A Tale Of Two Truths: A Team’s Multi-Six-Figure Day
Enter the minds of multiple traders tackling the first opportunity of 2025.
At the AXIA trading desks.
Monday 6th January 2025.
London, England. And Limassol, Cyprus.
That Saturday you swam in the sea and visited the snow. And you took your son with you. Such were the holiday memories of the past few weeks—of rejuvenation.
Now the flight back on Sunday is delayed. Should you ask Haywood for an emergency desk on the Limassol floor? Something is brewing, but fates do not twine their strings today. After a three-hour delay, you fly back to London with your family and get home; sleep by midnight… do you trade from home tomorrow? No! You committed.
And so: Monday, the 6th—back to the London floor. You catch up over the morning hours and look at the bonds… equities. Where’s the dollar? Reset the charts, refresh the desk…
11:02 – TRUMP AIDES EXPLORE TARIFF PLANS FOR EVERY COUNTRY - WAPO.
Instantly!
—clickclickclickclickclick
You sell some clips in the S&P and DAX. Do other markets?
Not this time.
Hold. First trade back—patience.
The Spoo retraces. You scale out some clips. Give space; give yourself some room to operate. Leave a core short position—
—DAX just pinged straight back higher!—
something’s up…
You snatch the other mouse and click through the Washington Post article, but you know the headline is already suspicious. And now the article————hold on! You shout out some extracts across the floor—only… critical imports… sources.
“Only… critical imports… sources!”
shouts the trader from across the room. That trader is a good friend of yours; in the game for over two decades. You both go way back—first as spread traders—where you, as the only Englishman, joined his team full of Greeks trading the Bund-Bobl-Schatz fly. And this Cypriot—a North Londoner—is someone you trust and respect. He and the other Immortal Cypriot are classic volatility-chasing, fast-finger macro-flow traders armed with deep market and narrative knowledge.
Oh, hell! That sounds soft! A softer version of the current tariff plans. Not ‘universal’ or ‘every country’, but now only applied to ‘critical imports’? Seemingly, this is a walk back to this hawkishness that’s been pricing in! Risk-on. You lift a few clips in EuroStoxx and Euro currency futures, and you are suddenly well placed to trade what comes next, as you are a hybrid of news and market profile—‘technical’—trading.
You felt the dollar was already overbought, as Cable and Euro made huge downside moves since the New Year then… consolidated… ripe for a short covering move—a squeeze! And look at that Stoxx now… its weekly profile structure… there is a large cave—something like a bell curve but with its belly blown off—above last week’s high. This means, likely, we’re about to trade higher, and Stoxx will want to test and ‘repair’ that area once more. Bid on headline implications? Check. Bid on market structure and participant positioning? Double check.
You run your long Stoxx and Euro positions. P&L starts to swell. You keep them on. But there is a thought that worms in your brain; you can’t ignore it. It’s screaming: Denial. This WaPo article has to be bollocks! Why would Trump release a softer tariff plan before negotiations? He’d want to go in guns blazing. It doesn’t add up. And you know Trump’s no fan of WaPo!
“And you know Trump’s no fan of WaPo!”
reiterated our Englishman, a London native too, who is precariously tall and devastatingly well-mannered. You hear him and agree. That S&P and DAX you sold on the initial headline? You cut and reversed long ago, ever since you shouted out details of the WaPo article to the floor minutes ago. You are now long S&P and DAX… but they are still complacent—mere moments go by, painfully slow.
DAX!
It bids higher. You are on-side at least twenty ticks. What other markets can you build positions in? This is what you do best. Scatter and manage across markets, ride that volatility and navigate through correlations. From spreads to outrights, your two decades of experience tell you this is the most volatile the Dollar has ever been—or at least, as much as you can remember. You lift Euro and Yuan futures, climb onside, and positions start to swell across the board; you scale in some more. By far, the largest position relative to all others is in the Euro. Hold!
You come back to the article. What could be the next market mover here? Tariff policies are inflationary, and these bonds are just sitting there on the lows… lift ‘em! You lift some ZF—the U.S. Five Year—for good measure. You run and run the positions, the markets continue their bid, and the respective intra-market correlations hold. But there are some considerable technical levels ahead; a good place to start scaling out and bank some profit. Scale out… scale out… after nearly thirty minutes, you wind down, almost flat. Because you know what is likely to come next: Denial.
You look through your X feeds, newswires, and AXIA’s home-brew project: the Delta One terminal. And you are attuned to a new player in town—Trump’s Truth Social.
