Minute’s Madness: A Trading Team’s Multi–Seven-Figure Day.
Exclusive: How the AXIA team navigated “War is very complete, pretty much”—through multiple perspectives. (2026 Iran War: Part I)
Dear Practitioners,
Welcome to the latest Dispatches—hot off the AXIA desks—covering the recent market turmoil surrounding the Iran–U.S.–Israel conflict.
Specifically, this piece captures the momentous day that was March 9 for the traders, along with the period leading up to it. This is Part I of a broader narrative—scene-setting and immersive by design—using story as a way for you to better remember, recognise, and make use of these moments when they come again: how things were traded, how the action unfolded, how decisions were made in real time. This will soon be followed by a more direct Q&A with traders across the desks in Part II, where we move into direct explanation.
This was a record-making moment for many of those involved, and there is much more to come. What began as a regional conflict has, since its opening phase, developed into something far larger—potentially an unfolding global energy crisis, if we are not there already.
As a result, this will become a central focus for Asymmetrist going forward. In effect, this now multi-part Dispatch series takes the place of the original Feature that was intended to anchor this publication cycle. That work has not gone anywhere—it will still be published, along with the upcoming trader interview and profile, and everything scheduled for this cycle will be accounted for over the coming months.
For now, the priority is to bring these Dispatches to you in real time—while you are still in the environment, while the memory is fresh, and while the material can be of immediate use.
At the centre of this, we follow the action—play by play—through The Godfather and The Warrior, figures many of you will recognise from Traders of Our Time. For those who are new, these are traders operating at the outer edge of global macro volatility: across markets, across flows, deploying risk in fast-moving, news-driven environments. A reductive label might call them news traders—but that scarcely captures it.
Alongside them, I would also like to formally mint a new alias—a trader who has appeared in previous Asymmetrist material without one. We will call him The Kid, a nod to Billy the Kid—for his sheer speed off the mark on headlines, and other reasons that will become clear. What began as a headline-driven style has evolved, year by year, into something far more complete—pushing into the same territory as The Godfather and The Warrior. He is now approaching a decade into his career.
Across these traders—and others on the desk—you are looking at individuals operating at a very high level, across multiple measures of performance. At the same time, this series will contrast that with younger, earlier-stage traders, capturing the full spectrum of the career path. Between The Godfather, The Warrior, and The Kid alone, you are looking at something approaching fifty years of combined experience.
Finally, it is important to say this clearly. While we sit at the desks, interpreting and trading these events, they are not abstract. They are real. The outcomes—economic, political, human—are being lived out in full across the world.
That should never be lost. The impacts are severe, and likely to become more so across many points of that spectrum. People are being affected in ways far beyond what is seen on the screens.
No one is cheering such a thing—least of all here. That, as ever, remains one of the most important reminders Asymmetrist can make.
My deep thanks to all the traders for their immense contribution to this story, especially at such a busy and decisive moment in their careers. Asymmetrist greatly appreciates it.
Good reading, and good trading to you all,
Bogdan
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Minute’s Madness: A Trading Team’s Multi–Seven-Figure Day
Then came the volatility. It digs up the past and burdens the present with expectations of the future. And, in a perverse way, those transient expectations of the future begin to ground the severity of the present and the failings of the past.
The days feel like weeks. There is no release, no true resolution, even if the day-to-day elicits opportunities for performance. It seals the trader in bated breath; the universal experience is not the elation of strong performance, but the sheer relief of having done so.
A discharge of pent-up expectation—rendering strength back onto itself: that they have measured up against possibility, done justice to their personal stories and purpose, and to all that it took to arrive here—manoeuvring themselves into the right place, at the right time.
That is where we are in the story.
Act I: March 9
SCENE I : Endsleigh Street. A London townhouse. First floor. Early spring—cold air, warm light.
An open-plan trading floor, carpeted, with twelve large desks arranged in rows. Screens are stacked high, obscuring the people behind them.
Late in the day, moving into evening. The room carries the atmosphere of a locker room: heat, stale air, and the residue of sustained activity. At intervals, alerts and synthetic voices cut through the chatter; when irrelevant, they are ignored.
The desks are cluttered with personal effects—takeaway bags, plates, half-finished food, snacks, wrappers, cups and mugs.
Time has lost sense and definition.
UPSTAGE: tall townhouse windows. Shutters closed. Grey curtains drawn, muting the last of the light.
ENTER STAGE LEFT: The Warrior, The Godfather, The Kid, The Student.