Recent update of Trend Following podcast: http://www.michaelcovel.com/2015/01...st-collection-all-311-michael-covel-episodes/
I think you are selling snake oil. Here's why: Trend Following is not a strategy. Trend Following (TF) is a metastrategy. A metastrategy is an umbrella concept under which a number of strategies (aka detailed plans) reside. The metastrategy of Trend Following is very simple: Trade with the trend. The metastrategy of Trend Following has been freely available and widely known for a very long time. Long before anybody ever heard of Michael Covel. In other words, nobody needed Michael Covel to tell them about TF. That wisdom was freely and readily available, especially in the age of the internet. Here's the rub: When I go to your website and look at your performance page, you refer to Bill Dunn and some other hedge-fund gazillionaires. So what? One cannot trade a metastrategy aka an umbrella concept. One cannot trade "Trade with the Trend". One can only trade a strategy aka a detailed plan (e.g., Donchian Channel Breakouts). The metastrategy of Trend Following covers hundreds if not thousands of separate strategies. MOST TF STRATEGIES ARE FAILURES. If they weren't failures, we'd all be rich. Fact: most of us aren't rich. When you cite the "performance" of your admittedly proprietary TF strategy as Bill Dunn's performance, you are lying ... UNLESS you are selling Bill Dunn's very specific strategy (aka his detailed plan). Are you selling Bill Dunn's specific TF plan? A simple question that deserves a simple yes-or-no answer. If not, can we get the performance results for the particular strategy (aka detailed plan) that you are selling? If not ... SNAKE OIL !!!
For those not familiar my podcast goes beyond trend following alone. Today's episode covers the Franc move in the intro and then my guest: http://www.michaelcovel.com/2015/01...-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio/ Next Ep (or following) is Jean-Philippe Bouchaud of http://www.cfm.fr/. Background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Philippe_Bouchaud
Thanks for your interest. Since it has been some time for my podcast updates here, a few recent trend following episodes: Tom Basso: Michael Covel talks with 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 privat trader. This is Basso’s fourth podcast conversation, and Covel and Basso talk about the 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; and Basso’s advice to newcomers to the CTA industry. http://trendfollowingradio.com/ep-3...4-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio http://traffic.libsyn.com/trendfollowing/306.mp3 Zbigniew Hermaszewski & Natasha Reeve-Gray: Today on the podcast, Michael Covel speaks with Zbigniew Hermaszewski & Natasha Reeve-Gray, two of the four founding partners of Altis Partners--a very successful systematic and primarily trend following money management firm. Covel, Hermaszewski, and Reeve-Gray 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; and the collegial atmosphere amongst London CTAs. http://trendfollowingradio.com/ep-3...w-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio http://traffic.libsyn.com/trendfollowing/302.mp3 Ewan Kirk: Michael Covel interviews Ewan Kirk on today’s podcast. Kirk is the head of Cantab Capital and has brought his firm from $30M AUM in 2006 to over $5B today. Kirk employs several strategies but clearly uses a trend following foundation. Covel and Kirk discuss how consistent and predictable profits are the Holy Grail--you’re never going to get there. Covel and Kirk also explore Kirk’s background, and how someone with a PhD in mathematical physics ends up going to work for Goldman Sachs; why computer programming is “today’s literacy”; standing out from the crowd; trend following in the European scene vs. America; weighting positions based on risk; talking to clients and explaining that losses are statistically inevitable; whether the demand for discretionary traders is waning; how discretionary traders look at a trader like Kirk who is 100% systematic; why discretionary intervention in a systematic trading strategy disqualifies it from being truly systematic; proving a strategy as broken rather than proving that it’s right; why randomness is everything; uncertainty and convictions about technique; capturing the realism of the world in your trading strategy; what actually benefits the economy, society, and the world; seeking client feedback and understanding a client’s drivers; and the importance of consistent marginal improvements. http://trendfollowingradio.com/ep-2...w-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio http://traffic.libsyn.com/trendfollowing/296.mp3 Nigol Koulajian and Donald Wieczorek: Michael Covel speaks with Nigol Koulajian and Donald Wieczorek on today’s podcast--two separate interviews back to back. Nigol Koulajian's firm is Quest Partners, LLC and is approaching one billion AUM. Koulajian has a very interesting take on trend following--specifically his take on replicating famous trend following strategies. Koulajian and Covel discuss Koulajian’s background and entrepreneurism within Lebanese culture; how Koulajian got his start, and how he found his way into the systematic strategies he employs today; the influence of Van Tharp; the importance of practices like transcendental meditation and yoga on the mental side of trading and in the context of Koulajian’s work today as a fund manager. the S&P 500 as a trading system; crowd psychology; replication strategies; price action as a trigger for different strategies; volatility, volatility compression, and why volatility is not the way to measure risk in the markets anymore; the Flash Crash; and trend following as a hedge to equity risk. Next, Michael Covel speaks with Donald Wieczorek. Wieczorek’s firm is Purple Valley Capital. Covel and Wieczorek discuss Wieczorek’s early track record; Salem Abraham; drawdowns; Wieczorek’s first exposure to trend following; why losing early in your trading career can be a good thing; why you don’t need to predict market movement to make money; Jack Schwager and the Market Wizards series; and why systematic trading is more than just the technical system. Next, Covel and Wieczorek break apart some of Wieczorek’s monthly performance windows (trendfollowing.com/don.pdf), picking apart the psychology and context of certain months in Wieczorek’s career. Covel and Wieczorek continue on to talk about correlation between famous trend following traders; volatility and risk; and the value of crisis alpha. http://trendfollowingradio.com/ep-2...w-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio http://traffic.libsyn.com/trendfollowing/294.mp3 Will most more. Easy to play this way.
