The Trend Following Bible: How Professional Traders Compound Wealth and Manage Risk

FOREWORD

I've been trading for investors for over 30 years. My first fund, Tactical Commodity Fund, started in mid-1981. Tactical's current program began in 1993 as an offshoot of that first fund but with lower leverage and some evolutionary changes. I've learned a lot over the years. I've seen a lot of markets, a lot of bull moves, a lot of bear moves. And I can tell you I wish I had read this book 30 years ago. I would have made more money, especially near the beginning. Do yourself a favor. Read it. Now.

My trading-for-investors career began not long after gold peaked around 870 and a bit over a year before the S&P bottomed near 100. I subsequently watched gold drop more than 70 percent over 19 years and then rally over 700 percent in the next 12. I watched the stock market rally for over 17 years with just one big, brief pullback along the way only to witness two retracements greater than 50 percent in the next 10 years.

I've seen almost too numerous to remember booms and busts in the commodity, currency, and interest rate markets. I've seen things happen that everyone said never would and watched as things didn't happen that everyone said were inevitable. I've traded and held positions in these markets nearly every single day since mid-1981.

Tactical was one of the first systematic, computerized fund managers. We started out on a Radio Shack TRS 80, before the first Apple. Historical data that costs pennies now took months to type in by hand. We ran Fourier transforms and ...