[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and giraflorens PB49 - any stock traders out there?

[DaveV]

What about Buy Low and Sell High for your first two cities? Absurdly basic advice, but a lot of people forget it at times like these.

[Cornflakes]

Some resources to start with:

Candlesticks ... the basis of the forecasting voodoo: https://www.luckscout.com/the-language-o...ndicators/ ... this article is about currency trading, but the concepts are the same for stocks.
How to time entering and exiting a trade ... 10 simple rules at the start, and then some lengthy examples: https://www.luckscout.com/how-to-enter-a...ck-market/
Bollinger Bands ... too good to be true? This is a standard-deviation-based signal: https://www.luckscout.com/double-bolling...ade-forex/ ... again written about currency trading, but the concepts are the same for stocks.

[Cornflakes]

A friend invited me to open a Robinhood trading account about a year ago in order to get a free share of a stock. I put in $40 and got a share worth about $5 of a company I’d never heard of, and immediately sold it. The account has been sitting at $45.02 for a year. I figured now is a good time to start and we can follow the progress here. And if I lose everything it’s just a nice steak dinner for myself, or barely a date night at a decent restaurant with my wife.

This morning I bought 2 shares of QID near the open with a market order for 20.87. I’ll made the trade based on the negative chart pattern and yesterday’s candlestick. I’ll post some chart screenshots later but wanted to give the play-by-play when I made the trade.

[Cornflakes]

Here are the charts. First the longer term weekly chart:

   

Longer term chart, stronger signals. I drew the blue line along the tops ("resistance") from late 2018 - early 2019. I also added in the "Fibonacci Retracement", starting at the very top and going to the very bottom of the march drop. 50% retracement is a general target for a bounced (true for either bear market rally, or bull market pullback). At yesterday's open, QQQ up over 3% and was near the area where both the blue line and the 50% retracement line converge. Throughout the day QQQ lost all of the gains from the open and even closed in the red, despite two separate attempt to rally in the last hour. That is negative. Let's zoom in now and look at the daily chart over the last 3 months:

   

Wait, what? Where's the candlestick from yesterday? I reviewed the charts after the close yesterday when I actually made the decision that I would buy QID today, but didn't take the screenshots until a few minutes ago. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but that is very ... suspicious. This was not at all what I intended to show you. Could somebody else check Yahoo Finance? It seems that across the board any chart I check is missing yesterday's candlestick  I wasn't planning to zoom in further but let's take a look at the 5-day chart since you can't see yesterday's candlestick here:

   

At this level of zoom each candlestick is 5 minutes. The gap up yesterday hit the 50% retracement dead on but despite another attempt to break above 50% a couple hours in, the highs for the day were at the open and it was all downhill from there. Yesterday closed at the low for the day with a long solid red candlestick. This 5-day screenshot was taken about 12:30 today and it appears that QQQ has just failed another attempt to return to 50%, which turned down at the blue line. NOTE, the retracement levels and blue line on this screenshot were drawn on the long-term weekly chart and have not been adjusted as I zoomed in. I will continue to monitor over the next couple days. This is a short trading week with the holiday Friday.

One more note on why I'm posting charts of QQQ but traded QID. QQQ is the ETF which tracks the NASDAQ composite index. Based on the charts I think QQQ will decline in the short term. QID is an "inverse" ETF which is set up to move opposite QQQ. It is also a "leveraged" ETF designed to moved -2x QQQ (on a daily basis). Leveraged ETF's over the long term perform worse than non-leveraged ETF's due strictly to math (see https://thecollegeinvestor.com/4414/leve...rformance/ for a full explanation). But over the short term they can provide double the returns. So today I bought 2 shares of QID near the open with a market order for 20.87 which I expect to move up as QQQ declines over the next week or two.