Synopsis: Jean-Philippe Bouchaud speaks with Michael Covel on his second visit to the podcast. He is founder and Chairman of Capital Fund Management (CFM) and professor of physics at École polytechnique. Today, Covel and Bouchaud focus on Bouchaud’s co-authored paper, “Tail Risk Premia vs. Pure Alpha”. Additionally, Covel and Bouchaud discuss his firm’s performance for 2014; whether trend following actually “died” prior to it’s “reappearance” in 2014; what trend following manages to exploit; exploiting vs. exploring; looking at volatility as a precursor to profit; volatility as a measure of risk; trend following as a genuine market anomaly; the behavioral biases in play as oil has fallen fifty percent plus; the feedback Bouchaud has received from peers on his newest paper; whether other strategies exploit a genuine market anomaly; Bouchaud’s philosophy on transparency and “secrets” in his work; and why Bouchaud’s work culture is not a culture of MBA’s. Note: In this episode a white paper is mentioned. There are short (www.trendfollowing.com/cfm-short.pdf) and long (www.trendfollowing.com/cfm-long.pdf) versions. Receive a free trend following DVD: www.trendfollowing.com/win. Listen: http://www.michaelcovel.com/2015/01...-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio/ http://traffic.libsyn.com/trendfollowing/313.mp3
The thing is, Michael has the respect of many successful traders in the business, otherwise they wouldn't bother joining him on his podcasts. I don't think you can judge his courses without buying them. Given that he has been able to interview such successful traders as David Harding, who happens to be a billionaire, I would argue that he probably has a lot more to offer than 99% of the folks here in ET. JMHO of course.
The thing is, Covel has the attention --not respect, attention-- of many successful traders because he's written some books praising them and his podcasts gives them more opportunities to showcase themselves. And to say a product can't be judged until it is bought is one of the silliest things I've ever read here or elsewhere. If the so-called performance page is not about his product but about how other traders did using other products, how is that not a basis for judging his product? "Hi, I'm a golf instructor. I can teach you how to play golf. Tiger Woods learned how to play golf and now he's rich. If you learn how to play golf, it's possible this can happen to you too. Nevermind that I was never Tiger Woods' golf instructor but hey, minor detail, right?" If Covel is going to pretend that his performance is the same as other traders' performances simply because they all fall under the umbrella of trend following, I'm going to call him on it. It's blatant deception.
Nowhere on his websites does he claim any sort of trading performance for himself. And, if you've read the books, there are interviews of many successful traders in the books. He didn't just wake up one day and write about the Turtles without conducting any interviews. That is why he gains trust from other successful traders to do his podcast. Back to your golf analogy, since that is another subject I know a bit about. I learned how to teach golf from Hank Haney, among others. Haney was Tiger's coach for five years. Do you think I am now qualified to teach people who want to learn how to play golf? Covel has learned from top traders. He has information gleaned from these traders through years of interviews and research. Therefore he should be able to pass that information onto people who want to learn. He uses the performance of many top trend followers to suggest that it is a great approach to trading and investing...nothing more, nothing less. He then offers to teach about trend following, and how to do it successfully. Of course, we all know that because of the human condition, most will still fail anyway as they continue to search for the holy grail, just as golfers don't want to do the work necessary to change their swing.