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I have nothing. all I know is a long time ago I was told do not borrow money to buy stock and would not shorting a stock be the same. In the free market no one should have been frozen out of selling their shares. You can not predict the events of the future . (you can think you know but you can never be sure) A lot of people learned that lesson this week (or were reminded). You know my Disney shares went up about 4% today (yeah for me) but I also think I will own those shares in thirty years.

I have no idea why or how this got to my Youtube feed, but now you can laugh at it too

The old and the new...Yoda and The Child. Or is this back to the future, or forward to the past???

Knowing how life has gone the past 12 months, I’d end up rich but quarantined like Thurston Howell III.

F it. I am now part of the insanity

Some sellers do have real invoices. Besides...Amazon is not always a rational actor when it comes to these types of decisions.

As an option trader, I agree that you have more risk with greater volatility. I disagree with some of the points however. Selling naked puts, you can owe more than the stock is worth, but the most you would owe is the strike price, but some of that is offset by what you sold the option for. And most accounts won’t let you sell naked puts without experience and the cash on hand to buy them. Similarly, if you bought the same stock and it went down in value, you’d be out the same amount but you wouldn’t have the sale proceeds. So, owning the stock would have been net worse. Assuming you continue to hold the stock and it doesn’t recover. You can lose a lot of money on selling naked calls. But very few brokers will let you do that. You can sell covered calls and then you may just end up forgoing some profits on the stock you used to own. Buying and trading puts and calls can result in losing the money you put into them if they expire before you make money on them. It’s basically a time versus price movement gamble you take. If you have a hunch about a stock but you don’t have the money to buy the full shares, then this is a good strategy. For example, I made a little money last year buying puts on stocks I expected to be hammered by COVID when it was first starting to make news and before most investors connected the consequences to airline and movie theater stocks. That second article is misleading. In those cases, people converted their options to stocks. If the options expired worthless, they’d owe no taxes on them. But once you exercise them, you owe taxes on the gains — which is the difference between the exercise price and market value when they are exercised. And the employee has to pay the exercise amount up front. But the employee would have gotten something of value — albeit stock and not cash — they still owe taxes on it that year. If the stock goes down in value, they can claim short or long-term losses depending on how long they held the stock, but they will only be capped to $3k in losses a year and carry the remaining forward to the next year. But in all of these scenarios, it wasn’t the options that got them—it was that the company wasn’t required to withhold taxes on the stock conversion. Most companies abandoned options however because of the accounting rules changes and issue shares of stock instead. Those have tax consequences on the day they vest. And most companies will auto-sell enough on the vesting day to pay the taxes on the remaining shares. That way the employee can’t be stuck with a surprise tax bill if they do nothing. But right now I’m watching GME for entertainment purposes. Not touching that action with a 10-foot pole. Because while people think they are making money, until they sell, it’s only on paper. If they are buying it for $300 thinking it will go to $1000, it can just as easily drop to $50 tomorrow — with or without brokerages putting buy restrictions in place. Nobody is expecting GME to stay at $300. When folks finally bail and move to something new, it will snap back and people will lose money.

Not entirely correct, shorting is much riskier that buying shares. You have additional borrow fees. Shares be can recalled by your brokerage at anytime and you are forced to buy back, unlimited upside risk, etc. etc. etc.

Well I dare say that the 2020 numbers will be skewed due to the current situation... As of now TLG has reported stronger sales than expected, as of September consumer sales in all markets, including western Europe were up 14%, this is before the holiday rush so I would imagine they will show strong gains for the second half. I would also take your argument and apply it to Held der Steine and turn it around the emergence of the high quality competitors such as CADA (which I understand are very high quality products) have only really emerged in the past couple of years so the fact that he started as 100% LEGO doesn't really carry much weight to me, there weren't that many competitors until just recently. Having said all that I do see in general more acceptance here in the U.S., especially by younger folks, of the actual knockoff brands. That is a real problem for LEGO, and a hard one for them to solve unless they can get support from the home governments of these brands to move forward with litigation. In any event, I think if there is a little competition for LEGO that will only benefit everyone. I'm just not sure if I readily accept that this 'attack' on one person represents a downward turn for TLG. I think that LEGO is going through a bit of an identity crisis right now, looking for ways to capture more market share and I think that how they come out of that over the next couple of years will have far more affect on their sales (and status) in the global market than any legitimate competitor.