You wait for the Truth… and wait and––————
THERE!—
Not. Trump’s Truthin’ about Bragg… Pomerantz. No joy.
THERE!—
Nope. More Truth about Congress or something. He’s awake, he’s Truthin’, and he’s not going to let WaPo get away with this—come on, man! Deny it!
“Come on man! Deny it!”
shouts the North Londoner. You’ve heard him trade all morning, in fact—see him—as you sit comparatively closer than the rest. You're in the middle of the room, catching the exchange between these two traders for most of the morning. Like them, you also started as a spread trader in the early noughties, and you three transitioned to outright trading nearly a decade ago. Small world: prop—and after so long, you met again, this time being a comparatively newer member of the AXIA team and this floor.
But you’ve waited for your moment. You need to be picky and careful when starting the New Year—these grindy moves off the WaPo? You are not convinced. Wait for the denial—that’s the core of your skills—trading comments, data points, the fast moves, smash’ n’ grab.
Denial is coming—Trump’s Truth. You scan the markets, planning your next move: Copper, Yuan futures, other Chinese markets—and the Euro; it’s already moved significantly. It will retrace. Unwind all this risk-on bid done on thin air. But you can always do more. What else? Keep DAX and Peso on the docket, too. You continue with your prep, but you also start to think of the rest of the team. Some are still on their way back to the floor, but there is one usual suspect you can’t help wondering about… he’s in Dubai…
That familiar Dubai skyline
glints to your left. Up on the fortieth floor, you can see everything… but crowding around you is your usual setup replicated from the London floor: all dozen plus monitors. Well—nearly—you have the compulsion to ensure its exact; exact! You can’t afford to hesitate or waste time because something’s off. It’s nearly there; you need to angle the monitors like you did in London. Every time you change it over there, you also change it in your Dubai place. They must be exact! But it’s worth it; it lets you spend New Year here, after some skiing in Chamonix and Verbier—first time skiing since you were ten years old…
But now all you think about is the Denial. What a blunt start to the year! Like Soleimani’s assassination in early 2020—risk-off, then risk-on over a day or so. You only just made it off the plane from Tulum back then…
You replay the events of the morning in your head—one of these slow-burners—of this correlation and flow-dominant days; they align perfectly with your skills and niche. The kicker was how this came to be because of how the WaPo article dropped over the newswires a few hours ago. You saw the first hit:
TRUMP AIDES EXPLORE TARIFF PLANS FOR EVERY COUNTRY - WAPO.
Which is very different to the headline that hit about a minute later:
And you have experienced these situations before. Releasing headlines like these creates confusion and, in many cases, opportunity. After the market reversed the initial spike, it started trending higher in sensitive markets like the Euro, DAX, and Chinese markets. After the bullish—less than hawkish—clarification, you positioned long in the Euro and DAX. The steady grind looked great, with decent volumes across the board, and that gave you conviction—you’ve seen this play out many times. All the markets correlated and reacted to them. You kept buying and adding to the positions even as they had already extended. A slow burner that slowly gathers momentum. But you did so with one hand on the revolver at all times, one eye open, since you know that our main man is going to Truth this. He’ll never want to show a sign of weakness before taking office.
Yet, even between the two headlines, you hit first and asked questions later, seconds later. You quickly scanned the article to see the real kicker— ‘critical imports’. And in between all this, you had time to message a young buck, that good old lad, at the Cyprus office; it isn’t what it seems. Article quite dovish.
“Article quite dovish!”
shouts the young trader. “‘D——’s just messaged me.” You hear the good old lad say to your far left, down the rows of desks, squawking what the Immortal Cypriot just messaged him from his Dubai timezone. You glance all over your monitors… and then—the WaPo article link pings on your screen.
So, a step back on the hawkishness? But so much has already moved! Wait. Be patient. You try a small scalp, but no such luck… but you’ve learnt long ago to be patient; the markets demand it—but demand it more so for the new and the young. You’ve got the firepower, the leverage, but life for the new and the young is precarious, even after four years in the game. You don’t want to become another golden-haired Icarus. Do you want to give in to that clickclick—do stupid—and go back to the lentils and rice life and rent in that village again up in the hills, up and away from the office? No. You’ve already come a long way. There’s gonna be something here—
But so much has moved!
Hold. You start messaging everyone’s favourite North Londoner, and he’s all over the Denial that’s coming, and you start talking tactics and game planning with him and the rest of the surrounding floor. Eyes are out everywhere. On TV: CNBC and FOX, who will appear there? Will it be a social media thing? Truth Social? The WaPo piece mentioned Haley, Bessent, and Lutnick—keep track of these names, too.
