While I do not act as a fund manager for clients, I am a full-time entrepreneur who takes on healthy risks daily. My career earnings have come from business ventures, real estate, investing with traders and trading.

If you live in the Washington, DC Metro area and would like to be interviewed (on film) about the subjects I write about, drop me a line. I have found that question and answer formats work much better than standing in front of the camera preaching, hence my desire to get others involved.

I am in Dallas to conduct an interview with a very good trader. More to follow.

I did Mike Norman’s radio show today on the BizRadio Network. Mike is also a regular pundit for Fox News.

Last night I gave a presentation to a lively group at Superfund’s Fifth Avenue office. Aaron Smith of Superfund had invited me up to speak a few months back. True to his word he provided forum space and let me cover whatever trend following topics I saw fit. I give Aaron (and ultimately Superfund’s CEO Christian Baha) credit as I brought up the full range of topics including positive stories about some of their competitors. Why do they allow this? In my opinion they are actively working at the big picture of providing education along with their hedge fund business model. Outside speakers like myself don’t like to be constrained and they accept that. It is refreshing.

After the presentation I spoke with a writer from Reuters who covers the hedge fund space (he had read 1/2 of my book so far). He was probing more as he was not really ‘getting’ trend following. I put a quick chart on the white board showing a move from 50 to 150. I asked if he cared what the market was and why it went from 50 to 150 as long as he could be long. He agreed that he would not care if he could catch that move. But then, seconds later, he says, “but how do we know why it went to 150?” We went round and round. He kept coming back to the idea that there must be a need for knowing why the market moved. He rationalized that if you knew the fundamentals you could surely add that knowledge to trend following and do even better.

It was a great example of a bright guy not seeing the trend following picture just yet. We agreed to continue the conversation as I promised to get him over the hump.

I did a quick 6 minute live interview today at 2:50EST for Report on Business Television, the Canadian version of CNBC.

I did not get the feeling the interviewer was familiar with trend following trading completely, but I appreciated the opportunity to defend the strategy. I will try to put the video online here, but you can listen to the MP3 of the interview here.

On a side note, the remote location’s lights, where this was filmed in Washington, DC, are not good on the eyes!

Face to Face Interviews – Audio Insights (MP3).

A recent interview with Bloomberg Radio (6.5 MB MP3 audio file) and Mike Covel about trend following.

I interviewed a Miami area trend follower in his office this past Friday. While a younger man in terms of age, he has a track record exceeding 20% per year dating back to the early 1990s. He manages nearly $500M USD for clients.

In a surprising way, he quickly jumped into the philosophical elements of trend trading. All he could do was shake his head when I mentioned that some people still feel his kind of trading is bogus. “Do they not add up the profits” was his paraphrased response back.

He did drive home a crucial point about diversification from his perspective. Essentially he said, “what is the point of diversification if you can simply ride the big trenders each year while excluding the losers from your portfolio?” Of course this really would be the Holy Grail of trading, but perhaps as this trader hinted “some” are headed there as we speak.

My front cover interview with Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Magazine is currently out in the June 2005 issue: read the interview now.

Conducting interviews over the last 5 months has revealed “niches” among trend traders. What do I mean? My book Trend Following covers a distinct grouping of price-based trend following traders. There are, however, traders who trade trends using different entry and exit methods. Instead of relying on price, some rely on specific mathematically based patterns for their entries and exits.

Today I had a conference call with one such trader. Based he Europe, he manages over $1 billion USD in client money and has a track record exceeding 10 years (this is a different trader than the one I met with last Friday in New York City). The big picture lesson? Even if most trend traders are highly correlated, if you work hard and do the research, there exist uncharted territories in trend trading yet to be conquered.

But does this mean this trader’s philosophy is entirely different than trend followers? No, not at all. It means he has found a space where he thinks his method of entry and exit are superior. He still, like trend followers, must use great risk management to control his downside. And at the end of the day, he too needs trending markets to make money.

I interviewed a very successful trend follower last Friday in his New York City office. This man to some may seem young (he is in his mid-thirties), but his firm has been producing great returns for nearly 10 years. He got his start in Europe appealing primarily to non-US investors, but now reaches thousands of clients across the globe. Today he manages well north of $1 billion USD in client capital.

No one would have left this meeting without a deep appreciation for this man’s aggressive nature. He doesn’t wait for people to give him permission. He is 100% entrepreneur through and through aiming to make “it” happen. Some think the key to success is some secret formula, but the real key is to just get started. Just do it.