Creating a blog couldn’t be easier and yet more complicated in 2020.
There are so many different things to think about, and yet so many different platforms you can use to streamline the process.
Understandably you’ll already have an idea of what you want to write about, I, unfortunately, can’t help you with that, but what I can do is show you how you can set up a killer blog that will drive readers to your website.
We’ll take you through what you’ll need to get started, our five steps to setting your blog up, the best blogging platforms to use, how to get your blog discovered, and the do’s and don’ts of blogging.
But first, we need to establish what type of blog you want to set up.

What type of blog?

Firstly you’ll want to have a goal in mind. What are you aiming to achieve through your blog?
Do you want to pull in more users to your sales pages by writing about your brand, to increase its publicity?
Do you want to build a blog that promotes brands and products from other companies?
Or do you just want to set up a blog documenting your travels around the world?
In order to pick the right software for you, you’ll want to have a grasp before you start of how big this blog is going to be, whether you’re going to monetize it, and what type of blog it’s going to become.
For example, if you’re planning on building an affiliate blogging programme, where you promote other brand’s products and call readers to action to but the products, you’ll be writing a lot of content and will benefit from having a more comprehensive blogging system with lots of plugins to promote sales.
But if you’re looking to just set up a personal, or a personal brand blog talking about yourself and your brand, you may not perhaps need as many comprehensive features as you would if you were building an affiliate blog.
You may also want to build an online portfolio of your work, which could require an entirely different piece of blogging kit, as opposed to the traditional blog that hosts articles and journals.

What you’ll need to get started.

There are 3 key things you’ll need to get up and running.

A blogging platform.

After you’ve identified the type of blog you want to set up, plus whether you’re going to make money from it, you’ll then need to pick a blogging platform tailored to your needs. Many people chose to operate on WordPress as it is one of the most comprehensive blogging systems going, but they forget platforms like Wix and Squarespace that are great for both helping you save and make money and are great options for those who are less tech-savvy and are new to the blogging game. Plus if you’re blogging for business, you might want to think about using LinkedIn for your business blog.
We’ll go into more detail on what blogging platforms are best for your needs shortly, but make sure to keep in mind your objectives and technical experience when choosing the right platform for you.

A hosting platform.

Every website needs a web host to store their website’s information on the internet. A web host is an online service provider that will store your website’s information on one of its online servers. This will put your blog out there to the world. The best web hosts will perform a variety of functions for you, for example, Wix is an all-in-one package that will host your website for you, allow you to register a domain name, and has easy to use website design tools to help you start your blog.
Web hosting can be expensive though so make sure you pick the best value for money host that can cater to the amount of traffic you have running through your website. Check out our post on the 11 best hosting providers. [Insert blog link here]

A domain name.

I’m sure by now you already know what sort of blog you want to set up, whether that’s a travel, blog, a blog accompanying your online store, or perhaps an affiliate marketing product review blog. You’ll have a niche and an idea and now all you need is a name. Every website online has what’s called a domain name. It’s included in the website address at the top of your search bar, for example, our domain name is www.digitalsupermarket.com.
You’ll need to register a domain name after you purchase a hosting plan, to enable customers to find your site quickly and easily. One good tip is to find a hosting platform like Bluehost or GoDaddy that will provide you with a free domain name when you register for one of their web hosting plans as domain registration can be fairly pricey. Pick a great domain name that is easy for customers to read and type into Google so they can find it easier online.
TOP TIP: To increase your blog’s search engine ranking, and to help more people find you on Google, try to pick a domain name that has either a .com or .co.uk ending. These domains often rank a lot higher in Google searches than .org’s, .net’s, and .info’s, and for that reason can be slightly more expensive, yet can help boost your site’s reach and credibility.

The Best Blogging Platforms For You.

There are a wealth of platforms out there catering to all your blogging or online portfolio needs. We have listed some of the main ones below shedding some light on what needs they service and why they might be a great option for you.

WordPress - The best software to give you full customisation.

WordPress is perhaps one of the most renowned blogging platforms in the world, running approximately 35% of the internet. It’s favoured highly by professional bloggers because it gives you total freedom to do whatever you want with your blog. WordPress can help you build your blog using one if its search engine optimised themes, you can customise using its drag and drop website builder tool to create a stunning blog.
What’s more, is you’ll be able to use its professional blogging service to post your content online and take advantage of the hundreds of third party app plugins, you can integrate into your blog, to improve automation, add new features, and drive traffic to your site. The only downside of WordPress is that it can be quite technical and can take some time getting used to, but once you’ve got the hang of things, you’ll have great control over everything on your webpage.
Pros:
Cons:

Full customisation
Domain name registration
Fully scalable
Tons of third-party plugins and apps
Technical and can take some getting used to
Not the best if you’re not tech-savvy or are just starting out.

Wix - Best for monetizing your site.

Wix is probably the most streamlined and easiest blog providers. It’s so simple and easy to use, it’s therefore great for anyone just starting out in the blogging world. You can customise one of its stunning templates with Wix’s drag and drop editor, and then upload blog posts to your site by slotting in pictures, gifs, social media buttons, sidebars, and other widgets that will help your blog stand out.
One of the coolest features about Wix is its marketplace integration, where you can install a whole variety of third-party applications to your blog to provide your users with greater features and usability. Wix is the perfect all-in-one blogging solution to help you easily build a platform to amplify your business to the world, helping you to make more money, but it can also save you a lot of money as it’s cost-efficient plans roll up, web hosting, blog posting, and domain registration all into one product!
Check out our Wix review and our comparison of Wix and Squarespace for a deep dive into Wix’s main blogging features. [Insert link here]
Pros:
Cons:

Streamlined and easy to use blogging software
Includes as a package, web building tools, domain registration, and web hosting
Tons of third-party plugins and apps on the Wix marketplace
Great platform to help make money and save money on its reasonably priced subscription plans
Don’t get the same full control as you see with WordPress
Locked into using Wix’s templates.

Squarespace - Best for creating visually stunning blogs.

Squarespace is very similar to Wix, in that it is an all-in-one web building and blogging platform that can help you build a blog you can monetize efficiently. It sets itself aside though through its better design and customisation features, making it one of the best platforms on the marketing if you’re looking to design a visually aesthetic blog. I’d recommend using this platform if you are a business operating in some sort of design, arts, or culinary industry.
Although it offers minimal template options, Squarespace’s templates are works of art and offer you great customization when building your blog. Plus Squarespace offers a great blogging tool that lets you schedule posts and customize your blog to suit more mobile audiences.
Pros:
Cons:

Streamlined and easy to use blogging software
Can build a visually stunning blog on Squarespace with its streamlined tools
Excellent blogging features
All-in-one web host, domain registrar, and web builder
Can’t add third-party applications on Squarespace

LinkedIn - Best for blogging businesses.

Aside from setting up a blog on your own site, corporate entities can use LinkedIn to enhance and amplify their presence online. LinkedIn has more than 575 million users, most of whom are professionals and members of corporate conglomerates, and you can use this social platform to target some of the most influential people in the world.
If you’re blogging about business this is the perfect platform to use a pre-existing community of people to enhance your social standing. You’ll then be able to build connections and followers on your profile who can easily share your blog on their platform through a couple of simple clicks.
Pros:
Cons:

Utilise LinkedIn’s pre-existing community of business people to amplify your brand
Target corporate directors and influential people directly through LinkedIn
Check out what people are looking at on LinkedIn and tailor your content to that market
Again you are confined within what LinkedIn’s platform will let you do, it’s not your site and you don’t have full customisation

Instagram - Best for the Artists.

Instagram is one of the biggest blogging sites in the world and without realising it, we are all technically bloggers in some way with our Instagram accounts, right? Ultimately for professional use, it is great for building a portfolio that has some form of visual or graphic eye-catching media around it. Instagram lets you post videos, photos, boomerangs, even write a blog in the photo’s caption if you wanted to!
Best of all, Instagram is free, and you can use its business software to link up your online store, to drag users away from your profile, using its product tagging features, and land them in your online checkouts. Our top tip for using Instagram is to post regularly and keep on the theme of your blog. Don’t go off-piste as you’re followers will catch on quickly and unfollow you. And with 1 billion people using the platform each day, it is a great way to gain people’s attention and build your brand’s presence online.
Pros:
Cons:

Best for the creatives.
Totally free and easy to use interface.
Access to a pre-existing community of people.
Online selling capabilities.
Again you are confined within what Instagram’s platform will let you do, it’s not your site and you don’t have full customisation

The Do’s And Don’ts Of Blogging

Here are a couple of top tips to bear in mind when building your blog to help you create an awesome, lead driven platform.

The Don’ts

Don’t use complicated language too soon.

With that in mind, do include language that your target audience will understand. But remember they are still here to learn, so don’t drop people in at the deep end right away by using complex jargon off the bat. Define terms and spell it out in layman’s terms for people at the outset, and as the post goes on, then introduce more complex writing. Introducing technical jargon at the start of your posts is an instant turn off for most readers.

Don’t waffle - Keep it succinct.

People want to get to the punchline now. 43% of people admit to skimming through blogs to get to the information they need, meaning to get your blogging site converting leads, you need to engage the reader early on and offer information succinctly throughout your post.
Plus don’t make your blog too long. Depending on what you’re writing, a lot of people will see large volumes of text and will switch off immediately. There is no set limit for what a good and bad amount of text is, that’s something you’ll have to figure out per your industry, but from my experience, the shorter, the better.

Don’t make headlines too long.

Also ensure that your headline is not more than 60 characters long. If it gets too long it won’t rank well in search engines and people just won’t want to read it. Check out this headline analysis tool which will analyse the effectiveness of your proposed headlines.

Don’t plagiarise or use credited images.

Copying other people’s work is lazy and can land you in a lot of hot water in extreme cases if you breach a copyright regulation. But it’s also just unfair on the person who has worked hard or been creative to write that work. The same goes for images, people need to make a living from the content and photos they’re taking so don’t steal that off them.

The Do’s

Do write killer headlines.

People are like goldfish. You only have about 3 seconds to get their attention. That’s why it is important to write catchy, funny, and enticing headlines to draw your reader in. One good way to do it is to use the “How To” and “10 Best” strategies. These sorts of titles telling people ‘How to set up a blog’ or ‘the ten best web hosting platforms’ are search engine optimised, lead winning titles that rank highly in Google searches. Try them out and see!

Do post regularly.

The key to creating a great blog that builds leads is posting regularly. Although it is not the best idea to post regularly. Ideally, you want to post 3-4 times a week to get the best influx of traffic to your site. You’ll also want to check out when’s best to post for your target audience, for example, if you’re in the FOREX market, you’ll want to post your blogs perhaps at 8 AM, before the markets open when city workers are on their staring at their phones on their morning commuter trains to the city.

