Trend Following, 5th Edition: How to Make a Fortune in Bull, Bear and Black Swan Markets (Wiley Trading) 5th Edition

I usually don't write book reviews as I don't like to feed the mass hysteria, but I had to pay my respects to Mike without whom I would have been still stuck working for the man and would have lost whatever was left after the 2008 fiasco.I stumbled upon Turtle traders sometime in 2009 after losing more than half of my wealth in 2008. Before coming to a conclusion on how awful investor I would have been, I would like to tell that I had years of experience working in Investment banks and had pretty good idea of the markets and drank the same cool aid which my fellow traders drank. But unlike the big banks I didn't have the government save me when sh*t hit the fan.Now 9 years later, thanks to Mike and his books, I trade in 30 different markets while staying on a small island (literally) where nothing interesting happens. Due to him I was able to cut out the noise. I am not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit or any other mass hysteria channels. I don't watch CNBC or Bloomberg, unless there is nothing interesting on Netflix to watch and I need some entertainment. I made more money in times when everyone was bleeding and just to test my models even traded cryptos and made a bloody fortune there as well.What people don't get is that this book is not a handbook of trading. It is more like a map which will help you develop the thought process to become a system trader. Our problem today is we want handouts, ready formulae for milking the cash cow. But that's not how the world works. No one will give you their money making formula in a book. You have to go out and figure it out yourself. What this book can help you is to figure out the right path. The interviews in the new edition is pure gold. If you know what those legendary traders are saying, you will know they are giving out the secret in plain words, its up to the reader to comprehend.Finally I would like to say this book is like The Bible. Some people think its a storybook, some get inspired and some find God.P.S: I know many of the reviews book is not actionable and its true coz its not supposed to be actionable. Now if you decided to take the red pill and go down the rabbit hole, its going to take a lot of hard work. First thing (and the most difficult one) will be to throw out all your beliefs and start from scratch. Brush up or learn more about Statistics and Probability (tons of books and free courses out there) which is absolutely necessary. Learn more about Game Theory which I feel is very important. Then if you are still alive and want to get some more, I suggest these books for further reading1. Thinking, Fast and Slow This is the base of Trend Following, understanding human behaviour.2. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts How to make decisions when you have limited variables you can control and no whatsoever no control on the outcome.3. Trend Following with Managed Futures: The Search for Crisis Alpha (Wiley Trading) A book by Chief Scientist of ISAM and legendary Trend Follower which will be your induction to the world of Managed Futures4. Following the Trend: Diversified Managed Futures Trading (Wiley Trading) A wonderful read on actual Trend Following5. Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals (Wiley Trading) This one gets bit technical but this is the real deal. This book will dissect TA and help you decide how to evaluate strategies. This is a no BS book but you should be open to receive the knowledge6. Trading Systems: A New Approach to System Development and Portfolio Optimisation This one is bit old but this one helped me a lot when I was building up my first system and the methods still hold good and will continue to hold good for any person starting out on the journey.

Great book very thorough

Great book.I recommend the readers of this book also read my book Profit from bull, bear and sideway markets . Its main strategy is a simple but profitable trend following. It is price-based concentrating on price movements and ignoring fundamentals. It shows you ‘HOW’ with step-by-step instructions starting with simplest SMA-50 with no charting - a free site calculates it for you. Then it includes SMA-200 and optionally other technical indicators such as RSI(14), MACD, Bollinger Band and Double Tops. All are available free from the internet.My other short-term strategies, Sector Rotation and Momentum Investing, are also included in this book. Sector Rotation has 12 strategies from simple market timing, rotation of several sectors to top-down investing. Momentum strategies include contrarian, headline, earnings, short squeeze, year end, turnaround…It has over 370 pages (6*9). Check out the extensive Table of Contents. All chapters are practical and useful. Hence it is harder to read and you need to try out some techniques discussed. It is written in 10/2017. It has been the updated with the current market events and today's available tools. It represents my many decades in investing and hundreds of books on trading. I only include those strategies that would work in today’s market. This book is for both beginners and experts.

The book is very interesting and complete as it talks about what trend following is and how the CTA industry works - as opposed to other types of investments.It's inspiring but it doesn't teach you how to be a trend follower yourself. Althought it mentions a very simple trend following strategy, it doesn't give you details on how much capital would you need to start and it doesn't go deep on Money Management either.It became clear to me that trend following works, but I didn't really learn the details on how to use it by trading it myself.

The new edition of Trend Following is a must have addition to any investment library. Where most other trading books review specific systems or techniques, Covel starts with the model of why trend following works and how it compares to other approaches. He backs up his views with case studies of successful trend followers with the notable addition of David Harding in this edition.In this edition Covel also adds interviews with some of the world's top trend following traders. This is incredibly helpful for someone developing their own systems not because of any hot tips on programming your own system but because it gives you an inside look at how some of the best think, approach problems, and what they seem to consider important and what they don't. If you read this interviews and don't walk away with a deeper understanding of what to focus on in your systems you just weren't paying attention.The last section of the book includes curated papers from traders around the world. This is incredibly helpful as it gives some examples of how to approach back testing and system design at a very tactical level and nicely rounds out the rest of the book. It also provides evidence that trends are a feature of markets that history suggests will not be arbed away.There are many books out there that talk through very specific trading rules or systems. Others describe discretionary traders with some magic sauce that can't be replicated. Trend Following gives you a framework to develop repeatable processes that make money in markets.