How To Read The Collector
Dear Practitioners,
Thank you for your time and presence last night. It was an enjoyable session, and it was great to see more of you in the chat and the marginalia threads around The Collector—especially as we revisited ideas written years ago that continue to prove themselves in the current environment. The chapter gave us a natural way to reflect on the shift from H1 to H2 2025: changing volatility, new constraints, and the challenge of staying viable as the ground moves beneath your feet.
This post includes the full recording of Stream Three (Thursday, 4 December 2025), along with concise show notes and references.
P.S. There was a small glitch with Substack’s live chat towards the end, so a few comments may not have appeared on my side. If I missed something important, please reply to this email or message me directly.
Further down, you’ll find the show notes—but first, the links for the next session.
Stream Four will cover:
Chapter 4 — “The Adventurer”
Thursday, 18 December · 6 p.m. GMT
If you can, read Chapter 4 in advance and bring your marginalia, thoughts, and reactions to the live session. You’re welcome to participate via the livestream chat, or—if you prefer—contribute asynchronously to the long-term discussion threads via Substack Chat.
» (Link to Stream Four to follow ASAP—Substack’s latest update has broken the scheduling feature. I will nevertheless send a reminder email with the link by 17 December. For now, feel free to mark 18 December in your calendar.)
» Join the book club’s discussion of current and previous chapters
What We Covered in Stream Three
• Chapter 3—“The Collector”
We explored The Collector as a quiet survivalist archetype: a trader who adapts from one-regime, single-product identity towards a more flexible, multi-instrument way of operating. The chapter became a lens on the H1 → H2 2025 environment shift—compressed vs explosive volatility, new constraints, and the need for sitzfleisch, peer learning, and low-variance focus—as we talked about the longer journey from a Minimum Viable Trader to an Always Viable Trader.
Explored:
Environment as the real protagonist — how The Collector frames shifting regimes as the real driver of a trader’s fate, forcing adaptation rather than nostalgia for “good markets.”
The old “try-your-hand” metagame — the era where a trader’s whole career was the first strategy they learned, sustained by slow regime cycles that no longer exist.
From single-market identity to skillset — the danger of being “a Bund/oil trader” instead of a volatility navigator, and how the Collector is pushed towards transferable skills across products.
H1 vs H2 2025 — using the chapter to read the break between early-year headline opportunity and the tighter, more hostile environment of the second half.
Sitzfleisch and work-capacity — the unglamorous edge of building the ability to sit through thin sessions and late-night windows, treating time at the screen like training.
Metagame shifts — how inherited conventions on the floor give way to strange new approaches that are mocked at first, then quietly become the new normal.
Forcing Focus and last-chance constraint — the “you must be up this month or you’re out” moment as a hard boundary that sharpens concentration, risk-taking, and selectivity.
“The trader is always made in the next cycle” — why the decisive step happens when a fresh regime finally lines up with your wheelhouse, and how preparation dictates whether you catch it.
The extended mind of the floor — treating other traders as a live network by asking “Where are you making money?” and using that as a signpost rather than a script.
Contaminated observation — the cost of copying too early: polluting your own pattern-recognition and skipping the clean observational stage the Collector had to live through.
Minimum Viable → Always Viable — the long arc from just staying in the game to building skills, markets, and metagame awareness that keep you viable across multiple cycles.
Asymmetrist Cross-References:
“Minimum Viable Trader” – Asymmetrist series on early-career survival and extracting low-hanging fruit while building an account.
“On the Importance of Sitzfleisch” – stamina, long hours, and staying with markets through difficult regimes.
“Forcing Focus” – piece on the productive role of constraints, last-chance moments, and why removing constraints too early can kill an edge.
“Start Narrow, Grow Wide” (series) – especially Part One; ties directly to the Collector as an example of narrowing into one workable seam before later widening out.
Chapter markers:
(Substack does not yet support clickable timestamps.)
