Systematic trend following, economic indicators & macro factors

Transcript

Andrew Swanscott 0:02: Okay, welcome to The Trading Panel, your weekly show where we talk about all things trading and the markets. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. And today we have a small panel here. Small but good, small but powerful. We've got a couple of others who are going to be joining us in a moment. In fact, here's someone now. Rich is joining us. Good day, Rich. Good day, guys. Sorry about that. I just had a bit of check problems for some reason.

Jason Kurz 0:27: No problem.

Andrew Swanscott 0:29: No problems. Exactly. So we've got a couple of the usual suspects here and we've got a new bloke. Well, he's not exactly new. He's been on the Better System Trader podcast before. So how about we do a quick little around the room? Jason, do you want to start since you're the mastermind of this whole experiment?

Jason Kurz 0:48: Sure. Hey, I'm Jason Kurz. I've been trading for about fourteen years now. I've been in the markets for a little bit longer than that as well. Just actually trading and systematic trading has been less than the actual time in the market. So I don't really count the years I have blowing up accounts and doing really stupid things in the markets. I run Against All Odds Research. It's a research company as well.

We do research interviews with traders and podcasts as well. And we're here and I'm excited to be with the panel once again. This has been fun. As Andrew nicely said, I'm the mastermind, but Andrew's also been a big part of this and we've been kind of putting this idea together for a while. So it's super cool to have you on Rich with us today. We have had Pavel on the last few weeks, so it's really cool to be able to talk with all you guys.

Andrew Swanscott 1:42: Yeah. Yeah. Pavel, do wanna go next?

Pavel Kýček 1:46: Well, I'm trading for over eighteen years, but systematically over eight years. Yeah. I'm trading equity basically, and stocks. These days, we we are trading quite a lot of crypto because crypto is moving like crazy, and we also set up a company, Robuxell, that is trading systematically crypto for retail, but also for smaller hedge funds and proprietary proprietary trading companies.

Andrew Swanscott 2:23: Yep. That's right. And, Rich?

Richard Brennan 2:25: Good day, guys. Thank you very much for having me on. So I'm Rich. Been trading for a long time since about 1985, settled on what I do now, which is this diversified systematic trend following in about 2014. And, yeah, a cohost on a couple of podcasts.

The algorithmic advantage is a Australian based podcast we've just started up and also Top Traders Unplugged And, also run, I'm involved in a fund in Sydney, that trades, trend following and also, have a training and education program for retail traders who want to pick up the techniques of these professional trend following fund managers, recognizing that they've got minimal capital and how they go about that. So I've got that process as well.

So yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks very much.

Andrew Swanscott 3:25: And not to mention for Rich, it's actually 7AM in Queensland, in Brisbane where he lives. So thanks for getting up so early, Rich. Yeah. Problem.

Richard Brennan 3:35: Oh, and one that's my wife happy because she's yeah. I think she's got the motor mower sort of sort of coming out now ready for the lawn, which I'm gonna have to do as soon as I finish here.

Andrew Swanscott 3:46: I hope you don't do it at 08:00 in the morning. That would be I'm not very good neighbors. Wait.

Jason Kurz 3:52: Wait. Dude, what did you call it? The the motor motor? The The the lawnmower.

Richard Brennan 3:58: The lawnmower. I was like I was like, I wonder if you guys call it something different. Because we call it Well, some of us have it yeah. I've I've always called it the motor mower. So, I come from Tasmania, which is a really weird state in Australia, and they're very strange down there. And, they they have different names for different things. Andrew would appreciate that. It's kind of like, it's kinda like Texas here in The United States.

It's kind of like a little different

Jason Kurz 4:22: little twang in the language. Yeah, I love Australia, man. It's a cool place. Yeah.

Andrew Swanscott 4:30: Now for the discussion today, I wanted to start off with something that may be a little bit controversial. But first, just something before I forget. Now, Rich spoke about how he's on a lot of different podcasts. I actually had the privilege of having him on the Better System Trader podcast maybe about a month ago now. We were talking about surviving uncertain markets. We talked a lot about trend following. It was a great discussion.

So if you want to see that head on over to Better System Trader channel in YouTube and you'll be able to see that one. And also this week I had Pavel on. We talked about algorithmic crypto trading and he shared a lot of insights in our discussion. We've got a lot of good reviews on that one too. So if you want to see that head on over to the Better System Trader YouTube channel and you can see those.

Now I'm just going to try and present my screen here a little bit and share a little tweet from someone we all know. I was going to say we all know and love, but we're not going to get political here. So I don't know if people love him or not. But before I show this, we don't want to get political but we want to talk about this from a market perspective. So let's keep that in mind. And here we go. It's coming.

I have to have a laugh when I saw this. It's on the screen, right? Yeah. So we've got a tweet here from POTUS. Inflation is the lowest it's been in nearly three years. I almost can't get this out. And wages, wealth and jobs are higher than they were before the pandemic. So excluding the politics of all of this, because we're not a political channel, what do we want to say about? What are the markets saying about this statement?

Do they support this?

Jason Kurz 6:17: How do we I thought this was funny. And honestly, it's like, I've been seeing so many people lately kind of have the same kind of discussion, which is, hey, inflation is dead because basically for me, I'm a futures trader, I'm always trading commodities. I'm always just posting stuff about commodities or whatever. And there's somewhere short, the ags basically are short across the board.

But basically, if you look at a lot of them like cocoa, the one that's the biggest weighting in most of the energy indexes, which is oil and gasoline, like these are bottoming and starting to get breakout signals and stuff. So it's kind of interesting to think that, once again, like it's lagging data. They're looking at the, what was this, the core PCE this week or something, It's incredibly lagging data. Basically, it's about to be March.

We're talking about January prices. That's what these normal economists, normal traders look at. They're looking at these like extremely backward looking indicators and you're like, wait a minute, as a trader, like I'm getting signals in these things now. I see that cocoa is just off the board.

Now, once again, it's not the biggest weighting in any of the commodity indexes or anything they measure at all, but there's a lot of commodities that are moving higher. So it's kind of interesting. You kind of always see this stuff all the time, right around the bottoms. Like honestly, like I don't, I'm not one to predict things and go, okay, it's gonna bottom because this was said.

I'm just saying, it's kind of interesting when you start to get price action signals and then the president come out and post something like this.

Andrew Swanscott 7:55: Well, we're seeing a lot of trends in markets, Right? And, some of these are potentially caused by inflation and other aspects. Crypto's probably well, actually, there's lot that's been happening in the crypto markets recently. Pavel, maybe do you wanna have a since you're our resident crypto expert here, do you wanna Yeah. What's been going on? I know you're not a fundamentals guy, but Yeah. What are you seeing?

