Moontower Testimonials

Recently, I’ve been fortunate to receive some thoughtful feedback from readers in light of the different modalities (writing, video, app). These testimonials, all shared in the past few weeks, highlight how ideas can connect theory to practice, spark new perspectives, and even accelerate the learning curve for those in the thick of it.

It I was overwhelmed when they came rolling in via quote-tweet, text message and DM after I shared that I got this note::

I need to compile every message where someone tells me about a prop firm telling a junior to go read🌙🗼 .

I never take it for granted that the “stoner dad” letter namesaked by a beer bust scene is read by the hawks of the trading world.

I was in the final round for CitSec and was recommended Moontower as a great read! I have been enjoying it ever since and would love to connect and learn more.

A few replies:

Very flattered to be the contra on these notes I received after that thread:

A Senior Trader’s Take

Originally posted on X by @CedarsHill

“I noticed this post from Kris earlier in the week and it has stuck with me. This is one of the most elegant implementations of Bayesian logic to trading options I have seen in my career. I worked at SIG and learned a lot of this stuff years ago, but it just sunk in at another level.“

(Referring to this thread)

From a Young Options Market Maker

“Hey Kris, your recent post walking through the probabilities/‘stabilizing & destabilizing moves’ implied by the NVDA call spreads really stuck with me despite zero relation to the single stocks world, mostly because it felt like a very visual way to grasp the intuition (and I usually suck at this kind of mental abstraction/visualization). Today by chance I was walking through skew on the desk with someone who isn’t really vol savvy (and in a totally different context, FX), and at some point I realized I was mostly borrowing from your logic about how it balances the odds between different areas of the distribution—I could literally see it ‘clicking’ for the guy (and he said so too). And in a way it ‘clicked’ for me too as I went through the concept with these new lens! Figured that was nice feedback to pass along as you recently posted about your work being recommended to juniors and trading desks…I can say from personal experience it would have made a hell of a difference in speeding up the learning curve back when I was in that position.

When I asked the trader if I could share this as a testimonial he replied:

Feel free to share it however u prefer. I can give you the full version of the praise—I’ve been a reader I think probably since year 1 (!), back then I was in my 2nd year on a vol desk (enough so it’s past that point where you feel like everyday you’re fighting not to drown, but not nearly close enough to really ‘seeing the matrix’ so to speak). The stuff you write is literally in the realm of professionals but explained in ways that anyone could eventually understand. There were multiple topics on which I would read your pieces and think ‘ok that condenses in a very intuitive way what I felt it took me many months doing the hard work of trading, controlling position spreadsheets, doing P&L attribution, before figuring out how it really is traded in practice, what are the thought processes, what are the practical pitfalls’. When I started I took the more difficult route of going through the tougher theoretical books first (like Rebonato’s) before getting to the more practical/intuitive ones (like Bennett’s) and before getting to the useful corners of ‘vol twit’ (and then your blog). For someone starting from scratch (and learning on the go) a bunch of stuff was really, really difficult to grasp—Moontower would be literally the first required reading I’d recommend because of this bridge between theory and the practical reality of its applications, there’s really no book or other blog that I know that offers that. For a few years now I don’t deal with vol stuff directly, but once you learn to see the world through options lens it’s the type of thing you can never ‘unsee’ afterwards, and I still don’t miss 1 post.”

From an Option Market Maker with 20 Years of Experience

“These videos are a really authentic sneak peek into the mind of a real options trader, must be neat to watch for people that have never sat on a desk. I watched that first one you posted and your Excel tool reminded me so much of the production pricing and risk management sheet I built over many years and traded off of from xxxx-yyyy.

Your content is amazing, consistently a must-read. So much of it resonates in drastic ways and makes me think hard about my life and my choices (which I already do, but enlightening to hear it framed by someone as thoughtful, humble and self-reflective as you).”