Friends,
"Two centuries ago, it took a year to send a message around the globe. Now it takes a fraction of a second. We have no idea what this means or what the consequences may be. Man's knowledge and ability have dangerously exceeded his capacity to understand either."
— Dee Hock, founder of Visa, writing in his journal at an advanced age sometime in the 1980s or 90s.
This is from the opening chapter of Neil Postman’s eerily prescient Amusing Ourselves To Death:
The information, the content, or, if you will, the "stuff" that makes up what is called "the news of the day" did not exist-could not exist-in a world that lacked the media to give it expression. I do not mean that things like fires, wars, murders, and love affairs did not ever and always happen in places all over the world. I mean that lacking technology to advertise them, people could not attend to them, could not include them in their daily business. Such information simply could not exist as part of the content of culture. This idea - that there is a content called "the news of the day" - was entirely created by the telegraph (and since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is, quite precisely, a media event. We attend to fragments of events from all over the world because we have multiple media whose forms are well suited to fragmented conversation. Cultures without speed-of-light media - let us say, cultures in which smoke signals are the most efficient space-conquering tool available - do not have news of the day. Without a medium to create its form, the news of the day does not exist.
Postman’s book, a long essay really, is one of the most profound I’ve ever read. It’s lessons serve as user notes for the world we see around us today. Like close-captioning for our eyeballs. (my book notes)
It took me awhile to find that quote because the compressed version I had in my mind is stored as a prescription for myself not a transcription. You can trace my version back to Postman’s sentiment but its is optimized for usefulness not fidelity. It goes:
“Kris, there’s always something going on somewhere — you must choose what to focus on”
I conjured the Postman bit and the Dee Hock quote because a paradoxical byproduct of hyper-connectivity is isolation. It’s not just having your nose buried in your phone as you wait to order a matcha latte. It’s far more insidious.
Which brings us to this illuminating post:
Is Modern Mass Media A Mind Prison? (9 min read)
by
This is one of the those essays that puts a finger on the sense that we are all being played but struggle to point out the perpetrator. Of course if it were as easy as pointing out a single source of the strife, then it might also be solvable. The source unfortunately seems to be something like [waves hand in big circle] “incentives”. That’s my attempt to fill in what Jason doesn’t focus on. He skips right to diagnosis and cure which is the right approach anyway.
[My opinion: the cause is the most speculative part of the malaise around us and has so many facets we’d be playing a hopeless game of top-down whack-a-mole whereas addressing our individual responses is plausible.]
Excerpt from the end:
I actually believe this to be the single most successful technique for social control in the 21st Century, convincing those most eager for change that it can only come through thrilling and glorious action, a battle of pure good versus pure evil. “Why bother voting on this boring bond issue? I’m not leaving the house for anything less than a war to overthrow capitalism! And don’t ask me to hang out unless you agree, I don’t befriend class traitors.”
The truth that the system is so afraid of us learning—and that we’re happy to let them keep from us—is that actually changing the world requires a stunning amount of tedious, quiet work, of dry reading and learning and organizing and slowly changing obstinate minds. Mathematically, this includes engaging at least some minds you previously considered ignorant or hateful. And this persuasion occurs, not through flashy performative acts, but by slowly earning trust until your opponents want to agree with you.
The system wants you to equate tedious work with neutered slavery and to equate liberation with sexy drama because it knows the opposite is true, that if you restrict yourself to flashy and dramatic solutions, you will be exactly as useful to the status quo as any other sedentary daydreamer. There is a reason the system has no problem feeding you a steady stream of fantasies about violently overthrowing it.
The reality is that the amount of focus and desire required to blow up the occasional building or pipeline is nothing compared to the lifetime of quiet labor required to understand the system well enough to actually build a better one. And that better world, if it arrives, will require the cooperation of some truly unpleasant people, because all of civilization is nothing but truly unpleasant people learning to peacefully cooperate.
Money Angle
Just gonna speak freely here.
This cycle of memecoins pumping feels different than the post-covid mania.
The masks are totally off. There is no pretense of value. No attempt to justify the price of anything.
It’s not a ZIRP thing, there’s positive real rates out there. And frankly, you could crank positive real rates up a few percent — the meme coins shouldn’t care. If your taking coin-flip type risks, an extra 2% on your savings still leaves you flaccid. Blue meth and viagra or bust.
All of this feels inevitable.
On gambling culture
LeBron James and Roger Goodell are in bed with Phillip Morris Draft Kings. The biggest baseball star in the world made his bookie famous (the bookie is a former commodities trader because sometimes life makes sense).
Gambling culture is corralling Americans into a holding pen in preparation for the ultimate neoliberal wet dream — put a price on everything. Abstract everything into numbers in an order book.
Here, I’ll glimpse you one of my cards — this is a bummer. They’ll beat you down for saying that because FREEDOM you commie. But it’s not actually freedom. It’s a monopolistic rigged game. But the devil is in the nuanced details. I’m not the messenger for that — instead browse Voulgaris’ recent timeline:
Voulgaris is the NBA sharp (now retired and cruising the Mediterranean on his yacht) featured in Nate Silver’s book and a legend in the gambling world. He’s got lots of haters to be sure (he was quite up front about his dog living a better life than 99.99% of humans in the world), but this podcast interview is a down-in-the-dirt look at his career and the betting world. You’ll also pickup colorful lingo (“beards” “getting down”), insightful discussion of discretionary vs systematic betting, and lessons in niche sources of edge.
As gambling and financial nihilism spread, it becomes risky to sell. I sold my house in November of 2020 — I’m scared to sell anything ever again (not without immediately buying something else). Who knows when the pump is coming to something you own?!
And the more ridiculous the thing you own, the fewer justifications you need to make up for it “mooning”. Worthlessness is now an alibi.
