A Trading Firm’s Q2 2025 Review: Horizontal Learning (Part II)
The Novice, and Lessons for the Many
Across the AXIA trading desks.
April-June 2025.
London, England, and Limassol, Cyprus.
This is Part II; for the first, please see:
To be sure, AXIA experienced one of its best quarters, though not the biggest, which belongs to the early 2020s. We suspect long-volatility teams, firms, strategies, etc. had a similar experience. But, as The Warrior says, “it wasn’t easy.” We’re more concerned about the details between the achievements and the shadows cast when building any monument to success.
Context is essential. Hence, the P&L discussion. This quarter exceeded the eight-figure mark for the firm. But we reveal a detail per AXIA’s Mario Kyriacou. There are now a dozen traders aiming for multi-six or seven-figure trading days, rather than one or two traders hitting that milestone repeatedly five years ago. Kyriacou wears many unexpected hats, including Trump’s, as Asymmetrist found out inside the ‘Risk Room’ during the 2024 U.S. elections, and he is well placed to give a broader view, as we will explore in Part II and later.
Reviewing the team’s achievements and transformation can be summarised as: bulking out the middle. More traders than ever are consistently in the running for better results. This rate of change is more critical than this quarter or yearly P&L, because we must look forward. A weak centre is fated to crumple between extremes. With a stronger centre, the team of traders can pull up the novices while transforming themselves and others to greater heights. Remember: performance is a network effect. At one point, it will reach a critical mass to unlock new opportunities for every trader’s achievement and career length at the firm. This achievement has been revealed this quarter because this process has been developing far longer.
We cannot ignore the shadows. What makes you can break you, so we must consider the inverse situation. The centre holds yet it rests on a market environment and opportunity cycle—a recurring cluster of similar opportunity sets, which can buttress a hidden fragility. Skills and performances improved by optimising for this opportunity cycle. Perhaps over-optimised. The novice graduated from the simulator to live trading, only adapting to the skills required in this opportunity cycle.
The groove has been overly greased for those who’ve used this cycle to grow from five to six, or six to seven-figure traders, on a narrow, hyper-tactical skill set. These tactical traders rely on the market and external world for opportunities, rather than working piecemeal to identify subtle opportunities for a strategic trader to capture, creating their own opportunities. In the eternal observation of The Engineer in Traders of Our Time, “when the idea is obvious, its access is difficult; when the idea is subtle, its access is simple.” Nothing signals an ‘obvious’ idea more than a news headline, requiring more nuance, skill and tactical ability to trade an increasingly crowded trade—“everyone’s piling in!”
This creates two problems. Firstly, repeated clusters of similar opportunities generate a better sample set for human and non-human participants. This allows the latter to outcompete the former until something significantly changes, especially at the ‘tactical’ level.
What happens if the markets face a prolonged period of recycled headlines, no material change in current themes, and lower volatility, should the market move beyond the recent narrow pattern? The markets have rewarded, and as practitioners know, reward results in reinforcement. Reinforcement is dangerous; a poisoned chalice, the reason why what makes you can also break you. In Part I of this Quarterly Review, we’ve written about the nature and need to widen opportunity sets.
And now we look at the young, the new, and the novice. Because in them we can also look at the experience, the old, and the veterans. As a trader recently said to us while reflecting on Mark Spitznagel’s The Dao of Capital—within a seed, a whole forest.
The Seeds Of The Novice
All traders learn across as well as up. You learn horizontally from peers and vertically from those much further along. But learning from those far ahead can be challenging for both expert and novice. This is the ‘Tacit Knowledge’ problem: you know more than you can say.1 Ask a world-class footballer how to kick a ball, and they’ll shrug: “You just kick it like this.” Often, it’s the ones beside you, facing the same problems or who just overcame them, who can teach you most. A good learner takes in from all directions. You could take this quarterly review series as a menu to cross-reference against others.
Later—in Part III—we will explore the quarter through the perspective of older traders further up the experience and achievement curve.
