On Permanent Revolution
Avoid creative decay. Make It New. That’s what sets you apart—and lays the foundation to become an eight-figure trader.
Good God man!
Are you co-opting a phrase from the Communists—nay—Trotsky himself, in a publication that is deep-in-the-bones trading and financial markets—Capital C Capitalism? Yes, yes! Because there is no better phrase to encapsulate the prime directive for the trader of the future, the ones that survive the gauntlet of time: the New Professional. That is, the discretionary human trader of the future is not in crisis. They are crisis. They have embraced an attitude or mentality of permeant revolution so deeply as if it were culture. And one cannot deny the Reds had great copywriters—Peace, Bread and Land—need I say more?
In a world where change is the only constant, and where that rate of change is amplified in the pressure cooker of financial markets, to say ‘go forth and permanent revolution’ is the only instruction worth saving.
Consider that in many domains, re-creation through disruptive, creative, visionary processes is the exception. It is rare because we live in a world that, by its nature, consolidates, stabilises and endeavours to reach equilibrium. Later: process, best practices, optimisation, automation, how-to’s, ‘career paths’, bureaucracy, societal norms, dogma, tradition and so on, follow and root so deeply that only unimaginable crisis—to the linear thinker—can break them. Look at a VIX chart. For all the crimes of the totalitarians—the C’s and F’s—they committed a trader’s most egregious mistake: to be systematically short volatility. In that world, embracing risk becomes a revolutionary act. And that is what makes you exceptional. Therefore, of extreme value.
That is what makes a successful, multi-decade, seven-to-eight-figure trader. And that is where the successful trader of the future will go. To embody Permanent Revolution—a relentless capacity for reinvention and risk-taking—avoiding the creative decay that dooms systems and individuals alike. They are a die-hard revolutionary, in more ways than one.
On a long enough timeline, each domain suffers creative decay; heat death. Consider what you are reading right now—an essay. An essay? But where is The Format? Where is your Point, Evidence, Analyse (PEA)? Where is your… well, reader, the vitality of the essay died in the way of most other things—standardisation, ja?
One realises that all is optimised when there are acronyms for everything—so speaks the 20th century. Grind generations of students to regurgitate the same answers to the same questions, who are no more interested in the essay than they are ticking a box and attaining a made-up score. Quotas, da?
Put them on the mental conveyor belt with the pre-made levers and presses, to churn out the same widgets and cogs; for these workers to never look beyond—more meta—and realise that the essay has its own exciting history of change and forms; prototypes, dead-ends and circuitous routes.
That is, the essay was full of life some time ago: it was full of risk. And the history of the essay form is tied to one of its greatest practitioners: Michel de Montaigne. Indeed, his essais is the inflection point where the upstream etymology of Old French—“essay, essai... to trial, attempt, endeavor”1 found new meaning through his literary innovation in the 1580s, transforming these words of testing and trying into a "tentative attempt" to writing about himself and the world around him, as translator M.A. Screech puts it.2
Note!— to trial, to attempt… risk and uncertainty rooted in the essay! A map unseen: what treasures, at its edges, await? But what does your modern school-factory experience make you think of the word instead? Not creativity—certainly not risk!—but to follow the pre-set plan. The Optimised PEA Path. Pump ’em SAT numbers. PEEL and SEAL! Creative decay; heat death.
That is why, over four centuries later, Montaigne’s work still feels like a revolutionary act. Because of how he thought, read, and interacted with the world in a cross-disciplinary way; nodes of information from everywhere—Latin literature, nature, personal experiences in the throes of a tumultuous Civil War—late 16th century France was a dangerous place. And then his inner war—his “melancholy,” his depression.
Yet by attempting to navigate these nodes he made the output his; it is unique. Change, risk and uncertainty rooted into his practice. Also consider that Montaigne’s work is charged with both meaning and value because it is rooted in crisis—the ultimate forcing function. The personal essay for a personal crisis. And what can better crack a static domain for a need of risk-creativity-vitality as does a crisis? Better yet, to embrace crisis, to be long volatility; to seek Permeant Revolution?
That is what made Montaigne exceptional. And so glints the enduring trader of the future.
The Permanent Start-Up
Consider another domain apparently closer to home: launching a business. To survive any length of time, one must have likely imbued the enterprise with an embrace of risk—a flowering of creativity—of prototyping, of energy, of novelty—an essai at doing something new. And of vision.
Yet to grow, and scale, you will need a team, and as that team grows it is likely that they will push away; they shy away from change, reject novelty, and downplay Permanent Revolution.
Indeed! They are also right. The start-up scrappy spaghettification—the product of trial and error—is swept away by process, standardisation, best practices, categorisation, streamlining and optimisation. And this is as critical to a business, as it is to a trader.
