Start here to profit in trend following…

We have been providing trend following trading system courses, DVDs, bestselling books and consulting services for beginning traders, college students, individual investors & traders, researchers, brokers, banks, family offices, & hedge funds since 1996. We connect with our clients where they are in terms of geography, current job, education and experience — pioneering the use of the Internet to teach trend trading to clients across 72 countries.

We have a deep and unbridled passion for trend following trading and spreading the gospel of its benefits. Our reputation is built on a dedication to providing top trend following training at a price that allows everyone to get in. Whether you are looking to create additional income, learn where to invest your retirement funds, or simply prepare for a financial future in the face of a collapsed stock market, we can help.

However, trend following is a brutal understanding of reality. It shoots for big returns. If you want the chance for big money, in bull and bear markets, trend following is where you want to be. But this isn’t clipping coupons. No risk, no return. No balls, no babies.

Below you will find a lengthy introduction, but you will also find the personal writings of Michael Covel great trend following introductions:

• Can I become a trend follower?
• When the next crash happens will you be ready?
• The dead hand of safe bets.
• Trend Following preface.
• The Complete TurtleTrader preface.
• The Complete TurtleTrader afterword.
• On criticism.
• Meeting Mikhail Gorbachev: my journey.
• Influences.

Our Backstory

Does your family’s future wealth depend on your investing and trading skills? If so, what will you do? Trust Wall Street. Trust the government. Trust financial media.

Deep down those answers are all losers. In the last decade stock markets have shown boundless euphoria with gut-wrenching despair. Uncertainty is the new normal. No more smooth and steady. The world is headed toward recovery with easy ‘long only’ stock gains? Trust that and we have Florida swamp land to sell you.

Rising taxes, dollar volatility and Social Security bankrupt. Who feels secure about that? No one. Consider this recent Wall Street Journal excerpt:

“For many investors, the market’s turbulence hasn’t just destroyed wealth. It has shattered their faith in the financial system itself. Consider Philip Eberlin, 56 years old, who runs a woodwork-restoration business in Chicago Heights, Ill. Trading hot stocks a decade ago, Mr. Eberlin got burned on picks like Krispy Kreme and Tyco. In 2007 he got back into stocks, only to take another hit. “Having been burned twice in 10 years,” says Mr. Eberlin, he now has about 80% of his family’s assets “protected from the market” in certificates of deposit and fixed annuities. “I don’t have trust in Wall Street to help the small investor in any way, shape or form.” Mr. Eberlin isn’t alone. Late last year, Decision Research of Eugene, Ore., asked Americans how much they trusted bankers and other Wall Street leaders “to reduce the risk of the financial challenges the country is facing now.” On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning no trust at all, the rating averaged a paltry 1.7.”

Forget counting on stock markets going up. Look at how many times we have crossed 10,000 in the last decade. Wash, rinse, repeat. 10,000 on the Dow clearly means nothing:

We said that here on FOX, and caught flack. But when the Fed keeps monkeying with rates to boost stocks to unsustainable levels, bubbles, bubbles and more popped bubbles are normal. Dow predictions? Makes no sense to play in that sandbox.

So how do you really feel opening your brokerage statement every month? Can you stomach your coffee-hyped advisor telling you to, ‘just hang in there’? Mutual fund managers and financial advisors are cons. They charge huge management fees and deliver no return.

Bottom line, mutual funds only want fees. Their buy and hold (hope) scheme will leave you underwater 20 years from now just like Japan. Guaranteed. Even during the bull market 90% of mutual fund managers failed. A child spinning in circles would have beaten many of the overpaid suits. There is no reason to stick with that nonsense and there is no reason to be broke. The good news? You can protect yourself and make money.

16 years ago Michael Covel had a life-changing experience.

It eventually led to the creation of the now famous financial portal TurtleTrader.com, the bestselling trading books ‘Trend Following‘ and ‘The Complete TurtleTrader‘ and the first and only honest film documentary to cover our economic storm (titled ‘Broke‘).

However, it did not start that way. It started with Covel as a political science graduate on the outside of Wall Street looking in. His path then led to the completion of his MBA, but that provided little in the way of money-making answers. Then something changed.

A random experience lead to a unique discovery, one always known by the insiders, but hidden in plain view from average investors. What was that?

