Thank you for your email. I’ve been listening to some of your podcasts and I wanted to learn more about your strategy.
What’s your biggest trading challenge right now? What’s keeping you from achieving the consistent profits?
Well I suppose it is having a system, strategy or process that actually shows growth. I have been trading for over 14 years. I have been on trading courses, read trading books, signed up to traders’ programmes, and I have nothing to show for it. My investment pot is smaller now than when I started. I have tried forex, crypto, shares, indices, day trading, long term trading. Everything has failed.
I’m hoping that your Trend Trading strategy can be the one to give me faith that I can be a successful investor. And it needs to happen soon because I’m not in the prime of my life, but it would be nice to see that I can provide for my family a bit more than a pension.
“Trend Following” and “The Complete TurtleTrader” shaped how I think about systematic trading — the idea that a clearly defined, mechanistic edge, executed with discipline, can compound into real returns over time. Your podcast, with over 1,300 episodes featuring everyone from Ed Seykota to Jerry Parker, is the most comprehensive oral history of systematic trading that exists. You’ve spent two decades documenting what separates real systematic edges from noise.
I’m [nmae], 16, from McKinney, Texas. I’ve analyzed 16 years of CBOE S&P 500 options data and found that daily changes in IV skew (25-delta put minus ATM call) predict index returns at 1-5 day horizons with a t-stat of -3.87. The Q5-Q1 quintile spread is 14.2 bp/day. The mechanism: dealer gamma hedging of institutional put demand creates temporary directional pressure on the underlying.
The signal I’ve found operates at a much shorter timescale (1-5 days) than the trend-following systems you’ve written about, but the underlying philosophy is identical: identify a persistent market structure that creates predictable price behavior, define rules around it, and execute systematically. The mechanism — dealer hedging forcing directional moves — is structural, not behavioral, which is why I believe it persists. Your books emphasize that the best systematic strategies exploit a counterparty who trades for reasons other than profit (hedgers, index rebalancers). In my signal, the counterparty is options dealers who hedge not because they want to, but because risk management requires it. That’s exactly the kind of forced, non-discretionary flow that creates durable edges.
I’m actively seeking a summer internship at a CTA, systematic trading firm, or quant fund. Through your podcast and your teaching across 76+ countries, you’ve built relationships with hundreds of systematic traders and fund managers worldwide. If you know of any firm that might consider a high school student with completed systematic trading research, I’d be deeply grateful for any introduction or guidance.
Thanks for the nice note, but I have no connection to that time frame. Zero!
The headlines are back to screaming. One morning, it is a trade tariff threat from Trump. By the afternoon, it is a retaliatory strike between Israel and Iran. The market whipsaws 3% in a single session, and the “experts” rush to the microphones. They are desperate to explain exactly why it happened.
Most traders treat the news like a crystal ball. They believe that if they can just understand the geopolitical chessboard, they will find the shortcut to profit. They think that if they can time the next escalation or the next policy shift, they have cracked the code.
That is a losing battle. It is a game played by people who want to be smart rather than profitable.
The Illusion of Control
You cannot “time” a war. You cannot “know” the internal logic of a world leader. When you trade based on fundamentals or the 24 hour news cycle, you aren’t trading the market. You are trading your own ability to predict the unpredictable.
The victims of the news cycle ignore the most fundamental law of the markets. If you don’t know where the yield is coming from, you are the yield.
The desire to “know” is a human impulse that trend following is designed to kill. We don’t care about the macro thesis. We don’t care about the “why” behind a price move. We care about the price itself. Price is the only truth in a world of political noise. It is the aggregate of every fear, every greed, and every geopolitical move. It is all distilled into a single, unarguable number.
Reacting vs. Predicting
Trend following can’t guarantee a profit at any single moment in time. What it can do is provide a smart process to handle total uncertainty. We don’t predict. We react.
When the geopolitical trend breaks, we exit. We don’t wait for an explanation or a peace treaty. We follow the system. We cut the loss. While the rest of the world is busy debating the news, the trend follower is busy following the math. Stop trying to solve the world’s problems. Start following the trend.
I listened to your podcast recently about value and decided to email you.
I read a few of your books years ago, but recently started thinking about trend following and trading again. I always used to think if you own a quality name like Nike or Oracle you could buy a bunch and never look again until retirement. Maybe even pass them on to your kids and grandkids. Your podcast definitely woke me up to the reality that happens with individual stocks. If we give up and just ‘buy the index’ we get paltry returns. My estimate is that the index tends to about keep up with the M2 money supply. So inflation.
I know you have several books but I don’t know where to start. What are some good ‘how to’ ideas for someone like me?
I know psychology is a big component so I recently purchased and read a few books from Van Tharp. They were very beneficial.
You see the screenshots. The P&L curves. The “lifestyle” shots of some guy in a rented villa, claiming he’s cracked the code with a secret indicator.
It’s all noise.
Worse than noise. It’s a trap for your psychology.
If you are checking your X feed to see what the “sentiment” is, you’ve already lost. If you are looking for validation from strangers on whether your long position is “right,” you aren’t a trader. You’re a seeker. And seekers get slaughtered.
The Feedback Loop of Nothing
Social media is designed to make you feel like you are missing out. It feeds the exact human impulses that trend following is designed to kill:
The need to be right.
The need to be first.
The need for a story.
Trend following doesn’t care about your story. It doesn’t care about your “likes” or how many followers agree with your macro thesis.
The market is the only reality.
Price is the only truth.
The Ghost of 2021
Remember the endless GameStop screenshots?
The forums were a digital cathedral of “diamond hands” and rocket emojis. People posted gains every hour.
The mania had nothing to do with math. It had everything to do with belonging.
Then the trend broke.
The screenshots stopped. The “community” vanished.
The people who tied their happiness to that digital crowd didn’t just lose money. They lost their identity. They were trading for status, not for equity. When the status evaporated, they were left with nothing but a broken account and a bitter taste.
All that social media chatter? It didn’t save a single soul when the price turned.
Systems Over Status
Trend following is a tool for freedom.
It is a systematic approach to extract profit from human behavior. It is not a social club.
The best traders I know? You can’t find them. They aren’t posting “alpha.” They are out living. They have systems that run. They follow the rules. They take the signals.
Then they go for a walk. They travel. They spend time with people who don’t know what a moving average is.
If your happiness depends on the next tick, you cannot trade objectively. You become a slave to the screen.
Don’t get it twisted.
Validation online is a dopamine hit that lasts five seconds. A systematic edge lasts a lifetime.
If you want to win, stop looking for consensus. Stop scrolling for “conviction.”
The market is not your identity. If the Wi-Fi goes down and you panic, you don’t have a system.
My guest today is Nelson Dellis. He is a memory athlete and consultant. Nelson is a six-time USA Memory Champion, holding the record for most wins of the national memory champion title. Nelson also runs Climb 4 Memory, a nonprofit which aims to raise funds and awareness for Alzheimer’s disease research through mountain climbs around the world.
The topic is his book Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More.
In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:
Memory techniques as systems and frameworks
Pygmalion effect and belief shaping performance
Memory as foundation for faster learning and creativity
Training the brain like a muscle and preventing cognitive decline
Name memorization using visualization and association
