Ep. 218: Sam Polk Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Michael Covel's Trend Following

Michael Covel

Investing, Business

4.6 • 730 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2014

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest today is Sam Polk, a former wall street banker who walked away after making millions. Today, Polk runs a non-profit to help the poor understand nutrition. However, his op-ed is definitely controversial.

The topic is his op-ed For The Love of Money.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

The intensity surrounding the reaction to Polk’s op-ed piece
Reactions from friends and colleagues about the article
Envy and jealousy in the Wall Street world
Polk’s background and life growing up
Filtering cultural messages
The line between individual responsibility and being part of a system
Crony capitalism
Power dynamics
The mythology of risk-taking in America
The solution for the investment banks out there
Polk’s non-profit which he runs today

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

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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.
0:26.6	I am your host, Michael Covel, not filtered, raw, honest.
0:41.7	That's my passion. Today on the podcast, something a little different. A friend of mine who has appeared on my podcast, Peter Borish, recommended that I speak with Sam Polk.
0:43.4	Sam wrote an interesting article in the New York Times, an op-ed called for the love of money.
0:49.7	A former Wall Street banker who walked away after making millions.
0:54.5	Today, Sam runs a nonprofit, helping the poor to understand nutrition.
1:00.6	However, his op-ed definitely controversial, definitely chooses sides, definitely makes a point.
1:10.4	I think our conversation is fun. I hope you enjoy it.
1:19.9	So let me jump right in. You wrote a interesting piece. I'm sure some people loved it and some people hated it. And I'm sure you knew
1:30.2	that going in when you wrote this opinion piece called for the love of money in the New York Times.
1:35.4	Is that a fair assessment that you knew it was going to upset some people and make other people happy?
1:41.2	Yeah, I mean, I guess that's true. Although although to be totally honest, I was surprised at the sort of level and intensity of the reaction.
1:51.8	Explain. Well, for one, I mean, the, you know, the article hit, and since then I've done, you know, 50 to 60 interviews have been,
2:03.1	you know, asked to sort of speak all over the world and received like, you know, I think,
2:08.4	you know, I haven't counted, but my guess is over 10,000 emails from people, I'd say 99%
2:15.8	really supportive. Some of them would be sort of what you would expect, the people that
2:20.8	are like really angry at Wall Street. And I, you know, we can talk about all this stuff, but those
2:27.0	folks, I mean, look, I think that Wall Street, you know, has some problems right now for sure.
2:32.8	And I also think the world just loves to
2:34.7	judge Wall Street. But there were a lot of people that really identified with like the
2:39.5	sort of feeling of greed and jealousy that I was talking about. And those were the sort of nice
	...

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