But it’s not just the gambling culture. This feels like a natural albeit non-obvious step in progression of efficient markets. This is where I sound crazy (and if I’m wrong hopefully it’s in a way that doesn’t make you feel dumber for having heard it).
The efficient markets angle
I’m no EMH maxi. I’m more in the “efficiently inefficient” camp is you had to place me in a traditional bucket. But I haven’t studied the academic arguments deeply anyway. My street version — “the no easy trades principle”.
A major difference in mine compared to EMH, is today's weirdness is actually an expression of efficiency because it goes back to something my closest trading homie says "the leg that makes money is the hard one".
The sign that the market is efficient is anything that you can pencil out is not an opportunity because everyone else can too do that too. All that's left is, well, whatever the heck this is.
The Jacked Quant asked:
Why is the noise to signal ratio is exponentially higher in quant finance compared to other realms (AI Twit, Math twit, etc)?
I answered:
Because prices are adversarial. Endless predator/prey dynamic that competes signal away with a half-life that’s a function of transparency and scalability.
Daryl Morey said when finance quants see the signal strength in sports analytics their mouths water but he talks about the flip side of the coin as being “we don't win by beating the SP500 — we have to be the best of 30 teams.”
We’re not there yet, but you might as well choose now:
Have fun, all this machinery that allocates resources is but a game now. If you like the game and do what's required to be good at it seems like a sweet time to be puzzle solving and making loot.
Get out of the abstraction of it all and ground yourself in tangible links between inputs and outputs. This is the antidote to nihilism. Look at the people you serve in the eye.
Update on moontower.ai
We published our monthly update including latest release notes.
A few highlights:
🎈Free stuff: moontower.ai users get comped subscriptions to moontower.substack. If you currently pay for the substack, well thank you, but also you now get a free year appended to whenever your sub period ends.
📱We'll be doing our first community zoom the week after next. Details will be sent via email and posted on our Community page. All sessions will be recorded and subscribers will have access to the video archive.
📈 We've added a few new charts to the Pairs page, thanks to a request from Euan Sinclair (thanks, Euan!). Aside from the IV scatter chart, you now also have a RV and a VRP version of that visualization. You can see a short demo here.
✨Getting ready to add more ETFs, and start adding single stocks. We'll add more ETFs in April, with single stocks (we'll start with the top 25 - 50 by market cap) coming in May.
And we answer a common question:
Do you think moontower.ai is worth the investment for someone who has limited option knowledge or time?
From My Actual Life
I taught my 5th grader’s math class on Thursday (lesson plan). I did a dry-run with a group of 3rd-5th graders the night before.
Yinh was like “baby Boiler Room” vibes. I promise I didn’t throw my car keys on the table. My favorite comment: Illegal SF Algebra Speakeasy
The following morning: I survived!
Look, today’s letter was admittedly dystopian. Guilty as charged. But that’s no way to start a week. And I heard there’s a void in lifehacking advice this week what with the no-alcohol guy putting out fires with the ladies and all. So I’ll step in with an antidote to the exhaustion —> [try new morning routine] —> end up where you always do cycle:
Cold plunges, manifesting, sound baths, chakras. Meh. The original chicken soup for the soul is just share with your neighbors. Remember you can “just do stuff”. You have gifts. Activate them. It’s nice for others. It’s great for you.
Don’t forget the gist of what Postman said — there’s always something going on. It’s news because they made it news and put it in in front of your face. And what they put is not random. You can find any fact on any day to feel aggrieved. If you aren’t going to do something about “the news” anyway, close the tab. Don’t let the algos choose how you spend the next minute. Outrage is a choice. You can pick literally anything else.
Maybe it’s that freedom that scares you.
Inspiration
Many of you know Yinh has an amazing podcast where she interviews people that inspire her. Athletes, scientists, entrepreneurs, doctors, artists. You name it. She recently interviewed our good friend and neighbor Maya Smith. (Maya’s son was one of the kids that had to endure me being teacher-for-an-hour).
Maya has amazing stories that span high and low, many of which sprung from her globe-trotting experience with Lady Gaga as executive director of the Born This Way Foundation for a decade. She’s a funny, real af NJ-gal (love for Rutgers!), with a huge heart and a flair for the pen (she’s new to substack — what can I say, I’m a pusher).
🎙️Maya Enista Smith, Kindness Champion (Growth & Failure with Yinh)
In very Maya fashion, she is also an entrepreneur with an uplifting product: greeting cards that are more than a gesture.
Founded in 2017, Thoughtful Human has quickly gained recognition for its emotionally resonant greeting cards, designed to reflect the complexity of human emotions and experiences. With a diverse range of designs and messages, Thoughtful Human's cards offer an invitation into authentic conversations around all of life’s most challenging (and celebratory) moments, resonating with consumers seeking genuine connections. Printed on plantable seed paper that grows wildflowers, Thoughtful Human brings sustainable sentiments for real issues to the forefront of the card industry. Thoughtful Human products are now sold nationally in over 1,100 retail locations including Cost Plus World Market, Barnes + Noble, Paper Source, and select Whole Foods Market, Safeway, and Andronico’s locations, as well as online at thoughtfulhuman.co.
This is not a paid promotion. Everything Maya is doing needs to be out there!
Moontower readers get 10% off — use the code MOONTOWER at checkout
☮️
Stay Groovy
Moontower Weekly Recap
If you annualize volatility with 252 days can you use that number in a 365-day option model?
This last post got some praise from one of my favorite educators, Bionic Turtle — an invaluable trading resource on YT for years! He wrote:
Such a great answer, I’ve never seen it explained with quite such clarity. The 252 day sample does “sample the volatility that transpired over a 365 day”
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