Well, I'm more into crypto volatility than into crypto fundamentals to tell you through.

Pavel Kýček 8:28: But, yeah, Bitcoin is on all time high on many currencies, not against USD, but, for example, against Czech rounds or very near to all time highs all time high on against Euro. Well, everything is moving like crazy. We are having 15%, 20% day on some coins. So, yeah, very interesting environment that is pretty nice for trend following strategies, for breakout strategies. But really, I don't know why it is happening. Maybe because of the ETF.

I don't like thinking about narratives and why should be happening something. In fact, I have studied economics. I have university degree in it, and I try to get rid of this type of thinking there. I'm trying think about it really, because I like reading about it a lot, but I try not to get into the level that I should be thinking what should be happy what should be happening because of some fundamentals also.

Because it is always interfering or it used to be interfering my trading very negatively in the past. That's why I'm not doing it anymore. I'm reading all the news, but that's it. That's it. Not analyzing.

Jason Kurz 9:51: I like that because what Pavel said is what I kind of think of it too is I also love to read economics books, but it's kind of like a novel for me. It's like, oh, it's just a really beautiful novel. It's written very nicely. It's this beautiful thing. And sometimes I get really interested in that novel. And then at the end of it, you kind of forget about it. Kind of the best way to handle that stuff.

Because really, I traded on what I think is going on in the economy, I would be broke. Like there would be no trading. I would never get hired. I would be fired every single day. You can't do that. Like think of 2023, if you looked outside, especially in The United States, and if you talk to anybody in the world, the economic data was horrible. In the world was bad. Inflation was rampant in places, especially in Europe.

It was a very nasty environment, but at the same time, that was when the market bottomed. That's when you really started to get these huge trends. And for people like us, Michael, who was on the show the other week, we had a conversation about this in January 2023. And it was, I think it was either the end of January or the beginning of February, somewhere around then, we all got signals to get long the NASDAQ. And we were like, are you serious?

You know, like right now, really? But of course we still just buy the signals because we don't try to outthink the market or our systems especially. So we get into it, we ride the trend and honestly, like I wouldn't have expected it to ever end up here, but it did end up all the way here, with one, basically one trade in the middle of that. So it's a really amazing thing when you just kind of tune out the noise and just trade your systems.

Pavel Kýček 11:39: It is. For example, I really love macroeconomics, like long term trends, like thinking about where water is directing and where it is moving and what is connected with the but really this this noise, like day to day noise or week to week noise and trying to explain things based on something that happened in the past, this is way to hell, at least at least for me from trading perspective.

Richard Brennan 12:13: Yeah. I know I can't predict into the future one day, let alone, But, you I'm very good at hindsight bias looking back and what's happened, but not very good at looking into the future. So, yeah, I agree with you guys. I just react to price so I don't predict it. But we've had some great trending opportunities. Like 2023 was pretty well is very interesting, actually. 2020 and '21 and '22 were very good trending years.

Then sorry. 2023 was actually a breakeven year for us, And so everyone was anticipating that trends were going to dry up this year. But January, February, we've had the resurgence of trends, so it's a very good time for the techniques that I deploy at the moment. So it's a great trending opportunities at the moment.

Andrew Swanscott 13:10: Yeah. Rich, your audio's kinda going in and out a little bit there. I'm not sure if it's your microphone or not. But I'll just bring that a bit closer. Hopefully, that's good. That's perfect.

Jason Kurz 13:20: Hey, So Andrew. Can you can you pull back that thing from the show? Yeah.

Andrew Swanscott 13:27: Okay. Here we go. Let me bring that one back. Here we go. Here you go, Kevin. Inflation is the lowest it's been in nearly three years. Wages, wealth and jobs are higher than they were before the pandemic.

Panelist 13:47: Interesting. You know, look, you see this on all sides. Right? So inflation is going down, the rate of change is going down, prices are not. And then wages has been very distorted, right? So it's kind of hard to really measure that. And then, jobs the jobs market is decent. So are are are these words maybe an exaggeration? He's a politician like everybody else. Right? I wouldn't do that. Oh, man. You guys doing today? Good. Good. We

Jason Kurz 14:28: were bringing this on as kind of a joke because we were like, just kinda Andrew and I were talking about it the other day. It was just kind of laughable and we were just kind of like, it'd be funny to talk about it with some of everybody on here. And it's really true. It's like, and I talked about this the other day and we went on, Kevin and I went on to Spaces recently and somebody basically was talking on there.

Kevin has a show at around the same time, so he might've missed it, but he was basically talking about the fact that like anybody who talks about the inflation thesis is an idiot and like, any of these things. And it's like, wait a minute, if you actually just let's tune out all the noise and what's in the news and what's in analyst reports. And let's just look at the price data. Like, you're kind of like, okay, there's a lot there.

And then if you look at the actual fundamentals underneath it, like which Kevin does a lot better than me, like there's a lot to do with this right now. There's a lot of inflation coming in. So it's gonna be quite interesting to see where that all ends up in the future.

Panelist 15:31: I would say they So services inflation is still very sticky, right? And we are seeing that in the core PCE. And I think the thing that I have a little bit of an issue with is when people just follow year over year, and that's all nice and dandy, but there's two factors that actually do impact it. You kind of miss what's actually happening under the surface.

So if we compare what's happening with disinflation right now, compared to what we saw with inflation a year ago, a year and a half ago, that was mainly goods driven, Now, lot of those goods are actually deflationary factors. Deflationary, not meaning that they're in disinflation where the price changes are not moving as quickly to the upside. They're actually in a deflationary pattern where prices are coming down for the most part in some areas.

But now we have this services side that's becoming very sticky, and we continue to see it not only within the PCE data, the CPI data, PPI data, ISM manufacturing services manufacturing, the regional fed surveys, pretty much everywhere. You are seeing some of these pricing pressures.

And for people that think that inflation just completely, like, don't ever think about it again, I feel is disingenuous to say the least because we are at a low time when it comes to commodities in prices. Right? December, January, if you're looking at November, usually, we don't consume as much. Usually, prices are low. We're about to hit spring. Like, we're at 75 degrees out here in Colorado. We're about to open up some lakes.

Activity is starting to spark up here a little bit, and the goods inflation narrative is still not not over with yet. And I think we definitely need to be mindful of that moving forward. Now does that mean that the fed is gonna have to raise rates again? I don't think so.

But I think the fear of that possibility happening in one print that does show a year over year increase, which is totally possible, maybe not in the February print, but the March print. February, we would need to have a 0.525% increase on month over month to be able to have a increase on year over year. But once you get to March and beyond, our comps are pretty much shot.

