Pod Insights Michael Covel's Trend Following Ep. 1346: Resilience with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio About this episode Please enjoy my monologue Resilience with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. This episode may also include great outside guests from my archive. --- I’m MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I’m proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I’d like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can’t get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 I'm feeling a little motivational today, a little inspirational. And I'm thinking about coaches. Because I gotta say, for me, as somebody who grew up playing a lot of baseball, coaches were very important to me. Coaches that let you play, and coaches that you respected. Coaches that were good leaders. And I'll be the first one to say that I loved the wild man coaches. In fact, during high school, I had a baseball coach who was a local legend in the DC area. A guy named Jake Jacobs. And I think when he coached me, he was like 65. But Jake looked 85, because he had been in the sun at baseball games his whole life.
0:47 Speaker 00 And I remember we were playing a team called Good Counsel, and they had a younger coach. And Good Counsel was in the same league that my school, O'Connell, was in. And this was with famous high schools in America like DeMatha, Gonzaga. But this young coach was probably in his 30s. And Jake could not have been any taller than 5'8". And like I said, 65 years old, and there was like a near fight breaking out. And Jake turned his hat around backwards and basically got in the grill of the younger coach. And I just love that kind of energy. Now, I'm gonna read some quotes from some famed coaches today. A little different than that, because what I described with Jake is just pure energy.
1:32 Speaker 00 I don't know what his education was, but he was a winner. He was someone that you just wanted to play for as a young man. And I'll never forget that energy, and that kind of energy sticks with you. Because today, so many things are sanitized. There's cameras everywhere. Everyone has to watch what they say. But back in the day, man, you could talk some shit. You could have fights. Stuff could happen. Today, eh, not so much.
2:06 Speaker 00 But I still feel inspired by Jake, and I'm sure he's up there watching, always kind to me. My first quote I want to lead with today is from the famed Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. Quote, "The greatest accomplishment is not in never failing, but in rising again after you fail." End quote. Most people don't want to fail. They're afraid to fail. They're afraid to freaking try.
2:35 Speaker 00 I was in the gym today. And there was a female trainer, training two young kids. And the kids were age fifteen and eleven. They were Thai, but with perfect English. So they had gone to international schools, obviously. And so I'm a sweaty mess. And the young boy. He was fairly athletic looking at eleven years old. So I started getting on him, pushing him. I was like, hey, man, if you're gonna do Muay Thai, you gotta get going. You gotta break a sweat, man. Now, I'm sure at his age, he wasn't really thinking about failing. But maybe, deep down. Maybe you don't want to try something because you might fail.
3:15 Speaker 00 But you've got to try, and when you do fail. You've got to pick it up and you've got to go again. That's all we have. Another famed coach, Mike Ditka of the Chicago Bears, quote, "You're never a loser until you quit trying," end quote. That's trend following, baby. Because you gotta keep trying. Because you don't know what's gonna happen. And when you try with trend following, you're gonna be a loser a lot of the time. But what Ditka is talking about here is being the loser in life. Not just necessarily as a. Piece of the score, or trading. He's not necessarily talking about the score, and of course, he's not talking about trading.
3:58 Speaker 00 But he's talking about being a loser in life if you quit trying. Spot on. Bill Belichick, the most successful of NFL coaches, quote. "Mental toughness is doing the right thing for the team. When it's not the best thing for you," end quote. Now, that's a tough one. For me. It feels a little bit like karma. You've got to do the right thing. Do the right thing and it will come back to you. Yeah, you might not be Elon Musk. You might not be Bill Gates. But you can still be. A damn good man. A successful man.
4:39 Speaker 00 Lou Holtz, quote, "If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today," end quote. That is all about staying in the present moment. Are you here right now? Oh, you're patting yourself on the back about what you did yesterday? You want someone to sing your praises about what happened last week? No, the world doesn't care. You're a man, you stand up, you do it every fucking day. You don't want to do that? Guess what? There's a video game out there that you can go take and play all day long and be a pussy.
