Contract-of-difference (CFD) is a financial contract. Two parties get into legal binding that pays the differences in settlement price of the asset. The opening and the closing price of the asset make traders profit/loss.
A unique way of investing in the market through such contracts. There are several CFD brokers in India that offer a range of services. We’ll analyse the best available in the market for successful trading.
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CFD Brokers in India
CFD Brokers in India
The Indian market has active traders that keep investing in various assets. For such traders CFDs are a good investment opportunity. Although, it involves risk traders with good market experience can invest to earn profits.
Here, we have the best CFD brokers in India that users can trust for effortless trading:

FP Markets

FP Markets is an Australia based CFD broker that offers its services globally. Indian traders can open their account with the broker to have smooth CFD trading. It offers clients with thousands of CFDs to trade.
The brokerage platform has 60+ forex pairs, shares, precious metals,commodities, cryptos and indices.
Users can enjoy the various technical services that make trading more advanced. It has MetaTrader4 and MetaTrader5 trading platforms, ECN pricing, fast execution of trade and low pricing.
Besides, traders can have the following pros and cons:
Pros:

• Regulated broker
• Tight spreads
• Good product range to trade
• Customer support
• Meta Trading platform

Cons:

• Withdrawals are expensive

PepperStone

Pepperstone is a popular forex broker. The platform works to provide the best trading services worldwide. It was established in 2010 and is based in Australia. The broker opened its London office in 2015 to serve its European clients.
It has regulation of severn authorities. Thus, a safe trading platform that makes trading secure. In addition, traders can find various CFD assets to trade on the platform with other products.
Pepperstone has low trading fees, advanced tools and services. The facilities of the broker make trading easy and more effortless. In addition, the broker does not have any inactivity fees, withdrawal fee or deposit minimum or limit.
Other than this, traders can have various other facilities making it easy for traders to invest. The pros and cons of the broker are:
Pros:

• Low trading fees
• Trading platform
• No minimum deposit
• Good research tools
• Educational support
• Customer service
• Offers CFDs

Cons:

• Basic trading platform

AvaTrade

AvaTrade is a 2006 trading platform. It has established itself as a leading forex and CFD broker with its dedicated and advanced services. The broker is working to provide its clients with the best service experience they are looking for.
It operates in more than 150 countries and India is one of them. Indian traders can open their account with the broker and invest in CFDs. The platform is best for the traders as it suits any class of investors.
There are wealth educational tools for beginners along with guides to support. For experts the platform offers comprehensive and advanced facilities to keep them investing in the markets.
The pros and cons of the broker are:
Pros:

• Wide range of assets
• Educational tools
• Trading platform
• Comprehensive website
• Secure
• Mobile app

Cons:

• High inactivity fees

XM

XM is a regulated forex and CFD broker. The parent company of the broker is Trading Point Holding. The broker was established in 2009 and is a known forex and CFD broker.
The broker has regulation of three authorities making it a secure trading platform. The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Financial Services Commission of Belize look after its working.
Pros and cons of the broker give a brief overview why the broker is best for CFD trading:
Pros:

• Low CFD trading fees
• Easy and quick account opening
• Educational tools
• Various assets

Cons:

• No investors protection for EU clients

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InvestBy is one of the leading and the best Forex and CFD brokers, allowing users to trade 350+ assets across all major financial markets, including Forex, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, indices and Stocks.

Conclusion

CFD trading is a risky investment requiring support of the best brokers for efficient trading. In India traders can have various CFD brokers but in the article we have listed the best.
FP Markets, Pepperstone, AvaTrade and XM are the top four that traders can invest with. They offer a range of CFD trading services with low fees, various products, education facilities, tools and trading platforms.
Overall they are good Indian CFD brokers that allow smooth trading.

You may be searching for a lab diamond and confused about pricing that you’re seeing in the marketplace. Lab diamonds of the same 4 C’s can be offered at wildly different retail prices, whether by e-commerce, a large retailer, a private jeweler, a wholesaler, or an independent store. The reasons for these discrepancies have less to do with the entity selling the product and more to do with complex wholesale pricing dynamics and the cost of lab diamond production.
The lab diamond industry is currently experiencing a shakeout: a period of consolidation and liquidation following rapid expansion. It’s a tricky time to be a consumer of lab diamonds and more imperative than ever that you know what you’re buying.
Who Am I?
I’m the founder at a lab diamond jewelry company. I spend my days evaluating lab diamonds from around the world, documenting and analyzing changes in quality trends over years. I’ve personally inspected over 15,000 certified lab diamonds over 6+ years (and thousands more uncertified). I evaluate over 100 lab diamonds/week and regularly collaborate with grading labs like GIA to help advance consumer knowledge and education about this innovative product.
This breadth of exposure to and documentation of the lab diamond supply makes me uniquely positioned to comment on changes. After all, this is a product meant to be inspected in person. 360 videos can be manipulated (or even faked), and let’s just say the diamond industry isn’t known for its honesty.
What I’m Seeing
Before I get into market dynamics, it’s important to understand that there are characteristics of lab diamonds beyond the 4 C’s that are directly tied to production output and production cost. Two GIA-certified F VS1 treated CVD rounds can be a whopping 4x difference in cost at both wholesale and retail from one another. Significantly cheaper lab diamonds are often produced with sped up growth and catalysts that can cause defects beyond the 4 C’s like brown and gray color tinge or noticeably blurry material that doesn’t sparkle.
These defective characteristics can get so bad and so obvious that even a non-diamond expert can tell with the naked eye. This effectively means that there are now two categories of lab diamonds in the marketplace: those that look like natural diamonds and those that don’t.
I’ve been raising the alarm about this for a few years now. In some of my past Reddit posts, I posited this eminent bifurcation of lab diamond quality and that consumers would be none the wiser. Now that reality has come true. Two lab diamonds priced significantly in cost from one another likely will not look the same, and those quality characteristics beyond the 4 C’s are directly tied to the cost of production.
My organization continues to see relatively stable pricing for the absolute best quality lab diamonds that look natural, have great make and sparkle, and the cleanest, clearest material. That’s because those lab diamonds are more expensive to produce than the lower cost ones.
We have seen a decline in wholesale pricing for lab diamonds that do not pass our quality control standards, with differences as high as 4x the cost.
The number one question we get asked about lab diamonds: can you tell the difference between a lab diamond and a mined diamond with the naked eye? For years, we said no; and for some inventory out there, the answer remains no.
But with the surging prevalence of low-quality material in the marketplace, the new answer: it depends, and for a lot of the lab diamonds being produced today, yes you can tell the difference.
Is it possible to get a lab diamond that you love, that happens to be super cheap and available from e-commerce? Yes, of course.
Will it be beautiful? I don't know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’m here to talk about lab diamond quality and what is causing this phenomenon, not whether you may or may not have been happy with your own lab diamond purchase.
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In this post I cover current market conditions for lab diamonds, the defects that can arise in low quality CVD and HPHT, and where the industry needs to go to satisfy consumer demand for natural-looking, nice material lab diamonds in the medium and short term.
For expediency and to make this post readable and usable by the public, I have admittedly simplified some very complex scientific topics. You will see me intentionally use qualifying language like “may,” “most,” “often,” “majority of,” etc.
For the sake and sanity of other Redditors, please refrain from corner-case combatting my post with edge cases. Recognize that I am here to provide guidance and insight on the industry at a high level, and I do not have the ability to cover every single exception in a Reddit post (nor would anyone read it).
How We Got Here
Over the last 3 years, the lab diamond industry has seen both an explosion in demand as well as a significant increase in the number of CVD growers around the world. During COVID, diamond mining and HPHT diamond growing stayed shut much longer than CVD diamond growing. This led to a number of diamond cutting facilities (mostly in India) in need of rough to cut.
In what can only be called a boom era, the number of CVD growers increased, with nascent aspirational growers purchasing re-purposed Japanese reactors of varying quality, many of which are fundamentally flawed technology that leak nitrogen into the reactor. People who had no business growing lab diamonds entered the market, and a lot of them still don’t know what they’re doing. After all, it’s not particularly hard to grow lab diamonds; but it is hard to grow them well.
The manufacturing (cutting) side of diamonds couldn’t get enough. Existing CVD growers started getting pressured (pun intended) to produce more and more with their existing equipment. They started using shortcuts: truncated growth cycles by running the machines hotter and faster; using and re-using cheap seeds; using cheaper hydrocarbon gases; and introducing catalysts like nitrogen or compensating boron to increase production to the maximum degree physically possible.
Lab diamonds got faster and cheaper to produce, but not better. The technology didn’t improve. In fact, these shortcuts came with consequences like color tinges, crystal strain, and lackluster material.
This expansion was accelerated by a sudden uptick in demand over the last 2 years due to consumer education, the lifting of COVID restrictions, a strong US economy and dollar, a war in Ukraine that brought attention to the “conflict” nature of Russian mined diamonds, and a desire for bigger, better at lower cost by the US consumer.
Indeed, lab diamonds are representing an ever-increasing percentage of fine jewelry sold by both independent and online jewelers and will continue to gain market share in the months and years ahead.
However, demand for fine jewelry and luxury goods in general has begun to dip in recent weeks as impacts of inflation, layoffs, fears of recession, crypto crashes, uncertainty around the election, and rising interest rates hamper consumer spending. CVD growers historically operate on extremely low profit margins, meaning that any reduction in demand can have immediate financial consequences.
Manufacturers who bought poor quality lab diamond rough have found themselves in a tough spot: they have a glut of cut and polished inventory with gray and brown tinge and crystal strain, and they need to get rid of it. Historically they’ve been able to offload their inventory to wholesalers in mixed parcels (literally mixed bags of good and bad lab diamonds), but wholesalers have gotten smart about gray/brown tinge and are forcing manufacturers and growers to sell them lab diamonds individually. This has left the lower quality material without a home.
To save cost, some growers have even stopped capturing 360 videos, opting instead to trade their goods entirely by the grading report. This kind of forced selling strategy is obviously concerning as it can lead to fraudulent behavior.
This confluence of events has had a sudden impact on pricing at the wholesale level, forcing some vendors to panic-sell their existing inventory at a loss. This will leave many of those vendors with little to no ability to re-invest in quality inventory in the future, compounding the use of any means necessary to reduce production costs going forward. This requirement to produce more for less can exacerbate a competitive environment in which the actions of a few growers may force higher quality growers to use shortcuts themselves.
This is a downward spiral that likely gets worse before it gets better. This will inevitably lead to the demise of some growers and may cause a reduction in lab diamond supply in the medium term. Simply put: a lot of lab diamond growers who had no business being in this business need to sell out now, or risk going out of business.
If this truly is an industry shakeout, the question remains: will the free market reward the cheapest producers of lab diamonds, or the best? Only time will tell.
Output = Quality
Understanding wide discrepancies in lab diamond pricing requires an understanding of both lab diamond growth as well as wholesale market dynamics.
On the growth side, lab diamond costs of production are associated with how quickly they can be grown. This dictates both the quantity and quality of output. Various shortcuts can alter the output of a CVD grower by 4-5x by adding catalysts and speeding up growth.
What this means:

• If you use shortcuts, you can grow 5x more diamonds
• If you use shortcuts, you can grow the same quantity of diamonds in one-fifth the time
• If you use shortcuts, you can grow the same quantity of diamonds at one-fifth the cost

These shortcuts present lower quality lab diamonds as it relates to the 4 C’s. Warmer color lab diamonds of G, H, and I color are much less expensive to produce than DEF, even with treatment. Rap pricing for these goods has largely “solved” for that phenomenon.
But the real issue lies beyond the 4 C’s. Grading labs are not responsible for reporting on all subjective aspects of a diamond. Instead, reports cover a diamond’s basic quality characteristics as it relates to carat, color, clarity (and for rounds, cut). Color is graded for the presence of any color, not just yellow, culet up. Material issues like strain are not reported as part of clarity.
Below my summary I go in deeper into explanations around BGS and BGP. I could easily expand this post to be dozens of pages long with tons of examples, but for the sake of brevity I’ve kept this high level, and I've not covered every aspect of quality beyond the 4 c's. If you’d like me to expand on some of these topics, just comment. I’ll try my best to do a follow up post or DM you more information.
TL:DR Summary & Where We Go From Here
The lab diamond industry is at risk of losing consumer confidence that a lab diamond is the same, chemically, as a natural diamond. This is especially true if the products do not look the same to a lay person. This in turn can make a consumer question the purchase of a lab diamond altogether.
I was recently challenged on this by a fellow Redditor who asked me: “How can 2 different F VS1 labs look different? Isn't that the entire point of ratings/grading?” before asking if what I had said was “all BS.”
This is a reasonable question, and the answer is that I wish you could simply rely on the grading labs. The discrepancies in lab diamond quality require significant capital investment from sellers who want to guarantee quality.
What should consumers know? There are gorgeous lab diamonds out there, some that rival the world’s best natural diamonds. There are lab diamonds that look indistinguishable from natural diamonds of the same 4 C’s. And they’re available from all manner of sellers.
However, this is still a free market that puts a premium on quality. You shouldn’t be surprised to pay more to get more.
How can you ensure you make a good purchase? Trust the seller and make sure they know what they’re selling to you. If that’s your local jeweler who you have a great relationship with, great. If that’s an e-commerce site, that’s awesome.
I’m not advocating for one retailer over another. Obviously as a lab diamond retailer myself, I am not objective. However, I wouldn’t personally buy a lab diamond totally sight unseen, even with over 6 years and 15,000 lab diamonds behind me. And if you saw what I saw on a weekly basis, you wouldn’t either.
Videos are incredibly deceptive, prone to gray tones, and easy to dupe. I find 360 videos in many cases to be detrimental to in-person QC, not helpful.
Be safe, be smart, and when in doubt, listen to Warren Buffet: “If you don’t know jewelry, know your jeweler.”
BGS: The CVD Defects You Need to Know
A re-cap on CVD growth: CVD diamonds are grown by placing a lab grown diamond seed into a vacuum chamber, introducing hydrocarbon gas (methane), hydrogen, and using microwave energy to break apart the methane. The carbon rains down and deposits on the seed, growing vertically layer by layer in the shape of a cube.
Six main things contribute to how a CVD diamond looks: the quality of the seed used, how many growth cycles a diamond goes through, how hot/fast you try to run the machine, the quality of the methane gas used, whether or not accelerators like nitrogen are added to the reactor, and whether or not you conduct treatments to the crystal, mid or post growth.
B is for Brown
Brown tinge \"H\" color lab diamond
If you run a CVD machine too hot and too fast or if you can’t fully control your plasma, the resulting crystal has more voids at an atomic level and hence, looks brown. Growth catalysts like nitrogen can increase brown. The fastest and easiest way to reduce brown is to simply use a post-growth HPHT treatment. But the better and cleaner way is to run your machine more slowly.
Running your machine more slowly = time = lower output = less revenue.
How it appears to the naked eye: quite literally, brown. Since diamonds are graded for color by the presence of any color, culet up, a CVD diamond can yellowy, brown, or gray in tone. How a lab diamond looks table up can also be very different from culet up since the brown color is cause by voids and not necessarily nitrogen.
Here is a video showing two G colors. The diamond on the left is brown in tinge.
G is for Gray
Gray tinged \"H\" color lab diamond
Treatment of a brown lab diamond can cause a gray hue. This is a result of collapsing voids in the crystal structure as well as exposing graphite deposits in the crystal. During post growth treatment, it’s also possible that carbon atoms revert back to graphitic bonds around the vacancies, leaving microscopic bubbles of gray graphite in the diamond. The gray tone can vary from mild to severe. Even color grades as high as D can have telltale signs of post growth treatment leaving behind a gray hue.
To be clear, post growth treatment of nicer quality CVD can result in beautiful material. Treatment of low quality material can look gray. Garbage in, garbage out.
How it appears to the naked eye: not just gray tinge, but overall dark and lifeless.
Here is a video of a gray-tinged F color lab diamond (left) next to a natural looking E color lab diamond (right).
Is it possible to find brown and gray natural diamonds? Yes. However, the reasons for the tinge is different, how it looks to the naked eye is different, and how those tinges are disclosed is different ("chocolate," "salt and pepper," vs white diamonds).
S is for Strain
Crystal strain in CVD (likely caused by low quality multi-sector seeds)
Crystal strain is blurriness in the crystal caused primarily by the using and re-using of cheap, multi-sector low quality seeds. Good quality seeds versus low quality seeds can vary up to 30-40x in cost!
Strain is due to edge dislocations, or half complete sheets of carbon during the deposit stage of CVD. This creates a warping or stretching of the carbon crystal lattice (basically an uneven carbon structure). If the layers of carbon are not evenly aligned because they’re depositing on an uneven surface, the light scatters inside of the diamond causing birefringence (inconsistent light refraction).
Strain is exacerbated by growth catalysts like nitrogen which speed up production but worsen blurriness.
How it appears to the eye: windex streaks; it looks like you cannot get the diamond clean. It’s blurry and lacks sparkle. Crystal strain does not contribute to clarity grades.
S is also for Striations
Blurry, out of focus material from several growth runs (striations) in CVD
Most CVD diamonds are not grown in one run, but rather in several runs, starting and stopping the machine several times. This iterative growth creates inconsistency in the carbon structure because a CVD reactor at start up has a completely different plasma environment than a CVD reactor running at a steady state.
The simplest analogy I can use is baking a cake, where midway through baking, you add a new layer of batter to the top. Thirty minutes later it’s still a cake, but now the consistency is wrong.
Hence, the CVD diamond can develop striations, or rings of diamond growth. These are easily seen under high-powered deep UV-C light, which requires specialized equipment. All CVD have some level of stria (plural of striation), and some of is not problematic. But extensive growth layers (5+) can make the carbon deposit incorrectly, causing light to scatter and escape in the crystal. The telltale signs are dark rings that run parallel to the table and indicate where the CVD reactor started and stopped.
The more growth cycles the diamond goes through, the cheaper it was to produce. Running your CVD reactor slow enough to reduce growth cycles is significantly more expensive.
How it appears to the eye: the diamond is quite literally out of focus with the carbon layers so misaligned that it looks like you cannot see straight into the crystal. It results in dull, lifeless material. Striations do not contribute to clarity or cut grades.
BGP: The HPHT Defects You Need to Know:
A quick re-cap on how HPHT diamonds are grown:

1. Small diamond seeds are placed in an insulated growth cell made of Salt and Zirconia.
2. A metal powder is poured over the diamond seeds, which acts as both a solvent and catalyst for the diamond growth
3. Graphite is added on top of the metal
4. The growth cell is then sealed and placed at the center of the HPHT pressure cooker.
5. The growth cell is subjected to 1 million psi of pressure, and heated to 1500 °C.
6. The solvent-catalyst metal melts into a liquid.
7. The carbon above the metal slowly melts as well, and transits through the liquid metal and eventually adheres to the small diamond seeds, growing the crystal atom by atom. It is also possible to re-start HPHT growth on top of existing rough.

B is for Blue
Blue tinged HPHT lab diamond
Because HPHT diamonds are not grown in a vacuum, they are exposed to our atmosphere which is 78% nitrogen. Hence, HPHT diamonds for decades were contaminated with nitrogen and a bright golden orange yellow color.
To grow colorless diamonds, growers must properly prepare the metal discs for those seeds and reduce gapping where nitrogen can leak into the growth cell. This is extremely time consuming and expensive. It simply faster and cheaper to add a significant amount of a ‘compensator’ that cancels out the nitrogen: boron.
If the growers add too little boron, their diamonds are still goldish brown. If the growers add too much boron, the diamonds turn a bluish hue.
Generally speaking, a bluish hue in a lab diamond can be problematic because 1. It can look noticeably different from a white diamond, and 2. It can be mistaken for another gemstone because of its blue color.
Diamonds with present boron are considered type IIb and exist in both lab grown and natural diamonds. However, Type IIb blue-tinged natural diamonds make up less than 0.1% of the gem-quality market. These are also so rare that they are often unaffordable to the public, especially in bridal sizes of 1.5ct+ where they can sell in the millions of dollars, not thousands.
Hence, when I refer to blue tinge as being “unnatural looking,” I am referring to the fact that effectively zero regular consumers could “accidentally” buy a blue natural diamond for an engagement ring. So a lab diamond with a blue hue may be different enough in appearance from a white natural diamond that someone could easily spot the color tinge and question the material.
A blue tinged lab diamond may be fine with you as a consumer, and if you know what you’re buying, that’s great! But it’s still considered a defect.
Some retailers who know very little about the product will confuse a blue tinge with strong blue fluorescence. They are not the same thing.
G is for Gray
A gray tinged HPHT diamond
Instead of using boron, some growers will use titanium or aluminum as ‘getters’ or ‘compensators’ for present nitrogen. When this happen, microscopic titanium carbide crystals can form within the grown diamond which can give the diamond a gray appearance. Gray tinge can also be from irradiating a blue nuanced HPHT stone to try and heal the blue color.
I put a video here of a grayish blue HPHT next to a natural looking HPHT.
P is for Phosphorescence (glow in the dark)
The presence of boron can also cause an HPHT diamond to have bright phosphorescence, which is an orange or blue glow seen after exposure to long wave UV light (such as sunlight), or a standard blacklight. This is problematic because it is visible in the course of everyday life and does not require jeweler’s or specialized equipment to see it. Even a few seconds in direct sunlight can activate the boron. Moving from sunlight to a dark room, an HPHT diamond can glow in the dark, with the glow lingering for several minutes or even hours. This can make the diamond look cloudy/milky in low light environments.
Phosphorescence is not the same thing as fluorescence.
I put an entire post up about this on Reddit.
On left: a handheld UV light (the same as sunlight). At right: obvious phosphorescence zoning. This did not require any sophisticated equipment to see.
The grading laboratories do not offer any information regarding phosphorescence on a certificate. It is only something you can test for in person.
Growers are always looking for ways to mask their sins or reduce their costs. One of the ways that growers may be reducing phosphorescence is by putting the HPHT diamond through an irradiation treatment. This is not the same thing as annealing and instead uses an electron beam to permanently alter the crystal. The main problem with this method is that it turns the crystal a slate blue-gray color which looks very strange in person.
You may think it's super cool that your lab diamond glows in the dark. As long as you know what you're buying, that's great! But it can have consequences. I have personally seen strong phosphorescence in an HPHT diamond affect its appearance in low light environments for hours. This is not a hypothetical academic concept; it is real.
Type IIb natural diamonds can also experience phosphorescence but the way it appears (notably via zoning) is not the same between lab grown and natural.
How to Avoid Buying a Defective Lab Diamond:

1. Understand the objectives of grading labs such as GIA, IGI, and GCAL
2. Acknowledge the shortcomings of 360° videos to assess a lab diamond
3. See lab diamonds side-by-side to see the blue, brown, and blurriness
4. Check HPHT diamonds for phosphorescence
5. Find a knowledgeable jeweler with substantial experience with lab diamonds.

