Jay:  Today’s show guest is Michael Covel, a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and film director. In 1996 he cofounded TurtleTrader.com, which later expanded into TrendFollowing.com. Currently he’s based in Vietnam, and today he shares some very interesting stories about legendary Chicago commodities trader, Richard Dennis, and how trend following allows investors to profit in both up and down markets. Please enjoy my conversation with Mike.

Michael, thanks so much for joining us.

Mike:  Thanks for having me.

Jay:  Yeah, we’re delighted to have on, being very acclaimed and famous, so to speak, in the financial industry, so we’re excited to hear your thoughts on what we’re going to talk about today. So thanks for making the time.

Mike:  Yeah, thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Jay:  For the audience that might not have heard of you, because we’re going to have quite a varied audience tuning in from around the world, maybe you could give a quick background on who you are and what you do for a living.

Mike:  I, many years ago, stumbled into a style of trading called trend following. So for all those folks out there that think they can know how to value a company, they know the fundamentals, they know the PE ratio, they know this, they know that, they’re going to be the next Warren Buffet… I’m the opposite of all of that. So I am the guy that says trend following or momentum — times-series momentum — is the way to go.

And I think if you look at the last 20 years, the booms and busts, I mean, frankly, who was predicting anything? Who was predicting the dot-com bubble? Who was predicting the great recession? Who was predicting Bitcoin? Who was predicting the current US bull market right now? You know, these things happen.

And what I love about trend following — it’s a long story, but how I got started in the 1990s, I saw all these fantastic hedge fund managers that nobody was talking about, and they were making a bloody fortune. And you could see their track records. There was proof that they were doing this. It wasn’t just another talking head on CNBC blabbing about something. This was just absolute rock-solid proof.

What inspired me was there were so many different types of these traders, meaning they weren’t related, they weren’t connected. One guy could be in Australia, or people could be in Chicago or London, and they had all come at this style of trading, this non-fundamental style of trading in different ways. It was inspiring.

Look, for example, the owner of the Boston Red Sox made his billions of dollars to buy the Boston Red Sox through trend-following trading. The wealthiest trader in London today — he’s not the wealthiest but one of the wealthiest — made his money through trend-following trading. It’s just this fantastic story.

And I have had the good fortune to be at the nexus, the center, of, many times, the center of the story and to help educate people to this great style of trading, and that’s been my career. It’s been quite fun.

Jay:  I think it’s fantastic because essentially you’re taking… People go down various paths when they want to learn how to be an investor, and oftentimes, either you need to go the traditional route which is get a pedigreed education, try to get yourself on Wall Street somehow, and learn from someone, apprentice under someone, and try to go that route. And if you aren’t smart enough or you don’t do well enough in school, oftentimes, you are just discarded by the wayside. You don’t have any chance.

So I love your side of the story because there’s a lot of, like you said, all these hidden traders that no one has ever really heard about that are—

Mike:  Outsiders. Complete outsiders.

Jay:  And it’s amazing. It’s like a true underdog’s success story.

Now, Michael, the problem… Not the problem but a byproduct of that is also there’s a lot of scammy salespeople that are selling these “follow this trend or trading style, and you could just do it at home from your internet.” This sort of thing. That’s proliferated recently since the internet and the flow of information has gotten much easier. But there’s a dark side to every type of business.

But having said that, your book was one of the 20 or so books that I… I started my career in 2001, and your book was released a few years after that, so it was definitely one of the first few investment books that I ever got. For me personally, I started off as a trader on Wall Street, so it appealed to me much more than something like financial statement analysis.

Mike:  You should add there though that financial statement analysis does not tell you when the buy or when to sell. That’s just financial statement analysis, which starts to get at why trend following is so interesting.

Jay:  Right. One of the references from your book is this notion that was portrayed in that movie Trading Places where these guys just picked up a random person off the street and taught him how to trade essentially within a short amount of time. Maybe you can tell us a little bit of the origins of where you started your research and searching for this trend following. Maybe you can touch upon Turtle Traders as well.

Mike:  Sure. I still remember in the summer 1994, I had just interviewed for a job at Salomon Brother, New York City, World Trade Center 7, and literally within weeks, I picked up a magazine. There was the trading environment that you just described, what most people think of as typical Wall Street trading. And that’s what I thought.

