Trend Following With Michael Covel

Dan Pena is a high performance coach, philanthropist, businessman and author. He has seen every type of business imaginable. He brings an attitude that inspires and provokes action. The pussification of America has come to fruition through low self-esteem individuals creating a snowflake generation. Youth today are being raised by beta males who aren’t teaching them how to live strong, persistent and driven lives. Dan explains why the lack of alpha males in today’s society is the root of the politically correct driven culture. When someone has a beta personality, they tend to be less than a high performance achiever. High performance people succeed because they get things done. They walk the walk on a consistent basis. They do not live a sheltered, PC life. How do they accomplish this? Picking the right friends is the first key to success. Pushing yourself to be around others who inspire, will lead to you being inspired. When kids are around other kids looking for success, they are given a much higher probabi

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management science at the Stanford Engineering School and researcher in the field of Evidence-based management. Sutton is also the best-selling author of “The No Asshole Rule.” What does it mean to live in a “no asshole environment”? It means to weed out the people who demean and make you and others feel horrible. He gives the science and craft behind how to deal with assholes, how to prune these people from your life and get out of negative situations. But the question ever since that book has been: “Help, I’m dealing with an asshole! What can I do?” Sutton has heard that question asked in a thousand different ways. He answers the question in “The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt”. It shifts focus from building civilized workplaces to providing relief for anybody who feels plagued and pushed around by assholes. The Asshole Survival Guide delivers a cogent and methodical game plan. Sutton starts with diagnosis—what kind of asshole problem, e

Jason Calacanis is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, angel investor, author, blogger and has years of perspective when it comes to investing in start ups. His new book is “Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups–Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000”. Even if you never plan on becoming an angel investor, his book is a great look at how the modern economy works. Technology is accelerating at an ever-increasing rate and Jason argues that there are approximately 30 million jobs that will disappear in upcoming years due to advancements in technology. He wrote his book to try and help people step away from the usual way of thinking and look at where the world is moving. For example, the cheapest car you could buy today is far and above more sophisticated than the most expensive car you could have bought 20 years ago. When Jason evaluates a company, he looks at a couple things: What is in the best interest of society? And what is the best technology that we can use to ge

Laura Doyle is bestselling author of “The Surrendered Wife”, and her newest work is “The Empowered Wife.” Relationships are a skill just like everything else in life. They can be hard and sometimes and having some basic survival tools could make the difference between having a failed relationship or a thriving relationship. Laura gives a perspective and tools that we can all use in our modern day relationships. Laura went through thousands of hours and thousands of dollars of marriage counseling that did not work before she tried asking her friends what they were doing right in their relationships. She wanted to learn what was working for them and what hadn’t worked for them over the years. Her main “aha” moment was when she realized the problems her and her husband were having were self inflicted. Who has the most power in a relationship? How do you make your spouse feel respected? What are some main differences emotionally between men and women? What type of language do men respond best to? What type of lan

Michael dives in for a weekly monologue. Listen at your own peril.

Richard Clarke is co-author of “Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes.” Richard was also the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States. He worked for the government starting with Ronald Reagan’s Presidency and continued to move up the ladder until he resigned in 2003 under President George W. Bush’s presidency. Was there a starting point to Islamist terrorism? Were American’s affected much by the Gulf War? What was some red flags raised about the World Trade Center bombing? What are Cassandras? What did we know, and what were some warning signs at the time of 9-11? Why did we still go to war after 9-11 when the evidence was so lacking to go into Iraq? Michael and Richard go through these questions and many more throughout the podcast. Michael ends the interview asking Richard, “How can you see the next 10 to 20 years unfolding?” In this episode of Trend Following Radio: The Gulf War Islamist terrorism World Trade Center bombing

Peter Borish is chief strategist of Quad Capital. He works as a trading coach and helps recruit new traders and develop the company’s trading strategy. He also is a founding member of the Robin Hood Foundation. The Robin Hood Foundation has made great strides in their charity work and are continuing to do bigger and better things. Peter believes that the quality of life for those around you is much more important than the material possessions that can be accumulated. Michael and Peter change gears from charity work, to trading and Quad Capital. Quad Capital has had only 5 or 6 down months since inception about 42 months ago. What does their multi-strategy approach consist of? They look at alpha generating, capacity constrained strategies. They also believe investors are looking at liquidity, therefore that is exactly what they provide in their funds. Peter is the business of managing risk, not just being right. Another way of putting it is, “Are you interested in making money or are you interested in being ri

Collin Seow is author of “The Systematic Trader: How I turned a $250,000 debt into profits through stock trading.” He also is a qualified Chartered Portfolio Manager with a Certified Financial Technician qualification, and a member of MENSA Singapore and Technical Analysts Society Singapore. Michael and Collin switch discuss the “Singaporean perspective.” What is the Singaporean perspective and what helped lay the foundation for their success? The founding fathers of Singapore set forth strict rules and regulations so people knew what they could and could not do. The system was laid out clear and concise. Citizens knew what their boundaries were down to the last detail. For example, there are rules defined ranging from whether or not you can chew gum to how for trees are allowed to be planted apart from one another. Collin moves from the Singaporean perspective socially, to their perspective on trading. More traders in Asia seem to be open to the idea of systematic trading. When he back tests a system, he doe

Michael Covel’s take for the week.

