Pod Insights Michael Covel's Trend Following Ep. 1398: Time Marches On with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio About this episode Please enjoy my monologue Time Marches On with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. This episode may also include great outside guests from my archive.
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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.
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Transcript 10,579 words · 3 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Before I get into my guest today, an archival guest, but one of my best ones. A quick reminder, and this offer basically ends within the next day. My July 4th, early July special is still available at trendfollowing.com/join. J-O-I-N. Once again, that's trendfollowing/join. My repeat guest today, unfortunately, because of the way human life works, I can't have on the show anymore.
0:41 Speaker 00 He's doing okay, but there's just not going to be any more podcast episodes, unfortunately and sadly. But you know, the great thing about this AI technology, the best of us will always stay the best of us. The stuff that you like the most, the stuff that you like about yourself the most, it will be preserved. And in that spirit, please enjoy one of the most unique trend-following voices who has ever lived, and I doubt there will ever be another one like him. I'll see you again next week.
1:36 Speaker 00 My guest today, a longer form episode. My guest Larry Height, the famed trader. He was on just a few months ago. This is a catch-up episode, longer than the last episode, almost 90 minutes. I'm not sure what will happen in editing, but nice conversation, fun stuff. I love Larry's perspective. We are all fortunate that he gets to share some wisdom and have a fun conversation. Without any further delay from me, let's jump right into the market wizard Larry Height.
2:20 Speaker 00 Let me make an observation on that, since you lead with getting older. I just watched Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett on YouTube and I watched a good portion of their annual shareholders meeting from the last few days. And compared to them, you're a teenager.
2:36 Speaker 01 That's true, but there's so much missing in me. Well, you take what you get. What does the world think of America now?
2:47 Speaker 00 What does the world think of America?
2:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're sitting in Asia, right? These people have had experience with America, really shitty experience, but okay. When I was there years ago, they said, well, we are Buddhists, so we don't hate, but we don't forget. So now the world is flipping around and I just wondered if they still have that.
3:15 Speaker 00 I had a conversation with a guy that works for a fund that raises assets across Asia to let people in all Asian countries essentially buy their green card to America and it's a minimum $800,000 investment. So I don't think there's any lack of demand for that. And I think even the average Vietnamese, probably other Asian countries, they still want their kids to go there for school and all that kind of stuff. And they still think that America is the ideal that they might've heard about in their youth. And I think, in my opinion, many people in Asia have not experienced on the ground because
3:58 Speaker 00 of COVID, in many cases, they've not experienced on the ground since 2019. And America is a completely different place after COVID. They still have a certain optimism, but the direction America is going on all kinds of fronts, especially culturally, I think eventually people are going to understand what that is and they're not going to like it.
4:18 Speaker 01 I live here and I don't like it.
4:24 Speaker 00 It's not nice. I'll share something with you too, since it's an interesting way for you to start our conversation. Look, sometimes you and I joke around about pretty girls in this podcast, but I must say one thing that I really love where I'm at right now, and whether it's a relationship or a friend, the sensibilities of the women in Vietnam, for example, they remind me of the sensibilities of our mothers or our grandmothers. So they might be a younger attractive lady, or an older attractive lady, or whatever, but they still, even in their twenties and thirties, there's a sensibility to where it's, oh wow, there's a certain caring there, there's a certain feminine feeling there. They're
5:05 Speaker 00 hard workers and all that stuff, but it's not this strident chasm that's developing between men and women in America. Probably not news to you, right?
5:16 Speaker 01 First thing would become, and I am certainly one person who fits the bill, very impatient. Amazon is a great example. Today, A, no one has to not have anything anymore. Pretty close. And not only do they get it, but they get it fast. That is probably true in the adult too. But I could stay in my apartment and want anything I want, and it'll be the end of the day.
5:51 Speaker 00 Is that good or bad? I no longer think it's good.
5:54 Speaker 01 I think what we have in that mode is we have, when you go to Miami, I do a lot of physical fit things, or trying to anyway, and everybody, when you talk to the doctors inside, people want to come in and get the thing that's going to do it. Boom. And everybody's impatient. We have an impatient country. We have an impatient world for all I know. So nobody has to wait for anything. That does not mean anything. Now, look, I'm not an economist.
6:34 Speaker 01 You know, I'm a trader. They want to make this coin, a trillion dollar coin. I could not believe it. Said, what are they gonna do? They're gonna print more money.
6:45 Speaker 00 Well, they can't. They're kind of locked in right now. I mean, with the inflation, it's gonna be interesting to see what they do if they go old school Volcker and they really kill inflation. But look, back to trend following 101, you and I can't predict tomorrow. We're smart people. We can make observations. We can look around, but we sure as hell don't know what's gonna happen next. We have to prepare for whatever happens, right?
7:08 Speaker 01 I came into one of your old, you were in a rant and you ranted about how the world's changing.
7:16 Speaker 00 I was ranting?
7:18 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. You started out with a fake country and so many people were this way, so many people that way. Change. I thought it was an extremely interesting way to look. And look, here's your deal. You could deal with this like Tom Bassel. Have a great time. Or, and you mentioned my name. Well, he really deals with it. He puts in a stop and that's it. And I actually believe that having a stop is an enormously sensible thing to do.
7:58 Speaker 01 And I can't imagine people without a stop in futures. I can understand that in the stock market.
8:09 Speaker 00 Larry, they can still go to zero. Look at all these banks out there in San Francisco going under right now. I get your point on futures, but right now we're in the age of bank stocks going to zero.
8:20 Speaker 01 I don't know about zero, but yes, I was thinking the other day, anybody who doesn't have a way of getting out, I believe, I was in Korea and it's a, there's sort of somebody committing suicide.
8:36 Speaker 00 It's back to Ed Cottot's famous line about everybody gets what they want. So if somebody doesn't have a stop and they're sitting there and they're taking the pain, it's kind of like some sadomasochistic thing. They enjoy it. They enjoy the losing. They enjoy going down with the ship.
8:51 Speaker 01 You know that guy from Texas?
8:54 Speaker 00 Salem Abraham.
8:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. Why did he stop trading?