Do share on social media.

Share your content far and wide on your social platforms. Everyone is on social media these days and its outreach is simply phenomenal. That’s why you should always share your posts to your social channels to get greater traffic on your website, and include share buttons all-around your blog to invite your readers to share your articles too!

Do use SEO keywords to drive more traffic.

In a nutshell, SEO keywords are the phrases people put into search engines when they are looking for information on a certain subject. They are how you get found on your website. Depending on what you are writing about, there is always a set of keywords relating to that topic that you can implement, to help you show up higher in people’s google searches. For example, people might regularly search in google, ‘what is the best compost for growing sunflowers?’ When you come to writing about growing sunflowers in your blog, you might want to use these words or incorporate this question into your blog somewhere, to help you rank higher on Google.

Do use call’s to action to take your readers to the next step.

If you don’t challenge your reader at the end of your blog to follow you on Instagram, or check out your sales pages, you’ll never get the leads or sales you are looking for. With that in mind, build compelling calls to action at the end of each of your posts, to pull readers into taking the next step. Check out our post on landing pages to see a couple of cool ways on how to implement calls to action on your site [insert link here].

Do identify a target audience.

People will often tell you to write as though you were in the shoes of the person you’re looking to bring to your website, but it’s true! Identify what type of people you’re writing to, for instance, if you’re writing a business blog about FOREX trading, you’ll write with potential traders in mind who have one eye on the stock market and the other on your blog. Or if you’re a wedding florist, you’ll set your portfolio up to target those people looking to get married in the next year.

Leads, Sales, Results.

Blogging is one of the most influential marketing strategies in the world and the best bloggers can reap some awesome rewards for producing some truly awesome content.
It is fairly straightforward to get started and we advise if you’re a small business, or someone with minimal blogging experience, to try out Wix or Squarespace first before you jump into using more technical platforms like WordPress. Once you’re up and running remember our top tips on what to do and what to avoid when writing your blog. Plus don’t forget to think about optimising and adding useful applications to your site to help you build and grow your content. Check out these 39 awesome blogging tools you can use to drive greater traffic to your site!
Found this article useful? Make sure you share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter and let us know in the comments if you have any other useful blogging tips.

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Reposting because I didn't get input last time.
Demographics: Indian. Male. From ProspeFrisco Texas. Middle/Upper class area. I would say my high school is very competitive.
Intended Major(s): Computer Science
ACT/SAT/SAT II: SAT: Have not taken a real test. I have taken three practice test all resulted 1440+. Prepping for 1500+, but consider my score to be a flat 1400 for now.
UW GPA and Rank: UW: 3.981 Rank: 12/979
Coursework:
Freshmen Year:
- Honors French 1 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- HonoGT Geometry (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors Computer Science 1
- Honors Biology (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Human (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4)
- Honors English 1 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Outdoor Education (Required)
- Digital Art and Animation (Required)
Sophomore Year:
- Honors English 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors French 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Computer Science A (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5)
- AP Computer Science Principles (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4)
- AP World History (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Biology (Highest Level that year available to me ) (3) <-- Not sending this score
- Honors Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors Algebra 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Academic Level Architecture (Highest Level that year available to me )
Junior Year:
- AP English 3 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Independent Studies in Video Games (AP Level but not AP) (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors UIL Math Prep
- Ap Physics 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5)
- Academic Level US History
- AP Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4)
- AP Environmental (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5)
- Honors Pre-Cal (Highest Level that year available to me )
Senior Year (will take upcoming year):
- Honors Computer Science 3 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors Computer Science 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP English 4 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Gov/Econ (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Physics C (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Calc BC (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Stats (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Still Deciding but not AP for sure.
Awards:
- Adobe Certified Associate - Visual Design using Adobe Photoshop CC2015
- Aloha Math Competition Certificate.
- UIL Math Competition Certificate.
- Multiple Student of the month award
Extracurriculars:

I am an intern at Visual Technologies LLC. I have helped in 4 projects regarding computer science for outside companies. This is one of my biggest achievements as a real company was willing to work with me and we ended up doing 4 projects together helping me grow every second of me working with them. After two successful projects with them, I was given some responsibilities such as following up with clients and other things. This gave me a sense of accomplishment because this would mean that they saw qualities in me that they would look for in a “normal aged” programmeconsultant.
2020 - I have worked for Cutco for about 3 months in which I have learned many skills for marketing. I have been promoted and over $3000 in sales. Other details mentioned earlier.
2019-2020- For UIL math we program our calculators to make tests easier for us. Last year I was one of the top coders for UIL math right after my seniors. I made programs that were complex. Although I didn't create many programs, I made programs that other programs were not able to create the year before because they were termed as “too hard”. Me being able to code those programs gave me the stance as a well-known programmer for UIL Math - an achievement in itself.
2016 - 2021 has offered free tutoring to many students who strive to be better but cannot afford fees. I have given at least 80 hours of free tutoring (not for school)
2020 - I have also worked for Ambit and have managed a successful team of over 50 members as I am a regional consultant for the company. I am in the top 10% of the company according to my boss, but I don't know whether this is true or not. I can certainly say that more than half of the people working do not make it to the level I am at. This company is an electricity company, and I have capitalized on selling our service to apartment complexes. I have also helped many high schoolers needing a job to find success in this business.
2020- I volunteered to make a system for the school called “Corona Tutors”. This is a platform where students can anonymously ask questions and receive answers from other students who want service hours. This fixes many problems: this eases the extreme dependence of teachers being online 24/7, this makes sure that students are getting their questions answered, this also allows students who want to help society. This is an official Prosper resource on their webpage which students can use at their will.
2017-2020- I have been a volunteer at ICNA Relief committed about 2 hours each week, and puts me right over 300 hours of community service. We as a group have made a rationing system where we try to fairly distribute goods and other goods as per people's needs. We help with anything from getting food to getting families a laptop for their kid's education.
My love for business goes very far. In 7th grade, fidget spinners were very popular and amazon took 3 months to ship them. This was perfect for a mini business, so I bought a fidget spinner directly through the supplier (AliExpress) and got my shipment. Not only did I retail them I also wholesale them in the mall to any store that was allowed to sell them. I came profitable from this business, but it was not the money that made this great, it was the contact I got through this business. - 2016
2020 - I resold brand new bikes with a high markup. One day scrolling through Facebook marketplace I realized that some bikes were being sold for almost 2x their price at Walmart. (During COVID) I simply contacted my contacts and was able to get about 200-250 brand new bikes. Since this was a very big investment I had five partners with me, and we marked them up according to market price a month later (150% return on investment)
2020 - When school ended, I started to get a lot of Forex trading ads, so I chose to take a look into what it was. Forex trading is a currency exchange and is highly risky. When I started to learn about it I started to see that there were groups called “signal groups”. These groups told you when to trade what and claimed that they have a 99% accuracy on their trades being profitable. Instead of trading, I chose to get in contact with famous traders and offer them a lucrative cut for simply sending a message in a group chat about what they are trading. For one month I tested the service and then put it into action for the public. The program kept working until all traders were able to work and then it was shut off making sure that more one was a loss.
2020 I have written a book/report that I have published it on Amazon. This report took me 200+ hours to make. As we learn in school, there is a rise in global warming, and it is our job to find alternative ways of fuel and stop the rise in global warming. I took an already done research - well in parts in college language- and made it into a more understandable report considering almost every aspect of the situation. I covered everything from the experimental design to how we can use the waste product in everyday life to how we can scale this project to how even a high schooler can make a difference by simply taking initiative and presenting this idea to their school. This report allowed me to take complex language and make it into an everyday language report. I showed my report to many people in the community and it was very satisfying to hear from their parents when they said “my son is going to present this idea to his school because they mostly have a lot of oil”. The report is about converting waste cooking oil to biodiesel.
2015 - 2020 - I have helped my mom in her business called “BLANK (don't want to say) Designs Collection”. Simply by watching her sell and trying it myself I acquired skills that I use to this day not only for business but simply for communicating. Currently, I am a social media and online sales handler for the company.
2018 - 2020 - I have been a part of Mu Alpha Theta for two year tutoring students for Math. Last year I was one of the top tutors for Mrs.Wood for algebra 2. I went there every time I did have an eagle time activity.
2020 - I recently joined the Science Honor society; we have helped the science fair in their activities.

Essays/LORs:
Essays, I have not started.
Letter of Rec: I have three incoming from my teachers. English/CounseloComputer Science/ Math (waiting for response)
Schools:
- MIT,
- Brown University
- Caltech
- Carnegie Mellon
- Columbia University
- Cornell University
- Duke University
- Georgia Institute
- Hamilton
- Harvard University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Princeton University
- Purdue University
- Rice University
- Stanford
- UMich
- UT Austin
- UT Dallas
- Texas A&M
- UC Berkley

Demographics: Indian. Male. From ProspeFrisco Texas. Middle/Upper class area. I would say my high school is very competitive.
Intended Major(s): Computer Science
ACT/SAT/SAT II: SAT: Have not taken a real test. I have taken three practice test all resulted 1440+. Prepping for 1500+, but consider my score to be a flat 1400 for now.
UW GPA and Rank: UW: 3.981 Rank: 12/979
Coursework:
Freshmen Year:
- Honors French 1 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- HonoGT Geometry (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors Computer Science 1
- Honors Biology (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Human (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4)
- Honors English 1 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Outdoor Education (Required)
- Digital Art and Animation (Required)
Sophomore Year:
- Honors English 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors French 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Computer Science A (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5)
- AP Computer Science Principles (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4)
- AP World History (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Biology (Highest Level that year available to me ) (3) <-- Not sending this score
- Honors Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors Algebra 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Academic Level Architecture (Highest Level that year available to me )
Junior Year:
- AP English 3 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Independent Studies in Video Games (AP Level but not AP) (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors UIL Math Prep
- Ap Physics 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5)
- Academic Level US History
- AP Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4)
- AP Environmental (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5)
- Honors Pre-Cal (Highest Level that year available to me )
Senior Year (will take upcoming year):
- Honors Computer Science 3 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Honors Computer Science 2 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP English 4 (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Gov/Econ (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Physics C (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Calc BC (Highest Level that year available to me )
- AP Stats (Highest Level that year available to me )
- Still Deciding but not AP for sure.

