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Category: Interviews

Ep. 313: Jean-Philippe Bouchaud Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Jean-Philippe Bouchaud
Jean-Philippe Bouchaud

My guest today is Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, a French physicist. He is co-founder and Chairman of Capital Fund Management, adjunct professor at École Normale Supérieure and co-director of the CFM-Imperial Institute of Quantitative Finance at Imperial College London.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • His firm’s performance for 2014
  • Whether trend following actually “died” prior to it’s “reappearance” in 2014
  • What trend following manages to exploit
  • Exploiting vs. exploring
  • Looking at volatility as a precursor to profit
  • Volatility as a measure of risk
  • Trend following as a genuine market anomaly
  • The behavioral biases in play as oil has fallen fifty percent plus
  • The feedback Bouchaud has received from peers on his newest paper
  • Whether other strategies exploit a genuine market anomaly
  • Bouchaud’s philosophy on transparency and “secrets” in his work
  • Why Bouchaud’s work culture is not a culture of MBA’s

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Ep. 312: Dan Hill Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Dan Hill
Dan Hill

My guest today is Dan Hill, a recognized authority on the role of emotions in consumer and employee behavior. He runs Sensory Logic, a scientific insights firm that analyzes consumers’ facial expressions to help companies better navigate consumers’ emotional decision-making processes.

The topic is consumer and employee behavior.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • What a face coding expert is
  • The evolutionary aspect to face coding and the 43 muscles present in the face; emotional decision-making
  • How Hill found his way personally into this field
  • Why we feel before we think
  • Being hired by the Milwaukee Bucks
  • The importance of a smile in the heart of a champion
  • The difference between technical skill and the factors that Hill is looking for
  • The importance of having the right amount of happiness
  • Some of the limitations of facial coding
  • How technology is intertwined with facial coding
  • Why a personality like Richard Nixon may never be President again
  • The say/feel gap
  • Whether we can learn how to avoid negative facial expressions and emotions
  • A trading system based on the movement of human faces
  • Where we might see facial coding moving to in the future

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Ep. 311: Mebane Faber Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Mebane Faber
Mebane Faber

My guest today is Mebane Faber, a noted author (The Ivy Portfolio), blogger, and portfolio manager with Cambria Investment Management. Faber is involved in many different areas of the market, extremely practical and pragmatic.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • The podcast medium
  • Trend following, buy & hold, and emotions
  • Anti-fragility
  • Ray Dalio, risk parity, and his strategies All Weather and Pure Alpha
  • Asset allocation as a buy and hold investor
  • Faber’s five ETF’s, and his factors for starting one
  • Deflation, inflation, Japan, why traders run out of the store when things are on sale
  • Value investing
  • What if governments didn’t meddle with markets

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Ep. 310: Daniel Simons Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Daniel Simons
Daniel Simons

My guest today is Daniel Simons, an experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois. Simons is most well known for his work on change blindness and inattentional blindness, two surprising examples of how people can be unaware of information right in front of their eyes. His research interests also include visual cognition, perception, memory, attention, and awareness.

The topics are experimental psychology and cognitive science.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Simons’ YouTube success
  • The definition of inattentional blindness
  • Why our intuition about our own minds is often wrong
  • Money managers and weather forecasters
  • Serial tasking, multitasking, and focus
  • How Simons became immersed in this area of study
  • Memory and attention, and the myths and misconceptions surrounding them
  • The notion of intuition, gut decisions, and Simons’ thoughts on Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”
  • The idea of preparation in relation to expert performance
  • The science behind eyewitness testimony
  • How our minds don’t work the way we think they do

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Ep. 309: Mark Mobius Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Mark Mobius
Mark Mobius

My guest today is Mark Mobius, Ph.D., executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, joined Templeton in 1987. Currently, he directs the Templeton research team which is based in 18 global emerging markets offices, and manages emerging markets portfolios. Mobius oversees a team of more than 50 people managing some $45 billion.

The topic is economics.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Key events that happened along Mobius’ development and moved him to find emerging markets as his passion
  • Growth across Asia
  • The importance of being on the ground to see what’s happening in China to have a true picture of what’s going on
  • Why what’s happening in China now is entirely different from the USSR in the early 1980’s
  • The two Koreas, and whether we’ll see one Korea eventually
  • The impact of both North and South Korea on their own
  • Mobius’ outlook on Myanmar
  • Singapore as an emerging market, and as it is compared to a city in the States
  • India, its growth, and how Mobius sees it moving forward
  • The importance of travel, and how it changes everybody that goes out there and experiences it

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Ep. 307: Bryan Caplan Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Bryan Caplan
Bryan Caplan

My guest today is Bryan Caplan, an American economist and professor of economics at George Mason University, research fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and blogger for EconLog. He works in public choice theory. His books include The Myth of the Rational Voter and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. He has also written extensively on open borders and pacifism.

The topic is economics.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Voting, rationality
  • Defining “rational irrationality”
  • What voting patterns in America might look like if the American stock market looked like the Japanese stock market
  • Economic growth in benevolent dictatorships vs. republics like the USA
  • The anti-poverty program in China
  • Caplan’s view on immigration and its effect on the economy
  • The case for more kids, and why Caplan was so passionate and so inspired as to put out a book on the subject
  • Why genetics matter more than the style in which you raise your kids
  • Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” and wealth and income inequality

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Ep. 306: Tom Basso Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Tom Basso
Tom Basso

My guest today is Tom Basso, the trader most famously known as “Mr. Serenity” in Jack Schwager’s “New Market Wizards”. Basso, now retired from managing client money, was president and founder of Trendstat Capital Management. Basso became a registered investment advisor in 1980, a registered commodities advisor in 1984, and was elected to the board of the National Futures Association in 1998. Today, he is a private trader.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • 50% drop in oil and why trend followers have done especially well with this price movement
  • Why people like to blame speculators, and the value of speculation; emotional rushes and emotional devastation
  • Mentally rehearsing catastrophic events
  • Focusing 1,000 trades into the future
  • Separating your trading from your political opinion
  • Trend following and behavioral economics
  • The importance of not letting your trading define you
  • Basso’s advice to newcomers to the CTA industry

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