Of course it’s fake, but I wonder who exactly had the Photoshop time to make it? I did not do it!

My book “Trend Following” will be published in Portuguese now. To all my new friends down in Brazil at BMF&BOVESPA thanks for pushing the issue after my summer visit! Obrigado!

That’s now 10 foreign translations:

Arabic
Chinese-Simplified
Chinese-Traditional
French
German
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian
Turkish

A Facebook friend of mine just asked me:

Which [of your] books should I read first? Trend Following or TurtleTrader? I am already a trader for about 1 year. I use technical analysis, and have already read Dr. Alexander Elder and John Murphy to give you an idea of my previous experience. Congrats, you’ve been doing an Amazing job. My name is Felipe from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Read The Complete TurtleTrader first. It is an exciting story and brings trend following alive with real people and real millions. Second I would read Trend Following — which is more of a trend following encyclopedia filled with all of the trend following legends and their philosophies. Both books have 2009 editions now.

Note: Feel free to connect with me on Facebook!

The Russian version of “The Complete TurtleTrader” is available here. Any chance one of my Russian speaking friends can locate the book on that site and send me the link?

Thanks Eric:

http://www.piter.com/book.phtml?978538800322

I caught some criticism of “The Complete TurtleTrader” recently that was worth responding to. People should keep in mind that the Turtle story has spanned three decades and dozens upon dozens of people. As a biographer of such a story you have to make decisions about who the real players are and who the bit players are. Once you have properly determined the bit players including every last detail about them, good or bad, doesn’t make much sense. For example, the following text was authored by an ex-Turtle and NOT included in my book:

“I am writing to inform you that as of July 31, 2001, [...] has liquidated all open positions, and has stopped trading in the futures markets. Unless I receive a response from a majority of you to the contrary, there are no plans to resume trading of any kind at this point, and instead we will be seeking an orderly dissolution of the company, and a return of all monies to the investors, as quickly and expeditiously as possible. The reasons for this decision are many, but the primary factor is that we simply have not made any money in almost three years. After getting off to a profitable start the first year, the fund is now showing a negative return of about ten percent since inception. I think that the trading game has somehow fundamentally changed, and that long-term trend following is no longer a viable approach to extracting profits from either the futures or equity markets.”

Clearly, the inane statement “long-term trend following is no longer a viable approach to extracting profits from either the futures or equity markets” was not true. I can only assume that this statement was designed for some other purpose 8 years ago.

You can listen to the podcast of my August 2009 speech for the Brazilian exchange BMF&BOVESPA on iTunes for free.

Larry Hite (appears in Broke) gave a speech a few years back. In his speech, a defense of trend following, he relayed a comical conversation about the never ending need of some to know the fundamentals:

Many years ago, I jumped up at three in the morning one night and started scribbling and calculating and said, “Holy shit, it’s not the number of the eggs, but the size of the chickens.” My girlfriend at the time looked at me and said, “You wake me up at 3AM to tell me size matters?” “You’ve got to understand,” I explained, “you can’t get large eggs from small chickens.” “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well I have been thinking about eggs.” She said, “Eggs? It’s three in the morning, what do you mean you•ve been thinking about eggs?” She said, “I thought you were a music guy or a drug dealer, why are you thinking about eggs?” I said, “Well here’s the thing about these eggs. There are going to be a lot of chickens next year. But if you regress the age of the flock there’s going to be a lot of small chickens and medium chickens but there are not going to be a bunch of old, large chickens. And without large chickens you can’t have large eggs. And without large eggs you can’t make the deliverable on the Chicago Merc which calls for large, white eggs. So there will be a shortage of deliverables in Chicago.” She said, “You know, I could have told my friends a lot of stuff about you. I could have even had lied to my parents. But I really can’t sleep with a guy who counts chickens.” That was what commodity trading was all about. It was about the fundamentals of a commodity.

Pick the market. Stock, commodity, future, whatever. If you find yourself trying to actually know all of the fundamental data for some market, doesn’t Hite’s story hit you in the gut? Bottom line, knowing the fundamentals doesn’t translate into making good buy/sell decisions and or making good money management decisions (”how much to buy or sell?”).

The original edition of “Trend Following” was translated into Japanese. The new edition of “Trend Following” (Feb. 09) was just sold for a Japanese translation as well.