Awards:
- Adobe Certified Associate - Visual Design using Adobe Photoshop CC2015
- Aloha Math Competition Certificate.
- UIL Math Competition Certificate.
- Multiple Student of the month award
Extracurriculars:

I am an intern at Visual Technologies LLC. I have helped in 4 projects regarding computer science for outside companies. This is one of my biggest achievements as a real company was willing to work with me and we ended up doing 4 projects together helping me grow every second of me working with them. After two successful projects with them, I was given some responsibilities such as following up with clients and other things. This gave me a sense of accomplishment because this would mean that they saw qualities in me that they would look for in a “normal aged” programmeconsultant.
2020 - I have worked for Cutco for about 3 months in which I have learned many skills for marketing. I have been promoted and over $3000 in sales. Other details mentioned earlier.
2019-2020- For UIL math we program our calculators to make tests easier for us. Last year I was one of the top coders for UIL math right after my seniors. I made programs that were complex. Although I didn't create many programs, I made programs that other programs were not able to create the year before because they were termed as “too hard”. Me being able to code those programs gave me the stance as a well-known programmer for UIL Math - an achievement in itself.
2016 - 2021 has offered free tutoring to many students who strive to be better but cannot afford fees. I have given at least 80 hours of free tutoring (not for school)
2020 - I have also worked for Ambit and have managed a successful team of over 50 members as I am a regional consultant for the company. I am in the top 10% of the company according to my boss, but I don't know whether this is true or not. I can certainly say that more than half of the people working do not make it to the level I am at. This company is an electricity company, and I have capitalized on selling our service to apartment complexes. I have also helped many high schoolers needing a job to find success in this business.
2020- I volunteered to make a system for the school called “Corona Tutors”. This is a platform where students can anonymously ask questions and receive answers from other students who want service hours. This fixes many problems: this eases the extreme dependence of teachers being online 24/7, this makes sure that students are getting their questions answered, this also allows students who want to help society. This is an official Prosper resource on their webpage which students can use at their will.
2017-2020- I have been a volunteer at ICNA Relief committed about 2 hours each week, and puts me right over 300 hours of community service. We as a group have made a rationing system where we try to fairly distribute goods and other goods as per people's needs. We help with anything from getting food to getting families a laptop for their kid's education.
My love for business goes very far. In 7th grade, fidget spinners were very popular and amazon took 3 months to ship them. This was perfect for a mini business, so I bought a fidget spinner directly through the supplier (AliExpress) and got my shipment. Not only did I retail them I also wholesale them in the mall to any store that was allowed to sell them. I came profitable from this business, but it was not the money that made this great, it was the contact I got through this business. - 2016
2020 - I resold brand new bikes with a high markup. One day scrolling through Facebook marketplace I realized that some bikes were being sold for almost 2x their price at Walmart. (During COVID) I simply contacted my contacts and was able to get about 200-250 brand new bikes. Since this was a very big investment I had five partners with me, and we marked them up according to market price a month later (150% return on investment)
2020 - When school ended, I started to get a lot of Forex trading ads, so I chose to take a look into what it was. Forex trading is a currency exchange and is highly risky. When I started to learn about it I started to see that there were groups called “signal groups”. These groups told you when to trade what and claimed that they have a 99% accuracy on their trades being profitable. Instead of trading, I chose to get in contact with famous traders and offer them a lucrative cut for simply sending a message in a group chat about what they are trading. For one month I tested the service and then put it into action for the public. The program kept working until all traders were able to work and then it was shut off making sure that more one was a loss.
2020 I have written a book/report that I have published it on Amazon. This report took me 200+ hours to make. As we learn in school, there is a rise in global warming, and it is our job to find alternative ways of fuel and stop the rise in global warming. I took an already done research - well in parts in college language- and made it into a more understandable report considering almost every aspect of the situation. I covered everything from the experimental design to how we can use the waste product in everyday life to how we can scale this project to how even a high schooler can make a difference by simply taking initiative and presenting this idea to their school. This report allowed me to take complex language and make it into an everyday language report. I showed my report to many people in the community and it was very satisfying to hear from their parents when they said “my son is going to present this idea to his school because they mostly have a lot of oil”. The report is about converting waste cooking oil to biodiesel.
2015 - 2020 - I have helped my mom in her business called “BLANK (don't want to say) Designs Collection”. Simply by watching her sell and trying it myself I acquired skills that I use to this day not only for business but simply for communicating. Currently, I am a social media and online sales handler for the company.
2018 - 2020 - I have been a part of Mu Alpha Theta for two year tutoring students for Math. Last year I was one of the top tutors for Mrs.Wood for algebra 2. I went there every time I did have an eagle time activity.
2020 - I recently joined the Science Honor society; we have helped the science fair in their activities.

Essays/LORs:
Essays, I have not started.
Letter of Rec: I have three incoming from my teachers. English/CounseloComputer Science/ Math (waiting for response)
Schools:
- MIT,
- Brown University
- Caltech
- Carnegie Mellon
- Columbia University
- Cornell University
- Duke University
- Georgia Institute
- Hamilton
- Harvard University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Princeton University
- Purdue University
- Rice University
- Stanford
- UMich
- UT Austin
- UT Dallas
- Texas A&M
- UC Berkley

Post any options questions you wanted to ask, but were afraid to ask. A weekly thread in which questions will be received with equanimity. There are no stupid questions, only dumb answers. Fire away. This is a weekly rotation with past threads linked below. This project succeeds thanks to people thoughtfully sharing their knowledge and experiences (YOU are invited to respond to questions posted here.)
Perhaps you're looking for an item in the frequent answers list below.
For a useful response about a particular option trade, disclose position details, so that responders can assist. Vague inquires receive vague responses. Tell us: TICKER -- Put or Call -- strike price (for each leg, on spreads) -- expiration date -- cost of option entry -- date of option entry -- underlying stock price at entry -- current option (spread) market value -- current underlying stock price -- your rationale for entering the position. .
Key informational links: • Glossary • List of Recommended Books • Introduction to Options (The Options Playbook) • The complete side-bar informational links, for mobile app users.

Links to the most frequent answers

I just made (or lost) $____. Should I close the trade? Yes, close the trade, because you had no plan for an exit to limit your risk. Your trade is a prediction: a plan directs action upon an (in)validated prediction. Take the gain (or loss). End the risk of losing the gain (or increasing the loss). Plan the exit before the start of each trade, for both a gain, and maximum loss. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture)
Why did my options lose value, when the stock price went in a favorable direction? • Options extrinsic and intrinsic value, an introduction (Redtexture)
Getting started in options • Calls and puts, long and short, an introduction (Redtexture) • Exercise & Assignment - A Guide (ScottishTrader) • Some useful educational links • Some introductory trading guidance, with educational links • Options Expiration & Assignment (Option Alpha) • Expiration time and date (Investopedia)
Common mistakes and useful advice for new options traders • Five mistakes to avoid when trading options (Options Playbook) • Top 10 Mistakes Beginner Option Traders Make (Ally Bank) • One year into options trading: lessons learned (whitethunder9) • Here's some cold hard words from a professional trader (magik_moose) • Thoughts after trading for 7 Years (invcht2) • Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance (Farnum Street Blog) • 20 Habits of Highly Successful Traders (Viper Report) (40 minutes) • There's a bull market somewhere (Jason Leavitt) (3 minutes)
Trade planning, risk reduction and trade size, etc. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture) • Trade Checklists and Guides (Option Alpha) • An illustration of planning on trades failing. (John Carter) (at 90 seconds) • Trade Simulator Tool (Radioactive Trading) • Risk of Ruin (Better System Trader)
Minimizing Bid-Ask Spreads (high-volume options are best) • Fishing for a price: price discovery with (wide) bid-ask spreads (Redtexture) • List of option activity by underlying (Market Chameleon) • List of option activity by underlying (Barchart) • Open Interest by ticker (optinistics)
Closing out a trade • Most options positions are closed before expiration (Options Playbook) • When to Exit Guide (Option Alpha) • Risk to reward ratios change over the life of a position: a reason for early exit (Redtexture)
Options Greeks and Option Chains • An Introduction to Options Greeks (Options Playbook) • Options Greeks (Epsilon Options) • Theta Decay: The Ultimate Guide (Chris Butler - Project Option) • Theta decay rates differ: At the money vs. away from the money • Theta: A Detailed Look at the Decay of Option Time Value (James Toll) • Gamma Risk Explained - (Gavin McMaster - Options Trading IQ) • How Often Within Expected Move? Data Science and Implied Volatility (Michael Rechenthin, PhD - TastyTrade 2017) • A selected list of option chain & option data websites
Selected Trade Positions & Management • The Wheel Strategy (ScottishTrader) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Options Playbook) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Redtexture) • Synthetic option positions: Why and how they are used (Fidelity) • Covered Calls Tutorial (Option Investor) • Covered Calls - Chris Butler - Project Option (20 minutes) • The 10 Most Common Mistakes Made by Covered Call Writers - Allen Ellman - Blue Caller Investor (8 minutes) • Take the loss (here's why) (Clay Trader) (15 minutes) • The diagonal calendar spread and "poor man's covered call" (Redtexture) • Creative Ways to Avoid The Pattern Day Trader Rule (Sean McLaughlin) • Short calls and puts, and dividend risk (Redtexture) • Options and Dividend Risk (Sage Anderson, TastyTrade) • Options contract adjustments: what you should know (Fidelity) • Options contract adjustment announcements / memoranda (Options Clearing Corporation)
Implied Volatility, IV Rank, and IV Percentile (of days) • An introduction to Implied Volatility (Khan Academy) • An introduction to Black Scholes formula (Khan Academy) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile: Which is better? (Project Option) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile in Trading (Tasty Trade) (video)
Miscellaneous: Economic Calendars, International Brokers, RobinHood, Pattern Day Trader, CBOE Exchange Rules, Contract Specifications, TDA Margin Handbook, EU Regulations on US ETFs, US Taxes and Options • Selected calendars of economic reports and events • An incomplete list of international brokers dealing in US options markets (Redtexture) • Free brokerages can be very costly: Why option traders should not use RobinHood • Pattern Day Trader status and $25,000 margin account balances (FINRA) • How to find out when a new expiration is opening up: email: [email protected] for the status of a particular ticker's new expirations.
• CBOE Contract Specifications and Trading Days & Hours • TDAmeritrade Margin Handbook (18 pages PDF) • Monthly expirations of Index options are settled on next day prices • PRIIPS, KIPs, EU regulations, ETFs, Options, Brokers • Key Information Documents (KIDs) for European Citizens (Options Clearing Corporation) • Taxes and Investing (Options Industry Council) (PDF) • CBOE Exchange Rules (770+ pages, PDF) • NASDAQ Options Exchange Rules
Following week's Noob thread: Oct 21-27 2019
Previous weeks' Noob threads:
Oct 7-13 2019 Sept 30 - Oct 6 2019
Sept 23-29 2019 Sept 16-22 2019 Sept 09-15 2019 Sept 02-09 2019 Aug 26 - Sept 02 2019
Complete NOOB archive, 2018, and 2019

Post any options questions you wanted to ask, but were afraid to ask. A weekly thread in which questions will be received with equanimity. There are no stupid questions, only dumb answers. Fire away. This is a weekly rotation with past threads linked below. This project succeeds thanks to people thoughtfully sharing their knowledge and experiences (YOU are invited to respond to questions posted here.)
Perhaps you're looking for an item in the frequent answers list below.
For a useful response about a particular option trade, disclose position details, so that responders can assist. Vague inquires receive vague responses. Tell us: TICKER -- Put or Call -- strike price (for each leg, on spreads) -- expiration date -- cost of option entry -- date of option entry -- underlying stock price at entry -- current option (spread) market value -- current underlying stock price -- your rationale for entering the position. .
Key informational links: • Glossary • List of Recommended Books • Introduction to Options (The Options Playbook) • The complete side-bar informational links, for mobile app users.