[Cornflakes]

We are live   Screenshot after moving scout and settling:

   

I decided to trust the mapmaker regarding orphaning of seafood and settled in place. No seafood revealed yet

Scoreboard indicates 650 land tiles total, divided into 9 players is 72 tiles/player. There are 55 land tiles visible, including the tiles across water and all tiles in the immediate ring of fog. Therefore 2 rings of fog will more encompass the entirety my 72 tile allotment. For comparison PB43 had 130/player so this will be considerably tighter. Those players without any early-game boosts in either civ or leaders will run out of space before their slower-starting powerhouse can get up to speed. I'm quite pleased to have Babylonian Gardens and Bowman security.

My first thought for scout movement is the solid yellow line, but on 2nd thought dashed is definitely better. There is plenty of time to make a wider circle, and the capital border pop in 5 turns will pick up the tiles directly south anyway.

[giraflorens]

Good to start!!! Cheers!

but if you move to the hill you'll have wider view and decide afterwards

[thestick]

Is it time to derail the thread and start babbling about financial economics? Because that has almost nothing to do with stock trading, at least on a week to week level and with small amounts of money.

What kind of stocks does Robinhood let you invest in? What are the fees/commissions like?

[Cornflakes]

Sure, proceed with derailment not much is going on in game for the next month anyway. And another foundational rule on my list (sub-point to Risk Management) is “trade with the major trend” and ignore or be patient through the short term counter-trend bounces. So an understanding of the bigger picture is required as well.

It must then be evident that I believe the major trend is now down since I just bought an inverse ETF.

As far as I know Robinhood supports trading in any public ally traded stock and EFT, and their options. No commissions or fees. No short selling. Margin account is optional, which I have but don’t intend to use.

[Cornflakes]

Somehow managed to be last in turn already and got to play turns 1-2 back-to-back, great to see quick turn pace   Here's what our scout reports:

   

We landed on a peninsula, with apparent islands to the west and east. We've now revealed 64 land tiles (including 1 ring of fog). Outside the capital it's looking about 70/30 brown/green ... and the green is mostly covered in yucky jungle. The big question (as usual): "Where's the food?" It looks like the clams will be the only food that we can pick up with a pig-splitting 2nd city. This is unfortunate because that's another tech that will be required early. On the plus side worker labor won't be in as high demand early. In fact with our Garden-powered early whipping we may be able to get by for a long time on just one worker 

The gems will provide some happiness after eventually hacking them out of the jungle. I'd consider settling on them for earlier happiness but that would be foodless. CHA is looking solid. Avoiding IMP/EXP looks good given the relatively inhospitable territory.

Some of Ref's thought process on the map can be learned here: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...p?tid=9518 Looks like we landed the "islands for IC trade routes". ORG gives us a head start on Great Lighthouse thanks to the lighthouse discount. Seeing the lack of overly lush land it might make sense to head for the islands early-ish. Obviously don't want to cede too much mainland to our neighbors so we will need to have some sort of balance.

[Cornflakes]

Here's a screenshot from the sim showing where we can be with a T30 settler:

   

Stats for the first 30 turns
Total pop grown: 5
Number of whips: 3 (4 pop whipped)
Number of chops: 1
Builds: Worker (T11), Garden (T23), Warrior (T25), Bowman (T28), Settler (T30)

Note the overflow from the settler is enough to bring a worker into 1-pop whip range at 30/60. This requires a couple tile swaps between floodplains and plains forest hill from T26-30 to ensure I get exactly the correct amount of food to grow, while the rest of the foodhammers go to production. This will allow me to whip down to size 1 for a turn when the 2nd city is settled and steals the pigs away. A little more testing shows that the first worker is probably better off heading straight for the deer to camp as soon as Animal Husbandry completed, rather than chopping first as shown in the screenshot.

I marked a couple tile locations: A, B, C, and the as-yet-unexplored D that may be a valid alternative if there is food lurking in the fog. What do you think are the advantages/disadvantages of A/B/C? I have some thoughts but no more time to type, got to run.