Publication Cycles Two & Three: From the Iran War to the Space Between Headlines
A Trader’s LIFFE, the Q1 Review, Cyprus Floor Notes, the Living Library, and Everything Published Since March
Dear Practitioners,
Welcome to the periodic round-up of all things Asymmetrist and what has been happening across the past two publication cycles.
From an editorial perspective, Asymmetrist runs on roughly eight to ten publication cycles a year. The length of each cycle may vary, but each has a spine: a centrepiece Feature or theme around which everything else orbits.
This page is a compact review of everything published across Cycles Two and Three. Think of it as a map of the territory: a way to see each cycle in one place, trace how it unfolded, and catch anything that may have passed you by.
Before diving in, Asymmetrist now enters a short break between publication cycles. We will return during the week commencing 29 June with Publication Cycle Four and its centrepiece Feature, currently titled Designing for Judgement: Cultivating a Trading Team.
This is going to be a big one.
In Case You Missed It:
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Publication Cycle 2: March-April 2026
The Iran War
Publication Cycle Two centred on a single dominant event: the Iran War and its impact across the markets.
Rather than analysing the theme after the fact, the aim was to capture it while it was still unfolding. The cycle began with an impromptu Living Library episode recorded ahead of the Sunday futures open, using the developing situation to explore one of the publication’s recurring ideas: The Singularity of Now. In practice, this meant attempting to think forward into possible market states before the market itself had started to price anything.
Alongside this, Asymmetrist followed events directly from the trading floor. The resulting stories captured one of those rare periods where geopolitical developments, market volatility, and trader development all converged at once. Across the career curve, traders experienced some of the biggest moments of careers compressed into a single moment.
The cycle also featured a Living Library examining what happens when a market theme matures, when headlines no longer produce clean, linear reactions, and when traders must learn to stop trading yesterday’s market.
Finally, the cycle continued the Stream of Consciousness series with The Warrior, Part II from Traders of Our Time.
The Book Club series will return in a future publication cycle.
Publication Cycle 3: May-June
A Trader’s LIFFE: Thirty Years Across Pits, Screens, and Racetracks
Publication Cycle Three began with A Trader’s LIFFE, a long-form conversation with Simon Harris. The interview explored a career spanning the FTSE 100 pit, hedge funds, championship motorsport, and the performance work that followed. It also marked a new format for Asymmetrist, combining written and audio-visual material within a single feature.
The Q1 Review:
The Q1 Review looked back on a quarter of extremes: from the compressed “Market of Islands” conditions inherited from late 2025 to the violent reopening of opportunity during the Iran War theme. Rather than simply recapping events, it examined how different market environments select for different trader behaviours, how opportunity clusters, and how entire careers can sometimes move further in several weeks than in several years.
The Features:
Written from AXIA’s Cyprus floor, The Answer to a Trade Is Another Trade gathered 46 mid-year field notes drawn from conversations with traders across the career curve. It explored market transitions, the move from trading on headlines to trading between them, D+1 and D+2 flows, observation before strategy, and the wider question of how traders adapt their process, routine, risk, and imagination as the market environment changes.
Written from the ongoing writer-in-residence work at AXIA’s Cyprus office, The Quality of Your Questions, and Questions of Quality explored the trader’s relationship to questions: how novices often search for answers, while accomplished traders build frameworks through inquiry, disconfirmation, negative capability, and better ways of seeing. It moved from chart-reading and trade ideas to market profile, extreme questions, and the central Asymmetrist question beneath them all: what am I actually trying to monetise?
The Living Library:
Episode Five of the Living Library examined mature market themes, transition phases, and the difficult shift from trading directly on headlines to trading between them. Using Bunds as the working example, it explored what market profile can reveal as a theme begins to mature — and why profile can orient execution, but cannot generate the trade idea by itself.
Once more, if Asymmetrist has proven useful to you, consider sharing it with another practitioner through the new referral programme.
Good trading to you all,
Bogdan Stoichescu
Editor & Founder, Asymmetrist