Top Traders Unplugged

By Niels Kaastrup-LarsenBusiness News Investing Business News

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Top Traders Unplugged episodes

June 02, 2019 SI38: Process over outcome and how sports relates to trading
This week, we discuss the importance of process over outcome, how sports can be related to Trading, and whether mistakes are to be avoided completely or something we should look forward to learning from. Questions answered this week include: is Ray Dalio’s suggestion of 15 uncorrelated return streams the ultimate way to diversify your portfolio? Are some markets more tradable for Trend Followers than others? Is market ‘noise’ making it harder for Trend Followers, or is the volatility a good thing? How do you deal with strategic retirement decisions as a Trend Follower? Is it in a Hedge Fund’s best interests to stay relatively small and private?
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50 YEARS OF TREND FOLLOWING BOOK AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS - CLICK HERE
-----

Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.
IT’s TRUE ? – most CIO’s read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written here.
And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.
Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.
Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 – Intro
02:30 – Weekly review of performance
10:15 – Live event update 10/26/19-10/27/19
11:30 – Top tweets
40:30 – Question 1: Jack; When/how do you decide to change a losing TF system?
49:20 – Question 2: Werner; How do you decide not to add a specific market to a TF system?
57:15 – Question 3: Sam; Should investors decrease risk as they near retirement?, and if so…How?
01:24:30 – Discussion of noise vs volatility paper by Michele Cocchiglia & Stefan Martinek of Kelonia Capital Management: Deconstructing Noise – A closer look at the notion of noise, its definition and potential impact in today’s market environment.
01:29:00 – Benchmark performance update
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
----
PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey:
1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about
In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. Click Here
2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score
One of the things I’m really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! Click Here
3. Other Resources that can help you
And if you are hungry for more useful resources from the trend following world...check out some precious resources that I have found over the years to be really valuable. Click Here
Privacy Policy
Disclaimer
1 hr 33 min
May 28, 2019 Best of TTU – How To Start & Grow A CTA Business
I get a lot of questions about ideas to help build the best Trading Model, and I understand why many aspiring managers feel that this is critical to their future success. There is though, a lot of truth in the saying: “Most people overvalue ideas and underestimate execution". What I mean by that is, when you want to start and build a business such as a Hedge Fund or CTA, I’m not so sure that the real challenge lies within the design of your investment approach. Nowadays, I think that raising the initial funds from Seed or Early investors have actually become the biggest obstacle for new managers. This is something I have a long experience with, and this is why I wanted to focus on it, in today’s post. So I thought that Kim Bang, who spent many years at a big firm like Bloomberg before starting his own CTA firm, is the perfect person to talk about this. So enjoy these unique takeaways from my conversation with Kim, and if you would like to listen to the full conversation, just go to Top Traders Unplugged Episode 77 & Episode 78.
Growing from Family Clients to Institutional Investors
Niels: Sure. Let's jump to the next topic that I wanted to ask, and I know and realize that you're a small organization. But still, I do want to ask because clearly you have a huge amount of experience in building organizations and running them and so on and so forth. You fully understand what is required in the trading world, so how have you structured your so-called "organization" as it is today with the AUM you have right now? How do you do that and still make it attractive for investors, maybe even institutional investors, to take you seriously?
Kim: Right, so it's not easy, I would say, and I think the reality is, is that if you're going to try to make a go of this business, you need to have some money yourself that you can put up. So, I think that you need a few million dollars that you can put into the business yourself. Maybe you can go to a family member or two, and ask for 1 million or 2, and maybe you have a friend or a business associate from your prior life, and maybe they'll put up a couple of million bucks. So, if you can get out of the gate somewhere around 5, and even better around 10, but I think that's the minimum level where you have to start.

I think that you probably can't expect to get any more money from any outside investors for probably the first 18 months. I would think 18 to 24 months is probably the first time, which is around where we are right now. We are getting more inquiries now than ever, and it's from, I would call them, early adopters - but institutional clients. These are probably institutional clients that I would classify as very knowledgeable about this particular industry. So they're very comfortable. They understand the underlying investment strategies, they're very comfortable with the type of trading activity that goes on in these markets, and they understand the risk associated with it and the volatility.