8:58 Speaker 00 Oh, I don't know. I mean, he had a long career. I didn't know that he stopped.
9:02 Speaker 01 Somebody told me that.
9:04 Speaker 00 I don't have any news there, but I will say this. Like I said, I think if I'm going by memory, I believe his first fund started in 88. Very young man. He might've had a 25 to 30 year track record. I'm not really sure what the status is at this moment.
9:21 Speaker 01 Oh yeah. He had that. And see, my view is there's nothing to do with that. It's a machine. You turn it on, it makes you money.
9:33 Speaker 00 One of the things that we did see in the trend following managed money space over the, let's say decade between 2010 until 2020, we did see some large names in trend following see their assets under management go down. Not necessarily from drastically reduced performance, but because everyone looks over there and says, hey, let me go stocks, stocks, stocks, that kind of thing. And then all of a sudden, of course, it's 2020 until today, trend following has been a wonderful investment. I think some people saw their assets shrink during that period. That could be one issue. We're speculating about any one individual we're speculating or one company. I don't know.
10:17 Speaker 01 I look at it, it's a machine. It's a really simple business. First thing, you gotta be like Dixon Watts, as you point out. You gotta trade at where you can sleep. But if you do that, and that's built into the system, you don't need to do much to just say, look, take an average. You get a bunch of averages. I don't care. They'll tell you the trend. You have a choice to figure out to say how much you're willing to lose, and you can keep a score. It's like baseball. You actually know if somebody's
11:00 Speaker 01 good or bad, or having a bad run. But I have not seen people, but if you keep your bets, there's a lot on the lower side, but a lot of bets, you do very well.
11:16 Speaker 00 In my observation of this, Larry, it really does. I'll go back to the, the interesting thing about trend following, for me, has always been, you could find these audited track records on file with the government. But then these are often managed money companies. Those companies, while they are producing trend following performance, they have the burden to deal with investors who might not know their ass in a hole in the ground, and are pulling money in, pulling money out, and all this other kind of stuff. You know that can affect the size and scope of a potential company, even if the strategy is great.
11:46 Speaker 01 Great is a big deal. Very few people are great. But I read the Mark and Wizards book, Mark Medley, and I have become friendly. But if you look at these track records over a period of time, they have one thing that I always find. It's not that I don't have losing periods. I'm mentoring a guy, because he had done some shit in the middle of things that I was interested in. So I would, he would tell me how he got through that rough trading. But we became friends. He had some trading methods, and they were all right.
12:30 Speaker 01 I dug through his stuff, and his systems actually worked.
12:35 Speaker 01 Until he's going away, he doesn't do something.
12:39 Speaker 00 He stops following the system?
12:41 Speaker 01 What he hated was when he made a profit and he lost it and the calls me up, I can't stand this. I was ahead and now I'm down. And I said, Quad, this is you. You hit a boxing ring. If you hit a boxing ring, it'd be no surprise to you if you get smacked in the face. That's the other person's job to smack you in the face. If you're in a boxing ring, you can't have a big, oh my God, somebody just punched me in the face. You went into a boxing ring.
13:18 Speaker 00 That attitude, though, is kind of strange because it's almost like if you personalize it that much, an individual like that doesn't seem to imagine that there's other players in the game besides him. He thinks it's just him against the market, whereas there's so many players out there.
13:35 Speaker 01 I remember there was a guy who used to show up in there to get sugar prices. I remember fucking that this guy would show up and walk out. I think I might have had this in a book, but it was a true story. I don't remember the guy's name, but it was called Henry. When he committed, he days, look at you. He said, look, I made seven million dollars in sugar. And then I lost it. Sugar owes me that money back. He said, now the sugar market goes on a real move, with a big move. I happened to bump with the industry. They said, well, you must be happy.
14:18 Speaker 01 Now, why? Sugar goes up. I missed it. We missed it. I don't know. I had a cold. And when it started, you know, I'm going to pay more. So this guy showed up, I don't know, maybe he tried to fuck some girl. I have no idea. But here's a guy shows up, gets his sugar price.
14:42 Speaker 01 And then he doesn't do the trades. What you just talked about is a personality concept.
14:53 Speaker 00 They're smarter than the market, they're smarter than everyone else, they're going to outsmart it all.
14:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, there are people like Kugner and who go along, make a good living, a very good living. Kugner's worth about $5 billion.
15:08 Speaker 00 Let me read something to you. This is a quote from Buffett from his shareholder meeting the other day, and I think you'll like this one. And they were kind of just asking him about people doing stupid things. And Buffett said, what gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things. In the 58 years we've been running Berkshire, I would say there's been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things. And they do big dumb things. I think there's a lot of commonalities between his thinking. I don't want to call him a trend following trader because that's not what he does, but in many ways it is. He bakes his money from concentrated bets that have big trends. Now, how he gets there is different than a trend following trader, perhaps. Another line, let me find this.
15:48 Speaker 00 At this same meeting, he was talking about diversification and Munger was calling it, now he's 99 years old. He's calling it diversification. And he said, quote, "One of the inane things that's taught in modern university education is that a vast diversification is absolutely mandatory in investing in common stocks. That's an insane idea." People don't understand that about trend following. Yeah, you might monitor a lot of markets, but you might make your big money in any given year off just a handful of markets, which is exactly what Buffett and Munger are doing as well. They're making their money off a handful of markets.
16:21 Speaker 01 That's true, but man, they made a fortune by spreading their bets.
16:27 Speaker 00 Okay, but if the market's not moving, man can spread their bets, but if the market's not moving, what the hell are they doing? They're not trend following. You can't trade 140 markets at one time, they're not all moving at one time. Different strategies.
16:38 Speaker 01 I could trade as many things if I can get in and out. That's it, it'll come, I will have those moves. Yes, if I bet four times or 20 times my net worth and I have no stops, I'm going to die. People do not want to recognize losses. My mother was a very intelligent woman and she was a very good card player. She used to say, well, Larry, you don't really have a loss if you don't take it. I said, no, no, you have a loss.
17:15 Speaker 01 And let me tell you, my mother was into numbers.
