Michael Covel speaks with Mikael Stenbom. Stenbom is the CEO and founder of RPM, which is a advisory consulting firm in Sweden. They advise, consult, or manage over 3.5B AUM. Stenbom has had tremendous experience in understanding strategy and the money management side of the CTA/managed futures world. Stenbom and Covel discuss what makes up a “smart money investor”; third party risk monitoring; and the life-cycle of CTA’s, hedge funds, and businesses in general. Nothing is constant in this world, and things change--Stenbom places a time axis on CTA’s to better manage for his clients. He also gives his opinions on why certain CTA’s have found such success. Covel and Stenbom discuss some of Stenbom’s early influences, such as the first time Stenbom had a “lightbulb moment” in the systematic world; Stenbom’s economics background; connections between economics, trading, and sociology; and the Austrian school of economics. Further topics include how Stenbom goes about explaining his style of responsive, systematic trading to new clients; Andrew Lo’s Adaptive Markets Hypothesis (which says that markets are for the most part efficient, but from time to time due to changes in the market ecology, become extremely inefficient); the process of rebranding Stenbom’s firm in 2008; the “politically infected” investor; and the cultural compatibility between Nordic countries and the Japanese. Free trend following DVD: www.trendfollowing.com/win.