Gambling Tax UK - Get Your Gambling Winnings Tax Free

I recently wrote this up for my friends who asked me how I do what I do. I figured I'd share it here. This is freely available to anyone who wants it, though please credit me if you simply copy/paste. Nothing here is novel, and can be done by anyone. I am not a financial professional, and the example given below is only Abbvie because I forgot that Abbott Labs was alphabetically the first in the S&P 500 when picking an example.
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First, let’s come right out and say that if you do not have the time to do this, or do not find it enjoyable, just buy low-cost index funds that track either the total market or the S&P 500.
Second, let’s make an important distinction:
Investing – This is the act of purchasing assets for less than their intrinsic value. This PDF will focus on how to determine the intrinsic value of an asset that produces income. Note that for most assets, this is simply how much money you can extract from the asset over the period of time that you hold it for. There’s no other value than money in investing. Causes and emotions are what philanthropy is for.
Speculating – This is, at its core, the act of taking supply of an asset from the present to the future (by hoarding it). If there is more demand, lower supply, or both, this pays the speculator to take the asset from a period of low value to one of high value. It is not gambling, but is very difficult to do, since it entails taking on timing risk. It is not illegal, immoral, or impossible, but I have no special insight into it. I’ll leave it there.
Gambling – This looks a lot like speculation, but without any particular reason to believe the asset will be more valuable in the future. Speculators at least estimate the value of an asset to investors, as they are ultimately the end market for an asset. Do not gamble. Full stop.
Determining the intrinsic value of an asset
The value of an asset is simply the present value of all future income that asset can provide you. Since a dollar in five years is naturally less valuable than a dollar today, you have to discount future income against the opportunity cost of forgoing the dollars you invest today. When we get to the Present Value equation, this is represented by interest. It can also be thought of as the opportunity cost of investing in the asset instead of some other asset or simply consuming the dollars instead.
Here’s the actual math. Note that it’s not super hard, and while I will explain it, there are dozens of free websites that will quickly let you calculate this. The key phrase to Google would be “present value of a growing annuity calculator.”
PV = (C / i - G) * {1 – [(1 + G)/(1 + i)]^n}
PV = present value
C = cash flow per period
n = number of payments
i = interest rate
G = growth rate
The value for PV is your estimation of what the asset is worth today. If this ends up far higher than the market price, you are probably purchasing dollars for quarters. Avoid edge cases, as you are guessing about both the interest and growth rate.
C is the cash flow per period. If you have a high degree of confidence in the culture of the company and it has a long history of being good stewards of retained earnings, you can use the earnings per share (EPS). I usually use the dividend. It is impossible to fake or financially engineer a dividend, and requires less looking through financial documents to make sure it’s what it appears to be. But for, say, Apple or Microsoft or Chevron, feel free to use the EPS.
The number of payments is how many payments you expect while holding the asset. Dividends in American companies are typically quarterly (though some pay monthly or every six months, so check on that), so every multiple of four would represent one year if you choose to do it that way. If n = 16, then you’re expecting to hold the asset for 4 years. You can also put in a year’s worth of dividends and keep n = years rather than quarters.
I typically do n = 30, since 30 years is both a long time horizon that is realistic, and coincides when I will hit “retirement age.” You will have to decide how far ahead you’re planning. For most people, they are net purchasers of investments while working and net sellers while retired, so keep that in mind. Note that using years instead of quarters will lessen the amount of compounding, and will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong.
Interest is one of the two variables you have to guess at. Typically, one would put what you expect the actual long-run interest rate to average for this investment. Unfortunately, this is really difficult. Instead, I use a rate that represents my opportunity cost. There are any number of relatively safe ways to get a 5% yield on money invested, so I generally use i = 5% to represent that this asset has to perform better than a utility or telecom or real estate investment trust. Feel free to use what you feel is most appropriate for you. A higher interest rate will lower the value of the asset, so high-balling this number will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong.
The second variable you have to guess at is the growth rate. If you’re looking at the dividend, you want to know how fast to expect it to grow over time. If you’re using the EPS for C, then you want to see how quickly the total earnings are growing per share. This is extremely difficult to predict. I recommend taking the 5-year growth rate and halving it. Dividends will also be more predictable here, as most companies pay out far less than they make, which means even if EPS grows slowly, the dividend can still grow quickly for many years after a boom is over for the company. Note that lowering your estimate for G will lower the value of the asset, so low-balling this number will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong.
OK, so let’s walk through an example. I’ll use Abbvie, a biotech/pharmaceutical company. It has a quarterly dividend for the coming year of $1.30/share. Its dividend has an 18.5% growth rate over the last 5 years, and has grown it for the last 7 (it’s only been around for 8 years).
I assumed a growth rate (G) of 7%. I used $5.20 as the starting dividend this coming year and used years for my n = 30. As always, I used i = 5%.
This gave me an estimated present value of 1 share of Abbvie at $197.94. As of writing this, Abbvie shares are trading on the market at $103.43. This looks like a screaming buy, but first let’s look at why I have a high degree of confidence.
Note how the interest was higher than the going rate – I used my “low-risk alternative” as an opportunity cost. Abbvie has an extremely high rate of growth for its dividend, so I took less than half of its current rate. I also calculated annually rather than quarterly, which reduces the impact of high rates of growth. That’s three places in the equation where I consciously lowered the estimated value of a share of Abbvie, and it still came out as a strong buy – spending less about 50c for a dollar!
I do this because even if I’m wrong in some or all of my predictions, I now have quite a bit of room to be wrong and still make money. It’s like how you don’t walk next to a steep cliff, right? You should know how to walk where you want to, but there’s always the small chance something could cause you to slip or put a foot wrong. But if your plan is always to be 5 feet away from the edge of the cliff, the odds are that you’ll not go over the edge even if you fall down.
Many people feel this is over cautious. But let my portfolio speak for itself. I’ve beaten the S&P 500 index fund every year except one since 2008. My brokerage only keeps digital records back to Dec 2015, but the S&P 500 returned 101% since then – with dividends reinvested. My own portfolio has returned 256%.
So caution is still very high reward. In fact, if you just don’t lose, you’ll do better than the vast majority of professional money managers (about 85% of whom cannot even match the index funds).
Due diligence still has to occur
Now, we can’t just go straight out and buy Abbvie – though it’s a high profile company that receives lots of investor and regulator scrutiny so it’s less likely to have a landmine than most. Just to make sure, you’ll want to do the following before buying shares in this company:
-Check the debt load. If the debt is very high, has very high interest rates, or has a lot of it maturing very soon, then this is a yellow flag. It doesn’t mean don’t buy, but make sure you understand the structure of the company’s debt and make sure it won’t impair the company’s earnings going forward. This information is found on the balance sheet. Abbvie has $97.287 billion in long-term liabilities such as debt, pension liability, and deferred taxes. That’s a lot compared to their assets, but they also are owed some money, so it nets out about $90 billion.
-What’s the book value? Book value is fairly low at $8.65/share. This is pretty much the assets minus the liabilities. Abbvie is in a knowledge industry, however, so you shouldn’t expect their main assets to be physical capital that can be sold. It’s mostly organizational or human capital from their workforce, so this isn’t worrying. If Abbvie was, say, a retailer with stores and land and inventory, you’d want this to be much, much higher for the share price. There’s no easy way to judge this one, unfortunately, but it’s good to look it up and you’ll eventually get a feel for it. No red flags here.
-What are the catastrophic risks that even you or I could think of? For a company in the pharmaceutical space, the obvious answer is regulatory and political risk. Regulatory risk is just want it sounds like – more regulation which can be either costly to comply with or lower profits. This does have an upside, which is that it makes it harder for new competitors to enter a market, so I tend to be rather sanguine about regulatory risk. Political risk is much more severe. This is when politicians decide to either confiscate a company, target it specifically rather than the industry it’s in, or other ways in which the government is involved with taking rather than regulating. In Anglo countries (US/UK/Canada/Australia), the rule of law is typically strong enough that this doesn’t happen much, as there is usually some kind of due process. Places like China, Argentina, Russia, and the EU are much more likely to nationalize or otherwise capriciously penalize a company due to the prevailing political winds. Abbvie has a global footprint, but that also means it’s diversified against such risk. It’s headquartered in the US, so it’s unlikely someone will simply take the entire company.
-Payout ratio? Abbvie has a fairly high payout ratio (80% for the last completed fiscal year of 2019), as they have been aggressively growing the dividend. That’s another good reason to input a much lower G than the last few years. That being said, Abbvie has been around for 8 years (it was spun off of Abbott Labs) and has grown its dividend for the last 7 years and has announced it will this coming year as well. The payout ratio is pretty high, but not worrisome. It suggests a fairly mature company that’s now returning cash to shareholders. I’d say this is not nothing, but less than a yellow flag for me. Any company with 95%+ payout ratio is much more vulnerable to a dividend cut.
-Credit rating? S&P gives Abbvie a BBB+ grade for its unsecured debt. This is a slight downgrade because their balance sheet is currently digesting a big acquisition from early 2020 (Allergan). Moody’s gives it a Baa2 rating for unsecured debt. These are both good, solid, investment-grade credit ratings (if you were buying the bonds of Abbvie). This looks great.
-Does it need a genius? Some companies run on all cylinders because they have a genius at the helm – often a founder. But what you want is a company any dummy can run, because sooner or later any dummy will. Don’t plan to invest long-term in companies that require skilled management. Abbvie is fairly diversified and has an OK pipeline of research. They also can buy little biotech companies that invent something but can’t navigate the regulations to bring it to market. So pondering giants are actually a good thing. Means they’re hard to break.
So, given that there was nothing obviously treacherous in our basic due diligence, and the extreme discount at which our example is selling for, this would be one you might want to buy! This is what I do for all the companies I invest in.
Notice that there is no story, no excitement, no narrative, no counting on good or bad management. Emotion has no place in investing. You also will notice that we took every opportunity to reduce the risk of losing your capital by always sandbagging the estimated value of the company. You never want to pick up nickels in front of a steamroller. You want the investment to be so obvious it hits you in the face like a baseball bat. If you’re ever on the fence, don’t do it. You don’t have to hit home runs – just don’t strike out.
You can be even more conservative in your estimates than I am. If, for instance, you used 5% growth rate for Abbvie’s dividend, you’d still get a present value of $148.57/share vs the current market price of $103.43. Similarly, you could use a higher interest rate, which would also lower the estimated present value.
You may have to do this calculation with more companies to find one to buy, but even in a very expensive market like today’s, there is always an opportunity. You don’t even have to look at little companies. There’s around 500 companies in the S&P – just start with “A” and work your way through all of them.
A quick note about further reading: I very strongly urge most people to actually read as little as possible on this subject once they get the basics. That’s not because there’s not more to learn, but because I would sadly say the majority of what I see and hear is actively bad advice. But if you do want to keep up with financial news and books and chat boards, the best thing to do is find out what the historical returns of the person giving advice are.
Since WWII, the long-run return on the S&P 500 has generally been just a bit shy of 10% per year. If someone can’t beat that, year-in-and-year-out, then their advice is worthless. As in, you don’t want to accidentally absorb it. This is, unfortunately, true for most professionals. Over the last 15 years, 92.2% of actively managed funds have underperformed a simple S&P 500 index fund (and they charge you fees for the privilege). Beware anyone selling something. The advice here is given freely
That’s why I made a point of mentioning that I have and regularly outperform the standard fund almost every year. Granted, I don’t have many of the regulatory restrictions a public fund would have, but it shows how useful the advice I’m giving here is. You don’t need anything fancy. You don’t need anything high risk. I’ve done this through two deep recessions and the longest bull market in history.
If you want to learn more about investing in general and where I learned how to do this, you can read Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor. It was written in the 1930s, so much of the technical information is out of date. Skip over that and just read it for the concepts.
Even easier reading is to go online to Berkshire Hathaway’s website and pull Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s annual letter to shareholders. Almost all of them have something useful in them and don’t make you do equations.
I am available for questions in the comments

