Friends,
As always around the holidays, Moontower is taking the next few weeks off and returning in January. We can all use a bit less stimulation at the end of the year. Play boardgames, go to sleep late, binge some shows, gain a few pounds. Laugh so hard bourbon eggnog comes out your nose. Shower your loved ones with attention. You’re not missing anything, including Moontower.
Moontower is wrapping 2022
In a future world, I’d be able to provide you a personalized Moontower Wrapped like Spotify’s end-of-year feature recapping what material you most engaged with.
For now, I can give you the aggregated Moontower Wrapped. These were the most viewed and shared posts of the year:
- Ambition As An Anxiety Disorder
- 3-Card Macro
- The Investing Version Of “Nothing Good Happens After Midnight”
These were the most popular technical posts:
Posts worth a mention:
- Special Topic: Do You Even Trade Bro?This post is actually a sub-series of the Moontower Money Wiki comprising 3 topics that can help a retail investor understand if they’ve gone astray:
➡️Trading Vs Investing
➡️Celibacy Vs Condoms: The Answer To Whether You Should Trade Options
➡️Trading Is A Team Sport - Design Your Own Engine This is a 31-min read. I wouldn’t expect it to be widely read. It was a personal treatise on how I think about using my time and ability both philosophically and pragmatically. Skills, goals, and constraints are just variables. Each person assigns to those variables differently. This post describes how the variables can fit into a model of living.
I wrote this post for myself. For my own reference.
But it also turned out to be the rare post that I was able to accurately gauge how its reception in the wild. Most people wouldn’t care to slog through it, but for the few who were looking or especially receptive to something like this, it would be highly impactful. 3 people told me it was the best thing they read this year and deeply influenced or tugged something already inside them.
3 people are 2 more than I would have needed to be proud of its impact, which was my bar for publishing it instead of keeping it private for my own use (which is actually how it lived for awhile, albeit with less polish).
These posts from prior years have an especially long tail, finding many readers every month:
Gratitude
- Thanks to all of you for reading Moontower. Your attention gives me chances to do cool stuff. It’s that simple. A year ago at this time, there were just over 2,500 subscribers after nearly 3 years of writing. There are over 9,000 subs today.
- Thanks to the 24 Substack writers who “recommend” Moontower. That has been a great channel for growth and if you are considering writing a newsletter Substack’s community angle has definitely made huge difference.
and Market Sentiment recommendations have been 25% of Moontower’s growth.
- Thanks to this year’s sponsor: Mutiny Funds. Starting last year, a number of companies asked to sponsor the letter. They were mostly crypto-related so I put on my black “Security” shirt to play bouncer at our intimate party at the Moontower. But when Jason and Taylor reached out it was a no-brainer. I was and remain and investor in their Cockroach fund since before they ever asked me to sponsor. I’m a huge fan of what they are doing and them as people so I’m proud to have their support.
A Favor
I’m not Cialdini-hacking your sense of reciprocity on purpose by thanking you and then having an “ask”, but I have an ask.
When you sub to Moontower all I see is an email address. I know a couple hundred of you out of the 9,000+. I’d like to know more both because I’m curious and also because the sponsorship real estate is valuable so I’d like to better match the audience to sponsors.
There’s no need to worry I’ll still protect the space from NFT hawkers but my working hypothesis is that if I’m already a fan of company X, they’d probably get a nice ROI from me boosting them here, you’d find about them formally, and I’d get cash that I can re-invest in this whole online creation thing.
Win-win-win.
The way it was always supposed to be. (Looking at the headlines these days, it’s forgivable to think we have lost sight of that).
Enough preamble. Please fill out this survey as a holiday gift to me. It’s hopefully fun. It will take <10 minutes:
[There are sensitive questions, so keep in mind all questions are optional, but also I am not collecting email addresses. I have no way to link your responses back to an email address because I want you to be honest.]
The Wrap
I’m looking forward to 2023…there will be lots of writing.
Finance stuff, vulnerable stuff, education stuff, kid stuff, and ways of being stuff.
True to the tagline, climb on up to the Moontower, we’ll see further together.
Stay groovy.
Warmly,
Kris