NFL Week 2 Betting Recap

 I will have a post up soon about Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian (actual) refugee who was murdered by a black man on a public train and left to bleed out in front of a dozen or so other blacks who barely even looked her way. Between her murder, Charlie Kirks murder and the reaction to both of them, I am so beyond full of rage. Like, white hot, blinding, trembling rage. I can barely muster a comprehensible sentence about all of it right now so I'm going to fester for a couple more days before I write about it. But a post is coming soon.

Today I am going to continue this new thing I'm doing this year which is a recap of my bets for the NFL for the prior week. So let's dig in.

First off, as is typical with NFL teasers, I had a few bets from week 1 that were still pending into week 2, all of them being Chicago +7.5 teasers. I hedged with various Vikings bets and again got a little too cute. I got decent numbers on a couple Vikings -1 and -2.5 which won, but I mostly hedged with Vikings -3.5 +150ish. The Vikings ended up winning by 3 so my teasers all won and a couple of the hedges won too, so a good result that should have been way better. A recurrent theme this week that we'll see...

I did a few 'non-standard' teasers this week which is usually when I get a team at -3 -130-ish and tease them to +3 and the buy half a point. I can actually get these 6.5 point teasers at -120 which is really good. Besides these teasers being +EV on their own, I like the idea of doing any teasers that aren't exactly Wong teasers. It throws the agent/bookmakers off the scent a little bit and they look square. I teased GB, SF and PIT from heavy -3's into +3.5s. The Steelers were the only team to not cover +3.5.

I also had many different small teasers with IND +8.5 and +7.5 as well as KC +7.5. I was able to get KC +7.5 by jumping on KC +1.5 early in the week. I had KC +7.5 in almost all of my teasers so I hedged with some PHI -1 and -2.5, but mostly -3.5 and a little -9.5. Again, getting too cute. PHI won by 3 so it was the same thing as the CHI/MIN game. A good result but a half point away from being amazing.

I had a fairly big position on the NYJ at +6.5 -105, -102 and +6 -108 I got throughout the week, all of which were arbable with Pinnacle. I did my half-scalp thing and got myself plus odds of NYJ +6 and +6.5 where Pinnacle was at like -115ish, no vig. They got blown out of course but they were fantastic bets. 

I had the Patriots teased to +7.5 in a few teasers and was able to hedge with MIA ML at -125 on Draft Kings which was a couple cents away from being arbable at Pinnacle. If MIA won by 7 or less points it would have been a huge winner. I still made money as I had way more on the Pats. It didn't work out perfectly but again, I was finding a ton of really good spots like this all week. I actually cashed out of most of my MIA bets near the end of the game for small amounts which is something I almost never do but worth thinking about. I did the same thing with a small DAL -4.5 bet I had. They were down by 4 with the ball for the last possession of the game. There was, I believe, zero chance they would score a TD to go up by 3 and then NOT kick the extra point. I couldn't see a single possibility where they could cover 4.5. The cash out was small, something like 15% of the bet, but I did it and it got me thinking about the cash outs a little bit. Usually you can find a better option then cash outs through live betting, but not always. I think if you are able to scoop up these little 10-20% cash out rebates it may be worth it. I think they might be leaving them up a little too long, especially when the cash out option is tiny. (However, in general, cashing out is almost always bad).

My PPH account put up DEN -107 moneyline which was off market and on the verge of being arbable with Pinnacle. However, close to kick off, Draft Kings put up IND +110. So I had a nice clean little arb there which I basically maxed out. (Terrific way to clear a bonus I had too). I had IND teased to +7.5 and +8.5 from early in the week as well, so hedging that with a -107 DEN ML and then arbing THAT with IND +110 ML is a traders wet dream. IND won with a walkoff field goal, but if DEN had won by less than a TD it would have been perfect. Again, a decent result that was inches away from being amazing.

The Sunday Night game was interesting. The market was bouncing between Min -3 and -3.5 all day. I wanted some more KC +7.5 right before it started and my PPH had KC +1 which was slightly better than market. So I paired it with MIN -3 -115 and bought half a point, which gave me KC +7.5 and MIN +3.5 for one big bet of a 6.5 point teaser at -120. Once KC covered, I knew I had to hedge some of the MIN bet. The best number I could find was Draft Kings who had ATL at +3.5 -115 (Pinnacle was at +3.5 -123ish). However, my PPH dealt MIN -3 -110, where Pinny was at -3 -114. This was one of those rare scalp opportunities where you have two slightly off market numbers instead of one off market number. So I fired hard on MIN -3 -110 and even harder on ATL +3.5 -115. I had $500 worth of bonus bets from DK too so I used them all on ATL +3.5, plus a lot more. If it was a 3 point game either way, I would have done quite well and if MIN won by exactly 3 I would have absolutely cleaned up. ATL won outright which wasn't ideal but I had more on ATL. I also had a nice little Draft Kings same game parlay with a 50% boost of ATL +3.5, under 44.5 and under JJ Mccarthy passing yards. The boost made it go from 4 to 1 to 6 to 1. That was a nice little addition but for a really small amount with the $30 max bet for the promo.

Other than all that, I had a few small live bets with bonuses and a couple small MLB props, again with bonuses. Nothing worth writing about though. All in all I'm basically break even after two weeks with some teaser equity going into week 3. Speaking of week 3, so far I have TB +8.5 tonight as the last leg of a couple teasers. I jumped in small on DEN +8.5, GB -2.5, ARZ +7.5 and DAL +7.5 for Wongs. For my non-standard 6.5 point teasers, I have one with BUF -6.5, IND +3.5 and Patriots +7.5 (they opened at +1.5/2 but are now PK/+1. Another example of jumping on those +1.5's early in the week).

Anyway, that's about it for today. Be on the lookout for my next post, should be up soon.

Thanks for reading, bye for now!

Back At It. NFL Week 1, My Process, Robin Hood Futures And More

Week 1 of the 2025/2026 NFL season is in the books. I have never been less interested in a new football season as I was going into this year and to be honest, I wasn't planning on doing any real betting at all. However, come this past Sunday, I found myself at my battle station and settled right into my old routine. And I must admit, it actually felt good. I had somewhat of an internal resurgence for betting, and I didn't even have a good week! That's how I know it was real. So something I think I'll do this year is make a post on Mondays or Tuesdays detailing how the prior week went, betting wise. I'll detail my exact positions (for the most part) and we can all go on this little journey together. It occurred to me the other day that after every slate/week, I mostly just delete everything on my pending sheets and start over for the next slate of games/week. I of course keep very good records of win/loss in every category as well as overall ROI, but the actual positions I took and the bets I made get lost forever. So this will be a good way to keep something like a betting journal. I have no idea if people are interested in this but my gut tells me yes.

First off, I am unfortunately working with only two books right now, plus Robin Hood futures which we'll get into later. I expect to have at least one or two more eventually, but for now all I have is one really good, beefy PPH account that I've had forever. They don't let me bet anything other than straights and teasers but have massive betting and credit limits plus I have never once had a problem with the agent in over a decade. That's my main book, plus I have a Draft Kings account. Very much like last year, my main thing this year will most likely be Wong teasers, off-market straights, alt lines, and the occasional prop/parlay on DK. I am planning on taking Live betting more seriously this year too but we'll see how that goes.

First thing I did on Sunday was look for Wong teasers. Aside from getting Atl teased to +7.5 early in the week, I actually missed the 1:00 slate completely (having a two year old at home makes locking yourself in front of your computer all day on a Sunday impossible) but I got into gear for the afternoon games. Except for LAR/HOU, every single game after the 1:00 o'clocks was Wongable. So I had Sea, Den, Det and Buf in a bunch of 3 team, 6 point teasers (at +170 which is decent and slightly better than two teamers at -110). I actually usually don't really do that; that is, having teasers with teams playing at the same time. I like to have them playing at all different times so I can hedge/middle each one. I decided to mostly let them ride this week though and just bet smaller amounts. I also tied Chi +7.5 into a bunch of them as well. A couple I did fire big on - for instance this teaser: Den -2.5, Buf +7.5 and Chi +7.5. They were all on different times so I was able to hedge/middle each one. 

I managed to get +120 on Detroit ML where Pinnacle was at -100/-110, so I maxed out Det +120 and hedged most of it out with GB -110. I also got Det +2.5 -110 which was arb-able with Pinnacle with GB -2.5 +116. (This is from that same mythical PPH account that I've talked about a bunch on here before. The one where the agent moves lines around way into arb-able territory for seemingly no reason at all. And another instance of him being right. He wanted action on Detroit and he got it from me. And wouldn't ya know it, they got blown out by Green Bay. I've mostly learned my lesson on this now though and generally just take the free money, though I did have plenty of exposure to Det. With the ML and spread being arb-able PLUS being in Wong range, it couldn't be avoided.) Anyway, all the Wongs won except for Detroit. If Detroit had covered +8.5, I would have had an amazing week.

I got a little too cute on my hedge on the Titans against Denver. I had Denver -2.5 in every single teaser so I knew I wanted some action on the Titans. I could have got +9 -110 but I always try to pay as little juice as possible on hedges, so I went with +7.5 +107 instead. I also bet Titans ML at +370 which was a good price. My nightmare scenario was Den winning by 1 or 2 and they were winning by exactly 2 deep into the 4th quarter. I panicked a little bit and hit Den to win straight up live betting on Robin Hood a few times late into the game which worked out but wan't a great play. Denver ended up winning by 8 so even though it all worked out, it should have been a lot better.