5:21 Speaker 00 Tom Landry, the famed coach of the Dallas Cowboys. As somebody who grew up as a Redskins fan, the Washington Redskins, I hated Tom Landry. He'd wear that damn suit and that hat, but he was a Hall of Fame coach. Quote, "I've learned that something constructive comes from every defeat," end quote. Every defeat. What is he talking about? The markets? Relationships? Business? Life? Of course, he's talking about all. Now, he was talking about football, but he knew damn those words would apply to everything.
6:02 Speaker 00 Chuck Knoll, the Hall of Fame coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers, quote, "A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning." Trend following 101, baby. If you think you're gonna win every day and you get frustrated because you don't win every day, you're a loser. You're an idiot. You're a moron. If you think you're gonna win every day, you have lost it. You need remedial help. You gotta go back to square one. You didn't learn anything in school, you didn't have a coach, you don't know a damn thing.
6:43 Speaker 00 If you think you're gonna win every day, in the markets or life, may I ask, what is wrong with you? Where did it go wrong? Did they not pet you as a child? Did you not get enough attention? Did you not work hard enough?
7:02 Speaker 00 Let me calm down. Next, Joe Gibbs, Hall of Fame coach of the Washington Redskins. My favorite team when I was a big football fan. Quote, "Failures are expected by losers, ignored by winners," end quote. Now that's a very clever one as well. Failures are expected by losers. Now you can't contrast that to trend following 101 because what he's really saying is losers have a mindset of failure. Winners, they don't care about failure. They just move on. It sort of reminds me of Ed Cottot that everybody gets what they want.
7:44 Speaker 00 Another Hall of Fame coach, Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49ers fame. Quote, "Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional train wreck you have just been in. It's mental quicksand," end quote. The professional train wreck. Now that again can apply to anything, the markets, life, relationships. Let's say it all goes to hell in a handbasket on day one. If you spend the next 300 days obsessing over the one day where that professional train wreck happened. That's what Walsh means by mental quicksand.
8:28 Speaker 00 You're stuck and you're sinking slowly. What's the way around? What's the hack? Just stop. Simply stop thinking. Another Hall of Fame coach, Nick Saban of the Alabama football fame. Quote, "Success doesn't come from pie in the sky thinking. It's the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence," end quote.
8:58 Speaker 00 But that's not what most people want to do, especially if we're talking about the markets. A significant number, maybe it's not most, but probably is most people, want to get rich overnight. They just want to gamble. And that shouldn't be a surprise for me to say that because gambling is America's favorite pastime. From the governmental lotteries, to Vegas, to blackjack, to poker, all across the country now. Does anyone really think if you play gambling games non-stop, where the house has the edge, do people think they're smart?
9:38 Speaker 00 If the house has got the edge, and you play the game non-stop, and you give them your money, what's wrong with you? Isn't that the only question to ask? What is wrong with you? From the Hall of Fame basketball coach, John Wooden, "Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts." That's just keeping you in the moment of right now. Just stay with it. Success is not a goal, it's fleeting. You just keep moving forward.
10:19 Speaker 00 If you have a failure, if something goes wrong, you're not dead. Yeah, if you're a moron and you're jumping off bridges, then you're dead. But in most things in life, failure is not going to kill you. So how do you keep focused? How do you keep pushing on? There's got to be something deep in your gut that makes you wake up each day and say, "I'm going to take on the world, I'm going to make it happen." And that is courage.
10:50 Speaker 00 Phil Jackson of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers fame. Another Hall of Fame coach. Quote, "You have to have the mentality of executing your game when you don't feel like there's a lot of hope," end quote. Now that translates directly to something like trend following. Let's say you're in a drawdown and let's say the rest of the buy and hold world is everywhere. CNBC, Bloomberg, and they're just talking up a storm, talking their book. And you start to wonder, do I have the right strategy?