Links to the most frequent answers

I just made (or lost) $____. Should I close the trade? Yes, close the trade, because you had no plan for an exit to limit your risk. Your trade is a prediction: a plan directs action upon an (in)validated prediction. Take the gain (or loss). End the risk of losing the gain (or increasing the loss). Plan the exit before the start of each trade, for both a gain, and maximum loss. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture)
Why did my options lose value, when the stock price went in a favorable direction? • Options extrinsic and intrinsic value, an introduction (Redtexture)
Getting started in options • Calls and puts, long and short, an introduction (Redtexture) • Exercise & Assignment - A Guide (ScottishTrader) • Some useful educational links • Some introductory trading guidance, with educational links • Options Expiration & Assignment (Option Alpha) • Expiration time and date (Investopedia)
Common mistakes and useful advice for new options traders • Five mistakes to avoid when trading options (Options Playbook) • Top 10 Mistakes Beginner Option Traders Make (Ally Bank) • One year into options trading: lessons learned (whitethunder9) • Here's some cold hard words from a professional trader (magik_moose) • Thoughts after trading for 7 Years (invcht2) • Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance (Farnum Street Blog) • 20 Habits of Highly Successful Traders (Viper Report) (40 minutes) • There's a bull market somewhere (Jason Leavitt) (3 minutes)
Trade planning, risk reduction and trade size, etc. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture) • Trade Checklists and Guides (Option Alpha) • An illustration of planning on trades failing. (John Carter) (at 90 seconds) • Trade Simulator Tool (Radioactive Trading) • Risk of Ruin (Better System Trader)
Minimizing Bid-Ask Spreads (high-volume options are best) • Fishing for a price: price discovery with (wide) bid-ask spreads (Redtexture) • List of option activity by underlying (Market Chameleon) • List of option activity by underlying (Barchart) • Open Interest by ticker (optinistics)
Closing out a trade • Most options positions are closed before expiration (Options Playbook) • When to Exit Guide (Option Alpha) • Risk to reward ratios change over the life of a position: a reason for early exit (Redtexture)
Options Greeks and Option Chains • An Introduction to Options Greeks (Options Playbook) • Options Greeks (Epsilon Options) • Theta Decay: The Ultimate Guide (Chris Butler - Project Option) • Theta decay rates differ: At the money vs. away from the money • Theta: A Detailed Look at the Decay of Option Time Value (James Toll) • Gamma Risk Explained - (Gavin McMaster - Options Trading IQ) • How Often Within Expected Move? Data Science and Implied Volatility (Michael Rechenthin, PhD - TastyTrade 2017) • A selected list of option chain & option data websites
Selected Trade Positions & Management • The Wheel Strategy (ScottishTrader) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Options Playbook) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Redtexture) • Synthetic option positions: Why and how they are used (Fidelity) • Covered Calls Tutorial (Option Investor) • Take the loss (here's why) (Clay Trader) (15 minutes) • The diagonal calendar spread and "poor man's covered call" (Redtexture) • Creative Ways to Avoid The Pattern Day Trader Rule (Sean McLaughlin) • Short calls and puts, and dividend risk (Redtexture) • Options and Dividend Risk (Sage Anderson, TastyTrade) • Options contract adjustments: what you should know (Fidelity) • Options contract adjustment announcements / memoranda (Options Clearing Corporation)
Implied Volatility, IV Rank, and IV Percentile (of days) • An introduction to Implied Volatility (Khan Academy) • An introduction to Black Scholes formula (Khan Academy) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile: Which is better? (Project Option) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile in Trading (Tasty Trade) (video)
Miscellaneous: Economic Calendars, International Brokers, RobinHood, Pattern Day Trader, CBOE Exchange Rules, Contract Specifications, TDA Margin Handbook, EU Regulations on US ETFs, US Taxes and Options • Selected calendars of economic reports and events • An incomplete list of international brokers dealing in US options markets (Redtexture) • Free brokerages can be very costly: Why option traders should not use RobinHood • Pattern Day Trader status and $25,000 margin account balances (FINRA) • How to find out when a new expiration is opening up: email: [email protected] for the status of a particular ticker's new expirations.
• CBOE Contract Specications and Trading Days & Hours • TDAmeritrade Margin Handbook (18 pages PDF) • Monthly expirations of Index options are settled on next day prices • PRIIPS, KIPs, EU regulations, ETFs, Options, Brokers • Key Information Documents (KIDs) for European Citizens (Options Clearing Corporation) • Taxes and Investing (Options Industry Council) (PDF) • CBOE Exchange Rules (770+ pages, PDF) • NASDAQ Options Exchange Rules
Following week's Noob thread: Oct 14-20 2019
Previous weeks' Noob threads:
Sept 30 - Oct 6 2019 Sept 23-29 2019 Sept 16-22 2019 Sept 09-15 2019 Sept 02-09 2019 Aug 26 - Sept 02 2019
Complete NOOB archive, 2018, and 2019

Forex is the short way of saying “Foreign Exchange”. This means the global market for exchanging international currencies, also known as the FX market. When someone prices or exchanges a currency against another, the exchange rate is best on the particular forex trading pair (i.e., both currencies involved in the pair).
Currency pairs are typically priced out to four decimal places, depending on the currency denomination, where one ten-thousandth of a unit of currency is known as a pip (i.e., 0.0001 unit), which is the smallest price increment (in addition to fractional-pips).
The EUUSD, which is the most widely-traded forex pair, is an example of the Euro (EUR) currency against the US dollars (USD) currency.
When trading one unit of EUUSD, you can calculate the price in USD (i.e., a price of EUUSD 1.3000 indicates $1.30 per euro). Conversely, when exchanging the USD/EUR, each unit of USD (i.e. each dollar) will have the prace of a specific number of euros (i.e., a USD/EUR price of 0.7700 indicates €0.77 per dollar).
A speculator expecting the price of the EUUSD to go up. He will buy the EUUSD pair long (buying a pair to open a trade can be a bullish or long position). Whereas, a speculator anticipating a drop in the price of the EUUSD may sell the pair. (bearish or short position: selling to open a trade).

Largest international market Globally

The forex market is decentralized across the globe. It consists of dealers such as central banks, private and public banks, non-bank intermediaries, brokerages, and large corporations such as insurance giants and other participants engaged in international finance.

The Foreign Exchange market is the largest globally, with nearly $6 trillion in average daily volume traded as of April 2019, according to the latest BIS Triennial Survey of Central Banks.

The FX market suffers the influence mainly by each government’s monetary policy, the supply, and demand of the global economy. As well as international trade agreements, and users and suppliers of currencies (hedgers), in addition to speculators.

Market integrity and progress

While there have been cases of forex market manipulation by the biggest banks and dealers in the past, the amount of influence any one entity can have on the prices of major currencies is negligible. This resistance to serious manipulation risk is due to the enormous amount of trading and resulting liquidity available.
The FX Market itself has high price integrity. Because it is an electronic market, efficient and with a certain size. Participants must still adhere to best practices.

Efforts such as the Global FX code were launched to encourage forex dealers to uphold the best-execution where the best price available is given to traders.

These efforts are why the spreads and trading commissions continued to improve over the years, as the FX market evolved. In addition, regulators have competed to increase local market integrity and efficiency by creating more strict regulations. These come from the top-tier financial centers such as the US, UK, Singapore, Japan, Australia, among other advanced economies.

Investing and trading in the forex market

As an asset class, Forex is well-established and offered by many regulated brokerages from within a margin account.

The use of leverage is what makes forex trading more risky than non-margin investing.

Margin-based trading used by investors as well as self-directed traders and fund managers, thanks to the range of risk-management tools available within forex trading platforms (mobile, web, and desktop software). Wiseinvest provides trading signals with risk-management.

Forex market research and analysis

There are two primary ways for traders to assess and identify trading opportunities in the forex market.

One is through the use of fundamental analysis, which looks at economic news and data released by governmental agencies, as well as market sentiment data.
The second is through technical analysis, which pertains to the historical and current market price of the underlying currency.

Advanced forex trading strategies and algorithms

The foundation of successful trading in the forex market is having a trading strategy. It’s based on a specific methodology that best suits your trading needs. Strategies could be manual, automated, or a combination of both.

Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of automated trading strategies made available for retail traders.

And while there are many serious traders with established track records for their trading systems, there are many more low-quality trading systems falsely marketed as high-quality by overly eager affiliates, making it harder for investors to navigate the market for trading signals.

There has also been an increase in the social copy trade. Where an operator can mimic other operators’ businesses in real time.

Whether using a copy-trading platform or an automated trading system, in almost all cases, this type of investing is considered self-directed and doesn’t require a power-of-attorney or another third-party money manager to handle your account.
Unlike other copy and social trading platforms, Wiseinvet’s AI has the ability to execute a huge set of market data. It does by combining technical and fundamental analysis. This strategy can increase the accuracy of trading signals.

Self-directed forex investors

Compared to investing in a managed fund, there is greater responsibility. Traders put it on self-directed traders who use trading systems. A self-directed trader should conduct more detailed due diligence. It can avoid falling for the countless low-quality trading systems that exist on the internet.

Good quality trading systems will have established track records (historical results), and there will be other quantitative performance rankings, along with qualitative data about the strategy developers and any proprietary math used to operate the strategy.
Bad quality trading systems will usually promise high returns will not equally emphasizing potential risk.

There are no guarantees that a strategy will perform well. But conducting proper due diligence can help traders assess various trading systems. They consider using them to aid their trading or investment strategy.

Post any options questions you wanted to ask, but were afraid to ask. A weekly thread in which questions will be received with equanimity. There are no stupid questions, only dumb answers. Fire away. This is a weekly rotation with past threads linked below. This project succeeds thanks to people thoughtfully sharing their knowledge and experiences (YOU are invited to respond to questions posted here.)
Perhaps you're looking for an item in the frequent answers list below.
For a useful response about a particular option trade, disclose position details, so that responders can assist. Vague inquires receive vague responses. Tell us: TICKER -- Put or Call -- strike price (for each leg, on spreads) -- expiration date -- cost of option entry -- date of option entry -- underlying stock price at entry -- current option (spread) market value -- current underlying stock price -- your rationale for entering the position. .
Key informational links: • Glossary • List of Recommended Books • Introduction to Options (The Options Playbook) • The complete side-bar informational links, for mobile app users.