Seattle was only in a handful of my teasers so I let that ride and they covered +7.5.

Going into the late Buf/Bal game, I had a few teasers still alive, one being massive (for me). This is how my Sundays typically go; I end up with a huge position on the Sunday Night Game. This time it was Buf +7.5. I hedged with Bal -6.5 +190, some -2.5 +105 and -3.5 +145. I usually keep my hedges so that I still have a position on the original bet since that's where the EV comes from, but sometimes I manage to find +EV hedges which is like Indiana Jones finding that jewel or skull or whatever it was (I don't think I've ever actually seen Indiana Jones). I also managed to lock up some free money with small Live arbs on DK (I don't have the stats to back this up yet but I find that betting against the team that just scored a TD is usually a good play with live betting). So if Bal won by anything between 3-7 I would have absolutely cleaned up. As we know, Buf ended up winning by one so I made out ok but it was tantalizingly close to a dream week.

I tied Chicago +7.5 to a lot of these teasers as well, especially with Buffalo. So last night was similar to Sunday night as I had a big position of Chi +7.5 going into the game. I hedged with a mix of Min -3.5 +150ish, Min -1 -110, a nibble of Min ML, and then a bunch of Min +7.5 -125 and Min +3.5 +155 live betting in the first quarter when the Vikings offense looked like a high school team. The Vikings ended up winning by 3 which was a half point away from being absolutely ideal. If they won by 4-7 I would have won nearly every single bet I made on that game which would have been quite nice for me. I can't complain though, anytime your main teaser wins and you win or push on any of your hedges, it's a great outcome.

Looking ahead, I already put in a couple teasers for next week. One is Chi +7.5 (which won already) with KC +7.5, and the other is Patriots +7.5 and Colts +8.5. I like to take small nibbles at the start of the week and slowly ramp them up as the week goes on.

Like I mentioned up top, Robin Hood came out with Prediction Markets a few months ago and now they include sports too. Interestingly, they leave them up all game so you can use them for live betting. There's no spread or total so it's just moneyline betting, but it sure is intriguing. I imagine they'll eventually get spreads and totals and other things on there too. Robin Hood really does want to do it all; brokerage, credit card company, retirement accounts and now sports book/exchange, and so far they've done a really good job in my opinion. I've fucked around with it before and have a bunch of small positions on the price of BTC and ETH as well as how many cuts the Fed will make this year, but this week was the first time I was really digging into the futures and seeing exactly the price they were dealing after fees. Sadly, the fees are higher than they seem at first. Anytime I figured out exactly what they were dealing, it would be something like -120/-110. 20% commission. That will definitely need to come down if they want more volume but I could see RH being the next Matchbook. A highly liquid, small fee exchange that US players can play on. I had them and Draft Kings up at the same time with live betting and most of the time DK had the better price, but there were spots where RH was the best price/slower to move. Something to keep in mind.

Looking ahead to Week 2, there have been some pretty big line moves. It's interesting to see how the market reacts to the first week of the season. Buf is at the Jets and that spread moved from Jets +8 to Jets +6.5. Dallas went from -3 to -6 against the NYG. New Orleans went from +7 to +4.5 against the 49ers. The possible Wongable games are the Patriots at +1 against the Dolphins. That's one to watch all week to see if you can find a rouge +1.5 somewhere and tease it up to 7.5. Be careful with that though, the Pats are notoriously bad in Miami. Even during the Brady run when they were far and away the best team in the league and the Dolphins were terrible for like a decade straight, weird stuff always seemed to happen in Miami. This one I'll probably completely hedge/middle. KC is also +1, playing at home vs Phi. Same thing, look for a +1.5 to tease up to +7.5. Pats are on at 1:00 and KC is 4:00 so it's an ideal pairing. (Some books let you do open teasers which is an underrated option and perfect for stuff like this. With an open teaser option, you don't need both legs to be Wongable at the same time.) Finally, you have Ind at +2.5 -119 at home vs Denver. Definitely a good leg and one I'm jumping on small now. Other possibilities are Buf at NYJ at -6.5 if they get bet up to -7.5 or if you can get really good teaser odds and tease them down to -.5 and hedge with NYJ ML. Again, only if you can get really good numbers on both bets. That game a fairly high total though so not ideal. Lastly, TB is +2.5 +101 right now at Pinnacle as the MNF game. If TB takes some money during the week it might be a good leg to throw in as the last leg of a 3 teamer as a stand alone game. Fairly low total too which is good.

That's it for today. These posts will probably be shorter than normal. Please comment if you like these little wrap ups. Check back soon, I will have a longer post up. If you see the news (online) you probably know what I'm going to talk about. Bye for now!

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Aliens

In this post we're going to talk about aliens. "Extra-terrestrials," "non-human intelligence," UFO's, UAPs. This is one of the most bizarre (in the truest sense of the word) and disconcerting topics I have ever really looked into, and for every answer found, you get two questions. It's hard to know really where or how to dig into the topic since there are so many different threads and avenues to go down that lead to more threads and avenues. I'm going to assume that you know next to nothing on the subject at the start and then get deeper into it, like an onion. I'll touch on the the 7 or so books I've read on the phenomenon as well. Most of it has to do with abductions but there are plenty of other things at play here. Prepare yourself, things are going to get strange.

So first off, I have gleaned over the years, that before you start talking about aliens or UFO's or alien-hybrid-reptilian-humanoid breeding programs in any sort of serious way, you first have to talk about talking about it. More than politics, even more than religion, this topic makes people very strange when you bring it up. Try it out if you don't believe me. Most people hear the word 'alien' and just tune out or laugh. Actually when you think about it, it's a little weird that the topic of aliens almost immediately elicits a chuckle or outright laughter in our culture (and it mostly is just Western culture that treats aliens and 'other worldly beings' as jokes. Every other culture that I've read about fear and revere them, which is probably the natural reaction minus an ongoing 100 year CIA psy-op. ) 

'Little green men.' It's so ridiculous, they say, it's obviously a joke. It has to be, right? If you bring up the topic in any sort of serious way, you will be met with derision almost always. People say that there isn't any evidence of alien life, but I actually think the opposite is true. There's too much evidence. So many unexplainable pictures and videos, some 100% verified from military sources with the pilots and radarmen testifying to them under oath. Never mind the fact that the US government has confirmed the existence of crafts that fuck with our planes and ships that we cannot even remotely explain. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of personal accounts and missing time episodes, plus the crop circles. (By the way, I could make an entire post on crop circles alone. One group of guys who were casually linked to the US military one time 'admitted' to making one as a hoax and that largely made the story disappear from the mainstream, but if you look into it at all you'll see that the hoaxers claims are impossible. To explain how they got to the middle of the crop circle they claimed to have made without making any footprints, they said they pole vaulted into the middle of it and then back out. With all kinds of boards and equipment to make them. The Why Files did a great episode breaking all this down which I highly recommend checking out. Honestly, crop circles alone nearly prove the existence of aliens. Check it out sometime, I promise it's worth it. That youtube video has almost 7 million views). You throw a couple hoaxers (intentional and not), loons and drones into the mix and it all just feels like a blurry, messy morass that people don't want to deal with. Similar to religion, the phenomonom also attracts more than its fair share of whacko's, grifters and hustlers who either see confirmation of their pyschosis or, at the other end of the spectrum, dollar signs. The topic also challenges just about everything we think we know about life and reality itself. Time travel, different dimensions, consciousness without physical bodies, 'portals', abductions, alien-human-hybrid breeding programs. It is a lot easier and probably more comfortable to chalk it all up to nonsense and hoaxes. But once you turn over this rock and see all the little squiglly movement, you really can't put it back again.

The first little seedling of an idea for me that really got me thinking about aliens and the possibility of life elsewhere out in space is the Fermi Paradox. Named after Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, it basically posits that knowing what we do about space so far, it doesn't make sense that we haven't seen evidence of aliens yet. We can observe something like 100 billion stars, just in our own galaxy. A lot of them, like tens of billions, are similar to our sun and have planets orbiting them. That means that there should be something like a couple billion planets orbiting some kind of sun, just in The Milky Way. Then consider the fact that Earth is a relatively young planet, somewhere around 4.5 billion years old. The Milky Way Galaxy is around 13 billion years old, and the universe itself is somewhere around 14 billion years old. So that means that the universe existed for roughly 10 billion years before the earth was even formed. Then add on another 4 billion-ish years until humans came online. In other words, there are tens or even hundreds of billions of planets relatively close to us and orbiting a sun that have been out there in space for billions of years, all before a human being ever took a step on Earth. Humans have existed for something like half a million years, give or take a couple thousand years, and we're already in space. We have put men on the moon, we have rovers on Mars, Venus and various asteroids and we've sent mini, unmanned ships deep into space. The area above Earth is nearly covered in satellites and we emit all kinds of evidence of ourselves into space. If someone from a different planet was looking, they could pretty easily see us. Imagine 50 or even 100 years from now. Assuming we're still here, we'll have way more ships and satellites and other things in space. Colonization of Mars will probably happen in the next couple hundred years. If you assume our trajectory for space travel remains at least consistent, (which is a gross under-assumption. Generally, as things progress, they progress faster and faster. Think of the hockey stick curve. For instance, it took us something like 200,000 years to get a plane in the air, but then less than a hundred years after that to put a man on the moon) in something like 500 years we'll probably have colonies on Mars and will be using it as a launch pad to get to other planets. We could conceivably colonize our galaxy in 1,000 years - a blip in time on the cosmic scale. Assuming our current trajectory at least holds, we should be a multi-planet, space traveling species in about half a million years, total. Again, very roughly. Give or take a few hundred thousand years. So it begs an obvious question. With their massive multi billion year head start, why haven't we seen anyone yet? Where is everyone?

