trendfollowing's Commentaries
Come On At Least Make it A Good Argument!
A recent reviewer was very short:
Anyone familiar with the concept of survivorship bias should be appalled by Covel’s use of selected historical returns to demonstrate the efficacy of his trading advice. The book is essentially a long-winded sales pitch — like a text infomercial — full of useful gems like “the trend is your friend until the end when it bends.”
To suggest that there is nothing to be learned from trend following performance success across many, many traders, spanning three decades plus, in all types of markets both up and down, performance that came from thousands upon thousands of trades (not just a few buy and held stocks), performance that was massively positive for 2008…is a notion put forward by a reviewer who either doesn’t understand the content of the book, is sitting underwater with a mutual fund portfolio, or has some other motive. Debate survivorship bias, absolutely. But as you do it please be sure to bring up the name Warren Buffett. So there is nothing to be learned from Buffett? He was just a lucky and leftover survivor from all the other failed Buffett’s? Thanks for pushing the conversation forward. Since I can’t begin to relate to the direction of your review, a vantage that seems to be beyond a head buried in the sand, I am blessed to have the opportunity to argue against it. It makes the trend following case all the more stronger. Bottom line, the academic retort of yelling “survivor” as a means to explain away success, and thereby eliminate the need to even examine and or understand the success, is defeatist.
Tags: critics
