The Quarterly Review: A Prop Firm’s Eight-Figure Kick-Off.
Inside AXIA’s prop desks during Q1 2025—and the prompts to rethink your Q2.
Across the AXIA trading desks.
January-March 2025.
London, England, and Limassol, Cyprus.
… Then came April. And what a quarter it was!
The clocks finally changed, the brake broken, and it seems that European equity can go up. Or, perhaps until Liberation yester-(day) gave you a discount.
Consider, in no particular order—on-brand for the markets, yes?—what had to be digested over the past quarter: the evolution of the Trump Tariff saga, the DeepSeek disruption, the European budget reactions to the Russian-Ukraine war—Germany’s debt break story; Bund’s a-sorry. And… ah-yes. Remember those ECB and BOE cuts? FOMC holding and perhaps others folding. Gilty anyone?
Nevertheless, this is where the multi-dimensional market operator must thrive. VIX goes up, and your P&L must do too. You must be positioned this way. Otherwise, when you forget this inconvenient truth, you’ll get a real nasty surprise. No refunds.
But oldboy!—remember, the worst is reserved for Goldilocks strategies that thrive on a decent VIX number, but when it goes up too much—liquidity is fleeting, duration is weeping—that special environment is what really separates the traders with pure long-tail, convex-style payouts; those that can consolidate performance in such a disrupted market state. Of course, Q1 2025 was none of the latter—this was March 2020 action—but as a reminder of what volatility can do: blow a hole into the market’s actual functioning and… reality.
Further, consider this from the Introduction of Traders of Our Time:
“In a zero-interest-rate policy and highly accommodative world, many asset classes grind up. The world becomes more one-dimensional—“if x, do y” scenarios. Like a controlled scientific experiment, many of the variables were isolated and seemingly snuffed out. In a complex web of many variables, a dynamic world is where the human trader thrives. But if only a handful of variables become relevant, especially if it becomes central bank policy, then much edge and profit is to be had among the server racks of speed and automation until they later start to eat each other, too—but that is another story.”
To add, a one-dimensional world is fantastic for investors and those proclaiming a new regime and world order—passive investing, quant funds—an ‘if x, do y’ world sounds the death throes of the human discretionary trader. As it had been from 2013–2019, roughly. The same is true for static, rule, or mandate-bound investors, human, algorithmic, mechanical traders, or otherwise.
So what did the dynamic, complex web of Q1 2025 look like for a futures-based (long-short agnostic), multi-product, multi-edge discretionary trading floor? Firstly, reimagine the scenes of A Tale of Two Truths, which describes most action days or weeks of January to March. Of course, all action periods differ, but inaction is the same. As described in Sitzfleisch. There was no real one-off, big event, but an accumulation of ticks, a harvesting of volatility, and a general rising tide of P&Ls as the markets thrashed around.
How much accumulation? The AXIA prop desks globally clocked in over $10 million this Q1. Time to look back, and then forwards.
The High-Level View
The following interview from March 12 with AXIA’s Alex Haywood will take us much of the way. In doing so, we will reference many from Traders of Our Time, because they are still protagonists at the desks, yet this article is written to be stand-alone from the book. Haywood begins:
How did the beginning of the year look, and how were traders navigating it?
“In January, the traders that were doing well were your ‘early theme’ type of traders—where news is explosive, and the opportunities are somewhat binary. You just needed to be fast, and your market selection needed to be efficient. Moreover, the technical structures were cleaner. You could see visible lines and areas on the charts, knowing that there should be a move if it breaks this area. Overall, the news was the main instigator of the momentum for a breakout on clear technical boundaries on the chart; you could make a lot of money trading this.”
This is precisely the wheelhouse of The Student, featured in Traders of Our Time and currently trades on the AXIA London floor. He is a “hybrid trader”, both at home with the market profile and with navigating macro-economic implications, news flow and the like. Though, as we’ve said in Defeating The Discombobulating Dialectic Part II, this label should one day be redundant. Or rather, the next big pioneering trader is who will make it redundant; such is the New Professional of the future. In short: The Student ding’ed a seven-figure-month this January precisely because of building these exact hybrid skills over the past five years and “building the bullets”—size—since then. Time to reap.
