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Category: Interviews

Ep. 276: Richard Lewis Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis

My guest today is Richard Lewis, a cross-cultural expert who has been studying language and communication his entire career. He’s traveled to 130+ countries and speaks eleven different languages.

The topics are his books When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures and When Teams Collide: Managing the International Team Successfully.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • How Lewis’ love affair with language started
  • The best way to start learning a language
  • Travel as a “magic elixir” of sorts
  • The Lewis model
  • Cultural differences in language, and what Lewis means by linear-active, multi-active, and reactive
  • The idea of losing face in the context of cross-cultural communication
  • Microculture and macroculture
  • Cross-cultural teams vs. homogenous teams
  • Normal and abnormal in a cultural context
  • Paperwork and punctuality in different cultures
  • Why the linear-active person confronts with logic, the multi-active person confronts emotionally, and the reactive person is never confronting
  • Why there’s much more to making a deal than just quantity and price

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Ep. 275: Joel Mokyr Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Joel Mokyr
Joel Mokyr

My guest today is Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern University. He focuses on technological progress, and how it affects growth. From Mokyr’s perspective, we haven’t seen anything yet. He’s not trying to predict what will happen next; he’s just confident and ready that big things will continue to happen.

The topic is technology.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Define technology
  • The notion of playing God with technology
  • How technology and economic growth are intertwined
  • Why screwing up is part of technology
  • The acceleration of technology
  • New ways of measuring growth
  • Anesthesia and antibiotics as technologies and imagining new technologies as revolutionary as them
  • Moving from a wheat and steel economy into an information economy
  • The factory, the separation between firm and household, and the Industrial Revolution
  • The death of distance
  • Why technology is often not reflected in the GDP
  • Solving the language barrier through technology
  • Why the global acceptance of the English language is driven by technology
  • Why innovation isn’t natural to us
  • The declining respect of the writings of previous generations
  • Why the median age will continue to increase
  • Why we are moving into a mass-customization society
  • Changes in material science
  • The best way to think about the future

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Ep. 274: Guy Kawasaki Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki

My guest today is Guy Kawasaki. For those of you that pay attention to being an entrepreneur, Kawasaki’s books have been invaluable over the last decade. Currently, he is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and chief evangelist of Apple.

The topic is entrepreneur.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Why being a consultant or an investment banker are two of the worst first jobs you can get
  • Working in sales, and Kawasaki’s early experience in the jewelry business
  • Some of the most valuable attributes of a good salesman
  • Marketing, social media, and why you’d want to have a rabid fan with fifteen followers rather than just another blurb on the back of your book from the so-called big name
  • Why a book review in The New York Times isn’t as important as it used to be
  • The Amazon and Hachette conflict, and why Amazon is still the best thing to happen to authors in a long time
  • The two types of people in the world–baker vs. eater
  • How Kawasaki manages his time
  • Looking at your social media presence as core to your existence
  • Disruptive high growth opportunities
  • Introversion and getting better at standing on stage

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Ep. 270: Laurie Santos Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Laurie Santos
Laurie Santos

My guest today is Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology and cognitive sciences at Yale University. Her research explores the evolutionary origins of the human mind by comparing the cognitive abilities of human and non-human primates. Santos is able to look at monkeys and their behavior in markets and money, and see the similarities with humans.

The topic is cognitive abilities.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Santos’ early “ah-ha” moments
  • Teaching monkeys about currencies
  • Whether the monkey economy is as irrational as ours
  • The endowment effect
  • How monkeys’ behavior in markets quantitatively matches human behavior
  • Whether some monkeys took to the experimental economy better than others
  • Mistakes and predictable errors
  • Why humans might be uniquely irrational when it comes to enjoying what we pay more for
  • Vernon Smith’s work
  • Relationships between Santos’ work and the financial crisis of 2008
  • Bubbles, monkeys, and Daniel Kahneman
  • The “G.I. Joe fallacy”
  • Why we have trouble accepting cognitive limitations rather than our biological limitations

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Ep. 269: Robert Aumann Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Robert Aumann
Robert Aumann

My guest today is Robert Aumann, the fourth Nobel Prize winner to appear on this podcast. Aumann is an Israeli-American mathematician, and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He is a professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

The topic is game theory.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Conflict and cooperation through game theory analysis
  • World via his game theory perspective
  • Meeting John Nash and Aumann’s early background
  • What game theory is trying to accomplish
  • The economic definition of rationality
  • The idea of a strategy matrix
  • The world champions of peace and the best way to maintain peace
  • The 2008-09 bailouts from Aumann’s perspective and a game theory outlook
  • Behavioral economics
  • Game theory, diplomats, and the Cuban Missile Crisis
  • The existence of nuclear weapons and the Cold War

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Ep. 267: Dennis Gartman Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Dennis Gartman
Dennis Gartman

My guest today is Dennis Gartman, the editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter. Gartman appears on CNBC, ROB-TV and Bloomberg television, discussing commodities and the capital markets, and speaks before various associations and trade groups around the world.

The topic is outside the box market perspectives.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • How Gartman first got started
  • Chicago trading in the late 70’s to the mid 80’s
  • Why you should never add to a losing position
  • Buying strength and selling weakness
  • Systems from Gartman’s perspective, and keeping your systems simple
  • Being patient with winning trades and impatient with losers
  • Gartman’s daily grind and process
  • Mass psychology, efficient markets, and behavioral economics
  • Gartman’s thoughts on the market today and geopolitical events
  • How we hear about geopolitical events today compared to the past

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Ep. 262: Terry Burnham Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Terry Burnham
Terry Burnham

My guest today is Terry Burnham, an economist who studies the biological and evolutionary basis of human behavior. He has a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University, a Masters from the MIT Sloan School with a concentration in finance. Terry was a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, the University of Michigan, and the Harvard Business School. His non-academic experiences include working briefly for Goldman, Sachs & Co., being the chief financial officer for Progenics Pharmaceuticals , a start-up biotechnology company, and being the director of portfolio management for Acadian Asset Management, a quantitative equity manager.

The topic is his book Mean Markets and Lizard Brains: How to Profit from the New Science of Irrationality.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Burnham removed $1 million from his Bank of America account and said “I don’t trust the banks”
  • The two ways to think about risk
  • Separating the ideas of luck and skill
  • The lizard brain and how it relates back to our choices
  • A story about interacting with Paul Tudor Jones
  • Why markets have momentum
  • The great driver of conformity
  • Rationality and irrationality
  • Captive chimps vs. chimps in the wild and the differences in behavior
  • Predicting when the Fed will step in
  • Thinking of the worst case scenario for equities and looking to Japan for an example
  • Negative interest rates

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