And then I picked up a magazine within a few weeks that said, “Wall Street’s top 100 paid for the year.” And like number 35 or number 37 was this guy named Jerry Parker, short little paragraph, and it said that he had made, I think, 30 – $35 million for one year. Back in the early 1990s, that’s huge money. That was fascinating because it was not fundamentals, and it said he had learned a trend-tracking system from someone else.

And I was like, okay, I don’t have the pedigree, I don’t have the right degree, but what is this all about? And if this guy that I don’t know, Jerry Parker — and this was in a blink. This was like a Malcolm Gladwell blink. In a second, I knew if this guy Jerry Parker had learned whatever he had learned — because I didn’t know at the time; I didn’t know about the whole Turtle story — then I could. Then anyone could. Which also told me that all of the people at the top of the food chain on Wall Street were there for the very reasons that you described — connections, the right degree, etc. But you didn’t have to have that stuff. And that’s what the Jerry Parker story proved.

The story was the great Turtle story, which everybody first read about in Jack Schwager’s Market Wizards, my second book, The Complete Turtle Trader.

Look, Richard Dennis, in the early 1980s, he and George Soros are like the biggest, baddest traders on the plant. And Dennis sees this movie Trading Places with his partner Bill Eckert, and they kind of have this conversation: “Could we do this? Could we…?”

Look, Richard Dennis had made a couple hundred million dollars by the age of 37 in 1982. Huge money. So could they take people off the street and show them his rules?

His partner said, “No way. This is not going to happen.” Well, they did. They took approximately 20 people off the street — essentially really off the street; some of them have zero experience — gave them two weeks of rules, trend-following trading rules, price-action rules, let them go trade down the street from their main offices. About four years later, they had made about a $100 million profit as a group.

Then they all went out on their own, became hedge fund managers throughout the ’90s, and still some till this day and have made still even more money.

Again, as I mentioned the thing with John Henry earlier and hinted at David Harding at Winton Capital, so many other traders… It wasn’t just the Turtles. Other traders — John Henry, David Harding, Bill Dunn, Ken Tropin — all these different types of traders were going down the same path. And so it’s just a fantastic story.

I think with the Turtle story — they were nicknamed “The Turtles” — what the Turtle story showed more than anything is that you could take someone off the street, give them rules, and say “Go do it.”

Now, look, there’s plenty of rules that we could all get in our life, but it’s up to us to execute. What that story proves though beyond a shadow of a doubt is you can do it. That doesn’t mean everybody will do it.

Jay:  Right. Exactly. And I think… Here’s where the human psychology part of investing comes into play. We’ll talk about your podcast in a little bit because it’s one of the best podcasts out there. I like how you’ve done more than just interviewed investing people. You’ve branched out, and some of the people that you’ve interviewed are Nobel Prize-winning psychologists who have written books about human behavior, and I believe that with investing — and I don’t know what your view is — but a large percentage of it comes down to emotion and how you can manage your emotion and control that.

Mike:  And large percent or all of it?

Jay:  Perhaps all of it. I think that any types of rules-based system, in my opinion, has its advantages.

Fundamental investing versus momentum are kind of like, it’s like religion or politics or something. They’re at two ends of the spectrum, and a lot of people just veer towards one or the other. And I feel like while some people have made a lot of money, like Warren Buffet, on the fundamental side, when you’re going through a drawdown, and you’re sitting there, and you’ve done your analysis, and you’ve built your conviction level, it basically comes down to you and believing in yourself and the work that you’ve done and your level of conviction. And you have to decide whether you can bear that drawdown.

Whereas I feel like if you’re following a rules-based system, I think I would have a little bit more confidence just overall based on rules. And you can extrapolate that to the quant, when they use factor-based investing that’s back-tested on 80, 100 years of data.

Interestingly enough, I think that as I’m getting older, my emotions are a little bit more… I don’t want to deal with it in the market anymore. I’m curious to see, have you just consistently just kept to trend following personally throughout the years, or has your style changed as well?

Mike:  Look, like every knucklehead in the 1990s, of course, I did my fair share of dot-com. “Oh, yes, I know the fundamentals of Pets.com.” Of course, everyone does something silly. But I think the larger point that you’re making — and you hinted at Daniel Kahneman, you’re thinking about his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, that really is the trick. If there ever was a trick, it’s knowing yourself.

