th in line for dinner and their ticket machine showed that 80% of the menu was sold out. No eggs available. Chashu bowl was easily the worst I had in Japan. Chashu was tough and chewy and lacked flavor, and the rice wasn’t cooked well. Broth was very interesting - deep seafood flavors with a punch of clam (as advertised). But I wouldn’t come here again. Very good price point though!
  
• Shewolf Diner - 9/10: We were craving fries and this restaurant was attached to our hotel so we came here after the disappointing sobahouse dinner to get our fry fix. Really really tasty fries. Highly recommend the truffle if you’re into truffle.
  
• Sushi Mogana Okachimachi - 9/10: One of the best tempura we had in Japan, along with very good quality sushi. You order from your phone after scanning a QR code.
  
• Nogata Ramen - 9/10: wanted to eat near the Meguro River Cherry Blossoms Promenade and wandered into this place. Their broth is extra garlicky and oily, so ask for less if you need to. They offer pickled beansprouts that have a little kick to them and they were super tasty. The egg was excellent. Chashu don was very tasty with a good char taste. Skip the gyoza.
  
• Bifuteki Kawamura - 9/10: Not sure how much of it is marketing but they give you a full explanation about what is allowed to be called Kobe beef or not. Really good dining experience here, but also the most expensive of our trip. The garlic fried rice was bursting with flavor. We had the standard kobe beef course and it was definitely some of the best steak I’ve ever had. I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t cheaper alternatives though.
  

Touristy Spots:

• Shinjuku Gyoen - a must visit during sakura season.
• Yoyogi Park - if you don’t want to pay a (nominal) admission fee, you can come to this park for free
• Meguro River Cherry Blossom Promenade - very nice walk. Not very crowded after 8pm. Probably get better pictures during the day though.
• Cat Street - nice area to walk around that isn't super crowded. Lots of shopping and food stalls. I wish I tried the lobster rolls.
• Shibuya Scramble - Nice to see from Shibuya Station walkway
• Kappabashi Street - Tons of shops here. I wish we had more time to explore. Picked up some knife sharpening stones and a knife here.

Other Thoughts:
This was mainly the shopping portion of the trip. The mega donquijote in Shibuya was wild. 7 floors of merchandise. Tax free on the top floor. I only was able to last through 2.5 floors and I was just too tired and overwhelmed to keep going haha. It was at the end of the day so I would probably start earlier there next time. We visited multiple one piece stores and pokemon centers throughout Japan, and we noticed that 90ish% of the things can be gotten at any of the stores. There was a custom shirt making station in the Shibuya Pokemon center that I didn’t see in the Ibekuro, Osaka, Nagoya or Osaka ones. Claw machines games were a money sink. I was surprised at how much of a premium Kirby souvenirs demanded compared to all the other anime/game souvenirs. We saw massive lines at Narita for China Air but everything else was smooth sailing. We flew ANA and it took us about 20 minutes to pickup our forwarded luggage, check our bag, and get through security. They have showers and a room that you can rent. And it seemed like all the stores and restaurants in the airport were priced the same as outside of the airport, which was a big surprise coming from American airports. So you can save some of your souvenir shopping and dine in the airport without fear of being price gouged.

My 83 year old Dad, still very active, works 2 days a week in the farming sector out of choice. He has an iphone 4, it can't run most modern apps, including whatsapp which is annoying for the rest of the fam because we can't communicate with him easily. Also banking, travel, etc .. Imagine living your life without pretty much any smartphone facility.
He now wants a new phone so he can keep up with the rest of us. The reason he still has the phone is that he got some kind of really tough case for it, and despite being trod on by cows and dropped umpteen times, the phone still works great.
I got my daughter a blackview 3 years ago which is built in tough case, after she broke every phone within weeks, still going strong - so this is my goto unless you guess can recommend anything better.
So what smartphone that can come with a tough case to take on my Dads crazy life?

My 73 year old mom is visiting. Been here 30 hours and Sunday won't come soon enough. This morning we were talking and she went off on Facebook and how awful they were to her.
A friend of hers sent her a FB post about how Apple and FB track you and how you must turn off a setting on your iPhone if you want to avoid being tracked. She was suspicious but sure enough there was a setting to toggle on or off where the post said one would be. That settles it. The post must be true so she sent it out to all her friends on FB.
A few days later FB notified her that she was sending out false information. She continued to send it out and was finally threatened with suspension. She stopped but is just appalled FB would threaten her like that. Besides, she was only sharing it. It's not like she made it and don't they have better things to do. That was her defense.
Once again I told her to STOP SHARING SHIT SHE FINDS ON FB! I have explained to her repeatedly that most of what she shares come from Russian or Chinese troll farms.This is not the first time stuff like this has been an issue. I have a FB page but don't use it. I have never "friended" my mother, no matter how much it irritates her, because I don't want to see the shit she shares. My wife has even gotten to the point of not telling me what my mother shares (she's "friends" with her on FB) because I told her I don't want to see it.
My mother shares every post or meme about "blessing police" or "young people are lazy and refuse to work" or "pass this on to ten friends for good luck" to "your doctors are wrong" she sees. Honestly, she's always acted like she knew everything but with FB, she believes she knows everything.
It's poisoning her and she refused to see it. She always claims, when called out for Facebooking, she isn't really on it much and doesn't really share things. WTF! That's total BS!

Background/Context: I'm a former Sr. developer from AWS that decided at the end of last year to regain some sanity (Amazon devs will understand) and take a sabbatical. It is a wildly privileged position to be in. My wife and I are planning a large family trip to Japan next year, taking all the (grown) kids. A big deal. Yesterday I joked with my wife that, heck, I could just pop off to Japan next weekend and do some recon. Two hours later I had booked tickets for 10 days. Solo trip. April 20th-30th.
I don't even have a hotel yet.
Me:

• I've been to Japan once before, in 2018. I spent time in Tokyo, Matsumoto, Nagano, Kanazawa, and Kyoto.
• I speak broken Japanese that magically get way better if I drink. But I don't drink anymore... I can read enough to navigate.
• 44 yo and I am a big dude. 6' tall and 240lbs/109kg. Since my last trip I have increased my tattoo coverage such that many are visible. I am also a nerd (worked in gametech at Amazon) and most of the visible tattoos are like Zelda and Dragon Quest. I'm basically an otaku billboard.
• I love food, parks, aimless meandering, nerd stuff, being a fly on the wall in busy areas. Not super interested in shopping other than maybe some art supplies.
• Edit: I f-ing love sumo. Watch the tournaments every two months.

My Questions for y'all:

• What would you do if you were just dropped in Tokyo weekend after next?
  • Where would you stay? I'm currently thinking of getting a hotel in Ueno and using it as a hub to travel around. Maybe I should split up to two hotels?
• What would make good day trips?
  • Matsumoto was one of my favorite life experiences (that and the snow monkeys in Nagano). We hit up the wasabi farm there, the castle, and stumbled into a newspaper that was throwing an appreciation party for the locals. That was awesome. What is accessible and off the beaten path for a day trip?
• Suica card? Cash?
  • Last time we had the JR pass because we were cruising from city to city, and cash for everything else. Should I set up a suica card? Do something with iPhone wallet?

Anyway, I appreciate everyone that reads through this post and comments! Thanks in advance!
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