JediMasterZao Significant_Advice28
I didn't want to leave this stone unturned. I bit the bullet and went ahead and decided I WANTED to try 'THE WORST SIMPLY BARE PRODUCT' ...
Well. I had been warned. Turns out JediMasterZao was spot on on his review. A slight taste of orange zest... a tea biscuit finish ... and otherwise a flower that is less appealing than my cherry ak I had from 1964 before that.
But, I don't know how the others are finding it after a while.. it's special in the sense that I'm sometimes under a sativa high... sometimes slow like under a good indica... and that is surprising.
(It is said to be indica dominant on SB's website. )
Also interesting, this strain is FVOPA certified (so it's certified Organic and Bio both in Canada and the US) ! https://www.fvopa.ca/steps-to-certification/
It does hit, but when you think you were smoking a dud and reviews were even being generous ... then it hits you .. ...
Honestly not a product I would buy again, but still glad to be enjoying it !
My fav was the white runtz, followed by a tie between the banana and the nitro cherry, followed by the gassy pebbles, and then this bc orange animal.
It's both a potent indica and a potent sativa... but it's a bit of a roller coaster.
Buds are sticky, but they barely stick 1-2 seconds because they are way fluffier than any simply bare I ever had.
The smell when you open the bag hits you like a tangerine dream... then as other said.. it goes into a simple orange zest.. then even that fades away... to leave a Goglu biscuit (tea biscuit) smell.
Ashes are salt-and-pepper. Does provide a nice oil ring.
It's not the smoothest simply bare! at all! .. it's indeed my least favorite ... yet still way ahead of other players.
Plus side : being fluffy made it the 'fullest' bag I had from SB.
Still a happy camper. Had to try it .. but I will know that both gentlemans and a few others here .
For instance I know MarkyRoll thinks like me ... I saw your comment 'I was wondering the exact same thing' ... well ... bro you can skip this one... many branches have some white runtz now ... get that if you can :D Worst case... just throw some orange peal in your mason jar with some buds ... you'll have a better sesh.
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tl;dr Short-Term Doom, Long-Term Prosperity
I will start with energy, because that is where the economy starts. Everything is energy. All production, all consumption. Debt is just a claim on future energy/resources, and is typically purchased on the expectation of repayment of principal/interest (money is just tokenized energy), based upon an expectation of real economic growth of the debt issuer (assuming interest rates are positive). When you live in a world where everyone has more energy to use and consume on an annualized basis, economies see real growth. The opposite also usually holds true, absent financialization tricks to mask the decline. So, where are we today? Conveniently BP has excellent data on this stuff going back to 1965, and keeps it here:
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
You can download a spreadsheet there called “Statistical Review of World Energy – all data, 1965-2021.” It has a handy tab called “Primary Energy – Cons capita,” which tells you what the annual per capita consumption of energy is in gigajoules, broken out into various geographic groupings. Here is what that looks like for roughly the first decade of data:
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Notice how energy consumption per capita is trending upwards from 1965 to 1973? Those were pretty good times. America had cheap and abundant domestically produced conventional onshore crude oil, and a massive manufacturing base that thrived off of it in the glory days after WWII when we dominated pretty much every market that existed. Unfortunately, in 1973 this thing called an energy crisis happened, as our conventional production was going into decline, and Europe, Japan, and other economic competitors were back on their feet after WWII and seeking to increase their share of the economic pie (using energy).
Note the consistent declines in global energy consumption per capita and OECD consumption per capita during 1974 and 1975. So, what did the S&P 500 do in 1973 when this energy crisis suddenly arrived on the market?
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From January ’73 to October ’74, the S&P 500 lost about half of its value. Business plans, debt, and earnings all ran into the hard wall of an energy crunch and reset market expectations as inflation driven by energy shortages reared its ugly head. The E on the P/E side of the equation changed suddenly, and anything based on TTM or pre-crunch estimates was total garbage.
Around this same timeframe, some relevant events also happened. In 1971, Nixon took us off the gold standard and ended the monetary system (Bretton Woods) that had existed since WWII ended. Prior to that dollars could be exchanged for gold at a set rate, but some stagflation in 1971 made the whole system unstable and unworkable for America, so it had to go. By the time the energy crunch hit in 1973, the US knew it needed to do something to stabilize its supply of energy, its global reserve currency, and its access to real assets to fund future growth. So in July 1974, Nixon sends his new Treasury Secretary, former Salomon Brothers bond trader Bill Simon, to Saudi Arabia on a top secret mission. Bloomberg learned about it from a FOIA request decades later, and wrote a cool article about it:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold-story-behind-saudi-arabia-s-41-year-u-s-debt-secret
Here’s the tl;dr on the article, from the article itself:
“The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending”
That word petrodollar is also important. In early 1945 FDR entered into an alliance with Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia agreed to sell and price oil in dollars. Most other oil producing nations of the world quickly joined the club, and we liked this. If countries outside of the Soviet system needed energy to grow their economies, they needed reserves of dollars, and debt denominated in dollars. We will return to this topic later.
So, we had obtained a fat stack of funding from the Saudis to dig our way out of this energy crisis thing. The process was pretty rocky, resulting in the 1970s, but eventually this nice man named Paul Volcker ratcheted interest rates high enough so that the stagflation could be beaten into submission, while around the same time enough capital had reached E&P companies to enable capex to flood the market with new cheap energy, turning boomtowns of the 1970s like Houston into ghost towns in the 1980s. Newly developed offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico and North Sea pumped energy like it was going out of style, and the market had a really good time for about 20 years.
Since all of that energy came online in the early 1980s, global consumption per capita has generally trended upwards every year until 2018. We kept finding new ways to economically pull oil and gas out of the ground (new fields, deepwater, fracking shale), and get it into the hands of consumers so they could use more of it to grow the economy. This lifted billions of people out of poverty, allowed the agricultural revolution to feed them with nitrogen fertilizers made from natural gas feedstock, and provided predictably priced (mostly) inputs for heavy industry. This was an all around great thing for business, and American Boomers as a group made a metric fuckton of money riding the wave during the entirety of their working lives.
So, what does the most recent decade of BP per capita energy consumption data look like?
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Pretty much a plateau globally from 2011-16, small increase in 2016, top in 2018, and downwards trend since (with 2020 being a big down anomaly for obvious reasons). There’s variation around that whether you look at OECD, EU, Non-OECD, but the peak for all of them is 2018. People have less energy to work with today than they did four years ago.
Unless more energy gets injected into the system, it is very hard to stimulate real growth, and financial instruments (like bonds) that track anticipated real growth reflect that with high prices and low (or even negative) interest rates. In a world where everything is growing, I want my loans to at least reflect the real rate of economic growth, otherwise I am losing money. Looked at bond yields over the past decade lately? They didn’t seem to be pricing in a lot of real growth at any duration. Why do you think that is?
People can argue about the definition of peak oil all they want, but 2018 appears to be at least a localized peak when scaled to global population. The key to reversing this is producing enough energy at a reasonable price, so that people can start using more of it. That would reflect an economy that is growing in real terms. That takes lots of money. Which brings us to the next chapter of this story, a very brief overview of geopolitical stuff that happened from the fall of the Soviet Union to the recent start of World War III.
The year is 1991, the Soviet Union falls and this country called Russia suddenly has a lot of available energy reserves that previously weren’t getting a lot of circulation outside of the walled-off Soviet Sphere. These abundant energy reserves were recognized immediately for what they could be: a giant engine of additional economic growth to fuel the 1990s and beyond. That’s what happened. A country in Europe called Germany had this bright idea to build out a massive heavy industrial and manufacturing base, fueled by cheap Russian natural gas, which could easily be pipelined in from the fields in western Russia and eastern Ukraine. The plan worked, and Germany became an economic powerhouse with a massive trade surplus. Germany did not control the energy it used, though, so its position was precarious. To make matters worse from an economic perspective, over time Germany decided it did not like cheap energy due to environmental concerns, and had this very intense political aversion to nuclear power (another cheap, energy-dense method of generating baseload electricity). So, Germany decided to get rid of its nuclear reactor fleet, reduce its number of coal powerplants, and replace them with natural gas power turbines for baseload electricity generation, supplemented by semi-reliable solar and wind power, which is not suitable for baseload generation.
Eventually this brutal mafia boss named Putin takes over the country, and becomes President for Life of Russia’s energy reserves. He does not care for America, has actively sought to collapse us for decades, did not like the fact that he was forced to sell oil in dollars, and would do anything he thought he could get away with to make Russia strong vs. its competitors, especially America.
Fast forward to his invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. The U.S./Eurozone/Allied response was to hit Putin and Russia with sanctions. Much like prioexisting sanctions on Iraqi or Iranian oil, these sanctions did nothing to actually keep his oil and gas off the market. Putin did not like the sanctions or Allied support for Ukrainians, so he decided to weaponize his most strategic resource: natural gas flows to Europe. Eventually we got to here, where Germany’s 30-year economic miracle died almost overnight:
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That is decades of GDP that just got wiped out, on top of all sorts of weird multi-sigma anomalies like $1.5 Trillion margin calls in European electricity futures markets. None of the stonks you own have priced in this reality. Not even remotely. Bonds have seen a ton of volatility (check the MOVE index), and it is really hard to find buyers for treasuries with this much uncertainty around future real economic growth prospects, while this thing called the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, and starting to sell lots of bonds into this market.
There are billions upon billions of dollars of formerly productive assets sitting in Europe now, completely cut off from reasonably priced energy supplies that allow those assets to be economically competitive. Capitalism really does not like these sorts of inefficiencies, and is designed to fix them, so that costs of production can be as low as possible and competitive. It takes staggering amounts of resources and capital to just move production like that from where it is no longer competitive, to areas where it can be (like on the opposite side of the Atlantic, close to America’s and Canada’s abundant energy resources). Russia probably wouldn’t mind buying that stuff at firesale prices and building out a manufacturing economy of its own next to its own energy resources, but America really would not like that, and the existence of sanctions makes that maneuver pretty difficult. As far as America is concerned, we paid for all of that stuff through an investment called the Marshall Plan about 70 years ago, specifically so that Russia could not have it.
And now we come to the Federal Reserve and the Petrodollar. The federal reserve has only two priorities: (1) full employment; and (2) price stability. Employment is currently close to all-time highs. Price stability is at a place not seen since the 1970s. As we have reached the edge of our petri dish during a supercycle of energy and economic growth, the fuel is dwindling, from both natural (depleting reserves) and unnatural (war) causes. The show simply cannot go on at these levels. We are constantly bumping up against the limits of energy, and it is creating chaos in the availability of reasonably priced energy, which affects commodities and food, which causes inflation, and which restricts real growth. The energy crunch is here.
You can’t just print more dollars and create more energy instantaneously. Europe is about to try by printing Euros to provide subsidies for energy that it doesn’t produce, which isn’t priced in Euros, alongside price caps over the world’s most essential commodity, which it doesn’t control. The UK is getting in on this act, too. This will cause two things: (1) hyperinflation; and (2) energy shortages and rationing.
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Meanwhile, that Putin guy is now demanding payment in Rubles for his oil and gas. He wants valuable real assets (foreign currency, hard assets, technology transfers, whatever) for his stuff, just like America gets from the Petrodollar. He is also refusing to sell it to anyone who tries to cap the price of his stuff. This, more than the Ukraine invasion itself, has caused World War III. It is a direct attack on the supremacy of the Petrodollar, which America cannot abide. The Petrodollar is central to our national security strategy. Recently Saudi Arabia has entered the chat, and agreed to sell its oil to Europe and Asia at reduced rates (not fully priced in dollars). It is not clear to me at this point if this is a temporary relief valve to our allies to relieve forex pressures, or if the Saudis have allied with Putin. The fog of war is real, and events are unfolding in real time, but markets hate uncertainty.
Turning back quickly to the hyperinflation issue, what will be the effect of the European countries printing not-dollars to subsidize energy they don’t produce or control in sufficient quantities to meet their needs? The hyperinflation will definitely affect citizens and some businesses quite harshly (Goldman Sachs says 20%+ in the UK, and a government spokesperson affirmed that this was a reasonable estimate). It will also have the effect of concentrating national wealth in a handful of energy production and distribution related industries that are vital to the national security of those countries. Enter the Federal Reserve and America’s greatest weapon (we actually use it, unlike our nuclear stockpile): interest rates and the Petrodollar.
Used properly interest rates and the petrodollar become a many birds with one stone solution to a lot of nagging problems. One, with recent large pro-Putin protests in the Czech Republic, Germany, and other Eurozone countries facing staggering and bankrupting energy bills, there is a risk that these countries could leave Team America, and try to cut a deal with Putin. It would take a while to get past the sanctions, but where there’s political will there’s a way. This outcome is unacceptable to America and can never be permitted.
As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and sells its massive bond stockpile to combat inflation arising out of the energy crunch, much like it did in the 1970s, all sorts of second and third-order effects start happening, like sovereign debt crises. Countries keep reserves of dollars to buy energy, and as a result of regularly needing to transact in dollars, issue dollar-denominated debt. As interest rates in the US rise and bonds are sold, the global supply of dollars decreases. It is harder to get dollars, and foreign currencies dependent upon a stable or growing supply of dollars depreciate. They need to use more of their own currency to get the same amount of dollars that they used to. Much like the energy situation, a supply/demand imbalance arises. Also, quite a lot of the record high levels of corporate debt around the world are priced in dollars. That debt was also issued predicated upon growth assumptions that probably did not include an energy crisis, World War III, and stagflation. As you might imagine, this can cause a lot of problems.
Why then, do you ask, would America keep raising rates and selling bonds when markets are screaming “hey guys, big energy crisis over here, maybe turn on the liquidity a bit more”? Well, the amount of liquidity it would take to patch the gaping hole in German GDP is beyond anything we can reasonably do. That would lead to hyperinflation in America, which can never be allowed. The only thing that truly threatens the accumulated wealth of a nation (which the Federal Reserve protects in America) is hyperinflation. It killed the Weimar Republic, and it will kill what we currently recognize as the European economy. The wealthy and wealth of this country can survive market crashes, but not hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is an economic weapon of mass destruction, and you just can’t predict the outcome with any reasonable certainty (other than real bad).
Also, we are kinda tapped on liquidity after the Covid money fountain, and finding ourselves at the end of a business/debt cycle while we bump up against the chaotic limits of available energy. So, what happens when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and sells bonds to continue tightening liquidity into this mess? Something in the global economy pops, starting in Europe (remember that $1.5 Trillion margin call in electricity futures). Hyperinflation destroys their economies, and they need a bailout/reset. In return for the bailout, we can give them the dollars they desperately want (we can create them at will). In return we only ask for all of their critical, national-security adjacent energy assets, which American capital can then operate for them starting from Europe’s new, lower baseline of reset economic growth. Some of the plant and equipment (natural gas turbines, very nice), along with intellectual property, can also be used to develop a more robust manufacturing economy here in America, close to comparatively cheap and abundant supplies of energy. We have done this with our allies before. In March of 1941, before America entered WWII, we sent the UK about 40 mothballed, decrepit destroyers from storage, and all we asked for in return was postwar dissolution of the British Empire and control over the global monetary system. It was a really amazing deal for America. We have profited immensely.
The other part of the puzzle is the staggering amounts of capital that will be needed to properly invest in energy and manufacturing infrastructure in America over the next decade. We basically have to onshore Germany, and replicate their trade balance that just vanished, plus some if we want actual growth. That is just a crazy amount of money, but we have to do it. The problem is that a huge chunk of our economy’s money is tied up in the stonks you retards have been buying hand over fist at a time when bond yields were screaming “NO REAL GROWTH.” Reversing this trend means inversing you. Your stonks gotta be crushed so that we can reset our growth baseline back to something reasonable, providing a multi-year runway of growth that will not bump up against energy limitations and make everything chaotic again. Once that happens, the Fed can turn the money spigot back on and the high interest rates will ensure that capital is allocated efficiently to the sectors where it will be most productive, like energy and manufacturing.
In the short to medium term this is going to be a rather volatile and unpleasant process, if you are not aware of what needs to happen. The old world of globalization is over. The heavy industry and production will be relocated here on our fortress continent, where we can keep our investment safe from bad actors like Russia in an increasingly dangerous world. The pivot is not coming until the reset happens. If you love America, sell your stonks and wait for the crash (or gamble on the timing of it like a degenerate with puts or UVXY, which I am doing), then go long as balls American treasuries, energy, manufacturing, and short dollars so the rest of the world can buy all the stuff we are about to make so we can all prosper. The Fed is on our side. You can make money in any market as long as you are flexible.
In the meantime I will conclude with a few fun bearporn centerfolds that I collected from around the internet:
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Gooooooooooooooooooooooood news everyone
Update: Bloons TD 6 v33.2 - Patch Notes!