And I don’t really think, for me, I don’t have any desire to compete with the person that comes on TV and says, “I know the fundamentals of this, and this will happen.” Because anybody that takes a statistical view realizes this is all about coin flipping. And so whoever has got this great confidence and bragging about he knows what’s going to happen, it’s all a coin flip. It’s a ridiculous coin flip.

You speak to drawdowns. Look, Warren Buffet is famous for saying, “If you can’t tolerate a 50% drawdown, you should not be in the market.” Again, the most famous, most successful value investor there is. “If you can’t tolerate a 50% drawdown, you should not be in the market.”

I will guarantee you the vast majority of Warren Buffet acolytes and fundamental traders and value investors today will actually disagree with Warren Buffet.

Jay:  Very true. It’s cool. I love how… Before I read you book — and a lot of people, this is probably is the same for a lot of people, they probably haven’t heard of a lot of these pockets of traders that are out there. You hear about certain groups like the Tiger Cubs, Julian Robertson and Goldman Sachs prop desk, these little groups. But then when you read your book, it kind of opened my eyes to think whole new group of traders that I had never heard of, and it was fascinating and inspiring actually.

Not for nothing, let’s take our current market for example. Let’s say US equities and fixed income markets, by any sort of metric, extremely overvalued. So the value investors have been sitting on their hands for the last 18 months to two years perhaps doing nothing, whereas the momentum guys, trend followers, made money hand over fist probably in this market.

Using that as a transition, what are your thoughts currently on this market? And what’s going to bring this bull market to an end?

Mike:  You just asked a trend-following trader that question? What’s going to end this bull market? And honest answer is anybody that tells you they know the answer to that is absolutely 100% full of you-know-what. That’s the God’s honest truth. No one knows.

Now, look, we can all look at history, and we can try and approximate when things might feel bubblicious, but that doesn’t do us any good if we’ve got to buy and sell, if we’ve got to make bets, if we’ve got to have diversification. It doesn’t do any good to try and predict the end of any market run.

And your question hinted at one particular type of market — an index. Look, there are individual equities, there are futures contracts, there are commodities markets, there is gold, there is silver, there is Uber, there is palladium, there is the agricultural markets. There are so many different markets.

I think one of the things that if can take away from what I’m talking about today… Who cares where your money comes from? Who cares where your profit comes from?

But you know what? People do care. People want to make their money in what they think is their cool market. Their market they love. Again, this gets back to the Daniel Kahneman, the emotional part. It shouldn’t be emotional. I’m not saying it doesn’t become emotional. But in a perfect world, if you’re trying to emulate the most successful — and these are just streams of numbers.

You could go to a desert island, and you could just look at an old-fashioned ticker tape, not know the symbol, and trade at end-of-day price quote. You don’t have to know the name of the market. And, again, why is the name of the market even important?

If you make 100% in oil or you make 100% in Tesla, and a dollar gain is the same, why did you care whether or not you made it in oil or Tesla? Who cares? And that’s a really tough, tough concept for people to wrap their arms around.

I’ve had trend following traders tell me, “No, Mike, you don’t get it” — a lot of well-known folks — “You don’t get it, Mike. People get this concept today. This is common knowledge.”

I don’t think it’s common knowledge. I don’t think people get this at all. They won’t get it until the current equity index bull market goes the other direction. Then they’ll get it. They’ll get it after trend following has its next big run up. That’s life. That’s how it works.

Jay:  Well, I also think that there’s this strange, antiquated bragging rights that comes along with being a good stock picker, I think. And even though all the smart guys would actually go down to the fixed income desk, but being a good stock picker, for some reason it just carries this badge of honor for some of these old-school guys. So they think that, “Oh, well, if I’m smart enough to make money trading stocks, then I’m the king of the world or the king of the markets.” Money is money, I suppose.

I like the fact that when you were talking about your analogy — you can be on a desert island just trading the ticker tape — because that’s very relevant for markets like Asia.

Shifting gears now, you’ve spent a lot of time in Asia, and you’ve spoken at a lot of different conferences, and you’ve consulted with some sovereign wealth funds, some of the largest in the world. And a lot of people, when they come to Asia, they’re not successful, and that’s due to a number of reasons. Number one, there’s the home-country bias, so they don’t look outside of the US equity markets or fixed income markets. But number two, a lot of them say, “Oh, Asia doesn’t trade on fundamentals. You can’t really apply the same rules.”