can't forget the Anniversary unique Star Wars Minifigure. It's not just the box label but a collectible token for the anniversary. It should huice the appreciation a little...but by far the Book of Boba will be the main booster for interest in this set...and by Dec the set will be "well retired" and memories of clearance prices will be long gone...the new "floor" in pricing should be well established with no clear ceiling for growth.

Not a ton, but I flipped a few Aston Martin's during the holidays. Even had one returned after that still sold above RRP. I'm surprised at the number of sets I thought I was going to be stuck with that still sold above RRP. I was prepared to just dump and move on. Some I just broke even (or close) at but that was a win for me.

This is the first I am hearing about this. I live in the U.S. and am not a native German speaker, though I grew up and lived in Switzerland for many years. I don't think this is grabbing much attention outside of Germany for several reasons. I can only speak for the U.S as that is where I currently live and have experience dealing with issues of copyright and fair use (I'm not a lawyer but in my work this is a topic we are constantly engaging with). In the U.S. this kind of litigious action is very common, big companies will often go after people who they feel are infringing on their copyright (usually this takes the form of a cease and desist letter first, and if no action is taken then it can lead to further legal action), so in some ways this wouldn't really be seen as newsworthy. As you said this is primarily a German story with most discussion occurring in German so that automatically takes it out of the larger realm of discussion in the worldwide LEGO community. Now for my opinion (I know- I know what they say about opinions). This is the first that I have looked into Thomas Panke, and I have to say that from an outsider's perspective it appears that he is at least partly pushing the "outrage" button in a move to increase engagement on his videos - this may not be outrightly intentional, just a result of seeing that videos on this topic get a lot of comments, drive up engagement and increase views, thus it becomes a bigger topic. In any event I certainly wouldn't look at the notorious youtube comment section or ratios as an indication of a greater trend. Also I have to say I'm not 100% confident in the reputability of BILD which seems to be the primary (traditional) news organization reporting on this (I admit fully I could be wrong on this as my understanding may well be out of date). As far as Bluebrixx goes, if you look into it a bit further it appears that LEGO mostly had issue with sets containing minifigures, and as they state they consider the minifig, with its precise proportions to be a trademark of LEGO. In the U.S. we would say that this is "Making a mountain out of a molehill". As far as LEGO Sales being down in Germany, maybe in brick and mortar retail shops, but it would appear that overall, including online sales this is not the case. A quick google search brings up this info: https://www.statista.com/statistics/671661/sales-toy-market-germany/ Which indicates that LEGO along with Brandstätter lead sales in the growing toy market there. As a moc maker and designer I can fully see where people like Janke are coming from, I have plenty of gripes with the designs of some LEGO sets, but I don't see that as large enough portion of the LEGO market to make that big of a dent (and many of us AFOLS still spend $$$$$ each year on official LEGO sets despite our misgivings). Granted, again, I will admit I am not that familiar with the German LEGO afol community. If you've made it this far thanks for reading lol. If this is a topic you are interested in you can see more here https://www.lego.com/en-us/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-play/ where LEGO goes over what they consider copyright infringement and what they don't in great detail - and you can see where they may have issue with people like Janke and Bluebrixx, whether those objections are legal or not, well that is up to the courts to decide...

One of Trump's failures was he did not disclose all of secrets stuffs behind AREA 51/52/53/54 before he left office 👎

SAH has a new VIP survey about space for 15 points. LEGO seems interested in knowing if you believe aliens exist. This is not a joke. https://www.lego.com/en-us/vip/rewards-center

I also had a very fruitful clearance round, but how could I pass up ~60% off being shipped to my door?!