The big winners use rock solid trend following systems to make money in both up and down times across all types of markets. The winners don’t buy and hold. Let’s face it, many people view making money all wrong. They make bad assumptions:

• Do winning traders all have some special talent?
• Do they have a special inborn gene or divine gift?
• Do they have the innate talent of a child prodigy?
• Do they have some inside knowledge?
• Do they have the ability to predict markets?
• Do they always have a degree in finance or MBA?
• Do they have huge starting capital?

There is one answer and its the same answer: No.

The reality of great trend following systems trading is far simpler, so simple most won’t accept it. In our communications with great traders certain truths have been uncovered:

• Innate talent is overrated. There is no magical talent that made the Turtles, for example, successful.
• Intense practice, persistence over and over again, is the reason great traders make millions, not I.Q. In fact, E.Q. is more important.
• It is no coincidence that many top traders have their roots in the trading educator Commodities Corporation. Richard Dennis, a subject of Michael Covel’s second book, also proved how important coaching is to long-term success.

Successful coaching is not about motivational speeches, but rather delivering specific corrections at key times to let aha! moments happen. The only way those aha! moments can happen, the only way you can dial it in and get it, is to stress your circuits. You have to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. The act of failing and then fixing it is when the learning magic happens. Repeating that process over and over again, showing human resilience, is when real human talent reveals itself.

What stops us? We live in a world of instant gratification. We multitask. We watch Kim Kardashian’s reality show. We sit on the Internet and our iPhone at the same time. Everything is now. Faster. Easier.

There is no patience.

For great trend following traders it doesn’t work that way. Great trend following traders don’t make their millions acting like hyperactive teenagers.

LTCM, Amaranth, Enron, Dot Com Bubble, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, Washington Mutual and the Bernard Madoff con are great examples of what can happen when one trades the wrong way or has no plan. Frankly, the demise of these entities should cause every investor to immediately dump their mutual funds, turn off the financial news and fire their brokers. Do that and there is hope.

The good news? There are alternatives. There are ways to big money. Top trend traders have done it. If you want to learn how they have made their fortunes, we can teach you.

However, forget get-rich-quick schemes. We are not about that. Nothing in life is free. You will have to put in the work, the time, and the dedication to make trend following work for you.

What did we do? We modeled the trading methods of great trend following traders.

This modeling enables us to teach their techniques and behaviors to our clients. These are trading principles and methods that, when applied, regardless of your gender, race, religion, or financial status, create lasting results. The right trend trading behaviors can easily be installed into a person just like a software installation. And we have a 14-year track record of successful “installations!”

We’ve spent years painstakingly creating the most powerful trend following training available going behind the ‘Wizard of Oz’ curtain to learn directly from trend following winners. We have relentlessly pursued their trading excellence by identifying and refining their exact techniques, in turn saving our clients years in research.

Our trend following trading systems and training courses share those insights:

• Our clients don’t learn dozens of theorems, just core concepts.
• Making money isn’t about trading technology, it’s a mindset.
• Don’t look at all information, just look at relevant information.
• If you only want to work for the man, you can’t be the man.
• Take personal responsibility. No blame games.
• Market corrections are not historically infrequent. Plan for them.

We teach, in one word — freedom.

But how do you prevent failure before you begin?

Right from the start, we are here to assist in teaching you how you can become a trend following trader. But we know that everyone learns differently and our individual email support will allow you to connect with our support team in the best way for your trading level. All successful entrepreneurs, traders, executives, and athletes have coaches and or mentors. No trading system is beyond the comprehension of the average investor or trader, but the right education is pivotal.

And if you have a deep desire to make money and the ability to follow a proven, step-by-step system, you have a chance. So what is a trend following system?

A system is simply an idea. It’s a trading idea for making buy and sell decisions in any market. A trader takes an idea, turns it into a mathematical formula and trades it. A good trading system doesn’t buy low and sell high; it rides trends.

We teach exactly how. Great trend followers know their success comes from the discipline to follow their rules no matter what. Trend followers don’t receive their entry or exit signals and apply an extra layer of human judgment or a ‘gut’ feel. They don’t try to outsmart their system. Our trading systems answer 5 questions:

• What market do you buy or sell at any time?
• How much of a market do you buy or sell at any time?
• When do you buy or sell a market?
• When do you get out of a losing position?
• When do you get out of a winning position?

Ever hear Jim Cramer or a broker talk like that? No! However, keep in mind, not following your system is the equivalent of having no system.