Obviously this isn't set in England, but spiritually this piece is within my English Football series. The first six episodes covered Nottingham Forest's 21st century woes, the dickpic that consigned Notts County to the non-league, a reignited rivalry between Derby County and Leeds United, Stoke City's legendary shithouse era, the English Golden Generation of the 00s descending into farce, and Wimbledon FC's controversial relocation to Milton Keynes
This spin-off piece follows on from the main question raised by the Wimbledon FC/MK Dons saga. When does a club stop being a club? Is it the legal entity or something rather more intangible? These were questions posed with regards to one of the titans of Scottish football earlier this decade.
Background - The Establishment Club
Rangers FC has long cultivated an image as Scotland's 'establishment club', it isn't just a sports team, but an institution that embodies a particular way of living and worldview. Alongside other institutions like the Church of Scotland, the club is perceived as embodying traditional and small-C conservative Scottish values. Alongside Celtic (more on them in a bit) Rangers have dominated Scottish football since the league started. No club other than the two Glaswegian sides has won the league since 1985. Rangers have 54 league titles, Celtic have 51. The joint 3rd best sides (Aberdeen and the Edinburgh pair Hearts and Hibernian) have just four a piece. And yet as a legal entity the club ceased to exist in 2012. What happened? Does Rangers FC still exist?
It would be impossible to tell this tale without telling the tale of the Old Firm and the profound political, cultural, and religious divides involved. Glasgow's two largest clubs have a rivalry that defies comparison to anything in the rest of Scotland or in England. Essentially Rangers FC and its supporters represent Protestantism and British Unionism, while Celtic FC are considered to be aligned with Catholicism and Irish Nationalism. When the two sides meet, the Scottish saltire is rarely flown by supporters. Rangers supporters prefer the Union Jack or Ulster Banner, Celtic fans are likely to fly Irish tricolours. It is as if somebody took the socio-cultural conflict of Northern Ireland and transplanted it into a football ground.
Which is sort of what happened. Ultimately a big factor was migration to Glasgow in the early 20th century - Irish Catholics in Glasgow set up Celtic FC as their club, while Protestants from Northern Ireland (who are historically of largely Scottish extraction) who worked in the shipyards of the Clyde came to adopt Rangers which was located near the shipbuilding areas. Local Scots, being generally Protestant, inclined to support Rangers and many would have shared the religious and political feelings of the newcomers from Northern Ireland. This has meant that at matches both clubs have sections of support who chant about the Northern Irish conflict - some Rangers fans have a 'songbook' including the Loyalist anthem The Sash (which commemorates King William III, the Dutchman invited to become King of England and Scotland who defeated a Catholic army at the Boyne in 1690), while Celtic fans might sing in support of the Irish Republican Army. This involves by no means the majority of supporters, but it is important in setting the atmosphere at games.
Rangers FC had until the late 1980s an alleged policy of not signing any player known to be a Catholic. This led legendary Celtic manager Jock Stein to joke that if offered a Catholic or a Protestant to sign for Celtic, he would sign the Protestant in the knowledge that Rangers would never sign the Catholic. I cannot find evidence of any player ever transferring directly between Celtic and Rangers in the postwar era, with the low number of players who have turned out for both having had a 3rd club in between. Another example of the intensity is the way in which the clubs traditionally share shirt sponsors. This sounds innocuous, but the only way to sponsor one of the clubs without triggering a mass boycott by the other supporters was to simply sponsor both.
No other football rivalry in Britain has a dynamic like this (Liverpool and Everton did to a far lesser extent before about the 1960s, but sectarianism largely died out there decades ago), even in the days when hooliganism was a serious blight on English football it never quite reached the sort of scenes on display at the 1980 Scottish Cup Final.
Which club is the 'biggest'? It is impossible to say. Rangers have had more League titles, but Celtic being the first British club to win a European Cup in 1967 is a fairly potent trump card. What is without a doubt is that they are the two best supported Scottish clubs and their rivalry is possibly like no other.
Chasing the Rainbow
Avid readers of this series will notice a theme. The 1990s were a boom time for football and everyone involved in the sport. TV revenue started to really take off, as did the prizes for winning European competitions. Many clubs sought to capitalise on the windfall and Rangers were no exception.
Their chairman, Sir David Murray, had become one of Scotland's weathiest businessmen by leveraging debts against future revenue. He spent big on Rangers in the hope that they would win a major European trophy and repay his investment. Top players like Paul Gascoigne came to Rangers where before it was fairly rare for big name players from other leagues to move to Scotland. Domestically his investments paid off, from 1989-97 Rangers won nine League titles in a row, equalling the record set by Jock Stein's great Celtic side between 1966-74.
Unfortunately this did not translate to the windfall a Champion's League win would have given. While Murray was bankrolling Rangers, other clubs around Europe were likewise chasing the new massive financial prizes. Rangers came close to getting past the group stage of the new Champion's League format in 1992-93, but no Scottish club would enter a Champion's League knockout round until Rangers do so in 2005-06.
The debts mounted and Murray sought ways to manage the debts and hedge them against future revenue anticipated from TV fees and European prize money. He allowed the Bank of Scotland to buy a stake in the club with a mortgage allowing them to recover their losses in the event of the club defaulting on its repayments. Nothing to worry about, surely? David Murray had become a wildly successful businessman by effectively managing credit lines and debt against future income to fund expansion.
But a far bigger problem was just three small letters.
EBT
Put simply, Employee Benefit Trusts are a way of not paying tax, it was legal in some cases at the time but is generally illegal now.
Murray sought, from 2000, to pay his players through EBTs. This meant that they would be able to offer high net wages to players while cutting tax costs. In Britain most employees have all their tax payments deducted by the employer, so schemes like this and ones where employees are paid in dividends are a way of essentially not paying tax.
By 2010 HMRC had begun to investigate the case, concluding that Rangers may have evaded £49m in taxes, a vast amount for a club already overleveraged in debt in a league not known for being particularly wealthy.
By about 2008 Murray had had enough of Rangers and was looking to sell up. He had gambled and lost huge amounts of money on the club, which was now saddled with huge amounts of debt. The prospect of paying £49m to HMRC if the courts ruled against Rangers deterred any serious buyer and it took some years for a buyer to emerge. Another serious issue was the sheer amount of debt Rangers had to Lloyds (who had taken over the Bank of Scotland), with fans in 2009 threatening a boycott of the banking chain if the bank called in its debts.
Would a buyer emerge and save Rangers from this predicament?
Well, a buyer would emerge in 2011. Not the other bit, sadly.
Enter Craig Whyte
Craig Whyte had once been Scotland's youngest millionaire as a venture capitalist. He bought the club for £1 from Murray but desperately needed to leverage some funds to settle the Lloyds debt, so he borrowed a cool £26.7m against future season ticket sales. This on the face of it should have set alarm bells, even the biggest clubs don't make huge amounts of money on matchday tickets in relation to their massive costs.
Whyte also indulged in a bit of tax fiddling. But rather than setting up an avoidance mechanism and letting the lawyers fight it out, he just stopped sending Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs the income tax payments for the club players and staff. Definitely not the sophistication of Murray.
Matters only got worse. In early 2012 BBC Scotland aired a BAFTA-winning documentary about Whyte and Rangers, which revealed that Whyte had been once banned from working as a company director for seven years. The Scottish Football Association agreed, Whyte was not a 'Fit and Proper' person to own a football club.
At about this time Rangers entered administration. When this happens in Britain, the company's creditors can agree to a 'Company Voluntary Arrangement' (CVA) which essentially means agreeing a plan for the company to continue operating while in administration so the creditors can recover their debts. HMRC, with the outstanding £49m tax case from Murray's era plus the money owed by Whyte's outright failure to pay tax, voted against allowing this to happen.
In the absence of a CVA and agreement with creditors, this meant that Rangers FC as a company ceased to exist in June 2012, with all assets transferred to 'Sevco Scotland Ltd'.
Could this have been avoided? In the end, the £49m owed to HMRC which proved such a millstone has been substantially reduced and the cases around it are still ongoing. But ultimately, Rangers had vast amounts of debt not just to HMRC.
For his part Whyte would be bankrupted by his loan to buy the club and would be faced with a far longer ban on acting as a company director.
Sevco FC?
Sevco inherited everything Rangers had. The players had an opportunity to transfer their employment to Sevco, which also gained Ibrox Stadium and Ranger's membership of the Scottish Premier League.
For the club owned by Sevco to be able to play in the SPL next season, 2/3rds of members had to vote in favour. Clubs such as Aberdeen, Dundee United, and Hearts bowed to fan feeling that Rangers could not continue where they left off. In the end, no club voted in favour of Rangers remaning in the SPL with only Kilmarnock abstaining. This event would generate a huge amount of bad feeling and bitterness from Rangers fans who felt that supporters of other clubs were content to throw them under a bus for reasons not of their making. There was definitely a sense of schadenfreude from supporters of other clubs, watching Scotland's 'Establishment Club' go to the wall.
Could Rangers join the Scottish First Division and gain promotion to the Premier League? First Division clubs didn't want to face the consequences of a Premier League problem, so they also rejected it.
In the end, the Scottish Football League allowed Rangers FC to rejoin the league in the Third Division, a largely semi-professional league three divisions below the Premier League. Their first competitive game was a Challenge Cup (competition for the two lower leagues in the Scottish Football League) tie against Brechin City, who represent a sleepy town of just 7,000.
Clawing their way back up
Most of Ranger's players had refused their statutory right to transfer employment to the new company. Nonetheless, the 2012-13 season started well with their first home league game setting a world record for the best attended fourth division match in history as over 49,000 attended Rangers vs East Stirlingshire. A strong league performance saw Rangers confirm promotion into the 3rd tier by the end of March.
2013-14 saw another promotion as Rangers had an unbeaten season in League One (the leagues were renamed at about this time) to secure promotion to the Championship, the first league which would be wholly filled with professional clubs after the mix of professional and semi-professional that plies their trade in Scotland's lower leagues.
Rangers didn't make it three back-to-back promotions as they lost a promotion play-off final 6-1 to Motherwell, one of Scotland's more successful non-Old Firm clubs who had suffered a stint in the 2nd tier.
During this season they met Celtic in the cup. Some Celtic fans placed an advert in a newspaper claiming that the 'Old Firm' was over and while they had enjoyed a rivalry with Rangers FC they did not recognise the new club as the same entity. This caused some controversy, not just with Rangers fans, but with Celtic fans who were indeed looking forward to the first Old Firm in some time. The accusation that Rangers were 'Zombies' or 'Sevco FC' would become a common one from Celtic supporters at games and remains as such.
Rangers won the 2016-15 Scottish Championship to secure promotion, while also beating Celtic in a Scottish Cup semi-final. But, the 'Gruesome Twosome' of Scottish football would once again grace the top flight together.
Same as before?
Celtic had done very well out of the previous few years. They had won a succession of League titles at a canter with the accompanying European qualification giving them financial muscle the other clubs couldn't compete with. Rangers finished a respectable 3rd, but Celtic once again dominated the league.
After an embarrassing elimination out of the Europa League at the hands of a semi-professional side from Luxembourg, Rangers didn't improve on their 3rd place and Celtic won again. It wasn't until 2018-19 that Rangers finished 2nd.
With Celtic winning again.
Could Celtic's domination be broken before they won 10 titles in a row and broke the record jointly held by 1960s-70s Celtic and 1990s Rangers? Perhaps not yet.
2019-20 started well, Rangers had a fantastic run in the Europa League under Steven Gerrard and beat Celtic at their ground for the first time since 2010. COVID put paid to an increasingly close title race with Celtic awarded the title based on Points Per Game with the season abandoned.
This season has very much been Ranger's season though. At the time of writing they seem, barring a miracle/disaster, overwhemingly likely to win the League this year and deny Celtic the coveted ten in a year.
Postscript
Is the Rangers FC of today the same club as that pre-2012? Displays from Celtic fans would say not, and as a legal entity it certainly isn't the same. But UEFA allows for 'sporting continuity' for a club in terms of identity and honours even if the holding company or corporate structure changes. This suggests something that many football supporters would agree with - a club is as much as community asset as it is a company or business and the stories we have looked at explore the issues when the business and the community collide.
Next time, we'll take a look at how Arsenal Fan TV revolutionised football social media while turning their club into a laughing stock