“…keep track of these names too,”
says the young trader behind you. He’s been with you since the start! Since you and Haywood opened this floor in Cyprus, following you from London. Tall, blond too—good-looking—you dare say. Sporting the usual baseball cap and low-key colours. You believe in him and want him to succeed; keep going. Thrive; fly!
But now you have your next opportunity to think about. The Denial is a matter of how and when. But critically—how? Press conference? Because trading that will be very different from, let's say, another article. Or some social media posts elsewhere?
And where is the meat on the bone? Where is the value? Which markets should you trade? What’s held since the morning’s highs? Concentrate on those. Then, the sizing depends on how you get the info. You know from experience. That big blip down the price ladder has a different probability set of outcomes and, therefore, variable expected value instead of getting it early. So, sizing will depend on what point you get the news. And it al——
—D-denial! Denial!
“D-denial! Denial!”
shouts the good old lad from across the floor. The risk screens explode; action everywhere! Firm-wide:
Euro, Dax, Stoxx, Yuan, Copper, S&Ps, Five Year, Ten Year, Peso—
—You scan across the page; even more markets!—ultra-violence.
The swarm is angry; fuming—this emergent synaptic beast has sunk its teeth into everything, and you know these traders would be damned before they let go of anything. Some traders are in so many markets simultaneously that their dropdown list of positions overlaps with another trader’s long list of positions. And the noise, man—you think of the collective cries, the fury and yelps from London to Dubai must be an en-masse ensemble as it is here in Limassol.
You flick over to read the Truth: “The story in the Washington Post… is wrong. The Washington Post knows it's wrong. It's just another example of Fake News.”
Fake News! He hasn’t used that phrase in such a way for a while, and denied—Truthed—so categorically! So binary. No wonder the traders hit this so hard; this isn’t a central banker’s answer.
And it’s already over—many traders smashed and grabbed beautifully—everyone’s cut most positions; some left a few runners. But it’s done. And they banked. The aim was to retrace all the WaPo price excursions. What a day: the grindy, trending slow morning and the volcanic afternoon denial. A Tale of Two Trades; Two Truths.
You return to the trader you were speaking to earlier. He focused on China-related markets and outperformed. And that is no surprise—the nature of the denial and the depth of his prep—fit his skills well. Hit and go onside immediately and hold most of the size from the start. But then this trader mentions a pattern you’ve both seen many times before: after a great first week in January, those who’ve missed it often start chasing for the next two months. And what calamity follows! Because the next period can have terrible, non-existent opportunities. Some older traders with the account to match dig themselves into a destructive negative P&L spiral; other grads—the new and the young—lose their accounts and leave. It gives you a false sense of performance hope.
“It gives you a false sense of performance hope,”
Haywood says to us! “Because it almost matches your New Year’s resolution mentality. You come back fired up, charged, and super motivated. Your brain was detached and had time to rejuvenate and think about how you will conquer the world. And because of that, you can do much better than normal because of the New Year’s mindset,” he continued.
The follow-up implication, he said, is “how do you create a New Year’s mindset every week of the month? Regardless of your form. That is a distinctive feature of a trader you already know—the Immortal Cypriot,” he continued. In doing so, Haywood just mirrored a micro version of the Permanent Revolution. “Sometimes, when traders come in with a New Year’s mindset, they are met with the reality that after three weeks, they don’t make money. That is why newer traders—on the brink—often quit in February,” Haywood said, even if there were no realistic opportunities to tackle. More-so—if they missed an explosive start to January. This pernicious problem is now but a hairline away from finality. It's a double whammy that has ended careers before. The market will always turn strengths into weaknesses.
Reader!
You just witnessed some seven-to-eight-figure traders on January 6, but let us examine them at a higher level.
The day allowed to trade either the morning WaPo, the afternoon denial… or both. Such was the case for both the Cypriot duo and our ‘news-technical’ trader, all of who outperformed on a relative basis, firm-wide. For the former, their flow and correlation trading skills permitted accessing that situation. For the latter, recall that he was in two minds. Long Euro and Stoxx, yet highly aware of an impending Denial that would make you want to short those markets instead. How do you resolve this inner conflict? That is again the power of the ‘framework bonus’. In his case, the ability to turn to the market profile and find conviction and orientation elsewhere when other factors—like the wily details of a headline—do not permit it.
