Asymmetrist, Year One
To know where you are, and why you’re here
Dear Practitioners,
Asymmetrist, across both its publishing and streaming, returns in January 2026.
Until then, I wish you rest, reflection, and a strong start to the New Year.
As with many things, it helps to know where you have come from before deciding where you are about to go. The turn of the year is the natural place to take such bearings, no matter how secular—or humbug—one might be. My formulation goes as such: first, to give thanks; second, to reflect on what has come before; which, thirdly, clears the deck to boldly go into what is to come. Add in some eating and merry-making, and it is hard to outdo a very human process.
First: Thank You
To you, dear reader: thank you—for your time, attention, and feedback since Asymmetrist launched just over a year ago. I hope it has already provided immediate returns, and that the longer-term ones are still compounding in the background. You are the bedrock supporters from which much will emerge in Asymmetrist: a relationship defined by taste. I know one day you will be able to say, as a source of pride, that you were among the first readers.
I also want to extend deep thanks to Axia Trading Group—both Axia Futures and Axia Markets Pro—for the access, trust, and ongoing mind-melding across the desks. From being a ‘writer-in-residence’ across the trading desks to the continual mind-melding with their traders and coaches, this access has enabled a perspective that truly feeds the veins of Asymmetrist. In particular, thank you to Alex Haywood and Mario Kyriacou for helping to launch, fund, and believe in Asymmetrist as it emerges. Lastly, special thanks to the AXIA traders themselves, who are readers, and often the subjects of Asymmetrist’s articles and reflections. You are the lifeblood, and I guarantee your efforts will be returned in kind as Asymmetrist grows.
To read Asymmetrist is not a passive act.
It is a deliberate choice: a vote for a more considered way of thinking about who we are as traders; how this profession shapes us over time and how we might speak more constructively about that experience.
It is also a vote for building a trusted cultural mirror to this industry. One that reflects success, failure, learning, and change. A vote for raising the standards by which this profession understands and represents itself, and for treating its inner life—its mentalities, pressures, and contradictions—as something only we, as practitioners, can truly relate to and represent, rather than leaving it to be distorted by others.
Over time, Asymmetrist aims to become an industry-standard publication: a place that helps us grow, and helps us imagine a better version of the industry we inhabit. A quiet revolution has unfolded from the bottom up. The pirate, entrepreneurial spirit forged in the trading pits of the 20th century and carried into the 21st was never part of “high finance,” and never particularly interested in it. Within this world, traders at the frontier have undergone an intense professionalisation, both in how they operate and in how they think about themselves. Yet the wider culture still lags behind, and is long overdue an overhaul. Asymmetrist intends to be part of that process. Perhaps even its vanguard.
As discussed in the inaugural Stream-of-Consciousness in November, perhaps the first order of consciousness—of life itself—is the ability to look back at ourselves and change our behaviour accordingly. In that sense, Asymmetrist is also an attempt at consciousness-expansion: for individuals and the industry, slowing the feedback loop just enough to allow reflection, and from reflection, evolution.
Within those ambitions sits a great deal of unfinished work, and a long road still ahead. But every such project begins with a first step. You have taken that step with me. And it has been a privilege to write for you as Asymmetrist takes shape, and to have you as part of this mission.
With that: a brief review of the year follows below. If you have downtime in this holiday period and find yourself reflecting on your own trading practice—at whichever stage of your career—there is likely much you may not yet have read on Asymmetrist, or perhaps worth returning to with the benefit of having lived through the turns and twists of 2025.
Second: The Work We Did In 2025
Fun fact: From January to December, Asymmetrist published somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000+ words this year alone. That is roughly the length of a standard modern novel—or around half of Traders of Our Time—written, edited, and released over the course of a single year.
Stories from the desks
We hit the ground running in January with a multi-point-of-view team tackling tariff headlines, alongside a brilliant young trader navigating downplay headlines from the London cadre.
