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 its biggest, which is reserved for the opening act of the 2020s. We suspect that outright, long-volatility—implicitly or explicitly—teams, firms, strategies or otherwise have had a similar experience. Though, in the eternal words of The Warrior, “it wasn’t easy.” And we are more concerned about the details between the achievements, and the shadows cast when erecting any monument to success.
Context is essential—hence the discussion of P&L. This quarter crossed well over the eight-figure mark for the firm as a whole. But we reveal a further detail per AXIA’s Mario Kyriacou. There are now at least a dozen traders shooting for multi-six or seven-figure trading days, rather than one or two traders who hit that milestone repeatedly five years ago. Kyriacou wears many unexpected hats, one of which is Trump’s own, as Asymmetrist found out firsthand inside the ‘Risk Room’ during the 2024 U.S. elections, and he is well placed to give a wider view, as we will explore further in Part II and later in the series.
Reviewing the achievements and transformation of the team can be summarised in one phrase: bulking out the middle. More traders than ever before are consistently in the running for meatier results, and this rate of change is far more critical than this quarter or yearly P&L, because we must look forward. A weak centre, as history has shown, 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, better, unexplored opportunities for every trader's achievement and career length at the firm. This is the achievement that has been finally revealed this quarter because this process has been gestating far longer.
Yet, we cannot ignore the shadows: what makes you can often 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. That is, skills and performances have 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.
Similarly, the groove has been overly greased for those who have used this cycle to grow from five to six, or six to seven-figure traders, on a narrow, hyper-tactical set of skills. These tactical traders are defined by relying on the market and the external world to provide opportunities, rather than working piecemeal to identify subtle opportunities in which a strategic trader captures, therefore creating their own opportunities. In the similarly eternal observation of The Engineer, noted in Traders of Our Time, “when the idea is obvious, its access is difficult; when the idea is subtle, its access is simple.” Nothing flashes an ‘obvious’ idea more than a news headline, requiring far more nuance, skill and tactical ability to trade what is an increasingly crowded trade—“everyone’s piling in!”
This creates two problems. Firstly, repeated clusters of similar opportunities generate a better sample set for both human and non-human participants, allowing the latter to outcompete the former until something radically changes. This is especially true in the ‘tactical’ level of the game.
Secondly, what happens if the markets enter a protracted period of recycling headlines, no material change in current market themes, and lower volatility over time, should the market move beyond the narrow pattern that’s underpinned much of this recent performance? So far, the markets have rewarded, and as most market practitioners have known or experienced, reward results in reinforcement. And reinforcement is dangerous; a poisoned chalice, the very reason as to why the thing that makes you, breaks you. We’ve written about the nature and need to widen opportunity sets in Part I of this Quarterly Review.
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
Consider that all traders learn across as well as up. You learn horizontally from those at your stage, just as you do vertically from those much further along. But learning from those far ahead can be fraught, for both expert and novice. This is, in part, the ‘Tacit Knowledge’ problem: you know more than you can say.1Ask a world-class footballer how they kick a ball, and they’ll likely shrug: “You just kick it like this.” Often, it’s the ones beside you, in the same boat, facing the same problems or have just overcome that problem you are struggling with, 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 across the spectrum.
Later—in Part III—we will also explore the quarter through the lens of other older traders further up the experience and achievement curve.
We begin with the novice—two AXIA graduates, from the firm’s Cyprus floor, who have gone into live trading in March and June, respectively. With them, we will explore the nature of reinforcement and abrupt change. A young trader born in March, named G.S., has already put in some $8k+ or $6k+ days, narrowly missing out on his first five-figure day. We meet him at a critical, important, and somewhat unique part in a trader’s career of attempting to emerge from a negative account—a maximum drawdown of -$8k, with more bumps, loss-making, and wheel spinning, along the way, yet with much learnt. This means that change within this trader’s behaviour has taken place. Learning without change effected is otherwise futile. That is the best we can do to understand a trader leaning towards success, and keep the basics ticking over. In the words of Kyriacou:
“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.”
The other, T.W., was born at the start of June and had experienced a career pattern far more consistent than the markets themselves: strong performance on the simulator for most of the year—enough to be promoted to a live trading account—only to enter immediate and prolonged drawdown, where everything has changed and nothing seems to work.
This is a microcosm of an effect that is otherwise in slow motion: even a profitable trader’s performance over many years can prove temporary, as it could happen that the opportunity cycle was long enough to 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.
For T.W., he has ruthlessly experienced the observation: the trader is never made in this cycle, but in the next. In effect, he had temporarily ‘solved’ or optimised the market’s state of Q1, which then needed different skills, approach and mentality for a different opportunity cycle of Q2.