But now your argument is that if you use trend following rules, it doesn’t matter which market you are in. You can still make money. Right?

Mike:  I think the issue probably that you’re hinting at — because we don’t want to generalize Asia — but I think what you’re really hinting at if we did generalize Asia and we try to group a dozen or so plus countries into one, I think liquidity is the issue really. Can you get your money out when you want it?

Now in terms of trading style, anyone can look at… Again, I don’t think the generalization here, but anyone can look at “Asian” markets, and you can see some volatility sometimes. Sometimes you’ll see straight up trends, but overall, I think you’ll see a little more volatility. Look at Shanghai for example. And that just makes a lot of sense to come at from a trend-following perspective.

I think the one thing that I have noticed after spending a lot of time in Asia in the last five years, it feels like, whether I’m talking with people in Singapore or Beijing or Bangkok or KL, Tokyo, it feels like people are more accepting to this idea of “Let me analyze the price action instead of the fundamentals.” Meaning, “Mike, let’s talk about what’s a good entry criteria.”

“Mike, let’s talk about good exit criteria.”

“Let’s talk about a proper diversification of a trend following portfolio.”

“Let’s talk about bet size.”

“Let’s talk about leverage.”

That seems to be something that, perhaps for the very reason you’re hinting at, Asia accepts more because perhaps — and I can’t speak to it. I’m not Asian yet. Maybe if I’m here for ten more years, I will become… But I think it hints at the people in this part of the world are less trusting of the fundamentals. And so when they find out about a way, a technique, a process that can give them an edge, a mathematical edge, that really hits home in this part of the world.

Jay:  I believe so. Asians… Well, we could go down this generalization route because I am Asian, so I can get away with it probably. Asians love to play the stock market, particularly here in Hong Kong, and they love to gamble as well. So it’s just another form of gambling.

It’s funny because most of the wealth in Hong Kong was, as you probably know, it was generated through the property market. But yet they still love trading stocks. But the second that you bring up early-stage investing or any different asset class, they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know. We want to stick to what we know. We’d rather go gamble in the markets than any of that.”

How long have you been based in Asia or splitting your time in Asia?

Mike:  Before I jump to that question, I should add something about Hong Kong. Having presented from Northern Asia down to Southeast Asia, everything in between dozens and dozens of times, I will have to say some of my most vocal debaters have been at Hong Kong presentations. Generally though, generally the skeptics at the Hong Kong presentations are white guys. I don’t know why, but generally it’s the white guys that want to argue the fundamentals — “This doesn’t work.”

But it’s really notorious in Hong Kong, from my perspective.

So I came to… The first time I was in Asia actually was in 2006 — Hong Kong. And then within a few months, Tokyo. But then I was away for years. Maybe 2008. And then I came… CLSA invited me to present in 2013. It was like a four-month presentation all across Asia. I was living in Southern California, and after that four months, I was like, well, I think I’m going to stay in this part of the world.

This is kind of a side tangent, but if somebody wants excitement in their life, if somebody feels the need for a shot of adrenaline, I’m not saying you can’t find it in London. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist in New York City to some degree, or you might sneak up on it in L.A. Give me a break though. If you look at the modern Asian cities, it’s like pants-on-fire adrenaline rush. Maybe it burns people out eventually, or maybe it keeps them going, but there really is something for those people that have not yet experienced the major Asian cities. It’s a fantastic experience.

Jay:  Well, I came over here in 2005, and I’ve been here ever since. I still love it. I have a family now. I’m settled down. I have three kids. So it’s not quite the same experience, but I still love it here. Like you said, there’s an energy and a vibe that you can’t really get elsewhere.

What excites you about Asia right now from an investment standpoint? Everyone talks about China. Everyone talks about growth and the rising middle class and this sort of thing. You are down in Saigon, which is another… Vietnam has a lot of interesting and exciting things happening. What are you seeing as far as opportunities in the region?

Mike:  Again, I know it’s hard because that’s the kind of typical question you would ask. But from a trend-following perspective, I really don’t care about the fundamental story. Sure, I can look at the window, and I can feel the energy of Saigon. Or if I go to Hong Kong, I can feel the energy. But from a trading perspective — and I’m going to beat this drum — if you want something different, the trend-following approach says, “Okay, what is our tracking portfolio? What are we going to follow?” And from that following, we are then going to say, “What’s our entry criteria?” And you’re going to take an entry, and 60% of the time, you’re going to lose a small amount of money.