In April we began a quarterly review series to examine team performance and lessons learnt as a whole. Only to be immediately thrown into Liberation Day (2 April 2025) and its fallout. Asymmetrist made full use of its writer-in-residence credentials, sitting right in the middle of the volatility as the London team navigated what followed—Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.
In June came classic geopolitical trading: the Iran–Israel–U.S. flashpoint, a staple case-study for future headline regimes.
In July we returned for the second quarterly review, and, to no one’s surprise, there was far too much to write about, so we did: Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.
Then came the long drought of late summer and autumn as opportunity density sublimated—and with it, the quieter career-gifts of the last two quarters, captured in our final review of the year: Parts One and Two.
Essays, models, and long form
We used the quieter months for essayistic work:
A long series on the counter-intuitive shape of trader development: from Start Narrow, Grow Wide (Part One), to the perils of delusion (Part Two), to constraints (Part Three), to the difficulties ahead in becoming the Always Viable Trader (Part Four)—capped with a Practice Companion built for application.
For readers who found this pertinent: don’t miss the earlier exploratory essay on the impact of trading on the body (March), nor the adjacent implications of training stamina and work capacity rendered as Sitzfleisch (February).
From the essayistic work, various kernels hardened into a bottom-up structure we launched in June: the Idea Index—including ‘building the future’ through recruitment, the trader’s original sin (attempting to make an infinite process finite), and positing that markets can only be navigated (not solved), with further additions in December which examined the nature of time in trading.
Stream-of-Consciousness
In November we launched something new: Stream-of-Consciousness—a live, meandering book-club through Traders of Our Time.
Running every other week, we rounded off The Adventurer (Chapter Four) before Christmas, following streams on The Collector, The Razor, and Chapter One / Preface / Introduction. The streams have become a place to tie the old and the new together: recent market development, trader career evolution, and loose material that finds its meaning in being discussed together.
The Big Book
Lastly—but extremely not least!—is of course the elephant in the room: the 27 March release of Traders of Our Time: Navigating the Impossible Landscape. I’m sure most of you know about it, but it provided a big unlock and upgrade for Asymmetrist: a way to tie, build on, and expand the work in the book. To many, as I’ve recently started labelling it, Asymmetrist is in effect Traders of Our Time 2—but published and released through different mediums and formats.
Third: The Year Ahead
The question for myself in 2026 is how best to use each medium available, and its particular strengths, to capture story and sublimate it into meaningful lessons and evolution for market practitioners.
That said, the backbone of Asymmetrist remains the written long-form. Various experiments and feedback this year have helped me better identify what to publish, how to publish it, and at what cadence. Expect classic Asymmetrist to remain exactly that, while improving all the same.
Over December and January, I’ll be working to spruce up different parts of the site and the reader experience more broadly, and to further formalise and crystallise what Asymmetrist is becoming. A big part of that is building something that can be sustained, and improved, without compromising the standard of the work.
From January, you’ll see a remodel in how Asymmetrist publishes, connects people, and integrates its community of trader-readers-practitioners. Year Two needs a more deliberate structure behind it: clearer lanes, better organisation, and a more durable foundation for the long view. Nothing short of Asymmetrist 2.0.
As we said when we launched the Idea Index in June:
Asymmetrist is continually evolving, perhaps fatefully pulled into the direction of some kind of open-air R&D department; a little adventurous ship sailing on the fringes of its known world. To speculate on the edge of our known industry, of how we look at ourselves and our domain, from the trading firm to the trader.
You can find more about this here: Launching Asymmetrist 2.0
An Invitation to Curate
Asymmetrist only works if it reaches the people it’s written for.
You know your taste, and you know what you value in this industry. I trust both.
If you want the future to look more like Asymmetrist, the way to vote for it is to pass it on and to invite others to subscribe. It travels best trader-to-trader.
Thank you for helping it find its people.
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Be merry. Be well. See you in 2026.
Good trading to you all!
Bogdan Stoichescu