Price first. Prediction last.
Michael Covel's Trend Following treats markets as a reality test, not a place for comforting stories. Solo arguments and interviews push hard on trend following, buy-and-hold assumptions, decision-making, business transformation, purpose, and the messy incentives behind money.
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Michael Covel's Trend Following is built for people who think markets reveal more truth than forecasts do. The show is impatient with soft explanations. Its recurring target is the belief that investors can reliably know value, predict turns, or trust institutions to make uncertainty harmless. Michael Covel keeps dragging the conversation back to price, rules, exits, and the practical question of what a person can actually control. That makes the show feel less like financial commentary and more like a running argument about reality. Solo episodes often start from a public shock, a market chart, a political conflict, or a cultural dispute, then turn toward strategy. The tone can be blunt. It can also be useful, because the bluntness is aimed at breaking the spell of easy answers. Buy-and-hold gets hit hard. So do prediction, vague valuation stories, academic certainty, and the habit of waiting for someone else to explain the future. Interview episodes add range without losing the thread. Daniel Coyle brings purpose, action, and learning into the conversation. Joseph Pine brings business transformation and the idea that customers want more than transactions. Other episodes pull from trend-following history, system design, fitness, mathematics, and the problem of separating signal from noise. The show is at its best when it connects those fields back to discipline. It asks what happens when war moves fuel prices, when markets drop, when institutions fail, or when a trader discovers that being right in theory does not matter if there is no strategy. There is a sales edge around trend following, but the editorial spine is clear: uncertainty is normal, prediction is weak, and rules matter. This is not gentle personal-finance listening. It is for people who want their assumptions challenged, especially around money, risk, and control.
Made for: For traders, investors, entrepreneurs, and strategy-minded listeners who can handle sharp opinions and want a rules-based way to think about uncertainty. Best for people already curious about markets, systems, risk, and decision-making.
What sets it apart: The show mixes trend-following doctrine with cultural argument, business interviews, and personal-performance themes, so market strategy is treated as a wider operating system for life. Its edge is the repeated insistence that price beats narrative.
Bestselling author Michael Covel is the host of Trend Following Radio with 15+ million listens. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trading -- all passionately explored and debated. Guests include Nobel Prize winners: Robert Aumann, Angus Deaton, Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Hart, Harry Markowitz & Vernon Smith. More guests: Jack Canfield, Howard Marks, James Altucher, Dan Ariely, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Marc Faber, Tim Ferriss, Jason Fried, Gerd Gigerenzer, Larry Hite, Sally Hogshead, Ryan Holiday, Jack Horner, Ewan Kirk, Steven Kotler, Michael Mauboussin, Tucker Max, Barry Ritholtz, Jim Rogers, Jack Schwager, E…
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Michael Covel connects trend-following mechanics with the harder disciplines of risk control, decision-making, and intellectual honesty under uncertainty.
Michael Covel treats trading as a discipline of uncertainty, with trend following framed through risk controls, market behavior, and the limits of prediction.
A stop-loss and a first step toward purpose have something in common here: you have to act.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Purpose comes into focus as something built through action, small experiments, and adjustment.
Daniel Coyle argues that flourishing grows out of action, while Michael Covel presses the harder question of what purpose means when smart people still feel something is missing.
A two-interview episode where facts, scorekeeping, and disciplined trend following carry the discussion.
Michael Covel stitches together two interviews he calls classics, one on trend following that helped put the podcast on the map and one on fitness that he also calls a legend.
A confrontational opening leads into a zero-sum trading framework for understanding market winners and losers.
Michael Covel turns a combative political argument about men in women's sports into a broader discussion of market behavior, then settles into Larry Harris's framework for trading as a zero-sum game.
A disciplined market discussion that keeps risk limits and stops ahead of seductive trading stories.
Richard Weissman's conversation with Michael frames trading first as a problem of risk, not as a hunt for perfect entries and exits. Introduced as an author and trader, Weissman links Trade Like a Casino, Find Your Edge, Manage Risk, and Win Like the House to a simple…
Daniel Coyle frames purpose as something practiced through action.
Purpose lands here as something people build by doing, not a hidden answer they uncover by thinking harder. In Michael's conversation with Daniel Coyle, the author of The Talent Code and Flourish, The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment, the most useful idea is also…
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
Naval Ravikant on epistemology, startups, and crypto, from David Deutsch to Vitalik Buterin.
Alex Theuma interviews SaaS founders and investors on scaling to $10M-plus ARR.
Guy Raz traces founders' origin stories and fields live advice-line calls from entrepreneurs.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
The host discusses his occasional use of salty language, reflecting on audience reactions and personal discipline, as part of an episode titled 'I'm Addicted to Trump with Michael Covel'.
Michael Covel interviews bestselling author Daniel Coyle about his new book 'Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment.' Coyle argues that modern life, amplified by AI and automation, often leaves even successful people feeling hollow.
The host shares a personal story from graduate school about a debate where he successfully argued against NATO expansion, highlighting the importance of critical thinking in international relations.
Michael Covel interviews Richard Weissman, author of 'Trade Like a Casino', on Trend Following Radio.
Michael Covel interviews Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler and co-author Alex Imas about the updated edition of their book 'The Winner's Curse' on behavioral economics.
Michael Covel shares a chapter from his book 'Trend Following Masters' about Bill Dreyse's experiences with mathematical modeling in military think tanks and the interconnected nature of the trend-following world.
This episode features an interview with trader Toby Crable, discussing his short-term systematic trading approach, philosophical mindset, and background as a former pro tennis player.
Michael Covel interviews Steve Burns about AI tools, trend-following markets, education, and building a one-person brand.
Michael Covel interviews Cullen Roach about Your Perfect Portfolio, a book comparing roughly 20 established approaches including trend following, 60-40 portfolios, Boglehead investing, and endowment strategies.
The host critiques the concept of value investing by analyzing the volatile stock charts of Nike, Oracle, and Microsoft, questioning how investors can determine true value and suggesting broader societal deception in financial systems.
Purpose cannot be solved from the easy chair.
This episode discusses trend following as a trading strategy in volatile markets, contrasting it with buy-and-hold approaches and emphasizing the unpredictability of events like war and oil price fluctuations.
Host Michael Covel interviews returning guest Joseph Pine about his new book 'The Transformation Economy' and its connection to his earlier work 'The Experience Economy', discussing how businesses can guide customers toward their aspirations.
Michael Covel discusses integrity in life and markets, using the Epstein Files as a cautionary example of corruption, while emphasizing that trend following relies on price action over unreliable news.
No intensity for me today.
Michael Covel ties Larry Harris's paper "The Winners and Losers of the Zero-Sum Game" to trend following, saying market profits and losses "sum exactly to zero." He contrasts systematic traders with CNBC-driven buyers, chart readers, Elliott wave traders, and people who "look at the moon" or "the tides." Covel also says trend followers accept small losses and drawdowns because those losses accumulate across many markets.