UPDATE – 26 January 2021
COVID has been in Canada for one year now.
The strange case of the CEO in disguise to get vaccine for himself.
COVID-19 tax tips.
COVID-19 and the world of work – the International Labor Organization.
A breakdown of cases among healthcare workers.
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If you’re having trouble regulating life while working from home, the fake commute might be for you, have a look: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/18/success/fake-commute-meaning-benefits-pandemic-wellness/index.html
“For the many who have been doing your part, you may be asking, what more can I do? Be the voice of support and encouragement for those who may be wavering in their resolve.” – Dr. Bonnie Henry.
Feel free to share this post, or copy and paste, in whole or any part of it.
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LOCAL:
· 82 cases among New West residents in the previous week.
· No new school exposures in New Westminster since that of the Queensborough Middle School on January 11th.
· Current outbreaks: Royal City Manor, declared Jan 21; Royal Columbian Hospital, declared Jan 20.
· The Rio Theatre in Vancouver has converted into a sports bar.
· The theatre is dealing with a full closure of movie theatres. But as restaurants and bars can remain open with safety protocols, the theatre is seeking other ways to do business. The move does show that the Rio cannot do business as a theatre right now, but can meet the safety requirements to operate as a sports bar.
· There are differences though. The theatre has to actually meet the requirements for a bar, such as taking orders from people’s seats rather than allowing a line-up at the concession.
· The move has stirred controversy, with some decrying the Rio as finding a loophole while the basic lay-out is still that of a theatre, with narrow entryways and tiny washrooms. Others welcome the move as innovative, a way for a theatre to survive during the closure.
Sources: CBC, Global News, Fraser Health
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PROVINCIAL:
· The strange case of the CEO in disguise.
· Vancouver couple Rod and Ekaterina Baker were fined $575 after sneaking into the Yukon to try to get the vaccine for themselves.
· The couple posed as local motel workers.
· The clinic at Beaver Creek normally has one nurse and a receptionist, but a team of six was flown in to do vaccinations. Beaver Creek was chosen because “of its remoteness, elderly and population, and limited access to health care,” said Chief Angela Demit of the White River First Nation in Beaver Creek.
· The story of the wealthy executive trying to get vaccine intended for remote elderly First Nations people has not gone over well.
· Rod Baker is the Chief Executive Officer of Great Canadian Gaming, since 2011, where he earns $900,000 per year as salary, but last year also made $45.9 million from company stock options.. The company announced his resignation yesterday. The gambling company cited it’s “core values.” Ekaterina Baker is an actor, but not apparently a good enough one to fool Yukon officials. The couple chartered a flight to the Yukon.
· “We had not been imagining that someone would go to this length to mislead or deceive.” John Streicker, Yukon’s Minister of Community Services.
· The manager of the 1202 Motor Inn, where the couple claimed to work, was also rather upset. “That’s a risk (serving travellers) that we take – not a risk that somebody enforces upon us because they are too ignorant.” Staff at the Beaver Creek clinic found the couple suspicious, and phoned the motel to check on their story. While at the clinic and pretending to live and work in town, the couple rather oddly asked if anyone could drive them to the airport afterwards.
· Story from the Globe and Mail: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-great-canadian-gaming-ceo-resigns-after-being-charged-in-yukon-ove?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Coronavirus%20Update&utm_content=2021-1-25_19&utm_term=Coronavirus%20Update:%20Great%20Canadian%20Gaming%20CEO%20resigns%20after%20alleged%20botched%20disguise%20as%20Yukon%20motel%20worker%20in%20attempt%20to%20get%20COVID-19%20vaccine&utm_campaign=newsletter&cu_id=czq7hF%2BueFDcmmCKozRUQ1bduJl6paGe
· Ekaterina Baker is known for acting in productions such as Chick Fight, Fatman, The Asset, and The Comeback Trail, and as producer of Big Gold Brick.
· IMDB page: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9698063/
· BC has adopted a four phase vaccination plan.
· Phase 1, December to February: Residents, staff, essential visitors with long-term care and assisted living; people waiting for long-term care; people in remote Indigenous communities and hospital workers caring for patients with COVID-19.
· Phase 2, February to March: Seniors over 80; Indigenous seniors over 65, Indigenous elders; more health-care workers; vulnerable populations and nursing-home staff.
· Phase 3, April to June: Members of the general public aged 60 to 79.
· Phase 4, July to September: Members of the general public aged 18 to 59.
· Premier John Horgan says the plan is based on those who get most sick, and those most likely to die, so priority goes to the elderly and vulnerable, and those who work around them.
· The Premier said multiple groups argued that they were front-line workers and so should get priority. But with vaccine supply limited, it didn’t seem to make sense to vaccinate people on the basis of their job, like being a front-line worker, ahead people ahead of seniors or those more likely to be hospitalized or to die. Health care workers are not only the most likely to be exposed, but they also work with and have direct contact with patients and the vulnerable.
· Here is a good article with the numbers and the rationale behind the priorities: https://www.newwestrecord.ca/local-news/opinion-elderly-should-get-covid-19-vaccine-before-bc-teachers-3291898
· The dates might vary, depending on supply.
· Covid cases in BC have plateaued to an average of 500 per day.
· Dr. Bonnie Henry said that the number is still dangerously high. “For the last few weeks, we have plateaued at 500 new cases. This is too many. We are at a precipice. The virus continues to circulate in our communities. We are at the threshold of where we were in late October and November when cases started to rise.”
· “Over the next two week, I believe we can bend our curve. Not just plateau, but bend it back down…. More than you’ve done before, stay home, stop social interactions.”
· B.C. will receive no new doses of vaccine over the next two weeks. It is not sure how much will be received in February.
· Over the past three days – Saturday, Sunday, Monday:
· 1,344 new cases. 618 of those in Fraser Health. 527 reported on Saturday, 472 on Sunday, 346 on Monday. 64,828 cases to date.
· 26 new deaths. 1,154 total.
· 4,392 active cases.
· 57,831 recovered.
· 11 outbreaks in long-term care declared over.
· 6 cases of the UK variant in BC, 3 cases of the South Africa variant. No community transmission of the UK variant, but the South Africa variant cases are not connected to travel and are being investigated. Dr. Henry: “I’m very concerned. I’m concerned that if those variants start to spread, it’s just going to make our job that much more difficult.”
· 119,850 doses of vaccine administered to date.
· New numbers for Tuesday:
· 14 new deaths. 1,168 total.
· 407 new cases. 65,234 total. (Comparison: a high of 911 cases happened for Nov 27).
· 313 hospitalized, 71 in intensive care. (A high of 381 were hospitalized on January 6th).
· 4,260 active cases.
· 6,450 in self-isolation.
· 58,352 recovered.
· 122,359 doses of vaccine administered to date. 4,105 are second doses.
· No new outbreaks, one outbreak declared over.
· Dr. Bonnie Henry: “For the many who have been doing your part, you may be asking, what more can I do? Be the voice of support and encouragement for those who may be wavering in their resolve.”
· New restriction may be necessary if the number begins to climb again.
· 4,850 cases among health care workers, from January 2020 to 15 January 2021. About 8% of cases.
· From January to December 17th 2020, care aides had the highest number of cases among healthcare workers at 1,193 or 24.6%. Nurses were second at 833 or 17.2%. Below are the ten highest number of cases by healthcare worker category.
· 1,193 – care aids.
· 833 – nurse.
· 304 – licensed practical nurse.
· 280 – administration.
· 177 – housekeeping.
· 156 – dental professional.
· 151 – physician.
· 149 – kitchen staff, dietary aid, food services.
· 91 – occupational therapist, physiotherapist, respiratory therapist.
· 75 – student.
· The document is here: http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site/Documents/COVID_sitrep/COVID19_healthcare_workers_2021_01_15.pdf
· BC has has opened 3 clinics for people with longer term Covid symptoms.
· Located at St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver General, and the Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre in Surrey.
· Some people still have symptoms months after the start of the disease. Of patients who were hospitalized in BC, after three months half still had breathing issues. About 20% have permanent lung scarring.
· The St. Paul’s clinic already has 160 patients.
· Nanaimo Regional Hospital has had an outbreak.
· Two staff and a patient tested positive.
· Limited to the 4th Floor on the east wing.
· A homeless shelter in Surrey has had an outbreak.
· 2 staff and 24 clients test positive.
· The Surrey Emergency Response Centre was set up to make more shelter available to homeless people during the pandemic.
Sources: CBC, New Westminster Record, Globe and Mail, BC Centre for Disease Control.
​
NATIONAL:
· Worked from home during Covid-19? Be sure to check out these tax tips: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/accountants-break-down-tips-for-working-from-home-expenses-1.5872477
· Covid has been in Canada for one year now, starting back on the 25th of January, 2020, with one case in Toronto.
· Long-terms care homes are particularly hard hit, and it continues to be so that care homes are getting outbreaks.
· From the CBC, “What we’re seeing in the long-term care facilities just demonstrates, unfortunately, years and years of neglect.” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-canada-first-case-one-year-1.5884630
· In those early days, the public was generally told in Canada that the risk was low, and that people should not wear masks, and emphasized into March that there was no community spread.
· In late February, community transmission was evidenced in the U.S., and people returning to Canada from the U.S. began to show Covid. The halt to non-essential travel, on the land border, came on March 20.
· Canada is considering more travel restrictions, says the Canadian government.
· 143 flights have arrived in Canada in past two weeks with confirmed Covid cases. Deputy Prime Minister Freeland has assured, “We are considering the issue very, very seriously.”
· In this story, you can see where Canadians are flying during the pandemic. There sure seems to be a lot of urgent need to travel to places that happen to be warm vacation spots: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/freeland-travel-restrictions-1.5887163
· There is an 8 p.m. curfew in Montreal, and that is hard on the city’s homeless people.
· Homeless people have seen a dramatic reduction in help since the pandemic began. Shelters have to have social distancing, if they are safe to open at all.
· The province has refused to exempt homeless people from the curfew. People who break the curfew are subject to fines that start at $1,000 and can go up to $6,000. Premier Legault says making an exception for homeless people could cause people to pretend to be homeless.
· Some shelters have been forced to close altogether, because they can’t meet the requirements.
· Story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-homeless-covid-curfew-1.5880946
· 90 “adverse events following immunization,” 0.015% of the 601,901 doses administered as of January 9th 2021.
· 63 were non-serious, 0.010%. This includes things like a skin rash.
· 27 were serious, 0.004%. In Canada, this includes a wide range of symptoms from headache to nausea to anaphylaxis.
· Learn about the Canada Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS) here: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/immunization/canadian-adverse-events-following-immunization-surveillance-system-caefiss.html
· Here is where the numbers are updated every Friday (but not consistently): https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/#seriousNonSerious
· Manitoba is now requiring a 14 day quarantine for non-essential travel from other parts of Canada.
· The move is being made to attempt to prevent new variants of Covid-19 from entering the province.
· Applies to air and land travel.
· Includes Manitobans who are returning to the province from elsewhere.
Sources: CBC, Toronto Star, Public Health Canada
​
INTERNATIONAL:
· The world is experiencing Covid-somnia – an epidemic of insomnia.
· Insomnia is now at one-quarter of the population in the UK, and at 40% in Italy and Greece.
· There is concern that this is affecting people’s health in other ways.
· Work productivity is also affected.
· A University of Ottawa study of health care workers in 55 countries and 190,000 people showed that depression, anxiety, and PTSD have all risen at least 15% since the start of the pandemic. Insomnia has risen by over 23%.
· People are advised to seek help, which many are not as people avoid medical services, or those services are unavailable. Seeking help is important, because sleep issues over time can become and ongoing sleep disorder. “Tele-health” now makes treatment more available despite the pandemic.
· Working and using screens in bed is a big part of it. The recommendation is to use your bed only as a place of sleep.
· Full article: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210121-the-coronasomnia-phenomenon-keeping-us-from-getting-sleep
· Vaccine delays are happening around the world.
· Canada is receiving zero doses this week.
· Health workers who were scheduled for vaccination were mostly notified by email of their cancellations.
· In Canada, 50% of doses will be delayed for up to four weeks, up to 400,000 doses delayed.
· Restoration of supply will happen in the European union before it happens in Canada. Pfizer explained this as differing contract deals but did not reveal details. Europe has also threatened to sue Pfizer for breach of contracts, and threatened to abandon Pfizer altogether as a supplier, perhaps in doing so catching the company’s attention.
· Pfizer and AstraZeneca say they will catch up to their commitments in the Spring. Pfizer says their delay is due to changing production systems, so a short-term shut down for a greater number of people vaccinated more rapidly overall. Pfizers says that they are upgrading to be able to produce 2 billion doses per year, from the current 1.3 billion. AstraZeneca has not given details.
· UPDATED: The Pfizer production facility in question is in Belgium. The European Union has threatened to ban exports of the vaccine if commitments to Europe are not met. The company is attempting to distribute the problem in the world somewhat equitably. If Europe followed through on the threat, that could mean delays for other countries would be longer, including Canada, which is served by the Belgium facility.
· The UK, having had Brexit and pulled out of the European Union, has realized that they, too, would be one of those outside countries. The UK, somewhat ironically, is now arguing against nationalism as government policy, referring to what they called “the dead end of vaccine nationalism.”
· The World Health Organization’s Covax program, to distribute vaccine around the world fairly to low-income countries, has not been affected, some good news in the mix. The Covax problem is still on schedule, as its vaccine supply is produced in India and South Korea. The program has also received a substantial boost, following US President Joe Biden’s decision to contribute $4 billion to the program.
· The CDC in the US says that allergic reactions to the vaccine are extremely rare.
· Out of 4 million given the Moderna vaccine, 10 had severe allergic reactions.
· Moderna – 2.5 per million doses have severe allergic reactions.
· Pfizer – 11.1 per million.
· Normal flu vaccine – 1.3 per million.
· Allergic reactions begin quickly, at a median of 7 and a half minutes, so people are able to be supported through it. The majority were known to have severe allergies in advance. In the US, all vaccination sites must have people trained in responding to anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction.
· Story: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/22/health/moderna-severe-allergic-reactions-rare/index.html
· A doctor in Texas has been arrested for stealing vaccine.
· The doctor stole 9 doses to give to his friends and family, authorities allege.
· A man lived in the Chicago O’Hare airport for three months because he was afraid to fly. Story: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55702003
· Los Angeles has lifted its air quality limitations for cremations. An emergency order was issued so that crematoriums can catch up with the number of bodies. One person every eight minutes was dying from Covid every 8 minutes. The rate of death in LA county is double the norm from past years. 13,800 deaths in the city, 7,400 currently hospitalized, and 23% of those in intensive care.
· Over 200 incidents with plane passengers over the wearing of masks have been reported in the U.S.
· The behaviour has included refusal to wear masks once onboard, shouting abusively at flight attendants, and even physical assault.
· On Thursday, President Biden issued an executive order requiring the wearing of masks across transportation, a move welcomed by flight unions.
· The FAA, Federal Air Administration, has introduced fines up to $35,000 and potential jailing for abusing aircraft personnel, a move made in December after two flight attendants were assaulted.
· One person has been fined $15,000 after hitting the flight attendant, and grabbing her phone away from her while she was notifying the captain of the problem. Another passenger was fined $7,500, who when asked to wear a mask approached other passengers without a mask and sexually harassed a flight attendant.
· Some airlines are banning passengers from their flights who refuse to follow the rules. United Airlines has banned 615 people from flying on the airline since June, Delta Airlines has banned 700.
· There is a lot of news about variants of the virus.
· New variants have appeared in Britain, South Africa, and Brazil, all countries that have had high rates of Covid.
· So, what about vaccines? Scientists have actually expected that vaccines would still work against the variants. Moderna says that antibodies triggered by their vaccine works on new variants in lab test results. More study will be needed of people who actually have been vaccinated and who had the variant. The study so far was a small sample of eight people. Early results with the Pfizer vaccine also show that it works against variants.
· Moderna is also studying to see if there is a benefit of giving a third booster shot.
· Reports vary almost daily about if the variants are more deadly or not. The truth is that data is too limited and it is too early to really tell.
· Covid job losses have been four times worse than in the financial crisis in 2009.
· That’s according to a report by the International Labor Organization.
· The report estimates that 8.8% of the world’s work hours were eliminated. The ILO looks not only at those who have become unemployed, but those who have had reduced hours of work as well. That loss is equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, or $3.7 trillion dollars of income.
· Press release: https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_766949/lang--en/index.htm
· Study: COVID-19 and the world of work. Seventh edition. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_767028.pdf
· What’s the latest with the Tokyo Olympics?
· The government of Japan wants to go ahead with the Olympics that were delayed last summer.
· The Olympics are planned to start on July 23, and the Paralympics on August 24.
· The International Olympic Committee is currently planning on proceeding, but has not made a final decision. Efforts are underway to have Olympics that are Covid safe. That might mean no audiences, athletes restricted to their accommodation areas, and each sport would have to have protocols around training and competition areas.
· “We need the vaccine to come to Africa.” A note about Grandmothers in Zimbabwe. I encourage you to read this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55726054
Sources: BBC, Toronto Star, International Labor Organization, CNN, Los Angeles Times.
​
STATS (as of end of Monday)
CANADA
· 144 new deaths. 19,238 total.
· 5,628 new cases. 753,011 total.
· 1,222 fewer active. 62,446 total.
· 849 in critical care.
· 6,706 new recovered. 671,327 total.
USA
· 1,887 new deaths. 431,392 total.
· 152,244 new cases. 25,861,597 total.
· 9,812,845 active.
· 26,259 in critical care.
· 207,426 new recovered. 15,617,360 total.
WORLD
· 2,149,496 deaths.
· 100,286,772 cases.
· 72,315,474 recovered.
Sources: www.covid-19us.live/, https://www.covid-19canada.com/
​
Pandemic updates provided on a voluntary basis as a community service, on Tuesdays and Fridays unless circumstances do not allow (currently dealing with an injury that limits my typing).
To provide accurate and timely information, locally, provincially, nationally and internationally, all in one place.
Feel free to share.
With love and hope,
Jaimie McEvoy, City Councillor, New Westminster, B.C.