This question alone got me going down this rabbit hole a good decade or so ago. When you think of the sheer vastness of space, the amount of suns and planets that are out there, it is hard to imagine that it's just all for us. But then when you add the fact that Earth is a young planet, it really does make you wonder, how have we not made contact with anyone else yet?

There are a few possible answers to the Fermi Paradox which I find less interesting than the question itself, but I'll run through them real quick:

-We are alone. We haven't found anyone yet because there is nothing and no one to find. I find this to not only be the least likely option, but also the (second) most terrifying. To be truly all alone on this tiny little spinning rock in an infinite, ever expanding void. A completely barren universe, save for us, to me anyway, really is unnerving. All this infinite space, just for us? So if we went extinct, that would be it for life in the entire Universe? Also, the fact that we exist almost completely rules this possibility out, in my view anyway. I could wrap my head around a completely barren, lifeless Universe, or one which supports life and has many instances of it in its literal infinite space. But for there to be exactly one life form? Just logically it makes the least sense to me out of all the possibilities. 

-Life is extremely rare/spread out. Perhaps there is other life in the universe, only it is extremely rare. Or spread out over time. Perhaps civilizations spring up and die, separated by millions or billions of years. Even this seems unlikely to me though. Because even if there is something like a one in a billion chance of a planet orbiting a sun to have life, we should have seen at least evidence of at least a few by now. However, when you consider how vast everything is and how limited our vision of it is, perhaps what we've done so far is like sticking a cup into the ocean and concluding that there isn't any life in it because the cup didn't have a fish in it.

-They're there, we just can't see them. An interesting possible answer. What we can see with our naked eye and even on radar is pretty limited. It's possible that whatever life is out there is so advanced that they've transcended the need for physical bodies and maybe even physical reality itself. This is roughly what I believe and if you read the literature about abductions and alien encounters, it makes the most sense. Imagine a person from the year 1600 waking up in a busy city in today's world. Think of how different things would be to him. It would be close to being on a different planet. That's just a 400 year difference and staying on the same planet. Imagine a four thousand or four million year difference, AND being on a different planet, maybe even a different solar system. The differences would be incomprehensible. The people or beings would be so different and have such different needs and wants and motivations. They might not even have any needs or wants! So the fact that we have yet to make contact with anyone or anything doesn't mean a whole lot to me.

-Predator universe. This is probably the most unnerving and terrifying one to think about. It could be that the Universe is teeming with life, but one alien species is the dominant one and eliminates any and all competition they find. So anyone who finds that out hides from being able to be seen from space. This isn't as far fetched as it sounds at first, and many serious people have brought it up, especially in regards to the way we have broadcasted various messages like 'Hello!' into space for the past 50 years. "Physicist Stephen Hawking, in his book A Brief History of Time, suggests that "alerting" extraterrestrial intelligences to our existence is foolhardy, citing humankind's history of treating its own kind harshly in meetings of civilizations with a significant technology gap, e.g., the extermination of Tasmanian aborigines. He suggests, in view of this history, that we "lay low"."

-The Great Filter. This one is pretty scary too. It could be that basic life itself is fairly common throughout the Universe, but intelligent, organized, planet colonizing life is so rare that it barely exists at all. This could be due to something called The Great Filter, or some kind of major resistance/filter that hits life before it can become the kind of civilization that we're talking about. Now the question becomes, if there is a Great Filter, is it behind us? Or in front of us? Maybe the jump from single cell, algae type of life to anything more than that is the Great Filter. Or the jump from the water to the land, or the jump from monkey/primate to human. There are probably thousands of possible jumps in our evolutionary history that could have been the Filter. But what if it's in front of us? What if the technology that makes space travel possible is just too much for most civilizations to handle? What if once atomic energy becomes possible, it's just a matter of time before we blow ourselves up or set ourselves back to the Stone Age, over and over? See, isn't this a fun topic to think about?

What we now think of aliens and then later the alien abduction phenomenon really began shortly after World War II. There was the famous Roswell New Mexico 'crash' at Area 51 in 1947. Then in 1961, there was the Betty and Barney Hill famous abduction case, which was the first real nationally known 'alien abduction' case. (An interesting somewhat lesser known fact about the Betty and Barney Hill case; they were an older interracial couple in New Hampshire in 1961. Why on Earth would an interracial couple from 1961 make up such a story? Why would they involve the police and invite all that attention onto themselves? Neither profited from it and Barney's life took a turn for the worse after it happened. The idea of them making this story up and sticking with it their whole lives, to no benefit to themselves, is almost harder to believe than the idea that they were abducted). 

Then you had the Travis Walton case, where a logger got abducted by a UFO in front of a crew of men and then reappeared five days later. These are two of the most famous abduction cases as both have had multiple movies/shows made about them, but there are literally countless stories and accounts of people being abducted by aliens. (If you don't know about either of those cases, just read their wiki pages. They're insane. And the documentary about Travis Walton is called 'Catching Fire' and is definitely worth a watch).

When you first hear about someone claiming to have been abducted by aliens, floated through a wall and into a space ship, you probably immediately think that they're lying. But when you actually dig into it and think about it, the idea that they're making it up quickly loses steam. For one, why would they? You might say for fame or some sort of notoriety, but in the vast majority of the cases I've read about in various books, the abductees wish to remain anonymous. They aren't writing a book or selling anything or gaining anything through their stories, so that puts that possibility out to pasture right there. The second thing you might think is that they're disturbed people. But this again fails under scrutiny. Most of these people are completely normal, high functioning adults. People with families and careers. The researchers carefully screen anyone they talk to, and the vast majority of them are living in constant fear and have had their lives upended over it. They're desperate for it to stop (most of them, anyway. After a certain point, some of them understand it more and come to accept it.) Lawyers, doctors, farmers, policemen, teachers...anything you can think of. Living perfectly normal lives aside from getting visits from alien beings. Not only that, but almost all of them report very similar scenarios. People who have no possible way of communicating with each other, some from different countries, reporting very similar things happening to them on these ships, some of it downright degrading, gaining absolutely nothing from their stories. At some point, you have to turn that 'debunking' ray on the debunking itself.

It all sounds so crazy and far-fetched at first, but when you really think about it, is it really that outlandish? That reality is different than what we think it is? We haven't even fully explored our own planet. Most of the ocean has never been seen before. Is it that out of the realm of possibility that intelligent life exists somewhere else in space and has interacted with us in a way that we find bizarre? 

There are a few different components to the whole thing. Number one, you have abductions. That's the part I am most into and probably know the most about. Most of the abduction stories involve breeding and/or some sort of sexual encounter. Males report having their sperm taken and having sex with aliens, alien-human hybrid beings, and even other humans while on a ship. Females report all kinds of weird sex stuff. Lots of unexplained scars and even missing pregnancies. Ovaries and eggs being harvested. One fact that always stuck with me was that multiple women reported to John Mack that during an abduction, something was put up inside their vagina, like way way up. And then they felt like they were inflated from within somehow. John Mack asked an ob/gyn friend about this, and the doctor said it sounded exactly like how they harvest a womans eggs. They inflate the inside of a womans uterus to make more room in there and to get her organs out of the way. They'd be put under anethestsa normally, of course, so they would have no memory of it. It seems like the aliens are doing this procedure while the women are awake, but they aren't being hurt by it. 

Another component of the alien phenomenon is the UFO's. Ships, orbs, rays of light, UAP's. Probably the most visible part of it all. And this isn't even controversial anymore. The USAF has admitted that their pilots routinely come across things in the sky and on their radar that they cannot explain, moving at speeds that would easily kill any human on board. All with no heat signature or obvious means of propulsion. There's real, unclassified video of tic-tac like crafts flying in and out of the water without making a wake or slowing down at all. There exists a pretty famous 4chan post from a guy who says he's in the military and has terminal cancer and was spilling the beans. His claim was that UFO's actually originate here on Earth and are all made from spec, one offs built for a purpose. That's why they always seem to look slightly different. He says there's a mothercraft somewhere in the Ocean that pumps them out. And obviously a random 4chan user doesn't mean much by itself, but it was definitely an interesting read. I can't find the post now but it was all over Reddit for a while. I have screenshots of it if anyone is interested. 

Another component to the phenomenon are the little mummies of alien bodies that were found in Peru. This was big news when it happened but staying with a constant theme in all of this, once they were found there was a lot of back and forth between scientists arguing over who got to see it and do work on them. Some people claimed they were fake, it all got messy and weird and it kind of disappeared from the mainstream. Very similar to crop circles. Almost the same exact thing happened with the metallic orbs that were found, also in Latin America. And then of course we had that whole New Jersey 'drone' thing here a few months ago. Remember that? A strange thing I remember reading about that story is that the crafts (they weren't drones, at least not at the start) were showing up at the houses of the FBI agents investigating it! I think what happened there is that there definitely were unidentified crafts flying around, and then the FBI sent their own drones up to investigate it. Eventually the story just became 'drones', but I was following that whole thing from the start and they were absolutely not just drones. I saw a few pictures of the crafts and a few of them looked kind of like airplanes but not really. Like an AI rendering of a plane from far away. One had the wings upside down. I live in the Northeast and I saw a few odd looking crafts around that time as well. As usual, it's just weird enough to be something, but not 100% conclusive of anything.

