Dear Practitioners,
So we’ve cracked open the first of the traders—The Razor. It was a trip down memory lane in more ways than one, and it opened the door to further riffs, reflections, and postscript material that have emerged since finishing the book. Thank you for joining me.
» I’ll put out a reminder for the next stream closer to the date, along with a short poll so you can vote on whether you prefer the Thursday 6 p.m. slot or a weekend session for the remainder of the series.
This post contains the full recording of Stream Two, aired Thursday, 20 November 2025.
Further down, you’ll find the show notes—but first, the links for the next session.
Stream Three will cover:
Chapter 3 — “The Collector”
Thursday, 4 December · 6 p.m. GMT
As we read together, please read Chapter 3 in advance and bring your marginalia, thoughts, ideas, and reactions to the live stream. Participate in the livestream chat—or, if you prefer, subscribers can add asynchronously to the long-term discussion threads via Substack’s Chat feature.
» Link to Stream Three (4 December)
» Join the book club’s discussion of current and previous chapters
What We Covered in Stream Two
• Chapter 2—“The Razor”
We examined The Razor not only as a trader but as a narrative portal for the whole book: the bridge between the introductory worldview and this craft of ours. This chapter—precision, patience, constraints, low-variance setups—became a doorway into broader discussions about identity, story, and the purpose behind a trading life.
Explored:
Constraints as creative engine—how resistance shapes careers in trading, literature, and art; from Tarkovsky and Bulgakov to traders forging themselves against adversity.
Losing and rediscovering the “why”—the danger of outgrowing the initial financial motive; why every trader must eventually find a deeper, more durable reason to continue.
“No Plan B”—the psychological intensity of building a career where failure is existential; The Razor, The Warrior, and the shared refusal of a fallback route.
Low-variance opportunity—The Razor’s core philosophy: the moments where the market must do something before it can do anything else. The fleeting edge where conviction aligns with structure.
Limit down: the decisive moment—his 2020 ‘limit-down’ trade, a perfect narrative example of The Razor’s craft: precision, patience, escalation, and composure under extreme pressure.
Wearing another trader’s hat—why understanding someone’s story expands one’s trading consciousness; on internalising other traders’ mental models and “thinking like them” without imitation.
Long volatility vs short volatility—navigating regimes, opportunity frequency, and the importance of orienting a career toward environments that reward discretion.
Minimum Viable → Always Viable trader—moving from survival to adaptability; why differentiation, not replication, determines longevity.
Contaminated observation—the hidden cost of copying someone else’s strategy too early: corrupting your natural powers of pattern recognition.
Acts of mastery—the recurring theme that a trader’s great advances emerge from grappling with difficulty, not ease; mastery is born of constraint.
“The next trade is always the most important one.”—The Razor’s sign-off and one of the central ethos lines of the whole book.
Chapter markers:
(Substack does not yet support clickable timestamps.)
03:00 – Opening remarks; Cyprus trip; meeting the new traders.
05:00 – Why deliberate reading matters; the “great conversation”; approaching books with intention.
06:50 – Entering Chapter 2; setting expectations for The Razor.
12:10 – The challenge of merging technical detail with compelling narrative; introduction to limit down.
18:45 – Constraints as creative force; Tarkovsky, Bulgakov, and traders shaped by resistance.
21:40 – Constraints in trading careers; internal “opponents”; the mysterious better trader meme.
22:30 – The danger of losing your “why”; Cyprus interview anecdote.
37:40 – Warrior vs Razor: exploding vs compressing variance; shared low-variance philosophy.
38:30 – Extremes becoming similar; inverse thinking.
45:00 – The first-instance principle: maximising the highest-quality moment, not the repeat.
47:45 – The Razor’s origin story; variance aversion and eight years of grind.
48:30 – Story as expansion of consciousness; learning to “wear” another trader’s mind.
49:10 – Volatility regimes; long vol vs short vol orientations.
60:00–70:00 – Observation to funnel > synthesis > low-variance > conviction sizing.
78:00 – Minimum Viable → Always Viable trader; navigating to your North Star.
01:35:00 – Copying strategies vs developing your own; “teach me where, not how.”
02:05:45 – Editing personalities; capturing traders authentically but respectfully.
02:06:50 – Razor’s sign-off: “The next trade is always the most important one.”
02:07:10 – Announcements: Stream Three (The Collector) schedule.
02:08:00 – Using Substack Chat for marginalia and long-term discussion threads.
02:09:10 – Closing thanks; Thanksgiving wishes; next steps.
Mentioned Works & References
For those who want to explore the writers, ideas, and influences mentioned throughout the stream, here’s a concise list of books, figures, and Asymmetrist connections that shaped the Stream-of-Consciousness.
Books, Thinkers & Other References
The Heart of a Dog—Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita—Mikhail Bulgakov
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future—Peter Thiel & Blake Masters
Roger Bannister — four-minute mile barrier analogy
Asymmetrist Cross-References:
Start Narrow, Grow Wide (The Counterintuitive Shape of Trader Development)
Of Fumes and Fury: Liberation Day Fallout, Part I
