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Category: Interviews

Ep. 111: Nick Radge Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Nick Radge
Nick Radge

My guest today is Nick Radge. Radge operates The Chartist (www.thechartist.com.au). He began trading in 1985. During a stint working for an investment bank in Singapore Nick dedicated his evenings testing trading strategies; 2 hours a day for 18 months, a total of at least 750 hours. Nick’s first book, Every-Day Traders (John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, 2003), was written to identify the traits of successful traders.

The topic is his book Unholy Grails – A New Road to Wealth.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • How the trend following world is foreign to many people
  • The importance of drawing distinctions between traditional value investing and alternative systems like trend following
  • How the name of the game for many fund managers is not necessarily performance but funds under management
  • Playing the game of mathematics vs. playing the game of picking the right stocks
  • Why the US stock market has gone straight up despite all the fear going on elsewhere in the world, and why you shouldn’t “fight the tape”
  • Closet trend followers
  • Why price can’t be faked
  • Trade restrictions, cultural attitudes, and the importance of being able to step out of the crowd
  • Why individuals have an advantage over fund managers
  • The value of understanding trend following even when you don’t actually use it as a strategy
  • Spotting ‘trends’, how you can’t spot a trend until it’s started or until it’s over, and using hitchhiking as an analogy for trading
  • How trend following is useful when outlier events and black swans appear
  • Using rules and strategies to fight fear
  • The difficulty of using Warren Buffett as an example, and the problems that arise when managing larger amounts of money
  • Radge’s thoughts on being an entrepreneur

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Ep. 95: Chris Kacher and Gil Morales Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Chris Kacher and Gil Morales
Chris Kacher and Gil Morales

My guests today are Chris Kacher and Gil Morales.

Kacher is the co-founder of TriQuantum Technologies, holding company for KJA wherein he is lead portfolio manager. Dr. Kacher’s metrics have called every major top & bottom in bitcoin since 2011 to within a few weeks of the top. He was up in 2018 vs the average performing crypto hedge fund at -54% (PwC).

Morales was personally recruited by Bill O’Neil himself to join William O’Neil + Company, Inc. as a Vice -President and Manager of the Institutional Services Division, responsible for advising over 600 institutional investor clients, and as an internal portfolio manager responsible for managing a portion of the firm’s proprietary, internal assets. From 1997 to 2005 he achieved a return of approximately 2100% in his portion of the firm’s proprietary account. In 2004 he was named Chief Market Strategist at William O’Neil + Company, Inc.

The topic is their book In The Trading Cockpit with the O’Neil Disciples: Strategies that Made Us 18,000% in the Stock Market.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • The “O.W.L.” ethos, and the story behind it
  • Reversion to the mean mentality, and how it can often be the kiss of death for traders and investors
  • Trading psychology, the idea that “you must lose to win”, how the least important statistic is your percentage of gains v. losses in your trading account
  • Dealing with emotionalism and why clients often want to hear something that will make them feel better
  • Teaching people to let go of the news and simply watch the price action
  • Why people think that “this time is different”, put their trust in the central economy, and why trend following will survive into the future
  • Understanding that investing is always a process of changing along the way
  • What mental clutter in the way of fears, biases, concerns and more can build up in the mind and get in the way of clear and decisive decision-making

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Ep. 94: Tushar Chande Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Tushar Chande
Tushar Chande

My guest today is Tushar Chande, a trader, author,co-founder and head of research at Rho Asset Management in Switzerland. Chande has had a long and distinguished career in technical analysis; he brings a unique perspective on how to look at the markets as a trend following trader. He came to America and earned his Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1984. 

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Early influences, and chart the journey from his days as an engineering student to his accomplishments as a systematic trend following trader
  • Analogy between sports and trading, how the best sportsmen rely on having a stable and predictable environment (unlike the markets)
  • Evaluating performance within the context of the market
  • Discretionary trading v. systematic trading
  • Learning through “trial and terror”
  • The Rho Trend Barometer and the ability to quantify the environment
  • The problem of indexes
  • The Sharpe ratio
  • The importance of market movement to trend following trading
  • “The black box disease”
  • Trusting your system
  • Cognitive biases
  • The benefit of the “black swan” and outlier events and why these events are so beneficial to a trend following system
  • Whether “one-hundred Ph.D.’s are better than one”

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Ep. 90: Richard Weissman with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Richard Weissman
Richard Weissman

My guest today is Richard Weissman, a professional trader with over 25 years of experience and an author. Weissman considers himself a “swing trader”. He is one of the world’s foremost authorities and thought leaders in the fields of derivatives, risk management and technical analysis.