So I think there is definitely some risk that's out there, and I don't think the market's really pricing that in. I wouldn't make it a bear case for an equity market, though. What are your guys' thoughts?

Jason Kurz 18:03: Jason, you're on mute. I know. I that's what I actually said I'm on mute. But no. I agree. And that's a thing that I think everybody's kind of stuck on is like, it's either this like, oh my gosh, it's gotta be, if you're talking about any form of inflation, that means you've gotta get out of every single stock in the world because it's gonna crash again. And honestly, that's not how this usually works.

And we know like from price action signals in general, most of the time, like you can see like inflation start to uptick. And then next thing we start to get into different sectors. We start to see energy. I trade the sector futures too. And so we'll start to get into sector futures.

We'll start to get into different countries that are commodity based, different currencies that are commodity based currencies, like the Canadian dollar, the Aussie dollar and so on. So you'll start to see that start to happen. So it's not really a thing where it's like, oh, it's gonna put so much pressure on the market. That's the end of it.

It's just a thing of maybe we could get out of this thing where, our signals have been logging the NASDAQ forever now. Maybe we get out of this thing that's like starting to see some actual diversification through the market, some breath actually tick up, start to see us go into different sectors because really like the portfolio has been extremely tech heavy for a long time because of it.

once again, it's not something where we need to exactly predict, but we are seeing these signals start to change. I mean, we are starting to see more energy based signals like we talked about at the beginning, like commodity based signals that are really coming in. Kevin and I can honestly probably nerd out about oil for the next three hours. So if you guys wanna shift, feel free, but like Kevin and I could talk about oil forever.

Panelist 19:50: No one's talking. So let me jump in and talk about oil. No. Look. You had your chance. Look, Jason, I think you are making a very good point. And so a lot of times here, newer traders also kind of get this wrong.

And unfortunately, I think there's a cohort of individuals that have maybe just started trading during COVID that their view on equity markets, their view on fixed income, their view on the economy and how things work right now are completely distorted by their first experience of a bear market in a synthetic recession, in a synthetic recession. We cannot stress this enough.

This was not a normal something broke because something broke because somebody wasn't hedged the right way or something broke because there's geopolitical tension. This was literally a synthetic situation here. So we have to just kind of keep that in mind. When you talk about macroeconomic factors, and maybe you're not just rosy in the streets, just jumping for joy about the macroeconomic picture, does not mean that you have to be bearish.

Does not mean that you have to be bearish at all. You can still have upside moves. You can still ride trends. And inflation is not a bad thing. And I think that's the second thing that people are scarred by. And that's why I kind of bring up the COVID-nineteen situation, right? As soon as I said, Oh, inflation can come back, I bet you there's half of the people who are like, Oh my God. They're like, He's a macro bear. Dude, put a comp comp chart.

I know you guys are gonna do it, but for people on their free time over the weekend, don't go and enjoy it with your family and friends and all of that. Go on your computer. Do a com a comparison chart of inflation, CPI. You can use PCE, you can use core PCE, correlate that with the S and P 500 or correlate that with the NASDAQ 100. There's good inflation, and then there's bad inflation.

The reacceleration that we are seeing right now, if we keep up with the wage growth that we are seeing, and I don't think the wages are sustainable by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe they are. Maybe this is the new regime.

If we have those wages growing faster than that inflationary rate, that's positive growth to the market that would complement what's happening in GDP, that would be positive for consumption, that would also then be positive for what? Flows and prices. So that could be the scenario that we are in. Just because we say reinflation doesn't mean that it's like, oh, oh my God, the world's going to end. How inflation happens is a problem though.

If we do see reinflation because we still have supply shock issues, like in oil, or if we have something that's going on in, let's say, lean hogs or cattle, And mind you, Texas is having the biggest wildfire in their history. Millions of acres being burned right now. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of livestock, lean hogs, and look at cattle today. I brought that up earlier this week too, Jason, in the spaces too.

I know I got laughed off about that. Those type of issues is what bad inflation entails. So I think there is a reason why we are having this price action to the upside here today. We could have inflation reemerge. I don't think that's going to be its so called negative thing. I don't think the market understands the type of reinflation we may see though, and they might interpret it very negatively.

And that's where I think there's gonna be equity risk.

Jason Kurz 23:20: No. I like that. Well said, and I completely am in agreement on that. So let's pull Rich in the conversation because I'm I've been I've I've wanted to talk to Rich for a while just in general, and I've never gotten to. And I've been like, man, I'm so just happy that you're on here because I do watch a lot of the interviews that you're on and the podcast that you're on and stuff.

And, just thinking about new traders and we get this question a lot on here. They're always asking about, like, getting to profitability and so on. And I want to ask you, when did you start to understand that, like, you wanted to be a systematic guy? You know, you were that was your kind of style of trading.

Richard Brennan 24:06: So that was about 2014. I've come off the cusp of trading derivatives. And so my start was in fundamental value that ran for a while, then I got into spread trading on stocks in Australia. Then I got into options trading, and then I got into derivatives trading. And all through that entire it was about three decades, wins and losses, ups and downs, no sustainable progress. So that's when I went back to the drawing board and decided, look.

Rather than try and think that I'm smarter than the market, let's look at the validated track record of the fund managers who've persisted over a very long period of time, and let's start standing on the shoulders of giants and looking at what they do and emulating what they do. So that was my sort of moment.

That was when I sort of started to adopt the philosophy of a lot of people have been trading this game for a very long period of time, and they're very smart people. And while as smart as we think I think I am, etcetera, you're you're just another one of these participants in the market, a victim in this horrible little game called trading. And so that's that's when I started taking things seriously.

And when I did that analysis of the because I wanted this as a career, I wanted this to be a lifetime venture. It was a case of looking at sustainability, sustainable track records and validated track records. So, how how do you validate a track record? So I wouldn't take the hearsay of statement made by people.

I'd look at the validated track record, and that tended to be found in fund managers who had to report their monthly returns, etcetera, to investors, so there was a regulatory regulatory obligation to have an audited track record. And that when I started looking at that track record, that's when I started getting a bit of very good information from looking at the, thirty, forty year track record.

You know, in that track record, we see the occasional bright spots like Berkshire Hathaway. We see Soros. We might see well, we we can't confirm the medallion track record because that's from a Zuckerberg book, and it's there's no way of validating that record. We do have the Renaissance Fund, which is another very strong performer in the trend following world.

And then we've got so we've got these handful of these standouts, and then we've got a cluster of a large number of fund managers with this long term track record, and that cluster centred around trend following. So that's why I then decided, well, these individual standouts, they've obviously got these highly specialised skills, large research divisions at their disposal, a couple of PhDs in their funds or whatever,

but there is a class, a large class of fund managers who don't necessarily have that same level of infrastructure but they have been very successful over the long term. So I thought to myself as a as a person with limited capital, that would be the group I'd sort of elect to sort of stand with and see what they do, learn from them, and that's where I got onto the track of trend following.