Links to the most frequent answers

I just made (or lost) $____. Should I close the trade? Yes, close the trade, because you had no plan for an exit to limit your risk. Your trade is a prediction: a plan directs action upon an (in)validated prediction. Take the gain (or loss). End the risk of losing the gain (or increasing the loss). Plan the exit before the start of each trade, for both a gain, and maximum loss. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture)
Why did my options lose value, when the stock price went in a favorable direction? • Options extrinsic and intrinsic value, an introduction (Redtexture)
Getting started in options • Calls and puts, long and short, an introduction (Redtexture) • Exercise & Assignment - A Guide (ScottishTrader) • Some useful educational links • Some introductory trading guidance, with educational links • Options Expiration & Assignment (Option Alpha) • Expiration time and date (Investopedia)
Common mistakes and useful advice for new options traders • Five mistakes to avoid when trading options (Options Playbook) • Top 10 Mistakes Beginner Option Traders Make (Ally Bank) • One year into options trading: lessons learned (whitethunder9) • Here's some cold hard words from a professional trader (magik_moose) • Thoughts after trading for 7 Years (invcht2) • Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance (Farnum Street Blog) • 20 Habits of Highly Successful Traders (Viper Report) (40 minutes) • There's a bull market somewhere (Jason Leavitt) (3 minutes)
Trade planning, risk reduction and trade size, etc. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture) • Trade Checklists and Guides (Option Alpha) • An illustration of planning on trades failing. (John Carter) (at 90 seconds) • Trade Simulator Tool (Radioactive Trading) • Risk of Ruin (Better System Trader)
Minimizing Bid-Ask Spreads (high-volume options are best) • Fishing for a price: price discovery with (wide) bid-ask spreads (Redtexture) • List of option activity by underlying (Market Chameleon) • List of option activity by underlying (Barchart) • Open Interest by ticker (optinistics)
Closing out a trade • Most options positions are closed before expiration (Options Playbook) • When to Exit Guide (Option Alpha) • Risk to reward ratios change over the life of a position: a reason for early exit (Redtexture)
Options Greeks and Option Chains • An Introduction to Options Greeks (Options Playbook) • Options Greeks (Epsilon Options) • Theta Decay: The Ultimate Guide (Chris Butler - Project Option) • Theta decay rates differ: At the money vs. away from the money • Theta: A Detailed Look at the Decay of Option Time Value (James Toll) • Gamma Risk Explained - (Gavin McMaster - Options Trading IQ) • How Often Within Expected Move? Data Science and Implied Volatility (Michael Rechenthin, PhD - TastyTrade 2017) • A selected list of option chain & option data websites
Selected Trade Positions & Management • The Wheel Strategy (ScottishTrader) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Options Playbook) • Synthetic option positions: Why and how they are used (Fidelity) • Covered Calls Tutorial (Option Investor) • Take the loss (here's why) (Clay Trader) (15 minutes) • The diagonal calendar spread and "poor man's covered call" (Redtexture) • Creative Ways to Avoid The Pattern Day Trader Rule (Sean McLaughlin) • Options and Dividend Risk (Sage Anderson, TastyTrade) • Options contract adjustments: what you should know (Fidelity) • Options contract adjustment announcements / memoranda (Options Clearing Corporation)
Implied Volatility, IV Rank, and IV Percentile (of days) • An introduction to Implied Volatility (Khan Academy) • An introduction to Black Scholes formula (Khan Academy) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile: Which is better? (Project Option) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile in Trading (Tasty Trade) (video)
Miscellaneous: Economic Calendars, International Brokers, RobinHood, Pattern Day Trader, CBOE Exchange Rules, Contract Specifications, TDA Margin Handbook, EU Regulations on US ETFs, US Taxes and Options • Selected calendars of economic reports and events • An incomplete list of international brokers dealing in US options markets (Redtexture) • Free brokerages can be very costly: Why option traders should not use RobinHood • Pattern Day Trader status and $25,000 margin account balances (FINRA) • How to find out when a new expiration is opening up: email: [email protected] for the status of a particular ticker's new expirations.
• CBOE Contract Specications and Trading Days & Hours • TDAmeritrade Margin Handbook (18 pages PDF) • Monthly expirations of Index options are settled on next day prices • PRIIPS, KIPs, EU regulations, ETFs, Options, Brokers • Key Information Documents (KIDs) for European Citizens (Options Clearing Corporation) • Taxes and Investing (Options Industry Council) (PDF) • CBOE Exchange Rules (770+ pages, PDF) • NASDAQ Options Exchange Rules
Following week's Noob thread: Sept 30 - Oct 6 2019
Previous weeks' Noob threads: Sept 16-22 2019 Sept 09-15 2019 Sept 02-09 2019 Aug 26 - Sept 02 2019
Complete NOOB archive, 2018, and 2019

Post any options questions you wanted to ask, but were afraid to ask. A weekly thread in which questions will be received with equanimity. There are no stupid questions, only dumb answers. Fire away. This is a weekly rotation with past threads linked below. This project succeeds thanks to people thoughtfully sharing their knowledge and experiences (YOU are invited to respond to questions posted here.)
Perhaps you're looking for an item in the frequent answers list below.
For a useful response about a particular option trade, disclose position details, so that responders can assist. Vague inquires receive vague responses. Tell us: TICKER -- Put or Call -- strike price (for each leg, on spreads) -- expiration date -- cost of option entry -- date of option entry -- underlying stock price at entry -- current option (spread) market value -- current underlying stock price -- your rationale for entering the position. .
Key informational links: • Glossary • List of Recommended Books • Introduction to Options (The Options Playbook) • The complete side-bar informational links, for mobile app users.

Links to the most frequent answers

I just made (or lost) $____. Should I close the trade? Yes, close the trade, because you had no plan for an exit to limit your risk. Your trade is a prediction: a plan directs action upon an (in)validated prediction. Take the gain (or loss). End the risk of losing the gain (or increasing the loss). Plan the exit before the start of each trade, for both a gain, and maximum loss. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture)
Why did my options lose value, when the stock price went in a favorable direction? • Options extrinsic and intrinsic value, an introduction (Redtexture)
Getting started in options • Calls and puts, long and short, an introduction (Redtexture) • Exercise & Assignment - A Guide (ScottishTrader) • Some useful educational links • Some introductory trading guidance, with educational links • Options Expiration & Assignment (Option Alpha) • Expiration time and date (Investopedia)
Common mistakes and useful advice for new options traders • Five mistakes to avoid when trading options (Options Playbook) • Top 10 Mistakes Beginner Option Traders Make (Ally Bank) • One year into options trading: lessons learned (whitethunder9) • Here's some cold hard words from a professional trader (magik_moose) • Thoughts after trading for 7 Years (invcht2) • Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance (Farnum Street Blog) • 20 Habits of Highly Successful Traders (Viper Report) (40 minutes) • There's a bull market somewhere (Jason Leavitt) (3 minutes)
Trade planning, risk reduction and trade size, etc. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture) • Trade Checklists and Guides (Option Alpha) • An illustration of planning on trades failing. (John Carter) (at 90 seconds) • Trade Simulator Tool (Radioactive Trading) • Risk of Ruin (Better System Trader)
Minimizing Bid-Ask Spreads (high-volume options are best) • Fishing for a price: price discovery with (wide) bid-ask spreads (Redtexture) • List of option activity by underlying (Market Chameleon) • List of option activity by underlying (Barchart) • Open Interest by ticker (optinistics)
Closing out a trade • Most options positions are closed before expiration (Options Playbook) • When to Exit Guide (Option Alpha) • Risk to reward ratios change over the life of a position: a reason for early exit (Redtexture)
Options Greeks and Option Chains • An Introduction to Options Greeks (Options Playbook) • Options Greeks (Epsilon Options) • Theta Decay: The Ultimate Guide (Chris Butler - Project Option) • Theta decay rates differ: At the money vs. away from the money • Theta: A Detailed Look at the Decay of Option Time Value (James Toll) • Gamma Risk Explained - (Gavin McMaster - Options Trading IQ) • How Often Within Expected Move? Data Science and Implied Volatility (Michael Rechenthin, PhD - TastyTrade 2017) • A selected list of option chain & option data websites
Selected Trade Positions & Management • The Wheel Strategy (ScottishTrader) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Options Playbook) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Redtexture) • Synthetic option positions: Why and how they are used (Fidelity) • Covered Calls Tutorial (Option Investor) • Take the loss (here's why) (Clay Trader) (15 minutes) • The diagonal calendar spread and "poor man's covered call" (Redtexture) • Creative Ways to Avoid The Pattern Day Trader Rule (Sean McLaughlin) • Short calls and puts, and dividend risk (Redtexture) • Options and Dividend Risk (Sage Anderson, TastyTrade) • Options contract adjustments: what you should know (Fidelity) • Options contract adjustment announcements / memoranda (Options Clearing Corporation)
Implied Volatility, IV Rank, and IV Percentile (of days) • An introduction to Implied Volatility (Khan Academy) • An introduction to Black Scholes formula (Khan Academy) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile: Which is better? (Project Option) • IV Rank vs. IV Percentile in Trading (Tasty Trade) (video)
Miscellaneous: Economic Calendars, International Brokers, RobinHood, Pattern Day Trader, CBOE Exchange Rules, Contract Specifications, TDA Margin Handbook, EU Regulations on US ETFs, US Taxes and Options • Selected calendars of economic reports and events • An incomplete list of international brokers dealing in US options markets (Redtexture) • Free brokerages can be very costly: Why option traders should not use RobinHood • Pattern Day Trader status and $25,000 margin account balances (FINRA) • How to find out when a new expiration is opening up: email: [email protected] for the status of a particular ticker's new expirations.
• CBOE Contract Specications and Trading Days & Hours • TDAmeritrade Margin Handbook (18 pages PDF) • Monthly expirations of Index options are settled on next day prices • PRIIPS, KIPs, EU regulations, ETFs, Options, Brokers • Key Information Documents (KIDs) for European Citizens (Options Clearing Corporation) • Taxes and Investing (Options Industry Council) (PDF) • CBOE Exchange Rules (770+ pages, PDF) • NASDAQ Options Exchange Rules
Following week's Noob thread: Oct 7-13 2019
Previous weeks' Noob threads: Sept 23-29 2019 Sept 16-22 2019 Sept 09-15 2019 Sept 02-09 2019 Aug 26 - Sept 02 2019
Complete NOOB archive, 2018, and 2019

