Ep. 161: Michael Konik Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio
Michael Covel's Trend Following
Michael Covel
4.6 • 732 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2013
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My guest today is Michael Konik, the author of many books of fiction, non-fiction, and essays. Konik has had a fantastic experience in the world of sports betting, and the parallels between his world and the trend following world are off the charts.
The topic is his book The Smart Money: How the World's Best Sports Bettors Beat the Bookies Out of Millions.
In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:
- Similarities between Konik's world and the Turtle story
- Konik's background and how he came into this world of rule-based betting
- Some of the stories about "Big Daddy" Rick Matthews (fake name for a very high profile individual featured on 60 Minutes), the main character in Konik's book and the most successful sports wagerer in the world
- Position limits
- Konik's theater background and how it tied in to the experiment
- Sports betting technique, the line, the Kelly Criteria, and "Big Daddy's" own line
- The "brain trust" and how "Big Daddy" led his operation
- Point spreads
- Looking for value rather than a favorite home team
- The importance of a dispassionate outlook
- The importance of knowing why you place a bet or trade
- How the brain trust came up with a line better than the other lines out there
- The importance of injuries in sports betting
Jump in!
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I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show.
To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/
You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/
Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast
My social media platforms:
Twitter: @covel
Facebook: @trendfollowing
LinkedIn: @covel
Instagram: @mikecovel
Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is Trend Following Radio, where great thinking comes alive. |
| 0:10.9 | Nobel Prize winners, legendary traders, bestselling authors, and the pros that know what drive us irrational human beings. |
| 0:21.2 | I am your host, Michael Covel. |
| 0:24.0 | Not filtered, raw, honest. |
| 0:27.3 | That's my passion. |
| 0:33.1 | Today in the podcast, I have Mike Connick. |
| 0:36.1 | Mike wrote a cool book called The Smart Money. |
| 0:39.5 | He's written several books, but today, our conversation is about the smart money. |
| 0:45.2 | Actually, it's really not as much about the book. |
| 0:48.0 | It's more about Mike's experience. |
| 0:50.9 | And Mike has had a fantastic experience in the world of sports betting. |
| 0:57.5 | The parallels to my trend following world are off the charts. |
| 1:04.0 | I hope you enjoy this conversation. |
| 1:13.5 | Hey, Michael, how are you? |
| 1:15.4 | Can you hear me clearly? |
| 1:17.1 | I can hear you clearly. |
| 1:18.8 | I can hear you clearly. When you called a couple minutes ago, Skype decided to update my experience, so it would be even better well uh these things happen in uh technology world |
| 1:33.1 | and considering we're about i don't know five six seven eight thousand miles away it's not half bad |
| 1:38.7 | where are you i'm in vietnam we are about 7,000 miles away. |
| 1:45.2 | Hey man, what are you doing there? |
| 1:47.3 | I was in Asia in the spring on a speaking tour and I came to Saigon, enjoyed it, and I was supposed to go home and I didn't go home. |
| 2:01.1 | Right on. |
... |
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