What has happened in the last the days in this subreddit has been nothing short of an explosion of mass hysteria and delusion.
It's been a mix of a cult like following of the 'reddit stocks' where any alternative opinion shared is shot to hell and a tinfoil hat wearing brigade declaring any slight market movement not in their favour or platform issue, is due to some grand conspiracy and/or market manipulation. From an outside perspective it honestly felt like the Trump crowd proclaiming 'tHe elEctiON waS rIgGEd' just because it didn't go the way the way they wanted.
I have no issue with people sharing views on the next penny stock or with people that have wildly more speculative investing styles to my own, I think that it's completely normal and should be welcomed. But it felt as if overnight investors (as in people that got an account in the last few weeks, watched a few youtube videos on 'what's a stop loss' etc and built a confirmation bias from reading articles on reddit) were throwing completely baseless allegations at T212.
I remember it unfolding. Everyone was like 'F*** T212 let's go to FreeTrade where they aren't manipulators' or 'I can't wait til we get Robinhood in the UK' to, 'T212 is taking backhanders from HF's' & 'the whole industry is in on it'. Which is all completely baseless and false. I also remember when people were absolutely losing their marbles when they couldn't place orders despite having no knowledge NYSE had halted trading etc. Anyone who's been a market participant for more than 5 minutes knows that none of what happened was new or shocking. Brokers do unusual things in unusual times to protect themselves. I also posted on their fiduciary responsibility (which got shot to hell) which i'll share again beneath. There was also a great comment from u/dialectic_duck which i'll paste beneath for anyone that wants to read about what was happening behind the scenes.
There's also the massive issue to me that this is a FREE service. To expect lightning fast execution at the best prices and 100% server response at peak market times during a completely unexpected event like this, is an absolute joke. It's not what this platform is here for. It's a free service which to me, everyone that used this service prior to the frenzy understood. If you're new to the markets and want to dabble, or you want to invest without the fees of say HL, great T212's your guy. If you want a professional level broker, go get yourself a $10k minimum deposit and go elsewhere, or be willing to pay high account charges.
I was also downvoted for saying what would have happened if T212 hadn't suspended trading when the price was of GME was at $450. So many here would have flooded in and due to the reddit sentiment, would still be holding at a MASSIVE loss. Without realising, many people have been saved from losing a tonne of money by physically not being able to enter orders. You can't have your cake and eat it. I also think it's completely reckless when completely unqualified users are telling others 'to hold no matter what'. People that can't afford to lose money have lost £0000's on this. Holding onto a loser is completely against basic investing principles as you almost certainly lose more money. Google behavioural finance.
On risk & regulation etc. Again people who have been in the market for more than 5 minutes would have identified all the risks here INCLUDING counter-party risk and stepped back and happily watched the frenzy from the sidelines. When investing in risky stocks such as this you have to be prepared to lose money, and that loss can come from anywhere. If you honestly look for 100% risk free and feel entitled to this from a free service, you are probably better purchasing Gilts from the DMO. The FCA also regularly issues notices on the risks to retail investors on issues such as these so they quite frankly don't give a monkey's and complaints with the FOS will go nowhere. Here is the FCA's statement for anyone interested.
Prior to the WSBs crowd, there were generic discussions on investing tips, sharing investment ideas or gains, platform information and general financial news etc. I think people need to take a step back and remember that's what this is here for.
I have NO IDEA what will happen next, i'm not trying to say I do or share any opinion on what might happen to GME etc in the next few days. Could go to $10 or $10k. I also sympathise with those who were stuck in orders etc. But I think it's time we all took a step back and just chill a little. A lot of us like T212 for what it is. I like the updates to the web app and am looking forward to carrying on using it.
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u/dialectic_duck 's post:
It’s hilarious people think this has legs and I look forward to my downvotes.