I am putting together my investment portfolio for 2018 and made a complete summary of the current Top 100. Interestingly, I noticed that all coins can be categorized into 12 markets. Which markets do you think will play the biggest role in the coming year?
Here is a complete overview of all coins in an excel sheet including name, market, TPS, risk profile, time since launch (negative numbers mean that they are launching that many months in the future) and market cap. You can also sort by all of these fields of course. Coins written in bold are the strongest contenders within their market either due to having the best technology or having a small market cap and still excellent technology and potential. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s8PHcNvvjuy848q18py_CGcu8elRGQAUIf86EYh4QZo/edit#gid=0
The 12 markets are

Currency 13 coins
Platform 25 coins
Ecosystem 9 coins
Privacy 10 coins
Currency Exchange Tool 8 coins
Gaming & Gambling 5 coins
Misc 15 coins
Social Network 4 coins
Fee Token 3 coins
Decentralized Data Storage 4 coins
Cloud Computing 3 coins
Stable Coin 2 coins

Before we look at the individual markets, we need to take a look of the overall market and its biggest issue scalability first:
Cryptocurrencies aim to be a decentralized currency that can be used worldwide. Its goal is to replace dollar, Euro, Yen, all FIAT currencies worldwide. The coin that will achieve that will be worth several trillion dollars.
Bitcoin can only process 7 transactions per second (TPS). In order to replace all FIAT, it would need to perform at at least VISA levels, which usually processes around 3,000 TPS, up to 25,000 TPS during peak times and a maximum of 64,000 TPS. That means that this cryptocurrency would need to be able to perform at least several thousand TPS. However, a ground breaking technology should not look at current technology to set a goal for its use, i.e. estimating the number of emails sent in 1990 based on the number of faxes sent wasn’t a good estimate.
For that reason, 10,000 TPS is the absolute baseline for a cryptocurrency that wants to replace FIAT. This brings me to IOTA, which wants to connect all 80 billion IoT devices that are expected to exist by 2025, which constantly communicate with each other, creating 80 billion or more transactions per second. This is the benchmark that cryptocurrencies should be aiming for. Currently, 8 billion devices are connected to the Internet.
With its Lightning network recently launched, Bitcoin is realistically looking at 50,000 possible soon. Other notable cryptocurrencies besides IOTA and Bitcoin are Nano with 7,000 TPS already tested, Dash with several billion TPS possible with Masternodes, Neo, LISK and RHOC with 100,000 TPS by 2020, Ripple with 50,000 TPS, Ethereum with 10,000 with Sharding.
However, it needs to be said that scalability usually goes at the cost of decentralization and security. So, it needs to be seen, which of these technologies can prove itself resilient and performant.
Without further ado, here are the coins of the first market

Market 1 - Currency:

Bitcoin: 1st generation blockchain with currently bad scalability currently, though the implementation of the Lightning Network looks promising and could alleviate most scalability concerns, scalability and high energy use.
Ripple: Centralized currency that might become very successful due to tight involvement with banks and cross-border payments for financial institutions; banks and companies like Western Union and Moneygram (who they are currently working with) as customers customers. However, it seems they are aiming for more decentralization now.https://ripple.com/dev-blog/decentralization-strategy-update/. Has high TPS due to Proof of Correctness algorithm.
Bitcoin Cash: Bitcoin fork with the difference of having an 8 times bigger block size, making it 8 times more scalable than Bitcoin currently. Further block size increases are planned. Only significant difference is bigger block size while big blocks lead to further problems that don't seem to do well beyond a few thousand TPS. Opponents to a block size argue that increasing the block size limit is unimaginative, offers only temporary relief, and damages decentralization by increasing costs of participation. In order to preserve decentralization, system requirements to participate should be kept low. To understand this, consider an extreme example: very big blocks (1GB+) would require data center level resources to validate the blockchain. This would preclude all but the wealthiest individuals from participating.Community seems more open than Bitcoin's though.
Litecoin : Little brother of Bitcoin. Bitcoin fork with different mining algorithm but not much else.Copies everything that Bitcoin does pretty much. Lack of real innovation.
Dash: Dash (Digital Cash) is a fork of Bitcoin and focuses on user ease. It has very fast transactions within seconds, low fees and uses Proof of Service from Masternodes for consensus. They are currently building a system called Evolution which will allow users to send money using usernames and merchants will find it easy to integrate Dash using the API. You could say Dash is trying to be a PayPal of cryptocurrencies. Currently, cryptocurrencies must choose between decentralization, speed, scalability and can pick only 2. With Masternodes, Dash picked speed and scalability at some cost of decentralization, since with Masternodes the voting power is shifted towards Masternodes, which are run by Dash users who own the most Dash.
IOTA: 3rd generation blockchain called Tangle, which has a high scalability, no fees and instant transactions. IOTA aims to be the connective layer between all 80 billion IOT devices that are expected to be connected to the Internet in 2025, possibly creating 80 billion transactions per second or 800 billion TPS, who knows. However, it needs to be seen if the Tangle can keep up with this scalability and iron out its security issues that have not yet been completely resolved.
Nano: 3rd generation blockchain called Block Lattice with high scalability, no fees and instant transactions. Unlike IOTA, Nano only wants to be a payment processor and nothing else, for now at least. With Nano, every user has their own blockchain and has to perform a small amount of computing for each transaction, which makes Nano perform at 300 TPS with no problems and 7,000 TPS have also been tested successfully. Very promising 3rd gen technology and strong focus on only being the fastest currency without trying to be everything.
Decred: As mining operations have grown, Bitcoin’s decision-making process has become more centralized, with the largest mining companies holding large amounts of power over the Bitcoin improvement process. Decred focuses heavily on decentralization with their PoW Pos hybrid governance system to become what Bitcoin was set out to be. They will soon implement the Lightning Network to scale up. While there do not seem to be more differences to Bitcoin besides the novel hybrid consensus algorithm, which Ethereum, Aeternity and Bitcoin Atom are also implementing, the welcoming and positive Decred community and professoinal team add another level of potential to the coin.
Aeternity: We’ve seen recently, that it’s difficult to scale the execution of smart contracts on the blockchain. Crypto Kitties is a great example. Something as simple as creating and trading unique assets on Ethereum bogged the network down when transaction volume soared. Ethereum and Zilliqa address this problem with Sharding. Aeternity focuses on increasing the scalability of smart contracts and dapps by moving smart contracts off-chain. Instead of running on the blockchain, smart contracts on Aeternity run in private state channels between the parties involved in the contracts. State channels are lines of communication between parties in a smart contract. They don’t touch the blockchain unless they need to for adjudication or transfer of value. Because they’re off-chain, state channel contracts can operate much more efficiently. They don’t need to pay the network for every time they compute and can also operate with greater privacy. An important aspect of smart contract and dapp development is access to outside data sources. This could mean checking the weather in London, score of a football game, or price of gold. Oracles provide access to data hosted outside the blockchain. In many blockchain projects, oracles represent a security risk and potential point of failure, since they tend to be singular, centralized data streams. Aeternity proposes decentralizing oracles with their oracle machine. Doing so would make outside data immutable and unchangeable once it reaches Aeternity’s blockchain. Of course, the data source could still be hacked, so Aeternity implements a prediction market where users can bet on the accuracy and honesty of incoming data from various oracles.It also uses prediction markets for various voting and verification purposes within the platform. Aeternity’s network runs on on a hybrid of proof of work and proof of stake. Founded by a long-time crypto-enthusiast and early colleague of Vitalik Buterin, Yanislav Malahov. Promising concept though not product yet
Bitcoin Atom: Atomic Swaps and hybrid consenus. This looks like the only Bitcoin clone that actually is looking to innovate next to Bitcoin Cash.
Dogecoin: Litecoin fork, fantastic community, though lagging behind a bit in technology.
Bitcoin Gold: A bit better security than bitcoin through ASIC resistant algorithm, but that's it. Not that interesting.
Digibyte: Digibyte's PoS blockchain is spread over a 100,000+ servers, phones, computers, and nodes across the globe, aiming for the ultimate level of decentralization. DigiByte rebalances the load between the five mining algorithms by adjusting the difficulty of each so one algorithm doesn’t become dominant. The algorithm's asymmetric difficulty has gained notoriety and been deployed in many other blockchains.DigiByte’s adoption over the past four years has been slow. It’s still a relatively obscure currency compared its competitors. The DigiByte website offers a lot of great marketing copy and buzzwords. However, there’s not much technical information about what they have planned for the future. You could say Digibyte is like Bitcoin, but with shorter blocktimes and a multi-algorithm. However, that's not really a difference big enough to truly set themselves apart from Bitcoin, since these technologies could be implemented by any blockchain without much difficulty. Their decentralization is probably their strongest asset, however, this also change quickly if the currency takes off and big miners decide to go into Digibyte.
Bitcoin Diamond Asic resistant Bitcoin and Copycat

Market 2 - Platform

Most of the cryptos here have smart contracts and allow dapps (Decentralized apps) to be build on their platform and to use their token as an exchange of value between dapp services.