But now the business is on a path that is hardening itself against change; rejecting novelty and risk. At least no longer embrace change; not long volatility. Consider this taken to an extreme. Throw away your visionary, energetic founder and embrace the ultimate systemiser, optimiser and standardiser that seeks to do more of what they already do. A product of the environment before. To keep producing that best-selling widget year after year; keep optimising and get those costs down! To scale, expand, and layer process upon process—employee onboarding, more meetings and calls! Process, man! Do you speak it? We must scale! Follow the protocol.
Thus, a regime of short volatility has been institutionalised. But then, one day, it all seems to lose potency. Because now a culture of embracing change has been eroded; impossible for the processors to stomach or conceptualise deep revolutionary pivots. But the demands of the market have changed. It don’t work? Double down! Optimise harder—copy of a copy of a copy of past success. The road toward history’s dustbin is strewn with businesses that do just that. And, so too, the traders themselves.
Consider a crude rendition of Apple and Steve Jobs’ story. Apple, before Jobs’ departure in 1985, was the classic innovator, the disruptor. And, for good or ill, there was a vision, energy and determination to execute on that vision through not a Macintosh, but the Macintosh. There was, one feels when reading about these stories, the mentality of the permanent start-up; a culture of permanent revolution.
Then the optimisers took over—the consolidators and short-volatility proponents—led by John Scully’s (in)famous takeover. Momentum masked the unpalatable truth: innovation faded. No “tentative attempts,” no essai, at something new. Creative decay; heat death. The handheld Newton notwithstanding.
So: do what everyone else is doing! Do more—extract more profit, more product lines! Cut costs! This resulted in Apple’s near terminal decline until Jobs returned in 1997. It would take a crisis to bring him back to the fold. And it would take another Revolution within Apple to rescue it, and in-turn, bring forth the handheld one another decade later. The Jobs and Apple story, like Montaigne’s personal life are both rooted in Crisis—charging them with meaning and value, for the permanent revolutionary. And that is what leads to the creation of something new.
So reveals a dialectic—pun intended, Tovarish’—between the start-up spaghetti thesis, of searching on the frontier for the new, against the buttoned-up, optimiser and scaling, risk reducing executive: the antithesis. Both are necessary, but it’s difficult to return to break the old and try anew. Hence, why it takes a prime-time crisis.
But the trader is affronted with both demands simultaneously, to somehow keep this antagonistic state in their mind and navigate it. Because it should not take a crisis to enact change. Otherwise, it may very well be their first and last. So the solution is to become a synthesis; to embody Permanent Revolution. Discover, exploit, scale—tear it all down—and start anew.
The Transient Trader
Now observe at the trading desks. It is diagnostic if the trader is ready for change by their ability to take on suggestions and ideas as targets rather than rejecting it as criticism. To be receptive to disparate sources, to explore the nodes—wherever they come from—like Montaigne’s exploration of his thoughts, crossed through experience, in his essays.
Or another example: to view the success of others as inspiration, and another node of promising information, rather than irritation. For the trader to accept change and creativity, as a visionary founder of a business, if you will, and to prevent creative decay. To be willing to accept risk to change, rather than rationalising it away.
A trader’s response to a crisis is also diagnostic. Consider if a deep change in the market environment occurs, like a long-term collapse in market volatility, or a change of exchange rules that renders a trader’s profitability inert overnight. One trader doubles down on what they did before—they just need to wait it out!—optimise, and belt-tightening. Rather than recreate altogether as another trader does. Spoiler: the former does not survive. He was making six-figures a month. But one day, by 7.15 in the morning, he had no more career. So recalled a trader last week.
Then the cost-cutting begins. Move firms for a better profit split? Great idea! Better commissions too. But in that new environment, there’s no one to learn from—no new material to join the dots in different ways. Everyone’s a copy of each other. Creative decay; heat death.
Where will this trader get their new and random inputs to learn from? Cost-cutting—as factory optimisers find out—is predictable, safe; the very reason they commit to it. And that is why it fails eventually. If you can predict it will work—is it really innovative? Not enough! No risk, no energy. Anyone can cut costs. But to navigate the fringes of the unknown? To renew the venture or trader with the spirit of Permeant Revolution? That is the extremely valuable fellow you’d want to eat last when stranded at sea.
Other traders in a career crisis change their environment, to change firms—seemingly to reinvent—yet commit to it like water to oil.
“So you know I’ve been sitting with the technical traders,” says he.
“Yes.”
“And they don’t trade the same markets as me. They keep talking about that profile thing.”
“—Yep.”