Another part of this whole thing is the cattle mutilations. There have been dozens if not hundreds of reports of cattle and other animals being found dead with vital organs (usually sexual organs but not always) completely missing, no blood anywhere, and, astonishingly, the carcasses will be left untouched for months. No predators, no birds, not even maggots end up eating it. One report was of mutilated cow corpses being found on a farmers roof! Like crop circles, I could probably write a whole blog just on cattle mutilations but that's beyond the scope of this post.

The abductions are the most fascinating part though, to me at least. If you accept that these people are telling the truth, the implications are reality shattering. The 'how' and even more-so, the 'why' of it all is what always gets me thinking. So I'm going to roughly go through the books I've read so far and what I've taken from each one and what I think it all means, all put together.

The first book I would recommend to someone coming at this with little knowledge of the subject would be 'Abduction' by John Mack. John Mack was a professor of psychiatry and the founder of the Dept of Psychiatry at the Cambridge Hospital in Harvard Medical School, a real, respected psychiatrist and professor from Harvard. He got hooked up with Budd Hopkins (who we'll read about soon) and started having sessions with people who claimed they were abducted or visited by aliens. He was totally convinced that these people were the telling the truth, and he ended up becoming a super prominent voice and author in the UFO world. Harvard actually suspended him for a year once he started getting into it, but was brought back in on good terms after an 'investigation' and an outcry from his peers. And I say 'John Mack was' because he is dead. He was hit by a car while out for a walk and died, which is exactly the kind of weird thing/death you see in this space. Again, something odd but nowhere near conclusive of anything. Anyway, Abduction is the accounts of 13 people that Mack had sessions with. It's written very clean and clearly and while the accounts are utterly insane, it isn't overwhelming to read. This is a good book to start with.

The next I would say, in order, would be 'Communion' by Whitley Striebler. Whitley has been on Joe Rogan and other podcasts. 'Communion' is one of the biggest, 'most OG' abduction books ever. Its cover is fairly famous in this bizarre corner of the world:

 

This book is basically about the authors history of being visited and abducted by alien beings for his entire life - his family and even friends and neighbors too. He said something was implanted in his ear that he can still feel. He actually went to the doctor to have it removed but as they were trying to remove it, they said it moved. Like it was alive and trying to evade capture. There's actually video of it, believe it or not. Here you go.  As usual, it isn't slam dunk evidence of anything, but it's just another thing to add to the list. This book is OUT THERE and I absolutely couldn't put it down. Hard to even really describe. Throughout Whitleys visits and abductions, he noticed that there was always the same alien present, a sort of bigger, female, leader among worker bees (the one on the cover). He ends up forming a sort of relationship with her and says he can see and talk to her in his mind. One passage I always remember is that he said at one point, he got a strikingly clear view of this alien in his mind. Like he was actually looking at her. He said he thought to himself 'I wonder what the bottoms of her feet look like' and the being actually picked up her feet and showed him. In the image in his mind. In a lot of abduction cases, people report that the aliens not only speak to them telepathically, but that the people could talk back. Again, the implications of all this are staggering. We might be talking about interfacing with beings that are perhaps millions of years ahead of us. I would say this book is an absolute must read if you're interested at in all of this stuff.

Up next I would say 'Missing Time' by Budd Hopkins. I would say these three books round out the Big Three of must read alien/abduction books. I've written about Hopkins before so I won't go too into it again. This books is similar to Abduction where you have people recounting their abductions or 'missing time episodes', usually under hypnosis. This book has a more eerie and ominous feel to it for some reason. John Macks books are a bit more clinical, probably because he was an actual doctor and professor. 

Going in order, I would next recommend 'Intruders: The Incredible Visitations At Copley Woods', also by Budd Hopkins. This books is about one woman/family/house and the unreal sightings, visits, missing time episodes and abductions that have been happening to her and her family for as long as she can remember. Similar to Communion but written by an outside observer. 

After that, I would recommend Karla Turners three books: "Into The Fringe; A True Story of Alien Abduction", 'Taken: The Alien-Human Abduction Agenda" and finally 'Masquerade of Angels'. She's another one of these authors who died relatively young. She fought a long battle with cancer so it isn't really suspicious, (until you really, really get into it all.) All three books are fantastic and worth reading, but Masquerade of Angels is probably the most interesting/unique. 

You see, a common theme in most abductions is the aliens imparting a certain message to the abductee's. The main one is almost always that we're harming the planet, we've gone astray from our purpose or God or nature or 'The Source' as it is sometimes called and we're hurting our planet almost to the point of no return. Many abductees have been shown images of apocolytopical events, seeing the Earth from space consumed by fire or literally breaking apart. They said they were made to believe that they were seeing the actual future. During the famous Zimbabwe School UFO sighting, where an entire class of school children reported they saw a UFO land and little beings get out, they all also reported getting spoken to 'in their minds' (telepathically) that we were hurting the Earth and needed to take better care of it. (By the way, this was really made famous by John Mack. He traveled to Zimbabwe and investigated the whole thing and came away saying the children were 100% telling the truth. In all the years that have followed, none of them have changed their story.) A very common theme in a good chunk of abductions is the aliens telling us humans that we're not taking good enough care of the Earth. They also sometimes say that their planet died out and they're cross breeding with us to save their race but also save us. However, in Masquerade of Angels, Turner has a different hypothesis. She thinks that the aliens are lying and are a lot more evil and selfish than most think. She thinks they need us for breeding and are just doing whatever they can to make it easier or to make our planet last as long as possible. There's all kinds of evidence and stories in the book about them being possibly deceitful. A weird running theme in a lot of the abduction stories is that besides the worker bee grey aliens, most of these beings are sort of playful and trickster-ish. Like they have a mischevious sense of humor.

Lastly, the book I'm currently reading is "Passport To The Cosmos", John Macks follow up to 'Abduction'. I would only read this once you're fully into the subject as it deals with the more esoteric themes like spirituality and shared consciousness. Probably the weakest of the bunch but still worth reading. Up next I have 'Passport to Magonia' by Jacques Valle which I have heard was great so I will update once I read it.

This is getting long and meandering so I will wrap it up soon. Putting it all together, from what I've read and seen in dozens of books and many hours researching and reading, is this: it all seems roughly similar to what a lab monkey might say about us if it could talk. Most abductees report that the aliens handle them with something between cold indifference and almost a fear or respect. Whitley Streibler always said he got the feeling that the worker bee aliens who handled him and got him in and off of tables and things seems to fear and almost be 'in awe' of him. He and others have reported that the commonly seem little "greys" seem to almost be controlled by someone else. They stumble around, fall, and seem uncomfortable in their bodies. A couple people have reported seeing groups of them walk in perfect lock step with each other. Most abductions feature these greys as the worker bees and one or two bigger, different looking alien or aliens that seems to be in charge. Others have reported regular human beings as part of the abduction teams and sometimes as the ones in charge! 

Rarely are people actually hurt in any of these abductions. Most of them are terrified, of course, but there seems to be little to no reports of anything resembling violence or anything really sadistic (though that may depend on your definition of sadistic). The aliens actually seem to go out of their way to make whatever they're doing as painless as possible, and even seem to be able to block it from our memory (though not completely and it seems that hypnosis largely can overcome it). Nearly all abductees have scars which they or no one in their family can explain (which, as Hopkins points out, is more odd than you might think at first. Think of any real scars you or the people you know may have. I would bet you know the story behind each and every one. For all these people to have real, serious scars and none of them able to remember how they got them is again one of those bizarre, unexplainable things but not 100% conclusive of anything.)

Lab animals, animals in the wild, animals in zoos, domesticated animals; they would all have a very different perspective of humans. Some humans they see are sadistic and want nothing more than to hurt them. Some are so empathetic to them that they may lay down their lives to protect them. And then you have everything in between. And we're all the same: human. The way we might knock out a wild Rhino, perform some surgery on it that it can't possibly comprehend, could be the way these aliens interact with us. And we could watch a Rhino with something as simple as a trail camera and it would never know. I think the alien phenomenon is similar. It's easy to look down the food chain, but to look up? It's counter intuitive to a human. 

Anyway, I'm going to wrap it up here. I could go on and on but I'm rambling a bit. If anyone wants a Part 2 to this let me know. It truly is a fascinating and life changing subject to really look into. It isn't what you think. There is a spiritual connection to it all, especially the deeper you go, which was very surprising to me. When you think of aliens you probably think of advanced technology and futuristic sci fi stuff. And sure, that's all there. But there's a deep spiritual side to it all that I can't really explain in a blog post. Reading all this stuff has been one of the main reasons I don't consider myself an atheist anymore, either. Not the whole reason but a big part. I'm telling you, it's worth reading one or two of these books and see if it grabs you. The whole thing is much different than you might think. It has implications for you too, whether you believe in this stuff or not.

As always, you never know what you're gonna get around here. Thanks for reading, bye for now!