Ethereum: 2nd generation blockchain that allows the use of smart contracts. Bad scalability currently, though this concern could be alleviated by the soon to be implemented Lightning Network aka Plasma and its Sharding concept.
EOS: Promising technology that wants to be able do everything, from smart contracts like Ethereum, scalability similar to Nano with 1000 tx/second + near instant transactions and zero fees, to also wanting to be a platform for dapps. However, EOS doesn't have a product yet and everything is just promises still. Highly overvalued right now. However, there are lots of red flags, have dumped $500 million Ether over the last 2 months and possibly bought back EOS to increase the size of their ICO, which has been going on for over a year and has raised several billion dollars. All in all, their market cap is way too high for that and not even having a product.
Cardano: Similar to Ethereum/EOS, however, only promises made with no delivery yet, highly overrated right now. Interesting concept though. Market cap way too high for not even having a product. Somewhat promising technology.
VeChain: Singapore-based project that’s building a business enterprise platform and inventory tracking system. Examples are verifying genuine luxury goods and food supply chains. Has one of the strongest communities in the crypto world. Most hyped token of all, with merit though.
Neo: Neo is a platform, similar to Eth, but more extensive, allowing dapps and smart contracts, but with a different smart contract gas system, consensus mechanism (PoS vs. dBfT), governance model, fixed vs unfixed supply, expensive contracts vs nearly free contracts, different ideologies for real world adoption. There are currently only 9 nodes, each of which are being run by a company/entity hand selected by the NEO council (most of which are located in china) and are under contract. This means that although the locations of the nodes may differ, ultimately the neo council can bring them down due to their legal contracts. In fact this has been done in the past when the neo council was moving 50 million neo that had been locked up. Also dbft (or neo's implmentation of it) has failed underload causing network outages during major icos. The first step in decentralization is that the NEO Counsel will select trusted nodes (Universities, business partners, etc.) and slowly become less centralized that way. The final step in decentralization will be allowing NEO holders to vote for new nodes, similar to a DPoS system (ARK/EOS/LISK). NEO has a regulation/government friendly ideology. Finally they are trying to work undewith the Chinese government in regards to regulations. If for some reason they wanted it shut down, they could just shut it down.
Stellar: PoS system, similar goals as Ripple, but more of a platform than only a currency. 80% of Stellar are owned by Stellar.org still, making the currency centralized.
Ethereum classic: Original Ethereum that decided not to fork after a hack. The Ethereum that we know is its fork. Uninteresing, because it has a lot of less resources than Ethereum now and a lot less community support.
Ziliqa: Zilliqa is building a new way of sharding. 2400 tpx already tested, 10,000 tps soon possible by being linearly scalable with the number of nodes. That means, the more nodes, the faster the network gets. They are looking at implementing privacy as well.
QTUM: Enables Smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain. Useful.
Icon: Korean ethereum. Decentralized application platform that's building communities in partnership with banks, insurance providers, hospitals, and universities. Focused on ID verification and payments. No big differentiators to the other 20 Ethereums, except that is has a product. That is a plus. Maybe cheap alternative to Ethereum.
LISK: Lisk's difference to other BaaS is that side chains are independent to the main chain and have to have their own nodes. Similar to neo whole allows dapps to deploy their blockchain to. However, Lisk is currently somewhat centralized with a small group of members owning more than 50% of the delegated positions. Lisk plans to change the consensus algorithm for that reason in the near future.
Rchain: Similar to Ethereum with smart contract, though much more scalable at an expected 40,000 TPS and possible 100,000 TPS. Not launched yet. No product launched yet, though promising technology. Not overvalued, probably at the right price right now.
ARDR: Similar to Lisk. Ardor is a public blockchain platform that will allow people to utilize the blockchain technology of Nxt through the use of child chains. A child chain, which is a ‘light’ blockchain that can be customized to a certain extent, is designed to allow easy self-deploy for your own blockchain. Nxt claims that users will "not need to worry" about security, as that part is now handled by the main chain (Ardor). This is the chief innovation of Ardor. Ardor was evolved from NXT by the same company. NEM started as a NXT clone.
Ontology: Similar to Neo. Interesting coin
Bytom: Bytom is an interactive protocol of multiple byte assets. Heterogeneous byte-assets (indigenous digital currency, digital assets) that operate in different forms on the Bytom Blockchain and atomic assets (warrants, securities, dividends, bonds, intelligence information, forecasting information and other information that exist in the physical world) can be registered, exchanged, gambled and engaged in other more complicated and contract-based interoperations via Bytom.
Nxt: Similar to Lisk
Stratis: Different to LISK, Stratis will allow businesses and organizations to create their own blockchain according to their own needs, but secured on the parent Stratis chain. Stratis’s simple interface will allow organizations to quickly and easily deploy and/or test blockchain functionality of the Ethereum, BitShares, BitCoin, Lisk and Stratis environements.
Status: Status provides access to all of Ethereum’s decentralized applications (dapps) through an app on your smartphone. It opens the door to mass adoption of Ethereum dapps by targeting the fastest growing computer segment in the world – smartphone users.16. Ark: Fork of Lisk that focuses on a smaller feature set. Ark wallets can only vote for one delegate at a time which forces delegates to compete against each other and makes cartel formations incredibly hard, if not impossible.
Neblio: Similar to Neo, but 30x smaller market cap.
NEM: Is similar to Neo No marketing team, very high market cap for little clarilty what they do.
Bancor: Bancor is a Decentralized Liquidity Network that allows you to hold any Ethereum token and convert it to any other token in the network, with no counter party, at an automatically calculated price, using a simple web wallet.
Dragonchain: The Purpose of DragonChain is to help companies quickly and easily incorporate blockchain into their business applications. Many companies might be interested in making this transition because of the benefits associated with serving clients over a blockchain – increased efficiency and security for transactions, a reduction of costs from eliminating potential fraud and scams, etc.
Skycoin: Transactions with zero fees that take apparently two seconds, unlimited transaction rate, no need for miners and block rewards, low power usage, all of the usual cryptocurrency technical vulnerabilities fixed, a consensus mechanism superior to anything that exists, resistant to all conceivable threats (government censorship, community infighting, cybenucleaconventional warfare, etc). Skycoin has their own consensus algorithm known as Obelisk written and published academically by an early developer of Ethereum. Obelisk is a non-energy intensive consensus algorithm based on a concept called ‘web of trust dynamics’ which is completely different to PoW, PoS, and their derivatives. Skywire, the flagship application of Skycoin, has the ambitious goal of decentralizing the internet at the hardware level and is about to begin the testnet in April. However, this is just one of the many facets of the Skycoin ecosystem. Skywire will not only provide decentralized bandwidth but also storage and computation, completing the holy trinity of commodities essential for the new internet. Skycion a smear campaign launched against it, though they seem legit and reliable. Thus, they are probably undervalued.

Market 3 - Ecosystem

The 3rd market with 11 coins is comprised of ecosystem coins, which aim to strengthen the ease of use within the crypto space through decentralized exchanges, open standards for apps and more

Nebulas: Similar to how Google indexes webpages Nebulas will index blockchain projects, smart contracts & data using the Nebulas rank algorithm that sifts & sorts the data. Developers rewarded NAS to develop & deploy on NAS chain. Nebulas calls this developer incentive protocol – basically rewards are issued based on how often dapp/contract etc. is used, the more the better the rewards and Proof of devotion. Works like DPoS except the best, most economically incentivised developers (Bookkeeppers) get the forging spots. Ensuring brains stay with the project (Cross between PoI & PoS). 2,400 TPS+, DAG used to solve the inter-transaction dependencies in the PEE (Parallel Execution Environment) feature, first crypto Wallet that supports the Lightening Network.
Waves: Decentralized exchange and crowdfunding platform. Let’s companies and projects to issue and manage their own digital coin tokens to raise money.
Salt: Leveraging blockchain assets to secure cash loands. Plans to offer cash loans in traditional currencies, backed by your cryptocurrency assets. Allows lenders worldwide to skip credit checks for easier access to affordable loans.
CHAINLINK: ChainLink is a decentralized oracle service, the first of its kind. Oracles are defined as an ‘agent’ that finds and verifies real-world occurrences and submits this information to a blockchain to be used in smart contracts.With ChainLink, smart contract users can use the network’s oracles to retrieve data from off-chain application program interfaces (APIs), data pools, and other resources and integrate them into the blockchain and smart contracts. Basically, ChainLink takes information that is external to blockchain applications and puts it on-chain. The difference to Aeternity is that Chainlink deploys the smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain while Aeternity has its own chain.
WTC: Combines blockchain with IoT to create a management system for supply chains Interesting
Ethos unifyies all cryptos. Ethos is building a multi-cryptocurrency phone wallet. The team is also building an investment diversification tool and a social network
Aion: Aion is the token that pays for services on the Aeternity platform.
USDT: is no cryptocurrency really, but a replacement for dollar for trading After months of asking for proof of dollar backing, still no response from Tether.

Market 4 - Privacy

The 4th market are privacy coins. As you might know, Bitcoin is not anonymous. If the IRS or any other party asks an exchange who is the identity behind a specific Bitcoin address, they know who you are and can track back almost all of the Bitcoin transactions you have ever made and all your account balances. Privacy coins aim to prevent exactly that through address fungability, which changes addresses constantly, IP obfuscation and more. There are 2 types of privacy coins, one with completely privacy and one with optional privacy. Optional Privacy coins like Dash and Nav have the advantage of more user friendliness over completely privacy coins such as Monero and Enigma.

Monero: Currently most popular privacy coin, though with a very high market cap. Since their privacy is all on chain, all prior transactions would be deanonymized if their protocol is ever cracked. This requires a quantum computing attack though. PIVX is better in that regard.
Zcash: A decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that hide the sender, recipient, and value of transactions. Offers users the option to make transactions public later for auditing. Decent privacy coin, though no default privacy
Verge: Calls itself privacy coin without providing private transactions, multiple problems over the last weeks has a toxic community, and way too much hype for what they have.
Bytecoin: First privacy-focused cryptocurrency with anonymous transactions. Bytecoin’s code was later adapted to create Monero, the more well-known anonymous cryptocurrency. Has several scam accusations, 80% pre-mine, bad devs, bad tech
Bitcoin Private: A merge fork of Bitcoin and Zclassic with Zclassic being a fork of Zcash with the difference of a lack of a founders fee required to mine a valid block. This promotes a fair distribution, preventing centralized coin ownership and control. Bitcoin private offers the optional ability to keep the sender, receiver, and amount private in a given transaction. However, this is already offered by several good privacy coins (Monero, PIVX) and Bitcoin private doesn't offer much more beyond this.
Komodo: The Komodo blockchain platform uses Komodo’s open-source cryptocurrency for doing transparent, anonymous, private, and fungible transactions. They are then made ultra-secure using Bitcoin’s blockchain via a Delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) protocol and decentralized crowdfunding (ICO) platform to remove middlemen from project funding. Offers services for startups to create and manage their own Blockchains.
PIVX: As a fork of Dash, PIVX uses an advanced implementation of the Zerocoin protocol to provide it’s privacy. This is a form of zeroknowledge proofs, which allow users to spend ‘Zerocoins’ that have no link back to them. Unlike Zcash u have denominations in PIVX, so they can’t track users by their payment amount being equal to the amount of ‘minted’ coins, because everyone uses the same denominations. PIVX is also implementing Bulletproofs, just like Monero, and this will take care of arguably the biggest weakness of zeroknowledge protocols: the trusted setup.
Zcoin: PoW cryptocurrency. Private financial transactions, enabled by the Zerocoin Protocol. Zcoin is the first full implementation of the Zerocoin Protocol, which allows users to have complete privacy via Zero-Knowledge cryptographic proofs.
Enigma: Monero is to Bitcoin what enigma is to Ethereum. Enigma is for making the data used in smart contracts private. More of a platform for dapps than a currency like Monero. Very promising.
Navcoin: Like bitcoin but with added privacy and pos and 1,170 tps, but only because of very short 30 second block times. Though, privacy is optional, but aims to be more user friendly than Monero. However, doesn't really decide if it wants to be a privacy coin or not. Same as Zcash.Strong technology, non-shady team.
Tenx: Raised 80 million, offers cryptocurrency-linked credit cards that let you spend virtual money in real life. Developing a series of payment platforms to make spending cryptocurrency easier. However, the question is if full privacy coins will be hindered in growth through government regulations and optional privacy coins will become more successful through ease of use and no regulatory hindrance.

