Kris Abdelmessih
Former options market maker who writes Moontower, a newsletter on trading, volatility, decision-making and how to think about risk outside markets too.
Kris Abdelmessih did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
Their wordsI've said it in a number of posts this year, but I'm in the camp that you won't recognize knowledge work as you've come to know it soon enough.
↗when smarts are as cheap as sunshinemoontower.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsthe original post I'm quote-tweeting below is an example of how the future is going to increasingly be bots reading for you, and of course bots writing for bots.
↗when smarts are as cheap as sunshinemoontower.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsI have no plans to stop writing, but I suspect it becomes an increasingly niche thing to do, like being an upholsterer.
↗when smarts are as cheap as sunshinemoontower.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsBut if you want to beat the market, you can only beat the market by choosing investments that you find that other people have not found and are doing worse than the market. The only way to beat the market is for somebody to underperform the market. It's zero-sum.
↗you can’t change mindsmoontower.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThere is a cost of risk which is the same as paying a fee. So when you're paying an investment management fee to somebody, you pay that fee and you see that fee... And so if somebody turns up to most investors and says, "I've got this S&P 500 fund and the fee is 75 basis points," people are like, "Come on, give me a break." ...Taking risk, you should think about taking risk as also paying a fee...
↗you can’t change mindsmoontower.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsOne thing I've learned in doing what we've been doing for the last 15 years is that you just don't change anybody's mind about anything.
↗you can’t change mindsmoontower.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 7 days earlier
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Their wordsAt the Robinhood Summit last week, Mat Cashman and I hosted a "Trading Lab" emphasizing that options are surgical tools. You only want to reach for them when you have a specific view.
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsPassion doesn't usually come first and then get supported. Usually exposure comes first, then competence (from actually having gone through practice), and passion tends to arrive somewhere after that, because human beings mostly love the things they are good at.
↗academic accelerationmoontower.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThe thing is, children are not good judges of what they will be glad to be good at at thirty.
↗academic accelerationmoontower.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 7 days earlier
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Our reading
The more things are handed to people, the more value will lie in the ability to do difficult things.
Their wordsthe more things get handed to us, the more the edge will lie in going out of our way to do hard things.
↗Moontower #329moontower.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsMy worry is that dependence on tech creeps in slowly enough that we don't notice what we've stopped being able to do.
↗Moontower #329moontower.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
The pendulum has swung so far toward poptimism that it may be difficult to return to valuing depth.
Their wordsWe have swung the pendulum so far toward poptimism, toward the blinkered idea that all art is equal because all humans are equal, toward the ethos that guilty pleasures are simply pleasures, that I'm not sure if we can ever swing it back.
↗Moontower #329moontower.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsIn an increasingly on-demand info landscape, it's dangerous to forget that it's difficult, maybe impossible, to shortcut understanding.
↗the math of why “crappy” investments aren’t cheapermoontower.substack.com