Jerry Parker posted something this week that made me laugh, and Jerry does not waste words. He was one of Richard Dennis’s original Turtles. He has run Chesapeake Capital for decades on a single idea: systematic Trend Following. So when Jerry points at the so-called experts, he is pointing from inside the arena, not from the cheap seats.
Here is what he saw. A whole crowd of experts trash systematic Trend Following in public. Then they turn around and write books telling investors to do this:
Diversify. Respect price. Follow trends. React instead of anticipate. Stay flexible and adapt when the market changes. Stop deciding a market is too high or too low. Accept that trying to call tops and bottoms means missing the biggest moves. Cut losses. Let profits run. Focus on the size of your winners, not how often you are right. Manage risk without mercy.
Read that list again.
That is not a critique of Trend Following. That is the definition of Trend Following. Word for word. Every line on that page is something a trend follower has been doing since the first market opened. The experts did not discover a better way. They described our way and slapped a different cover on the book.
So why the act? Why trash the method in one breath and teach it in the next?
Because saying it out loud costs them something. The prediction business is a good business. Telling people you know where oil goes next quarter sells newsletters, fills seminar rooms, and gets you back on television. “Follow the trend and control your risk” makes a poor headline. It is too plain. It does not flatter the guru and it does not flatter the crowd. Nobody wants to pay for permission to stop guessing.
There is ego in it too. To call it Trend Following is to admit you do not know the future. That is a hard thing for a man who built a career pretending he does. Easier to mock the name, borrow the rules, and hope nobody notices the contradiction. Jerry noticed.
Here is the part I want you to keep. Do not get dragged into the fight over the label. Let them call it whatever they want. While they argue about the name, you do the work. You diversify. You respect price. You cut the loser the moment it proves you wrong, and you sit on your hands while the winner runs. You stop asking whether the market is too high. You react to what price is doing instead of betting on what you wish it would do.
The experts already wrote down the answer. They just refuse to say the two words. You do not have that problem.
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