Navigating Market Stress: How Vladyslav Yakymashko Managed Liquidity and Risk During the Turbulent Start of 2024
Vladyslav Yakymashko is a financial markets leader who directs the end-to-end execution and risk of multi-million-dollar trading books across multiple asset classes. Specializing in market microstructure, Yakymashko is responsible for maintaining price continuity and liquidity during periods of rapid repricing, such as the fragmented trading conditions seen in early 2024. His work integrates high-stakes trading with original research and scientific peer review, focusing on the development of systematic risk frameworks that govern how liquidity behaves under stress. By aligning operational market making with academic rigor, he bridges the gap between high-level execution and technical leadership in the field of electronic trading.
The first months of 2024 reminded market participants how quickly conditions can change. In January, the approval of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs triggered a surge in digital-asset volumes and volatility, pushing Bitcoin to new all-time highs by March.
At the same time, equity markets rallied sharply, with the S&P 500 rising more than 10 percent in the first quarter and setting 22 new record highs, while gains remained heavily concentrated in a small group of technology stocks tied to artificial intelligence.
Beneath the surface, however, trading conditions were uneven. As expectations around interest rate cuts shifted repeatedly, equities and currencies went through rapid repricing cycles, liquidity thinned during key moments, and execution quality varied from session to session. Oil and gold rallied sharply, and commodities such as cocoa experienced extreme price spikes due to supply shocks.
For senior market-making professionals, these moments test more than trading skills. They reveal whether pricing systems, risk controls, and execution processes can hold together when markets move faster than models expect.
Vladyslav Yakymashko spent this period managing trading operations across multiple asset classes, ensuring that pricing remained stable and risk controlled as volumes surged and market behavior became less predictable.
“When markets reprice quickly, liquidity disappears first,” he explains. “The job is to keep prices continuous and risk contained when everyone else pulls back.”
This perspective reflects a broader reality of modern financial markets. As trading becomes increasingly automated and liquidity more fragmented across venues and asset classes, the role of senior market-making professionals has structurally shifted. Beyond execution, it now requires continuous risk calibration, real-time pricing discipline, and systems capable of functioning when volatility exceeds historical assumptions. Yakymashko’s work during this period illustrates how these structural demands play out in practice.
Experience Built for Unstable Markets
Educated in Poland and France, Yakymashko worked at the IQ Option Group in Cyprus, one of the world’s largest electronic trading platforms, before joining High Tech Invest Ltd. in the Bahamas as a financial markets dealer.
Throughout his career, Yakymashko has focused on market microstructure — how prices are formed in real time, how liquidity behaves under stress, and how execution quality deteriorates when volatility accelerates. Rather than relying on long-term forecasts, his approach centers on short-horizon decision-making, inventory control, and the mechanics of price continuity. This specialization became especially relevant during the opening months of 2024, when equity indices reached record highs while trading activity was increasingly fragmented. Gains in stocks like Nvidia and Meta contrasted sharply with declines in others, such as Tesla and Apple, creating uneven liquidity and short-lived dislocations within the same market.
At the same time, historic shifts in monetary policy added further complexity. In March, the Bank of Japan ended its negative interest rate policy for the first time in 17 years, sending ripples through global currency markets. These crosscurrents created environments where prices adjusted rapidly, but not always smoothly.
Yakymashko’s role involved managing end-to-end trading, hedging, and risk across multi-million-dollar trading books, adjusting inventory and execution logic in real time as conditions changed. These responsibilities are typically entrusted only to senior professionals, because errors during such periods propagate quickly and at scale.
“In volatile markets, small mistakes become expensive very fast,” he says. “You have to make decisions with incomplete information and still protect the book.”
Responding to Volatility
The January crypto rally following ETF approvals created sudden surges in volume, followed by sharp pullbacks — a difficult environment for liquidity providers. Bitcoin rose nearly 70 percent during the quarter and reached a new all-time high above $73,000 in March, creating fast-moving conditions where spreads and inventory risk could change within minutes.
During this period, Yakymashko deployed a systematic, market-neutral crypto market-making strategy that maintained stable performance while limiting drawdowns, achieving a 22 percent return under strict risk limits.
In equities, February and March were dominated by shifting expectations around inflation and interest rates. At the start of the year, markets priced in up to six or seven rate cuts; by the end of March, those expectations had been reduced to just two or three. The adjustment triggered repeated intraday repricing in rate-sensitive sectors, particularly growth and technology stocks.
Yakymashko responded by redesigning risk controls for equities trading, reducing losses by five figures while strengthening inventory stability and execution under stress. The updated framework allowed trading to continue smoothly even as market conditions changed rapidly.
“These are exactly the moments when risk systems matter,” he notes. “You find out very quickly whether they were designed for calm markets or real ones.”
Building Resilient Teams and Systems
Beyond trading performance, Yakymashko also designed a firm-wide training and onboarding program for new traders and risk personnel. Implemented ahead of the 2024 volatility, the program reduced average ramp-up time by approximately 40 percent and improved consistency across trading decisions — an outcome that proved critical as markets became more fragmented and decision windows narrowed.
“When volatility hits, people fall back on training,” he explains. “If the foundation isn’t strong, mistakes multiply.”
Connecting Practice with Research
Alongside his trading work, Yakymashko contributes to academic research focused on market liquidity, pricing inefficiencies, and risk transmission — the same issues that defined the first quarter of 2024. His work examines how liquidity behaves when markets are moving quickly but unevenly, and how price signals become distorted during periods of rapid repricing.
He has published research on liquidity shocks in equity markets and on pricing distortions in crypto derivatives, translating real trading challenges into analytical frameworks that can be studied and improved. His expertise has been formally recognized through his appointment as an external peer reviewer for an international scientific journal, where he is entrusted with evaluating and validating research in finance and economics — a role reserved for established experts in the field.
“Research helps explain why markets behave the way they do during stress,” he says. “It’s how practical experience becomes something others can build on.”
A Focus on Stability
As 2024 continues, the dynamics observed in the first quarter highlight how sensitive financial markets remain to policy decisions, geopolitical developments, and shifts in investor expectations. With equity indices at record highs, commodities surging, and interest-rate assumptions still in flux, the risk of sudden dislocations remains.
For Yakymashko, the priority is building systems that remain functional when markets become unstable — not just profitable, but reliable.
“The real test isn’t when conditions are calm,” he says. “It’s whether your pricing, risk, and execution still work when everything moves at once.”
