I don't really care about their current status... the two books I mentioned were useful. I was just curious as to why Covel seems to base such a large portion of his site, his writings, his thoughts on trying to steer people away from Curtis Faith. What he (Covel) apparently doesn't realize is that by doing that he's actually driving a lot more traffic TO Curtis Faith.
I emailed Covel if he trades himself (this was years ago). He said no, it was not his game. Feel free to email him and see if he now trades (in a meaningful way, i don't mean he went long 100 shares of SPY).
Jack Schwager interviewed Bill Eckhardt and asked him this. The answer was well they didn't know at the beginning but they needed some criteria, so they just hired the smartest people they could find.
Ahh ... Covel wins my respect for his honesty. At least he admits he doesn't trade. However, I am not sure if he discloses this fact to his students whom he charges thousands for teaching trend-trading. An honest person will do it. If he charges thousands for a 3-day course with full disclosure, I think it is fine even when students go ahead and pay top dollars to learn from a teacher who teach but not do. Willing buyer, willing seller as long as rules of full disclosure are followed.
I can understand that. I can also see, after reading the books, that you actually do NOT need high intelligence in order to work the system. It actually makes more sense to me that a "punk 19 year old" could more easily simply just follow the rules, unquestioning, than the older turtles. Most adults have more of an appreciation for "what a dollar is worth" and I can see where the risk/fear of paying too much, going to heavy, etc. would be much harder for the others that were older than Faith. Like I said before, even though I'm pretty firmly convinced in the methods, I personally know that I would be unable to stick to the system, and it isn't because I lack the intelligence to follow it. As far as Covel goes, I was actually kind of mad when I found his site and read all of his little-girl whining about Curtis Faith. I had read Covel's books prior to finding his site and I thought much higher of him then.
I believe intelligence and cunning is required to be a good trader. This is possibly a trait found in someone who is 'hungry'. Someone who us hungry is someone who is always searching and poking around the debris of life for solutions to not only survive but to be happy. In my book, anyone happy and successful is intelligent.
That may be true for developing your own strategy/system, but not for simply following one that is handed to you.
Suppose Covel did trade a Turtle-y strategy. What would that prove? The expected future Sharpe of any long-term trend strategy is 0.50- 0.75 at best, given current crowding in the space, so any given trading year is not unlikely to show a loss just by random variation. And it would take decades of results to show Covel's flavor of trend following was significantly better than competing flavors, or even significantly better than random.
You respect this Covel guy who doesn't trade, has never traded and will never trade to teach you how to trade???!!! This sort of thinking is one reason why it's possible to make money in the markets. When you opponents think like this, it's exactly like being in a poker game with a load of amateurs and fish.