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

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

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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Ep. 305: Mark Manson Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Mark Manson
Mark Manson

My guest today is Mark Manson, an author and personal development consultant. Manson has worked with thousands of people from over 20 countries and his writing offers a different take on the self-help genre. Manson calls it “self help from a first person perspective”. He has sold over 15,000 copies of his book “Models: Attract Women Through Honesty” and almost 400,000 people read his site each month. He’s been published and quoted on CNN, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Yahoo! News, The Sydney Morning Herald and a variety of other publications. He is also the CEO and Founder of Infinity Squared Media LLC.

The topic is personal development.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Why people are such ass—– on the internet
  • Internet communication vs. real world communication
  • Becoming desensitized to the internet
  • How Manson came to his entrepreneurial path and how he was inspired by “The 4-Hour Workweek”
  • Location independence and how travel has changed Manson
  • Consumerism in America
  • Having an excess of choice in your life
  • The type of business Manson has developed and why it’s been successful
  • Why certain approaches to dating aren’t emotionally healthy
  • Our bias against performers
  • Why Manson refers to himself as “self-help for people who don’t like self-help”

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Ep. 302: Zbigniew Hermaszewski and Natasha Reeve-Gray Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Zbigniew Hermaszewski and Natasha Reeve-Gray
Zbigniew Hermaszewski and Natasha Reeve-Gray

My guests today are Zbigniew Hermaszewski and Natasha Reeve-Gray, two of the four founding partners of Altis Partners–a very successful systematic and primarily trend following money management firm.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Covel’s recent experiences traveling in Asia
  • The advantages of location independence
  • Early triggers that led Hermaszewski and Reeve-Gray into the systematic trading world and away from the efficient market hypothesis
  • Why Hermaszewskii was motivated to go down the particular path he went down
  • The advantages of a physics background when applied to trading
  • Looking for predicability in the markets
  • How Altis uses predictability in the context of their world
  • The four broad types of market behavior in Altis’ program
  • Trend following and persistence
  • Inter-market relationships
  • Why there are no “manual” inputs in Altis’ systematic program
  • Portfolio construction and why Altis is different from its peers
  • Applying the same models to all markets
  • The collegial atmosphere amongst London CTAs

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Ep. 300: Travis Jamison Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Travis Jamison
Travis Jamison

Please enjoy my monologue Michael Covel Monologue and Travis Jamison Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. This episode may also include great outside guests from my archive.

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Want to learn more Trend Following? Watch my video here.

Ep. 299: Scot Billington & Jon Boorman Interviews with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Scot Billington & Jon Boorman
Scot Billington & Jon Boorman

My guests today are Scot Billington and Jon Boorman.

Billington is one of the managers of Covenant Capital along with Brince Wilford. Billington is the Chief Manager, Head Trader, and is responsible for all system development at Covenant.

Boorman is the President and CEO of Broadsword Capital, LLC, a Registered Investment Adviser in Charlotte, NC. Boorman has spent over two decades in global markets, witnessing first-hand some of the most tumultuous periods in financial history. Boorman started the Alpha Capture blog in January 2013 to keep a record of trading signals and market commentary, and demonstrate to a wider audience what could be achieved through trend following. The primary aim has always been to inform and educate.

The topic is trading.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

  • Covel and Billington discuss his firm’s exceptional performance in September of 2014; why low volume and low volatility tend to be accompanied by low returns; whether all of Billington’s trend following trading is predicated on a weekly system; Billington’s background and what got him into the systematic trend following space; why simplicity is the ultimate sophistication; marketing vs. trading reality; why certain investors try and disguise their trend following strategies as something else; why trend following is one of the most repeatable, teachable strateges; why the world still believes in the efficient market hypothesis; why trends continue to emerge as a function of the marketplace; the idea of a barbell strategy; and why upside volatility is not such a bad thing.
  • Covel and Boorman discuss the fear of public speaking; the idea of ego in the context of both trend following and buy & hold systems; why you’d seek to minimize rather than eliminate both ego and emotion in the context of trading; how Boorman and Jerry Parker connected and Parker’s early influence on Boorman; both Parker and Boorman’s views on exit strategies; how Twitter changes the level of access we have to each other; whether Boorman’s RIA might move into a fund structure; and process vs. outcome.

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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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