Changes

• Paragon limit was planned to be removed from base gameplay in this update but unfortunately, we have had a bug with this and the limit is still in place. This will be coming in 33.3! Read more about this reasoning over here

Fixes

• Resolved an issue where Doomship’s ability targeting could miss-align from target points
• Resolved a crash quickly double pressing Race! button
• Resolved a crash when closing the app in the Race Event screen
• Resolved a crash that could occur exiting custom input mode for a destroyed tower
• Resolved a crash that could occur returning to main menu
• Resolved a crash that could occur with low quality devices attempting to join boss lobbies as settings are being changed
• Resolved a crash that could occur when opening the race event screen without having previously downloaded the player's online data
• Resolved an issue where Bloonarious Prime's path switching art asset was not displaying correctly
• Resolved an issue that could occur when exiting out of Boss Menu as rewards are being distributed
• Resolved a possible infinite load screen issue
• Resolved an Arcade version issue with names displayed incorrectly under Content Browser

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Update: Bloons TD 6 v33.1 - Patch Notes!

Changes

• Base game paragon count restriction increased to 4 in response to feedback that with a restriction having support for 4 player co-op to each push for a paragon is more fair
  • We have heard even more clearly from the community that this was a frustrating change, even for players who didn’t push for multiple paragons. We’re certainly not happy that our balance-focused decision has created such concern, and we certainly don’t want nerf-blaster toting giant head monkes showing up at our doors.
  • Superceding the 33.0 notes, we are planning for 34.0:
    • Continued review of the use of Paragons and discussion with community and creators around Paragon limits overall
    • Maintain a default of 4 Paragons in Boss Events and CT, but allow this to be edited per event, consistent with the Content Browser feature below
    • Provide the Content Browser feature previously discussed, to allow individual Paragons to be excluded and total Paragon limits to be edited for maximum challenge creation flexibility
• Intro animation for CT will no longer play together with the "Daily Bonus" popup
• Added Tile Recap title & pop-up to recap mode in Contested Territory

Fixes

• Resolved an issue with Sentries not placing on Covered Gardens
• Resolved visual issues related to disconnecting and rejoining a co-op game on Covered Garden
• Resolved visual issues related to modified starting round on Covered Garden challenges
• Resolved an issue with xx4 Buccaneers receiving a small income buff from the Navarch Paragon
• Resolved an issue with x3x Bomber Ace bombs exploding instantly on Covered Garden with no fall animation
• Resolved a crash loading a save using a Goliath Doomship set to wingmonkey
• Resolved some cases in which CT Building 3D elements would carry over into other parts of the game or become duplicated visually
• Resolved a crash that could occur when adding Geraldo to your Odyssey crew
• Resolved a crash that could occur when entering and backing out of the CT menu too quickly
• Resolved a crash that could occur on android devices that did not have google play installed

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Update: Bloons TD 6 v33.0 - Update Notes!