Mihir Desai is author of “The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return.” Mihir is currently the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He wrote his new book with two goals in mind: 1. Demystifying finance and 2. Have people look at finance in a more inspirational way. After each financial bubble bursts, the public repeatedly retreats to stereotypical ideas of finance. Mihir doesn’t want to wait for a generational shift to take place for finance to be looked at in a positive light. Financial literacy has gone by the way side in schools. How do you get children to think about basic risk taking? How do you think about protecting yourself? How do you buy insurance? How do you pool your money as a family? He hopes his book may help change some views and enlighten. Mihir explains why diversification isn’t important just in the markets, it is important to diversify in all aspects of life. As an athlete you

You won’t expect or see this episode coming… First, consider a truism: Asian American students dominate in academia. Asian Americans know that if they get the right scores, and check off all the boxes, they get the good school. However, this is not how it works at Harvard and other Ivy League institutions. They don’t operate based on who has the best test scores. Michael reads a passage from a New York Times article illustrating the injustices in Harvard’s admission processes. Once one ethnic quota has been filled, that’s it. No more students can me admitted. Public universities handle their admission process differently. Asian Americans make up 34% of The University of California’s student body as apposed to about 15% of Asian Americans allowed to attend the Ivy schools due to diversity regulations. “America, the home of equality?” This catch phrase has gone by the way side. When students work hard, but then are slapped down because of their race, this goes against the American dream. And when the system t

Art Collins is author of “Beating the Financial Futures Market: Combining Small Biases Into Powerful Money Making Strategies”, “When Supertraders Meet Kryptonite”, “Market Rap: The Odyssey of a Still-Struggling Commodity Trader” and “Market Beaters.” He has been trading systematically for the past 30 years. How was Art Collins able to get Richard Dennis, Bill Dunn, Bob Pardo, Mike Dever and Larry Williams (to name a few) to talk? He made the interviews more like a partnership, than an interview. He made an impressive name for himself which led to positive word of mouth spreading. What does robustness mean to Art? He uses four rules for prudent testing: 1. Don’t settle on your best result if it is a “diamond in the rough”. 2. Strategies should test well in various markets, particularly similar ones. 3. You don’t want your results to be bunched up in limited time frames. 4. Stay focused on testing concepts you understand in the markets. Throughout the years Art wasn’t only focused on trading markets. He also

Michael reads an article he recently wrote for The Observer. He weaves in commentary throughout and speaks to the gross misuse of political power. Michael portrays politicians and the D.C. culture as a dog and pony show. In this episode of Trend Following Radio: Parliament of Whores Bill Clinton presidency Political dog and pony show 2000 stock crash

Tyler Cowen is author of “The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.” Tyler first noticed a problem in America when he began traveling after the financial crisis and saw how “comfortable” life had become for many Americans. People were not taking risks anymore and when risk is taken away, what is left? There is no way to deliver upward mobility in a society once risk taking, innovation and a sense of urgency has diminished. Americans seemingly have lost the ability to envision a future different than the reality in front of them. Innovation is suffering, travel is disappearing, and people are changing jobs much less than ever before. Tyler describes this shift in mentality as people losing their sense of restlessness and change. There is no feeling of opportunity costs. Why is this happening? How can American’s not imagine something better? American lives have become safe and comfortable — risk is the only factor that can help transition Americans away from their own complacency.

Gimme Danger with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. A new monologue for the week.

Jon Gordon is an author and speaker on leadership, culture, sales, and teamwork. He has worked with numerous athletic organizations, academic institutions, and corporations. His latest book is “The Power of Positive Leadership.” He teaches people how to focus on weeding out the negative and not letting that energy poison the team. Jon describes himself as a once fearful, negative and stressed out 31-year old. What changed all of that? His wife gave him the ultimatum: Change your life or I am leaving you. He had an “Aha” moment that gave him the revelation he was meant to write and speak. However, Jon knew he needed to work on himself first, so he started taking steps to better himself. He began by going on walks of gratitude and created a “positive tip of the week” newsletter. This lead to him creating a website, doing about 80 free talks to get started, and ultimately just going for it as an entrepreneur. Jon describes impacting others as being the greatest feeling in the world. “The Power of Positive Lead

A new mono… with some freaking edge. In this episode of Trend Following Radio: Warren Buffett Black box trading

Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman are authors of “Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar” and their newest book is “A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age.” Jimmy and Rob highlight aspects of their new book by detailing who Claude Shannon is and why he is so fundamental for our everyday lives. Claude Shannon made the entire digital age possible. As Jimmy and Rob said, “He didn’t just think about things, he thought through things.” What made Shannon so unique? He was extremely curious about information and wanted to know about all aspects of it. He brought a lot of insights into a subject that seemingly would come from left field. Shannon was also brilliant at transmitting information and breaking the complex into the simplistic. He allowed himself to move into different fields and go wherever his mind wanted to take him but never wasting his time on an unworthy subject. He could expertly sort through what was worth working on and what was a waste of time.

An impassioned intro and an oldie but goodie monologue. Enjoy!

Andrew Lo is author of “Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought.” He is also the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor of Finance at MIT and the chairman and chief investment strategist of the AlphaSimplex Group. Andrew was taught from the beginning of his career that the efficient market hypothesis was gospel truth. It was the end-all-be-all. However, he first found a problem with the efficient market hypothesis just after graduating college. He did a test on the “random walk hypothesis” and related his findings from that hypothesis to the markets. He then came to find that his results proved the efficient market hypothesis wrong. Was there pushback during the early stages of talking about EMT being wrong? Absolutely. Andrew was one of the strongest that pushed back primarily because it went against everything he previously knew to be true. Andrew talks about another study he did with one of his MIT classes in 2004. He looked at hedge funds around that time and through data he prov