Talk to us about how over the years you went from believing to loving.

Well, it definitely took me some time to have that experience and to realize the alternative was way worse than not loving it.

I fell in love with trend following before I met Richard Dennis, and I still am in love with trend following.

So I think that's what I meant is that I think most traders, as they grow, experience have experience and trade over the years they could have a tendency to um evolve away from the methods that they initially learned or improve them and um even to the point where they look a lot different and not be so wedded to one sort of strategy you know i feel like that um that some traders are more systematic and that's what they believe in.

It's all about the systems.

And for a while, trend following was the systems that I chose based upon the research and the back testing.

And then I think with me, it was more, no, I'm choosing trend following and I'll just try to make it better over time.

What are you afraid of taking a small loss? Don't be afraid of that, you know?

Yeah.

Um, but it's what a machine would do.

You know, we have this sort of unsophisticated machine.

It does something for us every day.

It's not the best machine, but it cont-- but the only way the machine works is by doing the same thing all the time, and that's the definition of it working.

So that's what we have to do with this approach.

We need to improve it, possibly.

so now there's an opportunity where it, it pulled back a little bit away from the trigger, but it never got stopped out, and now it's right back to that trigger to the point where, again, it's an opportunity to almost roll back the clock.

In their head, they're like, "Oh my God, this sounds way more risky." Talk to us a little bit about that.

Well, yeah, it's the opposite of more risky.

It's hundreds of markets maybe in different from each of those four sectors and shorts.

And we're able to, you know, with the futures, we're able to fine-tune the risk on each position.

So some of the markets are traded larger than others and some smaller than others, and it's kind of all based upon the volatility in each individual market.

So we can put together this very precise-- At least initially, it's pretty precise.

When the profits start to run, you know, the volatilities can all change and things can get kinda hectic and crazy as we're making money on the big trends.

We're long Merck

Mm-hmm.

And these big trades, they dominate the performance, the gold, the silver, cocoa, um, short yen, crude oil.

You know, this is gonna dominate the performance.

So this is what it makes it look like that they're so much more important.

But a good trend following exit, um, you know, over time will make a, make about the same, the same amount of money as another trend, good trend following exit.

So it's really only like, how did I do in 2026? I'm glad I traded more a shorter term and a longer term because the longer terms didn't work out as well as the shorter terms.

At least I have some shorter term exits.

Mm-hmm.

But with a big profit, you're much more liberal with that profit.

Right.

So we want to limit those losses to a small amount of our of our capital.

And then we, through our back tests, we've learned that we, in order to maximize the profit, we will have trailing stops that are, you know, have potential to give back a lot more than we're willing to risk on a losing trade.

So it's all based upon the back test.

So if the back test came back and said, oh, don't use loose pants.

Keep those trailing stops tight to the market.

It's, it's kind of my, my, you know, Achilles heel in some ways.