17:18 Speaker 00 Larry, after all your success, obviously, your mother was alive to see you have success. So I'm sure at various points before she died, did she ever come to your side and go, oh, my gosh, my son figured out this game and I had it all wrong. Or did she go to her grave thinking, oh, my gosh, I know a better way than my son.
17:37 Speaker 01 This is a true story. I had a very big house in summer in New Jersey and that house came with a library dock pine. I took that as my office. It was my Don Corleone office.
17:52 Speaker 00 You had a cat you were petting as well, too?
17:56 Speaker 01 Well, so anyway, my mother comes down, my father dies and I take her up north for the funeral and she comes into my office. She's like 75 or something. She said, Larry, we're all proud of what you've done, but don't you think you should be in a real business? I turned to her, I said, well, I most things I did, I didn't do too well as a kid. I am probably the most successful person in the family. And if I went into the dress business, why would I leave this business where I, where I'm
18:40 Speaker 01 making more money than either I ever made? Now I have a younger daughter. Now, parents, kids go to the grandparents or something like that. So my kids. My older one is like my mother. My younger one is not like my mother. She relates to my wife's mother for some reason. So the kid comes, she's like 12 years old. She sits right in the chair that my mother sat. She looks at me and says, Dad, don't you think you want to get into like a regular business?
19:18 Speaker 00 The whole generation of height family members on the female side are giving you hell.
19:22 Speaker 01 Well, not hell, but they don't know what to do. I came up with the whole concept of asymmetrical leverage. Cause we had done something with the guaranteed fund and we made an enormous amount of money. And I was sitting with these guys in England. So we said, and these guys went to Cambridge, Oxford, and they have quizzed the West Point. And I said, you know, I've just made probably 10 times more than my father made in his lifetime. I said, I've been thinking about this. I'm not 10 times smarter than my father.
19:59 Speaker 00 You might've had 10 times better technique than your father, though.
20:02 Speaker 01 Yeah. And then all of a sudden I came to the conclusion, I made money doing this. Because I put myself consciously in places that I could get a reasonable bet with a large upside. And everything used to be called options. When David Ricardo, he said, don't ever refuse an option. That confused me for years. So I called a friend of mine in England.
20:35 Speaker 00 It was a hidden leverage note, wasn't it?
20:37 Speaker 01 Yes, it was.
20:39 Speaker 00 And the asymmetric part.
20:41 Speaker 01 It didn't matter what he was trading. Because when he says someone offers you, and I saw this in Turkey. The people used to sit in a circle. And you got up and you walked over to somebody else and said, I will give you this. And in the words that Ricardo uses is if someone offers you an option, take it.
21:07 Speaker 01 He goes against you, leave quickly. He goes for you, stay there. What's that about 400 years ago?
21:16 Speaker 00 I want to keep it something at your mom for a second. Not really on the trading part, but more of a you looking back part, because everyone has to deal with family members that doubt them. I mean, I've dealt with it. How do you feel at that moment when here you've had this life success that should mean something to family and they don't see it? Now, there could be many reasons why they don't see it. It could just be literally horse blinders. There could be some latent jealousy or envy, perhaps?
21:49 Speaker 01 Both of that happened, which is amazing. Mothers have an instinct. Every time I meet somebody that kids like, one of my best friends, his son was at a wizard school, but he was a handy kid. So he sort of got into technology and building and stuff. But one of the things he did, he bought Tesla and his family, who my friend's a lawyer, he was a great fighter as a kid. The first thing my friend's wife said to her son, get it, get out. Because
22:30 Speaker 01 mothers are born afraid. And you could see it. When you raise a kid, the first part of the kid's life, you really want to stop the kid from killing himself. Because they don't know. Don't touch the stove until they get a little burn. They just do it. I had to walk this child when he was young and we were walking across a little bridge in upper New York state. But it was like a 10 foot drop on rocks. They tried to squeeze.
23:02 Speaker 01 Between the two, and I kept pulling them away. I was very, very restricted about the kid, but I don't want the kid to be four of those rocks is gonna be mush. Power gene for women become the first part of resolve and they're afraid. Those little people hate change.
23:24 Speaker 00 Larry, does this fear thing leave women? I mean, right now, after this COVID thing that happened, it really does look like to me, my observation, and I really don't care what anyone thinks of me when I say this, but it looks like the COVID operation has scared the bejesus out of women permanently. Many women are just permanently afraid of this damn thing. And I think society did this unfairly.
23:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, but they have a bias. Every once in a while, I meet a woman who's like an eagle. But the majority of women will fall back to motherhood. I don't know why. Yeah, there are women, there are some pretty brave women. I'm not saying it, but in general, and people, everybody should fear for their job. Because machines will do a lot of things. There's a lot of work that a machine could do. Fall back. You're surfing guy, did you run in the book?
24:23 Speaker 00 Bill Dreis.
24:24 Speaker 01 Yeah. I wonder how many times he tinkered with his system? Or if he ever did. He's got it on a machine. So the orders go in automatically. And then he just stay there with, like Bill Gunn. Bill Gunn basically has done the same stuff. Long-term averages, he rides them down, he rides them up.
24:49 Speaker 00 This is the cool thing about trend following is all you guys and the guys that came before you and the guys that came before them just said to themselves, okay, hold on. The concept of the madness of crowds is a thing. Long before Daniel Kahneman got a Nobel Prize for it. The concept of madness of crowds is a thing. This is demonstrated in price action. If we Know this is gonna happen in unpredictable times. How can we put ourselves in a position to ride this madness of crowds? When the next one happens? And that seems to be the commonality here, which is if you believe in the madness of crowds, you have an approach to take advantage of that. And you back to your rule, the Larry Height rule. You're gonna believe in the madness of crowds, but you can't predict it.
25:34 Speaker 00 You're gonna be wrong a lot of times when you bet on the madness of crowds. You better have a stop. There you go. That's trend following many ways.
25:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, no. When you said it, you ran. You're like, Larry, put it in a stop. But I have bought bottoms and sold tops a couple of times. And I came to the conclusion that every time I've done that, it's luck. I'm being like, if I could do that regularly, I'd be a lot richer.