How To Make Money Betting On The NFL, Preseaon And Regular Season. Plus More.

 If you are a regular reader here, this post will mostly be stuff we've covered before. I've been working on my Aliens post for a while now but it has been a little more challenging than I anticipated. There are just so many different avenues to go down and things to explore. I don't even know if anyone is really looking forward to it or anything but I will have it out at some point in the near future. I might even make it a multi-post kind of thing but we'll see. I've been skimming some of my old alien books and will probably make it part book review.

But with the NFL preseason underway, I thought it would be a good idea to touch on some +EV strategies for betting on the NFL in 2025. Also, some things that work specifically in the preseason. This will be a bit of a basic bitch post, but if you're relatively new to +EV sports betting, you'll find some nuggets in here. And if you are a grizzled veteran and a regular reader here, this might be a good post to link to to get noobs on board. If you're like me and truly believe in things like Bitcoin, free markets, the evils of central banking, inflation, and The Fed, the evils of our ruling class barely hiding the fact that they're bug-eyed lizard people who fuck children and openly despise us, then getting this blog out there is a good thing. It costs nothing, no ads, no 'premium membership' to unlock full posts, no substack asking for money...nothing but thoughts, uncensored and for free. Old school internet. So maybe use this post to link to and send out. The more people on our side, the better. Here is my X account @poogsBLOG that I only use for when I have a new post for a reminder.

Ok. So. The 2025/2026 NFL season is upon us. As you may or may not know, I was a pro sports bettor for a while a little bit ago and still do bet for profit, just not professionally anymore. I still get high six figures in volume down a year, I have never had a losing year betting sports in my life and NFL has typically been my best overall sport. So I think I still very much have some insight to offer in this space. Let us start with some basics, delve into the preseason specifically and go from there.

The best and surest way to make money in the NFL and in any sport, really, is to attack the smaller markets, especially if you're starting out on your +EV journey. The smaller the limits, the better. If your typical bet/unit size is in or under the $300-$500 range, you will be much better off betting in markets where that is a max bet or close to it. Most people I know bet something like a hundred bucks a play in markets where one could get down $50k if they wanted. That isn't a great strategy. If a market is big, mature, and efficient enough to take a $50k bet, almost by definition, you are not going to beat it if your unit size is less than four or five hundred bucks. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but if you don't know exactly what your edge is, how to calculate it and why you have said edge, you don't have one. 

You generally want to be close to the limits for your bet size. So if you usually bet one or two hundred bucks max, you should be looking at bets and markets where that is considered a big bet. What markets fall into that category? Props and derivatives, of course. A derivative is any market that is based on, or derived from the main spread and total. Things like half time lines, team totals, live bets (although live betting is its own animal entirely), game props like sacks or total field goals, or any kind of exotic bet. The reason these lower limit bets/markets are more attractive is that because they have such small limits, the guys at the upper end of the food chain don't even bother with them. And because the high limit sharps don't bet them, they can be wildly off from their true probabilities, all the way until game time. You are not going to know something about an NFL matchup that the guys who bet and re-bet $50k a pop don't know. You might, however, be able to find an edge on a team total or a game or player prop in a market where the big boys don't even bother to look. 

Let's look at some of those markets. First, you have props. They came in two basic forms; player props and game props. I made a living for nearly a decade betting in these kinds of markets so I would consider myself pretty close to an expert in the field. With DFS being in the mainstream now, some might say the party is over in the player prop markets. From like 2010 to about 2018, most people had no idea what a player prop even was. They were soft as baby poop. They have gotten considerably sharper since DFS came about, but there are also a lot more options these days. Things like prop builder, live props, the ability to parlay props and the fact that a lot of books will put up lines on just about every player for every stat you can think of, are all new-ish things that offer plenty of low limit +EV. So it's a bit of a double edged sword. 

Player props are growing in popularity but due to their low limits, they will probably always be fairly soft. But one thing the DFS crowd has largely overlooked is game props. How many sacks will each team get, how many field goals, total first downs, total rushing/passing yards, the longest or shortest field goal, the total TD's in the game, etc. The more obscure, the lower the limit, the more likely it is to be ignored by bettors with large bankrolls, and therefore more likely to be +EV. And don't worry about not being able to get enough money down. That isn't something you need to worry about until it happens, and when/if it does happen, with a little bit of hustle, accounts will find you. With two sports books you basically double your limit right there. I was bashing these teeny markets for the better part of a decade and not being able to get enough money down wasn't even on my top 10 list of problems. Well, not in the top 5 anyway for sure. Don't forget, for each game you have literally hundreds of prop/derivative options. So the limits on each bet might be small but overall you can get plenty of money down. So, again, look for the absolute smallest, most obscure markets and work your way up from there. 

Another two derivatives to always look at are team totals and alt-lines. These are purely based on the main spread and total and if you try, you can easily find books that mis-price these and/or are slow to move them when the main spread and total move. With access to at least a few accounts, you can often find juicy middles on team totals, full game and first half (and even quarter team total lines can be found these days). These are great because it takes no handicapping at all and you can fly through them. Look for key numbers in the NFL like 17, 21, 24, 28 for full game to middle, and 7, 10, 13, 14 and 17 for first half. One of the very first team total middles I ever hit was on a college football game of over 13.5 -110 and under 14.5 -110, maxed out on both sides which was a big bet for me at the time. It landed on 14 and for whatever reason, I'll always remember it. Hitting clean middles is one of the best feelings in betting. A great thing about middles is that since you can't possibly lose both, you can max bet them and give yourself a nice chunky payout. Don't be afraid of half middles too, something like over 9.5 -110 and under 10 -110 for first half team totals would be profitable. It's hard to know exactly where to draw that line though. For instance, would over 9.5 -130 and under 10 -120 be profitable? Probably not but it's close. You don't want to be drowning in juice but you also only need to hit these a small percentage of the time to be +EV. If you can work some kind of odds boost or percentage off losses into the equation, then you're really cooking.

Now, for the preseason in particular, there are some specific things to keep in mind and be on the lookout for. First, let's discuss the nature of the preseason. How is it different than the regular season? For one, the betting limits are a lot smaller. Why? There is more uncertainty about who will play and for how long, as well as how much each team/coach even cares about winning, so with some work, you can find edges that way. You'd be surprised at how much value you can find in certain coaches interviews leading up to a preseason game. 

Another major difference between pre and regular season NFL is the lower totals. Totals in preseason are generally a good ten or so points less than the regular season, or roughly 20% lower. That's a big difference. With less points being scored, that means each point is worth a little bit more. How can we take advantage of that? Through teasers, mostly. With teasers, you're paying to move the spread and capture the points in between the regular spread and what you get for the teaser. For example, if you do a 6 point Wong teaser from +1.5 to +7.5, you're capturing the 2 through 7. Since there will be less points scored overall, the value of capturing those 2-7 points should be higher than normal. The same logic applies to buying and selling points, but only do that if you know what a push rate chart is. If not, give it a google. (An important point regarding teasers I have mentioned on here probably 3 times already but I consider it that important: understand the odds you're getting with teasers. With two team, 6 point teasers, never pay more than -120. You really shouldn't pay more than -110 but those are actually kind of hard to find these days. I mean, not really, but if you're a true noob with no PPH access, you might have to settle for -120. +180 for three team, 6 point teasers is great. +170 is ok and anything less than that I would not bet unless the line is way off. If you are going to bet teasers for any kind of money, it's worth it to find a book that offers at least -110 for two teamers and/or +170 for three teamers). Lots of books now offer all kinds of different teasers, like 10 or 7 pointers. These are sometimes worth playing if the juice isn't bad and you can capture a key point, usually with the main spread being a little bit off. You can get all kinds of creative with teasers, hedges, middles and alt-spreads but I've discussed this before.

There are a few upcoming preseason games that look great for teasers right now. New Orleans is +1 -115 on Pinnacle right now with a total of 40. If you can find a +1.5, that would be a great leg of a 6 point teaser. Same with Chicago at +1 -111 and a total of 40. Dallas at +1 -103 with a total of 37 is great too. In general, these kinds of spots are about as good as you can do with Wong teasers. Something where the market has a team at +1 with a total in the low 40's or lower. You find a +1.5 and tease it up to 7.5. Same thing the other way, if you can find a team where the market is -9 or -9.5, look for a -8.5 and tease it down to -2.5. Now, one important caveat here, especially in the preseason; be on the lookout for teams that like to go for two. Going for two is kind of a new school, analytics type move that is gaining a little bit of traction in the NFL. This makes key numbers a little bit less key and is obviously bad for Wong teasers. There's this new thing now in the NFL where when a team is down by exactly 14 points and score a TD, they'll go for two instead of kicking the extra point. I remember the Lions did that last year in the playoffs. That's pretty devastating for Wong's so something to keep in mind.

With a new NFL season upcoming and with the NFL being the most popular sport to bet on, now would be a good time to make some sort of sheet or system to keep track of your results if you don't already. I've always said that keeping track of at least your money won/lost every week is a must if you're at all trying to make money betting. Now is also a good time to look for and get more accounts. Either regular, legal books like Draft Kings and Fanduel, or offshore books, or PPH's. Ideally, all three. Don't be afraid to e-mail books and ask for deposit bonuses or anything else. Worst they can say is no. (Digression time: back in the day when I was playing on Full Tilt Poker, they announced they were giving rakeback deals to new customers only. I sent them an e-mail saying that I was a loyal customer for years and I didn't think it was fair that a new customer should get a rakeback deal and not me. And they gave me rakeback! Forever. My poker playing friends couldn't believe it. Don't be afraid to send e-mails like that).