11:29 Speaker 00 Do I keep going on? And that's what Phil Jackson is getting at.
11:34 Speaker 00 Stick to your game plan, stick to your rules, and just let it play out.
11:41 Speaker 00 Bobby Knight, another Hall of Fame basketball coach. Quote, "Everybody wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win," end quote. I think that is self-explanatory. But in this day and age, where people are glued to social media and people want overnight everything immediately, do they really know how to prepare to win?
12:07 Speaker 00 Preparing to win is often very isolating. It's you and the blank screen, you and the blank page, you and your time. Will you get distracted? Can you stay focused? I'm not sure I would have wanted to play for Bobby Knight. But I'll bet you that if I got through playing for Bobby Knight, I'd probably be a better human. Larry Brown of the 76ers and the Pistons, another Hall of Famer. Quote, "Failure does not come from losing, but from not trying," end quote.
12:46 Speaker 00 That is 100% trend following because when you try with trend following, you already know 60, 65% of the time, you're going to lose. So you're going to get failure from trying. So you have to try. If you don't try, you're guaranteed failure.
13:07 Speaker 00 From the baseball coach Tommy Lasorda, quote, "About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure," end quote. That is so true. How many, for example, young people who are playing a sport at a young age, perhaps they hit their growth spurt early, and perhaps they got a lot of recognition at age 12 or 13? And perhaps they could do things on the field that other kids could not do just by the genetic lottery at that point in time of their age. But then the other kids get bigger, and the other kids push harder.
13:49 Speaker 00 And then maybe that other kid who had all the success, just because he was bigger, now has failure. What is he gonna do? Is he gonna quit? Or is he going to push on? I've seen it both ways. In fact, one of my favorite examples is a childhood friend of mine. We've known each other since age six. And he was absolutely the best baseball player in the area at age 12. Little league field. At age 13, he did not grow. Stayed smaller.
14:28 Speaker 00 We played on all the teams in Babe Ruth together and high school together. By his senior year of high school, he was starting third baseman, but probably not a big guy, probably 5'7", 145, something like that. But then he found his way to be a walk-on at a D1 school in upstate New York. And in his first and second, third year of college, he started to grow. In fact, he went from that 5'7", 5'8" all the way up to about 6'4", 6'5". And by the time he got to grad school, he was throwing mid-90s, maybe a high of 97, 98.
15:12 Speaker 00 And when he finished his first year of grad school, he signed a free agent deal with the Astros. And he ended up coming up through the system, making it to AAA before a rotator cuff injury sidelined him going forward. But I love that story because he was the best at a certain age. And then the genetic lottery did not reward him right away, but he kept pushing. And then after many years, it paid off. This is life. This is how it works. Now, of course, there's not going to be a huge number of examples of people that are growing eight inches in college. But my point still sticks.
15:55 Speaker 00 You have to figure out how to deal with failure and stay focused and stay on it. Earl Weaver, one of my favorite baseball coaches, definitely Hall of Fame of the Orioles. I've had a few podcast episodes where I've discussed Earl Weaver before, some of his salty language. Quote, "I became an optimist when I discovered that I wasn't going to win any more games by being anything else." End quote. Now, that one's beautiful, right? There is no choice but optimism. That doesn't mean you're going to win every day.
16:36 Speaker 00 But if you have optimism every day, if you can believe there's a chance, that will be more successful than any other strategy. Obviously, being a pessimist. Who the hell wants to be a pessimist? I mean, a lot of people are. I saw this the other day, that the average person wakes up in a bad mood 300 times per year. What the fuck? I don't ever wake up with a bad mood. And I don't ever wake up in a bad mood because of what Earl Weaver just said. And I really get right now for the first time. Because even though I did not write it out, I know deep down optimism is all we've got.
17:21 Speaker 00 If you're not optimistic, you're dead.