New Awesome

• New Paragon Tower - the Monkey Ace Goliath Doomship!
  • Endless jokes about big planes aside, we’ve been very excited to build and balance the first air Paragon!
  • While we resist thinking about Paragons as 5/5/5+ Monkey Towers, the Goliath Doomship did allow for logical blending of features from all 3 paths, plus we included a powerful activated ability that adds further tactical control that plays out usefully across various map shapes
  • At $800k cash, you will have to make sure your eco game is strong but Doomship’s power is balanced to that lofty setup cost
• New Halloween game icon
  • Your eyes are not failing, nor is your screen - our icon is simply celebrating the ghoulish colors of Halloween!
• New Maps
  • Advanced Map - Midnight Mansion
  • Intermediate Community designed map - Covered Garden from u/SuperPsou
• New Trophy Store Items
  • Heroes: Joan of Arc Adora - Dragon Pet
  • Monkeys: Monkey Ace - Dragonfly Pet
  • Co-op: Psigh emote
  • Game & UI: Banana Farmer - Banana Costume, Glue Trap - Honey Bee skin, Profile Banner - Patchwork, Profile Banner- Sun Rays, Profile Banner - Star Burst
  • Banner winner by DREAD_LEAD (Engineer Foam)
  • Banner winner by LordTeddington (Grand Master Ninja)
• New Limited Time Items: DDT Bloon Skin - Spider, Avatar - The Scream , Avatar - Monkey Brains.
• New CT Team Store Items
  • Building Prop: Fortified Castle
  • Base Props: Refracting Telescope, Pirate Crew
  • Water Prop: Mini Pirate Boat
  • Flying Prop: Moon Rabbit
  • Team Banners: Pet Frenzy banner, Contested Territory banner
  • Icons: Kung Fu Kiwi icon, All-Seeing Eyecon
  • Frames: Cognition frame, Ninja Scroll frame

Game Changes / Additions

• New Languages - Polish and “Monkelish” are now supported
• Team Browser - Added more intuitive UI to the "Advanced Search" panel
• Paragon tower placement restrictions
  • We’ve set a maximum of 3 per game in 33.0, as we now have a baseline of general purpose DPS paragons and want to move into more synergies and interesting mechanical interactions between them, which become more interesting when choices need to be made
  • We have heard the clear feedback from the community about this general restriction based on the preview notes and now plan to do the following in future major updates, or minor ones if feasible:
    • Increase the limit to 4, based on feedback about 4 player co-op in particular
    • Include a Content Browser editor function that allows players to set higher limits or unrestricted in player-created Content Browser games
• Contested Territory
  • The number of steps required to use Relics felt like too many, so we’ve removed Relic Voting from the team store. Now, when viewing any tile players will be able to pop up a full list of their available relics to personally select from.
  • To improve active team coordination we have allowed Vice-Mayors to also set focus markers on the CT map.
  • The total number of focus markers each team can set in CT has been increased from 1 to 4, to allow for diverse preference and strategies.
  • Contested Territory matchmaking improved for better groupings based on activity & overall rank.
  • Added a Daily Reward to welcome back players entering the Contested Territory event.
  • The Main Menu CT Icon now shows a pip displaying available tickets.
  • Tidied the CT Info panel up for much clearer readability.
  • Added a spooky Seasonal Theme to CT screens, in preparation for Halloween!
  • Added Discord & Steam Rich Presence for Contested Territory.
  • Team Banners can now be set on personal profiles, as long as your team owns that banner.
  • Over 32.4 to 33.0 we made general constant improvements to the balance of BanneRelic tile distribution over the CT map.

Bug Fixes & General Changes

• Team Island should correctly reflect your Team Color in CT
• Resolved an issue where loading a save and restarting would not allow you to earn a Black Border from that run
• Resolved a number of background errors in CT
• Changed team permissions so that Mayors can only only transfer leadership to members who have already been promoted to Vice-Mayors
• Changing search filters in Team Browser will now trigger a search
• Resolved an issue where disabling friend requests would not save
• Resolved a number of map specific placement issues
• Loading a profile from the cloud will no longer keep boss event saves
• Resolved a crash on using boss checkpoints
• Resolved an issue preventing some challenge codes from being searched
• Resolved an issue where powers could be disabled in unranked co-op Bosses
• Paragon towers should be correctly sold when their supporting arctic wind platform is removed
• Resolved an issue with the CT event main menu banner appearing prior to level 30
• Improvements made to camera zoom in CT
• Large texture cleanup for all Paragon towers
• Resolved an issue with logging out of accounts on some devices
• General cleanup and optimizations of the Team Store
• A number of localization issues resolved
• Resolved an issue where players could add duplicate entries to their Friends List
• Resolved an issue withy friends showing 'default' avatar for their highscores on maps
• Resolved a number of issues around joining and leaving Teams
• Resolved a number of cases in which the background for some menus would show entirely black
• Optimizations made to a number of large textures
• Team/Friends - Popup dialogs can no longer appear off screen
• Team Trophy balance now correctly updates visually upon purchase
• Resolved a minor graphical glitch on Frozen Over map when Cave Monkey is released
• Resolved an issue with heroes gaining more than one level at a time counting as tiers purchased with the least tiers ruleset
• Resolved an issue with missing or wrong badges displaying on CT leaderboards
• Resolved an issue with Team Search not allowing Space entries
• Resolved low quality splash screen issues
• Heroes are now purchasable from the upgrades menu in-game

Ice Monkey

• 5xx Embrittlement now slows MOABs the correct amount with permafrost
• 250 Absolute Zero now slows MOABs the correct amount with permafrost

Glue Gunner

• xx4 Relentless Glue no longer targets Bosses/BADs
• 104 Glue Gunner should no longer sometimes apply green glue assets

Monkey Sub

• 3xx Submerge subs should now submerge correctly on Quarry

Monkey Buccaneer

• Buccaneer paragon should no longer mis-align its platforms if upgraded from the trade empire

Super Monkey

• 025 Legend of the Night now correctly gains crosspath pierce

Pat Fusty

• Highlighting on Snowman Pat Fusty no longer disappears at Lv3
• Pat’s legs should no longer sometimes not sink into water when taking a dip

Admiral Brickell

• No longer clips into ship badly at Lv12

Psi

• Psi is now able to target Leads when the Alchemist Touch relic knowledge is equipped

Geraldo

• Description spelling errors resolved
• When fitting multiple sentry items on top of a flagship platform, these will now correctly relocate when creating the Paragon
• Rejuvenation Potion will no longer reset Paragon cooldowns

Desktop Version

• Added Linking Codes to Epic clients

Balance Changes

Freeplay
To encourage challenge diversity using the new extended list of preset rounds in freeplay, we have decided to make a tweak to freeplay income tax to drop it off slightly slower and allow a little more cash to be earned naturally in this range.

• Round 101+ natural income generation increased from 2% -> 5%
• Round 121+ natural income generation remains at 2%

Dart Monkey
As Sharpshooter’s crit occurrence didn’t feel frequent enough the overall attack rate has been increased also just to lead better into the T5’s already high rate of fire. Along with this all Crossbow criticals have been standardized, overall with T5 criticals occurring more frequently in exchange for a slight reduction in base pierce to improve Sharp Shot crosspath value. Apex Plasma Master excels generally for the cheapest paragon & how easy it is to start scaling early degrees so is seeing a rate decrease.

• xx4 Sharpshooter attack cooldown reduced from 0.75 > 0.6
• xx5 Crossbow Master attack cooldown unchanged
• xx4 Sharpshooter crit rate changed from 8-12 shots to every 10th
• xx5 Crossbow Master crit rate changed from 4-8 shots to every 5th
• xx5 Crossbow Master pierce reduced from 10 > 8
• Apex Plasma Master attack cooldown increased from 0.3 > 0.35

Tack Shooter
The Tack Zone’s all-purpose high single target & grouped DPS plus cleanup utility scales too well with so many options, as this is primarily intended to be the single-target damage path. To reinforce this we have traded off damage for a bonus to MOABs in order to nerf its unbuffed cleanup potential, so watch out for cluster and Super Ceramics now. Ring of Fire should pick up in that area for cleanup use & general destruction but it has more pierce than it really needs in most scenarios with other important stats sitting lower to compensate for high pierce, so we have shifted this high pierce more into requiring the pierce crosspath in exchange for more base power and an overall buff. Inferno Ring’s meteor will now also follow target priority since that was a fun idea that was worth adding.

• xx5 Tack Zone damage reduced from 2 > 1
• xx5 Tack Zone gains bonus damage to MOABs +1
• 4xx Ring of Fire attack cooldown reduced 0.4725 > 0.315 (buff of +25 > 50%)
• 4xx Ring of Fire pierce reduced from 60 > 40
• 4xx Ring of Fire damage increased from 3 > 5
• 5xx Inferno Ring damage increased from 4 > 8
• 5xx Inferno Ring MOAB bonus reduced from 6 > 4
• 5xx Inferno Ring attack speed unchanged
• 5xx Inferno Ring Meteor now follows Target Priority

Ice Monkey
Arctic Wind hardly gets used for its actual basic intended purpose, which would be cool to see used for more than just causing ice platform bug reports.