We begin with two novice AXIA graduates from the Cyprus floor who started live trading in March and June. We’ll explore reinforcement and abrupt change. A young trader born in March, G.S., has earned $8k+ or $6k+ days, narrowly missing his first five-figure day. We meet him at a critical point in a trader’s career attempting to emerge from a negative account—a maximum drawdown of -$8k, with bumps, losses, and learning. This means change in this trader’s behaviour has occurred. Learning without change is futile. That is the best we can do to understand a trader leaning towards success, and keep the basics going. In Kyriacou’s words:
“I’ve been in this job 25 years. I’ve seen the cycles. And I’ve backed plenty of traders through the tough periods. It’s not a formula. It’s a gut feel. But here’s what I look at: are they showing up every day? Are they still committed? Were they just unlucky and missed something? What’s their backstory? Have they done it before?
It comes down to the relationship, the conversations, the consistency. It’s not easy to articulate. But if you’ve been doing this long enough, you know when someone’s just down versus when they’re truly drifting. You’ve got to make that call.”
T.W. was born in early June and had a more consistent career pattern than the markets. He experienced strong simulator performance for most of the year, enough to be promoted to a live trading account, followed by immediate and prolonged drawdown, where everything has changed and nothing seems effective.This reflects a slow-motion effect: even a profitable trader’s performance over years can prove temporary, as the opportunity cycle could sustain their performance without their skills developing into new areas required to monetise an entirely different opportunity set, like that of a low volatility, non-headline driven, ZIRP environment seen in the mid 2010s.
T.W. painfully experienced the observation that the trader is never made in this cycle, but in the next. In effect, he had temporarily ‘solved’ or optimised the market’s Q1 state, needing different skills, approach, and mentality for the Q2 opportunity cycle.
Chiefly, Q1 was dominated by an accumulation of trade opportunities. In contrast, Q2 all happened within a small cluster of days. Q1 was enough to go live, and—Sod’s law—going live is often the peak and end of that cycle. This explains why novice traders experience ‘beginner’s luck’ or intermittent success; their skills, strategies, or approach match the market opportunity cycle. This is clear and easy for the trader to see. The greater danger lurks over the longer-term processes that go unnoticed and underestimated, like an iceberg. Recall AXIA’s Alex Haywood’s observation in Traders of Our Time:
The [non-linearity of performance] lag effect also works in reverse. The catch-up of the P&L curve creates a slingshot-like effect. It can run on its own legs, sustained by the momentum of strong improvement and growth of the learning curve. The P&L curve will begin to overpay the trader after years of underpaying, which creates a dangerous situation—creating a feeling that the trader does not have to keep up their adaptation, their iterations, to refine their process, to push along their learning curve. Instead, maintaining the status quo feels sufficient for outsized returns, creating a dangerous confirmation that their current state is enough … and so, the trader relaxes his processes and learning but still enjoys better returns than ever. The learning curve has now plateaued, perhaps regressing, and it is a matter of time before the spread will close—violently.”
We can only triage the P&L bleed and learn widely, fast—from our novice T.W. to the experienced trader reinventing, like The Godfather and The Student. Through the social learning of their network, the ‘extended mind’, we can monetise the current opportunity cycle to survive for the next. Whether it’s two months, two years or two decades, the same applies.
Understanding Narrative Continuity, from Phases One to Three.
T.W. articulates a change from market behaviour and responsiveness to certain information over time. This change might seem fundamental, even banal, to a team of ‘news’ or ‘event’ traders: to think and trade within a continuity of narrative. The headline or event of yesterday does carry over to today. And tomorrow. Yet to many non-‘news-trading’ outsiders, this is a revelation. Usually, news trading is treated as isolated cases, as if an aberration that a trader could luck out on for extra P&L.
Nothing is in isolation. “If [a tariff comment] had come out in April, [the markets] would have gone miles,” said T.W., after trying to sell S&P futures in vain back in May. Such is the rate of change. “[It] made me realise that conditions are different now and I needed to adapt.” That was a key moment, T.W. acknowledged, leading to a shift in his perspective on the markets. “I had only started trading news in Q1 when news was coming out thick and fast and markets were susceptible to it. Now in late Q2, I’m forced to improve and be more nuanced.” This reflects the change from Phase One to Phase Three explained by The Warrior, in Traders of Our Time, in how the market prices, trades, and processes information inputs that become a ‘theme’.