Jason Kurz 27:49: No, that's a cool part of the journey. I mean, it's basically what you're just saying is I figured out what worked. Like if we summarize it, I figured out what worked and I tried to stick with what was working.

Richard Brennan 28:01: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In case of because you can spend your entire lifetime going through social media, going on Twitter feeds, going on YouTube, listening to people. You you can't ever attest to the veracity of what they're saying. So you hear all of this stuff, but ultimately, you've gotta test all this stuff yourself.

Because if you make the horrible trap of just accepting someone else's opinion, then you can find yourself in deep water very quickly.

Panelist 28:32: Rich, you you don't think screenshot of a Weebill trade is validation enough to No. I

Richard Brennan 28:42: don't.

Panelist 28:46: That's how it's done these days? Screenshot it and then just trust them. Trust them without any other proof.

Pavel Kýček 28:54: Yeah. What we're talking about is Lambo is enough to tell you through. You don't need to use screenshots already.

Jason Kurz 29:01: Just Lambo. Gotta show the Lambo, dude. No. Oh, yeah. There you go. What's funny is that I've I've met some some people with the Lambos and the McLarens and all that stuff. And what's funny is they're they're probably broker than anybody would ever believe. Like, it's it's kinda crazy. I the world is just so backwards from what you think it is.

Panelist 29:21: Credit rich, cash broke. Right? Yep. A lot of people, credit rich, cash broke.

Jason Kurz 29:28: And Rich is bringing up a good point though, because when new traders start trading, they go online and they see one or two people and they're putting out this trade idea. And they're like, oh, here's this trade idea that I'm gonna put out. And then one of the 50 trades turns into some options trade that's a 10X option trade or something. Then they post that everywhere. Look at how great this trade is.

And it's like, I don't even like somebody could show me that as a trader or any of us on here who've done this for a while and we'd just be like, okay, what's your yearly return? I don't care about that. What are you doing per year? And then also like an audited track record is something that's another step up.

And if you actually work for a fund, that's the reason why I don't mind sharing things because when you're in the actual fund world, you have to, you don't have a choice. And I think it's also good to actually have people look at your stuff or at least have a friend. Like I find new traders all the time and they won't share the returns with anybody. It's like, you at least need a friend that you share your good times and your bad times with.

Like someone that can go through and like see you. Like I have my buddy Keshav came on here recently. Keshav's been my friend for, this has gone on over a decade and he's seen my great periods, my bad periods, like he's been someone who can, he can lean on me when he's going through hard times, I can lean on him. This is normal in trading but you can't do that just looking at your own trades all the time.

At some point your own biases will start to come in. Not to mention even as systematic traders, like we still gotta hit the buttons. We still have to see the systems, make sure they're running and they keep the workup whether you're looking at it once a day and running your systems or you're doing it on the weekends, once a day, one day on the weekends, whatever it is, we still have to hit the buttons.

So making sure your mental health is right, all of these things, like this is all incredibly important in trading.

Richard Brennan 31:28: Staying humble is important as well. Like Exactly. You know? Good job. Everyone who enters this this market believes that I think when you begin trading this market, you think that you're you're here to beat the market. And I think over the years, the experience teaches you, well, you you'll never beat the market because the market is full of very intelligent participants. And it really to me, this market is a scene from natural evolution.

You know? It's it's very much like a natural evolution of our our human planet here, and it's the survivors, the cockroaches, that now have have been the most successful over the eons. And, it's the survivors in the trading world because trading is not new. It's been going for hundreds of years.

And when you go to the early books, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago, you were hearing a lot of techniques that seem to be the flavor of the month now.

You know? Mean reversion was a principle back then. Trend following was a principle back then. The only thing that's changed is the technology we're using to process the data, but a lot of these things have all been tried and tested over hundreds of years. So the best way to get a track record in trading is a fossilised record, and the fossilised record is that of the survivors. Who has survived?

Because you'll see that the carnage with ninety percent of traders failing in a couple of years, three years, five years or whatever, and only ten percent surviving, Over this long term track record you see that the successful things float to the top and if you can look at the long term track record you get a lot of clues about what robustness is, what's a sustainable venture, what's dealing with too high a leverage, too high a risk

because they're the things that fall out of the fossilised record. They're the things that are extinction events for most traders. But survivors, if you can get those track records, those validated track records of survivorship, they really give you some solid clues about the best way to start this game rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or thinking you're smarter than the market doing it yourself.

Jason Kurz 33:50: I love that point because that's the thing that I've I run into with traders all the time, which they're trying to always reinvent the wheel. You know, it's trading like, for example, the book that always spoke to me that was my great, great uncle gave me my first copy of it. I actually have a very old copy of it, which is cool, which is reminiscence of a stock operator. And that is a great book and the principles from that book move on to today.

You know, I just I just posted one on our newsletter today, which was about the one from Livermore. Never hesitate to tell a man whether I am bullish or bearish, but I do not tell people to buy or sell any particular stock. In a bear market, all stocks go down and in a bull market, they go up. And it's kind of like, his whole idea throughout this book continues to be this trend following idea. Like don't get in the way of trends.

All of these stocks kind of rise to this top at the same time. It's kind of constant throughout his entire book. And I always love that because that's as old as it gets. That's very old principles. Sure, trend models if I back test going back to the 1910s, 30s and so on, I'm running into like very short term trend models working but also the long term ones work.

But if we get to this day and age, the very short term, like the Donchian twenty day high, twenty day low models and stuff, those don't work at all today, but they used to work back then. So it's kind of the same idea, but may or more maybe more long term models, maybe the models have changed a little bit, but that's about it. The the general idea of trends, they still work.

Richard Brennan 35:35: Trends tend to lead to what I call extinction level events. For those who are not sort of trading in the direction of the trend, there will be certain moments in their life where that causes the cataclysm for them, an extinction level event, or you can exploit them.

You can exploit them, or you can be the, know, adverse sort of victim from them because they're such enduring features that can really wipe out a trader's account if they're either overleveraged and against that trend. So they're they're pretty wicked features, especially the big ones. So, yeah, they're they're they're sort of emanating from these tail properties of the market distribution of returns.

And when you get into those tails, that's where a lot of traders come undone because it starts to get fairly chaotic, damages their predictive models, and throws them out of the game.