Further yet! That day showcased a range of seemingly different skills: the ‘antagonistic’ blend of news and technical trading. The morning relied on technical reasoning, while the Denial demanded swift action on the price ladder. A skill he is not comfortable with: to hit the flow first! Before the headline! And why? Because he read how the Immortal Cypriot did the same to counter the slow translation of the Japanese election results. What was the ROI of reading that? He thought the Truth would come out from Trump in this fast way—and he won’t be sitting around waiting for headline confirmation. A synthesis of disparate skills and methods. He Made It New.
The cumulative P&L from the rest of these traders netted north of half a million on the day. Some outperformed on a trailing twelve-month basis; for others, it was significant from expanding the skill set and getting the reps in. With the exception—at least for now—of our cap sporting, young trader, who still outperformed on a relative basis compared to the usual. He dinged the $15,000 ceiling with open P&L on the Denial—trading that exclusively—and closed his trade out not far from there.
And you realise something else, too: everyone thinks they underperformed… by default. At a high level, this is the fate—a hallmark—of a performer. Could have been better! Sometimes, these are mere lamentations, but there is always room to improve. To a ruthless performer, the best days must always be ahead. No one feels this stronger than the Immortal Cypriot, regardless of the shiny numbers. “In the end, I was gutted as I felt I could have done much, much better on the denial,” he explained. “I expected it to come a bit later in the day, and at the time, I remember I wasn't looking at my screens; I was on my phone… I saw the market blip, and then a few seconds later, I saw the post. I clipped 320 lots in Euro and 60 or 90 DAX… I think,” he continued. “But I felt I was a bit late to it, and it caught me a bit off. I didn’t go straight onside in the DAX either, which stopped me from hitting other markets. Like the Chinese related ones, they were probably the best, so I was quite upset about it. I felt I could have made twice as much if I were more alert and reacted faster.” In turn, he mirrored the conversations for the whole group. Few more lots there, potential to do more here, this market must be hit first next time…
Such is also the reflective nature of our young yet growing trader. To see that he expects to perform, not merely shrugging shoulders like a newbie learner—who reverts to: eh! I’ll get it next time! And this expectation is echoed in his changing mannerisms, his speech, and a growing Presence at his desk—perhaps unintentionally mimicking the top performers at the firm. He sits right behind one. Spend enough time together, and you will begin to talk alike. What follows from there?
He also reflects on how market choice made the biggest difference for him—doubly so for a trader with a much smaller account, yet with more considerable leverage that accompanies a growing account. By default, the margin of error is smaller than those with a larger account. So, it is all eggs, one basket. “A younger version of me might have tried to fade S&P or by default—U.S. equities. Why not? But I saw and expected the Chinese markets were the best to be in, so that is where I chose to prepare for the Denial,” he said. “I only hit one market. I was a bit panicked and flustered, but at least I was in the right market. So, looking back on it, I could have visualised more—hitting it. I could have also done more size; I tried to clip more but I didn’t get filled on the rest. Perhaps I should have paid down and been even more aggressive; I’m just so used to hitting my smaller clip size—by clicking on the right mouse button, I never end up going for the bigger clip. That is what I’ll be working on this year. To ensure I vary my size even more, this was an opportunity to do that on the Denial, which is frustrating.” So say, we all.
What are some other takeaways? Especially for the new and the young? “Many layers came into play at once,” one of the traders said—the one that founded this Limassol floor with Haywood. “It’s realising that Trump is hyper-in-play, so you must be attuned to the opportunity set around it. It, therefore, needs your time and consideration to match these opportunities more than trying to back-test a trend line for seven hours that day, for example. Because there’s a time and place for testing when the market is quiet—that’s the right thing to do—but now you need to be sensitive to this new opportunity set,” he said.
Further, note how fast these minds shifted to ask: What is next? To be instantly ready for the Denial and “storyboard”—as another young trader in London described during the potential Russia-Ukraine conflict escalation on November 19. To internalise this so much, it becomes mere reflex; no more than a return volley on a tennis court, no more different had the Truth come out mere minutes or days later. Indeed, many other variables would be different, but they have Presence to deal with it all the same.
Nevertheless, recall something mentioned in the previous Asymmetrist Feature: On Permanent Revolution—that ‘the anomalous becomes the centre’; the trader of the future—the unique and weird—as it is, at least, to the trader of today, will be the very same person to displace them. So the goal, for the traders of today, is to stay new, and “be competitive with the opportunity set presented,” says Haywood, quoting Stanley Druckenmiller. Why not create and expand your opportunity set altogether? The day went to the flow traders, but also the framework—technical—traders and the smash ’n’ grab traders. But tomorrow will go to only one of them, where there will be no distinction. A time will come—and maybe one day soon—when a trader has to be all those things. And that is not the trader you’ll want to be fading.
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.