“It is also about placing the clues in their evolving context! The Warrior puts this as the “three phases” of a market theme: emergence, peak and post-peak. These phases may have the same input of clues, headlines or causes but with very different effects. What was strongly market-moving in a peak theme becomes a loss-making trap in post-peak. And that is because the context, the story, has moved on; the complex, dynamic market has moved on.”
This often indicates the transition between Phase Two and Phase Three, which results in many traders losing gains from the first phases. Take it from G.S:
“[In the Iran-Israel June ‘25 Flashpoint] there were so many rehashed headlines. All the algos were blipping on comments that were already known—like Iran isn’t stopping enrichment, Israel will pay for it, Iran refuses to negotiate. If you weren’t prepared, if you weren’t aware of what had already been said, and you just reacted to the blip—or didn’t trust the work you’d already done, the research and planning to know you weren’t missing anything—you’d get killed instantly in that blip.”
Another case for the importance of immersion and time at the desk, the current opportunity cycle demands it, regardless of trading ‘approach’. From G.S., on approaching late Phase 3 theme trading, as opposed to the shocking start of Phase 1, which rewards proactiveness, aggression and the “just get in!” attitude that served the trader well after Trump’s April 2nd Liberation Day speech. Yet in Phase 3:
“I think the best way to recognise and overcome any ‘dud’ headlines is by being conscious and aware of the current environment around the Theme—and being rigid in your preparation for which headlines you’re willing to hit. You’ve got to be disciplined about it. It can be harder for newer traders, but it all comes down to trusting the work and planning you’ve done over the weekend or after a major repricing event.”
What Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
Re-pricing, as suggested in the word, is a continual evolution of shifting goal posts. What was extreme before is now the default, so trading on that extreme headline again is futile and static. Bad news yesterday is good news today—as noted with Iran’s de-escalation missile strike, which was a choreographed escalation. Per G.S:
“Then also being instantly ready and confident to hit the headline that shows a deviation from the current theme or environment—going from zero, where you’re disinterested, to one-hundred instantly—due to a switch in language, because you’re tuned in, and you know this one [headline] should reprice the market.”
This dynamic engagement marks a critical step in discretionary trader development, regardless of trading ‘news’, ‘technicals’, or otherwise. G.S.’s words suggest this moment, and a few other implicit signs of growth:
[There was a] WSJ article on Iran saying they were ready to stop and negotiate with the U.S. if Israel halted its attacks—this was on Monday, just four days after the first strike. Oil was the most in play at that point—it was still near its highs, the theme was fresh, and it turned out to be one of the quickest themes to come in and out of play. I saw it as the perfect opportunity to reprice it, at least back toward the scene of the crime. I was actively pushing myself to go for my first five-figure day—flashed 10k on the trade, but unfortunately closed around 8.6k after Oil flushed and instantly reversed. I was pushing two-thirds of my max size on Oil and Gold since they were the most in play. Maybe it wasn’t the most asymmetrical trade in terms of movement, but it was in terms of size and risk on the table relative to my current risk profile.
G.S. redefines asymmetry, not just as capturing a price dislocation when probabilities are stacked in one’s favour, but as a chance to push his performance boundaries. To grow through discomfort by expanding the edge of his known world. It’s not just about articulating pay-off versus risk, but what the trade unlocks within the trader. Often, the real pay-off lies in the future, harder to see.
There’s a hidden internal asymmetry that permits growth. It’s about recognising a learner’s adjacent possible—the space of near-future reinventions—and a practitioner’s performance possible—the ways to grow into a stronger trader.2 On some days, a trader might be positioned to do more size for the same or less risk. So take advantage!
This was a defining feature of the intense growth arcs in The Hero and The Engineer. The former grew from three to three hundred lots early in his career, consistently and quickly—by focusing only on trades where he could reliably size up. Five, ten, fifteen more lots each time. These were often not the ‘biggest’ trades by volatility, drama, or excursion.
Many traders conflate large market moves with edge. “What was the best trade?” becomes “What was the biggest move?” A nod to the importance of language. But the real edge can be more subtle, and rarely realised in the moment: when a trade suddenly sparks to life, all the convergent experiences and lessons let the trader (re)emerge as something greater.
