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Ep. 298: Emanuel Derman Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Emanuel Derman
Emanuel Derman

My guest today is Emanuel Derman, a South African-born businessman and writer, best known as a quantitative analyst. Derman, who first came to the U.S. at age 21, in 1966, is currently a professor at Columbia University and Director of its program in financial engineering. Until recently he was also the Head of Risk and a partner at KKR Prisma Capital Partners, a fund of funds.

The topics are his books My Life As A Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance and Models Behaving Badly.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Why economics can be an ‘incestuous’ field
  • Economics as a moral science
  • Why all four of the US investment banks were not allowed to go by the wayside
  • Derman’s background and his PhD in theoretical physics
  • Derman’s early eye-opening experiences at Goldman Sachs
  • Model building, and how Derman was indoctrinated into the world of model building
  • The financial model and science and the physics model and science
  • Short volatility models vs. long volatility models
  • How one estimates risk
  • Models vs. theories
  • Whether Derman finds a certain amount of pushback from others in the academic community

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Feedback Always Welcome… Especially When It’s Good!

Feedback in:

Mike, I picked up your podcast [feed] a month ago or so and have really been enjoying the content. I have since ordered a couple of your books and look forward to reading them. Thank you for sharing your thoughts & creating a platform for such objective, honest, and critical thinking across a broad range of topics. I ran across a book that you might find interesting by Jordan Ellenberg, “How to Not Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking”. If you have read it, I would be interested in your thoughts or reflections. If not, I hope you get the chance to read it.

Thank you again for sharing!
[Name]

Have not seen it. Will take a look! Thanks for the nice words.


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Ep. 293: The State Episode with Doug Casey and Charles Hugh Smith with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

The State Episode with Doug Casey and Charles Hugh Smith with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio
The State Episode with Doug Casey and Charles Hugh Smith with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

My guests today are Doug Casey and Charles Hugh Smith.

Casey is the founder and chairman of Casey Research, a provider of paid subscription newsletter services espousing libertarian viewpoints as the justification for the purchase of highly speculative microcap stocks, precious metals, and other investments.

Smith is an American writer and blogger. He is the chief writer for the site “Of Two Minds”. Started in 2005, this site has been listed No. 7 in CNBC’s top alternative financial sites. Smith’s economic works stress the value and efficacy of decentralizing power and wealth, the individual’s power of self-determination and the value of community, which in his view has been diminished by the state.

The topics are state power and central planning.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Casey and Covel discuss what it’s like having traveled to over 175 countries and where one can find social and economic liberty today in this world; the advantages of being a perpetual tourist; why Casey describes himself as an anarchist; if whether there is a purpose anymore to voting in the United States of America; loyalty to the country where you were born; those who rule out the possibility of a financial panic in the future; quantitative easing and currency debasement; and what was the trigger for Casey’s turn at life as a global traveler.
  • Smith and Covel discuss how winners and are being selected by the state as exemplified by the 2008 financial crisis; alliances between corporations and the state; why there might be an uproar if equity markets were not at all-time highs; what happens when the typical wage earner can no longer substitute debt for earned income; stagnant wages and tradable labor; building your life around non state controlled opportunities; the decentralization of power and wealth; and the reliance on secrecy in politics to avoid accountability.

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You Are Right… The World Could End

Feedback in:

I am looking forward to a future show with more details from Dunn Capital. If I’m not mistaken, they would have a practical opinion on the usefulness of both Bayesian Inference and Efron’s bootstrap method. Efron, of course, is the author of the Bayes critique cited above.

Per the Kaminski piece, there is no guarantee that 800 years of evidence won’t be undone by a perpetual and implacable tyranny of central bank price discovery suppression. This research looks suspiciously like new marketing materials from Greyserman/Hite etal. In today’s world It is absolutely invalid to say that stop orders which lost money on concentrated bets in the US stock index will be a justifiable risk control cost when the market gaps down 50% over a weekend because the Fed finally sh*ts the bed. How can any credible trend follower say they don’t care to know anything about unprecedented and precarious risks to the monetary system in their analysis?