1. when you buy a stock settlement is not immediate
2. orderly settlement is an important function of underlying market transactions (a tx isn’t complete until what you bought is delivered)
3. most brokers rely on settlement agents to handle settlement and clearing for them.
4. every day brokers post collateral on a continuous net settlement basis so that the clearing house knows that both sides of a transaction will be fulfilled at settlement time this allows brokers the confidence to know that even if the other side is at another brokerage there is enough cash/equity to fulfil.
5. the margin rate for brokers went from 10% to 100% overnight because there was concern that settlements may result in failures to deliver (simply put for clarity this means if you bought you might not end up getting what you think you bought**) and in that case the broker would be on the hook to pay this liability, as such they’re completely within their rights to manage this risk (that they cannot fulfil a delivery) not just in the case of a customer wanting to buy, but for the security of all their customers who would be adversely impacted if the broker itself imploded. (This is why Robinhood got caught short and pulled down a reported 500mm in bank lines and 1bb in emergency convertible debt funding from their investors in 24hrs, because half their customer base was buying GME and they wouldn’t have been able to meet short term clearing obligations without it)
6. my own broker made it very clear in multiple communications that they passed on the enhanced margin requirements (100% long and 300% short AND the liquidate only restrictions on to all customers - retail, professional and institutional customers). some of those customers are family offices, small hedge funds etc (anyone that doesn’t have a prime IB brokerage).
7. T212 uses IBKR as their intermediary, they literally had no choice but to comply, and neither did IBKR because they would have been in breach of settlement collateral posting obligations. As an aside HL uses a RFQ system and their is no obligation for the RFQ broker network to provide a quote to open new positions if they reasonably believe they cannot fulfil delivery to the client. (Btw when I checked I didn’t see restriction on buying with HL, but I only looked once).

** this is the fallacy in the argument, people are complaining they were prevented from buying, their only thesis for wanting to buy something that everyone “knows” is absurdly priced is because of XXX% short interest, by their (own logic) means there is limited shares actually available to buy. If you take this to the extreme they’re demanding someone sell them something that by their own logic might not exist for delivery to them.
It’s like going into Tesco and demanding to buy something they no longer can give you with any reasonable certainty, then writing to your MP about it, it’s stupid.
The only thing the outrage could guarantee is enhanced “retail protections” that will almost certainly result in a curtailment of retail investor freedom people have today.
Edit: if you have a complaint about not being able to buy ARK complain to ARK, it’s them that do not run a MIFID complaint fund nor report to HMRC for tax purposes (meaning gains anyway would be taxed as foreign overseas income, and not CGT).
---------------------
My post on 28/01:
They (T212) have a fiduciary responsibility to protect their customers' interests.
And yes they can control risk. It's exactly the same reason why they can't offer excess leverage to retail clients and can close out positions. Halting trading for this reason is not new. It has happened across the board with plenty of brokers in the past.
The FCA handbooks cover this. They could be liable to FCA sanctions if it transpired they were offering easy access to completely non-qualified investors and they all ended up losing huge sums and made FCA complaints.
Say GME dumps at open (which it is completely possible), I feel people won't be complaining.
They've said in that notification, this is partly to do with trading volumes (which have been crazy) and their servers will just melt again and people will be stuck in orders when the market potentially dumps this.
So T212, a free service, should upgrade all their servers and increase capacity in the space of 2 days, purely because every man and his dog has decided to pile into a handful of stocks the last few days (fuelled by a reddit forum)?
This happens, it's happened loads on the past with all brokers across the board and this issue wasn't specific to T212 yesterday.
People that have qualified themselves as pro investors, have literally become traders overnight and are complaining 'manipulation' etc...
Yes it's really shit to everyone stuck in orders, but what did you expect!!! Experienced investors will have stayed well clear of this and only invested what they can afford to lose, knowing it's a complete gamble!
The FOS are going to say T212 looks after the interests of all its users and were trying to decrease server volatility whilst literally millions of people were piling into a few names at a time there was also no liquidity. And that the platform isn't just for people trading risky instruments via CFDs. The FCA won't give a monkey's, they regularly issue risk warnings on stuff like this.

I posted this yesterday morning (UK time) but after 5 hours or so, pennystocks deleted the original post. I had a message to share it on here too, so here it is!
--
This is my first time posting a DD post – a friend of mine who moderates on SPACs has shared some analysis I have written previously, but I’m keen to share this here, and see if there is any appetite for sharing my own personal written DD I have on the 30 stocks I have across a number of different portfolios.
I have modified this format, as it was originally a script for a video which I created on the stock. If you prefer to listen – check it out here: https://youtu.be/qsjwU7kkPsw
Some of the market stats (market cap, current multiples, etc.) are correct as of Feb-06, and clearly a little outdated since the price movements.
Not a financial advisor, do your own DD. I am long HITI and have an expectation of a long term hold on this stock.
Overview

• High Tide Canada-based cannabis retail company, operating under multiple brands. It operates under 3 core divisions:

1. Brick and mortar retail – 4 key brands with just under 70 locations in Canada. Brands include: Canna Cabana, New Leaf, Meta Cannabis and Kushbar. Forecast to have around 115 stores by end of 2021
2. Online retail – has 2 brands, both of which attract millions of viewers per month – Grasscity.com and CBDcity.com
3. Wholesale – manufacturer of paraphernalia in US and Canada. Number of products are branded with various celebrities, Snoop Dogg, Paramount Pictures, Trailer Park Boys and many more

• Has good c-level execs and experienced executive board; hold significant stake in the business. CEO Raj Grover holds just over 21% of the shares
• Currently has a market cap of around $280m. Still significant upside to the valuation – see analysis later in post

Investment Merits
Very strong market growth:

• Business has demonstrated growth both organically (through new store openings, more online sales and greater wholesale sales), as well as inorganically through M&A
• Growth in markets which High Tide has a physical presence in is expected to be very strong. North American cannabis market (Canada and US) is forecast to grow by 30% a year to 2027 (source: research and markets)
• Analysts covering High Tide are forecasting growth in excess of this, which is positive to see and implies capturing market share
• New markets / geographies ‘opening up’, legalizing and regulating cannabis is also an exciting and realistic prospect for incremental growth:

1. The US federal legalization debate is on the table
2. Many other countries are considering this too and High Tide is well positioned for these; this is catalyzed by the fact that government debt has increased significantly as part of the response to the COVID-19 health crisis. This needs to be repaid somehow, and increasing tax rates on existing taxes is an unpopular political move. Finding new tax revenues is a more palatable way of increasing tax revenues for governments. This is especially important in countries where elections are upcoming.