Learning To Build The World
Another ‘performance possible’ that G.S. has started to push is the ability to mentally and instantly switch between themes. This is another marker of trader maturation, and the openness and fluidity with which they do this, as if the trader has a cupboard full of ideas, notes, and experiences to pull out and put away instantly and pivot to whatever situation. When asked how he kept a fresh and open mind during Q2, he replied:
“[By] reviewing the best practices I was doing before busy weeks or periods. When it was active with Iran, it was quite easy to be in the flow—there was only one theme in play. But then tariffs came back into play, and I had to remind myself to train my memory, knowing all the trades I’d be willing to take, and with what size, at every turn of the hour. That helped build a consistent, repeatable way of remembering where we are, and where we could head, across every theme in play.”
This is a conscious practice, evident from The Godfather and his floor trading Fedspeak amid anticipated Iranian retaliation headlines, then switching back to geo-politics. But for veterans with over ten or twenty years of experience and seven-to-eight-figure P&L milestones, this was a display of unconscious competence. Put it this way: some new traders on the floor were born when The Godfather traded the Treasury-EuroDollar spread in the Greenspan era. Experience is both a multiplier and a separator of performance.
Readers of Traders of Our Time would know the ‘Worldbuilding’ mental model to understand The Warrior, The Godfather, and other traders.
“Effective worldbuilding serves as a container to facilitate multiple stories that overlap or relate within that specific world. The act of worldbuilding creates a rich tapestry of details, depth, richness and colour in that world and, importantly, its rules and limitations … first-rate worldbuilding weaves together as if a pyramidal-like superstructure, which determines the course of how the narrative and stories flow … [The Warrior] is thinking of the ‘shadow’ future, the branches of how the world can evolve, yet it is rooted within the ‘container’—the pyramidal superstructure of the market world and its reality.”
In a market environment deepening its complexity by self-referencing its workings and reflecting the ‘real world’ in a more immediate and hyper-connected way, this mental switching is a skill needed earlier in a trader’s career, as evidenced by G.S., because the rate of change is faster. Consider The Godfather’s words, from Traders of Our Time: “In the early 2000s, you could give a trader one spread, one market, and they would be good for at least five years or longer. They didn’t need to know anything else. It took that long for the market and the edge to change. Later, you could get away with a couple of years. In 2022, it is as if the cycles last only a few months.”
G.S. and T.W., you could say, are products of their times, and what better way for all traders to understand the latest market demands than looking at the novice and what it takes for them to succeed? That’s the gift of a beginner on the trading floor.
In parting words to those learning horizontally from T.W. and G.S., understand that the 2025 novice generation can claim a real chapter in their trading careers, if they capture and work on it effectively. This is not the time to monetise your experience, but deeply understand it, and remember the muscle memory of this period to redeploy it in the future when this opportunity arises again. T.W. and G.S. lived through this, not just heard about it. One day, these experiences will shape their conviction. Next time, they’ll trade a similar opportunity cycle with more size, conviction, and maturity as sophisticated traders. That is what will make them as traders and push performance–as well as yours—if you capture this period. Consider Kyriacou’s words to ‘the grads’.
“You can explain to them all day long, but until they live through it, it’s not the same. Now they’ve experienced that this doesn’t last forever. The Trump Tariffs and the geopolitical events gave us a really busy stretch, but now it’s quiet again—summer markets. The cycle has shifted. And I think people are starting to recognise that. It’s all about how they manage their way through it. A junior made six figures, then almost lost the same in a day. But he’s still here, pushing through. That’s part of the job. If you want to sit at the big trader table, you’ve got to accept that this is part of who you are. It’s character building.”
Remember, the trader is always made in the next cycle.
»Part III Now Published!
Acknowledgements, Permissions & Disclaimer
Grateful acknowledgement to AXIA for granting access to many of their traders.
The photograph, provided by Axia Futures, is used with their permission, and they retain full ownership and copyright over the image.
Disclaimer: Do Not Do Stupid Financial Decisions. This Is Not A Game.
Tacit knowledge refers to skills or understandings that are difficult to express or formalise—first introduced by Michael Polanyi in the 1960s, who observed that “we can know more than we can tell.” In trading, it often manifests as instinct or fluency gained through repetition and experience, rather than through explicit rules.
We explored the ‘adjacent possible’ in Traders of Our Time, and its application to trading via Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From.