17:26 Speaker 00 I love this one from Tommy Lasorda, again, of the Dodgers fame. Quote, "Baseball players can be categorized as either those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, or those who wonder what happens," end quote. Meaning, get in the game. Get in the damn game. We've created a world now where people think the goal is to simply have all of these things that society thinks you're supposed to have. No, ladies and gentlemen, that's not it. As a man, you want to wake up every day thinking there is something that I can make happen.
18:07 Speaker 00 Not just fucking around, not just going out, not just playing video games, not just playing a sport necessarily.
18:16 Speaker 00 But in the professional sense, that's pretty damn impressive, so I'm not knocking it. But what I'm getting at is you waking up every day with the passion to make something happen, whether that's trend following, business, life, relationships. Shoot for big. You're gonna die. Everyone dies. So you don't want to be sitting back at 90 years old saying, "God, I wish I would have done something. I wish I would have tried." But let's be frank, most people are scared shitless. They're scared of their shadow, they're scared of trying. And I ask you, why? If you're alive, and you've got a chance, and you know you're gonna die at some point
19:01 Speaker 00 in time, then damn it, take a fucking swing. Take many swings. You strike out, so what? Get back up there and swing again.
19:14 Speaker 00 Joe Paterno, another Hall of Fame coach, quote, "The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital." Because ultimately, everybody can say they want to win. But what do you do every day to put yourself in a position of winning? Knowing damn well that you're gonna fail a lot. This is the preparation. Do you have it? And if you don't have it, again, I ask redundantly, why do you not have it? Did your dad not care about you? Did you not have a cool uncle? Were your friends morons? Did you not read? What's wrong with you? The great thing about the modern age right now, and this is good and bad.
19:59 Speaker 00 It's less about the person that you physically see every day. And it's become more about the voices and names online, for example, like on X, that are sharing their wisdom every day. Guys like Naval. These people open their mouth. And you look at the words that come out. And each word fills a gap. And there's never too many words. It's the right amount of words to make the point in the moment. And as a man, if you don't have this going on every day, where you're taking in this reinforcement from all of these coaches that are out there.
20:43 Speaker 00 Today, I'm sharing with you coaches that I know about, professional coaches over the last 50 years. But there's a ton of coaches out there right now. Absolutely on fire, giving you great insights every day. If you don't have what you want every day, again, I ask you, what's wrong? No one cares if you're a man and you're losing. No one cares if you're a man and you're out of shape. No one gives a shit. So you should just get up off your ass and go make it happen. And let me end with Tom Landry again of the Cowboys fame.
21:26 Speaker 00 Quote, "A coach forces you to see and hear what you don't want to, so that you can become the person you've always known you could be." End quote. And maybe that's what I'm trying to do today. I'm simply channeling all these great coaches to give you some coaching, to give you some motivation, to give you some inspiration. To make you wake up in the moment, tomorrow, the next week, I don't care. But to wake up and say, "Damn it, I'm gonna do something. I'm either gonna become the next pro athlete. I'm gonna become the next Ed Secoda. I'm going to become the next great author. I'm going to become the next great entrepreneur."
22:08 Speaker 00 But to do something, something big, something vital, something important, that when you're gone, when you're dead and buried, they will find you and they will be inspired by you because you took action and you made people feel like, "I want to be like that guy. I want to model him. I want to try like he did." That's all we got. See you again next week.
22:41 Speaker 00 I see a time when those awake will understand how to make money in up, down, and surprise markets. Whether new trader or experienced, college student or financial advisor, protecting against a crash or just trying to make a lot of money, trend following offers everyone an answer in uncertain times. To get started immediately, send me an email, [email protected] . I will send you the right trend following steps to take, along with my free video. But if you want to buy and hold, trust the government and trust Wall Street, this is absolutely not for you.
Previous Ep. 1345: Jerry Parker and Moritz Seibert with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Next Ep. 1347: Sun Tzu with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio Page updated November 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