26:03 Speaker 00 Larry, 99% of the population out there, the global population thinks because of the propaganda in education, they think they are supposed to buy the bottom and sell the top. 99.9% of people think that's what they're supposed to do.
26:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. And they don't even know what the bottom or the top is.
26:21 Speaker 00 Exactly, exactly.
26:23 Speaker 01 I've been thinking about people who lose their fortunes, which there was a guy named Terrence O'Neill started this. But he went to one of the big brokerage firms in California. He was doing a dissertation. They looked at 10,000 accounts and he found this strange thing. The people will sell their winnings, take that profit to average down on their losers. And after that, many more papers came out. And of course, you mentioned it, there are a lot of people take the more of their relationship with the market
27:07 Speaker 01 as a personal one. I had Buffett's stock for a long time. I noticed that Buffett has never, ever sent me a Christmas card. Never. That did give me seven times on money, but never a Christmas card, nothing. So I figured out the market doesn't know me, but it doesn't hate me either. It doesn't really give a shit.
27:31 Speaker 00 Don't care.
27:33 Speaker 01 That's it.
27:34 Speaker 00 Larry, as you say that, as you say that, though, it reminds me of that First Market Wizards book. So you're in there and Ed Sikota's in there, Rich Dennis is in there, Bruce Cogner's in there. I think Michael Marcus is in there, all these trend following traders. Every podcast you and I have, you essentially restate that book in different ways with different stories and different advantages. I just think that most people, for whatever reason, can't accept conceptually what it is that you're saying philosophically. Because I think they think that you're just bullshitting them. They think, ah, Larry, he's a funny guy. He's just bullshitting me. They really don't get that you are telling them exactly how you think and exactly what you do. They don't get that part.
28:20 Speaker 01 By the way, you know Ed Sikota well.
28:23 Speaker 00 I don't know so well. I mean, okay.
28:25 Speaker 01 Pretty well. I mean, he did damn very good favor one time.
28:29 Speaker 00 He's a good guy.
28:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. So let's tell me there at the beginning, he was a long only trader. Or he liked going long much more than he liked going short.
28:40 Speaker 00 I know something about that currently, but I'm going to refrain from saying it on air. But I think it's an interesting observation. So I think if somebody wanted to go down the path of looking at a trend following portfolio, let's say across commodity futures, and you wanted to examine the idea of doing it from a long only bias, skipping the short trades, that might be a worthy project to go investigate.
29:08 Speaker 01 Oh, I did that. And I tell you, you do pretty well. It's very interesting. You actually don't do well going short most of the time. But when you put the two together, you actually make more money than if you just go long. I don't know why.
29:25 Speaker 00 I wanted to take it back to something that you started this podcast with, because I mean, I've been thinking about it. The way you brought it up a while ago here in this conversation, which is the culture thing. And I wanted to share something with you. It sounds a little wacky. I really didn't expect to read this thread on Twitter, but I've read some stuff from this guy before. And look, I'm talking about this guy Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, clearly a psychopath and he killed people. But the interesting thing about him is 167 IQ, got into Harvard at age 15. And I was reading pieces on a Twitter thread today that someone put out there of his manifesto. It's amazing what that guy was seeing about modern culture and what technology is doing to us. He's obviously lost a screw, he's a killer,
30:10 Speaker 00 all that kind of stuff. So my disclaimers are out of the way. However, his views on technology are damn interesting and what it's doing to culture and civilization.
30:21 Speaker 01 There was a girl that I met who was crazy. I had this girlfriend in college and she was her friend. They grew up as kids in New York on the Lower East Side. What happened was this girl literally was nuts, but she was brilliant. And she couldn't control what she says. She would say things, blurt them out, and they're so spot on, absolutely right. But she would blurt out these things and they were right. The first time I met her, I was with this other girl. She watched it
31:02 Speaker 01 for a while and she nailed the relationship perfectly. But she was right.
31:08 Speaker 00 I think some of these people have minds, like you and I, okay, maybe people are going to say we're smart, not smart, whatever. I like to think I'm okay, smart. But I still want to have normal life experiences. I enjoy that too. But I think some of these folks that are on the spectrum, perhaps, some of these folks that are pushing the IQ level at obscene scores, I think some of them don't necessarily care about their personal life. They don't care about other people's personal life. They're in some crazy search for the truth and only the truth motivates them. They think is the truth and sometimes it is the truth. But I think they block out everything else. I mean, look at this guy, Kaczynski, he lived in a cabin
31:53 Speaker 00 in a hole forever. They block out everything else and just stay focused. Look, I'll share with you one time. Years ago, when I did that documentary film and you appeared in that documentary film, I interviewed a Nobel Prize winner who was famous for having Asperger's, Vernon Smith. And I remember that we were setting up in his office at college campus in George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. I was kind of new to this whole thing and he's kind of a famous guy, Nobel Prize winner. And I said, Hey, Dr. Smith, we're going to set some lights up in your office. Is it okay? Do you need to some space or will it bother you? And he looked at me straight in the eyes, no emotion. He goes, I won't know you're here. And that's the focus thing where I think literally some of these people have minds where they can block out all distractions.
32:38 Speaker 01 Wait, do you think Michael Jordan is not a bit of that? Michael Jordan is into athletic. You know, you really made your way to be that good. You have to have that kind of dedication. I could have been a very, very rich man. I don't know what you say that meant, but I didn't.
33:04 Speaker 00 Newsflash, Larry, you're not broke.
33:06 Speaker 01 That's true.
33:09 Speaker 01 Anyway, I just, I had nothing to do, so I, you know, feel we'd get together. But I'm really thinking that people who don't, you stop. See, Buffett, I should tell you Buffett has a very simple system, really. Here's how this started. I'm watching television and there was a guy, he was a Jewish guy, but he went under the name Adam Smith. He has this.
33:36 Speaker 01 Interview with this guy, he had hair, but it's sort of moves, he's kind of like a little not dressed quite correctly. He's that bizarre, but what he wears is obviously second to this guy. He's like me. I'm looking at the guy here, so this guy's very famous. I don't know, but he's a gazillionaire. Now, I was doing pretty well. I had rented this tax shelter and I'm making like five hundred thousand dollars a year. In that game, I kind of think, hey, you know, I must be somewhat smart. I said, why don't I understand what this guy is saying?
