A few years back, I had a great time talking with Scott Billington.

I die-hard trend follower with some very strong convictions about how long-term trend following can be done differently to many in our industry.

Scott shared some great stories about real-life experiences that had shaped their approach,

and I'm excited to share with you some of the key moments today. So sit back and relax and enjoy these unique views and observations from Scott.

And if you would like to listen to the full conversation,

just go to top traders on plot.com forward slash 25 and also 26.

So I started putting together basically a trading model.

And in my opinion, there were kind of three big picture decisions somebody had to make

when it, when you talked about what kind of trading you were going to be.

And the first was discretionary or systematic and mechanical.

Sure.

And so I would define discretionary as I bring in different inputs, whatever those inputs might be.

I weigh them in a non-standard fashion, meaning that I don't weigh them necessarily the same way every time.

I might bring in the same inputs. I might look at different ratios, but sometimes input A overwhelms

input B, and sometimes input B might overwhelm input A, regardless of that might be. And then I would make the trade

decisions in that fashion. Systematic I define as, as I do the exact same thing every time.

Right. I might argue that if you have any discretion, then you're discretionary.

Sure.

So that even if I have a mechanical model, but I decide seven times a year to override it,

I suspect those seven times a year are going to be seven of the more volatile and the, you know, the larger outcome periods.

And in essence, you have a discretionary model, which is fine, but that you're a discretionary trader.

And the reason that I and we have gone with systematic is threefold.

...