On today’s episode of Trend Following Radio Michael starts off discussing his travel. One of his stops in early December was New York City to meet up with a few legends, one of them being Larry Hite. He talks a bit about their lunch conversation and how Larry has climbed the ladder of success. Larry paints the picture that he was just an average Joe from Brooklyn, and his success is fully obtainable if the right desire and drive is there.Today's subject on Trend Following Radio goes along the lines of the rest of his conversation with Larry Hite. It’s all about the data. Michael makes it clear that his career would not exist if he did not have the opportunity to dig into the trend following data. You see all types of trend following traders up in the same months and down in the same months–that means something. Doesn’t matter why it happened, just that it happened. Further, many make the mistake of not caring about the psychological. You can have the best system under the sun, but if you don’t have the psychological toughness to carry it out then the system does not matter.Michael goes on to read from an article out of The Washington Post titled, “Jeff Samardzija just proved athletes would be foolish to pick NFL over MLB.” America’s favorite sport is football, hands down. The dream of just about every father in America is for his son to play professional football. However, all data says to stop right now and turn your focus to baseball. The article states, “The top 30 contracts in the history of team sports – ranked by total compensation – all went to baseball players.” When you compare average players in the MLB with top players in the NFL, the MLB still comes out on top. “Through this season, [Calvin] Johnson will have collected $113,816,086 in earnings, making him one of the wealthiest non-quarterbacks in league history. Samardzija, by virtue of the five-year contract he just signed with the San Francisco Giants, is guaranteed to have earnings of $122,725,000 – and have another chance to dip into the till in 2021, when he’ll turn 36.” Mike pulls the article back to trend following showing that trend following numbers have made it and persevered through ups and downs. It may not be the most widely known strategy, but the data is real.
In this episode of Trend Following Radio:

The success of Larry Hite
Baseball vs. Football
Trusting the data