Haywood's “early-theme” traders mirror how The Warrior looks at the evolution of themes and how the market reacts to themes over time. Namely: Phases 1-3—emergence, peak and post-peak. As he says in The Warrior: Part II of Traders of Our Time, execution must differ in each phase, and proper separation of consistent performers occurs in post-peak. “To lose only two, when you make ten, as others lose twelve,” as The Warrior said. In post-peak, the market is very tired and unreactive, and headlines are often faded or reverse quickly. Everything's just V-shape, V-shape, V-shape! As Haywood said, within the early stages of new theme emergence, the moves are straight-line, go far and likely hold. Indeed, operating here can be fairly binary: smash the bid—going off-side? that's information enough—get out. Smash the bid—going on-side? that's information enough—grab it.
And what changed from February to mid-March?
“From mid-February to where we are now [March 12] … the skill set has demanded navigation of a ‘latter theme’. [Moving from Phase 2 to 3]. However, there have been some outlier themes that were as opportunistic as they were in January. [Smash-and-Grab] But it became more nuanced—Trump was now going to and fro with his tariffs, and people didn’t know if he was believable. And the technical charts had lost their structure. Then, the flow-news traders came into their own.
So we have moved from the skill set of clean technical early-theme traders and the [smash-and-grab-style] news trading in January to a more dynamic flow, subtle-news environment, because some headlines wouldn’t immediately move the market. So, how are you digesting that flow?
The traders who grew up on these order flow dynamics—the early 2000s, the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) traders, or COVID-type traders—have these experiences to be dynamic with the flow and the ‘subtle news’ skills. However, you also have a trader like [The Engineer], who’s both technically proficient (market profile) and dynamic with his flow navigation.
When his charts are no longer constructing the perfect boundaries, he’s just looking for when a market flow stretches one way, and suddenly there’s big momentum the other way. He just ends up working these ranges. He’s really proving himself—he’s not just a ‘linear’ thinking technical trader, which a lot of technical traders are: looking for neat lines, or waiting for levels to be broken.
If the markets have lost their technically clean lines and structure, he’s able to shift dynamically just through the flows. For example, the market just seems exhausted at one end, and then you get these powerful dead cat bounces—in the equity markets, where it can release, and then there’s a twenty to thirty handle bounce, which you can make a lot of money on. Even so, you work with your framework and tools. Take the market profile—you have to start compressing it if the volatility starts increasing.”
What has been the relationship between the cycle in market environment, volatility and experience?
“These are the types of environments that benefit futures traders. Meanwhile, traders—like those single-stock, long-only—would probably be struggling now because the universal selection of stocks going up has diminished. If you overlay a senior elite trader’s equity curve, this is an environment where you could match it against the VIX chart. Senior traders who have seen the previous cycles perform better when the VIX jumps.
But new junior traders who see a cycle for the first time struggle. Instead, the performing traders have seen at least a prior cycle like COVID-19, the Great Financial Crisis, or the European debt crisis. Former junior traders who had no performance in 2020 or 2022 during the Russia–Ukraine [early war days] were still able to experience it—and now they’re leaning on that experience to perform in 2025.
They survived the previous volatility cycle and the compression in between volatility cycles to make the money now.
On the other hand, completely new traders, despite the ripe volatility, do not perform well and will not perform well. They require lived experience, appropriate debriefing techniques, and a learning protocol to understand this experience, adapt to it, and then endure the lower volatility periods until next good volatility comes around.”
Consider an extract from Traders of Our Time from The Engineer: Part II, to explicate further.
“This perfectly describes the nature of The Engineer’s growth, and of all the traders in the book! The trader is not made in this market cycle, but they are made in the next. The trader learns, builds, makes mistakes, iterates and survives while the sun shines, while the markets still provide recurrent opportunities for their trading. But only to reap the real rewards in the next cycle when conditions are favourable for his trading once more. That is how to ‘break through the numbers,’ as The Godfather said, describing The Warrior’s growth.”
Something we have also echoed in Asymmetrist's Inaugurating the Next Cycle: Understanding Your Future.
Yet this cyclicality is also the bane of all those who graduate from the simulator and move to a live trading environment. It represents your very personal Sod’s Law, just as it has for a particular new trader on the AXIA London floor. He was promoted to trade live after maximising January’s opportunities. Of course, just then, the markets changed and required a completely different skill set, which this new trader had not yet experienced.
Once again, this highlights why the maturation period for traders has only increased over the past two decades. The rate of change and the speed at which markets transition from one state to another seem faster than ever. This young trader will draw on his January experiences once again. Next time, he will apply those experiences for much better performance. However, he cannot afford to wait for the “markets to become good again” because who knows how long that would take? He must continue traversing the long and challenging process of developing new skills for a changing environment. Then, he will do so repeatedly as the market keeps shifting and altering its behaviours. It is tough to survive this maturation period, but imagine the arsenal this trader is building; the foundations he will establish after enduring long periods of stress testing, breaking, iterations, and fixes. Never fade a “slow-brew” trader as we describe in… well, reader, you know what book!