Dunn seems to have taken more into account than ISAM. An educated guess about Dunn’s risk throttle is that one of the inputs is proportional to the difference between the overnight rate and the CPI.

Further to reducing risk in a low payoff environment (throttling), one of your other guests, Peter Schiff, (who you must interview again) has a decent theory that CPI and the overnight rate will never again cross paths or at least not until Keynesian central banking is dead and buried.

BTW, if something goes wrong with the monetary system, have you considered the possibility that agricultural markets and other markets with lock limits could suddenly and simultaneously be both lock limit up and lock limit down?

I’m guessing, in your mind, you have this idea that it is impossible for all positions to simultaneously lose because there is both a long and short side. One side has to win by definition, right? Well, maybe not…

Think about the situation where the monetary system is pushed to the breaking point. Where in the CME rule book does it say a market can’t be locked both up and down? Trend following strongly depends on the assumption of knowing prices or at least a sensible price ranges. What happens when this is suddenly a bad assumption?

DUNN CEO already appeared on my podcast. TFs don’t use Fed analysis in their trading. Of course, as you note, the world could end. In that case far more issues than trading will be relevant.


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.

Trend Following: Pura Vida!

Feedback in:

Hi Michael, I´m a Tim Sykes Challenge student [and] I saw you in one of his DVDs. Since then I have followed your podcast (and great interviews by the way). I’m [an] audio guy [and] I only found your audio book [for] “The Little Book of in Trading”. [W]hen [will] the others books…be available in audio?

I´ve been a broker for 17 years in Costa Rica in [Name] (biggest Insurance company in Central America) and my clients currently are pension funds: private and public. The markets in this country are changing. Our pension funds administrate 15B in local currency and they are doing baby steps to invest in the US markets. Could you recommend me the top funds that do Trend Following that specialize in pension funds or insurance companies?

Greetings from Costa Rica, or how we say, “PURA VIDA”.

Review my podcast. Many names. All of my books? More names. No secrets!


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.

Ep. 286: Alex Greyserman Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Alex Greyserman
Alex Greyserman

My guest today is Alex Greyserman, Chief Scientist at managed futures firm ISAM. He is also a professor at Columbia University. He is a member of the ISAM Systematic Investment Committee. He has 25 years of experience in the Managed Futures industry, having starting initially as Research Director at Mint Investment Management Co.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Idea of young college graduates writing articles about the death of trend following while firms like Greyserman’s continue to have tremendous success
  • Alternatives to thinking only ‘long stocks’
  • Greyserman’s first meeting with Larry Hite and how they have come to have such a career together
  • Why trend following is about more than getting on the right side of the S&P trade
  • The difference between cross-sectional momentum and time series momentum
  • The phrase “crisis alpha” and why trend following does well in times of crisis
  • The cost of not having trend following in your portfolio
  • Benchmarking and diversification
  • Why the worst thing you can do is “trend follow a trend follower”
  • The science of trend following
  • Speculation
  • Trend following your life–not just the markets
  • Dispersion among trend following traders
  • Effect of a higher rate environment

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alex greyserman

Ep. 285: Anthony Todd Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Anthony Todd
Anthony Todd

My guest today is Anthony Todd, the CEO of Aspect Capital, one of the most successful managed futures trend following firms. Todd co-founded Aspect in September 1997. Before that, he was with AHL.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Why prices aren’t random
  • Finding an inefficiency that the academic financial community refuses to acknowledge
  • The idea of “predictable” patterns in the market
  • The desire to know static positions
  • How crowd behavior drives trends
  • Addressing misconceptions
  • Using fundamentals in a systematic way
  • Defining Todd’s medium-term style of trend following
  • Why “it’s less about the genius of the trade and more about the repeatability of the approach”
  • How long you can be in a particular market before you give up on it
  • Client understanding of trend following drawdowns
  • The phraseology of “crisis alpha”
  • The culture that Todd has built at Aspect
  • Todd’s advice to young entrepreneurs.

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