• Arctic Wind aura slow amount increased from 40 > 60%

Glue Gunner
We want to achieve an effect with Bloon Solver’s acid burning through the layers quickly but not instantly, though we haven’t so far achieved a good balance of this along with eliminating Super Ceramics in a timely manner, causing it to be disappointing or impractical on shorter maps. To solve this while retaining the vision we have boosted the ceramic bonus up significantly along with preventing this bonus from overflowing into the children layers.

• 5xx Bloon Solver DoT's Ceramic bonus damage increased from 2 -> 8
• 5xx Bloon Solver DoT’s increased Ceramic damage will not skip through extra children layers upon breaking the ceramic layer

Sniper Monkey
After the lower tier nerfs Elite Sniper still remains just a bit too good even without considering its cash production.

• x5x Elite Sniper price increased from $13,000 > 14,500

Monkey Buccaneer
Monkey Pirates is great for the first couple MOABs but with the long ability cooldown it very quickly falls off after that point, we have pushed it and Pirate Lord’s base stats up to feel more competitive especially with possible Brickell synergy. Trade Empire farming power even with the water requirement feels like it takes off too easily, so the bonus cash it provides will now require T4 Favored Trades for the full benefit.

• x4x Monkey Pirates Grapes damage increased 1 > 2
• x4x Monkey Pirates Grapes ceramic bonus increased 1 > 2
• x4x Monkey Pirates Cannonball explosion damage increased 2 > 3
• x4x Monkey Pirates Cannonball explosion moab bonus increased 0 > 6
• x4x Monkey Pirates price increased $4500 > 4900
• x5x Pirate Lord Grapes damage increased 5 > 10
• x5x Pirate Lord Grapes ceramic bonus increased 5 > 10
• x5x Pirate Lord Grapes burn damage increased 1 -> 9
• x5x Pirate Lord Cannonball explosion damage increased 2 -> 5
• x5x Pirate Lord Cannonball explosion moab bonus increased 0 -> 10
• x5x Pirate Lord Cannonball frags damage increased 1 -> 10
• x5x Pirate Lord Cannonball frags moab bonus increased 0 -> 5
• xx5 Trade Empire cash per round per merchant when applied to xx3 Merchantmen reduced $20 -> $15
• xx5 Trade Empire cash per round per merchant when applied to xx4 Favored Trades remains at $20

Monkey Ace
To help you work towards the new Ace Paragon we have reduced Spectre’s lategame ceramic weakness with improved targeting for the bomb projectiles & a large increase to their bonus Ceramic damage to help out later on, to change focus on these projectiles we have also shifted damage around for the darts to deal single target with the bombs providing ceramic AoE cleanup. Flying Fortress’s value drops off by the lategame when you can realistically afford it, so following on with this dart single target focus change at T4 we have added a large MOAB damage bonus to Flying Fortress darts.

• xx4 Spectre darts & bombs now both have a weaker homing effect
• xx4 Spectre dart damage increased from 2 > 3
• xx4 Spectre bomb damage reduced from 3 > 2
• xx4 Spectre bomb ceramic bonus increased from 2 > 4
• xx5 Flying Fortress darts now deal bonus damage to MOABs +10

Heli Pilot
Heli’s Razor Rotors don’t scale with higher tiers so improvements have been made specifically to that attack for Dartship & Apache Prime. Support Chinook use is too niche outside of farming for the high cost, so the upgrade cost along with that effective cash gain amount from ability usage has been lowered to retain the same farming while improving niche use. Downdraft has more general use throughout the game and scales better than the more expensive MOAB Shove upgrade though they both see use, so the price of these upgrades has been swapped around. Faster Darts xx1 upgrade will now increase the attack distance of Heli Dart attacks in order to assist with cluttering issues where large numbers of Helis will push each other away from nearby targets.

• 4xx Apache Dartship rotors damage increased 2 > 4
• 4xx Apache Dartship rotors pierce increased 10 -> 20
• 5xx Apache Prime rotors damage increased 2 > 8
• 5xx Apache Prime rotors pierce increased 10 -> 40
• x4x Support Chinook price reduced 12,000 -> 10,500
• x4x Support Chinook crate cash reduced $1800 -> 1650
• x3x Downdraft price increased 3000 -> 3500
• xx3 MOAB Shove price reduced 3500 -> 3000
• xx1 Faster Darts also increases attack distance of dart attacks by +30%

Mortar Monkey
It has been hard for The Bloon Solver & The Biggest One to exist so close in the same price range when they fill the same role but with The Biggest One being simply better and more versatile, so we have ramped The Biggest One to fill a better role but for a higher cost. Artillery Battery’s special stun bonus is completely ineffective against targets which are impossible to stun, so it is receiving a small damage bonus to these targets to compensate. Other similarly priced decamo options are able to decamo DDTs, so Signal Flare feels like a far lesser choice here having this basic decamo utility locked behind Monkey Knowledge, so that’s being freed up.

• 4xx The Big One shockwave gains bonus to ceramic +1
• 5xx The Biggest One price increased from $28,000 -> $36,000
• 5xx The Biggest One can now stun MOAB Class Bloons at a reduced rate
  • MOAB 0.3s, BFB/DDT 0.2s, ZOMG 0.1s
• x4x Artillery Battery deals bonus dmg to BADs & Bosses targets > 4
• x5x Pop & Awe deals bonus dmg to BADs & Bosses targets > 10
• x5x Pop & Awe grants all other x4x mortars bonus dmg to BADs & Bosses > 6
• xx3 Signal Flare can now decamo DDTs
• Paint Stripper MK now instead allows xx4 Shattering Shells to remove Fortification from DDT's
• xx4 Shattering Shells DoT damage per tic increased 1 > 5
• xx5 Blooncineration DoT damage per tic remains at 5

Dartling Gunner
Rocket Storm being cheaper than its T3 when the T3 is more of a decent stepping stone into the good T4 didn’t quite sit right, so these prices have just been swapped. Buckshot pierce has been increased to help make its attacks cut through more for a chunkier hit. Focused Firing’s distance bonus on 203 due to how it is setup with projectile speed dropoff was a bit less than this written ‘25%’ realistically closer to 18.75%, so this number has been increased enough to give it roughly a true 30% increase in distance.

• x3x Hydra Rockets price reduced from $5250 > 5100
• x4x Rocket Storm price increased from $5100 > 5250
• xx3 Buckshot dartling pierce increased 4 -> 6
• xx5 Bloon Exclusion Zone pierce remains at 6
• 203 Focused Firing distance bonus 25% > 40%

Wizard Monkey
Wall of Fire’s exceptional T2 power needs to be moved around for improved crosspathing, along with a slight nerf to Phoenix as it is currently performing too well, and both of these upgrades are shifting some of their power into Dragon’s Breath so it can stand out as more than just a buff to WoF & a stepping stone to Phoenix. Shimmer is prone to missing a lot of camo Bloons due to the low attack rate, we do want it to be slower than other decamos to account for the larger radius and better T5 so we are making the radius benefit more noticable and lowering price

• 020 Wall of Fire pierce per tic reduced from 15 -> 10
• 021 Wall of Fire pierce per tic reduced from 19 -> 15
• 020 Wall of Fire damage Tic rate reduced 0.1 -> 0.15
• 020 Wall of Fire wall spawn rate reduced 5.5 -> 6.5
• 120 Wall of Fire duration increased 4.5 -> 5.5
• 120 Wall of Fire no longer auto-targets but gains a target marker (like x3x Engineer)
• 030 Dragon's Breath base damage increased 1 > 2
• 030 Dragon's Breath WoF damage Tic rate remains 0.1
• 030 Dragon's Breath WoF pierce per tic increased 15 -> 20
• x4x Summon Phoenix price increased $4000 -> 4500
• x4x Summon Phoenix pierce reduced 10 > 8
• xx3 Shimmer radius increased 70 > 80
• xx3 Shimmer price reduced $1700 > 1500

Super Monkey
Ultravision is a lackluster crosspath with so many other ways to get camo detection cheaper &/or for more towers. The Anti-Bloon is expensive but as a quite underused tower feels it doesn’t live up to the super monkey name for that cost, for now the ability is seeing a cooldown decrease. We feel Legend of the Night’s base tower is more usable now after recent buffs, so without a total need to lean entirely on the passive ability for use we are increasing this cooldown to prevent some issues.

• x5x The Anti Bloon ability cooldown reduced 45 -> 30s
• xx2 Ultravision grants bonus damage to camo bloons +1
• xx5 Legend of the Night cooldown increased 120 > 180s

Ninja Monkey
Sticky Bomb feels like it is in a very strong point right now in a lot of situations, though flash bomb isn’t good enough without a great deal of support leading into it, this shift should open up for challenge viability especially in Alternate Bloon Rounds games.