• Personally I do expect to see this accelerate the agenda for the regulation and legalization of cannabis in many new countries
• Whilst predominantly Canada and US based, High Tide does have presence in some markets where cannabis is not regulated or legalized, the UK for example (~10% of Grasscity sales are made here) and so it is well positioned with a strong and established brand to capitalize on this opportunity, when / if the market ‘opens up’

Regulation

• High Tide benefits from the regulatory focus and overhang on the cannabis retail sector as it represents a strong barrier to entry, making it more challenging for new competitors to enter market
• Participants in the market need to have licenses and ensure consistent compliance with laws to continue operating – failure to comply can result in significant financial penalties
• Personally I normally don’t like investing into retail. There are usually fairly limited barriers to entry, minimal differentiation and negligible customer loyalty, however the cannabis market does have different characteristics in this respect and makes it a more compelling proposition
• Regulation also benefits those with scale, something High Tide has as the leading player in the market. It costs money to obtain and retain licences to operate and it costs money to ensure compliance with all the laws and regulations and that all staff are acting in accordance with these
• Some parallels in this respect which can be drawn to casino gaming in casinos; you don’t see new casinos popping up at the same rate which you see new restaurants or apparel stores opening

Demand

• There’s a lot to like about the demand dynamics for High Tide. It’s vice-nature means that demand is less correlated to disposable incomes. Given where we are in economic cycle, especially important consideration
• For those doubting this, check alcohol, tobacco or gambling expenditure across economic cycles historically, for a proxy

Strong performance throughout COVID-19 crisis

• Despite heavy weighting towards brick and mortar, (the most hard hit part of retail) it has effectively managed the shift to online, which is a positive
• Has relied on government support and financial assistance in the form of job retention schemes (address in more detail later in post)
• This demonstrates management are capable and have effectively navigated the challenging situation

Data

• Massively summarized from the video, (and my video on KERN) so check that out if interested in this point, however, they have unique access to supply chain data which could be monetized effectively and generate strong levels of recurring revenues
• Other established sectors have a trusted party with such unique access to data (e.g. alcohol, lithium, different foods, etc.) and the opportunity here is enormous
• I would like to see High Tide capitalize on this

Forecasts financials & analysts

• Currently 2 analysts covering High Tide, both have a buy rating on the business
• Their coverage is slightly outdated (expect this being updated soon and a further catalyst for positive price action) and their price targets are 60c; at the time their reports were published, they were forecasting a 4x upside (HITI was trading at ~15c)
• Same analysts also forecasting strong growth - 77% CAGR to 2022. They are forecasting revenues of around $250m and EBITDA of $46m. A reminder here, these are professional analysts, not YouTube students – these come from their financial models, the assumptions of which are discussed with management

​
https://preview.redd.it/9ft3iuw6zmg61.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=44f5a24a035466bac6e9e72c70eb1edcadf5091d
Valuation

• Going to go quick here, its explained more slowly in the video but High Tide is currently valued at a significant discount to the other listed peers
• Looking at EV / FY+1 Sales multiples – EBITDA not meaningful as some of the peer group are EBITDA negative and High Tide itself has only recently become EBITDA positive

https://preview.redd.it/83j8aqdkzmg61.png?width=342&format=png&auto=webp&s=f06ec34f6de10eeae049710dd59c494f6ef697c9

• Personally, I think Planet13 is the most comparable given its business model
• Taking both Planet13 multiple and peer group average multiple, this is then applied to High Tide’s forecast FY+1 sales to calculate an enterprise value – this is adjusted for net debt to get to a market capitalization and then divided by the share count to get an implied share price
• The table below shows the implied stock price valuations from this analysis

​
https://preview.redd.it/1z2ap11mzmg61.png?width=406&format=png&auto=webp&s=775ddc0c9d7e99412dbb4eb1fbbf8ed4645bc235
NB – assumed the following:

1. Net debt will change in coming year given the capital structure and a large number of convertible notes – this has been ignored given it will have small impact on the price
2. The share count will change as a result of dilution from various instruments – if this bothers you massively then look at the valuation discount on the basis of the enterprise value as it does not impact this (and only slightly on the market cap given minimal impacts to cash from instrument execution, etc.)
3. Not accounting for any stock split, consolidation or any other M&A deals
4. The FY21 financials are on the basis of the mean broker estimates from Thomson Reuters – Seeking Alpha has different and slightly outdated ones

Investment Risks & Mitigants / Outstanding DD points
Exposure to changing regulation

• US is only a small part of the market which High Tide addresses, while a change in regulation would have a big impact on the company, currently it is unlikely this would happen, given the discussions about potential federal legalization
• Canada regulation is established and not going anywhere
• Other countries likely to legalize and regulate cannabis, as outlined earlier

Dilution

• No escaping that there will be some significant dilution for shareholders, as pointed out in the table below, but this should be already priced into the stock
• Potential that new equity issuances could occur to help finance growth, but provided this growth is delivered, it should be accretive for the stock price

​
https://preview.redd.it/n8dzmapozmg61.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=12e0e8bbd93f0c5c17920e7a5c5fad2559cc8bf0
Potentially misleading cost basis information

• A risk that investors need to be aware with for all companies which have relied on government financial support during COVID-19 measures. Such support has resulted in the number of businesses going bankrupt decreasing massively – this is at a lower level than it ever normally is and is masking some real underlying issues within companies. As investors we need to be open eyed about this
• As High Tide has benefited from support in the form of the Canada’s Emergency Wage Support scheme, there is the risk that once this is lifted it may become apparent that the cost base has not been effectively managed
• Personally, I think this is mitigated by the synergy analysis conducted as part of the M&A. A full cost base analysis would have been conducted to calculate the potential $8.4m synergies so strong likelihood that this is under control, but should keep on our radar and reassess

Marketing expenses and celebrity licenses

• Need more information to ascertain whether these are underpinned by a compelling ROI. Seen a lot of people suggest this is a great positive, but the impact on sales volumes from these is unknown, as is the terms of these license agreements (e.g. split between upfront fee vs. volume-based fee)
• No escaping the fact that it is an increased cost and so need to understand the ROI this generates to determine whether it really is compelling
• Is there really more demand to pay a premium for Snoop Dogg bongs, Guns n Roses papers, Cheech & Chong grinders, or whatever they may be?
• So far management have suggested this has been helpful in driving new sales, but this is something to dig into more

If you want to check out the video, it would be appreciated: https://youtu.be/qsjwU7kkPsw

Previous Results

1945 – Sir Archibald Sinclair (Liberal)
1950 – Clement Davies with 50% of the vote
1951 – Clement Davies with 58% of the vote
1955 – Sir Anthony Eden with 67% of the vote
1959 – Harold Macmillan with 75% of the vote
1964 – Jo Grimond with 73% of the vote
Last week the results were: Jo Grimond (Liberal) 73%, Sir Alec Douglas-Home (Conservative) 16%, Harold Wilson (Labour) 11%
Lab vs Con only: Sir Alec Douglas-Home (Conservative) 56%, Harold Wilson (Labour) 44%
The Actual results from 1964 were:
Labour: 317 seats, 44.1% of the vote
Conservative: 304 seats, 43.4% of the vote
Liberal: 9 seats, 11.2% of the vote

Profiles

• Harold Wilson is the 50 year old current Prime Minister, and Leader of the Labour Party, a post he has held since 14th February 1963
• Edward Heath is the 49 year old current Leader of the Conservative Party, a post he has held since 28th July 1965
• Jo Grimond is the 52 year old current Leader of the Liberal Party, a post he has held since 5th November 1956

Background

• 1964 – The election of 1964 saw the end of an era of Conservative dominance with Harold Wilson’s Labour Party winning the election. However, Wilson only won a majority of 4 MPs due to a late Tory uptick which placed him in a precarious position. Wilson wanted another general election to secure a larger majority. In early 1966 the Labour MP for Hull North unexpectedly died. This was a seat Labour had only flipped in 1964 and had a majority of only around 2.5%. This could have been a routine pick up for the opposition, but the end result was a swing of +8.9% to Labour, signifying Labour could perform well electorally. The Liberals also saw a bit of a revival in 1964 gaining 3 seats and increasing their share of the vote by 5.3%, the Liberals also picked up seats in London, whereas from 45-64 they had been seen as a party which clung on in the fringes of the country: Cornwall, Wales and Scotland’s Highlands and islands.
  
• The Economy Stupid – One of the largest issues facing Labour as soon as then entered office was the large deficit and poor balance of trade left by the Conservatives. Labour moved quickly – establishing a new ministry of technology, unveiling a national plan for the economy, and cutting back on the military, raising protective tariffs on imports, and raising taxes. The deficit has been cut from £750m to £350m and the balance of trade has also improved. This early “test” reflected positively on Wilson and Labour’s ability to run the economy. Labour have also repealed the controversial charges on prescriptions and increased the amount of houses being built.
  
• The 1965 Conservative Leadership contest – After the defeat of 1964 Douglas-Home may have been able to stay as leader of the Conservatives after the improvement in Conservative polling, however the party had been in power for 13 years and reacted very negatively to its return to opposition and Home did not believe he was suited to being leader of the opposition. Home changed the Conservative Party’s leadership election process which had led to so many issues for Home. Now a simple election between Conservative MPs with each having one vote decides the next leader. The winner of this contest is Edward Heath. Heath was somewhat of a surprise with the more widely known former Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maulding expected to win. Heath however had served as Chief Whip – with his job being to wrangle Conservative MPs into voting one way or another and Heath had a more intimate knowledge of how to win over his party members while fighting a clear and focused campaign.
  
• Heath vs Wilson – Heath and Wilson will (spoiler!) fight over 4 general elections so let’s compare them. In many ways both are remarkably similar. Both were born in 1916 and both had middle class upbringings, both excelled at school and won scholarships to Oxford. Because of this both are seen as more modern “technocrats” as opposed to the nobility who traditionally became Prime Minister. Both were involved in Oxford student politics although Wilson only somewhat. Heath on the other hand became President of the Oxford Union debating society and of Oxford University’s Conservative society. Heath travelled extensively throughout Europe before World War 2, even attending a Nuremburg Rally in 1937 and attending an SS cocktail party with Goering, Goebbles and Himmler (whom he described as the most evil man he’d ever met). Heath therefore stood as a pro-interventionist candidate in student politics, heavily backing the Spanish Republic and defeating a pro-Franco candidate for leader of the Conservative society. Heath fought in World War 2 and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel whereas Wilson signed up but was regarded as too important to fight in the war and stayed in Britain organising coal stocks. Both served in multiple ministerial positions and both as President of the Board of Trade. Here Heath instituted an extremely controversial policy during Home’s last year as Prime Minister – lifting the restrictions on the amount of foods Supermarkets could buy. This law was put in place to help small grocers and Heath was warned if he repealed it he’d split the party before an election by antagonising one of the Conservative’s key supporters in small business owners (Heath went on anyway and the split never happened). Heath’s experiences as chief whip during the Suez Crisis, negotiating entry into the EU, and in repealing this law imbued a great deal of self-confidence within him as he’d soldiered through incredibly difficult circumstances but always come out the other side undamaged. On the other hand Wilson’s time as “Nye Bevan’s dog” during the battles between Bevan and Gaitskell reinforced the importance of maintaining party unity and managing big personalities within government.
  
