The Will To Perform: Liberation Day Fallout, Part II
Gothic dread, gallows humour, and the daily theatre of the dauntless.
Read Part I Here!
Across the AXIA trading desks.
Tuesday 8 April 2025.
London, England.
How does the gothic interior meet a smiling spring? A few doors down from the traders at Endsleigh Street, a handful of white cherry trees are in full bloom. Their petals sweep in front of countless university students spilling into Tavistock Square Gardens and Gordon Square. They queue at street food vendors at Byng Place. They sprawl over the grass, they picnic, they frolic, they celebrate the Sun. It’s been at a premium. They wonderfully have no care and every care in the world.
But don’t they know?—don’t they know?!—about the end of the world, the end of the monetary system, the great future fiat rug-pull, the end of humans, the NWO, inflation, economic data manipulation, market (dis)function, that time the Fed hiked massive, and equities still went up! And now, the end of trade and globalisation as we know it. How can they be so happy? Don’t they know the injustice of being blown out of a great trade for stupid reasons when you give back so much… when a third-time rehash of an old headline sends your mega-trade flying the wrong way? To get squeezed so much you puke the high tick; to be hunted! To come in and lose and lose and lose… to lord over a place where the Sun only ever sets; to feel you live among the ruins of what you once were: an unending finality. Decay.
As these pale traders brood along their crumbling castle walls, peering down at the villagers below. Don’t they know… so glints another aspect of the will to perform. To push—or, as others might say, abuse themselves—for performance. Another grindy sixteen-hour state of paused alert, mounting sleep deprivation; some smoking to sacrifice the lungs for a temporary boost or relief. That is the visceral immediate, but consider something darker. To do what they do—navigation of this complex, multi-dimensional market world requires complete exposure. A specific mind-body empathetic capacity to experience it all, to be sensitive yet primed to feel the nuances of sentiment, theme evolution, the plot twist. This has a cost in the way actors warp their reality and personality when overrun by their roles. Total immersion. Here be fiends… to know that vast outperformance is emotionally Pyrrhic, as success is fleeting yet failure permanent. Here be magic… to carry the burden of knowing and seeing too much; to never want to talk about it, or be damned if you do. Here be beasts… to isolate their hearts in castles because who would understand the necessity to don a mask of extremes: wrath, silence, madness and badness—whatever they need to do what must be done. Here be…
Banter?
It’s quiet along the walls this Tuesday morning. This means whatever pundit, speaker, egghead, fund guy, or Fed gal just wheeled out on mainstream TV is hounded by the traders. A tough crowd: the TV is racked with one-liners, meek speakers savaged, and the self-aggrandising are parodied, all with the earthy hilarity that can emerge from a trader’s mouth.
Later, they pace around their seats, looking ahead: “What’s market pricing there...”—“Or Here…”— “Yeah, but it’s priced, no?” To reassess: “What a meek response, mate!”—“Where’s China?”—“Xi and Trump need to have a phone call; got to happen!” This is interlaced with lambasting and satirising the world stage: “China mulls… EU mulls… everyone’s mulling mate! Sell the mull! Buy the mull! China mulls… dumping treasuries,” says one. Ha! “China mulls… putting on a steepener!” Haw-Haw-Haw—“China mulls… dumping 2s and buying 30s!” Ho-Ho-Ho and so on and so forth.
A trader’s most prized possession is the perfect quip, regardless of its sophistication or toilet humour. They’re wrapped around a special core of bitter irony that sounds sweeter to those who know. No matter how bad, a joke is treasured when it carries the aura of this brotherly mystery. This thing of ours... a beacon to signal that you know that I know that when the Sun’s rays break through, we can appreciate it in our own tortured ways. A perfect quip or one-liner is weaponised humour, like a Trojan horse, to reach those too paranoid to be happy. So they can contort their face to resemble a grin or reply with a low huff, which is as good as laughter.