Present 🙋🏼‍♂️

My wife asked me why I didn’t get in on this. After reading your post....that’s why. I am totally dumb on this topic. I’ll just sit by and watch. I don’t have money to burn on this. I think I’m some on some topics, but this one I claim no smarts at all.

Yeah, but $420.69 specifically? Where’s your toke smiley? Lol

Wow, now y'all buying Blockbuster stock. Jesus.

This is good advice. When I joined this site a 2 year hold after retirement was the norm. No patience anymore.

$150 craigslist pick up. Now I have to take it apart and bag it so my little dude can build it.

Hello. I (as most others here I'm sure) was into Lego in my youth. Over the past couple years I've been picking up sets when I found them discounted for my growing children. My older boys (now 7 & 9) are really into Ninjago (please let me know if someone has the Nightcrawler 70641), Star Wars, Avengers, etc. My younger girls are into Duplo with my 5 year old getting into other standard Lego sets recently like the Friends series and of course the Frozen sets I've given her. They have City sets and others as well. I ended up here because I am bargain hunter and prefer to find deals for things. So when looking for possible Lego deals I found this place. As I mentioned earlier I started with only getting sets when found on heavy discount. I've stockpiled some and overtime whenever there is some event (a holiday, great school grades, etc.) I give them sets. I've also picked up some sets at small discounts and even some at retail (Razor Crest and others) lately. As much as I'd love to hustle Lego for profit I doubt that will happen. So I'm really just trying to slow down the process of going broke on them by finding the best deals I can. Looks like a good place here and thanks for those hosting, moderating, contributing and participating.

I was in meetings today at the close but was thinking this morning that the last couple hours would be interesting on GME. A lot of retail investor folks are trading the call options and may not understand assignments. If your option expires "in-the-money" at the market close of the option expiration, then most brokerages will auto-assign the option. I.e., if you had bought a $300 GME call, and it was worth $350 at the close on Friday and you still have it, then they will assign the call and the original buyer will have to come up with 100 shares of GME stock and take $30K for it (options are always 100 shares). If they don't have the stock (a "naked" sell versus a "covered" sell), they'll have to buy it at market price, but folks selling naked calls are usually more versed in the market risks and have to get special brokerage approval. Anyways, in my example, those people who were stuck holding the call -- either forgot to sell it, couldn't sell it, or don't understand them, are now required to come up with $30K for each contract. If they don't have $30K sitting around, and the brokerage doesn't expect to see this money, then the brokerage can buy and sell (i.e. a margin call) -- as a courtesy. This isn't usually a problem during the weekend with typical stock volatility. But GME doesn't have typical volatility and I wouldn't trust my brokerage to get a favorable buy-and-sell value. I.e. at $350, my call option is worth $5000 at market close, but could be worth $0 or $10K if it goes down to $300 or up to $400 before the brokerage converts it. Or, if I had the cash in my account, do I want $30K in GME stock over a weekend right now? Nope. I'd do everything in my power to get rid of that option -- sell it to someone else (maybe the original seller is buying it back) -- so I would expect that the sell side of the options to be fairly extensive. Looking at the numbers, it looks like the option volumes were many times the open interest -- those options shifted hands many times today like a game of hot potato! Folks may discover this weekend they own a lot of stock they didn't own today, but didn't have the cash to cover the purchase -- with the brokerage forcing them to sell. I haven't looked at the numbers to see how the number of options compares to the float, but it could make dent. Or it could just be an academic exercise. Fun to watch. The only downside I see to this, personally, is that the SEC will be "required to do something about it" and there will be a slew of new regulations that create problems for normal and reasonable investing that shouldn't be necessary given that people will learn from this example such that it is unlikely to happen again.

Nope, Santa has been the best to date! $400 this Christmas for a $75 set. Not half bad.

True, harder to move smaller sets if you are not on Amazon. Shipping hurts.