“Well, I never used it, and they have no idea what I do. I just had my biggest down-day yesterday because of them! They are just filling my head with crap! So I want to move somewhere else. Put me with all the other traders like me…”
Creative decay…
“Son, you can’t hit the news—algos and all that,” says another, “it’s all priced into the charts anyway. There is no edge in news trading! It’s just punting.”
“Well, you’re welcome to sit with all the news traders…”
“Nah, I’ve done the math. Just can’t be done! But I’ve got edge. I’ll never tell you what it is, of course. But believe me—I’ve got spreadsheets! Something tangible: rules.”
…heat death.
That is, these traders, like the essay and Apple, were full of life some time ago: they were full of creative risk. However, to optimise and scale their P&Ls they rightly had to focus—entirely antagonistic to the creative-chaotic demands of having the vision to look ahead. And now going back is neigh impossible. Reviving a domain demands more than grinding optimisation—it demands the audacity to:
Make It New
Do not conflate best practices with forever practices. Such is the Permanent Revolutionary summarised. Launch in a heat of creative-risk taking and cool down with processes and scaling. And then break it all again. To keep making “tentative attempts” forward—to essai.
That is to say, writers—like a trader— must harness their chaotic-creative output into a process, a lucid practice and optimisation. To craft and associate disparate nodes—creativity—and yet to edit coldly. And to then have the capacity to reinvent once more.
In a phrase: Make It New. Why—yes! I did also just co-opt this from Ezra Pound, and the literary Modernists of the early 20th century. Vanguard activists do indeed have the best memorable phrase-prompts… they are too good to pass by!
To Pound, English poetry of the 19th century was a “corpse language,” rooted in the Georgian—as Pound would accuse—practices that experienced the same creative decay; heat death. A crusty hang-over that was no more suited for their new, broken, crisis-world following The Great War. Romanticism, Glory and Man died in the trenches, yes?
And aside his own unique development as both poet and literary activist, Pound would spend the majority of his life championing authors and potential talent that would shake up, modernise, and recreate English literature as a whole. To Pound, the English letters were in crisis, and no-one seemed to be doing anything about it. His influence became immeasurable through his fervour and efforts. Consider a short roster: James Joyce, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and none other than T.S. Eliot. It was with Eliot’s The Waste Land where Pound’s editorial genius shone through and is widely known. 3
Specifically, Pound and Eliot themselves were determined on going direct to the unfiltered source; not the copy of the ‘successful’ yet transient generation before them. That is, going to the near ‘first principles’ of the form as one can. For example, to read Dante, to read the troubadours of 13th century Provençal, to read the ancient Romans and Greeks. To not just read: but dig for writing edge! Joyce’s Ulysses, for all of its novelty—especially for 1922—is rooted in the deep and proven narrative powers of Homer’s Odyssey. Structured identically and intentionally. Deep, yet devastatingly new. And it has stayed new.
Well, trader—that’s it! Make it New no better describes the efforts of both Pound and Eliot to reinvent and recreate than it does to phrase the demands of the new trading professional. One that stays new. But that does not mean to throw it all away and start from Year Zero. As the avant-garde and the Bauhaus have tried to do.
Rather, it is to dig into the past—directly—for there lies treasure. Perhaps the more unfashionable the better. Learn, and recreate from there. A “tentative attempt,” to do so. To find edge in places no one bothers to look. Or, worse, refuse to look. And for traders: to explore the lineage and mastery—the ‘vertical’ memory—of a trading floor, but to also accept the current, ‘horizontal’ lived experience of a diverse floor and then Make It New. A few too many novice traders attempt Year Zero, with no grounding or context and their trading depth goes in the way of modern art… the eight-figure art auction house P&L notwithstanding.
Preserving one’s red-hot creative energies while lucidly channelling its antagonistic output-process for a long time is difficult. In an individual or in a team. Powerful forces on your career will put one on a path of creative decay; heat death. And that is what separates a writer, a business, a trader to endure decades—to enact a culture of Permanent Revolution in their domain. To seem as if they are a vessel for an inner storm, a never-ending crisis they’ve learned to harness. To transmute that chaos—like an artist—into tangible, refined output to: Make It New. When you meet someone like that, they are unforgettable; they are unique. And they also happen to be your eight-figure prop trader.
Acknowledgements, Permissions & Disclaimer
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.
Douglas Harper, “Essay,” Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed 17 December 2024, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=essay.
Montaigne, The Complete Essays, trans. M.A. Screech (London: Penguin Books Limited, 2004), xv.
To those unfamiliar with Ezra Pound, it should also be noted that, later in his life, he became a supporter of Mussolini, espoused Fascist ideology, and voiced antisemitic views. These aspects of his legacy remain deeply troubling and must be considered alongside his contributions to modernist literature. By no means should this discussion of Pound’s literary achievements be mistaken as casual support or endorsement of these views, either by the author or Asymmetrist.