"We've been fortunate. Our timing for the launch was pretty good. As I mentioned to you, we're annualizing a little over 19% so far, and our Sharpe Ratio is running around 2, which is very high for historical standards in this space."

So, they really understand. They actually like to make investments around this time frame. I think the reason, as you mentioned in your opening commentary, is that we've done some research, and it's very easy to do when you look at the BTOP50 firms -there's about 20 of them in there. It's very clear to see, all of them had their best performance in the first say 3 to 5 years in business, and their average performance was around 20%, which is pretty outstanding. And, by the way, these firms, they launched at all different times, right? It's not like they all launched 30 years ago. Some were 30 years ago, some 20, some 10 years ago, right? So they were fairly well dispersed. But in common,
20 min
May 28, 2019 BO20: How to start & grow a CTA business
I get a lot of questions about ideas to help build the best Trading Model, and I understand why many aspiring managers feel that this is critical to their future success. There is though, a lot of truth in the saying: “Most people overvalue ideas and underestimate execution”.
What I mean by that is, when you want to start and build a business such as a Hedge Fund or CTA, I’m not so sure that the real challenge lies within the design of your investment approach. Nowadays, I think that raising the initial funds from Seed or Early investors have actually become the biggest obstacle for new managers. This is something I have a long experience with, and this is why I wanted to focus on it, in today’s post. So I thought that Kim Bang, who spent many years at a big firm like Bloomberg before starting his own CTA firm, is the perfect person to talk about this. So enjoy these unique takeaways from my conversation with Kim.
Listen to the full episode here. Part 1 & Part 2.
-----
50 YEARS OF TREND FOLLOWING BOOK AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS - CLICK HERE
-----

Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.
IT’s TRUE ? – most CIO’s read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written here.
And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.
Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
----
PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey:
1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about
In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. Click Here
2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score
One of the things I’m really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! Click Here
3. Other Resources that can help you
And if you are hungry for more useful resources from the trend following world...check out some precious resources that I have found over the years to be really valuable. Click Here
Privacy Policy
Disclaimer
20 min
May 25, 2019 37 The Systematic Investor Series – May 26th, 2019
Is ‘Buy & Holding’ the S&P500 index the perfect investment strategy? Should you apply Equal-Weighting across all of your Trading positions? Are long-term strategies the only way to avoid market noise? Also, we give our thoughts on why you should avoid ‘Fat-Tail Distributions', Volatility versus Risk, how Trend Following strategies tend to ‘melt-up’ rather than crash down, and our upcoming Systematic Investor Series Live Event.
You can download your free guide to Systematic Investing, and subscribe to our mailing list by visiting TopTradersUnplugged.com
Get a free copy of my latest book "The Many Flavors of Trend Following" here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
Follow Niels, Jerry & Moritz on Twitter: @TopTradersLive, @RJparkerjr09 & @MoritzSeibert
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest rating & review on iTunes so more people can discover the podcast.

Episode Summary
0:00 - Intro
1:55 - Weekly review
6:30 - Live event update 10/26/19-10/27/19; 12 people
9:30 - Top tweets
52:20 - Question 1: Sam- Please discuss equal weighting positions.
1:00:30 - Performance update
1:01:50 - Final thoughts
Subscribe on:
1 hr 7 min
May 25, 2019 SI37: Is "Buy and Hold" the perfect investment strategy? and should you "Equal Weight"?
Is ‘Buy & Hold’ the S&P500 index the perfect investment strategy? Should you apply Equal-Weighting across all of your Trading positions? Are long-term strategies the only way to avoid market noise? Also, we give our thoughts on why you should avoid ‘Fat-Tail Distributions’, Volatility versus Risk, how Trend Following strategies tend to ‘melt-up’ rather than crash down, and our upcoming Systematic Investor Series Live Event.
-----
50 YEARS OF TREND FOLLOWING BOOK AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS - CLICK HERE
Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.
IT’s TRUE ? – most CIO’s read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written here.
And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.
Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.
-----

Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:55 – Weekly review of performance
06:30 – Live event update 10/26/19-10/27/19; 12 people
09:30 – Top tweets
52:20 – Question 1: Sam- Please discuss equal weighting positions.
01:00:30 – Benchmark performance update
01:01:50 – Final thoughts
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
----
PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey:
1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about
In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. Click Here
2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score
One of the things I’m really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! Click Here
3. Other Resources that can help you
And if you are hungry for more useful resources from the trend following world...check out some precious resources that I have found over the years to be really valuable. Click Here
Privacy Policy
Disclaimer
1 hr 7 min
May 22, 2019 Best of TTU – The Evolution and Future of Trend Following
Regardless of the investment strategy that you apply to the markets, your strategy or approach needs to evolve over time. The way we did Trend Following back in the 1970s, 1980s, & 1990s is not exactly the way we do it today, and I think this can be said about most, if not all strategies. Now with some strategies, the model decay is so rapid, that if you don’t adapt quickly you can lose your edge. I think short-term strategies are good examples of this. Trend Following, being a longer-term strategy is, in my opinion, a lot slower when it comes to Model Decay… so you need to have been around for a really long time in order to have witnessed this evolution.
So when I looked through my list of guests to pull a few golden nuggets from on this theme, I thought that Marty Lueck, the co-founder of AHL and Aspect Capital would be the perfect person for this. So enjoy these unique takeaways from my conversation with Marty, and if you would like to listen to the full conversation, just go to Top Traders Unplugged Episode 37 & Episode 38.
How Trend Following Has Evolved Over Time
Niels: What has been the biggest changes over time and is it really small incremental changes, or is there something where you look back and you say in the last 15 years 2008, or 2009, or whatever it might be, we did actually discover something that we would say that was a big upgrade or that was a big find - key finding?
Marty: By and large it is very much an incremental process and we make a virtue of that because you don't want... the last thing we want to do, especially with our focus on institutional investors and a high level of transparency. The last thing you want to do is surprise an investor. With the benefit of hindsight, I highlight two particular features about the evolution of the approach. First, in an odd way... the first, Niels, is the importance of risk management and portfolio construction. I think this is something that investors and maybe managers that haven't been doing it for that long may underestimate the importance of this in the process, and again I'm saying this because I did (laugh). After all of the shenanigans of looking at Chartism and distilling it down into to so fundamental tech models, you come up with a pretty robust diversified set of medium term trend following models, or we did anyway.

The neat thing, in the 1980s was the range of markets that have sprung up around us, Niels, afforded us a level of diversification that essentially... the combination of trend following across that range of markets it risk managed itself. You didn't have correlated risk shocks. You didn't have ... there was enough intrinsic diversification that if one sector was melting down you'd have opportunities in another sector. Risk management...I couldn't spell risk at the time. Then a couple of things happen. First of all (I'm going to foreshorten this) you got to an era where I think some of those trend following models became less efficient. You go to an era where markets did become more homogenous, so there's both a sort of macro effect as your pension fund manager in Japan begins to hold a similar looking portfolio to your pension fund manager in Sacramento. Whereas, once upon a time they didn't, it was much more parochial.

''You got to an era where markets did become more homogenous, so there's a sort of macro effect, as your Pension Fund manager in Japan begins to hold a similar looking portfolio to your Pension Fund manager in Sacramento"

You begin to get a greater coherence of both investor holdings and then also with the advent of VaR metrics and that approach to risk management, you also got a more correlated response to events, so that everyone around the world who thought they were doing independent things would react in the same way to an event. In response to those kinds of increasing correlations in the markets and increasing propensity for s...
23 min
May 21, 2019 BO19: The Evolution and Future of Trend Following
Regardless of the investment strategy that you apply to the markets, your strategy or approach needs to evolve over time. The way we did Trend Following back in the 1970s, 1980s & 1990s is not exactly the way we do it today, and I think this can be said about most, if not all strategies. Now with some strategies, the model decay is so rapid, that if you don’t adapt quickly you can lose your edge. I think short-term strategies are good examples of this. Trend Following, being a longer-term strategy is, in my opinion, a lot slower when it comes to Model Decay… so you need to have been around for a really long time in order to have witnessed this evolution.
So when I looked through my list of guests to pull a few golden nuggets from on this theme, I thought that Marty Lueck, the co-founder of AHL and Aspect Capital would be the perfect person for this. So enjoy these unique takeaways from my conversation with Marty.
Listen to the full episode here. Part 1 & Part 2.
-----
50 YEARS OF TREND FOLLOWING BOOK AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS - CLICK HERE
-----

Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.
IT’s TRUE ? – most CIO’s read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written here.
And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.
Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
----
PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey:
1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about
In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. Click Here
2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score
One of the things I’m really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! Click Here
3. Other Resources that can help you
And if you are hungry for more useful resources from the trend following world...check out some precious resources that I have found over the years to be really valuable. Click Here
Privacy Policy
Disclaimer
23 min
May 19, 2019 36 The Systematic Investor Series – May 19th, 2019
In today’s episode, we discuss whether or not Trend Following is more effective with Volatility Targeting, how cautious you should be of outlier events, how to use stress-levels as an indicator of how good your trading strategy is, and we give our thoughts on the concept of ‘Risk of Ruin’, in relation to the plight of Long-Term Capital management in the late 1990s. Questions this week include: Should you trade in a style that suits your personality? Can 10 years of financial data still be classified as ‘noise’? Should the fundamental causes of market movements affect how you trade? Should you reduce your position in a trade if it goes in your direction far quicker than expected? We also touch on Howard Mark’s comments regarding the skill of catching a ‘falling knife’.
You can download your free guide to Systematic Investing, and subscribe to our mailing list by visiting TopTradersUnplugged.com
Get a free copy of my latest book "The Many Flavors of Trend Following" here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
Follow Niels, Jerry & Moritz on Twitter: @TopTradersLive, @RJparkerjr09 & @MoritzSeibert
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest rating & review on iTunes so more people can discover the podcast.

Subscribe on:
1 hr 9 min
May 19, 2019 SI36: Can you measure the quality of your strategy on your stress-level?
In today’s episode, we discuss whether or not Trend Following is more effective with Volatility Targeting, how cautious you should be of outlier events, how to use stress-levels as an indicator of how good your trading strategy is, and we give our thoughts on the concept of ‘Risk of Ruin’, in relation to the plight of Long-Term Capital management in the late 1990s. Questions this week include: Should you trade in a style that suits your personality? Can 10 years of financial data still be classified as ‘noise’? Should the fundamental causes of market movements affect how you trade? Should you reduce your position in a trade if it goes in your direction far quicker than expected? We also touch on Howard Mark’s comments regarding the skill of catching a ‘falling knife’.
-----
50 YEARS OF TREND FOLLOWING BOOK AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS - CLICK HERE
-----

Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.
IT’s TRUE ? – most CIO’s read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written here.
And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.
Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
----
PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey:
1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about
In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. Click Here
2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score
One of the things I’m really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! Click Here
3. Other Resources that can help you
And if you are hungry for more useful resources from the trend following world...check out some precious resources that I have found over the years to be really valuable. Click Here
Privacy Policy
Disclaimer
1 hr 9 min
May 12, 2019 35 The Systematic Investor Series – May 12th, 2019
Today, we discuss how to go from managing personal money to third-party money, in this current regulatory environment. We clear up some confusion surrounding the VIX market, touch on stocks vs commodities & how they affect on Trend Following strategies differently, as well as how to avoid a single driver from overly correlating your portfolio. We also answer the questions: how do you define long-term versus short-term? Did Richard Dennis’s Turtles ever add to winning positions? Are CTAs underrepresented at investing conferences, and are investors losing out by only choosing the most common names?
You can download your free guide to Systematic Investing, and subscribe to our mailing list by visiting TopTradersUnplugged.com
Get a free copy of my latest book "The Many Flavors of Trend Following" here.
Send your questions to [email protected]
Follow Niels, Jerry & Moritz on Twitter: @TopTradersLive, @RJparkerjr09 & @MoritzSeibert
And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest rating & review on iTunes so more people can discover the podcast.

Subscribe on:
1 hr 26 min