03:00 – Opening remarks; setting the frame for Chapter 3, “The Collector,” and tonight’s focus on survival and adaptation.
07:45 – Cyprus floor and founding group; the Collector as one of the original traders there; contrasting London, the Razor’s “glass” floor, and Cyprus’ more monastic environment.
09:55 – H1 2025 recap; Liberation Day, tariff trades, and the first half of the year as an intense but opportunity-rich period that shaped expectations for what “normal” markets look like.
12:24 – Introducing the “Minimum Viable Trader” idea as a companion essay; early-career constraints, financial lifelines, and the reality of needing to pull rent from a still-fragile trading account.
16:23 – Tom Wolfe’s “The Last American Hero” and the Aston Martin entrance; the Collector’s arrival on the floor and the legend of the Flipper as the backdrop for his early development.
19:50 – Low-hanging fruit around the Flipper; learning to take a tick out of weird order flow; realising that even distorted environments can be turned into a small but vital edge.
22:11 – Quiet implosion of parts of the financial complex; traders becoming obsolete after regime shifts; the danger of assuming your current edge will always map cleanly onto future markets.
31:32 – H1 vs H2 2025 in detail; July–August headline feast versus the later collapse in easy news-driven opportunities; the luxury some senior traders have to sit out versus the minimum-viable grind for newcomers.
34:40 – “On the Importance of Sitzfleisch”; first half of the year as a stamina test, second half as a conviction test; treating time at the screen like an athletic base for future cycles.
36:29 – The old “try-your-hand” attitude; slow regime cycles that once allowed a single inherited strategy to carry a whole career; setting up the metagame discussion.
37:30 – Defining the metagame; how strange, mocked approaches become the new orthodoxy; Warrior and Sphinx trading Bank of Japan overnight as an example of discovering a fresh metagame.
43:32 – Traders who think they have “solved” markets; resistance to change when volatility compresses; bund range examples and the fragility of one-regime identities.
48:28 – Minimum Viable Trader as forcing function; why almost everyone needs a do-or-die phase; separating those who push intelligently when it’s there from those who never fully commit.
57:06 – Asymmetrist essay “Forcing Focus”; constraints as productive pressure; the Collector’s cliff-edge moments where being up or out sharpened his decision-making and selectivity.
01:00:46 – “Where are you making money?”; approaching a top trader on the floor; the Chicago PMI trade as the Collector’s last bullet and launchpad; burning the boats onto one focused seam.
01:09:16 – From PMI to taking ticks out of the DAX; choosing the best accessible opportunity within one’s constraints; banking a career on the most workable micro-edge in front of you.
01:19:59 – The Extended Mind; borrowing from Annie Murphy Paul; using other traders and the floor as cognitive scaffolding; low-skill, high-volatility opportunities as valid starting edges.
01:24:35 – “Where are you making money?” as hunting tool; dangers of shutting yourself off from the extended mind; Alex Haywood’s warning about insular intakes and superficial copiers.
01:28:52 – Excellence as design requirement; why many never reach the staging ground for excellence; getting stuck between newness and stubbornness, or between copying and genuine understanding.
01:41:44 – The old guard’s cynicism; the 150-trader floor cut down after abrupt regime change; “if my edge isn’t there, I don’t trade” as a path to extinction rather than discipline.
01:47:52 – The Engineer shattering taboos; seeing serious, large technical trading break the old “no real trader trades technically” dogma; expanding what counts as legitimate edge.
02:03:08 – Pulling the threads together; extended mind, constraints, minimum-viable phases, and the Collector as a template for surviving hostile environments.
02:07:04 – Addressing those in the minimum-viable state; pointing toward “Forcing Focus” and “Minimum Viable Trader” as further reading; emphasising scrappy, honest progress over perfection.
02:09:31 – Closing thanks; notes on stream logistics and Substack quirks; announcement of Stream Four on Chapter 4, “The Adventurer,” and the forthcoming H2 2025 review.
