Michael Covel talks to Eric Crittenden. Crittenden is a Founding Partner responsible for managing all research, risk quantification and trading operations at Longboard Asset Management. He's also been featured in Covel's own Little Book of Trading. Covel and Crittenden talk about Crittenden's beginnings, coming from a medical background and switching majors to economics. Crittenden got to see the world from two different perspectives: one from a biostatistics and natural sciences perspective, and also from a business school perspective. Crittenden is a little different than some of his counterparts in the industry in that he focuses more on "why?" than "what?". Covel and Crittenden talk about sustainability vs. short term inefficiencies; being "ultra long term trend followers" and some of the reasons why he believes it to be the most robust approach; Crittenden's peers and influences--particularly Tom Basso; the start of Longboard Asset Management; why Crittenden decided on a "trend following mutual fund" model, and the benefits to that model; looking at performance data and understanding when trend following (or the media perception of it) falls "below average"; diversification and the markets Crittenden chooses to trade; risk control at Longboard; who can buy into Longboard and the minimum investment required; whether most of the large liquid markets work within the robust structure Crittenden has developed for trading--and the one (only, single) market that long term trend following would have produced a loss on within the last forty years. Crittenden also gives an explanation on the source of trend following returns that might be one of the clearest explanations of the topic that Covel has heard to date.