Andrew Swanscott 36:33: Yeah. Rich, if you if if you think about some of those macro factors that Kevin was speaking about a couple of minutes ago, we've got this trend following performance results from a long period of time. What do you think the place is in incorporating macro type of factors into long term trend following? Is there a place there? I imagine we could probably go back and say this period of time was high inflation.

What happened in trend following, hedge funds and CTAs and things back then?

Richard Brennan 37:08: Mhmm. I think that when when you look at what's correlated to trend following, you tend to find that uncertainty is correlated with trend following. So predictability is negatively correlated to trend following. So when we look at the regimes that we've had over the last thirty years, a classic decade of poor performance was post GFC from about 2010 up to about 2020.

That's that's where we had, the quantitative easing going on, masses, trillions of amounts of money coming into the system, and we had high frequency trading emerge because it was a very what what the central banks were doing was suppressing volatility as much as they could with this incredible amount of quantitative easing. So, of course, trends were very subdued, and that's exactly what the central banks wanted over that period.

So trend followers suffered with building drawdowns. And, they're always cutting losses short, but if you're continually getting whipsawed with our trend following models, the drawdowns do build slowly, albeit slowly, but it's a painful period. And and it was lackluster returns. But in 2014, that was a I think energy prices or something was the thing that lifted our returns in 2014.

But the balance of the decade was not wonderful for trend following, And that's what I call a highly predictable regime, a predictable regime that mean reverting models, etcetera, exploited. So it was very predictable in nature with this selling the tops, buying the dips by central banks that was occurring, creating this oscillating cycle that was exploited by mean reversion and trend following failed.

But then when once quantitative easing flipped to quantitative tightening in 2020, suddenly we got the rubber band breaking, buying, and we got these massive trends emerging 2021, '22. '23 was a year of breakeven and so everyone was thinking, ah, the trend followers have had their day back in, you twenty twenty one twenty two and so it's gonna be a subdued year this year.

But suddenly we find January and February giving us magnificent returns in a lot of commodities particularly. Cocoa, Bitcoin has been a great bullish move for those trading Bitcoin in their diversified portfolios. The Nikkei, the pound yen, really great. Soybeans short. Lot lots of things are sort of moving, and it's it's associated, I think, with this level of unpredictability in the market. So I tend to I'm very interested in macro.

I love macro. Don't get me wrong. But I'm listening to macro from very much a hindsight perspective only, trying to understand what's happened. I don't use macro as a basis to forecast because there are so many conditional events that I view these trends emerging from what I call endogenous factors within the market itself, not necessarily news events, not necessarily exogenous factors coming from outside in.

Most of the movement I'm seeing in the mechanics of the market tends to be what I call internally driven. Things such as behavioural biases etcetera are coming from internal market sources, what your friends are doing, what your neighbours are doing. All of those collective impacts of participants, how they all interact together makes price mechanics move. Yes.

News events do affect things, but not to the to the level that the old efficient markets hypothesis assumed, a far lower degree. So I tend to see these these markets as displaying what I call these chaotic properties. Most of the time they might be predictable but some of the time they're incredibly unpredictable.

So I see it as these complex adaptive systems that are slowly moving forward and we get these major transition events that are separating periods of stability, then we get a major transition event as it adjusts to a new equilibrium level then a new regime develops then a transition event, a new regime develops.

So as a trend follower we say the term history might rhyme but it never repeats, just going forward with this sort of adaptive system that's non stationary and continually moving forward, bringing new opportunities to exploit and new risks that have never been seen before in a backtest.

Jason Kurz 41:54: I literally feel like I've just got a class on trend following right there. Sorry, can I say it? No, that was great. No, that was great. That's perfect because honestly, this is the type of stuff that like, it's funny, Andrew actually quoted you, correlates with trend following.

I actually went over and wrote it down on my wall so I can see that everything because it's the truth because, and I think it's something that you need to understand because it's like we were talking about earlier, the NASDAQ trade. When you have that NASDAQ trade, you have the signals, you're in a world of uncertainty. And that's the signal that becomes one of your biggest winners of the year. Same with something like Bitcoin around that time.

If you're running into Bitcoin and you really like understand the fundamentals behind it, it's a very risk on asset, it's to do with a lot of liquidity. If you just understand those basics things and you just listen to that and tuned out the fact that the price was giving signals, you would have never caught that trade either. So it's like really that simple thing right there, uncertainty correlates with trend following is like spot on.

Bravo, good job. I hope everybody listened to that because that's the, I think it's the honestly the biggest thing that as a new trader, you have to let go of as a trader and get to that next level, which is you have to let go of that fact that you think you know everything. I'm in a program and we always talk about like, you get to a certain point and you think you know some shit.

And really it's like the same thing with trading, like you learn enough to be dangerous at a certain point. You think you know things. And really it's like, you have to sometimes take the signals and they're not going to make any sense to you and that's totally okay. It's the same thing like Kevin was talking about earlier with like maybe inflation, like I can't know for certain that yields can't go up with tech.

This was the case last year, everybody said, Hey, there's no way yields can continue to go higher as tech is just raging. And it's like, well, they did. It did happen. All the correlations always change. Things can always change. So it's like really that point that you brought up, like that's everything. So thank you for saying that. I think people also forget too,

Panelist 44:22: right? Artificial intelligence is a secular growth story. Secular growth stories don't care about any of the other stuff. It's gonna do what it's gonna do. Is literally ramping. You could have atomic bombs falling last year at the end of the year, and Nvidia would have still ramped because people are like, Hey, artificial intelligence is gonna be a huge thing. Generative AI is gonna be a huge thing. It could care less about whatever the macro is.

It could care less about any of that stuff. It's gonna do what it's gonna do. So that's another tailwind for this market that I think people try to attribute so much other things to this trend, the trend right now. And I think right now in this current moment, the AI theme is kinda like a relay race. Right? The AI theme was the thing that got us around the first, let's say, two laps of a four lap race. Now we're seeing the baton being handed off.

We don't really need it now as much as we did eight months ago, nine months ago. Look at industrials. Industrials performing in the environment that we are seeing right now, very strong, relative strength right there. Materials, really strong, relative strength. Healthcare, really strong, relative strength. Small cap healthcare, small cap biopharma, let me say that. Small cap biopharma and med tech.

Can now they can do what they have to do right now. There's enough investors that are comfortable enough to put dollars to work and put money at risk here. But when we talk about some of these boom bust cycles, we also have to think about in the past, market just doesn't go up without any catalyst or story. There's usually something that correlates with that, right? You have the nineties internet boom bust cycle, quote unquote boom bust.

It wasn't really a It was a bust in equity prices, but the secular story of the Internet continues to live on till this day. AI looks like it's gonna be doing the same thing. We had the housing crisis. Right? Boom bust is still growing at a fairly rapid rapid pace right now on a relative basis. And I think you have the crypto situation too. I mean, that was a secular trend during COVID. Right? Everybody was like, oh, yeah.