How much money can be made as a trend follower?

Fortunes have been made. The man who bought The Boston Red Sox baseball team, as but one example, made his $700 million to buy the team as a trend following trader. What are performance number examples over the decades? The returns are huge.

To make that type of big money you need a plan for all contingencies in all types of markets. When the unimaginable occurs, when the randomness and uncertainty of life kicks in (like our all too frequent market crashes), systematic trend traders remain calm knowing when to buy, sell, or adjust their positions.

You can apply our proprietary trend following rules in markets around the world from currencies to gold to silver to oil to stocks, but how can one system trade all markets?

People think to trade successfully that you need to know everything about stocks. You must know crop reports. You must know gold mining. You must know about OPEC and oil. All false. Consider this excerpt from Covel’s book “The Complete TurtleTrader”:

“Tom Willis had learned long ago from Dennis why price, the philosophical underpinning of Donchian’s rule, was the only true metric to trust. He said, “Everything known is reflected in the price. I could never hope to compete with Cargill [today the world's second-largest private corporation, with $70 billion in revenues for 2005], who has soybean agents scouring the globe knowing everything there is to know about soybeans and funneling the information up to their trading headquarters.” Willis added [when talking about trend followers], “They don’t know anything about bonds. They don’t know anything about the currencies. I don’t either, but I’ve made a lot of money trading them. They’re just numbers. Corn is a little different than bonds, but not different enough that I’d have to trade them differently. Some of these guys I read about have a different system for each [market]. That’s absurd. We’re trading mob psychology. We’re not trading corn, soybeans, or S&P’s. We’re trading numbers.”

All of our trend following systems in our course trade off of “price action.” We don’t teach fundamentals or value investing. Warren Buffett? Give us a break. If there was no government bailout, he was toast. And guess what? You are not Buffett with a phone line to the President!

At the end of the day there are no secrets or insider information needed to make the big money. There is only information you don’t yet have:

• We show how to trade for out-sized absolute returns on all markets.
• We teach how to be ready for markets to go up, down or sideways.
• No ‘educated guesses’ about what to do or pattern chart reading.
• Think probabilities, not hunches.
• Fundamental factors are irrelevant.
• Many of the things you might think would matter most matter least.
• You will go broke trying to trade on your gut.
• Winners think about how much they can lose.
• Losers think about how much they can win.

You don’t have to risk anything with our trend following systems until you are 100% comfortable with daily trading decisions. You can back test and paper trade for as long as you need before investing real money. Our guarantee is rock solid.

Think of it this way: professional trend following traders take what the market gives them, but amateurs force market profits (and always go bust). Anyone who says you will make money all the time is full of it. Ever see the marketing hype that says you will make 10% a month? Making 10% per month is impossible.

Great trend following trading is about managing risk, no gambling.

Our training includes everything you need to get yourself up and running as a systematic trend following trader. You will learn:

• Proprietary and proven winning systems with easy to understand examples.
• How to enter either on the long or short side at the right time.
• Where to place your stops to exit with a profit or a loss.
• How to use today’s trading action for your next day signals.

Every ‘trading issue’ has been addressed in our training. Our trend following trading course contents are extensive (full course descriptions):

• Learn trend following systems that trade all markets the same. No jargon, no secrets, no technical language, just clear, comprehensive explanations of exactly what you need.
• Extreme customer support. Always super fast answers.
• Multiple Market Wizard DVDs of legendary traders.
• Plus much, much more!

Frequently asked questions.

Q: What experience do I need to start?
A: We list the basics here, but experience is not the issue. Beginners have to start somewhere, and we can help. Additionally, lack of time is no excuse. If decades of your labor are on the line & at risk, then you have to make the time to learn.

Q: Can I trade my IRA or 401k?
A: Yes. We teach how.

Q: Why don’t professionals purchase your course and use your systems for their clients?
A: They do. Many, many professional firms and hedge funds are our clients.

Q: I’ve tried other trading systems and have had no luck.
A: Most trading systems are junk, but the detail we are providing here with trend following is one of kind. Do your homework on us. We have a proven track record of allowing first-time traders to close the gap between themselves and elite trend following traders.

