Dear Practitioners,
Thank you for your time and presence last night. It was an enjoyable session—and a fitting one to close out before the holidays and New Year. The Adventurer gave us a natural way to reflect on the second half of 2025, and how we might carry those reflections into the year ahead.
This post includes the full recording of Stream Four (Thursday, 18 December 2025), along with concise show notes and references.
Further down, you’ll find the show notes—but first, a note about the next session.
The next stream will cover: Chapter 5—“The Warrior: Part I” In January 2026
I will confirm the new slot, date, and timings for the new year in a Boxing Day round-up email, which will also look back at various Asymmetrist materials and subscriber updates. The link to Stream Five will follow then.
If you can, read Chapter 5 in advance and bring your marginalia, thoughts, and reactions to the live session. Or you can contribute asynchronously to the long-term discussion threads via Substack Chat.
» A central page to follow the full stream series
What We Covered in Stream Four
Chapter 4 — “The Adventurer”
Stream Four used The Adventurer to explore what comes after competence: moving beyond survival towards meaning, lifestyle, and greater selectivity in risk, time, and attention. We read it through the Minimum Viable Trader lens (build viability fast, then adapt as conditions change), with brief nods to markets-as-mirror and embodied judgement. Cross-references included Zero to One, John Coates, Angus Fletcher, Asymmetrist work, and contrasts with other archetypes in the book.
Explored:
The Adventurer as a post-survival archetype: optionality earned, then trading reshaped to coexist with life, travel, sport, and identity.
Minimum Viable Trader as the universal origin story: monetise quickly, get viable, then adapt when the environment (and the seam) changes.
Observation > trial-and-error > temporary monetisation: watch what’s live now, find a small basket that works in that regime, run it.
Dynamic sizing as a behavioural signature: wait, tolerate being wrong without bleeding, then press when it’s real (vs all-in/all-out; The Razor as the extreme).
Markets as mirror (Seykota): desire and incentives quietly shaping outcomes.
Embodied judgement: interoception and decision-making via Coates, with Fletcher’s Primal Intelligence flagged as a future book club potential.
Cross-References:
Peter Thiel & Blake Masters — Zero to One
Ed Seykota — the markets will give you what you want
John Coates — The Hour Between Dog and Wolf
Angus Fletcher — Primal Intelligence
Asymmetrist series: “Minimum Viable Trader”, Choice and Its Discontents
Forthcoming H2 2025 Trading Floor Review Series (Part I to be published Sunday 21 December)
Chapter markers:
(Substack does not yet support clickable timestamps.)
00:03:04 — Opening + tech/Substack chat housekeeping; how to follow along with notes
00:05:26 — Chapter 4 begins: positioning The Adventurer and what to extract from the archetype
00:08:34 — “Don’t replicate the outlier”: Zero to One framing (copying misses the point)
00:11:44 — The trader’s “why”: money vs meaning; Seykota (“markets give you what you want”)
00:16:13 — The lifestyle image (trading while travelling) + why his edge shows up as dynamic sizing
00:21:54 — Quote + theme: what happens after success; material → meaning
00:26:39 — Athletics analogy: why novices can’t copy the champion’s current training (evolution over time)
00:34:36 — Asymmetrist-as-expansion + the Minimum Viable Trader lens (viability first, then adaptation)
00:54:24 — Account reset / “no plan B”: forced excellence and a shift in perception
01:04:24 — The danger of “one thing = my edge”; markets change + constraints/creation analogy
01:11:02 — Alien planet mindset: observation over assumptions; inductive fallacy + “turkey problem”
01:13:00 — Trial-and-error: finding a workable basket for this regime and running it
01:13:40 — Chat: Primal Intelligence (Fletcher), creativity vs AI, and a possible future stream
01:16:15 — Dynamic vs static sizing spectrum: Razor vs scaling archetypes (incl. Warrior/Godfather)
01:33:25 — Conviction and sizing across regimes (ambient volatility vs tight/low-vol environments)
01:40:47 — Embodied judgement: interoception, hunches, and Coates (The Hour Between Dog and Wolf)
02:02:19 — Constraints + the “fly-on-the-wall” coaching moment with Alex Haywood; end-of-chapter insight
02:07:42 — Wrap: holidays, scheduling notes, and next stream tee-up (The Warrior in January 2026)