We got this shiny new object. Bitcoin mining operations, and I'll get off my soapbox here. Who here on this panel did not think to themselves, I should mine Bitcoin in my basement or at my house?

Remember those days when people were spinning up and getting whatever anything that they could get their hands on, gaming units, you can go to micro center and you can just buy gaming units and just start mining Bitcoin, earn passive income while also working your day job. Remember that stuff? I looked into that. All of that stuff was a huge trend, huge hardware spend. A lot of people spend massive amounts of money.

And honestly, that's where NVIDIA got put on the map. No one even remembers. That was what put Nvidia on the map. It wasn't GPUs. They were the only ones that actually had the resources and supply out there to be able to create these, crypto mining networks. And then that just fueled the whole rally. And at the end of the day, that technology died off really quickly because new technology came on board, right? We had GLUTs.

But at that time, equities didn't need anything else. It was kinda like that spark to light the fire. It just got hot enough where other things could catch fire. I think that's where we're at right now. And I would not be surprised if tech doesn't lead us this year. Right? If it's doing really great right now, I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't.

It's gonna probably have decent returns, but we don't really Apple is about to fundamentally breaking down right now. If you you've I haven't seen a two month correlation of between the S and P five hundred and Apple in a price manner like this. Like, I say ever, mainstream ever, right? Let's say last twenty years, look at a chart. Whitest divergence that you've ever seen between those two stocks. The market continues to rally.

So I think that's where we're at right now. I think we're getting the baton has been handed off. I don't think it's all about AI. NVIDIA could stay at 800 and we could continue to see markets make new highs on a relative basis in my opinion. Until something changes

Jason Kurz 49:02: and until the market cares about the stuff that changes. I think we can You you also brought up something in the middle of that I was like, holy crap. I totally forgot about some of that stuff. And I'm sure everybody has a story. I'm sure Pavel probably has a story about that too. But I had a friend and this goes back to 2012. I have a friend, it's actually my fiance's friend too. So it was my fiance's friend's husband.

And so he comes up to me and goes, Hey, I know you trade, I know you know about Bitcoin, I'm gonna start mining it. And I said, well, I had a friend also before that who told me something that was a little bit smarter at the time, which was, why don't you just buy some? Like it might be a better idea to just buy it. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll just do that, which I did. And I'm thankful that I had a friend who said something like that to me.

But so I tried to say the same thing to him. I said, you you might be better off just buying some. And he was like, no. And I said, well, know, with the mining costs and the friend I was talking to told me not to do that was like, basically you could buy every the GPUs, you could buy everything to do this and they will be out of date so quickly your head will spin.

And you have to buy more and like the amount of money and not to mention the electricity you're running. So he ends up renting a place in a building, buys all the equipment, everything spends about like, and it's actually his family's money which is the sad part of it. He borrows money from his family to the tune of like a couple $100,000 and he has this building and he's mining and he makes nothing.

And basically to the point where like he lost a ton of money, like his family got screwed out of their retirement or something. Like it's a nasty story but it's true. Like that's really the times we're living in at that point. So it's it's a good thing to remember because that literally kind of says everything that needs to be said about some of these things when you see these trends and cycles.

And I think it's, I always liked that book, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about trends and cycles in there a bit. When you're really kind of at that point where things just start tipping over and then it becomes this massive trend, you can't really predict that. You can get an understanding of the psychology behind it, but once again, like nothing's better at telling you the psychology.

Nothing's better than telling you the actual psychology behind it than the actual price action itself. So that's why I really look at the charts to really figure out when I'm gonna enter and exit something because that's really so super important.

Pavel Kýček 51:40: Yeah. I like the story about Bitcoin because it reminds me the type of stories of like mortgage your house to buy more Bitcoin? But what I like about it and I like it a lot because it's some kind of expression in which state still crypto is. And that's why it is so interesting because it's driven by emotions a lot by far by much more than any other asset you can trade, and that's why there are such a huge trends and inefficiencies.

You just won't find it anywhere else. And this is the main reason why I'm trying to trade it as much as possible to tell you through. If there wouldn't be so many added risks compared to any other asset, I would allocate almost all of my capital here because there is nothing nothing that can compare with crypto these days in terms of in terms of possible possible profits and performance.

Panelist 52:42: Yeah. We'll see. I mean, look. It's it's having a really nice run right now. I think from technical standpoint, I'm I'm a little concerned. Right? You're kinda getting I'm just saying technically. Right? Kinda getting to that bay that peak. So, like, you wanna break out through that with some pretty large volume. I think that would be good thing. Two things real quick, and then I do have to jump.

Going back to the mining rigs, because I'm kinda laughing right now. I was looking at one, when this whole thing whole thing happened. They were going for, 15, like, $18. Right? And if you think about it, like, two of those mining rigs equate to one of the GPUs that NVIDIA has right now, which is crazy because of the compute power. You know? Like, just how much the compute power has also increased exponentially over time is remarkable.

But, hey, guys. I had to jump. It's always a pleasure. Thank you guys for having me on. And and, Rich, really nice meeting you, man. You guys have you guys have some really good insights. Wrote a couple of those things down as well, and looking forward to maybe joining you again for another little powwow, if you will. So Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for coming on, Kevin. Appreciate y'all. Have a good one. Have a good weekend.

Andrew Swanscott 53:53: You too. Have a good one. You too. Now I just want to jump back to a question. Oh, Kevin, are you still there? Yeah. Hey. How can people get in touch with you or or learn more from you? Do wanna you give a shout out to your Twitter or something? Or Yeah. If you wanna follow me on Twitter, I'm at KG Bull and Bear.

Panelist 54:14: So you can follow me there. Also, I'm on LinkedIn too, and I actually write maybe an article a week for right now on my LinkedIn, so you can follow me there. It's just Kevin Green. And and, usually, if you put Kevin Green LinkedIn, I'm I think I'm the first one that comes up, first or second that comes up. So, yeah, I appreciate that and definitely would love to follow.

Actually, I think I'm only, like, five away from being at 5,000 followers on Twitter. I'm hitting the big time, guys.

Andrew Swanscott 54:40: Big time. Come on, everyone. Let's hope you can get across 13 the away. Right now. 13. There you go.

Jason Kurz 54:46: Let's keep going. We can do it. It. You all have a good Thanks, Kevin. Have a good one. See you.

Andrew Swanscott 54:54: So I just want to jump back to a question in the chat here because it's part of Rich's mic drop moment today about uncertainty correlates with trend following. So let me put this question up on the screen from Let's Get Philosophical. How is uncertainty measured in this context?