Q: Will your trend trading system work in other markets?
A: Yes. You can trade all markets: stocks, currencies, energies, bonds, grains, indices, meats, metals & forex. This is technical trend following. The ‘price’ is the main indicator. Can one know absolutely when price will trend? No. Does one have to know absolutely in order to be profitable? No. In fact, a great number of businesses, for example, are based on the probability that a time based series will trend. In fact, if you look at insurance, gambling, and other related businesses, you will come to the conclusion that even a small positive edge can mean great profits. We teach finding the “edge”.

Q: What indicators do you use?
A: We don’t share specifics of our trend following systems taught to clients, but we will share what our systems don’t use: No Fibonacci, Elliot Wave, Gann analysis, trading off of news or ongoing subscription is needed.

Q: Do I need an advanced degree or huge starting capital?
A: We weren’t all born with a silver spoon in our mouth. A famous quote from great trend following trader William Eckhardt:

“I know of a few millionaires who started trading with inherited wealth. In each case, they lost it all because they didn’t feel the pain when they were losing. In those formative first years of trading, they felt they could afford to lose. You’re much better off going into the market on a shoestring, feeling that you can’t afford to lose. I’d rather bet on somebody starting out with a few thousand dollars than on somebody who came in with millions…This is one of the few industries where you can still engineer a rags-to-riches story.”

Many highly educated people are used to being ‘right’. Their ego makes them afraid of being ‘wrong’ and they are unable to make good bets. They aren’t comfortable with the idea of risk, because they don’t know how to assess it or measure it. They have been taught only to absorb knowledge, not how to apply it to their advantage.

Q: Do I need to stare at the screen all day?
A: Top trend following traders don’t spend the whole day trading. They manage their trades in 10 to 60 minutes per day. Orders are placed before the market opens and do not need hourly monitoring. Trend following legend Richard Donchian offered these words of timeless advice:

“If you trade on a definite trend following loss limiting-method, you can [trade] without taking a great deal of time from your regular business day. Since action is taken only when certain evidence is registered, you can spend a minute or two per [market] in the evening checking up on whether action-taking evidence is apparent, and then in one telephone call in the morning place or change any orders in accord with what is indicated. [Furthermore] a definite method, which at all times includes precise criteria for closing out one’s losing trades promptly, avoids…emotionally unnerving indecision.”

That’s it. Your trading day is over.

Q: So who exactly is this for?
A: Here is the list:

• Complete beginners.
• Everyone whether you have $5000 or $10,000,000.
• Anyone who wants the opportunity to make big money.
• All traders across Wall Street to Main Street.
• Experienced traders: hedge fund managers, commodity trading advisors, floor traders and locals.
• Professional traders seeking to establish money management firms.

We give everyone, from housewives to Wall Street analysts, the opportunity to make big trend following money. A degree in math or statistics, or economics is not needed. Staff, premises, and expensive overhead are not required.

Q: Who is our trend following training NOT for?
A: Here is the list:

• People expecting to make millions instantly.
• People who only want fast-paced day trading.
• People who can’t follow rules.

More frequently asked questions.

What are others saying? Our success stories back our presentation.

Final words.

We have over 5000+ trading system course clients across 72 countries. 100,000+ investors have bought ‘Trend Following‘. It makes no difference where you live. San Diego, Jakarta, Singapore, London, South Africa, etc., the internet allows us to teach clients globally, but more importantly you will be learning from a firm that has been on the ‘inside’ for over a decade.

If you want to know how great trend following traders make their decisions, what rules they use for buying and selling, how they control risk and use it to their advantage to make millions, we have researched and assembled some of the most profitable, unique and proprietary trading systems and rules available all from the winners.

The great trend following traders’ day-to-day actions and trading rules are not intuitive for most people. The top traders use specific trend following trading rules applied with rigid discipline. Their trading process is nothing like a Fidelity mutual fund nor is their trend following technique or mentality taught in the universities.

In fact, you will almost never hear about the trend following techniques and philosophies we teach in the financial press. The ’system’ (read: government, press and Wall Street) is setup to promote fundamental analysis and or buy and hold (hope). Trend following trading is heresy for the establishment.

The choice is yours. Paying for a trend following trading education is far less expensive than losing a fortune with no plan. How much will our trading education cost? Consider it an investment in your future wealth. All of our research effort took time, energy, and money to assemble, and we are capitalists, but we know our passion for teaching and our ability to simplify complex subjects have made it possible for thousands to take the first step toward their dreams of financial independence with trend following.

P.S. We offer a FREE trend trading DVD. Just tell us where to send it.