We discussed skill matching different opportunity sets, but you also mentioned how a trader’s physical environment, even their hardware setup, can shape performance. What do you mean by that?
“... [You want] to be able to define the cycles and attach the necessary skill set for the cycle as it shifts to another domain. There are different skill spectrums. You could be a good news trader, but not so much when the market is flowy, the moves are more ‘dirty’, and the structures are more over-extended.
Take [this fast-growing young trader]—he’s somewhat struggled [in Q1]. He’s more like a binary news trader; he hasn’t optimised his technical trading, and has underperformed in a more dynamic flow-type [slow-burn] market. You could attribute this—and that’s what [The Warrior] said—to the way [this young trader] organises his ladders. He's prioritised the need for speed, yet he’s sacrificing his peripheral vision [to look across the screens] to watch the flows and correlations across markets.
Other traders, like [The Godfather] have performed relatively stronger since February because of their ability to see the correlations across all the markets, to see where value is—they’re just picking up one market that hasn’t gone yet. They’re buying whichever because they can lean on the correlations of the other markets. In other words: the correlation lag—and [The Warrior] and [The Godfather] are great examples of exploiting this.”
One Story, All Stories
Let's examine how some dynamic flow traders—like The Godfather and The Warrior—traded in Q1. We should also investigate the same navigation skills applied dynamically by 'technical' traders, though we use that term reluctantly.
We heard from The Hero on Tuesday, April 1st; his insights are noted below. This trader closely ties the price ladder—order flow—to his market profile framework. The savant, tactical price ladder navigator—The Warrior—and the strategic profile operator—The Engineer–alongside Haywood himself are the three most influential figures in The Hero's skill development and career growth. One can quickly see this reflected in his trading.
What’s shifted in your approach to markets during Q1 2025?
“I performed quite well in some spots but not in others. One of the main things is to avoid a static way of thinking and move away from hard scenario planning. This is more the case now than at any other time in my career. [Since at least 2016]. This is largely because of the current climate—Trump policies—and general market behaviour.
Yet, some of my biggest trades have always come from really thought-out game plans and scenarios, step by step, drawn out before executing. I’ve had a few trades like that recently, too. But I’d say my biggest asset right now is fluidity—letting go, reassessing, and not being rigid in my approach.
A more specific tactic I’ve been using over the last three months is a product from a very specific morning routine. Every day, I write down six trading principles I’ve really anchored myself to. I’ve tweaked and refined them over time. I also write out my calendar each morning. And I go through three questions—same ones every day. It’s not a formal questionnaire, just a quick check-in that helps flip the switch so I can enter the market with a trading and analytical mindset.
Whenever I’ve been stuck in static thinking or rigid approaches, those have been my worst days. When I’ve been open-minded and fluid—whether leaning on technicals, fundamentals, or both—I’ve done best.”
Recall Trading With Your Body. Routine is paramount yet counterintuitive, too. In periods of fast-moving workload, market volatility and chaos, the response should not be more novelty, but more familiarity. Not a holiday—routine breaking—but doubling down on sameness. Control where it can be found outside the markets. Therefore, the more volatile the markets, the trader must stick to firm routine and process. It cannot be an excuse to break routine, or not evolve it to fit the environment. The Hero has violently experienced the best and worst effects of routine and process upon a trader.
One is reminded of what Gustave Flaubert once penned in a letter, popularly translated as: “Be regular and orderly in your life ... so that you may be violent and original in your work.” He offered it as a rule for artists, yet if the trader of the future is to distinguish themselves through creative faculties, there may be no stronger case for purging the distinction between the two domains. A quote for your monitor's sticky note.
How do you read today’s market environment—and what does real-time adaptability actually look like in your process?
“Back in 2022, 2023—even during COVID—you still had a lot of ‘if-then’ scenarios. Not binary, but you could boil them down to clear inflecions across markets and themes.
But now, you’re playing in a field with unbelievable uncertainty. Not just from a thematic perspective but also from a practical one. Looking at markets I trade—for example, S&P or certain bonds—they’re displaying behaviours that don’t give me the confidence to get convicted one way or another. A lot of it is low time frame and fast finger flow. These are not things I can read into and trust heavily. And I question whether those moves are even meaningful. So, this fluidity has helped me navigate the current conditions. I still work through mental frameworks, which I’ve refined over the last few months—actually, even before that. But what the last three months forced me to do was accept that I have to take my hands off a little.