Richard Brennan 55:13: So the way we'd look at this is we we'd look at a histogram of the market distribution of returns. And so let's let's say we're taking daily returns over a thirty year, fifty year period. We plot those daily returns as far as at and in a histogram with frequency and the daily return on the bottom.

And we'll measure that in either dollar terms or we might measure it in terms of r, which is VanTarp's r, which is the distance from the entry to the stop of your trading system. What what we do with the market distribution of returns is we'd say, how does the market distribution of returns plot in that histogram? And what you find over very long term data sets is that it plots with what they call a leptokurtic distribution.

So it's not what you call a bell curve distribution, which is a normally distributed distribution. It tends to have fat tails at either side, left and right side of the market distribution of returns, and it's got a peak around the median of that distribution. When you look at the distinction between uncertainty and certainty, you're looking at the distinction between predictability and unpredictability.

When you're looking at where the market distribution of returns plots, when you're looking at the tail regions, you're looking at a zone which is unpredictable. So if we look at the number of participants in a market that are trading the market, they impact trading behavior. The impact of their buying and selling decisions is and the quantum of that amount actually is what is responsible for moving price.

You might have these ancillary reasons for them to do that, like inflation, interest rates, fundamentals, all of these things are the reasons why they're gonna take that trade. But, fundamentally, what makes price move is when they come together in the marketplace, the buy and sell decision occurs with their trading models that they're applying, and that exerts a pressure on the market mechanics.

It exerts a pressure which moves price either up or down. So when you're looking at the distribution of returns of the market, you're actually looking at the mechanics of market participants. When you're looking at where most participants are extracting their edge in the market, you'll realize that they're extracting their edge from propositions or trading strategies that are assuming a predictive stance.

They're assuming a repeatable occurrence, and they're looking for the greatest frequency of that occurrence because that's what's giving them the edge. So a mean reverting system is looking for the propensity of price to revert to its mean. A fundamental investor is looking at the propensity of price to move from where it is currently to the intrinsic value, which is what they've calculated is the fair value of that market price.

So all of those types of strategies plot around the mean, and that's what gives this big peak at the top of the leptokurtic distribution. Now anything outside that bell curve, which is a normal distribution, is an arbitrage opportunity. So the opportunities around the peak of the distribution around the mean is where most traders are extracting their edge.

And then most traders who have a model that has a using a back test, they've identified the most frequent pattern, the most frequent occurrence. That's why it's sitting around the peak of the distribution, high frequency, around the mean of the distribution. They're extracting their edge with models that are what we call convergent in nature, Converging to something, converging to an intrinsic level, converging to a mean.

However, at the tails of the distribution, the left and right tails, we've got where divergent players trade. And they are people that assume that price won't revert to a mean or an intrinsic value. Price will diverge away from that mean or intrinsic value. That's why you see them on the left and right tails of the distribution because the price movement is extreme away from the mean of that distribution.

So when you're looking at convergent models, which is based on a predictive modeling philosophy, most traders focus their opportunities around that area. And there is an edge to be exploited there, but it's an incredibly competitive landscape. That's where Jim Simons, all of these people, Two Sigma, they're extracting their edge from their heavy duty, high-tech systems, quant research that is exploiting opportunities around convergence.

But where you find trend followers extracting their opportunity and also some option traders, etcetera, they're extracting it from diverging opportunities. And when you're looking at the balance of participants in the market, the vast majority of market participants are what we call convergent traders.

Only about 10% in the landscape of trading and investing are what we call divergent players because it's a very difficult game, psychologically very hard to play diversified trend following. So because there's this imbalance, 9010%, we find that the predominant regimes when when you get a regime that has a predictable occurrence, algorithms are continually identifying those opportunities because they are highly frequent.

They're sitting around the mean, and they're exploiting that opportunity, and they quickly latch on to them. When get all of these competing players in the convergent landscape coming together with their different models, that is actually eating the alpha or eating the arbitrage from that convergent premise, that predictable oscillation. And it basically destroys that predictability over the course of time.

That's what we call eating the arbitrage or eating the alpha from that opportunity. The first players into it get it first, and then it decays. With regards to tales of the distribution

Jason Kurz 1:01:37: yep. I gotta hop. I just wanted to say, like, before I hop, it's it's really great talking to you, Rich. I absolutely like, I asked Andrew already. I was like, I gotta get him on my show. I'd love to chat with you more. I just have something going on tonight, so I have to get going. But, man, it was great to meet with you. I thank you so much for coming on. This was really enlightening for me as well, man. Pleasure, Jace.

And guys, just tell me to shut up if I'm talking too much. No. You're not talking too much. I just gotta go. I would love to continue this conversation, but I just have to leave. Right. It's so good to meet you. Andrew, Pavel, thanks. Thanks for coming on. Great to see you guys, and we'll talk soon. And Rich could keep going, if you guys have the time, please.

Andrew Swanscott 1:02:23: No worries. Catch a replay, Jason. Okay. Alright,

Jason Kurz 1:02:27: guys. I'll see you. Catch you. Alright.

Richard Brennan 1:02:30: So so what you what you find, the edge in the convergent landscape is continuously eaten. The first to the opportunity, extract that opportunity, and then as new new more and more participants get into that opportunity, their impacts reduce that signal over the course of time and the opportunity dissipates.

But in trend following world, in our trails, increased participation in trends actually is what we call a positive feedback, and it exacerbates the trends. And so as more and more participants start jumping onto trends, it actually makes the serial correlation extend further and further because they're all trading in the same directional way. They're all contributing to the signal.

So what you find is when we start getting into market crisis or when markets become very uncertain and these predictive modelers start finding that their models no longer work, they start becoming trend followers through their actions. They start they either start averaging down to try and avoid the calamity or the when they're getting squeezed with these massive trends. And what that averaging down does, it just increases their leverage.

But, ultimately, the decision is they've got to get out of that position with a significant negative skew event or a major loss. And what happens as soon as they get out of that, their trade action in getting out of that actually accentuates that trend further. So you start getting these capitulation tails, which just keep on going, keep on going. So it's a nasty world.

In our trend following world, it's it's where people get eaten alive who are sitting against our trade. So but the people that are exploiting that opportunity tend to do well, and that is in a very unpredictable environment simply because the predictive models are breaking down. So I measure this by what degree of tail is in that market distribution to identify the level of predictability that market might possess. Yeah.

Pavel Kýček 1:04:40: I love this explanation. I also love this logic on trading trend strategies, but also mean reversion strategies to tell you through. I like putting them together into portfolio. But what you thought about edge being arbitraged out and so on, I think that if I assume that arbitraging the edge out of the market or of the strategy means that basically performance is getting lower and lower on strategy level, let's say.

