Moontower #165

I just got back from the StockSlam Sessions in NYC. It was an epic week of meeting new friends, seeing old faces, and doing something I haven’t done since my 20s — going home at 2 am four nights in a row. If I were drinking these days I could never have done that at this age (not to mention fitting a workout in on 2 mornings).

The sessions themselves were a raging success. The feedback on both fun and learning was super encouraging, so we have plenty to chew on. I’ll circle back on that when it makes sense.

I wasn’t in the writing jumpseat all week so today is a brief one.

An empathetic thought

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Money Angle

Last Sunday, I mentioned for October I’ll be stringing together a few non-technical posts about trading. Last week I published Trading Vs Investing.

This week I give you:

Celibacy Vs Condoms: The Answer To Whether You Should Trade Options (17 min read)

Here’s the table of contents:

1 Think Before You Even Get Aroused

2 Why Anyone Would Trade An Option?

• 2.1 Directional speculation on the underlying
• 2.2 Hedging
• 2.3 Some kinky thing called “vol trading”
  • 2.3.1 For the retail masochists
  • 2.3.2 For the aspiring professional masochists
• 2.4 Addressing covered calls and cash-secured put selling

3 Wear a Condom

• 3.1 Specificity
• 3.2 Destination vs Path

4 Conclusion

Last Call

Some random stuff I enjoyed:

• Notes From An Interview With Serial Entrepreneur Keith Schacht (7 min read)

  I liked the attitude and insights in this pod and took some notes.

• The Midwit Trap: Why are we so dismissive of simple solutions? (philo.substack)

  This is a cool post demonstrating how people outsmart themselves. A few vectors in particular:

  • Confusing complex for smart
  • Misdiagnosing Pareto distributions
  • Ignoring bottlenecks (ie Theory of Constraints)
  • How “we share 99% of our DNA with chimps” reminds us that just 1% can be a giant difference
  • Hidden “divide by zero” problems where long logic chains become fragile because they rely on every statement being true (this one reminds me of why quarantining risk is an underappreciated tactic — see I Felt Bad For Picking My 3rd Grader Off)

From My Actual Life

Shout out to Chris and Avi who got me to my first death metal show. It was at Monarch in Brooklyn and was headlined by Blood Incantation. Loved the “leave it all on the field” performance. They performed 4 long songs with super-heavy, psychedelic grooves. The drummers of these bands are aliens.

The names of the other bands are also morbid MadLibs:

Full Of Hell, Vermin Womb, Mortuous and God Is War

Stay friggin groovy!