Ep. 68: Mark Shore Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio
Michael Covel's Trend Following
Michael Covel
4.6 • 732 Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2012
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My guest today is Mark Shore, a trader and educator whose main area of expertise is managed futures. Shore has an MBA from the University of Chicago, was the former head of risk at Octane Research (over a billion AUM), was the former COO of VK Capital (a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley), and now is an adjunct professor at DePaul University teaching the only accredited course on managed futures in the country.
The topic is his paper Decoding The Myths of Managed Futures.
In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:
- Shore's experience in getting the "a-ha" moments out of his students when teaching managed futures, and how he brings his students into the world of managed futures
- How and why those working in the CTA/managed futures/trend following space have a firm grasp on risk management that exceeds the understanding of competitors (i.e. mutual funds)
- How the term "managed futures" (which refers to the instrument and not the strategy) might be problematic
- Skewness
- Drawdowns
- Why managed futures performance is famous for doing extremely well when chaos unfurls
- Why the majority of the mutual fund industry hasn't adopted CTA strategies
- The issue of survivorship bias
- Why certain people can't wrap their arms around strategies not based on fundamental analysis
- The emotional elements of trading
- Other experiences while working at VK Capital
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/
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Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast
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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. |
| 0:21.2 | I am your host, Michael Covel, not filtered, raw, honest. |
| 0:27.3 | That's my passion. |
| 0:33.1 | So today in the show I have Mark Shore, and Mark is most experienced in the futures markets |
| 0:39.8 | space. Mark's got his MBA from the University of Chicago. He has been involved with multiple |
| 0:46.6 | funds, former head of risk at Octane Research, which was a very large fund over a billion |
| 0:52.8 | assets under management, was the former CEO of VK Capital, which was a very large fund over a billion assets under management, was the former CEO |
| 0:55.9 | of VK Capital, which is a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. Currently today, an adjunct professor |
| 1:02.5 | at DePaul University teaching a course on managed futures, a whole lot of other bio stuff. |
| 1:08.1 | But I think we can get a little detail today and a little |
| 1:11.3 | specific, and I think Mark's going to give a lot back. Mark, thank you for joining me today. |
| 1:16.0 | Thank you. It's great to be here. So let me ask, I'm trying to go back on my memory banks |
| 1:21.0 | about where we met in person. Do you remember? I know we did. I can't remember if it was at a conference, an MFA event. |
| 1:29.8 | Where did we cross? |
| 1:30.7 | Yeah, you were, it was in New York when I was still living in New York. |
| 1:34.5 | You were speaking at some event that a friend of mine went to and he asked me to go with. |
| 1:40.7 | And that's where you and I met. |
| 1:41.9 | And then I started talking to you about |
| 1:44.3 | my skewness paper and that got us into a whole lot of other conversations about managed futures |
| 1:49.3 | was that as was that at a super fun event I yeah it was okay yeah now now it's strike or me |
| 1:55.9 | it was okay now now I recall I think well listen let me let me jump right in because I don't think there are many professors right now working in the space of managed futures. And as I give my own perspective on it, I'm going to let you run with it too. But, you know, managed futures for the audience out there. |
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