So I don’t have the ability — I’m not going to even pretend — I don’t have the ability to forecast a da*n thing, not at all. Really. But I think there’s also something beautiful to that. Because I think for the people that are listening today, it’s nice to say to yourself, “Oh, wow, if I go down this path that Mike is talking about where he can’t give me the fundamental story about X, Y, Z new equity issue in Saigon,” or KL or Singapore, “But,” he says, “Let’s look for some momentum across the board in our tracking portfolio of the assorted instruments in play, and then he’s willing to take an entry on a company that he knows nothing about, and if he loses X, Y Z percent of his money” — 5% percept, whatever, I’m just generalizing — “he’ll get out, and he’d be willing to get back into that particular market if it turns around and goes the other way again.”

This is an entirely different way of thinking really. And so it allows you — and this is why I mentioned liquidity — if one feels like they have liquidity down, if they feel comfortable with their regulatory structure, if they feel comfortable with the government structure, if they can get their money in and out, then I’m giving my readers, my listeners, my students, I’m giving them the opportunity to use a tool that allows them to become an expert in all of these markets immediately. That’s just super cool. It’s super awesome really. It’s great.

It’s not necessarily something unique to me. As I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, it’s a long-standing style of trading that goes back literally decades.

Jay:  I think you’re applying the principles almost to your life because you’ve moved over there, you’ve obviously seen some sort of action in Asia, and you decided to move here.

Mike:  Action? What kind of action are you talking about?

Jay:  Well, you can interpret that any way you want. So why Saigon though? You could have picked any city in Asia. Why there?

Mike:  You know what? I like Saigon. I like Singapore. I like Tokyo. I like Hong Kong. I thought about living in KL at one point in time. I actually thought about living in Bali, but after two weeks of living in Bali, I was like please get me off the island. I guess for a couple week vacation, that’s fine, but I’m a city guy.

Siagon has got an interesting vibe. Look, if you come to Hong Kong or you go to Tokyo, you go to Singapore, you feel maturity. You feel stable. You feel… Yeah, sure, you’ll see new buildings and stuff like that. Siagon feels like the Wild West. If you turn around in Siagon, there’s a new 80-story condo complex. If you don’t walk down a certain street on week one, and week two the restaurant you like may be gone. The building may be gone. There might be a new building with a new restaurant that’s even better. It’s really that kind of energy.

That brings up an interesting issue from a fundamental perspective about Asia, which I think is useful for trend followers to think about. There are — what? What is it? — 180 million people or a 160 million people or… There are 250 million people in Indonesia, another hundred million in Saigon, 60 or 70 million in Thailand, 60 or 70 million in Malaysia, 120 million in Japan, 1.4 billion in China, 60 or 70 million in Korea… I mean the demographics are absolutely insane. And so I think, from a trend-following perspective, you do want to know that there is some gusto behind the markets. There are people standing in line wanting to trade, wanting to make bets. And that is something really interesting about the cultures in this part of the world.

Jay:  Yeah, absolutely. It’s exciting. The first thing I tell people whenever they ask about investing in Asia is I say you just have to get over here and see it for yourself first before you do anything else. That’s my view. I have a strong that you’ve got to come and take a look for yourself first and then figure out what interests you and how you can get involved in the action, so to speak.

Mike:  You know, that’s a great point because so many non-Asian investors or travelers, they view their first experience in Asia — and I guess I did this at first too — but they view it like, okay, let’s get the schedule done. I’ll be there for five days. I’m flying over, and then I’m flying back. a

No, no one here in this part of the world trusts that. You need to come break bread, and somebody needs to know that you’re spending time here and that you actually get it. Now, of course, investments can be made without having all that, but I can safely say that in this part of the world, I think people really appreciate if you take the time to “get it.” If you get their culture, you get their food, you could appreciate their food.

And if you’re a white guy, for example, if you can choose chopsticks. I can. I can. I would have to say every dinner that I’ve been from North Asia and Southeast Asia usually involves me and a group of Asian businessmen who want to see if I can use chopsticks because they’re dying to make fun of me if I can’t. And so it’s always nice to put that to bed quickly.

Jay:  It’s the first test.

Mike:  Yes, the first test.