• xx3 Flash Bomb price reduced $2750 > 2250
• xx4 Sticky Bomb price increased $4500 > 5000

Alchemist
Transforming Tonic has always had a large struggle with pierce, rather than directly throwing onto the base pierce we have added crosspathing pierce & rate benefits for transformation enjoyers to now choose between. Acidic Mixture Dip stacking from multiple alchemists / stalling tactics too effectively lowered use of other lead counter options in a way we didn’t like, so the maximum stacks here without Permabrew has been reduced considerably.

• 140 Transforming Tonic monster pierce increased 6 -> 9
• 041 Transforming Tonic attack speed increased 0.03 -> 0.024s
• 2xx Acidic Mixture Dip max number of stacks reduced 200 -> 40

Druid
Top path Heart of Thunder doesn’t scale well with tiers for an upgrade with such niche use & generally feels lacking, so it is seeing general power improvements across the board to upgrades that incorporate this attack. Druid of the Jungle’s vines feel too strong already for this, but for quality of life the T4 Jungle’s Bounty Druid will now gain targeting options for the global vine attack, which we hope will make all players as well as Druid fans happy.

• 2xx Heart of Thunder damage increased from 1 > 2
• 4xx Ball Lightning (HoT) damage increased from 1 > 3
• 4xx Ball Lightning (Ball) damage increased from 2 > 3
• 5xx Superstorm (HoT) damage increased from 3 > 10
• 5xx Superstorm (Ball) damage increased from 5 > 10
• 205 Avatar of Wrath applies its full RBE damage bonus scaling to Heart of Thunder
• x4x Jungle's Bounty vine can now follow tower Target Priority

Spike Factory
Spike Factory 4xx feels it needs a small boost in order to really start feeling worth upgrading to rather than getting multiple T3s in the lategame due to the improved Spiked Mines pierce not being as needed for Super Ceramics.

• 4xx Spiked Mines spikes bonus to fortified increased 1 > 3
• 4xx Spiked Mines explosions bonus to fortified increased 1 > 3

Engineer
The MOAB offense of top path lacks for a mainly dps tower that is quite complex to use, T3 Sprockets already feels underwhelming so is seeing a buff here carrying up to T4, and the 320 crosspath will now be able to double dip on the Fortified & MOAB damage bonuses that it gains. Cleansing Foam is only seeing a slight tweak to help it be more viable if you want to attempt it as 'main camo detection’, and this mainly fixes some issues in ABR games allowing it to catch quick initial camo spawns.

• 3xx Sprockets buff amount to sentry rate & deployment increased 40 > 50%
• 120 Sentries can now benefit from both of the moab and fort damage bonuses on one target if that target is a fortified moab
• x3x Cleansing Foam attack gains 1s of 4x rate on round start

Gwendolin
As she’s a little average all around these days with other heroes overtaking in the past years, Gwendolin is seeing some improved quality of life, synergization, and extra juice to the initial hit of Firestorm since currently the ability is, well, not heroic enough and the first impact does very little compared to the DoT.

• lv3 Cocktail of Fire gains a target selection point
• Lv5 Pyrotechnics Expert: All Ring of Fire, Signal Flare & Dragon's Breath gain 10% rate & radius (This follows normal buff rules, applying to higher tiers, but not subtowers)
• Lv18 Pyrotechnics Master: Ring of Fire, Signal Flare & Dragon's Breath buff increased from 10% to 20%
• Lv10 Firestorm initial damage increased 2 -> 5
• Lv10 Firestorm initial moab damage increased 2 -> 20
• Lv20 Firestorm initial damage increased 5 -> 10
• Lv20 Firestorm initial moab damage increased 5 -> 50

Ezili
Ezili’s niche use is in an extremely strong spot right now so we shouldn’t really buff her, but anyway Heartstopper & Sacrificial Totem both feel too limited in total possible synergies, these are having quality of life improved and Heartstopper will additionally allow all towers to damage Purple Bloons to open up more combination options and give more reason to use it.

• Lv3 Heartstopper can now activate if there are Purple Bloons spawned regardless of if they are regrow or not
• Lv3 Heartstopper now also removes Purple Bloon immunity for duration
• Lv3 Heartstopper duration increased 6 -> 10s
• Lv3 Heartstopper cooldown reduced 60 -> 45s
• Lv7 Sacrificial Totem now gains a targeting option for spawn
• Lv7 Sacrificial Totem grants an additional pierce to Wizards 1 > 2
• Lv7 Sacrificial Totem grants an additional attack speed to Wizards 15 > 20
• Lv12 Heartstopper cooldown reduced 45 -> 40

Adora
Adora feels like the perfect target to fill a current hole heroes have, we so far have no real dedicated ‘Fortification Buster’ among us in the hero lineup so giving this to Adora will hopefully allow for new unique use cases that the others don’t fill.

• Lv3 Long arm of the Light cooldown reduced from 45 -> 35s
• Lv9 Main attack gains increased damage to fortified Bloons +2
• Lv13 Main ඞttack fortified damage bonus increased to +3
• Lv19 Main attack fortified damage bonus increased to +4
• Lv10 Ball of Light gains increased damage to fortified Bloons +3
• Lv15 Ball of Light fortified damage bonus increased to +5
• Lv20 Ball of Light fortified damage bonus increased to +20

Admiral Brickell
We had people request a specific funny use case of Brickell on Ravine, which we respect and approve, and overall we wanted to scale her main revolver attack better into late game, so she is seeing slight and slightly experimental improvements.

• lv10 Mega Mine explosion no longer blocked by map line of sight
• Lv12 main handgun damage increased 7 -> 8
• Lv15 main handgun damage increased 9 -> 12
• Lv17 main handgun damage increased 11 -> 18

Contested Territory - Relic Knowledge
Most balance time this update was dedicated to actual towers, but a few Relic Knowledge points in CT stood out to us as far too strong or weak & are seeing the numbers update below. In future updates we will be taking a closer look at top & bottom performing relic points, so if you want to have your voice heard on that matter the next month will be the time.

• Camo Trap: Number provided reduced from 2 > 1
• Flint Tips: DoT tic rate reduced 2 > 2.5s (4 > 5s total)
• Camo Flogged: Bonus damage to Camo increased from 1 > 3
• Hero Boost: Increased XP value increased 10 > 15%
• Going the Distance: Range bonus increased from 10 > 20%
• Bigger Bloon Sabotage: It goes without saying the Bigger Bloon Sabotage relic was not intended to apply to Boss Bloons and this has been resolved. This was a bug resolved in 32.2 but deserves mentioning here with the rest of the changes

Looking Forward
We said a lot in 32.0 notes so not as much new-new news here but we restate our commitment to keeping players updated and looking for more ways to get the community involved in future development directions, so your feedback is encouraged, respected, and appreciated.

• 34.0
  • Heads down on Beast Handler - from the look to the variety of each path, we are putting great effort into making this all new BTD tower something special. While we’re excited to preview, we have to set realistic expectations that the work involved may not leave much time before the update for sneak peaks, but we’ll do what we can!
  • More Maps - still aiming for 2 new maps to make sure there is plenty of new badges to grab over the holidays
• Creators
  • Huge thanks to these creators for supporting the early partnership with Nexus.gg and figuring out the ins and outs of the system:
    • Tewtiy: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh_qU1GUf4FcNtV4-fJm3MA
    • Ethan Reid: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbdbgaxLYyqYiSyGT3uDlFg
    • TrippyPepper: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBczY8q9siLYhV_kP92JpmA
    • SJB: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzIVHVDqZmvqFiTud7cILnw
    • ISAB: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7WQH4kpgxXJYHp8r9IAO-Q & https://www.twitch.tv/btdisab
    • Boltrix: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClGJXPEYFjjhsvPN0WgBD-A
    • Aidanz: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxpyUFmh0jT5TZd7Y5ZgpoQ
    • Dabloon: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-dsyRY8AXvoLqKPiSeRf4g
    • Alukian: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkKjISVs-Th9kGc5mLFmk8w
    • Hbomb: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMV2-8sFDZmyqY48ysw5iEQ & https://www.twitch.tv/smackdaddyjosh
    • Sensation: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDxfRwPvQX4p-JGFfr2z_Cg
    • JeromeASF: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrYnLkVfvVf0Qy0YOUQdk2A
    • Tewbre: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCOyUvlbt1YagerVgbwopQ
  • We’re still working with Nexus on improvements and tools and hope to include more creators by the end of this year. Stay tuned!
• Console
  • We are still pushing hard to get BTD6 submitted for PlayStation and Xbox this year. 4 player couch co-op is so much fun and we can’t wait to share it, but we cannot speak to a launch date, or even whether it’s late this year or early next. As soon as we can update you on release targets, we will!