34:19 Speaker 01 I understand that he's logical, but I don't understand. Like he's talking Greek and I'm talking in English. So I got so interested, I went out and I said, all right, I'd like to get all his trades, but I can't do that. But what I'm gonna do is I'm going to get all the trades that Brookshire made. I went over every trade. I went into a value line. Basically, I figured out when he bought the stocks he bought. So then I go get the value line thing and I began to understand about his algorithm.
34:59 Speaker 01 And you can write it out. Yes, he knows a lot about industries and businesses. Okay, so he has what they call a Jewish cycle. He thinks like a Jewish, but that kind of person would think, yeah. He looks at, first of all, as Graham taught him, he looks for the market to be irrational. That's his opportunity. And how does he figure out he wants a stock? He'll take the cash flow yield and he'll put whatever that number is, draw a line. And then he puts the price that he's paying for the stock plus the debt.
35:41 Speaker 01 And he'll look at that and ask how many times he's getting better than the ten year stock. That formula more or less works. What Buffett is, is a different kind of trend follower. He'll go in, and as long as the business is giving him that yield, he doesn't care about the market. The market gives him a currency he wants to buy something. When things go down, he likes to buy things that are going to give him a cash flow steady. If the price of the stock then varies to him, he likes that. In fact, when he can, he likes to buy his stock cheaper.
36:23 Speaker 00 But like anybody, though, he still needs that stock to go up. And I got a quote here also from his most recent shareholder meeting a couple of days ago. And this is quoting Buffett. "We've got a business at Apple," meaning he's got an investment at Apple. He goes, "I don't understand the phone at all, but I do understand consumer behavior." Now, isn't that a hell of a line? "I don't understand the phone at all, but I understand consumer behavior." Well, how the hell do you measure consumer behavior? Well, what the price.
36:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. But he uses a price to buy. And sometimes he gets into deals and he gets out of them. I don't know how he does it in his private deals. He's very much getting into lithium mining in California. He owns some big companies that do that. Lithium could be a very big deal. Coca-Cola is his favorite kind of stock. Think about it. I remember when Kennedy got shot and the stock market took a dive, very hard dive. And I remember thinking to myself, it doesn't matter. I'm going to buy a Coke this morning. It doesn't matter if the president was shot.
37:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, people are still going to drink Coke.
37:37 Speaker 01 People are still going to drink Coke.
37:40 Speaker 00 I want to shift it to something else, though, really quick. Well, I've got you. I'm curious. I know you're home there in New York City. I've been there. And here I am, I'm in Asia right now. And I was back in the States, December, January, and I saw some things I didn't like. But how do the streets feel? I mean, you're in a nice section of New York City, and I know you like to walk. How do the streets feel in New York City these days after the pandemic? Do you feel like things are the same? Do you notice things that are different? What's your observation just on the streets? You're a big walker.
38:15 Speaker 01 I feel that I've outspent my time here.
38:19 Speaker 01 I do not understand. I live in a world that I have no grasp of. These things about sex changes, the things of trying to get kids at fifth. They say it's much better if you're gonna be transgender to get the operation early. I look at what happened in the world and I feel I don't know this world.
38:44 Speaker 00 You should come get a place over here. Seriously. You'll all of a sudden be like, oh, my gosh, this is how I grew up. It's nice over here.
38:51 Speaker 01 Well, it's safer. Anti-Semitism has really gone up a lot over the last couple of years. So my wife, really emotional about these things. Just, you know, she goes, I'm not going to the concentration camp. I says, there's no concentration. I said, you really, really want to go, let's get an apartment in Israel. And I said, my wife, do you realize that bombs going off in stores and other places? This is not a safe place to be. I'm not saying that tone, but you're going to a war zone. Do you see what's happening in France?
39:35 Speaker 00 Yeah. Let me keep you at your New York City comment. Does that mean on the streets you feel things have changed? It's not the same experience you had in the streets years ago.
39:45 Speaker 01 Sure. I mean, I lived in a working, my English wife lived in a house. It's a working class neighborhood. I didn't think of it as working class. I just, this is where I grew up. To me, the whole thing has changed. Now, I'm a very self-involved person, an old child, but just generally. I think about the small sector of things that I like and I don't think about the rest. But the world has changed.
40:20 Speaker 01 There was a crazy guy on the train.
40:22 Speaker 00 I saw that.
40:23 Speaker 01 Well, you know what? Turns out the guy actually who was crazy had fits of various his family, he's like, he got the money. He was entertained in the subway, but he was a crazy guy.
40:40 Speaker 00 He had like 40 arrests. He had punched a 67 year old woman. He tried to kidnap a seven year old girl. Who knows what's going to happen in the case? I'm not going to try and prejudge it.
40:49 Speaker 01 I will tell you what will happen. They're gonna go after this Marine. He's gonna go to jail.
40:54 Speaker 00 They'll build a statue for the dead guy.
40:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's insane. It's absolutely insane. And no, you want to know what? I do not feel safe. And I'm used to feeling safe enough.
41:10 Speaker 00 I would think you're in an interesting position because that's a cool place you have there. And I'm sure you think about leaving it to family and stuff, but I'm imagining if I was in your shoes, I would have to look ahead and say, okay, if I leave this to family, would I really want my family living in this environment? That's a tricky thing.
41:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's also not as big as people think it is too, because what happens in journalism, you should know this, is all saying journalism. If it bleeds, it leads.
41:44 Speaker 00 There's a lot of bleeding in America these days.
41:47 Speaker 01 And a lot of strangeness.
41:50 Speaker 00 Yes, that's the part. That's why I love being here. There's not strange here.
41:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't really understand. And everybody I know is not that happy about their situations. It's so wacky.
42:07 Speaker 00 What's really going on too, from my observation, is it's essentially a battle between, let's say I'm Gen X, you're a little older than Baby Boomer, but then it's really these generations above age 50, the younger below 30, just seems to be scared. And look, I'm sure I have some clients below 30, probably great people. But overall, it seems to be a very strange mass thinking in the underage 30 where it's like, instead of being logical and pragmatic and being tough, it's more about, hey, let's have a group therapy session nonstop 24 and 7 all the time. And that just seems to lead nowhere.