Market 5 - Currency Exchange Tool

Due to the sheer number of different cryptocurrencies, exchanging one currency for the other it still cumbersome. Further, merchants don’t want to deal with overcluttered options of accepting cryptocurrencies. This is where exchange tool like Req come in, which allow easy and simple exchange of currencies.

Cryptonex: Fiat and currency exchange between various blockchain services, similar to REQ.
QASH: Qash is used to fuel its liquid platform which will be an exchange that will distribute their liquidity pool. Its product, the Worldbook is a multi-exchange order book that matches crypto to crypto, and crypto to fiat and the reverse across all currencies. E.g., someone is selling Bitcoin is USD on exchange1 not owned by Quoine and someone is buying Bitcoin in EURO on exchange 2 not owned by Quoine. If the forex conversions and crypto conversions match then the trade will go through and the Worldbook will match it, it'll make the sale and the purchase on either exchange and each user will get what they wanted, which means exchanges with lower liquidity if they join the Worldbook will be able to fill orders and take trade fees they otherwise would miss out on.They turned it on to test it a few months ago for an hour or so and their exchange was the top exchange in the world by 4x volume for the day because all Worldbook trades ran through it. Binance wants BNB to be used on their one exchange. Qash wants their QASH token embedded in all of their partners. More info here https://www.reddit.com/CryptoCurrency/comments/8a8lnwhich_are_your_top_5_favourite_coins_out_of_the/dwyjcbb/?context=3
Kyber: network Exchange between cryptocurrencies, similar to REQ. Features automatic coin conversions for payments. Also offers payment tools for developers and a cryptocurrency wallet.
Achain: Building a boundless blockchain world like Req .
Req: Exchange between cryptocurrencies.
Bitshares: Exchange between cryptocurrencies. Noteworthy are the 1.5 second average block times and throughput potential of 100,000 transactions per second with currently 2,400 TPS having been proven. However, bitshares had several Scam accusations in the past.
Loopring: A protocol that will enable higher liquidity between exchanges and personal wallets.
ZRX: Open standard for dapps. Open, permissionless protocol allowing for ERC20 tokens to be traded on the Ethereum blockchain. In 0x protocol, orders are transported off-chain, massively reducing gas costs and eliminating blockchain bloat. Relayers help broadcast orders and collect a fee each time they facilitate a trade. Anyone can build a relayer.

Market 6 - Gaming

With an industry size of $108B worldwide, Gaming is one of the largest markets in the world. For sure, cryptocurrencies will want to have a share of that pie.

Storm: Mobile game currency on a platform with 9 million players.
Fun: A platform for casino operators to host trustless, provably-fair gambling through the use of smart contracts, as well as creating their own implementation of state channels for scalability.
Electroneum: Mobile game currency They have lots of technical problems, such as several 51% attacks
Wax: Marketplace to trade in-game items

Market 7 - Misc

There are various markets being tapped right now. They are all summed up under misc.

OMG: Omise is designed to enable financial services for people without bank accounts. It works worldwide and with both traditional money and cryptocurrencies.
Power ledger: Australian blockchain-based cryptocurrency and energy trading platform that allows for decentralized selling and buying of renewable energy. Unique market and rather untapped market in the crypto space.
Populous: A platform that connects business owners and invoice buyers without middlemen. Invoice sellers get cash flow to fund their business and invoice buyers earn interest. Similar to OMG, small market.
Monacoin: The first Japanese cryptocurrency. Focused on micro-transactions and based on a popular internet meme of a type-written cat. This makes it similar to Dogecoin. Very niche, tiny market.
Revain: Legitimizing reviews via the blockchain. Interesting concept, though market not as big.
Augur: Platform to forecast and make wagers on the outcome of real-world events (AKA decentralized predictions). Uses predictions for a “wisdom of the crowd” search engine. Not launched yet.
Substratum: Revolutionzing hosting industry via per request billing as a decentralized internet hosting system. Uses a global network of private computers to create the free and open internet of the future. Participants earn cryptocurrency. Interesting concept.
Veritaseum: Is supposed to be a peer to peer gateway, though it looks like very much like a scam.
TRON: Tronix is looking to capitalize on ownership of internet data to content creators. However, they plagiarized their white paper, which is a no go. They apologized, so it needs to be seen how they will conduct themselves in the future. Extremely high market cap for not having a product, nor proof of concept.
Syscoin: A cryptocurrency with a decentralized marketplace that lets people buy and sell products directly without third parties. Trying to remove middlemen like eBay and Amazon.
Hshare: Most likely scam because of no code changes, most likely pump and dump scheme, dead community.
BAT: An Ethereum-based token that can be exchanged between content creators, users, and advertisers. Decentralized ad-network that pays based on engagement and attention.
Dent: Decentralizeed exchange of mobile data, enabling mobile data to be marketed, purchased or distributed, so that users can quickly buy or sell data from any user to another one.
Ncash: End to end encrypted Identification system for retailers to better serve their customers .
Factom Secure record-keeping system that allows companies to store their data directly on the Blockchain. The goal is to make records more transparent and trustworthy .

Market 8 - Social network

Web 2.0 is still going strong and Web 3.0 is not going to ignore it. There are several gaming tokens already out there and a few with decent traction already, such as Steem, which is Reddit with voting through money is a very interesting one.

Mithril: As users create content via social media, they will be rewarded for their contribution, the better the contribution, the more they will earn
Steem: Like Reddit, but voting with money. Already launched product and Alexa rank 1,000 Thumbs up.
Rdd: Reddcoin makes the process of sending and receiving money fun and rewarding for everyone. Reddcoin is dedicated to one thing – tipping on social networks as a way to bring cryptocurrency awareness and experience to the general public.
Kin: Token for the platform Kik. Kik has a massive user base of 400 million people. Replacing paying with FIAT with paying with KIN might get this token to mass adoption very quickly.

Market 9 - Fee token

Popular exchanges realized that they can make a few billion dollars more by launching their own token. Owning these tokens gives you a reduction of trading fees. Very handy and BNB (Binance Coin) has been one of the most resilient tokens, which have withstood most market drops over the last weeks and was among the very few coins that could show growth.

BNB: Fee token for Binance
Gas: Not a Fee token for an exchange, but it is a dividend paid out on Neo and a currency that can be used to purchase services for dapps.
Kucoin: Fee token for Kucoin

Market 10 - Decentralized Data Storage

Currently, data storage happens with large companies or data centers that are prone to failure or losing data. Decentralized data storage makes loss of data almost impossible by distributing your files to numerous clients that hold tiny pieces of your data. Remember Torrents? Torrents use a peer-to-peer network. It is similar to that. Many users maintain copies of the same file, when someone wants a copy of that file, they send a request to the peer-to-peer network., users who have the file, known as seeds, send fragments of the file to the requester., he requester receives many fragments from many different seeds, and the torrent software recompiles these fragments to form the original file.

Gbyte: Byteball data is stored and ordered using directed acyclic graph (DAG) rather than blockchain. This allows all users to secure each other's data by referencing earlier data units created by other users, and also removes scalability limits common for blockchains, such as blocksize issue.
Siacoin: Siacoin is decentralized storage platform. Distributes encrypted files to thousands of private users who get paid for renting out their disk space. Anybody with siacoins can rent storage from hosts on Sia. This is accomplish via "smart" storage contracts stored on the Sia blockchain. The smart contract provides a payment to the host only after the host has kept the file for a given amount of time. If the host loses the file, the host does not get paid.
Maidsafecoin: MaidSafe stands for Massive Array of Internet Disks, Secure Access for Everyone.Instead of working with data centers and servers that are common today and are vulnerable to data theft and monitoring, SAFE’s network uses advanced P2P technology to bring together the spare computing capacity of all SAFE users and create a global network. You can think of SAFE as a crowd-sourced internet. All data and applications reside in this network. It’s an autonomous network that automatically sets prices and distributes data and rents out hard drive disk space with a Blockchain-based storage solutions.When you upload a file to the network, such as a photo, it will be broken into pieces, hashed, and encrypted. The data is then randomly distributed across the network. Redundant copies of the data are created as well so that if someone storing your file turns off their computer, you will still have access to your data. And don’t worry, even with pieces of your data on other people’s computers, they won’t be able to read them. You can earn MadeSafeCoins by participating in storing data pieces from the network on your computer and thus earning a Proof of Resource.
Storj: Storj aims to become a cloud storage platform that can’t be censored or monitored, or have downtime. Your files are encrypted, shredded into little pieces called 'shards', and stored in a decentralized network of computers around the globe. No one but you has a complete copy of your file, not even in an encrypted form.

Market 11 - Cloud computing

Obviously, renting computing power, one of the biggest emerging markets as of recent years, e.g. AWS and Digital Ocean, is also a service, which can be bought and managed via the blockchain.

Golem: Allows easy use of Supercomputer in exchange for tokens. People worldwide can rent out their computers to the network and get paid for that service with Golem tokens.
Elf: Allows easy use of Cloud computing in exchange for tokens.

Market 12 - Stablecoin

Last but not least, there are 2 stablecoins that have established themselves within the market. A stable coin is a coin that wants to be independent of the volatility of the crypto markets. This has worked out pretty well for Maker and DGD, accomplished through a carefully diversified currency fund and backing each token by 1g or real gold respectively. DO NOT CONFUSE DGD AND MAKER with their STABLE COINS DGX and DAI. DGD and MAKER are volatile, because they are the companies of DGX and DAI. DGX and DAI are the stable coins.

DGD: Platform of the Stablecoin DGX. Every DGX coin is backed by 1g of gold and make use proof of asset consensus.
Maker: Platform of the Stablecoin DAI that doesn't vary much in price through widespread and smart diversification of assets.

EDIT: Added a risk factor from 0 to 10. The baseline is 2 for any crypto. Significant scandals, mishaps, shady practices, questionable technology, increase the risk factor. Not having a product yet automatically means a risk factor of 6. Strong adoption and thus strong scrutiny or positive community lower the risk factor.
EDIT2: Added a subjective potential factor from 0 to 10, where its overall potential and a small or big market cap is factored in. Bitcoin with lots of potential only gets a 9, because of its massive market cap, because if Bitcoin goes 10x, smaller coins go 100x, PIVX gets a 10 for being as good as Monero while carrying a 10x smaller market cap, which would make PIVX go 100x if Monero goes 10x.

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Catalogue

Which are your Top 5 favourite coins out of the Top 100? An analysis.

Market 1 - Currency:

Market 2 - Platform

Market 3 - Ecosystem

Market 4 - Privacy

Market 5 - Currency Exchange Tool

Market 6 - Gaming

Market 7 - Misc

Market 8 - Social network

Market 9 - Fee token

Market 10 - Decentralized Data Storage

Market 11 - Cloud computing

Market 12 - Stablecoin

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