If you do get a new PPH account in the next couple weeks, a good strategy would be to do a bunch of Wong teasers and any other breakeven or slight +EV, noob looking bets. If you win, great, you made some money. If you lose, pay your guy in full with no problems and ask for a rebate. Something like 10-20% off of weekly losses. You might need a bad two or three week run to get it, but any kind of rebate like that is a goldmine that you can lock into for the whole NFL season, or at least as long as he keeps you. 

Lastly, changing gears a little bit, I have read two new sports betting books recently. 'Beyond the Odds: Efficient Market Theory and Tools of Warfare for the Modern Sports Bettor' by, Elihu Feustel (Justin7 who we've talked about before) and 'But How Much Did You Lose; How To Win More At Sports Betting By Losing Less' by Dan Abrams. (By the way, is that not the single worst title of a sports betting book you have ever seen?? I actually hid this book while I was reading it I thought it was so embarrassing). And boy were they both duds. Two of the least interesting books on betting I've ever read. Maybe it's me but the last three books on betting I've read have been absolute slogs. The one by Elihu has some kind of online worksheet 'answer key' thing attached which is the same thing that the last book I read had. The one by Andrew Mack that I threw on the ground while reading. And can I just say right now to sports betting book authors; please stop doing that. I don't want an online companion to a book. I have no idea if I'm in the minority here with this opinion, but I can't stand it. I just finished it and I honestly cannot tell you one single nugget or idea I got from the book. And the 'how much did you lose book' was basically one idea, over and over. That hedging is actually good and EG is more important than EV. Something I agree with and have understood for a while so it's not like I didn't like the book because I disagree with it. Lots of mind numbing, multi-page math formulas to show exactly how much you should hedge given your bankroll, edge, and the size of the original bet. Just the same thing, over and over again. He actually says in it 'the most important aspect in betting is figuring out how much to bet.' It is?? I always thought finding and maintaining edges/new accounts was far more important. And just to show I'm not being a sourpuss, here is a positive review of the book by OG +EV bettor/author Joseph Buchdahl, the author of "Fixed Odds Sportsbetting", another book I got nothing out of.

That's it for today. Probably some more sports betting posts coming up with the NFL starting and the Aliens post will be up soon. Talk soon, bye for now!

BTC price: $117k

BTC marketcap: $2.33T

BTC dominance (including stables): 59%

Total crypto marketcap: $3.95T

Total cryptos on coinmarketcap: 19.55M

Crypto, Stocks, Politics, Books And More

Been a while since we really checked in on the Bitcoin/crypto world, and with BTC at the quietest all time high in its existence, I thought now would be a good time. I also want to do a rundown of the stocks I own and trade as well as my general strategy and outlook on stocks in general. A little bit of politics with the whole Epstein case back in the news. Finally, a look at a few books I've been reading plus some other things I've been meaning to talk about on here but aren't worthy of their own post. Also, I have officially begun writing my Alien Post in my head, so be on the lookout for that in the next week or so. But today, let's do a big look around, shall we?

First off: crypto. Bitcoin just ever so casually sitting at about $120k with a beefy $2.35T market cap, flirting with new all time highs. I know I've said it before but it's interesting how every cycle has it own little narrative. This cycle has largely been the alt-coin reckoning, BTC dominance and BTC ETF show. But another interesting aspect of this cycle that I haven't seen talked about too much is the utter lack of retail. Not like it's simply more quiet than other cycles, but it's more like retail just is literally not there at all. My favorite crypto youtube guy, Ben Cowen, has all kinds of charts and videos on the subject which you should check out, but it's pretty obvious even without any kinds of charts. I see Bitcoin mentioned in financial news and media all the time but that's really it. Remember how insane things were in the 2020 cycle? You would see or hear some kind of Bitcoin reference every single day, outside of the finance world. Now? Barely a peep. I can't remember the last time I personally talked to anyone about it. It feels like the adoption phase is fully behind us now. You're either on board or you're not. I feel like a lot of people seem to think they missed the boat but that really isn't the case at all. As I will try to show, I think Bitcoin still has a long, long way to go before it begins to level off somewhat. 

Personally, I've pretty much stopped talking about it with friends and the like. I was quite the BTC proselytizer in the first few years I got involved, but looking back, I really can't say it did a whole lot. I got my wife and and I guess a couple close friends into it, kind of, but most people either get it or don't. The vast majority don't, and a good chunk pretend to, I think. But I can really only think of like one or two people who actually bought it. And I really don't give a shit anymore. I always think back to that great Michael Saylor quote: 'everyone will buy bitcoin at the price they deserve.' It has been by far the best performing asset since its inception, it is super easy to purchase and hold, and it has just quietly and systematically mowed down every instance of FUD in its path. Every silly argument against it, batted down one by one like flies. I will never forget the sentiment in late 2022 during the last bear market. The cringe inducing 'r/buttcoin' subreddit with tens of thousands of people cheering and celebrating every leg down. The smarmy, fake-smart, insufferable and always wrong economists and 'academics' taking victory laps as bitcoin plunged under $20k. Even people in my own friend group, some of who helped me get into crypto in the first place, calling it an 'interesting experiment that failed' and making fun of people who held it. Truthfully, it shocked me to my core seeing how fickle people are. Now where are these people? Probably pretending they supported it the whole time. (Honestly, now that we're well past it, how fucking insane was the 2020 'covid era'? So many people, famous and not, just completely abandoning any pretense of integrity or idealogical consistency. I had no idea how many people are just completely blowing in the wind, adopting and abandoning 'principles' just as fast. I truly am a different man having lived through all that. I will never see people the same again). I remember telling a few friends that I was buying when BTC was at the bottom of the bear market and I'll never forget their reactions. It was like I told them I was investing in literal shit and piss. I can still picture their faces. They couldn't believe I would be buying bitcoin during a bear market! Hello! That's the goal, people. Buy low, sell high. One of the biggest shocks I have received since I got into investing was how many people get this completely backwards. They FOMO into shit at tippy tops and then panic sell at the bottom. I genuinely did not know that that was the general noob investor trend before I got into it all myself. The urge to be one of the herd is more powerful than I realized (he said from his throne, hair blowing in the wind. I realize how pretentious this all sounds but it is true).

Even with BTC being at an all time high, the technicals are still showing we're nowhere near over heated. Ben Cowen's logarithmic regression band actually has the total crypto marketcap as under fair value right now! The BTC regression band is still calmly in the green accumulation zone. I'm going to do something I rarely do here and give out a price prediction, whatever it's worth. I think BTC hits $200k this cycle quite easily, and I think $300k is in play. The very bottom of the red bubble zone in Cowens model is $300k in December of 2025, and the top of the band is $450k. If you believe in diminishing returns, as I do, that might be a bit too high. But I think we see $200k this cycle and somewhere around $250k for a top sometime in the winter, and I think that is being conservative.

It is also starting to feel like alt-coin season might be here soon. We've seen a big move from ETH and other related alts the past month or so. ETH/BTC has bounced hard off of .018 and is now at about .028. Alt season typically brings retail back in, as noobs FOMO into stuff like BoobAndDickcoin. THAT is who I plan on selling a good chunk of my alts to. Personally, I know I will be using this upcoming alt season to convert most of what I have into solely bitcoin. I'll always keep some exposure to ETH and my little Chainlink and LTC sidepieces, but I want it closer to like 75% BTC, 25% everything else. I will for sure be dumping my Matic when/if the price rebounds this cycle. I'll be looking for BTC/ETH to hit around .07, .08 to start unwining a good chunk of my ETH holdings and turning them into BTC.

Speaking of alt season, however, if you look at a BTC/ETH chart, you'll notice that in June of every year for the past 4 years, ETH has pumped against BTC only to get whacked back down again. This time may be different with the halving being about a year behind us and a rate cut or two in the pocket of the Fed, but I would not be shocked to see ETH fall off a cliff again.

Like I've said a millon times before though, there really isn't a whole lot more to say about crypto. If you're not on board by now, you probably never will be. The only advice I have to give is to buy as much Bitcoin as you possibly can and hold onto it, preferably in cold storage. Other than that, I don't know what else to say to convince anyone, nor do I really care to anymore either.