Jay:  That’s awesome. Mike, what are you working on these days? You have an amazing podcast. All listeners, I highly, highly recommend Mike’s podcast. It’s one of the best out there. You were one of the pioneers when it comes to anything investing podcast-related. I didn’t really see any others out there early on, early doors, independent. Not associated with like a financial news network or anything like that. How many episodes are you up to? Like five, six hundred or something like that?

Mike:  Approaching 600.

Jay:  Wow. In the meantime, you also directed a movie.

Mike:  A few years back on that one. Time flies. But, yeah, I spent three years of my life during the middle of the great recession putting a documentary film together. It was not planned to be about the Great Recession. The film was in motion before that chain of events happened. The film was in motion in late ’06, but we had to adjust on the fly once things started to melt down.

Jay:  Interesting. I guess if it was the same sort of thematic, then that recession actually just strengthened the argument you were trying to make. Right?

Mike:  Oh, sure. I could think of… Ben Stein, the author, the guy that was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off also, he’s famous for saying, “If you made money — if you made money in October of ’08, you were doing something wrong.” If people want to send me an email, my email address is really simple — my name at my last name dot-com. I will give you a laundry list of people and funds that made fortunes in October of ’08. And I think that’s still a fascinating thing for people because probably I would hazard a guess the vast majority of investors do not know of a trader or a fund that made money in October of ’08 honorably, outside the system. I’m not talking about Goldman Sachs and gifts from the government and all that kind of nonsense. I’m not talking about being Warren Buffet, the richest guy on the block. I’m talking about trading strategies that had no ability to predict October of ’08 at all and still made fortunes.

So it is one of those things where I think as a trend following trader, I have to be careful that I don’t want to tell someone, “Oh, things are in a bubble stage, and it could go down from here.”

But here’s the reality — trend following is the strategy that does fantastically well when markets drop — especially equity markets, especially equity index markets. When equity index markets drop, think about what happens.

This is kind of the fundamental reason that trend-following traders make money. If you’re a trend following trader and you’re coming into 2008, you do not know that October ’08 will happen. But you have a diversified portfolio of markets — from energies to metals to you-name-it, including equity indices. Things start to change. And what happens when you get to that fall ’08 time period, money is running from index markets, running to other markets.

So trend-following traders were already in positions that were already trending even maybe just a little bit earlier in ’08. And then when the panic happens, it reinforces the move. And so it’s just a fabulous…

I tell people it’s Daniel Kahneman’s book in trading form really. It’s all Kahneman’s work that he got from behavioral finance, behavioral economics, prospect theory, getting the Nobel for that work, trend following is that in action as a trading strategy.

Jay:  Yeah, that’s pretty much it. That’s spot on. The podcast, you’re doing an awesome job with that. You obviously have your website. For, again, the audience listening in, you actually have some courses that you teach trend follower strategies.

Mike:  Yeah, if people want more information, I’m easy to find. They can always check me out at TrendFollowing. I’ve been teaching people for what seems like decades now, giving them insights on these types of strategies. Enjoy the books too. The books are quite fun. The newest edition of Trend Following out this year. I think it’s 220,000 words. The audio book is 34 hours.

Jay:  Wow.

Mike:  Yes, so it will keep you busy.

Jay:  Any other exciting projects that you’re working on, Mike?

Mike:  There’s always something exciting, but I don’t generally like to mention it until it’s out, you know?

Jay:  It sounds like you’ve got something big up your sleeves that’s coming down the pipeline. And the podcast, is that weekly?

Mike:  Two episodes a week until I burn out. When did I start? It’s the fifth or sixth year into this.

Jay:  Still going strong.

Mike:  It’s fun.

Jay:  Awesome. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, man. You’re unlike any other guest that we’ve had, so I think the audience is really going to enjoy and appreciate what you have to say, but we appreciate your time, Mike. The best place people can find you, follow you, connect with you is, I guess your website, TrendFollowing.com.

Mike:  TrendFollowing.com. I’m at Twitter — my last name @Covel. Easy to find. If you want to drop me a personal email, it’s michael@covel.com.

Jay:  I guess if I ever swing down to Saigon or if you’re ever up here in Hong Kong…

Mike:  You know, I was in Hong Kong like 18 months ago, two years ago. I gotta get back up.

Jay:  I think you’re due. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot. Appreciate your time.

Mike:  Take care.

Jay:  Take care.