Blog

Feedback in:

Hello Mr. Covel,

My biggest challenge is consistency, I always listened to this and that here and there. I tried somewhat technical trading but always switch to different indicators without big success, then tried the long term buy and hold à la Motley Fool with rather big loss. Well big loss in percentage only, because I am still with my few thousands dollars account to get the twist before investing more money.

From the beginning of the year it seems to unlock somehow. I just finish reading your book The Little Book of Trading. So far with a combination of MACD/Volume/MFI/EMA(55) I identified two trends signals (I am only long) one with perfect timing, another a bit late. I made a Google Sheets calculator for the risk management based on ATR but didn’t had any stop loss so far, got burnt rather much by putting stops and got swept just to see the trend getting back, so I’m just watching from time to time, no hurry as I am already more than +10% up on these two trends. It’s a study case on stock with low account for now.

The best lesson I got from your book is living the “Now”, I identified myself very much with this line of thought and want to deepen my knowledge on trend following. I’d like to look at your mini course and see what I can learn from there, no other plan for now or even to go further on your offered material, that’s the actual trend of my experience.

Benoit L. St-Placide, QC, Canada

Keep exploring.

I want to see you with a complete trading system.

Subscribe to Trend Following Radio on iTunes

Howard Marks Inspiration with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

A reader writes:

I am focusing on trading futures right now and I need to remove all distractions in my life in order to master this task. I respect you highly and hope to come back and follow you again someday but for now I am removing everything in my life that isn’t essential to my main focus. Once that is accomplished, I will be back.

What strategy are you using to trade futures?

Intraday trading during the evenings due to my day job. I plan to start with a very small amount of cash (and by small I mean tiny, as in $250) and trade the micro NQ (possibly the ES if I can’t find consistent success since the NQ is very wicky). My setup is simple, Bollinger Bands on the 1 and 5 minute as well as a 5 day 30 minute chart for a long game view that I can zoom in and out of to maintain perspective of the long game.

I plan to trade the bounces off the top or bottom bands when I see a solid setup and manage the trade extremely tight (2 points max) in order to stay in the game since that 2 point stop can go to 4 plus in the blink of an eye.

If I happen to have the opportunity to get in during the day and it’s a trend day, then I want to hit those opportunity days with larger sized moves in order to capture a portion of those beautiful moves up or down.

By all means, if you see any flaws or have any questions or concerns, please let me know as I am always open to the insight of those that are more experienced than myself.

Stop all of that. It’s a dead end. Nothing to salvage. And it ends in one way only…

Badly.

Subscribe to Trend Following Radio on iTunes

Bain & Company partner Rob Markey argues most companies are too focused on earnings at the expense of customers. Instead they should measure and report “customer value” to investors, like Costco, Amex and Humana do, with consistent metrics that allow investors and other stakeholders to judge a company’s true value compared to competitors.

Too often, earnings pressure results in cost-cutting measures that hurt customers. But if you want to compete in today’s loyalty economy, customer value should be reported in your next quarterly and annual earnings or IPO reports, and it should become the focus of the money and attention you invest in your company. The article contains tips and original research with numerical data on how much faster loyalty leading companies grow revenues and shareholder returns than competitors.

Bio: Rob Markey is a partner and director at Bain & Company and the founder of the firm’s Global Customer Strategy and Marketing practice. He is a coauthor of The Ultimate Question 2.0 and is the host of the Net Promoter System podcast.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio:

• Are You Undervaluing Your Customers?

Mentions & Resources:

• Rob Markey

Feedback in:

Some great podcasts lately. Keep up the good work (or fun), as life may have it.

William [Name] CFA CFP®
Senior Investment Advisor
[Name] Management Group

What did you like?

Golisano and Rishad. The longer I “manage” investments, the more noise it becomes. I really like segments on how to develop vision, and simplify my life.

Thanks!

Feedback in:

Wow, hello Michael, thanks for your interest! I will say that my most obvious biggest problem with the way I trade is hanging on to losing stocks way too long. Number two (or co number one) is not protecting well from downside risk. Third is buying stocks basically “on a hunch”. Like I could really pick them! I’m looking forward to a more stable relationship with my investments.

Best regards,

Josh B.

Let me move you to a new way to think about trading.

Feedback in:

Hey there, my name is Daniel, how are you?

I’ve seen some trend followers traders here in Brazil selecting their stocks to trade finding the ones that had the most strong trend in 26 weeks (and some others filters). In your opinion, is this a good time window? Or should be less, 3 months or larger, 1 year?

Best regards!

Daniel C.

Let’s start here. It’s more than just entry.