Switching gears somewhat, one thing I've never really got into on here was Stocks. Stonks. I barely know what the fuck I'm doing with them so it never felt right to discuss as I am far from an expert. But you know what? Neither is anyone else. And now with a good 5 years under my belt and an ROI in just stocks approaching 100%, I think I have at least something to offer. Before I get into specifics though, let me just give you the single best advice about stocks I can possibly think of. Something I wish someone had told me 20 years ago, which is this: start. Just start. It isn't nearly as complicated as it seems, you can get it going from scratch in a matter of days, and you can start with as little money as you want. You can start with 20 bucks! (This is another thing that real n00bs get wrong that I didn't understand until I saw it firsthand. A lot of people, apparently, don't realize you don't have to buy full shares of companies. If a stock is, say, $1200 a share, you don't have to have $1200 to invest in it. You can invest literally one dollar in anything on Robinhood. I know this is noob city stuff, but two people I've talked to about stocks and crypto didn't know that. One of my college friends who is no dummy thought you had to buy a full Bitcoin if you wanted to invest at all, and another was bitching about being priced out of the stock market. He didn't know you could buy partial shares of stocks!) So again, my biggest piece of advice in stocks and crypto and investing in general is just start doing it. You honestly have to try to lose money in the stock market. It just goes up! (All it's really doing is tracking real inflation anyway). Sure there's volatility but have some balls. Start slow and small, learn and add as you go, don't use leverage or options or anything like that, certainly not at the beginning. Buy stock in companies you understand and/or use, don't panic sell, and in a few years you're almost guaranteed profit. Oh and also, keep track. This is something I carried over from my heavy sports betting days. Keeping really good records in excel or google sheets is a must. I could share my sheet if anyone is interested, but it's pretty simple. For each stock I own, I have a section in my sheet where I put in each buy and sell with a date. They all add up so you know your exact position. The things I have it calculate are total shares, net money spent, total current value, average price, and net money up or down and ROI. I have a line for 'market price' that I update every time I check it and then a section at the top that adds everything together. So I know how much I've invested, how much I'm up, what everything is worth currently and the total ROI of everything. It's very simple but effective. Without it, everything would be a blur.

I've noticed something of a mental block for most people when it comes to stocks and investing. It's like they view it as something that is just out of reach for them. But like I said before, it honestly isn't nearly as complicated as it seems. Seriously, if there is one general thing I could do over in my life, it would probably be to get into investing way earlier. (Fun aside: when I was a kid, something like 14 or so, I called a Charles Schwab office on the phone trying to get money invested. My parents owned some stocks, I think, but they weren't exactly the type to like, teach me stuff, which may be the subject of a post down the line. That boomer-parent, millennial-child weird relationship where no one explained anything or told us a fucking thing that as I get older I find more and more bizarre. Anyway, stocks and investing always sort of had a spot in my brain but I didn't know the very first thing about it. So I somehow called a Charles Schwab office and left message. I remember panicking a few days later when they called back and I saw their name on my parents caller ID. It felt like I was doing something wrong for some reason. My grandmother was there watching me and my brother (so I must have been really young actually now that I think about it) and some guy told her that the minimum to get started was something like $20k. I pretended I had no idea what she was talking about. I don't even know why I'm even telling this story except for the fact that that is how investing felt to me and I assume other people my age too. Like a big secret, not for people like me and something wrong that I could get in trouble for even broaching. That's strange, isn't it?)

My general strategy for stocks has been to own something like a dozen or so at a time and buy and sell them accordingly. My biggest mistake at the start was way too much selling. The sports bettor/trader in me always wants to buy something, sell it for a profit, then buy it back again for cheaper. When that works you feel like a genius but looking back, I would have been better off had I not made so many sells. You get whacked with a tax bill every year too which is something I have to learn more about.

So for whatever it's worth, here is my stock portfolio and a little info on each one.

In order of my biggest holdings to smallest:

Amazon. Average price $95 per share, currently about $225 per share. You know why I started buying this stock in 2022? I was once on a ski trip in the middle of the woods and rented a movie from Amazon on my kindle. I had really bad service where we were but the movie played fine until the end. It started to freeze and play shitty and I think I gave up on trying to watch it. I figured I was lucky to watch it at all with the spotty service, it was something like 3 bucks and I didn't really care about the movie so I just forgot about it. The next day, I got an unsolicited e-mail from Amazon saying that they noticed I had trouble finishing my rented movie and they refunded the purchase. I thought, if they have this attention to detail with a three dollar movie rental in a hundred billion dollar company, they must really know what they're doing. Again, I didn't even email them about it. So I started buying small when it was around $100/share and made some really good sells when it shot straight up and did a good job buying it back when it went down. I've also seen many interviews with Jeff Bezos and even though he's a cringey, bug-eyed lizard person with the worst taste I've ever seen, he certainly knows business. And now we all know how good they are at delivery and I like having exposure to big companies fucking around with AI. My ROI is 135% in Amazon so far and I just add a little bit anytime it drops. This is one of the stocks I own in a company I truly believe it and plan on having forever.

Tesla: Average price $156/share, currently $330. One of the first stocks I bought in 2021 for around $270/share. I have done a really good job trading this stock with my average buys being $220 and average sells being $268. Not much I can tell you about Tesla that you don't already know. The knock on them has always been that they're over valued but I think the old school way of valuing stocks doesn't really work anymore. I think Elon is a bonafide genius and a modern day Henry Ford. Similar with Amazon, one thing I like to do in stocks is bet on the man. The way I see it, as long as Elon is in charge, Tesla stock will generally go up. I also like the volatility. Make some small sells when it shoots straight up and scoop it back up when it goes down. Like Amazon, I plan on holding exposure to Tesla for a very long time, at least until Elon leaves. My ROI is just over 100%.

Eli Lilly: Average price $595/share, currently $775. I heard about them in early 2023 when I was on a plane and read an article about them in the Economist. That was the first time I heard about how they were basically solving weight loss. My first buy was for $350/share and I'll always regret not being more aggressive with it. I've added slowly to my position and have made some nice sells at around $780 in mid 2024 and around $900 in February this year. This is another one I really believe in and plan on holding and adding to basically forever. My ROI is only 30% which isn't great, but their next thing is attacking alzhymers disease and as more people get used to the GLP 1's, I think it has plenty of room to run. They also pay a little dividend which is nice.

Netflix: Average price $60/share (!), currently $1200. This is one of my best performing stocks ROI wise, but I own less than a full share. I will always be kicking myself for how I handled this stock. I first starting buying in early 2022 when their stock fell off a cliff and went from $690 to $200 after one bad earnings report. Everyone I knew not only had Netflix but were kind of addicted to it. I knew Netflix wasn't going anywhere. But I couldn't help myself and made a bunch of sells as it rebounded into the $500 range. I wasn't really able to get back in and I stopped selling when it crossed $600. My Netflix experience was a really good learning curve. You don't have to sell something just because it's way up. I'll be looking to buy back in if they ever have a dip but this is one I just like to hold. My ROI is 1888%

Robinhood: Average price $10.4 share, currently $110. I started buying this mid 2024 around $18/share and really timed it nicely. I made one sell mid 2025 for $64/share so that's how my average price is so low. Robinhood took a massive hit, rightfully so, with the GME debacle. But other than that, I have to say, they have one of the most user friendly apps I have ever used. Everything is very simple and intuitive. They basically game-ified investing. When I'm out and about, I see random people on their phones checking their RH accounts all the time. They have a young user base who will only grow and get more money as time goes on. This is another one that I kick myself for not being more aggressive with. ROI: 960%.

Draftkings: Average price $23/share, currently $43. I've talked about them numerous times on here but this is one of those companies that just has a license to print money. Seriously, think about the amount of people you know that use DK. Despite what they say, nearly 100% of them will be lifetime losers and will be happy to keep re-depositing. Their app is really good too and I also saw an interview with their head trader once and he impressed me. This isn't a stock that I'm married to but I'll definitely be looking if it dips at all. ROI: 85%.

McDonalds: Average price $234/share, currently $300. Little bit of a diversification play. I know I don't need to sell you on McDonalds. Just a behemoth of a company. Also, super predictive macro looking chart. Seriously, look at their chart. From 2015 on, it's basically a perfectly diagonal line up to the right. Pretty easy to trade and they also pay a nice little 2.32% dividend. ROI is only 28% but this is a super long term play.

Nividia: Average price $43/share, currently $170. Another once I'll be kicking myself over forever. I remember reading about them all the time on reddit back in 2020 when they were like $10/share. All the gamers knew about chips and how important they were going to be. I started buying early 2024 at about $60/share and have been adding on slowly since. I made a little sell at $105/share and bought back in at $96, and made a sell at $140 a couple months ago which is how my average price is so low. This is another one I would have been better off not selling at all though obviously. This stock is valued pretty high now and everyone knows about it so I don't plan on adding much. It pays a tiny .02% dividend which is strange. ROI: 294%.

Carvana: Average price less than $0/share, currently $340. This is my best performing stock ROI wise as I have sold more of it than I invested, so I'm completely free rolling. I only own 1 share exactly so it hasn't been a huge raw return, but I'm up more than double the share price. I actually started buying this stock early 2023 when my wife told me this story: Her friend was shopping for a car which we all know is such a brutal process. The slimy salesman got her number from the paperwork and texted her to ask her out! She was beyond grossed out. I just thought, this whole industry is like something from the past, like watching a bear ride a bike or something. It's ripe for an overhaul. In late 2023 it absolutely crashed all the way to $4/share and I scooped up another 5 shares for like 20 bucks. I've made a ton of sells and a few buys for less on its way up. I don't give a shit about the company and everything I read about it sounds like a complete sham. Yet all it does is go up. It bounces around a lot so it's easy to scoop up dips and sell tops and I am not even remotely married to this stock, but it has been quite the performer for me. ROI: technically infinity.

Compass: Average price $8.5/share, currently $4.3. They can't all be winners. This is one of three of my 'mushroom stocks.' I started buying this early 2022 at around $15/share and added more on its way down. My thesis for these mushroom stocks is that I know from personal experience that there is absolutely something there with psilocybin (magic) mushrooms. I think they may have the power to actually treat stuff like depression and anxiety, and the current medicine for that is woefully ineffective and possibly even harmful. I wanted exposure to companies fucking around with mushrooms and I still think it's a good long term play, but this stock has been a dud so far. It's also a foreign company which costs a small amount of money every month to hold in Robinhood. I think these plays will pay off sometime down the line, and I do keep up with their research trials, but it's iffy at best. There are many hurdles. ROI: -54%.

