Michael Covel's Trend Following

Latest Episodes:

Ep. 330: Nigol Koulajian Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 27, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is Nigol Koulajian, the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Quest Partners LLC. He has been designing and trading short-term and long-term technical systems for over 22 years.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Trend following performance in 2014
Volatility vs. skew
Why having a good Sharpe Ratio is not the be-all-end-all
The notion that alpha in the CTA world is not a result of skill
Correlation between tail risk and the Sharpe Ratio
Central bank action and the Swiss Franc
Why trend following may not be as good in equity market corrections now as it has been in the past
Why trend following is not about the super-complicated mathematics
Getting outsiders to understand drawdowns
Emotional intelligence vs. intellectual intelligence
Media bias against trend following

Jump in!

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I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show.

To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/

You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 329: Terrance Odean Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 23, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is Terrance Odean, the Rudd Family Foundation Professor and Chair of the Finance Group at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Odean has extensively researched into the empirical data on active trading. He is very well-known for his work in behavioral finance and is once of the early pioneers.

The topic is his extensive research into the empirical data on active trading.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Odean describes his work
How Odean started his work looking at individual broker statements
The disposition effect
How Odean was able to get individual investor data when he was starting out
Looking at early thinkers in the arena of behavioral finance
Why people buy low and sell high
Why statistics are one of the best ways to understand what's going on in the market
The difference between male and female investors
Why overconfidence hurts investors
Attention and how we make decisions
Why a simple heuristic from Seinfeld could be the best way for most investors

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 328: Robert Seawright Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 20, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is Robert Seawright, the Chief Investment & Information Officer for Madison Avenue Securities, a boutique broker-dealer and investment advisory firm headquartered in San Diego, California. Seawright is also a columnist for Research magazine, a Contributing Editor at Portfolioist as well as a contributor to the Financial Times, The Big Picture, The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch, Pragmatic Capitalism, and ThinkAdvisor.

The topic is his blog A New Kind Of Investment Outlook.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

How Seawright was able to put together this blog piece
Perfection and prediction
Bias blindness
Volatility vs. risk
Separating your politics from your investing
Financial media as entertainment
Whether Seawright encountered any pushback after putting out his article
Letting go of the high leverage idea
Why the more we trade
The worse we do
Nobel laureate David Baltimore
Adversarial collaboration

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 327: Susan Polgar and Douglas Goldstein Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 16, 2015

Show notes

My guests today are Susan Polgar and Douglas Goldstein.

Susan Polgar, American chess grandmaster, and Douglas Goldstein, Certified Financial Planner, had the unique idea of looking at chess and applying the wisdom to investing.

The topic is their book Rich As A King: How the Wisdom of Chess Can Make You a Grandmaster of Investing.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Polgar's early history as a four-year-old chess playing prodigy, and the trouble some older males had in accepting her; nurture vs. nature; the connection between the Turtle story and chess; the skills that chess provides outside of just playing the game; the importance of keeping your emotions in check; process vs. outcome; and thinking through the possibilities from a chess perspective.
Douglas Goldstein, Covel discusses how the idea came about to combine finance with chess in a book; tactics vs. strategy; and pattern recognition

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 326: Kabir Sehgal Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 13, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is Kabir Sehgal, a New York Times bestselling author and Grammy Award-winning producer. He is currently a vice president at JPMorgan Chase. Sehgal's new book, Coined: The Rich Life of Money and How Its History Has Shaped Us, caught Covel's eye. This is a subject layered in complexity and depth. Just about everything that goes on in our lives is decided by money and Sehgal digs into its story on a micro level.

The topic is his book Coined: The Rich Life of Money and How Its History Has Shaped Us.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Sehgal's history
Sehgal's experience winning a Grammy for production and the idea of "no boxes"
Why Sehgal sees his life like a jazz composition
Defining money as a symbol of value
The neurological effects and artistic aspects of money
The currency of the natural world
Whether Sehgal sees "money as the root of all evil"
The idea of charity
The politics of money
The internationalization of currency
Hyperinflation
Gold, and Sehgal's experience going to the basement of the New York Fed
Digital money and bitcoin

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 325: Trend Following Attitude with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 09, 2015

Show notes

Please enjoy my monologue Trend Following Attitude with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. This episode may also include great outside guests from my archive.

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 324: David Stockman Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 06, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is David Stockman. Those that follow business and politics in the United States will recognize his name. Stockman has been a businessman, a Congressman, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan.

The topic is his book The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Woodrow Wilson piece
How Wilson brought the US into World War I and how the pain of the 1930's and the pivot point of the 20th century was connected
Why the ATM's going dark in 2008 wasn't a true possibility
Zero interest rate policy and how we're forcing people to spend down principal
How the Fed can generate massive bubbles

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 323: Jerry Parker Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Mar 02, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is Jerry Parker, an original Turtle, trained by Richard Dennis. However, since then he has very successfully run a managed money firm called Chesapeake Capital.

The topic is Trend Following.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Series of tweets written by Parker and use them as a jumping-off point for conversation. Topics include price action, "normal" market behavior
Recent moves in the Swiss Franc
Paying attention to entries as well as exits
Why investors are often their own worst enemy
The first moment that Parker heard about price-based trading
Becoming obsessed with asymmetrical risk and reward
Why looking at trend following losses is important
Why you can tell a system is robust if it has big drawdowns
Backtesting and treating all trades with equal weight

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 322: Sophia Roosth Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Feb 27, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is Sophia Roosth, a Harvard professor that Covel first heard quoted on DNA privacy from Davos. Roosth's research focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first century life sciences. Her first book, based on four years of ethnographic fieldwork, examines how the life sciences are changing at a moment when researchers build new biological systems in order to investigate how biology works. In this work, Roosth asks what happens to "life" as a conceptual category when experimentation and fabrication converge.

The topic is science.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Davos event
What becomes of privacy in a moment of internet surveillance
Having more information out there as a way to control privacy
Biological privacy, and whether our DNA is going down a path where it's a lot more public
Discrimination based on genome
Genetic McCarthyism
Somatic transfer and cloning
The story of Chance the bull
The idea of de-extinction
The ethics of cloning
Molecular gastronomy and world hunger

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 321: Michael Lardon Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Feb 23, 2015

Show notes

My guest today is Michael Lardon, one of the premier mental performance coaches in the world, with clients in more than a dozen professional and Olympic sports. His athletes have won major golf championships, Olympic gold medals, Super Bowls and World Series titles, among other achievements. He is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego and a Consulting Psychiatrist to the United States Olympic Teams at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA.

The topic is mental performance coaching.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Lardon's early experiences playing professional table tennis; the "slowing down of time" and how it affects performance
The importance of mental performance in sports
Phil Mickelson's loss at the 2013 Open and his win at the British Open a month later, and how Lardon was assisting him during this period
"The yips", and what is going on in the mind when someone can no longer perform a simple activity they used to accomplish easily
Neurological vs. psychological "yips"
Lardon's opinion on what's happening with Tiger Woods currently
Narrow, intense focus vs. dropping the intense expenditure of energy when you don't need it (ie. what do you do with your downtime?)
The process of desensitization
The deliberate plan for improvement and the importance of writing things down

Jump in!

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You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!