42:50 Speaker 00 If all of us are being honest, we look at these great buildings that were built in New York City and Paris and around the world in the last several hundred years, or even going back farther to the Greeks and Romans. None of this stuff would have been achieved with the namby pamby attitude of some of the young people today. I mean, none of it would have been achieved. The people, our ancestors that built these buildings and built these civilizations, these were great people. I'm sorry, regardless of their errors and the problems they had, they were still great, tremendous, successful people.
43:23 Speaker 01 But as Jesse Livermore pointed out, it's always the people. And people do the same thing. I live on this new boy Jesse Livermore blew his brains out. But again, but his way of doing this, one of the things is he always had a 10% stop. So how do you use all that money? He says, the number one thing is you go downstairs, it's over. Jesse Livermore, why did Jesse Livermore not use that rule?
43:55 Speaker 00 I hear you on that, but at least during Jesse Livermore's generation, there were men building New York City and building towers, whereas a lot of young people today are simply crying that they need a sex change. So it's a very different world.
44:11 Speaker 01 But we're still doing things. Our technology has moved way forward. We live in a very immature society that you get whatever you want. If you have a credit card, you can live anywhere. You get anything you want. So we have these people who don't know. I came with a, I have a rich cousin and he had something that, we were fourteen or fifteen and I asked my mother why I can't have that thing and my mother said we can't afford it. There's no debate about it. We can't afford it.
44:51 Speaker 00 We don't have that anymore. That attitude's gone.
44:54 Speaker 01 That's gone. That is absolutely gone. That makes everybody a namby pamby. Don't forget, we are doing great things in science. We have done some tremendous work using the computers. We can make more drugs and see which works, don't. AI has a very big future. We're building different kinds of buildings.
45:22 Speaker 00 Something has gone wrong, though. Something has gone wrong.
45:26 Speaker 01 I'm gonna tell you right now, law, feminism.
45:30 Speaker 00 I agree. One hundred percent.
45:32 Speaker 01 When women wanted the rights of men, they got them. And guess what? They got the illnesses of men too. You can't say to a woman, hey, you look really sexy. You can maybe say that to your wife or girlfriend, but you just can't say something like that. So the bad side of this feminine thing was people that expect, I'm considered rich, are people I grew up with. They'll always say to me, what was your money? Why would you care? Well, what do you, why I care? Well, you're a valuable, have a good time. I said, it's this idea of entitlement.
46:17 Speaker 01 Look what's happened in France. That's not even America. Just because they wanna raise the time you get your social security, they're having riots in France.
46:29 Speaker 01 France is a very old country with a system of laws that they're like England. And yet they're in the street arguing because they don't have enough money. And we could see something now happen in America or where America very will do a some sort of phony deal so they can keep getting money. I mean, it's extraordinary.
46:56 Speaker 00 Let me offer a clarification, though, on the feminism part. Whether it's men or women listening or both, I'm sure most of my audience is primarily men, but I'm sure there's some women that listen. You and I are not attempting to have a sexist conversation at all. But let's be honest, people, there is a huge fight, whether it's an unspoken fight or it's a spoken fight, there's a huge fight between American men and American women. And there is a chasm growing between the two. And you can see that across every aspect of life, especially in birth rates. And eventually, if men and women don't like each other, people say, oh, there's too many people on this planet.
47:40 Speaker 00 It only takes a few regressions to look at a reduced birth rate and realize what can happen to the global population. But we got this structure set up where men and women are physically and mentally equal and everybody's the same. And now we're just going to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. And we're going to throw away every experience that we've had in human history that's got us to this point. And we're going to reduce the birth rate. This is not productive for civilization, in my opinion.
48:10 Speaker 01 Well, you're right. It's come to everybody's entitled. I'll give you the example. Everybody thinks they're entitled. I used to see that in England a lot. The big thing was where your family was, you were entitled. And you're not working class, you don't work. Now, everybody wants it. There's a guy wrote a book, I don't know if it was a guy either, called Brit Think, U.S. Think. The guy says, somebody walking down the street in England sees a young guy in a new Rolls Royce convertible sitting with a blonde, great looking girl, great looking guy.
48:53 Speaker 01 In England, they say, he should not have that car. He shouldn't have that. I should have that car. He must have stolen, stole something from someone. Behind every fortune is a crime. Where in America, the America I grew up in, the America you grew up.
49:14 Speaker 00 We admire that.
49:15 Speaker 01 We admire that. The crazy girl, when they were out, she had come from the Lower East Side. Very poor, poor neighborhood in New York. She looked at me like, you wish you were born on the Lower East Side. And she's right. Because in America, the dream that I grew up with, you come from nothing and you make it. My children don't have my hunger.
49:45 Speaker 00 Hunger creates imagination.
49:48 Speaker 01 Yeah. Let's say the biggest commercial thing you ever done is these podcasts. You didn't invent podcasts, but you made a whole industry. Because in a lot of ways, podcasts reminds me of radio. But on the radio, we had stories.
50:09 Speaker 00 When you come on my show, that's what you do. You share stories.
50:12 Speaker 01 Yeah. That's what it's about. And the stories are the way people teach.
50:18 Speaker 00 To go to your story, though, in London, with the guy and the Rolls Royce and the blonde, the jealousy and the envy. When I look at American political fights now, every American political fight, regardless of what they say they're fighting about, it's all jealousy, it's all envy, and it's all it is. People have learned how to use the political system to get money. The Tocqueville book, Democracy in America, it's two wolves, two wolves and a lamb going out for dinner and asking, what's for dinner? Well, guess what? It's the lamb. And so, look, there's a problem. And I don't see a way out because people have lost that thing that you described you had as a young man, where you could see the rich guy, you could see the successful guy.
51:03 Speaker 00 Maybe he got it because he was a con, maybe he didn't. You don't know, you don't care. You're a young man, and you say, I'm going to strive to try to get there myself. And that part is missing. Some people still have it. Now, I'm not going to say all young people don't have that, but a switch is flipped.
51:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's a world that I don't understand.
51:23 Speaker 00 Where do you want to live now? Go to Singapore, man. Seriously, you went to Singapore, it's hot. You might not like that, but you could go to Singapore. Literally, it's going to require no effort to move in. You just have to find a place, whatever, but you could do that immediately. It's like safe. You could just go to Singapore or Tokyo, either one.
51:42 Speaker 01 I am living my last year and I'm very big for my convenience. Arlene's worked for me for 25 years. I have a friend whose son just graduated economics and would you have a talk with him? I get on the phone. I'm saying, how am I going to talk to this kid? And I start with a question. I said, where do you want to be in 10 years? What would your life look like? Because I'm a great believer. If you don't name it, you can't claim it. You gotta do something. I believe in goals. I think goals work very well.
52:26 Speaker 01 Even though you wanted to be a great athlete, you were a pretty good catcher. But you never went on to become Yogi Berra or whatever. But the fact is, you have to have a goal. You have to have action after the goal. You just can't say, I want it. And then you come out of there. So I'm trying to figure out. I'm thinking about, all right, I'm going to ask this question. And then I said, hold on, I'm going to ask myself, where do you want to be? Well, I kind of know I actually don't want anything. There's nothing in the world that I want desperately. I just don't.
53:11 Speaker 01 I don't care about much. I don't want anything.
53:14 Speaker 00 I think you like sharing, though. I think you like sharing experiences.
53:18 Speaker 01 I like that. I like teaching. I really do, because you also learn a lot from people you're teaching. I always used to say, if I were Kennedy, I was born in Kennedy, I got that wealth. If it were me, I would change my name to Riley and see what I would do. I wouldn't give the money back, but I would want to see what I did if I was in a Kennedy. I am, and I'm sure you are this way, I am very proud of what I've accomplished. And I would not have been happy if someone gave me $20 million. You're the same way. I would bet you you do not have to work, especially where you live.
54:01 Speaker 00 I don't have to work, and I don't even call it work. If I get on to do a podcast with interesting people, I talked to a lady recently on the podcast. She was 102 years old and she was still sharp as a tack. I had a guy on the podcast recently who was the performance coach for Phil Jackson and the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. It was a really interesting conversation. His roommate during college was Dr. J, Julius Irving. I just love these kinds of experiences that I get to chat with all these people. And look, this is not hugely profitable for me like Joe Rogan, but maybe one day it will be. Who knows? But I love the fact that whatever I've built has engendered trust. People trust that they come on and they talk with me. I'll give it a fair shake. I'll be curious. I'll ask good questions. I'll stay focused.
54:46 Speaker 00 That's just enabled me to keep having these conversations while I live 8,000 miles away from you, Mr. Height. It's awesome.
54:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you have to get to that communication where in reality you do. But we're so used to getting things so easy. You and I and a large portion of people maybe don't do it. You get on a plane and go somewhere. I went to do a deal in Australia. I had a couple of names and I wound up doing this deal in Australia. I was a friend of mine married in Australia and her sister was there. She says, you just go into Australia because to them it was a big deal.
55:36 Speaker 01 But I said, no, there's a lead here. And I just went and then I made the deal. But the point is I can get on a plane and go anywhere I want. Well, maybe I'm not that unique. A lot of people can do it. They don't have to fly to Concord, but you get there. And I think things are so easy for people that they fight over nary pambi things.
56:06 Speaker 01 You can't say a lot of things.
56:09 Speaker 00 I have to self censor myself in this podcast quite a bit. And sometimes I have to actually censor you because you might say something too interesting. I'll share something with you. You might get a kick out of this. So a young person that I know, I thought would be a perfect candidate to introduce to Jerry Parker. Jerry Parker, who is the most successful of the turtle traders trained by Richard Dennis. There's a lot of reasons why I thought this could be a good introduction. I explained to this young person a little bit and I got a response like a day later. And I told them, I said, Hey, one of the things you need to do is read my book on the turtles. You needed to do that. I've sent people your way. I've sent some other people assorted ways, but I don't really do this a lot.
56:53 Speaker 00 I don't really try to play matchmaker. This young person writes me back and says, how long is the book?
57:02 Speaker 00 Like, I mean, I'm lifting a finger. I'm not contacted Jerry or anything like that yet. Here I am, I'm trying to.
57:10 Speaker 01 Be a good guy.
57:11 Speaker 00 And it's like, how long is the book? That's the younger generation where it's like, they are missing something. They're missing something. If I was told at age 20 or 25 or whatever, somebody said, Hey, here's an article. And it was an article about Jerry Parker or it was an article about Larry Height or Ed Secoda. And I read that one page article and I realized who these people were. And I said, Oh gosh, they're really interesting people. I want to meet them, even if it's for an informational interview. And then somebody said, Well, hey, I can make an introduction, but I really think you need to be prepped. Why don't you read this market wizards book first? So you know a little bit more about this height guy. I can't imagine uttering from my mouth, the phrase, how long is the book? I can't imagine that.
57:57 Speaker 01 Maybe you want to ask.
58:00 Speaker 01 People, maybe young people can explain this. If I want something, first of all, the person doesn't know much about reading.
58:10 Speaker 00 Fair enough, as a young person in high school and college, I'm not going to say I was a voracious reader either, so, fair enough.
58:16 Speaker 01 No, but they don't know how to read a book. You are reading a book. I don't read that much fiction. I read to learn something.
58:27 Speaker 00 Exactly.
58:28 Speaker 01 And there is a way to actually do that. I know what I'm looking to find out, and then I say, how am I going to get this information? So what I did with the Buffett thing, I took three or four guys, I formed a group, a study group. Now, I went back and I got Buffett's Berkshire trades. I have a friend, he has data about his trading, and I finally made him use stocks. So he's paid himself some money. I said, you don't understand, you don't check these records and understand what the odds are. And he didn't get it.
59:12 Speaker 01 His books keeps these records, but he doesn't ask the fucking what the numbers are saying.