Chiefly, Q1 was dominated by an accumulation of trade opportunities, while Q2 all happened within a small cluster of days. Q1 was enough to perform to go live, and—Sod’s law—going live is often the high-point and the end of that cycle. This also explains why all novice traders experience so-called ‘beginner’s luck’ or intermittent periods of success; their skills, strategies, or approach happen to match the opportunity cycle of the markets. Once more, this is obvious and visceral, easy for the trader to see. Still, the greater danger lurks over the longer-term processes that go unnoticed and underestimated, like a lurking iceberg. Recall AXIA’s Alex Haywood 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.”
From our novice T.W., to the experienced trader reinventing, as many had to like The Godfather and The Student, all that can done is to triage the P&L bleed, and learn widely, fast—through the social learning of their network, the ‘extended mind’—and monetise the current opportunity cycle as much as possible to allow for survival for the one that comes after. If that is within two months, two years or two decades, the same still applies.
Understanding Narrative Continuity, from Phases One to Three.
T.W. articulates a change from market behaviour and responsiveness to certain information over time, which to a team full of ‘news’ or ‘event’ traders might seem fundamental, even banal: 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 often a revelation. Usually, by default, news trading is traded as isolated cases, as if an aberration that a trader could luck out on for some extra P&L.
But nothing is in isolation. “If [a tariff comment] had come out in April, [the markets] would have gone miles,” recounted 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, as leading to a shift in his perspective on the markets. “I had only really 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 is another example of the change from Phase One to Phase Three explained by The Warrior, in Traders of Our Time, as the way the market prices in, trades, and gestates information inputs that often 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 is often symptomatic of the transition between Phase Two and Phase Three, the period which results in many traders giving back gains made in 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 one’s trading ‘approach’. From G.S., on the nature of approaching late Phase 3 theme trading, as opposed to the often shocking start of Phase 1, which rewards more proactiveness, aggression and correct attitude of “just get in!” that served the trader well in the immediate aftermath of 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 the shifting goal posts; what was extreme before is now the default today, so trading on that extreme headline again is futile and static. Bad news yesterday, is good news today—as we 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 kind of dynamic engagement—regardless of whether one trades ‘news’, ‘technicals’, or otherwise—marks a critical step in discretionary trader development. G.S.’s words below 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 here, not just as the opportunity to capture a price dislocation when probabilities are stacked in one’s favour, but as a chance to push the boundary of his performance. To grow through discomfort by expanding the edge of his known world. It is 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, and it’s harder to see in advance.
There is a hidden, internal asymmetry that permits growth. It’s as much about recognising a learner’s adjacent possible—the space of near-future reinventions—as it is about realising a practitioner’s performance possible—the many ways one might grow, and re-grow, into a stronger trader.2 On some days, a trader might be uniquely positioned to do more size for the same risk—or even less—than before. So take advantage!
This was a defining feature of the intense growth arcs seen in The Hero and The Engineer. The former grew from three to three hundred lots early in his career, consistently and “fast”—by focusing only on the trades where he could reliably size up. Five, ten, fifteen more lots each time. These were often not the ‘biggest’ trades measured by volatility, drama, or excursion.
Many traders conflate large market moves with edge. “What was the best trade?” becomes shorthand for “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 that have been accumulating to 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 helpful 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 presents itself. When asked how he attempted to keep a fresh and open mind, even with the grindy, intense nature of 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, intentional practice, which we have already seen play out on the other end of the spectrum by The Godfather, and the rest of his floor, trading Fedspeak right in the middle of anticipated Iranian retaliation headlines, and then instantly switching back to trading geo-politics once more. But for these veterans, many with over ten or twenty years of experience, all the seven-to-eight-figure P&L milestones to boot, much of this was a classic display of unconscious competence. Put it this way: some new traders on the floor were only just born when The Godfather had been trading the Treasury-EuroDollar spread in the Greenspan era. Experience, as ever, is both a multiplier and a separator of performance.
Readers of Traders of Our Time would know of the ‘Worldbuilding’ mental model we suggested to understand The Warrior, and the likes of 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 that is deepening its complexity by self-referencing its internal workings, as it is also reflecting the ‘real world’ in a more immediate and hyper-connected way, this mental switching is a skill needed earlier than ever in a trader’s career, as evidenced by the likes of G.S., because the rate of change is faster than ever. 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 a product of their times, and what better way for all traders, of all achievement and skill, to use as a reference to intimately understand what is the latest demanded by the market by looking at the novice, and looking at what it takes for them to succeed? That is the gift of a beginner on the trading floor.
In parting words to all those who are learning horizontally from T.W. and G.S., understand that this generation of novices—of 2025—can claim a real chapter in their trading careers, if they capture and work on it effectively. These are not the days of monetising your experience, but deeply understanding it, and remembering the muscle memory of this period to redeploy this in the years to come when this kind of opportunity arises again.
T.W. and G.S. lived through this, instead of just hearing about it. One day, these experiences will be at the root of their conviction. Next time, they will trade a similar opportunity cycle with far more size, conviction, alongside being a deeper, mature, sophisticated trader right from Day One. That is what will make them. That is what will push their performance possible once again, as well as yours, should you capture this period dutifully. 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.