This is Trend Following Radio, where great thinking comes alive.

Nobel Prize winners, legendary traders, bestselling authors, and the pros that know what drive us irrational human beings.

I am your host, Michael Coval.

Not filtered, raw, honest.

That's my passion.

So this is probably one of my breakout podcast episodes, breakout in the sense that it's not a pure trading or trend following episode.

My guest, coming up in a few moments here is Mike Aponte.

Mike is a professional blackjack player and he was a team member, a leader of the famed MIT blackjack team. So Mike is a professional

card counter. He's definitely not a gambler. He's an investor. We're going to talk about that.

And for those, if you really want to look at more information on Mike, but he's featured in the book

called Bringing Down the House

by this guy named Ben Mesrich, was a bestseller, and he is the character in there, Jason Fisher.

And it was also made into a movie called 21. The only thing is of 21, though, is it 21 was

an adaptation of the book. So it's more of a fictionalized portrait of the book.

And the book, Mike talks about this.

The book was somewhat accurate.

But anyways, it's a really interesting conversation.

Now, if you're immediately hearing this intro and you're saying, oh, I'm just interested

in trading, I could care less about this blackjack player, that could possibly be one of

the most boneheaded things to say.

This, this, the synergies between blackjack successfully playing blackjack and trading

are off the charts all the way down to one of the key lynch pins between the two, Ed Thorpe

...