• The quiet man – Heath however has one key disadvantage when compared to Wilson in his charisma or lack thereof. Wilson is incredibly witty and charismatic, but Heath seems to shun the concept of even giving interviews, sometimes going years between television appearances and appearing very stiff and wooden when he does talk. This hasn’t helped the fact that Heath has had less than a year as Leader of the Conservatives before the election. As a result very few voters have even heard of him, and Wilson is incredibly effective at making fun of Heath. Heath believes that the electorate will tire of Wilson and see him as a fake like Heath does (for his public persona and Wilson’s exaggerations about his childhood and upbringing with Wilson trying to paint himself as rising from the working class despite being comfortably middle class) and because of this… Basically does very little to make arguments as to why the voters should back him, instead just sitting back and waiting. This has alarmed his supporters who elected him as a direct answer to Wilson.
  
• Liberal dilemmas – For the Liberals 1964 was a great success. While still nowhere as near as popular as Labour or the Conservatives the Liberals did manage to make themselves seem like a true 3rd party instead of some regional relic of the 1800s. Grimond however is facing new issues – Grimond presented himself as a young, radical alternative to the old Tories but that role has become adopted by Wilson and the Tories elected a technocrat. Grimond is the oldest of the 3 leaders and a firm member of the upper class of society. Grimond also struggled with supporting Labour. Since Labour had such a thin majority there was always the question of if the Liberals would agree to support Labour on certain issues which many Liberals disliked the thought of. Wilson and Grimond seemed to come to an agreement on institution proportional representation – a long-term aim of the Liberals but Wilson has not upheld his end of the bargain. Grimond is also struck by the suicide of his son Andrew during the campaign which takes a great mental toll on Grimond and seemed to take a lot out of him (as you’d expect).
  
• Europe again – Edward Heath is one of the firmest supporters of Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, a policy which the Liberals also support. Wilson’s position is more confused. Wilson personally opposes entry as does the left-wing of the Labour party, but those on the right support entry. Wilson in a desire to keep the party together has made speeches indicating he supports entry but has not committed to actually joining and has accused Heath of “rolling on his back like a spaniel at any kind gesture from the French”.
  
• 9-5-1 – Heath has managed a rare hit on Wilson by referring to Britain’s economic figures. As mentioned before Labour has gained the trust of the public by managing to quickly bring down Britain’s budget and trade deficits but Heath has referred to 9-5-1 meaning the 9% rise in wages, 5% rise in prices and meagre 1% rise in production. Heath is warning about the issue of inflation, but Wilson saw the unpopularity of Home’s attempts at a wage pause, and also wishes to continue full employment both of which have led him to committing little action to combatting inflation.
  

Issues

Labour:

• New incentives for exports, maintenance of tariffs on imports, cuts onoverseas military expenditure, new taxes on overseas income and control over the export of capital to stop the flight of the rich abroad
• Increased productivity by selective investment, incentives to reinvest profits, a new corporation and board to reorganise industry and increase productivity
• Encouragement of agricultural and horticultural co-operation, increased and cheaper marketing of foodstuffs, support for farm workers
• Fixed income, prices, and rent control to curb the cost of living
• 500,000 new homes a year by 1970, continuation of Crown Land Commission to seize land at below-market prices to combat “land famine” and remove land from the free market, improved public transport for commuters, modernization of old city centres, and continuation of the policy of building new towns
• Commitment to full employment, new recognition of the right to a trade union, equal pay for equal work
• increase by 1970 the annual spending on hospital building to a figure double the highest sum spent in any year by the Conservatives, increase in medical students, rapid expansion on health and welfare services for old and disabled
• Creation of “The Open University” by using TV and Radio to deliver University lessons
• A new tax on gambling and gaming, and a land tax based on the difference between the value of the land as it’s currently used and the price received when its sold for redevelopment
• Votes at 18 years old, reorganisation of civil service, local governments, law commission to revise and modernize old laws, and a conference to review the UK’s voting system
• “Realistic” controls on immigration
• Increase in police officers, new youth parole system to cut down on numbers in jail
• Commitment to European Free Trade Association but no commitment to join or stay out of European Economic Community

Conservative:

• Tax incentives for saving money, a new act for industrial relations to end restrictive practices, intimidation and establish that agreements between unions and employers are legally enforceable, encouragement of competition between businesses
• Wider ownership of houses, pensions and capital
• Restrictions on immigration and fairer treatment for immigrants
• An attack on rising rates of crime
• Goal of 500,000 new houses
• Entry into the European Economic Community
• New cost effectiveness department to cut government waste, reorganisation of economic ministries into one department as well as combining the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and the National Assistance Board into a single Department, hiring of university and industry professionals to help draft legislation and policies
• New inspectors of welfare to co-ordinate support between local authorities and hospitals, improved benefits for old, children, and widows
• Establishment of education television centre to help teach children, more power to local education providers and authorities, more choice in education for parents
• Expansion of education and higher education budgets for Scotland and Wales
• Initiate peace talks to break the deadlock in Rhodesia
• Support for admission of China into the U.N.

Liberal:

• Simplification of tax system, reduction of direct taxes, cutting of tariffs, continuation of incomes policy but wages to rise in line with productivity,
• New works councils to force management of businesses to regularly consult and negotiate with workers, workers to become shareholders in their place of work, A standard contract of service to be introduced covering the right to Union representation; an equal range of security benefits for wage and salary earners; holiday pay based on average earnings; a guaranteed opportunity for further education and training in employer's time; and equal rates of pay for men and women doing identical work
• Increased prices for beef, expansion of production of cereals to eventually end tariffs on cereal imports
• Parliaments for Scotland and Wales, elected regional councils responsible for the use of land, including new towns and new industries, public transport and hospital building, water supplies, regional resources and all facilities for leisure and the arts, streamlining of government ministries
• Creation of new motorways but for all new motorways to be pay roads
• No controls on amount of immigrants entering UK, expansion of teaching facilities to teach immigrants English and special funds for housing in areas with rapidly growing immigrant communities
• Cuts to defence spending, British nuclear weapons to be given to international organisations
• Proportional representation, votes at 18
• Increase in state pensions, encouragement of employers to supplement them, increase in sick and unemployment pay, paid for by A Social Security Tax, replacing National Insurance stamps and levied on employer (two thirds) and employee (one third)
• Increase in number of GPs and nurses, better facilities for them, and new hospitals as well as improvements to existing hospitals
• salaries, working conditions and pensions of teachers to be improved, 11+ exam to be abolished, slum schools to be improved
• Entry into European Economic Community
• Increased trade and international aid for poverty stricken countries, pressure on Rhodesian government to step down and the formation of a new government to represent all Rhodesians

Read the full manifestos here:

Conservatives
Labour
Liberal

Vote here (all parties): https://rankit.vote/vote/kg17GSV1AAOpr3qbJXRo

Vote here (Labour vs Conservative): https://rankit.vote/vote/vEyeMxyH6CRIZIj0wXjt

Please try to vote as if you are a British citizen in 1966 without knowledge of what will happen after the election.

Your 11-minute Tuesday report in 2562 words.

gas prices could rise due to currency fluctuations

Russian gas price (at the border) had increased from $150 to $165 per 1000m³ in 2019. Although the Russian currency Ruble was devaluing against the Dollar, Armenia was/is paying for gas with Dollars.
Since 2019, the Pashinyan administration has been trying to convince Russia to implement a different gas payment mechanism within the EAEU trade bloc. Making payments in Rubles instead of Dollars was one of the priorities:
"We are constantly talking about high dollarization within the EAEU, but we still pay for Russian gas in dollars. Our proposal was that it would be more correct if we paid for gas in rubles, because I think it is more logical, also within the EAEU," said Pashinyan in early 2020.
This idea was also shared by Vladimir Putin's personal adviser back in October 2018. It appears the EAEU has been working towards this goal lately.
But meanwhile, Armenia has to pay for Russian gas in Dollars. With Armenian Dram devaluing against the Dollar, the pricing for consumers will likely be revised. Consumers pay 139 Drams per cubic meter. This was calculated in 2020 when $1 was 480 Drams. Today $1 = 520 Drams.
Large consumers pay in Dollars and have their rates adjusted periodically, while small consumers (general public) pays in Drams.
Armenia imports 2.2 billion m³ gas from Russia annually, at the price of $165 per 1000m^3. 0.7 billion of it is consumed by the general public.
Dram was devalued by 6.6% since November. This could prompt the internal gas company to raise the prices, including for the general public.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039886.html
http://www.armbanks.am/en/2020/04/07/128024/
https://neftegaz.ru/en/news/energy/406887-armenia-should-pay-for-russian-gas-in-rubles/

Public Council meets drone and robotics industry

The Public Council (linked to PM's office) held a meeting with engineers from the drone, robotics, AI, and nano-tech industries. They discussed ways to help the state to develop the military-industrial complex, drone production, aviation, and to bring their quality to international standards.
https://factor.am/327477.html

former PACE MP sentenced to 4 years for taking bribes from Azerbaijan

An Italian court has concluded that Italian PACE representative Luca Volonte, who is the former head of the European People's Party, took €2.4 million in bribes from the Aliyev regime in 2012-2013.
The bribe was handed over by Azerbaijan's PACE delegation leader Suleymanov. The scheme was coordinated by an Azeri lobbying firm based in Brussels. In return, the MP gave Azerbaijan favors during PACE and Italian Parliament sessions.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039927.html
Tags: #caviar

POWs and searches

The search crews in Artsakh discovered bodies of 10 soldiers and 1 civilian in Jabrayil, Hadrut, and Sgnakh regions. The civilian has already been identified by his relatives. The cause of death is being investigated.
Many bodies under the possession of the Armenian side are yet to be identified, while more bodies will likely be found during daily searches for the foreseeable future. Overall, 575 calls have been made by families who are looking for missing relatives, says the Russian humanitarian envoy in Artsakh.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039900.html , https://www.panarmenian.net/arm/news/289293/
Human Rights Ombudsman Tatoyan once again criticized Azerbaijan for intentionally politicizing and delaying the POW swap mission. "It is against international laws to file felony cases and arrest POWs because that's a form of a prohibited punishment. Azerbaijan is also hiding the true number of POWs."
The Ombudsman has noted that Armenian residents in Tegh, Vorotan, and several other bordering villages have lost access to 2500 hectares of farming lands due to border changes. (some lands that were internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan were given to Azerbaijan after the war).
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039933.html , https://factor.am/327226.html , https://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/204175

POW discussions: general prosecutor meets Azeri counterpart

Chief prosecutor Arthur Davtyan and his Azeri counterpart were invited to Russia. The three sides held a conversation about the establishment of future contacts in the field of international law and other related topics. Prosecutor Davtyan mentioned the importance of implementing the November 9th statement about the return of POWs, "which will serve as an assurance for implementation of other [trade unblocking] issues."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039953.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039972.html

how much will a new railway network cost?