Cybin: Average price $24.75/share, currently $8.4. Basically the same exact thing as above, only a little worse. ROI: -66%.

Mind Medicine: Average price $4.15/share, currently $9 and pumping. Another mushroom play but this has gone a bit better. I started buying this late 2022 when it was over $40/share. I kept buying as it went down and then for basically this entire year, I've sold a little every time it went to $7.75 and higher, and bought back in when it went under $7 and even $6. I also hit the bottom nicely early 2024, picking up about 20 shares at $3.6/share. This has been one of my favorite stocks to trade. For this whole year, it basically oscillated between $8 and $6, very predictably. From January to June, I was able to net 10 shares for less than 10 bucks with a bunch of small buys and sells. A couple more sells and I'll be free-rolling on this one just like with Carvana. The only real risk I'm taking with selling when it hits $8 and $9/share is missing out on a big, real run back up to something like $40. But with no news and the ability to see the order book with Robinhood Gold, I feel pretty confident that isn't about to happen. I also now never sell all of a stock. With it being above $9 now, I'll keep making small sells and then start buying back in when/if it goes sub about $7.5 share. ROI: 117%.

Ally: Average price $22/share, currently $40. I started buying this mid 2023 when Warren Buffet announced he bought a big stake in it. I don't really know or care much about this stock and I have made two nice sells at $40/share in the past couple years and bought back in lower. Small exposure, really more of a diversification play and it does pay a nice little 3% dividend. I'll probably just sit on this forever. ROI: 74%.

Google: Average price $147, currently $184. Another one I will be kicking myself over for a long time. I have a very clear memory of almost buying this stock in February 2023. Remember when they released their AI bot thing named Bard and it made a mistake during its demo? Here's the story if you don't. I clearly remember that day and thinking it was a perfect time to buy Google stock. I put in a limit order to buy at $80 share and it fucking bottomed at $85! It's been basically straight up since then. That was a good lesson. Sometimes you just have to pounce, period. I bought the latest dip in March this year for $147 and have just held steady since. I would like more exposure here as they're investing heavily in AI but it feels like I missed the boat. ROI: 25%.

So that's everything I own, but for completeness sake, there have been a good amount of stocks that I owned at one point and sold all of. I'm down a small amount total on all of these. Real quick:

SOL, PYCO, TIL, TSP: I don't even remember most of these. I think they were European power supply companies I bought when the Russia/Ukraine war started that never really panned out.

GameStop: Fucking disaster. This was actually the very first stock I ever bought and was the initial reason for getting Robinhood in the first place. I was a little late to the party though and eventually capitulated a year or so later, down a couple hundred bucks after an absurd roller coaster of a ride and lots of a buys and sells.

AMC: Same thing but even worse. I had to learn this shit the hard way.

ROKU: Bought a little bit when Cathie Wood announced they bought it. Exited with a small profit. I've never met anyone who actually uses Roku.

Penn: One of the very first stocks I bought from a recommendation from a friend who apparently only bought it because Dave Portnoy did. Again, this is how I learn. Trial and error. That friend, by the way, is one of a couple who I use as top signals. When he tells me to buy a stock I know it might be a good idea to start selling.

DJT: I bought this during the debate with Biden as I was watching Biden melt in real time. I thought it was a good proxy for Trump exposure which was a good idea in hindsight, just not great execution. I didn't have any way to bet on him winning the election at that time though. I exited completely a couple months later basically breaking even.

So that's my entire history with stocks. Altogether I've basically doubled my money since early 2021. I started out super small and my stock exposure is like 20% of my crypto exposure, but it has been worth it. One thing you might have noticed is that I never mentioned anything about P/E ratios or market caps or any kind of technicals. I do look at that stuff, but my general thesis is that all of that information is embedded in the price already. I really don't think there's anything in earning reports or technical analysis that I'm going to uncover that JP Morgan or any of the other hundreds of thousands of hedge fund guys don't. I like betting on the man like with Amazon and Tesla, anything with a big company tinkering with AI is attractive to me. I also look for dips with established companies like with Netflix and Google. I like to keep up with the big boys like Warren Buffet and Ark Invest and dabble when they do. Similar to chasing steam in sports betting. But I generally like to keep it to roughly the same companies and buy and sell accordingly, sometimes adding in a new one or selling all of something. After a while with a stock, you start to get a feel for different levels of support and resistance and the way it moves. I think Robinhood Gold is worth paying for too, just for the access to the order book.

Another positive aspect of trading stocks is that it really forces you to stay in tune with the news and world events. It's always on my mind, when I see a big story I think about how the market might react. It's interesting to think about that, too. What is the market, exactly? You're kind of betting on not only what you think your neighbor thinks, but it's more like what you think your neighbor thinks about his neighbor. Maybe I'm not explaining it correctly but just like with sports betting and even poker to a lesser extent, investing is predicting the future. You have to know people to be able to do it on your own, and that is something I've always been decent at. Long term profitability in the stock market without using any leverage or options or any kind of technical analysis or knowledge is evidence of that, in my opinion anyway. One last thing, I have another personal top signal that is kind of a joke but actually works. Whenever I have the urge to show my wife my Robinhood account, I start thinking about selling a little bit. That has historically been a sign for local tops for me.

On another note, the disgusting Epstein story marches on, now with Trump and his administration getting their hands dirty in it. The way they have handled everything so far has been breathtaking in its stupidity. From Pam Bondi releasing 'Phase 1' of the client list, only to back track and say there never was a client list in the first place, is truly astounding. And then for them to release that jail cell video with a minute missing, AND for it to have been edited multiple times in Adobe Pro! And now it looks like that may have not even been Epsteins' cell? Just truly unbelievable that they thought that was a good idea. Like we'd all watch that and just be like 'oh ok, case closed then!' 

I can't tell you anything about Epstein you haven't seen before and I'm not going to do a deep dive on the whole story, but this is the best article I've ever seen on it. It has a ton of links in it that you can follow for basically as long as you want. It is as confusing, bizarre, shady, disgusting and shocking as it is depressing. Just a cesspool of rape, coercion, murder, lies, 'suicides', CIA, the fucking Mossad, pedophilia, billions of dollars out of nowhere. It's like every possible evil word in the English dictionary all in one place. 

Tim Dillon had a great line this week: "You have to choose the pedophile you agree with. Which pedophile has a pro business attitude? You cannot ask that they don't fuck kids. That's a bridge too far." It really is fucking insane, isn't it? They aren't even hiding it anymore. I mean, do we really just have to accept the ruling class in America are literal pedophiles, barely even attempting to hide it? Is that really where we are right now? We are so over due for a true reckoning in this country. It's like the end days of Rome. I'm sure Trump will weather this like he has every other thing in the past, but he sure does make it hard to be even a tepid supporter of his. Him calling the whole thing a "Democrat hoax" is beyond a slap in the face. Imagine being one of those girls and hearing him say that? To think that of the entire Epstein saga, the only person in prison being a woman is again one of those things people will read 200 years from now and think it can't possibly be true. 

Lastly, (shifting gears so hard the drive train falls out) I want to touch on a book I just finished. Well, a couple books, and they were actually comic books, or 'graphic novels.' I've never been a comic book/graphic novel guy in my life. Anytime I've seen a couple pages of them my eyes just glaze over. However, a couple months ago my family and I were on a walk and we came across a weird laundry basket full of books. It was in front of a house that I'm pretty sure was going through a divorce. Every week it seemed like a new bag or basket full of a mans things were outside to be taken or as trash. This time it was a whole bunch of books. So I stopped to check it out and I ended up taking like 6 or 7 of them. Among them were two comic books, V for Vendetta and The Watchmen. They sat in my room for months and months before I decided to give V for Vendetta a try and I was more than pleasantly surprised. Having never read one before, I was surprsied at how easy it was to read. I could almost feel something like a new pathway opening in my brain as I took in this new-to-me art form. V for Vendetta was awesome, really cool read. Once I finished I wanted more, so I started The Watchmen. And let me know tell you something. Having finished it now, The Watchmen was one of the very best books I have ever read. Top three, easily. If you've never read it and don't consider yourself a comic book guy, I heavily suggest you give it a try. It's amazing the amount of information and detail that can be conveyed through that medium. The combination of words, dialogue and pictures sets such a good, moody tone, and the story itself is so rich, so deep, it's hard to really describe. I can't wait to read it again. I get why they tried to make a movie and TV show out of it, and I get why neither of them were all that successful (though I will say, the HBO show was decent). Neither of them come remotely close to touching the greatness of the book though. I honestly can't stress enough how fucking good this thing was. Do yourself a favor and order a copy right now and thank me later. If anyone out there reading this has read it, I would love some recommendations on more graphic novels similar to The Watchmen, and if you do read it based on my recommendation, I'd love for you to comment and let me know how you liked it.

So that's about it for today, be on the lookout for my big alien post coming soon. Thanks for reading!

BTC price: $118k

BTC marketcap: $2.36T

BTC dominance: 60.2%

Total cryptos on coin marketcap: 18.7M