I can’t be so rigid in my structure. I have to be more principled—anchored to guiding principles rather than hard trading parameters. It’s no longer “if this happens, I do that” or “if that piece of data hits, I’ll do X.” I have to stay much more flexible, especially in the most sensitive areas of the market. I constantly ask: what is the market giving me feedback on right now? If it’s showing that something isn’t sensitive, and I’m struggling with it, I want to let it go quickly. I try not to refine my views too much, because if I do, I naturally start anchoring to them. And when I anchor to ideas instead of to my principles, it’s harder to work myself out of bad periods.”
The Next Quarter: Suggestions for The Practitioner
As Q1 closes, each trader is left not just with their results—but with a set of questions. What broke? What held? What’s next? Below, a diagnostic tool inspired from the ‘Practitioner’s Postscript’ in Traders of Our Time to help anchor your Q2 with intention.
À la The Engineer: what you do on one end must feed the next—routine into process, into higher-level framework—and then right back in reverse.
The question then: What can you take from this article, and your own experience this quarter to update your Routine, Framework, Process as explained in The Engineer's chapters in Traders of Our Time.
I. Framework, Routine, Process (per The Engineer)
• What element of your routine did you update or adapt to the Q1 environment?
• Did your trading framework remain relevant across January’s breakout conditions and March’s flow-dominant dynamics?
• In hindsight, where did your process hold up? Where did it disintegrate under volatility or theme transitions?
Suggestion: Update your “Routine, Framework, Process” cycle with at least one concrete revision per layer based on your Q1 experience.
II. Theme Navigation & Execution (per The Warrior)
• Which theme phase did you execute best in: emergence, peak, or post-peak?
• How clearly could you map the market’s position in the theme arc in real time?
• Were you able to change execution style across phases (binary smash in January, fading/reactive in March)?
Suggestion: Debrief one trade from each phase. Note your reasoning, execution style, and outcome.
III. Your Adjacent Possible (per The Student)
The “adjacent possible” highlights that limits are targets—pointers to where experience and competence should be developed next.
Where were you limited in Q1? Was it in adapting dynamically? That’s the edge of your current world.
Were you slow or unsure in January’s fast market? That’s your next terrain.
• Which trading competency was clearly outside your reach this quarter?
• What adjacent market, product, or skill would have expanded your edge?
• Did your knowledge base plateau—or did you break into new domains?
Suggestion: Define the edge of your current map. What’s just beyond it? Target one adjacent area to develop in Q2.
IV. Awareness of Market Transition.
• At what point in Q1 did you realise the environment had changed?
• What were your cues—volatility compression, structural breakdown in charts, or a change in headline responsiveness?
• How long did it take your behaviour to catch up with this shift?
Suggestion: Write a timeline of market regime change from January to March. Mark where your reactions lagged.
V. Tools and Setup Matching Market State
• Did your screen and ladder configuration match the kind of market you were in (e.g., flow vs. binary)?
• Were you seeing what you needed—or did you sacrifice vision for speed?
• What did your hardware or screen layout amplify? What did it obscure?
Suggestion: Describe one change you can make to your setup to better align with Q2’s possible regimes.
VI. Cyclicality and Maturation (per The Godfather, The Engineer)
• What “unusable” experience from prior cycles finally became valuable in Q1 2025?
• If this was your second volatile quarter, what foundational skills were missing the first time around? (You wouldn’t have known what they were back then.)
Suggestion: Map your past cycle experience to Q1 2025. What lessons did you finally apply?
VII. Principles over Scenarios (per The Hero)
• How often did you fall back into scenario-based trading?
• Were you able to detach from rigid “if-then” logic and instead operate from fluid, principle-based conviction?
• Do you have something close to six personal trading principles? If they’re implicit, can you make them explicit? Would that let you operate with more freedom?
Suggestion: Review your current trading principles. Rewrite or refine one based on Q1’s test.
VIII. End-of-Quarter Review Habits
• Do you have a quarterly review process? Is it scheduled? Does it include both performance data and structured reflection?
• What objective data would improve your review quality (e.g., performance by theme phase, product type, or volatility cluster)?
• What story does your Q1 tell—and how does it inform your Q2 posture?
Suggestion: Commit to a recurring quarterly review block. Include performance stats, emotional patterns, regime notes, and process updates.
Acknowledgements, Permissions & Disclaimer
Grateful acknowledgement to AXIA for granting access to their traders.
Special appreciation to HH for his help in refreshing the detail of Q1’s market action.
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.