The topic is his book Trade Like a Casino: Find Your Edge, Manage Risk, and Win Like the House.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Weissman’s path from how he started trading with his father in 1987 to how he made his way to where he is today
  • Background to Weissman naming his book
  • The influence of Jack Schwager’s work
  • Risk management
  • Positive expectancy
  • How Weissman defines trends and signs of strength
  • The idea of “don’t anticipate, just participate”
  • Positive expectancy and the probability skew
  • The connection between table limits and risk management
  • How there are no truly “safe investments”
  • Some tools that Weissman has used to influence his own trading psychology and smooth out the emotional highs and lows
  • Not letting a high price stop you from buying, and not letting a low price stop you from selling
  • Weissman’s concept of “the opaque urn”
  • The three things you can guarantee

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Ep. 85: Barry Ritholtz Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Barry Ritholtz
Barry Ritholtz

My guest today is Barry Ritholtz, an author, newspaper columnist, blogger, equities analyst, television commentator, and CEO of Fusion IQ. Ritholtz is deep down a quant guy, but brings strong views and opinions. However, he won’t sit around and “fight the tape”.

The topic is his book Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • The price of paying attention and why you should be selective in what you watch, read, and listen to
  • The onslaught of political information
  • The insatiable need to consume information and knowing when it’s the right time to quarantine yourself from being influenced by someone in particular
  • Ritholtz’s views on gold, why attaching your emotional well-being to it is wrong, and how it won’t be quite as valuable as most people think in the event of a crisis; cutting your losses short and letting your winners run
  • The real value of intuition
  • How Ritholtz views the world and where we’re at right now, societal and economic cycles, and how you can’t be a doom and gloomer seeing what’s coming down the pipeline in the next generation
  • The importance of not being cash rich and time poor, getting “lost in the screens”, and leading a good life instead of always chasing money for its own sake.

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Ep. 80: Robert Greene Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Robert Greene
Robert Greene

My guest today is Robert Greene, the bestselling author of the classic book, “The 48 Laws of Power”, in addition to other bestsellers such as “The Art of Seduction”, “The 33 Strategies of War”, and “The 50th Law” with musician and entrepreneur, 50 Cent.

The topic is his book Mastery.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • The influence “The 48 Laws of Power” had on Covel’s own writing
  • Using the 48 Laws as a defense strategy rather than as a cutthroat offense
  • Some of Greene’s early influences that led him into his writing career
  • Using Zen Buddhism and meditation as a tool to gain perspective and focus
  • The importance of using your unique life experiences in your career to create an irreplaceable style
  • Embracing opportunity

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Ep. 77: Michael Mauboussin Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Posted on by Michael Covel
Michael Mauboussin
Michael Mauboussin

My guest today is Michael Mauboussin, an author (“More Than You Know”, “Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition”), investment strategist in the financial services industry, professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Business, and board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute (an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute). 

The topic is his book The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Luck and skill, how they cross over and play off each other, and how both of those factors have played a part in both Covel and Mauboussin’s careers
  • How Mauboussin came to start working on “The Success Equation”
  • How losing on purpose can define skill
  • How sports can provide great examples of what Mauboussin contends regarding skill and luck
  • The human desire and emotional need to tell stories, and how that plays into peoples’ difficulty untangling skill and luck
  • Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of the .400 hitter in baseball and the paradox of skill
  • Physical limits and improvement in skill over time
  • Sample size issues
  • Process vs. outcome
  • What to do when you’re the underdog and how complicating the situation can help when you’re in that position
  • Improving your guesswork on where you are in the luck-skill continuum
  • Persistence and predictive value
  • Building skill

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