Please enjoy my monologue Skepticism & Agnosticism with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. This episode may also include great outside guests from my archive.
Want to learn more Trend Following? Watch my video here.
How does Ray Dalio, George Soros and Paul Tudor Jones trade? The other big macro traders you read about in the books? How do they make their money? They are all fundamental guys who have big opinions about the directions of major markets (currencies, bonds, stocks, metals, energies, etc.) and use all of their intelligence to make the right bets year after year decade after decade? That’s their process?
Hold that thought.
How do trend followers trade? That answer is the foundation of my books. How can you be sure how trend followers trade? Their performance data for starters. You can see their performance data. You can look at the markets moving and see where the profits originated. And over the years the performance of trend following traders can also be compared to other trend followers where you can see the correlation of their performance. So not only does the story of what trend followers do to make money make sense, you can see the proof.
Confidence builder 101.
Now back to the big macro traders (many of which are positioned as fundamental traders; Dalio, for example, says he is 100% systematic using only fundamentals) that don’t hold themselves out as trend followers, but seem to trade the same markets making money off the big moves across all markets (just like trend following traders). Traders like Dalio, Soros, Simons, etc. are harder to analyze as their performance numbers are not as public (like trend following traders). Plus, even when the big macro traders give hints of what they do–are their words believable? You mean I should just accept that the big macro funds trade using fundamentals? Trust the media accounts? Trust the press releases?
Think about it this way. Consider “Argo” the winner of 2013 Oscar for Best Film.
What did Roger Ebert say about the film?
The craft in this film is rare. It is so easy to manufacture a thriller from chases and gunfire, and so very hard to fine-tune it out of exquisite timing and a plot that’s so clear to us we wonder why it isn’t obvious to the Iranians. After all, who in their right mind would believe a space opera was being filmed in Iran during the hostage crisis?
After all, who in their right mind would believe the most famous macro hedge funds promoted for decades as fundamentally-based are really classic technical trend followers? Look at it this way: If the American government in the late 1970s could pull off the Canadian Caper (the basis of the film Argo) with fantastic subterfuge, isn’t it possible that some of the richest men on the planet could disguise their trading technique to sell a story to investors? Do I know this to be 100% true? No, but draw your own conclusions, do your own homework and try hard to not blindly accept press accounts.
How can you move forward immediately to Trend Following profits? My books and my Flagship Course and Systems are trusted options by clients in 70+ countries.
Also jump in:
• Trend Following Podcast Guests
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Performance
• Research
• Markets to Trade
• Crisis Times
• Trading Technology
• About Us
Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.
Please enjoy my monologue On Being Picked with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. This episode may also include great outside guests from my archive.
Want to learn more Trend Following? Watch my video here.
John Hussman writes about investors with no plan who buy at the top, panic, sell, and get killed:
“This is my retirement money. I can’t afford to be out of the market anymore!”
“I don’t care about the price, just Get Me In!!”
“It’s a healthy correction”
“See, it’s already coming back, better buy more before the new highs”
“Alright, a retest. Add to the position – buy the dip”
“What a great move! Am I a genius or what?”
“Uh oh, another selloff. Well, we’re probably close to a bottom”
“New low? What’s going on?!!”
“Alright, it’s too late to sell here, I’ll get out on the next rally”
“Hey!! It’s coming back. Glad that’s over!”
“Another new low. But how much lower can it go?”
“No, really, how much lower can it go?”
“Good Grief! How much lower can it go?!?”
“There’s no way I’ll ever make this back!”
“This is my retirement money. I can’t afford to be in the market anymore!”
“I don’t care about the price, just Get Me Out!!”
Obviously, he is not a price based trend following trader, but his understanding of trading psychology dovetails nicely with trend following.
How can you move forward immediately to Trend Following profits? My books and my Flagship Course and Systems are trusted options by clients in 70+ countries.
Also jump in:
• Trend Following Podcast Guests
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Performance
• Research
• Markets to Trade
• Crisis Times
• Trading Technology
• About Us
Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.