There’s a poise in the room, a priming, a sustained, balanced arousal state—the athletic kind, mind you!—which is hard to maintain for newer traders. But this veteran lot snap to action, as they did with ECB’s de Guindos’ comments around 10.30 a.m. that “markets always overreact,”—clickclickclick—so these traders hit the Bund, Bobl or Schatz; probing the line to see if anything lands because you never know. Maybe the flow tumbles into something more significant on the de Guindos downplay. Or, what the market thinks of the de Guindos downplay that can infer or alter the probabilities of ECB (in)action… cuts next week?... as various markets started to price this since Liberation Day: check Euribor.
Frustration builds and builds, markets directionless, P&Ls skidding: up a little, down a little. Then Bessent on CNBC talks about Energy… getting Europeans to buy American LNG with Tariff reductions… but markets turn on a dime based on lagging feed traders are listening to… in the end, nothing. Then, more Trump chatter about China “not knowing how to get it started.” Cue more chop—mediocre headlines—the traders push any ounce of opportunity. But nothing! CNBC rehashes the news, ensuring you can’t shake the thought: what if this time I’m in a position and the market runs with the fifth rehash? Damn it all!
But today, this fraternal humour is paying dividends. I mean! I mean, how can’t you laugh at all ’dis? Today, the order flow is mercilessly stupid, cunning, or both. Even the intermarket correlations seemed to fragment; Spoo futures were pinged around by the handful of traders still around. Currencies, commodities, and anything with a rate all answered questions at different times: Deal or No Deal? Recessionary, Inflationary, Stagflationary? Rate cut must be coming—bid, bid, bid! Then change the question mid-sentence.
This tenacious team spirit is a little big edge. It’s keeping you committed in the worst markets and situations, or this agitated state as if listening to the shriek of chalk on a blackboard. Come on, man! Wake up! Such shit markets! Endure this to be there for the great parts, the next big plot twist, and endless days like this Tuesday. Yet it speaks to the quality of these traders not to give back what they made on Big Monday. Today is crucial. Not giving back and not giving up: the will to perform. How simply difficult.
*
By afternoon, life became farcical, a blur with constant misreporting on X and newswires about 104% additional tariffs going into effect, with no response from China… a quote of a quote of a quote… everyone hit it one way, and the headlines rehashed it differently; time zones mixed up… going into effect Wednesday 9th at midnight, but—whats this Spoo doing man?! Leavitt comes on fifteen minutes later or so… bullshit denial, man! Cue the next pain: a huge blip on the U.S. 3-Year Note auction. When’s the last time this happened! Now of all times, on a low bid-cover! V-shape! Cue more foot stomping and venom. The market spills and begs by 7.30p.m… look at the Schatz, Look at the Schatz; whats going on! No one knows.
Contrary to expectations, all these traders lament loudly regardless of their P&L—and no matter that it’s infinitesimally small compared to Big Monday. Younger or junior traders wouldn’t fight; they’d be too relaxed: I made loads yesterday, oh well! What’s a five-grand loss now? Yet these traders instead push and push and treat any position as serious as the last. Everything is a fight until the last opportunity.
Such as the S&P’s Market on Close (MOC). Some got it, and some got caught: on a melting day, when does this ever happen? When does this ever happen!? Cue a floor rumble. What’s next? Waiting for Trump to speak at 8 p.m. London time, just in case. But now: Where is he? Why is he never on time? 9 p.m. grinds on. Trump talks factories and coal, and blasts the Democrats—but nothing on China? Tariffs? The trading floor music continues: Just shut up, man! On… and on… and on. Just say the word! Just say it! Say China! But no such words were dispensed.
By 10 p.m., traders discuss the overnight session. Most would wake up early, catch a few hours, get up at 5 a.m., and hit the office soon after. But let’s see.
Volatility is a funny thing, a difficult thing—six to nine in a blink of an eye. You don’t need to eat. Minutes feel like hours, and a day feels like a week, but the first five minutes after gut-spilling volatility mania are blank. A week has pressed into these traders, carrying its own debt paid by the body. But tomorrow we go again.
The traders start trickling out again in pairs. I walk out with them. One got a parking ticket. Well… that was Tuesday.
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Acknowledgements, Permissions & Disclaimer
Grateful acknowledgement to AXIA for granting access to 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.