Trading the Trends in the Stock Market

Trends can’t not exist. The economy is always shifting back or forth, and human sentiment which is ultimately the driver of the market, is always shifting backwards and forwards –and therefore trends will always occur.

I had a run in with a very major Australian educator whom in 2009 came out and basically said in “Whatever strategy you’ve used for the last twenty years, will not work ever again.” And I took that to heart. I thought that was an absolute lie, Of course he had the answer right? He had the new paradigm that you had to use now, that hasn’t worked for the last twenty years. So his point was mainly to scare people and to sell something different. Maybe his strategy didn’t work anymore, and maybe it wasn’t robust enough to facilitate the current market. You can’t tell me that markets are going to stop trending. They just can’t stop trending.

I backpacked around the U.S. back in the early nineties and I was in New Orleans and I had ten dollars in my pocket. That’s all I had left, I had ten dollars in my pocket and we had to get to Florida. Now, I actually got in a cab, because it was pouring with rain. I said to the cab driver, “I’ve got ten dollars, can you take me out to the freeway and put me under a bridge?” and he did that. So there I am on a six lane motorway heading towards Florida. And I put my finger out and within two minutes a car stopped. Now that ride took me all the way around to Orlando in Florida. One ride, from New Orleans. It took about three or four days but the one ride took me the whole way, and finished off at spring break. So you just never know where that ride’s going to take you. As a trader, you want to get on the trend, you want to hitchhike or catch a ride on the trend and ride it as far as it will go.