Feedback in:
Michael … I recently started listening to your podcast. Very informative and entertaining. Cool to see Godin and Zen Habits colliding with trading insights. The guests are great but the show is at its best when it’s just you riffing on a topic. And the humor is greatly appreciated (e.g. The comment in episode 51 about someone you would not let wash your car but that you would let massage your feet had me chuckling out loud while out on a morning walk.)
Thanks for cranking out the content!
Todd
Seattle, Washington
Thanks Todd.
How can you move forward immediately to Trend Following profits? My books and my Flagship Course and Systems are trusted options by clients in 70+ countries.
Also jump in:
• Trend Following Podcast Guests
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Performance
• Research
• Markets to Trade
• Crisis Times
• Trading Technology
• About Us
Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.
Consider (source) an excerpt:
Why is the EMF theory so widely advocated? Academics love EMH because they can claim that they have mathematics-based formulas which can predict the future even though the underlying assumptions (borrowed from physics) are provably false. For a professor, the ability to create beautiful mathematics is important since it means that they are less likely to be teased by physicists in the faculty club. Life is infinitely more interesting for an academic if they can create beautiful mathematics in their papers.
Charlie Munger adds:
“I have a name for people who went to the extreme efficient market theory—which is “bonkers.” It was an intellectually consistent theory that enabled them to do pretty mathematics. So I understand its seductiveness to people with large mathematical gifts. It just had a difficulty in that the fundamental assumption did not tie properly to reality.”
More Munger:
“The possibility that stock value in aggregate can become irrationally high is contrary to the hard-form “efficient market” theory that many of you once learned as gospel from your mistaken professors of yore. Your mistaken professors were too much influenced by “rational man” models of human behavior from economics and too little by “foolish man” models from psychology and real-world experience.”
More Munger:
“Efficient market theory [is] a wonderful economic doctrine that had a long vogue in spite of the experience of Berkshire Hathaway. In fact one of the economists who won — he shared a Nobel Prize — and as he looked at Berkshire Hathaway year after year, which people would throw in his face as saying maybe the market isn’t quite as efficient as you think, he said, “Well, it’s a two-sigma event.” And then he said we were a three-sigma event. And then he said we were a four-sigma event. And he finally got up to six sigmas — better to add a sigma than change a theory, just because the evidence comes in differently. [Laughter] And, of course, when this share of a Nobel Prize went into money management himself, he sank like a stone.”
I will add more to this on today’s podcast (will be episode 51).
How can you move forward immediately to Trend Following profits? My books and my Flagship Course and Systems are trusted options by clients in 70+ countries.
Also jump in:
• Trend Following Podcast Guests
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Performance
• Research
• Markets to Trade
• Crisis Times
• Trading Technology
• About Us
Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.
The markets are a science. Plain and simple. Some like to look at fundamentals and guess what will happen next. I like to look at the numbers. The facts. The only thing you can trust. Billion dollar hedge fund manager David Harding views the markets similarly:
Our approach to markets is a science. It is an unpublished science, but it is a real one. You would have thick leather-bound volumes of papers on it if there were a willingness to “open the kimono,” as the horrible modern expression has it. The process of trading our system is like repeatedly drawing different colored balls from the statistician’s apocryphal bag. As we draw out a ball it becomes part of the track record, and we put it back in the bag, but there is no guarantee that the balls will come out in the same order in the future.
Trend following is speculation in its purest form–find an edge and exploit it consistently over time. That attitude is critical for any entrepreneurial success. Throw the lottery mentality away. Forget the one hit wonder luck the press propagates to the masses of lemmings. Learn the real way to profit that goes against buy and hold (hope).
How can you move forward immediately to Trend Following profits? My books and my Flagship Course and Systems are trusted options by clients in 70+ countries.
Also jump in:
• Trend Following Podcast Guests
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Performance
• Research
• Markets to Trade
• Crisis Times
• Trading Technology
• About Us
Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.