I have personally found both the books to be right up there with the best and most honest books written on the subject. I have benefited a lot from them and also find the site pretty useful – so here’s my bow to Michael !

Mark, I don’t think you quite get the point here. You or I shouldn’t care about Michael’s performance. As long as he teaches and is fully honest about the difficulties in implementing the system, which i think he is, the month by month performance is something that you should decide, your % risk, not his. People here all trade sucesfully, some 100% annual returns, some 10%, and nothing is related to the system being better than the other. Covel can suck at trading, but can be a great mentor.

Seriously, success comes with a price. Be it commitment, money, energy, time, risk, tools, passion, energy, exclusion, what have you…

What if Michael told you his personal account has averaged 5, 10, 20, 50% for the last 5, 10, 20 years? Would that be enough? How much would be enough to buy the system? The education?

If there’s risk in the market, there is risk in buying education. It will take money. It might not work for you. It will take time. It might be the final key your trading and your brain need to make the right connections and create the right breakthroughs to take your trading to the next level. Perhaps it would take as much money as it would take time and insight and experience for you to learn on your own.

What if you bought the course and learned one thing that saved you $2,000.00 in time over the next 2 years? Would that make the system worth it? What if the system went into drawdown for the next year? Would that make it not worth it?

Michael’s performance is the last thing I would be thinking about when buying a system. I would be thinking what MY potential profit would be — and that profit can be measured in ways separate from dollars. I would be thinking about what my need is.

And while we’re on this subject, I see that a lot of traders on a lot of message boards seem to think that information on the topic of trading should be given away for free. I don’t see this anywhere else… You wouldn’t dream of going to a Mercedes dealership and getting mad at the dealer because they built an awesome car but won’t give you one for free? Would you tell them, I can’t believe you’re selling this awesome car, that you created an awesome ad campaign and made me really want one, but you won’t just give it to me.

You may say, but wait, they will let you test drive it? They will let you get behind the wheel and take it for a spin. Well, as far as I am concerned, this website, the books, the dvd’s, the blog, are all one massive test drive. And from what I can see here, there’s nothing but quality.

What are your alternatives? The forex trading robot that makes 600% a month? LOL

I will use an example. Back in the day I needed to know something. Wanted confirmation that John Henry was on the opposite side of Barings Bank. I asked a yes/no question and got an honest answer from someone in position to know. The value of that one YES — changed my life. Sometimes, that’s all it takes — one simple one word answer. What was that worth to me? Millions. Too many people go through life the eternal skeptic with no ability to see through the forest. Or worse yet, they get hung up and fixated on all that doesn’t matter. All questions are fair game, just think big picture. That’s my advice.

P.S. If you go through life looking for an evil predator in every shadow, your mind will see one!

Agree Jim. We all get started digging through information and making choices. I remember back in the day being at conferences, listening to ‘big’ names talk and preach, but it was only years later that I came to understand that some big names had no clue what they were talking about.

Tip? The vast majority of people on CNBC have no clue, regardless of their name, title, firm association, size of their watch or how nice their tie looks.

Mark, my response is not going to change. The last thing I want here are clients who are still skeptical after my 15 years online educating clients, my books and film. If that contribution has not alleviated your skepticism, nothing will. As far as your Butch Harmon example, who are my competitors in the trend following education space bringing to the table what I do?

Two follow on thoughts:

• The investing alternatives you mention are not trend following.
• My clients include a wide assortment of successful pro traders and managers, not to mention retail clients across the globe. So what ultimately is the real fear that one has over gaining additional education for a price? To this day I will never understand that one. Let’s face it (and this comment is not aimed at you Mark), some people will go through a life never acquiring information or education that furthers themselves for any number of excuses or rationales. Is that odd to me? Sure. Do I lose sleep? No.

Thanks, but no great defense needed! Not running a hedge fund here, and I have not blown up!

Transaction with me is easy: get to where you want to go faster than without. That’s it. Frankly, from a psychology standpoint, extreme skepticism is interesting to me.

I’m a huge fan of Michael’s. I bought the books in college and thought they were vastly different than anything that I heard in my financial engineering classes. I’m in my mid 20′s and have allocated 85k from what I have made playing poker to trade with. I am trying to determine if using a trend following strategy makes sense for an account my size. I remember reading that Richard Dennis said that he would generate 300%+ returns on a smaller account. On the other hand the performance of CTA’s managing large amounts of money is less than stellar for what I am trying to achieve. Considering the resources I listed in the previous post have multi year public track records of triple digit returns and limited drawdowns, their approaches are very compelling for me. I asked ONCE to see what Michael’s track record is. I don’t believe he is managing as much as most CTAs so it would be interesting to see the actual results of an individual trader. Most people who post and say things like “XYZ” trading system works for them are lying.

For me this is a big decision. Its not just allocating 3% of my trading capital purchasing a system. I am concerned about the possibility of drawdowns as well as underperformance relative to other strategies for an account my size. I really like the concept of trend following, but I don’t want to spew a bunch of money. I obviously don’t care if I get trolled by message board posters. If I can find someone with a track record triple digit returns on a smaller account, it is worth it. From a salesman’s point of view, someone like me is a pain in the ass and might not be worth the trouble. I don’t know what that has to do with me from my perspective. I only care about maximizing my long term earn.

Mark, regarding your account size, I can say mine is smaller and I’m not the in the 300% (not even in the backtest, testing the most aggressive settings I could get that, nor I want to), but 100% is perfectly possible. For me, what did the trick is finding a selected futures basket of mini contracts. For that you need a broker with a global reach. Or substitute the biggest futures contracts for ETFs, which in my case wasn’t great because of margin interest, but can be in your case. In a word: It’s possible.

To Mark:

What benefit do you gain by having Covel’s track record? Unless he is going to be trading your money you don’t need it.

You are looking for some kind of “guarantee” that trend following works. You’ll only find that out by implementing the strategies yourself. I can tell you… it works for me and most of the others posting here. The question is do you have the discipline to use it properly so that it works for you? Only you can decide/learn that for yourself. Someone else’s track record isn’t going to make any difference… we all use different levels of risk (what we’re comfortable with) and trade different markets… therefore we all have different track records.

If you are really serious about learning trend following then invest in the knowledge being offered here. You can do that on many levels… from the free information to an $18 book to a 2K trading course. In my opinion you can’t go wrong with any of them.

OK… I just re-read and saw that you made your trading capital by playing poker. How do you not get the concept of trend following?

Personally, I trade for the same reason Warren Buffet says he went into investing: “So I wouldn’t have to deal with stupid people.”

Trading = no politics, no ass-kissing, no wannabe’s…you’re either right or wrong and your bankroll determines wheher you know what you’re doing, not the color of your skin, not your religion,not your taste in watches, not your public speaking ability…nothing . It’s the perfect meritocracy…I love it!

Thanks to your site, books, trading course and “Paul Tudor Jones, losers average losers.” I kept a small loss from becoming much worse and made 60K last month..!! 2k seems to cheap..Thanks!!!