Sometimes I hear that it doesn't happen to trend the following strategies basically. But I don't disagree with this one because on performance level, if I go and I love going over very old approaches or very, very old basic strategy models. And you can see this edge that is getting a little bit smaller, and it doesn't matter if it is mini version strat or trend following strat. So that's why for example, good example was this Don Quijan strategy.

Twenty days moving twenty days Donkeyan strategy was working nicely on stocks, on commodities. I don't know how it's working now. Probably not that good. Higher time frame or higher periods or higher parameters are working better. And I can see, for example, that it is working nicely on crypto, for example, because it's a major market and it's quicker, more inefficiencies and so on.

And what I can see is that this edge decay is basically almost the same, maybe a little bit slower on basic trend following strategies as on miner version strategies, probably. Or do you have any other other comment to it? Look. The

Richard Brennan 1:06:37: way the way I view it is if you've got strategies that are developed that are competing against each other, In other words, things that are uncorrelated with each other, lots of different strategies, all uncorrelated, but extracting aspects of the predictable opportunity. It's these offsetting pressures from all of these different types of trading strategies that is sucking out a bit of that arbitrage.

So what it's causing is it's causing what we call destructive interference of the signal because each trader and their behavioral impact is impacting it in different directions, different ways. And when you're you're looking at I this is my my viewpoint. When you're looking at opportunities around predictive signals, that's what we find.

We find a lot of different types of traders and behaviors and systems being deployed to extract opportunities from the predictable nature of the market, and they are creating what a negative feedback loop of dissipation because they're constructively interfering with each other. But when you get signals that are unidirectional in nature, there's only one way to An uptrend is an uptrend. A downtrend is a downtrend.

When you're in an uptrend, you will find that if predictive modellers who are waiting to be in revert, for instance, on that trend, what they're doing, they're applying a negative pressure to that trend. That directional trend is only being amplified by trend followers or those who want that price to continue to go up, let's say we're long.

When the mean reverters start attacking that trend, assuming it's coming down, so they'll start placing their positions to come down. They will start interfering with that trend and create, you know these up and downs, up and downs of that trend. Yeah. And if the trend is strong enough with a serial correlation, it will continue on provided that the balance of people attacking that trend are are basically doing the same thing.

When they start interfering with that trend and the dominant participants start interfering with that trend, the trend ends. But what we find is that as these trends get more and more material in nature, the convergent trader or the predictive trader finds that their models, they're getting squeezed. Yeah.

So when when the in early trends, trends trends the one that's significant enduring trends like cocoa, Bitcoin, that sort of stuff, tends to be associated with this endurance associated with the fact that there has been minimal negative deterioration of that trend because of negative behavioral impacts impacting that trend. And it's been a dominant participation towards that trending behavior.

Then when people on the other side of that trade, when they start getting squeezed to death, that's when the trend actually starts extending their direction. And the momentum actually increases. So you tend to think of a trend it should slow down, but it actually doesn't do that. It starts when it starts getting more extreme, the value of turns start getting bigger and bigger and bigger because what these call these capitulation tales.

As these people that wanted to mean revert, they're failing and they're having to take to exit out of that position or under leverage. They're accentuating it. They're accentuating it. So there will be a time, of course, when a trend ends. But I think in the development and enduring nature of a trend, that is what I call a positive feedback loop. But when you start getting trend deterioration and ending, it's over.

That's because the dominant pressure from participants has done that. So, yeah, no, I see where you're coming from, Pav. But I just object to people saying that trend following can be there can be a lot of people say, oh, there's too many players in trend following, so the trends no longer work. I actually think the other way and think if there are too many people trend following, trends will work even better.

Andrew Swanscott 1:11:01: That's a good way to think of it. Yeah. Yeah. Or there would be more bubbles.

Pavel Kýček 1:11:06: Yes. But I know what you mean. Good explanation.

Andrew Swanscott 1:11:13: That's a good discussion. Unfortunately, I've also got a bail in a couple of minutes because it's my son's soccer practice soon. So we'll have to wrap this one up for today. But we've been getting some great feedback in the chat. So how about Pavel, do you want to let people know how they can contact you?

Pavel Kýček 1:11:34: Yeah. Of course. Follow me on Twitter at pkycek or p k y c e k or at robaxio.com. We have also quite a few blog posts there about trending and robustness testing and so on. So if you'd be interested, just just read or ask anything what is interesting for you. Thank you for having me here. Yeah. Thank you. And, Rich, how can people

Richard Brennan 1:12:02: find you? Where are you hiding? You can get me on Twitter at rich b one one eight, or you can get me on LinkedIn at Richard Brennan, or you can get me on the algorithmic advantage podcast, or you can get me on atstradingsolutions.com, which is the website for retail traders wanting to pick up these techniques.

Andrew Swanscott 1:12:24: Yep. All right. Well, I'll make sure we have all those links in the description of this video. So if people are driving or something, they can come back and find that. Now I just want to share some of the comments in the chat just to finish up. We've had a lot of good comments here. So I'm just scrolling up a little bit. So this is earlier on. Antonio was encouraging us to keep going. We're dropping jewels. Keep going.

Crypto Nick had some good comments in the chat today. Thanks Nick. Rich, truly fascinating. Let's get philosophical said I'm listening. And then also a thanks a little bit later. Whereas this one, let's get philosophical. Thank you, Rich for the answer earlier. And then we've got a nice comment from Pages. Thanks Pages. Thanks so much for this guys. Means a lot to me. And then here we go. Another one from CryptoNick.

Thanks Andrew, Pavel and Rich.

Enjoyed it very much. So great show today. Thank you everyone for joining us and the comments and the questions in the chat. And, oh, actually, I just forgot that there's a little we're gonna be changing the show a little bit. We're switching the day and time next week to see if it's a little bit more favorable for our guests and the audience. So we're going to be on at Wednesday, 2PM Eastern Standard Time next week.

So that's Wednesday, 2PM Eastern Standard Time, which for the Aussie folks is 6AM on Thursday if you're at my time or 5AM if you're rich. Yep. In Brisbane. So so, yeah, we're gonna try that for a couple weeks and see if the new day and time makes it a little bit easier for people. So we'll catch you at 2PM eastern on Wednesday. Any final thoughts guys before we go?

Richard Brennan 1:14:13: No, it was lovely seeing you guys and thanks very much.

Andrew Swanscott 1:14:18: Thanks Rich for It joining was a pleasure and Pavel always a pleasure. So thank you. Enjoy your weekends. Cheers. Enjoy.

Jason Kurz 1:14:27: Cheers.