Azeri economists believe it will cost around $430 million to build a railway network connecting Kars(TR)-Nakhijevan(AZ)-Meghri(AM)-Zangelan(AZ)-Baku(AZ). Overall, if you add Gyumri between Kars and Nakhijevan, it could cost about $434 million.
Economists believe Armenia can use this network to connect with Russia via two directions: Gyumri-Nakhijevan-Meghri-Baku (southern trip), or Ijevan-Ghazakh-Baku (northern trip).
https://www.panarmenian.net/arm/news/289313/

rumors & rebuttals: traitors are not selling Azeri juice in Armenia

Telegram channel Mediaport circulated rumors that "Azeri Sandora juice is being sold in Armenia". The misinformation was picked up by several outlets and caused confusion among the buyers.
Fact-checkers contacted Sandora's local importer who said the producer is a Ukrainian company that sells its product in multiple post-Soviet republics, so they have one unified tag that contains information both in Armenian and Azeri languages.
https://fip.am/14469

4 Dutch MPs receive medals for friendship

Among them is ethnic Kurdish MP Sadet Karabulutu, who publicly criticized the Turkish-Azeri aggression during the war.
https://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/204216

food prices in Artsakh

Pricing for 43 commonly-consumed items was examined by the consumer protection agency in Artsakh. 12 became more expensive, 5 cheaper, 26 remained the same.
Onion +25%, cottege cheese +6%, milk +6%, gloves +5%, ..., pear -12%, rice -1%, eggs -1%, butter -1%.
Several dairy product prices went up, and since Artsakh has dairy companies that own dominant market share, the consumer agency will launch an investigation to see if there was price-fixing.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039946.html

seismic resistance assessment for old buildings

A significant portion of Armenia's large apartment complex buildings were built half a century ago. They may not be seismically safe, considering Armenia's geolocation. After the 1988 earthquake, some buildings remain populated despite being deemed highly unsafe. Many other buildings have safety irregularities.
It is necessary to assess the situation, so the Urban Development Committee has drafted a bill "Methodology for assessing the priority of increasing the seismic resistance of buildings and structures".
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039887.html

IRS will closely monitor gambling industry / RFID chips & servers

IRS press release: gambling facilities and online betting services will be more closely monitored. We worked with international experts to digitize the gambling industry and bring it on par with international standards.
All gambling machines and platforms operating in Armenia will be connected to one server which will be connected to a monitoring Center. All betting and winning transactions will be recorded.
The Center will also install RFID microchips in casinos to monitor the movement of chips, the chips purchased or won by players, in real-time.
The government's Digital Council has approved the bill, which is yet to be discussed and voted in the Parliament. The goal is to be able to monitor the financial flows in this sector and to estimate the actual revenues. It will combat money laundering. (BHK skipping a Parliament session due to "COVID" in 3, 2, 1, ... /joke)
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039915.html

new "public council" will advise Nature Ministry

Nature Minister Romanos met several environmental organizations and environmentalists and discussed the creation of a new Council, which will advise him on nature protection issues, help draft bills and roadmaps, work with other environmental organizations and NGOs. The Council is accepting applications.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039896.html

large quantities of illegally-cut trees were busted

... by Ijevan policemen during a routine patrol on Sunday. Three cargo trucks were filled with wood.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039960.html

rammed through the gates

The police have arrested the father of a missing soldier who used his Vaz 21 vehicle to ram through the Defense Ministry's entrance gate before smashing it into a building on Sunday.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039957.html , https://www.panarmenian.net/arm/news/289315/

"turn off the camera"

Context: An incident happened last week between parents of drafted soldiers and military officials at a military unit. The parents wanted assurances that their sons would be safe after being deployed on Artsakh borders. The parents wanted to know why Armenian soldiers are still being sent to Artsakh "despite the November 9th statement saying Armenians should withdraw from Artsakh."
During the confrontation, an incident happened between a military official and a journalist. The official struck the camera and instructed it to be turned off. Several media outlets released a message condemning the officer for hindering the journalist's work.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039973.html

infrastructure upgrades

Four settlements in Kotayk province (Yeghvard, Nor Gegh, Aragel, Zovuni) have a newly renovated irrigation pipeline as part of a govt subsidy program.
https://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/204202

today in history

1932: First Yerevan tramway began operating in Yerevan
1951: The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was implemented.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039885.html

get your free colonoscopy today

The National Center for Oncology has purchased the latest generation tools and will perform a free and enjoyable colonoscopy for residents over the age of 45, for the next 6 months.
The goal is to detect suspicious growths at an early stage. It's the third most common cancer among adults in the world. It has become more common in Armenia in the past decade. When detected early, it can be fully treated.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039911.html

COVID stats

+1885 tested. +355 infected. +729 healed. +5 deaths. 8393 active.
The death rate has been 1.8%. The infection reproduction rate was 0.84 in the past two weeks, down from 1.43.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039906.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039943.html

COVID numbers have declined, so what do we do?

... we lift some of the restrictions!
"Aye, aye, Captain!"
"I can't hear you!"
"The rule that limits attendance to non-commercial gatherings to no more than 60 people has been removed. All other safety requirements remain in place," said a Healthcare official. "You can enter Armenia via air or land by presenting negative COVID test results that were taken within the past 3 days. If you don't, you will be tested at the airport and will need to self-isolate until the results arrive."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039931.html

Armenia will soon import COVID vaccines

Healthcare Ministry: we are negotiating with multiple entities. The first batch of vaccines will arrive between late-January and mid-February. We are negotiating with producers whose vaccines have passed the necessary tests: Sputnik V, Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. In the first phase, the vaccines will be given to the most vulnerable 10% of the population.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039921.html

Sputnik V vaccine has already been tested in Armenia

Healthcare Ministry: no complications were reported by the 15 patients, including Minister Torosyan. The often-discussed "skin redness" in the injection area has not been observed, either.
The first injection gave a 91.4% efficiency. The second increased it to 94%. Even if the vaccine doesn't fully prevent the infection, it can save the patient's life by making the case mild (is that right??).
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039925.html

the new COVID strain: good news, bad news

Doctor Davit Melik-Nubaryan: the version of COVID that mutated in the UK will eventually reach Armenia. Preliminary data shows that those who have already been infected and gained immunity from the original COVID will be immune to this new strain. It is believed that the immunity will last 6-12 months for the majority.
The good news is that the new strain isn't more deadly and doesn't result in heavier cases. The bad news is that it spreads a lot faster. The Healthcare system could be overloaded again.
The vaccines against the original strain will likely work against the new one. Pharmaceutical companies may have to modify the vaccines, but it will only take weeks.
Closing borders with the UK won't be helpful to prevent it. We may already have the new strain. We need to develop a new strategy from the ground up.
Viruses mutate all the time. It's part of the evolution. Sometimes they cause more severe symptoms, sometimes lesser. From the evolutionary and survival standpoint, viruses want to cause less severe symptoms for the host so they can have a chance to spread wider.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039856.html

Armenian scientists will study the COVID strain

CDC chief Bakunts: Armenia will have the ability to study the genetic mutations of the coronavirus. Active work is underway to invest in research resources. Meanwhile, we can submit a virus sample to a WHO laboratory to conduct a study for us.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039962.html

families with newborn children receive mortgage subsidy

450 families have so far taken advantage of a government subsidy program that helps with purchasing apartments. ֏526 million will be paid as part of this 2020-2023 program. It is part of a recent initiative to boost the birthrate.
Two other aid programs went into effect in mid-2020. Provincial families received a downpayment subsidy equalling 5% of the total price. Another one subsidizes insurance payments.
The same family can apply for all three programs, and there is no age limit for parents.
https://factor.am/327385.html

diaspora-government cooperation expands: iGorts

iGorts is a program that recently recruited 48 highly skilled diasporan Armenians to visit Armenia and work at 19 various government agencies. Three more volunteers have arrived today to begin their work: Shila Palyan from Canada, Zaven Ayvazyan from Russia, and Anahit Mikaelyan from Cyprus.
https://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/204211

Yerevan to install 32 more elevators in apartment complexes

Arabkir district is the next recipient. Hundreds of units were installed in 2020. They replace the decades-old elevators that have become dangerous and poopy. The new elevators come equipped with running water and flush so you can drain your crap /s.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039954.html

have you been buying stuff right and left lately?

...because trade turnover increased by +34%, and the number of printed receipts by +7%, during this year's New Year's holidays.
֏91 billion was spent between December 29-31, which is ֏23 billion more.
https://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/204195

would your majesty be pleased to take a salt bath?

Nerqin Getashen will have a halotherapy "salt bath" center to help alleviate certain conditions. It's the first in Gegharquniq province. There will also be rooms for aromatherapy (oils), ogyxenotherapy (oxygen cocktails), and massage.
The owner claims it helps boost immunity and alleviates breathing, allergy, and insomnia issues (take the claim with a bath of salt).
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039974.html

first Yezidi theater to open in Armenia

"шəp' y əBин" or "war and love" will be the first performance in a newly opened Yezidi theater in Ejmiatsin. It's part of a «Եզդիների կողքին» cultural initiative. The crew had planned a major performance about Yezidi national legend but the 44-day war began and some were drafted.
The crew ended up performing the "шəp' y əBин" during the war. It's about the importance of Yezidis in Armenia, and their love for the country. The January 17th performance will be dedicated to Yezidis who died fighting.
The performers aren't professional actors but they received acting training on-the-fly. "It seems to work because their enthusiasm is great. A very good team has been formed," said the producer.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039941.html

Aram Khachaturian House-Museum will resume "Musical Thursdays"

This year's first classical concert is dedicated to Ruben Babayan, "the BFF of Armenian musicians."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039916.html

Netherlands college will donate large quantities of school supplies

Several thousands of desks, chairs, furniture pieces, computers, lockers, etc. are being loaded in containers to be shipped to Armenia.
The Hermann Wesselink college is renovating its building with new items so they decided to donate the old stuff to Armenian kids. This will be enough to equip 15 provincial schools.
https://factor.am/327135.html

donations to Artsakh & recovering soldiers

www.1000plus.am (recovering soldiers & their families)
www.HimnaDram.org (for Artsakh & Armenia)
www.ArmeniaFund.org (U.S. tax-deductible)

archive of older posts

Armeniapedia's archive of my daily news threads:
http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/Daily_Anti-Corruption_Reports

disclaimer

All the accused are considered innocent unless proven guilty in the court of law, even if they "sound" or "appear" guilty.