I can't stand what Robin Hood did but their app has been easy to navigate and glitch free for me. The ALLY app sucks and i might close it down since they didn't restrict trading per se, just couldn't log in at all during this amazing moment. It's happened sporatically with them before. Does anyone have any reviews of an app they use that has worked well and didn't restrict trades?

Fidelity is being pimped at the moment as they didn't restrict trading.

The numbers up to and including 2019 cannot tell anything since this whole thing (rise of alternative brands' popularity) only started in 2019. Sales numbers and market share for 2020 and following years will be much more interesting. Apart from that, to fully understand what Held der Steine does why and why he does it this way, you really have to know the complete story. Some years ago he started as a convinced 100% LEGO-only retailer ...

Isn’t it this? Wall Street has got to think they can outlast the common folk, right? This is a fascinating exercise in crowdsourcing information and the power of group think.

what is an example of a set that can be purchased currently (thru mainstream options) with a high likelihood of retirement this year and will do better than x2 upon retiring?

Ok which one of you (in other videos he references Brickpicker often) has a paid group focusing on 3 sets and is taking a HELOC to buy them. He kinda looks like a pharmacist

lol, tbh, "everything" was a good QF last year 🤪

Newbie question, can I use this as emoji instead ???

💎💎✋💎💎✋💎💎✋ LOL you have to throw in the emojis. It is crazy!

That price is a little too suspicious to be real.

looking forward to when redditors figure out they are being played by just more big boys that could put all their cash into a big pile and start a fire and they would never burn out of cash. Being told to continue to hold is the equivalent of be out in the wild, encountering a bear, you tell you friends to stay still and don't' move, while you run away. I'm not far off am I?

Not about LEGO specifically but I recently had to deal with an inauthentic claim for a long out of print DVD that I originally purchased 18 years ago. However, the details of the documentatation/receipt request that I received was specifically about wanting a recent invoice from an authorized distributor showing a purchase of more than 10 DVDs so Seller Support wanted proof that I was an authorized/legitimate DVD reseller rather than the receipt for the actual DVD in question. Once I was able to provide a recent wholesale invoice, the inauthentic claim was closed. If Amazon started requiring wholesale LEGO invoices, then I think a lot of us would be SOL.

I have a good friend who just this year caught the winter village Lego bug and she asked me if I had any tips for getting the older sets. Now, she is a "used with no box is fine" person, but the point remains: people fall into this wonderful collectible Christmas trap every year, so demand will be seasonal but steady for the foreseeable. Plus, this is easily the best WV set Lego has put out, so I intend, like many of you, to get my hands on as many as possible.

The LEGO creator car series (or the whatever the series names are/will be) has been simply awesome (as a fan). This and the Technic super car line are great for car enthusiast and LEGO fans alike. My only gripe is a general lack of a consistent size ratio, but that probably comes w its own issues.

I have been eyeing this "theme" for a couple good weeks now due to the weird minifigures that caught my interest anyway. Hopefully those tiles are printed instead of stickers because they would be perfect in a record store modular moc or as a poster in a room for some other build.

It's a 2x3 plate lol. Not an important, rare piece, but a common piece (odd colour). I'm sure I'm eating the negative, but wow. Seconded. Most buyers are good, and you will find the 1/10 of 1 percent of odd balls anywhere.

Am I the only one who is more excited about the GWP than the actual set??

Not today but a couple days ago I found the last Jay Storm Fighter available for retail price at a store in the area. My oldest (9yo) really wanted that set since he found out about it a few months ago. Hes been doing great in school so I gave it to him yesterday. He was VERY excited. Today I finally caved and bought the 501st legion clone troopers set today along with the Trouble on Tatooine set. I had some gift cards for best buy so that helped with the decision. And the Mos Eisley set is out for delivery today 😁 My kids are going to flip when they see that one. Will probably be a while before I let them start on it. Maybe an end of school year reward. Also yesterday I bought my nephew (3yo) a Duplo plane set. He always enjoys the Duplos my smaller children have.

280 - On Hair by legojeff

Happy Thanksgiving! by Snazzy Bricks

Waiting for the fireworks by Marco Zanconi