59:20 Speaker 00 Do you know why I think I got trend following? I think I got trend following because I was aged 24, 25 when I was first exposed to it, and I can't remember exactly what it was. It might have been the Market Wizard's book, but it was because I had been through an MBA program. I was not a great student, I was bored out of my mind. I thought to myself, I'm never going to be an investor that's going down the Warren Buffett path of trying to study the balance sheets and stuff. And so, the moment that I read that there was something else that didn't have anything to do with balance sheets, and there was this underground army of these trend-following
1:00:04 Speaker 00 traders, all unrelated and unconnected, and they didn't study balance sheets, instant light bulb went off, that's me. And we didn't know what it was exactly at that moment, I was like, that's me, I'm going that direction. Because if they can do it, I can figure it out.
1:00:19 Speaker 01 If you bet by Tom Betts.
1:00:24 Speaker 01 You're never gonna lose.
1:00:25 Speaker 00 Tom was not a high leverage trend following trader. He was more shooting for 10 to 15% I think.
1:00:32 Speaker 01 There's a beautiful chart in one of your books, Bill Dunn. Bill Dunn goes down 40%, but he always comes back. You know the chart I'm talking about.
1:00:44 Speaker 00 He actually went down more than that. I think he went down over 60% on one.
1:00:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, at one time, but he always came back.
1:00:51 Speaker 00 People don't realize when they see that 40% down in trend following traders, a lot of people say to themselves, "Oh, my gosh, why did you let that trade go down 40%?" They don't understand that it was a trendless period of small losses adding up to the drawdown. And that's the lightbulb moment when you realize that you're shrinking the position size, you're taking small losses, you're preserving capital, it's a trendless period. And then when the trends come, you got capital and you make it back up.
1:01:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, because it's Darwinian. You get rid of losers. In many ways, I live my life that way. And you do. You've had 100 girlfriends since I know you.
1:01:34 Speaker 00 100? Hold on, hold on. 100? 100?
1:01:37 Speaker 01 Maybe more.
1:01:38 Speaker 00 That sounds like a high number. You're making me sound like some kind of Asian Casanova.
1:01:43 Speaker 01 I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here. But the point is, you go through and if something doesn't work, you cut your loss. And I'm not kidding. I told this story 1,000 times. I learned that.
1:01:59 Speaker 00 Your hairy story is famous on this podcast.
1:02:02 Speaker 01 You could do that. But I think that the Darwinian principle is a major principle of life. You either adjust or die, or founder. But eventually, though, if all you did is buy 52 week hots to get right out of Jesse Lippamore, and you go into the hottest industry, and you buy three stocks that are hot in there, so you have movement, right? And you have stocks. You will find out very well for you. You just will. The price tells you the whole story.
1:02:43 Speaker 01 Because the rest of the balance sheets, I was once trying to take a company public. And the guy said to me, look, Larry, I can make this earnings yield ninety five cents or a dollar ten. I can't make it in the middle. But he was telling me he could jack it up by the accounting. That tells you a lot about balance sheets.
1:03:11 Speaker 00 Can you get permission from your wife to come travel to Asia? Are you allowed to come back to Asia and visit?
1:03:17 Speaker 01 My wife loves traveling. She loves it. I used to say I traveled for money. And that's why I went places. But it wasn't bad, but it's not as glamorous. When you're on the road and you've got to move every three or four days to go to the next spot. It's not so glamorous. I mean, no one, man, questioned what I spent on myself. Or they spent when we were making money. But no one said that I had a great time. The most interesting thing about selling the product, and this was fascinating.
1:03:57 Speaker 01 It was, I know a lot about training. I don't know about many other things. I know what I do works. But when you speak to somebody in another language about it. It's fascinating how each culture is different.
1:04:15 Speaker 00 You bring up an interesting thing. Like if you came to a place like Saigon. And I'll give a little pitch here about travel in a second. But you came to a place like Saigon here. I mean, I don't know in this current economic climate, how much people want to pay and all that kind of stuff. So it might not be a great business thing. But in terms of getting an audience of people that want to listen. You would find a remarkable audience. I'll say this about travel, and I've thought about this a lot. I think travel for the sake of travel for very short trips doesn't resonate with me at all. I tell people and I I told this actually, the last time my parents came to Asia, right before the pandemic, I said, look, if you're going to come, you're staying for a month. You're not just coming and running around and all that kind of stuff. It's too taxing.
1:04:57 Speaker 00 I tell people also that if you come to a place like where I'm at right now, you book a month, you book three months, you book six months, whatever. Because it's that, once you settle in and you start living, then it's a different experience. So many people have been trained, I'm not talking about you, but so many people have been trained to like, you know, a six day trip to Greece, a six day trip to Greece, to travel from Asia or America or whatever, sounds like the most awful experience I can imagine. To travel around the world for six fucking days? Are you kidding me? I can't imagine doing that. I want to go live somewhere. I want to live somewhere.
1:05:40 Speaker 01 I took a trip around the world on a jet. And of course, it's a hundred thousand dollars a piece to do this. It was done by Four Seasons and, well, I always loved the Four Seasons Hotel chain very much, but...
1:05:58 Speaker 00 It's tiring.
1:05:59 Speaker 01 It was tiring. Yeah, I have a lot of money to pay for this. But we now are taking a boat and we're going to try some traveling in Europe. Instead of having changing hotels, the boat will go to the place and we'll get out and walk around and spend time there. Because you're right, you don't know much if you're in for two days.
1:06:23 Speaker 00 I want to live somewhere.
1:06:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, that's a very smart thing, but very few people have that time. You get paid to be a adventurer. That's how you get your content. The more bizarre and interesting a place, the more people want to hear about it.
1:06:44 Speaker 00 I've kept you too long.
1:06:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've got to go to work, but I'll call you again. See you later.
1:06:56 Speaker 01 I see a time when those awake will understand how to make money up, down, and surprise.
1:07:02 Speaker 02 Whether new trader or experienced, college student or financial advisor, protecting against a crash or just trying to make a lot of money, TrendFOLLOWing offers everyone an answer in uncertain times. To get started immediately, send me an email, [email protected] . I will send you the right TrendFOLLOWing 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.
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